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Here’s the First Family portrait, released by the Photo Office this morning:

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“General Motors Co. will offer only high-deductible consumer-driven health care plans to its 24,000 salaried employees, effective Jan. 1,” Business Insurance reports. “GM salaried employees will choose from two plans, both linked to health savings accounts….In addition, GM will contribute $1,300 to employees’ HSAs. That contribution is intended to help employees pay for uncovered health care expenses and to help them accumulate funds to pay for health care expenses after they retire, a GM spokeswoman said. GM salaried employees hired after 1993 are not eligible for retiree health care coverage.”

“The move to high-deductible CDHPs is a big change for a company once known for its lavish health care benefits program” (Giesel, 10/22).

“Despite Americans’ poor lifestyle choices and the chronic problems they spawn, the health-care reform proposals being considered in Congress contain relatively little to promote wellness,” The Tennessean reports. While “more than one-fourth of all adults in the U.S. are obese,” the “word ‘obesity’ does not appear in the 1,000-plus page bill approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. A Senate health reform bill contains only two obesity provisions.” Among the wellness provisions in the Senate and House bills is one that “would allow companies to rebate up to 50 percent of an insurance premium for people who complete a wellness program.” (Theobald, 10/23).

“Democrats are promising significant changes in the health insurance market with the passage of their health care legislation, but they may not be able to deliver as quickly as most Americans would expect,” CBS News reports. “A new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that about half of Americans think that if Democrats pass their reform proposals, help for the uninsured and consumer protections in the insurance market would kick in within a year. In reality, most of the reform provisions” would not go into effect until 2013 (KHN is a program of the foundation) (Condon, 10/22).

The New York Times: Asked in the Kaiser poll “if Congress passed a bill this year when they would expect people without insurance to begin getting help buying coverage, 49 percent of the respondents said this year or next. Twenty-five percent said three years from now, and 11 percent said ‘further in the future than that.’ Asked how soon they would expect health insurance companies would have to begin accepting customers with pre-existing conditions, 51 percent said this year or next. Twenty-three percent said three years from now, and 9 percent said further into the future” (Seelye, 10/22).

Mozilla has introduced a new inbox program called Raindrop. They refer to it as an "exploration in messaging innovation" to "explore new ways to use Open Web technologies to create useful, compelling messaging experiences." Sounds kind of like  what Google’s trying to do with Google Wave from that description doesn’t it? There is already talk that this may compete with it.

"When a friend’s link from YouTube or Flickr arrives, your messaging client should be able to show the video or photos near or as part of the message, rather than rudely kicking you over to a separate browser tab," says Mozilla. "Notifications from computers and mailing lists should be organized for you, not clutter your Inbox or require tedious manual filter setup. It should be easy to smoothly integrate new web services into your conversation viewer entirely using open web technologies."

Mozilla hopes to end this with Raindrop, which is aimed at spurring the development of applications that help users easily manage their conversations, notifications, and messages across a variety of online services. Right now, however, Raindrop is in a very early stage – version 0.1. Mozilla calls it a prototype, but one they hope will become both a customizable product and a platform for a variety of innovative messaging apps. Right now, it is not ready for everyday use.

Raindrop Software Components from Mozilla Messaging on Vimeo.

"In today’s world people use a combination of Twitter, IM, Skype, Facebook, Google Docs, Email, etc. to communicate," says the Raindrop development team. "For many of us this means that we have to keep an eye on an ever-growing number of places we might get new messages. As a result, we never know that we’ve actually processed all the important messages, because our email has been by noise which obscures the real messages from real people."

"Raindrop is an effort that starts by trying to understand today’s web of conversations, and aims to design an interface that helps people get a handle on their digital world," the team adds.

Mozilla has posted a set of guiding principles for Raindrop, which it says is an effort in promoting the values of the Mozilla Manifesto. These can be read here.

Mozilla says one of its first priorities is to make downloadable installers or setup a hosted installation that anyone can use to try out Raindrop. This would make it easier for non-developers to check it out.

