Wired Disruptions – 2011

The train ride early Tuesday morning from Connecticut to Grand Central was followed by a subway ride to Bowling Green with a stop at Wall Street. It was then a short walk along Battery Park to The Museum of Jewish Heritage to attend the WIRED Business Conference: Disruptive By Design. Attending technology conferences is a good way to keep connected with the latest trends and developments that are changing the world. The Wired Business Conference–they call it Disruptive by Design–was very well organized and loaded with interesting speakers. I missed the conference last year due to a calendar conflict, but comments from the first year’s conference are here.

Chris Anderosn, editor of Wired, kicked off the conference with a string of good sound bytes: the end of physical media, embracing change, disruption is the ultimate change. He used the tablet computer as an example. He didn’t say iPad, perhaps becuase the first speaker was Bill Gates. Another tangible example of disruptive change is the iPhone.  He gave Apple credit for re-imagining  what a phone could be and cited Google for having opened up the idea to huge numbers of innovators with Android. Chris said that one of the biggest dangers of cars today is texting, and Google’s autonomous cars may be the solution. Chris’s favorite topic is the decomcritizatin of production, and this came up in detail with other speakers.

A nice feature of the conference was that each attendee received a keypad to answer instant polls throughout the day. The first poll was to predict where the Dow would finish at the end of 2011. 63% said 14,100.

I have seen Bill Gates at many conferences over the years, but this is the first time that he never mentioned the PC. He was there to talk about about energy, mainly nuclear energy. He knows an incredible amount about the subject and is an investor in dozens of energy companies. He started by saying that the status quo is unacceptable. Energy is fundamental to just about everything. Reducing the cost of energy through technology could have more positive impact than anything a political leader could do. He discussed three key factors: cost, environment, and security. The good news about nuclear is that there hasn’t been any innovation and that very modest progress can make a huge difference. The 40-year-old designs did not have the benefit of computer simulation and simulation changes the game. New designs can permit a total and safe shutdown, no matter what catastrophe might occur. There are 400 reactors in the world: 100 in U.S., 70 in France.  Japan, China, and Russia growing their nuclear capability aggressively. There are 4 or 5 new 4th generation designs — one of them by a company Gates is an investor in. “Coal-based energy kills very large numbers of people, but only a few at a time, which politicians prefer.” Solar electric and solar chemical have the most long term potential but further breakthroughs are needed. Wind has to be subsidized by a factor of 2 and solar by 5. The amount of IQ working on energy is night and day more than years ago. An exception is ethanol, which has nothing to do with emissions — it is a farm subsidy. China works day and night to solve very difficult engineering problems and they likely will use robotics in making batteries for electric cars. If the entire U.S. was powered by nuclear, the waste could all be stored in one place for hundreds of years. Hydrogen doesn’t make sense. No mention of computers or software or tablets.

It was a superb day, featuring interviews and panels moderated by Chris Anderson and other Wired writers. A few more highlights follow. All of the content is available at wired.com.

Poll: Where do you consume most of your news 6% print, 51% web 31 % mobile devices.

Martha Stewart talked about how her company designs products and sells through others. $1.6  billion through Macy’s last year. She has built 21 kitchens of her own. She had some good soundbytes too: “There is always room for improvement.” What things did not work out well for you? “Going to jail.” “I love coming up with ideas.” Martha loves her iPad and doesn’t travel with a laptop anymore. She said you have to be where the customer is. “Always satisfy the customer.” “You must invest in the future if you are going to be in the future. Change is good.” I have heard her talk before and continue to be impressed. She is very progressive.

Salman Khan is the founder of Khan Academy and he has a vision to tutor billions of people online. He started Khan Academy on YouTube with a few ten minute segments for friends and family. He has now produced 2,100 online videos in math, science and the humanities, and has two million viewers per month watching hundreds of thousands of videos. Students work at their own pace. Teachers can monitor progress. A free world-class education for anyone anywhere. The Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. “We are a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere.” All of the site’s resources are available to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy’s materials and resources are free.

