Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Change of address: patrickWeb blog has moved

My first web site was started back in 1995 and was located at ibm.com/patrick (IBM was kind enough to maintain the link when I e-tired at the end of 2001). People often asked me how I was able to get a web address so close to the top of the company. The best answer I can offer is that back then people did not know much about the Internet and the web. We were all on a steep learning curve. Since I was out giving speeches about the Future of the Internet and people were calling my office asking how they could get copies of my slides it made sense to build a web site and make the materials publicly available. Walking the talk It was a policy that served me well for years to come.

In July of 2002 I moved ibm.com/patrick to my own personal web site at patrickweb.com. Beginning in 1997 I began to blog about various topics -- I called the postings "reflections". They remain here on patrickWeb. Initially the tool of choice for writing was Lotus Internotes to do the writing and posting but then I experimented with various new blogging tools that were springing up. In July 2003 I switched to Movable Type. I thought it was the ultimate but have now decided to change to WordPress. For my needs it is a clearly superior tool and will save me hours in what I do. As a reader you will not see much difference initially. As I gain expereince with WordPress I plan to integrate it more tightly with patrickWeb. As things unfold you will see a much richer archive with categories and tags, books recently read, better search, and an overall improved look and feel. I hope to have all this completed over the next month or so.

On infrequent occasions I have something to say about the technical aspects of patrickWeb. Most readers will not care about this but for those who do care, patrickWeb will continue to use the Atom protocol to publish the index of what I write. There is a debate in technical circles about what protocol to use -- RSS or Atom. For the most part the issues are technical. Both protocols accomplish the same thing -- they provide an index that allows blog reading software, such as Google Reader, to be able to display the date, title, category or categories, and the content of what I write. I believe that Atom is a better long term approach but I will continue to publish in both Atom and RSS.

For those readers who are interested in exactly where the new feeds are you can find them as follows...

RSS feed is at http://www.patrickweb.com/wordpress/feed/rss/

Atom feed is at http://www.patrickweb.com/wordpress/feed/atom/

For those who read patrickWeb from the homepage no action is required and for those receiving the stories from Feedblitz via email there should be no interruption.

As always, I greatly appreciate feedback about patrickWeb, especially if you find a broken link or an error of any kind. Suggested improvements in look or feel are also appreciated and thanks for reading patrickWeb.

A comparison of RSS and Atom by Tim Bray

More details about Atom

Other stories related to patrickWeb

Blogging - IBM - patrickWeb - People - Site June 1, 2010 09:32 PM

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Vision

I felt compelled to reflect back on a posting I wrote in March 2006 about trading on Wall Street. With the wild swings in the market experienced last week, one of the key questions seems clearly to be how long does it take for regulatory changes to get in sync with market and technological changes? The trading irregularities that occurred are viewed with alarm by many. Should we be shocked that such a think could have happened? I don't think so. Some will say that highly automated trading should not be allowed. In fact legislation was lintroduced to ban it. Maybe each trade should be artificially restricted to take X minutes or seconds or no trade can exceed X shares in Y minutes? Maybe trades should be approved by the government? Maybe trades should be on paper? Reminds me of the Luddites trying to destroy mechanized looms and many in the know expressing considerable resistance toward Johann Gutenberg's press.

Maybe what we need is more "Net Attitude". What we are being confronted with is not a technical problem and it is not a regulatory problem. It is a vision problem. Leaders not seeing and embracing technology. Advances in technology can not be stopped -- they have to be embraced, understood, and planned for. I would not expect leaders in the congress or regulatory bodies to be techno geeks but I would expect them to be tech aware and to bring in the right experts to help them see a vision of what is ahead and to thereby enable the leaders to lead in a more progressive fashion and not hide behind political statements that may appeal to various niches. Unfortunately, we are seeing time after time that leaders in key places do not seem to have a clue as to what is happening or is possible in the technological world.

The No Fly List is an even more sobering and dramatic example. The TSA told the airlines that when a high priority name is added to the list the airlines have to look at the list within 24 hours. Twenty-four hours? After the recent terrorist act they reduced it to two hours. Two hours? Amazon can process your order or banks can move your money in fractions of a second but a potentially life-threatening addition to an important list needs two hours to be communicated? Have they heard of email or text messages or tweets? This lack of awareness and technical thinking combined with their staffs leaking to the press an analysis of what the terrorist did wrong and thereby providing a checklist for how to do better next time does not make one comfortable about our security in the future.

One more example makes the point. A senior political leader being interviewed this morning was asked the following. When a person buys a ticket a one way ticket to Pakistan a few hours before the flight and pays for it with cash should that send up a red flag? The politican said "I don't know if that can be done". I am sure he doesn't know what a tweet is either.

