Cartoon by Dave Walker. We Blog Cartoons.

This is a new section on current technology services in the web 2.0 that are free to use.Technology can be very intimidating to most of us, but it also helps in reducing our every day morning stress.This section is aimed at people who are not geeks but who require free or easy to use tools.

One of the tools that we use everyday is word documentation,remember the time,when we had to work across multiple computers at work and at home and if on road with portable computer.

You had to save your files or documents on a floppy disk and then re-use it across multiple computers,if you are lucky they worked well but most of the times,they crashed if the disk becomes corrupt.Moreover,you had to worry about virus infection if you used it on a unknown- un protected computer.Also you had to juggle across multiple floppies as capacity in each was limited to 1.44 MB.Then came the era of USB-flash drive,this was robust and allowed us to accomodate upto 1GB now even 4 -160 GB,but again you had to save the information on these drives,risk losing your drive or misplacing them at work or home and also tugg them along.

But, now we have an alternative in that we can use and store every bit of information online.You could then access them anytime,anywhere when connected.

ZOHO is one such free web based information management tool.they have all office suite platform integrated into a single account.Moreover,you could save the word doc across multiple formats like .doc,.pdf and open office .dt.It is convient,in that simple word documents and comments could be written on any computer and you could access them via web anywhere,no more need to carry any USB drive.
It has a account for spreadsheet and presentation too,although similar to google docs,but the writer application has more features when compared to google docs.

Pithfalls

The the spell check feature is not yet robust.
The presentation application has limited templates.

When you are travelling,these tools can be come in real handy.With security check across airport changing-you had to always worry about removing your laptop and hardrives during multiple security checks and then if you travel across muliple cities-this had to be done every time you change your flight.I constantly worry about losing my data drives at the security check points.

Online tools could be useful at these times.However,to note:

You cannot use it to store sensitive and vital documents as they are stored on the web,and we do not know where the data is hosted and stored.

But,for all other non sensitive documents work and storage it works fine.

Popularity: 13% [?]

“When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable” -Anton Chekhov

Picture credit:Express Healthcare India

Official Google Blog: New advisory group on health

With Google forming an Health Advisory Council that looks as more US centric,but delivering Health information across the globe!

Where do you want to go today? Google or Microsoft for your personal health record information storage needs?

In the current news at Health care world Google and Microsoft are keen to enter into the world of Personal Health Record world.With Health care technology is billed as the next big revolution in IT industry.It is quite certain that the next wave of supremacy will be to be the leader in health care information.

With last year study in BMJ showing that Google searches revealed the correct diagnosis in 15 (58%, 95% confidence interval 38% to 77%) cases.it’s only a matter of time,before Google or Microsoft enters into Health care arena to battle for supremacy.But,health although is universal issue,yet the delivery of health care information is not quite simple.

Many people would like to avoid issues about health as much as possible and stay far away from it,because health is always associated with something bad.That means when you are healthy,disease free you don’t want to think or talk about it.Health is equated to sickness.Health is depressing.

The future of Medicine will be more of preventive care,with patientIndividual-centric model.Wherein the Healthy Individuals will have more control over their health and also mode of delivery.The beginning will be by optimizing health care information through education.Followed by personal health record.Then by delivering pertinent information to physicians..

Web 2.0 is the extension of the web 1.0,in fact it represents the true power of Internet as envisioned by Sir Timothy John Berners- Lee.But,the proliferation of numerous websites and also information resources has also diluted the quality of information. Today,we need to wade across vast repository of online information if we need to collect good quality information.

The Search is dominated by SEO (Search Engine Optimized )techniques and also numerous other analytics which makes only SEO rich websites rank on top of the list and really good informed websites are way below.

Moreover,the web as of today is not semantic enough to retrieve results of what we actually need,but it is a pile of huge amount of content.In the world of medicine,although for physicians the current web may help in arriving at rapid diagnosis,yet patients need to be careful as many users tend to use information provided in Internet to diagnose or treat any illness, disease, health problem, or metabolic disorder without consulting physicians or health care providers.This is one of the dangerous side effect of uncontrolled web 1.0 proliferation.

Semantic Web

Popularity: 12% [?]