Google Flights’ new features change online travel.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/06/27/google_flights_new_features_change_online_travel.html

One of Google's Least Heralded Features May Change Your Summer

Visit Amsterdam!

Photo by ERIK VAN 'T WOUD/AFP/Getty Images

Back in the early 2000s, travel search engines caused panic among venerable career travel agents. Sites like Orbitz, Travelocity, and Priceline wowed tourists and businesses alike with low prices and flashy features. While online travel booking became the norm, the do-it-yourself novelty quickly faded into a hellscape of kitschy commercials, obscure policies, and redundant searches. The Internet-booked honeymoon was over. But it doesn't have to be that way! One of Google's less-celebrated features might just make that affordable coveted summer getaway a possibility.

In September 2011, Google unveiled Flight Search. It was still in its nascent stages, but it brought Google's user-friendly design to the online travel bookings—far away from the garden gnomes and shouting William Shatners that represented the alternative. Then, in December 2012, things got more interesting when the tech giant announced Flight Explorer, which allowed users to view a bar graph showing airfare prices throughout the year—enabling them to get a good look at when prices were a bit more budget-friendly. Users can set limits on price, airlines, dates, stops, and duration of flight.

Best of all, Flight Search integrated Google Maps technology into search functionality, allowing users to enter their departure city, then view a map of the globe. Under each city name is the total airfare. Earlier this month, Google gave "Flights" a makeover, announcing new features that allow users to view airfare by day/month while in maps mode. The company even incorporated its famous "I'm Feeling Lucky" button for more adventurous travelers.

A New Yorker looking to go to Europe in August will see prices around $1,000 in most cities, but a bit of digging shows Copenhagen with a lower fare. A quick tap on the Danish city shows prices dipping as low as $600 for a direct, round-trip flight in late August and early September. And all of this is nearly instantaneous. Other search engines are slow and finicky—requiring users to backtrack and guess new locations and dates to scour for better fares. (A recent search for me also repeatedly and inexplicably changed my departure city from Washington, D.C., to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.)

But not everyone has been happy about Google's service. After acquiring ITA software for $700 million in 2010, online travel sites practically howled, forming an anti-Google alliance called FairSearch in response. Their arguments seemingly hinge on the fact that Google's search results were much faster than their own, which is, in fact, the greatest benefit of the service. (Kayak offers a similar mapping service, with much slower results.)

While everyone continues to distract themselves with Google Glass fashions, Google continues to be Google—quietly making improvements to its bread-and-butter products and striking fear in the hearts of competitors. (Or simply buying them). In this case, it means an affordable trip to Europe. Where you can forget your worries. And be forgotten.

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THE NEXT ECONOMY | AMERICA 360

This Urban Research University Is Also an Economic Powerhouse

Resources for entrepreneurs and industry partnerships have made it easier than ever for University of Minnesota inventions to hit the market.

University of Minnesota engineering professor Jian-Ping Wang holds a magnetic nano-chip that he created to detect proteins and DNA that signal the early stages of cancer.(Sophie Quinton)

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By Sophie Quinton

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June 17, 2014

This article is part of an America 360 series on Minneapolis.

MINNEAPOLIS—Jian-Ping Wang doesn't like running companies, but he's already started two, and a third is under way. Wang has also filed 39 patents. "I don't like to be driven by money, by any other people," says the University of Minnesota engineering professor. "I like working on something I figure is really interesting, fundamentally difficult." But Wang also thinks about how his work could be applied beyond the lab. 

Over the past decade, the University of Minnesota has overhauled its process for commercializing research discoveries. It's become easier for university entrepreneurs to start companies, and for existing companies to license and sell technology produced by university professors and students. The push to get innovation out of the lab and into the marketplace could amplify the university's already big impact on the Twin Cities' economy.

There are about 48,000 students enrolled at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, making it one of the largest public-research universities in the country. In 2012, UMTC ranked 14^th nationally in higher-education research-and-development spending, putting it above MIT. The U (as the Twin Cities campus is known locally) has an $8 billion economic impact on the metropolitan area each year, according to university officials. That calculation doesn't include the impact of research discoveries. But here are some statistics: Since 2007, 65 companies have come out of university research. Last year, the university filed 148 patents on behalf of Minnesota professors and students. According to the Brookings Institution, cities with high patenting rates tend to have lower unemployment rates.

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Wang, with his three companies and 39 patents, is unusual even by top research university standards. Wang was born in China, and has worked at Minnesota since 2002 as a member of the electrical- and computer-engineering department. His enthusiasm for his subject is infectious. Most entrepreneurs have a story about working night and day to launch a business. Wang's story is about working night and day to build a machine that turns disks of iron silicon or iron cobalt into impossibly tiny, magnetic particles. The machine, which fills most of a room in Wang's lab, looks like a metal cylinder exploding.