Poll: 39% said we are in a bubble but only the dumb will be hurt.

Nick Mountz CEO of Kiva Systems talked about networks of robots in warehouses that are part of a network that figures out where to go to pick up one of tens of thousands of products and take it to a packer who is packing packages. Kiva is revolutionizing physical distribution.

Poll: Future of U.S. manufacturing: 41% said high-value goods designed here and made overseas.

Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk, and Chris discussed the trend to self-manufacture. Design at home, print it in 3D, or send your design to a company that makes it or makes it into a kit that you put together. TechShop has the machines that can fabricate whet you design. TechShop is a membership-based workshop that provides members with access to tools and equipment, instruction, and a community of creative and supportive people so you can build the things you have always wanted to make. They have three locations open and four more opening soon, including one in Brooklyn. The democritization of manufacturing has many implications. You can capture a 3D image with an iPhone–you take ten phontos and it can be made into a 3D design. You could take a picture of a piece of furniture in a store and then have it made — cheap. Self-manufacturing is at the prototyping stage but Chris and others think millions of people will want to do this.

The Wired conference is definitely on top of the latest trends. They were first to have an iPad magazine. Whether it is iPad or print, reading Wired allows one to know where things are headed. The added attraction of the conference, as always, is catching up with friends and colleagues from days past.

Tags: autodesk, bill bates, khan academy, kiva, martha stewart, self-manufacturing, techshop, wired

DACS.19

On April 5th, the Danbury Area Computer Society held it’s monthly meeting and it was my honor to give a talk about The Future of the Internet. (This was the nineteenth year in a row that I have done this). The meeting was open to the public and took place in the auditorium at Danbury Hospital. Rob Limbaugh wrote a review of the evening that appears below.

DACS General Meeting
April 5, 2011
Meeting Review:
John Patrick ‘Future of the Internet’

By Rob Limbaugh

JOHN PATRICK WAS BACK for his 19th year which coincides with the launch of ThinkPad.

In this time, the Internet has grown to adolescence. Expectations rise every day due to the new things that can be done. It’s still all about the power of the click, but we’re only 10% of the way there because so many sites are still ”lame”. For example, you search for a part for your old refrigerator. You finally locate the part, click to buy, but when you enter the zip code, you find it’s not available and you are redirected to a dealer that may or may not have a website or even be in business.

The internet is squeezing out the ‘old’ with new ways to connect people to things or information. It took Steve Jobs to figure out how to make money in the digital music industry. Digital book publishing has not learned from those lessons. Printed material has become a failing business model because people in that business don’t like to spend money. Hollywood chose a defensive approach to digital movie media and is now being picked away by digital media distribution companies that have embraced new delivery methods.

Retail sales last year were $4 trillion. Of that, 3.9% were e-commerce ($165 billion). 21% of that was solely Amazon. A merger of healthcare and the Internet is underway. The healthcare industry is about 30 years behind manufacturing in adopting digital methodology. The latest strides are led by the realization that healthcare is about patient data. Eventually healthcare IT will be bigger than all of IT as we know it today.

Here’s an example of how things are changing. The illegible prescriptions we are all used to are a thing of the past. A digital e-prescription is sent directly from your doctor to the pharmacy, where it will be ready for pickup when you arrive. Along the way it is compared with your other prescriptions and assessed for possible reactions or concerns. If any are found, the system alerts both your doctor and pharmacist.

The ”Patient Centered Medical Home” is an up-and-coming term based on the philosophy that medical practitioners work with you. Efforts in healthcare reform and  Health Information Exchanges are building blocks that are thrusting these changes forward. Monitoring sensor devices are becoming smaller and smaller and wireless which ushers in the ability to have a home monitoring system that can send an alert if your blood pressure or other critical statistics are out of range. Tools like the iPad are helping to bridge the communication gap between doctor and patient. There are now specialized apps that enable the doctor and patient to view anatomical illustrations  to help the doctor explain a diagnosis and treatment.

