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A Newcastle, California man woke up Sunday morning and found his pond missing.

The man, Mark Korb, told the Sacramento-area NBC affiliate KCRA that his man-made pond was drained by a sinkhole. As if pulling the plug on a giant bathtub, Korb estimates the entire pond drained in four or five hours.

It is unknown whether the sinkhole was caused by natural processes or by mining activity, which was once prevalent in the Newcastle area.

Sinkholes have recently been making the news on the other side of the country, following the death of a Florida man. The man was swallowed up by a large sinkhole that opened up beneath his bedroom.

Facebook has quietly updated its terms for Pages to allow page owners to display previously banned text and visuals on their cover photos.

Although the terms page says that the last revision occurred on December 17th, there has definitely been some changes to to the “cover” section.

Before the change, Facebook was pretty strict when it came to what can go in a page’s cover photo. Here’s what the guidelines used to prohibit:

• Price or purchase information, such as “40 percent off,” or, “Download it on socialmusic.com.”
• Contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your page’s “about” section.
• References to Facebook features or actions, such as like or share, or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features.
• Calls to action, such as “get it now” or “tell your friends.”

These restrictions have been removed.

Now, Facebook only enforces the “no images with more than 20% text” rule, among other, more general rules that are enforced on all products across the site:

All covers are public. This means that anyone who visits your Page will be able to see your cover. Covers can’t be deceptive, misleading, or infringe on anyone else’s copyright. You may not encourage people to upload your cover to their personal timelines. Covers may not include images with more than 20% text.

So, if you’ve been dying to throw some text about a deal you’re offering into your cover photo, I guess you can feel free to do so. I’ve reached out to Facebook for confirmation.

[Mari Smith via AllFacebook]

HBO has decided to pull the plug on its show Enlightened after just two seasons.

Hollywood Reporter shares a statement from HBO:

“It was a very difficult decision. We’ve decided not to continue Enlightened for a third season. We’re proud of the show, and we look forward to working with Mike White and Laura Dern in the future.”

White and Dern would be the show’s co-creators. Dern also starred in the show.

Enlightened’s description is as follows: “A self-destructive woman who has a spiritual awakening becomes determined to live an enlightened life, creating havoc at home and work.”

It’s rated 7.0 on IMDB.

If you’re in the market for an Enlightened coffee mug, you might want to keep an eye on this page in case the show’s merchandise goes on sale.

The second season will be coming soon to DVD, HBO says.

With another new season of Mad Men fast approaching, the changing nature of advertising, and along with it the role of ad agencies in the creation of ads, is once again in the spotlight. Digital disruption has clearly been one of the major catalysts for this change, but less has been said about how the transformation is a prime example of open innovation, a focus of my research for many years. This topic has been at the forefront of my mind because, this week, ninety leaders from all over the world have come to HBS to take part in our Leading Change and Organizational Renewal executive education program. What it takes to make the successful shift to open innovation is always an important theme in our discussions. The transformation of advertising reflects this shift in several important ways:

First consider identity. Back in the Don Draper days, the creative agency would pitch storylines, mock them up, test them with market segments, go back to the drawing board, and produce the one that got the most positive feedback and fit best with the brand. Now, however, digital media has disrupted this process, and the roles and identities of the players have significantly changed. The audience plays a more active part in both generating content and filtering the ideas. The overarching role of the ad agency has shifted from content generator to a combination of strategist, curator, and brand manager. To remain successful, ad agencies must acknowledge and address this question of identity head-on, otherwise the internal experts may become threatened and find ways to undermine the effort.

Some ad agencies are adapting fairly well. Take Doritos, a Frito-Lay brand. They increased the innovation pipeline (the next important shift) by inviting thousands of fans to create a commercial for the Super Bowl. Of the approximately 3,500 submissions, five were chosen as finalists by the brand’s experts. These were uploaded on YouTube and shared via Facebook. The general Doritos fan base (and their friends and friends-of-friends), then chose the best two videos from the five finalists, which were then aired during the Super Bowl.

The process Doritos used here illustrates my next key to harnessing open innovation: filtering. Once they increased the content pipeline, the internal branding and creative teams became the first filtering agents, using their knowledge of the brand and of FCC guidelines to narrow down the 3,500 submissions to five. Choosing the top five videos out of the thousands of submissions allowed the business leaders to maintain a certain amount of control — they don’t run the risk of an offensive, inappropriate, or off-brand video getting through to the final stages — while giving the final decision-making power to those who would ultimately purchase the product.

