The Kindle Cloud Reader

The Kindle Cloud Reader allows you to read Kindle books on a Windows PC or Mac using the Google Chrome or Safari web browsers, on Linux computers using Google Chrome, and on an iPad using the Safari web browser. It enables Kindle users to read their Kindle books in the browser “almost without having to install anything” on their devices, “almost” because Chrome users are asked to install optional browser extension that enables offline reading and Safari users are asked to extend 50 megabytes of browser database storage to the web-app for the same purposes. However, I see the reading offline functions as one of the best things about Kindle Cloud. When you’re stuck without a wireless connection all of your books are still at your fingertips without having to download an app to your smartphone, iPad, and laptop or even have a Kindle. Airports anyone? There are some features that are missing from the app and Kindle reader as pointed out by the Unofficial Kindle Blog: While you can read the books in the browser (if your browser is supported), the following features are not available:

  • Taking new notes and highlighting (though previous annotations are visible)
  • Searching within the book (or your book collection). You can however search within the page using browser search function (Ctrl-F)
  • Text-to-speech is not there. Given how complex the HTML document structure is (iframes within iframes and a lot of nested tags) I’m not sure if screen reader software will be able to handle it.

If you are a physician and have your favorite reference texts available in Kindle format there may be disadvantages if your computers aren’t already equipped with Chrome since Medical Centers are usually on a very secure network due to patient information confidentiality and you cannot just download programs to the desktops. Other disadvantages would be if you wanted to highlight or leave a note to yourself in the book for future reference, you would not be able to do that, as well as not being able to search the book or book library for quick reference. But, it does keep you from having to install the Kindle reader if you work on multiple work stations or carry your iPad or Kindle with you.

Since I am already a loyal Chrome user, the browser compatibility isn’t a big deal to me, but I can see how many are being left out with Internet Explorer and Firefox being two of the biggest browser names and they are not as of yet, and may never be, supported by the Kindle Cloud Reader. So, for personal use I see this as a great addition to the Kindle lineup. I love not having to download any applications and having access to read my Kindle books on any computer I’m using and not worry about running my smartphone battery down reading from an app or having my personal computer with me.  If you’d like learn more Information about the Kindle Cloud Reader you can visit Amazon’s website, The Unofficial Kindle Blog or Technorati.

Doctors Go Digital in the 21st Century

Think you’re the only one staying ahead of the mobile technology curve? Guess again…doctors are taking advantage of the convenience of mobile technologies too!  The infographic below provides an interesting view of how doctors are using mobile technologies, but please keep in mind that the primary purpose of infographics is to entertain and that the statistics should be taken with a grain of salt.

At the point of care, doctors are using mobile technologies primarily to access electronic medical records, prescribe medications, and monitor patients in hospitals.  Doctors can use their devices bedside to show patients high resolution videos of what their procedures will be like.  Current mobile technologies allow doctors to view or send CT, MRI, and PET scans, allowing them to remotely consult with specialists.  Using attachments like theHandyscope, doctors can turn their mobile device into a digital dermatoscope, allowing them to take up-close photos for early skin cancer screenings.

For our part, libraries are attempting to make their online content easily available on mobile technologies.  Medical and drug reference databases, electronic journal access, and easy access to research librarians ensure that doctors are getting the most reliable, up-to-date information available on their mobile device.  Laupus Library has access to several medical databases designed specifically for mobile devices; DynaMed, Micromedex, PubMed for Handhelds, and RefMobile are a few of the most popular mobile resources we offer.

Though it may seem shocking that two in five physicians spend time online during patient consultations, we have entered a technological era that will ultimately improve patient quality.  Beyond being a convenience, mobile technologies can be used to guarantee that patients are receiving the best medical care possible, and can reduce medical errors by modernizing the health care system.  While we hope doctors are not using their iPhones to update their Facebook status during a patient’s consultation, we do want them to have immediate access to the most current diagnostic and treatment options for any given medical condition.

