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Cross-occupational invasion of medicine by IT, exemplified

I have written on these pages about a cross-occupational invasion of medicine by IT personnel, wherein the IT personnel seem to forget that they are facilitators of healthcare, not enablers, with a primary purpose of serving the needs of clinicians.<div> </div><div>The <a href="http://www.histalk.com/">HISTalk</a> site recently posted an attorney's views on the "hold harmless" and "defects nondisclosure" controversy <a href="http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/301/12/1276">first reported on by Koppel and Kreda</a> in JAMA, and amplified in my <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/07/health-care-information-technology.html">letter to the editor</a> in the same publication. The attorney's views at HISTalk (link below) are quite reasonable regarding such practices.</div><div> </div><div>However, the user comments thread reveals some attitudes exemplifying the "invasion" of which I've written. Both the attorney's post and the responses by a poster under the nom-de-blog "Programmer" to others' concerns can be read <a href="http://histalk2.com/2009/08/24/hitlaw-82409/">at this link</a>.</div><div> </div><div>Read it all. The attitudes of "Programmer" (assuming they are genuine, which is likely) are remarkable.</div><div> </div><div>-- SS </div>

Cross-occupational invasion of medicine by IT, exemplified

I have written on these pages about a cross-occupational invasion of medicine by IT personnel, wherein the IT personnel seem to forget that ...

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Five years of introducing students to open source

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiNBefv5FOOWCcB3oCsVMdrya1YtaF2TyRmOEIwgWaC6dvDYoz-ltMKqiLiyZaJKCs88EO8EBqGTPSUFYbycNNLnNDlsuYdkNpEKLTr5UHXq6nm2rAVELvXQwXgYSvfkEPcNBMhNdRMtpm/s1600-h/GSOCLogo2009.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374350768142386402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiNBefv5FOOWCcB3oCsVMdrya1YtaF2TyRmOEIwgWaC6dvDYoz-ltMKqiLiyZaJKCs88EO8EBqGTPSUFYbycNNLnNDlsuYdkNpEKLTr5UHXq6nm2rAVELvXQwXgYSvfkEPcNBMhNdRMtpm/s320/GSOCLogo2009.png" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" /></a>We've just concluded our fifth <a href="http://code.google.com/soc/">Google Summer of Code</a>, our <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/supporting-students-in-open-source.html">flagship global program</a> to introduce college and university students to open source development. Once again, the results this year have been impressive. Nearly 2,000 mentors from 64 countries participated in the program. They worked to bring 1,000 students from 69 countries into the communities of <a href="http://socghop.appspot.com/program/accepted_orgs/google/gsoc2009">150 free and open source projects</a>. We're particularly excited this year to have introduced several students to open source development that has a direct impact on social causes, from <a href="http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/mifos">microfinance software</a> to <a href="http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/sugarlabs">global educational initiatives</a> to <a href="http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/sunlight">making government data more transparent and accessible</a>. Three months and hundreds of thousands of lines of code later, 85 percent of our student participants have successfully completed their projects. We'll be publishing more extensive program statistics and wrap up reports in the coming weeks on the <a href="http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/">Google Open Source Blog</a>, so stay tuned there for more news about Google Summer of Code. We'd like to congratulate all of our student participants for their hard work and tremendous achievements this summer. We're excited to hear that many of our students have planned out the next few months of their coding work with their chosen open source project. Finally, our sincerest thanks to all of our mentors for volunteering their time and expertise to help these students more actively engage with open source development. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL033tQbAwIUwnaaqHP1SPoq07cHjn9TPUJqrk4O_fUsfFqK-yd1K_Xjijvq1KMIgwsfcX3czt5WXnuii4VzWjaF6TlxC5Lm7G0HVE5vPutWlj5qXNGILu-Wgn9RWKEUkZyb8TQXp1TRtz/s1600-h/soc.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374350985593503762" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL033tQbAwIUwnaaqHP1SPoq07cHjn9TPUJqrk4O_fUsfFqK-yd1K_Xjijvq1KMIgwsfcX3czt5WXnuii4VzWjaF6TlxC5Lm7G0HVE5vPutWlj5qXNGILu-Wgn9RWKEUkZyb8TQXp1TRtz/s400/soc.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" /></a> Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager, Open Source Team

Five years of introducing students to open source

We've just concluded our fifth Google Summer of Code , our flagship global program to introduce college and university students to open...