This user-centered process also highlights the “test and learn” approach to new content. Rather than repeatedly pitching storylines, mocking them up, testing them, and going back to the drawing board in serial fashion, brands have hundreds of fully executed videos that show them which approaches work best. Do people respond to humor or heartstrings? They can learn this in real time, and it gives them a good idea of which videos will perform well within the larger audience. It also allows them to save some money on production and redirect the budget to market a proven product. Meanwhile, the winning producers get money, exposure, and a beefed up portfolio.

The last key shift I’d like to address is incentivization. Each of the top five Doritos entrants got $25,000 and a ticket to the Super Bowl. If a video made it to the top three of USA Today’s Ad Watch list, the producer then got a bonus (incidentally, the producer of the #4 video was later hired to work with the director of the next Transformers movie). Everybody won — Doritos was able to redirect its money towards buying every type of Facebook ad to increase the brand’s exposure exponentially, generated its content for a fraction of the cost, and received measurable feedback from its fans to gauge popularity, while the producers earned cash and exposure.

Not all attempts at open innovation go this smoothly, however — in advertising or in any other domain. Clearly there are many other examples of organizations trying to increase their idea/content pipelines using outside-in mechanisms. How is your company changing its identity, testing and learning, and incentivizing its stakeholders to try something new?

In a cover of Sam Hart’s Mario Kart Love Song, Jimmy Fallon and Selena Gomez prove that love can blossom on the battlefield that is Mario Kart.

As an aside, Fallon should rock a moustache more often. It looks good on him.

Yahoo announced today that it has acquired Jybe, which includes five former Yahoo employees.

Yahoo Cloud Platform Group SVP Jay Rossiter discusses the acquisition in a blog post.

“As part of this acquisition, we’re welcoming an extremely talented group of engineers and data scientists who will join Yahoo!’s platform organization, focused on targeting and personalization,” he writes. “This will be a ‘coming home’ for the team — all five are former Yahoos. Arnab Bhattacharjee was the VP of Yahoo! Search Technology (YST), one of the most well respected engineering and platforms groups in the company. He returns together with former key members of the YST and Hadoop teams — Tim Converse, Christian Kunz, Sameer Paranjpye, and Karthik Krishnamurthy.”

“While the Jybe app has closed, we’re confident that their data- and science-driven experience will supercharge our efforts to build great products and experiences for the millions of people who come to Yahoo! every day,” he adds. “On a personal level, I’m thrilled to welcome back Arnab, Tim, Christian, Sameer and Karthik. I, too, am a recent ‘boomerang,’ returning to Yahoo! to participate in the incredible spirit of innovation and entrepreneurialism that’s taken over the company. As a technologist, there are rare moments in your career when you get to be a fundamental part of the transformation of one of the most iconic companies on the Internet. Now is that moment for the Jybe team, me, and all of the talented engineers, developers and technologists at Yahoo!– in Sunnyvale and around the world.”

The Jybe team also put out an announcement. The team says:

The Jybe team first set off two years ago to bring mobile users smart, personalized recomendations on food and entertainment. This has been a fun and furious journey for our tiny startup, as we applied our various technology backgrounds to recommendation and mobile app design. It’s now time to move ahead to join a larger company, and Yahoo! is the perfect match.

For the five of us who will be joining Yahoo! this is a coming home – we are all former Yahoos. Three of us left Yahoo! to pursue our passion at Jybe, and two of us took a longer path via other startups and search-engine companies. We can’t wait to apply what we’ve learned about recommendation, personalization and the mobile experience to the hundreds of millions of people who come to Yahoo! every day. We look forward to (re)joining the world-class talent already working at Yahoo! and are excited to hit the ground running.

To our awesome users, thank you so much for trying out the Jybe platform. We hope it made your life a little more entertaining. We will be closing down the Jybe service, but we are putting together a tool so you can download and keep all your data. We’re eager to start applying everything we’ve learned and built to the Yahoo! platform, so stay tuned. Exciting developments are ahead!

