Page 1 2 3 Page 1 2 3 | FRIDAY - MARCH 3, 2006 - ISSUE NO. 202 |
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| Wireless Messaging Newsletter | ||
| WIRELESS  MESSAGING | |
| EUROPEAN MOBILE MESSAGING ASSOCIATION |
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| EUROPEAN MOBILE MESSAGING ASSOCIATION |
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| TECHNOLOGY NEWS |
What Is Microsoft's Origami?
Mystery Surrounding the Clandestine Project Begins to Unfold
By JONATHAN SILVERSTEIN
 No one is sure what Microsoft's mysterious Origami project is all about, but its secret nature has peaked the interest of technophiles everywhere. (ABC News) |
March 2, 2006—Is Microsoft's Origami a new hand-held device poised to change the world? Could it be a new operating system made especially for a new kind of portable computer? What if it's all just hype?
When a video of a hand-held, tablet-like computer appeared on the Internet recently, bloggers, technophiles and journalists jumped at what they believed was the mysterious Origami, and rumors began to fly.
Microsoft's public relations department did little to calm the furor.
"Origami is a concept we've been working on with partners," says an unidentified Microsoft spokesperson in an e-mail. "We are excited to share more details about the evolution of the Origami concept with you in the coming weeks, so stay tuned."
With bated breath, many in the public waited for March 2, when the company was to pull back the curtain a bit to reveal a little more about the clandestine project.
But instead of a high-resolution photo, or a blowout event to reveal Origami, the company simply added another cryptic video on the project's Web site—origamiproject.com—that answers few questions but instead continues to raise them.
What Is Origami?
"From the new information that Microsoft released today, it's obviously some sort of mobile product that consumers can take with them, and now all the speculation lies in what kind of mobile product," says Ross Rubin, an analyst with NPD Group,
The most popular explanation of—or speculation about—Origami is that it's a new kind of tablet PC.
Tablet PCs are not that different from regular notebook computers, except they allow the user to interact directly with the screen.
"So far, tablet PCs haven't really taken off in the home and in the general workspace," says Gizmodo.com news editor John Biggs. "Obviously, it has applications in medical and in some other fields where you have to be able to sign things, like real estate contracts."
Biggs doubts that Microsoft would release a piece of hardware given its track record.
"It's just not their modus operandi," he says. "They do consoles [Xbox and Xbox 360], but I don't think they're going to be doing hand-helds."
Instead, Biggs believes Origami is an operating system designed to work with new kinds of third-party, hand-held PCs.
"What we discovered is that it's probably some sort of software solution based on Intel's mobile PC platform, that tiny PC that they were flaunting a couple of months ago," he says.
The tiny PC he refers to is Intel's Ultra Mobile Personal Computer—UMPC.
Many have speculated that the hand-held computer—about the size of a small, paperback book—could operate using a new stripped-down version of the Windows XP operating system, called Origami.
"It's [UMPC] essentially a really low-powered PC running Windows XP. It's one size up from a PDA," explained Biggs. "It's designed to be low-powered, so it's not going to run out of batteries very quickly."
According to Rubin, the low-power requirement will mean the device will only need to be charged as regularly as, say, a cell phone, with several days' worth of standby power.
Microsoft Pulls an Apple
Aside from a lot of hype generated by the Microsoft PR machine and the so-called leaked video, why should the layman care about Origami? And do we need another portable device to add to our Batman-style utility belts?
"If this form factor takes off, and if the whole tablet idea actually gets accepted by the layman with the Batman belt, it could conceivably take the place of your BlackBerry, your laptop, your PDA and everything," says Biggs. "So it could be an all-in-one, incredible piece of hardware that everyone wants."
Biggs says the only way to make that happen is to develop a device and an operating system that is so compelling and so functional that no one can put it down.
But he points out that Microsoft's surreptitious marketing strategy resembles the methods of one of its fiercest competitors.
"I think we're seeing the first inklings of Microsoft pulling an 'Apple,'" he says. "I mean, Apple can hold a press conference and the whole world sits on edge waiting for some hi-fi box to appear out of thin air or something."
