How Much eHealth Should You Manage Yourself?

Philips recently launched an interesting application for the Apple iPad. Called VitalSigns, it’s a 99c app that uses the iPad’s camera to  record your heart and breathing rate. Unlike when you might do so at a general practitioner’s office or in a hospital, there’s no cuff to wear or sensor of any type to deal with; instead the camera measures the colour differences in your face, as well as the movements of your chest to approximate the rate at which you’re breathing. Give it a minute or two, and it’ll return a reasonable approximation of both.  Curiously, you can then update Twitter or Facebook with your vital statistics, although (while I engage with Social Networking on an incredibly regular basis), I’m befuddled why you’d want to.

I gave the app a quick spin, and it’s quite surprising what it can actually track; within a very short space of time the graph to measure breathing was going up and down in an eerie representation of the way I was breathing at the time. Very cool technology without a shadow of a doubt.

But I won’t be deleting my GP’s phone number from my phone any time soon, just because I’ve got a measuring tool of my own. For a start, the app is plastered with all kinds of legal disclaimers, as it’s not a dedicated and gently calibrated piece of medical technology; it’s a mass market tablet computer running some software. Equally, I’m not fully qualified to interpret the results it gives, except in the most broad ways. As a test, I took a measurement while sitting, then did a five minute jog on the spot and measured again. Not surprisingly, my heart rate was remarkably high for the second reading, but it didn’t mean I needed to rush to call for an ambulance.

The same is true of a lot of online medical information. There’s definitely something to be said for being well read, and if you’re so inclined, many of the world’s greatest medical texts and minds are but a simple Google search away. That doesn’t immediately turn you into a qualified doctor, just the same as reading the instructions for a low water usage shower doesn’t turn you into a plumber, or reading this article turn you into a journalist. Knowledge can be power, but knowing exactly how to apply that knowledge in the correct context is what gives that knowledge power. As such, the Vital Signs app is a nice party trick to pull out, and could conceivably be of use to those who need to take regular readings with a capacity for a margin of error, but I wouldn’t rely on it to save my life.

Understanding 4G Networks

Telstra’s made a big splash recently with the launch of its first ‘4G’ product — although depending on whose definition you adopt, it might not be 4G at all. Fourth generation wireless networks, and 4G specifically as a term have been used in varying ways by different groups overseas, so much so that some of what passes for overseas ‘4G’ — especially in the US — is currently sold in Australia as 3G!

That having been said, I’ve been testing Telstra’s 4G USB modem for a number of weeks now. Telstra’s currently using an 1800Mhz LTE broadcast network for its 4G product, which promises download speeds of between 2-40Mbps. That’s an immense range, but then if you’ve used any kind of mobile broadband product ever, you’d be well aware that variability is the name of the game.

At the moment, Telstra’s 4G footprint isn’t that massive, focused around capital city centres — within 5km of the post office typically speaking — and selected regional centres, where the footprint shrinks down to a smaller 3km radius. Step outside those areas and the USB 4G modem flicks over to Next-G coverage, where the bandwidth is smaller, but the footprint much larger.

Telstra won’t be alone in the 4G game for all that long, however. Vodafone’s been testing 4G services for some time now. Its last pronouncement on this was that we’d see 4G products by year’s end, although they’re running out of time to fulfil that promise. Optus meanwhile is testing 700Mhz 4G in Albury; depending on whose definition you adopt that’s more like “true” 4G, but requires the 700Mhz spectrum to operate, and that’s only available in areas where the analogue tv signal has been switched off. Optus’ timeframe for commercial availability of 4G products starts in limited rollout in April next year.

So what’s it like to use? Telstra’s only currently got one 4G product; a USB modem that comes with its own drivers installed on the modem. They’ll tell you how to connect, and whether you’re currently within the 4G network or Next-G coverage instead. In my own tests in Sydney’s CBD I’ve averaged anywhere from 4-50Mbps, but there have equally been times where it’s stubbornly sat on Next-G rather than 4G, even though I should have been under Telstra’s 4G cloud at the time. Telstra’s not charging for 4G any differently than it does regular data, however; it’ll be interesting to see what happens with data prices — considering 4G is essentially a pure data network, and the telcos will continue to use existing 2/3G infrastructure to service our call and texting needs — once Vodafone and Optus are also offering 4G services.

