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Succession planning—the perennial thorn in the advisor's side as he contemplates retirement and an exit from the business he's often spent a lifetime building. It's never easy, which is why more often than not it isn't properly done. To help, Fidelity announced Tuesday that its institutional wealth services division will offer a comprehensive new program designed to move investment advisors to envision and formalize their succession plans.
The company notes that according to its 2011 Fidelity RIA Benchmarking Study, 75% of participating investment advisors either did not have succession plans for their businesses or had plans that were not ready to be implemented. More than half of investors (54%) who work with an advisor say it is important that their advisor have a succession plan. Two-thirds (66%) of RIAs would prefer to have an internal successor. Among RIAs who feel an internal successor is the best route, less than a third (29%) have selected a successor.
The program, called Realizing the Value in Your Firm, includes a series of interactive workshops being held across the country that help advisors understand their succession planning options, engage with advisors who have executed succession planning strategies and ultimately choose the succession "track" that is right for them.
The company says it uses a sequence of personal and group exercises including a "Track Selector" game to help advisors determine which of three succession strategies is most aligned with their vision: "internal transition," "merge and stay involved" or "sell and move on."
The workshops are complemented by personalized consulting from Fidelity and certain third-party succession consultants, as well as a toolkit that includes worksheets, planning templates and a robust list of resources to help advisors create and implement their plans.
"The program has been long in the making; it's designed to fulfill an acute need for advisors to plan for their succession," David Canter, executive vice president and head of Practice Management and Consulting at Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services, told AdvisorOne. "It's designed to help them figure out a path and, more importantly, take action."
Fidelity's program presents three tracks for advisors to consider:
Track 1: Internal Transition
Advisors who select this track are typically interested in handing over the reins to a junior advisor, family member or internal staff member. These advisors are confident they have the ability to select, hire and mentor someone who will share their same investment philosophy or planning approach. Retaining the firm's brand culture and client base after the transition are important objectives. Track 2: Merge and Stay Involved
Advisors who select this track are typically interested in finding like-minded advisors to complement each others' strengths, leverage similar business cultures and benefit from integrated staff, tools and technologies. These advisors have a desire to continue to work after the transition, are willing to meld their investment process, and in some cases may consider revising their investment philosophy. Taking the time to find the right partner firm and dealing with the complexities involved in merging two firms are important considerations.
Track 3: Sell and Move On
Advisors who select this track are typically interested in making a complete exit from the firm and are comfortable turning the reins entirely over to someone else. There is little or no concern about retaining the firm's name or brand, and these advisors understand that their clients may be redirected into new investment strategies and products. Realizing close to the strategic fair market value of the firm is important.
After advisors select their tracks, Fidelity provides consulting and access to tools and resources to help advisors formalize and ultimately execute their plans. This includes leveraging a detailed workbook with resources such as a talent readiness assessment, cultural compatibility checklist, partner discussion guide and keys to a written succession plan.


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They named their new search engine Google, for the biggest number they could imagine. But it wasn't big enough. Today Google's a library, an almanac, a settler of bets. It's a parlor game, a dating service, a shopping mall. It's a Microsoft rival. It's a verb. At more than 200 million requests a day, it is, by far, the world's biggest search engine. And now, on the eve of a very public stock offering, it's cast as savior, a harbinger of rebirth in the Valley. How can it be so many things? It's Goooooooooogle.
Surviving IPO Fever
What it's like inside the white-hot quiet period.
By Michael S. Malone
Going Public Day is the great money moment of the entrepreneurial saga. It's the jackpot that justifies why the founders took all those foolish risks – quitting established careers, assuming crushing debt, putting their families through unbearable strain. Sometimes lightning strikes: Every few years, a rising superstar goes public in a blaze of headlines, speculation, and envy and in the process mints a few billionaires whose improbable success sways the next generation of risk-takers to jump off similar cliffs. In the most exceptional cases – Intel in '71, Apple in '80, Netscape in '95 – a hot IPO can even burn a hole in the zeitgeist, creating an entrance for a fresh batch of products, companies, and visionaries to spill out on society, changing it forever.
