The H3 detector could save lives in food safety, security, military and medical applications. This year alone, the company has won Utah Best of State for Inventor, and was a Finalist in the Stoel Rives/Utah Technology Council Utah Innovation Award in the Material Science/Chemistry group.

President and CEO of H3tec, Charles Christensen, has been working on the H3 detector for eight years after extensive experience studying in engineering, math and science and working with NASA, aircraft and automation.

“The concept of the H3 detector sprang from the fascination I had as a young boy watching Star Trek and seeing the fictional tricorder,” says Christensen. “Although I am in no way a Treky, I said to myself that someday, it would be possible to build a working tricorder. Over the years, I have had great opportunities to focus my mind on developing solutions to a lot of really difficult problems, but I never forgot the Star Trek tricorder. Although I pushed it to the back of my mind, it wouldn’t leave me alone, and 8 years ago I started my first designs for the H3 detector. I am a firm believer that anything is possible if you don’t know it isn’t!

“I have been building and refining the H3 detector over the last eight years of experimentation. I started out building analog machines that weighed 200 lbs. This version of the detector is the fourteenth iteration of the device and it weighs less than 10 ounces. . . . The next version of the H3 detector will feature full mapping through GPS.”

Among the possible applications (aside from what he calls their “most important markets” which “must remain confidential”):

• Homeland Security (all over the world)
• Medical Applications (cancer and tainted food)
• Natural Resources (oil and gas, and minerals; currently, we are very active in this field)
• Military Theater (mapping battle grounds, patrolling, and base safety)
• Intermountain Bomb Removal Squad (currently testing)
• Airborne Sensors (flying over hazardous and remote areas, including HAZMAT)
• Shipping, Airport Security
• Peace Officers (officer safety, drug detection, and detection of the precursor chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine)

Christensen is also keeping the device open to other markets and devices: “I am now designing an ASIC chip set (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) that will be a miniaturized engine with APIs. . . . The APIs will be open to the world of designers so they can use the engine in any application and integrate this engine with existing devices, like the cell phone, weapons systems, and other hand held devices.”

How does it work? Basically, the detector sends out an impulse that will excite the atom(s) in the selected element or compound when it reaches them. When the atom is excited, the “listening circuit” is complete: the device detects the element. The device has been independently tested and proven by labs including Chemir Analytical Services.

Christensen credits his father, who told him: “Understand the atom, and you understand everything,” with inspiring his love of science and technology, a USTAR grant, the UBDIS program at the Weber-State-University–affiliated Davis Applied Technology College and the Odgen Chamber of Commerce for their help in developing the technology and the company behind it.

To see the device in action (and get a visual explanation of how it works) see the H3 demo video created as part of their ad campaign by Rick Bennett and Dave Biesinger.

This is definitely a very cool technology. What would Google do with the H3 detector? If this were the Times, I’d just tell you. But since this is a blog, I’ll just say: let the speculation begin.

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In September, Fox News tapped Maven for its Internet TV technology. Major news publisher Gannett has followed suit, Maven announced today.

Gannett will use Maven to deliver ad-supported news video on its various news sites. Their audience should be in the neighborhood of 22 million visitors per month, which according to Nielsen//NetRatings was 14.3 percent of the total US Internet audience in October.

"Our Information Center approach to news and information relies on multimedia, and video is a key element of our news and information offerings on all our Web sites – whether they are related to our newspapers or TV stations," Gannett Digital president Jack Williams said in a statement.

The key to success will be the advertising Maven can enable Gannett to deliver. A variety of customization options for the Maven media player can make it resemble the look and feel of various Gannett properties.

Advertisements can receive similar treatment, a feature Gannett certainly will promote as the company pitches big-name brands and other advertisers as Maven unfolds across its properties.

A Maven spokesperson said the technology should be available on USAToday.com in the first quarter of 2008.

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This however, is not your typical bomb. It is the one of the first social media bombs to explode. A social media crisis that spread around the world through major media syndicators, news outlets that didn’t check facts or investigate and disclose all of the information.

How the catastrophe at USAToday began: Friday, October 12th, 2007.

Greg Farrell had finally finished an investigative piece covering the topic of corporate whistle-blowing. The feature focus of the article was Lynn Brewer, a business woman and speaker who had earned a reputation as having been one of the whistle-blowers who emerged from the implosion of Enron. Greg’s article attempted to spotlight a series of points in Lynn’s history that would set the stage for defacing her reputation as an ethical professional with integrity in support of his article’s title: The Enron whistle-blower who wasn’t.

According to the online world the bomb started ticking when the news story went live on the front page of USAToday (Friday, Oct 12, 2007). Within hours of the release, bloggers at several media sites covered the story as hard-hitting investigative journalism and applauding the work as being a top-notch review of the real story.

