More on Twitter

by Felix Francis
[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]
Twitter’s growing pains:
[Via Buzzworthy]

It’s hardly news that Twitter is experiencing growing pains, but a couple of items have appeared in recent days that shed some new light on just how bad they’re getting.
[More]

As mentioned below, some of the problems Twitter is having while trying to scale are rooted in its basic communication paradigm. It is much more complex than a system based on the telephone company. It is almost as if every phone call was a 5 or 6 person conference call.

Difficult to do with the best experts. But it sounds like Twitter was somewhat surprised by the direction its technology took and was not prepared for the type of growth it sustained. It is still a very small company and one that may not have had onboard all the engineering help it needed.

Twitter is, fundamentally, a messaging system. Twitter was not architected as a messaging system, however. For expediency’s sake, Twitter was built with technologies and practices that are more appropriate to a content management system. Over the last year and a half we’ve tried to make our system behave like a messaging system as much as possible, but that’s introduced a great deal of complexity and unpredictability. When we’re in crisis mode, adding more instrumentation to help us navigate the web of interdependencies in our current architecture is often our primary recourse. This is, clearly, not optimal.

Twitter broke ground on a new manner of using Web 2.0 tools. Time will tell if it is able to maintain its initial success.There are some very difficult problems that have to be solved. But there will be somebody who solves the scaling problem because this tool is just too useful.

Google was not the first search engine., just the best one so far. Web 2.0 works by allowing rapid prototyping of new tools as one works towards perfection. Twitter was able to accomplish a lot with really very little. It has hit a barrier now. It will be interesting to see how this problem get solved. It is not too unlikely that a user who is really knowledgeable will propose a solution.

We have kept an eye on the public discussions about what our architecture should be. Our favorite post from the community is by someone who’s actually tried to build a service similar to Twitter. Many of the best practices in scalability are inapplicable to the peculiar problem space of social messaging. Many off-the-shelf technologies that seem like intuitive fits do not, on closer inspection, meet our needs. We appreciate the creativity that the technical community has offered up in thinking about our issues, but our issues won’t be resolved in an afternoon’s blogging.

We’d like people to know that we’re motivated by the community discussion around our architecture. We’re immersed in ideas about improving our system, and we have a clear direction forward that takes into account many of the bright suggestions that have emerged from the community.

To those taking the time to blog about our architecture, I encourage you to check out our jobs page. If you want to make Twitter better, there’s no more direct way than getting involved in our engineering efforts. We love kicking around ideas, but code speaks louder than words.

That would be the Web 2.0 way.

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Creation, Social media, Web 2.0

Twitter - Good and Bad

by kevindooley
[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]
Am I Done with Facebook? Twitter FTW!:
[Via Phil Windley's Technometria]

I got a message from Facebook today saying that someone had friended me. I realized I didn’t care. Not that I didn’t care about the person who’d friended me–I didn’t care about Facebook. It’s been weeks since I was there and my life is pretty much the same.
I think the reason is Twitter. Twitter is much more social, much more interesting, and the plethora of clients (including any mobile phone with SMS) means that I don’t have to remember to go check the site to see what’s happening. Twitterific displays a solid stream of the 140 character thoughts of my friends.

Because of Twitter, today I know:
There were tornados in Denver and Laramie
Twitter posted an article about their architecture on their blog
There’s a blogger dinner tonight in Salt Lake City
@tylerwhitaker and @bradbaldwin aren’t going to carpool to the blogger dinner

I like that.

Twitter has scaling problems even though their user base is reportedly quite small. As Nik Cubrilovic points out, Twitter isn’t like WordPress or Digg. Twitter is a group forming network (GFN). When a Metcalfeian network adds another user, the number of potential connections goes from N² to (N+1)². When a GFN adds one more user, the number of potential connections goes from 2^N to 2^(N+1). In case it’s been a while since you’d done that math–it’s a big difference.

There are three important ‘Laws’ dealing with networks, social or otherwise: Sarnoff’s, Metcalfe’s and Reed’s. Sarnoff’s Law states that the value of a network (David Sarnoff started NBC) is proportional to the number of nodes. Metcalfe’s Law states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes. Reed’s Law states that the value of a network increases exponentially with the number of nodes.