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More books in more places: public domain EPUB downloads on Google Books

Try doing a search for [<a href="http://books.google.com/books?q=hamlet&btnG=Search+Books">Hamlet</a>] on Google Books. The first few results you'll get are "Full View" books — which means you can read the full text. And, because the book is in the public domain, you can also download a copy of <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=VBoVAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=hamlet&ei=bFOVSpTIAojMlQSP95WcBw#v=onepage&q=&f=false">Hamlet</a> in PDF form. Starting today, you'll be able to download these and over one million public domain books from <a href="http://books.google.com/">Google Books</a> in an additional format. We're excited to now offer downloads in EPUB format, a free and open industry standard for electronic books. It's supported by a wide variety of applications, so once you download a book, you'll be able to read it on any device or through any reading application that supports the format. That means that people will be able to access public domain works that we've digitized from libraries around the world in more ways, including some that haven't even been built or imagined yet. We founded Google Books on the premise that anyone, anywhere, anytime should have the tools to explore the great works of history and culture. We began digitizing these books because we thought it was important for people to be able to find and read them, and we want them to be able to do so anywhere — not just when they happen to be at a computer. This feature takes us one step closer towards realizing that goal by helping support open standards that enable people to access these books in more places, on more devices and through more applications. To find out more, check out our post on the <a href="http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2009/08/download-over-million-public-domain.html">Google Books blog</a>. Posted by Brandon Badger, Product Manager

More books in more places: public domain EPUB downloads on Google Books

Try doing a search for [ Hamlet ] on Google Books. The first few results you'll get are "Full View" books — which means you ca...

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Health Care Leaders: Don't Know Much About Health Care

