I found a recent Internet article, from a board-certified Internal Medicine physician, that outlines some of the unique health problems occurring in an “expanding tech-growth community”.  Beyond Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS), the doctor lists the following repeating problems: 1) horrible sleep hygiene, 2) headaches, 3) back pain, and 4) poor attention span. Where do I (you) fit into each of the four mentioned problem areas?  Sleep hygiene - less than 8 hours of  sleep per night, project deadli...

The author of “The World is Flat” gave a speech Sunday at Brandeis University.  Mr. Friedman said that economic success is because of enterpreneurs with personal computers.  Friedman said we are in “an age of greater speed and productivity, one where the biggest winners will be the best collaborators, synthesizers, and those with an eye for environmentally friendly technologies.  Read the article about his presentation....

Continuing on the “stress” aspects of IT, I was reading an online article that discussed “user stress” as a reason for the failure of several IT projects worth millions of dollars. In a review of five projects (three canceled before implementation, the other two canceled three months after deployment), each with a budget between $500k and $1m and lasting 7-11 months, the following “factors determined customer stress levels“: Customer time spent away from primary responsibility, Degree of chan...

The BBC is reporting the results of a UK poll that shows that IT stress is the leader in driving men and women in the UK to drink and harming their health.  The top three causes of stress are: 1) IT problems (30%), 2) Change in financial status/personal injury (24%), and 3) Commuting (20%).  Read the article. Read the report....

Wow, am  I a happy developer.  Levi Strauss announced jeans for women and men with a built in docking cradle and retractable headphones for your iPod.  Read the story....

Happy New Year to the Borland community.  Here we are at the start of another year full of fun, opportunities, and challenges.  While I was on my holiday break I had some time to get caught up on my reading.  An interesting “booklet” that I read was Bill “Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management”.  Bill Swanson is the Chairman and CEO of the Raytheon Company. You can order this insightful spiral bound book via the Internet. The book is free for individuals (a donation is requested to the MATHCOUN...

Wired Magazine has published their list of “biggest spoken gaffes” by technical executives in 2005.  You can read the top quotes in the article on the Wired web site....

Merry Christmas 2005 from David I.  I hope you have the best Christmas, Kwanzaaa, Chanukkah, Family Day, Festivus, and all of the other holidays you celebrate at this time of year. My greatest hope is for peace around the world....

Do you want to create your own search portal, integrate web search into our applications, and have access to terrabytes of archived web data?  I was reading Wired News online about how Alexa (a subsidiary of Amazon.com) is opening up their web crawler to developers and others.  The fee based platform (pricing) is now available to everyone who sets up an account.  The user guide is available online....

CNN.com posted a story today that describes computer-based emotion recognition software that was used to analyze the famous smile of Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa painting. The story refers to a recent British weekly journal, “New Scientist“, report about the software developed by Nicu Sebe (University of Amsterdam) and researchers at the Beckman Institute, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  The software examines key facial features (curvature of the lips, crinkles around the eyes, etc) t...