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

Virtual Reality to the Rescue - Hunter Hoffman runs the Virtual Reality Analgesia Research Center in Seattle and he has helped create something truly cool - "SnowWorld." SnowWorld is a virtual reality world that soothes young burn patients during treatment, allowing patients to lose sight of the nurses, equipment and other fearful sights and sounds around them. According to the article they are instead "immersed in an Arctic world where they lob virtual snowballs at penguins, snowmen and roaring woolly mammoths while speeding through hairpin turns in a canyon of ice." Very cool.

It Was Probably Just Swamp Gas - Federal officials say it was probably just some weird weather phenomenon, but a group of United Airlines employees swear they saw a mysterious, saucer-shaped craft hovering over O'Hare Airport last fall. Neither United nor the FAA have investigated the event, which has upset some employees. United goes as far as to say there is no record of a UFO and they don't recall having discussed such an event. Tower controllers, on the other hand, seem to have retained their sense of humor: "To fly 7 million light years to O'Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable," said O'Hare controller and union official Craig Burzych.

Pardon My Clumsy Segue, but... - The Netherlands have now joined Japan and Britain in the growing list of countries which have outlawed Segways from public roads. The reason for this ban? It doesn't have a brake -- you brake by leaning backwards -- which prevents officials from issuing it a license.

Where to Go When the Weather Turns Cold? - Menlo of course! We'll give you ideas to set your business on fire. The class schedule is out for 2007 -- check it out! Looking forward, we'll be featuring Agile Project Management in March. This is a great course for any project manager who's looking to expand their skills and get a jump on earning those PDUs for maintaining their certification. The two-day course earns you 16 PDUs and you'll walk away energized after an unforgettable learning experience. Come join us! Menlo Briefs subscribers can save 10% off the cost of registration by entering the discount code RS011810P during registration.

Rock Star: Supernova - The ambitious folks at Google are developing a search engine for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) project, a 3-billion pixel camera/telescope currently being built atop the Cerro Pachon mountain peak in Chile. Each night it will generate 30 terabytes of data, which Google plans to process in real-time. "Google's mission is to take the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. The data from LSST will be an important part of the world's information, and by being involved in the project we hope to make it easier for that data to become accessible and useful," William Coughran, Google's vice president of engineering, said in a statement. The project is slated for completion in 2013.

Money Talks, But What Else Can It Do? - Here's a story right out of James Bond: Defense Contractors have been warned about "spy coins" with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden inside. The coins were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada. The only problem? The Defense Security Service said it never could substantiate its own published claims about the mysterious coins.

Uh, I Left My Phone in My Other Pants - VISA and Nokia have partnered to turn cell phones into credit cards. According to the article, "Consumers will be able to pay for groceries and other purchases by swiping a phone over a reader that electronically communicates with a microchip on the phone. Phone owners confirm the purchase with the push of a button and the deal is complete." Systems similar to this one have been available in Europe and Japan for the past few years.

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.

How to Catch a Killer - Philadelphia police caught a serial killer with the help of a combination of Homeland Security and private surveillance cameras. Police examined video from 50 different cameras and pieced together relevant footage from 12 of them, and eventually were able to identify the murderer. Once caught, he confessed to several other murders spanning the past eight years.

Thumbing it Across India - Bank ATMs are not a very familiar sight in many parts of India, but a pilot program from AGS Infotech is looking to change that. Fifteen biometric ATMs are going to be placed at village kiosks in five districts across southern India. These ATMs are expected to serve about 100,000 workers who will use fingerprint scanners, rather than ATM cards and PINs, to obtain their funds.

When the "Killer App" Kills - Author Scott Rosenberg started out on a journey to chronicle the creation of the ultimate organizer for personal information. Instead, Dreaming in Code chronicles Mitch Kapor's self-funded journey into software oblivion as he tried to go beyond the bounds of existing applications such as Microsoft Outlook and instead found himself falling weeks, then months, then years behind schedule. The full title of the book is Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software. A title like that sort of says it all, doesn't it?

Pass Me the Tuneage, Bro' - Lance Fried - an electrical engineer and surfing afficionado - aims is to create a product that is small, durable, simple and a staple for anyone participating in "any type of activity that you either get wet; or sweat." Inspired by a beer cooler, the Freestyle Audio weighs just over one ounce and has only four buttons. It costs about $150.

The Next Inevitable Step in Pastry Evolution? - In the category of "Why didn't we think of that?" we offer up caffeinated donuts! Dr. Robert Bohannon has developed a way to add caffeine to baked goods while eliminating the bitter flavor that caffeine typically imparts. Each donut contains as much caffeine as two cups of coffee.

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 February 15th to learn how our approach creates the right software for the right application.