March 9, 2006

While driving to Reading, Pennsylvania, earlier this week to visit Maestro Sidney Rothstein for a conducting lesson (more on Beethoven's Prometheus Overture later), I tuned in to Bloomberg radio. The reporter was interviewing John Thain, CEO of the New York Stock Exchange (NYX), which had just started its first day as a public company. The interviewer asked about the possibility of the Exchange becoming "all electronic" to which Mr. Thain responded that the exchange is a very people oriented process, that the exchange is a very people oriented process, that people are required to balance the many buy and sell orders received and that the human element is essential and "that's not going to change".

Mr. Thain's words immediately rang a bell with me. It sounded like ten years ago when the CEO's of banks and brokerage firms (and Microsoft) were saying that the Internet was interesting but that it would never be used for banking or securities trades. Over the ensuing years financial services companies ran print advertising campaigns saying how important brokers were and how they provide advice from people you can trust. After the denial phase was over the firms couldn't get into online trading fast enough and now Barron's does in depth analysis of which securities firms have the best web-based trading and investment advice capabilities.

Computing power and networking speeds are accelerating rapidly beyond the already amazing capabilities of today. Computational biology has made it possible to decode the human genome years ahead of the projected time. Human proteins are being designed that may provide cures for cancer. A supercomputer defeated the world's greatest chess player. Two robots are driving around the surface of Mars under computer control from Earth. But buy and sell orders for securities can not be modeled, optimized, and matched by computers? Is it possible that the financial services leaders are once again benighted about what is in front of them? Could it be that the jeopardy of profit margins and bonuses could blind them from seeing what is ahead?

Go Figure - Internet Technology - Net Attitude - People - Public Policy May 9, 2010 05:16 PM

Friday, May 7, 2010

iPad - Part 4: What You Can Not Do

There are many things you can do with the iPad and we are only at the beginning -- but there are some things you can't do. Although I have been accused in jest that my enthusiasm for the iPad makes some wonder if I am on the Apple payroll. I am indeed very bullish about the iPad but this story is to highlight some of the things that -- at this stage -- you can do or not do very well with the iPad. Will the iPad replace the laptop? At some point, yes, but at this point I am writing this post on my ThinkPad (running Ubuntu Linux with the Google Chrome browser and WordPress).

There is a reason why I am unable to write the story on the iPad. Inhiibitor #1 for the iPad is the browser. Steve Jobs has said that Safari is the world's best browser and the iPad was introduced with no other choice. Many people think that Internet Explorer is the #1 browser -- some think it is the only browser. Let's start with some facts. In 2005 IE had 65% market share -- even though many people, myself included, think it is the worst of all browsers. Fast forward to March 2010. IE8 had 15% share, IE7 had 11%, and IE6 was at 9%. The total for IE was 35%. Firefox was 46%. Google Chrome (my primary browser) has gained every month since it was introduced in 2008 and now stands with a 12% share. Apple Safari is at 4% and Opera Software at 2%. I think Safari is a good browser but not a great browser. Perhaps it will become great if Apple continues to invest in it but based on the numbers they have a long way to go. When it comes to the iPhone and iPad the Safari share is 100% since that is all that is offered. One exception is that Opera Mini is now available on the iPhone. If they can get an iPad specific version approved that would be nice. So one thing you can't do with the iPad is surf all the sites you can surf on the desktop. I have found a number of sites that do not work properly with Safari. That is what forced me to be writing this story on the ThinkPad.

Even if Safari worked flawlessly with WordPress and MovableType, writing any significant blog post (or other document) is not as productive as using a PC or laptop with a large flat screen. I typically have a dozen tabs open on my flat panel -- gmail, iGoogle, calendar, a few spreadsheet projects, WordPress, wikiPedia, etc. It is easy to copy paste links and info from other pages into the blog post. You could do it on iPad but it is a lot more tedius.

I also have discovered that a number of iPad apps that have come from the PC or Mac world are not inclusive. For example eBay on the iPad is very nice but there are things like adding a reputation or preparing an invoice for the buyer, etc. that are not there. The Apple calendar, contacts, and mail applications are very nice and freshly updated from the iPhone versions. They are a joy to use but they do not have the full functionality of the PC versions -- can't send to groups in gmail, can't add group designations in contacts, can't add text message reminders in calendar. I use usps.com to do a mailing and stamps.com to mail packages. They both require printing. The iPad can't print. Although it can handle pdf files in emails, it doesn't support creation of pdf's which is what both the mailing apps do. I did find one iPad app called PrintCentral that boasted that it enables the iPad to print without installing any printer software on the iPad. I bought the app ($9.99) and then found out that it does require software to be installed on your PC and then that enables the iPad to print to any printer on your LAN. Not even as easy as it sounds however, and to use it your PC or laptop has to be on and connected to the LAN. Handling of files, generally, is not a strong suit for the iPad. The file system is closed so you have no visible directories, you can not detach attachments and put them somewhere (except for pictures). Everything is handled through iTunes which is clearly not optimized for file sharing. I expect this to get easier as clever app developers find ways to get around the various impediments. GoodReader for example is a great tool for managing PDFs. You can access the GoodReader app from a PC, create folders on the iPad from your PC, and upload PDF files into the folders. This gives you a repository for documents to read offline on the iPad. I use it mostly for board papers and find it extremely valuable. Others at the conference tables are attracted to the idea -- I should get an Apple commission!

