healthy4u

Blog search and beyond

Since <a href="http://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/2007/07/new-feature-search-box.html">we launched</a> the Custom Search AJAX gadget for Blogger on our <a href="http://draft.blogger.com/">experimental site</a>, we've gotten some great feedback. Now, the tuned-up search gadget is available to all <a href="http://buzz.blogger.com/2009/06/search-box-gadget-available-to-all.html">Blogger users</a>. You can configure this gadget to help your readers search all the information that's relevant to your blog — your posts, webpages that you link to, and sites that you link to from the sidebar — all in one shot. When your readers search using this gadget, the results are displayed with the look and feel of your blog. And they show up inline, so readers don't have to leave your blog. After they're done, they can quickly dismiss the results and go back to reading your blog posts. Take a look at how <a href="http://www.skrishnasbooks.com/">S. Krishna's Books</a> uses the gadget. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRqlT5-6b4bE1AkOLI6xuvg3NKQvMYq0iwkoqESZiUM-U04FDMrPBOC01qGwIeBlObBTVfRxtjW4den9gD-KIa3xOo1KaaDjiQDfF7mpCP0gyyyijHR9VnqCkM27r5Hzo1H6AX8UmonWoc/s1600-h/Books.gif"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5342405162847376402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRqlT5-6b4bE1AkOLI6xuvg3NKQvMYq0iwkoqESZiUM-U04FDMrPBOC01qGwIeBlObBTVfRxtjW4den9gD-KIa3xOo1KaaDjiQDfF7mpCP0gyyyijHR9VnqCkM27r5Hzo1H6AX8UmonWoc/s400/Books.gif" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 343px;" /></a> You can configure the gadget on your blog with just a few clicks: <ul><li>Edit your blog's layout, and click "Add a Gadget"</li><li>Select and configure the search box gadget</li></ul>The search box will then show up on the sidebar on your blog. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOrbH_pLmDEtke2p3q15DiX9Vi6mOjwgpj5WVOtWLXmCn6xD6-9QHUSfd18gz09ZJAKnATvxDvaPTefDVOKxdKMcDcWJuBAIVX0tovY1huxYa5KK0gEqNafEdzOIkinctFXvBA9uN4KmqL/s1600-h/blogger_gadget_add.gif"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5342404152935327858" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOrbH_pLmDEtke2p3q15DiX9Vi6mOjwgpj5WVOtWLXmCn6xD6-9QHUSfd18gz09ZJAKnATvxDvaPTefDVOKxdKMcDcWJuBAIVX0tovY1huxYa5KK0gEqNafEdzOIkinctFXvBA9uN4KmqL/s400/blogger_gadget_add.gif" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 225px;" /></a> By default, the following 3 search tabs are configured: <ul><li>This blog: searches across your blog posts</li><li>Linked from here: searches blog posts, webpages linked from your posts, blog lists, and link lists</li><li>The web: searches across all pages on the web</li></ul>The gadget also provides an option that lets you restrict search results to pages linked from a specific blog list or link list. For example, if you have many link lists on your sidebar, you can choose to surface only the most important ones in specific search tabs. "Linked from here" includes pages from all of them. The goal of this gadget is to expand the search capabilities of your blog and give your readers a better search experience. If you're using it, we'd love to hear your <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help?pli=1">feedback</a> on other improvements we can make. Learn more at the <a href="http://googlecustomsearch.blogspot.com/2009/05/search-box-for-blogger.html">Custom Search Blog</a>. Posted by Rajat Mukherjee, Group Product Manager

Blog search and beyond

Since we launched the Custom Search AJAX gadget for Blogger on our experimental site , we've gotten some great feedback. Now, the tuned...

