Blog

The island of Whidbey near Seattle, Washington, has been active lately, but not in the healthy, get-out-and-move sense. Residents living on the island, which is the fourth largest in the contiguous United States, were shaken recently when a massive landslide destroyed…

Often is the time when the mainstream media has been little more than a shill or an echo chamber for President Barack Obama, but when an organization flat-out lies about a well-documented truth, what little credibility remained within that organization should evaporate…

Men who do not get enough folic acid in their diets may be more susceptible to depression, studies have shown. Folic acid is the dietary form of vitamin B9 and is found primarily in green leafy vegetables, citrus fruit, beans and other legumes, liver, and yeast (including…

The unsettling news about antibiotic-resistant super-bacteria is gaining attention, as reports of outbreaks continue to surface in hospitals and other health care facilities across the nation. Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) appears to prey on the those…

A Superfund site is an area designated by the U.S. EPA for clean up due to dumping or discharge of toxic waste that could be extremely injurious to human health. There is no better analogy for the toxic dumping ground in the body known as belly fat. While unsightly and…

To kick off the big Play Store redesign, Google has launched a little contest to raise awareness about your favorite things in the Play Store. Simply tweet one of your favorite items, it’s link in the Play Store, and the hashtag #favoritethings. You’ll have to be following the Play Store’s Twitter account, obviously, and there’s a separate page where you’ll need to submit your proof to enter the contest, but it’s a pretty simple way to grab some cool prizes.

What prizes are there, exactly? Ten Nexus 10s, seven Nexus 7s, and four Nexus 4s, as well as a hundred $10 Play Store gift cards. Now, before you start tweeting off everything you love about the Play Store (and inevitably losing a few Twitter followers in the process) each person is only allowed one entry, so make sure to pick that one thing that you really consider your favorite. Just don’t take too long to decide, as the contest ends on the 24th. Hit the break below to check out the full rules for the contest.

source: Google

Come comment on this article: Tweet about your favorite things in the Play Store for a chance to win some prizes from Google

If you’ve decided that you aren’t a fan of Google’s color scheming in the latest Play Store redesign, we might have the answer for you. A “blacked out” themed version of the Play Store has surfaced on RootzWiki, and it definitely has a stylish appeal to it, especially if you aren’t a fan of all the white that Google uses.

Installation is simple, but you’ll need to be rooted to be able to flash the file in a custom recovery. For those unfamiliar with the process, you’ll download the packaged zip file on your phone, then reboot to recovery, flash the zip, and reboot. If you’re a little more tech savvy, you can manually push the modded .apk to your device, but recovery flashing does the trick.

In addition to the Play Store, tons of other Google Apps have gotten the sleek, dark redesign, so if the idea sounds interesting to you, hit the link below to check out the other apps.

source: RootzWiki

Come comment on this article: Download black themed Play Store and other Google apps

It’s not only financial analysts who are bearish on the prospects of new gaming consoles from Microsoft (MSFT) and Sony (SNE) — gaming industry pioneers aren’t too optimistic either. In an interview with Gamespot, Bioware cofounder Dr. Greg Zeschuk said that neither the next Xbox nor the PlayStation 4 are likely to fix the “sick market for old-school gaming” that the industry has found itself trapped in recently. Zeschuk, who cofounded the company responsible for the popular Mass Effect and Dragon Age series, went onto say “that unless Microsoft or Sony pull something magically out of a hat, it’s pretty much the same old, same old repackaged,” and that the new consoles will have a minimal impact on the retail market for high-end games.

If Apple (AAPL) does release its next-generation MacBooks this spring, it seems they’ll come with super-fast Wi-Fi capabilities. 9to5Mac reports that the latest version of OS X that Apple seeded to developers this week contains code supporting the 802.11ac standard, also known as “5G Wi-Fi,” that is capable of delivering theoretical peak speeds of 1.3Gbps and is a major step forward in the evolution of Wi-Fi. The added code confirms a report from earlier this year about Apple and Broadcom (BRCM) teaming up to bring gigabit-speed 802.11ac chips to the 2013 Mac lineup. Asus (2357) became the first company to produce a notebook with 802.11ac connectivity last year with its G75VW gaming laptop.

