WebMD for iPhone and Android Is a Dynamic Mobile Health Compendium [App Of The Day]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5805317/webmd-for-iphone-and-android-is-a-dynamic-mobile-health-compendium

Whether you're trying to figure out what's wrong with you (health-wise), locate a pharmacy or hospital, learning about drugs and treatments, or track your health problems, WebMD is an extremely comprehensive solution for all of those tasks.

While probably an enormous time-waster for hypochondriacs, if you're trying to figure out what's ailing you, WebMD's mobile app for iPhone and Android is helpful. You can specify symptoms easily by tapping the part of the body where they exist, and then once you've finished adding them all the app will identify some possible problems. You can then save those conditions for later to keep track of what you've discovered—perhaps for when you're seeing a real doctor to verify.

The WebMD app also lets you check out drugs and treatments, so you can learn more about them, and provides photo and video content to help you learn about things like CPR. Additionally, if you're looking for a local pharmacy or healthcare provider, it'll help you search using your current location (or any other location you want).

The only potentially major downside is that the app is a little slow to launch, but that seems to be more of a problem on older hardware. On the iPhone 4, it loads in just a few seconds.

WebMD is available for free, right now, on iPhone and Android.

WebMD for iPhone (iTunes App Store) and Android (Android Marketplace)

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You can follow Adam Dachis, the author of this post, on Twitter and Facebook.  If you'd like to contact him, Twitter is the most effective means of doing so.

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Space Archeologists Discover a Thousand Egyptian Tombs Hidden in Tanis [Video]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5805387/space-archeologists-discover-a-thousand-egyptian-tombs-in-tanis

Dr Sarah Parcak thinks that "excavating a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist" but that Indiana Jones is "old school". Well, she must know. After all, she has discovered two pyramids and 1000 tombs. From space.

Two pyramids, one thousand tombs and 3000 ancient settlements. That's what Parcak—an Egyptologist from the University of Alabama in Birmingham—and her team have discovered without even moving from their armchairs. Using infrared satellite imagery, the team has been looking for archeological rests in Tanis, the legendary city Northeast of the Nile delta, which became the capital of Egypt during the 21st dynasty.

And while there's no Map Room in the real Tanis, the satellite—which takes photos from a 435-mile (700km) orbit—is so accurate that it can clearly create a map with the streets and every building buried in the soil. In fact, it can tell if a tomb has been looted or not, distinguishing objects one meter in diameter and even identify materials under the surface of the desert.

Their discoveries have been shocking, revealing a dimension that nobody imagined and it's now considered one of the most important sites in Egypt. Dr Parcak believes that this is just the beginning of her work, which has been already confirmed by test excavations in the area:

They'd excavated a 3,000-year-old house that the satellite imagery had shown and the outline of the structure matched the satellite imagery almost perfectly. That was real validation of the technology.

She believes that, by making them understand the sites as a whole and have a clear idea of where they are getting in, the work can be more selective and focus on the important sites.

It is indeed impressive. The only thing I don't like: "We have moved from Indy," she said. Fine, but can you use a whip and, more importantly, have you found the bloody Ark? That's what I want to know. [Egypt's Lost Cities via BBC

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I'm A Little in Love With My New iPad Arcade Machine [Video]

Source: http://kotaku.com/5805409/im-a-little-in-love-with-my-new-ipad-arcade-machine

Last night I sat in front of an arcade machine in a darkened room of my house and played '80s arcade games until well past midnight.

While I haven't given up on the idea of building a little arcade in my home, Ion's iCade does a good enough job of replicating a form of the experience on an iPad or iPad 2 to at least temporarily satisfy that urge.

The $99 iCade, which starts shipping from ThinkGeek on June 9, is essentially an iPad Bluetooth arcade controller housed in a smartly designed box that looks just like an 80s arcade machine. There's even a bit of fake wood paneling and a light-up coin return slot.

The kit showed up at my house yesterday afternoon in a nondescript cardboard box. Inside was a collection of wood panels, the hard plastic box housing the joystick and buttons, and a small sack of bolts.

It took about ten minutes to screw together the iCade, and resulted in only one, plastic-breaking mistake (turned out it wasn't a big deal). Once assembled, I lifted the lid of the iCade, slid my iPad into the holder and read the instructions.

The iCade is really just a fancy dock and controller for your iPad. It doesn't power your Apple device or provide a monitor or even come with a game. But Ion so nails the aesthetic and feel of those old arcade machines that it doesn't matter. Besides you can string the Apple charger into the iCade and plug it into a wall to charge as you play.

Since the device doesn't come with any games you'll have to do some downloading to get any practical use out of the iCade. Ion suggests you download Atari's Greatest Hits, a collection of Atari arcade and console games that supports their controller.