Kaiser Health News provides a different perspective on health policy developments with Chip Bok’s “It Only Hurts When…”

Kaiser Health News staff writer Jessica Marcy talks with Dr. Antonio Falcon, a physician in the border town of Rio Grande City, Texas. He explained his concern “about several health threats facing border communities, including tuberculosis, diabetes, obesity and the H1N1 virus that causes swine flu.” He also talked about how “current efforts to overhaul the nation’s health system will benefit both the Hispanic community, which has the highest rate of uninsured of any ethnic group; and Texas, which consistently fares among the worst for state health care measures. Still, he worries that lawmakers in Washington are failing to address several important border health issues, including illegal immigrants’ health care” (10/23). Read entire interview.

A related story by KHN staff writer Jennifer Evans, explains how health reform bills would – and would not – affect illegal immigrants. “As lawmakers continue to shape a health care overhaul bill to increase the number of Americans with insurance while driving down costs, one group is being deliberately barred from receiving any government benefits associated with the effort: undocumented immigrants. This brief explainer looks at some of the questions surrounding immigrants and health care in the United States” (10/23).

Funding cuts are hurting dentists and hospitals, and squeezing providers that continue to treat low-income patients. Meanwhile, Massachusetts loses a key health official.

The Grand Rapids Press: “West Michigan dentists and mental health advocates are calling on state officials to restore adult Medicaid dental benefits eliminated earlier this year. The push comes after a severely mentally impaired Alpena County woman died this week, reportedly when an infection in her mouth went untreated” (King, 10/22).

West Virginia Public Broadcasting: “The Eastern Panhandle Free Clinic recently announced it is no longer accepting new patients. The clinic is one of ten across West Virginia that’s struggling to give health care to more people with fewer resources” (Mason, 10/22).

WBUR (NPR member station): Massachusetts’ health reform efforts could be pushing some “safety net” hospitals into bankruptcy and several are threatening to sue the state for more financial help. Hospital executives say the state has unfairly put the burden of reform on the safety net hospitals by cutting reimbursement rates below sustainable levels (Pfeiffer, 10/22).

The New York Times: “In pushing to include a government-run health insurance plan in the health care bill, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, is taking a calculated gamble that the 60 members of his caucus could support the plan if it included a way for states to opt out.”

“The Senate has long been seen as opposed to the federal government selling health insurance in competition with private industry, but now senior Senate Democrats and White House officials are strongly considering including such a measure in health care overhaul legislation, officials say.” But moderates from both parties however, seized on the opportunity to ask Reid again to slow the bill down so Senators have a chance to analyze and consider it. They include Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb.; Olympia Snowe, R-Maine; and Susan Collins, R-Maine (Pear and Herszenhorn, 10/22).

The Associated Press reports that the provision to allow states to opt out could help to attract the votes of the moderates. “Several officials said no final decisions had been made, with one possibility that the idea was being circulated to see whether it could attract enough support to survive on the Senate floor. … Democratic moderates are skeptical of allowing the government to sell insurance, concerned that it would mark an unwarranted federal intrusion into the private marketplace and potentially jeopardize payment rates to doctors, hospitals and other providers” (Espo, 10/23).

The Wall Street Journal: “Nelson, who has met twice this week with Mr. Reid, said it would be “very difficult” for him to support any proposal that creates a national plan — even one that allows states to opt out.” Similarly, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota said he has assurances that any plan “wouldn’t be tied to Medicare” (Hitt and Adamy, 10/23).

CongressDaily: “Conrad, who authored the co-op system in the Finance Committee bill as an alternative to a public option, said Thursday states should have the choice to participate in a nonprofit” (Edney, 10/23).

Roll Call reports that “Snowe and Nelson noted that centrists want to make sure the underlying bill is acceptable to them before allowing it to come to the floor. They argued that once the measure is officially being debated, it will be difficult to secure the 60 votes necessary to strip key provisions — such as a public insurance option. Sixty votes are needed to overcome a filibuster of any amendment or bill” (Pierce, 10/22).

Bloomberg offers more insights into what Snowe is thinking: “‘A public option at the forefront really does put the government in a disproportionate position with respect to the industry,’ Snowe, the only Republican to vote for a health plan so far, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s ‘Political Capital With Al Hunt,’ airing this weekend” (Litvan and Dodge, 10/23).

CNN: “In recent days, two administration officials have told CNN that the prevailing White House opinion is for the Senate health care bill to include a so-called ‘trigger’ mechanism proposed by Snowe that would bring a public option in the future if thresholds for expanding coverage and lowering costs go unmet in coming years. The source familiar with Thursday evening’s meeting said Obama ‘pushed for a so-called trigger, because it’s the more bipartisan way to go,’ due to Snowe’s support for the concept” (Bash and Walsh, 10/22).

