The Good NET Guide

Archive for the ‘The Basics’ Category

Short version: Gateway’s SX2840 is an ideal computer for someone who needs a good basic computer. It feels fast enough that it’s not annoying, and it’s perfect for pretty much everything except hardcore gaming. I’d even go so far as to say that it’d work great as an HTPC, because it plays back HD video with no problems.

View original here:
Review: Gateway SX2840

Short version : Iomega has been making storage devices for years, and it shows. I’m a fan of NAS hardware and technology, and Iomega has created a product that not only stores data, but has enough value add to make it stand out from the dozens of other black boxes for storing your data. Features: Dual gigabit ethernet Comes in 2TB or 4TB sizes Case well ventilated, looks nice LCD display provided up to the moment information on storage, status Pros: Supports Bittorrent Compatible with most backup programs Crazy number of features Cons: Cost – you can’t get it without hard drives Too many features, might be intimidating Setup can be tricky A good NAS should be invisible

More:
Review: Iomega ix4-200d

Over the last year or so we’ve seen quite a few throwbacks to the old school NES-style game in the form of Mega Man 9 & 10 , Bionic Commando: Rearmed , and most recently Dark Void Zero . Meanwhile, the “real” games these have been intended as mere adjuncts to have been almost universally panned

More:
It’s a bit sad when promotional de-makes of games are better than the games themselves

This morning, after many months of rampant speculation over the enigmatic Tablet, Apple officially invited scores of press to a special media event to be held January 27. The debut of the Tablet seems all but a given according to most reports, but there are some secondary announcements that also stand to be huge — especially the rumors that we may also see the launch of iPhone 4.0. This afternoon, Fox News “confirmed” that we’d being seeing the latest iteration of Apple’s hugely popular mobile OS for the first time. Should that be the case, there’s also a good chance we’ll see launch of a very important new feature: background applications.

First things first. While the title of the Fox News article is “Apple Tablet, iPhone 4 Launch Confirmed for January 27″, the body of the article later says that it’s “likely” that Apple will unveil those two products (along with an updated iLife suite), and also notes that Apple is known for suddenly removing features or products from their announcements at the last second — none of which makes the news sound totally concrete. That said, there are plenty of reasons why iPhone 4.0 could be making an appearance alongside the Tablet, and why it will bring background apps with it.

We’ve discussed the probable connection between the Tablet and the iPhone OS since as early as last May. With iPhone OS, Apple took Mac OS X and stripped it down to the basics to turn it into a compact and powerful mobile operating system. The tablet will almost certainly have more horsepower than the iPhone, but it would still stand to gain from the power and space saving attributes of the mobile OS (albeit a modified version). Our suspicions got further support less than a week ago, when we saw reports that the newest releases of the iPhone OS was actually being held back because some of its code alluded to the unannounced tablet device. Given these ties, it would be logical for the iPhone 4.0 OS to make its debut alongside the tablet.

But the Tablet OS will need to bring some new features with it. For one, it will probably need to allow users to run multiple apps at the same time. Most people don’t particularly care (yet) that they can’t do this with their iPhones, because the screen real estate is so limited and they don’t view the device as a handheld computer (even though it is one). But that won’t be true with the tablet — in light of its larger screen, users will expect more functionality, and the inability to run multiple apps would grow frustrating quickly. With that in mind, if Apple has already established a paradigm for running background apps on the tablet, it would make sense to finally bring it over to the iPhone too.

The iPhone’s current lack of background applications is one of its most glaring weaknesses compared to other mobile operating systems, most notably Android and Palm’s WebOS. Apple’s reasons for withholding the functionality before now were obvious: running multiple applications can drain the device’s already-strained battery more quickly, and forcing users to manage which apps are open adds an extra layer of complexity. It was the right choice then, but it’s time for things to change.

Plenty of developers have already had their applications hampered by their inability to run in the background. Messaging clients have to rely on the iPhone’s Push notifications, which can only display a single alert at a time. Music players (other than the built-in iPod app) close down as soon as you try to do anything else on the phone. And location based apps have to rely almost exclusively on the “check-in” model popularized by Foursquare, because they have no way to passively monitor your location. Consumers may not be frustrated by these restrictions yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they look enviously at their Android-toting friends streaming Pandora and running Skype or Meebo in the background.

