By Matthew Hile on 6/4/2010 3:49 PM

In many of our projects we use telephones to contact participants and collect various sorts of private information. To date we have done this using POTs (plain old telephones). However, Google Voice has a variety of features that make it look attractive as a research tool.  For example, it is (currently) free, it allows us to create phone numbers in different area codes so that callers would not need to incur long distance changes and we would not need to pay for an 800 number, it avoids the automatic blocking of the Caller ID (CPN or Calling Party Number) from certain locations.

Others (e.g., Preston Gralla  and JR Raphael) have previously questioned the privacy of this service but little current information/concern is apparent. But these commentators concerns were with the user’s information being added to what is already know about them and not about the information from the other participant on the call. For us, it is this other participant’s information we are obligated to protect. So the basic question is:

Is Google Voice private/secure enough to use to gather confidential data?

Transmission

In Google Voice the analogue sounds from a phone are being converted to a digital format and passed through the Google network to be reconstituted into analogue sounds at the other end. As with any other process it is possible that somewhere along the line this information could be recorded (by Google or someone tapping into the stream). This is really no different from a POT which can also be recorded or tapped. While their documentation is mum on this point, it would seem reasonable that those digital transmissions would be encrypted as they move from place to place, which would make the information less prone to access by outsiders.

Storage

What data is being stored as a matter of course? The Google Voice Privacy Policy seems pretty clear – Google “stores, processes and maintains your call history, voicemail greeting(s), voicemail messages, Short Message Service (SMS) messages, recorded conversations, and other data related to your account.” These various messages are treated essentially the same as email. In Google this means that they can be used to target advertisements and be mined for other business proposes. Because of the nature of their services, Google would probably be very careful to protect the identity of their users. Their full Privacy Policy supports that concern and seems eminently reasonable. It reads in part

Google only shares personal information with other companies or individuals outside of Google in the following limited circumstances:

• We have your consent. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.
• We provide such information to our subsidiaries, affiliated companies or other trusted businesses or persons for the purpose of processing personal information on our behalf. We require that these parties agree to process such information based on our instructions and in compliance with this Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
• We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (d) protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public as required or permitted by law.

Recording

In addition to the stored information described above, you can record incoming calls (though not calls you place). When you do so a voice (Ms Google?) announces “call recording on” to all listeners. The part of the conversation before that announcement is not recorded (at least it is not available to the user). So it looks like Google is being careful to only record when asked to do so.

Access

Google voice is accessed through your browser. Because of this the user also has the responsibility to access the data in a safe manner. This means that it must always be over an SSL connection (this is a setting in your Google profile) and it should be using a computer that you control (i.e., not one in an internet cafe or other public access location). These in addition to the other usual caveats – good passwords, up-to-date AV protection, …

So…?

Based on my understanding it does not look unreasonable to consider using Google Voice for research purposes. However, it’s use should be explicitly noted in your IRB submissions so that the people responsible for deciding if your project adequately protects participant confidentiality and rights have all of the information they need to make an informed decision.

By Matthew Hile on 11/3/2009 4:19 PM

In a presentation at the Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment Grantee Meeting in Bethesda, Tom McClellan, Deputy Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, discussed the presentation of SBIRT services to medical facilities. He stated the we take the wrong approach if we ask for their help. Rather SBIRT services help medical systems.

How SBIRT helps the current medical system includes:

1. The top five medical problems (e.g., chronic pain, hypertension, diabetes, sleep disorders) are greatly impacted by substance misuse.
2. Medical treatment noncompliance is highly related to substance misuse.
3. Drug to drug interactions are a significant problem and require attention to substance use behaviors.
4. SBIRT services reduce costs by reducing visits to emergency departments and lowering hospitalization rates.

By Matthew Hile on 7/1/2009 6:46 AM

Today I attended the  conference on Developing the Behavioral Health Workforce: Stimulus Funds & Workforce Models in Washington DC. Sponsored by the  The Annapolis Coalition a “small not for profit with a large collation.” The meeting was divided into two components. In the morning we focused on current funding with an emphasis on the potential impact of federal stimulus funds on behavioral health workforce development while the afternoon provided examples of working training models.

