Last week we learned that the computers systems of The New York Times had been attacked by Chinese hackers following publication of its story on Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s accumulation of wealth over the period of his administration. Then it quickly came out that The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal had also been hacked.
This follows in the wake of the Chinese hacking of Google and a variety of other companies. The hacking seems to be tied in some way to the Chinese government and apparently has various motives, ranging from identifying sources for stories on China to distorting markets in favor of native Chinese companies.
In the case of Google, the attacks resulted in significant destruction of its business and its displacement as the leader in the Chinese market by the Chinese company Baidu.
The enthusiasm over the past decade of foreign businesses to invest, produce, and sell in China has been fueled primarily by two assumptions. One is that China has truly chosen the capitalist road and that business is a matter of free market competition without government intervention and interference. The other is that the costs of doing business are extraordinarily low in China and therefore, to be globally competitive, a company has no choice but to produce there.
It is now clear that both of these assumptions are false. China is only halfway onto the capitalist road. Government has not withdrawn from the economy and especially not from control of information. Moreover, the government wants Chinese companies to succeed and predominate in a wide variety of industries. A consequence of all this is that the hidden cost of doing business in China can be very high. Indeed, far from having to produce in China to be globally competitive, it may well be the case that in order to survive globally a company must avoid producing in China.
Certainly any significant business needs to be extremely careful in how it deploys and operates in China. It will almost inevitably become, if it already isn’t, a target for hacking and electronic espionage. It must understand that even more than in other environments, in China, business is war.
It must also understand that business is often a matter of national strategy and of nationalist sentiment in China. That means it will be under observation not only by business competitors but perhaps also by the government or government-linked entities. In calculating the true costs of producing and doing business in China, it is important to incorporate these factors into the equation. The true costs may be much higher than the estimates made by the business accountants based simply on normal business costs.
You know how the official Twitter accounts of top government officials and the First Family make a point to let us know when it’s really them sending out the tweet, instead of their staff? For instance, a tweet sent from Barack Obama’s twitter account is only credited to the President himself when the tweet contains his initials at the end (-bo). It’s the same with Michelle Obama (-mo) and some other White House officials.
Well, it appears that the State Department’s official Twitter account is going to use the same protocol with new Secretary of State John Kerry. All tweets from the Secretary will be signed as such:
-JK
Yep, JK. As in “Two Americans held hostage in North Korea – jk” or “Were getting ready to invade Iran – jk.”
Twitter users have been quick to pick up on why this could lead to some confusion. How will we know when it’s Secretary Kerry making his own tweet or the State Department just kidding?
The Department of Defense (DoD) is the largest consumer of energy in the federal government. In turn, the U.S. Air Force is the largest consumer of energy in the DoD, with a total annual energy expenditure of around $10 billion. Approximately 84 percent of Air Force energy use involves liquid fuel consumed in aviation whereas approximately 12 percent is energy (primarily electricity) used in facilities on the ground. This workshop was concerned primarily with opportunities to reduce energy consumption within Air Force facilities that employ energy intensive industrial processes—for example, assembly/disassembly, painting, metal working, and operation of radar facilities—such as those that occur in the maintenance depots and testing facilities. Air Force efforts to reduce energy consumption are driven largely by external goals and mandates derived from Congressional legislation and executive orders. To date, these goals and mandates have targeted the energy used at the building or facility level rather than in specific industrial processes.
In response to a request from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Energy and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Science, Technology, and Engineering, the National Research Council, under the auspices of the Air Force Studies Board, formed the Committee on Energy Reduction at U.S. Air Force Facilities Using Industrial Processes: A Workshop. The terms of reference called for a committee to plan and convene one 3 day public workshop to discuss: (1) what are the current industrial processes that are least efficient and most cost ineffective? (2) what are best practices in comparable facilities for comparable processes to achieve energy efficiency? (3) what are the potential applications for the best practices to be found in comparable facilities for comparable processes to achieve energy efficiency? (4) what are constraints and considerations that might limit applicability to Air Force facilities and processes over the next ten year implementation time frame? (5) what are the costs and paybacks from implementation of the best practices? (6) what will be a proposed resulting scheme of priorities for study and implementation of the identified best practices? (7) what does a holistic representation of energy and water consumption look like within operations and maintenance?
This “Grid View” recently started showing up as an option on search results pages.
Special? Not particularly. It’s just interesting that such a move is randomly coming from Craigslist in 2013. At least it still looks relatively old fashioned.
j2 Global, the parent company of publisher Ziff Davis, announced today that Ziff Davis has acquired IGN entertainment from News Corp. The publisher will take control of IGN, 1UP, AskMen, and other IGN web properties. Ziff Davis is known for publishing PC Magazine, Geek.com, and other niche properties such as ExtremeTech.
j2 estimates that IGN has over 600 advertisers and 53 million monthly unique visitors to its websites. It also stated that the purchase will more than double the revenue of j2′s digital media properties. The price of the acquisition has not yet been revealed.
