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How to Transition Your Business to the Cloud

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 11:14:42 -0700

How to Transition Your Business to the Cloud:

Windows 8, the most radical redesign of Microsoft’s flagship...

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 10:54:46 -0700

Windows 8, the most radical redesign of Microsoft’s flagship operating system, is often said to be schizophrenic. On the one hand, the user interface that first greets users is beautiful: a fun, playful grid of colorful tiles, based on Microsoft’s well-received Metro design language, that offers access to apps and content. On the other hand, hidden beneath this Metro-enhanced surface is the same desktop-based UI we’ve known for decades, still riddled with taskbars, toolbars, and drop-down menus.

Today, Microsoft unveiled a preview of its latest version of Office, and like Windows 8, the newest iterations of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are just as split-minded. With roughly one billion users worldwide, Microsoft faced the same issues designing Office as it did Windows: How do you re-imagine a ubiquitous piece of software without alienating your global user base? While Microsoft designed this latest release for mobile, engineering the experience for touch-screen devices, and infusing elements of Metro’s design language into the program, Office 15 still feels slightly dated—bogged down by decades of legacy.

What The New Microsoft Office Gets Wrong

"Now let’s look at servces where the users provide all the value. Wikipedia, Craigslist, YouTube,..."

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 13:22:01 -0700

“Now let’s look at servces where the users provide all the value. Wikipedia, Craigslist, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Wordpress, etc, etc. There is no value to any of these platforms if the users don’t create the content. The users create the service, curate it, and make it what it is. I do not believe it makes sense to charge users to create the value.”

- A VC: In Defense Of Free (via bijan)

IKEA Introduces a Dark Lager Beer

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 12:16:42 -0700

IKEA Introduces a Dark Lager Beer

New York starts turning payphones into free Wi-fi hotspots The...

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 15:41:47 -0700

New York starts turning payphones into free Wi-fi hotspots

The hotspots are initially coming to ten payphones in three of the boroughs and will be open to the public to access for free. You can see a list of sites here. Users just agree to the terms, visit the city’s tourism website and then they’re up and running. Currently, there are no ads on the service, but there could be in the future.

The effort is part of the city’s larger goal of providing more digital inclusion for residents. And it’s also aimed at helping figure out the future of the city’s payphones, which are a source of complaints from many residents because they attract crime or are just plain ugly.

The payphones have been outfitted with “military grade” antennas, that provide service up to 300 feet away. The $2,000 installation is being provided for free by Van Wagner Communications, which owns many of the city’s payphones. The plan is to eventually spread the Wi-Fi hotspots to more of the city’s 13,000 payphones with the maintenance and ongoing costs paid by the payphone companies.

Meanwhile, in Portland…

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 13:30:09 -0700

Meanwhile, in Portland…

theatlantic: On the Ugliness of Wikipedia Here is an empirical...

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 11:15:41 -0700

theatlantic:

On the Ugliness of Wikipedia

Here is an empirical truth about Wikipedia: Aesthetically, it is remarkably unattractive. The gridded layout! The disregard for mind-calming images! The vaguely Geocities-esque environment! Whether it’s ironic or fitting, it is undeniable: The Sum of All Human Knowledge, when actually summed up, is pretty ugly.

And: no offense intended. Because, on the one hand, the site’s homeliness is a feature rather than a bug. “Wikipedia has always been kind of a homely, awkward, handcrafted-looking site,” says Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. And that homeliness, she notes, “is part of its awkward charm.” Wikipedia’s just-rolled-out-of-bed-looking interface sends a clear message to users, Gardner said, in a panel at today’s Wikimania conference. And that message is, basically, that the site has better things to do than obsess about its appearance. Wikipedia “is clearly not designed — at all — by marketing people,” Gardner notes. “It is clearly not trying to sell you something.” Which means that Wikipedia’s frank, unpretentious interface serves as a subtle reassurance: The site is not trying to monetize you.

Read more. [Image: Wikipedia]

The Sun on July 11th, 2012.

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 13:27:25 -0700

The Sun on July 11th, 2012.

technologyservices: Can Cloud Computing Take On Healthcare...