John reports that the US Government has generally been a progressive factor for the Internet. So far Congress and the FCC have resisted the temptation to regulate the Internet. A good example of government innovative is the e-file system to electronically file your income tax return. The Obama administration is the first time there has been a Chief Information Officer in the White House. For another innovation, take a look at data.gov to see how much data has been released to the public. There are even tools to search the Meta data to help find the data you need.

Today our schools and libraries are in a renaissance. Libraries are expanding to add programs, and  computers rather than just books. Libraries have become a new resource center for people out of work. Lifelong learning and homeschooling are being used via the Internet. Adults and seniors can take courses online. Unfortunately, not everything is rosy. Digital speeds in the U.S., particularly in homes, is lagging behind much of the world because we do not have enough competition. John defines Net Neutrality as providing equal access to all Internet resources no matter who is providing the connection . Exclusivity contracts between content sources and the carriers threaten Net Neutrality by restricting access to content or services based upon the Internet service provider being used. An example would be if you could access content from Disney only through a Comcast connection. This is a bad idea, and John calls it the ‘Balkanization of the Internet’. TV is changing. Instead of watching shows when they are broadcast on some particular channel, you can watch them when you want to watch them.

The connected home and appliances promise a future where the repairman shows up to replace a worn part of your refrigerator because the refrigerator sent an alert to the manufacturer reporting the problem. John showed examples of how thermostats for our furnace and air conditioning have become smarter. The more sophisticated units can automatically adjust heating and cooling based on the season and your work schedule. Soon you will be able to control your heating and cooling while you are away from home so your house will be just right when you arrive home. The cloud is becoming the always-connected solution to portable storage and access to applications. The “new” tablet form factor does not replace other computers (yet) but does provide a means to do many things that do not require the full power of a computer. It’s an ‘intelligent window’ to web content. Phones and tablets with cameras are bridging distances between people with video chat.

Data security, privacy, and integrity constantly present new challenges as threats change. Overall security is good,  but the bar always has to be raised. Privacy is a larger issue because young people “over share” on social sites which are now used by employers to determine the character of a potential employee. Young people often do not understand the differences between ‘personal’, ‘private’, and ‘public’.

In closing, John’s advice for businesses is to ‘think outside in’ and be sure to ‘think big, act bold, start simple, iterate fast’.
Everyone can keep up with John via his website and blog at www.patrickweb.com. Also take a look at his newest endeavor, the Health Discussions Forum at www.healthdiscussions.net.

Tags: dacs, Healthcare, ipad, john patrick

Breakfast with Nick

If you are interested in getting some great insight about technology and innovation, head up to the new Matrix Conference Center on Tuesday morning for a breakfast with Nick Donofrio. Nick is an IBM Fellow Emeritus and a terrific speaker. I am out of town through Tuesday or I would surely be there. The “Networking Breakfast’ has been organized by United Way’s Emerging Leaders Group and Nick’s talk is titled Leadership in the Marketplace. Details below.

April 19th l 7:30 am
The Matrix Conference Center
39 Old Ridgebury Road Danbury, CT
$25 per person
RSVP to: Stacy Schulman at (203) 792-5330 ext 247 or via email at sschulman@uwwesternct.org
Proceeds of the event support educational initiatives of United Way of Western Connecticut.

Tags: donofrio, IBM, innovation, matrix center

Back to DACS – 2011

On April 5th, the Danbury Area Computer Society will hold it’s monthly meeting and it will be my honor to give a talk (at 7:45PM) about The Future of the Internet. (This will be the nineteenth year in a row that I have done this). The meeting will be open to the public and will take place in the auditorium at Danbury Hospital. The talk will be an update on how the next generation of the Internet is unfolding and how it will affect our personal and professional lives. I will discuss recent developments that are fueling the rapid evolution of the Internet and enabling nearly two billion people to experience a Net that is fast, always on, everywhere, natural, intelligent, easy, and trusted. The potential for information technology to improve healthcare will also be discussed. There is a Program Preview by Richard DiFranco on the DACS homepage. I will also be discussing the new iPad 2.

