Caviar vending machines pop up at L.A. malls

17 min.

A. Pawlowski , NBC News contributor

Craving caviar in Los Angeles? There?s a vending machine for that.

Head to three local malls???Westfield Century City, Westfield Topanga and Burbank Town Center ? and you?ll see one of the brand new machines dispensing the prized roe, as well as truffles, escargot and mother-of-pearl spoons.

Prices start at $5, going all the way up to $500, which will get you one ounce of Imperial River Beluga Caviar.

The project is the brainchild of Kelly Stern, who co-owns Beverly Hills Caviar ? a gourmet food supplier located in the tony California community.?

The business plan: Reach customers in wealthy neighborhoods surrounding the malls who may not have convenient access to caviar and expose everyday shoppers to the delicacy, especially younger ones.

?All my friends and family knew about this for a year-and-a-half and no one wanted to tell me that I was crazy, but I could see it in their eyes,? Stern said.

?I did not know what was going to happen when people saw it.?

Stern shopped around the world to find the right kind of vending machine ? it had to keep the caviar cold, have a touch screen, an Internet connection and an attractive display for its gourmet contents. It also had to accept credit cards as well as cash.

She ended up buying parts from seven different countries and putting everything together in Los Angeles. Each machine costs about $85,000???including hardware, software, security and maintenance ? and has about $50,000 worth of inventory inside. The caviar is sold in jars and stays fresh for about a year.

Stern wants to franchise the business to ?every single city in America and the world? when she has more experience with the machines, which she describes as experimental. Stern says no one has ever thought of caviar as a turnkey enterprise, something she wants to change.

?A lot of the people that sell caviar now are old people. They are a dying species and they don?t cater to the young people at all,? Stern said.

?So I?m seeing all the teenagers that stop by as my future assets. They will grow up and become the president of the U.S. or the president of Microsoft and they will think about caviar. They will remember that they went into the mall and saw the machine and that?s where they are going to buy their caviar.?

The project has attracted lots of attention since the machines were unveiled on last week on?Black Friday, prompting Stern to hire a publicist???not to promote the venture, but to manage the curiosity it has sparked.

Industry observers, however, were skeptical whether the business model would be a success.

?It?s interesting, it?s a conversation starter and it?s a marketing tool? (but) I don?t think it?s going to sweep the nation,? said Tim Sanford, editor-in-chief of ?Vending Times,? adding that his staff chuckled when they heard of the concept.

?My guess is that most people who want caviar know how to get it.?

Vending machines often put?much-desired products in high-traffic areas where they can be sold swiftly to people who are there for some other purpose, so the caviar angle sounds more like a way to generate buzz, Sanford said.

But Stern projects she will recoup her money in the next few months, especially with the help of the holidays and awards season in Los Angeles.

?Everybody is talking about it. This is a dream come true,? she said.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/caviar-vending-machines-pop-l-malls-1C7339203

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Column: Time for college players to demand justice

Hey, major college football player. Can you give us a few minutes of your time?

Don't worry about drawing the attention of your school administrators. They're too busy scurrying off to a new conference or lining up some exorbitant television deal to notice what we're about to discuss.

You're getting ripped off. Big time.

Have you considered a strike? Really, I'm not kidding

Oh sure, you're getting a college education out of the deal, but that's not even close to being fair. While you're out there busting your butt every day, the guys in suits are padding their coffers with your efforts.

What you guys need is someone like Marvin Miller, the late, great baseball union chief who died this week. Someone who can drop some knowledge about just how badly you're getting hosed. Someone to get you organized. Someone with the guts to say, "Play fair, or we're walking."

Yep, walk.

While the last thing we need is another labor dispute in sports, there may be no greater miscarriage of economic fairness than what's going on amid the ivy-covered columns of higher education.

"There's a reason we call it higher education," said Ellen Staurowsky, a professor in the Department of Sport Management at Drexel University in Philadelphia. "It's supposed to aspire to higher ideals, to try to do what's best from a social justice point of view. It's such a shame for higher education to have a system in place that has really exploited the athletes in a way that is not defensible."

Think that college degree makes it defensible? Not even close.

Oh sure, a school such as Georgia might fork over around $40,000 a year to pay for your room, board and tuition, but let's do some quick math and see how you're making out.

Say a football program provides 85 scholarships a year. Multiply that by what they're spending on each of you, and it comes out to $3.4 million.

So, what does the school get out of this?

Well, let's look again at how the Bulldogs are making out.

According to Forbes, which does an annual ranking of the nation's most valuable programs, Georgia turned a nifty little profit of $53 million on football last year. That figure will only rise as leagues expand into super conferences, television deals keep hurtling toward the stratosphere, and the suits figure out how much more they can make off a playoff system.

A four-team postseason starts in 2014, and ESPN has already signed on for a dozen years. You know it's just a matter of time before the four-team playoff become an eight-team affair, then an eight-team endeavor morphs into a 16-team version. Why not? With labor costs so low, schools would be foolish not to add a few more playoff rounds and cram a few more millions into their already bloated accounts.

If that cuts into your time for classwork and taking final exams, so be it.

Maybe you haven't gotten the memo yet, but our colleges and universities aren't all that concerned about providing an education that will actually enhance your life after football. They tout tougher academic standards and improved graduation rates, but they're mainly concerned about keeping you eligible to take the field.

That's where your real value lies.

When you look around the classroom, you're likely to see many of your teammates. That's not mere coincidence. Last year, The Associated Press found that schools continue to be adept at a tactic known as "clustering," where they put a bunch of you in the same class, one they figure will make it easier for you to pass. They probably didn't bother asking if you were actually interested in that field of study.

Even with clustering and all the extra tutoring they provide, three out of 10 football players still fail to earn a degree. Better hope you're good enough to make it to the NFL. And if you are, you'll be in for a real eye-opening experience. While the stadiums and media coverage might seem largely on par with what you just left behind, there is one big difference.

The paycheck.

Yep, in the NFL, they actually pay you to play.

At that point, it might occur to you, "Hey, why didn't I get a paycheck for the last four years?"

Good question.

A few folks are on your side. South Carolina's Steve Spurrier suggested that he and his coaching colleagues, who also make millions off you, reach into their own wallets to provide a little somethin', somethin' for the help. His plan was derided as folly, the ramblings of an aging coach who doesn't really understand how the system works.

Actually, he knows exactly how it works. But you're young, so we'll let you in on a little secret: People in power are real reluctant to give up their loot, and they'll go to great lengths to tell others why they don't deserve any of it.

Just last week, after Maryland was lured away from its historic association with the Atlantic Coast Conference by the promise of more riches in the Big Ten, another coach floated the idea of giving the players a cut.

As it stands now, the NCAA won't even allow schools to provide a little financial assistance to help your family travel to a bowl game, the bowl game you made possible.

"It would be great to be able to take care of their families or guardian, to be able to help them fly to a bowl game," Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald said. "And take some of the money and allow them to get more money from bowl gifts and things of that nature that they've earned."

A nice gesture, but that's only the tip of this dollar-shaped iceberg.

The NCAA, which senses that you might be getting a little upset with the current arrangement, is considering whether to allow $2,000 stipends for athletes.

Don't be fooled. They're just trying to buy you off.

"It's notable that while coaches have access to representatives who negotiate those multiyear contracts, the athletes are expressly denied that same kind of representation," Staurowsky said. "It speaks to just how big of a conflict there is."

So, let's try this.

Hit up Twitter. And Facebook. And any of those other Web sites you kids hang out on.

Start talking about this issue.