CrunchBase describes Jybe as a startup focused on connecting people to the physical world around them.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

North Korea is one of the most isolated countries in the world. So it’s exceptionally rare to hear a first-hand account of life there — in English, no less.

Hyeonseo Lee: My escape from North KoreaIn today’s brave talk, given at TED2013, Hyenseo Lee gives a riveting account of what it was like to grow up in North Korea. “I thought my country was the best on the planet,” she says. “I was very proud … I often wondered about the outside world, but I thought I would spend my life in North Korea — until everything changed.”

Lee tells of seeing her first public execution at age 7, and witnessing the death and desperation around her during the terrible famine of the 1990s. She doesn’t actually remember much about her escape — only that, at age 14, she was sent to stay with distant relatives in China. She ended up living there on her own and wouldn’t see her parents again for another 14 years.

It’s easy to think that, once the border is crossed, the worst is behind a North Korean refugee. But Lee tells her story to stress the point that the struggle continues long after. In China, Lee lived under the constant threat of discovery — which would end with her being deported to face execution, torture or imprisonment. Even after seeking asylum in South Korea in 2008, Lee says life was still hard as she faced a deep depression adjusting to a new life all over again. And then she discovered that her family was being targeted after money she sent home was intercepted.

To hear this powerful story, watch the talk. And here, see more stories of escapes from incredible circumstances.

Sophal Ear: Escaping the Khmer Rouge
TED Fellow Sophal Ear’s family is Cambodian, but he grew up in Vietnam. At TED2009, he tells the story of how the Khmer Rouge forced his parents to leave their home in the city of Phnom Phen and work in a labor camp. And how his mom had the foresight to get them out, using her crude knowledge of Vietnamese.

Jacqueline Novogratz on escaping poverty
The Mathare Valley slum outside Nairobi is known for poverty, drug use and poor sanitation. In this talk from TED2009, Jacqueline Novogratz tells the story of Jane, a mom who had to work as a prostitute there but dreamed of being a doctor. She reveals how a sewing machine helped Jane out of poverty and enabled her to fulfill her dream of helping others.

Leslie Morgan Steiner: Why domestic violence victims don’t leave
Leslie Morgan Steiner thought she’d found true love in her early 20s. Instead, she found herself married to a man who regularly pointed a gun at her head and routinely abused her. In this talk from TEDxRainier, Steiner tells the story of how she escaped — by breaking the silence that surrounded her situation and telling everyone she could.

Kevin Bales: How to combat modern slavery
Modern slavery exists because it underpins industries in Asia, Africa, South America and, well, everywhere but Iceland and Greenland. In this talk from TED2010, Bale shares personal stories from his research that shows that people tend to voluntarily step into slavery because their families are hungry — and then aren’t able to escape. The key to ending this? Breaking the idea of people as disposable.

Theresa Flores: Find a voice with soap
As a teenage girl in the Michigan suburbs, Theresa Flores found herself manipulated into a human trafficking ring. Now, she tries to help girls in this situation. At TEDxColumbus she shares an idea — how wrappers on bars of soap in motels could give women the resources they need to find help.

It’s official. Gandalf will be marrying Jean-Luc Picard. In a way.

Sir Ian McKellen, the actor known for playing roles such as Magneto in the Bryan Singer X-Men movies and Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movies, has announced that he will be officiating the wedding of Sir Patrick Stewart and Stewart’s fiance, Sunny Ozell.

Stewart is well-known for many roles, notably as Professor Charles Xavier in the Singer X-Men movies and as Captain Jean-Luc Picard on the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation.

McKellen announced his marriage responsibilities during an interview on The Jonathan Ross Show. He also stated that he has performed a marriage before, officiating the civil partnership of two men in the U.K.

“I’m going to marry Patrick,” said McKellen, who immediately saw the problem with his wording. “But, no, well, how else do you put that? I am going to officiate, yes, at his wedding.”

McKellen also jokingly propositioned Doctor Who actor Matt Smith, who briefly showed up during the interview. The host later plays a clip of McKellen’s first appearance on television in 1964. The marriage revelation begins at the 11-minute mark in the video below:

Apple (AAPL), the world’s most profitable smartphone maker, has a number of advantages over most of the competition. Momentum, complete control over its end-to-end user experience, design prowess and a number of major new revenue channels it may be preparing to tap can be listed among them. But there is one area where top rival Samsung (005930) has a huge edge over Apple and other smartphone companies, and a recent report illustrates just how important it really is.

