After the usual lengthy alpha phase and more than a little hullaballoo over potential privacy concerns, Google Health has launched. While it remains to be seen whether entrusting your personal health records to Google is ultimately a good idea, the service does offer some value as a convenient online place to store and manage your health information. So rather than join the fray in debating whether or not you should actually give Google Health a try, I'll just take you on a tour of the service and leave your health care privacy decisions up to you.

Logging inIf you already have a Google account, either for Gmail, Picasa Web Albums, or another of the company's trillion services, there's no sign-up needed to begin using Google Health. Just use your existing login info and get going. If you don't yet have a Google account, go to google.com/health and click Sign Up to get started. The service collects only your name and requires you to select a username and password. Once you're signed up, you'll be dropped into a fairly empty-looking profile page.

By default, Google Health will use your login name as your profile name. If you'd rather change this to your actual name (which will make it easier for your doctor to understand when she's looking at your printed profile later), click Settings, click your profile name, and then type your preferred name and hit Enter. When you're done, click Save changes and then click your newly renamed profile name at the top of the left menu column to return to your main profile page.

To fill in your personal stats, such as height, weight, birth date, and so on, click Age, sex, height... under Profile Details on the left. Click Save when you've entered all your info.

Add infoUnless you're among the tiny handful of people whose medical services are already in digital form and ready to be shared with Google Health by their health care organization, getting your information into Google Health is largely a manual process. So before you move on to the next steps, you'd typically want to gather your existing paper records and have them handy for reference. So gather up any prescription receipts, lab test results, or other documents you may have filed away, and then click Add to this Google Health profile.

In the "Add to this profile" screen, you can enter any medical conditions, medications, allergies, procedures, test results, or immunizations that may be relevant to your health. The interface is simple and straightforward. Click the appropriate tab at the top of the screen, and then start typing the name of your condition, allergy, or what-have-you into the text field. Google Health will attempt to auto-complete your entry, showing you a list of possible matches. When you find the one you want to enter, select it by clicking on it and then click the +Add button. Alternatively, you can slog through the alphabetized list of choices below. Do this for all of the conditions, procedures, allergies, etc., that you'd like to enter.

In the not-so-distant dystopian future, every health care company you deal with -- from your hospital to your insurance company to your corner pharmacy -- may begin linking to sites like Google Health so that you can import all of your health records automatically and automatically share them with your doctor. At present, however, only a few companies have the ability to link to your Google Health profile. But if you happen to fill your prescriptions at, say, Longs Drug Stores, you can instantly import a list of all your medications by linking your drug store profile to your Google Health profile. To use this feature, click Import medical records and browse the list for health services providers that you deal with. If and when you find one, click Link to profile.

Drug interactionsOnce you've entered any drugs you are taking or imported prescription info from a linked pharmacy, Google Health will scout for any possibly dangerous drug interactions and alert you by placing either a hexagon or a triangle with an exclamation point beside the Drug interactions link in the left menu. The service will also alert you to any notices from your linked service providers.

Find your doctorsYou can add your family practitioner, surgeons, or any other doctors you visit to your profile by clicking -- what else? -- Find a Doctor in the left menu. Choose a type of practice from the drop-down list, then type your doctor's name in the search field and click the Search button. When you locate the doctor you're looking for, click Save to medical contacts to add them to your profile.

Add emergency contactsTo round out your profile, add an emergency contact by clicking Medical Contacts and choosing Create a contact from the next screen. Enter your spouse, parents, or any other person who you'd like to have notified in the event of an emergency, and include as many detailed notes about them as possible to help your health care provider communicate with them.

Print it outOnce you've entered all of your data into Google Health, all that remains is to keep it updated and choose Print from the upper-right corner of the screen to print out a fresh copy for your health care provider, family members, or anyone else you'd like to entrust with your data.

PC World is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Microsoft launched a comparative shopping feature in its Live Search engine on Wednesday. The service offers consumers a rebate on purchases made through the site, a scheme that could lure shoppers from Google and Yahoo.

