The Exchange Fitness - Fitness Gym in the World Golf Village
I've never really enjoyed working out. I always did it because I was "suppose to" but never wanted to. The Exchange changed that, getting to class is always a highlight to my day.
Jay OwenI've gained an exponential amount of strength and knowledge from the best coaches. I love going there and look forward to seeing all the other members; the community is really what makes the gym enjoyable.
Autumn CrosbySuch a friendly and welcoming place! You may arrive anxious, but you will leave sore and with a renewed sense of self and accomplishment. They do a great job!
Sarah LaRosa
https://theexchange.fitness/
NYC Bootcamp Classes - Pace For Success NYC
At Pace For Success we offer NYC Bootcamp style HIIT classes, Small Group sessions, Personal Training and a Running Program designed to unleash the inner athlete in you. We create F.I.N.E people through Fitness, Involvement, Nutrition and Empowerment. We take a special interest in our clients and help them reach their goals as we pace them for success. We are a true boutique studio where the trainers know your name, we offer a personal touch.
Founded by Jasmine Graham a fitness entrepreneur, marathon runner, fitness professional and motivational speaker.
CANCELLATION POLICY
CANCEL A CONFIRMED GROUP SESSION UP TO 6 HRS PRIOR TO THE START OF THE CLASS OR YOU WILL BE CHARGED THE FULL COST OF THE CLASS. CANCELLATIONS FOR PERSONAL SESSIONS MUST BE DONE 24 HRS PRIOR TO THE START OF THE SESSION.
NO REFUNDS
NO REFUNDS ON PACKAGES AND NO HOLDS ON MEMBERSHIPS.
http://www.pace4success.fitness/
BCN Fitness – BCN FITNESS
BCN Fitness (Formerly Bootcamp Noosa) is different. It's hard. It's demanding. And it's fun. Using supportive and motivational routines, our team of highly-trained former military personnel and expert personal trainers will lead you through an Military Inspired fitness program designed to put you in the best shape of your life.
You'll be surrounded by our supportive instructors and other team members who, just like you, want to make dramatic changes in their physical and mental well-being. At BCN, we will challenge you to push yourself to reach new fitness levels--and we promise you'll have fun doing it!
BCN has been designed with safe and effective exercises, stressing proper form, technique, and safety. Our expert trainers put your health and fitness first, and will be happy to modify your workouts so that any pre-existing injuries don't prevent you from attaining your goals now.
https://www.bcn.fitness/
Computational Queries: The New Vista in Search
Computational queries have emerged as a new category of search behavior. The most common type of computational query I use is how far from HERE to THERE. Sometimes I do this when driving around town. Sometimes I do this when helping someone plan a road trip. Some times I do this when I read an interesting article about astronomy.
Another type of computational query is how long does it take to bake cookies? There are differences in baking times. Unlike the distance-based computational queries baking-based computational queries require additional explicit criteria from the user (unless they are willing to settle for random information).
Both types of computational queries rely upon what I shall call Responsive Contexts: the additional information returned or required for resolving the query correctly changes based on circumstance.
In a distance-based query the additional information may include road closings and openings, traffic accidents, time of day (allowing for rush hour), and congestion due to construction projects and other factors (such as politicalmotorcades). The search engine or app may or may not have this information when you run the query.
In a baking-based query the additional information may include size of oven, type of oven, ingredients used in the recipe, and desired texture of the food. There is less information volatility in a baking query unless you have to pay attention to altitude, outside temperature, humidity, and things like that (and, yes, there are cooking articles to go into these kinds of details).
The simple query how long does it take to boil a pot of water also has Responsive Contexts. A few years ago it was deemed sufficient to give a single, simple example. Now people are modifying their queries to look for answers based on their elevations above sea-level, and maybe also based on their source of heat. General search and app search may not see enough volume in these types of queries to anticipate this kind of computation.
Youll know the search volume is sufficient when you start to see answers in the search results or apps that take your location and elevation into consideration when you type in how long to boil water. If you just searched on different types of pots, maybe a smart query resolver will take the different materials into consideration. If it knows you are in the middle of a national forest a smart app should anticipate that you are using sterno and a camping stove.
As Web marketers we dont yet have enough data about everything to speak in broad terms of Responsive Context but we are moving in that direction. I see this happening in site search more and more often. Site search drives more than 70% of all Web search (far more than Google). I suspect the percentage is even higher in app-based site search. But we dont bake Responsive Contextualization into our site search tools very often.