“This is a transformative deal for our digital media business,” said Hemi Zucker, CEO of j2.
j2 stated that Ziff Davis’ “strength in data analytics” will influence IGN’s marketing, allowing advertisers to “more efficiently reach its demographically attractive audience.” IGN’s audience is generally males from the age of 18 to 34, a highly prized demographic.
“By combining two of the most storied organizations in tech, gaming, and entertainment, we have created a very powerful company capable of producing and delivering content in all forms to an audience that marketers highly value.” said Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff Davis. “IGN and AskMen are tremendous best-in-class brands that we are proud to have as part of our digital media portfolio.”
One interesting thing to note is that this won’t be the first time Ziff Davis has owned 1UP. In 2009 the publisher sold the website to UGO Entertainment, which was acquired by IGN Entertainment in 2011.
During the mainframe era, you could hear phrase: “No one is fired for buying IBM”. In the 1990s and 2000s, the same could be said about Microsoft. As the so-called Post-PC era pushes forward, soon same can be said about Apple, if some IT organizations don’t already. Gartner predicts that by 2014, enterprises will accept the fruit-logo as much as Windows, which is something scary for the company owning that market segment.
Consumerization of IT — or bring your own device to work — forced Apple on unwilling IT organizations. Now, after tasting the fruit, they like it. More of them than ever are willing to deploy Macs, which encroach on territory Microsoft seeks to claim for Windows 8.
“Although Apple’s mobile iPhone and iPads are already as accepted by enterprise IT as is Microsoft, Apple’s Mac systems for laptops/notebooks and desktops remain not commonly accepted by IT”, David Mitchell Smith, Gartner Fellow, says. “Going forward, Apple will continue to benefit from consumerization and will continue to evolve Macs to take on more iOS characteristics, which will contribute to acceptance of Macs in the enterprise. As such, enterprise acceptance of Apple will continue to be driven by consumer demand”.
According to “Good Technology’s 2nd Annual State of BYOD Report”, 76 percent of enterprises with more than 2,000 employees have programs in place, and the total is expected to reach 88 percent this year. However, the largest and smallest businesses are slowest adopters. Among organizations with 10,000 employees, only 46 percent have BYOD programs in place, up from 35 percent in 2011. One-quarter of businesses with less than 2,000 employees follow suit.
Apple and other Microsoft platform competitors benefit from a startling shift in costs — to employee up rather than organization down. Good finds that in half the companies with BYOD programs, employees pay for devices and supporting services, such as cellular data for cell phones, tablets and some laptops.
Development Changes
This trend, more than perhaps any other, eases the way for enterprises to embrace non-traditional platforms, such as iPhone and iPad. Mac is next, Gartner says, but who pays is the question yet to be answered.
Apple also benefits from changes in enterprise applications development, which platform independence increases. “Enterprises are finding that they need to support multiple platforms, especially as the BYOD trend gains momentum”, Ken Dulaney, Gartner distinguished analyst, says. Increased interest in mobile devices drives demand for hybrid apps that transcend established and emerging platforms. While OS X isn’t emerging, many IT shops entrenched in Windows will see it that way — then there is the Mac operating system’s increasing hybridization with iOS.
There are increasing signs that Apple will close the fork between OS X and iOS, creating a single platform for all devices. Google follows similar trend with Android and Chrome OS. The question isn’t so much if but when platforms merge. Meanwhile, Microsoft follows a more defined two-platform strategy with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.
As I have heard IT managers often say: “We make decisions about applications, not operating systems”. As BYOD changes the device mix, application development moves with them. Gartner’s advice to enterprises embracing native app development with web applications –something Microsoft presents quite nicely in Windows 8, I should emphasize, much better than Apple does with OS X.
“Enterprises should consider how applications can be enriched or improved by the addition of native device capabilities and evaluate development frameworks that offer the ability to develop native, hybrid and Web applications using the same code base”, Van Baker, Gartner research vice president advises. Where possible, development activities should be consolidated via cross-platform frameworks”.
Is Twitter ramping up their efforts to implement two-factor authentication to make your accounts more secure?
Two-factor authentication (2FA), generically, is any approach to authentication that has multiple layers. Around the web (like with Google for instance), it is usually applied with a combination of a password and mobile alert. When a new device/location attempts to log on to a Google account, not only is a password required but so is a secondary authentication code sent to a user’s mobile device.
This way, an unauthorized user would not only have to obtain your password, but also your phone in order to access your account. It’s simply another layer of security, and one that companies like Google say “drastically reduces” the chances of a bad guy getting their hands on your personal info.
The Guardian points to a job posting on Twitter’s employment site. The post is for a full-time software engineer in the specialized area of product security. Among the duties of said position is to “design and develop user-facing security features, such as multifactor authentication and fraudulent login detection.”
As you may remember, Twitter made a pretty bad screw-up last November when they accidentally reset a bunch of passwords for accounts that hadn’t actually been compromised, following a hack that did see some accounts compromised.
