Tales of Hoffman

Looking for a quick laugh?

Looking for a quick laugh? If you're interested in web usability and you've got a few minutes, check this out. (Flash format)

The Masters Business. If Augusta

The Masters Business.

If Augusta National wants to retain its place in the golfing firmament its leaders must step into the modern world.

Or so says an editorial in today's New York Times. Man, they are so wrong about this that I can't not post something about it here. I am usually fairly liberal, politically, and when it comes to Women's Rights, I think of myself as being somewhere on the spectrum between Alan Alda and Phil Donahue. But please people, let it rest! Who cares whether these guys let a woman into their club? If and when they do, it'll be some hotshot woman CEO who's a member of "the club" anyway. Are we really arguing for some underprivliged party here?

And asking Tiger Woods to pass up participating as a show of solidarity doesn't make any sense either. Here's a guy who is putting time and money into helping kids who would otherwise have no exposure to a sport like golf (or the lifestyle that it really represents), and you want him to skip the most prestigious tournament in his field because a bunch of really rich guys don't want to see a really rich woman as a full member of Augusta? Let's all take a step back and try to pick our fights where it makes some impact. This is not one of them.

Web usability, deep linking. Jacob,

Web usability, deep linking. Jacob, at Family Medicine Notes, takes issue with how Medscape requires login in order to see our content, particularly in the context of allowing deep linking. Believe me, we don't take this part of our functionality lightly and there is constant thinking around here about what should be "in front of the wall" and what should be "behind the wall."

Jacob's theory about why we make folks log in is correct. The healthcare provider population is finite. In terms of web numbers....very finite. Since our business model at Medscape is delivering an audience to our sponsors, it is essential that we are able to count each and every healthcare professional that views our site. So, you may say, why not put every page "behind the wall" and count every user?

Well, Jacob points out our predicament. Since the population we are targeting is not large, we can't afford to have any healthcare provider come to the site in search of info and then turn away because it's too much of a hassle to register or log in. To this end, we are continually striving to make our registration process fast and easy, and we provide a "Remember Me" function for members to save their ID and Password on their PC. This is the point of failure for most users, and I'll agree that we need to do a better job handling the non-user who gets to the site through a "deep link." (Got an idea how? Send Me Mail!)

The deep linking issue, as pointed out in the eWeek article that Jacob cites, is slightly different. You see, some web sites only want you to come to their content by way of their home page, 'cause that's where the advertisers pay the big money. Actually, we don't feel that way at all. We want you to see our content -- no matter how deep within the site is resides -- because we believe it's the best medical professional content on the Web and once you see it you will keep coming back. We love deep links, and as a matter of fact, we will be encouraging even more of it when we release our specialty-specific and site-wide RSS feed in about a month (you heard it here first!). BUT, and this is the problem, we need to know you were there.

We continue to search out the right balance to solve this problem. I'm going to talk to a few folks around here about Jacob's idea:

Medscape could rather easily permit a full text "deep link" without login from external URLs (cgi.referrer <> "medscape.com) .. but require login for viewing from internal URLs.  This way, deep linking is preserved, but if the user wants to go anywhere within Medscape, they are encouraged to log in.

Not sure this would work, but since my mandate is to make Medscape as easy to use and as popular (at least among its target audience) as Yahoo, Google and Amazon, just plodding along with "business as usual" is not going to get it done.

By the way, do take a look at Jacob's great article on Medscape, "Practical Use of Computers in the Family Practice Office Setting", it's good reading for anyone in our field, and if you're a doc, you can earn CME credits to boot....but you'll have to log in or register first. ;-)

To PDA or Not to

To PDA or Not to PDA?

Over the last 8-10 years, I've had several brushes with PDA-land. I've owned a Newton; still have a Palm organizer with the brand "Pilot" written on it; after a long period of non-use, just bequeathed a Palm VII (with wireless connectivity) to my wife; and about a year ago, spent several months using an iPaq and then stopped.

It's like I wantto use a PDA. I understand the power of the technology. I needto be more organized. But...everytime I start with one, it gets loaded with info, sync'd religiously, and then lapses into less and less actual use. There are a lot of moving parts in my life right now -- family, work, blog, other hobbies (notice the order...) -- so I'm trying once more. This morning I dug out the iPaq 3600 and I'm syncing it right now. I've ordered the PocketPC 2002 upgrade. I'll install that, although I'm betting this 1.5 - 2 year old iPaq is a little underpowered. We'll see.

