Posts Tagged ‘Real-Time’

Health Care and High Speeds

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

It’s what you might call a “no-brainer”–and that’s not a medical term–to see how high-speed internet can help improve health care.  Information from Speed Matters.org, spelled it out for us thusly.

The potential for using high speed Internet technology to help expand access and improve the quality of health care in the United States is enormous. The use of advanced communications technology to transmit medical data and imaging in real-time, while linking patients to providers for direct consultation, can transcend geographic barriers to allow people to receive the medical care they need when and where it’s needed.

Especially in the face of rising medical costs and increasing gaps in insurance coverage, the cost-cutting efficiencies of telemedicine-–the delivery of quality health-related services and information using telecommunications technologies–are more valuable than ever. Universal high speed Internet access would help bring the prospect of affordable and quality health care for all Americans closer to reality.

Some of the benefits include:

• Real-time transmission of medical imagery–enabling the interpretation of MRI, ultrasound, X-rays, and other diagnostic procedures from afar.
• A reduction in the number of strenuous patient transfers, like from a nursing home to a doctor’s office, or for expectant mothers seeking prenatal care from a distant hospital. Remote monitoring and online consultations only possible through a high speed Internet connection can close the distance.
• A study from the University of Texas Medical Branch estimates that the U.S. health care system can save $4.28 billion from the elimination of patient transfers alone. This doesn’t even include potential savings from remote monitoring or interpretative services.
• Physicians can connect with distant specialists for real-time guidance in emergency situations—like during long ambulance rides when seconds count, or during a stroke or heart attack.

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Government Participation with Internet Speed

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Continuing with the reasons that Americans need access to high-speed internet, we’ll look at some of the benefits to government participation–with information from Speed Matters.org .

If Barack Obama’s presidential campaign taught us anything, it’s that utilizing the internet to connect with people really works. He’s carried this into his presidency, but other branches of government have yet to catch on. Broader access to high speed Internet connections could allow citizens to participate in civic life more fully, interacting with government agencies with greater ease.

Although e-government solutions wouldn’t replace the quality of services delivered in-person by skilled government employees, especially to vulnerable populations, high speed Internet enhances public employees’ abilities to supplement these services. As federal, state and local governments increasingly rely on the Internet to provide information, forms and services for various government programs, the need for universal, affordable access grows. And with civic participation only a click away, high speed Internet can lower the barrier between citizens and their elected representatives.

Benefits include:
• Government forms can be completed online
• Web sites open 24 hours a day are faster, cheaper and consume fewer resources than hard copies delivered through regular mail.
• High speed Internet allows a wide range of government services to be completed  electronically including business filings, review of Medicare prescription drug options, and real-time web public transit updates.
• The rapid download of video and data lets citizens tap countless resources on government and political issues.
• High speed Internet allows citizens to communicate with their elected officials, other candidates  or like-minded individuals to organize politically, participate in online campaigns, and make their voices heard via e-mail, online petitions, social networks and video streaming.

The possibilities are endless!

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Pacemaker Monitored with Internet Speed

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Reuters reports that New Yorker Carol Kasyjanski has become the world’s first recipient of a pacemaker with Wi-Fi that allows her doctor to monitor her health over the Internet— and in real-time.

Three weeks ago the 61-year-old became the first person *in the world* to be implanted with a pacemaker that has a wireless home monitoring system that regularly transmits critical information to her doctor with Internet speed. So when she shows up for her routine check-ups at St. Francis Hospital in Rosyln, New York, her doctor will have logged into his computer, learned most of what he needed to know about his patient, and about 90 percent of the appointment will already be done.

Kasyjanski, who has suffered from a severe heart condition monitored by a pacemaker for more than 20 years, says the device has given her renewed confidence. Previously, a pacemaker malfunction was only noticeable when she passed out. Now, she can rest assured that someone would be alerted by the slightest change and could have it fixed quickly.

Dr. Steven Greenberg, the director of St. Francis’ Arrhythmia and Pacemaker Center, said the server and the remote monitor communicate at least once a day, downloading all the relevant information and will alert the doctor and patient if anything is unusual.  “If there is anything abnormal, and we have a very intricate system set up, it will literally call the physician responsible at two in the morning if need be,” he said.

The wireless pacemaker, made by St. Jude Medical Inc., received FDA approval in July.

Kasyjanski, an account clerk, said it was frightening initially to be the first person to be implanted with the device but her fears have slowly been replaced by a sense of relief, knowing that her heart is under constant watch.

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The Twitpocalypse May Have Come

Monday, August 10th, 2009

A few months ago, we ran a story about the Twitpocalypse, the end of the Twitter world as we knew it.  It didn’t occur when expected, but this week’s series of Twitter attacks has made it feel close. 

The New York Times BITS blog reported, “Twitter, the popular microblogging service, was crippled Thursday morning by a denial-of-service attack. The extended silence in a normally noisy Twitterworld began around 9 a.m. Twitter later posted a note to its status update page saying the site had been slowed to a standstill by an attack.” They went on to explain that a denial-of-service attack involves thousands of malware-infected home PCs that are directed to flood a targeted site with junk traffic. Once the site is overwhelmed, legitimate visitors cannot access the service.

Later posts to the BITS blog explain that the Twitter attack came in two waves. It seemed the point was to silence a blogger’s criticism on the behavior of Russia in the conflict over the South Ossetia region in Georgia, which began a year ago on Friday. The technique they used was intended to discredit the blogger by making it appear as though he was the source of a large amount of junk e-mails, causing all of his messages to be filtered out.

Saturday’s BITS blog gave more information as the attacks continued to keep people from Tweeting.