The idea for his second start-up came when his father died of cancer. "I figured there must be something that an engineer can do," Wang says. Other rooms in Wang's lab house testing equipment—circuit boards, a vial of clear liquid that may have contained human antibodies—that he and his students used to create a technology called "magnetic nanobiochips." The ultrasensitive chips can detect proteins and DNA that signal the early stages of cancer.

When Wang makes a discovery, he can walk across campus to the Office for Technology Commercialization to see if the technology is new enough—and has enough commercial promise—to make it worthwhile to make an intellectual-property disclosure or file a patent. Most research universities these days have an office that helps researchers file patents, find companies to license patents, and start companies.

Minnesota's office is particularly effective. It's headed by Jay Schrankler, a former manufacturing executive. "Everyone in our office has come from industry, which is unique. And we run this like a company," Schrankler says. By hiring people who understood how both businesspeople and scientists think, the university has developed better relationships among companies, investors, and academics like Wang. 

OTC helped Wang patent his technology, and funded his efforts to turn the chips into a product. Wang designed some handheld devices and a desktop system that include the chips. All doctors or patients have to do is add a urine sample and the nanobiochip does its work.

OTC also has a business unit called the Venture Center that serves as a startup incubator. Understanding that researchers like Wang have no interest in giving up their day jobs, OTC recruits a 'CEO-in-residence'—an executive willing to take over the nascent company. Wang's research became a company called Zepto Life Technology, now based in the Twin Cities area. One of Wang's former students is the research and development director. Wang himself has an advisory role and a small equity stake.

"We talk a lot about start-up companies, but that's only about 10 percent of our activity here. The other 90 percent are other existing companies that license our technology," Schrankler says. The university's latest innovation in licensing is a program called Minnesota Innovation Partnerships—MN-IP, for short. Companies seeking to sponsor university research can pay more money upfront to get exclusive, worldwide rights to any resulting intellectual property. There were 41 such partnerships last year, and they're actually a pretty good deal for the university. Most of the time, when a company approaches a university for help with a research problem, it's looking to investigate an early stage idea. There's no guarantee the grant or partnership will lead to a discovery, and more often than not, the research doesn't result in a patent.

When Schrankler arrived at UMTC in 2007, there were 193 invention disclosures (the step that usually precedes patent applications), he says. In 2013, there were 331. He attributes the surge to the Office of Technology Commercialization's initiatives. But the productivity has been shaped by forces beyond the university, too.

Some federal grants require researchers to state how they would commercialize any technology resulting from the funded research. The University of Minnesota has to reach a target number of invention disclosures each year, or the state Legislature will withhold 1 to 2 percent of the university's base budget. Although federal grants still make up about 70 percent of the university's research awards, lagging federal spending has led the university to seek out more corporate partnerships, and those tend to involve applied research. 

Commercialized research can create jobs, businesses, even whole new industries. A top-flight research university that can jumpstart new industries—as well as support existing strengths, like the Twin Cities' medical devices sector—can be an invaluable driver of economic growth.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the size of the University of Minnesota's economic impact on the Twin Cities.

 

Words That Question Your Authority - Business Insider

http://www.businessinsider.com/words-that-question-your-authority-2014-6?utm_content=bufferd1bab&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

These 10 Words Make People Question Your Authority

University of Exeter/flickr

Nine-hundred and seventy-two.

That's the total number of emails I received just in May, and it's about my average. That's not counting the hundreds and hundreds of messages Gmail dumped into categories for promotional mail, forum posts, and social networking updates. I've become proficient at jumping through messages quickly (using the J and K keys), but there's one thing I've mastered even more than that: spotting a lack of confidence.

I also take quite a few cold calls — people who are not really sure what I do and have not really done too much research but have me on a phone list for some reason.

In most cases, it's a pitch about a product or someone asking a question about marketing to journalists. He or she might say he or she "usually" does something. In a few cases, it's someone with a business idea he or she "suspects" will be perfect. Most of the time, these messages are straightforward — the sender isn't messing around. But a few seem hesitant. I fire back a question, and the response makes me question the person's authority on the subject.

These words are not always triggers about confidence level, but they are my first signal that something is amiss. They make me think the sender is not that sure about the product or service. And they are dead giveaways that I need to question what the person says.

1. Might

Be careful when you tell people you "might" do something. Are you sure about that? No one is asking you to solve world peace. When you say you "might" finish a report, it implies you lack some ability, don't manage your time well, or have too many priorities.

