Maximum PC Internet RSS Feed

Verizon Puts Together Telehealth Collaboration Services

Paul Lilly — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:04:00 -0600

Verizon this week unveiled its Teleheatlh Collaboration Services, which is designed to aid health care organizations in setting up online collaboration environments and let health care professionals collaborate remotely through the Internet with patients and colleagues.

"Health care providers increasingly are tapping the power of IT, and our telehealth solutions offer an effective way to meet a wide range of challenges, including the expansion of access to care, speeding diagnoses, and driving efficiency," Rajeev Kapoor, global managing director for Verizon Connected Healthcare, said in a statement.

Verizon isn't alone in pushing collaboration tools for health care professionals. Cisco in July announced it was joining forces with UnitedHealth Group to create the Connected Care program, which will combine audio and visual technologies with medical information that will benefit both doctor and patient.

According to analyst company Datamonitor, annual spending on telehealth hardware, software, and related services will balloon to $6.1 billion by 2012, eWeek.com reports.

Woman Declared "Not Depressed," Loses Benefits over Facebook Photo

Pulkit Chandna — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:56:39 -0600

Just recently an American man accused of robbery was exonerated after a Facebook status update posted at about the same time as the robbery became his alibi. But Nathalie Blanchard, a 29-year-old Canadian woman, witnessed a different side, a much darker side, of using Facebook. Her rather jaunty Facebook alter ego has cost her dearly.

This IBM employee has been on sick leave for the last year and a half after being diagnosed with major depression. As if her long-drawn battle with depression wasn't enough, her insurance company, Manulife, withdrew her monthly sick-leave benefits this fall, using her happy Facebook pics as a pretext. Pics of Blanchard partying and holidaying were enough to convince the insurance company that she was back to normal.

The fun she was having, or trying to have, was strictly therapeutic - just what the doctor ordered, says Blanchard. She is also miffed at Manulife's meddlesome ways: the insurance company accessed her photos despite the fact that she has chosen to limit her profile to only friends. "My client was diagnosed with a major depression. And there were pictures of her on Facebook, in a party or having a good time. It could be that she was just trying to escape," Blanchard's lawyer Tom Lavin told CBC News.

The insurance company admits using social networking sites to keep a tab on clients. But it claims that it does not terminate claims "solely based on information published on websites such as Facebook."

Facebook Now the Third Most Popular Video Site

Paul Lilly — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:21:54 -0600

YouTube's reign as the No. 1 online video site doesn't appear to be in jeopardy, but among the also-rans, Facebook now ranks as the third most popular portal for viewing video on the Internet, according to Nielsen's VideoCensus report.

YouTube leads the way with 6.6 billion streams and just shy of 106 million unique visitors in October, leaving the real battle to be fought for second place. As it stands, the No. 2 spot belongs to Hulu, which served up 632.6 million streams and recorded 13.4 million unique visitors. Facebook trailed not far behind with 217.7 million streams, but had more unique visitors than Hulu with 31.6 million hits.

Not to underestimate the significance, Nielsen noted that the amount of time Web users spend hanging out at social networking sites watching videos increased 98 percent year over year. And viewing of video streams in general jumped by 26 percent, Nielseon said.

Image Credit: Nielsen

Newspaper Tracks Down Anonymous Commenter, Gets Him Fired Just for Fun

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:21:26 -0600

Many online commenters try and compensate for their lack of insight into the subject at hand by summoning their ability to enliven even the most vapid discussion with a highly stimulating cocktail of profanities. But not everyone can fully relish this amazing ability as not everyone possesses it. The practitioners of this colorful art are often persecuted by the prim archpriests of insipid internet discussions.

An anonymous commenter paid with his job for what was an earnest attempt to breathe some life into a discussion on a newspaper’s site. Last Friday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a blog post titled “What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever eaten? And did you like it?” One anonymous user replied with “a single word, a vulgar expression for a part of a woman’s anatomy.” But his terse reply was deleted within one minute of being posted (probably for being way too brief). The obdurate commenter returned to repost his single-word comment, only to have it deleted once again.

But the paper’s director of social media, Kurt Greenbaum, who had posted the concerned article, managed to track down the anonymous poster using the WordPress e-mail alert that accompanies every comment. The alert included the commenter's IP address, which was found to be from a local school.

“About six hours later, I heard from the school’s headmaster. The school’s IT director took a shine to the challenge. Long story short: Using the time-frame of the comments, our website location and the IP addresses in the WordPress e-mail, he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot,” Greenbaum wrote in a blog post on Monday. Was it right on the paper’s part to pursue an anonymous commenter? If yes, then what is the point of allowing anonymous comments? Have your say without the fear of getting fired.

Image Credit: Bio Job Blog

Major e-sellers Have Made Millions Scamming Customers

Bart Salisbury — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:06:56 -0600

Stuff like this is why we’re told to always be wary. Not just of strangers, it appears, but of friends as well. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation held a hearing on Tuesday, where it laid out the ‘questionable’ marketing practices of Vertrue, Webloyalty, and Affinion, web merchants that sign up users to “web loyalty programs,” to the tune of $9 to $12 a month, without the user being aware. How? By riding on the coattails of respected e-retailers such as Orbitz, Buy.com, Fandango, and Continental Airlines.

