Blog articles from 10/2008

GE made an unspecified amount of investment in New York-based QuietCare Systems in early October, 2008. At the same time, the two companies announced a technology collaboration and co-marketing arrangement. During the last two weeks, I have managed to locate executives from the two companies and here is what I learned. -GE Healthcare will help market Quietcare’s Living Independently product line and services under the brand “Quietcare by GE Healthcare.” David Stern,...

After my Monday morning panel at Partners Health Care’s Connected Care Symposium conference, I attended a few others. The PHR panel involved the three major ePHR vendors, Microsoft, Google, Dossia, and the fourth was the health information Web giant WebMD. The exchange between Grad Conn from HealthVault (the Microsoft initiative) and Jerry Lin, product manager of Google Health, was quite amusing when the moderator pushed for an answer to whether the two companies will allow users to...

On Wednesday, November 12th at 12 PM ET (11 AM CT), Parks Associates and Camiant will be hosting a webcast that addresses mobile broadband in North America and in Europe. Since mobile broadband markets are blooming, mobile carriers in Europe and North America alike see strong growth in mobile subscribers and massive growth in non-messaging mobile data traffic. Yet there are troubles on the horizon. Many carriers use rudimentary network control and business models to monetize the...

Parks Associates will be hosting the workshop Business Cases for Emerging Video Services at TelcoTV 2008 on November 11. TelcoTV , November 11-13, the Anaheim Convention Center, is the premier event for the exploration of a comprehensive entertainment convergence strategy. The workshop addresses the business case for emerging video services, including multichannel television and broadband video. Parks Associates forecasts that by 2012, almost 33 million U.S. households will...

What LogMeIn and Intel announced back in September sounds incredibly helpful. I actually experienced a dreaded "blue screen of death" yesterday with my laptop. Fortunately, I was able to figure out that the anti-spyware/Windows Registry cleaner that I had installed the night before wasn't compatible with my Vista 64-bit laptop computer. I was able to pick a restore point on Windows prior to the anti-spyware software installation and get the system back up and running. However,...

Did you know that a DVR in France is referred to as a "magnetoscope numerique"? Laissez les bon temps roulez!

Chalk up yet one more connected CE platform for Netflix Watch Insantly Internet video content. The two companies have announced that they're teaming up to provide TiVo® Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL subscribers the ability to stream 12,000 movies and TV episodes. If you're keeping track at home, here are the announced devices that support Watch Instantly features at the TV: * Samsung BD-P2550 and BD-P2500 Blu-ray players; * LG BD300 Network Blu-ray Disc Player; *...

Our TV 2.0: The Consumer Perspective study found that certain social-networking-at-the-TV features have good appeal with consumers. Recall the post from earlier today, where I noted that sharing DVR content with and having "most-watched" lists available are two of the most-desired features. Verizon's FiOS TV service has now implemented a most-watched feature with the FiOS TV 1.6 IMG upgrade. Their "What's Hot on FiOS" feature that shows the top-five shows being...