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Photo by Michael Grecco
Larry Page, left, Google cofounder and president, products; Sergey Brin, right, cofounder and president, technology.
This year's hot IPO is, of course, Google. The company has everything its famous predecessors had and then some: consumer loyalty, top-drawer technology, profits, and promise. "There are good IPOs, and there are great IPOs," says Marc Andreessen, a veteran of the public-offering process at both Netscape and Loudcloud (now Opsware). "The Google IPO is the rarest kind: one that draws the white-hot glare of public attention."
This is more than what the bankers like to call a liquidity event. Already, the Google IPO seems to be heralding a great new round of public offerings – by late January, 26 tech companies were registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to financial research firm Dealogic, all apparently waiting for Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt to prime the pump. Market watchers say Google could start issuing stock as soon as this spring, and in many ways the company is behaving as though the quiet period has already begun. What hungry investors (and unemployed tech workers) really want out of Google can best be summed up by a bumper sticker out on the highways of Silicon Valley: just give us one more bubble.
IPOs are like dreams: sometimes happy, often irrational, usually quixotic – and fraught with unexpected twists. Sometimes they turn into nightmares. (This magazine's founders, for example, twice spectacularly failed to take their rocketing venture public.) There's good reason for this. The typical firm entering the public market is less than five years old with a generation or two of products under its belt. The company is newly profitable (if at all) and only recently established a serious financial reporting apparatus. Meanwhile, it's growing like topsy and adding scads of employees with little idea of its core philosophy and business practices. The firm speaks with multiple voices, at cross purposes; some founding employees begin muttering about how the place is going to hell. Simply put, most companies at their debuts are adolescents – arrogant, self-conscious, hormonal, healthy, but also very, very fragile.
Then comes that pesky quiet period. It's bad enough for the Googleans to have the weight of the entire stock market on their shoulders. One slip of the tongue – a prediction of the opening price, an unscheduled product announcement – and the whole thing's toast. Which means these days everyone inside Google is scared to say anything about anything. As they should be. In this post-Enron era, SEC regulators are watching Google's every move, reading every public statement and keeping an eye on all our favorite magazines and newspapers. If Google is going to be the first of a new round of IPOs, it will be a model of responsibility.
But there are some pre-IPO truisms that, taken together, can paint a clear picture of what's happening inside Google right now. For example, it's a good bet that the VCs and management are at each other's throats. This is a simple matter of conflicting interests. VCs, desperate to prop up sagging portfolios with a big win (and then, needless to say, cash themselves out), are constantly exerting pressure to go public. Top managers naturally resist, since being a public company represents a new level of drudgery, exposure, and restriction. Many observers suspect this is why CEO Eric Schmidt put off the IPO so long.
Once a company registers with the SEC, business as usual ceases. The days of easy improvisation are over. The already overburdened and understaffed senior management team gets cut in half. Team A deals with underwriters and attorneys, revises the prospectus – vetting every word 50 times – and embarks on a grueling 20-city, five-continent road show. Team B hangs back to manage the unmanageable. "I was the guy who got to stay home," says Jeff Skoll, eBay's first employee and former president. "Even with all the management on hand, the company was growing too fast. Now it was absolute bedlam. An emergency would land on my desk, and before I could respond to it, another emergency would appear."
None of this gets lost on the rank and file, who've been quietly predicting the IPO date for months. Now that the event is officially on, they can think of nothing else. Every assistant, every product marketer, becomes an amateur historian and stat-spewing analyst, looking at past precedents and current financial environments to guess where the stock will open and how high it will climb (it always climbs) in the weeks and months to come. Then, satisfied they've nailed the stock's fate, employees take a momentous and inevitable next step: They multiply the fate by the number of shares they own to come up with their financial destiny.
At this point, there is no going back. Every relationship in the company has now changed. The high-ranking and the early-hired crack little smiles throughout the day as a six- or seven-digit number pops into their minds. Those with fewer options put on a good face and seethe. The real volatility comes when two org-chart peers rub shoulders. The early-vesting, longtime employee looks forward to Monaco and a Maserati, and the other to 20 more years in a cubicle and a gold watch.
