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The magic number

Here at Google, we're getting ready to celebrate <a href="http://www.piday.org/">Pi Day</a>, which culminates tomorrow, March 14 at 1:59pm, a date and time that correspond to the first six digits of pi: 3.14159. (Some people celebrate at 1:59am.) Of course, since pi is a member of a select group of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_number">irrational numbers</a>, meaning they can't be expressed as a fraction, there are an infinite number of digits in pi. You can even set a <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=recite+pi+world+record">world record</a> for reciting pi from memory if you have the spare brain cells to remember 100,000 or so digits. Odds are, you certainly won't remember the one trillion digits past the decimal point that computers have <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_computation_of_%CF%80">calculated</a>. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi">What is pi</a>, anyway? It's a mathematical constant representing the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter. It sounds abstract, but there's a real-world example right under your feet: the <a href="http://www.google.com/search?&q=circumference+of+the+earth">circumference of the earth</a> equals the <a href="http://www.google.com/search?&q=diameter+of+the+earth+times+pi">diameter of the earth times pi</a>. And pi is all over the place in math, science and engineering. It's even part of Einstein's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_field_equations">theory of relativity</a>, which is fitting since March 14 also happens to be <a href="http://www.google.com/logos/einstein.gif">Einstein's</a> <a href="http://www.google.com/search?&q=when+is+einstein%27s+birthday">birthday</a>. Maybe pi's essential place in our world is why every March around Pi Day searches for [pi] <a href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=pi&cmpt=q">spike upwards</a>. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTMo2XYySz3tJrQYc3zbvSJMMGGxMN2FWjypyYTzwpsMwatV6LjykEjaUol4AsZL06g-PdnvFmv6t4GxB2fAC8sX2bIEm2sSeTX9hvPh46KFnBDHbvi2ek-0mhUh3aUz-uahNumg_gh463/s1600-h/pi+march.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312745992947083346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTMo2XYySz3tJrQYc3zbvSJMMGGxMN2FWjypyYTzwpsMwatV6LjykEjaUol4AsZL06g-PdnvFmv6t4GxB2fAC8sX2bIEm2sSeTX9hvPh46KFnBDHbvi2ek-0mhUh3aUz-uahNumg_gh463/s400/pi+march.png" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 148px;" /></a>A quick <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+celebrate+pi+day&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a">Google search</a> reveals a lot of options for celebrating this "nerd holiday." For starters, you could do some <a href="http://www.google.com/search?&q=1+/+%28pi+*+phi+/+speed+of+light+*+planck%27s+constant+/+e+*+the+golden+ratio%29">math</a> (now that's an irrational number!). If you're at the <a href="http://press.exploratorium.edu/pi-day-march-2009/">Exploratorium in San Francisco</a>, where Pi Day began in 1987, you might be circumnavigating a "Pi Shrine" or singing a Pi Day song. Others suggest watching the movie π or going on a "pi run" (you can stop at 3.14 miles). You can hold your own pi recitation contest, or mix it up and make it tougher by asking people to recite <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=pi+in+binary">pi in binary</a> (hint: it's a lot of ones and zeros). Finally, don't forget the best part of Pi Day: eating pie! Either <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=pie+recipes">make your own</a>, or, if you're too dizzy to bake after circumnavigating Pi Shrines all day, find one to buy <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?&q=pie">nearby</a>. I'll have apple. Posted by Emily Wood, Google Blog team

The magic number

Here at Google, we're getting ready to celebrate Pi Day , which culminates tomorrow, March 14 at 1:59pm, a date and time that correspond...

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Introduction to the ad auction

(Cross-posted from the <a href="http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/03/introduction-to-ad-auction.html">Inside AdWords Blog</a>) When we go to conferences or read posts in forums, we find that advertisers sometimes know more about advanced features than about the basics of how AdWords works. So, we've decided to take some time to get back to basics and talk about how the AdWords auction actually works. To help you, we've brought along our Chief Economist, Hal Varian, to walk you through the auction and explain how your maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid and <a href="http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10215">Quality Score</a> determine how much you actually pay for an ad click on Google's search results pages. When people think of an auction, they often think of a prize being sold for the highest bid. But the AdWords auction works a little differently, where the winner only pays the minimum amount necessary to maintain their position on the page. That means you'll only pay the minimum necessary to beat the person below you. In fact, our quality-based pricing system ensures that you'll often pay less than your maximum bid. How exactly does this work? We'll leave that to Hal to explain. <object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/K7l0a2PVhPQ&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/K7l0a2PVhPQ&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="295" width="480"></embed></object> If you have trouble viewing this video, you can <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7l0a2PVhPQ">watch it here</a>. Posted by Austin Rachlin, Inside AdWords crew

