Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/267626509?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Friday, November 30, 2012
Europe Joins Free Internet Chorus
The European Union announced on Friday that it would oppose attempts to increase regulation of the Internet at a United Nations conference that will take place next week in Dubai. This move comes as some countries have called for tighter rules on Web service providers and phone operators. The International Telecommunications Union, an agency within the United Nations, is hosting the event.
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Thursday, November 29, 2012
Bring Nomadic Employees Back to the Mothership - Philip Tidd ...
By 2015, 1.3 billion people worldwide will be working remotely. That's almost 40% of the entire global workforce. While we can thank technology and increasingly flexible office policies for the shift away from the office, for many companies, mobility has simply been an unintended consequence of trying to keep pace with change, as well as a calculable means to rein in real estate costs. But while the movement toward less square footage and mobile workforces will likely continue, we shouldn't discount the importance of the office.
Having consulted with scores of companies over the last twenty years, I have seen the power of physical place. A good workplace bonds employees to one another in ways that virtual communication cannot replicate. It reconnects employees to the company and offers an organization the chance to showcase its culture. A good workplace can transform a business.
But today's offices need to be reimagined ? and redesigned ? to make them more effective for a mobile workforce. Perhaps we even need to rethink the term "office" itself. I like "mother ship" and "home base." These terms reveal a yearning for the office as a place associated with comfort, security, learning, and collegiality ? even family. The office needs to be a place that calls nomadic employees back home, because it has the potential to refresh and energize them ? not stress them out with distractions and unwanted interruptions.
In a mobile world, companies need to think about what their office space is actually achieving. Does your physical space reflect what makes your company unique? Does the office inspire employees, promote camaraderie, and enhance productivity? When planning your office, it's important to consider some general trends happening in today's workplaces:
? An evolving need for collaborative and private space. The open-plan office promised increased collaboration, economies of space, and cost savings. What it's delivered is a dilemma: visually exciting offices with lots of buzz on the one hand, and on the other, a lack of privacy and quiet. Research done by Gensler (the firm where I work, sometimes remotely) bears that out. Our findings show that the most significant factor in workplace effectiveness is focus work. Employees rate it as their most critical work activity, but our research shows it as the least-supported activity in today's offices. To function well, an office must provide a healthy mix of spaces ? quiet, collaborative, and social.
Take Microsoft's new office at Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam: the colorful, inspiring environment gets the mix of group space and private space right. And it helps that the Microsoft team has blended this new working environment with an open, trust- and results-based management style, allowing staff to choose how and when they go to the office ? all supported by excellent virtual collaboration tools.
? The rise of the emotionally intelligent workplace. Much has been written about the power and impact of the emotionally intelligent leader. If one of the key roles of the new generation of modern executive is to create a more emotionally open, collaborative working environment, then we should be designing physical space that supports that mandate.
To that point, organizations such Telefonica in Germany are doing away with their standard, hierarchical office layout (enclosed team spaces) and are instead creating an open, vibrant space with a variety of settings for meetings and collaborations among teams. When leaders moved out of their enclosed cellular offices and into the team space, not only did they feel more connected to their teams, but their teams felt more connected to them as leaders ? and to the whole sense of Telefonica's community.
22squared, an advertising agency in Atlanta, Georgia, is likewise fostering greater emotional/working connections at the office among previously siloed teams to bolster productivity. Conceptualizing its new workplace as a city grid with avenues, boulevards, and intersections among desks, the agency literally designed interaction into its space and increased collaboration by 20%, according to pre- and post-occupancy research done by Gensler.
? Generation whY in the workplace. More than anyone else in the workplace today, Millennials question the status quo. Why email when IM is faster? Why not form instant teams around a project when and where it works best? In response to this young workforce, a new workplace model is evolving in social media companies and other start-ups ? one built on speed, transparency, democracy, and a melding of virtual and real office spaces. In addition to a high degree of mobile technologies and channels used externally and internally, these offices are forging new ground in what I call "un-designed" space and what researchers call "empowered" space: Ultra flexible working arrangements that allow staff to team up as they like, where they want, and even take control over the design of their personal workspace.
In London's Tech City, young digital media companies are embracing self-customized office space which employees can furnish as they like. At ustwo, for example, the CEO is often found working in his off-the-shelf children's wooden garden playhouse situated inside the 10,000-square-foot open office. He typically takes his Skype calls or videoconferences from his laptop in the playhouse. Not only does it provide some privacy, but according to ustwo, it encourages creativity and is a culture-defining symbol.
There is still plenty of room and purpose for the twenty-first century office. It's one of the few tangibles that binds the nomads together and interprets for them in a very real way, how we work today. And if we design them right, our offices can be a catalyst for better business and a happier, more productive, and more connected workforce.
Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/11/bring_nomadic_employees_back_t.html
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School Testing In U.S. Costs $1.7 Billion, But That May Not Be Enough: Report
Matt Chingos has an idea that will likely roil the scores of parents and teachers who think the U.S. tests its students too much: we might actually spend too little on standardized testing.
But he's not alone.
"He shows, that with the debate about testing in this country -- it costs too much money -- it's absolutely wrong," said David Coleman, president of the College Board, the company that administers the SATs.
In a report released Thursday titled "State Spending on K-12 Assessments," Chingos, a fellow at the Brookings Institute, tallied up the cost of standardized testing, a subject that has fueled much debate and speculation. After sending out countless Freedom of Information Act requests and rummaging through boxes of documents, he arrived at an estimate of $1.7 billion.
"While it may seem like a lot, it's more or less a drop in the bucket," Chingos told The Huffington Post. All told, that number represents one quarter of one percent of all money spent on education. According to his calculations, ending all testing and reallocating the cost to personnel could either decrease the student-teacher ratio by .1 students per teacher, or give teachers a raise of $550.