Sarnoff’s is linear. It simply demonstrates how much NBC would make if another viewer joined the network. Since the network communicates in only one direction from a single source, the number of connections does not change much with increasing numbers of nodes.

Metcalf’s assumes the nodes can communicate with each other, resulting in multiple connections. This is where network effects come into play. One phone is not useful. Two are a little better, but a network of 10 can be very useful. Metcalf first showed this using this figure:

The line corresponds to Sarnoff’s Law. Metcalf’s, which was derived from the first Ethernet networks, shows that the value for small numbers in a communication network is not great. But this increases rapidly with larger networks.

Now Reed’s law looks at the number of groups that can be formed in a network. So take all the nodes 2 at a time, 3 at a time and so on. This results in the number growing at a rate proportional to 2^N. This is much faster growth than Metcalf’s. You can be a member of several different groups, some which have members in common and some that do not.

What this means is that in some social media settings, the number of groups can increase much faster than the number of connections. Here is a consequence of this:

To make this more real, consider TechCrunch’s twitter account. When TechCrunch, with almost 18000 followers, sends a message, that results in 18000 messages–one to each follower. This is like the phone system with infinite, always-on conference call capability. Sure, you can do things internally to collapse some messages, but you’re still dealing with exponential growth.

What is happening with Twitter, that is making it have problems scaling, is that the number of groups substantially increases the number of possible connections and messages it might have to maintain. With email, everyone on the list is sent a copy of the email, that sits on their computer and take up space. Twitter sends messages to phones, for example, possibly 18000 of them in this example.

That is a lot of wasted effort. Twitter may not be the best way to communicate with a large number of people in several different groups.

Technorati Tags: Social media, Web 2.0

Use this tool for searching

by digitalART (artct45)
[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]
A search engine for open notebook science:
[Via Michael Nielsen]

There has been some great discussion in the comments on my post about “Open science”. One outcome is that Jean-Claude Bradley has created a search engine customized for open notebook science:

http://tinyurl.com/4multu

Fittingly, many people contributed to the discussion!

This demonstrates one of the nice abilities of Web 2.0 approaches. Google permits you to set up a custom search for a group of websites. This allows you to perform a directed search using specific terms against a designated group of websites.

This example examines a group of Open Science sites but it is easy to see how this might be useful for other sites. This way you do not have to work your way through a multitudeof irrelevant sites.

RSS is really good for bringing me content but what if I want to find an article from one of my newsfeeds from a few months ago? With this, I can simply add all the websites I track to the custom search. Then I am searching a much smaller but very directed subset of the web and am much likelier to find the old article I read.

A user-generated subset of Google web searches may be very useful for linking the content of several sites. This could be fun to play with. I’ll have to put one together for Science 2.0.

Technorati Tags: Science, Web 2.0

Cool Pistols

by ComputerHotline
Science probe for ’space pistols’:
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition]

Scientists investigate whether a former US president’s duelling pistols were really made from a meteorite.
[More]

Short answer - not from a meteorite. but wait, they may not be the real pistols and there is a third pistol that could be the one. They just have to find it first.

Or, the pistols could just be made from an unusual allow that looks more expensive that it is, accompanied by a flowery story to impress an American President. it would not be the first time a tall tale was used.

Technorati Tags: Technology

No wonder

by blakespot
Why is the FEC Using TRS-80’s?:
[Via Balloon Juice]

Am I not understanding this:

The record-shattering fundraising by Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has reshaped the financing of presidential elections and generated breathless coverage and analysis of the otherwise arcane area of campaign finance.

Yet it’s had another consequence that has gone all but unnoticed. The campaign finance reports filed by Obama and Clinton have grown so massive that they’ve strained the capacity of the Federal Election Commission, good government groups, the media and even software applications to process and make sense of the data.

A milestone of sorts was reached earlier this year, when Obama, the Illinois senator whose revolutionary online fundraising has overwhelmed Clinton, filed an electronic fundraising report so large it could not be processed by popular basic spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel 2003 and Lotus 1-2-3.

Those programs can’t download data files with more than 65,536 rows or 256 columns.