One way to do this is to allow the searcher to configure persistent filters rather than force them to re-enter those filters on every search. Another way to do this is to take whatever is in the users shopping cart into consideration. If I just puta camping tent in my shopping cart maybe when I search for chair, bench, table, or stool I am looking for more camping gear. Unfortunately the major retail sites dont yet give us this kind of smart search, but they will. They already suggest additional products based on what we have carted or purchased.
It happens in all kinds of ecommerce. If you register a domain name you are inundated with additional deals for HTTPS certificates, privacy services, Web hosting, etc. Merchants even offer you discounts on additional purchases. But they have not yet contextualized their site search tools to take these recent transactions into consideration.
If you are just blogging you can create Responsive Contexts by subdividing your articles to cover the different contexts. Its a bit like creating three images of different sizes to be used in a Responsive Ad unit. The search engine, seeing the very different contextual information, pulls the best matching information from your article to satisfy the query.
I have created Responsive Contexts in articles but its not easy to do. You can use tabular data layouts, structured markup, and sometimes just well-highlighted paragraphs of text (use bold and italics to call out important facts, not keywords). A good example of where youre likely to find Responsive Contexts in structured markup is customer reviews on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. By slightly changing the query you can get to different reviews or comments on the same business listings; ideally, we want the search engines to take notice of where we are and what we are doing to help us drill down to the correct comments or reviews, although that wont always be computationally possible.
To feed the right answers to the Computational Queries you have to define the problem in such a way that the search engine or app sees the relevance to the query. You must then provide contexts for the answers you include. And you cannot possibly anticipate all the possible contexts that people will need to qualify their answers.
But assuming we can incorporate Responsive Contextualization into our editorial policies, how should we measure placement, visibility, off-site conversion, and insight conversion? We dont have proper tools for doing this.
Well probably have to invent new types of meta markup that can be tracked. I hate the idea of pumping more analytics code into Web pages but marketers want to know what the ROI is. If you are contemplating developing Responsive Contexts for 100,000 items in your query base you had better know what that will cost and have a projection for what kind of revenue will come back from the effort. Hence, you need to run experiments and without good analytics markup you wont have good experimental data.
Click-tracking is our best opportunity for measuring Responsive Contextualization. This may lead to problems down the road. Well be designing things like intrapage doorway widgets that are used to measure performance based on context.
But standards for measuring Ad Viewability may help us solve that sticky problem. If the context is viewed and an encoded action is performed then maybe we wont have to resort to in-page illusions (that search engines will almost certainly object to) in order to capture user activity data. The data will become vital to next generation on-page optimization because today we dont measure intrapage performance even though the search engines have been displaying random sections of pages in the SERPs for years.
Marketers have yet to let go of their outdated ideas about pages and (queries, keywords, or topics). It is not that the page is relevant to some query, it is that only some portionof the page is relevant to the query. This is an important concept that people need to understand. A few years ago in an article titled These Arent the Meta Descriptions Youre OptimizingFor I wrote that the whole page is the meta description. I warned readers then that I would say very little about this for a few years. That is because by ignoring meta descriptions and focusing on putting indexable text on the page that targets many queries you gain a competitive advantage over other people who are still fussing with meta descriptions.
You should assume that the meta description tag is as dead, useless, and irrelevant to search engine optimization as the keywords meta tag. Your natural instinct will be to argue the point, which just holds you back. Stop and think about which helps you more:
A search engine displays a text snippet from a meta descriptionA search engine displays the same text snippet from on the page
The second situation gives you a relevance boost for the query. The first situation provides nothing toward computing the IR score that helps your page rank for the query in the first place.
Worse, most marketers think about meta descriptions the wrong way anyway. They choose the best possible meta description for a single query and limit the amount of text (usually to about 25 words); instead, you should be including meta text that addresses multiple queries, up to 250 words.
But you can and should be putting those 250 words on the page so they help with your optimization. And since the search engines will grab those words anyway, you dont need meta descriptions. You have not needed meta descriptions for at least five years. Worse, you have been DE-optimizing your pages by trying to craft ideal meta descriptions that favored one query over many others.
The age of Computational Queries and Responsive Contexts may finally help marketers abandon meta descriptions and other outdated practices. The idea of optimizing for topics wont fit into this model, although many people will try to say its the same thing. A topic has no context and therefore cannot be responsive to a computational query.
