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  Heidi Montag's Plastic Surgeon Was Texting Just Before Fatal Accident

  JP 1:44 am on August 19, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: border collie, California, california highway patrol, Car (5), celebrity publicist, Charmaine Blake, Dr. Frank Ryan, Heidi Montag (5), nbsp (1,691), Read (1,473), Ryan (3), Steven Reid, surgeon

  Filed under: Cell Phones, Celebrities, Social Networking

  Plastic surgeon Dr. Frank Ryan, the man who turned Heidi Montag into a tragicomedic freak of science, died in a car crash on Monday after driving his car off of a cliff in Malibu. And, according to one of Ryan’s former flames, texting might be to blame.

  Charmaine Blake, Ryan’s ex-girlfriend, recently revealed to People that the surgeon was tweeting about his border collie just before his fatal crash. “He lived up in Malibu on a tiny street and he was texting while driving and he accidentally went over the cliff,” says Blake, who is also a celebrity publicist. Blake went on to say that investigators have already told Ryan’s family that the doctor’s tweeting caused the accident, although the California Highway Patrol has yet to declare an official cause. Although CHP officer Steven Reid confirms that Ryan was indeed typing away on his phone, he insists that, at this point, the tweeting is just “one of the elements that we are investigating.”

  Continue reading Heidi Montag’s Plastic Surgeon Was Texting Just Before Fatal Accident

  Heidi Montag’s Plastic Surgeon Was Texting Just Before Fatal Accident originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  Unable to Call, Stranded Biker Uses Twitter to Call Ambulance

  JP 1:44 am on August 8, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: bike, bike crash, California, Call (2), Connecticut (5), grand fashion, Leigh Fazzina, nbsp (1,691), Read (1,473), winding trails

  Filed under: Cell Phones, Social Networking

  

  Last Tuesday, Leigh Fazzina was racing her bike through the woods in Connecticut when she suddenly drifted away from the rest of the cyclists competing in the mini-triathlon. As she was furiously riding downhill toward the main bike trail, her front wheel ran into some gnarly tree roots, and she crashed in a grand fashion. The 36-year old from Philly wasn’t familiar with the Connecticut wilderness, and now found herself hurt, unable to walk, and without a cell phone signal to call her cousins for help. So, she turned to Twitter.

  “I’ve had a serious injury and NEED Help!” she tweeted. “Can someone please call Winding Trails in Farmington, CT tell them I’m stuck bike crash in woods.” A few minutes later, no less than six people (including some strangers) called the local fire and rescue services, with some followers calling from as far away as California. An ambulance soon arrived at the scene, and Fazzina was rushed to the hospital.

  Continue reading Unable to Call, Stranded Biker Uses Twitter to Call Ambulance

  Unable to Call, Stranded Biker Uses Twitter to Call Ambulance originally appeared on Switched on Tue, 03 Aug 2010 15:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  Dell Tech Swipes Nude Photos of Gullible Customer

  JP 1:43 am on August 2, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: California, computer gear, Dell Tech, nbsp (1,691), Read (1,473), s webcam (2), Tara Fitzgerald, Tech (6), Tennessee (2), woman (4)

  Filed under: Computers

  Dell is apparently eager to compete with Best Buy and Walmart for the title of most despised retailer in the country. A few months back, a tech support rep got in trouble for turning on a woman’s webcam without her permission. Then, last month, the company got nabbed knowingly shipping faulty PCs. And, just this week, the Texas-based manufacturer was caught shipping motherboards infected with malware. Now, a woman from California is alleging that a support technician for Dell stole nude photos of her from her PC and posted them online, and then charged $800 worth of computer gear to her credit card for another woman in Tennessee.

  This is not a cut-and-dry case of a misbehaving tech rep, though. This drama has actually been going on for almost a year, and only now is Tara Fitzgerald coming forward with her accusations. Try and follow the sequence of events, and make sense of Fitzgerald’s often questionable judgment.

