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Statewide HIE
HIE, or Health Information Exchange, systems are a central component of state and national health reform. The goal of these systems is to make electronic medical records mobile, allowing the effective exchange of data between medical organizations. HIE systems can provide many advantages over traditional medical record management.
Wireless Services Taxes
In recent years, wireless users have become a favorite target for new state and local taxes. Today, state and local taxes and fees average about 14 percent of consumers’ cell phone bills. That’s almost double the cost of ordinary sales taxes.
Wireless overview
More than 95 percent of the U.S. population – those living in urban, suburban and rural America – are served by at least three competing carriers, and more than half live in areas served by at least five. Eight years ago there were 100 million U.S. wireless customers. Today, there are more than 270 million, and in 2008 they used more than 2.2 trillion minutes – a tenfold increase since 2000. At the same time, prices have declined precipitously. Revenue per minute has fallen 89 percent since 1994, and U.S. wireless prices are much lower than in any other industrialized county. And, while at&t and Verizon are currently the two largest wireless providers, the next two largest, Sprint and T-Mobile, have a combined 82 million customers, and the carriers that round out the top 10 have another nearly 20 million customers among them.
What is Broadband?
The term broadband commonly refers to high-speed Internet access. Broadband can be simply defined as a fast connection to the internet that is always on. It allows a user to send emails, surf the web, download images and music, watch videos, join a web conference, and much more.
Broadband
The term “broadband” refers to the high-speed internet service which allows users to access a large volume of data very quickly. Think of it like a highway: the more lanes there are, the more traffic that can pass through efficiently. For instance, a very narrow road (or single-band signal) only has the capacity for light traffic, or Morse Code, for instance. Larger bandwidth can handle more types of data – such as telephone communication or music on the radio. A broadband “highway” has the capacity to move more complex and larger data vehicles very rapidly.
Personal Cloud Computing
The cloud is a deceptively simple concept for the modern consumer. Most of us use the cloud every day and probably never think about it. Popular online services and destinations like Gmail, Netflix, MobileMe, and Twitter are all operating in the cloud and the information and media we send to, or receive from, these sources is all passed through the cloud.
Exaflood
In the digital world, data is measured in bytes. A single digital character, a letter or number, is a single byte. A typewritten page is about 2,000 bytes, or two kilobytes, and a small, low-resolution image is about 100,000 bytes, or 100 kilobytes. There are about 5 million bytes, or 5 megabytes, in the complete works of Shakespeare, and a pickup truck full of books might amount to one billion bytes, or a gigabyte. One billion of those book-filled pickup trucks, or one billion gigabytes, is an exabyte.
Business Cloud Computing
Few businesses providing products and services today can abstain from maintaining an online presence or engaging in some form of e-commerce. To be competitive in the modern marketplace, enterprises, both large and small, have adopted online business solutions to reach consumers and deliver their products in a fast, efficient, and unencumbered manner. However, until recently the daunting costs; in terms of personnel, upstart and upgrade time, and capital; associated with software and hosting solutions have made those solutions as much of a challenge as an asset to the world of e-business.
Cyber bullying
The number of children and young people accessing the internet has increased dramatically in recent years. They have been key drivers of the social media movement, as services like Facebook and Twitter provide them with new spaces to engage their peers. However, the growth of online use among younger populations has made online safety a concern as the internet provides new opportunities for activities such as cyber bullying, where harassment occurs through technologies like text or instant messaging and email. Several studies have found that cyber bullying is not a small, isolated problem. The National Crime Prevention Council has reported that cyber-bullying affects over 40% of all American teens. It is more common among females than males, and is most prevalent among 15- and 16-year-olds.
Technology Taxes
California has been ground zero for technology development. For California to remain a global technology leader, the state will need to ensure a favorable business environment for innovation. Yet, recent studies indicate that increasing numbers of Silicon Valley businesses are looking outside of California to start new operations. Other states and countries, such as China, where the government has tripled R&D spending since 1998, are becoming more attractive to many companies. As California continues to suffer from record budget deficits and the search for new revenue becomes more urgent, the state must be careful not to hinder an industry that will be essential to a recovery and long-term prosperity.
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