Once this great financial destiny is fixed in employees' brains, woe betide the company that reverse-splits its stock to reach a target opening share price. That's what chip manufacturer Mips did in 1989, and the company fell into a funk for two weeks. Wired has learned that Google did the opposite – a stock split. There was a run on champagne at every liquor store in Mountain View that night, I can assure you.
Weeks before the IPO, the company dissolves into a pantomime show – a fevered, desperate attempt to present an image of normalcy to the world and to itself. But it never works, because things are anything but normal. Reporters phone-bomb everybody even remotely connected to the company, hoping to find the bozo who'll deliver the money quote. "I remember landing at SFO and running into these scrums of camera crews and reporters," says Andreessen. "That kind of world is for movie stars, not for normal people."
On executive row, managers are besieged by every current, once, and former contractor, customer, or supplier, all begging for a little friends-and-family. "Including the guy who empties the garbage cans at night," recalls Steve Millard, an angel investor and veteran of five tech IPOs. "There are a lot of pigs slopping at the trough, more than I ever realized."
To the outside world, the people going through the IPO are Lotto winners. "I remember coming in one morning and having 50 phone messages," says semiconductor industry veteran K. C. Murphy. "One was from a reporter, the other 49 were from bankers offering to help me invest my money."
Photo by Michael Grecco
Eric Schmidt, CEO
In the last few weeks before Going Public Day, the company descends into a bunker mentality. Employees keep to themselves – veterans stick with veterans, rookies with rookies – and one's most wistful thoughts about the future are now reserved for late at night, in bed, with one's spouse. "What I remember most," says Skoll, "is that in all that craziness there was also a feeling of unity. We all were so optimistic. The business hadn't yet been tainted by money. It was a real golden period."
Going Public Day itself is generally something of an anticlimax. Barring the unexpected disaster – an underwriter shoots his mouth off to the press, the stock market goes into freefall, the SEC discovers a filing anomaly – at some point that morning, usually very early California time, a unique cluster of letters appears on a computer display followed by a number. The little startup is now a publicly traded corporation, heir to the legacy of IBM, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard.
In conference rooms, knots of people raise glasses, laugh and cry spontaneously, slap each other on the back, hug, and make plans for dinner and endless rounds of drinks. Some are tycoons, most are worth more now than anyone in their family has ever been. They tell each other that they won't let it affect their great company, God bless it, and swear that they, too, will not change. Most of all, they're relieved it's finally over.
But it ain't. In the history of most great companies, the buildup to the IPO is chapter one of a very long book. "For companies, going public is a fundraising event," says Andreessen. "For the cultures of those companies, it changes everything."
The company has entered the world of quarterly earnings statements, analyst conference calls, shareholder meetings, and annual reports – the kind of financial bureaucracy that officially puts an end to the spur-of-the-moment decisions that characterized the startup phase. This change, more than anything else, ultimately will drive away the founders of the company. "Within a couple years after going public, basically all of the early people at eBay were gone," says Skoll.
As the founders leave, the workforce starts to look rather different. Startups attract risk-takers, men and women willing to accept long hours and smaller salaries for the chance to create something great and get rich in the process. Public corporations attract people less interested in the big score than the big office. Free-flowing founders' stock is replaced by disciplined stock option programs. New ideas are replaced by new initiatives.
"Before we went public, I used to send out a company-wide joke each day, just as a way of loosening things up," says Skoll. "The day after the IPO, I sat down at my computer to write that day's joke and in walked the general counsel. He says to me, 'You know that joke of the day thing? I think it's very funny.' Gosh, thank you, I replied. 'Well, stop it,' he said. 'We are a public company now, and we don't want to offend anyone. If you want to keep sending out jokes, they can only be about lawyers.' So I tried sending out lawyer jokes for two weeks – and then I gave up."