  Continue reading Dell Tech Swipes Nude Photos of Gullible Customer

  Dell Tech Swipes Nude Photos of Gullible Customer originally appeared on Switched on Sat, 31 Jul 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  NASA Radar-Ready Rover Helps Solve Murder Case

  JP 1:47 am on July 17, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: alviso california, California, Dawn Sanchez, ground penetrating radar, NASA (2), nasa rover, nbsp (1,691), Read (1,473), rover (2)

  Filed under: Computers

  

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  If the whole space exploration gig doesn’t work out, NASA might have a future in solving crimes… on Earth. According to Popular Science, a NASA rover equipped with ground-penetrating radar technology recently helped solve an 18-year-old California murder case.

  Back in 1991, Dawn Sanchez vanished after having last been seen in the car of her boyfriend, Bernardo Bass. Bass was a suspect, but police couldn’t gather enough hard evidence to charge him with the crime. The case was closed until, years later, an informant told police that the car had been taken apart, and buried in an abandoned lot in Alviso, California. But there was a problem: the lot was littered with tons of trashed metal parts, which would make locating the pieces of Bass’s car nearly impossible. That’s where NASA stepped in.

  Continue reading NASA Radar-Ready Rover Helps Solve Murder Case

  NASA Radar-Ready Rover Helps Solve Murder Case originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 15 Jul 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  Now Google Can Spy on You at an Angle: 45-Degree View Released

  JP 1:45 am on July 12, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: California, dortmund germany, Germany (8), google (193), google maps (22), Italy (7), nbsp (1,691), Read (1,473), South Africa (5), Venice (2), venice italy, View (17)

  Filed under: Google, Web

  

  Google has now announced that you can use its services to get a sideways view of the world. A few months back, Google released its 45-degree aerial photographs to developers, and has since incorporated the perspective into its beta testing ground, Google Maps Labs. Now the images are available for all users, but they only cover a handful of areas: some parts of California; South Africa; Venice, Italy; and Dortmund, Germany. Hooray for the Google panopticon!

  What does this mean for your weekend? Why, absolutely nothing. In fact, we can’t really see what’s different from when Google Maps merged its data with Google Earth. We guess the pictures are a little higher-res? Even more reason to cover up your naked child. [From: ReadWriteWeb]

  Now Google Can Spy on You at an Angle: 45-Degree View Released originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  Junior High Teens Uncover Cave on Mars

  JP 1:46 am on June 25, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: California, cave, Glen Cushing, high resolution imaging science experiment, Mars (2), mars odyssey orbiter, nbsp (1,691), Read (1,473), thermal imaging camera, U.S. (109)

  Filed under: Computers

  A group of 13-year-old scientists from Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, California recently discovered a hole in the roof of a Martian cave, only the second pit located near the Pavonis Mons volcano. Arizona State University’s Mars Student Imaging Program lets students create science projects and commission cameras aboard the Mars Odyssey orbiter in order to snap shots of the Red Planet’s surface.

  The students were investigating the concentration of lava tubes on the Martian surface, and, after studying hundreds of photos taken by the thermal imaging camera, noticed a mysterious black dot. U.S. Geological Survey scientist Glen Cushing explained that it was actually a 380-foot deep pit (620-by-520-feet wide) that may have been created after a cave’s roof collapsed. The students may soon get a better look at the cave, which is thought to have been created from ancient volcanic activity, with higher resolution images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). A geological discovery on another planet isn’t bad for a bunch of kids who can’t even legally drive. [From: Arizona State University and Space.com, via: MSNBC]

  Junior High Teens Uncover Cave on Mars originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 23 Jun 2010 07:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  Switched Asks, 'What is Farmville?'

  JP 11:25 am on June 18, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: California, facebook (320), FarmVille (8), informal survey, nbsp (1,691), southwest Indiana, Switched (12)

  Filed under: Video Games, Switched Video, Social Networking

  

  If, a year or two ago, you’d asked us what FarmVille was, we’d have said we were pretty sure that it was a small college town in southwest Indiana. We would, of course, have been wrong, but we sort of wish that we would’ve been right. ‘FarmVille,’ after all, has managed to dominate our Facebook feeds, telling us of our friends and family who trade cyber-cattle for cyber-corn, build e-barns and sell virtual tractors, endlessly and socially. There’s something pretty weird about people, locked in their cubicles, fantasizing about backbreaking labor on a farm — call it the predicament of the modern age. Fortunately, some are still ignorant of Zynga’s Frankenstein, confusing it with “the place Superman grew up” (Smallville), or where milk is made (a dairy?), as our video below demonstrates. One thing is clear from our informal survey: We have no idea why the app is so popular, because no one admits to liking it, or has relegated it to “Aunt-territory” or the app “made by the dude in California who gets revenue the sleazy way.”