Tags: dacs, Healthcare, ipad, john patrick

SIIA Conference – Buzz on the Panels

John Blossom took pictures and notes at the SIIA Conference last week. He did a really good job at it! If you want to get more insight to what some really smart panelists had to say, you can get it at John’s Buzz. He covered two panels.
Jim Kollegger’s panel
CEO Outlook: Winning the Platform Wars – Betting on the Next Digital Wave

John Patrick’s panel
Top Mobile Technology Trends – A Moving Target


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Tags: adobe, bloomberg, broadband, elsevier, fcc, flash, Healthcare, html5, IBM, ipad, iPhone, jeopardy, Jim Kollegger, john patrick, Mobile, opera, siia, social media, supercomputer, time magazine, WiFi

Top Mobile Technology Trends – A Moving Target

The SIIA Conference marked its 10th year of bringing together an audience of senior executives to address important strategic issues and to network. The theme was”Moving from Wired to Wireless”. My role was to moderate a panel named Top Mobile Technology Trends – A Moving Target. The distinguished panelists were Bill Godfrey, Executive Vice President, Chief Information Officer and Head of Global Electronic Product Development at Elsevier, Oke Okaro, General Manager and Global Head of Mobile, Multimedia at Bloomberg L.P., John Paris, Sr. Director, Mobile Strategy at Time, Inc., and Bob Sutor, VP, Open Systems and Linux at IBM’s Software Group. See their bios on the speaker’s page. It was an honor to lead the discussion.

I set the stage with a few comments about the big picture. The mobile Internet is taking off because of a supporting takeoff in three areas. First, the smartphone is becomine a bigger share of mobile phones. It is still mostly dumb phones out there but the mix is changing and soon smartphones will be in the majority. Seondly, the Cloud is gaining a lot of momentum as an efficient way to store information. Dropbox is an interesting model to follow as it allows replication of your data from the cloud to all your devices. The third factor I cited is the explosion in social media. The comgination of these three areas is resulting in an Internet that is where you are, not where your PC is Lastly, the mobile environment is very personal. Power to the people! More on my big picture view from the Genesys Partners dinner that was held on Monday evening.

The panelists offered the audience a lot of insight. Although they were not able to provide specifics of time and price, it was clear that there is a strong commitment to get magazines on the iPad and other mobile tablets. There are magazines there now but not in a desirable way. The obvious change coming is the subscription model instead of paying $4.99 per copy. More profound is the commitment I heard to make tablet magazines compelling by merging the social media experience with the e-zine content. Imagine reading a Time Magazine story about electric cars and simultaneously see how many other people are currently reading the story, how many have read it and liked it or did not like it, and how many of them own an electric car. In the case of a Business Week story, imagine seeing live data about the industry or company you are reading about. When it comes to Elsevier professional and research journals, we can expect big changes with them also. Tablets are ideal for reading journals with the ability to take notes and add bookmarks. You can also imagine drilling down from a Google search to a Wikipedia article to a medical journal to a particular intervention to live data from a clinical trial that may be underway. All these things can be done in a browser on a PC or Mac but the experience is not as real or personal. The mobile Internet lets you have your content with you wherever you are and with whatever device you may want to use. You may read on the train with your iPad and then read with your iPhone or Droid phone while you are in line at the deli waiting for a sandwich.

Bill, John, and Oke were all bullish about the potential for the mobile Internet to extend the reach of their content and all are actively working on their delivery mechanisms and business models. Some say information wants to be free but good content developers and journalists and subject matter experts need to get paid. Advertising may continue to foot a significiant part of the bill, but the upcoming subscription model may be preferable to readers who prefer not to be tracked or blitzed with advertising. Bob was not as optimistic about an end to the format wars as the publishers were about their business models. It looks like HTML5, the new standard for web content, including video, that has the potential to subsume all the competing formats. Bob said the odds of Microsoft, Apple, Firefox, Adobe, and Google all agreeing on a single standards based approach are slim. The good news is that the technology for developing the content is getting sophisticated enough that the publishers will be able to create compelling content and then push the button to produce multiple versions of the content so that it can be consumed on all the various mobile platforms.

