We’ve recently written about some exciting new ideas and technology that will transform medicine in 2012, how mobile technology is playing a role in this transformation, and lauded investor Vinod Khosla addressed the question of whether or not algorithms (and technology) will replace doctors.
Younger, smaller companies have flexibility, and can often have a greater impact on innovation and evolution of industries than giant corporations that have been around for decades. When we talk about innovation and technology touching the health industry, it’s hard not to mention electronic medical records (EMRs). As recently as 2009, The New England Journal of Medicine found that only 1.5 percent of U.S. hospitals have a comprehensive electronic medical health system. Practice Fusion, a venture-backed startup we’ve covered recently, has become one of the biggest providers of EMRs in the country, with 25 million digitized to date.
While the free web-based system for physicians is making some great progress in this area, and is catalyzing change, it has to be tempered by the prior statistic — there’s still a long way to go. That’s why it’s such great news for the industry, when older, giant corporations — the big kahunas — jump on the bandwagon and show they’re willing to help push their industries forward.
Founded in 1945, California-based Kaiser Permanente is one of the largest not-for-profit managed care consortiums and health plan providers in the country, with 9 million members, nearly 170K employees, 15K physicians, 35 medical centers, and 430+ medical offices under its fold. Yesterday, the health care organization announced the release of a free Android app and mobile-optimized website through which its millions of members can access their own medical information on the go.
This means that Kaiser Permanente patients can get full access to the company’s health record system and all that comes with it, which they already could do through kp.org, from their mobile devices. In 2011, Kaiser more than 68 million lab test results available online to their patients, and through the Android app and mobile web app, patients can now get 24/7 access to lab results, diagnostic information, direct and secure email access to doctors, schedule appointments, and order prescription refills.
The company plans to release an app for iOS in the next few months, but in the meantime, non-Android users can get access to the same set of secure tools through its new mobile-optimized website through their devices’ browsers. What’s more, the apps also make it possible for family members and other care providers to get access on behalf of patients and accomplish the same tasks that they could at kp.org. This is great for people who are traveling and need to receive care from non-Kaiser Permanente providers.
The company’s data on how people are accessing its site is very telling, too, as it validates the notion that mobile technology has become an essential part of healthcare, as Kaiser told us that 14 percent of visits to its website now derive from mobile devices, a 46 percent growth since January 2011.
The health plan provider has previously released mobile apps for the iPhone, one that helps patients locate KP facilities and another app that encourages people to walk and pursue healthy activities, and while both are great tools, neither have the implications that giving broad access to EMRs does through Android, and soon iOS. Kaiser Permanente has made some great strides in HealthIT, and is set on pushing forward in mobile technology as well. If the other big health plan and healthcare providers follow suit, this can have an enormous effect on the health industry and patient care. It’s already further validation of the importance of EMRs.
You can find the Android app here.
Google has already proven it can load web pages as fast as lightning and flying potatoes, but its “Make the Web Faster” team has grander designs. The speed junkies want to quicken the internet by reworking Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), a key communications method that helps keep the internet working. Google says that it can reduce latency and speed things up by increasing the amount of data that initiates a TCP connection, reducing the initial timeout from three to one seconds, consolidating packets using its new TCP Fast Open protocol and adopting a better algorithm for managing network congestion. These changes are backwards-compatible and open source, but sadly don’t include any way to speed up internet standards ratification and deployment, so ironically this might take a while.
Google suggests TCP tweaks to make web pages load faster originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The network we love to hate has made it a long way in the four years since we promised to never cover it again because of its ridiculous claims. Not only is it still on the air, but Herring Broadcasting has announced it will be adding a linear 3D channel to the existing handful of 3D channels that includes ESPN 3D, n3D and 3net. No word on any broadcaster carriage agreements, yet, but WealthTV 3D has spent two years producing original 3D content in anticipation of the launch and viewers can currently tune in online via Roku boxes. Some of the 3D content has been available via Verizon FiOS VOD since 2010 and while we have long since laughed off the CEO’s reaction to our feelings about his channel, our opinion of WealthTV probably isn’t going to be changed by adding another dimension.