Meanwhile I finished reading The Great Bridge by David McCullough using the iPad iBook reader. What a great book. After reading a few books on the iPad I can confidently repeat my enthusiasm for the Kindle. The light weight really makes a difference. It is also superior when reading out in the sunny weather we have been having lately. For now at least the optimum reading for me is to use the Kindle app on the iPad while on the treadmill and x-trainer or at the reading stand in front of my easy chair, to use the Kindle on iPhone while in a supermarket line or killing a few minutes at the train station, and the Kindle while curled up in bed. Once the iPad iBook novelty and fascination of the curling page flips with text on the back of the pages wears off, one thinks about the reason you read books -- the content, not the page flips. the Kindle wins hands down -- for now. On Wings Of Eagles was recently released on Kindle and that has been my read this week. Ken Follett doesn't write much non-fiction and he did a spectacular job of taking a factual story of the EDS rescue in Iran in 1979 sound like a legitimate novel. One can't wonder how the mission would have gone differently if iPhones had existed back then.

Bottom line, the iPad is a great device and I love it. It can't do everything -- no camera, no phone, no usb keys, weak printing and file handling -- but it can do almost everything. And, it is very personal. You show it to friends and family but you don't let it out of your site. You let them play with it, but not much. It contains your personal information of all kinds. It knows where you are. In time, it will be watching you and you will be watching others with it.

iPad stories on patrickWeb

Gadgets - Internet Technology - Mobile - Personal Computing - iPhone May 7, 2010 10:26 PM

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

iPad - Part 3: Other Reading

Many of us have weighed in on the various aspects of e-books and e-readers. The jury will be out for quite awhile as the publishers, Apple, Sony, Google, Lenovo, Dell, and numerous others refine their strategy for what goes into a book, how it is displayed, and how it is priced. While the book war heats up, there are other dimensions of the e-readers to consider.

Reading magazines and newspapers on the Kindle can be quite convenient -- especially if you travel a lot -- but I can't say it is enjoyable or even natural. On the iPad reading magazines and newspapers is enjoyable and increasingly will seem the natural way to read them. The New York Times got good press at the launch of the iPad but I find it weak. The WSJ, however, is quite good. Easy to navigate and you get the full "paper" as it was published in the morning plus updates during the day. The ads are annoying and it doesn't take long to realize that it takes two swipes to go to the next page if the page you are leaving is an ad. I would rather not have the ads but having them is the publishers only hope of making money which they need if we want good journalists. The NPR and BBC news apps are pretty good also. The Zinio ipad app is home to a large number of magazines. A few are free. Pricing is reasonable -- Popular Mechanics, for example, is $7.99 for tweleve issues. Flipping Zinio pages is smooth and natural. Bottom line is that reading newspapers and magazines on the iPad is a pleasing and natural experience. My friend Jim Kollegger at Genesys Partners says "the iPad will do for publishing what the ATM did for cash".

Aside from books, magazines, and newspapers there is an infinite amount of material to read on the iPad. Even the uninitiated organizations of the world are distributing their documents in PDF format. Not my long term favorite format but it is far better than receiving a doc file that wants to open some "bloatware" to be read. In cases where I must receive a fax I have it sent to my efax number and it shows up in the gmail inbox as a PDF. When checking out of a hotel I ask the desk to fax a copy of my room bill "to my office, no cover sheet required". The PDF in my inbox can then be archived or used for reimbursement purposes. For more significant PDF's that are important for future reference or even a board packet for a meeting I use the GoodReader iPad app to store and read the files. I would prefer that things were synced in the cloud rather than iTunes but the process of moving PDF's from my ThinkPad to the iPad over the home LAN is easy now that I have done it quite a few times. The storage of the iPad allows nearly unlimited documents for most of us and having the documents "local" is nice for travel plus partaking of the great zoom and pinch features lets you have whatever the optimum view for you may be. This is especially important for charts and graphs.