Michael A. Hoge, Senior Science and Policy Advisor for The Annapolis Coalition started us off with an overview and an acknowledgement that, in behavioral health, we do training poorly, provide little effective supervision/mentoring, and do not have an effective career ladder. Victor Capoccia, Program Director of The Open Society Institute, followed. He continued with the theme highlighting the fact that we have an inverse relationship between salary/experience/education and the time spent with those they serve (to read more about the characteristics of frontline workers see this RWJ publication) and described how we might leverage those individuals who are already working in the field by enhancing their skills. Victor championed using the workplace as a learning site with the characteristics:

• Partnerships between employers and learning organizations
• Faculty and employee interchanges
• Curriculum is workplace driven
• Learning is continuous
• Learner is employee (not student)
• Structured expectations and assessments
• Rewards for achievement and progress

We then heard about the stimulus funds. Sherry Kaiman, Consultant for the National Center on Education and the Economy, indicated that most job training money comes from the federal government and that the Department of Labor received the bulk of those funds. These funds are given to State’s Governors where they are used to support training through state and regional Workforce Investment Boards (WIB). I had never heard of a WIB before but in terms of training this is one group with whom you need to work, or at least coordinate, if you want to get money for workforce development.  To find the WIB supported one stop shop near you, and the services they offer, go to www.servicelocator.org. For Missouri you can also get information on our state WIB WorkSmartMissouri.

Mary Gardner Clagett, the Deputy Director for Policy or the  National Center on Education and the Economy, continued the discussion noting that the stimulus funds were to: 

• Focus training on lower skilled individuals and those who are otherwise disadvantaged
• Encourage longer term training
• Focus on high demand occupations (Health is one of those and it would be reasonable to extend this to behavioral health though it is not specifically mentioned)
• Working on increasing post secondary education
• AND importantly providing money this year (which might be stretched for an additional year)

She also mentioned that the Department of Labor will be releasing demonstration Innovative training grant RFAs in July/Aug with a priority on health care training that includes a focus on collaborating between various groups. Later discussions suggested that this collaboration component would need to be significant and that the WIBs could also compete for these funds though they might also work in partnership with others.

The afternoon focused on successful training models. Basically the presenters (Philadelphia’s District 1199c Training & Upgrade Fund and Massachusetts’ SSTAReach program) shared a set of common characteristics and the Jobs to Careers programs (which is part of the larger Jobs for the Future). Some of these characteristics include:

• Providing training experiences on the job
• Paying for at least some of the training or developing mechanisms to make it financially viable for individuals making very little to afford the training
• Providing supports for individuals who do not have traditional educational skills
• Working in conjunction with traditional educational institutions (Universities, colleges, and community colleges)
• Providing salary increases for successful completion
• Providing a path for continued educational pursuits (i.e., traditional degrees)

The sample programs have demonstrated good outcomes in terms of enhancing their staff’s skills and have been able to continue even after grant funding dried up.

So, in the final analysis stimulus monies will be available, they will fund collaborative models, and there are successful models that have demonstrated a positive impact by educating existing staff providing them with the skills and credentials needed to provide more skilled services. However, these funds are very time limited (1-2 years) and cannot be counted on to sustain programs over the long haul.

By Matthew Hile on 5/26/2009 6:55 AM

In episode 182 of SecurityNow Steve Gibson talked about a spiffy utility, KatMouse (http://ehiti.de/katmouse/), which solves a problem you did not know you had.

Currently, to scroll a window using the mouse wheel the window to be scrolled needs to have focus (i.e., you need to click on it before the wheel will scroll document.) With KatMouse this need is eliminated. To scroll a window, simply place the mouse pointer over the document and scroll away. This has the advantage of keeping your focus in place while changing information displayed elsewhere.