Just imagine what doctors will be able to do with their mobile devices a mere five or ten years down the road…are you ready?

++ Click to Enlarge Image ++
The Doctor's Tech Toolbox | Infographic |
Image Source: SpinaBifidaInfo.com

Regulation of Medical Apps

Are you feeling under the weather?  Have some questions about your new prescription?  There’s an app for that.  With today’s technology there is an app for everything.  There are over 425,000 apps on the market and a good number of those are health related.  But how do you know which ones to trust?

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently proposing guidelines to oversee a small number of medical apps.  They are focusing on those apps that could potentially pose a risk to patients if they are working improperly.  Currently the FDA is only focusing on what they are calling “mobile medical apps” which can be “used as an accessory to a regulated medical device” or those apps that “transform a mobile platform into a regulated medical device.”  The FDA will not be regulating medical reference apps, wellness trackers (such as calorie counters), medical office functions, or electronic health record systems.

The FDA has already approved a few apps that are mainly used by professionals in the health care industry; including apps that are designed to view x-rays and other medical images.

According to FDA policy advisor Bakul Patel, “the FDA is proposing to oversee mobile medical apps that:

  • Are used as an accessory to an FDA-regulated medical device. For example, an app could enable a health care professional to view medical images on an iPad and make a diagnosis;
  • Transform a mobile platform into a regulated medical device. For example, an app that turns a smartphone into an electrocardiography, or ECG, machine to detect abnormal heart rhythms or determine if a patient is experiencing a heart attack.”

The proposed guidelines can be found here: http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FDA-2011-D-0530-0001 Consumers are welcome to share their thoughts on the website until October 19.

 

For more information please see the following websites:

http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm263332.htm

http://mobihealthnews.com/11970/fda-drafts-mobile-medical-app-regulations/

http://mobihealthnews.com/11978/fda-wont-regulate-these-apps-for-now/

Green Apps to Celebrate Earth Day

Previous posts have discussed useful apps for your smart phones from a medical perspective but for today’s post, in honor of the 41st anniversary of Earth Day, we’ve highlighted some useful green apps.

iRecycle: Earth911 launched its free iRecycle app for Android and iPad/iPhone. Recycling is the easiest and most accessible way to get people plugged into sustainability. iRecycle provides access to over 800,000 recycling resources for more than 240 types of materials. Plus you get the latest in green news and social sharing. Take a moment this Earth Day to install iRecycle on your phone!

  

Teradesk: This app allows users to connect computers and mobile devices in a secure network, allowing you to get files and store them into the Teradesk virtual disk’s cloud storage.  Teradesk can be accessed anywhere and documents are always at the ready for sharing, which could help meetings run more smoothly without the need for printed documents. It allows file versioning, file sharing, GoogleDocs integration, and much more. Want to get to a file saved on your home or work computer? Connect to Teradesk and get remote access to any files you need!

  

iamgreen: This app aims to “ecofit” your smartphone. Use it to reduce the amount of power wasted when using your mobile phone. Save your time and money while extending your battery life, reducing your carbon footprint and conserving energy for when you need it the most. Plus, when you download this app, a tree will be planted! This one is available for Android, iPhone and BlackBerry.

  

ZipCar: Now that ECU provides ZipCar access to students, faculty, and staff, they can take advantage of a free app that enables ZipCar members to find, reserve, and lock/unlock ZipCars via iPhone. For the iPad version, ZipCar’s service could use the larger screen to integrate more rich media, including navigation, directions, entertainment, and even syncing with audio and visual content.

 

Control4: The free app basically turns the iPad into your central home dashboard, enabling the user to control a connected thermostat, lighting, entertainment systems (video, audio), and home security. To get this to work properly, of course you need to buy — and have a dealer install — the Control4 connected home system. An iPad app really plays into the sweet spot of Control4′s offer: a high-end home product, slick design, and a dashboard offering rich media around energy.

