#SecretDCHC - just a few hours away

Tuesday 1st December sees #SecretDCHealthCamp happen in Washington DC. This is not your usual HealthCamp.The event is a planning day.

I have two objectives in mind for this camp, but as ever, the outcome will be driven by the participants.

1. Health 2.0 Goes to Washington

Put the planning and organization in to effect to create a June 2010 event that brings HealthCamp, The Health2.0 Accelerator and the Health 2.0 Conference to the Nation's Capital. The discussions around this effort are scheduled for 11:00am (Eastern time) and a Conference Call will be opened up so people can join in the discussion.

The Call in details are:

Phone: +1.410.880.4287  or +1.877.232.4287

Conference ID: 81127

Passcode: Passcode is not required.

2. HealthCamp 2010 Calendar

There are a number of HealthCamps already pencilled in for 2010. There are also a number of HealthCamps we would like to see happen - in places like Paris and Berlin. For these to happen HealthCamp needs sponsors and local organizers. We therefore want to construct a calendar of HealthCamp events and look at what other Health related conferences are taking place that Camps might be able to run alongside.

There are also a number of regional gaps in HealthCamp coverage we would therefore like to see how we can get HealthCamps to happen in places like Seattle, Chicago, Ohio and Texas. 

If you can help we would love you to get involved. As a first step we are encouraging people to tweet potential dates for the calendar. To do this publish a tweet that includes "HealthCamp Calendar" together with a projected date and location. 

For example: HealthCamp Calendar Jan/Feb 2010 San Diego

We will use these tweets to compile the HealthCamp 2010 Calendar.

Can you keep a secret? Then come and light the fuse for 2010 at #SecretDcHealthCamp. There is still space available.

Posted via email from More pre-blogspot than pre-posterous

Newspapers - the slow death continues

Stowe Boyd's /Message blog always has some fascinating commentary. Today he picked up a great quote from an Editor of a well known Newspaper. As Stowe says - Telling Words indeed!

"We are not a national news organization of record serving a general audience." 

This came from Marcus Brauchli, executive editor at The Washington Post. If the leading paper in the Nation's Capital is not a National News Organization then what hope is there for 99% of the rest of the Newspaper industry?

Posted via email from More pre-blogspot than pre-posterous

Happy Thanksgiving! The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

via youtube.com

The Muppets are looking pretty good in HD on YouTube!

Posted via web from More pre-blogspot than pre-posterous

Report: Microsoft may help News Corp. delist sites | Digital Media - CNET News

Maybe Rupert Murdoch was serious about wanting to go without Google.

Murdoch's News Corp. has initiated discussions with Microsoft over a plan to have the media company's content essentially delisted from the world's largest search engine, according to a report Sunday in the Financial Times that cited a person familiar with the situation. Microsoft, which owns rival search engine Bing, has also reportedly approached media giants about having their content removed from Google search results as well.

Microsoft representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The two companies have been linked discussing a Web-search partnership in the past. During Microsoft's failed bid for Yahoo in 2008, the tech giant was reportedly in "serious" talks with News Corp. to make a joint bid for Yahoo.

Murdoch, the chairman of a newspaper, TV, and Internet empire that includes The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, 20th Century Fox, Fox News, and Hulu, warned earlier this month that his sites may soon disappear from the search engine's listings. Murdoch accused search giants of "stealing" his company's content during an interview with Sky News Australia. When he was asked why he just doesn't pull his Web sites from Google's search results, he said: "I think we will. But that's when we start charging."

Murdoch and other News Corp. execs have said that they intend to charge readers and viewers for access to the company's content, forsaking the ad revenue model.

For several months, executives at some of the nation's most influential newspapers and periodicals, including The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press, have been blaming Google and similar Web services for at least some of their deepening financial troubles.

Google sells ads tied to the news blurbs it "scrapes" from news sites. It links back to the Web sites from which it acquired the content but doesn't share ad revenue with them.

"Publishers put their content on the Web because they want it to be found," Google said in a statement earlier this month. "Very few choose not to include their material in Google News and Web search. But if they tell us not to include it, we don't."