In preparation for a board meeting this past week, I received the normal FedEx package containing the agenda and board papers. It was 38 pages, and including the binder clip, weighed a half-pound. I emailed the person organizing the meeting and asked for a PDF. After saving the attachment on the ThinkPad and uploading it over the LAN to the GoodReader app on the iPad I was good to go. Both reading the papers in a comfy chair the day before the meeting and following as needed at the conference room table were a welcome approach compared to fumbling with the paper. I reminded some people about the time, cost, and environmental impact of the old approach. In theory the same thing could be done with the iPhone but I have to admit that it is difficult with tabular information and graphs. It has certainly been feasible with the laptop but then you have to worry about battery life and the bulk of the device on the table. The iPad fills the bill really well. Another handy document reading tool on the iPad is the Memeo Connect Reader which syncs your Google Docs folders to the iPad app. This is really nice when you are on an airplane or somewhere that doesn't have a WiFi signal.

And then there is reading what bloggers have to say and the thousands of news feeds. I am using both NewsRack and Early Edition on the iPad. Both are evolving, listening to feedback and continuously improving their products. You can read patrickWeb, BusinessWeek, The Economist, Engadget or any of the millions of feeds that are out there. You can add new feeds on the iPad or use Google Reader on the desktop and have the feeds automatically sync to your iPad reader. The size and clarity of the iPad makes it quite enjoyable to scan through the feeds and read stories of interest. Another nice iPad app is the Wiki (squared). You enter a word of interest, read the article about it just like an encyclopedia but then follow the links and read to your heart's content. A real bargain for 99 cents.

How about creating documents? There are more tools to read than there are to write but there are some incredibly sophisticated writing tools available on the iPad. Apple itself features Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. I was skeptical about creating and manipulating a spreadsheet on the iPad but with Apple Numbers and no training I have learned how to do it. It is mostly intuitive. What surprised me is the breadth and depth of the functionality. I have a couple of other favorite iPad tools for writing. First is the CarbonFin Outliner. I have always liked outliners as a way to organize thoughts for a meeting or discussion agenda. You can add bullets and sub-bullets and then move them up or down or promote or demote them in the outline. The Outliner is available on a web site and you can sync your outlines. That enables you to make a change on any computer or on the iPad and everything is synced. This is the beauty of the Cloud and the way all applications should be (and will be). I have been using the Outliner for more than a year with the iPhone and I can highly recommend it. Another nice app is Things. Aside from being way overpriced ($19.99), Things provides a well organized way to capture your to do's in buckets -- Today, Next, Scheduled for a specific date, Someday, and Projects. As things get completed or moved around they show up in the Logbook. I have tried dozens of task list managers over the years and end up using scraps of paper and email as the dominant tools. Maybe Things, with the personal relationship people will have with their iPad, will make it a winner. I especially like the "Someday" category as a way to capture those things you think of that you want to do but you know you are not going to do anytime soon.

Meanwhile I am still reading The Great Bridge by David McCullough. Among my friends and recent acquaintances it seems I am the only one who has not read this great epic book. Both the political and engineering complexities encountered in the project are mind boggling. Even though I can't seem to find the time to finish this great book in a timely manner, I am getting used to reading on the iPad.

iPad stories on patrickWeb

Gadgets - Home Automation - Internet Technology - Media - Music - Personal Computing - WiFi - iPhone April 27, 2010 09:30 PM

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

iPad Thoughts

Part 1: Initial Thoughts

Part 2: Reading Books

Part 3: Other Reading

Part 4: What You Can Not Do

Gadgets - Home Automation - Internet Technology - Media - Music - Personal Computing - WiFi - iPhone April 21, 2010 10:05 AM

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

iPad - Part 2: Book Reading

If the financial analysts are right, Apple may soon have a market capitalization of more than $250 billion -- that is one quarter of a trillion dollars. Apple stock is up seven-fold in the past five years. People were skeptical of the stock price then and some are now but it is quite possible that the iPhone and the iPad have changed the game for the company in a very positive way. The "spillover" effect is that Mac sales are also booming and half of the buyers are first-time Mac buyers. Can Apple sustain such a high growth rate? The world is a big place and more than half of the iPhone sales last quarter were outside of America. The iPad sales outside the U.S. have not even started yet. The potential is very large -- many billions of dollars.

Tim Cook, the COO at Apple, said that he is addicted to his iPad and that he could not live without it. I have to confess I am in the same state of mind. Many friends have asked me why I am so enthusiastic about it. Is it the music, beautiful photo display, dazzling graphics, watching movies, the greatly enhanced iPhone applications that have come to life, a great new email program, effortless web browsing, the elegance of the device, the simplicity of using it? Yes. All of the above and much more. (See "iPad Thoughts" for an index to patrickWeb iPad stories). The main thing about the iPad is that it is personal. A bit hard to describe but the personal factor is what will make people tell their friends about it and proudly show it to them -- but not let it out of their site. Curling up in a comfy chair and being able to do almost anything in the digital world -- almost everything -- but not everything is what the iPad is about. Stories to come will focus on the personal and other aspects of the iPad. The purpose of this story is to offer some thoughts about book reading.