Talking about voice control

I’ve spent the last week talking to my phone. Not that revolutionary you might think; it is after all a phone, and voice has been part of the feature set right from the get-go. But in this case I’ve been testing out Siri, one of Apple’s key selling points for the iPhone 4S. Siri allows you to ‘talk’ to the phone in order to make calls, appointments, send messages and search for information.

In one sense this is nothing new; older smartphones, including those from other platforms have had voice control features for many years now. Where Siri makes it interesting is in its ability to handle natural language. Where most of the other systems rely on very simple phrases, Siri can handle longer contextual strings and a variety of voice inputs. So you could say, for example, “What’s the weather like in Melbourne”, and it’ll find a five day forecast; ask it then “what’s the time there?” and it’ll remember the context and give you AEDST time for Melbourne. It’s all rather reminiscent of Star Trek, frankly, speaking to a small computer in your pocket, although it does rely on having a net connection of some sort as some of the voice processing is done at Apple’s servers rather than in the device itself. It learns as it goes, according to Apple, so rather like products such as Nuance’s Dragon Naturally Speaking, the more you use it the better it’ll get. It’s also got a specific setting for English (Australian), and it’s highly advised that you use it; the difference in its understanding of a strine accent and a yankee one is remarkable. There’s obvious scope here for use by those with physical ability limitations where typing is difficult or impossible, but even just as a cool gimmick.

Siri does have its limitations, especially locally. Ask it for any kind of directions, and it’ll sadly inform you it can only give directions when it’s in the US. That’s not reticence on its part; the directions part of Siri’s logic relies on a couple of US-specific services that Apple’s signed up to. There are words and phrases it’ll stumble on repeatedly, and because it learns its owner’s voice, it’s markedly less effective for other users if they borrow your phone. To be fair to Apple, it does mark Siri as a “beta” (that is, still in development) product, so there’s plenty of room for improvement.

There’s arguably a bigger strike against Siri to consider, however, and it’s true for any voice controlled product. Within the context of your own home or office, talking to a computer may feel a little odd at first, but generally you’ll have access to a keyboard anyway, which adds a layer of instant precision. Out and about, and you’re going to have to talk over the general chatter and noise of the world, which means relatively loud. All of a sudden, you’re getting Siri to calculate the interest on your home loan, or noting the times of your medical appointments in public. Most of us would rather keep that stuff private. There’s no easy way around that — it’s decidedly a public perception problem rather than a technology one.

Windows 8: Good For Laptops And Tablets

Microsoft recently held its BUILD conference, a developer-only event at which the highlight was the unveiling of Windows 8. It wasn’t exactly a shock reveal; there’s been plenty of information on Windows 8 available up in bits and pieces, but this was Microsoft’s first peek under the curtain at the nitty-gritty of Windows 8 itself. As you might expect, Windows 8 is expected to run more quickly than its predecessors, but then, Microsoft’s very unlikely to reveal that it’d run slower. A lot of small details emerged, such as the fact that support for NFC (Near Field Communications) will be built into Windows 8, as will simpler setups for refreshing a system prior to selling it, removing malware more efficiently and a revamp of some standard Windows user interface sections such as the Task Manager.  Cloud syncronisation and a very Apple-like App store for Windows applications will also feature on the full desktop client, which at first glance looks an awful lot like Windows 7 does now. That could well change, but a lot of the real meat of what Microsoft had to show off was to be seen in how it’ll adapt Windows 8 for the tablet market.