***

If you want to comb through Obama or Clinton’s cash, you either need to divide and import their reports section-by-section (a time-consuming and mind-numbing process) or purchase a more powerful database application, such as Microsoft Access or Microsoft Excel 2007, both of which retail for $229.

The FEC can’t afford a copy of Excel 2007? I can lend them my laptop if they need, but they better not talk while I am watching BSG, and they should be warned that Tunch loves company and will probably pester them when they come over.

It is not clear that from the article that the SEC has any problem with the data. It is simple stating that the files from Clinton and Obama are so big that you could not use Excel 2003 for them. It does not state that the SEC does not have Excel 2007.

So it is pretty much a filler article trying to look more important than it is. The main bit of real information - the campaigns now have so many donors that they overwhelm old software. Whoopi.

Technorati Tags: Education, Government, Politics

Virtual Fun At Work

by MrClean1982
[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]
Next generation of business software could get more fun :
[Via Washington Post]

Once upon a time, people bonded with their co-workers on office softball teams and traded gossip at the watercooler.

OK, so those days aren’t gone yet. But as big companies parcel Information Age work to people in widely dispersed locations, it’s getting harder for colleagues to develop the camaraderie that comes from being in the same place. Beyond making work less fun, feeling disconnected from comrades might be a drag on productivity.

Now technology researchers are trying to replicate old-fashioned office interactions by transforming everyday business software for the new era of work. The historically dry-as-sawdust products are borrowing elements from video games and social-networking Web sites.
[More]

People are social animals and usually need some unstructured time to blow off steam, relax and generally recharge their batteries. In many business environments there are a host of conventions to accomplish this, from birthday parties to golf tournaments to lounges.

Online work will also include similar processes. As this article discusses, there are many approaches to creating break time in a virtual world. Where these tools can be important in research is that many bright ideas come up from the random interaction of a couple of scientists, often in a bar or a party. Crick famously drew up the list of the twenty amino acids used in protein synthesis on a napkin while at a pub before any real evidence existed.

They will have to be careful that the areas are not TOO much fun. Disney is finding out how hard it can be to shutdown a virtual world years after it has served its purpose. But using aspects of Second Life in a business setting may be important for a truly creative research experience.

So online water coolers, ‘inward Bound’ sessions, and even golf tournaments (with trophies) will be important. Just as many research facilities are built today to foster the random interaction of researchers as they stroll between lab and office, online work areas will be designed to take advantage of the non-structured interactions all humans need.

There has always been a little bit of randomness in almost every great scientific endeavor.

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Creation, Social media, Web 2.0

Technorati Tags: Social media, Web 2.0

Science 0.5

Biology was a lot more fun in the 70s. From 1971. Narrated by Paul Berg at Stanford. He won the Nobel Prize in 1980 “for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant-DNA.”

I first saw this in 1975 when I was in High School. No fancy animation, just hundreds of people and a fire extinguisher. The world was more innocent then. So was science.

Technorati Tags: Entertainment, Science

Open and Transparent

by Shutr

[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]

Doctors Say ‘I’m Sorry’ Before ‘See You in Court’ :
[Via New York Times]

In 40 years as a highly regarded cancer surgeon, Dr. Tapas K. Das Gupta had never made a mistake like this.

As with any doctor, there had been occasional errors in diagnosis or judgment. But never, he said, had he opened up a patient and removed the wrong sliver of tissue, in this case a segment of the eighth rib instead of the ninth.

Once an X-ray provided proof in black and white, Dr. Das Gupta, the 74-year-old chairman of surgical oncology at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago, did something that normally would make hospital lawyers cringe: he acknowledged his mistake to his patient’s face, and told her he was deeply sorry.

Think about what might happen if the lawyers took a lower profile and the doctors admitted their mistakes, if they were open with their patients. Turns out, something significant happens. Most people accept the apology and forgive the doctor.

This approach directly contradicts what most lawyers advise.

For decades, malpractice lawyers and insurers have counseled doctors and hospitals to “deny and defend.” Many still warn clients that any admission of fault, or even expression of regret, is likely to invite litigation and imperil careers.

But with providers choking on malpractice costs and consumers demanding action against medical errors, a handful of prominent academic medical centers, like Johns Hopkins and Stanford, are trying a disarming approach.