Will the iPad dethrone the Kindle? I don't claim to have the answer but I may have some clues. I would like to share the experience of reading e-books in six ways. The PC is one and categorically not a candidate to be considered, as I am sure we all would easily agree. Second is the Barnes & Noble Nook. I had one of the first and after a couple of books it was sold on eBay for what I paid for it. See the epilogue here. That leaves four -- the iPhone, the Kindle, the iBook reader on the iPad, and the Kindle reader on the iPad. I selected one of David McCullough's outstanding pieces of work and read chapters alternately on the four readers. Following are my thoughts.

Not that many years ago I said in speeches that I "would never read a book on my cell phone". I was wrong. Reading a whole book is unlikely for me but reading a chapter here and a chapter there is for sure. Standing in line at the supermarket or waiting for a subway train or maybe sitting on a park bench offers a chance to consume something you are really anxious to read. The iPhone Kindle app provides a landscape view and it is quite readable and simple to navigate. The beautiful thing is that when you later pick up your Kindle or the Kindle app on the iPad and open the reader it asks you if you want to continue where you left off on your iPhone. The Amazon Whispersync feature is innovative and extends your reading time and enjoyment. Apple will surely have something similar or better before the year is over and Google Android readers will no doubt have a sync feature as well.

One disadvantage of the iPad as a reader is that at one and a half pounds -- not a lot compared to a laptop or even a netbook -- it is five times heavier than a Kindle. The weight is concentrated in a thin flat device and I find it uncomfortable to hold after a while. The other thing is the back-lighting. The iPad screen is actually bright -- perfect for flipping through photos, watching a movie, or surfing the web, but for a couple of hours of reading it can be hard on your eyes. The positive aspect of the iBook reader is the graphical representation of the bookshelf and the flipping of the pages. It is truly incredible that as you slowly "flip" a page with your finger you can see the words on the back of the page. You have to see it to believe it. The processing power to perform the page turning is equivalent to what was called a supercomputer not long ago. The iBook reader also has some very nice content related features. The brightness can be adjusted -- helps with eye fatigue -- and there are five selectable fonts with variable sizes. I really like the display at the lower right of each page that shows how many pages remain to be read in the current chapter. An icon at the top brings you the table of contents of the book and a listing of all your bookmarks. Adding a new bookmark is very simple. You tap tap on a word and a menu pops up asking if you want to look up the word in a dictionary, search the book for occurrences of the word, or make the word be a bookmark. When I show someone the iPad iBook reader I always make sure to place a bookmark so that after they get finished paging around I can get back to where I was.

The Kindle reader on the iPad is an updated version of the iPhone reader. It takes good advantage of the larger screen and also allows you to change the color of the pages -- white, black, or sepia. The content controls are good but not as slick as the iBook reader. Ditto with the page turning. The Kindle reader has the graphical page flip but it doesn't show the words on the back of the page. Certainly not something you need but it makes a distinction for the iBook reader that people find impressive.

Last but certainly not least of the four is the Kindle itself. The Kindle uses e-ink -- it is reflective -- like paper. The more light the better. Like millions of others, I am Kindlzed -- since 2007. The 5 once device never burdens the wrist. The Kindle is monochrome but we don't need color to read a novel. The Kindle is simple and intuitive to use. Not flashy, compared to the iPad, but dependable with long battery life. For extended reading sessions the Kindle remains best, in my opinion --- for now. I expect things to change. The multi-purpose ability of the iPad is important. I find myself jumping over to check or send an email when I think of something while reading. Rather than just look up a word in the built-in dictionary I sometimes want to visit the Wikipedia or explore a web site. The iPad has personal appeal and you get attached to it. Publishers are busy working with authors to create multimedia content to be integral to new and backlisted books -- audio in the background, video interviews with the author or clips of content relevant to the topic of the book may make books more appealing and also may make them worth more -- which brings us to the pricing.

The McCullough book was $9.99 on Amazon and $14.99 through the iBook store at Apple. Same book. No multimedia content. Is Apple's version of the book worth 50% more? Publishers really don't like the idea of people getting used to paying $9.99 for a book. They want a new model. Apple is accommodating them -- so far. Time will tell how things are going to shake out. Ken Auletta's piece from the April 26, 2010 issue of The New Yorker explores the state of book publishing with excellent analysis of the strategies of the two digital behemoths -- Amazon and Apple, and also describes how Google will soon follow with it's readers and online store. There is a very large fight beginning for control of the e-books market.