Like any online service, Twitter accounts are vulnerable to being compromised and used for nefarious purposes – whether that be malicious spam messages or simply hijacking tweets in order to expose or embarrass.
In the past, Twitter has stated that they’ve “certainly explored two-factor authentication,” but to date the company has made no public declarations of intent. While this job posting is far from conclusive evidence that Twitter plans to implement 2FA, it does suggest that they are looking for personnel that could possibly draw up such a system.
Johnny Depp is all set to play Whitey Bulger, one of Boston’s most notorious criminals, in the upcoming film “Black Mass”.
Bulger has been the object of fascination for many over the years, specifically since Scorsese’s much-loved film “The Departed” was released in 2006. Jack Nicholson had the honors of playing the role back then, so it will be interesting to see what Depp does with it.
Bulger was accused over the years of various crimes; his reputation was one of violence and corruption, yet he also worked with the FBI to cover his tail. But those ties soon soured and Bulger became one of the infamous names on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List on 19 counts of of murder, as well as conspiracy to commit murder, narcotics distribution, extortion, and money laundering. He was captured in 2011, hiding out in California.
“I could not be more thrilled to have the biggest star in the world and Academy-Award winning director Barry Levinson to finally bring this incredible story to the big screen,” said Cross Creek Pictures president Brian Oliver in a statement. “We have been working on this project since we originally optioned the book in 2005. Black Mass expertly details the twists and turns of this highly complex story, painting a vivid portrait of Boston’s underbelly and its corrupt political machine, as well as exposing the worst scandal in FBI history. It’s also an examination of loyalty to family, Irish heritage, and South Boston.”
“Black Mass”, which is being helmed by Barry Levinson, is an adaptation of the book Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob, written by former Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerald O’Neill. Filming is set to begin this May.
When it comes to languages on a BlackBerry 10 smartphone, here are a few things you should know, such as how to enable language detection and switch between languages. In addition to languages, check out our post on customizing the BlackBerry 10 touchscreen keyboard so you get the most of your BlackBerry Z10 experience.
Changing your display language
On your Home screen, swipe down from the top of the screen
Tap Settings followed by Language and Input
In the Language drop-down list, tap the language that you want to use.
Changing your text input language
To select which languages you use for text input, complete the following steps to enable up to three languages at one time.
On your Home screen, swipe down from the top of the screen
Tap Settings followed by Language and Input
Tap Input Languages > Add/Remove Languages
Select the checkbox beside the languages that you want to enable.
It may have taken a few years, but Google’s Chromebook is finally taking off as a valid alternative to the traditional Windows laptop and MacBook. That means more OEMs are starting to make them with HP being the latest to join the fray.
HP announced the Pavilion 14 Chromebook this morning as part of its “multiOS approach to offer customers more choices.” HP’s new Chromebook fits snugly between Samsung’s and Acer’s offerings with an attractive $329.99 price tag and competitive specs.
“Google’s Chrome OS is showing great appeal to a growing customer base,” said Kevin Frost, vice president and general manager, Consumer PCs, Printing and Personal Systems, HP. “With HP’s Chromebook, customers can get the best of the Google experience on a full-sized laptop—all backed up by our service and brand.”
If you choose to go with the HP Pavilion 14 Chromebook, you can look forward to the following specs:
14’’ BrightView LED-backlit display (1366 x 768)
0.83 inch thin – 3.96 lbs / 1.8 kg
Up to 4.25 hours of battery
Dual-core Intel Celeron Processor
100 GB Google Drive Cloud Storage with 16GB Solid State Drive
Built-in dual band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n and ethernet
HD Camera
3x USB 2.0
HDMI Port
2-in-1 memory card slot (SD, MMC)
Bluetooth 3.0 Compatible
Kensington key lock compatible
Compared to the other Chromebooks from Acer and Samsung, HP’s Pavilion 14 is probably the second best available. The downside to that is the increased cost. It’s not as ludicrous as Samsung’s Chromebook 550, which retails for $450, but $330 may still be a bit too much for those looking for something super cheap like Acer’s $199 Chromebook.
Regardless, it’s good to see more OEMs experimenting with Google’s Chrome OS. That being said, Chromebooks still have yet to break into the mainstream, but that’s more the fault of the OS being closely tied to the Internet. As access to broadband becomes more widely available, expect the Chromebook to grow alongside it.
Google revealed on Monday what the top trending searches were during the Super Bowl (US). The top five were:
1. M&M’s
2. Beyonce
3. Baltimore Ravens
4. San Francisco 49ers
5. Colin Kaepernick
Very interesting that “power outage” didnt’t make the list, though Google does mention it as another noteworthy trend. I guess it only had half a game to work with. Ultimately, it ended up ranking eighth out fo the most-searched terms during game time.
Beyonce searches spiked during the halftime show, of course. Searches for Chrysler spiked after the brand’s fourth quarter commercial, Google says.
