TECH BYTES
Tech Bytes: Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008

For the 2,400 employees at Mercy Hospital, plastic bags no longer have a place in their shopping carts at local retail stores. The hospital is handing out reusable shopping bags to each employee next week as part of an ongoing effort to expand its "green” initiatives.

In addition, Mercy has launched a hospitawide recycling program in which 350 blue recycling bins were placed throughout the hospital on the far northwest side of Oklahoma City.

"Just our housewide recycling program is going to have a positive effect on our community considering that on any given month, the main hospital goes through some 15,000 soda cans,” said Jeff Johnston, Mercy's chief operating officer. "And while we are launching the recycling program this week, we have been leading the nation in many of our green efforts for several years.”

Mercy recycles more than 20,000 pounds of cardboard each month, and recently began using more environmentally friendly cleaning chemicals. It also switched from Styrofoam plates, bowls and containers to 100 percent biodegradable products.

Cox Communications high-speed Internet customers now have up to 5 gigabytes of free storage, the company said in a news release.

The online storage, through its new Media Store and Share service, is offered free to all Cox Preferred and Premier package customers.

Media Store and Share allows customers to manually transfer files from their computer into their online vault. PC users can also download a separate program that will automatically copy specified file types from the customer's computer into the storage vault on a regular basis – providing essential online back-up.

Media Store and Share also lets customers store music for personal use and create custom playlists with their music files.

Customers can access the new service by logging into their account on www.cox.net.

Rough-and-tumble cell phone users now have a phone from AT&T to match their lifestyles. The new phone is called the Samsung Rugby.

Available in black, deep burgundy and construction yellow color options, the Rugby is certified to military standard to withstand dust, shock, vibration, rain, humidity, solar radiation, altitude and temperature extremes.

The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation is offering a free estate planning seminar for attorneys, CPAs and financial planners from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. Oct. 1.

Featured speakers will be Stacy Eastland, managing director for Goldman Sachs in Houston, and Richard Kells, a partner with Hartzog Conger Cason & Neville.

The seminar will be at the Oklahoma City Marriott, 3233 Northwest Expressway. Registration is required. For more information, call 271-7400 or visit www.omrf.org/estate. Registration closes Wednesday.

A company called WebCE is offering a training course to meet Oklahoma's new education requirement for insurance producers who sell Medicare Advantage plans.

The Oklahoma Department of Insurance recently mandated a new 8-hour continuing education requirement for insurance producers who sell Medicare Advantage or Medicare private fee-for-service plans.

WebCE's course is available online for $15.95. An additional filing fee of $1 per hour will be collected when the course is purchased and remitted to Sircon with the completed credit hours. For more information about the company or the online course, visit www.webce.com.

From Staff Reports

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