There will be much more to say about the book market but in the meantime the iPad will be selling briskly. No doubt in my mind that there will be very large adoption -- tens of millions for sure -- and it will make a big dent in PC's. Also, more to say about what the iPad can not do and about the bigger question of iTunes. When will it be in the cloud? The iPhone will continue to be an important part of my life -- for calls and picture taking. This morning I had an appointment at a place that had no WiFi (fewer and fewer of such places) so I turned on the iPad and took a minute or two to download my email inbox and the Wall Street Journal before leaving the house. It was more than enough to occupy my subsequent idle time.

iPad stories on patrickWeb

Gadgets - Home Automation - Internet Technology - Media - Music - Personal Computing - WiFi - iPhone April 20, 2010 10:00 AM

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Neonatal Healthcare

We can all picture a hospital neonatal environment where a plethora of
medical monitors connected to babies are used to alert hospital staff
to potential health problems before patients develop clinical signs of infection or other issues. There are breakthroughs on the horizon for how this will be done. Today the instrumentation generates huge amounts of information -- up to 1,000 readings per second -- which is summarized into one reading every 30 to 60 minutes. The information is stored for up to 72 hours and is then discarded. If the stream of data could be captured, stored and analyzed in real time there would be a huge opportunity to improve the quality for special care babies.

The Hospital for Sick Children in Ontario, Canada has developed such a vision and is acting on it.
Dr. Carolyn McGregor, Canada research chair in health informatics at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology visited researchers at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center who are working on a new stream-computing platform to support healthcare analytics. A three-way collaboration was established, with each group bringing a unique perspective -- the hospital focus on patient care, the university's ideas for using the data stream, and IBM providing the advanced analysis software and information technology expertise needed to turn the vision into reality.

The result of the collaboration was Project Artemis which pairs IBM scientists with clinicians and`researchers to explore how emerging technologies can solve real-world business problems, in this case developing a highly flexible platform that aims to help physicians make better, faster decisions regarding patient care for a wide range of conditions. At the Children's hospital the focus is real-time detection of the onset of nosocomial infection (often called hospital-acquired infection).

Regulatory, ethical, privacy, and safety issues were addressed and then two infant beds were instrumented and connected to the system for data collection. The team then created an algorithm that describes the streaming data. By establishing the impact of moving a baby or changing its diaper those things can be filtered out to help spot the telltale signs of nosocomial infection.

Dr. Andrew James, staff neonatologist, at the Hospital for Sick Children is optimistic that as they learn more they will be able to account for variations in individual patients and eventually be able to integrate data inputs such as lab results or observational notes. In the future any condition that can be detected through subtle changes in the underlying data streams can be the target of the system's early-warning capabilities. It is likely sensors attached to or even implanted in the body will allow monitoring of important conditions from home or anywhere.

Other healthcare-related stories on patrickWeb

Gadgets - Home Automation - Internet Technology - Media - Music - Personal Computing - WiFi - iPhone April 11, 2010 06:59 PM

Sunday, April 4, 2010

iPad - Part 1: Initial Thoughts

I confess -- the doorway did not get out of my sight for the entire day yesterday. I had placed my order early in the morning on March 12 and when the first tranch of thousands of iPads left China for Louisville, KY and then to Orlando and on to Daytona and then onto a big brown truck, I did not want to be the unreliable part of the distribution scheme that Apple had planned with precision. By 4 PM the doubts were arising but at 5 PM my iPhone rang and it was UPS driver at the front door with an iPad in his hands.

If you know how to use an iPhone then you know how to use an iPad. I would not agree with some who say the iPad is *just* a "big iPhone". In fact I see the iPad as the beginning of the end of a lot of things as we know them today. It will not immediately replace laptops, netbooks, magazines, Kindles, and televisions -- not immediately. Over time, however, it is easy to see how the world will change. When we introduced the ThinkPad in 1992 it seemed like a huge deal just to get everyone at IBM to agree with the name. No one, certainly not me as VP of marketing at the time, had any idea that more than 30 million ThinkPads would be sold. The iPad will surely sell multiple times that number but more important the iPad will change the model of personal computing -- not immediately and not for everyone, but for many millions of people the PC will begin to look like a dinosaur. One of my reasons for such a bullish view is the number of skeptics coming forward to say that the iPad is not what it is cracked up to be. Skeptics have been a reliable predictor of the next big thing -- the Internet is too insecure to allow for banking and insurance. WiFi is too expensive and slow and will fizzle. Blogging was to peak out some years ago. Social networking is a fad. The iPad is just a big iPhone. Those with decades of experience with PC's may find it difficult to master the iPad but the younger generation which grew up on Nintendo will find it natural. They will use it not just for games, music, videos, and browsing but for creative work -- writing, drawing, composing, authoring, building, creating documents and web sites and multi-media content.