These numbers matter because even in an environment of economic woe and budget cuts, tests are about to see the biggest wave of change since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, which required states to test students annually from third grade onward. Now, 45 states are preparing to adopt a new generation of tests aligned with the Common Core State Standards, a set of teaching goals aimed to get kids to think more deeply about things like fractions and evidence-based arguments, and to eventually prepare them for college or the workforce. Funding for these exams has so far come largely from the federal government, but will dry up six months before the tests' first administration.
And with testing at an inflection point, Common Core advocates are seeing this moment as a critical one in marketing their veracity to teachers. On various polls, only between 20 and 25 percent of teachers indicate that they think the standardized tests associated with NCLB are accurate reflections of their students' learning. The perceived fallibility of these exams is part of what gave NCLB such a bad rap in the first place. In fact, this week, the American Federation of Teachers launched a campaign to end the "fixation on standardized testing" (but the union does support the Common Core.)
"You get this rage up that we're wasting time testing, and you're making testing shorter and shittier," Coleman said at a Brookings panel Thursday. "And then people say the test is all multiple choice and bad. We've worked ourselves into a set of stupidities when really -- I'll say it -- we might want want longer, more thoughtful exams." And those exams might cost more.
Nancy Grasmick, a previous Maryland education chief, saw the drawbacks of these transitions. "We lost something when we went to a multiple-choice test that did not require writing but required filling in the right circle," Grasmick said.
Such changes can bring anxiety for the test takers. Gerard Robinson, the former education chief of Florida and Virginia, put it this way: "I won't pretend that tests don't matter and there's no anxiety -- but I also tell people there's anxiety with sex. There's anxiety with sex, but there isn't any talk about getting rid of that."
For his study, Chingos was able to procure testing contracts from 44 states and Washington, D.C., and found that, on average, states spend about $27 on testing per student between grades three and nine. In general, he found that smaller states spend more: D.C. spends $114 per student, whereas New York spends only $7.
"This relatively low level of spending on assessment, combined with concerns that the quality of tests in many states is not high enough to use them for high-stakes purposes such as teacher evaluation, strongly suggests that states should seek efficiencies in order to absorb budget cuts without compromising test quality or to free up resources that could be reinvested in upgrades to assessment systems," Chingos wrote.
"We don't spend much on testing in this country," he said, "perhaps we're spending less than we should."
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/29/school-testing_n_2214362.html
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'We had the best crop in years': Residents feel pinch after FDA shutters plant
PORTALES, N.M. (AP) ? Farmers in a revered peanut-growing region along the New Mexico-Texas border should be celebrating one of the best harvests in recent memory.
Instead, millions of pounds of their prized sweet Valencia peanuts sit in barns at a peanut butter plant shuttered for two months amid a salmonella outbreak that sickened 41 people in 20 states.
Farmers are worried about getting paid for their peanuts, nearly a third the plant's 150 workers have been laid off, and residents wonder what toll an increasingly contentious showdown between the nation's largest organic peanut butter plant and federal regulators could ultimately have on the region's economy.
The tension boiled over when the Food and Drug Administration on Monday said it was suspending Sunland Inc.'s registration to operate because of repeated safety violations, meaning the plant will remain indefinitely shut down as the company appeals the decision. The company had planned to reopen some its operations this week after voluntarily recalling hundreds of products and closing its processing and peanut butter plants in late September and early October.
Many in this flat, dusty and solidly Republican farm town of about 20,000 denounce the FDA's tactics as unfair and unnecessarily heavy-handed ? and become defensive about the shutdown of the largest private employer in town.
"We had the best crop in years, and then these (expletives) came in and started this," said resident and local telecomm worker Boyd Evans.
For the first time ever, the FDA is using authority granted under a 2011 food safety law signed by President Barack Obama that allows the agency to shut food operations without a court hearing.
The FDA said inspectors found samples of salmonella in 28 different locations in the plant, in 13 nut butter samples and in one sample of raw peanuts. Inspectors found improper handling of the products, unclean equipment and uncovered trailers of peanuts outside the facility that were exposed to rain and birds. Inspectors also said employees did not have access to hand-washing sinks, and dirty hands had direct contact with ready-to-package peanuts.
The FDA has inspected the plant at least four times over the past five years, each time finding violations. Michael Taylor, the FDA's deputy commissioner for foods, said the agency's inspections after the outbreak found even worse problems than what had been seen there before.
The salmonella outbreak was traced to Trader Joe's peanut butter produced at the plant. Sunland produces products for a number of national grocery and retail chains, and New Mexico Peanut Growers Association President Wayne Baker says the industry generates about $60 million in the region each year.
Valencias are a variety of peanuts that come almost exclusively from eastern New Mexico. Because of their sweet flavor, they are favored for organic and natural peanut butter products because they require few additives.
The peanut is celebrated every year at the town's annual Peanut Valley Festival, and most residents have stories related to peanuts, whether growing up on a peanut farm, helping to haul them to harvest or knowing peanut workers or farmers.
"Peanuts is, like, everything here," said local shopkeeper Brittany Mignard.
The plant's retail store remains open, although its shelves are bare of its own products. The few items remaining include peanut brittle made in Lubbock, Texas. The shelves are stocked with jelly, but no peanut butter.
Baker, who is also a Sunland board member, said the company had never been notified of any past violations. And the company has vehemently denied FDA allegations that it knowingly shipped any potentially tainted products.
Plant officials said they were blindsided by the FDA's suspension on Monday. Just hours before it was announced, the plant had announced plans to start shelling the bumper crop on Tuesday. Plant officials said they had notified the FDA last week of their plans to reopen the processing operations while waiting for approval to resume making peanut butter.
"The FDA is overreaching its power and putting out information that isn't true," Baker said. "We don't understand what is going on. We don't think we are guilty."