This isn't all bad. For one thing, not all startups make great, gutsy choices and end up changing the world. More often they make stupid, impetuous decisions and die. Big public companies rarely do really dumb, suicidal things. Rather, they go on for generations, providing a livelihood for thousands.
But what of the first employees, those people out celebrating their Going Public Day wealth? Tough to say. Each will handle it differently, guided by their own heart. The most famous IPO story is that of Dennis Barnhart, the Eagle Computer CEO who, on the day his company went public in 1983, went to a celebratory lunch with his yacht dealer, then pointed his new Ferrari toward home – only to crash to his death off a hillside in Los Gatos, California. "There is no predicting human behavior, especially around an IPO," says Millard. "People do very weird and unexpected things when it comes to money."
There are as many cautionary post-IPO stories in the tech world as there were medieval morality plays. A few calls to Valley veterans revealed:
The quiet code writer rarely seen outside his cubicle who suddenly takes to wandering the halls and bursting in on the CEO's private meetings until he is summarily fired.
The mousy guy in accounting who dumps his mousy wife and runs off to Mexico with the admin.
The lonely programmer who goes off to a men's club to celebrate his new wealth and marries a stripper he meets there.
The sober family man who, upon discovering that he's half-Native American, renounces his US citizenship and moves to an Indian reservation so he won't have to pay taxes.
The programmer who quits, buys the sports car of his dreams, crashes, loses everything in the resulting personal-injury lawsuit, and ends up broke, back in his old job.
The senior executive who takes his new wealth up into Los Altos Hills and spends the next decade putting the money up his nose one gram at a time.
Google executives will warn their charges against doing anything so rash. Before the eBay IPO, founder Pierre Omidyar held up a chart at a company meeting showing Yahoo!'s roller-coaster market capitalization of the previous two months as a way of telling his employees to ignore price swings. Yet, within weeks, so much productivity was lost to people staring at financial Web sites all day that CEO Meg Whitman announced she'd fire anyone she saw totaling up their wealth.
K. C. Murphy gave a similar talk at one of his semiconductor companies. "Within two weeks, out of 75 employees, five had big new houses and two more had bought luxury cars." At another of his firms, employees were using options as collateral to borrow money. Others forgot about the capital gains taxes. When the stock slumped, they found themselves with more tax debt than net worth.
Two things are certain with Google's IPO: First, everyone will privately swear not to do anything brash, ostentatious, or tacky. Then, within days after the IPO, Google's parking lot will look like a showcase for German automotive engineering – just as it did at Apple and Netscape. A few Googleans have no doubt already placed their orders.
It's easy to think of a mega-IPO as a corporate event, but corporations are of course made up of people. A public offering on the order of Google's is the ultimate character challenge for everyone with a company badge. (And, given the emerging rules on expensing stock options, this could be technology's last great IPO event.) How they handle this test will determine the fate not only of Google but of their own lives. It will also very likely determine the strength and duration of the economic expansion that follows. In the tech world at least, the Google IPO will define the decade.
Have Schmidt and his team built a company that can survive the coming shock and remain focused and productive? Can it make the transition from startup to public company without losing its soul? Can the employees keep their perspective and still put the success of Google foremost – at least for a while longer – until the next, corporate generation of employees arrives?
It sounds impossible. And maybe it is. But impossible is exactly what we need right now.
Longtime Silicon Valley journalist Michael S. Malone (email@example.com) wrote about Google's search ticker in Wired 11.05.
Nine Superusers sound off.
"It's not my homepage, but it might as well be. I use it to ego-surf. I use it to read the news. Anytime I want to find out anything, I use it."
– Matt Groening, creator and executive producer, The Simpsons
"Google means that I no longer have an excuse to be ignorant. You can't go into meetings unprepared anymore! I have a Google sticker on my computer that, when I go through airport security and take out my PC, the security guys see and act like I have a cute baby or something: 'Ooh, Google!'"
– Esther Dyson, chair, EDventure Holdings
"Writers of the past had absinthe, whiskey, or heroin. I have Google. I go there intending to stay five minutes and next thing I know, seven hours have passed, I've written 43 words, and all I have to show for it is that I know the titles of every episode of The Nanny and the Professor."