The extra "real estate" -- roughly seven times more area -- of the iPad has a bigger impact than one might think. It becomes very obvious when you first see a map on it. It is not just the size but the number of pixels. The iPhone is 480 x 320 while the iPad is 1024 x 768. The clarity and brilliance are stunning. You have to see it to believe it. The TV ads and pictures do not do it justice.
It is the applications that will make the iPad (and iPhone) highly successful. There will be hundreds of thousands of them and the larger screen opens up many new possibilities. Magazines will be huge hit -- the screen allows for not only more advertisements (not a feature) but for embedded video and high quality graphical content. You can do have all this on an iPhone but there is really no comparison. There is much to say about the iPad. It has been stimulating to explore it. Many questions in my mind and much more to learn but bottom line -- I love it! There are some things that are not perfect -- more about this later. For now, let me just comment about books and the impact on the Amazon Kindle. Amazon's profit for the fourth quarter of 2009 was $384 million on revenue of $9.52 billion. That is more than $10 million of products shipped each and every day. They are not going away, with or without the Kindle, but will the iPad dethrone the Kindle?

I don't claim to have the answer but I may have clues. There are more than 40 e-book readers out there. Apple may be the largest threat to the Kindle among them, but it is not a slam dunk. At least in the short term, I do not see the iBook reader as a Kindle killer. I read a lot of books and I don't buy any that are not available on the Kindle. I am Kindlzed. The 5 once device never burdens the wrist. The iPad is just one and a half pounds -- not a lot compared to a laptop or even a netbook -- but compared to the 5 once Kindle it is almost five times as heavy. If you spend a lot of time reading you may develop a need for a wrist brace. The other thing is the lighting. The Kindle uses e-ink -- it is reflective -- like paper. The more light the better. The iPad has back-lighting. I was using the iPad out on the terrace today and it was very difficult to see the screen clearly. The Kindle was clear as a bell. (I watched a movie on the iPad indoors later and the quality was fantastic). The journalists that got to see the iPad in person in January reported that the room was dim. Why would that be? I suspect because good lighting makes the backlit screen harder to read.

I am currently reading the biography of John Adams (highly recommended based on first 40%). The Amazon Kindle book was $9.99. I invested $14.99 to buy the iBook version from Apple. It is not 50% better. The iBook is flashy and impressive. I like the feature that shows how many pages remain in the chapter you are currently reading. But we don't need color to read a novel and the iPad becomes heavy after holding it for awhile. For heavy reading, the jury is out and the Kindle wins hands down.

On a positive note, I think the iPad will find very large adoption -- tens of millions for sure -- and will make a big dent in PC's. The netbooks have been very successful but they are basically PC's with Windows. Their only redeeming feature is their low price. That is a good thing but it is not innovative and who needs another copy of Windows? PC desktops and laptops are already in decline and the iPad is going to accelerate the trend. I see the iPad lightening the load in briefcases when travelling. It will also take up a lot less space on the kitchen counter and while resting there in the new iPad case it will double as a picture viewer. In the family room it will be the controller for movies and music. Most of this story was written using the Bluetooth wireless keyboard with the iPad. I need more experience with this before I say it will become my tool for writing. Finally, with most of our data in the cloud why would anyone need a PC or laptop? Many of us will still have a PC and a big flat panel for certain things -- like Quicken -- but more and more of my time will be with the iPad. The bigger question is iTunes. When will it be in the cloud? More on that to come.

The iPhone will continue to be an important part of my life -- for calls and picture taking. And if I am in a location where there is no WiFi for the iPad, the iPhone will be my backup to the Internet. I do not plan to get the 3G model and sign up for another AT&T data plan. WiFi is available at most everywhere I go and the trend of expansion of WiFi will only accelerate. I suspect I will keep my Kindle too. There will be many naysayers and critics of the iPad but I am certain it will be a smashing success and a long-term game changer for personal computing. It will become so pervasive in our lives that even though it is a very powerful computer, it will not be thought of as a computer. It is at the crossroads between technology and the arts.

Index to patrickWeb stories about iPad

Gadgets - Home Automation - Internet Technology - Media - Music - Personal Computing - WiFi - iPhone April 4, 2010 10:59 PM

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Fatboy On The Road

The motorcycle trip had been in the planning stage for months and this week it was to happen. It would be one of the biggest adventures of all time for me. Not as exciting in some respects as the very light jet trip from Brazil in October. Not as long as the many trips I have been fortunate to take all over the world in the prior decades. Surely nothing compared to the voyage I just read about in John Adam's biography where he spent six weeks crossing the North Atlantic sea in February 1776. But at a very personal level, riding the Harley-Davidson 2003 (Anniversary Year) Fatboy for 1,190 miles from Connecticut to Palm Coast, Florida was quite a challenging but rewarding trip.