FDA officials wouldn't comment on his allegations, saying it was an ongoing investigation.
Food safety expert and Cornell University professor Bob Gravani said given the number of salmonella outbreaks in recent years, he believes the FDA is being heavily scrutinized about why they are not using their rules more frequently or more aggressively.
Putting aside the "he-said, she-said" between the FDA and the company, he said, "I would say suspension is warranted in this case."
This is not the first major outbreak since the FDA gained authority to pull a facility's registration in the 2011 food safety law. An outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe in 2011 is linked to at least 30 deaths and investigators found similar conditions at Jensen Farms in Colorado. Unlike Sunland, however, Jensen Farms did not attempt to restart operations after the recall and FDA investigation. The company later filed for bankruptcy.
Baker said officials have been trying for the past two months to cooperate with the FDA to get the plant reopened.
"That hasn't worked," he said. "But we are not going to give up. We are going to fight this. We have got no choice."
He said officials have begun calling the state's senators and congressman and talking with other agricultural groups about getting help in Washington with an appeal of the FDA action. No hearing has yet been scheduled.
Coburn said about 30 percent of the plant's workers were laid off Monday.
Although peanuts can be stored for a while, Coburn and Baker acknowledged that time is of the essence for getting to work on what Coburn said were "many, many millions" of pounds harvested from this year's crop.
Farmers, Baker acknowledged, are worried about getting paid. But he said Sunland has committed to paying them for their crops.
Under a worst-case scenario, he said, Sunland could sell the peanuts to other producers.
___
Associated Press reporter Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.
___
Follow Jeri Clausing on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/jericlausing
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/peanut-butter-plant-closure-angers-mexico-town-211629739.html
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Six Ways I Used To Choose My GPS | Apollo Nights
So allow us to get cracking by spending the time to take into consideration the reason why we desire one and just how we intend to be using this specific Gps unit system? The spot I feel is most beneficial to think about that will help us all find out some information is almost always to have a look at if we are using google maps often, and / or we need to print out guidelines from Google or Yahoo so as to get someplace. Definitely in case you are doing these things you could possibly be in need of the latest Gps unit. So we possess an answer at this point that explains why, but still you will find other items you ought to take into consideration before investing in virtually any system.
Because you might have seen the options on the market today when compared to a three years or so previously seem to be never ending. Seeing as there are numerous choices the price is as well wide-ranging which means that you must invest time to see what his or her budget can pay for well before all of us go out shopping.
Early Global Positioning System
Image by Chris Hunkeler
You can see the coordinates burned into the black and white cathode ray tube screen on this early example of a Global Positioning System (GPS) aboard the USS Midway.
The R-2363/SRN-25 (V) Receiver, Radio Navigation was manufactured for Naval Sea Systems Command by contractor Magnavox in Torrance, California under contract N00024-87-C-4261.
Bauer, Rodger. Early Global Positioning System. 2012. private photo collection of Chris Hunkeler, Carlsbad, CA.
DSCN7796_cr
Maybe some thing tiny like the wrist watch type is best for you because it is so convenient as well as simple to take away with you. Would you rather one that you can hold within your palm such as a cellular phone? Ok, it?s possible that mobility is not very important so having something which you can easily mount without the need of removal is a better solution. A great number of possible choices you will find, but reducing them prior to starting out is a good strategy.
The very next query we should answer is the features questions. Which of them do we need to have as well as really want inside our Gps device unit? Screen size could possibly be important to us all or maybe if the developer provides regular road map up-dates. What about clarity together with legibility from the display screen? Think about memory of things such as lap times, or maybe overall travel times and so on.
Commuter traffic detection is one of the best latest features the more recent devices are equipped for and is usually considered if this is necessary. Possessing this option may greatly lesson your travel times and those pesky times when you get trapped on the freeway at a grinding halt.
Considering the new distraction legislation which are coming out or out in many places, we will need to consider a product that has a hands-free option as you wouldn?t like to be pressing any kind of buttons when you are out and about operating your bicycle or simply driving around in the car.
I am hoping these guidelines we have in this article do help out with the really difficult decision concerning selecting a bicycle gps computer for the car or for an individual?s street bike journeys. Complicated isn?t a term we would like to utilize in trying to find just the right Gps device product this is the reason we have produced this article based on our own earlier ordeals in buying units for our family car and also our own bicycles. If you do this you will locate a model that provides you with all the options you?re looking for furthermore at a reasonable cost.
Tips To Chose A Gps Device
Tags: Gps unit, display screen, specific gps unit, gps device, Screen size, recent devices, System Image, grinding haltSource: http://www.apollonights.com/communications/six-ways-i-used-to-choose-my-gps/
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Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Getco eyes $1.4 billion deal with Knight Capital
(Reuters) - Getco Holding Co proposed a $1.4 billion deal that would see it merge into Knight Capital Group Inc
The main attraction for Getco and Virtu, both trading firms, is Knight's U.S. market-making business, which uses computer models to match buy and sell orders in stocks and options and executes around 10 percent of U.S. equity trading volume.
But the approach of the two firms to a deal with Knight differ, and it remained unclear which - if any - would be able to clinch a deal. Knight's shares were up 13.5 percent in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Getco's proposal effectively would see it bought by Knight, while Getco's management, led by Chief Executive Daniel Coleman, would take control of the combined firm. The combined firm would be publicly traded, which would allow General Atlantic, which invested in Getco in 2007, to take the firm public. Getco also already has a 23.8 percent stake in Knight.
Getco's cash and stock deal would value the combined company at $3.50 per share, according to a regulatory filing and sources close to Getco. That is a 41 percent premium over Knight's closing price on November 23, the day before rumors of possible offers for Knight appeared in news reports.
