iPad for medical professionals

I am currently working on a iPad app.

Curiosity got me and was thinking of various way iPad can be used for other than business professionals.

Medical professionals came to my mind, just came up with a quick list of areas where it can be applied.

• Real time view of patient history and medical reports
• All patient test results (X-rays and MRIs) can be accessed via ipad as soon as its uploaded onto the system
• Learning tool for medical students (Video’s, podcasts, notes, books, curriculum, blogs)
• Research tool for doctors
• Real time report and patient status monitor for senior hospital management
• Video conference between hospital/doctors/patients on the move
• Video conferencing between medical professionals across the world
• Note taking tool (voice-recognition software would let doctors dictate notes)
• Instant on the go access to patient medical history
• Specialist can educate their patients by showing them the anatomy of their speciality in a rich graphical and interactive qay

o Heart surgeons can show the block in the heart through an interactive anatomy of the heart.

o Podiatrist / foot doctor can ‘peel back’ various layers of the foot anatomy to show patients what is wrong.

Adobe Catalyst - Next step towards interactive prototyping

I had visited the Adobe seminar at Chennai on 24 Nov 09, where i was impressed by the turnout. Around 500 people had turned out, eventhough the start time was 8.30 am.


The main focus was on Adobe Catalyst and Adobe Flash Platform (i.e. Flex 4)


Adobe Catalyst is about creating rich interactive prototype without writing code – we can import PSD files and start creating the demo app from the layers. No coding knowledge is required and the final prototype would be as we can expect from a fully developed application with the richness of Flash. This prototype once approved can be handed over to the developers to plug in the server connectivity, data binding etc…

This is an interesting tool and has a lot of potential for RIA based prototyping. Designers would be able to showcase their design in a real time interactive fashion before actual development takes place. Dependency on a developer in such circumstances also reduces.

Adobe claims no coding knowledge is required, but i would say some knowledge would reduce the designers learning curve.

The prototype once approved can be handed over to the developers to plug in the server connectivity, data binding etc…

special thanks to Abhijit Thoshar for nominating us for this interesting event.

Banning Mobiles in Schools - by Krish Ashok

I was reading Krish Ashoks blog on "Banning Cellphones in School"

http://krishashok.com/blog/2009/08/banning-cellphones-in-school/

He advocates that change should be embraced and his examples on past attempts to resist change were un-questionable.

An idea immediately jumped into my mind (luckily i was not in the bath tub ;)

Why not build a Web 2.0 app for schools to integrate the students phone with the school CMS?

The possibilities are endless - This would take the education domain to a whole new level.

Not only the students but the parents too can be targeted - (apart from asking them to pay for it)

One quick tag line - "Taking the class room to the student"

RIA for Automobile Industry

Automobile industry has been one which has been the long time patron for new technologies. I would say they were the pioners in using RIA solutions.

Volkswagen Used car locator is one such example. I would not rate it high on innovation as we come across such sites by the dozens now. However i would rate it high on the simplicity and neatness of the application.

Highlights of this application are good Information Architecture, highest degree of task optimization and content level navigation.

Check out - http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/used/search

Creating a usability dashboard

http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/dashboard.html

Now this site is a must read for those in BI, RIA or UX line. The article is constructed around the usability of creating a dashboard. But i see it as the tutorial for collecting the KPI which form the foundation of all dashboards - this is realted to B1's

The representation of the KPI's in one page forms the RIA part

And the overall readability forms the UX part of it.

Why i am asking you to read it is that you will not get such a explanation with examples in any real life situation.

Read it and let me know ur views

What will be the focus in 2009?

Good question isnt it. Well this is what i have been thinking from my last entry. Well my answer to that is RMA - Rich Mobile Application.

You might ask hey why is Subbiah jumping from Rich Internet to Rich Mobile application. My answer is simple - mobile screens are going to be the next window to the internet.

What i am talking about is the next revolution. Imagine doing most of the work we do on the computer in the mobile itself.

Blog,
Share photos
read/send mails
Check the news
RSS feeds
Pay bills
Fund transfer
book tickets
Play games
............ and the list goes on.

The catch now is how much of this can be done in such a small device. Come on where is the user experiece angle here.

This is where the RMA steps in. Not only will will one be able to do the above and more but they would be satisfied using the mobile for it.

Watch out for more on RMA

Designing Executive Dashboards by Tom Gonzalez

For all those in RIA field, Dashboard is not a new word. In fact it is one of main most asked for requirement in the RIA space.

Tom Gonzalez is the founder and Managing Director of BrightPoint Consulting, and has a wonderful article on Designing Dashboards: Part 1 , Part 2 and Choosing Correct Metrics & KPIs .

I would highly recommend reading this article.

Widget Library

There are some amazing widget libraries out there and one such library is http://www.gwt-ext.com

what i liked in this site is the way the content is organised. the whole site itself is created by the widgets they are show casing.

worth a visit :)

RIA Company watch - Effective UI

I have been looking at latest RIA tools and services all these while. One thought came into my mind as to who are the people behind them and how are they defining their solutions/services.

The first of my series is Effective UI.

These are the people behind ebay's AIR desktop tool and few other Discover channel application. The reason why they require a special mention is that the number of downloads for ebay desktop tool has crossed 1 million downloads.

They also follow my doctrine of integrating Usability with RIA technology. Everything said for any application Usability comes first and then comes the technology used to deliver it.