Critics of the media companies' bashing of Google point out that if media companies were serious about not being indexed by search engines, they could accomplish the feat on their own by inserting a single line of code into their URLs. For example, if the Wall Street Journal added a line such as online.wsj.com/robots.txt, content from the site would be rendered invisible to Google.

via news.cnet.com

Microsoft is playing a dangerous game if this report is true. It is one thing to win audiences by being a better search engine. It is an entirely different situation if you are incentivizing content producers to hide content from competitors.

This could backfire on Microsoft if they are not careful.

Posted via web from More pre-blogspot than pre-posterous

EFF Tackles Bogus Podcasting Patent - And We Need Your Help | Electronic Frontier Foundation

EFF Tackles Bogus Podcasting Patent - And We Need Your Help

News Update by Rebecca Jeschke

Patenting podcasting? You've got to be kidding. Yet a company called Volomedia just got the Patent Office to grant them such exclusive rights.

EFF and the law firm of Howrey, LLP aren’t willing to just sit by and watch. This patent could threaten the vibrant community of podcasters and millions of podcast listeners. We want to put a stop to it, but we need your help.

The Volomedia patent covers "a method for providing episodic media." It's a ridiculously broad patent, covering something that many folks have been doing for many years. Worse, it could create a whole new layer of ongoing costs for podcasters and their listeners. Right now, just about anyone can create their own on-demand talk radio program, earning an audience on the strength of their ideas. But more costs and hassle means that podcasting could go the way of mainstream radio -- with only the big guys able to afford an audience. And we'd have a bogus patent to blame.

In order to bust this patent, we are looking for additional "prior art" -- or evidence that the podcasting methods described in the patent were already in use before November 19, 2003. In particular, we're looking for written descriptions of methods that allow a user to download pre-programmed episodic media like audio files or video files from a remote publisher, with the download occurring after the user subscribes to the episodes, and with the user continuing to automatically receive new episodes. You can read the entire prior art request here, and if you have something that could help, please send it to podcasting_priorart@eff.org or fill out the form on our Volomedia page.

EFF's Patent-Busting Project has taken on ten of the worst free-speech and innovation crushing software patents approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Eight of the ten have had a bite taken out of them so far, with two busted entirely, one narrowed, four reexams granted by the Patent office, and another one invalidated by the courts. We weren't looking to add to our list of the "worst of the worst," but this one was so bad we had to add it as a special bonus offender, and we can't wait to shoot it down. As Renee DuBord Brown of Howrey said, "Overbroad patents deter innovation. Congress specifically authorized the reexamination process to correct such errors, and we are looking forward to working with EFF on this reexam."

Related Issues: Patents

[Permalink]

via eff.org

EFF looking for Prior Art to November 2003. They obviously need to look at material used at BloggerCon I which took place in October 2003.

Who, other than Dave Winer were at BloggerCon I and still have notes and copies of presentations?

Posted via web from More pre-blogspot than pre-posterous

Upcoming Webinars

http://globalmediadynamics.com/webinars/upcoming-webinars#
Event Information: Achieving Vitality & Wellness in a Web 2.0 and Health 2.0 Environment - Participatory Healthcare in a Consumer-Driven Era
Registration is required to join this event. Event status: Not started (Register)
Date and time: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 3:00 pm
Eastern Standard Time (GMT -05:00, New York)
Panelist(s) Info: Mark Scrimshire
Director, Internet Channel Strategy
CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield
Duration: 1 hour 15 minutes
Description: About the Webinar:

The HealthCare market is changing. The emergence of High Deductible Health Plans and other changes in the Employer market are ushering in an era where more consumers are more engaged in their own health care than ever before. Transformation is coming to HealthCare driven by consumers and supported by a new generation of Web 2.0 and Health 2.0 tools and services that empower consumers to take ownership of their Health. The challenge for the industry is to embrace and support this transformation to achieve wellness and vitality for the population it serves.

