The List is Out! - Pardon us while we celebrate -- Menlo Innovations was just named to the 2007 Inc. 500 list of fastest growing private companies in America! We've landed at number 420 and couldn't be prouder. We'd like to thank our clients and everyone on the Menlo Team for making it possible. You can read our profile along with those of the other honorees online. [more]

The Holy Grail of Prosthetics - Jonathan Kuniholm and his fellow engineers at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory are on a mission: to build an artificial human arm that acts, looks and feels to its user like his native arm, and to do it by the end of 2009. Darpa has called on engineers at 28 companies and research institutions in six countries to help. Darpa program managers launched Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009 two years ago to help soldiers like Kuniholm who were returning from combat in Iraq or Afghanistan missing all or part of an arm. [more]

San José is Going Green - San José Unified School District today announced that it has entered into a unique partnership with Chevron Energy Solutions and Bank of America to establish what is believed to be the largest solar power and energy-efficient facilities program in K-12 education in the United States. Construction of the first phase will begin this summer and be completed by early 2008. The program’s subsequent phases will also include energy efficiency measures that will further reduce the district’s energy purchases and operating costs. [more]

Going for Gold - Embarrassed by recent scandals over the safety of Chinese products, organizing officials for next year's Beijing Olympics have spelled out high-tech plans to make sure healthy food is delivered to the 10,500 athletes who will reside in the Olympic Village. China announced it was taking steps to ensure athletes' food is safe and free of substances that could trigger a positive result in tests for banned performance-enhancing drugs. China will use Global positioning satellites to help oversee food production, processing factories and food hygiene. [more]

Robo Surgery - Starting in September a four armed surgical robot will be used at the Edmonton Royal Alexandra Hospital to treat prostate cancer. The robot's four tiny arms are slightly more flexible than the human wrist and are able to weave and bob with tight precision. One carries a camera and the three others wield tools. The surgeon controls them from a base with a three-dimensional screen. Jack Ondrack, a former patient, put up about 10 per cent of the $4 million to get the ball rolling. "Using the old methods, it would take a urological surgeon something like 350 procedures to arrive at his ultimate skill level," he said. "Using this robot, it looks like about 50 procedures are all that will be required to get a urological surgeon up to speed." [more]

A Possible End to Drunk Driving? - Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. has revealed a new concept car featuring multiple preventative features designed to reduce drunk-driving. The various technologies are designed to detect the driver's state of sobriety and to activate a range of preventive measures including immobilization of the vehicle. The system includes alcohol odor sensors, a facial monitoring system, and sensors to detect driver inattentiveness. [more]

The Search for Truth - An experiment at the College of Charleston revealed college students participating in the study trusted Google's ability to rank results by their true relevance to the query. When participants selected a link from Google's result pages, their decisions were strongly biased towards links higher in position, even if content was less relevant to the search query. The study's findings have long-term implications since such usage affects future rankings. [more]

Life in the Funny Papers - A friend of mine has a quote in the signature of her e-mails that always strikes a bittersweet chord with me: Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.' Charles Schulz wasn't talking about the IT Industry when he wrote it, but he might as well have been. Nearly all companies have failed investments in software initiatives--many in the six and seven figure range! The good news is that the leading causes of these failures can be avoided by applying Menlo's High-Tech Anthropology^® practice. Join us for the next FREE 90-minute presentation on September 20th to learn how our approach creates the right software for the right application.

Hate Your Cell Phone? Play Dead! - Many cell phone carriers offer deep discounts on expensive cell phones to attract customers, but have you ever tried cancelling that contract? Typically steep fees apply. Well, if you're looking for a way to escape that contract you signed you could try taking a clue from this guy -- he faked his own death in an attempt to escape his cell phone contract. A more reasonable route might be to try a service such as CellTradeUSA.com or CellSwapper.com, websites that match people wanting to get rid of the remaining time on their contract with people looking for shorter cell phone commitments. [more]

PLZ SND CHZ PZA - Following successful trials, Dominos UK is launching a new way to get pizza delivered - the Pizza by TXT service. More than 2,000 users have already signed up for the service since it trialed in July. [more]

It Keeps Going and Going and... - Flexible paper batteries could meet the energy demands of the next generation of gadgets, says a team of researchers. While a conventional battery contains a number of separate components, the paper battery integrates all of the battery components in a single structure, making it more energy efficient. The flexible battery can also function even if it is rolled up, folded or cut. [more]

Harnessing the Power of People - Two graduate students at MIT's School of Architecture and Planning want to harvest the energy of human movement in urban settings, like commuters in a train station or fans at a concert. The so-called "crowd farm" would turn the mechanical energy of people walking or jumping into a source of electricity. The proposal took first place in the Japan-based Holcim Foundation's Sustainable Construction competition this year. [more]