Who knows? If social media can help overturn entire governments, maybe it can bring about real change in college athletics.

We've even got a hash tag for your cause: "treatusfair."

If they won't, tell them you're walking.

___

Paul Newberry is a national writer for The Associated Press. Write to him at pnewberry(at)ap.org or www.twitter.com/pnewberry1963

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/column-time-college-players-demand-justice-235955898--spt.html

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Gildan profit rises on higher printwear sales volume

(Reuters) - Canadian clothing maker Gildan Activewear Inc reported an 84 percent jump in quarterly profit on Thursday, raised its dividend and forecast current-quarter earnings above analysts' expectations, sending its shares up nearly 3 percent.

Gildan said earnings in the fourth quarter ended September 30 were boosted in part by lower cotton costs and higher sales of printwear, clothing on which other manufacturers print their own designs.

The company said it expected first-quarter earnings of 28 cents to 31 cents per share before special items. That is above the analysts' average estimate of 25 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Gildan, which also manufactures private-label and branded apparel, forecast net sales in excess of $400 million for the current quarter.

The company has been shifting its focus away from private-label goods and is making a "significant investment" in marketing its own brands, which include Gildan and Gold Toe. It also holds the U.S. sock licenses for Under Armour Inc and New Balance.

Gross profit margin rose to 28.5 percent from 20.6 percent a year earlier, helped by the lower cotton costs and higher selling prices for branded goods, offset by lower prices for printwear.

Cotton prices are down 23 percent so far this year on expectations of weak demand amid an uncertain economic outlook.

The company forecast fiscal 2013 earnings of $2.60 to $2.70 per share before special items. Analysts were expecting $2.51.

Gildan said it expected net sales of $2.10 billion for the year, compared with the analysts' estimate of $2.22 billion.

The company increased its quarterly dividend by 20 percent to 9 cents per share.

Net income rose to $89 million, or 73 cents per share, in the fourth quarter, from $48.5 million, or 40 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding restructuring costs and other items, earnings were 78 cents per share, while analysts had expected 80 cents.

Net sales rose 17 percent to $561.7 million, just below the consensus estimate of $562.7 million.

Gildan's shares rose 2.9 percent to C$34.04 in early trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bangalore and Allison Martell in Toronto; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Lisa Von Ahn)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gildan-profit-rises-higher-printwear-sales-volume-152308263--finance.html

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Could Bill Clinton be getting a new job in Washington?

DEAR ABBY: My wife and I have been married for five years. I recently discovered that she made between 10 and 20 porn videos when she was 19. We got married when she was 27. We have four kids from two previous marriages.I am devastated. When I confronted her about it, she cried harder than I had ever seen. She said she was lost, and it's the biggest regret of her entire life.I understand how hard it can be to tell someone you have done something like this. I haven't led a perfect life either, and I have my own skeletons and things that I would never mention. But still, I can't get over this. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/could-bill-clinton-getting-job-washington-else-coming-200437492--abc-news-politics.html

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IOC ready to take away Armstrong's Olympic bronze

FILE - This Sept. 30, 2000, file photo shows U.S. cyclist Lance Armstrong waving after receiving the bronze medal in the men's individual time trials at the Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. His seven Tour de France titles erased from cycling's record books, Armstrong still holds claim to one piece of sports silverware: an Olympic medal. The fate of Armstrong's medal will be addressed when the International Olympic Committee executive board meets next week in Lausanne, Switzerland. (AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan, File)

FILE - This Sept. 30, 2000, file photo shows U.S. cyclist Lance Armstrong waving after receiving the bronze medal in the men's individual time trials at the Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. His seven Tour de France titles erased from cycling's record books, Armstrong still holds claim to one piece of sports silverware: an Olympic medal. The fate of Armstrong's medal will be addressed when the International Olympic Committee executive board meets next week in Lausanne, Switzerland. (AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan, File)

LONDON (AP) ? His seven Tour de France titles erased from cycling's record books, Lance Armstrong still holds claim to one piece of sports hardware ? an Olympic medal.

But for how much longer?

The fate of Armstrong's medal will be addressed when the International Olympic Committee executive board meets next week in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Twelve years after Armstrong won bronze in the road time trial at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the IOC wants the medal back after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency's report of widespread doping by Armstrong and some teammates during his seven Tour de France victories from 1999-2005.

The International Cycling Federation, UCI, recently agreed to strip Armstrong of his seven Tour titles and ban him for life.

The board could decide to strip the medal next week or wait another few weeks until cycling's governing body has officially notified Armstrong of the loss of his Tour titles.

IOC lawyers are studying whether the eight-year statute of limitations applies in this case, an issue that could push back a decision. But the IOC's resolve to revoke the medal and wipe Armstrong from the Olympic records is clear; the only issue is the timing and procedure.

"The board will consider this case," IOC vice president Thomas Bach, a German lawyer who heads the body's doping investigations, told The Associated Press on Friday. "The board is following a zero-tolerance policy on doping."

Craig Reedie, an IOC vice president from Britain, added: "We need to get this one behind us."

The IOC opened a disciplinary case last month after the USADA report detailed widespread doping by Armstrong and his teammates. The report called it the most sophisticated doping program in sports.

WADA and the UCI have annulled all of Armstrong's results since Aug. 1, 1998.

The IOC has an eight-year statute for changing Olympic results, but officials believe the decision by USADA and the cycling body to go back 14 years to disqualify Armstrong should clear the way for them to reach back to 2000.

"I would hope we can deal with it because the evidence (against Armstrong) is overwhelming," Australian IOC executive board member John Coates told The Australian newspaper. "USADA and the UCI went outside the eight-year limit on the basis that the statute simply doesn't apply if you have broken the law, so I imagine our lawyer will see if that applies with us."

Two months after winning his second Tour de France title in 2000, Armstrong took bronze in Sydney behind winner and U.S. Postal Service teammate Vyacheslav Ekimov of Russia and Jan Ullrich of Germany.

The IOC has no plans to reallocate Armstrong's bronze medal to any other rider, just as the UCI decided not to pick winners for the Tour de France titles once held by the American. That means Spanish rider Abraham Olano Manzano, who finished fourth in Sydney, would not be upgraded and the third-place spot would be left vacant in the Olympic records.

In August, the IOC stripped Tyler Hamilton, a former Armstrong teammate, of his time-trial gold medal from the 2004 Athens Olympics after he admitted to doping. In that case, Ekimov was upgraded to the gold.

In a bid to head off any legal disputes, the IOC had considered writing to Armstrong requesting that he give up the Sydney medal on his own. But the committee discarded that idea and is pursuing its own disciplinary action.

The chances of Armstrong voluntarily returning the medal seem remote: He posted a photograph on Twitter last month showing him lying on a couch at his home in Texas with seven framed yellow Tour de France jerseys mounted on the wall.

The UCI, which initially questioned how USADA could skirt the eight-year rule, has not yet formally notified Armstrong of its ruling but is expected to do so in the coming days. After that, Armstrong would have 21 days to appeal. The IOC could wait until that period expires, then revoke his third-place finish on the grounds that Armstrong had accepted his disqualification and should send back the medal.

The IOC is also investigating Levi Leipheimer, a former Armstrong teammate who won the time-trial bronze at the 2008 Beijing Games. The American confessed to doping as part of his testimony against Armstrong in the USADA case.

