Panasonic Unveils Robotic Drug Dispenser

Panasonic's first foray into the robot business is a machine that sorts and distributed medications to patients. It isn't developed to look humanoid -- it more resembles a cabinet with drawers, according to a company spokesperson. Pharmacists put drugs in, and the machine sorts and distributes them to patients based on stored medical data.
said Tuesday has developed a medical robot that dispenses drugs to patients, the Japanese electronics giant's first step into robotics.


Panasonic will sell the robot to Japanese hospitals next March and will market it in the United States and Europe later. Panasonic spokesperson Akira Kadota said the robot will cost several tens of millions of yen (hundreds of thousands of US dollars).

"This robot is the first in our robotics project. It sorts out injection drugs to patients, saving time for pharmacists," said Kadota.


The robot does not look humanoid. "It looks like a cabinet with lots of small drawers," he said.

Pharmacists put drugs into the robot, which stores medical data for patients. The robot will then sort out drugs for each patient and place them into respective drawers bearing the names of patients.

Osaka-based Panasonic hopes annual revenue from the robot and other medical robotics will reach 30 billion yen ($315 million) in the financial year to March 2016.

Japan boasts one of the leading robotics industries in the world, and the government is pushing to develop the industry as a road to growth. Automaker Honda Motor has developed the child-sized Asimo, which can walk and talk.

Earlier this year, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, a government-backed organization, revealed a walking, talking robot with a female face. However, it hasn't cleared safety standards and cannot yet help humans with daily chores.

Google to launch operating system ( Chrome OS)

Google is developing an operating system (OS) for personal computers, in a direct challenge to market leader Microsoft and its Windows system.
Google Chrome OS will be aimed initially at small, low-cost netbooks, but will eventually be used on PCs as well.
Google said netbooks with Chrome OS could be on sale by the middle of 2010.
"Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS," the firm said in its official blog.
The operating system, which will run on an open source licence, was a "natural extension" of its Chrome browser, the firm said.
The news comes just months before Microsoft launches the latest version of its operating system, called Windows 7.

"We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you on to the web in a few seconds," said the blog post written by Sundar Pichai, vice-president of product management, and Google's engineering director Linus Upson.

So at long last Google is making its move. It is poised to strike at the heart of Microsoft's software empire.
Tim Weber, Business editor, BBC News website

Charge of Google's light brigade
Both men said that "the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web" and that this OS was "our attempt to rethink what operating systems should be".
To that end, the search giant said the new OS would go back to basics.
"We are completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates.
"It should just work," said Google.
Google already has an operating system for mobile phones called Android which can also be used to run on netbooks. Google Chrome OS will be aimed not just at laptops but also at desktops for those who spend a lot of time on the web.

Silverlight Car Konfigurator

Although you may not speak German, the smooth experience of the Konfigurator comes through via the images and motion. You can check out a video of the Konfigurator in action or start using it to customize your own Mazda. Keep an eye out for the Deep Zoom of the interiors, which ends up being a great way to check out textures.

Configure your own car now here...

Multi-Touch Apps Without a Multi-Touch Screen

Multi-touch (MT) is a big part of Windows 7. MT is exciting and opens up new choices for UI interaction but the enthusiasm will quickly fade if you don’t have a multi-touch enabled monitor.
The good news is that there are multi-touch devices coming soon to your favorite hardware dealer. Hardware vendors like HP, Dell and Albatron want to have their products available before the October 22nd, 2009 release of Window 7. DigitTimes reports that a number of companies will be competing for a place on your desktop.

Touch panel makers, including eTurbo Touch, Mildex Optical, and Integrated Digital Technologies (IDT), are showcasing multi-touch technology supporting Microsoft Windows 7 at the ongoing Computex 2009.

The touch panel makers are introducing improved capacitive touch panels for medium- to large-size products, with prices 50-60% more than traditional capacitive touch panels and 60-80% less than projective capacitive touch panels, according to market sources.

One of the biggest obstacles in programming and testing a multi-touch (MT) application is enabling developers who don’t have MT computers to interact in a simulated MT way.

The Surface team solved this problem by creating a Surface emulator. Since the Surface has a five camera vision system buried in the depths of the table they needed to create a emulator that mimics that camera system on a normal PC.

It’s similar if you plan on adding MT to your Windows 7 application. For various reasons your dev team may not have MT devices for all team members. Both testers and developers need a way simulate user touches from their legacy hardware. Unfortunately there is no official emulator available from Microsoft. But there is a third party work-around that solves that problem.

Google's Gmail and More Finally Lose 'beta' Tag

First VLC, now Google. The kids are all growed up! Google has finally decided to ditch that pesky beta tag on several of its major projects. After five years of use, Gmail is apparently finally ready for prime time, along with Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Docs (in process).

The reason for dropping "beta" from the products seems to be largely political: businesses are reluctant to have their critical infrastructure depend on software that's perpetually in beta. By getting rid of the moniker, Google is aiming to convince more enterprises to consider its products as suitable for their business. And, of course, given that those are the people actually paying real money for the product--instead of us consumer leeches who pay only by having our eyeballs assailed with ads--that's a smart move on Google's part.

As Google's Matthew Glotzbach, the director of product management in Google Enterprise wrote today on the company blog: "We've focused our efforts on reaching our high bar for taking products out of beta, and all the applications in the Apps suite have now met that mark."

On a related note, Google is also adding some new features for those paying customers: email delegation and relegation, allowing businesses using Google Apps to easily comply with various data-retention laws.

Beta was once almost a mark of status for Web services, but it's become less so over the past few years, as they've become more and more popular. Even photo-sharing site Flickr got out of beta (and into "gamma," no less)--back in '06. Take that, Google!