The Washington Independent has a scoreboard on how the public option might fare in the Senate with 14 on the fence, 47 likely supporters and 39 likely opponents (10/22).

Politico: “The pace of the negotiations is picking up. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who is representing the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said the merger group hopes to send a package to the Congressional Budget Office soon.” Several senators have said it’s imperative for a new CBO score on the bill before they will consider it (Budoff Brown, 10/23).

But The Hill reports on how some see the schedule unfolding as the process continues. “The healthcare reform debate will be pushed deep into December and possibly beyond by a lengthy floor debate, several senators predicted Thursday. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is under pressure from a group of centrist Republicans and Democrats who are demanding a go-slow approach” in order to have enough time “to review the legislative language and to give the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) a chance to provide a detailed cost estimate.” That means the legislation “has no chance of being approved by Thanksgiving” (Bolton, 10/22).

The New York Times reports that the whistleblowing of a former vice president of a research hospital in Urbana, Ill., has highlighted some questionable research practices at certain community cancer research sites.

The Times examines the Carle Foundation Hospital where a vice president for research questioned the validity of federally sponsored cancer experiments and was fired. “Because the patients at community centers tend to be older, sicker, less affluent and generally more diverse than those treated at big academic medical centers, they are considered more representative of the national population. So, over the years, the community centers have played important roles in developing new treatments for breast, lung and prostate cancer.” If Carle is any indication, however, these sites may not be applying the best practices in researching cancer treatments. The vice president — and a federal audit — found deficiencies in 12 of 29 experiments at Carle, endangering and/or skewing the results of several studies (Wilson, 10/22).

By Carmi Levy, Betanews

Over the years, Microsoft has been vilified for more reasons than you can shake a memory stick at. But the world is bigger than Microsoft; and if we’re going to take the time and effort to hate something, it makes more sense for it to be something deserving of hate — like government corruption, unsanctioned access by certain countries to nuclear missiles, and diseases that evolve faster than our ability to comprehend them. Tossing bile at a mere software company would be too easy if it weren’t so pointless.

As Microsoft releases Windows 7 unto a world that has been well-trained to be suspicious of such events, now is a pretty good time to reconsider why so many people have for so long held a special degree of contempt for the company. It’s also an ideal time to question why this has been the case in the first place, and figure out what our attitudes should be from this point forward.

Microsoft’s failures have always led to success

There’s a reason Ford never followed up the Edsel with another car called “Edsel:” Some brands just deserve to die. (It’s a good thing “Vista” wasn’t a Microsoft executive’s first name.)

Most recently, Vista’s been the lazy person’s target for vilification and vitriol. When it was released, it was big and buggy, and although Microsoft eventually fixed most of the countless niggling problems with its flagship OS product, it couldn’t repair the damage to the Vista brand.

Vista is only the latest in a long line of Microsoft missteps. Whether it’s on account of the Xbox red circle of death, XP’s sieve-like (in-) security, Windows ME’s general crumminess, or Bob’s absolute disconnection from reality, Microsoft has had to survive a number of high-profile failures.

But the company that’s never failed hasn’t been invented yet. (Sorry, Google.) Failure is what teaches great companies — and people — to achieve greater success the next time out. And in Microsoft’s case, its successes far outweigh its failures. For better or worse, Microsoft’s influence on a wide range of markets has forged consistency and purpose in those markets, when no one else was willing or able to step up to the plate and take the lead. To wit:

