With SXSW currently underway, there is a giddiness in the air about the newest toys in technology. This excitement does not stop with the latest new gadget in the show, but also in new applications of technology in the medical field. The stethoscope is becoming obsolete, as vital signs can now be monitored and sent to a smart phones via a special band-aid. With this feature you can check more than just your email on your phone, rather you can check your blood pressure, cardiac rhythms, respiration rate, sleep patterns, and more. This wireless technology is helping free up more hospital beds, is keeping people safer, and becoming as easy as an application you simply download on your phone.

Today’s TV on Tuesday is a TED Talk by James Surowiecki, finance writer for the New Yorker and author of The Wisdom of the Crowds. He pinpoints the moments that social media became as relevant and informational as traditional news (such as the 2005 tsunami or the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes) and how it may even trump traditional media in its ability to preserve personal stories in their most direct form.  How do you get your news these days? Is it from social media (tweets, Facebook updates, and the like) or more traditional sources (such as the New York Times)?

We’re going casual with this TV on Tuesday, with a brief comedy clip about technology now, and technology in the future. It’s funny, but listen closely – it’s also thought probing (probing – that’s a scary word when thinking of tech of the future). Take a look, laugh, and let us know where you think tech is going. Will you be getting a chip implanted into your head in your lifetime?

Love watching reruns of Sex and the City, Entourage, Big Love, or Weeds–just to name a few? HBO is joining Comcast’s OnDemand Online Trial this summer enabling one to watch the channel’s epic movies and current TV shows online.  Comcast has agreed to take on this new website under its name because they want the company’s high-profile consumers, on the other hand, HBO wants the availability of Comcast’s consumers list to test out their new creation.

750 hours of content will be available provided by both networks, on Comcast.com and Fancast.com.  The website is said to include full-length episodes of current and classic television shows, movies, theatrical movies, and HBO Family programs.  Sounds like a steal? Well, don’t get too ahead of yourself, you have to already be a subscriber of HBO  or Cinemax through Comcast in order to gain access online.  But on the other hand, if you already are a paying customer of either of these three companies, there will be no additional fee for having onilne access. Will you still watch these shows unlimited on your computer when the website is up and running?  Or will you continue to relay on Hulu, Netflix, Youtube, or Epix? Do you think you will subscribe to HBO just for this access, or should it be more available to general public?

In today’s especially humorous installment of TV on Tuesday, blogger and entrepreneur Seth Godin talks about the tribes we are involved in with in our daily lives.  He describes the changes that we experience every day in our social lives we experience.  The idea of tribes is a discussion about leading and connecting people with ideas.  Whether it be a spiritual or religious idea or a work/family ethics, they are ideas that bring social norms to our lives. This is a long one, but it’s worth it!  What tribes are you following and how are they affecting your life?

The new website Bundle allows you to see, in friendly, colored-bubble format, how people in your region are spending money on things like shopping, travel and leisure, house and home, health and family, and transportation. We put in our local area and found out that people are spending $649 (per month) on food and drink.  After this, you can click “go deeper,” at which point Bundle breaks it down further – people are spending $298 on dining out, and $351 on groceries.  Click “get stats” and it will tell you exactly where people are spending those $298: in our area, at Starbucks, Chili’s, Round Table and Peet’s, among others.  And while this is definitely interesting for our notoriously voyeuristic society (reality TV, anyone?) and perhaps even useful (you can use others’ spending in your area to more accurately access yours in comparison), is it also too much?  Bundle uses Citi credit card data in addition to third party information to be privy to what most people would consider to be very private information.  It’s just one example in a long list of uses for the internet that straddle the line between interesting and invasive:  GoogleMaps is useful to find where you’re going and check it out on Street View beforehand, but many have protested that Street View is an infringement of their privacy, and perhaps even a threat to their safety.  While Bundle isn’t threatening – no one can see where you’re specifically spending your money – is it heading in that direction?  Do you think the internet is leading to an utter loss of privacy?  What point do you think pushes the boundaries too far?

We have been noting how technology and social media has changed society and how we spend our time. While we may be spending more and more time on social media interfaces, technology has also allowed us to save more and more time doing tedious work. This is prominently seen in biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies in one of their most exciting breakthroughs:

Taking medicine to target the symptoms will soon be a thing of the past, something that dates us, like knowing a time before the Internet and cell phones. Using the infinite progress technology has given society, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies have changed the way science and medicine is done. While only 57 years ago, we did not even know the structure of DNA; now we can sequence entire genomes for a mere $50,000!