The IOC is looking into the details of his admitted doping, including when the cheating took place, before moving to strip his medal. Finishing fourth behind Leipheimer in 2008 was Alberto Contador, the Spaniard who was stripped of the 2010 Tour de France title after testing positive for clenbuterol.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2012-11-30-IOC-Armstrong%20Medal/id-cd90d7d5c2534a22b91f219681f5b8a4

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The Scooby Doo Picture Frame Gag Gets a High-Tech Spying Twist

Are there any here among us who didn't watch Scooby Doo as a kid, see a villain spying (with blinking eyes) behind a picture on the wall, and secretly wish we could do that? We may never be allowed to carve holes in our walls, but we can still make that dream come true. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/2G3uQ72vPUo/the-scooby-doo-picture-frame-gag-gets-a-high+tech-spying-twist

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Do You Use VoIP on Your Phone?

We've shared tons of ways to make free calls on your smartphone using Voice Over IP (VoIP), but it requires a lot more work than just making normal calls. We're wondering: how many of you are actually using it?

Between setup effort, battery drain, and getting a data-only contract, VoIP can be a pain to get working. How many of you are actually using VoIP services for your regular phone calls? How hard was it to set up? Does it work well? What kind of battery life are you getting? Let us know in the discussions below.

Note: The original version of this article contained a tip about VoIP and battery life, but it was based on an incorrect interpretation about this study regarding VoLTE, which is different than traditional VoIP. Sorry for the confusion!

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/9oC-kLrRYww/do-you-use-voip-on-your-phone

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Internet service goes out across Syria

In this citizen journalism image provided by the Homs City Union of The Syrian Revolution, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, Syrian citizens walk in a destroyed street that was attacked on Wednesday by Syrian forces warplanes, at Abu al-Hol street in Homs province, Syria, Thursday Nov. 29, 2012. Two US-based Internet-monitoring companies say Syria has shut off the Internet nationwide. Activists in Syria reached Thursday by satellite telephone confirmed the unprecedented blackout, which comes amid intense fighting in the capital, Damascus.(AP Photo/Homs City Union of The Syrian Revolution)

In this citizen journalism image provided by the Homs City Union of The Syrian Revolution, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, Syrian citizens walk in a destroyed street that was attacked on Wednesday by Syrian forces warplanes, at Abu al-Hol street in Homs province, Syria, Thursday Nov. 29, 2012. Two US-based Internet-monitoring companies say Syria has shut off the Internet nationwide. Activists in Syria reached Thursday by satellite telephone confirmed the unprecedented blackout, which comes amid intense fighting in the capital, Damascus.(AP Photo/Homs City Union of The Syrian Revolution)

In this image taken from video obtained from the Ugarit News, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, smoke leaps the air from a building after a warplane attack in Homs, Syria, on Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2012. (AP Photo/Ugarit News via AP video)

In this image taken from video obtained from the Ugarit News, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, Free Syrian Army fighters capture a helicopter at the Marj al-Sultan military air base in Damascus, Syria, on Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2012. (AP Photo/Ugarit News via AP video)

In this image taken from video obtained from the Ugarit News, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, Smoke leaps the air from a building after a warplane attack in Homs, Syria, on Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2012. (AP Photo/Ugarit News via AP video)

In this image taken from video obtained from the Ugarit News, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, Free Syrian Army fighters capture a helicopter at the Marj al-Sultan military air base in Damascus, Syria, on Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2012. (AP Photo/Ugarit News via AP video)

BEIRUT (AP) ? Internet service went down Thursday across Syria and international flights were canceled at the Damascus airport when a road near the facility was closed by heavy fighting in the country's civil war.

Activists said President Bashar Assad's regime pulled the plug on the Internet, perhaps in preparation for a major offensive. Cellphone service also went out in Damascus and parts of central Syria, they said. The government blamed rebel fighters for the outages.

With pressure building against the regime on several fronts and government forces on their heels in the battle for the northern commercial hub of Aleppo, rebels have recently begun pushing back into Damascus after largely being driven out of the capital following a July offensive. One Damascus resident reported seeing rebel forces near a suburb of the city previously deemed to be safe from fighting.

The Internet outage, confirmed by two U.S.-based companies that monitor online connectivity, is unprecedented in Syria's 20-month-old uprising against Assad, which activists say has killed more than 40,000 people.

Regime forces suffered a string of tactical defeats in recent weeks, losing air bases and other strategic facilities. The government may be trying to blunt additional rebel offensives by hampering communications.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland condemned what she called the regime's "assault" on Syrians' ability to communicate with each other and express themselves. She said the move spoke to a desperate attempt by Assad to cling to power.

Syrian authorities often cut phone and Internet service in select areas to disrupt rebel communications when regime forces are conducting major operations.

The government sent mixed signals about the Internet outage but denied it was nationwide. The pro-regime TV station Al-Ikhbariya quoted Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi as saying that "terrorists" have targeted Internet cables, interrupting service in several cities.

Separately, state-run TV said the outage was due to a technical failure that affected some provinces, adding that technicians were trying to fix it.

Activists in Syria, reached by satellite telephones unaffected by the outage, confirmed the communications problems.

A young Syrian businessman who lives in an upscale neighborhood of Damascus, which some refer to as part of "the green zone" because it has remained relatively safe, sent a text message to an Associated Press reporter Thursday that said the Internet had been cut in his area and that mobile phone service was cutting out.

He said he was driving Wednesday through the Damascus suburb of Aqraba, near the airport, and saw dozens of rebel fighters for the first time in the area, riding in pickup trucks and motorcycles, and wielding AK-47s.

Their presence so close to the "green zone" may have led to the Internet being cut, said the resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared government reprisal. He said the military was positioned a few hundred meters away from the rebel fighters and had built large speed bumps to enclose the area.

The opposition said the Internet blackout was an ominous sign that the regime was preparing a major offensive.

"I fear that cutting the Internet may be a prelude to a massacre in Damascus," said Adib Shishakly, a Syrian opposition figure from Cairo, Egypt. "The regime feels it is being choked off by rebels who are closing in on the capital from its suburbs. It's a desperate move; they are trying to sever communications between activists."

Renesys, a U.S.-based network security firm that studies Internet disruption, said in a statement that Syria effectively disappeared from the Internet at 12:26 p.m. local time.

"In the global routing table, all 84 of Syria's IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet," Renesys said. It added that the main autonomous system responsible for Internet in the country is the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment, and that "all of their customer networks are currently unreachable."

Akamai Technologies Inc., another U.S.-based company that distributes content on the Internet, also confirmed the complete outage.

Jim Cowie, the chief technology officer at Renesys, said the abruptness of the outage suggested it wasn't due to a severed cable. Syria has several cables that connect it to the outside world, and all of them would have had to be cut at once for a complete outage. A power outage or an intentional shutdown at central Syrian telecommunications facilities is a more likely cause, he said.

"We saw everything go in three to four minutes, which looks like a light switch," Cowie said.

He said the profile of the outage was similar to what the Egyptian government did in January 2011 during the Arab Spring uprising that toppled longtime leader Hosni Mubarak. Egypt switched off the Internet for five days, halting businesses, banking and ? at the height of the demonstrations ? the ability of protest leaders to organize and communicate with each other.

Bahrain's Sunni rulers also jammed cellphones during the military offensive on the protesters' encampment in the capital of Manama in March 2011. Internet service remained at a crawl when the Bahrain's military stormed the city's Pearl Square ? the headquarters of the revolt ? after weeks of street protests.

Ann Harrison, deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said in a statement that the group worried the communications were cut in Syria "to shield the truth of what is happening in the country from the outside world."

The shadowy group of hacker-activists known as Anonymous sent out a tweet Thursday saying that as of 9 p.m. (0200 GMT Friday) it would "begin removing from the Internet all web assets belonging to the Assad regime that are NOT hosted in Syria. We will begin with the websites and servers belonging to ALL Syrian Embassies abroad, which we will begin systematically removing from the Internet tonight." It said the first target was the website of the Syrian Embassy in China.