Microsoft’s had tilts at the tablet market for years now, but outside certain specialised niches, they’ve never had that much success — especially in the era of the iPad. Windows 8 has a lot of tablet-specific features, including a full tablet user interface called Metro that Microsoft showed off at the Build conference on a Samsung supplied tablet that all attendees got to take away with them. Microsoft’s built on the interface ideas it first showed off with its Windows Phone 7 devices, and the results are quite spectacular. It’s also worth noting that while Windows tablets to date have all run on Intel hardware, Windows 8 will also run on more power-efficient ARM processors, although there will be tradeoffs for the ARM models, which won’t run legacy Windows applications, just the specialised touchscreen ones. Whether by whatever time Windows 8 launches it’ll be able to make a dent in the iPad’s near dominance of the tablet market remains to be seen; a good half dozen Android tablets haven’t managed that, and the rest seem to be bogged down in legal battles with Apple.

Microsoft haven’t announced a timeline for when Windows 8 will ship (except to say that it’ll ship “when it’s done”); at a guess I’d say we’d be lucky to see it on store shelves and in laptops, desktops and tablets before at least the middle of next year.

The Future Of Printing

The concept of the paperless office has been with us for a very long time indeed. While it’d be tempting to think that the concept coincided with the growth of personal computing in the 1980s, it dates back even further than that, being used in the mid-70s to describe a vision of the offices of the future in Business Week.

Given that was the mid-1970s, this is pretty much the future, and yet paper and printing are still with us to a very large extent. It seems we still adore having printed sheets of paper, even as the growth of smartphones and tablets would seem to make them largely redundant.

I recently travelled to Shanghai to view a number of new printing innovations from HP (disclaimer: HP paid for my airfare and accommodation to attend the event). There were some products, such as the white and attractive Envy 110 that are aimed squarely at the home office market; there’s not a great deal of actual physical innovation there, although it is an attractive unit. Moving slightly up the scale were models such as the HP LaserJet Pro M275, AKA the HP “TopShot”. In most respects it’s a standard laser colour multifunction device, but with an additional quirk. The top of the unit houses an arm that hangs over the scanner plate, giving the TopShot the capability to capture three dimensional looking images. HP was a little coy when it came to answering specific technical questions about the Topshot, which won’t be available until sometime next year, but it’s an interesting glimpse into printing’s future.

While you can shift somewhat paperless with a Tablet or Smartphone, HP’s got that angle covered. It announced tweaks to its existing ePrint system, which lets you print to any printer from any device capable of sending files via email, adding a social element to it by allowing you to name your printer. Not a great innovation you might think, but it’s got to be easier to remember “myprinter@hpeprint.com” (or whatever you choose; it’ll be first come first served for all names) than it would be, say “hpe101010101015732~4@hpeprint.com”.

The other area HP was at pains to demonstrate fits more neatly into slightly larger offices, and that’s document security. If you’ve worked in any office at all, you’ve probably noticed plenty of times where an office printer sits with a stack of printed documents on it. Not only can it be a waste of paper, but there’s the risk of folks seeing documents that they shouldn’t be privy to. HP demonstrated systems that send documents fully encrypted, whether via a cabled or wireless network, and that then can only be printed via a passcode punched into the printer itself; the idea is that you’ll send a print job, but not forget it as you’ve got to approach the printer and enter the passphrase to print it, at which time you’ll walk away with it rather than remotely printing and then forgetting it.

Notebooks: Thin Is In

There was a time when if you wanted a very thin and light notebook, you’d pay through the nose for it. Ultra-light notebooks were for serious business travellers with serious business bank accounts that could withstand four thousand dollars or more being spent on a thin and light notebook — and more often than not, one that wasn’t as powerful or feature rich as the same heavier systems were at the time.

Those sorts of machines are still around, but they’re generally not feature poor. I’ve spent a couple of weeks recently testing out Sony’s ultra-slick Vaio Z, a thin and stylish laptop with all the trimmings, and then some. This is a system that includes a media dock that comes with a Blu-Ray drive and external graphics card for added performance when you’re using it in a desktop style configuration. The one thing it isn’t is cheap; at $3,999 it hearkens back to the ultralight systems that used to dominate this particular market segment.

