TGIF. Many things happened this week which may impact many of us in the world of technology and internet applications.
Hewlett Packard replaced Lou Apotheker with Meg Whitman in the wake of the discontinuance of the HP Touchpad, the announcement of HP disbanding or selling their HP consumer product line (apparently their printer division will still continue, since it is the dominant printer manufacturer, and also produces significant revenue for HP.
The demise of Apotheker comes not so much from his decisions to make strategic changes, but his poor communication and people skills in dealing with his Board of Directors and the Stockholders. It must have seemed heavy-handed and the investors voted with a 50% reduction in stock price as many unloaded their shares in the weeks since the announcement was made. This came after only 11 months of Apotheker’s reign (apparently of terror). Reports were that Apotheker lacked some leadership abilities critical to management of a diverse HP enterprise.
On the internet side and Web 2.0 Social media announced the expansion of SM with Google +, Google Hangouts and several new versions all within the past three months. Google + gained 45 million new users in less than three months and the growth is still exponential. While Facebook states it has over 600 million users it is 6-7 or more years old. Analysis shows that FBs growth has stagnated. Users of both platforms have a diverse opinion of how G+ stacks up against.
There is a dichotomy of opinion. Many FB fans are intensely loyal and are vocal about G+s failings while some have willingly jumped the FB ship, announcing how ‘lame’ FB has become.
Google + has loosened it’s ban on pseudonyms for user names, but remains a non-commercial platform.FB remains the dominant marketing SM tool. Many enterprises have just adopted SM for marketing and G+ does not as yet have a significant user base (45 million for G+ vs. 600+million for Facebook.
In the past several weeks this writer spent about six hours a day on Google +. Part of it was a learning experience. I learned much about Hangouts.. Health care has much to learn from and use in Hangouts.
I held an ophthalmology video conference based upon a user list serve for ophthalmology which is international in scope well respected and attended daily. Users who usually only communicate in writing and once or less a year at meetings were able to see and talk in real time to discuss interesting cases, display images with the restrictions in place by HIPAA. I was able to share the HIPAA 18 never say data as a document during the conference.
What are it’s other potentials? Everyone will figure out a way to use it…patient education in small groups seems the first item, and communication of physicians in regard to operations of the practice (business) or associates and other practices. How about a section meeting of the medical staff. Multiple concurrent Google hangouts can be run with different Gmail addresses. (You will need a high performance graphic card or multiple display card) or separate PCs.
President Obama hold a five way Hangout (notice Harry Reid’s one finger salute to the Chief)
Google+s hangout offers a 10 way audio-video conference with the capability of sharing documents, screens, and videos. It seems to offer new functionality every day. It runs well in all the browsers. I have used it in Firefox, Chrome and even Safari (on a PC) Interesting that Safari which normally loads very slowly and has slower screen web page changes on my PC yields the best video performance on my laptop. Some of this may have to do with how video is rendered with the laptops meager video resources and memory sharing for video graphics.
FB countered in the past weeks with several new applications and major changes to the interface becoming much more visual with alterations in the “white space’ of their web pages. Zuckerberg announces TIMELINE.
HIPAA violations !!
And finally this news. Neutrino found exceeding the speed limit of light.
See what I mean? TGIF now maybe I can get back to work !!