Introduction to the ad auction

(Cross-posted from the Inside AdWords Blog ) When we go to conferences or read posts in forums, we find that advertisers sometimes know more...

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Schools get the "App"titude across the globe

Since the launch of <a href="http://www.google.com/a/edu">Google Apps Education Edition</a> in October 2006, millions of people at thousands of schools in more than 100 countries have been using our free email and collaboration tools. We love hearing from newly deployed schools like <a href="http://www.lmu.edu/">Loyola Marymount University</a>, <a href="http://www.westmont.edu/">Westmont College</a>, <a href="http://www.njit.edu/">New Jersey Institute of Technology</a>, <a href="http://www.kpbsd.k12.ak.us/">Kenai Peninsula Borough School District</a>, <a href="http://www.chapman.edu/">Chapman University</a>, <a href="http://www.ignatius.edu/s/237/home.aspx">Saint Ignatius High School</a>, and <a href="http://www.csuchico.edu/">California State University, Chico</a> (to name a few) about how they're now able to use Apps in teaching, learning, and researching on campus, while also saving time and money. While we continue to see more and more U.S. schools moving to Google Apps, we find it especially exciting to see that the trend of outsourcing online communication and collaboration needs is catching on in other parts of the world. In Australia, for example, the New South Wales Department of Education <a href="http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24966636-15318,00.html">recently migrated</a> 1.5 million students to Google Apps. The University of Adelaide also just <a href="http://www.adelaide.edu.au/news/news31901.html">announced</a> that it is offering to its 16,000 students email services and other online tools as part of the Apps suite, at no cost to the university. Many other schools and colleges in this region have also recently deployed Google Apps, including <a href="http://www.hsc.edu.tw/">Hsin Sheng College of Medical Care and Management</a> in Taoyuan County Taiwan, <a href="http://www.au.edu.pk/">Air University</a> in Islamabad Pakistan, <a href="http://www.uph.edu/">Univesitas Pelita Harapan</a> in Indonesia, the <a href="http://www.icms.edu.au/">International College of Management</a> in Sydney, and schools across New Zealand like <a href="http://www.fendalton.school.nz/">Fendalton School</a>. To help spread the word about Apps, the team in India came up with the <a href="http://www.google.co.in/apps/gottheapptitude/index.html">Got the "App"titude Challenge</a>, which encouraged students, faculty members and alumni from all engineering and management schools throughout India to move their institutions to Google Apps. The challenge created quite a stir, and after launching in August, we received almost 6,000 sign-ups. Each college team consisted of students, alumni and faculty who worked closely with IT staff to identify challenges in their existing email and collaboration solutions. Working with a Googler, the teams then demonstrated ways Google Apps could be used to address these challenges. The performance of each team was evaluated by measuring product usage after their deployment. We'd like to extend our congratulations to the XL CONNECT team from <a href="http://www.xlri.ac.in/">Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), Jamshedpur</a>, who won the challenge by demonstrating the highest usage of Google Apps products. As a result of the challenge, more than 100 colleges across India are now in the process of implementing Apps in their institutions. And we look forward to seeing more and more schools all over the world adopt Google Apps. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMFPjvBD5h1TIRmAl9tyqe6UYRKLCz3a9SY2QnclEN6Gkd0GlxR6D8PR0ABUmCo5XZhjjl0VNkBuR50e20N37EkNehNQ0uMZJEWTD5SWtpTxxNIYOV-qDtVX-WqG-fZKfLDSYlE9RqSZ2k/s1600-h/Picture+12.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312368619552880722" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMFPjvBD5h1TIRmAl9tyqe6UYRKLCz3a9SY2QnclEN6Gkd0GlxR6D8PR0ABUmCo5XZhjjl0VNkBuR50e20N37EkNehNQ0uMZJEWTD5SWtpTxxNIYOV-qDtVX-WqG-fZKfLDSYlE9RqSZ2k/s400/Picture+12.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 197px;" /></a><div style="text-align: center;">Countries shaded in blue represent active Apps users in that area. </div> Posted by Amarpreet Singh, Online Sales and Operations Manager, and Andrew Mitchell, Senior Strategist

Schools get the "App"titude across the globe

Since the launch of Google Apps Education Edition in October 2006, millions of people at thousands of schools in more than 100 countries ha...