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The Day in the Cloud Challenge featuring Google Apps on June 24th

<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZUXnbLKmon5FnhTlyMCUpqtVV8zldj7cwWpM8Q1mym32Gqx8t_8YY8dsd2l7uol_OWOvi3zfvCyko5VLnHKcwLhdlKQF3Ljeu-Zk6hf2QUZ_zRZqw4UQwr0VhDTmZ84mzLPq2jWitw_qL/s1600-h/DIC_Logo.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5342371620736381266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZUXnbLKmon5FnhTlyMCUpqtVV8zldj7cwWpM8Q1mym32Gqx8t_8YY8dsd2l7uol_OWOvi3zfvCyko5VLnHKcwLhdlKQF3Ljeu-Zk6hf2QUZ_zRZqw4UQwr0VhDTmZ84mzLPq2jWitw_qL/s200/DIC_Logo.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 200px;" /></a>You're invited to take the <a href="http://www.dayinthecloud.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=ogb">Day in the Cloud Challenge</a>, the first-ever online scavenger hunt to be played simultaneously in the air and on the ground. We've teamed up with <a href="http://www.virginamerica.com/">Virgin America</a> to sponsor this challenge on June 24, 2009, the "Day in the Cloud." At Google, we've gathered a small group of gamers extraordinaire to come up with unique puzzles, trivia, and brain teasers, many of which use Google Apps. So if you're game, get ready for the Day in the Cloud Challenge. More and more people are storing their data (such as documents, calendars, email, and photos) online "in the cloud" with services like <a href="http://www.google.com/apps/">Google Apps</a>. All that you need is an Internet connection to access and share that information with friends, family, and co-workers. With airlines like Virgin America offering in-flight Wi-Fi, it's now even easier to stay connected while you travel, even when you're flying through the sky. Those of you paying close attention might remember that we've held a <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/can-you-crack-code.html">puzzle extravaganza</a> in the past. The Day in the Cloud Challenge will be different in that each contestant will have just one hour to play the game. Everyone is encouraged to take on the challenge between 12:00am and 11:59pm PDT on Wed, June 24, 2009. And if you happen to be flying on Virgin America, in-flight Wi-Fi service will be complimentary on June 24th so that you can play during your flight. The top five scorers in the challenge will receive a "Year in the Cloud" <a href="http://www.dayinthecloud.com/challenge/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=ogb">prize package</a>, which includes a year of free flights and free in-flight Wi-Fi from Virgin America, an HP netbook computer, and 1 terabyte of Google account storage for all of your photos and email. Not a puzzle fanatic? Don't worry. The questions come in various difficulty levels so there will be some easy puzzles and others that might drive even the most experienced competitors crazy. A final note on eligibility: You must be a legal resident of the U.S. and at least 18 years of age to be eligible for a prize. Check out <a href="http://www.dayinthecloud.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=ogb">www.dayinthecloud.com</a> for more information. While you're there, sign up for an email reminder to receive practice clues and tips. We'll see you in the cloud. Posted by Boris Debic, Physicist and Google Software Engineer (and puzzle creator)

The Day in the Cloud Challenge featuring Google Apps on June 24th

You're invited to take the Day in the Cloud Challenge , the first-ever online scavenger hunt to be played simultaneously in the air and ...