Virtu offered to take Knight private for at least $3 a share in cash and take it private, a source with knowledge of the offer said. Virtu would look to sell off Knight's businesses other than market-making.
Private equity firm Silver Lake, an investor in Virtu, would be a backer of such a deal, along with other unnamed investors, the source said.
Knight makes markets and trades in more than 19,000 U.S. equities. For the first nine month of 2012, Knight's U.S. market-making unit traded an average of 3 billion shares a day.
Besides being a market maker, Knight runs bond and foreign exchange trading platforms and owns a reverse mortgage lender. It also holds a stake of about 20 percent in Direct Edge, the No. 4 U.S. cash equities exchange.
Knight acknowledged receiving Getco's offer but did not comment further.
The bidding for Knight comes months after the firm had to be rescued over the summer by Getco and other investors. It suffered a trading loss of $440 million in August due to a software glitch that unleashed a flood of orders to the New York Stock Exchange.
The rescue was led by Jefferies Group
As part of the deal, General Atlantic, Blackstone and TD Ameritrade, were given seats on Knight's board.
GETCO OFFER
Chicago-based Getco, the No. 2 designated market maker at the New York Stock Exchange with more than 850 listing assignments, disclosed its offer in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. The filing included an offer letter to Knight directors.
Getco is proposing a two-step deal. The first step would involve Knight buying Getco in exchange for 242 million newly issued shares and warrants, with different strike prices, to buy an additional 69 million shares.
In the second step, the combined entity would launch a tender offer to buy up to 154 million shares at a cash price of $3.50 per share. Getco and its former owners would not participate in the tender offer.
The deal would leave the new company with more debt. Getco said it has lined up $950 million of fully committed financing from a "large financial institution."
Knight CEO Tom Joyce would become chairman of the board under the terms of the proposed deal. The Getco proposal also calls for four directors of the new company to be nominated by Getco shareholders. Sources said Getco is ready to proceed with the deal as early as December 3.
Knight shares were up 40 cents to $3.37 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
(Reporting By David Henry in New York; Editing by Paritosh Bansal, Gerald E. McCormick, John Wallace and Tim Dobbyn)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/getco-bids-control-knight-capital-140905496--sector.html
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90% of GLBTs vote for Obama, helped the President win close election
The Community Marketing & Insights (CMI) pre-election poll showed that 90 percent of gay men and lesbians voted for Barack Obama.
The election poll of 6,625 GLBT United States citizens was administered Nov. 2-4 and responses were received from all 50 states. GLBTs represent an estimated five percent of United States voters and an overwhelming majority supported the coalition that produced Barack Obama?s victory. Ninety percent support for Obama was seen in all battleground states and the percentage was similar to the level Obama received from the African American community.
Demonstrating the importance of the election, 95 percent of GLBTs indicated they would vote in the election and 41 percent indicated? the had already voted before election day.
Final data indicated that 90 percent supported Barack Obama, six percent for Mitt Romney and four percent for a third party candidate.
GLBTs gave 41 percent of money to the Obama campaign.
Respondents were part of CMI?s international research panel of 70,000 GLBT people. Community Marketing is a an GLBT market research firm providing market intelligence and insights to more than 100 corporate brands globally.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OutAboutNewspaper/~3/_nfAQi7kZxw/5643
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Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Fostering Curiosity: Mars Express relays rocky images
ScienceDaily (Nov. 26, 2012) ? For the first time, ESA's Mars orbiter has relayed scientific data from NASA's Curiosity rover on the Red Planet's surface. The data included detailed images of 'Rocknest3' and were received by ESA's deep-space antenna in Australia.
It was a small but significant step in interplanetary cooperation between space agencies.
Early on the morning of 6 October, ESA's Mars Express looked down as it orbited the planet, lining up its lander communication antenna to point at Curiosity far below on the surface.
For 15 minutes, the NASA rover transmitted scientific data up to the ESA satellite. A few hours later, Mars Express slewed to point its high-gain antenna toward Earth and began downlinking the precious information to the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, via the Agency's 35 m-diameter antenna in New Norcia, Australia.
The data were immediately made available to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California for processing and analysis, proving again that NASA's amazing new rover can talk with Europe's veteran Mars orbiter.
Curiosity's ChemCam images Rocknest3
The information included a tremendously interesting image acquired on 4 October by Curiosity's ChemCam Remote Micro-Imager camera.
ChemCam comprises the camera together with a Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectrometer, which fires a laser at targets and analyses the chemical composition of the vaporised material.
The laser zaps areas smaller than 1 mm across on the surface of martian rocks and soils, and then the spectrometer provides information on the minerals and microstructures in the rocks.
"The quality of these images from ChemCam is outstanding, and the mosaic image of the spectrometer analyses has been essential for scientific interpretation of the data," says Sylvestre Maurice, Deputy Principal Investigator for ChemCam at France's Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP).
"This combination of imaging and analysis has demonstrated its potential for future missions."
ChemCam laser targets
A third image, relayed separately by NASA, indicates the locations of the laser target points on Rocknest3, as seen by the RMI camera.
'Rocknest' is the area where Curiosity stopped for a month to perform its first mobile laboratory analyses on soil scooped from a small sand dune. Rocknest3 was a convenient nearby target where ChemCam made more than 30 observations using 1500 laser shots.
A wide-angle context image was acquired by Curiosity's MastCam and shows Rocknest3 as targeted by ChemCam. Rocknest3 is about 10 x 40 cm, or roughly the size of a shoe box.
Fostering Curiosity -- and others
ESA's Mars orbiter has also relayed data for NASA's other surface missions -- Phoenix, Spirit and Opportunity -- since 2004, and it relayed Curiosity's radio signal during its arrival at Mars last August.
During the Curiosity mission, Mars Express is set to provide additional relay slots, while maintaining its own scientific observation programme, under an ESA-NASA support agreement.