Apple’s been something of a disruptive force in this particular market, although even they used to sell the ultra-thin Macbook Air as a premium machine. Last year’s iteration of the Air slimmed things down and made SSD mandatory while dropping prices, and this year the company effectively killed its plain Macbook line in favour of the Air. If you want an entry level Mac notebook, the Air is it.

It’s not just a Mac world for inexpensive ultralight notebooks however, with a number of vendors offering up what’ll be informally dubbed Ultrabooks; that’s an Intel marketing term for thin and light ultraportable notebooks. Acer’s set to unveil its Aspire S3 ultrabook in the Australian marketplace, and it’s expected to sell for between $1000-$1600 depending on configuration; that’s the same price as most equivalent Macbook Air models. Toshiba likewise has the Portégé Z830 ultrabook waiting in the wings for an Australian release later this year, and it’s likely to sell for the same $1,000-$1,500 price point. Acer’s ultrabook has the edge in being genuinely thin, but Toshiba’s is somewhat lighter; at around 1.13kg it’s the lightest ultrabook announced so far.

At that kind of price point, it’s still entirely possible to pick up a decent but heavy notebook, with many models coming in under the $1,000 barrier. If you’re cash-strapped and still need portability, a netbook is still a viable option, but not a powerful one. The under $1,000 crowd are largely older technology — in the next few years we can expect to see this year’s Ultrabooks become the entry level fodder. Thin, in other words, is in.

Understanding SSDs

The chances are high that the next time you go to buy a laptop, you’ll have the option of either a standard mechanical hard drive or an SSD. On the surface, the numbers would appear to favour mechanical drives; even the cheapest notebooks tend to pack in at least 320GB into a drive, whereas the SSD option is typically under 256GB, and often very small. That’s what you’ll see on the in-store sticker, but understanding what an SSD is, and why they’re becoming more prevalent in the consumer notebook market can help you make an informed buying decision, rather than just looking at the straight storage numbers.

SSD stands for Solid State Drive, and unlike traditional mechanical hard disk drives, they’re not a bunch of spinning platters and an LP-style read head, instead reducing all that moving clutter into a what is essentially a bunch of microchips. Why would that be a good thing? Well, for a start, because that makes them substantially more resistant to shock and bumps. Drop or bump a working laptop while the read head is spinning and you may lose data or crash the machine; with no moving parts this is no real issue for an SSD. The lack of moving parts also makes most modern SSD drives notably fast, leading to quicker startup times in particular, but also improved application performance in cases where the application can benefit from the SSDs write structure; not every application can.

No moving parts also means no whirring noises and a reduced heat footprint, which leads to fewer spinning fans and even less working noise in operation. An SSD-based notebook at the time of writing still won’t be silent, but it’ll often be a lot quieter than a mechanical hard drive based notebook. All that can also make SSDs more energy efficient, which for a notebook should equate to longer battery life. Finally, the lack of moving parts and reliance on chips rather than platters makes it possible to design SSDs that are smaller than traditional hard drives, although to date most manufacturers of installable SSDs have opted for traditional hard drive sizes in order to make them easier to fit. So what’s the downside? As mentioned, the price per gigabyte for an SSD is still a lot higher than for mechanical drives, which is why SSD options usually either invite a price bump or storage drop, and typically both. There’s some concern about the life cycles of SSD drives compared to their mechanical counterparts, although you’d be wise to be backing up all of your data in any case; any drive can fail, and it’s really just a matter of when.

There’s been a huge drop in the prices of SSDs in the past couple of years, just as the storage capacities of those same drives has gone up, and that’s pretty much exactly why they’re becoming a more commonplace option within notebooks. It’s worth considering the SSD option if the notebook you’re after needs to be thin, light and quick, but for the moment those who need large media libraries or primarily use a notebook as a desktop replacement are probably still a little better served with the traditional mechanical type.

Apple Lion OS X Roars, But It Can Also Bite

It’s been a couple of weeks since Apple released the latest version of its particular computer operating system, OS X 10.7, more informally known as “Lion”. Apple uses the names of the big cats for its operating systems, which is why previous releases have been named things like Tiger, Panther or Snow Leopard. Which means that presumably, a few years down the track, Apple may release OS X Ocelot.