  

Find Green App: Find healthy living and sustainable businesses quickly and easily with Find Green from GenGreen Digital Media. The first green location based service; Find Green helps you make everyday choices to reduce your environmental impact and make a difference! The GPS-enabled service can determine your exact location and find everything from yoga studios to bicycle shops to organic restaurants near you.

 

Contact Christine Andresen (andresenc@ecu.edu) with any comments or questions! Go Green!

Free Medical Apps for iPhones

Previous posts have discussed useful medical apps for your iPhone, this time the focus is on free medical apps. Below you will find a list of apps designed for medical professionals.

PubMed Mobile– PubMed has finally created its’ own version of a mobile friendly interface.  The site is currently still in beta and to access the page you will need to use the following URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/.  Users now have the ability to conduct basic searches and limit to free text.  However at this point in its development you cannot use any additional limits and other advanced search features.  In addition, users cannot access the site through the libraries proxy, so to get to the full text of some of the articles you will need to go through the libraries home page.  Hopefully, in the future this app will add additional features that will provide a more controlled search.

  

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/ma11/ma11_pm_mobile_beta.html

MedPage Today – Produced by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the medical information website MedPage Today, users will have access to Continuing Medical Education (CMEs), audio reports, video reports, and current medical news.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/medpage-today-mobile/id319094270?mt=8

MedScape Mobile –The MedScape Mobile app provides a drug reference, a guide to over 600 procedures, and medical directories for hospitals and physicians.  The app also provides medical news, a disease and condition guide that contains more than 3500 continually updated topics, and CMEs.  A nice feature of this app is that it offers offline access to the clinical tools mentioned above, so you do not have to be connected to the internet to access needed information.

 http://itunes.apple.com/app/medscape/id321367289?mt=8#

Micromedex– This drug reference tool, published by Thomson Rheuters,  is similar to the  resource available through the library.  Content includes such information as dosage amounts, trade names, generic names, interactions, administration, monitoring, and contraindications.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/micromedex-drug-information/id390211464?mt=8

NEJM This Week – Created by the New England Journal of Medicine, this app offers access to recent articles, images of medical conditions, weekly audio summaries of Clinical Practice articles and videos of selected procedures.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nejm-this-week/id373156254?mt=8

 (Thanks to Amy Blevins for the screenshots)

Library e-books on your device

Like many libraries these days, Laupus has a healthy amount of ebooks available in our collection. Our ebooks can be found in our catalog (you can search for them just like any other book title), in One Search, or on our e-resources page.

We’ve noticed an increase in questions from our patrons about whether or not ebooks from our collection can be installed or viewed on e-readers like Kindles and Nooks. Technically, the answer to that question is no. Laupus (and the other ECU Libraries for that matter) do not purchase ebook titles for our collection with the intention that patrons can download them to a particular ebook reader. There are just too many e-readers out there for us to keep up with all of them. When we purchase ebooks, the books are really intended to be read on a desktop computer from the browser or for download to the desktop. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule.

If you are one of those folks who want to try to read a Laupus ebook on a device other than your desktop computer, there are a few things to consider. Ebooks are hosted on various online platforms and each platform works a little differently than the next. For instance, titles hosted on the NetLibrary platform look and behave a little differently than Ebrary titles; Ebrary titles look and behave a little differently than MD Consult’s ebook titles; MD Consult’s ebook titles look and behave differently than Psychiatry Online’s titles, etc. Also, some of these platforms require you to download software to read the book. If you happen to have an e-reader, smartphone, or other device that doesn’t support that particular software download then you won’t be able to read the book on that device. Many ebooks work a little more simply than that because they are readable in an internet browser. If your device supports a browser, you may be able to read the book that way.  Another option you may have is to read the book in .pdf format. If your reader supports .pdfs you may be able to view the book on your device.

Since there are so many proprietary ebook platforms and ebook readers out there on the market, you can see where all these different options render it difficult to tell if a particular title will work on your particular device. If you’re in doubt you can always contact us.