And Apple knows it. As far back as last May we were hearing that Apple was having serious discussions about how to implement background applications.  As it did with copy and paste (which iPhone users had to wait years for), Apple is clearly taking its time to get it right the first time.  Now, with the imminent release of the tablet, Apple may have finally settled on a solution.  If the Fox News report is correct, that could be revealed as soon as next week. But even if iPhone 4.0 isn’t announced for a few more months, it seems highly likely that background apps will come with it.

Image via Gizmodo. And no, it isn’t real.

In my recent post on how stealth mode is a bad idea, I advised entrepreneurs to come out of their shells.  To build marketable products, you need feedback from customers, potential investors/partners and business advisers. And the veil of secrecy which comes with being in stealth mode blocks this feedback. But there is a flip-side that I want to make entrepreneurs more aware of: It is a tough world out there and some big and small competitors will deliberately or accidentally steal your ideas. A few of these players are predators much like the beasts of Pandora. So there needs to be a balance. You need to air your ideas, but use every available mechanism to protect yourself. When you do come under attack, run as fast as you can or fight like hell.

I’m going to explain all this through three examples. But first, I’ll cover the basics about patents.

A patent gives the holder the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling their invention. So the idea becomes like a piece of land, and patenting the idea before someone else does is like buying that land. Patents can be valuable when done right, but most are not. The vast majority of the patents out there are worth less than the paper they are printed on because they are obscure inventions with little real world relevance or they are filed in a way that they do not provide any protection. I’ve written about this for BusinessWeek and you can read some more tips on patenting here.

The problem is that even when you have a good patent, it can be very costly to enforce. Take the case of Amit Jaipuria, founder of GizaPage, which is based in Bangalore, India. Amit believes he owns the second patent in the world in the social networking space (the first being the “six degrees” Weinreich patent which was bought by LinkedIn in 2002-03). In early 2000 (well before Friendster, Myspace, Facebook and Twitter came into existence), he had an idea for creating an online social network for professional networking. He filed a provisional patent in India and then started the process for filing in the U.S on July 11, 2001. Five years and  three “non-final rejections” by the US Patent Office (USPTO) later, Amit was granted Patent 7047202 in May 2006 titled “Method and apparatus for optimizing networking potential using a secured system for an online community”.

By this time, the social networking space had evolved and Amit was convinced he was sitting on a goldmine. So, Amit headed to Silicon Valley with the patent and a PowerPoint presentation to raise funding for a play in the social networking space. His hope was to raise venture capital based on the intellectual property (IP) he owned. However, since the patent had not been licensed by anyone, the VCs didn’t bite. And he couldn’t get any law firm to take his case on full contingency (they wanted him to share part of their costs – and he couldn’t afford this). He decided to auction the patent through OceanTomo (which specializes in selling IP). Unfortunately, he put in a reserve for  $3 million for it and the bidding stopped at around $2.5 million. Since the patent did not reach the reserve, it did not sell that day. However immediately after that, Amit was contacted by all the major social networks. One of them even offered a hybrid arrangement with a cash and stock sale. During these negotiations, someone anonymously challenged the patent with a claim of prior art. This claim asserted that evidence existed showing a similar patent or IP  pre-dated Amit’s patent.  The challenge muddied the waters and all the social networks walked away from the deal.

After subsequent reexaminations Amit got a final decision on his patent in early 2009. The USPTO narrowed Amit’s  claims due to the evidence of prior art cited in the appeal. But other claims related to key social networking features were granted as part of the narrowed patent. Amit feels these features are unique to the industry and can cover key potential areas for feature expansion. The patent is valid until 2020 and Amit is happy he has his patent. With limited resources and a focus on building his new venture, Amit hopes that he will be able to monetize his patent sometime in the future.

The moral of Amit’s story is simple. Even if you have a patent, you probably will have trouble defending it because large entities can outgun you in court and risk-averse lawyers are generally unwilling to take dicey cases for small clients on a contingency basis. In other words, a patent is really nice on your wall but it may not give you magical powers to negotiate deals with tech titans.

There are many other cases where an entrepreneur thinks they are first with a great idea but don’t really have anything a patent can defend. Such is the case with Kent Fuselier, an indie record label owner and entrepreneur who sought to launch a reality TV programming business that relied on a Facebook fan group to generate content and vote on ideas and winners and losers. He called his business “The Texas Producer”. Kent sent out promo packets and several days later Simon Fuller, a co-creator of the TV blockbuster “American Idol” announced he was launching a similar program. Kent was beside himself and worried that this new entry with a huge backer would steal his thunder.