Following reports that app recommendation service AppGratis had its iOS application pulled from the App Store, Apple (AAPL) is reportedly getting ready to crack down on numerous apps that have quietly been violating Apple’s terms and conditions. According to multiple unnamed sources speaking with AllThingsD, Apple pulled AppGratis from the Store for violating two clauses in its App Store Review Guidelines, one that forbids apps from promoting other companies’ software and a second that bars developers from sending marketing messages using push notifications. The blog’s sources say Apple is getting ready to crack down on other apps that violate these two clauses — though it would be nice if Apple were to fix its own “Genius” app recommendation system, which is still absolutely awful despite a recent overhaul, before ousting similar services that actually work.

When it comes to identifying potentially adverse reactions to prescription drugs, you might think doctors would be on the front lines. After all, they see a lot of patients for a lot of conditions and prescribe a lot of drugs, so who better to notice when certain prescriptions keep leading to the same side effects? And you’d be right — and wrong.

As individuals, doctors probably don’t see enough of any given adverse reaction to notice patterns emerging. But as a collection, their notes on patients’ medical records can provide valuable insights, as a group of Stanford researchers recently discovered. Using “18 years of patient data from 1.8 million patients [consisting of] 19 million encounters, 35 million coded ICD-9 diagnoses, and >11 million unstructured clinical notes,” the team was able to accurately identify interactions by analyzing the free-form text that doctors had entered about patients’ symptoms, conditions and prescription regimens.

A key aspect to being able to predict adverse interactions is understanding the relationships among the different sets of terminologies used in different medical fields. It’s a lot easier to spot patterns across hospitals or even an individual patients’ records when you know that a radiologist writing X is the same, or related to, an oncologist writing Y. We covered an earlier collaboration between the study’s leader, Nigam Shah, and medical-data startup Apixio around this very topic in 2011.

Shah and his team hope their work can complement the current process for tracking drug reactions, the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System. Whereas that system requires doctors and patients to manually alert the FDA of potential adverse side effects, their method could highlight potential problems that no one noticed or took the time to report. I’d consider this similar to some early research by social medical sites such as PatientsLikeMe, whose users are producing lots of data about their conditions, drugs, dosages and side effects that could produce correlations ripe for controlled experiments.

A press release announcing the study’s publication highlights some of its future promise and current limitations:

“[T]he research team is working on refinements that will cull even more useful information from clinical notes, such as reports of reactions caused by drug combinations, the use of medications typically prescribed for one condition but found effective for treatment of a different health problem, or finding medical profiles of patients that fit a certain scenario. …

One downside is that most electronic health record systems are set up for patient care, not patient research, Goodman noted. In this study, the researchers mined a data system created for this kind of research, which isn’t widely available. The researchers used the Stanford Translational Research Integrated Database Environment, known as STRIDE.”

This is just one of many ways in which researchers are experimenting with big data concepts to help medical professionals make sense of more data than they could possibly analyze on their own. Other examples we’ve covered recently include an artificial intelligence model for prescribing safe, cost-effective treatments, the application of Google PageRank-like algorithms to map the spread of cancer cells throughout the body, and the use of graph data structures to organize highly complex sequencing data.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Maksym Dykha.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• A near-term outlook for big data
• Why the next front in big data might be psychological
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution

 

Microsoft sure is doing its best to stay quiet regarding its launch plans for its Office for Android, but it finally appears that we have an idea of when to expect the productivity suite and tools to hit our Android devices. The gang at ZDNET obtained a leaked roadmap for the mobile port of Microsoft’s Office product, also affectionately known as “Gemini”. The major thing to note right off the bat is that “Gemini” is not only being stalled for a launch later this year, but it’s looking like it will be ready around the fall of next year. As Microsoft’s Win32, Surface RT and Mac versions takes precedent, it will likely have the Android’s app version being developed on the back-end and won’t be ready for the masses until October 2014.

The long wait is definitely a bummer for sure. Here’s hoping that Android port will be worth the wait.

source: ZDNET

Come comment on this article: Leaked roadmap indicates Microsoft Office won’t hit Android devices until Fall 2014

In some alternate universe, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer slaps former Windows & Windows Live president Steven Sinofsky on the back for a job well done. The company’s newest operating system is such a huge success that sagging PC shipments soared to record numbers. Our reality is something shockingly different. First-quarter declines are the worst since IDC started tabulating numbers in 1994 and surpass the worst estimates. You know things are really bad when even perennial gainer Apple sees a huge year-of-year fall off.