Continue reading…

Prepublication Now Available

Adapting to a Changing World was commissioned by the National Science Foundation to examine the present status of undergraduate physics education, including the state of physics education research, and, most importantly, to develop a series of recommendations for improving physics education that draws from the knowledge we have about learning and effective teaching. Our committee has endeavored to do so, with great interest and more than a little passion.

The Committee on Undergraduate Physics Education Research and Implementation was established in 2010 by the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Research Council. This report summarizes the committee’s response to its statement of task, which requires the committee to produce a report that identifies the goals and challenges facing undergraduate physics education and identifies how best practices for undergraduate physics education can be implemented on a widespread and sustained basis, assess the status of physics education research (PER) and discuss how PER can assist in accomplishing the goal of improving undergraduate physics education best practices and education policy.

[Read the full report]

Topics: Education | Math, Chemistry and Physics

According to a report in The Guardian (see disclosure), the latest BlackBerry devices have been deemed insufficiently secure for government use in the UK. The article maintains that Communications-Electronics Security Group (CESG) – the information assurance wing of intelligence agency GCHQ – examined the Z10 and its BlackBerry 10 software, concluding that their implementation of the BlackBerry Balance work-life-separation feature fails the government’s strict security requirements.

This would be a terrible blow to BlackBerry, which desperately needs BlackBerry 10 to succeed if the company as a whole is to survive. BlackBerry’s biggest selling point has always been its security, and indeed version 7.1 of the software was approved by CESG just last November. The only problem is that – according to both BlackBerry and CESG – the Z10 and its OS have not been nixed.

Here’s what CESG said:

“Discussions with BlackBerry are ongoing about the use of the BlackBerry 10 platform in government. We have not yet performed an evaluation of the security of that platform, but we expect to be issuing Platform Guidance in the summer. This will cover a number of platforms including Blackberry 10 (and the use of ‘Balance’).

“We have a long standing security partnership with BlackBerry and this gives us confidence that the BlackBerry 10 platform is likely to represent a viable solution for UK Government.”

As for BlackBerry itself, the company called The Guardian‘s report, and others repeating its claims, “false and misleading”:

“BlackBerry has a long-established relationship with CESG and we remain the only mobile solution approved for use at ‘Restricted’ when configured in accordance with CESG guidelines. This level of approval only comes following a process which is rigorous and absolutely necessary given the highly confidential nature of the communications being transmitted.

“The current re-structuring of this approval process, due to the Government Protective Marking Scheme review and the new CESG Commercial Product Assurance scheme has an impact on the timeline for BlackBerry 10 to receive a similar level of approval.

BlackBerry went on to point out that both the U.S. and German authorities have given BlackBerry 10 the all-clear, and it expects the British to do the same.

So what’s going on here? If you look very carefully at the wording of the denials, the anonymous sources that informed the original article may well have been correct – it could still be the case that the Z10 flubbed a specific test, resulting in CESG going back to BlackBerry and asking them to fix the problem. This would qualify as “ongoing discussions”, and when CESG says it has “not yet performed an evaluation of the security of that platform”, those words could be taken to mean the full evaluation has not yet been completed.

However, it is certainly not the case that the Z10 and BlackBerry 10 have been rejected outright by the UK’s spooks and their vetting processes. We’re probably looking at a situation where BlackBerry will update the platform, and CESG will take another look before drawing firm conclusions.

For now, BlackBerry can continue to claim the security cred it so desperately needs.

Disclosure: Guardian News & Media, which publishes The Guardian, is a minority investor in GigaOM.

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

• Carrier IQ and the continued erosion of operator trust
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• What Amazon’s new Kindle line means for Apple, Netflix and online media

Once the world’s largest solar panel maker, Suntech Power, has finally been forced into bankruptcy. The company has been running out of cash for months, defaulted on a loan payment recently, and has now become the biggest casualty yet of the coming consolidation of the global solar industry.

This week eight Chinese banks asked a court to find Suntech subsidiary Wuxi Suntech insolvent and to allow it to begin restructuring. Suntech responded to the court and said it would not object. The New York Times reported that the bankruptcy is “expected to lead to a takeover of the Wuxi operations by Wuxi Guolian, a financial conglomerate controlled by the city government of Wuxi.”

