Briefing: The Dawn of the Location Enabled Web
A Briefing On Public Policy Issues Affecting Civil Liberties Online from The Center For Democracy and Technology - The Dawn of the Location Enabled Web
"The ubiquity of increasingly high-powered mobile devices has already spawned the Internet’s first generation of location-based services and applications. As the accuracy of location data improves and the expense of calculating and obtaining it declines, location may well come to pervade the online experience. While the increasing availability of location information paves the way for exciting new applications and services, the increasingly easy availability of location information raises several different kinds of privacy concerns.”

New Ratings for America's Hospitals Now Available on Hospital Compare Web Site
News release: Important new information has been added to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (CMS) Hospital Compare Web site that reports how frequently patients return to a hospital after being discharged, a possible indicator of how well the facility did the first time around. On average, 1 in 5 Medicare beneficiaries who are discharged from a hospital today will re-enter the hospital within a month. Reducing the rate of hospital readmissions to improve quality and achieve savings are key components of President Obama’s health care reform agenda...Research has shown that hospital readmissions are reducing the quality of health care while increasing hospital costs. Hospital Compare data show that for patients admitted to a hospital for heart attack treatment, 19.9 percent of them will return to the hospital within 30 days, 24.5 percent of patients admitted for heart failure will return to the hospital within 30 days, and 18.2 percent of patients admitted for pneumonia will return to the hospital within 30 days."

How The Average U.S. Consumer Spends Their Paycheck From Visual Economics, this graphical image: Where Does the Money Go? - U.S. Consumer Unit Expenditures - average annual expenditures and percentage of total, using data from Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Featured artist: Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), Dutch artist who produced about 35 paintings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Street_of_Vermeer_and_its_Location
Copies of his paintings are housed together in a museum in Delft.

Walden Pond has been designated a National Historic Landmark and is considered the birthplace of the conservation movement. The reservation covers 400 acres. Mostly undeveloped woods called Walden Woods surround the reservation. The area is popular for fishing, swimming, and walking. To protect the natural resources of the area the number of visitors is limited to no more than 1,000 people at a time. Visitors are encouraged to call the park in advance and check on parking availability. A replica of Henry David Thoreau’s house is available for viewing by the public. Year-round interpretive programs and guided walks are offered. http://www.visitnewengland.com/current_category.77/current_advcategory.1826/companies_list.html

Search National Historic Landmarks by state at http://www.nps.gov/nhl/designations/listsofNHLs.htm

Lithuania is one of three countries known as the Baltic States. The other Baltic State countries are Estonia and Latvia. http://worldinfozone.com/facts.php?country=Lithuania
Lithuania celebrated its symbolic 1000th birthday on July 5, 2009. This year is the 1,000th anniversary of the first attested mention of Lithuania, in the Annals of Quedlinburg, an 11th century chronicle named after a German monastery. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090704/lf_afp/lithuaniahistoryculture_20090704175202

On July 16, 1790, the District of Columbia was established as the permanent seat of the United States government by the Residence Act. Originally the district contained land on both sides of the Potomac, grants from Maryland and Virginia, but in the mid-19th century, when it was obvious that the major government buildings were being built on the Maryland side, Virginia asked for its land back and received it. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/2006/07/district-of-columbia-named-seat-of-us.php

July 16 is the birthday of Larry Sanger, born in Bellevue, Washington (1968). He's the co-founder, along with Jimmy Wales, of Wikipedia. The collaborative user-edited Web site gets its name from blending the words "wiki" and “encyclopedia.” “Wiki” is a recent edition to the English lexicon, and made its way into the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary in 2007. “Wiki-wiki” is actually a Hawaiian word, meaning “quick” or “fast.” A wiki is a Web site that uses a certain type of software (the software is also called "wiki" software) that enables users to quickly and easily edit the Web site, create content, and interlink various Web pages. A wiki is easy to edit because it uses a standard mark-up language, which is a series of notes and tags that describe the layout format of the Web site.
On July 16, 1951, J.D. Salinger's (books by this author) first and only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was published. It has gone on to sell more than 65 million copies.
The Writer’s Almanac

Note that Salinger wrote nine short stories:
• "A Perfect Day for Bananafish"
• "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut"
• "Just Before the War with the Eskimos"
• "The Laughing Man"
• "Down at the Dinghy"
• "For Esmé – with Love and Squalor"
• "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes"
• "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period"
• "Teddy"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Stories_(Salinger)