December 2009

AT&T Mobility President Ralph de la Vega says the company is knee-deep in a market research project that asks consumers in focus groups to give their opinions on a range of potential tactics to free up network bandwidth for Apple iPhone users and other AT&T subscribers. AT&T wants to craft "incentives" that would compel iPhone owners to reduce demands on the company's overworked 3G cellular network. The most obvious solution is to get them to switch to wireless Wi-Fi networks whenever possible. Wi-Fi access points, found everywhere from customers' homes to coffee shops, move bits of information directly to a wired broadband Internet connection. That's cheaper than transmitting the bits to a cell tower, as 3G does. Cell towers get swamped when as few as a dozen nearby iPhone users simultaneously try to watch a YouTube clip or play a game. "Two years ago, all the carriers thought Wi-Fi was a threat" to their cellular networks, says Marc Lowenstein, a consultant who used to run marketing for Verizon Wireless. "Now it's a lifeline." It's a lifeline that AT&T plans to use heavily.

App sales are booming at a time when corporations are cutting tech spending and consumers are pinching pennies. Indeed, veteran industry executives, investors and analysts are calling the shift to Internet-capable devices and the apps that run on them a once-a-decade leap in technology, on a par with the great personal computing boom of the 1980s and the debut of the World Wide Web in the 1990s. No company is more central to the shift towards the mobile Internet than Apple, which enjoys a wide lead in distributing applications. More than 100,000 apps are available on its App Store and more than 2bn have been downloaded in less than a year and a half. To keep that gusher flowing, Apple has sought to inspire more outsider developers with the rare rags-to-riches stories - like that of Steve Demeter, a bank programmer who earned $250,000 in two months of 2008 after launching a simple game called Trism. But just as many from the front lines of the dot-com revolution were left on the battlefield, not all of those writing for the tiny screen will make it big.

China has issued new Internet regulations, including what appears to be an effort to create a "whitelist" of approved websites that could potentially place much of the Internet off-limits to Chinese readers. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology ordered domain management institutions and Internet service providers to tighten control over domain name registration, in a three-phase plan laid out on its website late on Sunday. "Domain names that have not registered will not be resolved or transferred," MIIT said, in an action plan to "further deepen" an ongoing anti-pornography campaign that has resulted in significant tightening of Chinese Internet controls. Only allowing Chinese viewers to access sites registered on a whitelist would give Chinese authorities much greater control, but would also block millions of completely innocuous sites.

The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology has certified 14 electronic health record products that pass muster for provider use under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). "We believe it will be a challenge for providers who have not yet begun to evaluate products to purchase and implement EHR technology and achieve meaningful use in time for the 2011-2012 incentives," said Alisa Ray, the CCHIT's executive director. "We have received more than 30 applications for our 2011 certification programs - more than half of which are for the comprehensive program - and are announcing new certifications regularly so providers can begin to consider EHR technology that demonstrates compliance with the proposed federal standards." The CCHIT has now certified 14 products under one of two new programs, the CCHIT Certified 2011 Comprehensive program and the Preliminary ARRA certification program, since their launch on Oct. 7. As part of the comprehensive inspection process, key aspects of successful use are verified at live sites and usability is rated for ambulatory EHRs. The program is intended for healthcare providers looking for assurance that a product will meet their complex needs as well as support the achievement of "meaningful use" of IT to qualify for the ARRA financial incentives.