Archive | December, 2010

iPad Used in Israeli Hospital

by on December 30, 2010 in Apple, Telehealth, UC News

HealthcareITNews has an article on an Israeli medical center that has deployed iPads to all of its doctors.  Take a look at the press release from the medical center to see the benefits the iPad is generating.

Here is a quick quote from the Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center’s CEO;

“A recent patient survey confirmed the importance of enabling doctors to check the status of patients and direct their treatment immediately, from within or outside the hospital – it was ranked 8.6 on a scale of 1 to 10 by the patients we interviewed. That is why we are using the latest devices and healthcare technology to help revolutionize patient care at our hospital, which is already known as one of the most progressive hospitals in Israel and internationally.”

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The Tech That I Use

by on December 29, 2010 in UC News

Here is a quick list of the hardware and applications I use on a daily basis.  As you can see from the list there is a relatively even split between Apple, Microsoft and Google, with honourable mentions to WordPress and Dropbox.

Hardware is dominated by Apple, productivity software by Microsoft and Internet services by Google.

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Kinect and Medical Use

by on December 27, 2010 in Kinect, Microsoft, Telehealth, UC News

Another great example of how Kinect technology can be used within the work place. Medical scientists in Berne, Switzerland are using a hacked Kinect as an input into their standard MRI data sets.

Take a look at their whole project over at their website here

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IBM Five in Five

by on December 27, 2010 in UC News

Interesting video from IBM Labs. The first prediction wonders that the universality of the smart phone will enable society to generate large data sets that could be analysed by scientists. The second is of course is much more fun. IBM Labs predict that 3d Holograms will be used within the work and home environment.

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The new IT landscape is almost baked

by on December 22, 2010 in UC News

Google gave more details of Chrome OS and for me it almost completes the battle lines that are being drawn by the big three companies that will dominate consumer and enterprise IT over the next 10 years.  Google, Apple and Microsoft are aiming at the same market with their competing products and services and when displayed side by side it is interesting to see how similar the strategy is.  What will make the difference is execution.

All have office products, voice and video, social and cloud offers. All three will have a mobile and desktop OS. All three are aiming squarely at the enterprise market. Buckle up and make sure your IS strategy reflects the new marketplace.

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More examples of non game use for Kinect

by on December 21, 2010 in Business Process, Kinect, Microsoft, UC News

There are now plenty of examples of the open source community developing applications for the Kinect.  Take a look over here at the Kinect Hacks website.

Here is one of my current favourites form the American Sign Language Association and Georgia Tech College of Computing

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Microsoft widening Lync client base in 2011

by on December 21, 2010 in Lync, Microsoft

In October I wrote here that the Microsoft UC team needed to widen the clients available for Lync and I hoped the Communicator client release for Mac OS X would flow through to their mobile clients.  The good news seems to be that this now seems to be coming to fruition.

At the Lync launch event Microsoft announced an official Lync client for iPhone will be inbound during 2011.  Microsoft are also working with RIM on a Blackberry client – RIM wished to take the lead on the development of the client.  Nokia will also have a Symbian client available soon.

The missing piece is of course Android.  I’m sure there will be Android clients released for Lync developed by partners and independent of Microsoft.  If you had asked me a couple of months ago if Microsoft would devote any effort in their own Lync client for Android I’d have said you were mad.  Now I am not so sure, I now think there is a chance we will see a Lync client for Android that will have some input from Microsoft in 2011.

Throughout 2011 expect to see a broad range of Lync mobile clients and be able to add ‘any device’ to the be connected anytime, anywhere on any device soundbite.

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ProtoSphere 3D Virtual Worlds and Lync

by on December 21, 2010 in Microsoft

Before experiencing the ProtoSphere software I was skeptical to the benefits, not sure on how it would be used in the Enterprise.  However after seeing the software in use and speaking with business units who are finding specific use cases I can now see there is a niche for the software. There are also several large organisations using the software today on the pre-Lync platform.

ProtoSphere have taken a fairly big gamble placing all their chips with Lync and they may experience some short term adoption issues given that Lync will take time to gain a large install base.

If you are considering Lync, take a look at ProtoSphere.  If you are a large organisation I guarantee you have willing customers.

For more information take a look at the Tom Keating’s interview with Proton CEO Ron Burns here

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JP Morgan evaluate the iPad

by on December 1, 2010 in Apple, UC News

I wonder how many of the Fortune 500 have iPads in their environment?  I’m willing to bet over 90%, with most going to senior executives.  I’m sure there are also business units investigating specific use cases.

I know its not quite prediction time but here are a few:

  • Senior execs will soon lose the novelty value of iPad for their work life but they will upgrade to other Apple products such as Macbook Airs.  IT shops with existing Apple schemes in their offer will be fine.  Those without better start working out an implementation.
  • iPads will find specific use cases within the Enterprise but I doubt they will be the right device for information workers.
  • One last prediction, the Playbook will fizzle and then crash and by this time next year will begin a very quiet retirement.

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