Our recent <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/08/ny-times-proclaims-anyone-can-run.html">post</a> about health care organizations recruiting executives with no experience in or knowledge about giving health care or biomedical science has attracted some attention. Some people suggested that letting some people from the "outside" into health care leadership might lead to fresh thinking and new ideas. My concern was not about that. However, I do believe that to be succesful, the leadership of health care organizations ought to collectively be knowledgeable about health care, and understand its context, culture, science base, and values. My concern was not about a few "fresh thinkers," but that the preponderance of health care leaders today know little about what it's like to actually take care of patients, have little understanding of biomedical science and health care research, and do not understand, much less share the values of clinicians. To illustrate with some admittedly anecdotal data, I looked up the official biographies of the CEOs of some health care organizations that have recently been mentioned in Health Care Renewal. I selected the most recently mentioned examples of the following types of health care organizations: hospitals and health care systems, managed care organizations/ health care insurers, pharmaceutical companies, device companies, biotechnology companies, and health care information technology companies. Here are the results. Hospitals/ Health Care Systems Example: Sutter Health CEO: Patrick Fry <a href="http://www.sutterhealth.org/about/ourteam/">Biography</a>: <blockquote> Mr. Fry joined the Sutter organization in 1982 as an administrative resident at Sutter General Hospital in Sacramento. Over the ensuing years he held increasingly responsible administrative positions both at the local affiliate level and region level, with responsibilities covering the breadth of Sutter Health's services. After serving as regional president for Sutter Health’s affiliates in the greater Sacramento region, Mr. Fry became president of the organization’s eastern operations. He later assumed leadership of Sutter Health’s Western Division and in 2000 became Sutter Health’s second-in-command, serving as chief operating officer and executive vice president. In 2005 Mr. Fry became President and CEO. Mr. Fry earned a bachelor’s degree in public health administration from the University of California, Davis in 1979 and earned a master’s degree in health services administration from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. </blockquote> Managed Care Organizations/ Health Care Insurers Example: WellCare CEO: Heath Schiesser <a href="http://www.wellcare.com/aboutus/managementteam">Biography</a>: <blockquote> Heath Schiesser assumed the role of president and chief executive officer in January 2008. He originally joined WellCare in 2002 as senior vice president of Marketing and Sales and focused most of his effort on the growth of the Company’s Medicaid and Medicare businesses. As president of WellCare Prescription Insurance, he led the Company's successful national entry into Medicare prescription drug plans. Between mid-2006 and the assumption of his current position in January, he served in a part-time role as a senior advisor, focusing on WellCare’s rapidly growing Medicare products. Mr. Schiesser brings extensive experience in improving operations, developing strategies and growing businesses in several sectors. Prior to joining the Company, he worked at the management consulting firm of McKinsey & Company, co-founded an online pharmacy for pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts and worked in the development of new ventures. A cum laude graduate of Trinity University, Mr. Schiesser received his Master of Business Administration from Harvard University. </blockquote> Pharmaceutical Companies Example: Johnson and Johnson CEO: William C. Weldon <a href="http://www.investor.jnj.com/governance/managementdetail.cfm?bioid=19175">Biography</a>: <blockquote> William C. Weldon is Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Johnson & Johnson, the world's most comprehensive and broadly based health care products company. Mr. Weldon assumed his current responsibilities in April, 2002. Previously Mr. Weldon served as Worldwide Chairman, Pharmaceuticals Group, and a Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors. He was elected to the Board in February, 2001. Mr. Weldon joined Johnson & Johnson in 1971 in the sales and marketing department of its McNeil Pharmaceutical subsidiary. In 1982 he was named manager, ICOM Regional Development Center in Southeast Asia. Mr. Weldon was appointed executive vice president and managing director of Korea McNeil, Ltd., in 1984 and managing director of Ortho-Cilag Pharmaceutical, Ltd., in the U.K. in 1986. In 1989, he was named vice president of sales and marketing at Janssen Pharmaceutica in the U.S., and in 1992 he was appointed president of Ethicon Endo-Surgery. In 1995 Mr. Weldon was named a company group chairman of Johnson & Johnson and Worldwide Franchise Chairman of Ethicon Endo-Surgery, the Johnson & Johnson affiliate that develops new procedures for minimally-invasive surgery and designs related products. In 1998 Mr. Weldon was promoted to the Executive Committee and named Worldwide Chairman, Pharmaceuticals Group. Among his outside activities, Mr. Weldon is a member of the Board of Directors of JPMorgan Chase & Co. He is also Chairman of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer, Vice Chair of The Business Council and a member of The Sullivan Commission on Diversity in the Health Professions Workforce. Mr. Weldon also serves on the Liberty Science Center Chairman's Advisory Council and as a member of the Board of Trustees for Quinnipiac University. He previously served as Chairman of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). Mr. Weldon was born in Brooklyn, NY, and is a graduate of Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He and his wife have two children and one grandson. </blockquote> Device Companies Example: Medtronic CEO: William A. Hawkins <a href="http://wwwp.medtronic.com/Newsroom/Biography.do?itemId=1100621535750&lang=en_US">Biography</a>: <blockquote> Bill Hawkins assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer of Medtronic, Inc. in August 