HealthCamp shows off 'remarkable innovation' - Tampa Bay Business Journal

Today is HealthCampOrlando. I wish I could be there in Florida but commitments in Washington DC prevent that. Follow @healthcampfl on twitter for updates http://twitter.com/healthcampfl Here is an article from the business journal about HealthCamp

http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/blog/morning-edition/2012/04/healthcamp-s...

Mark Scrimshire
B: http://ekive.blogspot.com
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Washington DC's HDI Code-a-thon: Preventing Obesity

The code a thon as part of DC's Health innovation has opened up registration for June 2-3. http://www.health2con.com/devchallenge/washington-dcs-hdi-code-a-thon-prevent...

Check out http://healthca.mp/dc on Jume 4th and sign up for HealthCamp DC too.

Mark Scrimshire
B: http://ekive.blogspot.com
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#bmoretechb @aol Baltimore's largest monthly tech event

Baltimore Tech Breakfast is at AOL/Advertising.com organized by Ron Schmelzer of http://www.bizelo.com

Here are the pitches:

Bandhappy

Online LIVE music lessons. Connecting musicians with students. 

Online synchronous music lessons.

Online lessons: 

- Students play 28% more.

Already have 10,000 registered students and teachers. Cover all 50 States and in 100 countries.

From a band perspective this enables musicians to supplement income by giving lessons while on tour.

Video chat is optimized to sync audio and video - unlike Skype. This is very important for lessons.

There is an approval process for Musicians. Teacher profiles are queued for vetting. 

Shout outs:

Chad Schneider of Root3 Labs looking for electrical engineers and designers.

CodePupil

An online teaching tool that teaches you to program.

The example was an Introduction to HTML and CSS.

online tutor services. With video, chat. People will be able to purchase teaching hours on an hourly basis. But there are a number of free games, online tools and workshops.

Competitors include Code Academy. Team Treehouse (closed service with monthly fee)

Makes learning coding fun!

ToolSpinner @ToolSpinner

Connect Tool owners with Tool renters.

Currently the options for home owners are: Buy or Rent from a major store. e.g. 18" chain Saw for $169 to buy or $67 to rent. 

ToolSpinner focuses on letting tool owners make money from tools they use infrequently. For the Chain saw example the rental cost would be $27.

Tools Spinner provides insurance for the tool owner. 

The rental market is a $9B industry for rental of general tools.

Business model is to take a commission on the transaction.

Liability Protection - for ToolSpinner and the Owner.

- Consumer to Consumer liability. much like AirBnB.

- Damage: pay for repairs or replacement value.

Competitors do not have a market niche focus.

Beergivr

Baltimore-based startup working with local bars to allow people to buy a friend or contact a beer (or wine).

Bars can use the platform to market to their customers. eg.. First person to come in with a smartphone voucher gets free beer.

User Revenue Model: Transaction Cost + 5% + $1.

31% of Beergivr visitors return.

This is a great service for Bars. The Average gift transaction is $12 but the average spend in those bars is $33. 

Peak usage hours are 3pm to 1am.

Beergivr integrates social sales with financial integration. 

Transactions can be locked to a specific venue or can be used across the network.

Baltimore Tech Breakfast - Logo Contest

19 submissions from 9 different designers. A great group of Baltimore Graphic Designers.

PointClickSwitch.com

Maryland Energy Advisors. Help you switch your electric bill to a  lower cost supplier in the residential market.

77% of the residential market have not changed supplier. 

Currently 37 different suppliers in the market. How do you compare? PointClickSwitch is the expedia of Energy Choice.

Reduce switching time from weeks to minutes. Average saving is 14%.

You can take a picture of your bill on your smartphone and email to them. 

Currently only an Electricity Energy Broker. Applying for Gas Brokerage permission.

Currently Maryland only but looking to extend to other states (16 states allow energy de-regulation).

Kojami

Kojami helps event organizers. 

Competitors include Eventbrite.

Kojami is a mobile event solution. Create an interactive mobile optimized event notification. 

Mobile Reminders. Event management. 

Market,  Manage, Analyze.

Good social network integration - allows consumers to "shove" to their network.

10,000 events already on the platform.

Free and priced options. 

Event Management market is crowded and mature.  Many Event Management programs don't really help with promoting an event. 

Kojami is a full event lifescycle solution.

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#bmoretchb it is Baltimore Tech Breakfast @aol

I am at the Baltimore Tech Breakfast, organized by Ron Schmelzer from www.bizelo.com.

Today we have pitches from: BandHappy, Code Pupil, ToolSpinner, BeerGivr, MD Energy, Kojami. http://www.meetup.com/Baltimore-TechBreakfast/events/57901652/

It is a beautiful day down at the inner harbor. This was the view from the AOL/Advertising.com with the free inner harbor connector heading to the other side of the harbor.