• Desktop operating systems. While some folks have valid reasons for disliking Windows, there’s got to be at least some good baked into it to explain the basic fact that 90% of the computing world runs it. Since Windows 3.0 first transitioned Microsoft’s GUI-based OS from curious plaything to serious competitor, the franchise has been the centerpiece of an ever-growing ecosystem of developers, vendors and users, all of whom have built careers and businesses around this now-ubiquitous OS. Mass adoption in various markets often seems to be accompanied by a certain degree of contempt: We all may despise Toyotas for being boring, soulless transportation appliances, but we buy them by the boatload because they get the job done.
• Applications. I still get e-mails from frustrated WordPerfect for DOS users who claim writing just hasn’t been the same since Microsoft’s Word vanquished WordPerfect’s offering — and, rather starkly, WordPerfect Corporation itself. Whatever. I still have nightmares when I remember trying to move data between Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect. Microsoft’s Office paradigm redefined how we got work done, and its market dominance made it easy for me to share my work with virtually anyone else who mattered.
• Development. The catch-as-you-can state of programming languages before Windows-based machines took over forced developers to either invest significant time in learning multiple languages, or risk backing the wrong horse by choosing the wrong one to learn. Products like Visual Basic opened up development paths to more users and broadened the landscape for consumers and businesses alike. Suddenly, programming wasn’t so arcane.
• Networking. While Novell rightly gets credit for defining and popularizing the modern Local Area Network, Microsoft’s Windows NT Server assumed the mantle and drove the concept into the heart of corporate IT. It certainly wasn’t always pretty, especially if you were responsible for patching and securing it, but it was a good enough, familiar enough product family for most organizations.

A kinder, gentler Microsoft

As it brings Windows 7 to market, Microsoft is showing signs of greying around the temples. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the evolution of its CEO, Steve Ballmer. Long known for being an exuberant — sometimes overly so — Microsoft booster, Mr. Ballmer’s antics, from throwing chairs to cheerleading during keynotes, are near-legendary. But somewhat uncharacteristically, his behavior during the Windows 7 launch has been nothing short of reserved and reflective.

Through Ballmer, we see a Microsoft that isn’t so much monolithically monopolistic as it is customer-centered and, dare I say it, soft around the middle. Could this be a kinder, gentler Microsoft? Perhaps. The company makes it clear that consumer feedback to Vista’s failings guided its Windows 7 development effort. And as new software delivery paradigms threaten its OS and productivity software dominance as never before, its efforts to build businesses in previously non-core sectors (Windows Azure Platform, anyone?) provide glimpses into a company that has come to terms with being merely mortal.

What’s left to hate?

So this clearly isn’t your father’s Microsoft. But is that a good or a bad thing? Is a post-antitrust, post-king-of-the-world, post-desktop company that doesn’t rampage through its markets as much as it carefully steps through them necessarily a good thing for the broader tech market?

Perhaps so. The tech landscape already has an heir apparent in Google, which now finds itself in the similarly unenviable position of lightning rod for those who seem to always need a lightning rod. By virtue of its size and perception as a monopolistic player, Google now falls under the same harsh criticism that had defined Microsoft for the better part of a generation.

Which leaves Microsoft to define a new path for itself, unencumbered by the weight of the constant attention typically afforded a singular leviathan of a given industry. It also leaves those of us who habitually cast an evil eye on this or any company, to wonder whether doing so serves any real purpose at all. Anyone who flogged Microsoft for the sins of its most recent Windows products, lost any significant reason this week to go on doing so. Sometimes, it just pays to be nice.

Carmi Levy is a Canadian-based independent technology analyst and journalist still trying to live down his past life leading help desks and managing projects for large financial services organizations. He comments extensively in a wide range of media, and works closely with clients to help them leverage technology and social media tools and processes to drive their business.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

A few weeks ago, Microsoft made a minor splash by announcing they’d offer an ad-supported version of Microsoft Office. Most of the functionality would be there, but there’d be an ad down there in the corner. A tempest briefly raged in this teapot, but died down once people realized they’d been using ad-supported software for years and never even thought to complain. After all, every time you search for something — look, ads! Have a free email account? Ads here and there (targeted based on the content of your email, which surprisingly few people find disturbing), and sometimes even included in your outgoing messages. Ad-supported services and software are embedded in our technological landscape whether you realize it or not, and it’s beyond question that they’ve cultivated improvement.

So when word came down that Apple had filed a patent for what appears to be an ad-supported version of OS X, my shock abated almost instantly. In fact, I only felt more justified in backing ad-supported products. There will be objections, some legitimate, some hysterical, but I think it will become increasingly clear over the next few years that this sort of thing is not only unavoidable, but ultimately desirable. As with other major emerging concepts like globalization, peer to peer connectivity, net neutrality, and device convergence, the evolution of advertising will be denied, debated, and championed in a million different ways. And that’s okay. Like those other processes (all of them still ongoing), you don’t have to accept them right away, but it helps if you realize that resistance is futile.

