Entries tagged with entertainment - Channel 10

Media Center University Part 4

brianjo — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:07:00 GMT

The CE Installer blog has posted Part 4 of the Media Center University series. In Part 4, Whole House Integration of Media Center Systems, Microsoft's Todd Rutherford provides guidance on integrating WMC with automation systems and designing WMC solutions.

Topics covered include:

Automation System Integration
Controlling Media Center from Control Systems
Controlling Automation Hardware from Media Center
Hybrid Solution Options
Whole House Entertainment
Understand the Customer's Entertainment Needs
Choosing an Architecture and Solution

and more...

Zine - Your Online Magazine on Facebook

sarahintampa — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:03:00 GMT

A new Facebook application called Zine is an online magazine of articles and videos that you can add to your Facebook profile. You can completely customize the magazine so you only see the topics that are interesting to you, whether that's News, Sports, Entertainment, Lifestyle, or anything else. Each main category is further divided into sub-categories that allow you to further customize your Zine. For example, you can choose to see just NFL news from the Sports category or just U.S. News and Politics from the News category, and so on. Your Zine is then loaded up for you, with each main category available as a tab at the top which you can click on to easily move through the content.

One thing I noticed right off the bat was that there was no "technology" news section listed. However, there is a feature called "My Topics," which lets you add the latest news stories for specific topics. For example, you could create a custom topic called "Olympics." I, of course, added a topic called "Twitter." I was happy to see a bunch of articles returned on the subject from big news sources like the NY Times, News.com, SFGate, and, of course MSN.com, which helps power this app.

When browsing through the categories, you can click "Prev" and "Next" buttons to scroll through the virtual pages or click "Expand" to have a particular section spread out across the page. You can also send a story to a friend or post it to your Facebook profile.

With all the talk of how newspapers and other print media are fading businesses, Zine stands out as a useful "new media" kind of way to get your daily news...right there in Facebook.

Arkansas Children's Hospital: IT Innovations Enhancing the Care of Hospitalized Children

bcrounse — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 18:26:00 GMT

Every so often we do a program in my House Calls for Healthcare Professionals series of audio and video-casts that really seems to hit the mark in demonstrating the value of Microsoft technologies in the healthcare industry. I want to draw your attention to one such program.

Arkansas Children’s Hospital is cutting edge when it comes to developing solutions on Microsoft technology. First, take a look at my Blog entry on this topic to get some background and then download or listen to our audio-cast with ACH to learn more about CarePoint and other solutions. This program is especially compelling because one of my guests is a patient at the hospital; a 16 year-old boy who has cystic fibrosis and has spent more time in the hospital than most of us can ever imagine. Find out how Microsoft technologies including Xbox 360, Media Center, Visual Studio, IE, and many others have come together to make hospital stays a whole lot more enjoyable for patients, their friends, and family at Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

Here is where you can stream the audio-cast or download it to your MP3 device

Arkansas Children's Hospital: IT Innovations Enhancing the Care of Hospitalized Children
This program is also available in MP3 for download.

Program Guests:

David Higginson is chief information technology officer at Arkansas Children's Hospital (ACH). He earned a degree in accounting/finance from Liverpool University and qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant. He began developing computer systems at the age of 10 and later combined his computer and financial expertise when he began developing systems for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the British Post Office. Since moving to ACH in 1996, Mr. Higginson has developed numerous award-winning computer systems with the help of his team of 14 developers, who have created more than 400 systems in less than five years.

Penny Ward is a registered nurse who joined Arkansas Children's Hospital in 1993. Since 2002 she has been a Nursing Director for the Adolescent and General Medicine units and for the Dialysis and IV teams at the hospital.

Christopher Holstead is 16 years old and has cystic fibrosis. He has been admitted to Arkansas Children's Hospital many times and has seen how the hospital has improved the patient care experience.

Additional resources

Healthblog - additional information and screenshots of ACH CarePoint patient entertainment/education solution

Arkansas Children's Hospital

Windows XP Media Center

Xbox

Bill Crounse, MD Worldwide Health Director Microsoft Corporation

A Pediatric Hospital Bedside Patient Entertainment & Education System: Microsoft Media Center + Xbox

bcrounse — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 20:54:00 GMT

Arkansas Children’s Hospital

Every so often I come across organizations and people that truly blow me away. Pediatric hospitals have always been known for innovative ideas in the care of their young patients. So, it comes as no surprise that a pediatric hospital would rise to the occasion to better meet the entertainment and education needs of their "customers". But you just have to love it when a truly dedicated clinical and IT staff put their heads together and come up with a solution that is truly best in class.