Lending eBooks, have libraries met their latest enemy?

The Nook vs. Kindle debate has been raging for awhile and everyone has their preference about which device they prefer. Each has lists of pros and cons. The Kindle is not backlit so reading in sunlight is easy; one version of the Nook is color and doesn’t need a light. From user interviews, I have learned that the Nook handles and transfers PDF files much easier than the Kindle and only the newer Kindle devices have PDF reading compatibility. Regardless of your favorite, advances in e-Readers, both the Nook, supported by both Barnes & Noble and Books A Million bookstores, and the Kindle supported by Amazon.com, have released a new feature allowing friends to share books with each other.

Nook calls it LendMe™ Technology that lets you share favorite books with friends. LendMe™ books can be lent for up to 14 days. You are able to choose the book you want to share and send it to your friend’s Nook, computer, or handheld device enabled with Nook software. However, while the item is being lent, you cannot read the item simultaneously unless you have your wireless disabled.

Kindle Sharing allows eligible Kindle books to be loaned once for a period of 14 days. The borrower does not need to own a Kindle; the Kindle books can also be read using the free Kindle reading applications for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android devices. Not all books are lendable as it is up to the publisher or rights holder to determine which titles are eligible for lending. The lender will not be able to read the book during the loan period.

The publishing industry has also become concerned with this process according to The Wall Street Journal:

“In the past few months, online clubs with such names as BookLending.com and Lendle.me have proliferated. The sites, some of which have gathered thousands of users, allow strangers to borrow and lend e-books onAmazon.com Inc.’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble Inc.’s Nook for free.
The sites are the latest twist in the industry of e-books, which has disrupted the traditional book-publishing industry and changed that business’s economics. Public libraries can’t lend e-books in the Kindle format, though they can for other e-reading devices.

Previously, Kindle and Nook readers were largely limited to sharing e-books with friends because two users needed to know each other’s email address to initiate a loan. The new sites give e-book readers access to a larger network of people and a larger selection of books. The lending sites have drawbacks. One is limited selection. Most major book publishers haven’t made their e-books lendable, and the books can be lent only once and for only 14 days. That means that with every successful loan, the sites’ available library shrinks unless new users with books to lend join.

Some publishers, which are monitoring the sites closely, say they fear that making books available for loan may deter people from buying physical and digital books. The lending sites’ founders say they are helping publishers because their users, after borrowing books, can purchase other books in the same series or by the same author.” [source]

Should libraries be concerned about e-book sharing and these sites that have popped up allowing users all over the country to share books for free? Isn’t that what libraries are all about? Sharing books? With the new e-book technology, I think libraries are definitely going to have to rethink their stance on e-books and loaning programs of e-readers. Whether we as libraries like it or not, e-books and e-readers are here to stay and it’s how we decide to incorporate them into our services whether we get left behind in the technology craze.

Down with the eBook Part 2: I Installed the NOOK App for iPhone

My relationship with eBooks ebbs and it flows. One day I hate them and the next day I need them. Back in April of 2010 I expressed my love and loathing (mostly the latter) of eBooks. It’s been almost a year and since then, a few things have changed.

Early January I signed on to participate in the 52Poetry Challenge via Twitter. With this, you read one book of poetry every a week for the year; hence, the fifty two. As such, I was also participating in a Twitter discussion group of the recently released Lighthead by Terrance Hayes (#Lighthead) of which I volunteered to be the leader. The only problem was that I hadn’t yet received my copy of the book which I’d ordered from Amazon and the discussion was set to start in just a day. It wasn’t a major, major problem considering I wasn’t a discussion leader for a class assignment. But I’d made the commitment and I looked at it as another step in certifying my writer-self.

Anyhow, the moral and point of the above short story is that since the hardcopy copy (is that right?) that I ordered from Amazon hadn’t yet arrived, since the Library didn’t own a copy, since it was too late to try and order it through Interlibrary Loan, I had only one (maybe two) option: try to buy the eBook or step down as the discussion leader. And I’m sure you’ve already gleaned that I was not going to quit my post!