How’s the alleged scam work? At the end of a transaction at a legitimate web site a pop-up appears asking the user to enter an email address if they are interested in receiving cash back or a coupon. Simple enough, except buried in the fine print is enrollment in the web loyalty program, along with permission to charge the user’s credit card a monthly fee. Where’s the credit card information come from? The legitimate web site sells that information to the loyalty program. The user never knows about the transaction until a charge appears on their credit card statement. The user gets double-pwn3d: by the unscrupulous web loyalty program, and by a trusted merchant.

Overall, the Senate Committee estimates the three loyalty programs generated more than $1.4 billion from the scheme, with $792 million kicked back to the web retailers who provided the user’s credit card information. (Classmates.com, for example, raked in $70 million.)

It would be easy to lay the blame at the users feet: you really should read the fine print. (Although the vast majority of us never do.) But the Senate Committee reported that managers at Affinion, Vertrue and Webloyalty knew full well that people were completely unaware of what they were signing up for, and that their programs were specifically designed to mislead people. The ‘legitimate’ retailers who enabled this were also aware of what was going on, but turned a blind-eye because of the revenue it generated.

Webloyalty and Vertrue stated during the hearing they’ve changed their business practice, and now require additional information for enrollment. Others aren’t convinced, arguing that the only way to curb the practice is to make it illegal for retailers to sell customer’s personal information.

Image Credit: trochim/Flickr

Adobe Announces Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 with Multitouch Support

Bart Salisbury — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:16:51 -0600

It’s not just the season for giving thanks, it’s apparently the season for coughing up betas. Yesterday Microsoft released the Office 2010 beta to developers (and to regular users on November 18). Today Adobe has announced beta versions of Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0.

AIR allows developers to create Internet applications that run outside a browser on a variety of operating systems. Flash provides multimedia content within a browser, again on various operating systems. Both beta versions will offer global error handling (a benefit for developers), local microphone access, and, should you be blessed with a touch screen, support for multi-touch and gestures. Flash will also incorporate the latest hardware decoding of H.264 on Windows PCs. While AIR will add communication with native applications on the local machine; mass storage detection; an open document API; a faster JavaScript engine; and new HTML5/CSS3 capabilities.

The betas for Flash Player and AIR are available now for Windows, OS X, and Linux, as well as x86-based netbooks.

Image Credit: Adobe

Study Finds 48% of Americans Willing to Pay for Online News

Bart Salisbury — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:04:28 -0600

There’s good news and bad news for Rupert Murdoch in a study recently published by the Boston Consulting Group. People are willing to pay for online content, supporting Murdoch’s insistence it shouldn’t be given away free. But, the study reveals, they aren’t inclined to pay a whole lot for that content, possibly leaving Murdoch no better off then where he is right now.

The study included the United States, Western Europe, and Australia. Forty-eight percent of Americans, classified as regular Internet users, said they were willing to pay for online content. This, along with Great Britain’s Internet users, was the lowest the study recorded. Most other countries reported about 60 percent of users would be willing to pay.

But, on average, Americans said that online news was worth only $3 a month, again a bottom figure (which tied with Australia). Italian Internet users were the most generous, on average saying they’d pay $7 for such a service.

The lack of willingness to pay, and the relative tight-fistedness of Americans is a reflection of content availability, says John Rose, a senor partner in the Boston Consulting Group. According to Rose: “Consumer willingness and intent to pay is related to the availability of a rich amount of free content. There is more, better, richer free in the United States than anywhere else.” According to Rose, a banding together of major news providers in the United States wouldn’t help because of the availability of other free sources on the Internet users can access.

The study concludes that newspapers which charge for online content probably won’t see a big increase in revenues, but, because online content is cheaper to provide, profits should increase. Maybe that will be enough to make Murdoch happy.

Image Credit: Mattes/Wikipedia Commons

Open Book Alliance not Happy with Google's Amended Book Settlement

Bart Salisbury — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:26:44 -0600

No matter the outcome, there are those who will be unhappy with Google’s plans to digitize the universe of books and make them available online. Google, which is being sued over the venture, filed a revised agreement with the Federal Court in New York hearing the case. The revision contains what John Timmer of Ars Technica calls “significant concessions,” including limiting the scope of the project.

But the Open Book Alliance (OBA), isn’t buying into it. OBA co-chair Peter Brantley, in a statement, said “By performing surgical nip and tuck, Google, the AAP, and the AG are attempting to distract people from their continued efforts to establish a monopoly over digital content access and distribution; usurp Congress's role in setting copyright policy; lock writers into their unsought registry, stripping them of their individual contract rights; put library budgets and patron privacy at risk; and establish a dangerous precedent by abusing the class action process.”

Brantley calls the revised agreement “a sleight of hand.” It “remains a set-piece designed to serve the private commercial interests of Google and its partners.” Further, Brantley maintains it does nothing to “address the fundamental flaws illuminated by the Department of Justice and other critics that impact public interest.”

Image Credit: Google