At $31.99, Lion’s very cheap for an operating system, but that’s more a function of it being part of Apple’s overall computer strategy. It makes money from hardware rather than software, and while that may be changing with the wild success of the iTunes App store for devices like iPads and iPhones, it’s a slow change, and for now the software’s just an inducement to buy the hardware, the same way that car retailers will offer “free” air conditioning… as long as you buy a thirty thousand dollar car. That kind of price might make it seem like an automatic upgrade option compared to the hundreds of dollars a full version of Windows goes for, but there are still some catches. I’ve had some serious time with Lion now, and while there’s definitely some good stuff in this big cat, there’s also some areas where it’s all too easy to get bitten.

Apple’s main focus in Lion has been to slowly merge the kinds of experiences its customers on iOS devices have with its Mac userbase, and as such, touch gestures are now system-wide. This includes the curious decision to reverse the direction of the scroll wheel to match how your fingers move on an iPhone or iPad; Apple rather optimistically calls this “natural” scrolling, and it was amongst the first things I switched off, which thankfully isn’t too hard.

Not surprisingly, my test Lion system has been quicker than it was before, but I’m still unsure if that’s a function of it being a freshly optimised system; I could well have the same speed boost in a freshly installed copy of Windows. Some applications are definitely perkier; Mail in particular may look drab but runs well and now has search capabilities that make it a pleasure to use. I’m also getting a lot of utility out of the app resume feature, which allows you to shut down the Mac and have every window, application and file spring up as it was the next time you power the system on. Likewise, system-wide autosave is a feature that’s been a long time coming to Macs, and so far, seems to work well.

Then there are the things that don’t work so well. Any Mac users of long standing with older applications may find they work unpredictably, or in the case of any code written for PowerPC Macs, that they don’t work at all. This includes some quite high profile applications, including Microsoft Office 2004; if you’re running that particular version of Office (or any older version), you’ll need to weigh up the cost of upgrading the suite as well as Lion.

I’ve also hit a smattering of application and hardware incompatibilities, some of which will hopefully be ironed out sooner rather than later. One of my multifunction printers works for printing, but hangs trying to scan documents, for example. The solution to this, by the way, for any prospective Lion upgraders would be to check with the vendor prior to upgrading for OS X 10.7 compatible drivers. Thankfully for my purposes I can access the scanner from another system.

So does that mark Lion up as a beast that roars, or a whimpering kitty? I’d say that as a new operating system on balance it does fairly well; I’ve certainly seen the same kinds of issues on new versions of Windows when they’ve emerged, with a mix of fixes and applications left by the wayside. It’s certainly worth doing your homework with regards to applications and hardware to ensure it’s compatible before switching over, but at the asking price if those apps aren’t an issue for you, Lion’s something of a bargain.

Femtocell To The Rescue?

Optus recently launched a new product offering called the “3G Home Zone” to the market. It’s a small, router-like device that acts as a base station for your mobile phone signal within your home, tethered to an existing broadband service. So if you’re in an area with poor Optus reception, or the physical characteristics of your home make mobile reception a problem, the 3G Home Zone product will boost that by using your existing broadband service to bridge the gap.

The 3G Home Zone contains what’s known as a femtocell; a device designed to bridge the gap between fixed line (ADSL or Cable broadband, in other words) and mobile services. Optus isn’t the only femtocell carrier on the market; Vodafone have a similar offering, but at this stage it’s only open to business customers rather than consumers.

The prospect of improving your home mobile (both 3G broadband and call) quality is an appealing one, but there are some catches. The 3G Home Zone is offered on a 24 month contract term, which is a very long time in the life of mobile devices. There’s an associated cost as well; if you’re on a $59 or better tariff with Optus the 3G Home Zone costs $5 per month, while those on lower tariffs will pay $15 per month. That extra payment isn’t without some additional compensation, as it also comes with unlimited national calls bundled in with the 3G Home Zone femtocell, but only for a single Optus mobile handset; you can nominate up to 12 connected Optus phones, but only one of them will get free calls. Given the number of plans that come with either stupendously large caps or unlimited calls anyway, that’s not much of a deal.