But not everything will become a computational query, either. Can I paint my car is a very different query from how much paint do I need for a 2001 Toyota Corolla? You may see the same results for these two queries, especially if you have been searching on topics related to 2001 Toyota Corolla. But the answers you need are very different. For example, some communities may forbid people from painting their own cars. That is a context you wont include in your question although you may search for it later (or before you get to can I paint my car?).
Related queries reveal more about the context to the search engine but are hidden from the marketer. The searcher may want to know things like:
How to paint a carCan I paint my own car in [LOCATION]Cost to paint a carHow much paint for a [CAR MODEL]Tools for painting your own car
Where in that sequence do you fit? The search engine may help you appear in queries for people who want to legally paint their own Ford Probe in their home town assuming you are relevant to that context, and you may not appear anywhere in a query related to a community across the country. You wont know the search context for the query that brought the visitor to your site. And that same visitor may run other queries after visiting your site to fill out their knowledge about how to do the project.
This is not a traditional local search query, but its a localized computational query. Apple, Bing, and Google are laying the groundwork for resolving these kinds of queries but their solutions are, I think, still years in the future.
What the search engines want to do is see that the searcher is trying to paint their car. They might develop algorithms that assemble the whole plan for the searcher. Such results would look very different from what we see in the SERPs today. For example, the searcher might see:
A local government site with regulations about painting your carA local paint store with the type of paint you needA local hardware store with the tools you needA how to guide with pictures and/or video showing you how to do itExamples of people who painted their own cars (maybe blog posts)
And then you would see normal (lacking context) search results for whatever the last query was. We could call this a Search Results Plan. Does it sound too far-fetched? We already see ads for related services based on these kinds of queries. The organic results are far less organized. When organic catches up to paid search in this area marketers will scramble to create proper contextual clues in their content to help resolve these kinds of queries.
Stop obsessing over data science and artificial intelligence. Its not all about how the search engines implement data analysis and AI decision-making algorithms. They have to have good data to work with. The marketers who get on top of the contextualization issue will be the ones who succeed in the next generation of search optimization strategies.
As search engines become better at interpreting searcher intentions and move away from their current (and very horrible) one solution fits all methods for generating search results they should create new marketing opportunities for Website owners who just want to participate in queries. Although search results exclusion will increase the diversification in searcher contexts should lead to more smaller sites earning traffic because they will better fit the needs of individual searchers than the larger, by-the-data Websites that continue to chase keywords.
Youll see yet more calls for brand-focused optimization in this new universe of search. Brand-based optimization will never go away but it is a terribly crude strategy for meeting tomorrows search needs. SEO sophistication has to look down the road far enough to have the pieces in place so that the search engines can evaluate the new data structures (not structured markup) and informational components so that they can develop the algorithms to make better use of the information they are indexing and sharing with searchers.
This is one area where publishers must be the innovators. In five years you can look back at this article and say with all the smugness you can muster, Well, he got THIS PART wrong but you probably wont even be involved in Web marketing if you dont start evolving now.
http://www.seo-theory.com/2016/01/19/computational-queries-the-new-vista-in-search/
Selecting Entities on Sites and Performing Tasks On Them Through Google
Visitors to a website may want to perform certain actions related to Entities (specific places or people or things) that are displayed to them on the Web.
For example, at a page for a restaurant (an entity), a person viewing the site may want to create a reservation or get driving directions to the restaurant from their current location. Doing those things may require a person to take a number of steps, such as selecting the name of the restaurant and copying it, pasting that information into a search box, and submitting it as a search query, selecting the site from search results, determining if making a reservation is possible on the site, and then providing information necessary to make a reservation; getting driving directions may also require multiple steps.
Using a touch screen device may potentially be even more difficult because the site would possibly then be limited to touch input.
A patent granted to Google this week describes a way to easily identify an entity such as a restaurant on a touch device, and select it online and take some action associated with that entity based upon the context of a site the entity is found upon. Actions such as booking a reservation at a restaurant found on a website, or procuring driving directions to that site, or other actions could be easily selected by the user of a site.
The patent is:
Semantic selection and purpose facilitation
Inventors: Paul Nordstrom, Casey Stuart Whitelaw,
Assignee: Google
US Patent 9,305,108
Granted April 5, 2016
Filed: October 5, 2012
Abstract
Computer-implemented methods for proposing actions to a user to select based on the users predicted purpose for selecting content are provided. In one aspect, a method includes receiving an identifier of a referent entity associated with user-selectable content, identifying, based on a prediction of a purpose in selecting the content, at least one action to be executed that is associated with the entity, and providing, for display, at least one identifier of the at least one action to the device for selection by a user. Systems, graphical user interfaces, and machine-readable media are also provided.