Only time will tell if we’ve become so attached to our real-time messaging that a few days without service will cause us problems. While Twitter was the only service that could get news out from Iran after their election a few months ago, it seems cyber-bad-guys have found ways to silence other dissenters with internet speed.

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Imaginary Cyber-Worlds and Real Money

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

The L.A. Times tech blog  recently pointed out that virtual reality has become so real to us, that we spend real money in our simulated worlds, with internet speed. 

Blogger Alex Pham tells us that according to a report released by Frank N. Magid Associates, about one in ten Americans spends an average of $30 on virtual goods—such as outfits, accessories, weapons and other items used in online games.

Of course, of the $1 billion worldwide spending projected for virtual goods this year, about 25% is expected to come from the U.S., the report said. Another firm that works in this market, Strategy Analytics, projected that the amount could grow to $17.3 billion in 2015.

“Why waste real money on intangible items?” he asks. A researcher with the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, Vili Lehdonvirta, says that people buy intangible items to gain status, identity, membership, class and performance. Pretty much the same reasons we buy real items…once we’ve covered the ones that are necessary for our survival, that is.

If you have never encountered anything of this sort, check out the Playfish website. They’ve even come up with a way to donate some of the money spent on imaginary animals toward saving the real things by partnering with the World Wildlife Fund, which is cool. 

There are many types of games out there, a list of the most played games shows that people like to run virtual restaurants, hotels, ranches, and zoos in cyberspace. They like to visit and save virtual worlds, virtual animals, and have virtual families. We can only hope this virtual experience is somehow useful in the real world too, and maybe even in real-time.

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Twittering Away at the White House

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Last week, cyberspace was all a-Twitter about the idea that Twitter, the real-time short messaging service, was banned at the White House.  Read Write Web said that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs casually mentioned on CNN that Twitter was blocked on official White House computers and that “[s]ome cynics will say this is great news, that taxpayer money isn’t being wasted on using Twitter on White House time.” But they also argued for the  importance of social networking in this day and age of internet speed, especially to the Obama administration, whose presence in the White House can be largely attributed to their shrewd use of new media. 

But a few days later, TechCrunch explained that there isn’t actually a blanket ban on Twitter from the White House. Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton told the press that for reasons of security and record keeping, Twitter is blocked from some computers, but posts can be made via HootSuite and staff members are allowed to tweet from their own devices. Official White House tweets are handled by the new media team, while President Obama’s account is apparently handled by the Democratic National Committee.

Then TechCrunch divulged that the White House wants us to know that it likes Twitter, and that the Deputy Press Secretary has a good sense of humor and seems to have a good grasp on the medium, having said “I have an account that I follow on my personal blackberry but I don’t actually twitter myself. It’s more to keep track of what Diddy and Perez Hilton are up to all day.”

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Read Books Anywhere with Internet Speed

Friday, July 10th, 2009

You may have heard of Kindle, Amazon.com’s digital device that allows you to download and read books. It may not exactly be with internet speed, since it utilizes Sprint’s 3G network to download the files. But as phones and computers become more alike, it’s not much of a difference as far as downloading files goes.

Amazon promises that their 3G wireless connection lets you download books right from your Kindle, anytime, anywhere; with no monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots. You can get entire books delivered in less than 60 seconds, straight to the device–no computer required. It probably takes longer than that to plunk down a book on a bookstore sales counter, have it rung up and pay for it. That’s even faster than real-time! 

Kindle’s memory can hold over 1,500 books, so you can carry your entire library with you and access them on a whim. They even have a new text-to-speech feature, allowing Kindle to read out loud to you, (unless the book’s rights holder made the feature unavailable). Because it’s lighter than most paperback books at 10.2 ounces, these features make it easy to enjoy a book anywhere, even if your hand is injured somehow, your eyesight is bad, or you’re sick in bed. That’s for the 6” model. There’s a 9-1/2” model too, the Kindle DX, geared for larger periodicals and textbooks.

Yahoo’s Tech Blog tells us, “Amazon has not disclosed Kindle sales figures, and the publishing industry has said e-books account for less than 1 percent of book sales. But it is a fast-growing, competitive segment. Customers can wirelessly download books to the Kindle, with new releases often as inexpensive as $10.”

Other perks include the option to download and read a book’s first chapters for free before you decide to buy, and a choice of over 300,000 books plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines, and blogs available.

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Michael Jackson may be King of the Web too

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

As news of Michael Jackson’s death began to spread with internet speed last week, the huge numbers of people looking for information about the pop star overloaded several Web sites and services.

AIM, the instant messaging service operated by AOL, even collapsed for about 40 minutes during the hoopla, though they later said they were doing a scheduled update. The company called the day “a seminal moment in Internet history.  We’ve never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth.”

Twitter had thousands of real-time tweets about Michael Jackson every minute. “We saw more than double the normal tweets per second the moment the news broke — the biggest increase since the US presidential election (and Twitter has grown tremendously since then),” one of Twitter’s co-founders, Biz Stone, told The New York Times Bits blog.

Many were braced for something similar on Tuesday, when the memorial and tribute service was held in Los Angeles to celebrate the pop icon. But while the event drew millions of fans and spectators, both online and off, this time the Internet didn’t crack under the strain. Phew.

Traffic to news sites supported by Akamai peaked at 3.9 million visitors a minute at the start of the memorial service before sharply dropping off, suggesting that people were sticking with the live video streams rather than surfing around. By comparison, on June 25, when word began to circulate of Mr. Jackson’s hospitalization and death, Akamai said that traffic to news Web sites topped out at 4.2 million visitors a minute.

But the inauguration of President Obama in January still had more viewers, when the total live video streams topped out at more than 7 million. So now we know that on the internet, a new President still has more draw than a mourned king.

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