So Kent emailed me to ask for advice on how he can defend his IP. I am answering him here. Simply, you can’t defend that kind of IP and you need to run like hell to stay ahead of Simon Fuller and his crew if you hope to make your business work. Getting a patent on a piece of technology is hard enough but convincing a court of law that a television show concept is some form of IP is nearly impossible. Why? Because prior art of some sort is everywhere. Somewhere, someone probably discussed or nearly launched a similar concept.

Which leads me to the second part of my advice. Namely, a small company that wants to go toe-to-toe with a Goliath and win should rely on its speed and nimbleness. For Simon Fuller to get his program launched and running, it will likely take months of work and meeting after meeting after meeting. Kent can launch his program as fast as he wants to. Major networks are impossible to crack for new shows even for experienced producers, let alone those with no major national television credits. But perhaps Kent can garner a large enough Web audience that can turn his program into a viable business in its own right or even into a program that the major national content producers find appealing. So run, Kent, run and don’t look back at any IP violations, real or perceived.

In the rare instance when an entrepreneur has a very clear case and has a decent amount of resources to start a legal battle against a Goliath, the message to all the entrepreneurial David’s in the world is this. Forget about standard hand-to-hand combat or even hopes of niceties and use that slingshot right from the get go. If you are going to sue a big company, make sure they know it and you can bring it in a way that causes them real pain. Line up a crackerjack attorney. Make it clear you are in this game for the duration, even if it means selling your pet hamster and mortgaging your house. Big companies like picking on easy targets but once a corporate lawyer gets a whiff of a real fight in a case where they are likely to lose, the big corporate lawyer as often as not does the math and realizes settling on your terms might not be such a bad thing.

Three years back I wrote about Kivin Varghese, founder of BrandPort, in a BusinessWeek article on the perils of partnering. Kivin had a brilliant idea. He would pay people to watch advertisements on their handsets or on their television. His unique twist on the pay-to-view model got the attention of big name TV advertisers like Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and L’Oréal. Kivin also managed to get in the door to talk to Virgin Mobile USA, a huge potential partner.

The bigwigs at Virgin told Kivin they loved his idea and asked to see his technology and model in detail. They wanted to partner together to build a service that would give their mobile users free minutes for watching ads through the BrandPort process. His negotiations were going well until he woke up one day to read in the New York Times that Virgin Mobile had launched a new product called Sugar Mama – which was exactly like his product. When Kivin protested, they essentially told him to “buzz off”. That morning, Kivin called me to ask for advice. He explained “I had a good non-disclosure agreement, we marked things confidential, had pending patents. I did everything right. A startup that relies on deals with partners as a core part of their business model (like mine) has no choice but to reveal everything about the innovation in order to convince them it’ll be a big revenue boost for them. If I held anything back, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the deal.”

My advice was to fight for what was right and show no mercy. And that is what he did. Reluctantly.

After over a year of litigation and probably spending millions of dollars, Virgin settled the dispute. Kivin won his case and got them to license his technology so there were limits on what they could do with it. But my guess is that Kivin failed to reap any significant income. The settlement likely covered his attorneys fees but not much more. (Kivin is under non-disclosure and won’t comment.  This is what I have inferred  from our discussions before he signed the agreement and settled the case).

Kivin would talk about his experience, however. What does he regret? He was too soft early on, and it wasn’t until the last bit of the case that he was able to bring on a strong litigation team. His thoughts on what he learned: If you are going to fight back, fight back hard and right from the start. If you want to fight back, get an attack dog attorney with big IP litigation chops, don’t go cheap. Be prepared to pay them big bucks for your case because good lawyers are expensive but worth it.  And be prepared to risk everything. And I’ll add one more – competitors know that he is no pushover and will think twice before doing this again.

So, to summarize, you need to be cautious in your dealings with the world. Don’t mindlessly “bear all”. You should file patents, but these patents provide less protection than you might think. Even if you have a great patent, you will need to fight hard to defend it and will need a good lawyer. In some spaces, you simply can’t get patents even for great, original ideas.  Your only recourse is to be faster and better than newer, bigger competitors. Finally, if you do feel you’ve been ripped off, then pull no punches and go for blood.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

I’m in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee for Christmas and on a drive between Memphis and Nashville I noticed that every $30/night hotel offered free wireless Internet access. Further, when we got to Nashville and checked into the relatively low-frills Holiday Inn Express we had better wireless Internet access than I’ve had in hotels around the US and the world—some of which I paid double to stay in.

