Hospital room of the future?

According to this post at Fast Company, this might be as close at 10 years away. I don’t want to spendy any time in the hosptial but this would make the stay less awful.

“The room is constructed as a plug-and-play environment in which customizable, prefabricated components integrate all aspects of care. The Patient Ribbon, for example, is a digital, silent, flat screen headboard that captures vital signs, houses gases, and holds the controls for all forms of lighting in the room. Ruthven says it’s possible that it will be the first component to be integrated in existing hospitals in the next five years. A media center at the foot of the bed facilitates collaboration between caregivers, patients, and visitors, and provides connections to multimedia entertainment and hospital information.

While most of the medical care is conducted within the patient room, several key functions for patients, staff, and visitors occur at the entry to the space. Namely, the Staff Resource Station features sliding doors made from smart glass technology and includes digital alerts for patient allergies, food restrictions, or special conditions.”

I’m guessing health care will be really good or really bad. Probably both, depending how wealthy/poor you are.

Google +1

I was going to do a post about Google’s +1 but anyone who cares probably already knows what it is and how it works. The rest of you… just click the little button below each post if you like it. That will make that post more like to show up in relevant Google search results. Just click the fucking button.

The Two Bobs

The Missouri Department of Transportation recently announced the closure of a number of offices around the state and the elimination of a bunch of jobs. Difficult times call for difficult decisions.

A few days ago I got a whif of how this is coming down, at least for some employees.

In at least one section, managers at a certain level and above were notified they will have to “reapply” for their current jobs. They’ll log in to a website and justify why they should keep the job they have had for years.

They’ll also have to identify some other jobs within the department that they’d be qualified for, in the event they don’t keep their current job.

Anyone who has ever done a stint in management sees what’s going on here. Someone up the food chain doesn’t have the authority (or balls) to decide who stays and who goes, and to tell them that, eye-to-eye.

“Yes, I know you did your job for 15 years and got great evaluations every year, but someone more qualified got your job. Sorry.”

Now I ask you, after going through this demeaning process, even if you get to keep your job, how do you feel about the people you work for?

Instagram

I started playing with Instagram about 6 months ago but never got around to writing about it here because I couldn’t think of how to describe it (“Fast beautiful photo sharing for your iPhone”).

From the website: “Snap a photo with your iPhone, choose a filter to transform the look and feel, send to Facebook, Twitter or Flickr – it’s all as easy as pie. It’s photo sharing, reinvented.”

I have about 3,000 photos on my MacBook and a couple of thousand on flickr. I post photos here at smays.com and a few on Twitter so, there’s no shortage of places to share photos. And it’s really no more trouble to post a photo to flickr or Twitter than Instagram.

So how to explain the popularity of this little app (4.5 million users)? I can’t.

Today I came across a website called Inkstagram that brings Instagram pics to your web browser.  So I can introduce you to the gritty images of tonydetroit; and komeda whose photos almost feature one or two people against a beautiful but lonely backdrop; and today I discovered travisjensen who sends instagrams from San Francisco.

I don’t know these people and will probably never interact with them, short of liking or briefly commenting on one of their photos. But I like to think the images they share tell me something about them. Something, perhaps, they don’t know about themselves.

Ah. Just came across this interview with the founder of Instagram.

Reality, there’s nothing like it

“We can’t comprehend Reality with our intellect. We can’t pull it into a static view of some thing. All our explanations are necessarily provisional. They’re just rigid frames of what is actually motion and fluidity. In other words, if you can think of how Reality is, you can be sure that’s how it isn’t. Reality simply cannot be put into a conceptual form — not even through analogy, for there’s nothing like it. Reality simply doesn’t fit into concepts at all. Nevertheless, Reality is something you can see. You can’t conceive of it, but you can perceive it.”

— Buddhism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen

DAR: Tivo for radio

This begs the question, “Does my local radio station have programs so compelling I want to record them and listen later?” Let’s hope so. If you have –or plan to– tried DAR, let me know what you think. (via Roger Gardner)

Future of video conferencing?

Skype, more bandwidth and easier-to-use software is making video conferencing ever more practical. We’re doing it at Learfield, Barb’s firm is using, it’s happening. But we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Some students from the MIT Media Lab show off a few features of what’s around the corner.

My favorite is the little timer in the speech bubble that shows how long each person has been talking.

What you see is NOT what you get

A lot of my recent reading has dealt with consciousness and –by extensions– reality. It has completely changed the way I see my world. Literally.

“Your senses are your windows on the world, and you probably think they do a fair job at capturing an accurate depiction of reality. Don’t kid yourself. Sensory perception – especially vision – is a figment of your imagination. “What you’re experiencing is largely the product of what’s inside your head,” says psychologist Ron Rensink at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. “It’s informed by what comes in through your eyes, but it’s not directly reflecting it.”

“In conjuring up this “now”, the visual system has to do something even more remarkable: predict the future. Information striking the fovea cannot be relayed instantaneously to conscious perception: first it has to travel down the optic nerve and be processed by the brain. This takes several hundred milliseconds, by which time the world has moved on. And so the brain makes a prediction about what the world will look like about 200 milliseconds into the future, and that is what you see. Without this future projection you would be unable to catch a ball, dodge moving objects or walk around without crashing into things.”

“The problem with attention is that it is a limited resource. For reasons that remain unknown, most people are unable to keep track of more than four or five moving objects at once. That can lead your visual system to be oblivious to things that are staring you in the face.”

My favorite line from this piece: “Essentially we experience the brain’s best guess about what is happening now.”

Is Gen Y changing the workplace?

Generation Y (GenY) is made up of those born between 1981-1999. I hear a few knocks on today’s young people but mostly from older folks with a very different view of… everything. I found the following in a story on a Canadian website and have applied for membership in Gen Y.

Clay Collins, author of The Alternative Productivity Manifesto and Quitting Things and Flakiness: The #1 Productivity Anti-Hack, argues that Gen Y is different than previous generation workers in the following ways:

  • Gen Y uses modern tools and technologies, including software that’s easily accessible and free from the Internet;
  • Gen Y easily maintains their to-do lists, and priorities by synching with the PDAs and iPODs;
  • Gen Y are not workaholics, and understand the relationship between a balanced life and productivity;
  • Gen Y are more likely to love their jobs, because they change jobs more frequently, and stay in jobs that match their passions and talents;
  • Gen Y has a continuing thirst for learning and personal growth;
  • Gen Y wants to have new experiences, try new things, and be creative;
  • Gen Y doesn’t stay in jobs they don’t like just to be comfortable and secure.

Understanding Generation Y is important not just for employers. Older workers–that is, anyone over 30–need to know how to adapt to the values and demands of their newest colleagues. Before too long, they’ll be the bosses. via Is Gen Y changing the workplace? Entrepreneur Financial Post.