The Menlo Briefs from Menlo Innovations. Visit us online at MenloInnovations.com.

Cell Phones for the Deaf? - The University of Washington has undertaken a project with the goal of making wireless mobile communication for the deaf a reality. The MobileASL video compression project seeks to enable sign language over video telephony, even on less-than-speedy data networks. While still considered "hypothetical" the project seeks to use motion vectors to identify particular signs. Current wireless telephone network has inadvertently excluded over one million deaf or hard of hearing Americans. The University is currently seeking participants for user studies.

Space Suddenly Seems Less Vast - Low orbiting junk - once a nuisance - is now a threat. According to the article early this year, after a half-century of growth, the federal list of detectable objects (those that are four inches wide or larger) reached 10,000, including dead satellites, spent rocket stages, a camera, a hand tool and junkyards of whirling debris left over from chance explosions and destructive tests. This number is significant enough to cause a chain reaction of destruction that could cause the ruin of billions of dollars’ worth of advanced satellites and eventually threaten to limit humanity’s reach for the stars.

Spring is in the Air! - The flowers are blooming, the trees are budding, and the stale cold air of Winter is finally blown away. What's the perfect way to celebrate? Training at Menlo of course! We'll give your business a fresh injection of ideas and to help you spring ahead of your competition. You can view our course listing online. We hope to see you soon! Menlo Briefs subscribers can save 10% off the cost of registration by entering the discount code RS033010P during registration.

Saving a Life Might Have Just Gotten Easier - While there are millions of people in North America who have been trained in CPR, many perform the procedure incorrectly a mere six months after training. Two engineering students from McMaster University have invented what they believe is the solution: the CPR glove.

Cell Phone? What Cell Phone? - Despite protestations from Google that they're not entering the cell phone market, a little Internet poking around reveals plans for a not only a cell phone, but one with faster searching capability even on slow networks. Sneaky!

Play Along at Home - Google recently updated its Google Earth data for certain parts of of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Not-so-coincidentally these sectors happen to be precisely where the US government has been hunting for bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. According to the article Google gets its images from many of the same satellite companies — DigitalGlobe, TerraMetrics, and others-that provide reconnaissance to US intelligence agencies. Now we can all look for Bin Laden from the comfort (and safety) of our own homes.

The Fastest Thing on No Legs - Oscar Pistorius is not simply your typical athlete, having broken a total of 19 world records. So what's the big deal? His legs were amputated when he was a year old and now he is on track to make the South African Olympic team running on carbon-fiber composite Cheetahs. Go Oscar!

That Should Help Pay for College - Kudos to Mary Masterson of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She's the 17-year old winner in the $100,000 Intel Science Talent Search. She built an accurate spectrograph that identifies the specific characteristics - or "fingerprints" - of different kinds of molecules.

We're Passionate About What We Do - "Good communication should be as stimulating as a strong cup of coffee and just as hard to sleep after." (Ann Morrow Lindberg said that and we agree!) Menlo is filled with passionate, enthusiastic people who only love one thing more than the work they do: sharing that passion with others. We love public speaking and are thrilled to have the opportunity to share inspiring messages focused on business success. Look here for our current speaking engagements and a list of some topics that we've spoken about in the past. Call us today at (734)665-1847 to book your next event.

Robots! - What can walk on four legs like an animal or two like a human, crawl like a centipede, climb like a spider, wiggle like a snake and even roll like a wheel? It's superbot! Constructed of autonomous, Lego-like robotic modules that can be reconfigured into different systems for different tasks.

There's No Need for Name Calling - Steve Ballmer (Chief Executive of Microsoft) said in a recent article that Google's hiring pace is "insane." Google had 10,674 employees at the end of last year, up 88 percent from a year earlier.

I Thought We'd Solved this Problem - Your

new ID theft worry? Photocopiers. Old news, right? High resolution photocopiers have been around for years. This time, however, it's the hard drives that are the risk. Most digital copiers these days use disk drives to store a scanned image of the document while it waits to be printed. If the data on the copier's disk aren't protected with encryption or an overwrite mechanism, and if someone with malicious motives gets access to the machine, industry experts say sensitive information from original documents could get into the wrong hands.

A Bird-brained Idea from the East - Scientists in China has successfully flown pigeons via micro electrodes planted in their brains. It's the first successful test of this type in the world. What no one seems to be able to answer is why someone would want to fly a pigeon.

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 April 19th to learn how our approach creates the right software for the right application.