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Video comments now enabled via Seesmic

Now, if I need to demonstrate something, I can use Seesmic for producing a video, or allow a commenter to upload a video reponse to a post.

Let's see if this works.

And it does.

BlackBerry Bold

Sascha Segan of PC Magazine has a good hands-on review. Its screen certainly doesn't rival the iPhone (soon to be 3G also?), but for texting, this is *the* device.

UPDATE: RIM and Thomson Reuters are creating a venture capital firm called the BlackBerry Partners Fund. They have earmarked $150 million for mobile applications and services for mobile platforms.

I'm sure Fred will have something to say about this.

Sister in Missouri safe from tornado

Last night when I saw the news about the deaths due to the tornado the hit hardest in Seneca, Missouri, I had to call my sister Camille, who lives in Ozark 70 miles east, to check to see if see was all right.

(Seneca is at the B marker, Ozark at A)

She tells me that her house doesn't have a storm basement like most of the houses in her region because of the limestone underneath. She does have a weather radio that provides an alarm if a dangerous storm is approaching.

MSNBC is reporting that 18 were killed in Missouri and Oklahoma, and one in Georgia due to tornadoes.

I received a similar call from my sister right after 9/11.

Another Disqus test

Work!

UPDATE: It is now working. See my comment if you're a TypePad user about to convert.

This is a test of Disqus

I'll be amazed if this really works...

Passphotoprint.com: quick way to DIY passport photos

Guess which photo costs $14 and which 31 cents?

I had the polaroid picture in the lower right taken at a Kinko's in Manhattan for $14. (The retake was even worse.)

Then, I found out about Passphotoprint.com. This Web site takes your 2x2 inch digital photo and gangs it up on a 4x6 inch print. I took a 15-minute walk to the nearest RiteAid drugstore, inserted the SD card into their Kodak printing machine, and they produced an excellent 4x6 print in minutes for 31 cents.

To take the photo I set my Nikon point & shoot S10 on a pile of books. I was facing the window in my bedroom and used the self timer and fill flash. I had a piece of white foamcore laying around that I propped up behind me for the background. I kept taking photos till I felt I got an acceptable shot.

They guy at Kinko's was discussing when he should take his break with his supervisor when he did my photo. That polaroid doesn't even meet the specs for a passport photo.

NIN: The Slip

free download

Speech recognition for cellphones: one upgrades, one quits

First the one that quit.

I had signed up for Sprint's Voice Command ($5/month) for my Treo 700p over a month ago only to recently receive a letter saying that they are discontinuing this service as of July. Basically, you dialed "*" and then a prompt would come on. You then spoke the contact's name, but this wasn't using the contact manager on your phone (or at least on the Treo, I don't how other phones work). You had to go online to the Sprint Web site and enter these contacts into a contact database. I recall using their import function to pull the names off my phone, but this didn't work at all. Maybe that's why this service is being stopped.

The Sprint Web site is working a lot better than it did not too long ago. Whenever you change your plan, they send you an SMS and an e-mail. If you have a question about your plan, you can chat with a rep online, and then the transcript of this conversation is sent to you via e-mail.

And the one that I upgraded.

I was also trying out the Voice Control based on Nuance technology ($6/month), but initially I didn't think that I'd keep it.

The Nuance Voice Control Web page is very helpful for setting up your phone and learning how to operate the software. It even has screens customized to represent your phone. (The screenshot here is showing an old version of the software.)

On the Treo, after you install the software, the side button is reprogrammed so that when you hold it down, it launches the software and beeps to let you know it's ready. While still holding down the button, you speak the command according to the list they provided on the Nuance Web site. It sends the info to their services which then sends the text and commands back to the phone to do the task. The time it takes to do this is the big issue.

I decided to finally review this product after getting the Sprint letter to see if I was going to discontinue both services. Voice Control prompted me to download the new version 1.5, which also made me download the new Palm installer before that. The upgrade was free and went on without a hitch, so I began my testing.

The fastest function is a Google search, and it works remarkably well. I was able just to say "Search New York Cancer Consortium" while still on the dial pad screen, and in less than 10 seconds it brought up the Treo browser and some hits on Google. This particular search would have taken some effort with thumbtyping, so for searches like this one, it's a real convenience. Or, you can say "Find bookstore 10019," and it will give you a Google map of bookstores in Manhattan. Another real convenience.