Continue reading WealthTV 3D joining handful of 3D networks
WealthTV 3D joining handful of 3D networks originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The block-building stylings of Minecraft bears more than a passing resemblance that timesucking hobby from our childhood. Now Lego and Minecraft look set to symbolize their love of all things block-based in a forthcoming set. The idea was suggested through fan submission site, Lego Cuusoo, which offers the chance for new user-submitted building sets — provided there’s enough interest — to reach retail. The Minecraft project is the latest to make it through, claiming over 10,000 supporters and managing to pass through the toy-maker’s requirements. Lego is now readying a concept that “celebrates the best aspects of building with the Lego system and in Minecraft.” We’ve been promised more details soon — until then, we’re getting back to the digitial mining.
Lego okays Minecraft set, landscaping love-in ends in marriage originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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While magical mobile devices are able to simulate instruments in wild and mind-blowing ways, thankfully most people stick to the actual instruments themselves when learning to play. Arguably, a better — or at least more popular — use for mobile devices is to act not as the instrument itself, but as an educational aid — a tool that helps us to learn how to play our favorite instruments.
There are a ton of these educational (and often game-ified) apps out there, and we seem to have a new one at Disrupt every year. There’s Miso Media’s Plectrum, which “listens” as you play, scrolling the tablature forward as you progress through the song, or Tonara’s interactive sheet music, WildChords’, a musical game that uses audio technology to recognize sound through your device’s microphone, turning your six-string into a game controller, Rocksmith, Rock Prodigy, and these … well, you get the picture.
If you want to learn to play the guitar, or another instrument, you can find plenty of YouTube videos you can strum along to, and the mobile apps and web-based tools that boost your chops continue to get better — and, frankly, astound. Of course, the truth is that most musicians learned their instrument by playing along to their favorite songs (probably not mp3s), and imitating what they hear. While YouTube offers a great jumping off point, it’s disorganized and only just scratches the surface.
Today, we’ve learned about another app for iOS (and coming soon to Mac and Windows desktops) called Jammit, which should be of interest to novices and experts alike. Ideally, when learning to play an instrument (or practicing), we want to play along with our favorite songs — to emulate them to get a better feel for how musicians created these songs — and for learning how to create our own riffs.
Jammit wants to assist in this approach by allowing musicians to play along with their favorite songs, and to get a taste (at least virtually) of what it’s like to be there in the recording studio. Jammit uses the original multi-track master recordings in its catalog so that users can tune into instrument-specific samples — for guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, and vocals. This granularity allows musicians to dive in to each nuance of a certain song, and then replace it with their own. Now you can feel like you’re part of the band — even if, like me, you’re too busy to go on tour with Rush.
It’s not easy to get access to original master recordings of songs, and Jammit Founder Scott Humphrey tells us that they’ve spent years working through the red tape to manage licensing fees and be able to offer master tracks to their users. After years of pursuing these leads, Jammit is now home to master tracks from hundreds of artists, including R.E.M., Jane’s Addiction, Nirvana, Rush, The Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and more.
While the catalog is not as complete as those we’ve come to expect from iTunes, there’s plenty of classic music to get you started on practicing, mixing, recording, and tinkering. Allowing you to literally remove the original guitar riff and record yourself right into the song — from your iPad? Pretty cool.
What’s more, the app provides note-for-note transcriptions in standard notation or tablature, the ability to quickly navigate to any part of the song, repeat bars with snap-to-grid looping — and this is the kicker — slow the song down by 90 percent without affecting the pitch. This feature, along with a “now” line, which underscores exactly which note you are on to aid in the learning process, are two huge updates for the newest versions of the app. If you’re having trouble hearing what chords are being played, or are struggling with the fingering, just slow the song down and loop it, or get cues from the app itself. Then, once you’re done recording, you can send it off to friends, teachers, and groupies.
The app itself is free, and individual songs range from about $2 to $6. Jammit currently has around 200 guitar songs, and approximately the same amount for bass, drums, and vocals. Humphrey tells us that they have hundreds more songs in the cue, and are starting to see bands come to them who want to release their albums on Jammit in tandem with releasing a new album. The latest example would be Lamb of God’s new album, “Resolution.”