2007 and became Chairman of the Board in August 2008. He was named President and Chief Operating Officer in May 2004 after joining Medtronic as Senior Vice President and President of Medtronic's Vascular business in January 2002. Bill joined Medtronic from Novoste Corp., where he had been President and Chief Executive Officer since 1998. Previous positions included Corporate Vice President and President of the Sherwood Davis and Geck organization of American Home Products; President of the Ethicon Endo-Surgery organization of Johnson & Johnson; President, Devices for Vascular Intervention and U.S. Operations, for Guidant Corp.; and several increasingly responsible executive positions culminating in the presidency of the Ivac organization for Eli Lilly & Co. He began his medical technology career with Carolina Medical Electronics in 1977. He received his bachelor’s of science degree in electrical and biomedical engineering from Duke University in 1976 where he also conducted medical research in pathology. Bill also earned a master’s degree in business administration from the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, in 1982. Bill is a member of the Board of Visitors of the Engineering School of Duke University and the Guthrie Theatre Board. </blockquote> Biotechnology Companies Example: Dendreon CEO: Mitchell H Gold, MD <a href="http://www.dendreon.com/about/leadership_team/mitchell_h_gold_md/default.asp">Biography</a>: <blockquote> Dr. Gold joined Dendreon in 2001 as the vice president of business development. He subsequently was appointed a director in 2002 and was named the chief executive officer of the Company in 2003. Dr. Gold has led the Company’s corporate development, acquisition and financing efforts in recent years, completing transactions valued at approximately $225 million, including the acquisition of Corvas International, and raising approximately $350 million in capital. Prior to joining Dendreon, he served as the vice president of business development for Data Critical Corporation, a company engaged in wireless transmission of critical healthcare data, now a division of GE Medical. He also served as the co-founder, president and chief executive officer of Elixis Corporation, a medical information systems company. Dr. Gold is a former urologist at the University of Washington and currently serves on the boards of the University of Washington/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Prostate Cancer Institute and the Washington Biotechnology and Biomedical Association. Dr. Gold received his B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his M.D. from Rush Medical College in Chicago. </blockquote> Health Care Information Technology Companies Example: Allscripts CEO: Glen Tullman <a href="http://www.allscripts.com/company/glen-tullman.asp">Biography</a>: <blockquote> Glen E. Tullman joined Allscripts as Chief Executive Officer in August 1997 to lead the Company's transition into the Healthcare Information Sector. He led the Company's Initial Public Offering and Secondary Offerings of the Company, which is now traded on NASDAQ (MDRX) and has driven the Company to becoming the leading provider of clinical software, connectivity and information services to physicians. Prior to joining Allscripts, Mr. Tullman was Chief Executive Officer of Enterprise Systems, Inc., a leading healthcare information services company providing resource management solutions to large integrated healthcare networks, from October 1994 to July 1997. Mr. Tullman led the company's Initial Public Offering and secondary offerings. HBO and Company of Atlanta acquired Enterprise in 1997 in a stock transaction valued in excess of $250 million. From 1983 to 1994, Mr. Tullman served in a number of management roles including President and Chief Operating Officer of CCC Information Services, Inc., a provider of information systems to the country's largest property and casualty insurers. Under his leadership, the company grew from $17 million to more than $100 million and is publicly traded. Mr. Tullman graduated from Bucknell University Magna Cum Laude, with a double major in Economics and Psychology. Upon graduation, he joined the Executive Office of the President of the United States in Washington, D.C. and later accepted a fellowship to study social anthropology at St. Antony's College, Oxford University, England. Mr. Tullman serves on the International Board of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and on the Board of Trustees of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT). He also is Co-Chair of the National ePrescribing Patient Safety Initiative (NEPSI), a $100 million campaign, led by Allscripts and Dell Computers, to deliver free electronic prescribing to every physician in America. In 2006, he was named CEO of the Year by the Illinois Information Technology Association. </blockquote> So there we have the leaders of seven important health care oganizations. Only one is health care professional (although he is described as a "former urologist.") Only one of them claims any biomedical science experience, and that was in college. One has bachelors and masters level degrees in health administration, and another has a bachelors degree in electrical and biomedical engineering. That seems to be the sum total of the group's experience, expertise, and formal training in health care and biomedical science. Only one claims any experience directly taking care of patients. Only one has training in any health care profession. Only one is a (?"former"?)doctor, nurse, therapist, or biomedical scientist. Of course, there are at least thousands of health care organizations in the US alone, each with its own often large (and some might say top-heavy) management teams. But I would wager that if there was a systematic survey of these leaders, the majority would turn out not to be health care professionals, not to be biomedical scientists, and not to have much direct health care experience. I would further wager the larger the organization, the less health care experience, knowledge and training would be found among the leadership. I repeat, to really reform health care, we need health care leaders who actually understand health care, and support its values. But the bubble may have to burst before many people learn that lesson. For now, there is too much money to be made.