FLEX-3 Tutorials - For Beginers

Lots of people have been asking me for good Flex tutorials. So i have decided to post such good tutorials as and when i come across them.

To start with here is one such good tutorial. I would highly recommend this for first timers.

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/beginners-tutorial-flex-3

Flex Office tools

MS office tools have been getting stiff competition from AJAX based online office tools. Now Adobe Flex has entered the ring and are coming out with some really cool web based office tools.

There is no single office suite yet in Flex. Samir Bhatia is working on one such suite called Live Documents. Which offers Word, Excel and Powerpoint tools.

While we are waiting for that, there are people focusing on one of the above and really bringing out some amazing Flex based office tools.

I would recomend the following

Slide Rocket - For PPT features. This has cool features of Mac Keynote. Making it more attractive.

Buzzword - for word documents

idubee for Excel spreadsheets.

There are more tools available and more being launched as i am typing this. So if anyone knows these tools pl do add it to this post.

Want your picture on a Magazine Cover???

Who doesnt :D.

Well the wish come true at Mag my Pic (http://www.magmypic.com).

Its one of those fun RIA sites where technology simplifies our wishes ;)

One can share the final magazine cover with friends and ask them to vote on it. The results can be associated with our email. The code can be pasted on to our blog and many more features are there.

Check out my pic on Style Magazine.

Create Fake Magazine Covers with your own picture at MagMyPic.com

Data Visualization in Sports web sites

While we are seeing a increase in the usage of RIA technologies in sports web sites, they have been predominently for video streaming and blog purposes.

Now they have brought in data visualization of the tonnes of data they have. Check out the "Stats Machine" tool of NHL (National Hockey League. Its Java based so dont expect the richness of Flex. However this is a good start and pretty neat in terms of functionalities.

http://www.nhl.com/cgi-bin/superstats/process_stats.cgi?source=NHL.com&statType=team&seasonType=playoff&season=20072008

Flash Plugin touches 12 million downloads per day?

Not only due 98-99% of the browsers in the world have the Flash Plug-in but has about 12 million downloads per day.

This should be a bigger push when trying to sell Flex technology :)

However - i read about the 12 million statistics, but am yet to come across proof of the same.will post the same as soon i get my hands on them.

Some general statistics about Flash player penetration:-

http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/
http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/PC.html

RIA For mobile devices

I have been trying to come up with a RIA POC for mobile devices. However the main constraint has been to zero in on the right RIA technology.

I found a good blog on the same topic in jajahdevblog.com. I would recomend this blog highly.

http://jajahdevblog.com/guy/2008/03/30/ria-on-the-mobile-phones-and-small-devices/

3D Interactive Video using Flash & ActionScript 3

Now this is what i call a video - a real interactive video. Imagine a video where you can decide which angle and the depth (zoom) you want to see.

I would have expected this functionality in a advanced 3D or a movie software. But achieving this in Flash using ActionScript 3 is really awesome. This was achieved by the folks at Immersive Media, check out their videos - without fail (http://www.immersivemedia.com/)

This is going to be the next Youtube of videos :)

If you want to know how they do this - here is all the info u need (http://www.immersivemedia.com/demo/demo.php#)


Many thank to Aasim for sharing this link with me :)

Flex based search engine

Vizzl - The Visual Search Tool.

A really cool search engine. But only to search within sites like Amazon, ebay and youtube. The power of sorting the search reults is show cased here.

A must use tool if you a online shopping freak.

http://www.vizzl.com/

Microsoft's Expression Design Event @ Chennai India

Well i got to attended the recently held Microsoft's Unique Design Event (Expression) in Chennai at "Dublin, ITC Hotel Park Sheraton & Towers".

Supreet Singh, User Experience Evangelist, and Pandurang Nayak, Technical Evangelist , did manage to impress the audience who had turned out in pretty large numbers.

What i was most impressed with was the sample solutions they showcased especially the travel website. You can check that out in http://www.silverlight.com/.

What i was not impressed by was by the claim that this tool can be used by designers who don't know any coding. The target audience should have been Usability Sales professionals, Business Analysts, Competency Leads, and RIA/usability analysts who need to come up with quick walk through for their clients.

One the whole Microsoft Expression tools shown did promise a lot but the real question was can it generate requirements from the client?

With its immediate competitor Adobe already way ahead and still going strong in this race track we need to see if this rookie can catch up.

Digital Bucket - online file folder

Came across this interesting and elegant site for online file storing and sharing.

http://www.digitalbucket.net/

I like the simplicity of the functionalities in the site - where they have maintained our age old windows explorer feel in a web based utility.

No software is required to install.
Fully drag and drop capability between files and folders.
Copy, Cut, Move, Delete, Rename and zip files or folders.
Folder publishing using direct links or RSS feeds.
Sharing with digitalbucket.net users with permission assignment.
Photo Album and Photo editing capabilities.
Word, excel online editing and PowerPoint presentation viewing.
Online music and video players.

1GB space is there for free. I tried it and i liked it. :D

Copyright your content! Numly

Yes you have read it correctly. We can copyright our content on teh web now, using Web 2.0 technology provided by "http://www.numly.com"

Now the advantages of doing this is that one can track who is viewing the content and when it is views, ratings can be monitored and to top it off no matter where the content is published it can be consolidated.

Final verdict is this is a must watch out Web 2.0 feature for all you bloggers/content writers out there in the Cyberspace :D