What gives with hotel WiFi?

This is a ten-year-old technology that has improved in speed and quality nearly everywhere—in homes, in offices, in public spaces, in coffee shops, in airports—even on planes. You can even get free WiFi at Krystal, a fast food chain that’s on par with White Castle and sells hamburgers for less than $1 each. Over the past two years I’ve stayed at more than two-dozen hotels around the United States and the emerging world. I’ve noticed a trend that seems to fly in the face of basic economics and technology adoption: The pricier and fancier hotel, generally the worse quality the WiFi, if it exists at all.

On a trip to Boston two years ago my fancy downtown, five-star hotel had no wireless access. The brand new W in Santiago, Chile has no wireless access. In India, Rwanda and Argentina I’ve had to buy expensive 24-hour WiFi passes, which can add up to hundreds of dollars per stay, for a connection that was just OK. But I knew better than to complain: The quality of the connection is almost always better in emerging markets than Western Europe.

London is hands-down the worst: I’ve stayed at the Sanderson in London twice and always had a hard time getting online, and I’ve also stayed at the Malmaison where even the wired connection didn’t work. I had to go down to the lobby to get a signal. Even then it was like the early days of wireless where you wandered around holding your laptop looking for bars like you were panning for gold.

Arrington may have his silly germaphobe, fist-bump movement. MG may be determined to hold AT&T accountable for its embarrassingly bad iPhone service. Here’s my outrage: Why in 2010 do so many hotels have zero, unreliable or outrageously expensive wireless Internet access?

This is clearly not a cost issue when economy hotels like Holiday Inn and Days Inn have no problem offering free wireless access from the middle of nowhere in the South. (Not to mention Krystal.) This is an issue of greed or tech ignorance on the part of luxury hotels and consumers and business travelers need to start showing some outrage.

On the greed point, Paul Carr—whose parents are hoteliers and lives in hotels now—says the sky-high prices are largely the result of hotels losing fees from business travelers making phone calls, now that we all have mobile phones. The only way to make up the cost was to start charging for Internet access. I wouldn’t have a huge problem with that if the access was good. But I get angry when you charge me $20 a day for a connection that barely works when I can get a better connection at a coffee shop next door for free.

Why not do what the Royal Orchid in Bangalore does? They offer a basic connection for free, and offer a paid rate if you want a faster speed. That still allows a way for the hotel to make money off business travelers with expense accounts, gives guests who need a high-speed connection an in-room option and offers price-conscious guests a way to do the basics like checking email for free.

The other issue is technology. A lot of hotels—deeming themselves too tech-ignorant to install and manage wifi networks themselves—entered into pricey service relationships with third party providers. Hotels say it’s those providers who saddle us with the high fees, and in my experience, not very good connectivity.

If hotels feel they absolutely can’t manage these networks themselves, there have to be better options. What about big Web portals and search engines like Yahoo and Google, or for other countries the local equivalents? Google was ready to wire up all of San Francisco for free access in exchange for ad placement and a Google start page, why not do that for, say, a chain of boutique luxury hotels instead? Or at a minimum, outsource to a service like Boingo that is pretty consistent in service and that many travelers already have a subscription for anyway. It makes the fees hurt less when you can buy an annual pass that’s also good at coffee shops, airports and other public spaces.

These are just a few ideas, and no doubt those of you with more experience setting up networks for big spaces have more. The Internet is fully woven into our lives now. It is the primary way people stay in touch, work and entertain themselves. There is no reason we shouldn’t expect a decent—and preferably free—connection when we pay upwards of $150/night for a hotel if a $30/night hotel can offer it. I, for one, would forgo the pillow mints, free HBO and mini-shampoos if that helps with the margins.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Guest columnist Lydia Leavitt writes about sex and, oddly enough, social media. For more information on the latest intimate technology as well as the full interview with Kim Airs, check out 69adget.com . Click through to read the NSFW article.