2. Won't

Here's an obvious word to avoid in your emails. Anyone who says he or she "won't" do something or "won't" attend a meeting is generating a negative vibe. Be more decisive: Either accept an invitation or reject it; using the word won't suggests hesitancy.

3. Usually

This is a trigger word in email that makes it obvious to everyone that you don't have all the facts. If you say the accounting department "usually" doesn't approve your expense report or the boss is "usually" late to work, it means you're stretching the truth.

4. Suspect

Unless you are talking about a suspect in a trial, avoid saying you "suspect" anything. You're not Sherlock Holmes. Just use direct terms: You know an investor is pulling out of the project, and here's why; or you have facts to support your conclusion on a new marketing plan.

5. Impossible

I'll bet Mark Zuckerberg has never used the word impossible in an email. The recipient will lose confidence in you quickly. State why something might be hard or difficult or just don't agree to a course of action. Don't bother telling people it's impossible.

6. Worried

We all worry about the stresses of life. Telling people you are worried by email makes it seem as if you lack confidence in your abilities. If you are worried, don't bother saying that to anyone — just express what you are concerned about and offer solutions.

7. Confused

Expressing your confusion will create even more confusion. It's better to just say what you are confused about and ask questions. Saying you are "confused" gives people the impression that either you don't understand something or that the topic is confusing to you.

8. Need

We all have needs in life. When you express those needs by email over and over again, it makes you look needy. I "need" you to come to work early, I "need" you to get that report done. Avoid saying "need" and express requirements more directly.

9. Quandary

Have you sent a message and said you were in a "quandary"? You should know that the word means you are in a total state of perplexity. I mean, you are really perplexed. That's not often the case when it comes to a new business proposal or fundraising round.

10. Likely

Few of us are in the business of predicting the future. If you say something is "likely" in an email, you are expressing to the recipient that you are not really sure about the topic, and you don't have all the facts yet. It's likely that you just lack confidence.

This article originally appeared at Inc.. Copyright 2014. Follow Inc. on Twitter.

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The Secrets to Small Business Success (Infographic) | Inc.com

http://www.inc.com/laura-montini/infographic/keys-to-small-business-longevity.html?cid=sf01002

The Secrets to Small Business Success (Infographic)

Looking too far into the future of your business can be overwhelming, but there are certainly reasons to be optimistic about what's to come. While many small business owners have been concerned about the slow economic recovery, almost 70 percent feel that their businesses are currently operating at a successful level. The key is to work on a few main strategies in your control on an ongoing basis.

Column Five and Intuit put together this infographic, which depicts some business owners' approaches to staying in business for the long haul.  

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http://gizmodo.com/tor-is-for-everyone-why-you-should-use-tor-1591191905?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Tor Is For Everyone: Why You Should Use Tor

EFF recently kicked off its second Tor Challenge, an initiative to strengthen the Tor network for online anonymity and improve one of the best free privacy tools in existence. The campaign—which launched with partners at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Tor Project, and the Free Software Foundation—is already off to a great start. In just the first few days, it's seen over 600 new or expanded Tor nodes—more than during the entire first Tor Challenge.

This is great news, but how does it affect you? To understand that, you have to dig into what Tor actually is, and what people can do to support it. Support can come in many forms, too. Even just using Tor is one of the best and easiest things a person can do to preserve privacy and anonymity on the Internet.

What is Tor?

Tor is a network and a software package that helps you anonymously use the Internet. Specifically, Tor hides the source and destination of your Internet traffic, this prevents anyone from knowing both who you are and what you are looking at (though they may know one or the other). Tor also hides the destination of your traffic, which can circumvent some forms of censorship. Tor has been in development for many years and is very stable and mature. It is regarded as one of the best privacy tools currently in existence and it does not cost you anything.

How does Tor help me?

This graphic shows how Tor and https can work together to protect your privacy on the Internet. Basically, Tor encrypts that data you send across the Internet in multiple layers, like an onion. Then it sends that data through multiple relays, each one of which peels a layer off the onion until your packet leaves the final relay and gets to its destination. This is called 'onion routing' and it is a fantastic method for keeping privacy on the web. Proper use of tor—along with HTTPS Everywhere—can be one of the best ways to ensure your browsing will remain anonymous.

But I don't need privacy, I have nothing to hide!

Everyone needs privacy sometimes! For example: perhaps you end up with an embarrassing medical condition and you want to search for information about it but you don't want Google and every advertiser to know about your bodily functions. Tor can help you keep that information private. Tor can also help prevent online tracking more generally as well. Proper use of Tor can circumvent most third party trackers that governments and corporations can use to track your browsing habits and send you obnoxious intrusive advertisements. Tor can also protect your data from hackers on your network. Tor can also help you get around censorship and firewalls from the filter at your school or office or even help you circumvent firewalls or censorship put in place by your government.