Google software engineer Jeffrey Oldham says, “As they did in the game, the Ravens narrowly beat out the 49ers as the most-searched team during the game on Google. The most-searched players of the game were Colin Kaepernick, Joe Flacco, Michael Oher, David Akers and Jacoby Jones—thanks to his 108-yard kickoff return.”
“The Harbaugh brothers’ on-field battle has been one of the big stories of the game, so it’s no surprise that viewers took to the web to find more information on these coaches,” he adds. “While John Harbaugh took home the trophy, Jim was the most-searched brother on Google.”
Searches for Super Bowl ads on Google were 55 times higher on Sunday than they were for the same time the previous Sunday. The most searched-for ads were from: M&M’s, Mercedes-Benz, Disney’s “Oz Great and Powerful,” Lincoln, and Audi. Searches for “Gangnam Style” also trended on YouTube, as did searches for Beyonce and Alicia Keys, who sang the National Anthem.
Yahoo also shared some insight into what people were searching for during the Super Bowl on its search engine. Searches spiked for “why did the lights go out,” “superdome power outage,” and “what caused power outage”.
Here’s the top ad-related searches from Yahoo:
1. [dodge super bowl commercial] (God Made A Farmer) – up 1722% during the game on Yahoo!
2. [taco bell commercial]
3. [go daddy commercial]
4. [doritos goat commercial]
5. [Budweiser commercial]
6. [banned skittles commercial]
7. [tide super bowl commercial]
8. [calvin klein commercial]
9. [jeep commercial]
10. [oreo super bowl commercial
11. [kia super bowl commercial]
12. [mercedes commercial] The new car buzzed 3570% on Yahoo!
13. [soda stream commercial] – the soda stream spiked 5244% on Yahoo!
According to Yahoo, Bar Refaeli was the most buzzed about celebrity featured in a commercial followed by Kate Upton, Kaley Cuoco, Stevie Wonder, Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen. Rogen spiked by 1,045% on Yahoo, while Rudd searches spiked by 668% and Kate Upton searches spiked by 152%.
Fast & The Furious 6 got the most buzz for movie trailers, spiking 827% on Yahoo, followed by World War Z at 78%.
Searches for “beyonce super bowl 2013″ spiked 7,236% on Sunday, searches for Jennifer Hudson spiked 10,802%, and searches for Destiny’s Child spiked 4,000%.
Other noteworthy Super Bowl Sunday search trends from Yahoo:
Super Bowl Related “How To” | “Who Is” Questions on Yahoo!
[how to ripen avocados]
[how to make wings]
[how to make jello shots]
[who is the direct tv genie]
[who is favored to win the super bowl]
[who is playing in the super bowl]
[who is singing the national anthem at the super bowl]
[who is in the super bowl]
[who is beyonce married to]
[who is beyonce’s husband]
[who is older jim or john harbaugh]
[who is paul harvey]
[who is ray lewis]
Top Searched Recipes On Super Bowl Sunday From Yahoo!:
The deal reached by President Obama and Congress to avert the fiscal cliff included future cuts in government funding for education, anti-poverty and anti-hunger efforts, and a wide range of human services. As usual these cuts mean non-profits will need to do more with less. And many will be sure to fail if they stick to business as usual. To meet the demands of the challenging years ahead, the nonprofit sector will need to change in dramatic ways.
One of the most important shifts will be how organizations articulate and achieve goals. They need to envision and articulate with measurable specificity what success looks like, persuade others of that vision, and measure and communicate their progress against it. Some organizations in recent years have begun by identifying battles that, as Jonathan Kozol said in his book On Being a Teacher are “big enough to matter but small enough to win.”
Share Our Strength, and our subsidiary Community Wealth Ventures, have begun to do just that with our No Kid Hungry campaign. Four years ago, we set a goal of ending childhood hunger in the United States by 2015. It’s ambitious but we believe it’s achievable. Here’s what we’ve learned so far.
For many years, our role had been one limited to grantmaking. We raised money and gave it away — to food banks, school districts, and advocacy organizations — to help feed hungry kids. We got great press, especially for the entrepreneurial manner in which we raised funds through cause-related marketing campaigns and other forms of social enterprise. This was popular and satisfying to almost everyone …except us.
We didn’t have any way of knowing if the problem of hunger was getting better or worse. Was the funding we provided equal to 1% of what was ultimately needed to end hunger? Or was it 50%? When could we say “mission accomplished”? Without a specific measure of success it was simply impossible to know.
We decided to hold ourselves to a higher standard and set a clear goal — not for funders or reporters or policymakers, but for ourselves. The politics of the process were fascinating and underscored the very different cultures of the nonprofit and the for-profit worlds.