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A Health Care CEO Who Didn't Put His Own Pay First

We recently posted about executives at two different not-for-profit health care insurance companies/ managed care organizations whose pay seemed to keep levitating, despite organizational financial losses, and commented on how the compensation of top executives of health care organizations seems always to go up, regardless of the financial fortunes, or quality of the products or services provided by their organizations. (Posts <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/03/more-gravity-defying-compensation-for.html">here</a> and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/03/43-million-dollar-ceo-for-not-for.html">here</a>.) Today's Boston Globe, however, <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/03/12/a_head_with_a_heart/">provided a contrast</a>. The background is that the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), a renowned Harvard teaching institution, is facing a budget shortfall. <blockquote> Paul Levy, the guy who runs Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, was standing in Sherman Auditorium the other day, before some of the very people to whom he might soon be sending pink slips. In the days before the meeting, Levy had been walking around the hospital, noticing little things. He stood at the nurses' stations, watching the transporters, the people who push the patients around in wheelchairs. He saw them talk to the patients, put them at ease, make them laugh. He saw that the people who push the wheelchairs were practicing medicine. He noticed the same when he poked his head into the rooms and watched as the people who deliver the food chatted up the patients and their families. He watched the people who polish the corridors, who strip the sheets, who empty the trash cans, and he realized that a lot of them are immigrants, many of them had second jobs, most of them were just scraping by. And so Paul Levy had all this bouncing around his brain the other day when he stood in Sherman Auditorium. He looked out into a sea of people and recognized faces: technicians, secretaries, administrators, therapists, nurses, the people who are the heart and soul of any hospital. People who knew that Beth Israel had hired about a quarter of its 8,000 staff over the last six years and that the chances that they could all keep their jobs and benefits in an economy in freefall ranged between slim and none. 'I want to run an idea by you that I think is important, and I'd like to get your reaction to it,' Levy began. 'I'd like to do what we can to protect the lower-wage earners - the transporters, the housekeepers, the food service people. A lot of these people work really hard, and I don't want to put an additional burden on them.' 'Now, if we protect these workers, it means the rest of us will have to make a bigger sacrifice,' he continued. 'It means that others will have to give up more of their salary or benefits.' He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when Sherman Auditorium erupted in applause. Thunderous, heartfelt, sustained applause. </blockquote> The editorialist's conclusion was: <blockquote> Paul Levy is trying something revolutionary, radical, maybe even impossible: He is trying to convince the people who work for him that the E in CEO can sometimes stand for empathy. </blockquote> Note that Levy is one of the few health care CEOs who <a href="http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/">blogs</a>, and he appears to write his blog on his own, unfettered by public relations flacks or risk-averse lawyers. His discussion of his revolutionary plan is <a href="http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/2009/03/town-meetings-bidmc.html">here</a>. Further note the context in which he is working. While his medical center does not seem to receive particularly payments from insurance companies and managed care organizations, a previously secret agreement between the previous CEO of Partners Healthcare, another renowned, but competing Harvard-affiliated medical system and the previous CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the state's biggest, and not-for-profit health care insurer/ managed care organization awarded much higher payments to that health care system (see posts <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/01/scorpions-in-bottle-shook-hands-secret.html">here</a> and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/01/to-whom-did-scorpions-in-bottle-owe.html">here</a>). And the current CEO of that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts just received (see this <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/03/43-million-dollar-ceo-for-not-for.html">post</a>) a substantial raise, enough to make him the best paid health care CEO in the state, while his organization's revenues and membership decreased. This case shows it is possible for a health care CEO to put the organization's mission, and the welfare and morale of its hard working staff ahead of his own remuneration. If only this example were not so rare.

