Of all the practical purposes for web 2.0 that have popped up, I am finding that the health industry utilizing it is one of the more interesting of markets lately. As an extreme Twitter fiend with my text messaging totaling over 10,000 SMS messages last month third party Twitter tools is nothing new to me. I was surprised to find however, that should I be diabetic, I could track my habits and blood sugar readings via Twitter and SugarStats.com.

Per their site, SugarStats makes it simple to track, monitor and share your blood sugar levels and other key statistics to help you manage your diabetes online. Having seen the effects of diabetes and the work that can go into maintaining your health I can see this service being very valuable to people that have busy or active lifestyles. If you use Twitter, you can also send a direct message to their service Twitter name containing your stats plus optional comments. The stats get imported into your SugarStats account along with the comments and the date and time the message was received.

No more forgetting what your glucose levels were, worrying about a dead battery in a blood meter whipping out your history, or having a pad and pen handy for jotting notes down. Most people carry their cell phones with them everywhere they go and by using Twitter and SugarStats they will also always have a place to keep their records. Especially handy is the comments for noting at the time exactly how you are feeling, eating, or doing.

SugarStats has also integrated a social networking type option within their service. You could share your stats, collaborate, and exchange messages with those you share with. At the very least this might be valuable for your doctor. Graphs and trends are created from your data so that you can easily visualize your history.

Not a Twitter fan? You can also send your stats to your SugarStats account via email or their mobile web through your phone or PDA browser.

A nice collection of screenshots for newly released Linux Mint 3.1 is available at OSDir.com. Mint 3.1, codenamed Celena, is compatible with Ubuntu Feisty repositories. New features in 3.1 include:

• mintAssistant - a first run wizard which allows you to fine-tune your system.
• mintUpload - allows you to upload any file smaller than 10mb to the Internet.
• Print to PDF- print any document to PDF that is auto-saved to your Home/Documents folder.

Also included are new artwork, improved stability and performance, new tools, and upgrades. Visit LinuxMint.com to get the full feature list.

I feel it is a day of mourning with this news from ArsTechnica:

Back in the excitingly heady days of the dot-com bubble, the rivalry between Sun and Microsoft was one of the highlights. Sun’s famous motto “The Network is the Computer” threatened to make Microsoft’s desktop monopoly obsolete, and visions of a world of thin clients running Java backed up by expensive Sun servers were dancing in then-CEO Scott McNealy’s head. Much has changed since then, of course. McNealy resigned, lawsuits were settled, and these days Sun and Microsoft are fast friends. Now, in a rather stunning bit of news, Microsoft and Sun announced at a press conference that Sun has signed up to become a Windows Server Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), selling Sun x64-based servers that come bundled with Microsoft Windows Server 2003. Sun has released a chart showing which hardware will be ready for the Windows operating system, and the company is expected to ship the first bundled systems within 90 days.

Read the entire piece at ArsTechnica 

From VentureCake:
“Although Distrowatch may say your mate’s homemade Linux rules the world, we’ve always been Google Trends fans. When reconfirming that the big three - Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSuSE - are still the most popular Linux distros, we noticed that Ubuntu has reached another milestone entirely.”

“Ubuntu is the first Linux distribution to overtake Jesus in Google Trends, establishing a firm lead over the bearded one since the end of Q1 this year.”

You really should go to VentureCake and read the rest. Really, right now…

From Mobile Magazine comes this tasty little tidbit:

I think that the Apple iPhone was garnering more attention and creating more rumors than the Google Phone, but interest in the latter is really start to ramp up now that the former is already out in the marketplace (with a price drop too). Five fresh rumors have arisen surrounding the secretive Google Phone, but unfortunately none point toward a potential release date.

Finish reading all about it…

I was ranting on a completely different issue over at Alternageek when the news started a story about a missing teenaged girl. Apparently she met an older man on MySpace, talked to him on the family phone a number of times, skipped school to meet him and never came home.

Having your children go missing or anything bad happening to your children is a parent’s worst nightmare. As a mother of four I am on constant alert and I realize I cannot keep an eye on everything going on at all times especially as they get older and become more independent. However, when it comes to what is going on in my home, darn tootin’ I know what is going on.

Internet access? Monitored via a proxy and firewall, all accesses are logged into a system log, AND the computer is right where I can see it. Even if all the technology blocking and logging fails I am still there to monitor the activities on the computer. If they go to friends houses? Yeah, I talk to the parents to ensure that the computer policies are the same as in my home, if not there will be no computer access while my children are visiting and if they should ever think that is ridiculous then I don’t want my kids there to begin with. Same goes with any other policy such as phone, TV, movies, video games…

What amazes me is that this man called this girl’s house and talked to her on the phone. Her mother thought it was just a classmate. Either this child is a REALLY good liar or something failed here. I know, parent’s are busy people! They don’t have time to stay on top of everything, right? Let me put it this way, my children are more important than ANYTHING else. Period. I want to know who people are when they call. I want to meet them, I want to talk to their parents if it is someone who they have talked to in more than just passing.

Take precautions when it comes to the internet just like you would your home. If you lock your door, subscribe to caller ID, install security systems on your property then for all that is holy, why do you leave your internet unsecured and unmonitored? Bad people on the internet isn’t new and it isn’t hard to monitor your family when they are on the computer. The software is free from most ISPs and the best prevention is to keep the computer screen so that it faces you in a common area when you children are using it.

/end rant