“At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market”, Bob O’Donnell, IDC vice president, says. Holy Moley, Windows 8 slowed the market? You want to know why Ballmer booted Sinfosky out the door? O’Donnell offers chilling indictment.

“While some consumers appreciate the new form factors and touch capabilities of Windows 8, the radical changes to the UI, removal of the familiar Start button, and the costs associated with touch have made PCs a less attractive alternative to dedicated tablets and other competitive devices”, he says. “Microsoft will have to make some very tough decisions moving forward if it wants to help reinvigorate the PC market”.

Strangely, I really like Windows 8 — well, running on Surface Pro. The broader market of buyers disagree. Well, now we have another reason Microsoft rushes Windows 8.1 development for pre-holiday 2013 release.

It’s the Apocalypse

In mid-March IDC warned that PC shipments might decline greater than its 7.7 percent forecast. The year-over-year drop is nearly double that — 13.9 percent. Let me put that figure in context that makes more sense of O’Donnell blaming Windows 8. Shipments sagged in Q1 2012, too, something that should have magnified gains a year later. Decline’s severity tells a story that O’Donnell reads grimly, for Windows 8.

“Although the reduction in shipments was not a surprise, the magnitude of the contraction is both surprising and worrisome”, David Daoud, IDC Research Director, says. You think?

Simply stated, and there’s no easy way about it, Windows 8 is failure. The measure of how much likely comes when Microsoft announces first-quarter results later this month. Looks like early license sales success is more a factor of low-cost upgrades, which the company no longer offers. Sustainability of license sales, at full price and without much lift from PCs, is something Microsoft must answer with earnings. Share price is down more than 2 percent in after-hours trading tonight, BTW.

Accelerating a trend already evident from past quarters, smartphones and tablets pull sales from PCs. Even Apple. IDC asserts that iPad contributed to Mac shipment declines during first quarter.

Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide PC Shipments, First Quarter 2013 (Preliminary) (Units Shipments are in thousands) 

Vendor	1Q13 Shipments	1Q13 Market Share	1Q12 Shipments	1Q12 Market Share	1Q13/1Q12 Growth
1. HP	11,997	15.7%	15,726	17.7%	-23.7%
2. Lenovo	11,700	15.3%	11,705	13.2%	0.0%
3. Dell	9,010	11.8%	10,110	11.4%	-10.9%
4. Acer Group	6,150	8.1%	8,952	10.1%	-31.3%
5. ASUS	4,363	5.7%	5,401	6.1%	-19.2%
Others	33,075	43.4%	36,739	41.5%	-10.0%
Total	76,294	100.0%	88,635	100.0%	-13.9%

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker, April 10, 2013

“The industry is going through a critical crossroads, and strategic choices will have to be made as to how to compete with the proliferation of alternative devices and remain relevant to the consumer”, Daoud says. “Vendors will have to revisit their organizational structures and go to market strategies, as well as their supply chain, distribution, and product portfolios in the face of shrinking demand and looming consolidation”.

In other words, traditional PC makers must tighten up supply chains, which reverberations will be felt globally by component manufacturers and suppliers, among other parts of the ecosystem. Then there is the tablet quandary, about which some companies must reallocate resources to different devices.

Globally PC shipments fell among four of the five top PC manufacturers — flat for second-ranked Lenovo. Acer posted the steepest decline — 31.3 percent.

Top 5 Vendors, United States PC Shipments, First Quarter 2013 (Preliminary) (Units Shipments are in thousands) 

Vendor	1Q13 Shipments	1Q13 Market Share	1Q12 Shipments	1Q12 Market Share	1Q13/1Q12 Growth
1. HP	3,570	25.1%	4,632	28.5%	-22.9%
2. Dell	3,074	21.7%	3,590	22.1%	-14.4%
3. Apple	1,418	10.0%	1,533	9.4%	-7.5%
4. Toshiba	1,279	9.0%	1,349	8.3%	-5.2%
5. Lenovo	1,274	9.0%	1,127	6.9%	13.0%
Others	3,581	25.2%	4,022	24.7%	-11.0%
Total	14,197	100.0%	16,255	100.0%	-12.7%

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker, April 10, 2013

What Will Apple Do?