People get really angry when they find out the error was concealed and that it might happen again. As with political scandals, it is the coverup that causes the problems.

So what happens if the doctors and hospitals are open with their patients?

At the University of Michigan Health System, one of the first to experiment with full disclosure, existing claims and lawsuits dropped to 83 in August 2007 from 262 in August 2001, said Richard C. Boothman, the medical center’s chief risk officer.

“Improving patient safety and patient communication is more likely to cure the malpractice crisis than defensiveness and denial,” Mr. Boothman said.

Mr. Boothman emphasized that he could not know whether the decline was due to disclosure or safer medicine, or both. But the hospital’s legal defense costs and the money it must set aside to pay claims have each been cut by two-thirds, he said. The time taken to dispose of cases has been halved.

The number of malpractice filings against the University of Illinois has dropped by half since it started its program just over two years ago, said Dr. Timothy B. McDonald, the hospital’s chief safety and risk officer. In the 37 cases where the hospital acknowledged a preventable error and apologized, only one patient has filed suit. Only six settlements have exceeded the hospital’s medical and related expenses.

From 262 to 83 in 6 years. Defense costs down by two-thirds. Malpractice cut in half. These are game changing numbers, in the completely opposite direction from what lawyers said would happen.

The hospitals have also taken to following up the apology with fair compensation. This has had the effect of changing the behavior of malpractice attorneys.

There also has been an attitudinal shift among plaintiff’s lawyers who recognize that injured clients benefit when they are compensated quickly, even if for less. That is particularly true now that most states have placed limits on non-economic damages.

In Michigan, trial lawyers have come to understand that Mr. Boothman will offer prompt and fair compensation for real negligence but will give no quarter in defending doctors when the hospital believes that the care was appropriate.

“The filing of a lawsuit at the University of Michigan is now the last option, whereas with other hospitals it tends to be the first and only option,” said Norman D. Tucker, a trial lawyer in Southfield, Mich. “We might give cases a second look before filing because if it’s not going to settle quickly, tighten up your cinch. It’s probably going to be a long ride.

In all likelihood, more money ends up in the patient’s pocket and less in lawyer fees. As long as the awards are also open, so that the hospitals can not manipulate the settlements too much, and people can really see that they are not committing the same errors again and again, the beneficial cycle of this should not only drive malpractice suits lower but also help care in the hospitals.

Quality improvement committees openly examine cases that once would have vanished into sealed courthouse files. Errors become teaching opportunities rather than badges of shame.

“I think this is the key to patient safety in the country,” Dr. McDonald said. “If you do this with a transparent point of view, you’re more likely to figure out what’s wrong and put processes in place to improve it.”

For instance, he said, a sponge left inside an patient led the hospital to start X-raying patients during and after surgery. Eight objects have been found, one of them an electrode that dislodged from a baby’s scalp during a Caesarian section in 2006.

This looks like a program that could have huge effects across the country. By admitting their errors and treating the patients like rational human beings, the doctors remove themselves from antagonistic relationships, the hospitals spend less money on lawsuits and the standard of care goes up.

All by showing a little openness and transparency.

Technorati Tags: Health, Science, Sustainability

Incredible

Amazing Animated Street Art:

[Via chrisbrogan.com]

Found this via Matt Mason’s Pirate’s Dilemma blog. This is street art by Blu. It’s incredible. Think about all that went into making this happen. Something for your right brain today:

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

What a lot of work. Now this is a creative use of street art.

Technorati Tags: Entertainment

Credit where credit is due

by Shereen M
[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]
Who needs coauthors?:
[Via Survival Blog for Scientists]

Young people, in tenure track positions, feel they to have to collect as many authorships as possible. Questions like “Will I be a coauthor?” and demands as “I have to be a coauthor” are part of daily conversations in science institutes.
But not only junior scientists are eager to boost their cv’s with authored papers.
[More]

Biology papers usually have large numbers of authors. It is rare to see a major paper in Nature or Science with two authors. Often modern papers are the results of collaborative research between multiple institutions. It makes it easier to get your name on a lot of papers but also makes proper assignation of credit difficult.