Read the original here: 
Scientists study mental orgasms through MRIs

The one skill which entrepreneurs need is something they don’t teach in business school—selling.  Yes, I know that “selling” conjures up negative images of used-car salesmen peddling clunkers. But the ability to persuade people to believe in you is a necessity. That’s because sales is not just about selling things for money. Selling is about life. Convincing the perfect soulmate to go out on a date is a sales job. Enticing your children to eat their vegetables is a sales job. Negotiating a raise with your boss is a sales job. And, yes, selling your company to Google is definitely a sales job. A sales job in that you are listening to others, finding out what they want or need, and giving it to them in a form that they appreciate. And guess who the best salespeople in tech companies are? Your developers.

Let me explain why I believe this.

I started my career as a geek. I ended up as Chief Technology Officer of Seer Technologies, a software startup which we grew from zero to $120 million in revenue and took public in a short five years. And then I became CEO of my own very successful startup called Relativity Technologies (until I burnt myself out and needed to shift gears).  A number of skills helped me through this ascent. I learned a lot about motivating and managing people who were sometimes smarter than me, about understanding markets and communicating effectively, and also a few really boring things like accounting, finance and law. But if I had not learned how to sell then my company would never have made it past three guys in a room with a phone and some laptops.

I didn’t believe this in my youth. I thought coding was the exact opposite of selling. I always associated “sales” with hustling and sleazy ways to convince customers to spend money on things they didn’t need. And you had to work fast to get that check before the dupes backed away.

One day I was promoted to project manager. After thrashing through a few uncomfortable meetings, I quickly understood that running a good project required a form of selling to my peers and managers. I also realized that perhaps sales was not so simple. In fact, convincing my staff that the ideas I had made sense was far more difficult than writing clean code. And persuading management to supply sufficient staff and funding to implement my ideas was harder still.

Being a successful project manager meant learning to listen closely to what others thought, to make them feel included, and to give them what they wanted and needed to succeed. It meant constant communication that was honest yet finely nuanced. It was hard work but ultimately very rewarding. I could listen and focus on helping others to achieve their goals and at the same time advance myself quite easily. When I was able to focus on a global view of helping my company succeed, I found it much easier to avoid destructive departmental politics. I rose up the ranks to become a vice-president of technology at one of the world’s five largest investment banks.

Then I got the chance to become CTO of a startup which would market technology which my team had built. Selling became an even more important skill. We all were living on borrowed time and the only thing that would give us more time was sales to put money into company coffers. We had a truly amazing product, much better than that of our competitors. But the stark reality was that unless we could really sell well, our competitors had a big advantage. They were a known quantity. They were not going out of business tomorrow. They played golf, went out for beers, and had lunch with our competitors.

My guru and mentor was my boss, Gene Bedell. One of the first things Gene did when we launched our company was to put everyone through a sales training boot camp. Gene had run billion-dollar businesses and reached the executive levels in investment banking. He had even convinced IBM to seed our company, a software spinoff from Credit Suisse First Boston. At first my technology team protested at being taught to learn about qualifying prospects and closing sales rather than the latest version-tracking software tools.

Within months, we were closing multimillion dollar sales with blue-chip customers across the globe. We did this with only two experienced sales reps and part-time sales support from our development staff. That’s because developers with sales training are incredibly valuable as a part of the sales process. They have two essential ingredients that make people persuasive—credibility and trustworthiness (for the most part).  So while a prospect may not really believe a salesperson, for example, when he says a system is reliable, they’re far more likely to believe a developer they respect.  This is a very powerful ingredient in the sales process, and one we used regularly.  We would compete with some of the largest software companies in the world—and win the sale almost every time. As CTO, I also took it upon myself to sell strategic partners. My biggest catch was a deal with IBM-Japan worth $8.6 million.

With a culture that put customer support and sales above everything else, we grew  into a profitable $120-million-a-year revenue machine. Our developers formed long-term bonds and friendships with our customers. They would go to great pains to understand customer requirements and build products that would sell. More often than not, new development projects would be funded directly by customers. Whenever there was a customer-service problem, our top engineers would voluntarily work around the clock and fly all over the globe to personally provide support.

So, how do you learn sales? It’s easy. There are literally hundreds of books on selling. The methods vary, but in essence all of them teach you about the basics of understanding customer needs and honing your message. There are also hundreds of “selling seminars” conducted all over the world. Be wary of any which teach you to sell things a customer doesn’t want. It is one thing to persuade someone to buy something which they need, it is another thing to con people. My personal favorite book (and I am a little biased here) is one by Gene Bedell himself, titled Three Steps to Yes: The Gentle Art of Getting Your Way.