All in all, it was an enlightening conversation with four very knowledgeable experts. There was a consensus throughout the conference that 2011 will be the year that the mobile Internet reaches the tipping point.

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Tags: adobe, bloomberg, broadband, elsevier, fcc, flash, Healthcare, html5, IBM, ipad, iPhone, jeopardy, john patrick, Mobile, opera, siia, social media, supercomputer, time magazine, WiFi

Genesys XVII

The 17th Annual Genesys Partners Venture Dinner — Gen XVII– Monday night at the Union League Club in New York attracted more than 100 venture capitalists, investors, journalists, entrepreneurs, and industry executives. As always, Jim Kollegger — CEO of Genesys Partners and one of the pioneers of the information industry — was an elegant master of ceremonies. He introduced the various sponsors, next day panelists for the SIIA Conference, several startup CEO’s, and a few of us who have been around the block a few times, each to make some comments.

Like a broken record, I offered the normal upbeat view of the future of the Internet but prefaced my remarks by asserting that we are only 10% of the way there. In other words, of all the things that could be done on the Internet that would save us time and make our lives better, only 10% of them are there. It may sound low but consider retail e-commerce. Although there has been continuous and steady growth of retail e-commerce it still represents just 4% of total retail (as of the end of October). Why isn’t it 25% or more? Much is written about that here at patrickWeb but the short version is that there are still a lot of lame web sites. “Click here for the location of our nearest dealer where you can visit” or “call to buy the product you just found” or “Click here to download this form and fax it to us”. And of course there are the ubiquitous clipboards at doctor offices where we take a pen and provide a lot of information information that they already have.

I described one man’s view of the evolution of the Internet including the seven characteristics below. This parsed way of looking at the Internet has served me well for quite a few years. The things going on under each area continuously change and Jim asks me once a year to do a thumbnail sketch of my latest thinking.

Fast
Broadband in the U.S. is not a pretty story compared to other parts of the world. The problem is that there are too many lobbyists and the FCC is a political organization. The new FCC head is a very smart guy with venture and business experience. He totally gets it. The only problem is that AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon have more lawyers than he does. Meanwhile France is racing at full speed to offer 100 megabit access and WiFi throughout the country. Thanks to the telco lobby, many states have banned the offering of WiFi by municipal entities. Every citizen in Greenland has Internet access. We have 31,000 post offices.

Always On

WiFi is part of the fabric of the world. The big shift is streaming of data — not just tweets, but data from *things*. Bridges, toll booths, traffic lights and sensors, buildings, cars, and health monitoring devices attached to people. Hospital physicians will soon be adjusting the drip rate on infusion pumps in the hospital from their office based on real-time data from the patient. The WiFi infusion pumps enable hospital administrators to know where the pumps are (they never have enough of them) and which ones need maintenance. WiMax continues to struggle. Some believe it will replace WiFi. My bet is on WiFi and in a two years or less we will have WiGig — gigabit wireless. Ubiquitous wireless plus an explosion of tablet computers is totally changing the model of personal computing.

Everywhere
Cloud computing has become the mainstay for me and for millions. The convenience and reliability of the clouds is compelling. Add Dropbox and you have a completely replicated set of data, wherever you are and with whatever device you may be using. The next big wave underway is enterprise cloud computing. Virtualization is making enterprise servers more scalable, reliable, and efficient than ever. AJAX is enabling applications to run in any browser on any kind of computer including mobile. Especially mobile. There are hundreds of millions of PC’s but there are billions of mobile devices. Today most of them are dumb. In a few years most of them will be smart. Opera sofware is enabling even the dumb phones to have web access.

Natural
Social networking may not be a business model in and unto itself but it has become fundamental to all aspects of our economy and society. Integration of social networking with a full range of web applications will evolve to become the primary means of collaboration. The emerging issue is that many people are a bit liberal with sharing their every movement — what they are eating, listening to, where they are headed, their current latitude and longitude, and where they slept last night. They are not thinking that some day they may run for office or interview for a job.