Say you are editing a document and need another as a reference. The process would be

1. Edit document
2. Move the mouse over the reference document
3. Click reference document to change focus
4. Scroll reference document to get to the desired location
5. Move the mouse over the edit document
6. Click the edit document (hopefully in the correct location to keep the focus where it was initially)
7. Start typing again

With KatMouse

1. Edit document
2. Move mouse cursor over reference document
3. Scroll to the desired location
4. Type the information into the edit document

In my case it took no time at all to get used to this utility – indeed I always had to remember to click the other document to scroll in the first place. This small utility really fit with how I was actually trying to use the system. So, give it a try!

By Matthew Hile on 2/27/2009 2:01 PM

While looking to solve a different Outlook issue I ran across this post. It solves a common problem - intending to send an attachment but forgetting to do so.

The post has a macro that reads your email message before it is sent. If it finds the word "attach" in the message and there are no attachments it reminds you to add one. This will be a great way for preventing me from looking foolish (at least in this one area).

This code and the instructions worked great for me in Office 2007.

By Matthew Hile on 1/29/2009 2:08 PM

I develop charts for Excel that are to be viewed on the screen AND printed or copied on black and white printers/copiers. To do this I make use of the various chart pattern fill formats that allow me to apply some sort of crosshatching fill to the bar(s).

Yesterday, as I was graphing in Excel 2007, I found out that this was no longer that option. I could only use gradients or graphic images to make my bars distinct. arguh!

Off to the web.

The first resource I used was from Eric Patterson, a program manager on the Excel team. His blog post on Chart Pattern Fills did much of what I needed and included an Excel add-in tool. However, it only used black patterns so the nice look one would get on the screen or when a color printer was used were not available. 

So back to the web.

The second site had an add-in that allowed me to create colored pattern fills - exactly what I needed. This one is by  a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Andy Pope from England. He has a lot of great chart help but for my purposes I honed in on his Pattern Fill Add-in. That page contains both the downloadable add-in and another link with instructions about how to add add-ins to Excel. His solution worked like a charm and it's free! Thanks Andy!

By Matthew Hile on 1/27/2009 7:49 AM

After my recent computer crash I decided to install Vista 64. I had 4GB of memory installed on my computer but the 32 bit version of Vista (or any 32 bit operating system for that matter) could not access all of it. After that install everything worked EXCEPT I could no longer sync Outlook with my Palm based Treo 650.

I searched the web and sent questions to various support sites. Basically the story is that Palm does not support syncing on Vista 64 and they seemed unlikely to ever do so. (Another sign of Palm's downward spiral.)

There is lots of chatter on the Internet about difficulties getting various Bluetooth devices to work on Vista 64 - my solution was to go to the Vista hardware compatible center and purchase a device that was compatible with Vista 64. I ended up with a IOGear GBU321 which is a 2.0 USB adapter, Class 1.

I got everything installed. I linked the two Bluetooth devices so they would talk with one another. I walked through the "Set up new device" on the Treo which created had me create a virtual serial port on the PC to us in syncing. Having completed all of the steps I clicked the HotSync button on the Treo and ...

Error on the Treo "Unable to initiate HotSync operation because the port is in use by another application."

So back to the Internet. What did I try?  Firewall on/off (on PC), slowing the speed of connections (on the Treo), changing com port (Treo), uninstalling and reinstalling Bluetooth (PC), standing on my head...

What finally worked? After much plunking around I found a post that mentioned NOT checking the box for serial transfer in the HotSync configuration on the PC. (Right click the HotSync manager on the system tray, go to the "Connections" page, uncheck "Serial" and check "Bluetooth".) This did not make much sense to me because the transfer was to occur over that serial port but... unchecking the Serial option worked and my phone was happily syncing with my desktop!

So give it a try. You can sync a Treo Palm with Vista 64!

By Matthew Hile on 1/26/2009 3:45 PM

One morning at work I had happen a computer user's worst fear. Trying to boot I got a "no boot device" error. What this means is that my computer's hard drive had become corrupted and could no longer be read. My computer had two drives configured as a RAID 0 that means that parts of each file was written across two drives to make reading and writing faster. In checking the physical drives the RAID controller reported one as being off-line with errors. So, even though only one of my drives was bad, because the data was spread across two drives I would be unable to boot.

