Chief Prognosticator

According to a study done by Merck Medco, about 50% of all adults in the U.S. who have insurance are on long term prescription medicine. This means they take a medicine on an ongoing basis like that for high blood pressure or high cholesterol. What do these study findings mean and is it necessarily a good thing or a bad thing? Or mixed?

Unhealthy Population
Does this figure of 50% mean that the population is more unhealthy than ever? Looking at the obesity rate for adults (and children) we see that America has never been fatter, so this data support that?
Better Medicine
Maybe this data shows that science and medicine has done a great job of developing medicines which treat chronic conditions (which always existed) and therefore extend life and quality of life. That’s a good thing, if you can afford it.
Sales and Marketing Pressured
This data could just be evidence that the sales and marketing divisions of Pharma companies are getting too good. With a plethora of television, radio and magaine advertisements. Try to think about how many ads you’ve seen this week for ED, Depression, Cholesteral, and Birth Control!

I’d say just plain complicated at this moment. Sure the U.S. Congress recently passed a law against insurance companies being able to use genetic information to determine coverage. Sounds fair right? Well it does and it doesn’t. Isn’t insurance all about risk? And isn’t risk based on predisposition? You know what would solve this? Socialized Medicine! Yeah, I know its a touchy subject here in the U.S., but if we don’t want to “discriminate” against anyone in who gets health coverage for a reasonable fee, then social medicine (single payer) is the only way to go… Why didn’t Congress pass that bill? I guess its a whole lot easier to pass a bill against “discrimination” than it is against capitalism…

I wrote this a few months ago:

Here’s an amazing website-slash-service I just randomly found Googling myself…. workFRIENDLY.net! What is it? Well it looks a lot like a search engine but what it does it a lot cooler. Just enter in the URL of a site you want to visit and workFRIENDLY masks it into looking like a MS Word document! Now you can read your favorite websites while at work with reduced chance of getting caught by the boss. There is even a “boss” button to quickly switch out the content. Check it out for yourself!

Now I see the site is dead! What happened to it?

Google has made some small progress in providing free wireless Internet blanketing over major American cities. It makes sense for Google to do it — the hardware is cheap, the access is too and they would get the unrestricted ability to show their advertisements on this network. Think of it as the Internet 2.0, one where Google makes all the money! Why haven’t they pushed this initiative more?

It looks like there’s just one city with it — that’s Google home base of Mountain View, California. The hometown gets free WiFi thanks to the Internet giant as a sort of thank you. Now what about more cities?

We’ve all heard the management-mumbo-jumbo about team building, but what is it really all about? Is it just getting some people to work together nicely or is there something more. Actually there is a whole science behind team building, one based on sociological, organizational behavior, and management techniques. This is why you should entrust only professionals when it comes to that magic thing called team building. TeamWorx is a management leadership training specialist. They have proven science behind their techniques and are the right professionals to increase your company’s productivity and overall employee satisfaction. Give them a call — they will take it from there!

Hurry… Your Chance to Win an Easy $25 is Ending Soon. I wrote a few months ago about a quick way to win $25. Now here’s a second chance but you only have a few days left to enter this super easy contest:

Check out the contest over at TheGuru.com and read the rules. It’s easy! Just make a post and leave a comment… that’s all it takes. In fact, your looking at my entry in the contest right now! Easy, huh?

Join the Chief Prognosticator links directory. It’s been open for a couple of months now and already has around 50 sites listed. As the directory grows, the popularity and PageRank will follow, providing you more traffic and more publicity to your site. Choose from a variety of categories and get your site listed today! It’s free to join with a link exchange. One note, if you have a Blogger accounted pointing to your own URL, the automatic process will not work. You need to click on contact and send me a note and I will add your site myself. Otherwise the process is completely automatic and you will receive an email when your site is approved (less than 24 hours). Join today before the next Google PageRank update and get the full benefit of being listed!

Web 2.0, Schweb 2.0… blah, blah, blah. Sure user generated content has dominated the current Internet, but there is something else I noticed and it involves online video. Wait, before you start thinking about YouTube, stop! Again, I’m not talking about user-generated content. No, I’m talking about the 180 degree turn in how businesses have embraced giving away their content online. From Saturday Night Live’s digital shorts to ESPN’s online video selection, media companies are giving away their wares for free on the Internet. Even CNN.com is offering free videos of their news stories. I can remember about 6 months ago, CNN.com tried to sell videos via subscription. Now they’ve totally redesigned their site to feature free video content. Amazing. Why are they doing this:

1. Capture more eyes
2. Show more Ads

Apple Inc. has had an amazing year of products 2007 with mostly hits and only a few misses. Of course leading the list is the Apple iPhone which has been simply amazing and well received. Following that was the new iMac design and of course the long awaited release of OS X “Leopard”. As for the misses? Well I think Apple TV has been a miss. It was just not a mature product which met market demands. Steve Jobs wanted to replace the DVD player but instead fell short. Without HD connectivity of HDMI interface, Apple TV was not really good enough to compete with even $99 “upconverting” non-HD DVD players. Let’s see if Apple rebounds with this product in 2008 with the necessary upgrades.

As for 2008, what will Apple release? Word is out on a new Hard-drive-less laptop. It’s been touted as iPod meets iBook. But what else? Apple has raised the bar so high that they need to come out with 3 or 4 new and AMAZING product every year as not to disappoint investors or fanboys. What could it be?

• New iPod? Boring
• Cheaper iPhone? So-so.
• Better Apple TV? Hopefully.
• Flash-only memory laptops? OK, cool.
• Smaller iPod? Pico? How small is too small?
• ???

I just love how technology is always pushing the limits of productivity and business performance to new levels. Just think of the impact of the desktop computer or wireless communication has had on business in the last 20 years. Even less ubiquitous areas of technology such as voice recorders, online ordering, and company intranets have made a huge impact on the bottom line. One exciting area of technology to help increase business productivity is the usage of GPS technology. GPS data can provide you with a lot of valuable information, especially in certain businesses like transportation and service visits. Here’s a great example of how GPS technology is helping business increase their profitability and improving their performance: GPS Insight.

The GPS Insight vehicle tracking system provides you with a Productivity Information System in real time for all your vehicle fleet. What does it do? Well after you install the hardware — it takes little to no time at all, just plug the unit into your vehicle’s diagnostic port, — you access real time information about that vehicle over the Internet. You get full real time data (updated every 2 minutes) for parameters like speed, fuel consumption, and idle time. Do more relying on drivers logs — those things are hard to manage and keep track of. Now with GPS Insight you get all the important data retrieved and stored in a single, powerful application. From a single map you can track all you fleet and keep an eye on things.

Product support for GPS Insight is 24/7. Not only do you have access to support staff but you also have the GPS Insight support wiki for customers. Knowledge and experience sharing helps you better use and optimize the product. This is really a 21st century product with 21st century productivity results.

So how much does all this information cost? Well the GPS Insight website has a great pricing tool which shows you instantly how much you can expect to pay for the hardware and the monitoring service. Just plug in your fleet size and get a line item listing of all the costs. It can be as low as  $1.50-2 per day per vehicle. That’ a low price to pay to have full oversight of your fleet. Whether you have a plumbing company or a trucking company, GPS Insight can help you get more profitable. Check out their Blog for GPS vehicle trackingat http://www.gpsinsight.com/blog for more information.

The future is bright and technology will continue to increase our business effectiveness!