The idea for Microsoft's "Live Search cashback" came from a Web site called Jellyfish.com, which Microsoft bought for an undisclosed amount last year.

Products found during a search eligible for a rebate are denoted with a gold coin icon with a U.S. dollar sign in the center. The rebate is based on a percentage of the purchase price and is determined by the advertiser.

For example, a search for a 4GB flash memory SD card from SanDisk showed a rebate of $2.12 offered by a retailer for a card priced at $52.99.

So far, the cashback option will only be available to U.S. citizens. Shoppers must set up a Microsoft cashback account, where the rebate money is held. When the amount reaches $5, Microsoft will either mail a check or transfer the money to a PayPal account or bank account. The rebate money is not released until 60 days after the purchase date in case the item is returned.

The cashback program offers an advantage for advertisers in that they only have to pay when they sell an item, known as a "pay per action" fee. It also avoids the problem of click fraud, where bogus clicks on an ad drive up marketing costs.

With the U.S. economy slowing, Microsoft's cashback program may be more appealing to advertisers with smaller budgets who only want to pay for completed transactions rather than for click-throughs from Google ads, said Mike Davis, senior analyst for Ovum in London.

"The Microsoft bit will potentially be more attractive to people with less money to spend," Davis said.

The cashback feature also thrusts Microsoft into an online retail market where it could potentially affect businesses such as eBay and Amazon.com, Davis said.

Persuading people to change search engines isn't easy, since people tend to stick with the one they're most comfortable with, said Alex Burmaster, an Internet analyst with Nielsen Online. For many people, that's been Google.

But it's a step in the right direction for Microsoft despite a consensus that Google will most likely dominate the search market for at least the next two years, Burmaster said.

"I think Microsoft should be applauded for doing this," Burmaster said.

The cashback site is one way Microsoft is trying to draw interest in its Live Search engine, which ranks a distant third place compared to Google and Yahoo.

Google was used 58.4 percent of the time by Web surfers in December 2007, according to data released by Comscore, which tracks the search engine market. Yahoo held a 22.9 percent share, with Microsoft at 9.8 percent.

Last week, Comscore said the number of visitors to Google's Web properties surpassed Yahoo for the first time in April, at 141 million. Yahoo's sites came in a close second with 140.6 million visitors with Microsoft's Web sites coming in third at 121.2 million visitors.

Microsoft's desire to boost of the popularity of its search engine also seems to be at the heart of its contentious discussions to acquire Yahoo. As of late, Microsoft is reportedly interested in buying assets related to Yahoo's search engine.

An exhibition of technology being used in the Beijing Olympics opened here Wednesday, with mixed results in demonstrating one of the Games' themes of "Hi-tech Olympics."

Although presented in English as "Hi-tech Olympics" (the Games' other two themes are "Green Olympics" and "People's Olympics"), in Chinese it appears literally as "Technology Olympics." As such, its translation may be raising expectations for the use of IT at the Beijing Games, even though few if any new technologies or innovations will be implemented.

"Green Olympics" has come to the forefront among the three themes, and even the technology being used seems to be aimed at addressing environmental concerns such as "zero emissions in the immediate Olympic Park area" and holding a "basically carbon-neutral Olympic Games," as stated by Science and Technology Minister Wan Gang at a news conference two weeks ago.

The Science and Technology Olympics Exhibition is as much a propaganda exercise as it is vendor showcase. Some vendors -- all of whom are official Olympic sponsors -- had representatives on hand to answer questions about their products, but branding was downplayed.

On display were Samsung TD-SCDMA (Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) mobile phones, making use of China's limited, domestic 3G service that will be available to 15,000 users during the Olympics. In three tries, the handset failed to connect with China Mobile's mINFO2008 3G content system. "Well, it's a little slow," said the booth representative. When asked if 3G wasn't supposed to be faster than GPRS, which is widely available in China, she said, "yes." "Where's the Samsung guy?" she asked her two colleagues. However, the handset maker's representative was not located.