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 11:13:22 -0700

technologyservices:

Can Cloud Computing Take On Healthcare Industry?

Technologies in the healthcare IT industry are converging with time and are far outpacing the legacy systems used by hospitals and healthcare providers. Recently, cloud technology has started replacing these legacy systems and offers easier and faster access to this data stored in public and private or hybrid.

How Cloud Computing will help Healthcare Industry

Implementing and utilizing technology will offer healthcare practices significant benefits, with Cloud computing offering better access to healthcare services and information that would subsequently result in improved outcomes and increased cost savings. Other advantage is that healthcare data has specific requirements such as security, confidentiality, availability to authorized users, traceability of access, reversibility of data, and long-term preservation.

A recent Healthcare IT News survey found 48 percent of respondents planning to incorporate cloud computing into their health IT endeavours; 33 percent had already taken the plunge. But 19 percent answered with a “no”.

Cloud technology in healthcare market has different models; applications, deployment models, service models, pricing models, and components. Applications in healthcare are of two main types, namely,

Clinical Information Systems (CIS)

Non Clinical Information Systems (NCIS)

CIS includes EMR, CPOE, PACS, RIS, LIS, PIS, and others while NCIS includes revenue cycle management, Automatic Patient Billing, cost accounting, payroll management, and claims management.

The healthcare industry is slowly adopting public clouds due to its highly regulated nature whereas the private and hybrid cloud models have a higher affinity.

Cloud computing is a utility based or pay-per-use type of a service and the market can be categorized by two types of pricing models offered by the service vendors, the pay-as-you-go model and the subscription-based or spot pricing model, while keeping operating costs to a minimum, covering only the essentials. Additionally patient data stored in the Cloud, health professionals and hospitals will no longer need to invest in storage systems.

Today, many pharmacology vendors including Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer have started embracing cloud computing and major cloud vendors like Amazon, Oracle and IBM have developed pharma-specific clinical research cloud offerings with a goal of lowering the cost and development of new drug.

Cloud based solutions have their own pros and cons. A solution should be selected based on the features and needs of the organization; not based on whether it is cloud based or on-premise. Most of the cloud vendors like Microsoft, Amazon, Dell, etc provide Healthcare Cloud with custom settings and user specified options, which help increase productivity.

Ultimately, Cloud computing helps physicians to provide better patient care at a lower cost without sacrificing their quality of work and productivity.

Following arethe Top Cloud Computing Providers which helps your business needs and to reduce your company costing.

Amazon Web Services

Rackspace

CenturyLink/Savvis

Salesforce.com

Verizon

Joyent

Citrix

Vmware

Microsoft

Bluelock

A new startup is embracing the openness of mobile and Internet...

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:36:29 -0700

A new startup is embracing the openness of mobile and Internet platforms and developing Ouya, a $99 gaming console for the television with software and hardware that is designed to be hacked.

The device will include a controller with a touch pad and a free software development kit.

“The current console market is closed, it’s expensive to develop and it’s expensive to buy games,” Julie Uhrman, a former executive at video game website IGN, said. “And we really wanted to turn that idea on its head by creating an open game console where it was inexpensive and affordable for gamers both on console side and game side.”

The team hopes Ouya will bring innovation to the good old video game console by attracting “indie” or independent game developers and makers of Triple-A game titles in a bid to capture the imagination of casual and core gamers alike.

Moreover, all the games will be free-to-try. That means developers can pick any plan to monetize their offerings like micro-transactions through sales of virtual goods or subscriptions, as long the gamer can try the game at first for free.

Meet Ouya, the $99 gaming console designed to be hacked

New AI Can Learn a Game By Watching You Play, Develop Its...

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 13:28:16 -0700

New AI Can Learn a Game By Watching You Play, Develop Its Own Strategies to Beat You.

As it watches, [the computer] uses standard image-processing tools to recognise changes in the separate board squares and pieces of a game, while ignoring extra details like human hands. The videos allow the system to learn the rules by logging what the board looks like when a game has been won, and what count as legal moves. Having mastered the rules, the software plays the game by examining all possible moves and choosing those it deems most likely to lead to a win.