To tackle these challenges, Global Media Dynamics' webinar on "Achieving Vitality and Wellness in The Era of Participatory HealthCare" offers a comprehensive review of emerging Social Tools for health, and targeted approaches to engage consumers in managing their own health, wellness and vitality. During this session, Mark Scrimshire, Director of Internet Channel Strategy at CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield and Chief Instigator for HealthCamps, will also address approaches that use the new breed of socially oriented tools to simplify consumer interactions and improve customer satisfaction.

Learning Objectives:
- Understand the structural forces impacting new products in health plans today

- Learn how simplification and integration can lead to improved adoption of tools and services by consumers

- Recognize the emergence of two-conversational marketing and the power of customer service as a marketing power house

- Understand how transparency is moving out of the hands of the industry and in to the hands of the consumer

- Prepare for adaptive engagement and the emergence of hyper-customization. One size no longer fits all.

About the Speaker:

Mark Scrimshire is the Director of Internet Channel Strategy at CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, an independent licensee of BlueCross BlueShield operating in Maryland, the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia. His role is to guide the transformation of CareFirst's Internet-based systems to meet the needs of a new era in Health Care.

Outside of CareFirst Mark is a blogger and is active in Social Media (@ekivemark on Twitter) and is best known as the Chief Instigator and Troublemaker for the HealthCa.mp movement which is driving the conversation around the reinvention of health care on a participatory model using social networking, open standards and the latest Internet technologies to deliver more effective care of our health. In the past 18 months 1,000 people have taken part in HealthCamps around the world.

Mark has been delivering strategic technology and business process solutions to major organizations for more than 20 years. A veteran of international business and the global consulting industry, he has undertaken many challenging assignments.

Who Should Attend:
From Health Plans, Employer Plans, Commercial Plans, and Retail Plans:
- Vice Presidents, Directors, Managers, and Executives of:
Marketing & Sales
Web Design
e-Solution
Benefits
Wellness

Health Promotion

Health Management

Human Resources

Corporate Health

Occupational Health

Medical Affairs

Consumer Engagement & Education

Product Development

Product Innovation

Public Policy

Regulatory Affairs

Product Management

Information Technology

e-Business

Health Reimbursement Accounts

Transparency

Business Development

Communications

Consumer Markets

Consumer Directed Health Plans (CDHPs)

Health Savings Accounts

I am presenting a Webinar on Vitality in a Web 2.0 and Health 2.0 World. I keep promoting the concept of the engaged patient and Participatory HealthCare.

Posted via web from More pre-blogspot than pre-posterous

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Steve Jobs (@FSJ) achieves total reality distortion before a product is even released

Old habits die hard. Rupert Murdoch believes that the future of the newspaper business is subscriptions—electronic subscriptions. He’s done with giving away his news for free on the Web and to search engines like Google. Instead thinks that Kindle-like tablet computers can save the media industry. It’s a notion that’s been floated before: an entire newsstand in a color tablet

which delivers electronic versions of any newspaper or magazine you want for a monthly subscription of $15 to $19 a month.

It’s got to work, otherwise, he warns from his soapbox, “Newspapers will go out of business. All newspapers.” In an interview on his own Fox Business

(embedded below), he explains his thinking:

ALEXIS GLICK: ARE YOU CONVINCED IT IS GOING TO WORK?

RUPERT MURDOCH: SURE.

ALEXIS GLICK: WHY?

RUPERT MURDOCH: WE TEST MARKETED IT AND PEOPLE I THINK UNDERSTAND THAT IT’S PERFECTLY FAIR THAT THEY ARE GOING TO PAY FOR IT. IF IT DOESN’T, THE NEWSPAPERS WILL GO OUT OF BUSINESS. ALL NEWSPAPERS. THERE IS JUST NOT ENOUGH ADVERTISING TO GO AROUND FOR ALL THE SITES ON THE INTERNET. THE NUMBER OF SITES AND AVAILABILITY OF ADVERTISING ON THE INTERNET, THE AVAILABILITY DOUBLES AND TRIPLES EVERY YEAR BUT THE AMOUNT OF REAL MONEY GOES UP 10 OR 15% A YEAR. THE PRICE OF IT KEEPS COMING DOWN.