Intelligent
The Semantic Web is the next big turn of the crank but the crank is moving slowly. Most web pages have links but do not have context. In other words the words on the page do not necessarily mean anything — but they could. If a web page said “Join us for a concert by The Eagles at Kimmel Center in Philadelphia next Tuesday” that set of words could have a lot of context. Clicking on it could add the concert to your calendar, knowing what “next Tuesday” means. It would also know exactly where the Kimmel Center is and that The Eagles is a performing group that performs a particular genre and your music player would receive a list of suggestions of music they have recorded or links to live concerts under way at the moment. This is the tip of the iceberg. The semantic web will lead us to a point where most of the interactions of web pages will be between computers not between computers and people. The biggest growth of intelligence is occurring in the field of analytics. Exabytes of data are being stored. Analytics will enable businesses to make sense of it, model their business and continuously adapt to what is going on. Stay tuned for IBM’s supercomputer to take on humans on the Jeopardy Show.

Easy
Technology isn’t the easiest thing at times. There are many dimensions to “easy” but one good example is the Nintendo Wii. At a local senior center, members find the Wii to be their exercise coach. It is not just for kids! The iPhone and iPad have shown how easy it can be to get applications on a handheld computer. Amazon has done the same with the Kindle. Most companies still don’t get the idea that the Internet is about power to the people. If you can’t make it simple, people won’t buy it.

Trusted
This is the big one. Will we trust the Internet? Security technology is available to achieve much higher levels of security than presently deployed both at enterprise and consumer levels. The bigger issue will be privacy. (Stay tuned for the Firefox “do not track” feature). Banks have our personal information and they are using it. Healthcare insurers have more information about our health than our doctors do. Nevertheless, there is much to be optimistic about when it comes to electronic medical records. Maybe 5% of doctors and hospitals use them but this will likely rise fast and the result will be better care, better outcomes, and fewer errors. And, fewer clipboards.

Tomorrow I will be moderating a panel at the SIIA Conference about the future of mobile.

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Tags: broadband, fcc, Healthcare, ipad, iPhone, jeopardy, john patrick, Mobile, opera, social media, supercomputer, WiFi

Strawberries

There are a lot of subjects I do not know much about. One of them is genomics. I moderated a panel at a technology conference a few years ago that included three PhDs in bioinformatics and I learned enough to confirm how little I knew. I asked the three experts what book would enlighten me. They unanimously recommended Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley. After reading the book I was convinced that the amount I did not know was orders of magnitude greater than I had thought. One thing I do know is that genomics is going to have a very major impact on healthcare in the years ahead — more like months than decades.

An early indicator of what lies ahead might be what is going on with fruits and vegetables. Elizabeth Weise, Science writer at USA Today, just did a nice summary of the latest genomic breakthrough with strawberries. Her story, Woodland strawberry genome sequenced, is about the genome of the woodland strawberry, a “cousin” to today’s cultivated strawberry, that has now been sequenced by an international research consortium.

The strawberry is the second smallest plant genome to be sequenced, with just 14 chromosomes. What sequencing means in layman terms is that the researchers have been able to construct a “parts list” of the strawberry. (See the actual gene mapping in Nature Genetics if you are curious about the details). Weise reports that as a result of the sequencing, breeders may be able to create tastier and hardier varieties of the popular berry as well as for other crops in its family, including almonds, apples, peaches, cherries and raspberries. The researchers are optimistic that they will also find new “parts” that will provide resistance to strawberry wilt, a common, soil-borne pathogen that spoils cultivated strawberries.

The consequences for humans are mind boggling. Gene hunters are finding more genes and linking them to diseases and predispositions to diseases. The next phase will be developing methods of prevention and cures. We may see more breakthroughs in the next ten years than we have seen in the last 100 years. If you want to get an idea of the scope of the human genome project, I recommend reading Medical and Societal Consequences of the Human Genome Project by Francis S. Collins.