That is exactly what has happened at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. ACH is based in Little Rock. It is the only full-service children's hospital in the state. The staff at ACH decided it was time to replace the hospital's aging in-room television system with something a little more contemporary. At first, they looked at systems that might typically be found in good hotels. However, they soon discovered that these systems were too expensive, too inflexible, and too limiting for what they really wanted to accomplish. They wanted a system that would provide their young patients with a full spectrum of on-demand movies, television, Internet, video gaming, and patient education. They also wanted a highly flexible platform on which they could provide other services now and well into the future. Finally, they wanted complete control over the system and its attributes that could be fine-tuned to meet the age-appropriate needs of patients, their friends and family. When they didn't find what they needed on the open market at a price they could afford, they decided to build it themselves.

The solution they came up with uses Microsoft Media Center, Xbox 360, and SQL Server. It extends the hospital's IT infrastructure out to the patient's bedside. Patients access the system through a custom designed interface on a 15-inch flat screen monitor next to the bed. This set-up lends itself to easy cleaning between patients. The monitor also becomes a kind of "command-central" for doctors and nurses who want to access a patient's electronic record or review x-rays and other data with the patient in his or her room. Movies, games, educational videos, Internet access, e-mail, messaging, etc. are viewed on a 32-inch LCD screen mounted on the wall across from the bed.

Home screen to the bedside entertainment and education system at Arkansas Children's Hospital based on Microsoft Media Center

Yesterday, I recorded one of my House Calls audio-casts with the staff at ACH. That program will be posted on my House Call's site on Microsoft.com within the next few days. In the meantime, I just couldn't wait to tell you about this. Although the solution has just finished a limited pilot, the decision has already been made to roll it out hospital-wide. One of the highlights of my audio-cast was interviewing a 16 year-old young man who is a frequent patient at ACH. To hear his excitement about using the new bedside entertainment and education system at ACH was reward in itself. He said the system is totally awesome in helping him stay in touch with school, friends and family during extended hospital stays. His doctor has used the bedside monitor to review test results with him. And the TV, movies and Xbox games are way cool!

Custom user interface that controls entertainment and education options as displayed on a 15-inch flatscreen monitor at the patient's bedside

Congratulations to ACH Chief Technology Officer, David Higginson, and his staff. This is just one of more than 400 clinical and business solutions this team has built at Arkansas Children's Hospital in the last five years alone. I met David a while back when he visited us here at Microsoft in Redmond. It was evident then that he and his team were up to some amazing work. My thanks also are extended to Penny Ward, RN, for sharing her enthusiasm about the bedside solution at ACH. And, my very special thanks go to Christopher Holstead, the 16 year-old patient at ACH, for sharing his thoughts about the new bedside entertainment and education system.

Be watching here on HealthBlog for more information when my House Calls’ audio-cast with Arkansas Children’s Hospital goes live on the Net.

Bill Crounse, MD Worldwide Health Director Microsoft

Brave New World: Make your own movie, tv, or radio show

bcrounse — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 23:16:00 GMT

Next week I'm off to New York for the International Freddie Awards. If you don't know about the Freddie Awards; it is a celebration to honor excellence in medical and scientific film, documentaries, television, videos, Web sites, DVDs and CD-ROMs. Now in its 32nd year, the International Health and Medical Media Awards, the Freddies, have become the equivalent of the Academy Award for Film or the Emmy for television. At the awards ceremony next Friday, it will be my distinct honor to present one of the evening's highest honors; a founder's award that is named after famous heart surgeon and researcher, Dr. Michael E. DeBakey.

Why am I hanging out with this crowd? I haven't shared with readers of my Blog that a substantial portion of my career has been dedicated to medical broadcasting. For more than 20 years, I anchored medical programming for Lifetime Medical Television, ABC News, Medical News Network, Discovery and other outlets. I also served as medical editor for the ABC and CBS television affiliates in Seattle, appearing nightly on the evening news. In fact, my career in television news and entertainment programming started long before I became a physician. I was actually anchoring the evening TV news (on weekends) before I was old enough to vote. Trust me that would never be allowed today.

Back in the day, I needed a multimillion dollar broadcasting studio to do my work, along with complex and costly recording and editing equipment, camera people, sound people, and more. Today, any one of you could produce, host, and broadcast to the world from your desktop or laptop or iPod (that wireless will come in handy on the Zune). My point is this. There has never been more opportunity or more accessibility for everyone to be heard and seen. Broadcasting has become commoditized. While that makes it much harder to earn a living, it makes it much easier to break into the business. And as the founders of YouTube and others have learned, there is gold in them there hills if you can find it. (By the way, have you checked out MSN Soapbox yet?) There is also an opportunity to change the world; to educate, inform, entertain, and enrich the lives of people. Sometimes I think, "If only I had been born a few decades later". The possibilities today seem infinite.

So please continue to write those Blogs, produce those podcasts, and post those videos. And every time you do, thank your lucky stars you live in an era when the communications universe is at your fingertips. If you are looking for a list of people to thank, besides the usual names that come to mind, check out the Computer History Museum.

Bill Crounse, MD Healthcare Industry Director Microsoft