There are many cool iPad/iPhone apps, but I recently found one that is simple and elegant - Photosynth
Using your mobile device, you can snap photos of the world around you and Photosynth reassembles the images into a 3D panorama. I was amazed by the speed and accuracy of the photo stitching in the application.
Here are a few examples
Yosemite Valley
Tuolumne Meadows
Boulder Colorado
Photographing the world around you and creating an instant panorama on your mobile device.
That's cool!
Friday, June 29, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
The SCOTUS Healthcare Reform Decision
Healthcare reform requires a foundation of healthcare IT in order to be successful including:
*Universal adoption of EHRs
*Frictionless exchange of healthcare information with patient consent
*Widespread use of Personal Health Records
*Analytics to support quality and cost measurement
*Decision Support to deliver the right care at the right time
The SCOTUS decision to uphold the healthcare reform law ensures that these foundational components will still have urgency, since every provider organization will be motivated to implement them in order thrive in the healthcare marketplace of the future.
*Universal adoption of EHRs
*Frictionless exchange of healthcare information with patient consent
*Widespread use of Personal Health Records
*Analytics to support quality and cost measurement
*Decision Support to deliver the right care at the right time
The SCOTUS decision to uphold the healthcare reform law ensures that these foundational components will still have urgency, since every provider organization will be motivated to implement them in order thrive in the healthcare marketplace of the future.
Our Cancer Journey Week 27
We still get up at 5am each day to care for the chickens/guinea fowl, turn the compost, refill water/food, manage the woodlot, and ready our property for the llama (our new guard llama is pictured above) and alpacas which are arriving in a month.
Kathy generally keeps my schedule and is on the go 20 hours a day. Now that she's in the third week of radiation therapy, she's ready for sleep by 8:30pm.
She has no pain, swelling or discomfort (other than continued numbness in her feet which impacts her ability to stand for long periods), but the home stretch in our cancer journey is like the last few miles of a marathon. The joy of completion is offset by dwindling energy reserves and a desire for it to be over.
By July 31, the treatment phase of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation will be done. We hope that the miracle of remission will continue for many years to come. However, it is clear that as the journey ends, the celebratory dancing will have to wait until the fatigue, the emotional drain, and residual numbness resolve with time.
Radiation therapy is far more benign than chemotherapy, but daily dosing feels unrelenting. All will be well and the exhaustion will be replaced by endless energy as our barnyard expands with the animals and plants we've envisioned.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
The Compliance Consensus
Per my previous blogs about the Summer of Compliance, we completed our multi-week joint IS/Compliance planning effort today.
To recap, first we listed regulatory and compliance risks and the policies/technologies needed to mitigate them. We then assigned these projects to 3 work teams to prioritize, estimate level of effort, and assign risk scores.
We then examined the total costs necessary to complete the prioritized projects.
The end result was that we identified 55 projects with $7.8 million dollars in capital costs. Our FY13 capital budget for security/compliance related projects is $4.2 million so we had to reduce the list of projects by $3.6 million.
The end result is that we identified malware controls as the highest priority, followed by mobile device encryption. All projects related to these general categories will be done first.
Other key items are data loss prevention for emails sent to commercial email providers, blocking of cloud storage services, restriction on outbound internet traffic (machines sending data to unauthorized organizations), and adaptive authentication.
Items to consider deferring due to capital expense include additional e-discovery infrastructure, network access control technologies, and enterprise mobile device management applications. These are desirable and likely will be done next year.
The end result of this exercise - a jointly agreed upon list of priorities, budgets, and timelines for compliance work over the next year.
With a mutual understanding of the time, scope, and resources, we can triage any new requests with the perspective of the work we've already agreed to do. Given that time and resources are known, adding scope means taking something off the list.
I look forward to the year ahead and policy/technology work needed to ensure we not only follow standard practices, but best practices.
To recap, first we listed regulatory and compliance risks and the policies/technologies needed to mitigate them. We then assigned these projects to 3 work teams to prioritize, estimate level of effort, and assign risk scores.