How do I use Tor?

The easiest way to get up and running with Tor is to use the Tor Browser Bundle. It is a version of Firefox that comes preconfigured to use Tor. Tor Browser Bundle is set up to use Tor the right way so that you will avoid a lot of the common pitfalls that can pierce your veil of anonymity. If your prefer a more holistic approach or wish to use Tor for something other than just web browsing, you can use Tails. Tails is an operating system that runs off of a live CD. It is configured so that all Internet connections run through Tor; and when you are done, everything that you did is wiped clean from your computer's memory. It never touches your hard drive and leaves no traces on your computer. If you want to use Tor on your android phone, check out Orbot, it can run your browsing and other programs through Tor.

Tor sounds great. What can I do to help?

To help make Tor faster and more secure one of the best things you can do is set up a Tor relay. That's what we're asking people to do in our Tor Challenge. The more relays there are in the Tor network the more speed and security Tor has. Setting up a relay may also improve your own personal anonymity. But even just using Tor increases the anonymity of all the other users. There's some safety in numbers: if the only people using Tor are those who have a serious need for it then any use of Tor is suspicious. But if Tor gets used for everything from pizza orders to looking at funny cat photos then it is much less so.

So if I use Tor will I have perfect anonymity all of the time?

Nothing is foolproof, not even Tor. If you use Tor the wrong way you can end up destroying your own anonymity. If you use Tor to log into Facebook or Gmail, for example, they may not know where you are coming from but they will certainly know who you are and they may even be able to track your browsing around the web. The Tor Project has posted a list of common mistakes that inexperienced users sometimes make.

When used properly Tor is one of the best tools for internet privacy that exists. You can use it to circumvent firewalls in an oppressive country, retain your privacy, or browse the Internet while at school. Setting up and running Tor is easy and it is one of the best things any citizen of the Internet can do to help keep a free and open Internet.

And if you can run a Tor relay, or want to commit to boosting the bandwidth on a relay you already run, you can take part in the Tor Challenge and push it over its target while collecting prizes. Check out the Tor Challenge today.

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This article first appeared on the Electronic Frontier Foundation and is reproduced here under the Creative Commons license.

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Internet ad revenues hit $11.6B in Q1, proving we're addicted to our gadgets | VentureBeat | Business | by Ruth Reader

http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/12/internet-ad-revenues-hit-11-6b-in-q1-proving-were-addicted-to-our-gadgets/

Internet ad revenues hit $11.6B in Q1, proving we're addicted to our gadgets

Companies know that we're more glued to our devices than ever, and they're capitalizing on it.

In the first quarter of 2014, Internet advertising hit an all-time high of $11.6 billion, according the Internet Advertising Bureau and PwC report released today. That's two billion dollars ahead of last year's first quarter.

The report takes into account Internet, online, and mobile advertising."Interactive advertising is seeing remarkable gains," said Randall Rothenberg, IAB's president and CEO. "Digital screens are a critical part of the marketing mix and these landmark figures speak to that irrefutable fact."

In case there was any doubt that companies are increasingly investing in Internet advertising, PwC says Internet advertising revenues are set to surpass television.

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We want hands-on expert reports on common marketing automation systems. If you use marketing automation, share your story ... and set your own price for others to learn from it. (Here's an example.)

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iHealth's tiny new blood glucose monitor plugs into your headphone jack | VentureBeat | Health | by Mark Sullivan

http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/12/ihealths-tiny-new-blood-glucose-monitor-plugs-into-smartphone-headphone-jack/

iHealth's tiny new blood glucose monitor plugs into your headphone jack

Diabetes is one of the costliest and most life-changing diseases, and 29 million Americans live with it. Part of the reason it's so life-changing is the clumsy way diabetics must monitor blood sugar levels every day.

Mountain View, Calif.-based iHealth Lab is trying to bring the process into the digital age with the introduction of its second smartphone-compatible blood glucose monitor in nine months, the iHealth Align.

The company's first monitor, the BG5, was sleek, white, compact, and had a very "designed" look. In short, it looked Apple-ish.

The new FDA-approved iHealth Align (or BG1) is more of the same design-wise, but it's even more compact – just slightly larger than the circumference of a quarter. The white, teardrop-shaped meter plugs directly into the headphone jack of Android and iOS devices and stores and displays readings using the iHealth Gluco-Smart app.

