healthy4u

More accessibility features in Android 1.6

From time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see — tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful. The most recent release of Android 1.6, a.k.a. Donut, introduces accessibility features designed to make Android apps more widely usable by blind and low-vision users. In brief, Android 1.6 includes a built-in screenreader and <a href="http://android-developers.blogspot.com/search/label/Text-to-Speech">text-to-speech</a> (TTS) engine which make it possible to use most Android applications, as well as all of Android's default UI, when not looking at the screen. Android-powered devices with Android 1.6 and future software versions will include the following accessibility enhancements: <ul><li>Text-to-Speech (TTS) is now bundled with the Android platform. The platform comes with voices for English (U.S. and U.K.), French, Italian, Spanish and German.</li><li>A standardized Text To Speech API is part of the Android SDK, and this enables developers to create high-quality talking applications.</li><li>Starting with Android 1.6, the Android platform includes a set of easy to use accessibility APIs that make it possible to create accessibility aids such as screenreaders for the blind.</li><li>Application authors can easily ensure that their applications remain usable by blind and visually impaired users by ensuring that all parts of the user interface are reachable via the trackball; and all image controls have associated textual metadata.</li><li>Starting with Android 1.6, the Android platform comes with applications that provide spoken, auditory (non-speech sounds) and haptic (vibration) feedback. Named TalkBack, SoundBack and KickBack, these applications are available via the Settings > Accessibility menu.</li><li>In addition, <a href="http://eyes-free.googlecode.com/">project Eyes-Free</a> (which includes accessibility tools such as TalkBack) provides several UI enhancements for using touch-screen input. Many of these <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/business/04blind.html">innovations</a> are available via Android Market and are already being heavily used. We believe these eyes-free tools will serve our users with special needs as well.</li></ul>You can turn on the accessibility features by going to Settings --> Accessibility and checking the box "Accessibility". While the web browser and browser-based applications do not yet "talk" using these enhancements, we're working on them for upcoming releases. Check out this <a href="http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2009/10/talkback-open-source-screenreader-for.html">Google Open Source Blog post</a> for more details, and stay tuned to the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/eyesfreeandroid">eyes-free channel on YouTube</a> for step-by-step demonstrations on configuring and using accessibility support on Android.

More accessibility features in Android 1.6

From time to time, our own T.V. Raman shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see — tips that...

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News Flash: 1945 Law Allows Concentration of Power in US Health Insurance

