Have A Happy Friday & Safe Spring Break

Stay dry like the Retriever in this video. See you Monday 23 March 09.  Hank

Wal-Mart, the 100 pound gorilla is getting into digital health records

While this may be hard to believe, Tuesday 3/10/09 the cat got out of the bag that Wal-Mart is going to front a turnkey digital heath record system. That’s right, Wal-Mart. They are teaming with Sam’s Club + Dell for hardware and its support, and eClinicalWorks for software. You can read the NYTimes article here:
OK, it appears that startups are being taken out of the game, but are they? eClinicalWorks , a 1999 startup, is an interesting in itself, hitting the INC 500 in 2007 and 2008 (ranked # 339), not bad. See chart at left from their web site. They are a private company employing some 700 people mainly in their Westborough, Mass headquarters. If this takes off, you can bet your bottom dollar that they will require local talent to support their roll-out, and the best way to accomplish this in the short term is to hire small firms to provide the support. Too bad they are a private company.

I asked my Lafayette-based MD yesterday what he thought about going digital. He is NOT enthusiastic about it, stating his office system was as likely or not to be down because of glitches, he knows nothing about computers nor has any desire to learn, and was happy with his manual files. He is not an old fart. Boy is there going to be resistance to this. Hank

Internet-based TV Programming

The purpose of this blog is to solicit from readers what web sites they have found quality TV/Movies on and they would recommend to others. Hank
Here’s a start:

• channelchooser.com
• hulu.com
• joost.com
• veoh.com
• vimeo.com
• worldtvpc.com
• wwitv.com

More On Hank’s HTPC-based System (Last One I Promise!)

Yesterday I finished putting all the components of our new HTPC-based Home Theater System in place and herein will share where it now resides. But first, to a question from yesterday’s blog about the Asus-based HTPC. It is in a unique case with its own internal fans – two, that automatically sense case interior temps and adjust their speed accordingly. There is plently of space on top and/or around the enclosure, with vent spaces in the rear of the Hooker for cables, so I don’t think heat will be a problem. The wireless N Linksys device is up by the lamp on the right end of the Hooker Cabinet. It goes behind the lamp and is not very visible. The ADB on the top shelf to the right is the IPTV interface through which we receive our TV from www.mintel.net, and also contains a PVR. It is feeding the Visio via a HDMI port. Below are pictures that Vince asked for, along with comments where “necessary.” Hank

Overall system with TV raised up from innards of Hooker Cabinet. HTPC and ADB are to right, and Linksys to left of lamp for clarity.

Shot of Visio with Windows 7 booted to default. It is full screen, 1920 X 1080 via a HDMI connection.

Shot of default Hulu bootup running via HTPC.

Short 32 seconds demo of Visio coming up out of Hooker Cabinet where stored “out of sight;” makes my wife happy

Hank’s HTPC + System Is Up & Running

I have the HTPC running that I have mentioned in this blog and in my ENTR200 classes this semester. The purpose of this blog is to share “how it’s going” so far. But first, as background, keep in mind that I am convinced that in the near future digital entertainment will quickly move from the Comcasts and DirectTvs to the internet. As the internet pipe is built out, and there is lots of $$$$ of this budgeted by the current administration for this, more early adaptors will come along. Here’s a quick status report:

• The HDMI works great, @ 1920 X 1080 and audio. However, it didn’t out of the box. There is a check box for Adobe Flash to use hardware acceleration. With this checked, 1920 X 1080 didn’t work, defaulting to a screen with a diagonal upper left one color, bottom right another. Stumbled on this fix.
• To get out of full screen, in say Hulu, you have to hit the Escape key. The Logitech diNovo Mini doesn’t have a single use ESC key, and it’s difficult to access the combination in a darken room. Guess I’ll get to know it by touch as times goes on. Other than this, the Mini operates as advertised.
• Running Windows 7-64 which is working well without any problems – to date at least. For whatever reason, this system is FAST! The one terabyte hard drive is divided into a 250 and 750 gig sections. May put Ubuntu and Boxee on another partition.
• Running an external Linksys WUSB300N wireless via a USB port. Windows 7 did not have the drivers for this device, and had a little difficulty finding them – Linksys links were busted.
• System runs perfectly without any dropped signal, pixelation, or other difficulties, while our IPTV main TV in last night storms was breaking up
• My wife Linda & I watched two movies and a show on Hulu last night, full 42″ screen with nary a problem. The commercials are short, and in some aspects superior to the droning on regular TV. Aside from Hulu.com, here are some channels I’m checking out: Veoh.com, joost.com, channelchooser.com, worldtvpc.com, vimeo.com, and wwitv.com.
• One last glitz, the DVD/CD tray hits the front cover of the housing and won’t open. May have to replace it with a different laid out CD drive.

Today’s challenge is to break the system down to components, remove the existing 42″ plasma from the Hooker cabinet, and properly install everything. Hank

Eric Schmidt, CEO Google, Ph.D. Electrical Engineering, Billionaire, talks on Charlie Rose Show

Eric lets it hang out about a range of subjects. Well worth your time (56 minutes) to watch. Hank

ENTR200 Group 8 Stroh Brann’s class Interview AJ’s Burgers

Stroh is ahead of my classes with their video submissions. Below is a sample of the interview one of his ENTR200 groups made with AJ’s Burgers. Thanks to Stroh and cudos to Group 8. This is streaming from Viddler. Note use of tags in timeline. Hank

Have A Happy Friday: And Stay Lucky!

Thanks to BIL Jerry for forwarding this. Hank

Yet Another Video Business Model: ZillionTV

Yesterday (3/4/09) ZillionTV made its face known to the masses. Behind the scenes is an extremely strong team that just might have the horsepower to make this business model work. So just what does ZillionTV purport to be/become? ZillionTV will enable customers with an internet pipe (reported to require 2.7 MBsec or better) to cut the cord from cable and satellite providers via its Z-bar hardware (pic @ left). ZillionTV users can pay a small fee to watch a movie or program without commercials, “buy to own” programming, or view free by agreeing to watch targeted advertising that meets their personal interests. The last option is indeed a new business model. CNET has a great article on the subject here where the pic @ left is from.

I foresee problems with their model: lots of bandwidth is required, their programming is in direct competition with that provided by bandwidth providers, and why use this model when off air is still free? We’ll see how this pans out. What say you? Hank

BTW, all of the components for my HTPC are in hand; see below. The Logitech wireless diNovo mini arrived yesterday.

SIFTABLES ARE COOL!

What are siftables you ask? Created by David Merrill and Jeevan Kalanithi at the MIT Media Lab, they are simply the coolest cookie-sized computer you have ever seen. According the their web site here, Siftables are cookie-sized computers with motion sensing, neighbor detection, graphical display, and wireless communication. They act in concert to form a single interface: users physically manipulate them – piling, grouping, sorting – to interact with digital information and media. Siftables provides a new platform on which to implement tangible, visual and mobile applications.

I’m certain you are going to see much more of Siftables and what they portend for education for instance. Concepts like Siftables is where “$our money$” should be invested in the future. Thanks to former ENTR200 student Josh Ringler for pointing Siftables out. A great video (7:29) explaning and demonstrating the concept from TED is below. Hank