By the way, I’m not the only guy saying this kind of stuff. The high priests of the Lean Startup Methodology, like Dave McClure, Brad Feld, and Eric Ries, all advocate a “get to sales ASAP” approach. “Recovering venture capitalist” Healy Jones blogged about how he was shortchanged with his Wharton MBA. Yet a quick conversation at any networking event in the Valley yields a simple observation that most technology workers don’t think that selling is part of their job description. The smartest technology entrepreneurs realize that everyone in the company is in sales and the sooner they embrace that reality, the easier it will be for that startup to grow and prosper. Coder, biz dev, PR, QA—nope. You’re all in sales. It’s all about selling for survival.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Site builder Webs.com (formerly known as Freewebs) is launching a new App Store today with the hopes of helping its members customize their sites with rich, dynamic web apps without having to deal with widgets. The company is adopting a model similar to Facebook Platform, inviting developers to build applications that users can install on their Webs.com pages from a central directory.

Webs CEO Haroon Mokhtarzada says that one of the biggest problems with traditional website builders is that they generate static content, and it’s up to the site owner to continuously provide new content in order to engage readers. That’s fine in some cases (like for business websites), but most people have a tough time coming up with quality content on a regular basis. But he says that rich applications, which offer users a more dynamic experience, can help.

At launch Webs has 15 total application savailable, though most of these were built internally (there are six built by third parties, with more in the works). Launch apps include a game arcade by HeyZap, Meebo’s Community IM, an Etsy store app, and an appointment app by BookFresh that will allow businesses to schedule appointments and execute payment transactions directly from their Webs.com sites. Applications that were built in-house include a calendar, forums, photo galleries, and video sharing platform.

The initial app selection covers most of the basics, and will be welcome additions for the site owners looking to customize their pages with new features. It’s also worth pointing out that Webs has recently seen strong growth from a segment of users who are tapping into the site’s social features, which allow users to build their own community websites (much as they would on a service like Ning). Mokhtarzada says that these still represent a minority of users, but that the performance of their sites is generally much higher than ‘normal’ sites across all metrics. The application platform launching today will likely be especially appealing to these group sites, where users may want to share their photos, forum posts, and video with other members. Mokhtarzada is also optimistic about the appeal of these apps to business owners, who will be better able to integrate marketplaces and schedulers like the aforementioned BookFresh app.

For apps supported by advertising, Webs takes a rev-share that is determined on an app-by-app basis, with around 60-70% going to the app’s developers. Webs is also going to be integrating a unified payment system for applications that want to charge users, which will also have a rev-share arrangement.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

As the threat of the swine flu (otherwise known as H1N1) pandemic become more serious and President Obama declares a national emergency over the rapidly spreading virus, Harvard Medical School is hoping to help educate people with its new iPhone app. The Swine Flu app, which is currently available on the app store, costs $1.99.

The Swine Flu Application includes videos, animations and text that allow you to learn the basics about swine flu, how to reduce the risk to you and your family, and how to prepare your business for the pandemic. The app also features real-time updates and news from Harvard Med School about H1N1.

To let users determine how close outbreaks are to their location, the app has a “HealthMap” feature that lets you know about the state of the epidemic in your current location and other locations. For those uses who are feeling sick but unsure if it is attributed to H1N1, the app has an interactive symptom checker that helps you decide if your symptoms, or your child’s symptoms indicate swine flu, and when it is wise to contact your doctor. And the app includes hotlines and numbers to call (based on the user’s location) in case of an emergency or for more information about H1N1.

The app also includes a section devoted to helping businesses educate employees about the pandemic and includes guides on how to prepare a business to deal with the flu.

There are other apps that provide similar services, such as the Swine Flu Tracker by IntuApps, but none have the backing of one of the foremost medical institutions in the world. The Swine Flu App is part of Harvard Medical School’s greater mobile strategy, called HMS Mobile, which aims to deliver a series of iPhone Applications aimed at promoting public health. It’s not a bad idea, especially considering that Harvard is monetizing the app. It should be interesting to see if Harvard’s newest app takes off; perhaps we will start seeing more medical institutions looking to make a presence on the app store.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.