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Sanofi-Aventis Settles

Here is another addition to the parade of multi-million dollar legal settlements by health care corporations. As <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iz-Iv0odwT89eHgHRlkwHSgLx5RwD98FB4T80">reported by the AP</a>: <blockquote> Drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis has agreed to pay nearly $100 million to settle allegations it cheated Medicaid on the cost of nasal sprays. The Justice Department said Aventis Pharmaceutical Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Sanofi-Aventis U.S. LLC, has agreed to pay the government $95.5 million to settle the charges. The government charged that between 1995 and 2000, Aventis and its corporate predecessors did not offer Medicaid the best prices for the sprays Azmacort, Nasacort and Nasacort AQ. In reaching the settlement, Sanofi-Aventis U.S. did not admit any wrongdoing. The company, based in Bridgewater, N.J., issued a statement saying it believed the old pricing system was legal. Under the law, the company was required to tell Medicaid the lowest price that it charged companies for those products, and offer state Medicaid programs rebates based on those prices. Prosecutors contend that in order to dodge that obligation, Aventis entered into a private deal with the HMO Kaiser Permanente that repackaged Aventis drugs under a new label, allowing them to overcharge Medicaid programs for the same product. </blockquote> It seems that scarcely a week goes by without a settlement of charges of unethical behavior by some major health care organization. The ongoing parade of such cases ought to inspire some worry about the ethics of the leaders of such organization. Given the current very public discussion of how expensive health care has become, one would think that there would be some discussion of how much of this expense is due to various kinds of deceptive and unethical behavior by some of the biggest, richest, and most powerful health care organizations. But perhaps that would be too upsetting for those who make so much money running these organizations. As we have <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/05/synthes-settles-agrees-to-stop-giving.html">said before</a>, most recently <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/05/novo-nordisk-accepts-deferred.html">here</a>, while human beings authorized or committed the acts that got the organization in trouble, rarely do these people seem to suffer any negative consequences. At most, the organization may pay a fine. In this case, the fine was, in corporate terms, of modest size. However, even a large fine, may come out of dividends or the stock price, dispersing the cost to stock-holders, or out of salaries across the board, dispersing the cost to all employees. Thus, those who got the organization into trouble are unlikely to feel pain from it. Perhaps because of reverence for all organizations related to health care, and fear that the bankruptcy of any health care organization will leave patients in the lurch, prosecutors do not seem inclined to actually prosecute such organizations. The net effect, though, seems to be that dishonest executives of health care organizations can continue to act with impunity.Until bad leadership of health care organizations leads to negative consequences for those practicing it, health care leadership can be expected to continuously degrade. ADDENDUM (2 June, 2009) - See <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2009/06/placing_a_vaccine_order_with_c.php#more">these comments </a>on the Effect Measure blog.

Sanofi-Aventis Settles

Here is another addition to the parade of multi-million dollar legal settlements by health care corporations. As reported by the AP : Drugma...

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Canadian Health IT Ripoff ... Is Anyone in the U.S. Paying Attention?