– Michael Chabon, author, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
"Actually, Google has had zero impact on my life."
– Steven Brill, Court TV founder and magazine entrepreneur; author, After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era
"I can't imagine life without Google News. Thousands of sources from around the world ensure anyone with an Internet connection can stay informed. The diversity of viewpoints available is staggering."
– Michael Powell, chair, Federal Communications Commission
"Google rocks. It raises my perceived IQ by at least 20 points. I can pull a reference or quote in seconds, and I can figure out who I'm talking to and what they're known for – a key feature for those of us who are name-memory challenged."
– Wes Boyd, president, MoveOn.org
"Google has improved my sex life, tightened my abs, and brought me closer to God. (I keed.) Actually, as a working gossip columnist, I appreciate Google as a rough – very rough – research tool. The Internet is still the Wild West."
– Lloyd Grove, columnist, New York Daily News
"My version is exactly what it is now. Google has got it right."
– Edward Tufte, Yale Professor of political science, computer science, statistics, and graphic design
"Google is my rapid-response research assistant. On the run-up to a deadline, I may use it to check the spelling of a foreign name, to acquire an image of a particular piece of military hardware, to find the exact quote of a public figure, check a stat, translate a phrase, or research the background of a particular corporation. It's the Swiss Army knife of information retrieval."
– Garry Trudeau, cartoonist and creator, Doonesbury
"Within the last seven days, Google has altered and augmented my perceptions of tulips, mind control, Japanese platform shoes, violent African dictatorships, 3-D high-definition wallpaper, spicy chicken dishes, tiled hot tubs, biological image-processing schemes, chihuahua hygiene, and many more critical topics. Clearly, thanks to Google, I am not the man I was seven days ago."
– John Gaeta, visual effects supervisor, the Matrix trilogy
I'm Feeling Lucky:
Photo by Erik Pawassar
The Engineer
Where do you go after Mars? To Google. At the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, Peter Norvig oversaw the coder team that in the late '90s taught rovers to find their way across the Red Planet. A true accomplishment – though he's better known for the wry PowerPoint version of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address that became an Internet hit in 2001. Not long after, Norvig decamped NASA to become Google's director of search quality. His mission: Enhance Google's software so it doesn't just give users the results they ask for but leads them to answers they don't know are there. – Paul Boutin
Photo by Ian White
The Optimizer
Psst … wanna buy top-tier advertising on Google, cheap? Then check out what Bruce Clay is hawking. He's part of a subset of Internet marketing specialists known as search engine optimizers. Give Clay several grand and he'll guarantee you high placement on results pages all over the Web. He claims that by adjusting a site's content (primarily through keywords) he can double its monthly search engine traffic within 90 days. And these clicks aren't generated from paid ads. Free advertising – that's almost as good as free cable. – Jesse Freund
Photo by Allan Penn
The User
Most marathoners rely on a good pair of sneakers and a high-carb diet. Monique Maddy had that much and Google. She wasn't prepared for the New York City Marathon, though she had qualified by running especially fast in her local Boston Marathon. Thanks to Google, Maddy found herself 7,000 miles from home and 8,000 feet above sea level doing sets of 20 grueling climbs up a 1,300-foot hill in a forest outside Eldoret, Kenya. "I ended up training at the High Altitude Training Center in Kenya with Lornah Kiplagat, one of the world's top female distance runners," she says. "Google changed my life as a runner." – J.F.
4 Scenarios for the Future of Google
Sometimes a liquidity event changes everything.
By Tom McNichol
The long-awaited Google IPO is a smash success, making billions for the company and investors. Market cap soars, and the press declares the Google Revolution under way. But the reign turns out to be short-lived, as a proprietary search engine from Microsoft strong-arms the market and passes Google. Swimming in red ink, the company is put on the selling block and becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL.
The long-awaited Google IPO is a smash success, making billions for the company and investors. Flush with stock earnings, Google's top tier of executives leave to "pursue other interests." Rudderless, the firm goes on a spending spree, snapping up enterprises that add little to the bottom line while at the same time fending off takeover attempts. Google unveils a new executive team to help the company "find its way again."