We then examined the total costs necessary to complete the prioritized projects.
The end result was that we identified 55 projects with $7.8 million dollars in capital costs. Our FY13 capital budget for security/compliance related projects is $4.2 million so we had to reduce the list of projects by $3.6 million.
The end result is that we identified malware controls as the highest priority, followed by mobile device encryption. All projects related to these general categories will be done first.
Other key items are data loss prevention for emails sent to commercial email providers, blocking of cloud storage services, restriction on outbound internet traffic (machines sending data to unauthorized organizations), and adaptive authentication.
Items to consider deferring due to capital expense include additional e-discovery infrastructure, network access control technologies, and enterprise mobile device management applications. These are desirable and likely will be done next year.
The end result of this exercise - a jointly agreed upon list of priorities, budgets, and timelines for compliance work over the next year.
With a mutual understanding of the time, scope, and resources, we can triage any new requests with the perspective of the work we've already agreed to do. Given that time and resources are known, adding scope means taking something off the list.
I look forward to the year ahead and policy/technology work needed to ensure we not only follow standard practices, but best practices.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Outbound Spam Blocking
Here's a new twist on the Spam problem.
What if one of your users falls prey to a phishing scam and enters their username/password into a hacker's website?
The hacker then logs into that user's email account and sends spam with your corporate return address.
AOL, Yahoo, Comcast and other commercial email providers blacklist your domain so no email flows to commercial addresses.
In our case, this happened briefly.
We first contacted all the major commercial email providers to inform them that we are a legitimate business and not a spammer.
We checked blacklist sites to ensure we were not flagged as a spammer (or contacted those services/companies which had marked us as such)
To prevent the problem from recurring, we enhanced our Proofpoint email appliance as follows:
If a message is sent that has a spam score of 100 and has more than 25 recipients take the following actions, we
1. Quarantine the message
2. Send an alert to the user to contact the IS Support center to make sure there account has not been compromised
3. Alert the messaging team of the quarantined message for remediation
Who would have thought that a single user, falling prey to phishing scheme, could result in the blocking of commercial email flow?
The internet can be a swamp of malware and malcontents!
What if one of your users falls prey to a phishing scam and enters their username/password into a hacker's website?
The hacker then logs into that user's email account and sends spam with your corporate return address.
AOL, Yahoo, Comcast and other commercial email providers blacklist your domain so no email flows to commercial addresses.
In our case, this happened briefly.
We first contacted all the major commercial email providers to inform them that we are a legitimate business and not a spammer.
We checked blacklist sites to ensure we were not flagged as a spammer (or contacted those services/companies which had marked us as such)
To prevent the problem from recurring, we enhanced our Proofpoint email appliance as follows:
If a message is sent that has a spam score of 100 and has more than 25 recipients take the following actions, we
1. Quarantine the message
2. Send an alert to the user to contact the IS Support center to make sure there account has not been compromised
3. Alert the messaging team of the quarantined message for remediation
Who would have thought that a single user, falling prey to phishing scheme, could result in the blocking of commercial email flow?
The internet can be a swamp of malware and malcontents!
Monday, June 25, 2012
Taking Sustainability to the Next Step
I've written previously about sustainability and my efforts to maintain a green lifestyle at home as well as create green data centers.
Now that my wife and I have moved to a rural location, we have have many more opportunities to implement alternative energy resources than in our slate roofed 1930's home in Wellesley. We've begun the study of solar technology in depth.
Photovoltaic prices have dropped, efficiencies have increased, and reliability has improved. Federal tax credits (30% of purchase price) are available until 2016. Massachusetts state tax credits for 15% of the purchase price up to $1000 are available.
Our barn is entirely south facing and we can install enough Hyundai Heavy Industries HiS-S245MG(BK) modules to generate 8351 kilowatt hours of power per year, about half the projected energy needs for the farm.