Regionally, the United States is a PC market in crisis. With the exception of a slight 2 percent gain in third quarter 2011, shipments fell for 10 consecutive quarters. In Q1, 12.7 percent year over year but stunning 18.3 percent sequentially. Shipments fell for the top-four vendors, with Lenovo, which gained 13 percent, the exception.

Apple’s 7.5 percent annual decline is anomaly but clearly an early trend. Shipments fell slightly, by 0.2 percent, during fourth quarter. More disturbing Q4 to Q1, shipments slumped by more than 30 percent. Mac’s woes reflect on trends larger than Windows 8 and, from my analysis, makes demand for smartphones and tablets more factor than any changes Microsoft made to its flagship operating system.

I’m suddenly thinking whole lots about Apple and PCs, because of something expressed by Derrick Wlodarz earlier today when writing about Apple and the enterprise:

what if Apple just stops making traditional computers altogether? Is this really that crazy of a prediction to make? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that when you have a growing majority of your revenue (iOS) overtaking a product line that represents the ‘old vision’ of computing according to Apple (laptops, desktops), some kind of drastic change needs to be made. And seeing how blunt Apple generally is with its market statements, I wouldn’t at all be shocked to see OS X 10.x be the last of its breed. In true Xserve fashion, the legacy of the Mac cats may be slowly nearing its digital end.

Derrick speculates for five years out. But, yeah, I can really see that from the company with a tendency to dump tech deemed unnecessary. Why not a whole category, particularly when tablets — perhaps with modular pieces — become good enough to replace PCs?

The numbers tell a story. During fourth quarter 2007, Macs accounted for 37 percent of Apple revenue. Five years later: 14 percent, while iOS devices represented close to three-quarters of revenue. If iPad already pulls away sales from Mac laptops, speculation Apple might some day largely exit the market is quite reasonable. Within five years — yeah, I’ll buy that.

Something else Derrick observes:

One must also be slightly suspicious as to why Apple has not made a peep about competing with Microsoft in touch on the traditional laptop and desktop side. After all, Windows 8 has been a public reality for Apple since 2011 when the fuller picture about Microsoft’s intentions for 8 were solidifying. We’re now full force moving into Spring 2013 and there is zero news about anything remotely touch related making its way to Macbooks or Mac desktops. If Apple plans something spectacular to slow the Windows 8 touch train, it certainly hasn’t brushed through any of the traditional leak channels as with most prior releases.

If O’Donnell’s assessment about lagging interest in Windows 8 touch PCs is right, perhaps Apple watches and waits. After all, consumers seem content enough with touchscreen tablets.

Whatever anyone does next, Daoud’s warning about a “critical crossroads” aptly describes two computing eras intersecting.

Photo Credit: Cameron Whitman/Shutterstock

A federal judge threw out an anti-trust case brought by airlines passengers who accuse internet provider GoGo of illegally raising the price of in-flight service to rates as high as $17.95.

In a decision issued Wednesday in San Francisco, US District Judge Edward Chen ruled that GoGo, despite supplying 85% of all internet-equipped airplanes in the US, does not have a monopoly. The company’s customers include Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta, US Airways, and Virgin America.

In throwing out the case, Chen accepted GoGo’s argument that it doesn’t have dominant market share because it covers only 16% of all US airplanes, and it’s possible for the remaining planes, which do not offer internet, to sign up with a competing service provider. The internet contracts are sold on airplane-by-airplane basis, and not across entire airlines.

The passengers sued GoGo in October, claiming that competitor Row44 charges only $5 for an entire flight of internet service but that airlines can’t drop GoGo because of ten-year contracts that lock them in. They also argue that GoGo’s internet technology is inferior because it relies on ground-to-air tower transmission rather than the satellite service offered by Row44 and Jet Blue’s ViaSat service.

The decision also agreed to GoGo’s request to acknowledge that a third provider, Panasonic, is entering the market with satellite service on United.

Chen dismissed the case without prejudice, meaning the passengers can try to bring up new facts to show that GoGo does have a monopoly. You can read the decision yourself below.