For someone who actually enjoys using technology and feels it does improve my life, this whole PDA thing just never worked out for me. Maybe this time. Or maybe I'm just not an electronic organizer kind of guy. I'll try to keep you posted.

From the "I don't know

From the "I don't know who they asked but it certainly wasn't my wife" Department:

Women Opt for Technology Products over Diamonds, Says New CEA Survey.

Fifty-eight percent of women surveyed responded that they would choose a high-definition television over a one-karat diamond ring, and 64 percent said they would choose a digital camera over half-karat diamond stud earrings.

Indian City Welcomes Bill Gates

Indian City Welcomes Bill Gates with Huge Condom. You would think that this headline links to theonion.com....but it doesn't. Really. It's from Reuters and I assume it's real. If only we had a picture...

According to a just released

According to a just released HIMSS study, IT use continues to grow inside physician practices. The one figure that jumps out at me is the 72% of physician offices that said they had "doctors who practice medicine with a hand-held computer of some type, such as a personal digital assistant." That's a pretty impressive number, if true. Of course, keep in mind that the methodology for this survey is not exactly spotless. First off, it was done online, so you would expect the numbers to skew toward docs who use technology. Secondly, although the press release is cleverly written to say "Over 5,000 physicians, practice managers, and health care executives were invited to participate in the survey from Aug. 8 to 26, 2002," a closer reading of the full study reveals that only 453 responses were actually used to tally the results. (For those of you with a statistical bent that means every result in the study is 95% accurate with a range of plus or minus about 4.5%)

In March of this year,

In March of this year, my physician poked me in the stomach and said, "You've got to take care of this." Meaning, of course, that I've been carrying around a lot of extra weight for a long time. So, as a present to myself for my 40th birthday (coming up in May), I decided to do it.

I started on July 8th (after a Independence Day holiday of french fry and ice cream debauchery). After years of eating a bagel every morning, a big sandwich (and sometimes soup too) for lunch and pasta, or fried rice, or something equivalently carbo-loaded for dinner at least 4 or 5 nights a week, I tried to move from carbos to fruits, vegetables and meats that weren't fried or otherwise slathered in grease. No pasta, no potatoes, no bread, no bagels, no rice, no pizza. So, in otherwords, what I'm calling the "Modified Atkins." It's not that I'm eating meat and cheese every meal, I'm just not eating all the starches that I used to (at every meal!).

Also important (or at least as the medical blogs that I read in the list to the right tell me) is that I started to exercise -- very briskly walking on a treadmill for 30-40 minutes at least 5 times a week.

Results: so far I've lost 19 pounds. I've been able to stick to my slow-go plan of about one pound a week, and I'm only 6 pounds away from my goal of 25 before the end of the year. I'm really proud of that and I think I've permanently changed the way I eat for the better. Happy Birthday to Me.

Been so busy with Medscape

Been so busy with Medscape business that I actually missed this post from Jacob at Docnotes. A mere month ago, we sat at dinner and he said he didn't think online CME had much of a future. His slow turn to embracing online as a medium for Physician CME bodes well for the longterm viability of what is a big part of the Medscape business model. I predict he'll have at least 10 credits in his Medscape CME logbook a year from now... ;-)

Mark Hurst passes judgement on

Mark Hurst passes judgement on weblogs as a "business tool". I've known Mark for a few years now, almost always agree with his opinions, and particularly admire his ability to cut through the BS and point out what's really important -- but this time I think he's taking too narrow a view of blogs in general.

I challenge you to look at any of the "doc blogs" in the right hand column and then tell me that they are not valuable places for practicing docs to get information on a wide variety of topics. To me, blogs are extremely valuable -- not as a business tool -- but as a knowledge sharing mechanism. Blogging tools have given these docs an outlet to communicate with their peers in a quick and easy way that adds value to the whole community. It's hard to discount that. You can't reproduce the effect of a weblog on Usenet. There's no way to get the same continuity of viewpoint that you can get from reading a person's blog day in and day out by reading threads on Usenet. Too ephemeral. Blogs do this much better. Take another look, Mark.