The solar market has seen an oversupply of solar panels and plummeting prices for those panels for over two years now. Two thirds of solar cells are made in China, where the Chinese government has given Chinese solar makers access to large low cost loans. The oversupply and drop in prices has led to huge solar manufacturers like Q-Cells to startups like Solyndra and Abound Solar to file for bankruptcy.

Suntech may be the largest to date, but it won’t be the last solar maker to crash. As MIT Tech Review put it earlier this week: “hundreds of solar companies need to fail to help bring the supply of solar panels back in line with demand.”

The weeding-out process will help slow the fall in solar panel prices and allow demand to rise back up again. Down the road the re-balancing will enable these companies to continue to invest in more efficient cells and new innovations, which will bring down the cost of solar through technology even more. Another 180 solar panel makers could reportedly disappear by 2015 due to consolidation.

At the same time, Suntech’s woes partly come from a financial scandal. The company got in trouble with a fund it controlled that financed solar power plant development in Europe.

Of course, it’s not all positive that Suntech has declared bankruptcy. As Ucilia Wang wrote for us last week:

The drama presents an ugly turn for a company that was solid and took technology and market risks to grow. . . Chinese companies in general had been known more as mass producers rather than innovators. . . Suntech’s decline also leaves a depressing note in the efforts by the federal and local governments to expand solar manufacturing in the U.S.

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

• Cleantech and investment in 2013
• After Solyndra: analyzing the solar industry
• Flash analysis: lessons from Solyndra’s fall

To snooze or not to snooze?

The answer, while simple, is a hard one to actually implement. Many of us are addicted to the snooze button. You may think that extra few minutes of fragmented sleep is helping you take on the day, but in reality it’s only screwing up your sleep cycles and making you more tired.

[AsapSCIENCE]

Amazon has launched a new “Send To Kindle” button for websites, so content can be sent to Kindle devices and the free Kindle apps for iPhone, iPad and Android phones and tablets.

“Adding the Send to Kindle Button opens a website to millions of Kindle customers who can now enjoy the content on Kindle,” a spokesperson for Amazon tells WebProNews.

“Readers often encounter news articles, blog posts and other content on the web that they want to read but don’t have time to do so immediately,” she adds. “The Send to Kindle Button lets people easily send that content to their Kindle so they can it read later.”

Probably not good news for services like Instapaper.

“Just send once and read everywhere on any Kindle device or free reading app,” the spokesperson says. “No more hunting around for that website or blog that caught your eye – just open your Kindle and all the content you sent is right there. The Send to Kindle Button is also great for readers who want to collect content from the web to use in work projects, school assignments, or hobbies.”

The button can be found on Amazon’s site here. There is also one specifically for WordPress bloggers here.

Users can add Send to Kindle apps to their browsers, desktops and Android apps as well. There is also an option to send by email.

Sterling looks likely to be one of this year’s big G10 currency casualties (the other being  yen).  Having lost 7 percent against the dollar and 5.5 percent to the euro so far this year on fear of a British triple-dip recession, sterling probably has further to fall.  (see here for my colleague Anirban Nag’s take on sterling’s outlook).

Many see an opportunity here — as a convenient funding currency to invest in emerging markets. A funding currency requires low interest rates that can bankroll purchases of higher-yielding assets including stocks, other currencies, bonds and commodities. Sterling ticks those boxes.  A funding  currency must also not be subject to any appreciation risk for the duration of the trade. And here too, sterling appears to win, as the Bank of England’s remit widens to give it more leeway on monetary easing.

All in all, it’s a better option than the U.S. dollar, which was most used in recent years, or the pre-crisis favourite of the Swiss franc, says Bernd Berg, head of emerging FX strategy at Credit Suisse Private Bank.

Berg points out that while emerging currencies have been lacklustre this year against the dollar and euro, they have turned in a decent performance against sterling and yen. (check out his graphics below)

 

 

On the Brazilian real, Berg advises opening a 12-month short sterling, long real trade, targeting a 3 percent gain in this period. The real’s  effective exchange rate has risen more than 7 percent since the start of the year, with gains of more than 16 percent against the yen and 14 percent against the pound.  He is also recommending buying Mexican peso, Polish zloty, Turkish lira and Russian rouble against sterling and yen.