"By turning off the Internet in Syria, the butcher Assad has shown that the time has come for Anonymous to remove the last vestiges of his evil government from the Internet," Anonymous said in its statement.

Thursday's violence appeared to be focused on southern suburbs near the Damascus international airport, forcing the military to shut the road to the facility. The surrounding districts have been strongholds of rebel support since the uprising began.

At the United Nations, the secretary-general's office said at least four soldiers assigned to the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force in the Golan Heights were injured in the crossfire on the airport road as their unit was heading out for a routine rotation of forces.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the regime has started a major offensive around the airport where rebels have been particularly active in recent weeks.

Abdul-Rahman, who relies on a network of activists in Syria, said large convoys of government reinforcements were seen heading south toward the airport, which is 25 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of Damascus. The fighting was concentrated in and around the suburbs of Aqraba and Beit Saham, he said.

The Syrian Information Ministry later said the airport road was secure after attacks by "terrorist groups" on motorists, according to state TV. It was not immediately clear whether the road had been reopened.

The fighting prompted both Emirates airline and EgyptAir to cancel flights to Damascus.

Despite months of sporadic fighting and deteriorating security in Damascus, the airport has remained open.

But EgyptAir said in a statement that the airline will halt all flights to Damascus and Aleppo starting Friday, until further notice. EgyptAir head Rushdi Zakaria said the decision was due to deteriorating security conditions in Syria.

Syrian TV also said government forces were chasing "al-Qaida elements" around Damascus, mostly in the eastern suburbs of Douma and the southern suburb of Daraya.

The Observatory said the regime used warplanes to hit districts including Daraya, where fighting has raged for days.

The operation around Damascus comes days after rebels made significant advances in the area. Last week, they captured a major helicopter base just outside the capital.

In the southern city of Daraa, where the uprising began, rebels detonated a car bomb near the house of a senior member of the country's ruling Baath Party, killing him and his three bodyguards, activists said. Rebels frequently target regime figures and military commanders.

___

Associated Press writers Barbara Surk in Beirut, Matthew Lee in Washington, Peter Svensson in New York, Peter James Spielmann at the United Nations, Robert H. Reid in Berlin and Aya Batrawi in Cairo contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2012-11-29-Syria/id-e4f01f24465d4312800225cf7c4160fc

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What we know about Superstorm Sandy a month later

FILE - This Oct. 31, 2012 file aerial photo shows the damage to an amusement park left in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, in Seaside Heights, N.J. The National Hurricane Center now says tropical force winds from Sandy extended 820 miles at its widest, down from an earlier estimate of 1,000 miles. Its pure kinetic energy for storm surge and wave ?destruction potential? reached a 5.8 on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 0 to 6 scale, the highest measured. (AP Photo/Mike Groll, File)

FILE - This Oct. 31, 2012 file aerial photo shows the damage to an amusement park left in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, in Seaside Heights, N.J. The National Hurricane Center now says tropical force winds from Sandy extended 820 miles at its widest, down from an earlier estimate of 1,000 miles. Its pure kinetic energy for storm surge and wave ?destruction potential? reached a 5.8 on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 0 to 6 scale, the highest measured. (AP Photo/Mike Groll, File)

FILE - This Oct. 30, 2012 file aerial photo shows burned-out homes in the Breezy Point section of the Queens borough New York after a fire. The tiny beachfront neighborhood told to evacuate before Sandy hit New York burned down as it was inundated by floodwaters, transforming a quaint corner of the Rockaways into a smoke-filled debris field. Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc on parts of the U.S. East Coast a month ago today after tearing through the Caribbean. In the weeks since, the storm's scope has come into sharper focus. (AP Photo/Mike Groll, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 31, 2012 file photo, Joseph Leader, Metropolitan Transportation Authority Vice President and Chief Maintenance Officer, shines a flashlight on standing water inside the South Ferry 1 train station in New York, in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. Governments are seeking money to help head off future disasters, as climate scientists continue to predict rising sea levels and the potential for more bad storms. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants electrical transformers in commercial buildings hauled to upper floors; the ability to shutter key tunnels, airports and subways; and to require hospitals to have backup power on high ground instead of on lower floors or in basements. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 30, 2012 file photo, a parking lot full of yellow cabs is flooded as a result of Superstorm Sandy in Hoboken, N.J. Sandy damaged or destroyed several homes and businesses, more than 72,000 in New Jersey alone, according to Gov. Chris Christie. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, File)

Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc on parts of the U.S. East Coast a month ago Thursday after tearing through the Caribbean. In the weeks since, the storm's scope has come into sharper focus.

DEATHS

Sandy killed at least 125 people in the United States. That includes 60 in New York ? 48 of them in New York City ? 34 in New Jersey and 16 in Pennsylvania. At least seven people died in West Virginia, where the storm dropped heavy snow. Sandy killed 71 people in the Caribbean, including 54 in Haiti.

LOSSES

Sandy is being blamed for about $62 billion in damage and other losses in the U.S., the vast majority of it in New York and New Jersey ? a number that could increase. It's the second-costliest storm in U.S. history after 2005's Hurricane Katrina, which caused $128 billion in damage in inflation-adjusted dollars. Sandy caused at least $315 million in damage in the Caribbean.

DAMAGE

Sandy damaged or destroyed homes and businesses, more than 72,000 in New Jersey alone, Gov. Chris Christie said Wednesday. In Cuba, the number of damaged homes has been estimated at 130,000 to 200,000.

DISASTER AID

New York is seeking $42 billion in federal aid, including about $9 billion for projects to head off damage in future storms. New Jersey is seeking nearly $37 billion in aid, including $7.4 billion for future projects. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg met with congressional leaders Wednesday to encourage quick action on storm aid.

MAGNITUDE

The National Hurricane Center now says tropical force winds extended 820 miles at their widest, down from an earlier estimate of 1,000 miles. Sandy's pure kinetic energy for storm surge and wave "destruction potential" reached a 5.8 on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 0 to 6 scale, the highest measured.

DOWN THE ROAD

Governments are seeking money to help head off future disasters, as climate scientists continue to predict rising sea levels and the potential for more bad storms. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants electrical transformers in commercial buildings hauled to upper floors; the ability to shutter key tunnels, airports and subways; and to require hospitals to have backup power on high ground instead of on lower floors or in basements.

___

Sources: State and local governments, NOAA, AP reporting

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-11-29-Superstorm%20Sandy/id-04fc3913d4224e408b9dd5ee563834db

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Unboxing the iPhone 5

The iPhone 5 is the latest and greatest mobile phone and portable data assistant from Apple. Unbox the iPhone 5 with help from your friends at eHow Tech in this free video clip.