  Maybe, or let’s hope anyway, our participants have been too busy tending to their real gardens to tend to worry about growing virtual greens.

  Continue reading Switched Asks, ‘What is Farmville?’

  Switched Asks, ‘What is Farmville?’ originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  Facebook Privacy Debacle an Issue in California Attorney General Race

  JP 1:46 am on May 28, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Attorney General Race, California, california attorney general, CEO Mark Zuckerberg (8), Chris Kelly, facebook (320), Kamala Harris, nbsp (1,691), political sphere, privacy (20), Read (1,473), San Francisco District

  Filed under: Web, Social Networking

  

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  The dust-up over Facebook privacy has entered the political sphere, and we’re not talking about the recent push for the FTC to investigate the company. The social network’s former privacy chief, Chris Kelly, is seeking the office of California Attorney General, and his role in shaping policy at the company has become a point of contention during the Democratic primary.

  Kamala Harris, the San Francisco District Attorney and current leader in the polls, issued a statement last Thursday clearly broadcasting her intention to make Kelly’s position at Facebook a campaign issue. The statement demanded that Kelly “come clean” with voters regarding his role at Facebook and asked pointedly, “If Kelly couldn’t stand up to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on behalf of Facebook users, how on earth can Californians trust Kelly to go to bat on their behalf as attorney general?”

  Continue reading Facebook Privacy Debacle an Issue in California Attorney General Race

  Facebook Privacy Debacle an Issue in California Attorney General Race originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 26 May 2010 07:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  Detroit Marathon Using Electronic Medical Records, Nation Should Follow Suit

  JP 2:15 am on May 7, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: California, Detroit (4), electronic health data, henry ford hospital, Hospital, lucile packard children, Marathon, nbsp (1,691), Palo Alto (6), Read (1,473)

  Filed under: Computers

  Not only can electronic medical data and records save time, but they may even be able to save lives. According to Scientific American, researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit are collecting electronic health data to help prepare for this October’s Detroit Free Press Marathon. By learning about runners’ medical conditions before the race, organizers can strategically place doctors at appropriate locations along the course. In addition, by studying injuries and treatments that occurred during past races, and this one, organizers can improve medical care at future marathons and other mass events.

  Of course, compiling and viewing this data in electronic form is more efficient than using paper documents. For further proof, just look at the success a California hospital experienced after switching to electronic records. Reuters recently reported that the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto had seen its mortality rate drop by 20-percent since incorporating an electronic records system in 2007. That’s equal to 36 fewer deaths over a year-and-a-half. The computerized system cuts down on medical errors and missing files, and saves money, too.

  Continue reading Detroit Marathon Using Electronic Medical Records, Nation Should Follow Suit

  Detroit Marathon Using Electronic Medical Records, Nation Should Follow Suit originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 05 May 2010 07:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  Quake-Catching's Best Weapon Could Be Your Home Laptop

  JP 12:50 am on March 22, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: best weapon, California, Catcher, collecting tools, nbsp (1,691), program (6), Read (1,473), seismologists

  Filed under: Computers

  

  In August of 2008, we covered a program called Quake-Catcher that turned laptop and desktop PCs (with a $50 USB sensor) into powerful data collecting tools for seismologists. Protecting the hard drive with an accelerometer (which is built into many a modern computer), Quake-Catcher is able to gather information about the size, speed, and strength of earthquakes.

  At the time of its inception, the network of computers was very small, with only three machines monitoring shaking. In order to be effective, the program needs many PCs working in concert to discern the “dramatic shaking” of seismic activity from the vibrations of traffic or bumps. Quake-Catcher is finally nearing that critical mass with over 1,000 computers running the software across the globe, including over 450 in California alone.

  Continue reading Quake-Catching’s Best Weapon Could Be Your Home Laptop

  Quake-Catching’s Best Weapon Could Be Your Home Laptop originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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