An app a day keeps the doctor away: Patients told to use mobile phones for a check-up instead of visiting their GP
Patients will be told to use mobile phones ‘apps’ to monitor their health at home rather than seeing a doctor or nurse. Cancer sufferers, pregnant women and those with diabetes, lung problems and heart disease will be urged to take daily measurements and text them into a central computer system. Their results will be analysed and within a few minutes they will be sent a reply advising them on what treatment to take. If any reading is abnormal patients will be urged to phone their doctor or nurse immediately. The scheme is being rolled out by the Department of Health in the hope it will save the NHS millions of pounds through unnecessary visits to the surgery or hospital.
Daily
Mail
The rise of enterprise mobility
Smartphones, tablets and e-readers are selling more than laptops and desktop computers, bringing the day closer when mobile devices will reign supreme both in offices and homes. iPhones, rapidly developing network technologies, 4G and Wi-Fi availability, lower mobile data cost and smartphone applications are bringing this assumption ever closer to reality. A recent study by ABI Research revealed that the number of mobile app downloads is estimated to reach 44 billion by 2016. One big reason behind the rise is Google's Android and Windows 7 mobile phones gaining on Apple's dominance in the apps market and in popularity. According to MarketsandMarkets, another research firm, the global mobile apps market is expected to be worth $25bn by 2015 compared to $6.8bn in 2010.
Guardian
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz's birthday marked with Google doodle wave
The search engine’s logo on its home page has been replaced with a moving image of waves on a graph, in recognition of the German physicist’s pioneering work on electromagnetic waves. The waves depicted in the Google doodle are in Google's trademark colours – red, blue, yellow and green. Hertz’s experiments made him the first person to conclusively prove the existence of electromagnetic waves, which later led to the development of the wireless telegraph, radio and eventually television. Born in Hamburg in 1857, Hertz demonstrated an aptitude for sciences from a young age and went on to study under the physicists Gustav Kirchhoff and Hermann von Helmholtz in Dresden, Munich and Berlin. At the University of Berlin, his progress was so rapid that in 1880, at the age of just 22, he obtained his PhD on electromagnetic induction in rotating spheres.
Telegraph
Android beats iOS in terms of smartphone OS popularity in UK
Android has secured the top spot in the UK's most used smartphone OS chart with other key players in the market such as iOS and Windows Phone lagging far behind, according to a new study. The study was conducted by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech and according to its findings Android has managed to secure a whopping 36.9 per cent share out of UK's smartphone installed base. The study included an extensive survey carried throughout the country in four weeks till January 23 this year. While Android topped the chart, Apple's iOS platform had to be content at the second spot with 28.5 per cent stake in the country's smartphone user base. And, when it came to market share, Android secured just under 50 per cent stake in the UK's smartphone arena, while Apple's market share stood at somewhere around the 30 per cent mark. The third spot was secured by RIM with 15 per cent. The other platforms including Microsoft's WP and Nokia's Symbian divided the rest of the 6 per cent amongst themselves. The study also claimed that over half of the UK's total population (50.3 per cent) were now in possession of a smartphone.
IT
Pro Portal
Blackberry Playbook OS 2.0 released
Blackberry Playbook owners will be glad to know that yesterday (Tuesday the 21st of February) the latest OS (2.0) launched for the sleek seven-inch tablet – several months after it was meant to arrive but, hurrah! As with any new OS it’s the features that matter and RIM have included quite a few that will surely get the owners cheering. Some of these new features include the long awaited built in email client on the tablet. Previously users had to connect up with their Blackberry devices to get email access but now, you no longer need your smartphone to do this. This native email client features a unified inbox which can pull all your email accounts at once, tabs and a rich text editor.
iMedia
Monkey
Groupon acquires mobile technology companies, tests loyalty program
Groupon has acquired Hyperpublic and Kima Labs, a company spokesperson told Direct Marketing News on February 21st. Hyperpublic builds technology that allows information to be incorporated into location information and Kima Labs is the creator of the barcode-reading app Barcode Hero and the mobile payment app TapBuy. "Kima Labs has developed popular apps that make mobile transactions easier, more fun and more of a possibility for merchants,” a Groupon spokesperson said. “We're excited by the team's ability to create technology that consumers love, and we believe they'll be strong assets in our pursuit to change the way people shop." The Chicago-based company is also revamping its website design and adding features, including “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” buttons, Groupon's CEO Andrew Mason recently told Bloomberg Businessweek. The changes are aimed at tailoring Groupon's offers to individual preferences and ensuring its 33 million users receive offers that are as relevant as possible. Groupon's redesigned homepage will also showcase special events and holidays, along with any associated deals.
Direct
Marketing News
Ubuntu plans to turn a smartphone into a full-sized PC
Smartphones are already more powerful than laptops were a few years ago. But they are limited by the size of their screens and lack of a really a really usable keyboard. There are already a few attempts to marry a handset with a laptop, such as the Motorola Atrix 2. But London-based Canonical is going a step further with Ubuntu Linux for Android, which it says will provide a full desktop operating system when a smartphone is plugged into a keyboard and screen.
Tech
Europe
Nightline goes inside Apple factories in China
A week after Apple said the Fair Labor Association was starting independent investigations of the working conditions at its partners’ factories in Shenzhen and Chengdu, China, ABC News was able to take its cameras into Foxconn’s factories for a look at how iPhones, iPads and MacBook computers are made — and what the conditions are like for workers there who make about $1.78 an hour. Masked and gloved workers at the iPad plant told Nightline correspondent Bill Weir that they handle up to 6,000 units each during shifts that can last 10 hours. A robotic feminine voice says “Okay,” “Okay,” “Okay,” as each iPad is “born,” Weir says.
Forbes
UK gets its own version of English in Windows 8
Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system will have the U.K. version of English as a display language option, to address customers in that country, and some other countries like South Africa, India, Ireland, and Australia that use the version of the language. Windows 8, the next version of the company's OS, will also have 13 new language interface packs (LIPs) that install on top of a standalone Windows display language, Ian Hamilton, a program manager in Microsoft's Windows International Team said in a blog post on Tuesday. The packs contain localized user interface elements for the most commonly used Windows features. Users will also have the option to install multiple display languages and switch between them, as for example between U.S. English and Spanish, a feature relevant in the U.S., Hamilton said. Offering the operating system in local languages will help because in many countries English is at best a second language, said Vishal Tripathi, a principal research analyst at Gartner. But support for local languages will have to go beyond the display of the operating system to supporting these languages in applications as well, he added.
PC
World
Shanghai court hears lawsuit against Apple over use of iPad trademark in China
Apple Inc. defended its right to use the iPad trademark in China in a heated court hearing Wednesday that pitted the electronics giant against a struggling Chinese electronics company that denies having sold the mainland China rights to the popular tablet computer’s name. Shenzhen Proview Technology’s lawyer Xie Xianghui argued that the sale of the iPad trademark to an Apple subsidiary by Proview’s Taiwan affiliate in 2009 was invalid. Apple countered that Proview violated the sale contract by failing to transfer the trademark rights in mainland China. It also contends that the Chinese LCD maker has not marketed or sold its own “IPAD,” or Internet Personal Access Device for years, thus possibly invalidating its claim to the trademark. The hearing adjourned after a fractious four-hour session which saw the judge repeatedly admonishing both sides to observe proper court protocol as they argued across the courtroom. No date was announced for a judgment or further hearings.
Washington
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