Brian King

What do you get when you combine the smarts of a computer scientist and a doctor of sleep medicine? The new test, known as thermal infrared imaging (TIRI), uses a thermal infrared camera to monitor breathing waveforms and airflow as a patient breathes in and out of his or her nose. A cool, less invasive way to figure out if patients have sleep apnea, a common problem that causes a snoring a person to momentarily stop breathing while sleeping. The measurements are processed using computer algorithms and produce results that have proved to be as accurate as traditional test for apnea known as a polysomnography.

If you have ever undergone a sleep apnea test, you know how terribly uncomfortable they are. NetworkWorld Extra: 15 genius algorithms that aren't boring The new method also provides doctors with more information about the patient's breathing, according to its creators Ioannis Pavlidis, Eckhard-Pfeiffer Professor of Computer Science at the University of Houston and Jayasimha Murthy, M.D., assistant professor of medicine from the Division of Pulmonary Critical Care Sleep Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston UTHSC at Houston. Traditional sleep tests use a variety of leads and probes on the patient's head, in their nose, one their legs, arms and chest to gather data. Data is collected from a distance by a thermal camera. TIRI eliminates the needs for the two most obtrusive probes under the nose, the thermistor and nasal pressure probe.

As the patient breathes in, cooler air is brought into his or her nostrils, creating a unique thermal signature for inhale. TIRI not only makes it more comfortable for the patient to sleep during the study, but it gathers much more data from an array of points across the patient's lower face. On exhale, the air blown from the lungs is warmer. The traditionally used thermistor only yields information about a specific point, the researchers stated in a release. "During a sleep study a subject has an average of more than 20 sensors attached to the head and body. However, these sensors can disturb sleep and contribute to the patient's anxiety," said Murthy. It's a very complex procedure where many physiological parameters are simultaneously monitored to help in the diagnosis of sleep disorders.

The researchers believe that this new technology could change the way sleep apnea is diagnosed, potentially helping millions of Americans sleep better and possibly live longer, researchers stated. . Approximately 24% of men and 9% of women experience sleep apnea, the researchers stated. The National Science Foundation-funded sleep research will be published in this month's issue of Sleep.

Perot Systems has bagged a 10-year IT outsourcing contract in India, its first outside the U.S. The win reflects Perot's bid to grow its health-care business in markets other than the U.S., as well as in emerging markets like India, China, Brazil, and Mexico, company executives said on Friday. But only 4.1 percent of the company's revenue from the health-care industry was from outside the U.S., up from 2.5 percent two years ago, said Kevin Fickenscher, executive vice president for International Healthcare at Perot, in a telephone interview. In the second quarter, 48 percent of Perot's revenue came from the health-care industry.

Expansion outside the U.S. is a key focus area for Perot, said Raj Asava, Perot's chief strategy officer. The maturing health-care industry in these emerging markets has a big appetite and also funds to invest in technologies such as electronic health records and clinical information systems, Asava said. For its health-care business, the company is targeting emerging markets in the Middle East, China, India, and Latin America, besides more mature markets such as the U.K. and Germany. The contract with Max Healthcare, a large hospital chain in India, has an initial value of US$18 million, but could go up in value as more applications and services are added, Perot said. The deployment will be around the open source VistA (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) electronic health record and health information system, he added. Besides running the applications already installed at Max, Perot will also deploy an electronic health records system and other IT infrastructure, Fickenscher said.

Perot already has a services subsidiary in India with about 9,000 staff that offer outsourcing services to customers in the U.S., Europe, and other parts of the world. Multinational and Indian service providers are targeting India's growing services market, including in the telecommunications sector where a number of mobile service providers are outsourcing their IT infrastructure. About 60 percent of these staff do work for the health-care industry. The immediate opportunity for vendors of IT targeting the health-care industry is from private sector providers, but government run hospitals will soon follow, Fickenscher said.

The iPhone GPS app market unleashed by the release of the iPhone 3.0 software update is getting more interesting by the day, with several developers in an arms race to add new features to their initial offerings. My own in-car navigation box doesn't even speak street names (other than numbered freeways), and it sure makes a big difference. Taking the lead in the GPS app race is Navigon MobileNavigator, which recently added support for spoken street names-a major failing in the three apps that I previewed in a Macworld Video last month.

Last week, I got to spend a little bit of time with Navigon's Johan-Till Broer, who showed me the next version of MobileNavigator, due as a free App Store update sometime in October. The traffic update also does a better job of estimating the speeds of various roads without live traffic data. It adds live traffic to the party, downloading traffic updates over the digital cell network and rerouting you around slow spots. The end result should be that MobileNavigator will do a better job of suggesting the fastest route you should take to your destination, based on both current conditions and the time of day you're traveling. I've found Sygic Mobile Maps to be a solid app, although it feels more like a port of a standalone GPS device than a native iPhone app. Sygic, maker of the Sygic Mobile Maps GPS navigation app, recently updated its app to support spoken street names, as well as catching up with the other apps by integrating the addresses of the contacts in your iPhone's address book.