Last week, some media reports noted that US Congressional Democrats countered an insurance industry study suggesting health care reform would cost much more than estimated by threatening a repeal of the McCarran-Ferguson Act's anti-trust exemption for health insurance. For example, <a href="http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/for-insurers-a-question-of-trust-and-antitrust/">in the New York Times Prescriptions Blog</a>: <blockquote>In a rare appearance as a witness at a Senate hearing, the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, told the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that it should repeal a 1945 law that granted the insurance industry limited exemption to national antitrust laws by allowing states to regulate insurers. The law, the McCarran-Ferguson Act, is often cited by Mr. Reid and other critics of the health insurance industry as a reason why coverage can be so expensive for many people. They say the law allows insurers to monopolize markets and fix prices in ways that are usually illegal. 'Since 1945, the insurance industry has enjoyed exemption from federal antitrust laws because of the McCarran-Ferguson Act,' Mr. Reid said. 'Providing an exemption for insurance companies to antitrust laws has been anticompetitive and damaging to the American economy,' Mr. Reid continued. 'Health insurance premiums have continued to rise at a rapid rate, forcing businesses to cut back on health insurance coverage and forcing many families to choose between health insurance and basic necessities.' He added: 'Insurance companies have become so large they dominate entire regions of the country. They have become so powerful they block start-up businesses from entering the market, and they put smaller companies out of business. They have become so dominant that they dictate business practices. They are so influential that they exert tremendous influence over public policy.' </blockquote>Also, the chief anti-trust enforcement officer in Obama administration weighed in with similar sentiments, as reported by Bloomberg News <a href="http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/20091015_Insurers__exemption_is_said_to_boost_costs.html">via the Philadelphia Inquirer</a>: <blockquote> Christine Varney, the Obama administration's chief antitrust enforcer, told lawmakers yesterday that repealing the insurance industry's antitrust exemption would spur competition and further the drive to control the cost of health insurance. Varney, head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that ending the exemption would 'allow competition to have a greater role in reforming health and medical malpractice insurance markets.' </blockquote> So why would this discussion be relevant to Health Care Renewal? First of all, the exemption of insurance companies from anti-trust laws (US laws designed to prevent monopolies and other anti-competitive business practices) may have allowed these companies to grow into business behemoths, and for individual companies to dominate local insurance markets. In some locales, businesses and individuals have very few health insurance policies available because only a few companies dominate the market. In fact, every recent year, the US American Medical Association (AMA) has put out a report on insurance market consolidation decrying concentration among power in local markets among few companies. For example, the <a href="http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/news/news/health-insurers-consolidate.shtml">AMA news release </a>for the 2009 report said: <blockquote> The vast majority of health insurance markets in the U.S. are dominated by one or two health insurers, according to a new study by the American Medical Association (AMA) that examined insurer competition in markets across the country. Most alarmingly, in nearly all 314 metropolitan areas studied, there is evidence that patients and physicians have fewer options and are left vulnerable to the demands of the health insurer. </blockquote> So this does seem to be a case of concentration, if not necessarily abuse of power in health care. Why this is real news however, is that the 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act, its baleful influence, and calls for its repeal are not old news. In fact, up to now, they have not been news, or part of health care policy discussions at all. My first response to the news articles above was "the McCarran what act?" I had never heard of this 64 year old law, and never heard it cited as an enabler of concentration of power in health insurance, and never heard a call for its repeal. Maybe that means I am no expert in this field. But, the first 10 pages of a Google Scholar search for the terms "McCarran Ferguson health insurance exemption" revealed precisely one article in the health care / services/ policy research literature that discussed this act (from 1998, in Health Affairs,(1) and without clearly relating the act to concentration of power in health insurance.) Similarly, a PubMed search, using the term "McCarran-Ferguson Act" produced nine articles, none in mainstream health care/ services/ policy research journals, much less general medical journals (three were in the Am J Law Med, 2 in AIDS Policy Law, one in Benefits Q, one in J Am Osteopath Assoc, one in J Pediatr Health Care, one in Am J Hosp Pharm, the most recent published in 2004, all the others in 1999 or earlier. There was nothing except the article above in Health Affars, nothing in Medical Care, nothing in Health Services Research, and nothing in any of the big general medical journals.) Therefore, maybe the 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act was a major cause of consolidation in the health insurance market, and this consolidation may be an important contributor to high health care costs and poor health care access. But this notion apparently has not appeared in any major medical or health care/ services/ policy research journal in the last 20 years. If the McCarran-Ferguson Act has been around for 64 years, and is a major cause of rising health care costs and declining health care access, why has no one bothered to discuss it where any physician or health care/ policy researcher might see it? It seems that the failure to bring the McCarran-Ferguson Act into polite conversation is another example of the <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2007/08/bling-bling-poltical-correctness-and.html">anechoic effect</a>. We have noted again and again that for physicians or health care professionals to discuss certain aspects of our dysfunctional health care system, often aspects that relate high costs, declining access, and poor costs to concentration and abuse of power, is "just not done." So it seems like discussing how a federal law from another era barred government action to prevent concentration of power in the health care industry, concentration of power that made some people very rich, was "just not done." Of course, if there was any discussion of this law and its effects, maybe someone would have called for its repeal before 2009. Dr Aubrey Blumsohn provided <a href="http://scientific-misconduct.blogspot.com/2007/05/on-decorum-in-medicine.html">a reminder </a>from the UK to us in the US: ""the desire to maintain decorum and status in medicine seems also to overwhelm all standards of decency. Our profession is inclined to fixate on the irrelevant while ignoring some very bad things." If we really want to improve health care here in the US, and around the world, a modest beginning would be to begin open discussion of the various skeletons rattling around in the health care closet. Reference 1. Nichols LM, Blumberg LJ. A different kind of ‘New Federalism’? the Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act of 1996. Health Aff 1998; 17 (3): 25. [Link <a href="http://healthaff.highwire.org/cgi/reprint/17/3/25">here</a>.]