We first presented our plan to our colleagues in the anti-hunger community at a meeting of 50 leading organizations in the field. When we laid out our goal of ending childhood hunger and our strategy for doing so, we were shocked to find that 45 of the 50 people in the room were passionately and energetically opposed to what we’d proposed. “Where would we get the money? What about other people like seniors who struggle with hunger? What if the economy changes and wipes away our gains?” All legitimate questions, sure, but there was something else going on. I detected an underlying discomfort with naming such a specific and difficult outcome.
The reaction from the business community was the opposite. Traditionally more comfortable with highly specific goals, our corporate sponsors’ response was, “If you’re telling us there is a goal line, you know how far you are from it, and what it will take to get across, count us in. That’s what we do and what we look for.”
In time, and thanks in part to the efforts of a new Obama administration, which adopted the goal of ending childhood hunger, our colleagues came together around the common goal. Each of the groups involved has their own strengths to share in the effort, and at Share Our Strength, we’ve continued an aggressive campaign to build political will among the general public, which in turn supports and encourages advocacy organizations and policymakers.
Many well-intentioned organizations take credit for success but avoid accountability for specific, hard-to-achieve outcomes. The lesson we’ve learned is that some risks, however, are worth taking. It’s not enough to measure inputs: how much money you’ve raised, how much good press you’ve garnered, how extensive your outreach is. You must also track how close to or far from your goals you are and establish the necessary systems to hold yourself accountable. Assuredly, this path is full of risk because any meaningful goal, almost by definition, will be hard to achieve. And failure is always an option. Setting this goal is the key, however, to meaningful success.
Nonprofit organizations would be well served to step back from the day-to-day operations and ask themselves what success means, how will they know when they have accomplished their mission, and how will they measure it along the way. It sounds like common sense, but almost no one does it, in part because it’s so hard to do. But if you answer those questions with precision and clarity, and articulate the goal you hope to achieve, everything else falls into place.
In our case, the result of taking on this challenge was catalytic and profound. Holding ourselves accountable to a specific outcome that was bold but believable inspired our stakeholders and gave them confidence that we merited their investment. Our revenues increased from $16 million in 2007 to $42 million in 2012. We added more than 70 new staff, strengthening our capacity and leading to further increases in impact.
The very action we had avoided for so long — stating exactly what we wanted to achieve and by when — turned out to be the one the marketplace rewards and that were crucial to achieving our mission.
It’s been two weeks since President Obama released his plan for reducing gun violence. Since then, the President and the Vice President have continued their push for common-sense steps to protect our children and our communities by reducing gun violence. They’ve spoken with mayors, law enforcement officers, and ordinary Americans about the plan going forward. They’ve continued to meet with experts about effective steps that cities and states have taken. And they’ve kept in contact with members of Congress about how to move forward on common-sense legislation to prevent gun violence.
On January 17, the day after the President released his gun violence prevention plan, the Vice President spoke to the U.S. Conference of Mayors about the plan. Last week, the Conference officially endorsed the President and Vice President’s proposals.
Vice President Joe Biden addresses the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, at the Capital Hilton, in Washington, DC, Jan. 17, 2013. (Official White House Photo by David Lienemann).
On January 25th, the Vice President traveled to Richmond, Virginia to hold a roundtable discussion with experts who helped improve Virginia’s background check system after the Virginia Tech shooting. Along with Secretaries Napolitano and Sebelius, Senator Tim Kaine, and Congressman Bobby Scott, they talked about what still needs to be done to make sure that there is a criminal background check for every gun sale in America.
Tebow’s name is all over ESPN these days whether it’s warranted or not–I’m looking at you, Skip Bayless–so I imagine today will be especially Tebow-rific, as Adam Schefter is reporting that the Jets will hang on to him in an effort to find a trade…and some think it won’t happen.
“I think his career is over without playing another position,” one NFL GM reportedly said of Tebow. And while his fans will undoubtedly think that’s way harsh, some think it’s just the brutal truth. Whether it’s the result of poor management decisions on his behalf, making him overshadowed and underused in the past season–or, some would say, that he was overhyped to begin with–one can’t deny that he hasn’t had much of a chance to show us what he’s made of. After a promising start to his career and a much-anticipated move to New York, the 2012 season left fans underwhelmed.
As far as the Jets go, they seemed at a loss for what to do with him, though they seemingly had faith that his talents could be put to good use.
“I think Tim Tebow can be good at whatever he wants to be good at,” offensive coordinator Tony Sparano said.
The Jets can’t try and make a trade until March 12th, so we’ll see what happens.
#Ravens win #SuperBowl what do we tweet about now…? Tim Tebow trade rumors of course…duh
A particular Volkswagen ad that aired during the Super Bowl brought a fair amount of controversy with it. The ad, called “Get in. Get Happy.” features a guy from Minnesota going around his office and talking with a Jamaican accent, and ultimately getting his co-workers to do the same once they ride in a Volkswagen with him.
Some think the ad was racist. Many others don’t. Either way, the ad has gotten a lot of people talking, and a lot of people seem to have liked it. It even has over 8.5 million views on YouTube.