Unfortunately they were led astray. According to hardcopy evidence displayed in a personal conversation with Lynn Brewer, along with information gathered through my own personal investigation, every assertion in the article simply demonstrates how a journalist at USAToday (Greg Farrell) used his soapbox for devastating results. The very hard-hitting journalism and seemingly top-notch article were all created by a man who really needed to look in the mirror and expose his own personal agendas. Over a dozen sources ranging from BloggingStocks to WizBang were sucked into a fraudulent support of the article, likely under the presumption that an author at USAToday would double-check facts before releasing such an article.

Presuming that such investigation happened would be normally be correct, for a reputable, major media outlet. In this instance however, that investigation went down a painful path of personal and professional motives. Greg was actually provided with actual copies of pay stubs, Lynn’s letter of resignation, travel receipts, parking tickets, and even invited to listen to the audio of Ken Lay’s secretary confirming personal appointments with Lynn Brewer. For reasons that were not very apparent in the article which I will detail, the factual information was specifically left out or even flatly wrong.

As a consultant for online reputation management and how social media and technology is changing the way news is released, I have covered the use of media tools and news syndication services again and again. I have detailed ethical uses of media to cover news stories and I have also added my own research of the “facts” covered by other stories to really compare the situation… and analyze how social media has the ability to both create and ruin professional reputation. In this case social media was directly fueled by a fire started with a traditional media article and that caused a significant impact to a business woman’s online reputation.

Thousands injured…

After Greg Farrell released his story, tens of thousands of readers saw the article both in the print and online versions of USAToday. It then went through a week long cascade of being reposted by several online news blogs and syndication services, eventually dying down after a full week of exposure. During this time, readers of the article relayed information to Lynn Brewer and her professional contacts, causing potential damage to both her reputation and the company she has worked diligently over the past 6 years to build.

Since USAToday is such a well-known media outlet, dozens of individuals who relied on Greg Farrell’s article wrote various pieces supporting the viewpoint and the tone in his article. The social media mob felt justified in throwing stones at a professional who has spent six years encouraging companies to “become something better”.

When the facts become revealed: How does a professional feel when they have been “duped” by a unsubstantiated news story?

Here is a short list of bloggers and news sources who supported the article (without due investigation) and put themselves in a professional bind by exposing their readership to the article:

CONDÉ NAST PORTFOLIO, which is a sister site in the same network of sites such as Wired.com and VanityFair.com

The Bing Blog, a child of CNN’s Fortune.com – which is owned and operated by Time Warner Company.

BloggingStocks.com, a member of Weblogs, Inc, a AOL owned subsidiary and one of the largest blogging networks.

Wizbang’s Jim Addison covers political and financial topics with a nationwide audience.

The Wired GC is published by John Wallbillich, a former general counsel in the Midwest and founder of Lexvista Partners.

FierceSarbox provides CFO’s, CIO’s, CTO’s and senior compliance managers with the Sarbox guide to more efficient compliance.

In less than a full week, the story continued full-circle from traditional media, to social media, back to traditional media.

On Friday, October 26 Inside Edition’s Paul Boyd continued coverage of this story on a slant towards high-conflict journalism. Having personally watched part of the interview process and met Paul, I was left inquisitively wondering how sixty minutes of video interviewing is carefully trimmed down to make up half of a five minute segment.

In the world of social media, such editing and manipulation of the facts isn’t controlled by the journalist, the news station, or the station’s advertisers. I would be intrigued to find out what type of journalistic viewpoints can be brought to my own article: approaching 2000 words in length, I’m sure there is a good 3 to 5 minute clip somewhere in here that can add fuel to the fire.

A few of the many details left out of Greg Farrell’s USAToday article:

Lynn Brewer is author of “Confessions of an Enron Executive: A Whistleblowers story” and Founder of The Integrity Institute, a company focused on providing the tools and consulting needed to promote corporate sustainability and identify future Enrons.

Greg Farrell is author of “Corporate Crooks”, a competitive book that tries to identify points of corporate sustainability and of predicting future Enrons.

Greg Farrell has an article identifying himself as a contributing author at Integrity International; another competitive business to Lynn Brewer’s Integrity Institute. (I would love to know if there is a payroll slip there…)

The four individuals who are quoted in Greg’s article supporting his negative piece are all mentioned in Lynn’s book, with not so favorable mentions on their character or what they did at Enron. I would love to bullet point how strange it is to see that all the individuals quoted in Greg’s article have both personal and professional axes to grind with Lynn.

Here are some examples of flat-out wrong (and somewhat ironic) points made by Greg in the review of Lynn’s paperwork:

• According to Greg’s article, Lynn was sent to London to do a corporate training and never showed up… but she has a parking ticket from that visit for the right time frame, and just several blocks away from the building she did the training in. Apparently her car made the trip to the training location but she was somehow out in the countryside enjoying a personal vacation.
• I also personally listened to Lynn’s voicemail that clearly identifies Ken Lay’s secretary confirming Lynn’s travel plans and Lynn’s meetings with Ken Lay just before his death.
  