Mark Scrimshire

B: http://ekive.blogspot.com

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#Django District @jackiekazil talking about Testing at #Pycon

Persistent themes from PyCon:

Mocking - Looks to be heading to be part of the main Python library.

System Resources:

Python Profiler only shows CPU time.

Use Unix Time Command to look at wall clock and CPU time then subtract for idea of I/O Time.

Pull out methods in to free functions

Factor out parts that don't touch attributes into a separate free function

Maintainable Testing:

- Design with testing in mind.

- Don't write tests to write tests. 

Mocking:

Mimic behavior of real objects in controlled ways.

Check out a great PyCon talk on Large Scale Testing

Don't Test Django - Write tests for your apps.

Use __init__.py to import all sub modules.

Don't hit the DB.

Don't run tests that do a self.save.

Large Scale Tests:

NOSE can re-order tests to optimize fixture loading

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#Django District Testing Facebook Canvas Apps

Eric Palakovich Carr - aka @bigsassy

on github at: http://github.com/bigsassy

Facebook Canvas Apps. 

A Facebook namespace that points to your web service.  Basically an iframe in Facebook.

Facebook has a signed request. 

People go to Facebook

They go to your app. That hits your app on your server via a POST. 

The POST has the necessary user credentials and supporting social data. eg.

/me

/me/friends

/me/likes

You will want to mine this data. Otherwise why create a Canvas App?

Take the signed Request from Facebook. Use Middleware app to match to your database data.

This is an example where Mock is a good tool to mock up the Facebook API responses.

http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/mock/

Also look at Django Gargoyle

Gargoyle is a platform built on top of Django which allows you to switch functionality of your application on and off based on conditions.

Great for testing on production with your in-house users.

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#Django District - 508 Compliance

Great presentation on 508 compliance.
This is a federal requirement to enable access to people with disabilities.

Avoid:- Images with Text
- Bad Alt Text
- Poor HTML layout (pass the W3C validation tests)
- Add Focus Indicators
- Designs that don't grow (allow fonts to expand - does navigation still work)
- Poor color contrast (Light background light font)

Enable Keyboard navigation and mouse navigation (not one at exclusion of the other)

Avoid rubber-band elementsAvoid Pin Point Accuracy (eg. small checkboxes)

Enable tabbing to get through the site.. Think about Tabbing sequence.

Avoid overriding focus in CSS.

Avoid Crazy Key Combinations (people may have use of only one hand)

People without headphones can be the same as people who are deaf.

Put Closed Captioning on your Videos.

Avoid Auto Play.

People with hearing disabilities may have problems with really long sentences (more than 15 words).Also avoid long paragraphs as well (for ADD type disabilities).

Don't use Audio only queues.

Poor quality live-streamed videos. Hard to discern movements or audio.

Don't "mute" the chat box.

Loss of navigation. Keep the global navigation visible.

Dark backgrounds ar ehard for dyslexics to read.

Avoid Serif fonts.

Avoid busy backgrounds.

Avoid ALL CAPS.

Motion ads can be annoying.

Pictures provide an anchor.

Justified text can be difficult for dyslexics.

Cool tools:

- Daltonizer
- N-Wax (for Chrome)
- Dev tools in the browser
- Fangs (FF)

For images you can use a CSS Style of Hidden and a Font size of zero to allow information that can be picked up from screen readers without corrupting the page design.

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Check out the Django District mertup

Tonight I am in the district at

Lightening Talks w/ a Testing Flavor (django-district). See more details here:
http://www.django-district.org/events/58149912/

I am supposed to be giving a lightening talk. You can find it on m slideshare account:

Http://slideshare.net/ekivemark

Mark Scrimshire
B: http://ekive.blogspot.com
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#GooglePlus posting via email

One of the things that has frustrated me with Google Plus is the way that it acts as an island. I use Posterous to post emails to my blog and notify Twitter and Facebook etc.

So this is a test. I have found some instructions here: http://google-plus.com/2053/how-to-post-to-google-using-email-or-gmail-you-can-post-to-public-circles-extended-circles-etc/ that allows you to use GoogleVoice to connect to Google Plus.

I then went to a very under-rated but amazing service: if this then that.  or ifttt.com

I basically configured a "recipe" that...

Took my Blogger feed url.

Connected it to GMail.

to send an email that posted to my googleplus email address .

So this post is the first test in order to see if this works.

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Made it to #bmorefail

After a productive morning working on tests for Restcat - https://github.com/RESTCat I made it to the Du Burns arena in Canton for #bmorefail. A great crowd building and it should be a fun and informative day.

Mark Scrimshire
B: http://ekive.blogspot.com
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#health2stat social media is a channel...