Microsoft says to check back March 9 to find out what Origami is.
Source: ABC News
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Parco Press Release Thursday, March 02, 2006
For Immediate Release
Thursday 02nd of March 2006
Patient Care Technology Systems Announces Integration of Parco Wireless’ Advanced RFID Tracking Technologies
March 1, 2006 (Mission Viejo, CA) – Patient Care Technology Systems (PCTS), a provider of advanced clinical information systems for high acuity departments announced today the integration with Parco Wireless’ radio frequency identification (RFID) tracking systems. PCTS will be integrating the technology, which is designed exclusively for hospital use and uses a highly developed form of RFID called ultra-wideband (UWB), with its software for automatically tracking patients and mobile medical equipment.
PCTS automatic tracking software allows for real-time data collection of patient location and care status utilizing most major tracking technology platforms including infrared, active RFID, and now ultra-wideband. Automated tracking systems operate inertly in the background, passively collecting location data for the caregivers and are designed to eliminate data entry or bar code scanning in some instances. Because little demand is placed upon the caregiver to collect this data, clinicians are able to provide more time focused on caregiving.
The PCTS software uses rules-based intelligence to translate interactions between staff, equipment and patients to identify and time-stamp the progression of care for each patient which can quickly identify patient flow bottlenecks. PCTS markets automatic tracking solutions for the emergency department, operating room and hospital-wide under the Amelior brand name.
The ultra-wideband hardware operates across a range of frequency bands while not interfering with existing communication systems. This is because it uses very low transmit power, while still maintaining a high data rate. It operates in the time domain rather than the frequency domain, with its signals consisting of high-speed electromagnetic pulses rather than sine waves. This means that the waves traverse many frequencies unimpeded and unnoticed. Extremely suitable for sensitive hospital environments, the UWB provided by Parco works alongside all existing wireless standards. Considered hospital grade wireless, UWB is more robust and accurate than IR, WiFi, or traditional forms of RFID. As such the combined systems can accurately read tags attached to people and objects in real-time with accuracies between six and twelve inches. The tags are also capable of sending and receiving secure data packets from integrated components to which the tag is attached.
“We are excited about the potential to integrate our automatic tracking software with Parco’s RFID system”, said Tony Marsico, CEO of PCTS. “Our focus has always been to provide the most advanced software with the broadest hardware compatibility possible. This provides our customers with the ability to create the ideal system configuration for their needs. The Parco technology offers a significant technological advantage in terms of thousands of tags that can be tracked at once, accuracy of reporting, repeatability and quality of data, and we are pleased to welcome them to our network of technology partners.”
About Patient Care Technology Systems
Patient Care Technology Systems, a subsidiary of Consulier Engineering, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSLR) is dedicated to becoming the leading provider of patient safety solutions in the high acuity segments of healthcare. Featuring the Amelior ED™ patient care system, a comprehensive ED information system with clinical decision support, and Amelior EDTracker™ automatic tracking, the most widely implemented automatic tracking system in U.S. emergency departments, PCTS provides a family of integrated and intelligent solutions designed to reduce medical errors and improve the operating performance of high acuity departments. Amelior patient care system customers have been recognized nationally for department productivity and nursing excellence. For more information, visit www.pcts.com.
About Parco Wireless
Parco is the healthcare industry leader in providing the most reliable, scalable and accurate RFID-enabled resource and patient workflow management tools available to hospitals today. Parco’s state-of-the art indoor positioning systems incorporate an advanced form of non-interfering RFID called ultra-wideband technology as well as advanced software management tools that consistently report sub-foot accuracy for thousands of patients and hospital equipment. Parco’s systems are designed to work with most legacy systems for easy software integration, electromagnetic and radio frequency compatibility. The Parco systems optimize asset utilization in everyday use as well as emergency situations, increase patient flow, reduce wait times, reduce operating costs and improve overall patient care quality. Visit. www.parcowireless.com for more information.