First, though, give yourselves a pat on the back. As a member of the vanguard of new media, next-generation services, and experimental technology, you should feel a certain pride. And I think you’ve also been justified in your various transgressions out here on the frontier — blocking ads, pirating media and software, and misusing or abusing other services (to a point at least) — because you moved faster than the rest of the world and it’s their fault that they didn’t see it coming, or weren’t fast enough to react in time. I don’t want to get all copyfight up in here, but the dinosaurs of media and communications deserve all the flak and failure they’ve piled up. I know it, you know it, they won’t say so but they know it too — but the time for sulking and suing is over. Instead, they’re piling into the wagons and hitting the trail. The latest Wild West on the internet is being clogged with settlers, and, at the risk of allowing this metaphor to overstay its welcome, there’s about to be a new sheriff in town (pictured at right). And the next few years will be the story of how the West was re-won — by corporate interests, as usual. Hey, it had to happen sometime.

Look. The fastest growing mobile platforms in the world are essentially trojan horses for new advertising (Android) and paid content (Apple). DRM is starting, thank god, to assume a form that isn’t instinctively abhorrent to even to the most seasoned of internet users. Digital distribution is no longer looked upon as an aberration, but an opportunity. And this positive change in new advertising is combined with, as Eric Clemons noted back in March, a failure on the part of traditional advertising to engage its audience on any level. Of course, his objections apply equally to a banner ad that’s in your browser as it does to a banner ad that’s on your desktop. Let’s talk about it.

Break yourself

So what can you do? Well, you can change the way you advertise. Ads these days are so bad that anybody who clicks one is guaranteed to be a sucker. And the supply of suckers, birth rates notwithstanding, is decreasing as techsavviness increases (along with AdBlock, torrenting, etc.). Even when you take an ethical stand, like Penny Arcade and others, and only advertise on your site for things you want you readership to support, ads simply won’t do any more. I wonder why? Let’s see. Tell me how most ads these days differ from the following:

(image from here)

Except for the fact that you no longer have to send a piece of mail to a physical address (usually, anyway), it is evident that the bulk of advertising hasn’t changed in 150 years. Interesting, that — and surprising that such a mind-bogglingly backward-looking strategy has survived so long. But luckily for us, advertisers are finally beginning to realize that the internet isn’t just a periodical with infinite pages. Innovators have, over the last four or five years, created a huge, rich playpen for marketers, and unsurprisingly those marketers have largely ignored it. Hence the trouble monetizing such obvious gold mines as Flickr, FaceBook, Twitter, and so on. “How will we make money on Twitter, there’s no place to put our gold-rush-era advertisements for Gammon’s Unctuous Ointment?” Sorry, but change comes from within, people. I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but if you can’t figure out how to take a hundred million eyeballs a day and turn it into cash, you should reconsider your profession.

That’s why I see all these troublesome embedded ads and sponsored services as non-threatening — even cute in a way. They represent the infancy of new advertising, and stuff like an ad-supported OS or office suite are their first wobbly steps. Photogenic in a way, but be ready to capture the first few falls as well. For instance: Apple’s potential system, while obviously just a rough sketch in more ways than one, has the troubling flowchart box “User pre-buys time?” Yeah, that’s not going to happen. Coin-op computing is not the way to go. Revisit Eric’s article for a few ideas on what is the way to go, but while I have you I’d like to add a few examples I’ve just thought up in the last few minutes, if I may. I doubt I’m the first person to think of these, but I don’t see any of them being implemented widely, so pretend I invented them for the purposes of this post.

Ads that aren’t anachronisms

When you say “ad-supported,” it conjures images of ugly banner ads surrounding the functional portion of the program or service. You and I see it every day in Gmail, after all, and who hasn’t seen worse? Nagware also comes to mind; I used WinRAR for a decade and clicked down its nag screen thousands of times before giving in. But that’s old school. These days, ads are rectangles filled with lies. Nobody clicks on those any more, or if they do, the numbers are decreasing at a rate which must alarm those who fill the rectangles. But what if the ads were to be invisible? Picture this: an OS-wide layer that detects searches, reads text on webpages, and scours all content for products and services. A Snap-esque pop-up or browser bar provides the lowest prices, latest blog posts, and a link to the official site. It provides trackable clickthroughs (bankable) and is, in fact, useful to the user. In a “normal” machine you could turn this off, and in an ad-supported machine you couldn’t (without some work anyway). Sure, it’s not a full solution, but honestly, would you mind having that on your machine if it meant saving a couple hundred bucks up front? Even if you say yes (and I might), I guarantee there are about a hundred million people who would say no. Can you say Wal-Mart? I knew you could. I’d venture to say that this is one of the driving ideas behind Chrome OS.