As you would expect, its performance depends on the complexity of the game. Connect 4 has few possibilities, making it very hard to beat the trained computer.

(via Computer watches you play a game, then beats you at it - tech - 10 July 2012 - New Scientist)

New Apple patent is for a head mounted display. A new patent...

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 11:12:25 -0700

New Apple patent is for a head mounted display.

A new patent granted to Apple, titled “Peripheral treatment for head-mounted displays,” shows a way to use a pair of small LCD or OLED displays contained in a wearable headset as a ‘Head Mounted Display’ which would allow for 3D viewing by sending different images to each eye.

While many blogs are pointing to this as a possible competitor for Google Glass, I wonder how this is different to the Sony Personal Viewer - a device which features two OLED screens in a head mounted display, allowing for 3D viewing by sending different images to each eye. Sound familiar?

howstuffworks: What are iPad Screens Made of? Gorilla...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 13:29:37 -0700

howstuffworks:

What are iPad Screens Made of? Gorilla Glass?

The iPad’s screen is arguably the most important component for the device. Almost every interaction with the iPad involves using the touch-screen interface in some way. That screen has to be able to protect the delicate circuitry inside the iPad while providing a pristine viewing experience. How do you guarantee that a screen will be thin, clear and strong?

The answer lies in aluminosilicate glass.

Read on…

Image courtesy Apple Store

New Chip Harvests Energy Three Ways, Simultaneously We’ve seen...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 11:15:24 -0700

New Chip Harvests Energy Three Ways, Simultaneously

We’ve seen a number of different devices that can harvest energy from various sources, but none quite like this new chip developed by a team of MIT researchers. It’s able to harvest energy from three different sources simultaneously: light, heat and vibrations.

The key to that is a sophisticated control system that’s able to rapidly switch between the three sources at all times to prevent any of that energy from going to waste (and not draw too much power itself), with energy from the secondary sources stored in capacitors to be picked up later — as opposed to existing systems that simply switch between sources based on what’s most plentiful.

(via MIT researchers develop chip that can harvest energy from multiple sources — Engadget)

Star trails over the Australian Outback by photographer Lincoln...

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 15:42:45 -0700

Star trails over the Australian Outback by photographer Lincoln Harrison

Video: Robot avatar controlled by thought. While it’s a long way...

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:26:47 -0700

Video: Robot avatar controlled by thought.

While it’s a long way from the movie Avatar, this is one of the first demonstrations ever of a human remotely operating a robot, using thought control alone.

The person controlling the robot lay in an MRI in Israel, where changes in blood flow to areas in the motor cortex were analysed to be able to distinguish when the subject was thinking about walking or turning. Almost 3,000 kilometres away in France, the information was received via an internet connection and used to control the robot. A video camera in the robot was linked back to the controller in Israel.

"The rise of the online-only brand marks a new generation of e-commerce. For consumers, it represents..."

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 11:12:36 -0700

“The rise of the online-only brand marks a new generation of e-commerce. For consumers, it represents the rise of more-affordable, higher-quality brands that will come to replace many things previously purchased through traditional retail. Watch in the next year as more online-only brands emerge. How about online-only watches? Cereal? Makeup? The opportunities to build mega-brands online are just beginning. Entrepreneurs and investors are already piling in. Now it’s up to the consumer to decide the winners.”

- Death to Retail: The Rise of the Online-Only Brand

You know you’re an internet addict when…..

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 15:40:05 -0700

You know you’re an internet addict when…..

"The hotel, which describes itself as a “techie pioneer”, has already experimented with RFID-equipped..."

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 13:29:10 -0700

“The hotel, which describes itself as a “techie pioneer”, has already experimented with RFID-equipped bracelets allowing guests to keep their Facebook friends updated about their holiday in real time. Now it has teamed up with PayTouch, which travelers can register with upon arrival at the hotel.”

- Read the rest 2 Springwise

Upending the cloud | Andreessen Horowitz’s Peter Levine Levine...

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 11:14:51 -0700

Upending the cloud | Andreessen Horowitz’s Peter Levine

Levine was brought into Andreessen Horowitz to focus on infrastructure companies. Hear what he thinks are big opportunities in the enterprise cloud.