Forget for a moment that news websites will be perfectly readable on these newfangled tablets everyone keeps talking about. So Murdoch still has the problem of “>”leading” all of his media competitors into the promised land of subscription tablets by walling off their websites from readers. And also set aside the fact that newspapers and magazines are already available for paid download on Amazon’s Kindle, and that those subscription revenues are still miniscule. A full-color tablet with access to an entire newsstand’s worth of magazines and newspapers for a single bundled price would be a better deal and better experience than buying subscriptions a la carté from the Kindle.

But in the face of free content readable via a browser, the subscription model will be challenged. Even setting aside competition from newer media sites and blogs with lower cost structures and lean staffs, there is no way to completely wall off news from every traditional news organization. At the very least, the weakest newspapers and magazines with the lowest readership and share of attention will find that they are better off remaining free and selling Web ads than taking crumbs from the new electronic subscrtiption pie. (Presumably the subscription revenue will be divvied up based on demand, with the most popular titles getting the largest portion).

Apparently, Murdoch also has no interest in simply playing Bing off of Google and making the search engines pay for the right to index his news either. Asked whether he was “moving towards an exclusive deal” with the “aggregators and the Googles of the world” to make them “pay for News Corp. content,” Murdoch replied:

NO, NO, NO. I DON’T KNOW THAT THEY CAN AFFORD TO DO THAT. IF THEY WERE TO PAY EVERYBODY FOR EVERYTHING THEY TOOK FROM EVERY NEWSPAPER IN THE WORLD, AND EVERY MAGAZINE, THEY WOULDN’T HAVE ANY PROFITS LEFT.

You got that? Even if he were to sell his news to Google, which he is not, Google doesn’t have enough money to buy it. Either that, or Murdoch is negotiating in public as Google’s search deal with MySpace comes up for renewal.

Video and partial transcript below:

Transcript excerpt via Fox Business News

ALEXIS GLICK: YOU HAVE MADE A LOT OF NEWS ABOUT AGGREGATORS AND GOOGLES OF THE WORLD AND WHETHER THEY SHOULD PAY FOR NEWS CORP. CONTENT. ARE YOU MOVING TOWARD EXCLUSIVE DEAL WITH THEM?

RUPERT MURDOCH: NO, NO, NO. I DON’T KNOW THAT THEY CAN AFFORD TO DO THAT. IF THEY WERE TO PAY EVERYBODY FOR EVERYTHING THEY TOOK FROM EVERY NEWSPAPER IN THE WORLD, AND EVERY MAGAZINE, THEY WOULDN’T HAVE ANY PROFITS LEFT. THEY HAVE DEVISED A BRILLIANT SEARCH ENGINE THAT SCRAPES ALL OF THE MATERIAL PUBLISHED IN THE WORLD, AND ON THE BACK OF THAT THEY SELL SEARCH, BUT THEY DON’T PAY FOR THE RAW MATERIAL. WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT. WE CAN PUBLISH OUR PAPERS ELECTRONICALLY, AND OTHERS CAN TOO, AND PEOPLE CAN STILL GO TO A SEARCH ENGINE IF THEY WANT TO FIND OUT SOMETHING, NOT NEWS PERHAPS, BUT THEY SEE TERMS THAT NEWS REFERS TO IN NEWSPAPER STORIES AND MAGAZINES THEY CAN EITHER GO TO GOOGLE OR MICROSOFT OR WHOEVER. THEY’LL STILL HAVE A VERY GOOD BUSINESS.

ALEXIS GLICK: YOU ENVISION A WORLD THEN WITH A TABLET, A HANDHELD DEVICE OR SOMETHING OF THAT NATURE WHERE YOU CAN OFFER A FINANCIAL MARKETPLACE OR A SUPERMARKET FULL OF MEDIA CONTENT AND DATA ON A MULTI-TIERED SYSTEM?

RUPERT MURDOCH: YES.

ALEXIS GLICK: HOW DOES THAT WORK?