However, you can't beat the price-Sygic is trying to drive sales of its updated app by reducing the price (temporarily, at least) to $40 for an app containing only United States maps and $60 for the app containing maps of all of North America. TomTom's promised car kit for the iPhone, which promises a mount, speaker, and improved GPS reception, has yet to arrive here in the States. (Our friends at Macworld UK are reporting that the car kit is available for order on that side of the Atlantic, with shipping times listed as "two to three weeks.") As for the TomTom app, the company promises "several updates by the end of 2009," but hasn't given details. While Navigon and Sygic are not familiar names to most Americans, TomTom is a strong brand and its iPhone app has sparked a lot of interest, although the iTunes charts would suggest that it may have fallen behind Navigon in terms of sales. Presumably spoken street names and live traffic are high on the agenda. Look for a comprehensive comparison of iPhone GPS apps from Macworld in the near future. Reviewing these apps is hard, requiring a lot of driving (and a dedicated driver so the reviewer doesn't cause an accident!), and the features of the apps keep updating at a rapid pace.

In the meantime, check out my video above if you'd like to see the apps in action. From my perspective, right now Navigon MobileNavigator is the best choice available, but this game is far from over.

Nearly four months after deadly ethnic riots in China's Muslim region led authorities to shut off the Internet there, local residents are still barred from sending text messages and getting online. The rioting between Uighurs, a mostly Muslim minority group native to Xinjiang, and Chinese Han, the country's ethnic majority, also led China to block various social networking Web sites nationwide. The clampdown on telecommunication in China's western Xinjiang province, where rioting claimed nearly 200 lives in early July, has hurt local businesses and cut residents off from many nongovernment sources of news and other information.

Twitter, similar Chinese services and Facebook all remain inaccessible in the country. Observers have cited a series of sensitive anniversaries this year as a reason for the blockages, but those dates, including China's 60th anniversary of communist rule on Oct. 1, have passed. "The unfortunate truth is that the Chinese government can impose and sustain this kind of Internet service disruption ... for as long as it feels it's necessary," said Phelim Kine, a researcher in Hong Kong for New York-based Human Rights Watch. "The government is impervious to concerns from the business sector and certainly those of ordinary citizens." Some companies have been allowed to communicate via a regional network in Xinjiang, said the marketing manager for one local company when reached by phone. China has blamed communication on such Web sites for helping lead to the riots, which were sparked by an ethnic brawl in far-away southern China. The manager predicted that regular Internet access could return in around one month. "It's relatively calm on the streets of Xinjiang now," he said. The owner of another online store, which sells dried fruits, nuts and other snacks, said she did not know of any regional network in Xinjiang. The manager's company, which sells make-up and other cosmetic products online, is one of many that have had to relocate staff outside of Xinjiang to continue operations, he said.

Most of the store owner's staff remain in neighboring Gansu province, she said. China has given little sign of when it will lift the Internet restrictions but said it will gradually do so as Xinjiang stabilizes.

A Beijing court has ruled that Microsoft violated a Chinese company's intellectual property rights in a case over fonts used in past Windows operating systems, state media said Tuesday. Microsoft plans to appeal the case, a company representative said in a statement. The Beijing Number One Intermediate People's Court this week ordered Microsoft to stop selling versions of Windows that use the Chinese fonts, state broadcaster CCTV said.

The ruling comes as Barack Obama visits China for his first time as U.S. president. A U.S. business association this week appealed to Obama for further efforts to protect intellectual property rights in China, where pirated copies of DVDs and computer software including Windows are widely sold on streets and in bazaars. The visit has brought renewed focus on tensions over piracy and the trade of high-tech products between the countries. Microsoft originally licensed Zhongyi's intellectual property more than a decade ago for use in the Chinese version of Windows 95, according to Zhongyi. Microsoft agrees with the court that the key in the two cases is a dispute over the scope of licensing agreements, the Microsoft representative said. Zhongyi argues that agreement applied only to Windows 95, but that Microsoft continued to use the intellectual property from Windows 98 to Windows XP. The court reportedly also ruled that Microsoft's use of a Chinese input system from Zhongyi did not violate any licensing agreements.