The weather from Virginia and south was projected to be nice -- the challenge would be getting from Connecticut through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, to Virginia. The lingering rain was mostly on the coast so I decided to follow a strategy that would get me south as fast as possible to minimize the cold and to stay west of New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington. I started the day with multiple layers of clothing -- an electrically heated vest and gloves, face mask, leather chaps, heavy socks, and motorcycle boots. Might sound like a lot for March but it turned out to be just right. I knew that the windchill at 55 degrees while moving through the air at 65 mph was right about freezing. The starting temperature was 39 degrees -- not moving -- so the likely windchill was 0-10. (See prior story about windchill). Heading down the Sawmill Parkway I encountered some unexpected flooding on the road that required anticipation and lane changes to avoid. Crossing the Hudson River on the Tappan Zee Bridge required hanging on tightly to control the buffeting and also crabbing into the wind just like flying an airplane in a crosswind. After a gas stop in Hellertown, PA I continued west and stopped after 200 miles for a thaw and a sandwich at a gas station in Indiantown Gap, PA. The sun was coming out and I began to anticipate peeling back some of my coverings as the afternoon progressed. The Interstates had served the strategy well and gotten me south and west of the worst weather. Now it was time to focus on South. Through Pennsylvania, Maryland, a touch of West Virginia, and into Virginia -- there was a beautiful ride through the Shenandoah Valley and over the mountains. I then headed back eastward toward Richmond, linked up wiht I-95 again and ended up (exhausted) at Petersburg, Virginia at a Holiday Inn Express. Just over five-hundred miles exceeded my 400 mile goal. A cup of chicken noodle soup from the microwave, some nuts and dried fruit, and a bottle of water and I was ready to read the Kindle and sleep.

Exiting the hotel parking lot in Petersburg put me right on a nice stretch of the 1,099 mile U.S. Route 301. It ran parallel to I-95 for the most part but had almost no traffic and was a very nice road for riding. The next gas stop would be Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Then Fayatteville and on to Florence, South Carolina and many interesting towns along the way. Downtown Smithville wasn't exciting but it was one of a number of places that had some fame or glory. As the southern leg of the trip unfolded the clothing began to peel away -- first the chaps, then heavy gloves instead of electric gloves, and then light leather gloves. The electric vest under the jacket became a leather vest with no jacket. The long sleeved shirt remained to protect against the intense sun. It was a long haul to Savannah and after the second five-hundred miles it was time for a rest. The Hilton Gardens was sold out but Marriott's Fairfield Inn had one room available.

There was no sign of recession in Savannah but along the roads to that point there were many signs. Literally. Many of them said "Advertise Here" or "Available". A number of the sprawling distribution centers that I suspect had been over-built a few years ago were vacant. One sign read "964,000 square feet available for rent". Rest stops along the Interstates were mostly closed due to state funding shortages. The famous "South of the Border" rest stop and roadside attraction complex was not as I had remembered it from 60 years ago. Hard to tell for sure but many other establishments seemed either closed or to have a lot of spare parking spaces. The exceptions I saw in driving through many towns were rehabilitation centers for seniors, hospitals, schools, and government buildings. None of them seemed to have enough parking. The contrast between public and private stood out.

One other standout was that of all the cars I noticed passing me on the Interstates the most prevalent was the Chevy -- Impala, Camaro, Malibu, Corvette, and trucks of various kinds. Nice to see them doing well. I have a hunch they will be profitable soon. My first car was a 1967 Corvette and a 2005 Chevy SSR is sitting in the garage at home. (My father was a car dealer from 1929 to 1976. Starting with the Ford Model T, my Dad's dealership became Patrick Chevrolet in 1961. Dad would have loved seeing the SSR).

Friday morning started out cold but warmed up before 10am when I stopped in Brunswick, Georgia for gas. Most of the day was spent on back roads enjoying the swamps, bridges, historic sites, and surprisingly little traffic, even going through downtown Jacksonville. Things changed in St. Augustine -- the oldest continuously occupied European established city in America -- where it was bumper to bumper. I did not mind because I knew I was a half hour from my destination. The Fatboy arrived at it's new home in the garage at Hammock Dunes by mid-afternoon of day number three. When I fly back North on JetBlue, I will be thinking of all the motorcycle riders 40,000 feet below but for now I will not wish I was one of them. The tweleve-hundred mile trip was exhausting but I am glad I did it. I unwound by taking a four mile walk on the beach. Today is wait mode to see if the iPad gets delivered as promised. More on that subject to come. Stay tuned.