To read your blood glucose level, you take a small blood sample from the fingertip, upper arm, or thigh using a lancing device and a testing strip. The strip is then fitted into an opening at the top of the monitor device, which reads the sample and conveys the information to the app.

Above: The iHealth Smart Gluco App for iPhone.

You can use the app to manage your readings and track insulin. Since all the data is automatically sent to the cloud, you can choose to share glucose level data with your doctor.

"For many diabetics, the cost and hassle of managing diabetes on a daily basis can be daunting, so we want to help make measurement and tracking as easy as possible," said Adam Lin, president of iHealth Lab.

The Gluco-Smart app is a perfect example of the kind of app that might one day integrate with Apple's new HealthKit cloud-based health data repository.

"We fully expect to be integrated with Apple's Healthkit," Lin told VentureBeat via email. "We believe in giving the consumer options for how they want to view and manage their health data."

The iHealth Align is available for $16.95 at the iHealth Labs website and at Walgreens.com. The app is available at Apple's App Store and at Google Play. The company says it's now selling the test strips at a reduced price, too.

More about the companies and people from this article:

iHealth Lab designs and manufactures consumer-friendly, mobile personal healthcare products. The company focuses on delivering easy-to-use products that make it simple for you to test, track, graph and share your health information reg... read more »

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7 Mobile Technology Skills You Need to Master - WorkIntelligent.ly

http://www.workintelligent.ly/technology/mobile/2014-4-14-7-mobile-technology-skills/?utm_campaign=ContentSyndication&utm_medium=NativeAd&utm_source=OutBrain&utm_content=&utm_term=7+mobile+technology+skills+to+master

7 Mobile Technology Skills You Need to Master

As mobile technology becomes more and more mainstream, workers need these important skills for the new world of work.

When I was filling out a résumé for my first job after an internship, my boss at the time chided me for including a "Skills" section at the bottom, rife with terms like "Microsoft Word/Excel/Access" and "Minor Spanish language fluency." It was offered up as an essential marketing tool in many job search seminars, but my boss disagreed.

"Why would you want to leave them with a description of yourself as 'minor'?" he said. "And who works in an office and doesn't know Microsoft Word?"

They were good points then, back when everyone worked and sent messages from their desktop computer. But these days, basic mobile fluency might range from "I use a BlackBerry for email" to "I can sign a document you emailed me and share it with you through SkyDrive from my phone."

There is a growing need for a common set of core mobile technology skills among workers. "Computer skills" are no longer what you need, but "web savvy," or perhaps "data agility." Here are some of the mobile technology skills that will soon seem irreplaceable among modern workers (and thus, unnecessary to list on a résumé).

MANAGING BATTERY LIFE (AND EXPECTATIONS)

One of the most important things you learn about driving a car is something you don't remember learning: your understanding of how far your vehicle goes on a certain amount of gas. You find out, maybe the hard way, how much further you can go after the "low fuel" light comes on. You get the sense of how hills, wind, load, traffic and other changes will affect how far you get before you have to flip the gas cap.

The same goes for smartphones. What are the battery life estimates of your phone given by manufacturers, reviewers, or by anyone you meet who owns the same phone? That's completely irrelevant, in almost every case. You're the one who has your own set of apps, your own number of constantly syncing calendars, and your own habits of flicking on the screen whenever there's an idle moment. Just as with driving, there are variables—scant reception, crowds, deep cold, and different charging cords with different wattage—that you can't avoid, but can at least plan around.

Better manage this easily-overlook aspect of your mobile device by scaling your power draw back on iPhones and on Android devices. Windows also has good advice on its own phone's power options.

But you still have to know the boundaries of how far you can go before you end up giving a presentation with a tablet that blacks out halfway through.

GETTING DECENT IMAGES OUT OF YOUR PHONE CAMERA

Not everybody is gunning to become an Instagram star, but most everyone needs to occasionally try and capture something for someone else's understanding: a potential meeting space, a new product, or maybe just an inspiration. Even if you're carrying the best phone camera around, make sure your mobile technology skills include knowing how to get just what you want out of a very tiny lens and sensor.

There's a lot you can do: use your light, clean your lens, tweak your white balance, and see what you can do in the settings. Look for simple patterns. If you see a recurring problem with your phone, search Google for other people who report the same problem (for example, my HTC One's "purple camera" issue).

KEEPING YOUR STUFF READY OFFLINE

Photos you take on your phone and the music you store on it are always ready for you. Same goes with your email and contacts, if things are working right. Nearly everything else is up to you to keep offline, if you want to have it available for airplanes, Wi-Fi that doesn't work, or buildings that kill cellular signals.