But it disagrees with the ruling on the coverage of the agreements, which it believes also include its use of the fonts, the representative said. Pirated versions of Windows 7 were on sale in one Beijing bazaar weeks before the software officially went on sale last month. Windows XP is the most widely used OS in Chinese offices and homes, but countless users run pirated copies. Microsoft offers Windows 7 in China for a lower price than in developed markets, and often labels its software "legal" to differentiate it from the pirated versions common in the country. Windows 7 Home Premium costs 699 yuan (US$103) in China, compared to $199.99 in the U.S.

Microsoft's ZuneHD, set to go on sale Tuesday, will not feature an open application store like its competitor the iPod Touch. Those capabilities will determine whether the ZuneHD sells well - and whether Microsoft decides to keep selling its own music player, said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft. It will come with some unique features, though, like an HD radio tuner, and with software that has been well-received by users. After observers noticed a Marketplace folder during earlier demos of the ZuneHD, many had hoped the new device would feature an open application store like the one accessible from the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

But the Zune Marketplace will be a closed store, meaning third-party developers won't be able to easily build applications for it. Marketplace is the name of the open app store that will be available on Windows Mobile 6.5 phones, to be released in early October. The new device will include the same casual games that came with earlier Zunes, plus a few other applications like an MSN weather application and a calculator, said Brian Seitz, group marketing manager for Zune. Zune customers will be able to download the applications they like for free. In November, Twitter and Facebook applications will become available, as well as a "Project Gotham" racing game, he added.

Seitz said the timing wasn't right to include the Windows Mobile Marketplace application, which isn't due out until next month, with the ZuneHD, but he also said it's not certain that a similar open Marketplace will come to the Zune in the future. "Down the line, if there's an opportunity for us to snap into what they're doing from a mobile application perspective, I'm sure it's something we'll look at," he said. He acknowledged that people are likely to criticize the decision. "I'm not saying we won't get dinged for that because I know we will," he said. However, Microsoft may decide it makes more sense to limit the applications in the Zune market and offer them all free, he said. That's for good reason, Rosoff said. "When you look at it as a head-to-head comparison with the iPod Touch, people will see it as a shortcoming," he said. It will feature the "smart DJ," which allows the user to pick an artist and then automatically creates a playlist of similar songs.

Microsoft will also debut new Zune software on Tuesday that customers use on their PCs to manage their music. Microsoft will also start offering people who subscribe to Zune Pass a way to access the Zune music collection from a browser. A Zune Pass subscription lets users stream any song from the entire Zune catalog and download 10 songs each month. That means subscribers will be able to listen to music from the entire catalog from any PC, including one at work, rather than only from a PC running the Zune software. Microsoft also revealed a few more details about a Zune feature that will start showing up in Xbox Live later this year.

That's part of a strategy to move the Zune software experience into other products from Microsoft, Seitz said. "Going forward, we hope more people think of a 'holistic Zune business,' as opposed to how many of these things we sell," he said, pointing to the Zune hardware. Xbox users will be able to buy or rent movies from a new Zune store that will be featured in Xbox Live. The most important upcoming product that will include Zune software will be Windows Mobile phones, Rosoff said. "The Zune interface will show up in Windows Mobile," he said. Rosoff suspects that Microsoft will eventually get out of the MP3 player market altogether. "We'll just see the Zune as a consumer component of Windows Mobile," he said. "This is sort of the last [Zune], if it doesn't sell." Even Zune hardware elements, like the touch screen and the form factor of the device, will likely make it into Windows Mobile phones, he said.

A committee of Taiwanese lawmakers rejected requests for funding by Taiwanese memory chip companies on Wednesday and asked the executive branch to stop promoting the DRAM revitalization plan. That committee reviews applications before they are passed to the legislative body for a vote. The economics committee of the Taiwan legislature rejected requests by Powerchip Semiconductor and the government-led Taiwan Memory Company (TMC), a legislative aide confirmed. Lawmakers in the group believe the worst of the global economic crisis has passed and that DRAM makers should be able to fend for themselves considering the rebound in DRAM prices this year, the aide said.

The legislature usually follows committee recommendations when voting. The executive branch can work with lawmakers on a more palatable plan, but convincing the economics committee is vital. The rejection throws a wrench into the government's plan to restructure Taiwan's DRAM industry. The plan was the result of a crisis among DRAM makers caused by excessive debt and an inability to raise new funds amid the global recession. In March, Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs unveiled a plan to build TMC as a means for industry consolidation and DRAM technology development.

Taiwanese DRAM makers built too many new factories during good times, leading to a glut of DRAM chips and a collapse in global DRAM prices. The Taiwan government first stepped in to ask banks on the island to give companies more time to repay loans and extensions were granted until Dec. 31. A government report argued the amount of money DRAM makers on the island owed Taiwanese banks could cause problems if not repaid. Most Taiwanese DRAM makers have not posted a net profit since the middle of 2007 due to the chip downturn.