Hi, I'm Dave Johnson, I'm the editor of eHow's Tech Channel, and today let's unbox an iPhone 5. So, what I've here today, is the brand new iPhone Five, it just came out very recently. And with almost all Apple packaging, it looks more like a piece of art than a product that you want to open up, I love this box. So, the first thing you see, when you open up the box, is the iPhone. And in all likelihood, what you've got here, is something that has already been activated by your carrier, Sprint or AT&T. So, I'll take that out, we'll put that aside for a moment, and we can pull out the little bed that the phone was sitting on. And we find some paper work, warranty information, that sort of thing. But there's some fun stuff hiding down, underneath, this looks really awesome. You've got redesigned ear buds, so you can pop those things out and use them to listen to music, and the charger. And last but not least, you've got the charging cable. And let me point that, of course, this end is just standard USB, you've seen USB cables before a million times. But this end, is the contentious, new connector for the iPhone. It doesn't look the old one and in fact, if you have an older iPhone or an older i-device that have the old styled, wide cable. Well, it's not going to fit in your new iPhone Five. But in exchange for that, you get something really cool, and that is, it's symmetric. Have you ever taken a USB cable, tried to insert it in the computer, didn't work, flipped it over, still didn't work, flipped it back the first way. Ah, finally, it goes in. Well, this thing works either way. So, I can pop it in there, or I can flip it around, pop it in the other way, works either way. Alright, so let's go ahead and get started with our new iPhone. So, it's going to take a moment to start up. Once the phone boots, you're on the welcome screen, so I'm just going to slide. And we just walk through some basic configuration and we say, we speak English, in this case. We're in the United States, so we can tap, Next a bunch of times. And it's going to look for a Wi-Fi signal in addition to the three-G. And in this case, I am in a location that has Wi-Fi. So, I'm going to type in my Wi-Fi password. After a moment, it's going to connect to the Wi-Fi network, tap , Next, it'll take a moment to activate the phone. You're generally going to want to enable Location Services, what that's going to do is, let the phone know where it is. So, it can help you find restaurants, and show you where you are on a map, that sort of thing. Now, you have a choice, whether to set it up as a new phone, which you might want to do, if you've never had an iPhone before. Or, you can actually restore data from either the Could, if you're using iCloud, or from iTunes. Say, you've had an older iPhone-four-S. So, I'm setting this up as a new phone, so I'm going to choose that one. Tap, Next, sign in with your Apple ID. That is what lets you buy stuff from the iTunes Store, so that's important to include. After it signs in, you have just maybe one or two more things to do, Agree to the Terms of Service. You have a choice about whether you want to use iCloud or not use iCloud, If you use iCloud, it'll back-up everything on the phone, online, so you don't have to sync with iTunes. I'm going to not use iCloud for the time being, you can always go back and change that. It's going to ask you, if you want to use Siri or not. I suggest using it, it's a lot of fun, especially when you first start using it. Let me demonstrate what that's like. Now, we're actually in our phone. So, if you press and hold the Home button, Siri pops up. And so, I can say, let me restart it. Where's the nearest pizza restaurant? And it gave me a bunch of results, there are 15 pizza restaurants in the vicinity, around me, here in Santa Monica, that's pretty good, because I like pizza. So, I could choose one to give me directions to it, that sort of thing. Also, I just want to show that it's really easy to personalize this, however you like. For example, you could, once you start downloading Apps from the iTunes Store, you'll have pages and pages of these things. But you can take them and actually group them. If you tap an icon and hold it with your finger, you can then move it over another icon, and you've now, grouped them. So, now, when I tap this, I have a name for it, like this is Utilities. And I can have a whole bunch of icons hiding here. So, basically, even if you have dozens or even a hundreds of Apps that you've downloaded from the Store. You can fit them all on one or two screens, that's really cool. And also, don't forget that you're going to want to spend a lot of time, initially at least, getting setup in Settings. Settings is the place on your iPhone, where you can configure everything about your phone. Ringtones, whether you want it to not ring in the evening when you're home having dinner, that sort of thing. The background, wallpaper, all sorts of stuff. And the thing you probably most need to know, before you get on an airplane. The very top item is Airplane Mode, slide that over to On,when you get on the plane. That turns off all the radios on the phone, so you're in compliance with the FAA. And that is the brand new iPhone 5.

Source: http://www.ehow.com/video_12250622_unboxing-iphone-5.html

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Video: First Read Minute

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/50010763/

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LN: Czech military eyes U.S. Black Hawk helicopters

?TK |

28 November 2012

Prague, Nov 27 (CTK) - The Czech military is interested in the purchase of the U.S. Black Hawk helicopters that are to replace its mostly Soviet-made machines, daily Lidove noviny (LN) writes yesterday.

The maintenance costs of the helicopters used by the Czech military are too high, this is the reason for the new plan, LN writes.

"We will opt for smaller, multipurpose machines to be used for the transportation of the wounded and a small number of people as well as fulfilment of supportive tasks including fire," Czech chief of staff Petr Pavel is quoted as saying.

This can be offered by the U.S. Black Hawk, that "acted" in the film Black Hawk Down (2001), LN writes.

The military has admitted that it likes the helicopters, but a final response will only be given by a tender that must be put up by the defence ministry, it adds.

The Sikorsky UN-60 Black Hawk had its maiden flight in 1979 and it is the backbone of a number of militaries in many countries, including the USA, Japan and Turkey. Austria, too, uses it, LN writes.

The deal will be worth three to five billion crowns, for which the Czech military may acquire 20-30 helicopters, it adds.

Black Hawk's chances are increased by their cockpits being assembled by the Czech Aero Vodochody manufacturer, LN writes.

As a result, the deal would help the Czech industry, it adds.

Helplessness, this is the word best describing the state of the helicopter force now, LN writes.

"We do not have old machines, but the military simply refuses to invest anything in them," a military engineer is quoted as saying.

"We are able to do minor repairs, but if something bigger or an overhaul are needed, we simply drop it," he added.

The military will gradually decommission the squadron of MI-24/35 helicopters. Their fate is clear. The machines will be sold, LN writes.

The military does not have the money to invest tens of million crowns in costly overhauls, Pavel said.

The military command is of the view that the purchase of the new helicopters will materialise in 2015-2017, when the life span of most current helicopters expires, LN writes.

"It is reasonable to buy new helicopters. Old machines may have wonderful prices, but as soon as the first repair is needed, the costs rise dramatically," Pavel is quoted as saying.

The intention to acquire new helicopters was confirmed by former deputy defence minister and current Czech ambassador to NATO Jiri Sedivy a couple of months ago, LN writes.

"In the long run, the military will prefer the transition to the platform of some of the Western manufacturers," Sedivy has told the paper.

Now the military is planning to have a single type of helicopters, it adds.

"If helicopters are really needed, they should be able to fulfil a variety of tasks," Pavel said.

($1 = 19.507 crowns)

Copyright 2011 by the Czech News Agency (?TK). All rights reserved.
Copying, dissemination or other publication of this article or parts thereof without the prior written consent of ?TK is expressly forbidden. The Prague Daily Monitor and Monitor CE are not responsible for its content.

Source: http://praguemonitor.com/2012/11/28/ln-czech-military-eyes-us-black-hawk-helicopters

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Mediation combined with art therapy can change your brain and lower anxiety

ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2012) ? Cancer and stress go hand-in-hand, and high stress levels can lead to poorer health outcomes in cancer patients. The Jefferson-Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine combined creative art therapy with a Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program for women with breast cancer and showed changes in brain activity associated with lower stress and anxiety after the eight-week program. Their new study appears in the December issue of the journal Stress and Health.

Daniel Monti, MD, director of the Jefferson-Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine and lead author on the study, and colleagues have previously published on the success of Mindfulness-based Art Therapy (MBAT) at helping cancer patients lower stress levels and improve quality of life.

"Our goal was to observe possible mechanisms for the observed psychosocial effects of MBAT by evaluating the cerebral blood flow (CBF) changes associated with an MBAT intervention in comparison with a control of equal time and attention," says Monti. "This type of expressive art and meditation program has never before been studied for physiological impact and the correlation of that impact to improvements in stress and anxiety."

