Thursday, January 28, 2010
In a letter to a buddy I wrote:
Here’s a small-but-powerful market for you: medical professionals. The other day my doctor walked in with this big, floppy laptop that he had a real tough time using (there was no flat surface that could accommodate it properly). I learned from my experiences at a clinical trial company that doctors in hospitals use tablet computers all the time for virtual charts and for data entry when participating in clinical trials and studies. I think in this sector the tablet (I really don’t want to even type its name) could be huge.
His on-point rebuttal:
Somebody is going to have to want this pretty badly. The big hospital chains are using customized software with big price tags, maintenance agreements and a lengthy development cycle. (For similar reasons, I’d bet many of the laptops and tablets in use by these doctors today are running XP, rather than Vista or 7.)
A hospital wouldn’t really be able to switch over until the medical imaging software provider, the patient data management software provider, the billing and accounting software provider and whoever else all have designed iPad interfaces that work with these programs. That doesn’t strike me as a small thing, or anything that’s likely to happen with the big health service providers within the next 24 months. It’s probably also not something where third parties can fill the gaps — with a few exceptions, medical software companies use proprietary data formats and non-standard programming interfaces.
But this can all happen sooner for smaller practitioners, who basically just need an iPad front-end for off-the-shelf database software. This will be a boon to young and handsome medical professions seeking to appear younger and more handsome.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
- No front facing camera, so no awesome video chatting with your sweetie.
- No multitasking.
- Big, ugly etch-a-sketch frame.
So much awkwardness. Small iPhone apps stuck right in the middle of the screen. The dock looks like it has the stability of a mid-game Jenga tower.
Phil Schiller says, “it’s going to change the way we do the things we do every day.” I’m sorry for yelling but, THAT’S WHAT THEY SAID ABOUT THE SEGWAY. We’re not going to have to “rethink cities” so to speak. It’s not going to change shit. It’s the worst of both worlds, which is just what I was afraid of. It’s the clunkiness of a laptop with the tough typing of an iPhone. It won’t even be the best way to watch video (laptops will still take that prize ’cause you won’t have to hold them up the whole time).
The price looks good, though (and the stock market seemed to agree). I also bet there could be some real interesting 3rd party apps that take advantage of touch that just wouldn’t make sense on the iPhone (the “Brushes” painting app for one).
The emerald cockroach wasp or jewel wasp (Ampulex compressa) is a solitary wasp of the family Ampulicidae. It is known for its unusual reproductive behavior, which involves disabling a live cockroach and using it as a host for its larvae
…
A 2003 study[2] using radioactive labeling demonstrated that the wasp stings precisely into specific ganglia of the roach. It delivers an initial sting to a thoracic ganglion and injects venom to mildly and reversibly paralyze the front legs of the insect. This facilitates the second venomous sting at a carefully chosen spot in the roach’s head ganglia (brain), in the section that controls the escape reflex.
More of this craziness at Wikipedia
Proponents of evolution, I love you and Ima let you finish, but how the hell can such a specific sequence of precise events — results of which would be failures without proper precision and order — be the result of natural selection?
