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Productivity boosts

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The clack of a typewriter, the soft clinks and conversation of coffee shops, the sound of music, or plants? What do you add to enhance productivity at work? Read more in  The Sounds & Sights of Productivity

SaaS for smoother college applications

Students have just gone back to school, but seniors already have to start thinking about the next step: applying for college. One of the newest programs in the space is  Edswell , which publicly launched its platform early in September. It can help students and those who guide them through every step of the application process, including the dreaded essay. I contacted the company's founder and CEO, Alex Thaler, to get the inside story on this SaaS platform, which is currently used in by students in a number of cities, including Beijing, Los Angeles, and Detroit. Thaler explains that, although there are already SaaS programs designed for college counselors available, such as Naviance and Career Cruising, Edswell is unique in offering "support for the application essay, the most time-intensive and anxiety-provoking part of the application process." Read more in  Cities Smooth the College Application Process

Better together

Some things are good on their own but really great when paired with something complementary -- like cookies and milk, wine and cheese, or perhaps a firewall and SaaS security. Read more in  Cloud-Based Risk Assessment Meets the Firewall

What tech can do for your teeth

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Have you been to your dentist lately? If so, you may have noticed that the office has some new machines that are transforming traditional dentistry. Tech-savvy dentists are adding 3D imaging systems that let them create custom caps for their patients in a single visit. Those of us who have had caps done years ago can appreciate the difference between the experience then and now. When I had to get a tooth capped seven years ago, I had to schedule two dental visits a couple of weeks apart. During my first appointment, I had to have an impression made to serve as the mold for a cap to be created in a lab. I also got a temporary cap that had to last until the real cap arrived and could be cemented into my mouth. My dentists favored a particular lab in California, so the cap took close to two weeks to arrive. Once it was at the office, I was able to come in for my second session. The temporary was removed, and the final cap was installed. What a difference a few years can make! Read

Giving the green light to emergency responders

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No one likes to be stuck in traffic. Time is money, after all. But what represents an inconvenience or even loss of income for most of us can turn into a much more serious loss for emergency response workers. Read more in  Technology Gives Emergency Crews a Green Light

Making supply chains sustainable with lean thinking

Nigel Southway is a productivity consultant and the co-author of  Cycle Time Management , a guide to applying lean thinking to organizations to maximize efficiency. His perspective is informed by his first-hand observations of economies in Europe and China, as well as in the NAFTA region. Read more with additional insight from Nigel Southway in the comments in  Lean Thinking for Sustainable Supply Chains

SaaS for Clinical Studies

"As a single system made up of many components, iMedNet EDC "can be configured [any] way you want." It offers drag and drop options for setting up dashboards and to-do lists that help users keep their studies on track. It also has options for individualized levels of access; each user gets his or her own ID and password that can be specified to a very detailed level for what the user can access and upload." Read more in  Seeding SaaS to Speed Up Clinical Studies

RX for Prescription Errors: Big Data Analytics

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We’re all familiar with the stereotype of the doctor with bad handwriting whose prescriptions are all but illegible. While the use of electronic medical records (EMR) eliminates that chicken-scratch problem, it unfortunately doesn't fix other, often fatal, errors. (Source:  Carbon Arc ) In fact, EMR's introduction has made “new and alarming types of errors that didn't exist in manual records” creep up, says Dr. Gidi Stein, co-founder and CEO of  MedAware , a startup using big-data analytics to combat the problem of prescription errors. Automatic selections are faster and neater than individual writing, but they also make it possible for doctors to put in errors they wouldn't have made on their own. As reported in "Medical Errors: a Report by the Staff of U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer" ( available in PDF format ), prescription errors account for many of the 210,000 to 440,000 deaths in America each year that result from "medical errors and othe

Big Data Analytics for Better Results in College and Job Recruitment

Students are not the only ones who go back to school. We can all come back to learn about ways to direct our efforts more productively.  Predictive analytics  can show the way. Whether applied to university recruitment or corporate hiring, what big data  reveals can show us that our assumptions about what works are leading us in the wrong direction.  Read more in  Back to School With Big Data Analytics

Getting to really know your customer requires managing a lot of data

Socrates considered "know thyself" the objective of wisdom, but in business, the key to success is knowing your customer. A customer's relationship with a brand is much more complex than some people assume. As shoppers, we don't just come on to a site and buy what it sells out of the blue. We may get there by clicking on an ad, clicking on a promotion in an email, or by remembering a positive experience we had with the business when we called and chatted about an order. There are many different channels involved, and each one only shows one aspect of the total customer experience. So how do you really get to know what your customer is responding to? This past June, Israel-based, NICE Systems introduced the  NICE Customer Journey Optimization solution  to just that problem.  Read more here : 

Planning a supply chain for space

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photo from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Carina_Nebula_composite_of_visible_and_infrared_light_(captured_by_the_Hubble_Space_Telescope).jpg The replicator that can produce food, clothes, and other necessities on demand is familiar to all devotees of Star Trek. That device was actually essential for the Enterprise's extended mission, to keep the ship properly equipped without having to pack along whatever the crew might need at some point light years away from a home planet. Though such replicators are still in the realm of science fiction, we are getting closer to the point of extended space trips. Going back to the moon and maybe even Mars NASA just finalized a  $2.8 billion contract  with Boeing Co. to produce the Space Launch System (SLS). SLS is a rocket powerful enough to carry astronauts where no human has gone before. That includes exploration of asteroids, the moon, and, ultimately, Mars. The first test flight is planned for 2017, and the fir

Happiness is a blue blanket

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For many of us, the words happiness and blanket together inevitably bring to mind images of the "Peanuts" character Linus clutching his favorite comfort object. Perhaps because the comic strip is an American creation, British Airways didn’t make the connection when it created its “ Happiness Blanket .” Read more here

The role 3D printing can play in Canada

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According to Nigel Southway, the real transformative power of 3D printing  lies in its potential for engineering more efficient tools of production. Read more in  3D Printing Might Bring Manufacturing Back to Canada