Although panels are at their lowest prices in history and the technology is better than ever before, the rapid evolution of panels means they will be obsolete within 5 years, although they will continue to function for at least 20. The solar panels of the future may be a thin film directly applied to shingles or three dimensional high output arrays
This presents us with a challenge - do we buy a technology that will rapidly evolve? Do we lease the panels, give the tax credit to the leasing company,and avoid the capital costs of a purchase/the operating costs of maintenance/the need to own the panels.
We've looked at Sungevity and other solar leasing companies and the notion of capturing the savings of a 50% reduction in energy bills without having to worry about lifecycle management or obsolesce seems attractive.
Since we're replacing the roof on the barn over the next year, it makes great sense to put solar panels with a 20 year life on top of a new roof with a 25 year life. At the end of 20 years, the leasing company simply hauls away the panels. Our cost of the lease is about $100 per month, netting us about a $10,000 savings in energy costs over the life of the lease.
Have you purchased or leased panels? Is leasing the right choice to capture the savings without the ownership risks of rapidly evolving technology?
For us, there's an opportunity to get closer to off grid living. Capturing the tax credits and incentives before they expire seems like the right thing to do. I welcome others experiences.
Now that my wife and I have moved to a rural location, we have have many more opportunities to implement alternative energy resources than in our slate roofed 1930's home in Wellesley. We've begun the study of solar technology in depth.
Photovoltaic prices have dropped, efficiencies have increased, and reliability has improved. Federal tax credits (30% of purchase price) are available until 2016. Massachusetts state tax credits for 15% of the purchase price up to $1000 are available.
Our barn is entirely south facing and we can install enough Hyundai Heavy Industries HiS-S245MG(BK) modules to generate 8351 kilowatt hours of power per year, about half the projected energy needs for the farm.
Although panels are at their lowest prices in history and the technology is better than ever before, the rapid evolution of panels means they will be obsolete within 5 years, although they will continue to function for at least 20. The solar panels of the future may be a thin film directly applied to shingles or three dimensional high output arrays
This presents us with a challenge - do we buy a technology that will rapidly evolve? Do we lease the panels, give the tax credit to the leasing company,and avoid the capital costs of a purchase/the operating costs of maintenance/the need to own the panels.
We've looked at Sungevity and other solar leasing companies and the notion of capturing the savings of a 50% reduction in energy bills without having to worry about lifecycle management or obsolesce seems attractive.
Since we're replacing the roof on the barn over the next year, it makes great sense to put solar panels with a 20 year life on top of a new roof with a 25 year life. At the end of 20 years, the leasing company simply hauls away the panels. Our cost of the lease is about $100 per month, netting us about a $10,000 savings in energy costs over the life of the lease.
Have you purchased or leased panels? Is leasing the right choice to capture the savings without the ownership risks of rapidly evolving technology?
For us, there's an opportunity to get closer to off grid living. Capturing the tax credits and incentives before they expire seems like the right thing to do. I welcome others experiences.
Friday, June 22, 2012
Cool Technology of the Week
The Google Map screen shot above illustrates the issue, showing how current traffic can extend the commute to from 35 minutes to over an a hour.
Red Sox games, college move ins, and inclement weather can truly disrupt the cadence of a day.
What do I use to adjust my commute in real time? Toyota Entune, a free iPhone app for Toyota owners.
As a Prius driver since 2005, I log over 30,000 miles a year in hybrid vehicles visiting all the BIDMC affiliates throughout Eastern Massachusetts. In early 2012, I purchased a Prius V which serves as a kind of hybrid truck for my day job and my farm duties.
Toyota Entune provides real time traffic speeds (as well as many other interactive features). I simply connect my iPhone 4S to the Prius V via USB and immediately the car integrates real time traffic flow data into the navigation system via my data plan.
Entune can automatically reroute while you're driving based on optimal commute times, fuel efficiency or distance. Each day I avoid road construction, accidents and even Red Sox home games (which are shown in detail on the Entune connected Prius Nav System). The end result is that I save an hour a day and my commute with Entune from the farm is even faster that my old commute to Wellesley.
Real time optimized navigation via an iPhone app connected to your car's navigation system. That's cool!
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