Eighteen patients were randomly assigned to the MBAT program or an education program control group. All had received the diagnosis of breast cancer between six months and three years prior to enrollment and were not in active treatment. The MBAT group consisted of the MBSR curriculum (awareness of breathing, awareness of emotion, mindful yoga, walking, eating and listening), paired with expressive art tasks to provide opportunities for self-expression, facilitate coping strategies, improve self-regulation, and provide a way for participants to express emotional information in a personally meaningful manner.

Patient response to the MBAT program was measured using a 90-item symptom checklist, completed by each patient before and after the eight-week program. In addition, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used pre and post-program to evaluate cerebral blood flow, corresponding to changes in the brain's activity. Scans were performed at rest, during a "neutral task" (control), meditation task, stressor task and at rest again -- designed to evaluate the general as well as specific effects and provide a thorough analysis of the CBF changes between the pre and post-program scans.

Participants in the MBAT group demonstrated significant effects on cerebral blood flow compared with the control group. The MBAT group showed increases in the emotional centers of the brain including the left insula which helps us to perceive our emotions, the amygdala which helps us experience stress, the hippocampus that regulates stress responses, and the caudate nucleus that is part of our brain's reward system. These increases correlated significantly with a lowering of stress and anxiety, as also reflected in the results of the pre and post-program anxiety scores among the MBAT intervention group.

The observed psychological and neuropsychological changes are consistent with current literature that states that MBSR interventions have shown to reduce anxiety, depression and psychological distress in a variety of populations. These have been associated with improved immune function, quality of life and coping effectiveness in women with breast cancer.

Given the improvements in anxiety levels and observed changes in CBF in the MBAT participants, these findings suggest that the MBAT program helps mediate emotional responses in women with breast cancer. "With the sample size enlarged, perhaps we can extrapolate these results to other disease populations and gain a fuller understanding of the physiological mechanisms by which mindfulness practices confer psychological benefits," says Monti.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Thomas Jefferson University, via Newswise.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Daniel A. Monti, Kathryn M. Kash, Elisabeth J. S. Kunkel, George Brainard, Nancy Wintering, Aleez? S. Moss, Hengyi Rao, Senhua Zhu, Andrew B. Newberg. Changes in Cerebral Blood Flow and Anxiety Associated with an 8-week Mindfulness Programme in Women with Breast Cancer. Stress and Health, 2012; 28 (5): 397 DOI: 10.1002/smi.2470

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/za0u9SshEYI/121128182721.htm

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Dog Backpacking - Exercise - MensJournal.com

Courtesy Ruffwear / Ben Moon Foto

Dog Backpacking

Whether a teacup poodle or a Saint Bernard, dogs of any breed need regular exercise beyond a quick scoot out the back door a couple times a day for a peremptory pee. Most of us simply don't have the spare three to four hours a day to properly walk and exercise our pups. For many dog owners, a typical day includes a short walk in the morning, perhaps a 30-minute walk midday (often by hiring a dog walker), and then a longer walk in the evening. This schedule isn't necessarily bad, but many dogs plain need more exercise in order to maintain their health and just to expend all their energy. Beyond that, certain high-energy breeds will often get frustrated and act out if they aren't stimulated properly by exercise as well. One solution, then, is what we call backpacking: The idea is to give your pooch a modest load to carry to maximize the effect of the exercise they do get (if your dog is old, out of shape, or injured, consult a veterinarian before attempting an exercise regimen).

To get started, try Ruffwear packs, which are sort of like saddlebags for dogs, and let you add weight to pouches on the sides. The age and relative health of your dog are determining factors in how much weight you'll use in the pack, but as a hard and fast safety rule, you should never exceed 20 percent of your dog's body weight. So, for instance, a 50-pound dog should never have more than 10 pounds of weight in its pack. The fun part is coming up with items to use as weights: You can add water bottles, soup cans, 'Harry Potter' books, water, snacks or even a cell phone. Or, for more precision, simply order small one-pound weights online.

As with humans, your dog can be seriously injured if you don't ramp up the weights slowly, so start with a small amount, say, two pounds for the aforementioned 50-pound dog. Walk your dog for a week or two and then add another increment to the pack. Then go another two weeks, and continue this process until you reach the desired or maximum weight for your dog. This will allow your pet to properly adjust and get used to balancing the weight without putting too much strain on its joints. After that, you can introduce Fido to stairs or steep hill runs (make sure your pack is on nice and tight so it doesn't slip off on an incline). Besides helping maintain fitness levels or tiring out high-energy dogs, animals that suffer from arthritis, hip dysplasia, and other joint and muscle ailments may see improvement as well, and live a happier, healthier life.

Source: http://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/exercise/a-workout-fit-for-the-dogs-20121129

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Visa teams up with RBS for V.me's first UK outing

Soon after getting V.me past the beta stage, Visa has signed up with old partner RBS for the UK launch of the digital wallet service. RBS and NatWest customers have started playing with the PayPal rival, and a full-blown rollout is aimed for spring 2013. While BBVA is slated to be the first financial institution to bring V.me to Spain, a French outing is planned for later this year. With mobile payments looking up, not least when springing for a cup of latte, it's yet another step leading towards a cashless world -- albeit a world where plastic still rules.

Filed under: Misc

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Via: Pocket-lint

Source: Visa Europe

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/28/visa-vme-uk-launch-rbs/

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Tips for New College Students to Excel in Life

Bangalore: It is a well known fact that most students have apprehensions about their future and do not have slightest idea about the type of career they wish to pursue while joining college. While this is normal, it is the manner in which they handle such apprehensions, determines those who succeed and those who do not.???

Here is a list of tips that will help new college students to choose and prepare themselves for future career path, as reported by Justin Epley on Come Recommended website.

More: College Degrees with Lowest Unemployment Rates

1. Identify Why You Are in College:

It is essential for every aspiring individual to identify and define the reason why they are in college. Once they have realized the exact motive, they can start charting their career path and plan accordingly. They must realize the undeniable fact that they must build their career by themselves and not depend on the circumstances to build it for them. They must do away with disorder and disorganization in life, and always be prepared to work hard and long, in order to achieve their goal.

More: 15 Best Companies To Work Around The World

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/si-career/~3/2Dqm-XRmz3M/Tips-for-New-College-Students-to-Excel-in-Life-nid-135134.html

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President Obama to Mitt Romney: Lunch and Awkward Conversation?

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PPC Advertising For Instant Traffic - Work On the Internet

PPC in Your Business's Online Marketing Effort

PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising is a powerful internet marketing tool that allows you to instantly place your products and services in front of a multitude of potential buyers. The effect of a properly managed PPC campaign can be immediate and long lating. Commercial keyword phrases can be identified and tapped into immediately on launch of your campaigns, allowing searchers online to find your products quickly. PPC results are often displayed in the first 3 positions of the search engine results pages. Which are directly in the line of sight of the market you are targeting.

In order to run an effective PPC campaign, you must become familiar with search engine marketing (SEM) platforms like Google Adwords and Bing Ads. The advertising platforms are similar to one another and the key similarity is that you only pay for the ads when searchers click the link to your ad. There are several important considerations when creating and optimizing a PPC ad campaign, common to both systems..

Creating a PPC Campaign

Of course the first step in creating effective PPC campaigns will be to complete your keyword research, to ensure that you target commercially viable search queries. Then you will create accounts in Google Adwords and Bing Ads. Of the primary PPC platforms, Google is by far the most popular due to the domination of the search engines it possesses. However Bing Ads are a common choice due to the relative affordability of their CPC advertising (cost per click). Finally Facebook has a highly targeted PPC platform that you may consider.