Credit for papers can be incredibly important and manipulation of the credit is not unheard of. Harvey Fletcher was a graduate student for Robert Millikan around 1910. Fletcher developed and designed the oil-drop experiments that measured the charge on an electron as well as investigations on Brownian motion that led to a better determination of Avogadro’s number.

Now, Fletcher could use a published paper in lieu of his Ph.D. thesis but only if he was sole author.

Millikin proposed that Fletcher be the sole author on the Brownian motion work and Millikan would be sole author on the electron charge work, even though Fletcher’s work was critical in both. Millikan knew which one would be the more important paper. As a graduate student, Fletcher really had no choice but to acquiesce to Millikan’s proposal.

Millikan published as sole author of the paper on the charge of the electron. Fletcher wrote on Avogadro’s constant. Millikan won the Nobel Prize in 1923. Although, Fletcher became the first physics student to graduate from The University of Chicago summa cum laude, he spent most of the next 38 years outside of academia, working at Bell Laboratories.

Although he did not win the Nobel Prize, he had a tremendous impact on many of the technologies that were developed in the 20th Century. At Bell Labs, he not only became ‘the father of stereophonic sound’ but was the director of the labs that developed the transistor.

What this shows is that while a true genius can not be stopped by who published what, in the scientific world, particularly in academia, the assignment of credit has huge ramifications. Almost anyone who takes physics knows about Millikan and the oil-drop experiment. Who knows about Fletcher?

These days, often the person who did the research is first author and the person who directed the research or whose lab supported the research is last. Everyone else involved in smaller amounts is in between.

But this can change. Often with 20 authors, no one ever gets to the last one when the article is referenced. The bibliography will just be ‘Smith, et al.’ So sometimes, the director of the lab will be placed as first author instead of last so everyone sees their name in the references.

So how does proper credit actually get assigned? In large measure, figuring out who designed the critical experiment, who simply provided reagents and who had critical intellectual input are all hidden from general view. This permits political pressures, such as what Millikan used on Fletcher, to determine placement, rather than actual worth.

Huge battles have been waged over where one’s name gets placed in a paper. Since this is what the world will see, it is worth it for many people to spend all their political capital to get a choice placement on a paper. A lot of scientific blood may have been spilt in order to get on a paper published in Nature.

Sometimes those in the know have an idea of proper credit but tenure committees, grant committees and other vetting bodies can have a difficult time telling just what contribution a scientist made on a paper with 40 authors.

There have been some attempts at better clarifying this, with authors making statements about who did what. Perhaps as we move away from the current model of publishing to one more digital in nature, there will be approaches to simplify this process.

In particular, there will have to be a way to assign credit for things other than just the number of publications. Scoring the impact people had on those publications, what work they actually performed and where they can be placed in the process that lead to novel scientific discoveries will become more likely, if the social media aspects of Science 2.0 comes to be appreciated.

Because every one of those aspects can be time-stamped and made accessible by using things like wikis and weblogs in ways that email will never accomplish. Openness and transparency, important aspects of successful Web 2.0 tools, will also make it possible to more accurately track the progress of creativity and innovation. Surely rewards will follow.

Will Science 2.0 make it less likely that political pressures can be used to claim credit that is not deserved? Being human, the pressures may never disappear. But Science 2.0 should make it a little more difficult to claim credit after the fact. Fletcher kept the secret of Millikan’s proposal until after he died. In those days, it was easier to control the flow of information, to hide political manipulations of the research.

Now, not as much.

Technorati Tags: Open Access, Science, Social media, Web 2.0

A new use for the Post Office

Electronics Recycling by Mail:
[Via Social Design Notes]
On March 18, the U.S. Postal Service announced that the Clover Technologies Group would provide postage paid envelopes to mail them expired inkjet cartridges, PDAs, Blackberries, digital cameras, iPods or MP3 players to be reused, refurbished or recycled. Envelops will be available at U.S. Post Offices at no cost to the public. Only a pilot project for now, but could expand nationally. (via)

This is a nice idea. I wonder what all the energy costs of recycling are, though? It would be nice to know what they are able to recycle and what is just hazardous material they have to dispose of.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Non-Profit, Sustainability

Peak Oil and hospitals

by Frenkieb

Rising Energy Costs and the Future of Hospital Work:
[Via The Oil Drum - Discussions about Energy and Our Future]

This is a talk given by Dan Bednarz to a group of nurses. The talk was given at the House of Delegates Meeting of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses & Allied Professionals (Pasnap) in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on April 29, 2008.