Media Contacts
Patient Care Technology Systems
Stephen Armstrong
VP Marketing
Patient Care Technology Systems, LLC.
27261 Las Ramblas, Suite 200
Mission Viejo, California 92691
(949) 367-6698
Parco Wireless
Scott Cohen
Chief Executive Officer
(646) 837-0643
Source: Parco web site
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| EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS |
t was the fourth night after Hurricane Katrina, and something like a thousand patients, doctors and staff were trapped at Medical Center Louisiana in downtown New Orleans, surrounded by floodwaters. Outside, reports were grim. People were drowning in their attics. Inside the hospital, there was no running water, no power, no phones and no Internet. Cell phones didn't work. Each day the authorities said evacuations were about to begin, but nothing happened.
The staff thought they’d seen everything the disaster could bring. Then, in the middle of the night, a pregnant woman dragged herself out of the foul, dark water surrounding the center’s Charity Hospital, having managed to swim several blocks from her home, where she had been trapped. She was in labor and the pain was intensifying. By flashlight, doctors quickly determined that she needed a Caesarean section. But with no running water, no electricity, and no way to clean her up or to sterilize instruments, surgery was out of the question. The doctors conferred, and then sent Tim Butcher, at that time Charity’s emergency operations director, upstairs to a conference room where a 5-foot-3-inch, middle-aged jazz musician, known for his cigarette-rasped voice and salty language, was sleeping on an air mattress. “Richard, wake up,” Butcher said. “We need you.”
Richard Webb, who happens to be legally blind, is one of the nation’s more than 660,000 licensed amateur radio operators. (They’re nicknamed “hams” for reasons that are unclear.) As an amateur radio operator and a member of the Mobile Maritime Network, Webb regularly relays messages from small boats, occasionally participates in small-vessel rescue operations and helps with tracking hurricanes.
Pitching in and helping is a long tradition among hams, particularly in times of emergency. In fact, the Federal Communications Commission’s regulatory charge to amateur radio operators urges them to enhance communication, “particularly with respect to providing emergency communications.” Whether it’s an earthquake or a forest fire, a blizzard or a hurricane, when usual communication systems go down, ham radio operators are up, ready to connect the scene of disaster with the outside world. As the series of recent emergencies and other natural disasters so amply illustrates, hams are often the sole means of communication from disaster sites. Within minutes of the first impact in the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001—which put the radio and phone towers atop the building out of commission—ham radio operators set up an emergency network that authorities used to coordinate rescue operations.
When the phone lines are down and “wireless” takes on a whole new meaning, when cell phone and PDA networks fail and batteries go dead, when the lights go out, authorities fall back on this seemingly antiquated but always reliable form of communication. Amateur radio becomes quite literally a lifeline.
“Most communications systems are all going through some common chokepoint,” says Allen Pitts, media and public relations manager of the American Radio Relay League. Whether it’s a telephone switchboard, an Internet relay or a radio tower, “knock out that chokepoint, and the whole system fails,” he says.
Rather than relying on a network, each ham operator has a complete, self-contained transmitting and receiving station. “There is no chokepoint,” says Pitts. “They are like ants at a picnic. You can knock out some, many or even most of them, and they still get to the food. Each one is a mobile, independent unit working in cooperation for a common goal.”
Understandably, many government agencies and hospitals have enlisted amateur radio operators to be on call for emergencies. When the two hospitals making up New Orleans’ Medical Center—University and Charity hospitals—decided to set up their station two years ago, they looked around for volunteers to run it. Richard Webb and his wife, Kathleen Anderson, who is also a ham, raised their hands. They set up the station and tested it every week or so.
The night before Katrina hit, Webb pushed Anderson—she uses a wheelchair—to their van and she drove them to the hospital from their small home in suburban Slidell, Louisiana. Pretty much every other vehicle they encountered during that 30-mile trip was heading out of, not into, downtown New Orleans. At the hospital, this unlikely A-Team—a blind man and a woman in a wheelchair—set up their antennas and gasoline-fired generators, got on the air, tracked the approaching storm and rode it out.