The other trap is the data one. A femtocell works by leveraging an additional data connection; in this case it’s your home broadband. You’ll need a minimum speed of around 1Mbps for it to work at all, and all the time it is working, it’s also chewing through your data allocation from your ISP. Surprisingly, even if you’re with Optus for home broadband, they’ll still count the 3G Home Zone’s data usage against your data cap. In other words, you’re using your money and your broadband to supplement Optus’ network coverage. Optus has stated that they’ll continue to work to improve the network overall, and that femtocells are a solution in small locations and where home construction impedes any mobile signal. There’s perhaps a market there, but I can’t help but think that the carriers offering femtocells need to make them more appealing to end customers, either by lowering pricing — as you’ll still be using their services and generating revenue anyway — or offering better bundled terms.

Can Blackberry Take Down The iPad Juggernaut?

Apple’s selling a lot of iPads right now. For the quarter ended in June 2011, more than seven million of them. To put that in perspective, Apple’s iOS business (which includes iPad and iPhones) was reported online to be, by unit sales, larger than the PC businesses of HP and Dell, combined. That’s a staggering figure for a combined tablet and phone offering that, four years ago, simply didn’t exist — and in the case of the iPad, that figure is only 18 months.

In other words, that’s a whole lot of tablets, and where there’s that kind of market momentum, there are going to be plenty of firms lining up to grab some of that market for themselves. To date there have been a number of Android tablets, but few that could entirely match the iPad experience, whether that was down to the plain nature of the Android OS supplied or a variety of hardware quirks.

Blackberry maker Research In Motion (RIM) has its “PlayBook” tablet in the marketplace now, and for the past couple of weeks I’ve had the chance to give it a longer than usual test. As a disclaimer, this is because RIM supplied me with a long term review unit.

The PlayBook is a 7” tablet, putting it in company with Samsung’s original Galaxy Tab, the very cheap tablets that Telstra and Optus offered late last year, Viewsonic’s ViewPad 7 and Huawei’s upcoming MediaPad. 7” tablets may have been dismissed by Apple’s Steve Jobs as not worthwhile, but that’s just his opinion; there’s undoubtedly some appeal in a smaller, more portable tablet option.

The best thing about the PlayBook? The hardware. This is easily the best 7” tablet on the market right now, from the build quality to the use of the entire screen, even the bezel sides, to perform tablet functions. The core operating system that runs it all is slick and fast and very easy to learn, even if you’ve not used a tablet before.

The currently available $579 PlayBook is WiFi only, and works best in concert with an existing Blackberry smartphone. That’s quite a deliberate decision on RIM’s part, as the mail and calendar clients on the PlayBook rely on having a nearby Blackberry to draw data from via Bluetooth connectivity. The idea is that if you lose your PlayBook, your most sensitive data doesn’t go with it, while at the same time tying you closely into the Blackberry ecosystem. With a Blackberry this does work well enough, although Bluetooth isn’t the fastest transmission protocol, and without it you’re limited to web-based email clients only.

Applications are the lifeblood of any tablet, and here the Playbook has some catching up to do. The number of available applications and their variety is somewhat dwarfed by the iOS and Android marketplaces, although there’s a curious feature of the PlayBook that could equalise that difference rather quickly. Aside from natively developed applications, RIM’s promising in a future update that the PlayBook will be able to run Android applications from the Android marketplace. They’ll have to be slightly re-optimised for the PlayBook, but making it easier to develop for in any way makes for a better future.

As it stands, the PlayBook is a great bit of physical hardware, and one of the best challengers to Apple’s near dominance of the tablet market on hardware terms alone. It’s not without its flaws, though, and unless you’re already a Blackberry user it’s limited in its overall utility thanks to the reliance on a Blackberry for vital email and calendar functions.

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