Justin's Blog

 Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Today Jason and I had some very productive meetings in Atlanta.  Jason’s really got things moving down here with a lot of agencies coming on board and we are working on some Georgia specific guidance which will will post on the Georgia page.

Don’t forget too that we will be having our conference in Roswell, Georgia on June 5th and 6th.

As a big fan of The Walking Dead, I was a little disappointed at the lack of zombies, but I guess I’ll just have to wait a bit.

:: Justin ::

f you use Therap in Minnesota and are interested in finding out how you can billing directly from Therap using Therap data, you should join this online User Group Meeting.

We’ll be discussing how Therap Electronic Billing and discussing Minnesota specific rules.

You can sign up here

The meeting is on February 1st at 10am Central

:: Justin ::

The other day, Richard wrote an interesting post on Facebook and parenting.  It’s a fascinating concept and one I tend to focus on the positive aspects of.  How else would I know if my daughter was eating fish fingers and custard or my neice was in desparate need of a new pair of Doc Martens if it were not for Facebook, Twitter and the like.

I am also fascinated by Facebooks willingness to change its basic interface.  Each change is followed by screams of “What has Facebook done” and “That’s it, I’m off to Twitter/MySpace/Google+/ThePub”.  However the new interface almost always brings benefits and people are even more upset when it changes.

We’ve gone through the same many times.  It’s one of the reasons we have both FirstPage and Dashboard running at the same time.

The latest innovation coming along is the Facebook Timeline, you have to jump through a few hoops to get it just now, but it’s worth it.

Below you can see mine (making this a very long post).  You can click on it to get to a bigger version on Flickr

What an awesome way to present data (and lose a few hours!)

Enjoy

:: Justin ::

I recently upgraded my phone to a Droid Bionic

Apart from being far and above the nicest phone I have ever used (it just does the stuff it should, like if I am driving it asks me if I want to listen to a text message – I say “listen” if I do), it is also my first time using a “4G” device.

I’m on the Verizon 4g LTE network and the speeds you can get are just incredible.  I’m getting 15Mbps download speeds (as a comparison, the fastest speeds I can get from AT&T at my home on DSL are about 2Mbps).  Given that I can take that and then share it out via wifi with upto 8 devices it have just made a lot of things more portable and possible.

It all goes to add to my conviction that trying guess where technology will be in a few years time is close to impossible, and the chances are that it will move faster than you think.  You can also be sure that we will be keeping an eye on it to work out how you can best take advantage.

:: Justin ::

PS It’s also great for playing Plants v Zombies!

Over the past few weeks, I have been testing a Chromebook.  It’s basically a laptop/netbook that only runs Google Chrome as a browser.

The question is, could you use a computer that doesn’t allow you to install anything (other than Chrome Apps).

Have you tried one?  Let me know what you think.

The answer for me is, “very nearly!”

Seems to me that this would be a great solution for Therap users (there are all sorts of enterprise controls available).

The only things I have found I really need to install are our Live Help application and there are times when Google Apps just doesn’t quite do enough for me and I need to use Excel.

Other than that, this thing is great.  It boots up very very quickly and as soon as I type in my Gmail address it is customized to me.  Then if I want someone else to use it, I log out and all of my stuff is safe on the cloud, they can log in and the computer becomes theirs.

So far the only thing I really don’t like about this Acer Chromebook is the clickable touchpad, I don’t see why I have to press so hard to click.

:: Justin ::

According to Wikipedia:

“World Information Society Day was proclaimed to be on 17 May by a United Nations General Assembly resolution, following the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis.^[1]

The day had previously been known as World Telecommunication Day to commemorate the founding of the International Telecommunication Union in 17 May 1865.^[2] It was instituted by the Plenipotentiary Conference in Malaga-Torremolinos in 1973.

The main objective of the day is to raise global awareness of societal changes brought about by the Internet and new technologies. It also aims to help reduce the Digital divide.”

I think that sometimes we have become so used to the extraordinary things we can do with Therap that we forget just how much we are changing the worold and society for the better.  With over a million T-logs being written each month, and on average each one being read 12 times, information is being shared like it never was before.

Who could have imagined parents and guardians having instant access to their loved one’s data?

All around the country states and providers are harnessing the power of Therap and the internet to improve supports and prevent the wasting of resources.

Congatulations, take a step back, look at yourself in awe, and celebrate!

:: Justin ::

Given Allison and Tony’s recent fawning over the iPad 2 and all things Apple, I thought it was about time I did a little on the things that are interesting me just now.

Top of these at the moment is some of the stuff that Amazon is up to.  I am a huge fan of shopping there, one of my rules in life is that if it is not sold by Amazon it probably is not worth having.

Then they started doing their video streaming service which include just about all my favourite old BBC shows like Blackadder, Red Dwarf, and Dr Who.

Then… they brought out their own Android App store to which my initial reaction was “eh?  what’s the point in that?” but it’s actually really quite fun.  Apart from the fact that they have a piad app for free every day, it’s a bit like having multiple record shops in your high street.  It’s nice to be able to choose where to shop and look at similar stuff presented differently.

And then…  they beat both Google and Apple by bringing out Cloud Drive it is wha you have always wanted from a music service.  You can upload your CD collection or buy music on Amazon.  Then you can listen to your collection from anywhere or download it onto any supported device.  It works like a dream and has very quickly replace Winamp as my music player of choice on my phone and computer.

It’s a fun time to be in the cloud.

:: Justin ::

The answer to this questioon is most likely “Probably, most of the time.” if you are using a current browser or an Android / iOS / WebOS phone.

The problems start to happen when you get someone like me who has tons of browsers on their computer (sometimes just to try them out and sometimes becuase I want to have multiple Therap accounts open at once while I am testing or setting somethign up).

Examples of browsers I might use include:

• Internet Explorer
• Firefox
• Chrome (probably the browser I use most though it has been causing me grief recently and with the new Firefox for Android I am really considering goign back)
• Opera
• Safari

And those are only the ones I use on my computer, when it comes top phones, tablets, and other mobile devices, there are mobile versions of each one of these!

Just the week, Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 9 and Mozilla has released Firefox 4.  Theoretically they are all moving towards standards based browsing, but any time they make an update (which they will often do weekly) they may change the way that websites and applications like Therap interact with them.

Obviously, if we were to spend all of our time on 100% compatibility with the latest browsers (not to mention the verious beta and mobile versions) you would probably never see a new feature.

Instead, we concentrate on the mature versions and address major functionality issues as we did with SComm on the iPad version of Safari.

What this says is, please let us know when you see curious things going on with brand spanking new browsers, but don’t expect instant fixes on little annoyances.

It’s very similar with phones and mobile devices.  Just walk into Best Buy or Staples to see how many there are, each with their own vagueries. We can’t possibly test every last device that is out there, but we would love to know which ones you are having success (or not) with.

I use my Android phone (a Droid 2), a Samsung Galaxy Tab, an iPod Touch and an iPad all with great success and I am sure that there is a device out there that is perfect for you (I am rather excited about the possibilities for the Motorola Xoom).

Let me know what you use.

:: Justin ::

Having given many presentations and trainings where the gremlins attack, this makes me feel so much better.

I love the should out of "Verizon!"

Maybe I should invest in that black turtleneck.

Enjoy:

:: Justin ::