But those who have not moved in on the sterling-emerging FX trade yet are a bit wary. Huge short-sterling positions have been put on in recent weeks as expectation has grown of more QE in the UK, says UBS FX strategist Manik Narain (who incidentally likes the idea of sterling as an EM funding currency).  Instead, he advises waiting for positioning to be shifted back from short sterling to neutral.

 

 

Ed. note: This post was first published on the official blog of healthcare.gov. You can see the original post here.

For decades before the passage of the Affordable Care Act, health care costs outstripped inflation, without corresponding improvements in health care quality. Our system didn’t incentivize quality or efficiency. We paid providers for the quantity of care, not the quality of care delivered. And we were not using technology to deliver smarter care.

The Affordable Care Act includes steps to improve the quality of health care and lower costs for you and for our nation as a whole. This means avoiding costly mistakes and readmissions, keeping patients healthy, rewarding quality instead of quantity, and creating the health information technology infrastructure that enables new payment and delivery models to work.

Here are just a few ways that the health care law builds a smarter health care system and incentivizes quality – not quantity of care – to drive down costs and save you money.

We’re Shifting the Focus to Quality, Not Quantity

The health care law creates new Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) that incentivize doctors and other providers to work together to provide more coordinated care to their patients. ACOs agree to take responsibility for the cost and quality of their patients and to improve care coordination, safety, and to promote appropriate use of preventive health services. And when this new care model saves the Medicare program money, that savings is shared with the ACO. Over 250 organizations are participating in Medicare ACOs, giving more than 4 million Medicare beneficiaries access to high-quality coordinated care throughout the nation. ACOs are estimated to save the Medicare program up to $940 million in the first four years.

The Affordable Care Act also ties Medicare Advantage bonus payments to the quality of coverage these private plans offer. This gives seniors a broader range of higher quality Medicare Advantage plans from which to choose. As a result, in 2013, the 14 million Medicare beneficiaries currently enrolled in Medicare Advantage have access to 127 four and five star plans, which is 21 more high-quality plans than were available in the previous year.

Keeping You Out of The Hospital

Every year, about 2.6 million seniors – or nearly one in five hospitalized Medicare enrollees – are readmitted within 30 days of discharge, at a cost of more than $26 billion to the Medicare program. Many of these readmissions stem from preventable problems. These rates can be drastically reduced if we do a better job coordinating care and support. The health care law’s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program reduces Medicare payments to hospitals with relatively high rates of potentially preventable readmissions to encourage them to focus on this key indicator of patient safety and care quality.

We’re starting to see results. Medicare readmissions rates have remained stuck near 19 percent over the five years that the data has been collected (and likely for decades prior to that), but in 2012 the nationwide rate of hospital readmissions of Medicare patients declined to about 17.8 per cent. This translates to over 70,000 fewer preventable hospital readmissions.

Lowering Costs

Taken together these improvements are providing more value for your health care dollar and helping to fuel historically low cost growth rates in Medicare and Medicaid. Last year, Medicare cost growth increased by only 0.4 percent, continuing the historically low Medicare growth we saw in 2011 and 2010. Spending in Medicaid actually decreased 1.9 percent from 2011 to 2012.

And a recent report found that health care price inflation in January dropped to 1.5 percent, one of the smallest increases on record.

As the nation’s largest insurer, Medicare can lead the way in effective practices like this that deliver better care and drive down costs. Our goal is that these reforms and investments build a health care system that will ensure quality care for generations to come.

Learn more about key features of the Affordable Care Act:

• See how the Affordable Care Act is holding insurance companies accountable
• Learn how the Affordable Care is helping Abby live without fear of being denied coverage.
• Find out how the Affordable Care Act is giving you greater control over your health care.

QPID said Wednesday that it closed $4 million in funding from investors including Matrix Partners, Partners Innovation Fund, Massachusetts General Physicians Organization and Cardinal Partners. Brandon Hull, Cardinal Partners’ managing GP, is joining QPID’s board. Boston-based QPID provides electronics health records software.