Jammit is currently raising a seed round of funding.
For more, check out the example of Rush’s “Limelight” below, or check out “how it works” here.
Though the rules have raised some concerns among web companies, EC privacy commissioner Viviane Reding wasted no time in heralding them as the foundation of a safer and more prosperous digital environment. “The protection of personal data is a fundamental right for all Europeans, but citizens do not always feel in full control of their personal data,” Reding explained. “A strong, clear and uniform legal framework at EU level will help to unleash the potential of the digital single market and foster economic growth, innovation and job creation.” If approved by the European Parliament and all EU member states, the laws would probably go into effect toward the end of 2013.
European Commission unveils new online privacy rules, aims to protect consumer data originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Two certainties in life: death and taxes.
Bonus certainty: that you’ve got a jam.
And now you can share it with This Is My Jam, a refreshingly simple site with a refreshingly simple purpose – to let everyone know what song you can’t get out of your head right now.
Log in using Facebook or Twitter then search for your tune. The site pulls content from HypeMachine and Youtube; you can also connect a SoundCloud account or upload your own files.
This is My Jam will add the cover art and post your jam to Facebook or Twitter. Your song will be available for everyone to enjoy for exactly one week; after that, send out your latest favorite to keep your friends’ headphones fresher than Georgia peach preserves in May.
Another jam we highly recommend.
After launching distributed database DynamoDB last week, Amazon Web Services is debuting another product—AWS Storage Gateway, which is a service that provides enterprises with a new option to securely upload and backup data to the AWS cloud from on-premises software appliances.
Basically, the Gateway connect san on-premises software appliance with Amazon’s cloud-based storage for a more secure integration between on-premises IT environments and AWS storage infrastructure. Via the Gateway, data is uploaded to AWS, where it is encrypted and stored in the Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). The Gateway provides a solution fir enterprises looking for effective backup and rapid disaster recovery between on-premise applications and the cloud.
And there is no need to re-architect on-premises applications as the AWS Storage Gateway exposes a standard iSCSI interface that works with existing applications, explains Amazon.
As Amazon says in a release: The AWS Storage Gateway also makes it easy to leverage the on-demand compute capacity of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for additional capacity during peak periods, for new projects, or as a more cost-effective way to run normal enterprise workloads.
The Gateway is prices at $125 per month per installed gateway and comes with a 60 day free trial. Snapshot storage pricing starts at only $0.14 per gigabyte per month.
There are obvious stats, bizarre ones, and then the good old informative ones. New data from Google revealed by Ad Age, falls into the latter category. According to Goog’s numbers, more people have a mobile internet-capable device than a PC or laptop in the five key markets it tested (US, UK, Germany, France and Japan). In the US, this figure is nearly 10% more, some 76% against 68%. The numbers were taken in September and October last year, which means any impact Christmas may have had won’t be taken into account. The trend away from feature phones towards smartphones is also drilled home, but that won’t be news to many people ’round these parts. No matter how you connect these days, any savvy netizen will tell you: it’s quality, not quantity that counts anyway.
Update: The complete report is now up online and, while smartphone and tablet use is skyrocketing, it doesn’t appear to be eating into PC sales. Check out the more coverage link for all the slides.
Stat Alert: More connected phones than computers in key markets, says Google (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It seems like every day there’s news that a new site or service has been hacked. The intruders make off with usernames and passwords, and even if they’re encrypted the service forces users to change them. This week it was DreamHost, and last week it was Zappos.
We’re big fans of LastPass, a cross-platform password manager that helps you create and manage secure, unique passwords for every site, but the point of failure is obvious: What happens if someone gets your master password? Here's how you can beef up LastPass by turning a USB flash drive into a key you have to plug in to your computer before you can access your passwords. This way, the next time a service you use has been hacked—even if it's LastPass—you won't worry.
