IN DEVELOPMENT / KATHLEEN WIEGNER : The Cutting Edge: Computing / Technology / Innovation : Hotels Booking Interactive Services
Video-on-demand would appear to be still in the future for most households with a TV set. Not so for guests who check into a hotel these days. Comsat Video Enterprises already offers a wide choice of movies at several hundred thousand Hilton Hotels, Embassy Suites, Marriotts, Holiday Inns and other hotels worldwide.
But Comsat’s On Command Video has been limited by its use of analog tape players linked to each guest room by the hotel’s cable system. A hotel worker has to grab the tape you ordered, slam it into a tape player and press the play button.
Now Comsat has teamed with computer maker Silicon Graphics to develop a digital storage system that will slash the time between ordering a movie and receiving it, as well as allow for more frequent updates of films.
A peek into the future: Last month Comsat joined Bell Atlantic, Marriott Hotels and the 4th Communications Network in announcing the test of interactive multimedia yellow pages and shopping service at the Santa Clara, Calif., Marriott.
Mailmobile delivers: Neither rain nor sleet nor even a bad hangover deters this mail deliverer from its appointed rounds. That’s because it is a $28,000 robot from Bell & Howell called the Mailmobile. Automated mail carriers have been around for a while, but most depend on wires or electronic sensors buried in the floor to guide them on their appointed rounds.
In contrast, the Mailmobile relies on a fluorescent material sprayed on carpet or flooring. The chemical is invisible under standard light, but when exposed to ultraviolet light, it turns a bright green, enabling photocells in the Mailmobile to follow its path. A fluorescent bar-code-like pattern is placed where the Mailmobile is to stop. A soft chime or blinking light announces its arrival to nearby employees.
When a company reconfigures an office floor or expands into a new wing, a new mail route can be added quickly and cleanly. The Mailmobile--known in some offices as “Luke Carpetwalker” or “Beeping Tom”--is already hard at work at the Lockheed Federal Credit Union in Burbank, Xerox in Santa Ana, Mattel Toys in El Segundo and the California Department of Transportation in Los Angeles.
New breath test: Your breath can reveal more than whether you’ve just eaten garlic or had too much to drink. Rutgers University physicist Daniel E. Murnick and Brian J. Peer, a former research associate in Murnick’s lab, have developed an instrument that can use a patient’s breath in diagnosing such medical problems as peptic ulcers, liver and colon dysfunctions and metabolic disorders.
Better yet, the breath test would obviate the radioactive isotopes now used in diagnostic tests, doing away with the problems of possible harmful exposure and disposal.
The new laser-based analyzer isolates and measures naturally occurring isotopes (elements with extra neutrons and slightly different weights, which allow them to be traced). If a patient is suspected of suffering from an ulcer, he or she can be given a tablet containing an excess of carbon 13. Exhaled breath is then analyzed by the laser to determine if there is any increase in carbon.
Such an increase would indicate the presence of the bacterium associated with ulcers, because the bacterium is the only one able to metabolize the carbon 13. The analyzer has been licensed to Diagnostics & Devices Inc. of Bernardsville, N.J., for commercialization. Other potential uses might include tracing pollutants in the environment.