PRESS RELEASE

QPID™ Inc., an innovative provider of health record acceleration and intelligence solutions, today announced that it has closed $4 million in early funding from investors including Matrix Partners, Partners Innovation Fund, Massachusetts General Physicians Organization (MGPO) and Cardinal Partners. The funding will support QPID’s growth strategy in three main areas: hiring critical talent to accelerate product innovation, marketing and sales, and strategic expansion into the commercial market after four years of R&D at hospitals within the Partners Network, including Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham & Women’s Hospital. As part of the investment, Brandon Hull, Managing General Partner at Cardinal Partners, will join QPID’s Board of Directors.
“While our initial intention was to raise $3 million, and we turned away prospective investors, we decided to extend the round to include Cardinal Partners because the firm is an excellent fit with our earliest committed investors – Matrix Partners, Partners Innovation Fund, and MGPO,” said Mike Doyle, President and CEO of QPID. “To be oversubscribed with such a quality syndicate is a testament to the value of what we’re offering at QPID – taking electronic data and creating intelligence around it. Essentially we are moving health care to a place where Electronic Health Records (EHR) are something that clinicians love, not loathe.”
QPID allows clinicians to easily extract data entered into any EHR, and presents information in an actionable format not previously available. With more than 5,000 health care professionals already using QPID for over 7,000 daily patient encounters, QPID is improving the daily workflow for clinicians in 15 different clinical departments at multiple hospitals in the Partners System. Its expansion into other health care institutions is imminent, making health care workers – physicians, nurses, administrative staff, physician’s assistants, and more – able to find and use the most accurate, updated information on a patient, resulting in better workflow and increased productivity.
“In doing our diligence on QPID, we were able to ascertain that QPID saves clinicians time, allowing them to make clinical decisions with the full knowledge of what is in the EHR – ultimately, improving patient safety. It is one of the few emerging health care platforms with a demonstrable ROI,” said Brandon Hull, Managing General Partner of Cardinal Partners. “When we saw the solution in action, we were convinced of its crucial presence in any health care entity using an EHR – it unlocks data that clinicians need in order to provide the best health care possible. Its ease of use and value – combined with our knowledge and experience in working with some of QPID’s senior management at other health care entities – convinced us that we wanted to be a part of this venture.”
“There’s no doubt that the health care experience and technical background of the QPID management team and its investors will enable the company to grow rapidly and become a strategic asset that leading health care institutions across the country need,“ added Stan Reiss, General Partner of Matrix Partners.
About QPID Inc.
QPID is an intelligence system for EHRs — permitting creation of clinician-directed queries, analytics and reporting abilities in real time. The consequence is improved filtration and exception handling in health care workflow, and its effect is akin to business intelligence, namely, activating stored data to reduce cost, improve revenue and quality of care delivery. QPID was developed within Massachusetts General Hospital and Partners HealthCare in Boston. QPID is venture backed by Matrix Partners, Partners Innovation Fund, Massachusetts General Physicians Organization (MGPO) and Cardinal Partners.
Connect with QPID
· LinkedIn
· Website
· Twitter
About Matrix Partners
Matrix Partners is a premier venture capital firm that has generated outstanding returns for more than three decades. By focusing on early-stage investments and emphasizing long-term relationships with entrepreneurs, the firm has delivered several of the industry’s top performing funds of all time. Matrix Partners has offices in Cambridge and Waltham, MA; Palo Alto, CA; Mumbai, India; and Beijing and Shanghai, China. Matrix Partners has invested in several game-changing, industry-leading businesses such as Apple Computer, Aruba, HubSpot, JBoss, Netezza, Phone.com, Polyvore, Starent Networks, Tivoli Systems, Veritas, Zendesk, and Zong.
About Cardinal Partners
Since 1996, Cardinal Partners has been one of the leading venture capital partnerships focused exclusively on healthcare investing. Cardinal specializes in early stage financing rounds, usually as the lead investor in the initial financing round of a growth company. Cardinal’s investors include university endowments, foundations, pension funds, banks, and insurance companies. Cardinal currently manages funds totaling $400 Million.
About Partners Innovation Fund
The Partners Innovation Fund, established in 2007, was launched with a total commitment of $35 million from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. It addresses Partners HealthCare’s unmet need for funding of early-stage technology to drive improved medical care for patients.
About Mass General Physicians Organization
The Massachusetts General Physicians Organization (MGPO) is a multi-specialty medical group dedicated to excellence and innovation in patient care, teaching and research.

The post QPID Raises $4 Mln in Funding appeared first on peHUB.

