Personalization has always been in vogue as a marketing ploy to promote everything from monogrammed clothes and jewelry to customized laptops and cell phones with special ring tones. Today, this trend is appearing in the health care industry as a strategy to encourage proactive health management. With Wii Fit and other game consoles that administer fitness training, iPhone apps that track caloric intake, and even PDA-like devices that rate products using genome computing analysis , users have ...Read More

In medical imaging, a picture is worth a thousand words and several gigabytes of data. MRI and CT scans, mass-spectrometry, phenotyping, and genetic studies generate hundreds of terabytes of data that must be processed and stored by powerful supercomputers, like the Intel Xeon-based SGI Altix UV being used to support the efforts of the Institute of Cancer Research in England.   Companies that manufacture medical imaging equipment rely on embedded technology vendors to deliver high-perfor...Read More

In a December 9th, 2009 E-cast on “Point-of-Care Terminals, Lab Equipment, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Devices:  Learn How These Low-Power Medical Devices and Others Benefit from Intel® Architecture”, sponsored by the Intel® Embedded Alliance, trends and ideas in medical designs using long-life Intel embedded processors were presented by a panel of guests with a Q&A follow up.   Don Dingee, editorial director of Embedded Computing Design , moderated the event...Read More

We've looked at a digital signage overview, graphics capability, and hardware maintenance and security ideas and trends. Now, we shift gears and take a look at the content presentation software side.   In simple architectural form, digital signage systems are a display powered by a media player (a dedicated computer with multimedia capability) attached to a network. They are often called on to just display information today, but these systems are increasingly becoming more interactive with...Read More

In part 1 of this series, we quickly named the elements of a digital signage system. We're ready to take a closer look at the graphics and multimedia capability a system needs.   "Signage" pretty much implies the graphics capability has to be good, because it's all the viewer really sees of a digital signage system, even though there is much more behind the scenes. The focus should be on content displayed crisply and vibrantly with rich media blending capability, but not necessarily at ult...Read More

In a November 4th, 2009 e-cast on "Open Standards Based Platforms Ideal for Military/Aerospace/and Government Applications", sponsored by the Intel® Embedded Alliance, the issues around standards-based platforms using long-life Intel embedded processors were explored by a panel of experts.   Chris Ciufo, editorial director of Military Embedded Systems , moderated the event for OpenSystems Media. Panelists presenting were: Peter Carlston, Platform Architect, Intel Embedded Computing D...Read More

Digital signage is showing up in all kinds of public and corporate applications: information signage and billboards, retail displays with advertising and promotions, and self-service kiosks which combine transactions with advertising. Anywhere a consumer can be found trying to gain information or make a transaction is by a broad definition an opportunity for a digital signage application.   In a recent deployment, a digital signage app is now seen prominently at the busiest airport in Asia...Read More

Though it could have earned you some cash a few months ago, that old clunker out back isn't going to do you much good with its lousy gas mileage, sputtering engine, and miscellaneous recalled items that you never bothered to get fixed.   Just as a vehicle needs a quality mechanical design to function properly and keep maintenance costs low, so too does an In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) system require a reliable hardware platform to enable seamless integration and rapid development at minima...Read More