RUPERT MURDOCH: WELL, YOU’D BE ABLE TO GET ON IT, AS WOULD BE TRANSMITTED TO IT, A TABLET. TRANSMITTED THROUGH THE AIR OR OVER WI-FI. A REASONABLE SIZE, ATTRACTIVE TABLET IN FULL COLOR AND YOU COULD READ A NEWSPAPER ON IT. YOU PRESS A BUTTON WHEN YOU WANT IT OR IF YOU WANT TO PLAY EXTRA, MORE THAN THAT, BUT IF IT COSTS $15 OR $19 A MONTH, IF YOU WANTED TRAVEL MAGAZINES OR SOMETHING YOU CAN ORDER THEM UP AND HAVE THEM.

ALEXIS GLICK: ON THE TABLET, IF I PAY THE MAXIMUM AMOUNT I CAN HAVE ANYTHING I WANT?

RUPERT MURDOCH: ANY CONTENT. BOOKS, ANYTHING AT ALL. YOU JUST HAVE TO PAY. THAT’S THE FUTURE. IT COSTS A FORTUNE. THE NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY – THE NEWS INDUSTRY, PUT IT THAT WAY. LET’S NOT TALK ABOUT PAPER. THE NEWS INDUSTRY SPENDS A FORTUNE IN COLLECTING THE NEWS. IT NEEDS TO BE PAID FOR IT. THERE IS NOT ENOUGH ADVERTISING TO GO AROUND. IT’S ALRIGHT ON CABLE TELEVISION BECAUSE IT GETS PAID BY THE CABLE SUPPLIERS, MONEY, WHICH, OF COURSE, GETS PASSED ON TO THE PUBLIC. AS WELL AS SUPPLEMENTED BY SOME ADVERTISING AND IT HAS TO BE THE SAME WITH OTHER FORMS OF NEWS.

ALEXIS GLICK: ARE YOU CONVINCED IT IS GOING TO WORK?

RUPERT MURDOCH: SURE.

ALEXIS GLICK: WHY?

RUPERT MURDOCH: WE TEST MARKETED IT AND PEOPLE I THINK UNDERSTAND THAT IT’S PERFECTLY FAIR THAT THEY ARE GOING TO PAY FOR IT. IF IT DOESN’T, THE NEWSPAPERS WILL GO OUT OF BUSINESS. ALL NEWSPAPERS. THERE IS JUST NOT ENOUGH ADVERTISING TO GO AROUND FOR ALL THE SITES ON THE INTERNET. THE NUMBER OF SITES AND AVAILABILITY OF ADVERTISING ON THE INTERNET, THE AVAILABILITY DOUBLES AND TRIPLES EVERY YEAR BUT THE AMOUNT OF REAL MONEY GOES UP 10 OR 15% A YEAR. THE PRICE OF IT KEEPS COMING DOWN.

get widgetminimize

CrunchBase Information

News Corporation

Website:	newscorp.com
Location:	New York, New York, United States
Founded:	1980

News Corp is the world’s largest media conglomerate company.

News Corporation is a diversified global media company with operations in eight industry segments: filmed entertainment; television; cable network programming; direct broadcast satellite… Learn More

Google

Website:	google.com
Location:	Mountain View, California, United States
Founded:	September 7, 1998
IPO:	August 19, 2004

Google primarily provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of tools and platforms including its more popular… Learn More

Amazon Kindle 2

Company:	Amazon
Website:	amazon.com/kindle
Launch Date:	February 24, 2009

Amazon’s Kindle 2 is a mobile eBook reader. It was announced on February 9, 2009. An update on the original Amazon Kindle, Kindle 2 weighs 10.2 oz, has 7 times the storage space of… Learn More

Information provided by CrunchBase

via techcrunch.com

As the Newspaper industry struggles to find a viable business model it appears that the legend of Steve Jobs reaches new heights.

He appears to have Google and Microsoft playing off against each other while convincing the Newspaper industry (okay - may be just Rupert Murdoch) that the Tablet is their only savior.

This is amazing since Apple haven't even released their much rumored tablet yet.

Posted via web from More pre-blogspot than pre-posterous