Dan is a healthcare consultant who tries to get people in healthcare (including public health) to start thinking about peak oil and climate change issues and how to address them. In Dan’s words, he is “a healthcare consultant building a consortium among public health and health care stakeholders and actors to address peak oil, climate change and related environmental issues”. Dan posts on TOD under the name Danb.

Hello, it’s nice to be with you today. My intent is to give you a realistic take on the future of your profession by explaining why healthcare and nursing will be transformed by rising energy costs. Is there danger ahead? You bet. It’s going to be difficult, probably life-changing for all Americans. Here’s why: the scale of our energy predicament is enormous, unprecedented and grossly misunderstood by institutional leaders and most of the media.

I know some of you may be wondering, Energy scarcity? That’s someone else’s problem; put this guy in touch with geologists and politicians.

So let’s step back for the big picture.
[break]
Overview

A few numbers to set the context:

•The amount of crude oil pumped out of the ground has been on a bumpy plateau since May of 2005. Until then oil production was steadily increasing about 2% a year-–with periodic declines–and the world had a daily surplus, or emergency cushion. That surplus is gone, everything produced, supply, is immediately purchased, demand. Whether or not the world has reached “peak oil”-–the point at which yearly total worldwide extraction cannot be increased–this 3 year plateau indicates that the era of cheap energy is over.

•Oil is now over $100.00 a barrel. It was $10.00 a barrel in November 1998.

•Oil powers 90% of all transportation and it is essential to food production and distribution; it is the primary ingredient in many products-–think plastics, petrochemicals, and clothing. It is fair to say that all our institutions, especially medicine, are dependent upon oil, the lynchpin resource that keeps the economy humming and allows it to grow.

•And it’s not just oil that’s getting scarce. Natural gas in Pittsburgh went up 30% on April 1st, to $12.50 per MCF (thousand cubic feet); it was $2.50 in 2001. Typically, the cost of natural gas drops after the winter but here we are facing higher prices during the summer.

•Coal is becoming scarce in many countries and more expensive here; its price has about doubled in the past year. It is our main source of electricity. In about 15 years the world may hit a peak in its production, and this combined with the fact that natural gas-–the secondary source of electricity generation–simultaneously will be at or past its peak, poses a threat to our supply of electricity.

•To put a human face on this, a polling agency found in December 2007 that 12% of Americans planned to put their winter energy bills on their credit card-–no wonder Christmas spending was down. An article in this past Saturday’s New York Times details the rising number of people unable to pay their winter utility bills and now facing service cutoffs. Many hospitals in California are on the verge of bankruptcy; rising energy costs-–in tandem with other increasing costs–could be a breaking point for them. Further, we are merely at the beginning of what some of you recognize as Jim Kunstler’s poetic phrase “The Long Emergency.”

•The total amount of energy the world gets from fossil fuels is predicted to peak in 2010, so we’ve probably got about two years before systemic disruptions and breakdowns become commonplace and then worsen. Even now we see the airlines struggling, food prices soaring, and we have a fiscal/financial crisis of unknown scope that is connected to the price of oil in numerous ways I cannot delve into today.

Energy usage in hospitals is increasing 4-8 fold each year. How in the world are we going to be able to afford medical costs when the price of energy increases also? This is a really difficult problem. And oil is not only important for energy. Almost everything used in a hospital includes plastics made from fossil fuels. These have also increased in price.

He concludes with these statement. It is critically important to understand how the cost of energy not only the cars we drive but the medicine we expect. This is also heading towards a crisis point unless we change our energy policies.

1.I feel safe observing that the vast majority of insurance companies, medical associations, HMOs and other hospital associations will resist facing the stark consequences of peak oil because they are benefiting from the status quo. On the other hand, those hospitals with a mission for stewardship of the earth and charitable activity are likely to be among the first to recognize the need for radical change in medical care.