One service not previously mentioned in relation to the Olympics is PTT (Push-To-Talk), which allows mobile handsets to function like walkie-talkies. A China Mobile representative said that PTT-enabled handsets would be available in China shortly. He declined to identify brands that would be available, although he said that as an official Olympic sponsor, Samsung handsets would likely be used during the Games. He also said the service could be available in China later this year, but that it would be aimed at groups such as conference organizers. "There's no need for the service on a person-to-person basis," he said, despite significant uptake of the service for just that purpose in the U.S. and other markets.

Also on display were traffic control systems, including a taxi tracking system to provide real-time road conditions to monitors. Although it did not confirm earlier figures of 15,000 vehicles, a chart showed that a taxi's tracker will use GPS to send the car's location and speed to a central traffic control room. Other systems can then be used to try to improve flow, such as automatically switching or holding traffic lights.

The exhibition runs through May 25 at the Beijing International Exhibition Center.

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Despite trailing rivals in several individual categories, IBM's RAD (Rational Application Developer) nonetheless had the highest user satisfaction scores among several IDEs rated in an Evans Data study being released on Wednesday.

Users of RAD scored it higher than users of other IDEs had rated their own development platforms of choice. Some of the other entrants included Oracle JDeveloper, Microsoft Visual Studio, and NetBeans.

"It's safe to say that RAD's users love their IDE and tools as well as the support and care they get from IBM," the Evans report, known as the company's "IDE Scorecard," said.

There were 1,200 developers worldwide who were involved in the study, which was funded by Evans. The company calculated user satisfaction based on user rankings in 15 different categories. RAD scored 170 points based on Evans' rating system, but only about five points separated it from the third-place finisher, Visual Studio.

Ranked in descending order were: RAD, JDeveloper, Visual Studio, Sun Studio, Adobe Creative Suite, Delphi, NetBeans, and MyEclipse. The seventh- and eighth-place finishers were the only open source IDEs included in the study. Originally, 15 IDEs were rated, but the number was pared down to eight.

Even with the growing prominence of SaaS, IDEs still are critical, said John Andrews, Evans president and CEO. "They still remain very, very important and core," Andrews said.

"There's still a huge amount of development [that] is contingent upon IDEs," he said.

Missing from the survey, though, was the base open source Eclipse IDE, which instead serves as the basis for other IDEs rated in the study, such as MyEclipse and RAD.

"It's really not an out-of-the-box IDE. It's an IDE that you've got to assemble, whereas [the] others are out-of-the-box IDEs," Andrews said.

In other categories pertaining to individual characteristics of IDEs, RAD did not fare so well. It was ranked seventh out of eight in ease of use, last in its editor capabilities, and fifth in availability of third-party tools to work with it. RAD did finish tops in the application modeling tools, quality of technical support, make/build functions, sample applications, and profiler categories.

Other winners in individual categories included:

* Visual Studio, for its debugger, editor, and size and quality of its user community. * Delphi, for ease of use, compiler performance, ability to integrate third-party tools, and availability of third-party tools. * Adobe Creative Suite, for Web design tools. * Sun Studio, for performance of resulting applications. * JDeveloper, for documentation.

Advanced Micro Devices' next-generation graphics processors will ship with GDDR5 (Graphics Double Data Rate 5) memory from Qimonda, the companies said Tuesday.

AMD's upcoming ATI Radeon R700 graphics chips are scheduled for release in the coming months and will offer a significant improvement over the company's current graphics chips, according to AMD executives. The R700 is the first AMD graphics chip to support GDDR5 memory.

GDDR5 chips offer much higher data rates than GDDR3 and GDDR4, which are supported by AMD's Radeon HD 3800 series graphics processors, currently AMD's most powerful graphics chips. GDDR5 chips also consume less power than other memory types.

Memory maker Qimonda will supply the GDDR5 chips used with the first R700 chips that hit the market, but AMD is working with other suppliers, including Samsung Electronics and Hynix.

Qimonda said its GDDR5 chips are being produced in volume and have started shipping to AMD, suggesting that the launch of the R700 is not far off. AMD did not say when the next-generation graphics chip will be introduced.

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