Like much of New Orleans, the hospital suffered relatively little damage from Katrina directly. Then the levees broke. Soon the hospital was isolated, an island surrounded by water 10 feet deep in places. (And, yes, when the power went out, a hospital staffer did offer Webb a flashlight. “Thanks,” he said, “but I don’t need it.”)
Webb and Anderson kept communications going 20 hours a day, relaying messages to and from the state command center in Baton Rouge. They passed along the hospital staff’s requests for food, drinkable water, medicine, bedding, cleaning supplies and more. Authorities repeatedly told Webb that rescuers were coming to evacuate the hospital—later that day, in a few hours, the next day—but day after day, nobody showed up. Coast Guard boats delivered supplies, and took out a handful of patients who needed critical care, including babies in incubators.
Webb and Anderson listened in on the emergency networks and heard how other hams, including many who drove in from all over the country, were a vital part of numerous rescues. In hundreds of cases, people trapped by floodwaters in homes or on rooftops tried calling 911 on their cell phones. The calls wouldn't go through. So they called relatives in other parts of the country, sometimes a
Hamming It Up The American Radio Relay League is the United States’ largest organization of amateur radio operators. Its Web site (www.arrl.org) is a good resource for those interested in this hobby and related volunteer opportunities. thousand miles away, and the relatives in turn dialed 911. Their local emergency dispatchers then would pass along messages to ham radio operators who contacted rescuers in New Orleans: There are three people trapped in an attic at this address . . . five on the roof of this building . . . 15 on an overpass at this intersection. |
A word about all this relaying. While most of today’s sophisticated communications equipment uses horizon-to- horizon, line-of-sight radio frequencies, ham radio must rely on lower frequencies for long-distance transmission. “Low-frequency waves do an interesting thing,” says Pitts. “They ricochet. These waves bounce off the ionosphere, 60 miles over your head.” Depending on atmospheric conditions, some days you can communicate more clearly with another ham operator in Kenya than with your buddy across town. “By using different frequencies, directions and means, ham operators learn the art form of getting them to bounce where they want them to go,” Pitts says.
Webb took one call from a teenager who had a brand-new license with no kind of emergency training. He was in a school building with a number of other people, and nobody knew they were there. Two babies needed formula, and an elderly man needed a respirator. Webb relayed the call, and the group was rescued.
As the week wore on—the storm hit on a Monday night—more and more people began stopping by Webb’s radio room, the only link to the outside world. When he could, he sent out word from hospital staffers and patients to their families: I’m at the hospital, I’m OK, I hope to be evacuated soon, I'll call you when I can. Hams who received the messages in other parts of the country telephoned or e-mailed the families.
A number of people tried to pay Webb for sending out their messages. “Sorry, can’t take it,” he’d growl. “Not allowed. I’m strictly a volunteer.”
Sometimes during lulls between radio transmissions he pulled out his guitar. Small crowds gathered, welcoming the diversion.
| Webb became a rare source of light and calm in the darkness and confusion of a disaster scene. |
The night the woman in labor swam to the hospital, Tim Butcher shook Richard Webb awake and told him that she needed a helicopter. “We have a two-hour window to get her out of here,” Butcher said. Otherwise the mother would probably die, and the baby might, too. Webb ran to his radio, broke in on the network, and tried to relay a message to anyone.
On this evening, the first ham that Webb could reach was a fellow member of the Mobile Maritime Network in Texas. The Texas ham contacted a Network member in Cleveland—who was also an auxiliary Coast Guard officer. The Cleveland ham contacted his superior officers, and within a short time the patient was being airlifted to another hospital, where she had a C-section. At last report both mother and baby were doing well.
Webb saved one life that night, Butcher says, maybe two. And no one knows how many other people at the hospital might have died if Webb and his radio had not been there. Butcher’s sure of one thing: “Richard is a real hero.”
Source: Delta Airlines Sky Magazine, February 2006
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