So that’s a kickoff point for ads in the OS: unavoidable yet unobtrusive, simple yet functional. What about in the browser? It’s more difficult because the user has more control over what they do and don’t see. But the same principles are at work, and at the risk of tooting TechCrunch’s horn, we’re already applying them (and have been before I got here; I’m not claiming any credit). Look down at the bottom of this paragraph. It’s a CrunchBase widget! Useful, embeddable, trackable, and customizable — mark my words, in a year or two these things (not just CrunchBase but similar items) will be everywhere. After all, who says an ad has to be produced by the company making the product? People don’t like those ads anyway. They’re badly designed, and frequently damned lies to boot. But in a CrunchBase or say GDGT embedded widget, you know the source, you don’t have to worry about spin, and it’s no skin off your back if TechCrunch gets a penny whenever you click through to Sony’s site through one. And here’s the fun part: payment, placement, and tracking are virtually identical to traditional ads. Sony doesn’t want to pay a website to advertise for them? Then no links to Sony. Users can figure it out by themselves.

If I’m honest, they should be a bit smaller if they’re to be everywhere. And have more stuff. You get the idea, though. …yeah, it’s me, so what?

But media, Devin, you’re forgetting the media! Billions are spent on television advertising. Or so I’m told — I only see TV ads at the gym and at bars these days, since I download or stream all my media. I’m not boasting of being some elite master pirate and internet jockey; the fact is that tech-savvy people do what I do, or rather I do what they do, because at the moment it’s easier and better. That’s all. And there are more people qualifying as tech-savvy every day. Media companies are realizing that, and TV ads, while not on their way out, are going to have to be heavily augmented with something else. What could it be? What did I say about the other ads — oh yes, unavoidable yet unobtrusive, simple yet functional. Okay, here’s one I just thought up as I typed this sentence. When you stream or download a show, have metadata or an on-screen menu or page (visible during the intro, ads, or whatnot) where you can buy associated items. But not just DVD sets. I mean, if someone’s watching episode 89, they either own episodes 1-60 already or will be buying them sooner or later anyway. You’re trying to sell God to the choir. Why not accessorize? The meta-page I theorize (an enormous advertisement in disguise) can have all manner of things: links to the coffee shop the characters were in. Prices and local availability for the clothes they wore. iTunes link for songs from the soundtrack. Related shows! Related books! Every time you provide an episode for free (if that continues) — with unskippable ad breaks for your regular ads! — you get to expose every viewer to a cornucopia of products that they are probably at least a little interested in. Can you say that about cable? And if you do say it, will people laugh?

How I learned to stop worrying and so on

But I seem to have wandered off from the original topic. Let’s get something straight. The world is already ad-supported. It always was. And it will continue to be. Don’t fight it. It’s like slipping into a warm bath. If Apple puts out an ad-supported version of OS X, or Google Checkout is built into Chrome OS, or Microsoft brings back Clippy to suggest sponsored websites, you can cry all you want, but know that advertising makes the world go round. For a brief, exciting time, you’ve been ahead of the curve, in a land where ad-men feared to tread. You hate advertising, and rightly so, because you’ve been subjected to it in its worst possible guise. For a decade at least, ads have been a lame, decrepit wolf in comically unconvincing sheep’s clothing. That’s changing — and while it’s too little, too late for some (the RIAA and MPAA for two, or their dignity at least), it’s a golden opportunity for others, and it means progress and improvement for the end user.

It’ll take some time, but the coming renaissance in advertising is going to happen whether you like it or not, just as the revolution in communications happened to the advertisers — who decidedly did not like it. They fancied themselves an immovable object, but the truly unstoppable force of progress has since relieved them of that idea. Users have been empowered to choose when, how, and from whom they will accept advertising. The race now is not to the biggest and flashiest ad, as it has been for generations, but to the very opposite end of the spectrum. The winner will be the one who best convinces the user that they are not being advertised to at all. Indeed, we are about to change the very definition of advertisement. Care to help?