Both Google Drive and Dropbox have tools for saving files for offline viewing. Many Android apps also have options to "Download," "Export," or "Save a copy," which might later require you to be able to get to them using a file browser (Astro is a good pick). Having the mobile technology skills to manage online documents while offline? That's one trick that'll surely catch the attention of most colleagues.

MANAGING ALERT NOISE

When your phone alerts you about everything, nothing stands out as actually urgent. Your phone should buzz or chirp only when there is something that is so important that you need to know about it right then, whatever you happen to be doing. But most apps and services, by default, assume you want to be aware of every single thing that happens everywhere at any time.

iPhone owners should head into their Settings and check out the Notification Center, the little gear-like icons and "More" options in the apps themselves to choose what kind of notifications are sent by their apps. Android apps keep their notification settings inside themselves, so rooting around for those deeper notification settings is a five-minute job that pays long-term dividends. Keep only those notifications you really need to know about: text messages, important emails and the like.

SENDING, DOWNLOADING, EDITING FILES

What you use to keep your files handy depends on your personal preference, your office setup and security needs. But there is perhaps no better reason we have upgraded phones to tiny computers than to have information and files available to us wherever we happen to be.

Whether you're using SkyDrive, Office 365, Novell, Dropbox, Google Drive, Zoho, or just the tools that come with your phone or tablet, your mobile technology skills need to include the ability to send someone a file. You also need to learn how to deal with any of the common attachments you receive (PDFs, Word documents, and so on), get files you were working on, and perhaps even edit files on the go, for the times you are away from your desk.

CAPTURING IDEAS, CONTACTS & CONVERSATIONS

What do you do when you come up with a great slogan for the next pitch, but you're on the train to a hockey game? How do you handle the business cards you pick up along your way? If you need to record a conversation and get back some key quotes, how do you do that?

There are some answers to those questions such as Evernote, a smorgasbord of business card apps, and, among others, Rev Voice Recorder, but you need to find the solutions that offer the least resistance to your train of thought and how you do things, with easy retrieval for when you go looking.

HOW TO SECURE YOUR DEVICE

Despite all we know about how data gets out, and how effective social engineering can be for the wrong people, there is a definite trend in mobile devices used for work: employees who do not believe they are responsible for their firm's data security. And data thieves keep finding new angles to exploit.

Every employee's mobile technology skills should know how to put a secure passcode ("lock screen password") on their phone and tablet, and how to ensure their device can be remotely located or wiped. Whenever possible, devices with work data should be encrypted, and wide-open services such as Gmail, Facebook, and others should be able to be signed out of remotely. And no two passwords should ever be the same for any two apps or services.

Moving Forward

Fifteen years ago, perhaps it would've been appropriate for me to have "Proficiency in Word" on a resume. Today, people just assume that you have those skills. And as smartphones and tablets continue to become more important aspects of our professional lives in today's new world of work, having these mobile technology skills will soon transition from a "nice-to-have" to being a "have-to-have."

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Health apps could be heading into a HIPAA showdown

Some of the steam has gone out of the fitness wearables space, and the market for wearables (and accompanying apps) that collect more serious health data (like blood sugar levels) seems to be gaining steam.

Recent announcements from Samsung and Apple of their intentions to operate large health data platforms to collect and store health data for such apps and devices will only accelerate the growth of the space.

Samsung's SAMI platform and Apple's HealthKit platform also provide a place where healthcare providers might access the health data, as the two companies' partnerships with high-profile medical centers prove. Both companies are also said to be working with Epic, a leading electronic health record vendor for large medical groups and hospitals.

But when a consumer app or device starts sharing personal data with a healthcare provider, people start getting very concerned about security and privacy issues. In the health world, the privacy of personal health data is regulated under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), enacted in 1996 to provide a set of rules protecting personal health information. So the question becomes: under what circumstances does the health data collected by consumer devices and app become "protected health information (PHI)".

Consumer apps & HIPAA

It depends on who is using them, says Adam Greene, a partner in the Health IT/HIPAA practice at the Washington DC law firm Davis Wright Tremaine.

"Right now, there's a big distinction between between apps that were created for use by healthcare providers and apps that were intended for use by consumers," Greene's last job was at the Department of Health and Human Service's (HHS) Office of Civil Rights, which acts as an enforcement arm for HIPAA.

"It's certainly something that the tech companies have to be aware of, but in general HIPAA doesn't apply to consumer data," Greene says. "Whether or not it applies is more about who is handling the data than about the content of the data itself."

Greene says that if a consumer app containing even the most sensitive health information would not be subject to HIPAA laws, because the app is acting on behalf of a consumer, not a health system.