Dr. Quake’s new machine for sequencing genomes is going to revolutionize the manner in which medicine is practiced by easing the process of genome sequencing. This in turn will increase our bank of fully sequenced human genomes, currently at a grand total of seven, and allow for scientists to find the differences among people’s genomes. Thus, allowing medicines of the future to target not just a cough or scratchy throat, but the root of the disease and “fix” it. This new boom in biotechnology is the first step in creating the cure for some of the most deadly diseases afflicting humans. How much more progress can you ask for?

Technology has truly changed our society by bringing people together, sharing information, saving time, saving money, and now saving lives!

Are you a senior at Facebook, but maybe a freshman at Twitter? Well, now there are two new social networking sites you’re going to want to log into:  Foursquare and Gowalla. It may sound like the games you used to play on the playground in elementary school, and…an energy bar or drink? But no, they are the two newest and trendiest websites to keep in touch with friends, tell your plans of your day, and keep track of others’ whereabouts.

Both sites were created in late 2008, but didn’t make it under the popular eye until 2009.  By March 2009, Foursquare stole the show, drowning out any fanfare that the then-buggy Gowalla tried to muster. But now the challenge has risen; nine months later and millions of dollars poured into getting Gowalla up into space, CEO and found Josh Willams, explains that there are well over 20,000 people logging into the site each day in over 1,000 different locations around the world.

So what’s really the difference between the two sites? Both have iPhone applications available, but have thousands of users logged in and many more joining the site, as well as millions of dollars behind them for funding to succeed.  But it depends on who you talk to, one will favor the other. Many claim the combo of Twitter, Yelp, Google Latitude, with a mix of social gaming and some privacy procedures gives you Foursquare; ecstatically declared, “next year’s Twitter.”  On the other hand, Gowalla is quickly creeping into the spot light and socially around the world. The widely expressed criticism with Gowalla is that it focuses on you more then what your friends are doing/interested in.  Part of joining Gowalla is to name your exact whereabouts and tell all your friends as soon as you login; surrendering your privacy.  The reason Gowalla demands this from you is because the information is crowd-sourced, which allows the app to quickly track in certain locations around the globe; giving the website more recognition for more users to join.

Many would say Gowalla trumps Foursquare in the lay-out of the website and accessibility, but Foursquare wins the race in terms of check-in location accuracy, tech support, supervising friends without stocking, and many other desirable and user friendly features. Regardless of which way you look at them, both are making strong efforts to get onto your smartphone for 2010. We are living in a world where you can get out of work and log into a site to find out where your friends are. Is this how socializing is going to be in the future? Edging out phone calls and texting only to keep technology booming and let personal connections plummet?  And in the competition between Gowalla and Foursquare, who gets your vote?

The media landscape has changed over time from the printing press to the telephone to radio waves that allowed TV and radio.  However, the internet is the first source of media that gives us the man-to-many conversation pattern, rather than the one-to-one pattern of the phone, or the one-to-many pattern of radio and television.  Everyone is a listener, everyone is a producer – it’s like having a phone that could turn into a radio if you pushed the right buttons.  Listen to Clay Shirky as he addresses how this powerful paradigm shift has affected how we receive news – from all around rather than the top down – and how that affects the workings of the world and the politics within it.  This is an amazing talk about the power of social media, and the power that social media endows people with.

Just how many of us have a Facebook account in the world? To even think about it you know the number is going to be astronomical; the question is “who doesn’t have a Facebook account?”  By December 2009, Facebook single handedly attracted 469 million visitors, putting them at the No.4 most viewed website in the world.  Sound like just a number to you?  More than 31 million people signed onto Facebook in December 2009 then in November – Yahoo had 31 million viewers in the entire year of 2009.  That’s right, Facebook had that many hits in just thirty-one days.  The social networking site is quickly climbing the ladder to becoming the third largest Web property in the world (booting out Yahoo as number three, and closely behind Google (No.1) and Microsoft (No. 2)).

All in all, Facebook has grown by almost 250 million viewers in 2009.  If Facebook continues to attract this number of people, it will surely pass Yahoo as the third most viewed website in the world by the end of 2010.  But how many viewers does it need to take on the No.2 and No.1 websites? To pass Microsoft, Facebook would need well over 727 million hits worldwide, and Google of 899 million viewers, which may take more time then the 11 months left to 2010.

On the other hand, Facebook surpasses both Yahoo and Microsoft in many other aspects.  For example, Facebook’s page views grew an estimated 141% last year to 193 billion in December, Yahoo only received 100 billion while Microsoft pulled in 109 billion.  Although Facebook passed these two head honchos, Google still holds the top spot for 274 billion a month. When all’s said and done, Facebook is making exceptional growth in today’s market of most viewed websites. So keep checking out your friends, updating your status and pictures, and let’s move Facebook to the number three spot!