Facebook and Social Startups Meme.

Might sound off the grid but it interested me, to know that there are ways to put our Mobile phone camera to better use. Researchers at the University of Berkeley have shown just that. The team has developed a CellScope, a cell phone microscope that makes your device’s camera take a step ahead to take images of bacteria and parasites with fluorescent markers. Talk about handheld laboratory equipment, this would provide better health facilities, in countries where (I agree with the article) there is easy availability of advance mobile devices and networks while they lack basic medical facilities. This would leverage the mobile networks and devices to bring advance lab facilities to distant areas. I will not get into the details of how it actually works but to some it up, they attach a compact microscope lenses to a cell phone and using it to examine samples. These images can then be examined right there or transmitted to a central lab via the mobile network. You can read more about it here.

A new handset, a new charger that will only work with that particular device. Sounds an awful waste when things could have been better with one universal charger. While that has taken some time, but manufacturers of as many as ten mobile devices have agreed on the request from the European Commission to create universal battery chargers. While this presently applies to the member EU states, but does technology has boundaries, especially one that benefits almost everyone? No, obviously. The Universal charger will have a micro-USB connector, meaning that it will support all phones that support USB data transfer. This will most probably be made applicable from next year onwards on the said manufacturers.