Once you have set up your accounts it is a fairly straightforward process to create your campaigns, step one is to set your daily budget. You can spend as little as $10/day, or as much as several thousand dollars a day, depending on your available funding.

Once you have decided what your budget will be you have to decide whether you will bid on text based or visual ads, and create an image or headline relevant to your topic. Next you will decide your maximum bid, or the amount you wish to pay for each click at maximum. for the keywords you decided to target in step one.

You will select keywords based on your target market. I like to examine the advertising that is displaying in the dominant positions for ideas on how to design my ads. I also examine display ads when I select an images for display advertising. If you are a dentist seeking new clientele, you might use a phrase like ???free teeth cleaning??? or ???$10 tooth Whitening??? as an incentive to click to your page. The success of your campaign is based on the perceived value of your offer.

Optimizing Your PPC Campaigns

There are many techniques available to the experienced Adwords campaign manager to optimize PPC campaign results. The first and most important aspect of a successful Adwords campaign is to ensure the relevancy of your ad to your landing pages. Google assigns a relevancy score from 0 ??? 10 to any advertisement, and the higher the relevancy score you attain, the cheaper your clicks will be and the greater likelihood of attaining good click through rates (CTR).

Once you have mastered the process of optimization you can maximize your campaigns through replication, using the Adwords Reader and similar tools. Other techniques include the use of negative keywords. A negative keyword is selected to prevent the display of the ad when these keywords are selected in the query. For a chiropractor, in example, you may choose not to display your ad when the term ???pain medication??? is chosen, as searchers seeking advice in that category may click on your ad, but are not likely to engage your services. Another example might be a flooring contractor selecting DIY as a negative keyword.

Laser Target your PPC Campaign

You can not only optimize your adwords campaigns for relevancy, but you can target your campaigns to specific geographic locations. You can target your ad campaigns to a specific distance from your city. If you are a brick and mortar based business in Milwaukee, you may not want to display your ad campaign in Chicago. If you use Facebook for PPC you can micro target to Gender and age categories as well as geographic and interest targeting.

PPC Analysis

Once you have your ad campaigns up and running, you are going to want to track the results of your efforts. Thankfully, the advertising platforms have made the process of tracking your campaigns very simple, you can use the default campaign reporting, or design custom tracking reports from the dashboard of the ad platforms. The purpose of data analysis is to help you improve your overall campaign effectiveness.

Both of the most popular Search engine platforms, Google and Bing provide detailed analytics for your ad campaigns. And Facebook provides detailed reporting functions as well. It does take some time to learn the science of ad campaign analysis, and you may be fully employed in the operation of your business. In this case it may be a good idea to select an experienced Internet Marketing Advisory agency, rather than spending a lot of time learning to create and manage your PPC campaigns. That way you can concentrate on your ROI, instead of the technical process of PPC management.

You have to create relevant, high quality campaigns to properly use Google Adwords and similar PPC ad platforms. To achieve your objectives you will have to target your campaigns to individuals who have a commercial interest in your goods and services, and who display intent to purchase. The key to a successful PPC campaign is to ensure that the keyword phrases are commensurate with this objective. When you target and optimize correctly, you will send highly targeted traffic to your landing pages, and realize a solid ROI on your campaigns. If you fail to properly optimize your campaigns, you may end up spending a lot of money, yielding limited results.

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Source: http://www.workoninternet.com/business/home-business-small-business/miscellaneous/220305-article.html

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Tornado in Italy

November 28th, 2012 at 1:16 pm by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, News, Weather

?? Check out the video of the tornado in Taranto, Italy.? The twister injured at least 20 (some reports now say 1 missing and 40 injured.? The tornado hit at 11:30 AM Weds. ? local time (5:30 AM EST) ? and damage appears to be at least EF2.? Here?s a link to more video and pictures.? Taranto is in southern Italy on the Mediterranean Sea.? Here?s video of a tornado that hit the city in Oct. 2010.

Note:? The north mid-lake Michigan buoy was retrieved either yesterday or this morning.? The south buoy (40 miles west of Holland) was still there at Noon today showing a water temp. of 47.8, 3.3 foot waves and an air temperature of 35.2.? The satellite loop shows mostly sunny skies across our area.

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Source: http://blogs.woodtv.com/2012/11/28/tornado-in-italy/

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Logistics, GIS and Disaster Response | GPS World

A 40-foot recreation of a 19th-century lighthouse rises inside the atrium of Lockheed Martin?s Center for Innovation.

An exercise in planning for months proves timely in light of Hurricane Sandy

By Art Kalinski

I was going to write about the increasing presence of social media at GEOINT 2012, but I?ll cover that next month since Hurricane Sandy made an exercise I attended last week more significant in its timeliness.

The Disaster Response Integrative Logistics Exercise was a joint effort of the Institute for Defense & Business and Lockheed Martin. Heading up the effort was retired U.S. Ambassador David Litt of the IDB and Corey Cook of Lockheed Martin. The almost week-long event was held at the Lockheed Martin Lighthouse located in Suffolk, Virginia, near Norfolk. The 65,000-square-foot high-technology facility is designed for experimentation and prototyping using analysis, modeling and simulation. It?s a reconfigurable command and control operations laboratory that permits participants to test and analyze concepts in a gaming environment.

The stated purpose of the disaster response exercise was: ?Given the nature, frequency, location and severity of disasters, inter-organizational collaboration ? to include the private sector ? is becoming increasingly critical to the efficiency and effectiveness of logistics in disaster responses.?? The exercise involved more than a 100 participants from the private sector, government agencies, non-profit organizations, and military services. Lou Kratz, Vice president and managing director, Logistics and Sustainment, Corporate Engineering & Technology for Lockheed Martin, stated that ?Today?s crisis response efforts struggle with effective collaboration among participating organizations, especially in the domain of logistics. This trend cannot continue in an era of 21st-century logistics capabilities. With global resources available from public sector and private organizations, we all need to collaborate effectively to help our communities and businesses recover.?

The Lockheed Martin Lighthouse in Suffolk, Virginia, site of the Disaster Response Integrative Logistics Exercise.

And collaborate we did! The list of participants was quite extensive and quite diverse. To give you a sense of the attendees, here is a partial list of organizations represented:

• commercial companies included DHL, Maersk, Florida Power and Light, Fluor, Home Depot, Walmart
• federal government agencies included FEMA, DHS, GSA, HHS, USAID, State Department
• military organizations included NAVSUP, NORTHCOM, USACE, USAF, USMC, USN, SOUTHCOM, National Defense University, USCG, NORTHCOM
• NGOs included United Nations agencies, the Red Cross, Operation Blessing, Catholic Relief Services and many more.

Conference attendance was significantly impacted by Hurricane Sandy, which also highlighted its timeliness.? FEMA, USAID, USACE, and the Red Cross, who were confirmed attendees and were instrumental in the development of the DRIL exercise, were deployed to Hurricane Sandy just hours before the start of the event. Fortunately, attendance to the DRIL by multiple organizations and substitute personnel was still robust, allowing for a highly successful exercise.

The DRIL exercise had robust attendance despite Hurricane Sandy.

Some of the exercise objectives included defining and understanding different agency logistics capabilities, leadership structures, institutional and regulatory obstacles, differences in cultures, missions and operating procedures while developing metrics to evaluate performance in disaster response efforts. To accomplish the objectives, all the participants were organized into four integrated teams that were then separated at times into functional teams and then reassembled with representatives speaking for each team to the entire group of attendees.