2.In the same vein, it’s obvious that nursing is not prospering even though it is in some ways the backbone of the system. Your profession’s main themes for reforming the healthcare system should center-–I hate to use the word “should”–around radical resource conservation and efficiency, and the elimination of wasteful and environmentally harmful practices. In other words, reduce, reuse, recycle, and repair.

3.Simultaneously, there will be a political struggle for the soul of healthcare: We will look to other nations with decent health systems where three core values predominate: 1) no one goes bankrupt due to medical status; 2) no one is denied treatment for any reason, and 3) preventive and treatment medicine are integrated. This means one response to energy downturn leads to healthcare for all. The alternative to this is medicine becoming something for the wealthy few, with the rest of society receiving what amounts to triage-–or, alternatively, home care or “folk medicine.” In some respects these alternatives represent the familiar themes of the Jeffersonian/egalitarian and Hamiltonian/elitist traditions.

4.By forming a coalition with public health and even some of the growing number of doctors who favor a “single-payer” system, nursing can shape the transformation of our healthcare system.

Technorati Tags: Environment

Big or small

by ThunderChild the Magnificent

[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]
Social Software: Freestanding or Layered?:
[Via A Journey In Social Media]

Had an interesting phone interview the other day, and we got into the topic above, which I found interesting.

We both agreed that we were going to see far more social software in the enterprise in the coming years.  The question was more about architecture — would these software packages be purchased and deployed as free-standing entities, or would they be thought more in terms of a “layer” over something else already in the enterprise.

And, if you’re aspiring to be a social media proficiency practitioner (as I am) — or a vendor that’s selling to people like me — the answer might matter to you.

Enterprise Buying Patterns

If you listen to software vendors who are trying to sell in the enterprise, they’ll usually make it sound like all sorts of large, important companies are buying their software.

However, if you dig down a bit, the truth is more usually that some group or another within that large organization made a purchasing decision. It wasn’t what I’d call a corporate decision.

As an example, let’s take SAP — a large, enterprise ERP platform.  No single group or department within a corporation will go out and deploy SAP — it just doesn’t make sense.  100% of their customers are probably “corporate decisions” rather than “group decisions” within a large company.

To take the opposite to an extreme, I happen to use SanDisk USB memory sticks.  Does that mean that EMC Corporation - a Fortune 500 company!! — uses SanDisk USB memory sticks?  Technically yes, but I think you get my point.

Why does this matter for social software?

Because I think there’s a big difference between some engineering group putting in a wiki for their team, and a large corporation making a strategic decision for all their employees.  Trust me, the buying criteria will be very, very different.

If I’m selling to a small group, I’d want an offering that’s focused on price, ease of installation, price, ease of management, price — and maybe price.

If I’m selling to a large enterprise, though, the list is very different.  If I’m a large enterprise, I’ve already made many, many investments in existing infrastructure software.I want my new social software to work with everything I have — not as another free-standing entity, but as a “layer”.

And I’ll pay extra for that capability.

[More]

An interesting discussion of the needs of a large company vs. a small company. The large company wants something that will act as a social layer over what it already has. It will not want to reinvest in calendaring, directories, etc.

To a certain extent, this is software lock-in. The choices of the company are limited by what others have decided to add on to previously purchased software. It is certainly a way to go but will reduce the types of tools the users can access.

As an example, if a company waits until Microsoft provides a social layer over Outlook, it could be a while. Even if a third company provided this solution, its updates may not be timely, hurting the company’s competitiveness against companies that can utilize new software more rapidly. They are tied to the develop cycle of the vendor, not the technology.

Web 2.0 technologies can change very fast. Twitter was hardly anywhere 6 months ago. Now it is being used by millions. So there is a trap for large organizations, especially ones on the innovation train.

Also, the tools need to meet the needs of the users to be successful.

That is one thing not addressed in the post. People will really only take advantage of these tools if it makes their work flow easier. A group at the company may need and utilize Web 2.0 tools in a very different fashion than others in the company. How does the company deal with this?

Trying to use a tool that may be ‘best’ for the needs of HR may not mean Research is happy. The best tools may be the ones that resemble Swiss Army knives, with multiple attachments, than simply a layer over Outlook. They may need to be almost infinitely customizable.