Plenty have taken to Twitter to share their thoughts on the ad:
That VW ad makes me a) happy and b) want to go to Jamaica immediately. What it doesn’t do is make me want to buy a VW.#Superbowl
Jamaican beer company even appears to be utilizing the buzz from the ad to serve promoted tweets on the Twitter search query “vw ad”:
Volkswagen itself tweeted a link to a press release from Minna Press, which says:
The new Volkswagen ad for the 2013 Super Bowl game garners a host of mixed reactions worldwide. “The ad shows a worker from Minnesota trying to cheer up co-workers in an accent often associated with Jamaicans, because he has been made so happy by his Volkswagen,” the Associated Press explains.
According to George Meikle, author of the book, In Praise of Jamaica, “the ad may be considered racist by some people … but us Germaicans say, “come to Jamaica and feel alright.” He states: “Volkswagen makes an astute observation that we Jamaicans radiate happiness no matter our circumstances, which is the point of the ad.”
Meikle adds, “we may speak funny but we can laugh at ourselves. Our book, In Praise of Jamaica tells the intriguing story about the wonders, heroes and achievements of Jamaicans.”
A new study performed aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has shown that being in space weakens astronauts’ immune systems. Researchers hope the findings can help prevent disease for those of us still on the planet.
European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Reiter performed the experiments while on the ISS, as seen in the video below. Human immune cells were allowed to float freely in microgravity while others were placed in a centrifuge that simulated gravity. The cells in the centrifuge were found to be more healthy than those left to float.
Analysis showed that a transmitter called the Rel/NF-kB pathway stopped working in microgravity, preventing immune cells from working correctly.
“Normally, when our bodies sense an invasion, a cascade of reactions occur that are controlled by the information held in our genes, similar to an instruction book,” said Isabelle Walther, a researcher with the Space Biology Group in Zurich, Switzerland. “Finding which gene does what is like looking for the right key to fit a keyhole, without having found the keyhole yet.”
Researchers stated that these findings could help disease research in two ways. First, being able to deactivate genes associated with the immune system could help patients who suffer from autoimmune diseases. Second, drugs could be developed to target genes that fight specific diseases.
“We are working towards a finer control of disease,” said Millie Hughes-Fulford, a NASA astronaut and an investigator on the research. “If you imagine our immune system responding to diseases as a waterfall, up until now we have been fighting disease at the bottom of the waterfall. In the future we could target the raindrops before they have a chance to cascade into waterfalls. We live in exciting times.”
Million and millions of U.S. Facebook users received an email last weekend that read LEGAL NOTICE OF SETTLEMENT OF CLASS ACTION – just like that, in all caps. It says that “a federal court authorized this notice,” and that it’s “not a solicitation from a lawyer.”
It also tells you that you may be entitled to up to $10, coming directly from the deep pockets of Facebook.
Although it may sound like a scam (in fact it really, really sounds like a scam), you can rest assured that it is 100% legit. You can proceed with your claim without fear – but you may not want to.
This past weekend, another large group of Facebook users received the Settlement email, which stems from an ongoing class action lawsuit that was first filed in early 2012. Facebook settled the lawsuit, which claimed that the company had infringed upon the privacy rights of users when they used their likenesses, photos, and activity in Sponsored Stories ads without consent, compensation, or the ability to opt-out.
The initial settlement was rejected, however, and Facebook was forced to rework the terms. In December 2012, a judge issued a preliminary ruling approving the new terms: a $20 million settlement that will see the majority handed out to users or to various charities and advocacy groups. It all depends on how many claims are filed.
What Facebook has done, in the simplest of terms, is create a giant fund that can be used to pay class members. If you received an email, it means that you are eligible to sign on as a class member because your activity or likeness was used in a Sponsored Story prior to December 3rd, 2012. The amount that each claimant will receive depends on how many people jump in the pool. If too many people file a claim, and it’s “economically infeasible” to pay out everyone, the fund will be distributed to around a dozen non-profits who all operate to “teach adults and children how to use social media technologies safely,” or to “protect the interest of children.
They are:
Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Joan Ganz Cooney Center, Berkman Center for Internet and Society (Harvard Law School), Information Law Institute (NYU Law School), Berkeley Center for Law and Technology (Berkeley Law School), Center for Internet and Society (Stanford Law School), High Tech Law Institute (Santa Clara University School of Law), Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, Consumers Federation of America, Consumer Privacy Rights Fund, ConnectSafely.org, and WiredSafety.org.
If you received the settlement notice, you have five options. You can either submit a claim, which makes you eligible for the $10, but prevents you from joining any other action against Facebook in this realm. Or you can exclude yourself, which lets you retain your ability to sue Facebook in matters pertaining to Sponsored Stories. If you do nothing, you give up your right to both the money and future litigation.
There’s also options to object to the settlement or attend a hearing, neither of which will really be considered by most users.