Health Care Leaders: Don't Know Much About Health Care

Our recent post about health care organizations recruiting executives with no experience in or knowledge about giving health care or biomed...

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Finding great stuff to read with Google Reader

I only followed a handful of blogs when I first started using <a href="http://reader.google.com/">Google Reader</a>, but was always on the lookout for more great stuff to read. Over time, I discovered that my friends followed lots of interesting sites, and my reading list grew from 4 to 34 sites and blogs as I incorporated their recommendations. Since then, Reader has launched several <a href="http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2009/07/following-liking-and-people-searching.html">sharing features</a> that make it easier to find and subscribe to feeds that your friends like, and we thought that recommendations could make finding good stuff to read even easier. This time, instead of asking our friends, we approached leaders across a variety of fields and asked them what they read online. We received lots of great responses, which we've collected into our second edition of <a href="http://www.google.com/googlereader/powerreaders2/index.html#">Power Readers</a>. In this edition, we've expanded from <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/follow-what-obama-mccain-and-leading.html">Power Readers in Politics</a> to include journalists, techies, fashion critics, foodies and more. We hope this will be a good place to find great things to read, whether you already have an extensive reading list or are totally new to Google Reader. Plus, now we can answer some questions that have interested us for years: Where does <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianna_Huffington">Arianna Huffington</a> go to get different perspectives on the news? When <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman">Paul Krugman</a> surfs the web, what are his favorite economics sites? What blogs do tech, foodie and fashion bloggers read? Visit <a href="http://www.google.com/googlereader/powerreaders2/index.html#">www.google.com/powerreaders</a> to explore and subscribe to any of their reading lists, or to any individual items that they recommend. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyWTgEut1v5QI0-peKZZRdkUPtmWX-TPAxONsHmWUSZX6URQCWJkq95qFPSIy5CsAkd_pejYXQeSuBKK5bDM3hmEV9lWYVsZK4AzA8TXVoeXYTg-Ujltr9qyG9EVUclDvepiMreWGqE5aJ/s1600-h/powerreaders.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5373998249780833634" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyWTgEut1v5QI0-peKZZRdkUPtmWX-TPAxONsHmWUSZX6URQCWJkq95qFPSIy5CsAkd_pejYXQeSuBKK5bDM3hmEV9lWYVsZK4AzA8TXVoeXYTg-Ujltr9qyG9EVUclDvepiMreWGqE5aJ/s400/powerreaders.png" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 259px;" /></a>A big thanks to all of the contributors who shared their reading lists with us. Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

Finding great stuff to read with Google Reader

I only followed a handful of blogs when I first started using Google Reader , but was always on the lookout for more great stuff to read. Ov...

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In the future, everyone will monetize their 15 minutes