How an entity and actions might be selected by a site visitor
A person searches for a site using text such as sushi restaurants in Mountain View. That person then circles the text we love Ramen Sushi out of all of the places weve been to on the web page they found with that search, by circling the text using a touch input. Based on the content they chose and the context of their selection of that text, The system decides that viewer of the page has selected Ramen Sushi, and it proposes that entity to the user. The user can confirm that, and is then given a number of actions to perform on the entity based on a context of that selection.
Someone circles an entity on a touch screen to perform actions on it.The context can include:
The current location of the deviceA past location of the deviceThe type of the device A previous action associated with the entity taken by the user or another userA search queryInformation on another user associated with the userThe file from which the user-selectable content was selectedThe remaining content from which the user-selectable content was selected
Actions might then be displayed that could include:
Directions to Ramen SushiMake a reservation at Ramen SushiOperating hours for Ramen Sushi Reviews of Ramen Sushi
Once an action is chosen, it can be performed by the system.
Entities are contained in an entity database, which may contain attributes or properties associated with the entity, and those can be pre-defined, and can have associated descriptors such as location, restaurant, and phone number. An entity that is a person such as George Washington can have an associated descriptor notable person.
The patent tells us that entities that are listed in the entity database can be associated with one or many user purposes and/or actions based on an associated descriptor.
A purpose is something that a user would want to do or find out with respect to an entity that selected. These actions are shown in a menu to the user as choices of actions to take regarding selected entities. These purposes may be referred to as a task. The patent provides a number of examples, that include:
play (e.g. for games and sports), rate or evaluate, travel to, contact, communicate, share, record, remember, dine, consume, experience or enjoy (e.g. art, music), reserve (tickets, etc.), compare, learn, study, understand, purchase, repair, fix, teach, cook, and make. For the example purpose dine, an example sub-purpose can be eat dinner, from which example sub-purposes can be make reservation, get directions, and find parking.
The patent tells us that users can select multiple entities of the same type at the same time to compare them.
Entities, purposes, and actions can be added to the entity database either manually or automatically with a user (or even an owner of the entity) adding information. The patent provides some examples of how information might be added to the entity database, but it seems to be fairly wide open under the patent.
The patent doesnt mention Schema vocabulary, which would be one way for a site owner to add entity information to an entity database.
Entities may be products, and actions presented to a user could include providing a review of the product, identifying a seller of the product, providing a price for the product, or providing an offer (e.g., discount or coupon) associated with the product. If the entity is a service, such as watching a movie or a plumber for hire, the actions that may be presented to the user could include providing a review of the service, identifying an availability of the service (e.g., show times), identifying a location where the service is being provided (e.g., an address of the plumber), or providing an option to purchase the service (e.g., purchasing tickets for the movie or rates offered by the plumber).
Take Aways
The entity database described in this patent could be a very big one, containing multiple businesses (like those from Google Maps), multiple products, multiple people (like those found at a knowledge base like Wikipedia), and multiple potential actions and tasks associated with those entities.
This seems to be a fairly aspirational patent, which might require a lot of steps being put into place before it is implemented. It does present a vision of how entities on the web could eventually be acted upon by people who see them in web pages.
This could be something that Google may intend to do, and some of the pieces for it are in place, such as a knowledge graph filled with entities, and a schema system that is extendable. Its interesting seeing a patent that lays out a framework like this one does. Is this a future path that Google will follow? We may need to wait to see.
Shares 345
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seobythesea/Tesr/~3/9ujomMm8fKY/
Goin' Away
It was the Winter of 2004 if I remember correctly, although I use the term Winter loosely being that I was living in Miami at the time. Id toyed with the idea of learning to play the guitar now and again, mostly while listening to Dylans acoustic stuff, but never followed through for one reason or another.One day I cant remember if it was during the day while toiling away for CBS Sports or at night while under the influence of one thing or another I recall hearing the stark and beautifully haunting sounds of Lightnin Hopkins while listening to Yahoos old streaming music service (it was powered by a great little algorithm, which I believe could have easily rivaled the likes of Pandora and Spotify had it been properly managed, but thats a story for another day).