You can also create a small e-mail message, or add an appointment to your calendar, but this is only a convenience if you're on the go and can set the phone down or put it back in your pocket while it does its thing. It might take 20 seconds or more, or even sometimes not at all. I would like to have the ability just to make a quick note into the memo pad, but it won't allow this.

As far as calling people in your phone's contact manager, it averages around 5-10 seconds, so if you're willing to accept this wait, it works well.

I have to say that overall, I wish Voice Control would work faster, but even then I think it's worth keeping

This week: Python, Cobbler, Rocks and RNA

Where I'm going this week:

Tomorrow: New York Linux Users Group (NYLUG) Python Workshop

Wednesday: NYLUG General mtg--Subhendu Ghosh on the Cobbler Provisioning System, and Robert Rusinko on Using Rocks to build Linux Clusters.

Thursday & Friday: From RNA to Humans--two full days of speakers looking at evolution from the point of view of molecular biology at Rockefeller University. This I'll cover on my other blog, Lexicillin QD.

EHRs, PHRs, PCHRs discussed in the April 17 NEJM

It was one of those late night reading sessions that kept me going till the sun came up. I had taken a nap earlier in the evening, so I was fully awake all through the night. Anyway, I had printed out these articles concerning the electronic health record, mostly about PHRs, published in the April 17 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Here's a brief summary of each, but each is worth talking about to a greater extent in future blog posts.

In the Perspective section of the NEJM, there are two articles, the first "Personally Controlled Online Health Data--The Next Big Thing in Medical Care?" looks at the use of EHRs as they will be implemented by private companies such as Google and Microsoft, and those companies allied with the non-profit consortium called Dossia.

Dossia (www.dossia.org), founded by AT&T, Intel, Wal-Mart, and five other large U.S. employers, plans to offer a voluntary means of storing personally controlled health data to about 2 million employees and 5 million dependents and retirees, as well as making other services available. The platform uses an open-source technology, Indivo, developed at Children's Hospital Boston. Dossia's long-term goal is a portable and secure lifelong record that will be available regardless of a person's employer, insurance plan, or physician; employees who leave a participating organization will still be able to use the system, possibly for a fee. Pilot testing is ongoing.

Mention is made of how these companies' efforts to store online data outside of the health care system are not subject to HIPAA regs. "Dossia, Google Health, and Microsoft HealthVault are not covered entities, the data they store may not be as private as consumers assume, and a person's 'control' could turn out to be limited."

The second Perspective piece, "Off the Record--Avoiding the Pitfalls of Going Electronic" voices some concerns I've been thinking about, that is, there are certain aspects of the electronic that be its very nature tends to lessens the value of clinical information it contains.

The ability to cut and paste previous entries or the use of check boxes or dumping lab data into the record, all produce volume but with little analysis leading to a "Where's Waldo" effect of trying to find a useful appraisal of the patient's condition.

This is what happens when non-clinicians think that any medical record is similar and is as easily created and maintained as banking records.

"Tectonic Shifts in the Health Information Economy" is the first of two articles in the Sounding Board section. It looks at the use of personally controlled health records (PCHRs) for clinical research.

The authors see the while the use of PCHRs "is driven largely by a need to provide assistance with clinical care processes, it will also profoundly affect the biomedical research enterprise."

They see five hurtles that need to be overcome for their in research to be fully implemented:

1. standard data formats
2. hospitals and doctors' practices need to make data available electronically to patients
3. CLIA labs must be allowed to release results to patients
4. structured data must available for analysis and computation, ie, the paper-based records be converted
5. since there is not universal patient identifier in place, new approaches to establishing ID and trust are needed

"Electronic Health Records, Medical Research, and the Tower of Babel" makes the case for the adoption of the standards needed such as a data language in the form of HL7, and clinical research data as envisioned by CDISC.

They mentioned the FDA's Critical Path Initiative for establishing a standard for the collection of research data. Also the Clinical Data Acquisition Standards Harmonization is working towards this goal.