News Flash: 1945 Law Allows Concentration of Power in US Health Insurance

Last week, some media reports noted that US Congressional Democrats countered an insurance industry study suggesting health care reform woul...

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Manage your tasks with Google

People use all kinds of tools to help them get stuff done — paper to-do lists, messages with a certain label or stars in Gmail, notes in Google Calendar, a couple different iGoogle gadgets and so on. Late last year, we added a lightweight way to help you keep track of what you need to do in Gmail Labs — <a href="http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-in-labs-tasks.html">tasks</a>. Since then, it's <a href="http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/tasks-graduates-from-gmail-labs.html">graduated from Labs</a>, and you can <a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/help/tasks/">manage your tasks</a> not only in Gmail, but also in Google Calendar, iGoogle and from your mobile phone (by going to gmail.com/tasks from your phone's browser). Your task list stays up to date no matter how you access it — so for example, if you create a task with a due date on your mobile device, the next time you consult your Google Calendar you'll see that task on your calendar for that day. <object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qrka_3jui8M&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qrka_3jui8M&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object> Starting today, there's a full-screen version of the <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/directory?type=gadgets&url=www.google.com/ig/modules/tasks.xml">Tasks gadget</a> for iGoogle. Click on the <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3VtliMk8N-h9qFDXeDGTX43KbnrhFHygh72UqYGBup_q4guqKV3-b2b03mjTfGg7dYeLpSQTL2GmIg4LC-71ci_vPRLZYYhHROFsYri7x_CxI8kxq_9l0acInI7Sb8dosvSXPrBF33w_o/s1600-h/t1.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5394752558479521266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3VtliMk8N-h9qFDXeDGTX43KbnrhFHygh72UqYGBup_q4guqKV3-b2b03mjTfGg7dYeLpSQTL2GmIg4LC-71ci_vPRLZYYhHROFsYri7x_CxI8kxq_9l0acInI7Sb8dosvSXPrBF33w_o/s400/t1.png" style="cursor: pointer; width: 16px; height: 18px;" /></a> icon in the top-right corner and you'll be able to see and organize all your tasks at once. For those of you who are already familiar with tasks, here are some power tips to help make you more productive: <ul><li>When you have completed a task and no longer want it to appear on your list, click "Clear completed" in the actions menu. You can review your completed tasks later by clicking "View completed tasks." Clearing completed tasks is different from deleting them — if you delete a task, it's gone for good and you'll no longer see it anywhere in tasks.</li><li>In the default "My order" view, press tab to indent a task you're editing, making it a sub-task of the one above. Press shift + tab to reverse this operation.</li><li>Try ctrl + up/down (⌘ + up/down on a Mac) to move the task you're editing up and down the list. Move a task that has sub-tasks, and they'll come along with it.</li><li>Ctrl + up/down also works in sort by date view, where it will alter the task's due date by one day. You can use this to quickly plan out your week's activities or postpone a task for another day.</li><li>Press shift + enter to edit the details of a task, including its notes and due date. You can also use this view to move your task to another list. </li></ul>We have more features in the pipeline, so if you're interested in hearing the latest on tasks, <a href="http://twitter.com/googletasks">follow us on Twitter</a>. Posted by David Barrett-Kahn, Software Engineer, Tasks team

Manage your tasks with Google

People use all kinds of tools to help them get stuff done — paper to-do lists, messages with a certain label or stars in Gmail, notes in Goo...

