health

How to use Android to quit smoking

"Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times." -Mark Twain

Can you relate? If one of your New Year's resolutions for 2012 is to quit smoking for good, here are a few Android apps that might help:

1. QuitNow! QuitNow! is a smoking cessation app that can help you track how long since you quit, how much money you've saved, and even the positive impact quitting has had on your health. QuitNow! has achievement badges as well, so you can try to make quitting … Read more

Jawbone halts Up production over battery issue, offers full refunds

Jawbone has halted production of Up, its fitness wristband over battery issues and has offered customers full refunds, regardless of whether they've encountered problems.

And the company is even allowing customers to keep their devices if they receive a refund. In essence, customers could tap the refund program to offset the cost of the device, even if their Up has no issues.

"I think most people will do what's right," said Travis Bogard, vice president of product management at Jawbone.

The Up, which garnered much attention at its launch a month ago, is a wristband that … Read more

Microsoft, GE team up in health care venture

General Electric and Microsoft have formed a health care company with a 50-50 ownership split. Sound familiar? It should. GE has a similar joint venture with Intel.

Add it up and GE has turned out to be a key partner for Wintel’s health care ambitions.

The GE-Microsoft healthcare joint venture is focused on patient outcomes as well as real-time data. The companies are planning to develop an open platform as well as clinical applications. Microsoft also finds a home for a bevy of technologies acquired when the software giant bought Sentillion two years ago.

With the move, GE has … Read more

How to turn your iPhone into a microscope eyepiece

Sometimes people ask me to look at frightfully exciting things.

These normally come via the incomprehensible medium of the press release. However, sometimes I get sent things (in this case, via an e-mail from my louche engineer friend George) describing a new invention that seems positively useful and even vaguely comprehensible.

This thing is called the SkyLight. It allows you to take your iPhone, Android phone, or any other that might still exist and turn it into a microscopic eyepiece for the world.

Its creator is medical designer Andy Miller. He has already designed the Global Focus microscope, a light, cheap fluorescent microscope for developing countries. … Read more

When an iPod gets stuck... inside you

No one can deny that human being do things they sometimes regret.

These things seem like good ideas at the time. And then, well, you end up in the ER being X-rayed.

It is, therefore, both exhilarating and instructive to look at some of the pictures from a new book called "Stuck Up."

This tome for our ages (but not necessarily all ages) features 100 X-rays that have revealed strange objects perched inside people's bodies.

As the Huffington Post displays it, people do end up going to hospital with iPods inside them. Cassette tapes, too. Although the … Read more

The laser that turns brown eyes blue?

Some people cry over the hue of their eyes.

If only they were blue, rather than muddy brown. And, well, brown eyes don't look so good with your dyed-blonde hair.

An inventor in California believes he has found the solution. Gregg Homer, founder of Stroma Medical, says that, in a mere 20 seconds, he can turn old brown eyes into old blue eyes. Or even young ones.

The way Homer told it to KTLA News, brown eyes are actually blue. Well, beneath the brown pigment that covers the iris, there is apparently a blue-looking orb.

 

So his procedure … Read more

Jawbone Up aims to get you healthier

Jawbone, a company known mostly for Bluetooth audio accessories like the Jawbone Era and the Jambox, is venturing into the health and fitness industry with a new product called the Jawbone Up.

First revealed at TEDGlobal, it's essentially a tiny wristband that works in conjunction with the Jawbone Up iPhone app to track your movements, sleep patterns, and eating habits to help you make healthier lifestyle choices. Jawbone breaks that into three categories: Measure, Engage, and Act.… Read more

Are you going to eat that? New app helps you eat better (video)

"If you are what you eat, then you are awesome" was the slogan printed on the bag sitting in front of us during lunch last week at a New Mexican burger chain. We felt pretty good about ourselves as we ate our green chile burger.

But what about an app that passes judgment on what you eat?

"The Eatery" is a new app from startup Massive Health that lets users snap a picture of their food and then starts analyzing eating habits over time. In the video above, SmartPlanet correspondent Sumi Das talks with co-founders Aza … Read more

Deaf YouTube star hears sounds of her future

Sarah Churman is the unlikeliest Internet star. The Texas stay-at-home mom of two little girls has somewhat ordinary interests--she loves to read, watch movies, and attend concerts with her husband of almost 10 years, Sloan.

But on September 26 of this year, Churman was catapulted to YouTube fame due to an intimate, home movie that went viral. She was born deaf. But on that day, she heard her own voice for the very first time. The 91-second video clip brought this viewer goosebumps, tears, and an empathy for this remarkable woman.

When I interviewed Sarah and Sloan Churman at medical offices in San Jose, Calif., she explained to me that the deaf community tends to be divided into two categories: those who want to use technology to restore their hearing and those who try to make the most of life without it. She is very firmly rooted in the first camp and has spent a good deal of her adult life researching the latest hearing devices to come onto the market. In May 2011, Churman heard a radio ad for Envoy Medical's Esteem implant. That set the balls in motion for a summer of hope, frustration, high emotion, and ultimately, success. … Read more