Nokia puts the pressure on (your arm)

Nokia Health (as was Withings) has a blood pressure cuff - the BPM, though there's a newer version out now, the BPM+.

The BPM is quite bulky (the newer BPM+ looks quite a bit smaller in the cuff design) with a metal cylinder which has a power switch on the top and this connects to the white (quite stiff) cuff which you uncurl and wrap around your arm. It takes 4 AAA batteries

The cylinder is placed forward and it's recommended that you sit upright with your upper arm by your side and forearm at right angles forward (say resting on a desk).

Initially you have to go into the Nokia Heath app and add it as a device (there's a choice of the BPM and the BPM+), then in future when the cuff is turned on, the app will automatically open and offer to take a reading.

There are two modes when taking a reading, the first will just take a single reading while the second mode takes 3 readings (over 3 minutes). Both your systolic and diastolic readings are stored as well as your blood pressure.

The app can then display a record of the readings over time, to show how progress is being made (for example).

This could be especially useful if you have a medical condition (and results can also be emailed to your doctor).

The BPM costs £89.95 and the BPM+ £109.95 (though they function identically, they BPM+ uses a softer smaller cuff which means it can be put in a bag or similar and taken with you much more easily than the original BPM).

Today is data logging day

The UK law comes into force today (based on an EU directive) that means ISPs and telcos have to keep records of emails and phone calls for up to a year.

Well telcos have already been keeping records of telephone calls because they have to bill calls and billing records have to be kept for seven years anyway.

The story for ISPs is slightly different (and potentially unworkable). If a customer uses their ISPs mail server to send out Email then the ISP has to record the time, the originator and the recipients of the Email. They don't have to log the contents (which would mean huge storage costs).

If a customer sends out their own Email without going through the ISP mail server, it obviously wont be logged. ISPs can force Email traffic to go through their servers (though this can be circumvented too if the customer tries hard enough).

Since most large ISPs (in the UK) are implementing what was known as Cleanfeed (the system that allows ISPs to block content based on an IWF blacklist), they can also use that system to log web requests.

Logging data can be a huge burden for ISPs as the volumes get very large very quickly.

Thunderbird - actually a reasonable email client

Reading email can be a pain. Mutt is my preferred Email client, it's text based runs on UN*X/Linux, is fast and just works and is also available from anywhere by ssh'ing into the bix where the mail is stored.

Being text based, it's really good for scanning Email and deleting the rubbish. Emails can also be read and actioned, however being text based it's not good when people send pure HTML Email or Emails with nice attachments.

Being a Linux user (Fedora Core 10 at the moment) which also acts as a mail server (and file server as well as various other things), it means the system is on all the time. Outlook is a fine Email program as is Mail.app, but they mean booting a Windows or Apple machine.

So though the Linux box was on all the time, it was only really used for reading text Email through Mutt.

Then Thunderbird was suggested, it's an Email client from the Mozilla folks and it works. It''s actually quite similar to Outlook in the way it does certain things and if you're used to Outlook it will be relatively painless to use (though setting up Email accounts may not be so easy).

Now attachments are there and can be viewed as can HTML Email (rendered through Firefox or at least its libraries).

Thunderbird is a pretty good Email client for POP3/IMAP Email accounts.