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Self-improving results now in the Google Search Appliance

The <a href="http://google.com/gsa">Google Search Appliance</a> (GSA) is getting an <a href="http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/10/singing-new-tune-google-search.html">update</a> today, with a bunch of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDFDE4LHblY">new features </a>aimed at making enterprise search easier for everyone inside a company. One of our favorites, the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmtpJGpqAXs">Self-learning Scorer</a>, learns from employees' searches to tune itself and improve over time. If employees repeatedly choose, say, the fourth result for a given query the GSA will learn that's probably the most relevant one and bring it up to the top the next time the query is searched for. Over time, the GSA auto-tunes, serving up better and better internal search results without any extra administrative work. You can read more about the Self-learning Scorer and check out the GSA's other new features in <a href="http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/10/singing-new-tune-google-search.html">our post</a> on the Google Enterprise Blog. Posted by Sibabrata Ray and Liviu Panait, Engineers, Google Enterprise Search team

Self-improving results now in the Google Search Appliance

The Google Search Appliance (GSA) is getting an update today, with a bunch of new features aimed at making enterprise search easier for ev...

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HHS to promote low-cost electronic health record software packages including the VA's VistA

If I were a proprietary health IT vendor, the following bolded passage in the new Healthcare Bill (PDF <a href="http://finance.senate.gov/press/Bpress/2009press/prb101909.pdf">here</a>) would make me a bit nervous: SEC. 1102. ENCOURAGING MEANINGFUL USE OF ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS. (a) STUDY.—The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall conduct a study of methods that can be employed by qualified health benefits plans offered through an exchange to encourage increased meaningful use of electronic health records by health care providers, including— <blockquote>(1) payment systems established by qualified health benefit plans that provide higher rates of reimbursement for health care providers that engage in meaningful use of electronic health records; and (2) promotion of low-cost electronic health record software packages that are available for use by health care providers, including software packages that are available to health care providers through the Veterans Administration.</blockquote> The VA system, VistA/CPRS ("computerized patient record system"), was developed with taxpayer money and is freely available. A free working demo is downloadable <a href="http://www1.va.gov/cprsdemo/">here</a> (Windows only). This represents a needed "public option" for healthcare IT, the estimates of cost of adoption of proprietary systems now at somewhere between $20 and $50 billion dollars, give or take. (I believe the actual figure to be far higher due to IT sector dyscompetence in HIT as I wrote at my post "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/10/fuzzy-math-rising-costs-in-governments.html">Fuzzy Math Indeed</a>.") To put that figure in context, $50 billion is enough to build approximately five hundred shiny new 100-bed hospitals, or one hundred 500-bed hospitals, at ~$1 million per bed. Entrepreneurial companies have sprung up to adopt it for the private healthcare sector such as <a href="http://worldvista.sourceforge.net/About/indexworldvista.html">WorldVista</a>. They probably won't be charging the multimillion dollar rates that the private HIT sector does, and the quality will likely be higher. -- SS

HHS to promote low-cost electronic health record software packages including the VA's VistA

If I were a proprietary health IT vendor, the following bolded passage in the new Healthcare Bill (PDF here ) would make me a bit nervous: S...

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Flying in a WiFi wonderland: Free Internet from Google on Virgin America flights

We know the holiday season seems to come earlier every year (sorry, Halloween), but before you make your final travel plans, we're excited to let you know that we're partnering with <a href="http://www.virginamerica.com/va/home.do">Virgin America</a> to <a href="http://www.freeholidaywifi.com/">provide free WiFi</a> on every Virgin America flight between November 10, 2009 and January 15, 2010. The holidays can be full of dates and details to remember, and it's easy to get stressed out somewhere between planning a long distance, multi-generational family gathering and combing the Internet for the latest impossible-to-find furry contraption for your toddler. And when you have to do all that while coordinating air travel at the same time as several million of your closest friends, things can get <a href="http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&um=1&sa=1&q=home+alone&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10&start=0">downright dramatic</a>. Whether it's using Gmail to confirm an airport pick up time with your brother, doing some last minute gift shopping for your niece on Google Product Search or searching Google.com for a good sweet potato pie recipe before touchdown — we hope this makes it a bit easier to stay connected with family and friends while you're up in the air. You can find out more about our partnership, where Virgin America flies and how the in-flight WiFi service works at <a href="http://www.freeholidaywifi.com/">www.freeholidaywifi.com</a>. Posted by Jeff Aguero, Product Marketing Manager

