Funeral Webcasting is Alive and Well

http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/funeral-webcasting-is-alive-and-well

The Internet is for people-to-people communication and this application is proof. Affordable broadband is the tie that binds us.

The folks at IEEE report "If webcasting a funeral seems a little, well, ghoulish to you, you’re not alone. The decade-old service has been a hard sell to most funeral directors until recently. But the advent of cheaper broadband, the financial strain of travel, and deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have all contributed to increased use of the Web as a tool to connect loved ones during such times of need."

Only You Can Prevent a Lousy National Broadband Plan

Check out this picture of telecom lobbying from Jan through June 2009 courtesy of DSL Reports.

http://www.dslreports.com/r0/download/1472717~38109c7d9cfa7ddfd5381d448779f454/lobbyists.gif

The battle of the corporate lobbyists is already taking place in our nation’s capitol and, most assuredly, is twisting the discussion on a national broadband plan to fit individual corporate goals. If we have learned ANYTHING from the recent recession and taxpayer bailout, we should recognize that businesses do what is right for them (and isn’t it nice if it actually aligns with what is good for the public.) (In 2003, I worked on the Gigabit or Bust report that noted this very thing was a major bottleneck for a real broadband agenda in this country.)

The national broadband strategy MUST be aligned with the public interest. The U.S. cannot afford to continue to be a goofy, denial-based, lobby-controlled, broadband-famine county. We are a nation of innovators and small businesses. We absolutely must balance lobbyists and their employer's self-interests and focus on a big broadband as an innovation platform for the public. As Paul Budde says, “I think it all depends on good leadership and understanding the social and economic benefits, not just the shareholders value.”

Learning to Surf the Internet Gives Brain a Boost

http://www.healthnews.com/family-health/aging-getter-older/learning-surf-internet-gives-brain-a-boost-3783.html

HealthNews reports that a "new study shows older adults who learn to search for information online experience a surge of activity in key decision-making and reasoning centers of the brain. The results suggest Internet training and searching online could potentially enhance brain function and cognition in older adults. “We found that for older people with minimal experience, performing Internet searches for even a relatively short period of time can change brain activity patterns and enhance function,” Dr. Gary Small, a professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, said in a news release. Previous research by the UCLA team found that searching online resulted in a more than twofold increase in brain activation in older adults with prior experience, compared with those with little Internet experience."

HOW TO: Copy the Entire iTunes Catalog in 25 Seconds

An interesting development from the French is touted at http://mashable.com/2009/09/30/copy-entire-itunes/. Those crafty French "researchers from the Bell Labs facility in Villarceaux, France have used 155 lasers, each operating at a different frequency and carrying 100 gigabits of data per second. Multiply the number of lasers with the transmission rate, and you get a crazy number of 15.5 terabits per second, over the distance of 7000 kilometers. Multiply those two numbers, and you get over 100 petabits per second.kilometers (a standard measure for high speed optical transmission)." Whiz-bang fast.

Applying a little math, the author estimates it would take 25 seconds to download about 10 million songs (50 million megabytes.) Cool.

The commenters were wondering how long for a "standard" broadband connection. MarkH said: About 1.5 years on an 8Mbps broadband connection. Or over 6 years if you're unlucky enough, like me, to only have 2Meg...

Oh to be so unlucky... how about all those poor folks who are about to get 768K down broadband courtesy of the ARRA and/or state-funded broadband programs?

People want to connect

Well. I think we've all been predicting this (people want to communicate),but now there is proof.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/social-networking-and-blog-sites-capture-more-internet-time-and-advertisinga/

Americans have nearly tripled the amount of time they spend at social networking and blog sites such as Facebook and MySpace from a year ago, according to a new report from The Nielsen Company. In August 2009, 17 percent of all time spent on the Internet was at social networking sites, up from 6 percent in August 2008.

“This growth suggests a wholesale change in the way the Internet is used,” said Jon Gibs, vice president, media and agency insights, Nielsen’s online division. “While video and text content remain central to the Web experience – the desire of online consumers to connect, communicate and share is increasingly driving the medium’s growth.”

Yo. Doctor. There's an app for that.

This week Webahn, a clinical documentation solutions company, announced the launch of two new iPhone apps for physicians: Capzule for its online EMR (electronic medical records) service Capzule.com and Accent, a voice recording application for its online transcription service OvernightScribe.com.

Capzule is a free, Web-based EMR app that enables physicians to access patient information instantly while away from the clinic. Specially designed for small practices, it has the capability to send messages, add notes, prescribe medications and write orders. Accent, which sells for $0.99, allows physicians to dictate patient notes and letters on iPhone and send them to OvernightScribe.com for transcription. The app also lets users edit audio files and tag dictations with key information, and it features search capability and the ability to access dictations from desktop PCs over Wi-Fi.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Midmarket/Medical-iPhone-Apps-Finding-an-Audience-327584/?kc=EWKNLHCR09232009STR2

Cyber Security Advice

Some interesting framing on cyber security. But, it's really hard to get people and businesses to spend money on security until they have an epiphany about their vulnerability.

http://www.qinetiq-na.com/a0c143e6-fd94-4328-a37a-19c2397d2186/news-and-events-latest-news-detail.htm

The National Cyber Leap Year Summit Co-Chairs Report and Summit Participants’ Ideas Report are now available. The Summit gathered commercial and academic innovators for an unconventional exploration of five game-changing strategies in cyber security:

• Basing trust decisions on verified assertions (Digital Provenance)
• Attacks only work once if at all (Moving-target Defense)
• Knowing when we have been had (Hardware-enabled Trust)
• Move from forensics to real-time diagnosis (Nature-inspired Cyber Health)
• Crime does not pay (Cyber Economics)