If you’re not already using LastPass to generate, maintain, and manage different and unique strong passwords for every site and service you use on the web, it’s time to get started. The beauty of LastPass is that it’s available for Mac, Windows, Linux, and even mobile devices, and you can choose and remember one strong password and then use that password to manage and access all of your other logins and services on the web. Still, LastPass keeps all of your passwords in the cloud, and while they’re as secure as they possibly could be, if someone gets a hold of your LastPass password, you’re pretty much screwed, right? Not if you have a spare USB drive with Sesame, a utility that turns your USB key into an actual key needed to unlock your LastPass vault. Once installed and set up, you’ll need both your LastPass master password and your key plugged into your Mac, Windows, or Linux PC in order to unlock your vault and access your saved passwords.
The first thing you’ll need is LastPass, and a Premium Account. It’s $12/year, but that’s a small price to pay for password security. LastPass is our favorite any-browser, any-OS password solution, and if you haven’t tried it yet, The How-To Geek has a great guide to getting started with it, and we have a more advanced guide to mastering your passwords and increasing your personal security with it.
The next thing you’ll need is a USB flash drive. Building on the principle that most secure password is the one you can’t remember, your second authentication factor will be a device, not a passkey or code. LastPass offers a tool called Sesame that can turn any USB drive into a second authentication method to use when you need access to your LastPass vault. This way, even if someone obtains your LastPass password, it’s useless without the USB drive, and vice versa.
You already know how to secure your personal belongings, like your wallet or keys, so a USB flash drive like the LaCie key-shaped USB drives that fit right on your keychain shouldn’t be a problem to keep safe and secure.
Once you have Sesame downloaded and extracted to your USB drive, here’s how to set it up:
Going forward, you’ll need your USB drive any time you want to access your Lastpass vault, like when a service or site you have an account with gets hacked and you need to change the password, or you reset a password for one of those services.
To access your LastPass vault once you have Sesame enabled, you have two options.
Don’t worry, if you lose your Sesame USB key, the key is useless without your LastPass email address and master password. You can always visit your LastPass vault, click the link in the authentication screen to tell LastPass that you no longer have your Sesame device, and confirm via email that you want to deactivate Sesame. Then, you can grab another USB key, reinstall Sesame, re-activate it, and be on your way.
Now that your LastPass vault is well protected with two-factor authentication, it’s time to tune up the passwords that LastPass is protecting. After all, LastPass won’t do you much good if your Amazon password is “password” or if your Google account password is “123456.” We’ve discussed how you can use LastPass to audit and update your passwords, and even how you can make those passwords more secure and easy to use. If you’re taking steps to make your LastPass account as hack-proof as possible, you may as well go the extra mile and make your individual passwords as strong as possible as well.
As we mentioned, Sesame is a great tool to make sure that even if LastPass gets hacked, or someone gets a hold of your LastPass master password, they don’t have carte-blanche to log in to your LastPass account and grab your credentials to everything else on the web. It doesn’t, however, automatically add a second authentication method for all of those services you use, so it’s important to make sure those passwords are strong.
Photo by Juan J. Martinez.
In addition to beefing up your LastPass account, you might want to consider activating two-factor authentication for any other web services where it's available. For example, we've discussed how you can—and should—set up two-factor authentication for your Google account, and how you can do the same for your Facebook account as well. Many banks and financial institutions are coming around to offering two-factor authentication before you can get at your financial statements or move your money around, so contact your bank or investment firm to see if that added security is available to you.
If you've been following along, you should now have LastPass set up with two-factor authentication for your vault, you've audited your passwords and made them stronger and more difficult to crack, and you've activated multi-factor authentication on the services where it's available to you. That all doesn't mean that you can relax and forget about security—you'll still need to quickly change your passwords for any sites or services you use that get hacked, and you'll still need to use different strong passwords for each site or service you use. No password mechanism, web service, or authentication scheme is completely hack-proof. That said, this should help you breathe a little easier.
LastPass provides more than one way to set up two-factor authentication, so if you don’t like this specific method, you have other options. For starters, you can purchase a Yubikey from Yubico for about $25, and set up Yubikey authentication on your LastPass account for the same effect. You can also use LastPass with Google Authenticator and turn your smartphone into the "key" that—along with your master password—unlocks your LastPass vault. If you're not interested in paying for a LastPass premium account, consider grid multifactor authentication for your LastPass account, a technique we’ve shown you that you can apply to other services.