If you decide to file a claim, however, you should know that you’ll be attesting to a few things that might be difficult to attest to (for the more informed Facebook user). As pointed out by Forbes, you’ll agree that you were “not aware that Facebook could be paid a fee for displaying actions such as these, along with my name and/or profile picture, to my Facebook friends,” and that you were truly “injured” by the display of your info in a Sponsored Story.
Anyway, all of the information you need to take any route is available on a dedicated site for the suit, fraleyfacebooksettlement.com
What’s just as interesting as the cy pres settlement is the set of changes that Facebook has agreed to implement as a result of the ruling. Facebook has promised to add new language to its terms, making Sponsored Stories easier to understand for the average user. Facebook has also agreed to implement better mechanisms for viewing past activities that may have been featured in Sponsored Stories, as well as set up tighter controls on what appears in the future.
Here are all of those stipulations, as provided by the agreement in Fraley v. Facebook:
Revise its terms of service (known as the “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities” or “SRR”) to more fully explain the instances in which users agree to the display of their names and profile pictures in connection with Sponsored Stories
Create an easily accessible mechanism that enables users to view, on a going-forward basis, the subset of their interactions and other content on Facebook that have been displayed in Sponsored Stories (if any)
Develop settings that will allow users to prevent particular items or categories of content or information related to them from being displayed in future Sponsored Stories
Revise its SRR to confirm that minors represent that their parent or legal guardian consents to the use of the minor’s name and profile picture in connection with commercial, sponsored, or related content
Provide parents and legal guardians with additional information about how advertising works on Facebook in its Family Safety Center and provide parents and legal guardians with additional tools to control whether their children’s names and profile pictures are displayed in connection with Sponsored Stories
Add a control in minor users’ profiles that enables each minor user to indicate that his or her parents are not Facebook users and, where a minor user indicates that his or her parents are not on Facebook, Facebook will make the minor ineligible to appear in Sponsored Stories until he or she reaches the age of 18, until the minor changes his or her setting to indicate that his or her parents are on Facebook, or until a confirmed parental relationship with the minor user is established.
As far as the money goes, you have until May 2nd to submit your claim. Or you can do nothing, of course. Personally, I don’t think I can file a claim that stipulates my ignorance on the fact that Facebook was making money off of Sponsored Stories. Plus, I don’t find myself feeling particularly wronged by the concept of a Sponsored Story. And in the end, filing a claim is simply more of a hassle than it’s worth.
But if you completely disagree with me (as I’m sure many do), and you received an email, you can proceed with the knowledge that this is all legit. Happy claims filing.
When you hear the word “cancer,” what do you think about? And how do you know what you think you know? Do you think of cancer as a disease of the old or as something that can affect anyone, as a death sentence or as a surmountable twist of fate? When you picture someone with cancer, who are they and where do they live?
Today is World Cancer Day, an annual campaign organized by the Union for International Cancer Control to raise awareness about cancer-related issues. This year’s theme is “Cancer—Did You Know?” and the goal is to highlight myths about the disease and replace them with facts.
The organization has put forth four major myths: that cancer is just a health issue, that it affects only the elderly and those in rich and developed countries, that it is a death sentence, and that it is fate. The UICC lays out its own counterpoints to these myths here, here, here, and here. The main take-home is that cancer affects people in all parts of the world, and is quickly worsening in less developed nations. All that disease is an incredible economic burden on both individuals and societies, and is particularly acute for women in developing nations who make up the majority of the 750,000 annual deaths from cervical and breast cancer.
But, on a more positive note: advances in medical science mean that people are surviving cancers that were once thought untreatable, and preventative steps — from education on healthy lifestyles to new vaccines for certain cancers — are further reducing cancer-related deaths. The trick will be getting education programs and medical technologies to more people, particularly those in the developing world.
In honor of World Cancer Day, here are 10 TED Talks that explore other aspects of cancer, from prevention to diagnostics to possible treatments.
Mina Bissell: Experiments that point to a new understanding of cancer
Breast cancer expert Mina Bissell doesn’t understand why, out of the tens of trillions of cells in the human body, cancer researchers focus on single cancerous cells. Why not also consider all the cells around it, or what Bissell calls the “context” and “architecture?” In this 2012 TEDGlobal talk, Bissell shares two key experiments that proved the prevailing wisdom about cancer growth was wrong and outlines her intriguing take on curing cancer.
David Agus: A new strategy in the war on cancer
With today’s advances in medical technology and genetic research, oncologist David Agus points out that the current approach to cancer identification and treatment is archaic. In this 2009 TEDMED talk, he asks: why define cancer by the body part in which it is found rather than by its own genetic profile? From there, Agus explores the future of cancer diagnoses and treatment.
Danny Hillis: Understanding cancer through proteomics
Scientist and inventor Danny Hillis wants to take cancer research beyond genes to the proteins they encode for — in other words, not the ingredients for a body, but what is going on in that body in the moment it is sick. In this 2010 TEDMED talk, Hillis breaks down proteomics, or the form and function of all the proteins in the human body, and what it might mean for cancer research.