It can also rapidly provide relay services in case of unavailability of NASA's own relay orbiter or if there is a problem on the rover itself.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by European Space Agency (ESA).
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/astronomy/~3/iqKUdE5FOGY/121126130945.htm
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Developing Your Small Business Marketing Plan
Along with your business plan, your small business marketing plans is only of the most important long-term plans you'll make for your small business. Some small business owners choose to ignore that advice, instead preferring to fly by the seat of their pants, so to speak, to "wing it." While some of those small business owners are successful, they're not nearly as successful as they could be had they laid out a well-defined small business marketing plan.
Source: http://hidupakudancintaaku.blogspot.com/2012/11/developing-your-small-business.html
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Reach For Brian Urlacher Jersey Achievement Using These Trusted ...
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Monday, November 26, 2012
Intrade boots US customers after federal charges
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Intrade, the online prediction market that gained popularity as an informal oddsmaker for the presidential election, shut itself to U.S. customers Monday after regulators charged it with illegally facilitating bets on future economic data, the price of gold and even acts of war.
Hours after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a complaint in federal court, Intrade posted in its user forum and on its news page that it could no longer allow U.S. residents to trade "due to legal and regulatory pressures."
U.S. residents must begin closing their accounts and withdrawing their funds immediately, the website said. It said customers must resolve open predictions by Dec. 23 or the site would assign them "fair market value" and close them.
The CFTC's civil complaint charged that Intrade and its operator solicited customers to trade investment contracts that technically are options. Options must be traded on approved, regulated exchanges.
"Today's action should make it clear that we will intervene in the 'prediction' markets, wherever they may be based, when their U.S. activities violate" laws and rules enforced by the agency, CFTC enforcement director David Meister said in a statement.
By requiring that options be traded on approved exchanges, Meister said, regulators can "police market activity and protect market integrity."
Intrade did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
It was unclear whether regulators believe that all trades on Intrade by U.S. investors are illegal. The CFTC said it would not comment further because the matter was in litigation.
Intrade is known for facilitating bets on award shows, weather and other high-profile events. The prices at which customers are willing to make those bets are cited as informal odds. TEN also used to allow betting on sports through other sites that it operated.
For example, on Monday the site gave "Argo" a 28.5 percent chance of winning the Oscar for best picture and assigned a 19 percent chance that the United States or Israel would launch an airstrike against Iran by June 30.
The CFTC oversees markets for futures and options, investments that allow people to bet on the future prices of commodities like grain and oil. Those contracts help farms, airlines and other businesses to protect themselves against unexpected price swings.
In the complaint, the CFTC alleged that Intrade, based in Ireland, had illegally solicited everyday U.S. investors to use the website between September 2007 and June 25 of this year.
Intrade and its operator, Trade Exchange Network Ltd., falsely claimed in annual reports that the contracts were not being sold to ordinary U.S. customers, the CFTC said. Regulators want the companies to pay fines and return profits that were obtained illegally. They want the site and its operators barred from any future activities related to options trading.
Intrade users reported on Twitter that the site already blocks them from trading contracts related to the prices of oil and gold.
One of them, Joe Schilling, posted an image of an email he said was sent by Intrade in 2009, stating that crude oil and gold contracts were unavailable to U.S. users "due to a regulatory request" from the CFTC.
TEN settled similar charges of soliciting U.S. investors in 2005. In an order filed with that settlement, the CFTC said that U.S. customers accounted for up to 40 percent of Intrade's total customer base. TEN paid $150,000 and agreed to halt further violations.
Under the settlement, TEN agreed to use pop-up windows to tell U.S. customers which bets were not available to them. It said it would cooperate in any future investigations.
Monday's complaint includes charges that TEN violated that earlier settlement. The company used Intrade to offer illegal options including on the future prices of gold, changes in the unemployment rate and a measure of U.S. economic output, the complaint said. It said TEN failed to provide the pop-up notices mandated in the 2005 order.
___
Daniel Wagner can be reached at www.twitter.com/wagnerreports.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/intrade-boots-us-customers-federal-charges-220646079--finance.html
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Turkish Airlines Eyes Possible $500 Million Lease Deal: Bankers ...
Nov 26, 2012
Turkish Airlines Eyes Possible $500 Million Lease Deal: Bankers
ISTANBUL (Reuters) ? Turkey?s national carrier Turkish Airlines is in talks with banks about a leasing arrangement worth around $500 million to help fund its plane orders from 2014, bankers familiar with the negotiations said on Friday.
The airline is considering using Enhanced Equipment Trust Certificates (EETCs) for the first time ? financial securities issued by banks under which the airline gets ownership of the planes when the certificates mature, the bankers said.
Turkish Airlines was also considering issuing sukuk ? Islamic bonds ? or eurobonds next year to finance its aircraft acquisition plans from 2014, they said.
Officials at the airline could not be reached for comment.
?Turkish Airlines is seeking various financing opportunities abroad. Sukuk or eurobond issuances might be also on the agenda, but EETC is outweighing them, which would be used for the first time for financing aircraft orders,? said one banker.
?Turkish Airlines? borrowing would not be small in size, around at least $300-$500 million for each transaction.?
Turkish Airlines said last month it had decided to buy 15 Boeing B777-300ERs by 2017, with an option to buy five more, and 15 Airbus A330-300 planes between 2014-2016.
EETC transactions, effectively a form of secured debt financing like mortgages, are often used by airlines in Europe and the United States, but are rarer elsewhere.
Aircraft leasing firm Doric Nimrod Air Finance Alpha said in June it would use EETCs worth almost $590 million to help finance the sale of four Airbus A380 planes to Emirates airline.