A Health Care CEO Who Didn't Put His Own Pay First

We recently posted about executives at two different not-for-profit health care insurance companies/ managed care organizations whose pay se...

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Former Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science Board Member Pleads Guilty

The Chicago Tribune<a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-weinstein-guilty-plea-11-mar11,0,3203453.story"> published </a>a reminder about a scandal from a few years ago that got little other than local attention at the time, <blockquote> Dr. Robert Weinstein, 63, of Northbrook faces 2 to 3 years in prison in connection with a complex fraud scheme in which he and Levine cheated Northshore Supporting Organization, a charity the two controlled. The charity supported the work of the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, which lost a combined $6 million in the scheme. Both men sat on the board of the North Chicago medical school. Weinstein, a self-described private investor for the last decade, admitted that he understated his income by $3 million on his 2003 tax return when he actually made $9.2 million. Weinstein, who is scheduled to be sentenced on July 1, didn't agree to cooperate in the federal probe. Weinstein was indicted last June on charges of wire and mail fraud and making false statements. But last week prosecutors charged him with a single tax fraud count after he agreed to plead guilty. The Tribune first reported in 2004 that the $6 million was missing from the charity. Not only did the school lose scholarship money but it also unknowingly paid a school construction contractor $1 million in kickbacks, according to court records. That money allegedly went to Sven Philip-Sorenson, a European businessman who paid it to the medical school as part of the scheme. Philip-Sorenson, who has not been charged, was a director of a Chicago-based health maintenance organization when Levine was a major stockholder of the company. </blockquote> I would submit that in retrospect, having two convicted felons on a medical school's board of trustees suggests a major governance problem. Yet this case, like others we have discussed involving very bad behavior by leaders of academic health care organizations, caused nary an echo outside its local area. Until we acknowledge that bad, sometimes horribly bad leadership and governance of respected health care organizations is possible, little will be done to prevent more bad leaders from damaging more organizations.

Former Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science Board Member Pleads Guilty

The Chicago Tribune published a reminder about a scandal from a few years ago that got little other than local attention at the time, Dr. R...

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Disruptive Innovators at Healthcare Renewal: Disruptive to whom, exactly?

