What Hospitals Charge – Some $8k, Others $38k

hospital

One of the reasons healthcare costs have spun out of control is that most consumers are blind to those costs. There isn't an easy method of shopping for price and little-to-no incentive for doing so since most consumers only care about their small co-pay. That all changes … [Read more...]

The Singularity & Schools

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Even a casual observer can't help but notice that the pace of change is accelerating, especially when it comes to technology. As we've joked here on the Minnov8 Gang in many previous shows, summers used to be pretty dead as far as topics were concerned and we had to pull … [Read more...]

U of MN Paying Professors $500 to Review Open Textbooks

uofmn

The University of Minnesota launched an online catalog of open-source books last month and it's just been revealed that the University will pay its professors $500 each time they post an evaluation of one of those books, according to this article on Inside HigherEd. … [Read more...]

MN Attorney General on Cramming Scamming

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Here is a followup to the post, "Mobile Text Message “Cramming” Scam" since I've received a response, embedded below, from an assistant with the State of Minnesota Attorney General's office. The AG's letter below had four key responses: Yes, I was a "victim" of … [Read more...]

Student Led Technology Conference

inver-grove

Inver Grove Heights Community Schools has an upcoming event that seems so delightful that I had to bring it to you. It's likely you know of someone who would really enjoy being enlightened about technology by a bunch of students, or perhaps you'd like to attend too and see … [Read more...]

3M Company supports SOPA

3m-logo

More than 400 organizations have publicly expressed support of the contentious Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), or the passage of other similar anti-piracy legislation, and we were stunned to see that Minnesota-based 3M Company made the list of those organizations IN FAVOR … [Read more...]

Walker Art Center’s Awesome New Website

Walker Art Center homepage (click for larger view)

Earlier this week I had a friend send me a Twitter DM saying, "Man...you MUST check out the new Walker Art Center website." So I headed over there that evening and spent over an hour reading, poking around and seeing what they'd delivered. To say I was impressed is an … [Read more...]

Heard About The Mass Spying Industry Yet?

spying-on-us

Wikileak's founder, Julian Assange, made headlines around the world this past week with his presentation on the release of tens of thousands hundreds of documents (with more to be released) outlining that "Mass interception of entire populations is not only a reality, it is … [Read more...]

Stop the Internet Blacklist

I normally don't harvest content en masse from a website, but I honestly didn't think the SOPA/Protect IP bills would actually make it to the floors in Congress. It has and the hearings are going on right now but, according to Tim O'Reilly (the tech publisher) on Google+ … [Read more...]

“Thank You” for the Books for Thai School

thai-books

Back in September I wrote a post called, "English Books for Thai School – Can You Help?" and was so pleased people jumped in to help. We collected well over 250 books for the school and delivered them when the students and teachers arrived at the Mall of America at the … [Read more...]