Flying in a WiFi wonderland: Free Internet from Google on Virgin America flights

We know the holiday season seems to come earlier every year (sorry, Halloween), but before you make your final travel plans, we're excit...

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"Going Google" with millions of businesses around the world

Each day, thousands of companies choose to "<a href="http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/gogoogle-ent.html#utm_campaign=gogoogle&utm_source=en-na-us-ogblog-gogoogle_101909&utm_medium=blog">go Google</a>" — that is, switch to Google Apps. Over two million business and 20 million users in over 100 countries and more than 40 languages have adopted <a href="http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/gogoogle.html#utm_campaign=gogoogle&utm_source=en-na-us-ogblog-gogoogle_101909&utm_medium=blog">Apps for their workplace</a>, and we're happy to welcome companies around the world such as Konica Minolta, Rentokil Initial and TOTO that have just decided to go Google. These companies no longer have to deal with the hassles of managing email servers or rolling out software updates, and their employees now enjoy the convenience of shared documents and calendars, Gmail and more. Since we <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/going-google-with-google-apps.html">first asked</a> for your "gone Google" stories in August, we've seen thousands of <a href="http://twitter.com/GoogleAtWork/favorites">tweets</a> and hundreds of comments explaining how and why your company decided to go Google with Apps, as well as with other Google enterprise products such as <a href="http://www.google.com/postini/gogoogle.html#utm_campaign=gogoogle_pos&utm_source=en-na-us-ogblog-gogoogle_101909&utm_medium=blog">Google Postini Services</a> and the <a href="http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/gsa.html#utm_campaign=gogoogle&utm_source=en-na-us-ogblog-gogoogle_101909&utm_medium=blog">Google Search Appliance</a>. Jeffrey D. from Ottawa, Canada told us that with Apps, he "was able to set up a new business in minutes with email, calendar, docs, and sync with [his] BlackBerry." <a href="http://twitter.com/happymacs/status/3111574146">@happymacs</a> from San Diego, CA tweeted how they liked the ability to "search every single email received in the past 2.5 years in under 2 seconds"; while <a href="http://twitter.com/appfrica/status/3102474107">@Appfrica</a> highlighted the sobering fact that the cost of an alternative software solution would employ a person in Uganda for a month. Today, we're excited to support this global momentum with the expansion of the "Gone Google" initiative to additional countries including the U.K., France, Canada, Japan, Australia and Singapore. We hope our messages — in train stations such as Paddington, La Défense and Shinagawa, and at airports in Singapore, Toronto, Dallas and beyond — help companies, schools and organizations learn all about the benefits of going Google with our enterprise products. Here's a sneak peek at what you can expect to see both here in the U.S. and abroad: <object height="340" width="560"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/iP2oWfDMvqc&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/iP2oWfDMvqc&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object> If you've already gone Google, you can <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdAMLEujm5M">share your company's Gone Google story</a> with us, or use some of our tools to help <a href="http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/spreadtheword.html#utm_campaign=gogoogle&utm_source=en-na-us-ogblog-gogoogle_101909&utm_medium=blog">spread the word</a> about switching to Google Apps. We hope you'll be part of the story. Posted by Tom Oliveri and Vivian Leung, Google Enterprise Team

"Going Google" with millions of businesses around the world

Each day, thousands of companies choose to " go Google " — that is, switch to Google Apps. Over two million business and 20 millio...

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