In my Feb. 18, 2009 <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/02/medinformaticsmd-in-wall-street-journal.html">Wall Street Journal letter to the editor</a> I wrote: <blockquote>You observe that the true political goal is socialized medicine facilitated by health care information technology. You note that the public is being deceived, as the rules behind this takeover were stealthily inserted in the stimulus bill. I have a different view on who is deceiving whom. In fact, it is the government that has been deceived by the HIT industry and its pundits. Stated directly, the administration is deluded about the true difficulty of making large-scale health IT work. The beneficiaries will largely be the IT industry and IT management consultants. For £12.7 billion the U.K., which already has socialized medicine, still does not have a working national HIT system, but instead has a major IT quagmire, some of it caused by U.S. HIT vendors. HIT (with a few exceptions) is largely a disaster. I'm far more concerned about a mega-expensive IT misadventure than an IT-empowered takeover of medicine. The stimulus bill, to its credit, recognizes the need for research on improving HIT. However this is a tool to facilitate clinical care, not a cybernetic miracle to revolutionize medicine. The government has bought the IT magic bullet exuberance hook, line and sinker. I can only hope patients get something worthwhile for the $20 billion. </blockquote>Regarding my fears about waste and about the identity of the true beneficiaries, this in from the Toronto Sun in Canada: <h3></h3><blockquote><h3 style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2009/05/29/9607096-sun.html">eHealth making critics sick</a></h3> Opposition wants 'walking papers' issued to minister, CEO over questionable expenditures By Antonella Artuso, QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU CHIEF29th May 2009 eNough, government critics say. Opposition parties at Queen's Park are calling for heads to roll after the newest revelations of eye-popping expenditures at eHealth Ontario -- the taxpayer-funded agency established to produce electronic medical records for every citizen in the province. One consultant with a four-month contract worth $210,600 billed taxpayers for items as small as her $1.57 Tim Hortons tea, her BBQ chicken sub, a $2.98 soup, and her muffins and pops, as well as travel to and from Alberta, and a $2,820-a-month apartment in Toronto. Even Premier Dalton McGuinty is struggling to understand the spending and has said that he welcomes the results of an ongoing investigation of the agency by the auditor general. ... Freedom of Information documents obtained by the Progressive Conservatives have revealed that eHealth Ontario CEO Sarah Kramer approved nearly $5 million in contracts that weren't put out for a competitive bid. Sun Media has learned that one consultant charged taxpayers $300 an hour to consult with her husband -- who also had a consulting contract with eHealth Ontario. Taxpayers paid $7,000 to a consultant to write Kramer's speech to Health Active 2008, and hundreds of dollars more to update her biography. Even the official spokesman for eHealth was a consultant who charged $1,600 a day to provide communications advice and talk to media, billing $33,200 for 20.75 days work in March alone. Questions were also raised in the legislature about consultants who billed the Ontario taxpayer to read The New York Times, talk on the subway and watch TV. On top of that, Kramer received a $114,000 bonus within months of beginning her $380,000-a-year position. eHealth Ontario and its predecessor agency have spent $146 million on consultants since 2003, despite commitments to reign in billings for outside expertise, and overall agency spending has ballooned to $839 million. Other provinces are ahead of Ontario in producing records although so far they have spent less money. ... During Question Period, Runciman called on the premier to give Kramer and Caplan their "walking papers." </blockquote>I stand by my Wall Street Journal letter, to the letter. The Toronto Sun article concluded with this: <blockquote> NDP MPP France Gelinas also called for heads to roll, saying eHealth Ontario and its predecessor agency have produced next to nothing for more than three-quarters of a billion dollars.</blockquote> I reiterate, I hope patients in the U.S. actually get something for the $20+ billion we're about to spend to force health IT down doctors' throats. -- SS

