delivery

New drug delivery system uses magnetism

There are many medical conditions that involve medication with intermittent doses on an as-needed basis, and often, that medication cannot be taken orally.

Scientists have long struggled with how best to deliver medication under these circumstances, where the delivery system might meet three key needs: intermittent dosing, with extreme precision, over the long term.

Research led by Daniel Kohane at Children's Hospital Boston may have hit on an effective new approach: a tiny, implantable device that releases the medication through a membrane whose porousness responds to the switching on or off of a magnetic field.

The membrane is embedded … Read more

Powerful invoicing program

Ezy Invoice 7 is a multifeatured program that allows users to create invoices and many other useful business documents. Although it takes some getting used to, the program's features make it worth the effort.

Ezy Invoice's creators seem to have made an extra effort to create a simple and uncluttered interface, but it seems they may have even gone too far; it is at times difficult to determine where in the interface you are. Similar-looking screens open on top of one another and it's not hard to get confused and lose your starting place. However, once the … Read more

Sites for the hungry and phone-weary

It's the end of a long day, and your stomach is starting to growl. You've got nothing appetizing within reach, you don't feel like venturing outside again, and you certainly don't feel like being put on hold by the local deli. It's time to order in online.

Domino's recently announced that has enhanced its site for online delivery ordering, and even though the pizza business seems to be leading the restaurant industry in online ordering, there are quite a few online services that will help orchestrate your next meal delivery.

Although the sites in this roundup provide varying degrees of usability--and I can't vouch for their reliability--you should find use for at least one of them.

Restaurant delivery services

Delivery.com Enter your address on Delivery.com's home page, and it provides a list of all the restaurants in your area with which it has partnered to deliver food to your area. Those located in metropolitan areas will naturally have a better selection of restaurants than those in more rural areas, and even in the city, third-party delivery may mean longer waits than usual.

That said, the ordering process is pretty simple. After you choose the restaurant you want (you can sort your results by cuisine, distance, and ratings), you can click through its menu, customize your meal, and select a delivery time. Delivery.com then contacts that partner, places your order, and collects a fee from the restaurant for referring you. You'll pay for the price of the food and delivery only.

Domino's Domino's recently revamped its site to improve the online-ordering experience, and it has succeeded.

Create a Domino's account, and you'll find Domino's locations in your area. If ordering a pizza, you can easily select its size, type, and toppings. Domino's says you will be able to track your pizza from the point of order to delivery. It even has the option to track your order on Facebook and Twitter.

Although I didn't have the opportunity to try out Domino's delivery, one person who has used the service, "KJ," said she "loves" the site's "pizza tracker."… Read more

And you thought Superman 64 stunk....

The last 20 years of gaming have treated us to better graphics and sound, more innovative control schemes, and more mature and sophisticated storylines. Could the next innovation involve the olfactory system? If the team behind some unique British Army training videos have anything to say about it, then yes.

According to a Daily Mail article, researchers in the U.K. have partnered with the Ministry of Defence there to make training videos for the British Army a tad more immersive. While the troops watch the videos, foul smells are released into the air, appropriate to what's onscreen.

For example, a training video involving a real-life village would have the smell of cooking food associated with it, teaching the soldier to associate that village or type of village with that smell.

Then, when the soldier enters the village in real life, the absence of such a smell could signify that the area had been evacuated and taken over by hostile forces. Or that no one was cooking at that time.

Professor Bob Stone, an engineering professor and research director of the Human Factors Integration Defence Technology Centre (HFIDTC, or SHIELD) at Birmingham University, says the scent delivery system, or SDS100, consists of a compressed air chamber with eight compartments and four fans. Each compartment holds a pot of wax, chemically infused with a particular odor.

With 100 scent options available, including "weapon fire," "cat urine," and "human feces," it's no wonder the researchers speculate that this technology could be incorporated into video games "within three to five years" ('cause gamers just love the smell of cat urine). … Read more

Cisco taps next-gen networks for the cloud

Networking company Cisco has introduced a package of data center tools for carriers wishing to deliver cloud services over next-generation IP networks.

The Unified Service Delivery package, announced on Tuesday, combines Cisco's existing Unified Computing System technology with its Nexus 7000 switch--an updated, data center-optimized version of its CRS-1 router--and the company's next-generation IP products.

The combination will make delivery of video and data services more efficient and lay the groundwork for the delivery of business applications to any place, according to Cisco.

"The unification of the data center and the IP next-generation network is a natural … Read more

Poll: The next video-streaming record breaker?

We've all heard it by now. Live streams of Barack Obama's presidential inauguration broke records for the Web, with about 7.7 million streams flowing concurrently at its peak. Which, of course, makes us wonder: what will set a new record?

With broadband penetration, not to mention Web usage in general, still growing, it's conceivable that some event of historic importance will surpass the inauguration in due time. Chances are, it'll be some prescheduled event that people know to tune into, rather than a sudden occurrence--but you never know.

We picked a few possibilities: World Cup … Read more

Akamai to cut 7 percent of workforce

Akamai Technologies announced Wednesday that it's cutting 7 percent of its workforce, as the Web content delivery company pares back its costs.

Cambridge, Mass.-based Akamai expects to cut 110 positions in the fourth quarter, a move that is anticipated to result in a $4 million restructuring charge.

"We have not changed our business outlook," J.D. Sherman, Akamai CEO, said in a statement. "However, we want to ensure that we can keep investing for growth even in the current economic climate."

The Web content delivery company also expects to lose approximately $2.5 million … Read more

Amazon tees up content delivery service

Clarification at 8 a.m. PDT: The Amazon.com Web services blog posting was not written by Amazon CTO Werner Vogels. He wrote a related blog on the subject.

Amazon.com is in the midst of creating a new content delivery service aimed at developers and businesses that it expects to launch by year's end.

According to an Amazon Web services blog posted Thursday:

This new (and as yet unnamed) service will provide you with a high performance way to distribute popular, publicly readable content to your customers all over the world, with low latency and high data transfer … Read more

Order food on your phone with CityMint

Not in New York, but still excited by our write-up of Web food-ordering service Wakozi last week and the prospect of ordering snacks from your browser? Check out CityMint, a free service that links you up with the menus and ordering information for local food places. The service's claim to fame is its iPhone-optimized Web app, but users get a much richer experience on their regular desktop browsers.

Like Wakozi, CityMint lets you browse the menus and inventory selections of local places and add various items to a single order. It'll tell you which places deliver, what the … Read more