DiabetesMine Announces Diabetes Design Contest to Foster Innovation for Life with Diabetes; Good Design can Transform Life for Diabetics

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) May 14, 2008

DiabetesMine, a leading informational and community web site for people with diabetes, announces the 2nd Annual DiabetesMine Design Challenge, a competition designed to foster innovation in diabetes design and encourage creative new tools that will improve life with diabetes.

This web-based competition is co-hosted at DiabetesMine.com and MedGadget.com, the Internet journal of emerging medical technologies, and supported by the world-renowned design and innovation firm IDEO, with headquarters in Palo Alto, CA. The campaign is generously sponsored by Cory and Justin Oringer, two young brothers (ages 14 and 11, respectively) who have both been living with Type 1 diabetes for more than 10 years each and have already seen and personally experienced many wonderful benefits of design innovation in diabetes technology.

Submissions are being accepted in two categories: under age 18, and over 18. The package of prizes offered to help further the winners' creative efforts includes $ 3,200 in cash, a two-hour workshop by IDEO design consultants specializing in health and wellness to help the winners refine their concepts, and free access to the next "innovation incubator" Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco in October 21-23, 2008, for one adult winner.

"People with diabetes are so varied. There's the 8-year-old kid going to school every day, versus the older gentleman who may be retired and barely gets out of his house. Consumer design takes that variability into account, but traditionally medical design does not. What people with diabetes really need and want are choices," says Cynthia Rice, head of new technology at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). "We applaud what DiabetesMine is doing, because it sheds light on this need."

Last year, creator of DiabetesMine Amy Tenderich posted an Open Letter to Steve Jobs, calling for the gurus of consumer design to help revolutionize design of diabetes devices. In the weeks and months that followed, numerous individuals and organizations came forward with compelling new prototypes, designs, and ideas. These included new concepts for glucose meters, insulin pumps, lancing devices (for testing blood glucose), devices for transporting medical records or tracking glucose results, diabetes supply carry cases and more.

This year, the official competition is open to anyone passionate about diabetes and product design. "Whether you're a pharma R&D pro, an independent engineer, a design student or an enterprising patient, we want to hear from you," Tenderich says. "Remember, good design can be applied to anything, even something as 'low-tech' as a special container for disposing of used glucose test strips. Let the innovation begin!"

Submissions are accepted in the form of a 2-minute video to be uploaded to the DiabetesMine YouTube channel, or a 2-3 page written "elevator pitch" plus supporting graphics. The deadline for submissions has been extended to midnight PST on Monday, June 16, 2008. Winners will be announced on Friday, June 20, 2008.

The official contest announcement and rules can be found at http://www.diabetesmine.com/2008/04/2nd-annual-diab.html.

For more information, please contact:

B. Tenderich at DiabetesMine.com

650-652-9430

info @ diabetesmine.com

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Punch! Software Announces the Release of Home and Landscape Design Studio for Mac at MacWorld '09

Kansas City, Mo (PRWEB) January 7, 2009

Punch! Software has released the next generation of home design software with the Punch! Home and Landscape Design Studio for Mac. The focus of this completely new package was to build the easiest product possible for an end user, while maintaining and expanding the rich feature set for which Punch! is known.

Home and Landscape Design Studio is a completely new product from Punch! Software sporting new features such as a QuickStart system to allow a user to build a home quickly, "Going Green" services which offer a wealth of information to help you build more energy efficient with just the click of a button, and a completely new and updated object library for more realistic 3D modeling. The software is built to help users save time and most importantly, money.

One of the best features of Punch! software has been the ability to build a 2D plan and review it in 3D instantly. Home and Landscape Design Studio takes this ability to the next level and makes it easier to use than ever before. Simply open the software and begin dragging whole rooms into place. Resize all rooms appropriately and complete the process. Users can instantly see their design in 3D and walk around or fly through their model. Check out the video on the Punch! Software website showing how to build a home in 59 seconds.

While QuickStart gets you designing and building a dream home in minimal time, the list of new features in this software will allow users to customize every detail:

Staying Afloat in Today’s Market

With the economy the way it is today, it’s become harder and harder for freelancers, like myself, to stay afloat. The age-old doggie paddle just won’t work anymore. Sure, by kicking your feet you’ll keep your head above water, but little else.

So what can you do to make sure the Big Bad Wolf doesn’t come knocking at your door. The answer is diversify. Regular businesses learned this long ago, so it’s time that you as a writer learn it, too.

Before you cut the cord to a full-time job and seek work as a freelancer, you need to figure out what kind of financial base you have from which to operate your freelance business. Yes, that’s right, I said “business.” Every business has some sort of backup plan for tough times, and you should, too.  Thoroughly do your homework so that you’ll have the confidence to know about the writing markets before you begin.

I started out slowly, writing on Sunday afternoons. Then as I got better and got some assignments, I worked at night after teaching school all day. Soon I was writing as much as I was teaching. But I really didn’t do enough research, so when I did quit teaching, I didn’t have much to fall back on.

I decided that if I was going to do this, I would see work in areas that used the knowledge I had gained from the subjects I wrote about. I began teaching continuing education classes about travel destinations—I was an aspiring travel writer—at a local community college. This led to teaching writing classes. After all, I was both a writer and a good teacher, so why not combine the two.
But I still wasn’t making enough.

I sought out a part-time  job at a travel agency since I did know a lot about travel and world destinations. That gave me a regular paycheck with enough time to continue writing. Eventually, I got a full-time job at a better agency while still writing. But that put me back in the same position I was in as a school teacher with one exception. I had learned a lot about the travel industry working in these agencies and this gave me the knowledge and experience to write for travel trade magazines. Once I started doing that, the assignments kept coming in. By the time I had moved to a third agency, I knew I was in a rut. So one day I quit.

But now I had travel trade assignments and articles published weekly in five local newspapers. Plus I was teaching more continuing education classes in the evenings which left my days free to fulfill my assignments. I was on my way to freelance success.

Today, my company, Bob Brooke Communications, encompasses several different areas. Besides writing articles and books, I also have a fairly packed continuing education course schedule. My interest in photography led me to learn as much as I could about digital photography and now I teach that at several locations several times a year. I have also developed a modest lecture circuit which pays well for the time involved. To get material for lectures, I use the information I gather for articles on various subjects and combined with my photography, turn them into lectures.
But to fill in the voids left when writing markets go astray, I began designing Web sites, mostly for small businesses. I began with my own site, then developed three more informational sites. I’ve designed over 25 sites to date. These I do occasionally, but the pay is good enough to tide me over.

So if you have to seek out other work, make sure it’s related to what you write or that you can learn information that will be useful in your writing. My continuing education courses and lectures are all based on what I write. My technical expertise, which I developed solving my own computer problems and designing my own site over the years, has helped me tremendously in my web design work.

Remember, don’t work at anything that will take away from your writing. Work only at jobs that complement it–if you have to seek outside work at all.