Social media is a channel. You still need a home to bring people back to. Twitter and other channels such as pinterest are not a destination. They are a pointer that links to a destination.

I refer to this in my presentation:

Mark Scrimshire
B: http://ekive.blogspot.com
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Python/Django with a testing Flavor - the slides for my lightening talk at Django District

I am still fairly new to the world of Python/Django but have found it to be a very powerful development framework. Recently I have built a UnitTesting framework for a number of Videntity applications including OMHE and Restcat. 

As a result I am attending the Django District Meetup next week and have been asked to give a lightening talk on my experiences in UnitTesting. In preparation for that I put together a few slides and have posted the deck on Slideshare:

However, I don't really consider myself to be a developer so my initial thoughts when asked to present are encapsulated in the following slide:

Hopefully in posting the Slideshare it might prompt some suggestions from people who are more expert than me that will improve my knowledge about Python/Django. So far my experience is that when you come up with a programming solution somebody will be able to suggest an approach that drastically reduces the verbosity and increases the efficiency of the code.

One thing that I am told is  worth pointing out in the UnitTesting frameworks I have built have no external dependencies.

So let me know - what approaches do you take to developing UnitTests for applications in Django? 

((tag: code, development, django ))

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How are we supposed to feel about Nokia's Lumia Windows Phone? a pale shadow of iPhone and Android meant for staid businessmen?

Techcrunch is reporting that European Carriers are not digging the Nokia Lumia Windows Phone. Apparently it doesn't cut it against the Android and iPhone competition. In the US the Lumia 900 phone is effectively being given away this week because they were launched with a bug that affected the phone's ability to use data.

When you put this together with the TV Ad promoting the Lumia 900 it really makes you wonder....

I was watching the ad and came away wondering if it was meant to make me feel:

- The brand is fuddy duddy. Has been slow  to adapt and finally managed to copy the competition (the beta test is over....). It's a business phone - the guy is in a suit. with a staid blue tie.

When you couple this with the bungled launch and data connection problems it leaves you thinking that the beta test may be over but the product was rushed out for it to be tested by the unwitting public. (Business as usual???)

What are your thoughts?

Too little, too late?

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Stevenson University is hosting #RelayForLife

This evening Stevenson's Students and Faculty have turned out in force to take part in Their Annual Relay for Life walk to support the American Cancer Society.

IMG_1349.MOV Watch on Posterous

Mark Scrimshire
B: http://ekive.blogspot.com
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Social Media and the shift from Push to Gravitational Pull

There is a great interview of Mark Bonchek, SVP of Communities and Networks for Sears Holdings in Forbes.

Mark talks about the concept of Customer Gravity. Social Media is a revolution. The most significant revolution of our age, and of recent times. The rules of the game are changing for corporations. 

- Broadcast is giving way to customized communication.

- Communication is shifting from broadcast to becoming a two-way conversation.

- Collaboration is occurring on a global scale.

Mark has developed the concept of customer orbits. Think of brands as planets, around which moons want to revolve. The web power houses such as Google, Amazon, eBay and Facebook are solar systems that comprise multiple constellations of planets.

The idea of a gravitational pull in a customer context is very relevant because customers are shifting from being the recipient of pushed communications towards a world where interests and networks of like minds are drawn in to a common orbit. 

Push communications is like an exploding star - you want to avoid the debris as it hurtles towards you. 

Pull is like the sun where we are drawn towards the warmth and energy that the sun creates.

Social is Strategic. It is a gravitational force that corporations can no longer ignore. 

Think back to the era of the Gutenberg Press. It was a time when the prevailing view was that the world was flat and the planets revolved around the earth. We now know that is not  true. Our planet revolves around the sun and the earth is round. 

The era of Social Media is reminiscent of that transformative change in scientific thinking. Corporations have to come to terms with the idea that they are not the center of the universe. The world does not revolve around them. Push communication will still have a role, a diminished role, used to deliver personalized communication to those that have requested it. But Pull will continue to grow in importance and corporations will have to come to terms with how they can nurture personalized relationships with customers and other stakeholders that can effectively compete for the limited attention that those stakeholders have at their disposal.

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Posterous had a major DNS service glitch today

Yes - Posterous had a DNS problem today?

This morning (US Eastern time) I started getting bounces from my mail server when I sent email to my Posterous Blog - http://ekivemark.posterous.com

Mail reported: 

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

 {Email address AT}ekivemark.posterous.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
DNS Error: Domain name not found

It seems that the main posterous.com site was up and running, but any dub-domain was inaccessible. Somewhat inconveniently this included help.posterous.com.

The outages seemed to occur around noon and continued until after 3pm. 

While there is no mention on help.posterous.com the Twitter account did make mention of DNS Server issues.

This snapshot from 5:50pm EST on April 12th:

Actually I tried sending this post to Posterous but the mail server responded with the same error. 

