assistance

Although more a record-keeper than a true assistant, Pageonce's ad-supported Personal Assistant app gives you the tools to view all your online accounts in one centralized location. Sure, you'll have to be comfortable storing all your passwords on your phone, but if you are, you'll find yourself relying on it to get all your details in a glance.

After adding accounts through an assisted browsing process, you'll be able to view a history of your banking transactions, stock portfolio, social commitments, and friends' status updates from a slew of social networks, e-mail accounts, and shopping services, … Read more

The productivity app known for bringing summaries of your social and financial life has now come to the Android Market.

Pageonce's Personal Assistant, made available Wednesday, provides account balances, status updates, and other real-time information from online accounts as varied as your stock portfolio, eBay bids, and cell phone minutes. The information is read-only, which makes some functions, like viewing your bank and credit card balances, more immediately useful than others, like watching your Twitter feed.

Sure, signing up for this productivity app does require you to put your trust in Pageonce's security--256-bit data encryption, 128-bit data … Read more

LogonAssist is a basic password organization tool. Although it's not as sophisticated as others we've seen, it's not bad for users needing a simple way to keep their log-in information organized.

The program's interface is basic and fairly intuitive, although there are a few things that could be clearer. For each account, users enter the Web address, their log-in information, and any other relevant details. Users must then both save the individual record and, when they're done adding records, save the entire file. This tripped us up at first and made us wonder where our … Read more

Mini USA announced today that it has developed, in partnership with Allstate Roadside Services, the first official roadside assistance app, dubbed Mini Road Assist for iPhone and Blackberry.

So the next time, you need a jump start, a flat tire changed, or an extra gallon of gasoline to get your Cooper home, you can just tap an icon on your iPhone or Blackberry and your personal info, the nature of assistance needed, and your current GPS location will automatically be beamed to Allstate Roadside Services' HQ and help will be dispatched, provided that you have a cellular data connection.

After downloading the app, Mini owners will supply their VIN, name, address, and other details to confirm ownership of a Mini vehicle. The system taps into the free roadside assistance that is available to all North American Mini owners as long as the vehicle remains under warranty. Mini owners who fall outside of the warranty safety circle due to expiration can still download the free app and use the roadside assistance for a fee set by the service provider.

Mini Roadside Assist is free to Mini owners and can be downloaded from Allstate Roadside Services.

Check out the video after the jump, which details the ins-and-outs of the app in greater detail.… Read more

While unmanned air vehicles are putting pilots out of business, a new U.S. Army-funded robot could do the same for rescuers and stevedores.

The humanoid BEAR (Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot) can locate victims in a mine shaft, battlefield, toxic spill, or earthquake-damaged structure. And then it can lift them up and then carry them over long distances to safety, according to the manufacturer Vecna Robotics. And it does this without risking any more lives (PDF).

The challenge was to enhance search and rescue while reducing the time military, police, and emergency response personnel have to risk their lives each day. … Read more

When the wizard announced in "The Wizard of Oz" that "hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable," he was being technologically visionary. A few weeks after the first successful implant of the world's smallest and lightest ventricular assist device (VAD) at the Heidelberg University Hospital in Germany, cardiac surgeons announced that hearts may now be, in so many words, one step closer to "unbreakable."

The HeartAssist 5, which is the fifth generation VAD evolved from the original DeBakey, weighs in at one fifth of a pound (92 grams) and … Read more

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Jerry Lewis' role in the development of "video assist" technology, the use of video technology to support film making (see "Jerry Lewis and the elusive Video Assist patent"). Lewis was credited as the inventor of video assist during the Academy Awards telecast in February, and more specifically, was said to hold a patent on the technology.

I looked for this patent because I thought it would be interesting to write about it here, but I didn't find it. After I contacted the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for help with the story, it looked too. The bottom line is that there is no such patent.

It turns out that video assist goes back to well before 1956, when Lewis claims to have invented it--as he did in a 2008 interview with Peter Bogdanovich.

Thanks to a commenter on my original post, plus some long discussions with Jim Songer, an engineer who made substantial contributions to video assist in the 1960s, I have tracked down what may be the earliest patents on video-assist technology.

But before I get into those patents, let me describe the elements of video assist technology in a little more detail.

First, video assist relates primarily to motion picture production. As the name suggests, the purpose of the video is to assist the production by allowing the director, actors, and other crew members to review what's being filmed. This can be done live, or if video recording is used, the video can be reviewed after the shot.

The ultimate implementation of video assist requires simultaneous film and video recording of the same scene with the greatest possible quality and convenience. Accordingly, both film and video recording should be accomplished with what amounts to one camera, which should meet all the other requirements for motion-picture principal photography, use the same viewfinder and all of the same controls, and work with the same lenses and lighting.

There can still be considerable value to a system that doesn't meet all these requirements. Indeed, the earliest video-assist systems were very simple.

US Patent 2,420,197 by Adolph H. Rosenthal, issued in 1947 with a 1944 filing date, describes combining film and video cameras on… Read more

I have tremendous respect for Jerry Lewis. He's a great entertainer, a ferocious intellect, and perhaps the greatest charity fundraiser in history.

I was pleased to see Lewis receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award during the Academy Awards ceremony in February, principally for his work with the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

I had no idea that the annual Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon had raised more than $2 billion over the years. There are larger charities, but I don't know any that owe so much to the fundraising efforts of one man.

The technical side of my brain was intrigued to hear that Lewis had received a patent for "video assist" technology--the use of closed-circuit television to allow a film director to review scenes as they're filmed.

It seemed to me the story of Lewis' invention of video assist technology would make a good post for Speeds & Feeds. I figured I'd also be able to mention another famous movie-star patent, Hedy Lamarr's 1942 patent (US 2,292,387) on frequency-hopping communications (as Hedy Kiesler Markey), and Walt Disney's 1940 patent on animation (US 2,201,689).

I ran a Google search for "'Jerry Lewis' patent" and found many references to such a patent, including an article by a Mark Adler of VAIdigital offering the title "Closed Circuit Television Applied to Motion Pictures." Adler said Lewis came up with the idea in 1956 and first used it in 1960 on his first film, "The Bellboy."

An article by Michael Frediani titled "On the Set with Video Assist" from an issue of The Operating Cameraman (then the magazine of what is now the Society of Camera Operators) includes a picture of a video assist system, complete with… Read more

Real Estate Assistant can help agents track listings and clients. It throws in a few related tools, but we would've liked to see more integration between the list of properties for sale and the list of clients who want to buy.

This program looks like the database-driven application it is. Very little has been done to dress up Real Estate Assistant's interface, but the plain window is fairly easy to navigate. Tiny command icons run along the top of a large pane for major functions. Basic command icons running along the left hand side are for printing, saving … Read more