I do agree that the user needs to have a single point of entry to the social web. But there has to be a recognition that new tools are being developed and that they may have to be implemented someday. A real worry should be that a large enterprise may not be as nimble with the successful recognition of vital new tools. This flattens the playing field with those companies that can utilize the new tools.

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Creation, Social media, Web 2.0

Complete with live links

MY NEW LIFE ….:
[Via Amygdala]

MY NEW LIFE.

Okay, it just feels a little like that. But it feels good so far.

Neat actual story, though.

Maker Faire is a celebration of the community of people who like to pull stuff apart and put stuff together, but it’s also a draw for those who like to teach. So it was not surprising to find a team from the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Dark Room pavilion, a set-up where you could find a harp whose “strings” were laser beams, bicycle wheels fitted with programmable light-emitting diodes that drew shapes as the wheels spun, and people wrapped in glowing fiber-optic lines. The folks from Santa Cruz (university mascot: the banana slug) had brought their giant Tesla coil.

Maker Faire looks pretty cool. And John Schwartz is my kind of guy.

[...] The crowd applauded like mad. Professor Schalk stuck a microphone in my face and asked, “Do you have anything to say?”

“Klaatu Barada Nikto,” I said.

I’d never insert links in something I was quoting, of course, so I also note that it’s neat that the NY Times has taken to inserting appropriate links in some stories just like any other blogger.
[More]

I mentioned a few days ago about live links in news articles. The NYT does it as evidenced in this article. Not only does it save the author from the need to explain his phrase, it helps provide greater information to a large group of people in ways that would not be strictly appropriate for a newspaper.

This is a nice example of how the medium of the Internet changes the news media. It provides a personal insight into some interesting experiments. And, instead of portraying the enthusiasts as some really weird kind of microbe.

No, this was someone who had bought stuff from the Edmund Scientific Catalog when he was young, something many incipient scientists did when we were young. In fact, I clicked on his link just to be amazed that Edmund was still around. (They have a Trebuchet Kit on the front page. Cool!) This writer is not afraid of writing about his inner geek.

And his last line struck a chord, since I use those words all the time for geeky things. They are the words used to prevent Gort from destroying Earth after the death of the envoy Klaatu. I would have linked to another article than the IMDB page but no real matter.

The movie, an allegory of Christ mashed up with a science fiction plot, was much deeper and interesting than any other movies of its time. It still holds up pretty well, over 50 years later. I still appreciate the last speech that the alien Klaatu makes:

I am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one is secure. Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We, of the other planets, have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first sign of violence, they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is, we live in peace, without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war. Free to pursue more… profitable enterprises. Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.

Now I’m not sure I would create some super-powerful robots to act as policemen but it seemed to work for them. And it was a message that was clearly different from many other movies that utilized giant ants to create drama.

The Day the Earth Stood Still is one of my favorite SF movies. I was thunderstruck then to see that they are are doing a remake due out for Christmas. Starring Keanu Reeves! I am not hopeful. Michael Rennie has an aura about him that was unworldly, in a detached sort of way you could get the Christ allegory without too much prodding (calling him Mr. Carpenter was about a strong a hint as needed). I do not expect Keanu to maintain the same sort of dignity and fully expect that if they keep the allegory it will be made much more explicit.

Well, maybe I’ll be surprised. I certainly was with one of my favorite comic book characters, Iron Man, and the movie they made for him. Now if they could just to the same for Doc. Strange.

Technorati Tags: Open Access, Entertainment, Web 2.0

Weird legal stuff

by the_kid_cl
Man jailed when daughter fails to get diploma:
[Via The Seattle Times]

A man ordered by a judge to make sure his daughter hit the books has found himself in jail because she failed to earn a high school equivalency diploma.
[More]

I’d like to hear more about this. The daughter is almost 19, has a fiance, an 18-month old child, lives with her mother, yet the father is the one going to jail for 6 months because the daughter did not get a GED. I thought that after 16, you could not be compelled to attend school. And how does a non-custoidial parent become responsible for an adult?

Lots of questions. Judges are not usually quite this stupid without some sort of legal reasoning. I wonder what the original charges were and why they were brought. There is really only one side of this story here. But it is a really weird side. Who gets 6 months in jail anyway? Just weird.

Technorati Tags: General, Government