(Cross-posted from the <a href="http://ytbizblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/in-future-everyone-will-monetize-their.html">YouTube Biz Blog</a>) We <a href="http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2007/12/partner-program-expands.html">first launched</a> the YouTube Partnership Program (YPP) to help some of our more popular users make money from their videos on YouTube. While we've focused on accepting prolific users who regularly produce videos that reach a wide audience — like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/fred">Fred</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/valsartdiary">ValsArtDiary</a> — we've occasionally extended the program to include some of the site's more unforgettable videos, such as the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM">Battle of Kruger</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txqiwrbYGrs">David after dentist</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epUk3T2Kfno">Otters holding hands</a>. These individual video partnerships recognize the role popular "one-off" videos play on YouTube, and have helped many people earn thousands of dollars a month as their videos went viral and endured over time. We decided it was time to spread the wealth. Today we're excited to announce that we're extending the YouTube Partnership Program to include individual popular videos on our site. Now, when you upload a video to YouTube that accumulates lots of views, we may invite you to monetize that video and start earning revenue from it. To determine whether a particular video is eligible for monetization, we look at factors like the number of views, the video's virality and compliance with the YouTube Terms of Service. If your video is eligible for monetization, you will receive an email and see an "Enable Revenue Sharing" message next to your video on the watch page, as well as in other places in your account: <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0xqC-mD19oVhI5eFU62QcKG-QyTfKVftFCFimoMldkPP-YIgjsgWBr52OrTyXY0Qlua8OJ7NExV8k6NGo9Vv0Jglcv8oe5JsrR238uuhDedLWlRkeDCOL7BhK-0eyd5lwgx2T0CFvi-eP/s1600-h/YTMonetization.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5373948130484086898" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0xqC-mD19oVhI5eFU62QcKG-QyTfKVftFCFimoMldkPP-YIgjsgWBr52OrTyXY0Qlua8OJ7NExV8k6NGo9Vv0Jglcv8oe5JsrR238uuhDedLWlRkeDCOL7BhK-0eyd5lwgx2T0CFvi-eP/s400/YTMonetization.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 160px;" /></a> Once you've chosen to enable revenue sharing, YouTube will sell advertising against your video and pay you a revenue share into your <a href="http://www.google.com/adsense">Google AdSense</a> account each month. (If you don't have an AdSense account, you'll have the opportunity to create one.) Individual video partnerships will not be eligible for many of the benefits of user partnerships, like enhanced channel features or the ability to monetize other videos in your account, so we encourage you to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/partners">apply to be a member</a> of the YPP. We'll consider your individual video partnerships when reviewing your YPP application. For now individual video partnerships are available only in the United States, but we hope to roll these out internationally soon. It's taken us some time to build out the YouTube Partnership Program, our content management tools and other infrastructure to handle expanding the YPP to so many individual users and videos. Now that we're ready to share these opportunities with a wider audience, we're excited to see how individual video partnerships will help even more people make money from their success on YouTube. Posted by Shenaz Zack, Product Manager

In the future, everyone will monetize their 15 minutes

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Biz Blog ) We first launched the YouTube Partnership Program (YPP) to help some of our more popular users ma...

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The bright side of sitting in traffic: Crowdsourcing road congestion data