I suspect that a change was made to the Posterous Dynamic DNS Server that maps sub-domains to blogs and this change has not propagated across the internet. It could be that mail servers are still querying the old DNS server and failing. This may take time for any caching in the mail server to be refreshed. So while you may be able to browse to a Posterous blog page you may not be able to publish by email for a little while longer.

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Building your personal brand in Social Media - My updated presentation

Last year I gave a presentation on Building your brand in Social Media.

That version includes an audio track.

Tomorrow I am presenting an update of this presentation. Obviously there is no audio track yet.

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#BmoreTech Tech and Social Change Meetup in Baltimore - To Tweet or Not To Tweet? This relates to my session tomorrow 2.healthca.mp/HFvSBI

The monthly Technology and Social Change Meetup.

This month Valerie Scott talking about how to use Social Media for fund raising.

St. Ambrose is a housing-focused non-profit based in Baltimore.

THe Fundraising 101:

1. Annual Plan of Action (SWAT)

2. Established private grant production schedule

3. Create and maintain a donor database. Cultivate prospects.

Redesigned website to enable online newsletter subscription.

Develop Monthly eNewsletter

Annual Fund Ask.

Keep moving or sink.....

Tools:

- Network for Good (intrusive - they own your donor names)

- Click and Pledge  

Network for Good you donate to them and they direct to the organization of your choice.

Tech for Social Change led to the introduction to:

- Google Ad Words

- QR Codes

- Mobile Giving

- Blogs

Mobile Giving: More people leads to more dollars.

The plan:

Launch January 2011

Working with Google Ad Words, Twitter and Facebook

Built  a spreadsheet for a baseline.

The objective was more email subscribers.

Twitter - Linked to Hootsuite.

Facebook - 5 administrators and all staff encouraged to contribute.

Website - redesigned with more pictures.

Donate Now on the Home Page.

Hired a blogger. Weekly postings. Links to other blogs. $1,200 per year.

Google Adwords: not a lot of traction.

Tripled online donations in 2011. Many coming in randomly and are not from specific solicitation.

Mobile giving campaign - Gather mobile numbers

Hubspot marketing grader: 78%

- Suggest 20 blogs per month

- Add social sharing  buttons

- More Twitter and Facebook activity

- Mobile Version of Website

- More Tweets

- Klout score of 23.

In housing markets - homes for individuals and families - change the message.

This ties in with the session I am hosting tomorrow on Building Your Brand in Social Media.

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Ridiculous ‘Google Glass’ Video Ripe For Parody | TechCrunch

via techcrunch.com

I am sure Google Glasses will bring some interesting innovations but the Windows Glasses Parody is hilarious.

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Pizza night

Last night I made pizza. I used trader Joe's pizza dough for the bases

The pizzas were:

- Red and Green Peppers with jalapeño and avocado and a four cheese miz

- Roast beef, mustard, Stilton and mozzarella drizzled with a pomegranate balsamic vinegar with cheddar cheese 

- Bacon, Brie, avacado and pear on mozarella

The crusts were a stuffed crust filled with shredded mozzarella.

The Green and Red Peppers pizza went in first...

Then the Roast Beef and Stilton...

Finally the bacon and brie. (The bacon was freshly cooked up early to become nice and crispy before preparing the pizzas)...

One trick to remember. Use plenty of corn meal if you prepare your pizza and then transfer it to the hot pizza stone. Use plenty of corn meal to help your pizza slide off on to the pizza stone more easily.

And no - I don't worry about trying to get my pizza bases to be perfectly round like they just came from Pizza Hut, Dominos or out of the freezer!

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HealthCare Social Media Review - Check it out

David Harlow and Joan Justice have launched the HealthCare Social Media Review over on HealthWorks Collective.

Check it out for a great round up of articles and posts on the use of Social Media in HealthCare. For those of you asking the question "Is there a use for Social Media in Health Care?" Take the advice of Dr. Howard Luks:

Digital or social media is NOT a passing fad… get past that.

The Internet has  forever changed the way our patients will approach healthcare."  

The HealthCare Social Media Review is well worth a visit. There is a little of everything for you to read: Privacy, Social Media Use. Health Literacy, Self Management and Self Awareness. Pinterest and HealthCare.

I am looking forward to collecting posts in order to host a future HealthCare Social Media Review on my blog at http://ekive.blogspot.com. And for anybody that would like to meet to discuss the use of Social Media in HealthCare why not checkout upcoming HealthCamps (http://HealthCa.mp) in Raleigh NC - Wednesday May 23rd, Washington DC Monday June 4th and San Francisco CA Friday October 5th.

If you want to know a little more about HealthCamp check out the latest Video for HealthCampRDU in Raleigh, NC.

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