SOURCE:?http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-turkishairlines-financingbre8am0gy-20121123,0,5924666.story
Source: http://www.worldleasingnews.com/news/turkish-airlines-eyes-possible-500-million-lease-deal-bankers/
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Fred Wilson Is Making A 'Huge Error' And 'Simply ... - Business Insider
In a widely-read blog post from over the weekend, Fred Wilson, a Union Square Ventures partner and investor in Zynga and Twitter, said that investment in consumer Internet startups is down for three reasons.
- "The consumer web has matured."
- "The consumer is moving from desktop/web to mobile/app."
- "The momentum/late stage investors have moved from consumer to enterprise."
Dave McClure, another famed venture capitalist, says Wilson and other VCs are making a "huge error" if those trends are causing them to invest in enterprise startups instead of consumer Internet startups.
McClure says he respects Wilson but that "consumer and small business internet opportunities are FAR from ?over?, and any such commentary is foolish, narrow-minded, and simply dead wrong."
His post:
Recent articles by the?WSJ,?Fred Wilson, & others are noting a shift in investor interest to enterprise and away from consumer. If true, this is a?huge error? at least for entrepreneurs, angels, and smaller funds. There is no better time than the present to build cheap & scalable software-based businesses that make money. And while there is lots of new potential for using consumer marketing techniques in the enterprise, let?s not be too hasty in digging an early grave for the Interwebs, shall we?
Having been in the valley for over twenty years, and an investor in startups for almost ten, I?ve seen at least 2 investor cycles of switching back & forth from consumer to enterprise. While i agree with Fred it?s helpful to know what themes downstream investors are funding, IMHO?most VCs switching from consumer to enterprise are clueless about why they?re doing so. For the few VCs who do have their shit together and have some domain-specific expertise, i am quite confident they will continue to invest in areas they know well whether the market is up, down, or sideways.
As the saying goes:?if you don?t know where you?re going, any road will take you there.
Regardless, though I respect Fred greatly, let me state my position for the record ? consumer and small business internet opportunities are FAR from ?over?, and any such commentary is foolish, narrow-minded, and simply dead wrong (altho, it may indeed be ?over? for most large funds attempting to do seed-stage investing at any scale similar to YC or 500). In addition, i most certainly take issue with the statement that it?s ?harder than ever to build a large audience?? nothing could be further from the truth. Almost every possible internet distribution channel has MORE users than ever before ? whether it be search, social, mobile, video, local, SMS, email, chat, etc. And for those of us who invest outside silicon valley and new york, the global consumer opportunity is huge as well in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and other fast-growing internet and mobile markets.
In fact, the assertion that consumer is ?tougher? is so absolutely incorrect and provably wrong that i?m puzzled why anyone would even say such a thing. The number of recent internet services that have grown from nothing to hundreds of millions of users is frankly rather astonishing ? Pinterest, Instagram, Groupon, Zynga ? all of these took less than a few years to get to hundreds of millions of users and in some cases billions of revenue. While Groupon & Zynga have certainly fallen Icarus-like from higher heights, it?s still the case that both are amazing for how fast they grew and acquired users via search, social, and other channels. Perhaps mobile app distribution can be challenging sometimes, due to Google and Apple still learning how best to offer organic or paid distribution on mobile. But regardless we?ve invested in several startups that have gathered millions of users quickly, and in a few cases tens of millions of users in under a year (ex: 9GAG, PicCollage, Cubie).
But i think most of this discussion is missing the main point. Historically, the venture capital industry has been used to finance high-risk business where significant capital is required to get companies off the ground, usually in two key areas: building product, and acquiring customers. But in today?s world, it?s certainly MUCH cheaper & faster to build product than ever before, and due to the explosion in adoption of consumer platforms, it?s also cheaper to acquire customers than ever before (altho here is where larger VC can be helpful in scaling up fast). This is why it?s such a great time to be an internet entrepreneur ? it?s REALLY EASY to bootstrap most internet and mobile businesses to at least the operational stage on a very small amount of cash. But in the early days, capital is nowhere near as important to the company as domain expertise. VCs who don?t have operational experience in building product or internet marketing probably shouldn?t be active investors in early-stage consumer and small business internet services. And clearly this is what we are seeing with the smarter funds ? they?re waiting until Series A or B when companies have clear traction before they jump in, when they may require larger amounts of capital to finance growth. However, later-stage investors are also aware many companies can get to break-even?withoutraising big rounds of venture capital, and may simply choose to operate on their own cashflow, or perhaps debt-based financing. Thus, bigger funds may miss out on many ?small? deals that break out early and/or get to profitability early.
Lastly, there is one other big trend that is likely to force larger VC funds out of consumer and small business internet services: monetization keeps getting better and better, and exits are getting earlier and more often. Altho internet payment services are still a big pain in the ass, in most of the US and EU it?s taken for granted you can pay online and have goods delivered to your door. While this isn?t the case yet in many big markets in Asia, India, Latin America, and Eastern Europe & the Middle East, give it another few years and it will become commonplace. And as online payments and monetization improves, again we will see less need for venture capital to finance customer acquisition for successful internet businesses. It just won?t be cost-effective for big VC to finance all the ?little? startups that are going to be built on consumer commerce and small business services. There will be thousands of small wins, but larger funds can?t handle the scale required to do so many small investments. Maybe we need something like the SBA small business loan equivalent, but on the the equity side.
So for all of you folks ready to call it a day on investing in consumer internet, i?m happy to see you go? that just means less competition for those of us ready to really dig in and invest at scale in all the millions of new ?small? businesses that will emerge and dominate the globe in coming years.