Other interesting impacts arising from Social Media:

• As of the time of this article: 109 comments were made on it at USAToday, within a week of posting his editorial attack on Lynn Brewer, other “second tier” social media sites were influenced.
• Lynn Brewer’s own name entry at Wikipedia was changed within two days of the article being distributed, and even Amazon.com’s book review of “Confessions of an Enron Executive: A Whistleblower’s Story” had personal attacks against Lynn Brewer based on Greg Farrell’s article: “As verified by USA Today in an article on October 12, 2007, she was neither an executive at Enron nor was she in any position to have witnessed the wholesale malfeasance she described.”.
• Lynn was kind enough to grant access to her server logs to detail the impact of traffic from the USAToday story, which identifies how a news story can virally increase a site’s traffic by syndicating content through the social media communities.

In summary of the article written by Greg Farrell, from my perspective the article:

• Seems entirely biased without full-disclosure.
• Is more focused on being a personal attack rather than real journalism.
  
• Leads the reader down a path of half-presented information, denying readers basic facts and the ability to decide for themselves.
• Was the catalyst that triggered pack mentality across the social media blogosphere.

The USAToday story defines clear issues at the newspaper, and in across the current media distribution channels:

• We cannot assume that stories are in fact true.
• We cannot assume that journalists present non-biased articles.
• We cannot assume that the basic facts given are accurate.
• Lastly, we cannot assume that syndicated information on other news sites is true, non-biased, accurate, or even remotely on-target.

As media figureheads and as evangelists of ethical and moral journalism, we must not shed our responsibility to question everything and confirm what we are told. Each and every one of us has the duty to examine the issues deeper than the media paparazzi trying to get onto the cover of the next grocery store magazine or sell advertising to a pop-culture audience. We cannot rid ourselves of this responsibility to the public by syndicating stories without disclosing and investigating all of the facts.

Knowing that major drama based media companies will always produce ethically challenged stories driven by advertising campaigns, I’m placing a challenge to all social media journalists: to raise the bar of true journalism by presenting as many facts as we can and working together to reveal what major news outlets hide.

This is a critical subject, requiring on-going debate and meriting all of our efforts to produce journalism that raises the bar for future of our media.

My own disclaimer: this is the personal review and commentary of Barry Hurd. My sister works as a consultant with the Integrity Institute which is founded by Lynn Brewer. Lynn Brewer is a personal friend. Lynn Brewer is also a client of my company: SocialMediaSystems.com. Having detailed knowledge of the social media space and online reputation, along with a detailed knowledge of Lynn’s work, my own investigation both in the real world and online, and personal reviews of evidence (hard copy records, audio tracks, etc… on a CD in my possession if anyone wants to read/listen), I detailed the ripple of impact that occurred from the nationwide syndication of one reporter’s bad journalism.

Comments

The whole look and feel of the site changed dramatically, and a number of USA Today visitors found the update jarring enough to respond negatively to USA Today editor Ken Paulson’s discussion of the new networking features. Don’t say social networking or citizen journalism, though; in USA Today’s world, it’s the age of network journalism.

Many people have responded well to the relaunch. USA Today said they have increased visitor rates by 21 percent, and many have registered for the site’s advanced features. To date, over 40,000 user comments have been tapped out on their stories.

I asked executive producer Joel Sucherman of USAToday.com about the commenting taking place. As one might expect, he cited some hot-button issues as ones gathering lots of interest, like the fall of radio legend Don Imus over his commentary on Rutgers women’s basketball. Iraq and Hilary Clinton’s Presidential aspirations, both major national news topics, likewise attract plenty of interest.

It’s been the smaller stories that have pulled in the most compelling comments. Sucherman said reports on weight loss, adoption, and health, stories that by themselves aren’t on the same scale as the headliners, generate the most interesting feedback.

He cited the scandal at Walter Reed Hospital as one that drew a number of personal stories, including one from a doctor who formerly practiced at the facility. USA Today reporters have followed up with some of those commenters to further develop their observations into articles.

The 825-word article mentions the word blog 80 times, nearly 10 percent of the article, to note the effusive evangelism of our favorite push-button publishing platform needs a reality check.

By mentioning the article, I’m taking the “echo chamber bait” he floats out there:

In fact, let’s create an Alice in Wonderland moment: I’m writing about reading about my columns in blogs, which bloggers will inevitably post.

So now, I’ll be able to read a blog about my writing about me reading about my writing in blogs.

I’m fulfilling his prophecy as the article is a funny, friendly and necessary reminder to be pragmatic about the whole B-phenomenon because, as most know, we’ve all seen this before. Not to mention, Maney gets cool points for tying it all back to Monty Python and the magical, mystery meat.