Feedback loops

But things might get a little more complicated once the next generation of consumer health apps begin transmitting data to the cloud, where healthcare providers can access it. We may enter a system where health data is moving from consumer apps and devices to provider information systems and back again.

"If an app just captures data on a mobile device and stores it on your phone, it isn't that useful," says Jason Wang, founder and CEO of TrueVault, makes an API that readies health apps for HIPAA compliance.

"Consumers want to be able to share their health data with their doctor and have him or her send back feedback like 'you need to run more' or 'you need to eat less.'"

It's that feedback loop that really benefits the consumer, Wang says, but it's also the thing that may put consumer app developers under the watchful eye of HIPAA.

"Any information that's used in the course of a healthcare service is protected health information and needs to be HIPAA compliant," he says.

HIPAA adapts to digital health

The problem for many health app developers is that the spector of HIPAA remains a moving target. They speculate on scenarios in which their apps might become subject to the law, while at the same time, HHS's conception of its role in digital health seems to be evolving.

Only last year the government widened the scope of HIPAA. The law was was originally aimed at clinics, hospitals, and insurers but was last year expanded to address computer systems that manage health information.

In a January update to its rules, HHS expanded the scope of HIPAA to cover "business associates", which commonly refers to information-systems vendors or contractors but could include app developers if their app sends or receives PHI. The agency also upped the maximum fine per HIPAA violation to $1.5 million.

HHS has put it on insurers and providers to comply with HIPAA and continually monitor the privacy of the health data they handle. But the agency is becoming more aggressive. HHS has said it plans this year to survey 1,200 covered entities and business associates to identify candidates for auditing.

Apple, meet HIPAA?

Apple and Samsung will need to take careful steps to stay clear of HHS and HIPAA rules. That might be difficult.

By definition, an information system that "manages and transmits" protected health information (PHI) is subject to the privacy rules in HIPAA, explains Dr. Travis Good, MD, CEO and Co-founder of Catalyze, Inc. Good is an expert in HIPAA compliance and security issues concerning health information systems.

"It's hard to argue that a platform called HealthKit is not collecting personal health information and that they would not have to follow the same healthcare privacy requirements that other healthcare information systems are forced to comply with," Good says.

When Samsung and Apple opened up the door to Epic and other health information systems, they indicated that they intended to transmit personal health information, Good says.

So far, Apple and Samsung have said little about how they intend to secure the data in their health data in their platforms.

For app developers, integrating with the big health platforms might force them to think seriously about HIPAA compliance.

"It is my understanding that Apple HealthKIt allows app developers to share data between apps," says Jeff Brandt, a health data security expert known for developing the first securePersonal Health Record (PHR).

"This could lead to more opportunities for data breach. If healthcare providers are going to recommend or collect data from these apps, they will need BAA (Business Associates Agreement) from each of the app developers," Brandt says.

This may actually put Apple and Samsung in the odd position of making sure that apps reporting into their platforms are HIPAA compliant. It's a safe assumption that those companies don't want to get into the compliance business. It's unlikely that privacy compliance will be a criteria for acceptance into the app stores anytime soon.

To be sure, we're in the very early days of consumer health platforms. But it's clear that the data privacy obligations of both platforms and apps will play a big role in shaping the consumer-driven health movement in coming years.

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This French tech school has no teachers, no books, no tuition — and it could change everything

PARIS — École 42 might be one of the most ambitious experiments in engineering education.

It has no teachers. No books. No MOOCs. No dorms, gyms, labs, or student centers. No tuition.

And yet it plans to turn out highly qualified, motivated software engineers, each of whom has gone through an intensive two- to three-year program designed to teach them everything they need to know to become outstanding programmers.

The school, housed in a former government building used to educate teachers (ironically enough), was started by Xavier Niel. The founder and majority owner of French ISP Free, Niel is a billionaire many times over. He's not well known in the U.S., but here he is revered as one of the country's great entrepreneurial successes in tech.

He is also irrepressibly upbeat, smiling and laughing almost nonstop for the hour that he led a tour through École 42 earlier this week. (Who wouldn't be, with that much wealth? Yet I have met much more dour billionaires before.)

Niel started École 42 with a 70 million euro donation. He has no plans for it to make money, ever.

Above: Free founder Xavier Niel, speaking at Ecole 42, the free engineering school he created.

Image Credit: Dylan Tweney/VentureBeat

"I know one business, and that's how to make software," Niel said. "I made a lot of money and I want to give something back to my country," he explained.

To make the school self-sustaining, he figures that future alumni will give back to their school, just as alumni of other schools do. If a few of them become very rich, as Niel has, perhaps they, too, will give millions to keep it going.