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Sunday, November 25, 2012
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An Useful Customer's Information To Aurangabad
Situated in the Native indian Condition of Maharashtra, Aurangabad is a well known location for visitors. There are a lot of vacationer areas in and around Aurangabad, but the Ajanta - Ellora Caverns surpass them. The town is known as after the Mughal Emperor Aurangazeb. Although being uncommonly silent and without much crowds of individuals, the biggest town in the north Maharashtra is popular for the caves and the historical monuments that enhance the position. The viewer's secrets and techniques for Aurangabad will tell you more about the caves that are a aspect of the Native indian lifestyle and all the historical activities connected to this town.
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Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/An-Useful-Customer-s-Information-To-Aurangabad/4285842
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Saturday, November 24, 2012
50Plus : Health : Obesity gene could protect against depression
The notion that obese people are more likely to be depressed is challenged by Canadian researchers.
It has long been thought that people who are obese are more likely to be depressed ? whether because of self esteem and?discrimination?issues resulting from?their?appearance, the?perceived?lack of physical activity and healthy eating habits, or the fact that anti-depressants are known to cause weight gain.
A new study at McMaster University in Ontario has found the opposite to be more likely. While it is common knowledge that depression has a genetic component, no gene has been found to be associated with the illness.
Researchers decided to test how the obesity gene may be linked to depression, and the results showed that a variant of the FTO gene may actually give carriers a lower risk for depression, no matter its effect on their weight. The new findings challenge the common stereotype that overweight people are depressed, since researchers found that those with the genetic mutation were actually protected from the disease.
?This suggests that the FTO gene may have a broader role than initially thought with an effect on depression and other common psychiatric disorders,? they wrote in the study report.
This protective effect was found to be the case regardless of ethnicity, as it was consistent in four different studies around the world.
For the McMaster study, led by David Meyre, associate professor in clinical epidemiology and biostatistics, researchers?analysed?the FTO gene mutation in 6,591 people with depression, along with 21,000 others who were not diagnosed with the disease.
While the study may not affect the way doctors diagnose and treat depression, researchers hope it will change the biased and limiting view that obesity leads to depression. Next steps include an examination of the 59 other genes associated with obesity as well as similar research with various diseases linked to obesity, such as Type 2 diabetes.
Sources: CBC.
Photo ?iStockphoto.com/okeyphotos
READ MORE
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The obesity epidemic
Fatty food linked to depression
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Copyright 2012 All Rights Reserved - ZoomerMedia Limited.
Source: http://www.50plus.com/health/obesity-gene-could-protect-against-depression/196375/
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Congo army fights back, rebels hold Goma
Dai Kurokawa / EPA
M23 rebel fighters rush from Goma to the town of Sake to reinforce positions as residents of Sake flee with their belongings on the road between Goma and Sake in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Nov. 22, 2012. Many of the fleeing residents stopped at an internally displaced person camp between Sake and Goma.
Reuters reports ? Congolese troops fought back on Thursday against rebels who rejected calls from African leaders to quit the eastern city of Goma, captured earlier this week in a major upset that forced U.N. troops to withdraw.
Thousands of people fled the area of clashes around the town of Sake, as M23 rebel fighters rushed from Goma to reinforce their positions against an army counter-offensive.
Both sides claimed control of Sake as night fell on the troubled eastern area. There was no independent verification of who was holding the town.
The M23 rebel movement, widely believed to be backed by Rwanda, has vowed to "liberate" all of the vast, resource-rich country after taking Goma, a provincial capital on the Rwandan border, ramping up tensions in a fragile region. Full story?
Jerome Delay / AP
Women run after Congolese soldiers and rebel fighters battle over the eastern Congolese town of Sake, Nov. 22. The woman in orange, identified as Mamou, said she lost her husband by a fatal wound to the head from incoming mortar rounds. Thousands fled the M23 controlled town as the militants seeking to overthrow the government vowed to push forward despite mounting international pressure.
Phil Moore / AFP - Getty Images
Thousands of Congolese flee the town of Sake, about 16 miles west of Goma, following fresh fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nov. 22.
Phil Moore / AFP - Getty Images
Congolese children sit on a step in front of M23 rebels in Sake, Nov. 22, 2012. Rebels took the town yesterday, but were engaged in heavy gunfighting this afternoon as government-allied militia tried to retake it.
Dai Kurokawa / EPA
A woman who fled her home in Sake emerges from a shelter at an internally displaced person camp in Mugunga, between Goma and Sake, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Nov. 22.
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Scientists rush to save iconic manta rays
By Rebecca Pilkington-Vincett
A feeding station popular with manta rays is not far from the Misool Eco Resort and Conservation Center in Raja Ampat, eastern Indonesia.
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News
RAJA AMPAT, Indonesia ?They?ve been described by one scientist as ?pandas of the ocean.?
?They?re such an iconic species, beloved by divers,? said Andrea Marshall, director of the?Marine Megafauna Foundation, who came up with the description during an interview with NBC News. ?They?re just amazing.??
Unlikely as it might seem, the panda and the manta ray have a lot in common.
Just as scientists still haven?t been able to confirm the number of pandas in the wild, they also have no idea how many manta rays exist.
?Globally we don?t know how many manta rays there are,? said Guy Stevens, director of the U.K.-based?Manta Trust,?whose research is largely based around manta populations in the Maldives.
But -- again, like the panda -- scientists think it?s a small population.
?If they?re lucky, (manta rays) have two pups (over several years).?That?s a very low reproductive rate, especially compared to your average fish,? said Dr. Heidi Dewar, a biologist at the?Southwest Fisheries Science Center, part of NOAA.
Anecdotal evidence suggests mantas are under threat, and China may be a major reason for it.
Manta rays are vulnerable on two fronts: as bycatch ? getting caught in industrial fishing nets targeting different types of tuna ? and, increasingly, because of traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM.?
Manta rays are abundant in the waters around Raja Ampat, eastern Indonesia.
Manta rays are harvested for their gill rakers, which allow the fish to filter food from water.? Some Chinese believe they have healing properties or are good at cleaning out toxins. One Chinese-language?website claims gill rakers enhance the immune system, promote blood circulation and aid in the treatment of cancer, skin disease and infertility.
