scout

Video Scout: For surgeons or James Bond?

We've come a long way, baby.

Back when the first endoscope was developed in 1806 to probe "the canals and cavities of the human body," the Vienna Medical Society ruled it to be something of an inappropriate technology, and improvements on such devices were slow-going for decades.

Today the field of endoscopy has splintered out into dozens of areas, playing key roles in procedures that involve almost every part of the human body, from colonoscopies (colon) to rhinoscopies (nose), colposcopies (cervix) to bronchoscopies (airways). The tiny cameras used in these procedures make David Pogue's column look like a review of ancient relics.

At just 3 millimeters in diameter, BC Tech's Video Scout is one of the smallest medical cameras in the world, according to the company's VP of business development, Charlie Skinner:

Medical companies can integrate the Video Scout into biopsy tools, ablation wands, catheters, tissue cutters, scopes and more. We're confident this sort of low cost imaging technology will usher in a new wave of disposable medical products with built in video cameras.

The high cost of health care has led to a big push for more affordable surgical devices. Video Scout has great potential to be a low-cost, single-use alternative to more expensive industry standards. CEO Ben Clawson takes the upside even further:… Read more

PicScout expands catalog; adds Ito as adviser

Image identification company PicScout is expanding its efforts to help people identify the rights holders of images they find online.

On Tuesday the company is set to add microstock site Dreamstime's more than 7 million images to its Image Exchange catalog. What this means is that users who have the company's Image Exchange Firefox add-on installed will be able to identify when one of those images (or the other 40 million or so that are in the catalog) winds up on Web sites and in places like Google's image search.

The add-on, which was introduced in October … Read more

Do more than find

A handy BlackBerry file manager, FileScout does more than just find. Sure, it creates a desktop-like file tree to help browse for files and folders on your BlackBerry's SD card and internal storage, but FileScout can also zip files and folders, create directories, and copy whole files and folders. You can rename and delete content, attach files and folders to e-mails, and search through directories, even with a wild card. Thumbnail images are left out of search results in this version, but are on their way.

We like how the app also lets you copy, edit, and delete text … Read more

Girl Scout banned from selling cookies on YouTube

I've always been a little suspicious of the Scout movement.

The uniforms. The slightly too correct and frightfully ancient hairstyles of some of the senior members. The Scout Promise that gets boys to promise: "To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight." And gets every girl to declare she will: "respect myself and others, respect authority, use resources wisely, make the world a better place, and be a sister to every Girl Scout."

Now these strangely clothed beings have gone a little too far. They have trampled upon Wild Freeborn.

Wild Freeborn is … Read more

Scout launches cheap real-time market research

Scout Labs, an interesting variation on market-research services, comes out of beta on Wednesday. Briefly, you feed it your brand name and some key words, and it scours the Web--blog posts and Twitter items, mostly--to see what people are saying about your product or company.

The competitive advantage: Compared with other market research tools, it's cheap: $250 a month for the standard package.

Scout Labs CEO Jennifer Zeszut said typical online market-research services, like Neilsen's BuzzMetrics, Visible Technologies TruCast, Cymfony, and Collective Intellect, cost more because they require manual intervention. Each report or dashboard is a custom job. … Read more

The 404 268: Where I don't care, subject to you!

Alternate show title: Where Wilson Tang is the worst son ever. As much as we love Wilson's Mom calling in and recording her voice for us, we can't help but give Wilson flak for exploiting his own flesh and blood. Today's show starts off innocently enough with a story about a disgustingly delicious Super Bowl snack, but in typical 404 fashion, it quickly sinks to dirtier waters (pun intended) thanks to yours truly. You know what? I don't even regret it! And special thanks to our surprise visitor, listen in to find out whom!

Filthy filthy … Read more

Random sampler: Boy Scouts go free, Mozilla improves email, and more

You know open source has arrived when the Boy Scouts of America start promoting its principles and adoption and the LDS (Mormon) Church starts hiring open-source developers. This week, we get both and more in today's edition of Random Sampler.

The Boy Scouts of America have created a website focused on open source. It's designed "as a place for scouting leaders to go when they need an application for their troop events or when they want to help other troops with their software projects." It's also intended to add some end-user usability to open-source development, which has long been lacking from many projects. Good effort. David Ascher, Mozilla's email guru, went on the record to talk about the future of Mozilla's email project, suggesting that he's not interested in building an Outlook clone, but instead wants to bring "new energy" to email. Let's hope he succeeds. Hyperic keeps getting asked by its customers, "Who can we hire to administer our Hyperic IT management systems?" Among those asking the question? CNET and the LDS church. Nice to see my blogging and tithing dollars going to good use.… Read more

If you see this hovering overhead, cover up

We saw this item a couple of days ago but passed on it because we were certain we'd seen it before--here. But despite the similarities in appearance, there's one big difference: The "Aeryon Scout" is a flying camera, not just a remote-controlled toy.

The Scout is made of four foam rings connected by a rotor in the center, according to Inventor Spot. The camera is attached to the bottom so it can take aerial shots like a miniature satellite--or at least with better range and control than a mini-chopper or rocket cam.

But at an … Read more

Collect iTunes cover art with CoverScout

When Cover Flow for iTunes was first introduced, I was initially pretty excited. After all, who wouldn't want to browse through their music and movies by flipping through covers? It's almost like flipping through records or CDs at a music store. But once I got Cover Flow up on screen with iTunes, I was faced with something I'm sure a lot of people experienced--there were so few album covers associated with my music library, Cover Flow was almost useless. I've been able to add many covers to my library since, but I still had gaping sections … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 704: Monster in Blue Jeans

I have never had so much fun reading a legal response than I did the note from the head of Blue Jeans Cables to Monster Cable. See the episode for the full story. We also determine that politicians across the world are nuts, and I'm not good math. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 704

Comcast to spearhead creation of P2P Bill of Rights http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080415-comcast-to-spearhead-creation-of-p2p-bill-of-rights.html

Defiant Psystar back selling Leopard computers http://www.news.com/8301-13579_3-9919432-37.html

So exactly who or what is Psystar? We dig a little http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/04/15/ so_exactly_who_or_what_is_psystar_we_dig_a_little.html… Read more