William Li: Can we eat to starve cancer?
Angiogenesis, or the growth of new blood vessels, is vital for a healthy body. When it goes awry, it isn’t good: for example, too little can lead to chronic wounds, and too much can lead to cancer. In this 2010 TED talk, medical doctor William Li explores ways to control the blood supply to a tumor through eating naturally cancer-fighting foods.
Jay Bradner: Open-source cancer research
What’s remarkable about Jay Bradner’s approach to cancer research isn’t just the discovery chemistry, although it is fascinating. It’s the fact that he’s bringing it to open source. In this 2011 TEDxBoston talk, Dr. Bradner shows how sharing data and information with as broad a group as possible can help solve a real-life cancer puzzle.
Bill Doyle: Treating cancer with electric fields
The standard toolkit of cancer therapies includes surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Bill Doyle adds to this set of choices, at least for certain types of cancer, by using electric fields. The fields stop the movement of electrically charged proteins in cancerous cells that are necessary for cell division (and, subsequently, cellular multiplication). In this 2011 TEDMED talk, Doyle explains the process and why it may give patients one thing that the traditional tools cannot: better quality of life during treatment.
Elizabeth Murchison: Fighting a contagious cancer
Cancer doesn’t just affect humans. In this 2011 TEDGlobal talk, geneticist Elizabeth Murchison explains her work on an alarming contagious cancer that is wiping out the Tasmanian Devil in Australia. What does this have to do with human cancers? Studying such cancers in animals could give insight into the rare chance of a contagious cancer in humans.
Eva Vertes looks to the future of medicine
Microbiology prodigy Eva Vertes was only 19 years old when she spoke at TED2005 about cancer stem cells. In the talk below, she presents research that suggests cancer might be a repair response to damage to stem cells in the lungs, liver, bones, etc. The implication she is testing? “It’s possible, although far-fetched, that in the future we could think of cancer being used as a therapy,” she explains in the talk below.
Yoav Medan: Ultrasound surgery – healing without cuts
Traditional cancer surgery requires cuts and slices to flesh and bone, which take a lot of time to heal. It’s a painful process. In this 2011 TEDMED talk, Yoav Medan describes a non-invasive approach to surgery using focused ultrasound, which has applications in cancer and several other diseases.
Jack Andraka: Detecting pancreatic cancer … at 15
The future of cancer research depends on the bright minds of young researchers. In this TED2013 Talent Search talk, fifteen-year-old Jack Andraka describes his invention: a cheap, efficient diagnostic test for pancreatic cancer.
And a TED Book you should definitely check out on this topic …
Controlling Cancer: A Powerful Plan for Taking on the World’s Most Daunting Disease
Could cancer be caused by viruses pushing infected cells to the brink? Paul Ewald, a leading thinker in the field of evolutionary medicine, postulates that this may be the case. In this TED Book, he and co-author Holly Swain Ewald lay out a bold plan for attacking cancer. By attacking the virus, he believes that we could come close to eradicating cancer altogether. (Read our Q&A with Paul.)
Oreo seems to have the social media marketing thing down. During the infamous power outage during last night’s Super Bowl, the beloved cookie brand quickly thought on its feet and tweeted this:
While the power outage lasted for about a half hour, Oreo was able to get out a highly successful ad (for free) to accompany its TV spot (not free). Buzzfeed spoke with 360i, the agency behind the tweet. Agency president Sarah Hofstetter told them:
“We had a mission control set up at our office with the brand and 360i, and when the blackout happened, the team looked at it as an opportunity. Because the brand team was there, it was easy to get approvals and get it up in minutes.”
…
“You need a brave brand to approve content that quickly. When all of the stakeholders come together so quickly, you’ve got magic.”
As of the time of this writing, that one tweet has been retweeted 14,555 times, and is still being retweeted regularly.
So about Oreo and social media marketing – the brand once set a Guinness Record for likes on Facebook, and has frequently used timelyevents to capitalize on its large following on social media channels.
With BlackBerry 10 having just officially launched, we’ve already got some very exciting app partners onboard. Last week we told you about the 70,000 apps available for BlackBerry 10 in BlackBerry World, including thousands of top apps. One of these apps I’m most excited about is ooVoo, an app that lets you video chat with up to 12 of your friends.
At the BlackBerry 10 global launch event, I caught up with Jay Samit from ooVoo to talk about what brought ooVoo to BlackBerry 10 and what he’s most excited for about the new BlackBerry devices.
Definitely sounds like some very exciting things on the horizon for BlackBerry 10 customers. The Inside BlackBerry Blog team is in Amsterdam this week at BlackBerry Jam Europe to bring you all the action and to show off more of the awesome apps you can expect on BlackBerry 10.
Stay tuned to the Inside BlackBerry Blog to find out more about the must-have apps for BlackBerry 10!