One of the big rumors from last year was that Google would release a $99 Nexus tablet. Those rumors never went anywhere though. Now it’s Amazon’s turn to take up the rumored cheap tablet torch.

TechCrunch is reporting that Amazon will introduce a $99 Kindle Fire HD tablet later this year. The tablet will reportedly be powered by a TI processor and feature the same 1280×800 display of the current Kindle Fire HD.

What’s interesting about this rumor is that the Kindle Fire HD is not the first tablet that comes to mind when a price drop is rumored. Amazon still sells the non-HD Kindle Fire for $159, and would seem to be the most likely candidate for a price drop to $99.

Still, the Kindle Fire HD being dropped to $99 would give Amazon a huge advantage in the current tablet wars. It would undermine every other 7-inch tablet on the market by offering better specs at an extremely low price while offering the entire digital content ecosystem from Amazon.

Amazon’s digital content ecosystem is the main reason why this rumor is so believable. In the past, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was quoted as saying, “We want to make money when people use our devices, not when they buy our devices.” That philosophy is the sole reason why the Kindle line is so cheap, and how Amazon is able to lower prices on its tablets faster than the competition. In fact, the company just recently chopped a sizable chunk off the Kindle Fire HD 8.9′s price. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to see the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD getting a price drop as well.

Regardless, this is all just a rumor for now. Amazon even told TechCrunch that its already selling the Kindle Fire HD hardware “at the lowest price points possible.” If we’re going to hear anything about a $99 tablet, it will probably be at a Kindle event later this year.

For all our talk about big data saving the world and changing lives, it so far has had more impact and gotten more press for lessor achievements, according to Sean Gourley of Quid. Gourley spoke in New York City Wednesday at the Structure:Data 2013 conference on the difference between data science and data intelligence.

Gourley illustrated this difference with children’s cereal. He pointed out that data science is used today for improving advertising, such as making better packaging and pricing strategies. Meanwhile, data intelligence could try to address the issue of child obesity.

“The naive empiricism of data science goes for the low-hanging fruit: it measures what can be easily measured and changed,” Gourley said.

Part of this is because of where the ideas of data science came from: Facebook and LinkedIn (lnkd). He noted that Facebook is the largest quantification society has ever seen, but it’s designed to put people in a pre-defined vector and test how to best advertise to them.

However, data intelligence will solve big problems, such as how the number of troops we send to Iraq might change the nature of the conflict. Or it could solve strategic problems that don’t require a prediction, but rather require insights.

He outlined the differences between data intelligence and data science for the audience. For example, data intelligence asks bigger questions and builds models to solve for them, as opposed to asking for predictions and equations. Data intelligence deals with messy, small data while data science handles big data.

Check out the rest of our Structure:Data 2013 coverage here, and a video of the session follows below:

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One of the world’s most famous confidence men has his reservations about Facebook.

Speaking at the Advertising Week Europe conference, Frank Abagnale says that he completely understands why people like Facebook. But he warns that the network is full of people who don’t really understand just how far they’re putting themselves out there. And that Facebook is basically a godsend for potential identity thieves.

Abagnale would know a thing or two about identity theft. He’s known as one of the most successful impostors of all time, assuming the identities of pilots, doctors, lawyers, and even a U.S. prison agent. You may know him as the subject of the 2002 Steven Spielberg film Catch Me If You Can. He’s the guy played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Abagnale suggests that users never include their date and place of birth together. He also warned against using “passport style” photos as profile pictures. To be safe, you should opt for group photos.

“If you tell me your date of birth and where you’re born [on Facebook] I’m 98% [of the way] to stealing your identity,” he said. “Never state your date of birth and where you were born [on personal profiles], otherwise you are saying ‘come and steal my identity’”.

He even discussed the concept of Facebook likes giving away tons of information about you. People (some with malicious intent) can use your history of likes (and even what you choose not to like) to discern your personal info, lifestyle choices, and personality traits. We recently ran a piece on this very same thing.

But he doesn’t put all the blame on Facebook and other social media and tech services. “Don’t blame all the other companies…you control it,” he said.

“What I did 40 years ago as a teenage boy is 4,000 times easier now,” he said. “Technology breeds crime.”

Chilling words from a guy who knows what he’s talking about.

[via The Guardian]