?It?s just cartilage,? said Dewar, echoing skepticism expressed by many scientists.
Medicinal fad?
Conservationists say manta rays aren?t even considered ?traditional? medicine and argue no reference to the animal can be found in TCM books dating back a century. But with rising incomes that enable Chinese consumers to readily adopt medicinal fads, the impact on manta rays has accelerated over the past 10 to 15 years.?
?A lot of it is completely unrecorded,? said Stevens, who worked on a project founded by Shark Savers and WildAid to document the scope of gill-raker harvesting.?
Understanding the beauty and diversity of Raja Ampat, aka 'Underwater Eden'
Researchers looked at the location, value and species involved. ?It does seem the majority of all of those gills that are being traded are ending up in China,? Stevens said.
The conclusion, published in a report called?Manta Ray of Hope, found that roughly 3,400 manta rays and 94,000 mobulas?(related to the manta ray family) are caught each year, but the numbers reflect only reported catches. ?Unreported and subsistence fisheries will mean true landings are much higher,? the report said.?
On patrol with a shark ranger in Indonesia's marine treasure trove
Visits to random TCM shops in Beijing and Shanghai turned up no gill rakers. In fact, a veteran pharmacist at Tongrentang, a long-established purveyor of traditional Chinese and herbal medicines, said she had never heard of manta rays being used this way.
But the Manta Ray of Hope report estimates a mature ocean manta could yield up to 15 pounds of dried gills that can bring in as much as $230 a pound in a market in China.?
Australia moves to ban fishing trawler with 900-foot-long net
Marshall said she has noticed an uptick in manta fishing. ?I?ve been (in Mozambique) in the last decade ? and we?ve seen an 87 percent decline in the population because of the fishing.??
Unlike many shippers, Chinese merchants who transport cheap products from the mainland for export to Africa ?want to fill [their unloaded cargo vessels] with resources wherever they go.? In Africa, they fill it up with wood, fish or shark?s fin,? she said.??They?ll go out to the local fisheries along the coastline and scout for these products.??
The scientist has spoken to members of local communities, who say the Chinese offer ?new nets, new lines, new hooks.?(The Chinese traders) say to them, ?If you get the sharks or the mantas or the turtles, you get all the meat. You can keep all the meat. You just sell us the things you don?t normally eat.'??
Protecting a ?threatened? species
Mantas were listed last year as ?threatened? under the international Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species.
The?International Union for the Conservation of Nature?has classified the manta ray as ?vulnerable? to extinction.?
PhotoBlog: Raja Ampat archipelago: The world's last paradise
Chinese scientists have also weighed in.?
?In the last two years, we have conducted evaluations of the manta ray and submitted a recommendation to the government to list it as a protected species,? said Professor Wang Yanmin from Shandong University?s Marine College.
?There is no regulation for protecting the manta ray so sales of mantas are not illegal,? said Feng Yongfeng, founder of Green Beagle, a group that promotes environmental protection.
Groups like Manta Trust are focusing on getting manta rays listed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). But scientists have their work cut out for them.?
?It?s very difficult to get listed on CITES.? They ask for a lot of detail that is difficult to pin down,? said Marshall. ??Maybe in the terrestrial world, biologists can provide those kinds of details. ?When you?re talking about the megafauna [or large marine species] world, it?s very difficult.??
Marshall ? who discovered a second type of manta ray in 2008 and is in the process of identifying a third -- acknowledges little is known about them.
AFP - Getty Images file
A huge manta ray weighing more than 2,200 pounds and measuring nearly 9 yards in length was caught off the eastern coast of China this past September.
Manta births a mystery?
Vexing questions include the manta?s life span, details of their reproductive ecology and migratory patterns.?
?I could wrap my life up in 20 minutes if I could talk to them,? she joked. ??It has been driving me insane for the last ten years because I haven?t been able to figure out where they give birth.? It?s 2012 and nobody has ever seen a manta give birth in the wild.??
And research is painstaking. For one, concentrations of the animal tend to be around far-flung islands.?Stevens of Manta Trust cited the costs of tracking mantas and the difficulty in locating and knowing how to study them.?
With technological improvements, however, scientists are gaining some ground. Satellite tags are one way to help the research.??What do they do when we can?t observe them? I?d love to follow an animal to find out how they spend their time,? said Stevens. ?The tagging gives you small glimpses of them.??
Two dive instructors at the Misool Eco Resort and Conservation Center in Raja Ampat have uncovered a revenue stream to offset research costs: tourism.
?One manta ray can raise $1 million (U.S. dollars) in tourism income over its lifetime,? said Rebecca Pilkington-Vincett, citing a figure contained in the Manta Ray of Hope?report.
PhotoBlog: Raja Ampat archipelago: The world's last paradise
With the blessing of the resort, Pilkington-Vincett and Calvin Beale launched a research project off the surrounding reefs. ?
Last season, the duo raised $32,000 from donations by recreational divers who accompanied them on dives to gather DNA samples and tag the mantas.?
With the money, they have bought three satellite tags and collected numerous DNA samples.? They are sending off the data to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for analysis by a graduate student.?
With online databases such as the?Manta Research Project, where some of Pilkington-Vincett and Beale?s data are logged, or the?Manta Matcher, developed by Marshall and operating much ?like the FBI fingerprint online database,? research on the manta ray has become rooted in a global exchange among scientists and amateurs alike.?
Until its secrets are fully revealed, the manta?s mystique seems guaranteed.?
?I think it?s fascinating,? said Dewar of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, ?that there is such a large and amazing creature that has so many mysteries attached to it.??
Additional research by Le Li, Johanna Armstrong and Yanzhou Liu.
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