A woman in New York recently received the world’s first pacemaker that can be monitored wirelessly and then accessed remotely by her doctor.  Beyond simple tracking, if serious abnormalities develop the device will actually phone the physician for immediate attention.
The new device automates many of the tests for patents with pacemakers, and in doing so, speeds up the health care process.  For the 3 million people with pacemakers around the world, this development would make monitoring their condition incredibly efficient, and could likely save lives.  The technology received FDA approval in June and will hopefully become commonplace in newer pacemaker [...]

As gaming systems become increasingly integrated with the physicality of the gamer, developers are seizing upon the intricacies of our actual environments for new ways of having fun on-screen. Aspyr’s Treasure World for Nintendo’s DS and DSi handhelds is one such attempt to bridge the gap between the real and the pixelated, launching players on a virtual treasure hunt that requires exploring one’s surroundings for actual wireless networks. Real-life WiFi spots are converted into in-game “treasure,” which can be traded in for items. The game can even be played with the handheld closed—at which point one is literally just wandering [...]

New York now probably has the grandest Wi-Fi hotspot in the country. Yesterday, the New York Public Library opened its elegant Edna Barnes Salomon Room in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building as a reading room specifically for online users. In recent years, the room has been used mostly for special exhibitions and rental space for private engagements.
Built in 1911, the Schwarzman Building houses the library’s research collection. The Beaux-Arts room is decorated in the classical style with 4,500 square foot of rectangular space and boasts dark maple wood floors. It has seating for 128 people on brown leather chairs and [...]

This report is filed from the JFK to SFO flight on Virgin America’s WiFi enabled jet. We thought we’d try out “air-fi” to see how it worked. First impressions are great – there’s simple upload and download of email, easy access to the web. As you do use it you get to notice some of issues from the slower connections which you’d probably expect – YouTube videos buffer for a long while, for example. There’s also some trickery going on behind the scenes to manage data volume – I’m writing this from PSFK’s web-based publishing platform not from my desk-top [...]

Virgin is teaming up with Google to promote cloud computing. On June 24th, the Day in the Cloud Challenge, lets players compete versus others either on the ground or while flying in one of Virgin’s flights through WiFi. If you’re flying Virgin that day, you’ll receive free WiFi to join the challenge. But if you have work to do, you can opt to share documents, email, browse websites or anything you normally do back at the office.
Whether you can teleconference is not clear, though it might be fun to collaborate on solving a puzzle while flying.

Bug Labs, a group of innovative engineers, unveiled their new additions to their Bug product at CES that enables users to create a custom device based on fully programmable “bugmodules” that attach to the “bugbase.”  The unusual product gives knowledgeable consumers a chance to build a device that fits their needs, rather than relying on the marketplace to provide something for them or become burdened by a string of different products. 
The first bugmodules were released in 2007 and included a touch-sensitive LCD screen, a motion and accelerometer sensor, a GPS unit and a digital camera with video capabilities.  At [...]

Dutch coffee shop CoffeeCompany has been using their wifi coverage to battle internet moochers.  The company offers free wifi in stores servicing local universities, but found their free internet was attracting far more freeloaders than paying customers. So they decided to tempt the cash tight loiterers by moving their menus into the wifi menu, constantly changing their network name from ‘CoffeeCompany’ to titles like “HaveYouTriedTheCarrotCake?” and “Mmm…YummyMuffinsOnly1,99″.  Clever solution. But definitely opening the door to some awkward situations; patrons planning to connect to the network may find it a little uncomfortable double checking with store staff whether “BuyAnotherCoffeeYouCheapskate” is [...]