This post is the latest in an ongoing <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/how-we-help-track-flu-trends.html">series</a> about how we harness the data we collect to improve our products and services for our users. - Ed. What if you could do a little something to improve the world during your daily drive to work? Here are a few ideas: tell everybody in the city when you're stuck in slow-moving traffic; warn the drivers on the freeway behind you that they should consider an alternate route; tell the people still at home that they should spend another ten minutes reading the morning news before they leave for work; tell your city government that they might want to change the timing of that traffic light at the highway on-ramp. Of course, you can't just get on the phone and call everybody, and your one traffic report from your one spot on the road might not help much anyway. But if everybody on the road, all at once, could tell the world how fast their car is moving, and we could make it easy for anybody to check that information on their computer or cell phone, well — then we'd be getting somewhere. If you use <a href="http://www.google.com/mobile/products/maps.html">Google Maps for mobile</a> with GPS enabled on your phone, that's exactly what you can do. When you choose to enable Google Maps with <a href="http://www.google.com/mobile/gmm/mylocation/index.html">My Location</a>, your phone sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast you're moving. When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions. We continuously combine this data and send it back to you for free in the Google Maps traffic layers. It takes almost zero effort on your part — just turn on Google Maps for mobile before starting your car — and the more people that participate, the better the resulting traffic reports get for everybody. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-qXddE05UTfYPov7sSX0DE7xKCi9UpLrhx-ge43mxq2kk0RWM9eACvwlPPZWdHPXTrn8ZyZxKUAS2DC4EvuC1q0KEfFWj5G0aqKYWuZW8iLaZRq4YGAV39zj84WJe1O4_HgCUXBnMav1q/s1600-h/gmm_arterials_z15.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5373770641888093074" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-qXddE05UTfYPov7sSX0DE7xKCi9UpLrhx-ge43mxq2kk0RWM9eACvwlPPZWdHPXTrn8ZyZxKUAS2DC4EvuC1q0KEfFWj5G0aqKYWuZW8iLaZRq4YGAV39zj84WJe1O4_HgCUXBnMav1q/s400/gmm_arterials_z15.png" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 267px;" /></a> This week we're<a href="http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2009/08/arterial-traffic-available-on-google.html"> expanding our traffic layer</a> to cover all U.S. highways and arterials when data is available. We're able to do this thanks in no small part to the data contributed by our users. This is exactly the kind of technology that we love at Google because it's so easy for a single person to help out, but can be incredibly powerful when a lot of people use it together. Imagine if you knew the exact traffic speed on every road in the city — every intersection, backstreet and freeway on-ramp — and how that would affect the way you drive, help the environment and impact the way our government makes road planning decisions. This idea, which we geeks call "crowdsourcing," isn't new. Ever since GPS location started coming to mainstream devices, people have been thinking of ways to use it to figure out how fast the traffic is moving. But for us to really make it work, we had to solve problems of scale (because you can't get useful traffic results until you have a LOT of devices reporting their speeds) and privacy (because we don't want anybody to be able to analyze Google's traffic data to see the movement of a particular phone, even when that phone is completely anonymous). We achieve scale by making Google Maps for mobile easy to install and use, and by making it easy for people to provide information about their own vehicle speed. There's no extra device to plug into your car and no extra software to buy. Google Maps is <a href="http://www.google.com/mobile/default/maps.html">free</a> and works with most cell phones, and the number of cell phones with GPS is rising every day. Some phones, such as the T-Mobile myTouch 3G and the Palm Pre, come with Google Maps and traffic crowdsourcing pre-installed (the iPhone Maps application, however, does not support traffic crowdsourcing). Google is fortunate to have a lot of people using our products, and that scale helps make our products better. We understand that many people would be concerned about telling the world how fast their car was moving if they also had to tell the world where they were going, so we built privacy protections in from the start. We only use anonymous speed and location information to calculate traffic conditions, and only do so when you have chosen to enable location services on your phone. We use our scale to provide further privacy protection: When a lot of people are reporting data from the same area, we combine their data together to make it hard to tell one phone from another. Even though the vehicle carrying a phone is anonymous, we don't want anybody to be able to find out where that anonymous vehicle came from or where it went — so we find the start and end points of every trip and permanently delete that data so that even Google ceases to have access to it. We take the privacy concerns related to user location data seriously, and have worked hard to protect the privacy of users who share this data — but we still understand that not everybody will want to participate. If you'd like to stop your phone from sending anonymous location data back to Google, you can find opt-out instructions <a href="http://support.google.com/gmm/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81875">here</a>. We've already been able to provide useful traffic information with the help of our existing mobile users, but we hope that is just the start. As GPS-enabled phones and data plans get less expensive, more people will be able to participate. Crowdsourcing traffic gives us a way to harness bits of location data from our users and give it back to them in a form they can use to make impactful decisions that affect their free time, their pocketbooks and the environment. The more people use it, the better it will get. So next time you're sitting in morning traffic, turn on Google Maps for mobile and let someone else know they can hit the snooze button one more time. Tomorrow morning, they might do the same for you. Posted by Dave Barth, Product Manager for Google Maps

The bright side of sitting in traffic: Crowdsourcing road congestion data

This post is the latest in an ongoing series about how we harness the data we collect to improve our products and services for our users. -...

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