Monthly Archives: October 2014

Good Ole Java

Java is one of the most widely used Object oriented Programming language in the world. Java came into existence in 1991 when a team headed by James Gosling set out to create a language intended for interactive television. Java was initially called “Oak”, it was later named “Green” and finally it got the name “Java”.

Java had a host of features which made it unique in its early days. Features like Inheritance, Polymorphism, Encapsulation, and Platform Independence made very powerful. Java was originally intended for Embedded Systems but as the World Wide Web came into existence Java power became more apparent. With the onset of the Web, developers faced a big challenge. The web was accessible from all platforms like Mac(Apple), Linux, Windows(Microsoft) etc. So the developers needed a language which was platform independent. Java came to the Web developers aid offering “Write once, Run Anywhere” capabilities. Thus it became the Language preferred by most web developers.

Java has gone many changes from its original release in 1992. The latest version Java 7 has many new features supporting advanced animation, sound and video handling etc. Java Platform is divided in three Parts: Java SE(Standard Edition), Java EE(Enterprise Edition), Java ME(Micro Edition). The Standard Edition for Standalone Applications, The Enterprise Edition for Web Applications, The Micro Edition for Mobile Applications.

Though Java has a host of features it also has some shortcoming. Most important among them is the execution speed of Java applications which were very low compared to applications written in native languages like C and C++. This shortcoming was significantly reduced by the use of JIT (Just In Time) Compilers.

Java has been one of the most Successful programming languages in the world and with the arrival of Oracle by Java’s side, I thing the future of Java look very bright.

Jing Screen Capture

Jing is an easy-to-use screen capture application for both Windows and Mac. It can capture both images and video. Even better, it is as easy to copy the image as it is to save it to your hard drive or email it or blog it.

Jing can sit silently in your taskbar, or it can be an active icon at the top, bottom, or side of your computer screen. Click on that icon, and you can have your screen capture in seconds. If you are having an online conversation, pictures can be worth a thousand words.

One of the surprising aspects to this software is that the basic version is free. The paid Pro version includes greater video support, including recording from a webcam and instant posting to YouTube and Facebook. Once I started using it, I can’t do without it. It is that good.

CaseSoft Legal Software including CaseMap

“As an attorney fascinated by legal software solutions, I can’t overemphasize the rapidly-growing importance of legal software to all types of law practice, driven by the inexorable increase in the ratio of software/internet era attorneys to older, computer-phobic lawyers.

And now, LexisNexis has stunned the legal community by its July 24th acquisition of CaseSoft and its product lines: the legal killer app CaseMap and its sister applications TextMap, TimeMap, DepPrep, etc. Product info available at: www.casesoft.com CaseMap is unique. It’s not a Business of Law product like case management software (Amicus Attorney, etc.); it’s a PRACTICE of law product. I used a couple of the earlier versions for awhile, years ago, and knew it was going to be big eventually, and I’ve wished I still had it ever since (It’s potential uses go beyond law [think Writing, Science, Financial, Education, Pharmaceutical….]) Imagine being able to dynamically database all the facts, legal issues (and their elements, sub-issues, and more), the pinpoint-cite-applicable laws/cases/authorities to each of those (sub)issues (positive & negative), evidentiary sources, witnesses, parties, specific claims, filings, page-cited discovery documents/ transcripts, etc., and imagine being able to interconnect them all in the hyperlinked analytical way that an attorney’s brain must (if successful) do. Imagine the result in a quickly accessible, comprehensively reviewable, and easily understandable computer database, as opposed to the lawyer’s typically chaotic row of crammed accordion files full of scribbled notes, clerk memos, pleadings, thick transcripts with post-it notes, etc., all in linear format (no hyperlinking) and hard to carry. And it’s not just a few attorneys making reference to CaseMap–per their website: The United States Attorney’s Office has 15,000 CaseMap and TimeMap license sets and the US Securities and Exchange Commission has a CaseSoft Product Enterprise License for 1,100 users. LexisNexis is going full force with this software assault on the legal market, also launching Time Matters 8.0 and Billing Matters 8.0, the latest versions of their popular case management and billing software, respectively. However, the case management/Business of Law software field is full of rapidly evolving competition, so this second blast from LexisNexis’ double-barreled software shotgun is not as big a deal as their CaseSoft coup. Now that there’s a big name behind CaseMap, it’s revolution will finally be getting underway, and developers better be working on something to compete with it. How? Duplicate the functionality, of course, even improve on it, but focus on Ease of Use, make it Intuitive to begin with, as CaseMap’s biggest weakness (only weakness?) is its frustratingly steep learning curve and rather demanding data-entry requirements. The software should also Look Better, but that’s just my opinion, and I could be wrong.”

