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I'm going to have to forgive General Electric marketers for their earlier advertising snafu. This latest video is an informative and entertaining showcase for why Electronic Health Records (EHRs) can be a productive (dare I say meaningful?) part of a physician's practice. Hat tip to John Lynn at EMR and EHR for the video link.

Also, check out this week's baseball-themed edition of Grand Rounds, hosted by Musings of a Dinosaur.

As someone into web standards and accessibility, I'm normally against Flash websites. Automatic music on websites tends to annoy me, especially if I can't figure out how to turn it off. But I'm going to have to say, Samsung's marketing hub for its new Galaxy tablet beats Apple's iPad web presence in a big way. Going to Samsung's site I immediately get a feel for what the Galaxy tablet will be like: I see how it'll work, I easily navigate toward my interests in a method similar to the tablet itself, I get a cool vibe that makes me feel that I could actually use this thing in my daily life (whether walking down the street or cooking a meal).

Personally, after that kind of interactive trip excellently combining video and user participation, the iPad page looks, well, talky. Apple wants to tell me how to use the product, not show me or let me experiment myself. It wants me to scroll down to do more than watch their marketing videos. It wants me to read about its specs, and I mean read; there's a lot of content packed in those pages, even if it's nicely offset with white space and images. Plus I constantly feel like I'm being called to look at other Apple products while I try to find out more about the iPad.

Sorry Apple aficionados, but I think this is one case where another company outdesigned (or at least outmarketed), and Flash actually seems to be the better course. Any comments?

I'm shamelessly pleased to announced that we've reached a milestone on this blog: featured in two blog carnivals during the same week. First was Grand Rounds, and now the Health Wonk Review, "a biweekly compendium of the best of the health policy blogs." This week the carnival is hosted by InsureBlog, and mostly discusses health care reform but also covers controversies at the FDA and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Perhaps my favorite tidbit of information to come out of this carnival was that while President Obama shouldn't give up his day job, his speech writers and graphic artists could definitely jump to the late night show circuit in a pinch. Just watch this YouTube clip to see what I mean (hat tip to The Hospitalist Leader for the video reference). Be sure to go over and check out the other great submissions at the Health Wonk Review.

As this week's host said, "The summer is almost over, but we can try to remain in the summery mood just a little bit longer." So Bora Zivkovic of A Blog Around The Clock set the Grand Rounds blog carnival on a tropical island medical conference (which judging by the pictures looks fabulous). There are, as usual, many excellent posts to read, ranging from the strictly informative to the zanily opinionated. Occam PM was featured this go round on "Day 2 – morning session: Medicine and Technology" (scroll down until you get to the picture of the floating fishing). Be sure to check it out.

This week's edition of Grand Rounds is up this morning, and Occam PM is featured in the "intellectual" section of A Cartoon Guide to Becoming a Doctor. I'll take that as a compliment, since I did warn the host that Occam's submission was more "ironic than LOL" (that's a direct quote from my email).

As always, there are plenty of excellent, medically flavored posts to read, some from the usual suspects, many from names I hadn't seen before. If you like nothing else, the cartoons should make you smile. But you really should enjoy this week's edition, as the host carefully tabulated how many times he said "Ha!" His count is "1,097 times."

Hopefully you'll come close to matching that count. Happy reading.

later update: I mean to include this link before hitting "submit," but better late than never. Scrubs, The Nurse's Guide to Good Living, has a hilarious two-parter YouTube video about a patient going to the ER. Anyone who's ever had to go to the hospital should appreciate this little comedic rendition.