I quickly bought a new single drive as a replacement. Tossed it in and turned to my backups. I had my system set to automatically backup - this is the only way that it will happen on a regular basis. I have been using NovaStor backup because it allowed me to specify exactly what I wanted backuped and from where. (The backup software that comes with Vista allows on to specify what but not from where so I was never really sure what it contained.)

My first discovery was that the drive had failed during the most recent backup. And, because I had not paid enough attention to the process, each backup deleted the previous one before it ran. 

Next I tried too recover from a 4 month old image backup of the system (this one created by Vista's backup tool). That got me part of the way there recreating the files as they were 4 months previously. To make up for the difference I went to the aborted backup and was able to restore all of my documents directory from the previous work day.

At this point all was good except that my offline outlook files had not been backedup before the disk failure and all I had were 4 month old copies. Now I store all of my messages in these files so to loose them was to loose 4 months of activity - something that would be a real problem for me. To get those I needed to get back into the old disks.

So we put the bad drive into another computer and fired up our copy of
SpinRite. This software can do remarkable things with failed hard drives. It worked on the bad drive for 317 hours identifying numerous unreparable sections.

After SpinRite was finished I pulled the new drive, reinstalled the two previous drives and rebooted. After some machinations Vista started and I moved the two needed outlook files to an external drive. Thank you SpinRite!

I reinstalled the new drive copied the outlook files and was back in business with no missing data. I have since modified my backup procedures to keep multiple generations of my file backups and decided to start doing a full image each month. Hopefully, with this approach I will not need to go through this painful process again.

By Matthew Hile on 12/7/2008 11:58 AM

I recently discussed the availability and presentation of St. Louis' regional crime data. For the city of St. Louis, the Post Dispatch's site STLtoday.com has the best graphic presentation of homicide data. An interactive bar chart that presents 4 years' data. While it is colorful and does provide individual monthly data when the mouse hovers over bar - it is not at all clear what you can learn by looking at this graph. It is not easy to compare changes month by month, to look at trends across a year, or to see underlying patterns in monthly rates.

Rather than simply complain I thought I would try my hand at making the graph understandable.

First I tried a simple line graph. But the overlapping lines made it difficult to see individual patterns. There was no reference to what one might expect on average. So it did not improve the utility of the graph at all.

Next I tried each year paired with the average of all years. This allowed a variety of comparisons. 1) By comparing each year with the average it is easy to see when months have more or less than would be expected. So we can see that 2008 has been pretty much consistently higher each month. 2) It also allows us to see the pattern across the months - you are less likely to get murdered in January and February than any of the other months. 3) Additionally, it also allows us to predict that there will be a spike in rates in November of 2008 when that data becomes available.

Now following the suggestions of graphics visionary Edward Tufte I decided to see if we could further simplify the presentation - conveying the same information with less ink. I believe that the final graph does this by removing the extraneous lines and the vertical axis information. This has the advantage of focusing the viewers attention on the main points - examining the pattern of homicides across the year and differences between the years. It looses the interactive features of the original but it does deal with the fact that the original graph really did not provide any more information to the viewer than a simple table of numbers.

Are there other ways to graphically ring information out of this data? Let me know what you come up with.

 

NOTE: This entry is cross posted on both my personal and professional blogs.

By Matthew Hile on 11/26/2008 9:23 AM

I struggled today to get the What's New module (version 3.03.00/4.03.00, available as a Supplementary Download) to work in a DotNetNuke installation (version 4.9.0). The installation went well and the configuration worked as expected. However I had two problems. First, the paging function did not work. I could click the page numbers and see the appropriate pages in the Edit mode but once live no paging occurred. Second, sometimes I would get no results (like when I changed users) in the What's New window. I tried a variety of settings but nothing helped. Finally I thought to change the Cache Time (in the Settings/Page Settings section) from 60 seconds to 0 (zero). That did the trick. You can see the result on our MoSBIRT site.