And thats when I knew I had to pick up the guitar.
HopkinsGoin Away is not considered to be one of his most popular songs, but its powerful lyrics and delicious guitar riffs have rattled my brain for years. What appears to be a simple story of love gone wrong is actually a fairly complex tale about a black man leaving home for an extended stint at a prison work camp (whether the crime was real or imaginary, we will never know).
Im pretty sure that Ill spend the rest of my days continuing to be transfixed by this song just as I was back in days when I first got acquainted with it. And so I figured why not also spend the rest of my days attempting to pay tribute to the man that put a guitar in my hand by covering hissong.
You can get my musical take on the matter over at Spotify or iTunes.
http://www.hugoguzman.com/2014/10/going-away/
Google Now Supports JSON-LD for Product and Review Rich Snippets
TweetGoogle Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller announced today on Google+ that Google is now supporting JSON-LD "for Reviews and Products structured data markup."
Until today the generation of review and product rich snippets in Google search results required either microdata or RDFa. Unlike these two inline structured data markup syntaxes, JSON-LD can be placed anywhere in an HTML document with a <script> tag, entirely separate from the page's presentation layer.
Today's change for reviews and products (which employ the schema.org types Review, AggregateRating and Product) is the latest of Google's incremental efforts to support the protocol, following on the heels of JSON-LD support for event rich snippets and Knowledge Graph features early in 2015, and recipe rich snippets in July 2015.
The Google Developers pages for product and review rich snippets have been updated to reflect the fact they're now supported by JSON-LD, but other documentation is still in the process of being changed.
Mueller also said in his post that "we've cleaned up some of our application logic. For example, requirements for explicit reviewed item and correct property name values are now enforced." He advises verifying that a site's code is compliant by using the Structured Data Testing Tool and the Search Console Data Dashboard, and to review the structured data documentation on Google Developers.
Tweet
Tagged as:JSON-LD, Rich Snippets, schema.org, Structured Data
http://www.seoskeptic.com/google-now-supports-json-ld-for-product-and-review-rich-snippets/
"Top Stories with AMP" Added to Google Structured Data Site
TweetConcurrent with its announcement that Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) articles are now available in the search results, Google has added a new page to the Structured Data section of the Google Developers site: "Top Stories with AMP". This now joins "Live Blogs" in the section titled "Promote Content using Carousels".
This comes on the heels of AMP-facing changes to the Structured Data page for Article Rich Snippets made in December. While at time of writing the article rich snippets specifications remain unaltered, the new page unambiguously confirms that the structured data guidelines for article rich snippets were paving the way for AMP.
The new structured data guidelines for AMP-supported schema.org article types (Article, News Article, BlogPosting) are, in fact, nearly identical to those that appeared on the article rich snippets page in December.
Insofar as they're at all significant here are differences:
The logo specifications for AMP remain the same as those for article rich snippets, but the AMP page now has a section dedicated to logos, including visual examples.The description property is recommended for AMP articles, but is not annotated with "required" or "recommended" for article rich snippets.Examples in JSON-LD and microdata are provided for article rich snippets, but the sole AMP example is in JSON-LD.
The AMP page, however, additionally has a section providing specifications for marking up VideoObject, absent on the article rich snippets page.
Required VideoObject properties:
namedescriptionthumbnailUrlpublisher (with nested properties name and logo)
Recommended VideoObject properties:
durationcontentUrlembedUrlinerationCountexpires
Finally, the AMP page provides information both on how to use <rel="canonical"> for AMP pages, and how to test pages to ensure they're AMP-compliant. For structured data markup specifically the guidelines unsurprisingly point users to Google's Structured Data Testing Tool. Additionally, there is now an AMP validation page on the main AMP site where users can validate whether their technical implementation of an AMP is valid.
It will be interesting to see whether the articles rich snippets page is altered or even removed in light of the new AMP additions.
Tweet
Tagged as:Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), schema.org, Structured Data
http://www.seoskeptic.com/top-stories-with-amp-added-to-google-structured-data-site/
The major pitfall for digital health startups
While 2015 was a solid year for digital health, with $4.5 billion in total venture funding, healthcare startups also made headlines for other reasons when reports emerged that much-hyped companies like blood-testing startup Theranos and brain-training app Lumosity were unable to prove the accuracy and effectiveness of their products.