The New York Times: “The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed legislation allocating billions of dollars in federal money for the treatment of HIV and AIDS.  By a vote of 408-9, the House reauthorized the Ryan White Care Act, first enacted in 1990 and named for the Indiana teenager who died of AIDS. The Senate has already passed the bill by unanimous consent.”

“The bill … approves an additional four years of funding for the program, which is administered by the Department of Health and Human Services to about 500,000 lower-income people each year. It allocates $2.55 billion for fiscal year 2010, with that figure rising to $2.95 billion by the 2013 fiscal year” (Becker, 10/21).

Dow Jones Newswires: “Both the Senate and House bills state the federal government must establish a goal of testing 5 million patients annually for HIV and AIDS. Federal health agencies will have to report to Congress to detail whether they met the goal” (Favole, 10/21).

Toy maker Mattel has launched its own ecommerce site, MattelShop.com, offering a selection of its popular brands along with social shopping features.

MattelShop.com features a social shopping tool called ShopTogether, developed by shopping application firm DecisonStep, that allows users to browse the site with family and friends. Shoppers have the ability to chat with each other in real time about the various toys offered on the site.

"We have developed a unique online shopping destination that is playful, social and informative," said Chuck Scothon, General Manager & Senior Vice President, Mattel Digital Network.

"The MattelShop.com serves as a research and shopping tool allowing parents, grandparents and gift-givers alike to choose the best toys for children this holiday season."

The site includes a complete catalog of Mattel’s brands such as Barbie and Hot Wheels along with other toys, games and licensed products from the company’s portfolio. Consumers can browse toys by age, gender and play preference.

The site also features ConciseClick that allows shoppers to watch videos of products, provides description and price and allows users to drop items into a shopping cart.

In addition, MattelShop.com has a presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
 

“Although thousands of doctors are converting their offices to electronic health records, a change the federal government supports with $19 billion in grants, there is a major catch — the government is still working on establishing a standard for e-records,” the Las Vegas Sun reports. “Doctors who buy a software program could lose hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, if their systems aren’t compatible with the future government standard.”

Software companies are meanwhile competing for the new business stimulated by the governments’ $19 billion economic recovery act investment in health information technology. One expert, Wes Rishel, tells the Sun there are currently 200 systems available, but that he expects the “crowded field” to narrow to 10 or so software providers over time. Those companies will be the ones that adapt easily to government standards (Lucht, 10/23).

David Brailer, President Bush’s top health IT official and head of Health Equity Partners, is also on the lookout for companies that adapt quickly to changes in the health care business, Bloomberg reports. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or “Calpers,” is “betting as much as $1 billion that (Brailer) can remake the $2.5 trillion health-care industry one startup at a time.” Brailer will use the investment to target “big pain points” where the health system wastes money and is inefficient, he said. Calpers is “the sole investor” in the company. 

“So far, Brailer has invested more than $120 million in 30 companies, and said he plans to spend $150 million to $200 million a year beginning in 2010. One company aims to save hospitals up to $1.6 million a year each, using a centralized center to read radiology images. Others make electronic chemotherapy pumps that save time and curb treatment errors, run pharmacy chains that blend alternative therapies with traditional drugs, or match consumers to insurance plans based on their medical history” (Mullaney, 10/23).

More often than not, when something is successful overseas, it’s even more successful in its home market.  And this led one person to wonder: if Facebook receives one-seventh of all page views in the UK (as Hitwise suggested last week), how’s it doing in the US?  He found that it might receive as many as one-fourth of all page views.

This isn’t quite an apples-to-apples comparison.  Think of it as Golden Delicious versus Red Delicious apples, at least, since Perry Drake, who’s the vice president of Drake Direct and an associate professor at New York University, used Compete statistics to look at Facebook’s US standing.

Anyway, Drake supplied the graph you can see below (sorry for the blurriness – we enlarged it) and wrote, "In the US Facebook accounts for, now get this, 1 in every 4 or 25% of our total pageviews.  Unbelievable!  Google on the other hand accounts for only 8% of the total pageviews (or 1 in 12)."

Drake also wrote, "[W]hen we look at total number of visits to these two sites, we notice that Google does have an edge as the figure below shows.  But, surprisingly, that edge is quickly slipping away."

So it seems that an interesting shift is taking place.  Facebook’s marketing and financial departments must be jumping for joy (and perhaps preparing to count a lot of cash).