How Much Memory?

Can you imagine how much energy it would take to teleport a human being using exact science? You would have to have a computer the size of Los Angeles to just store every bit of encoded information about YOU. You as a human being and a singular object. What about your clothes? That would have to be another city block just to encode encrypt your clothes. If it was computer driven, all the information would have to be recorded, the particles broken down, or just vaporized, and then reconstructed from those same atoms, or the surrounding atoms in order to reconstruct your form. Who’s to say bilocation won’t occur? (Bilocation is the ostensibly supernatural act of appearing or being in two or more locations simultaneously.)

An explanation of how hard (and expensive) it would be to create JUST THE COMPUTER necessary for teleportation. A human being contains [1 YB (yottabyte)] of information – 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes — 10008, or 1024. A typical computer hard drive can hold around [80 GB (gigabytes)] of information- 80,000,000,000 bytes or 109 bytes. 125 quadrillion PC hard drives is what it would take to transfer all that information, that’s 125 million million. About a 1000 km cube of CD-ROMs. Our national debt is around 8 quadrillion. This does not include the memory required for the transference of this information. The fastest connection to date is about 7 gigabits per second, and at that it’d probably take you a few centuries to get where you’re going via teleportation.

Windows Shell Replacement – GeoShell

GeoShell is a free desktop replacement shell for Windows. A replacement shell, for those of you who do not know, replaces the default “explorer” shell that Windows uses. This means that it gets rid of the usual taskbar, desktop and start menu, and instead uses its own. GeoShell was first built as a shell that uses minimal resources (back in the day when memory wasn’t so readily available), but over time it has become much more powerful, yet still using less resources than explorer.

GeoShell is a modular “bar-type” replacement shell, meaning that instead of a fixed taskbar, you get to create “geoBars” that you can place anywhere on your desktop, and on each geoBar you get to pick which plugins you want to put on it. GeoShell has many plugins available, like a mp3 player remote, a weather checker, a rss reader, just to name a few. Furthermore, GeoShell is highly customizable and once you get the hang of it, you can really increase your efficiency in using your desktop.

Electronic Medical Billing Software

The problem of paying doctors in the US looks simple from the outside. It is not. It’s an expensive paperwork nightmare. While patients have to be quickly sorted between those who owe copays and those who don’t, doctors have to combine diagnostic codes (laid out in the ICD-9 coding system) with procedure codes (using the HCPCS system) just to get an idea of what has to be paid. Since the Level 1 HCPCS codes are, in fact, the AMA’s proprietary CPT codes, billing involves issues of copyright.

But getting a bill out the door is only the first step as insurance companies use every excuse they can to deny claims and downgrade what is paid. Errors are rarely in the doctor’s favor. It is a confusing mess of incompatible paper and electronic systems that bloats administrative costs and is a huge drain on the national medical budget and is a threat to the health of any medical practice. Ex-Medic software, publisher of Ex-Medic, is a small software company that removes a great deal of the pain and agony of the medical billing process. Based on top of 4D’s eponymous 4D database engine, Ex-Medic is a slickly done application that handles all aspects of medical billing, paper and electronic. The entire patient workflow outside the patient chart is covered. From setting appointments to handling co-pays to writing requests for payment to insurance companies and the patient, Ex-medic does it all. As information is entered, the program remembers every code, every price, every insurance company, every patient so data is only entered once. The number of billing clerks needed to handle an average practice shrinks dramatically because while billing can be complex, it’s highly repetitive. Ex-Medic runs on both Macintosh and Windows platforms and extensive support and handholding comes free with the program. This is a company that is actually selling a solution instead of just a packaged product claiming to be a solution.