The collection is free to download and includes one free game (Missile Command was the freebie when I downloaded it last night, but it sounds like they switch it sometimes. Pong was the previous freebie.) The collection includes more than 100 games, but you have to pay to play them. I ended up splurging and getting the entire collection for $15.

The iCade, when paired with a supported game, is a marvel to play on. I set it up on my kitchen table and sat in front of it for hours playing Crystal Castle, Red Baron, Millipede and others. My only regret was that the system doesn't have more support on iTunes. Games like Pac-Man, Dig-Dug and Space Invaders, all available through the online store, simply don't support Bluetooth controllers.

So while I think the iCade is well worth the $99, you may want to consider whether you're a fan of Atari games before picking it up. I'd like to think that down the line more developers will add support for the device, or Bluetooth controllers in general, but there's really no way to be sure.

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Someone Will Pay You $100,000 to Drop Out of School and Start a Tech Company [Genius]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5805452/someone-will-pay-you-100000-to-drop-out-of-school-and-start-a-tech-company

There are several problems, of course. One: you'd be mentored by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, who's only one of the most impressive (and likely scariest) web 2.0 people in all the land. Two: of 400 applicants, only 24 were picked.

The 24 ex-students, all under 20 years of age, presented their tech company ideas to Thiel and were selected to join his Thiel Fellows program. Some of the initiatives sound great so far—there's Faheem Zaman, who's building a mobile payments system for developing countries (and is only 18 years of age), and John Burnham who is doing what any 18 year old would love to do, working in the field of space—specifically by extracting minerals from comets and asteroids.

Instead of sending out a message that "everybody should drop out of college," Thiel believes "you have a bubble whenever you have something that's overvalued and intensely believed...In education, you have this clear price escalation without incredible improvement in the product. At the same time you have this incredible intensity of belief that this is what people have to do. In that way it seems very similar in some ways to the housing bubble and the tech bubble."

A lot of parents are probably shaking their heads right about now, and hoping their school-age children don't catch wind of Thiel's comments, but as you no-doubt know, a lot of the most successful tech entrepreneurs—Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, even Twitter co-founder Evan Williams—dropped out of school early. There does some to be the running theme of opportunity, however—all these people met other people who helped them along into their careers. How rare is it that you actually meet the right person, who's willing to give you a chance? [NY Times]

Image Credit: Shutterstock

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8 Great Experimental Features to Enable in Google Calendar's Labs [Google Calendar Labs]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5805460/8-great-experimental-features-to-enable-in-google-calendars-labs

We've highlighted plenty of Labs features for Gmail, but Calendar has some pretty great Labs offerings, too. Since it's been nearly two years since Labs were added to Calendar, we thought it was about time they got a bit more attention. Here are eight of the most useful experimental features available for Google Calendar that you can start using right now.

Next Meeting (a.k.a., the One New Calendar Labs Feature You Should Definitely Enable)

Next Meeting is probably the single most useful experimental feature in Calendar, because it shows you exactly what event is coming up next, along with a clearly readable countdown timer so you don't miss it. It shows up as a widget in the sidebar, and the event displayed in the widget is highlighted the same color as the calendar set that it came from.

Jump to Date

This feature allows you to quickly jump straight to any date in the past or future, without a flux capacitor. Not only is it great for jumping back to check what events happened on past dates, but enabling it along with the Year View feature (below) is a great way to get a handle on long-term planning.

World Clock

This feature adds a simple, minimal world clock to the sidebar, and you get to pick and choose which cities to include in the list. It's especially useful for people trying to schedule events with co-workers who are located globally, and even better, it displays cities with dark backgrounds if it happens to be night time in their time zones.

Year View

The ability to view the entire year is something that most would agree should be included in any calendar service, but that's not the case in Calendar if you don't have this feature enabled. It's quick to use, unobtrusive, and extremely useful for planning events several months ahead of time.

Dim Future Repeating Events

This feature only applies to events that are slated for a specific time period, not a whole day. If there are recurring events scheduled for the same day as a one-off item, they'll dim slightly to make the slightly more important event stand out. Pretty useful if you've got a packed schedule and you're trying to skim through it for appointments.

Gentle Reminders

Gentle Reminders was one of the first experiments to hit Calendar's Labs. When enabled, event reminders will flash in the browser tab and play a soft alarm sound, which is less obtrusive than a pop-up window. If you're using Chrome, a new option allows desktop notifications as well.

Automatically Declining Events

Calendar already offers an option to list yourself as busy during events, but that won't stop people from inviting you to anything and everything while you're gone. This feature handles those invites for you by simply declining each and every one if you tell it to do so.

Event Attachments

Sharing calendars with friends or co-workers is great, but it only shares the events. This feature allows you to upload attachments to any event you want, and even grabs items from other Google services. The only catch is that if you're sharing something from Docs, you'll still have to actually set the doc itself to share, too.

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There are a few more experimental features in Google Calendar's Labs settings, so be sure to check them out for yourself to see if any suit your workflow.

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