Tags: bioinformatics, francis collins, gene mapping, genome, Genomics, health care, Healthcare, john patrick, matt ridley, strawberry

The Future of the Web

The Demo conference two weeks ago was in Santa Clara, not San Diego. Sorry for the error — Demo has often been in San Diego, but not this time. My last posting summarized what the event is all about and mentioned a few companies that launched there. In addition to the excitement of seeing so many enthusiastic start-ups I gained some new insight at the conference as well. Executive Producer Matt Marshall made some brief but profound comments in his opening talk. The content was not really new but he pulled together and nicely summarized the big picture of where things are headed (See more about his talk at DemoBeat. In a nutshell Matt said the future of the web is evolving around social networking, mobile, and cloud computing.

All three of these topics are written about throughout this blog but I truly gained some new perspective on them at Demo. I have often said that social networking is not about eleven-year old kids on MySpace. It is more about grown-ups looking for jobs, hunting for people to hire, or collaborating on a new venture. The new ingredient is e-commerce integrated with social networking. People can buy what their friends are buying and can offer help to a colleague who wants to know how a particular product works or might fit into their environment. More broadly speaking, social networking is finding its way into every web application, not just a separate application of its own.

The mobile Internet is booming as we can all witness from the massive press coverage about every new phone, phone rumor and network pricing change. The new trend I observed at Demo is that startup companies showed off their new application and pointed out that in addition to the mobile app, the data from it can also be viewed from a PC or Mac. That is a 180 degree flip since a year ago. The iphone and Android phones have the power and speed and graphics to make e-commerce, business apps, video conferencing, and other sophisticated apps practical on the handheld devices. The iPad and coming tablets take things to the next level. The PC and Mac become secondary.

Every start-up at Demo either offered some form of cloud computing service or had it built in to whatever they were offering. While there are still skeptics about cloud computing it is clear to me that it has evolved to where the Internet was ten years ago. Cloud is a natural evolution of the Internet. What makes cloud computing so powerful is actually what is on our computers and devices — the browser. Browsers are getting very sophisticated and able to execute javascript incredibly fast. The result is that apps in the browser have the look and feel of what we expect from a desktop computer or better.

When you combine all three of these market factors — social networking, mobile, and cloud computing — you get a new generation of capability. It takes things up a notch in terms of power, flexibility, convenience and ease of use. I no longer say we are just 5% of the way there. I revise that to 10-15% overall but still 5% in healthcare.

Tags: ethanol, find a doctor, health care, Healthcare, mac, vmware, windows

DEMO in Santa Clara

Demo has always been my favorite conference and this past week in Santa Clara proved valuable once again. This was the twentieth year I have been attending. The Demo conference allows entrepreneurs to show off new gadgets, software, hardware and business ideas and enables the press, analysts, investors, and technology enthusiasts to assess what they see. The product introductions that take place reveal key technology trends over the coming 12 to 18 months.

Sxity-six companies were launched in two days. Only one was healthcare related but I was quite impressed with it. The site, healthinreach.com, is designed to make it easy for patients to find a doctor that meets their criteria — based on ailment, cost, location, speciality, rating, bedside manner, and a host of other things. They get data from state medical boards. How does it know about bedside manner? Crowdsourcing, of course.  HealthInReach is free for patients but doctors pay a fee; in effect a finders fee.  The site is very user friendly. They even provide scheduling of appointments. The company is focused on the west coast now but plans to go national.

There were many other start-ups of interest but I will mention just a few that I found of interest. See the complete list and details at demo.com.

MicroFueler – a portable organic waste conversion ethanol system. Looks like a gas station pump, complete with nozzle. Converts grass clippings to fuel for your car.

Footfeed – the first dedicated location-based check-in aggregation platform. Check-in to Brightkite, Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook, and Twitter simultaneously.

Parallels – runs on the Mac and lets you run Windows apps side by side with Apple apps. No dual boot required.

VoiceBase.com – brings storage, search and sharing to voice communications just like email did for text. Very handy idea for conferences, presentations, meetings, and negotiations.

See the rest at demo.com.

Tags: ethanol, find a doctor, health care, Healthcare, mac, vmware, windows