The fascinating site "HealthMemes: Tracking Conversations About the Future of Health" at <a target="blank" href="http://in3.org/health/">http://in3.org/health/</a> identifies latest trends in health care disruptive innovations (innovations that go "outside the box"). I recently found out they've been linking my own writing as per a review of their <a target="blank" href="http://in3.org/health/archive.php">archives.</a> A number of the posts they link to over the past year or two have been mine or that of Dr. Roy Poses of Brown here at Healthcare Renewal blog, along with writings from approximately <a href="http://in3.org/health/sources.php">100 other sources</a>. The first "Permalink: attention should be paid to these posts" in the middle column of their homepage is mine, about endemic "overconfidence" in computing. My writings have also been noted at <a target="blank" href="http://healthcare.zdnet.com/?p=1848">ZDNet Health </a> by business journalist Dana Blankenhorn. I ponder the use of the term "disruptive innovation." Perhaps it's itself disruptive to ask the question: "to whom is such innovation 'disruptive', and for what reasons?" From <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/disruptive">thefreedictionary</a><a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/disruptive">.com</a>: <blockquote style="font-family:arial;">disruptive - characterized by unrest or disorder or insubordination; "effects of the struggle will be violent and disruptive"; "riotous times"; "these troubled areas"; "the tumultuous years of his administration"; "a turbulent and unruly childhood" Synonyms:<a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/tumultuous"> tumultuous</a>, <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/turbulent">turbulent</a>, <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/riotous">riotous</a>, <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/troubled">troubled</a> Antonyms (from thesaurus.com): <a class="theColor" href="http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/calming">calming</a>, disciplined, settling, <a class="theColor" href="http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/soothing">soothing</a>, <a class="theColor" href="http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/well-behaved">well-behaved</a> </blockquote> On the topic of to whom ideas and writings such as mine and other HC Renewal contributors are "disruptive": If there are disruptive innovators, then there must be a whole taxonomy of people who are not disruptive innovators. The taxonomy might go something like this: <ul style="font-family: arial;"><li>disruptive innovator</li><li>soothing, tradition-bound innovator</li><li>disruptive imitator (the antonym of innovator)</li><li>tradition-bound imitator</li><li>disruptive non-contributor</li><li>tradition-bound non-contributor</li><li>disruptive demolisher</li><li>tradition-bound demolisher (perhaps an oxymoron)</li></ul> Disruptive innovators, thus, are disruptive to the interests of a wide variety of others. The problems with tradition-bound innovators is that they tend not to break with politically correct custom and tradition to speak up when their innovations are misappropriated or misused. The mainstream healthcare IT community largely fits that criterion, resulting in what Harvard professors Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband in today's Wall Street Journal called "<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123681586452302125.html">Obama's $80 Billion Exaggeration</a>" regarding an industry, HIT, hijacked from the pioneers and morphed into a runaway wagon train to a gold rush that considers clinicians the enemy of profit. Incidentally, the points made by Groopman and Hartzband parallel the <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/medinfo.htm">points I've been making about HIT</a> since 1998 and that other disruptive innovators in Medical Informatics were making long before that. It's good to see an entire half page on these issues in a mainstream news source, finally. Disruptive imitators and tradition-bound imitators propagate the good ideas of innovators, often taking credit themselves. I've worked with several <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/failurecases/?loc=cases&sloc=Cardiology%20story">CIO's</a> and <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/failurecases/?loc=cases&sloc=%5Eyaleinf">professors</a> who fit the former category precisely. I believe many in our medical leadership fall into the tradition-bound innovator and imitator categories, thus allowing their bondage to tradition to faciliate what has been described on Healthcare Renewal as the <a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2006/07/anechoic-effect-explained.html">Anechoic Effect</a> regarding healthcare malfeasance and other abuses. Disruptive non contributors simply make trouble, and tradition-bound non contributors are those the Little Red Hen had to deal with. Then there are the disruptive demolishers. These are the people with net-negative value to an endeavor or workgroup, who are only good at destroying the work of innovators of both stripes. Their demolition often serves their own (sociopathic) interests. Corporate empire builders who have often risen above their level of competence, dishonest speculators, and other parasitic character types fit into this class. Finally, it is clear our current society whose economic system and industries have been brought to their knees, could benefit from paying significant attention to true disruptive innovators. Corporate CEO's, are you paying attention? The disruptive demolition men and women who've led us to this point, while tradition bound others sat back and did little, need some competition. -- SS Addendum: it occurs to me after reading Ignacio Valdes' post "<a href="http://linuxmednews.com/1236901534/index_html">On Medieval Barbering, Wal-Mart and One Size Fits All With Health IT</a>" at Open Source Health IT proponent <a href="http://linuxmednews.com/">LinuxMedNews.com</a> that Open Source Software is a "disruptive innovation" and its authors "disruptive innovators."

Disruptive Innovators at Healthcare Renewal: Disruptive to whom, exactly?

The fascinating site "HealthMemes: Tracking Conversations About the Future of Health" at http://in3.org/health/ identifies lat...

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Here comes Google Voice

We've just started to release a preview of Google Voice, an application that helps you better manage your voice communications. Google Voice will be available initially to existing users of GrandCentral, a service we acquired in July of 2007. The new application improves the way you use your phone. You can get transcripts of your voicemail (see the video below) and archive and search all of the SMS text messages you send and receive. You can also use the service to make low-priced international calls and easily access <a href="http://www.google.com/goog411/">Goog-411</a> directory assistance. <object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/oFVXAqFNgic&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oFVXAqFNgic&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object> As you may know, GrandCentral offers many great features, including a single number to ring your home, work, and mobile phones, a central voicemail inbox that you could access on the web, and the ability to screen calls by listening in live as callers leave a voicemail. You'll find these features, and more, in the Google Voice preview. Check out the <a href="https://www.google.com/voice/about">features page</a> for videos and more information on how these features work. If you're already using GrandCentral, over the next couple days, you will receive instructions in your GrandCentral inbox on how to start using Google Voice. We'll be opening it up to others soon, so if you'd like to be notified when that happens, please <a href="http://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite">send us</a> your email address. Posted by Craig Walker, Vincent Paquet, and Wesley Chan, Google Voice Product Managers

Here comes Google Voice

We've just started to release a preview of Google Voice, an application that helps you better manage your voice communications. Google V...

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