The basic idea of École 42 is to throw all the students — 800 to 1,000 per year — into a single building in the heart of Paris, give them Macs with big Cinema displays, and throw increasingly difficult programming challenges at them. The students are given little direction about how to solve the problems, so they have to turn to each other — and to the Internet — to figure out the solutions.

Above: A student at Ecole 42 explains how he created a ray tracing program. Six months before he knew nothing about programming.

Image Credit: Dylan Tweney/VentureBeat

The challenges are surprisingly difficult. One student I talked with was coding a ray tracer and building an emulation of the 3-D dungeon in Castle Wolfenstein within his first few months at the school. Six months earlier, he had barely touched a computer and knew nothing of programming. He hadn't even finished high school.

In fact, 40 percent of École 42′s students haven't finished high school. Others have graduated from Stanford or MIT or other prestigious institutions. But École 42 doesn't care about their background — all it cares about is whether they can complete the projects and move on. The only requirement is that they be between the ages of 18 and 30.

"We don't ask anything about what they've done before," Niel said.

Yet École 42 is harder to get into than Harvard: Last year, 70,000 people attempted the online qualification test. 20,000 completed the test, and of those, 4,000 were invited to spend four weeks in Paris doing an intensive project that had them working upwards of 100 hours a week on various coding challenges. In the end, 890 students were selected for the school's inaugural class, which began in November, 2013. (The average age is 22, and 11 percent of the first class is female.)

890 students out of 70,000 applicants means an acceptance rate a little north of 1 percent, or if you only count those who completed the test, 4.5 percent. By contrast, Harvard accepts about 6 percent of its applicants. And, even with financial aid, it charges a whole lot more than zero for its classes.

The upshot: If it works, the school's course of education will produce coders who are incredibly self-motivated, well-rounded in all aspects of software engineering, and willing to work hard. (The four-week tryout alone, with its 100-hour weeks, blows away the French government's official 35-hour-work week.)

Nicolas Sadirac, a French entrepreneur and educator, is the school's director. Before École 42 he ran Epitech, a well-regarded, private, for-profit school that trained software engineers.

Above: Ecole 42 includes a few extra amenities — like a hot tub on the roof deck.

Image Credit: Dylan Tweney/VentureBeat

All of École 42′s projects are meant to be collaborative, so the students work in teams of two to five people. At first glance, the École's classrooms look a little bit like a factory floor or a coding sweatshop, with row after row of Aeron-style chairs facing row after row of big monitors. But a closer look reveals that the layout is designed to facilitate small-group collaboration, with the monitors staggered so that students can easily talk to one another, on the diagonals between the monitors or side by side with the people next to them. Students can come and go as they please; the school is open 24 hours a day and has a well-appointed cafeteria in the basement (with a wine cellar that can hold 5,000 bottles, just in case the school needs to host any parties).

Students share all of their code on Github (naturally). They communicate with one another, and receive challenges and tests, via the school's intranet. Everything else they figure out on their own, whether it means learning trigonometry, figuring out the syntax for C code, or picking up techniques to index a database.

Tests are essentially pass-fail: Your team either completes the project or it doesn't. One administrator compared it to making a car: In other schools, getting a test 90 percent right means an A; but if you make a car with just three out of four wheels, it is a failure. At École 42, you don't get points for making it part way there — you have to make a car with all four wheels.

The no-teachers approach makes sense, as nearly anything you need to know about programming can now be found, for free, on the Internet. Motivated people can easily teach themselves any language they need to know in a few months of intensive work. But motivation is what's hard to come by, and to sustain — ask anyone who has tried outCodecademy but not stuck with it. That has prompted the creation of "learn to code" bootcamps and schools around the world. École 42 takes a similar inspiration but allows the students to generate their own enthusiasm via collaborative (and somewhat competitive) teamwork.

Above: Exterior view of Ecole 42.

Image Credit: Dylan Tweney/VentureBeat

Sadirac and Niel say that some prestigious universities have already expressed interest in the school's approach. The two are considering syndicating the model to create similar schools in other countries.

But even if they never expand beyond Paris, École 42 could become a significant force in software education. France already has a reputation for creating great engineers (in software as well as in many other fields).

If École 42 adds another thousand highly-motivated, entrepreneurial software engineers to the mix every year, it could very quickly accelerate this country's competitiveness in tech.

And the model will force schools like Harvard to make an extra effort to justify their high tuitions. If you can get training like this for free, and you want to be a software engineer, why go to Harvard?

Disclosure: My airfare and hotel to France were paid for by BPIFrance, a state-owned investment bank.

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