To understand the science of in-flight internet, see ”Why your in-flight WiFi is slow and expensive” by my colleague Stacey Higginbotham.

GoGo Dismissal

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• GigaOM Research highs and lows from CES 2013
• How HR can make the case for workforce analytics
• The 2013 task management tools market

Just because Apple’s (AAPL) plan to ditch Google Maps has been a bust so far doesn’t mean that the company has given up on decreasing its devices’ dependence on Google’s (GOOG) mobile services. The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple and Yahoo (YHOO) “have been discussing how more of Yahoo’s services can play a prominent role on Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices,” including increased integration into Siri, Apple’s virtual personal assistant. The Journal’s sources also say that the companies are discussing “possible deals to get more content from Yahoo News and its other Web properties loaded onto Apple devices,” although no deal is imminent at this time. The Journal notes that some Apple executives, including senior vice president of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue, have been reluctant to drop Google entirely because its search results remain superior to those of its competitors.

Yesterday, we hosted the first-ever White House Forum to Combat Human Trafficking. The event brought together leaders from government, the private sector, advocates and survivors, faith leaders, law enforcement, and academia to talk about what we can do, together, to end human trafficking.

We took time to honor the stories and lives of brave survivors. We noted the great progress we’ve made against this grave injustice at the national and grassroots levels.  We honored the recipients of the first Presidential award for those who have led the way in fighting human trafficking. And we put our heads together to come up with more solutions that we can get to work on right away. Because even one life devastated by trafficking is one too many.  That’s why President Obama’s administration is working with partners around the country and the world to eradicate human trafficking.

Last year, President Obama delivered a speech on the fight to end human trafficking at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) annual meeting in New York. There, the President said: “It ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric.” 

The President called on everyone to step up the fight against trafficking. And we have. Since last year, we have renewed sanctions on some of the worst perpetrators of human trafficking. We have released for public comment the Victims Services Strategic Action Plan. We have partnered with organizations and groups that help women and children escape their abusers. And we have expanded our interagency task force to include enforcement partners such as the FBI and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, along with many other Federal agencies. 

read more

Deutsche Telekom has been working to merge its U.S. carrier, T-Mobile, with MetroPCS, and last month received complete regulatory approval. The German company thought the original deal was good, but MetroPCS shareholders disagreed. In an effort to save the merger and finalize it, they approved a better deal today. This new deal will lower the amount of debt transferred to the new company and lower the interest rate on that debt. Lowering the amount of debt transferred means a more valuable equity stake. MetroPCS shareholders are currently being offered about $4 per share in cash and a 26% stake in the combined company. Votes are already being held in advance of a scheduled shareholder meeting Friday and according to an insider, it’s not looking like the deal will go through in its current form.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Come comment on this article: Deutsche Telekom Approves Better Deal For MetroPCS Merger

Google Glass hasn’t even hit stores yet, and already top venture capitalists are ready to fund the people developing cool uses for it.

Google debuted Google Glasses to developers back in June 2012 at its Google I/O conference, and companies have already started thinking about how they could build a more connected internet of things and roll out specific apps for the technology. And on Wednesday, some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent investors declared their financial support.

Bill Maris, managing partner at Google Ventures, Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, and John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins announced Wednesday that they’re together launching The Glass Collective, an effort to provide seed funding for people who are developing interesting uses for the technology.

Maris explained in a blog post why the investors think it’s important to support the idea:

“So what will the future be with Glass? Well, the truth is, no one can honestly predict where this new technology will take us. Not yet. And that’s exactly what’s exciting. We do know that smart entrepreneurs and engineers are going to develop amazing experiences through Glass. Glass will evolve quickly, just as the cell phone grew from this to this.”

However, with Google Glass not even in stores, it’s hard to imagine how normal people would use the technology every day, let alone what types of companies might emerge from a Glass-like ecosystem or how venture capitalists could profit from those companies. It’s a long-term bet on a very uncertain product, but if Glass does take off, it could be a profitable one, similar to Kleiner Perkin’s early investment in people building for the iPhone that was called the iFund.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The 2013 task management tools market
• How consumer media will change in 2013
• Social 2013: The enterprise strikes back