Technology to Treat Battlefield Wounds Instantly!

Satya Nadella Named New Microsoft CEO

Satya Nadella made major headlines yesterday. He’s the new CEO of Microsoft. Steve Balmer is retiring and becoming a board member. Bill Gates is stepping down as Chairman of the Board into the role of Technology Advisor. Things are changing! The question is… is it a good change? There are mixed emotions about the choice. Satya is moving from being Executive Vice President of Cloud and Enterprise. He’s been with Microsoft for 22 years. So is he a safe choice or will he be able to move into the role of CEO and shake things up? He talks about innovation and needing to push the company forward. Will he or won’t he? We’ll talk more about this on our weekly Geek Beat LIVE on Friday at 4pm, so join us then to chime in at geekbeat.tv/live!

Google Brings New Features to iOS

Google made a couple updates for those of you on iOS. First off, you can now use Google Wallet to add your rewards cards. You know, all those rewards cards that every single shop out there makes you sign up for to get good prices? Instead of keeping them all in your wallet, just get the info into the Google Wallet app. And Google Maps now offers iOS users the option of changing routes while you’re driving. If you get stuck on the highway in traffic, and another route clears up, it’ll automatically offer you that choice.

Maker Faire Heads for the White House

Moving from Silicon Valley to the White House, they’re actually planning their first Maker Faire! Later this year, students from all over the country will be invited to show off their inventions. Regardless of if you love or hate President Obama… regardless of if this event actually brings to light a young maker who will go off to great things… regardless of any of that, it’s GREAT publicity for the world of makers, and hopefully it’s great encouragement for kids to get off their couch and away from the computer and video games… and go do something with their hands. There are makerspaces all around the world where kids AND adults can go to learn from each other and be in an environment of creativity.

Nanotips Make Your Gloves Work with Touchscreens

Another Kickstarter project has blown up with funding. It’s called Nanotips. The sole purpose is to make your gloves work on a touchscreen. We all have gloves that you have to take off in order to use your phone, and that’s really frustrating. So they created a liquid that you paint on the tips of your gloves. It’s a conductive polyamide liquid solution. The Black version is for leather or rubber gloves, and the Blue solution is for fabric gloves. The downside? It’s not clear, so you will literally be painting your gloves, so if the colors don’t match, you might not like how they look. And I’m not sure if it’ll make the tips hard and tough to bend. But if either of those things are fine with you, you can support the Kickstarter starting at 18 dollars Canadian. It’s certainly intriguing!

XStat Treats Bleeding on the Battlefield

Now, THIS is really cool. There are a lot of deaths in war zones that don’t necessarily have to be deaths. Soldiers get shot, and they bleed out before they can get to safety. But what if they or another soldier could stop the bleeding right on the battlefield? That’s what the XStat does. There are all these sponges in a syringe. You insert them into the wound, and within 15 seconds, they expand to plug the hole basically. It’s made from wood pulp and coated with chitosan which is antimicrobal so you don’t have to worry about infection, and they cling to the moisture around them so they don’t get pushed out of the body by the force of blood. My first thought was they’re so small that they’re bound to get left in the body and cause damage later, but they’ve thought ahead. Each one is marked by an X and can be seen on an x-ray so doctors will be able to tell if one is lost. This is pure brilliance, and I can imagine us all…one day… carrying around these syringes… just in case. But first they have to get FDA approval, so it’ll be a while.

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