Canadian Health IT Ripoff ... Is Anyone in the U.S. Paying Attention?

In my Feb. 18, 2009 Wall Street Journal letter to the editor I wrote: You observe that the true political goal is socialized medicine facil...

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Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.

Back in early 2004, Google took an interest in a tiny mapping startup called Where 2 Tech, founded by my brother Jens and me. We were excited to join Google and help create what would become <a href="http://maps.google.com/">Google Maps</a>. But we also started thinking about what might come next for us after maps. As always, Jens came up with the answer: communication. He pointed out that two of the most spectacular successes in digital communication, email and instant messaging, were originally designed in the '60s to imitate analog formats — email mimicked snail mail, and IM mimicked phone calls. Since then, so many different forms of communication had been invented — blogs, wikis, collaborative documents, etc. — and computers and networks had dramatically improved. So Jens proposed a new communications model that presumed all these advances as a starting point, and I was immediately sold. (Jens insists it took him hours to convince me, but I like my version better.) We had a blast the next couple years turning Where 2's prototype mapping site into Google Maps. But finally we decided it was time to leave the Maps team and turn Jens' new idea into a project, which we codenamed "Walkabout." We started with a set of tough questions: <ul><li>Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?</li><li>Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?</li><li>What if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers' current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms? </li></ul>After months holed up in a conference room in the <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=48+Pirrama+Road+Pyrmont,+NSW+2009&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF8&split=0&gl=us&ei=Y3EcSsGXO46UswOYme3ZCA&ll=-33.865997,151.195736&spn=0.009229,0.022745&z=16&iwloc=A">Sydney office</a>, our five-person "startup" team emerged with a prototype. And now, after more than two years of expanding our ideas, our team, and technology, we're very eager to return and see what the world might think. Today we're giving developers an early preview of Google Wave. A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNCGFN-xwcoNlkDo4kO-aMA1dIYF1rPa_xaX6N2bU-4F-7C6d8_q-ATQtMgtNImxU7L7WBY6PNc40IC6KvNGC5vJ7zERjbAaS4wosKVy8JvVFEfFAbZJ21RZpqJgAaJX_Qx_CW9HO87PdK/s1600-h/Google_Wave_snapshots_inbox.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5340763954261169682" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNCGFN-xwcoNlkDo4kO-aMA1dIYF1rPa_xaX6N2bU-4F-7C6d8_q-ATQtMgtNImxU7L7WBY6PNc40IC6KvNGC5vJ7zERjbAaS4wosKVy8JvVFEfFAbZJ21RZpqJgAaJX_Qx_CW9HO87PdK/s400/Google_Wave_snapshots_inbox.png" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 261px;" /></a> Here's how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved. As with <a href="http://code.google.com/android/">Android</a>, <a href="http://code.google.com/chromium/">Google Chrome</a>, and many other Google efforts, we plan to make the code open source as a way to encourage the developer community to get involved. Google Wave is very open and extensible, and we're inviting developers to add all kinds of cool stuff before our public launch. Google Wave has three layers: the product, the platform, and the protocol: <ul><li>The Google Wave product (available as a developer preview) is the web application people will use to access and edit waves. It's an HTML 5 app, built on <a href="http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/">Google Web Toolkit</a>. It includes a rich text editor and other functions like desktop drag-and-drop (which, for example, lets you drag a set of photos right into a wave). </li><li>Google Wave can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services, and to build new extensions that work inside waves.</li><li>The Google Wave protocol is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing waves, and includes the "live" concurrency control, which allows edits to be reflected instantly across users and services. The protocol is designed for open federation, such that anyone's Wave services can interoperate with each other and with the Google Wave service. To encourage adoption of the protocol, we intend to open source the code behind Google Wave. </li></ul>So, this leaves one big question we need your help answering: What else can we do with this? If you're a developer and you'd like to roll up your sleeves and start working on Google Wave with us, you can read more on the <a href="http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com/2009/05/introducing-google-wave-apis-what-can.html">Google Wave Developer blog</a> about the <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/wave/">Google Wave APIs</a>, and check out the <a href="http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2009/05/hello-world-meet-google-wave.html">Google Code blog</a> to learn more about the <a href="http://www.waveprotocol.org/">Google Wave Federation Protocol</a>.  If you'd like to be notified when we launch Google Wave as a public product, you can sign up at <a href="http://wave.google.com/">http://wave.google.com</a>/. We don't have a specific timeframe for public release, but we're planning to continue working on Google Wave for a number of months more as a developer preview. We're excited to see what feedback we get from our early tinkerers, and we'll undoubtedly make lots of changes to the Google Wave product, platform, and protocol as we go. We look forward to seeing what you come up with!<div> </div><div>Update @ 7:07PM: The <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ">video</a> of the Google Wave keynote presentation is now available:</div><div> </div><div><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/v_UyVmITiYQ&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/v_UyVmITiYQ&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> </div><div> Posted by Lars Rasmussen, Software Engineering Manager</div>

Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.

Back in early 2004, Google took an interest in a tiny mapping startup called Where 2 Tech, founded by my brother Jens and me. We were excite...

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Search engineer stories

I came to Google because I wanted to work on hard problems and have a big impact on the world. Four years later, I'm still constantly awed by how challenging search is. We work on improving the entire search process, including formulating queries, evaluating results, reading and understanding information, and digging deeper with this new information. Every day we work on ways, both big and small, for search to be better, faster, and more effortless. My fellow engineers and I wanted to give a peek into some of the challenges we face and how we're trying to make search even better. We created a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=396574970FFD6E31">series of short videos</a> so you could hear straight from the engineers. Here's mine, where I talk about a change to spell suggestions. <object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/SWTzYAIkBdE&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/SWTzYAIkBdE&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object> Some of the videos may talk about things you are already familiar with and some may be new. Either way, we hope that you enjoy hearing these stories, and do stay tuned for more! Posted by Patrick Riley, Software Engineer

Search engineer stories

I came to Google because I wanted to work on hard problems and have a big impact on the world. Four years later, I'm still constantly aw...

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