Read the USAToday article

Reader Comments…

Kevin Dugan is the author of the popular Strategic Public Relations blog. Kevin is Director of Marketing Communications for FRCH Design Worldwide.

Visit Kevin’s blog: Strategic Public Relations.

One of the main concerns is the remaining risk the shuttle faces from fuel-tank debris, which was the cause of the Columbia disaster. According to USAToday:

The first shuttle flight since the Columbia accident is scheduled for May 15, less than six weeks away. A crew of seven on the shuttle Discovery will take supplies to the International Space Station and test methods for inspecting and fixing the shuttle’s heat shield.

Since the Columbia accident, NASA engineers have redesigned the fuel tank to reduce the amount of debris – mostly foam insulation – that falls off it.

Other NASA officials have a more pragmatic approach to the risks. They feel they have taken necessary steps to greatly reduce the risk facing the orbital vehicles, but they do acknowledge risks of debris damage linger. The upcoming Discovery mission will have a crew of 7 and will be led by Commander Eileen Collins.

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The Commerce Department said that orders for durable goods (manufactured products meant to last at least 3 years) fell 0.2% when strong transportation orders were stripped out. The number was expected to go up.

According to USAToday,

“The increase in February pushed up the total value of new bookings for durable goods – manufactured products expected to last at least three years – to $200.8 billion. The rise in orders came after a 1.1% drop in January, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

While most of January’s decline reflected weakness in demand for commercial airplanes, most of February’s pickup came from a bounceback in orders for commercial aircraft and parts. Demand for other types of manufactured goods last month was somewhat sluggish.”

Separately, the number of workers in the U.S. seeking first-time unemployment benefits increased to 324,000 after being predicted to fall to 315,000

A Bloomberg article says:

“Initial applications for state unemployment benefits rose to 324,000 last week from 321,000, the Labor Department reported. The less-volatile four-week moving average was 321,750, down 5.4 percent from a year ago.

The median forecast of 73 economists Bloomberg News surveyed before the report called for orders to rise 0.9 percent after a previously reported decline of 1.3 percent for January. Orders excluding transportation were expected to rise 0.3 percent after a previously reported increase of 0.3 percent the previous month.”

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Last week they were at 5.95%, and last year at this time, they averaged about 5.40%.

According to a USAToday article,

“The national average for a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage was 5.56% the week ended March 24, up from last week’a 5.47%, Freddie Mac said. A year ago, the 15-year mortgage averaged 4.70%.

One-year Treasury-indexed adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) averaged 4.24% this week, with an average 0.8 points, up from 4.20% last week. This time last year, one-year ARMs averaged 3.36%.”

The fact that mortgages have remained as low as they have has been a surprise to economists with the tightening moves adopted by the Federal Open Market Committee.

“Renewed concern over the threat of inflation pushed up long-term mortgage rates, while the most recent FOMC statement caused short-term rates to float upwards,” said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac chief economist. “Although mortgage rates have risen these past six weeks, they still remain at very affordable levels.”

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The smallest number of possible victims is 2 in the U.S. Virgin Islands with the largest number being 34,114 in California.

The company says it is almost done notifying by mail the 144,778 people that it claims could possibly be affected. Authorities in California, however, believe the number to be much higher at as many as 500,000.

“All I can tell you is our number is roughly 145,000, and we know that we’re over-notifying,” said ChoicePoint marketing director James Lee. “There will be duplications in there.”

According to a USAToday article,

“The company, based in Alpharetta, Ga., also says it is making about 17,000 customers go through a recredentialing process to verify that they are legitimate businesses, and it has hired a retired Secret Service agent to revamp its verification process.

Customers that will have to be recredentialed are any business that is not publicly traded or not a government agency. Once recredentialed, those customers will no longer have access to consumers’ Social Security numbers, dates of birth and driver’s license numbers unless they are sponsored by a public company or government agency, Lee said.”

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The satellite, named Deep Impact, is on a mission to intercept the Tempel 1 comet. Once the 268 million mile journey is complete, Deep Impact will then collide with celestial body, punching a hole or making a crater that Deep Impact will observe. The goal is for NASA to get an idea of how the inner workings of a comet are performed.

USAToday reports that the mission is going to cost NASA around $330 million. The satellite is expected to rendezvous with Tempel 1 in six months. Once arriving, the speed of the impact (in excess of 20000 mph) will cause the necessary “damage” to the comet for Deep Impact to observe; provided the satellite collides with the side of Tempel 1 that faces the Sun.

In order to photograph the area of impact, sunlight is required. The day NASA has circled for coming collision is July 4, 2005. If the collision happens on that date, expect NASA to provide their own brand of fireworks to the Independence Day celebrations

Read more at NASA’s official Deep Impact home page.

Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.