Like Beth Seidenberg from KPCB states, digital health startups are increasingly seen as a vehicle to help reduce costs, increase revenues and cut red tape for consumers, healthcare practitioners or service providers. With the laser focus on KPIs and growth, digital health startups often overlook an important factor: Trust.
However, in light of recent events in this space now more than ever digital health entrepreneurs need to remind themselves of the importance of building and maintaining trust with key stakeholders in order to sustain their businesses.
The importance of trust
Although developing a reputation of trust and credibility is critical for startups across industries, its particularly important in the realm of digital health. Not only are people more sensitive when it comes to issues of health and well-being, healthcare practitioners are very careful about who they work with because of the complex and highly regulated nature of this sector.
Having talked to many entrepreneurs working in this area, it seems that the most common problems they face often come down to obtaining funding and deciding on a business model. Both are in one way or another intertwined with the issue of trust.
The digital health market is still fairly nascent, which means many investors are just getting to know this fast-growing space and may not yet be so inclined to open their pockets. Part of the entrepreneurs task is to prove they have deep knowledge of the market, present evidence that their product/technology is effective or demonstrate how theyre capturing value through metrics.
How can digital health entrepreneurs prove their product/service is credible and trustworthy?
Besides raising capital, the question of whether to go B2C or B2B is a hot topic. I dont believe it has to be an either/or decision; rather, these models can be combined in an overarching strategy. Having seen more than 2,300 digital health startups and sat through meetings with portfolio companies, Ive noticed that B2B models usually take a bigger chunk of the revenue stream. And the foundation of B2B deals usually comes down to two things: retention and trust.
High B2C retention rates are a sign that a startup is capturing value in some way, while trust is needed to showpotential partners that your company is reliable and worth working with. If trust is not the backbone of a business relationship, these types of deals are much more difficult to close.
Another important thing to remember is that each transaction or interaction can either strengthen or undermine the trust that stakeholders have in a startup, and once its lost like in a scandal related to inaccurate claims or questionable motives its difficult to recover.
Building credibility
So how can digital health entrepreneurs prove their product/service is credible and trustworthy?
A good starting point of building trust with stakeholders is by acquiring FDA approval or product certifications. For mySugr (a Vienna-based startup aiming to change how people perceive diabetes therapy), meeting FDA/EU standards was a top priority from the very beginning. The company wanted to make it very clear to stakeholders that it was offering a medical product solving a real therapy problem, as opposed to a wellness gadget.
It takes time to build a startup brand with a reputation of trust.
Since its launch in 2013, mySugrs diabetes Logbook app has been registered as a medical device with the FDA. Michael Forisch, Quality Management Director at mySugr, told me that gaining approval essentially comes down to describing how the startup plans to work which includes everything from processes involved in hiring new employees to managing patient risks in a specific language used by organizations such as the FDA. Overall, he said the time required for FDA approval depends on the complexity of a product, but startups should expect at least 6-8 months in the EU and 9-12 months in the U.S.
Because mySugr partners with pharmaceuticals and diagnostic companies, among others, Forisch says its been critical having this stamp of approval because fulfilling regulatory requirements is typically a prerequisite for integrating their product with these companies.
Joerg Land, CEO of digital health startup Sonormed, said receiving CE certification for their app that aims to treat tinnitus, called Tinnitracks (now reimbursed by Techniker Krankenkasse, a large insurance company based in Germany), proved to be an important step in building trust with patients, physicians and partners alike.
Despite a process that took more than 18 months and involved working with authorities and lawyers, Mikko Kiiskil CEO of Finnish telemedicine startup MeeDoc shared a similar sentiment, and said its crucial to show concrete evidence of quality when working in such a conservative industry like healthcare. Today their service is reimbursed by the Finnish government and insurance companies in multiple countries.
Another way to support your claims is through clinical validation. Unfortunately, like getting approvals/certifications, the process can be time-consuming. German e-health tech startup Emperraworked alongside a health insurer on a study to provide evidence of the medical benefits of its digital diabetes patient-care solution.
Although the clinical study took around two years to complete, Emperra CEO Dr. Christian Krey said validating its medical product proved to be an important factor in gaining reimbursement from insurance companies and when negotiating partnerships all parties wanted to see the results of the study before entering into a contract.
Similarly, German brain-training startup NeuroNation conducted a study with two German universities that proved the application could increase the working memory capacity of its users. Although the study lasted around 18 months, NeuroNation co-founder Jakob Futorjanski said that having the validation was a huge milestone in gaining the trust of their users, and eventually led to higher-quality cooperation (insurance companies, clinics, etc.) and higher retention rates.