Since this was the first exercise of its type, it was a learning experience for all involved and focused on the basics of personnel interactions and group consensus.? Each participant had access to his or her own computer, common computer resources and pre-developed exercise parameters. There were many artificial assumptions presented to the teams, and the team members made even more assumptions and guesses as they worked through the individual scenarios. Most of the exercise consisted of reviewing the effects of Category 5 hurricanes hitting the Dominican Republic, South Florida and Virginia, so there was a domestic as well as international impact. We participated in our groups, listening to individual team members with specialized knowledge and experience, then prioritized the delivery of needed resources and services. As the exercises ramped up, there were many animated discussions in which basics such as water, food, shelter, medical, electric power and transportation infrastructure were prioritized and justification documented.

I made several observations to myself as the exercises progressed. First, there are definite cultural differences between federal, military, NGO and commercial agencies. Not bad differences, just different. Second, individual personalities can steer the group dynamics and outcomes. And third, situational awareness is critical to effective disaster response. Geospatial technology was not part of this first exercise, but would clearly have been valuable to provide a common operational picture. That level of complexity would not have been practical for this initial exercise, but it does lead me to the ?Solutions? room next to the main exercise area.

In a space adjacent to the main exercise room was a ?Solutions? room that showcased potentially helpful technologies. The room was open to exercise participants toward the tail end of the week. It consisted of a diverse assortment of commercial and government solutions that addressed some of the issues? the teams struggled with during the week. Examples include a new computer-based system developed by the Navy Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) that is similar to the commercial Kayak flight search system. The Transportation Exploitation Tool (TET) was explained to me by Greg Butler, division director, NAVSUP GLS Transportation, who initiated the effort. He explained that all too often resources are wasted flying parts or personnel on dedicated aircraft that are duplicate trips of other aircraft or ships with available space traveling to the same location. The new geospatial network scheduling system optimizes transportation resources across all branches of service and already saved the Navy $23M on a $750k investment.

Lockheed Martin?s Hybrid Air Vehicle is a multi-mission capable airship.

Lockheed Martin displayed several technologies, including communications and data management technologies. One of the most interesting was its Hybrid Aircraft that was initially developed for military use. However, its ability to transport equipment and supplies efficiently to undeveloped sites while providing a persistent platform for communications and to collect and download imagery makes it a valuable asset for emergency response activities.? To learn more, view the following video.

A representative from NATO explained the NATO Civil-Military Fusion Center, including a map library and custom services. Several exhibitors demonstrated the use of social media, which can be a very valuable and timely source of information to build situational awareness during emergencies. A company I work with, Soft Power Solutions, integrates GIS resources such as Google, USGS, ortho and oblique imagery married to geographically placed social media to build situational awareness that is quite robust. It was especially dramatic that during demonstrations, a 7.2 earthquake was reported off the coast of Guatemala.? One could easily see the growing number of tweets that almost immediately confirmed the earthquake and level of damage. Here is a ShakeMap generated by USGS within minutes of the earthquake showing the level of impact on the Guatemalan coast (shown in yellow).

A USGS ShakeMap shows the impact of an earthquake on the Guatemalan coast (in yellow).

One of the exercise objectives was to develop metrics that would evaluate performance in disaster response efforts. There were many metrics developed that one would expect ? roads open, electricity restored, utilities restored, etc. However, the one informal metric that was developed through personal experience of Florida emergency responders was the ?Waffle House? metric. Waffle House is a ubiquitous restaurant chain with locations throughout the southeast. The Florida responders observed that driving from one county?s Waffle House to another open Waffle House was a good indicator that the location was in OK shape.? Since a Waffle House needs minimal staffing and utilities compared to larger restaurants, it was a good indicator as to how bad conditions were in the location. Perhaps someone will develop a ?Waffle House Open? type GIS layer as a metric to ?okayness.?? Sounds like a good thesis for a GIS graduate student.

Everyone who participated was enthusiastic about conducting another similar exercise. Planning is already underway to make that happen. I, for one, feel that this kind of exercise can have a significant positive impact on future disasters because it builds face-to-face relationships that are so valuable during actual events. I?m going to do what I can to help with a geospatial aspect in future exercises.

Written by: GPS World staff on November 27, 2012.
Last revised by: bchambersNovember 28, 2012.

Source: http://www.gpsworld.com/logistics-gis-and-disaster-response/

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Auto Industry Insiders For Automotive Advertising Agencies 11/29 by ...

On his show, Comedian Rodney Perry covers arts and entertainment, everything from comedy and politics to music and acting, with his signature comedic slant.

MashUp Radio is a 30-minute podcast that discusses the fusion of technology, life, culture and science. Host Peter Biddle, engineer and executive for Intel?s Atom Software, dishes up a thought-provoking discussion.

Joy Keys provides her listeners with insight to improve their lives mentally, physically, monetarily and emotionally. Past guests on the show have included Meshell Nedegeocello, Blair Underwood, in addition to an impressive list of CEOs, humanitarians and authors.

Host Barry Moltz gets small businesses unstuck. He has founded and run small businesses with a great deal of success and failure for more than 15 years. This is a business radio show where he shares all the craziness of small business. It?s that craziness that actually makes it exciting, interesting and totally unpredictable.

The Bottom Line Sports Show is hosted by former NBA stars Penny Hardaway, Charles Oakley, Mateen Cleaves. Tune in to get the inside scoop on what's happening in sports today.

Deepak Chopra Radio provides an online forum for compelling and thought provoking conversations on success, love, sexuality and relationships, well-being and spirituality.

Hits Radio covers basketball, sports culture and entertainment with past guests including Jason Kidd, Robin Lundberg and Chris Herren.

Listeners get an earful on The Halli Casser-Jayne Show, Talk Radio for Fine Minds. Whether it?s the current political cocktail or the latest must-read award-winning book, Halli tackles all topics and likes to stir ? and sometimes shakes ? things up.

Award-winning World Footprints is a leading voice in socially responsible travel and lifestyle. Hosts Ian & Tonya celebrate culture and heritage and bring a unique voice to the world of travel.

Football Reporters Online is a group of veteran football experts in the fields of coaching, scouting, talent evaluation, and writing/broadcasting/media placement. Combined, the group brings well over 100 years of expertise in sports.

Host John Martin interviews the nation's leading entrepreneurs and small biz experts to educate small business owners on how to be successful. Past guests have included Emeril Lagasse and Guy Kawasaki.

The Movie Geeks share their passion for the art through interviews with the stars of and creative minds behind your favorite flicks and pay tribute to big-screen legends. From James Cameron and Francis Ford Coppola to Ellen Burstyn and Robert Duvall, The Geeks have got'em all.

Sylvia Global presents global conversations pertaining to women, wealth, business, faith and philanthropy. Sylvia has interviewed an eclectic mix from CEOs and musicians to fashion designers and philanthropists including Randolph Duke and Ne-Yo.

Seasoned entertainment reporter Robin Milling gets up close and personal with the world's most compelling celebs. From Michael Douglas to Katie Holmes to Kevin Kline to Ashley Judd to America Ferrera, she sits down in person each week with each and every A-lister.

Mr. Media host Bob Andelman goes one-on-one with the hottest, most influential minds from the worlds of film, TV, music, comedy, journalism and literature. That means A-listers like Kirk Douglas, Christian Slater, Kathy Ireland, Rick Fox, Chris Hansen and Jackie Collins.

Paula Begoun, best-selling author of Don't Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me, separates fact from fiction on achieving a radiant, youthful complexion at any age. She?s regularly joined by health and beauty experts who offer the latest on keeping your skin in tip-top shape.

Source: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/adagencyonline/2012/11/29/auto-industry-insiders-for-automotive-advertising-agencies

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