Because I’d received two Barnes and Noble gift cards (one as a graduation gift and one as a Christmas gift) in December, I went straight to barnesandnoble.com on my iPhone. I searched and perused, and found exactly what I was looking for.


(Let me back up just a moment—my iPhone 4 already had both the iBook and Kindle applications downloaded. I only chose NOOK because I had $40+ in gift cards for Barnes and Noble.)

I ended up spending the $9.99 for the NOOKBook and the $12.35+ for the hardcopy via Amazon. But again, I didn’t want to not participate in the Twitter discussion as the group leader. So yes, I wound up with two copies of the same book.

My mantra is no longer Down With the eBook. It’s Up With Cohabitation. While I do love, love, love to jot in the margins, and highlight passages and lines, the convenience of the eBook is undeniable. It has saved my hide in many a bind while in graduate school. The same situation that I found myself in with Lighthead has happened in several different literature courses. I’d buy a book online from Amazon or order it via Interlibrary Loan, but would end up (because I needed to read a chapter ASAP) on Google Books because I needed instant access.

I do still think that the physical book is being weeded out as I pointed out last April. And that point is not up for debate, really. But the other significant argument—that people are going to read less—is a true falsehood. The amount of reading material will, I think, increase. It is increasing; it has increased. With the advent of the Internet, we are inundated with massive amounts of stuff to read. The issue isn’t that people will not read anymore. The issue is that people are reading massive amounts of unvetted material. Fact-checkless and not peer-reviewed content—these are the problems that ought be focused on.

[Insert your local librarian here.]

They have, after all, the necessary training and wherewithal to help you differentiate between a credible source and everything else.

I will always stand for the real book, I think. But I also think it is necessary, in an effort to stay relevant and up-to-date, to familiarize yourself with trends as they develop. You have to either get with the times or get lost and left behind. Many of the students, faculty, and staff who come to the Service Desk will ask if the book or journal they are looking for is available electronically. If it’s not the first question, it’s the second. They are studying for a test as they travel home. They want to have access to NCLEX study questions while on the beach. Medical terminology texts that can fit on their hip, in their purse or pocket. I’d again be remiss to not know how these eBooks worked with smart devices.

It is easier and convenient, finally, to carry my iPhone loaded with books of poetry instead of eight (8) separate books. Still, though, I would prefer to carry both my device and my books. One is only made better by the other.

Project Homeless Connect: The Laupus Drive

November is National Homelessness Awareness Month.

However, Laupus is advocating and promoting action now and throughout the month of March.

On behalf of Project Homeless Connect and in cooperation with the Diversity Committee, we will be sponsoring a food and donations drive February 7th-17th.

We are collecting very specific items:

  • Handi-Snacks cheese and crackers
  • Juice boxes
  • Restaurant gift cards (Bojangles’, Hardee’s, Taco Bell, etc.)
  • Pudding and fruit cups
  • White crew socks**
  • Tuna and chicken snack packs

**A much needed item.

Monetary donations are also accepted. 100% of proceeds will be used for the purchase of drive items.

Drop boxes are located in Laupus the 2nd Floor and in the breakroom.

What is Project Homeless Connect?

On Wednesday, March 2, 2011, the Pitt County Planning will be hosting the county’s first “Project Homeless Connect” event at the Greenville Convention Center as part of its 10-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness. Project Homeless Connect is a one-day, one-stop event to provide a broad range of services to people experiencing, or at risk of, experiencing homelessness. Most importantly, the event is outcome-oriented; it is not just a day for people to wait in line, but a day for people to make changes, and for guests to have immediate access to community services. Participants will interact face-to-face with the many human services agencies in the Pitt County area and foster increased understanding of the societal implications which homelessness in our community raises, through the sharing of information and experience.

For more information and for other ways that you may help, please visit the Project site.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, direct them to Casey Holland (hollandc@ecu.edu).