Great post today over at Mashable listing a comprehensive Mobile Productivity Toolkit.

Here's a peak:

In the fast paced world, we’re constantly trying to improve our productivity, but it can get hard when you’re on the move. We’ve compiled a list of mobile productivity tools that are accessible through WAP enabled sites, mobile download applications, voice, and SMS integration. Some of them use web applications while others are standalone, but they all help you stay productive while on the go.

There are a few great services that I had never heard of, like:
scanR - Use your mobile camera phone to scan, copy and fax. Copy documents, white boards and business cards and extract the text. Awesome! Try it!
and
pinger - Point to point voice messaging. Does not dictate voice into SMS as I thought. It's a voicemail tool that sends sms notifaction of voice messages without going through your cell carrier (hence, point-to-point). Neat but not what I hoped.

Callwave dictates your own voicemails and sends them to you via SMS and is free. I'm still looking for a service that allows me to send sms to others with my voice.

I was searching on Google's public calendars and stumbled upon this technology networking event in the Boston area tomorrow:
http://www.techfoundation.org/
What: The 501 Tech Club
When: Tuesday, August 21st, 6pm
Where: Charles Hotel, 1 Bennett Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA
Why:

We are a group of technology professionals who work with or for nonprofit
organizations in Massachusetts.
We meet once a month for social and professional networking.
Food and drink are underwritten by TechFoundation.
Newcomers are always welcome.
http://www.techfoundation.org/

I emailed the organizer to confirm that it was on this month and she encouraged me to come and spread the word to other MIS/MBA students.
Free food, drinks, and technology news? My kind of party ;-) Hope to see y'all there.

So the saying goes... Since the beginning of photography, the idea that truth can be captured by a photographic picture has prevailed. Yet with the advancement of digital photography and photoshop, the original idea has been called into question.
Recently I read an excellent article in the NYTimes by filmmaker Errol Morris. In it, he questions whether it's even fair to ask the question: can a photograph be true or false. He comes to the epistemological conclusion that a photograph cannot be true or false independent of some further assertion. It's a point so obvious that it's easy to miss. Perhaps because we've been trained to ascribe a degree of truth to photographs by imposing our interpretation of reality. Still, it's worth reading Morris' article to better understand the implications of film. Here's a preview:

I want to ask a relatively simple question. Are these photographs true or false? Do they tell the truth?

I find the question ridiculous: “True or false in regard to what?”

Without a caption, without a context, without some idea about what the picture is a picture of, I can’t answer. I simply cannot talk about the photograph as being true or false independently of beliefs about the picture. A captionless photograph, stripped of all context, is virtually meaningless. I need to know more.

And yet, this idea that photographs can be true or false independent of context is so ingrained in our thinking that we are reluctant to part with it.

An article in the Sunday NY Times frames the debate brought into recent consciousness by Michael Moore's Sicko:

Many Americans are under the delusion that we have “the best health care system in the world,” as President Bush sees it, or provide the “best medical care in the world,” as Rudolph Giuliani declared last week. That may be true at many top medical centers. But the disturbing truth is that this country lags well behind other advanced nations in delivering timely and effective care.

We also lag far behind other nations in IT infrastructure and services. I'm not sure if there's a causal connection between high rates of technology adoption and high quality healthcare, but there seems to be something there. If you look at the top rated healthcare systems, they have all embraced EMR. So why aren't more healthcare operators in the US rushing to adopt electronic records? (see Why Progress Toward EMR is Worse than You Think)

High upfront costs, loss of initial productivity, change management, and numerous emerging standards are among the many reasons for the slow progress. Yet the overriding barrier to EMR has been data sharing. Recently I learned that Google has been working on an EMR storage solution for quite some time. Wal-Mart also has its own EMR system backed by Intel. It gives me hope that the leaders in information management and cost-efficient operations are tackling the issue head on. What will it take to get everyone to agree on a common standard for sharing data?

If anyone else happens to be in Montreal for the festival, here are the showtimes:

Voici l'horaire de votre film / Please find below the schedule for your film :

DISAPPEARED, THE (DOC)

28 août 21h10 ONF28.6,

29 août 17h00 ONF29.4,

1 sept. 15h00 ONF01.3,

2 sept. 13h20 ONF02.2,

Salles / Venues:

L = Complex de cinéma Quartier Latin / Quartier Latin Cinema Complex,

salles/theatres 9 à/to 17

ONF = Cinéma ONF / NFB Cinema

TM = Théâtre Maisonneuve, Place des Arts

CI = Cinéma Impérial / Imperial Cinema

As many of my colleagues know, I had a parallel film career while working in NYC. Just prior to entering my graduate program I finished work on The Disappeared. I am happy announce that the film was selected for competition at the Montreal Film Festival and the Chile International Film Festival!
The director, Pete Sanders, and I are heading up to Montreal in two weeks to enjoy the festivities and spread the word about this powerful documentary.
For those who are not familiar with the history of Argentina, the "Dirty War" refers to a period between 1976-1983 when the state murdered 30,000 dissident citizens. While similar acts of state-sponsored terrorism occurred in other nations, what was unique in Argentina was that thousands of children of the "disappeared" were stolen and their identities kept hidden. Our film traces the journey of a young man who discovers his identity by reconstructing the cause for which his real parents gave their lives.

An article about Residential Colleges appeared in the New York Times this week. It was nice to see mention of the RC at the University of Michigan. For a school as large as U of M, the RC offered a unique opportunity to foster a tightly knit community of learning within the larger college of Literature Arts and Sciences. The program was made up of interdisciplinary classes that combined literate, history, political science, philosophy, art, and language. For example, some standout classes included "Social Dynamics of Science, Technology and Medicine," "The Subject in the Aftermath of Revolution," and "Globalization and Its Discontents." To emphasize understanding as a metric of performance rather than an abstract letter grade, the RC did without them. Instead of getting grades in my classes, I was given written evaluations detailing my performance and contribution.
Harvard Business School also does not hand out grades, from what I hear. As an MBA program, maybe they're onto something that colleges like the RC at U of M figured out years ago.
I am grateful for my RC experience. It made me appreciate that you cannot study any subject within a vacuum. Far too many in academia become so specialized that they lose the ability to conceptualize from a high-level understanding. The RC helped me realize that knowledge is more about apprehending the causes and connections than the a priori facts. This fall, the RC will celebrate its 40th Anniversary. If my schedule allows it, I'm going to finally make the trip back to Ann Arbor.
Found this flash video that nicely explains how the RC is about being proactive and taking responsibility rather than reacting to lectures and asking what one needs to do to get an 'A.'