Ultimately, digital health entrepreneurs should remember that it takes time to build a startup brand with a reputation of trust and constant care to maintain it. And yet, its a crucial part to the success and sustainability of a startup aiming to challenge the status quo in health care.
Featured Image: retrorocket/Shutterstock
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/YuP-jT-UWvc/
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo: We want to stop email snooping by fixing these encryption flaws
Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others are backing the STARTTLS extension for upgrading plain text connections on SMTP to encrypted ones.
Image: iStock
Web giants are collaborating to fix some of the problems that expose STARTTLS to attacks that downgrade encrypted connections to insecure ones.
Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others have all started supporting STARTTLS, an extension that can upgrade plain text connections on the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to encrypted ones.
But according to recent research, contributed to by Google, one of the problems with this "opportunistic encryption" enabled by STARTTLS is that the system "favors failing open", which means that that even if something isn't right, the email will still be sent unencrypted, also known as in the clear.
The design is meant to encourage adoption of STARTTLS. However, the research highlights that attackers are easily able to use network devices to force a downgrade to non-encrypted channels.
In Tunisia, for example, the researchers found that 96 percent of email sent from the nation to Gmail is sent in the clear.
Now Google, Yahoo, Comcast, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and 1&1 Mail & Media Development and Technology are seeking to fix this problem in an IETF proposal called SMTP Strict Transport Security.
The other issue it seeks to resolve relates to questions about the authenticity of the Message Transfer Agent (MTA) server.
One of the measures the proposal introduces is the ability to stop delivering a message if it can't be delivered securely, which it proposes through SMTP STS policy records that allow a sending service to check a recipient's policy before sending an email.
"SMTP STS is a mechanism enabling mail service providers to declare their ability to receive TLS-secured connections, to declare particular methods for certificate validation, and to request sending SMTP servers to report upon and/or refuse to deliver messages that cannot be delivered securely," the draft proposal reads.
The IETF draft was submitted by the web firms on Friday and expires on September 19.
More on security
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T-Mobile enlists YouTube, Google Play for its Binge On video data plan
(Image: CNET/CBS Interactive) T-Mobile and Google have finally struck in agreement to add Google Play and YouTube to the mobile carriers Binge On program that allows customers to stream unlimited content at a lower quality without counting against the data paid for monthly.
The agreement follows a dispute between T-Mobile and Google and adds YouTube to a stellar Binge On lineup including ESPN and Netflix.
Google was a long holdout of Binge On, as it throttled users video without consent.
T-Mobile announced on Thursday a change to the plan, allowing customers to opt-out of the data program by texting T-Mobile or using the carrier's app. Companies can also opt-out, but their content will be streamed at a higher resolution and count against a customer's data plan.
"Reducing data charges can be good for users, but it doesn't justify throttling all video services, especially without explicit user consent," a YouTube spokesman told The Wall Street Journal in January during its dispute with T-Mobile.
Further, T-Mobile is extending the option to its partners to optimize the content for Binge On streaming, rather than T-Mobile. YouTube will be the first to take advantage of this.
T-Mobile also announced on Thursday Binge On has signed up Red Bull TV, Discovery Go, Fox Business, Baeble Music, ESNE TV, FilmOn.TV and KlowdTV to the service. Notably missing are Snapchat and Facebook.
For Legere, it's all about choice and he says Binge On gives it to customers. He said in January:
"YouTube complained about Binge On, yet at the same time they claim they provide choice to customers on the resolution of their video. So it's ok for THEM to give customers choice but not for US to give our customers a choice? Hmmm. I seriously don't get it. Customers have MORE choices than before. And these guys are complaining? Who do they think they are? Do they have the right to dictate what my customers - or any wireless consumer - should or should not be able to choose for themselves?? No way!"
In a press release on Thursday, T-Mobile provided the following data points on Binge On:
Customers are watching twice as many hours per day, in longer and more frequent viewing sessions, than before launch from free streaming services on qualifying plans with limited high-speed data. More than 57 million GB (57 petabytes) have been streamed without burning up customers' high-speed data. That's like watching Adele's 15 minute Carpool Karaoke with James Corden more than 460 million times. One video provider has seen the number of active viewers spike 90% and watch-times nearly triple from customers with limited high-speed data.
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