Google achieves platform-style success, spawning a new industry where millions of bloggers depend on its ad placement service as their primary source of income. Google becomes the second most recognizable brand after Coke. "I'm feeling lucky" becomes a national catchphrase. Rivals complain that Google squeezes out competition, but no one seems to care. The courts begin to hold the company liable for all sorts of wayward transactions.
Google's share of the search market soars above 90 percent, and the company takes full advantage of its position. Struggling search engines are either strangled or bought. Hardware makers begin shipping computers loaded with the Google operating system. The Department of Justice launches an investigation into the conglomerate's alleged monopolistic practices. Popular bumper sticker: satan uses google.
The (Evil) Genius of Comment Spammers
Renegade bloggers played Google for the fool. Then the Web fought back.
By Steven Johnson
The first arrivals drifted in innocuously, like the stray seagulls lurking during the early minutes of Hitchcock's The Birds. They were mostly phrased as salutations and praise, posted to the reader comments area of many popular blogs. Harmless notes, at face value, but they harbored a secret menace.
The bloggers hit with these strange messages were victims of an insidious new species, now called "comment spam." But this was a strange sort of spam: Why would someone go to the trouble of spamming thousands of blog pages to deliver only glad tidings and hollow compliments?
The answer, oddly enough, is that the spammers weren't trying to win the attention of the bloggers or their readerships. They were trying to win the attention of Google, like the high school bully beating up the class nerd to impress the homecoming queen. The nerd feels violated, but the truth is that it isn't really about him at all.
The spammers were exploiting the fact that open comment forums on the Web let bloggers post HTML for free. And not just any Web pages: These are heavily valued by Google's PageRank algorithm, thanks to the chronic interlinking of the blogosphere. If you could convince one of those bloggers to link to your new site, you'd have instant credibility. And if you could persuade dozens of bloggers to place links, you'd be an overnight PageRank sensation. Because so much of the Web's traffic now funnels through Google's search engine, that higher ranking translates directly into more "customers" for the spammer.
The (evil) genius of the comment spammers came when they realized that actually persuading the bloggers was unnecessary. All you have to do is post some benign text in the comment field and include a URL for your gambling site or Viagra emporium in discreet HTML. It doesn't hurt that some popular blog formats – notably Movable Type – have a standardized URL for posting comments, making it much easier to automate spam creation. The ultimate goal, of course, is to win the PageRank arms race against your competitors so the next time some hopeful soul types "penis enlargement" into Google, your site will arrive at the top of the list, having been validated by the sudden flood of links from the blogging community.
Comment spam proliferated throughout the blog sites with amazing speed. One blogger had 120 posts spammed over four days. Thoughtful discussion spaces were besieged by meaningless posts, sometimes in broken English, sometimes with bizarre keywords inserted into otherwise prosaic comments in a sort of spammer Tourette's: "I greatly appreciate atkins diet the comments here."
Skilled technicians who were angered by the incursions, the bloggers began to fight back. Within weeks of the comment spam explosion of late 2003, the blogosphere had strategies for stopping or neutralizing the invading hordes, most notably a plug-in created by blogger Jay Allen that blocks all comments that include text culled from an ever-expanding blacklist of spammers. In January, Movable Type's creators released a special update that contained fixes designed to thwart comment spam, including one that makes URLs posted in comment threads invisible to PageRank.
In a way, the rise of comment spam confirms what many of us have felt for years: Google has become part of the Web's infrastructure, as central as HTTP or packet switching. The centrality has been a boon: PageRank has let us feel that information we seek is at our fingertips. But in a kind of dialectical progression, that very success has bred its own antithesis. Build a universe where linking determines relevance and where relevance leads to financial reward, and sooner or later people link in bad faith. Can PageRank learn to tell the difference?
Contributing editor Steven Johnson (email@example.com) is the author of Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life (Scribner).
It's an Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad World
Forget the search business. Today Google's all about advertising.
By Josh McHugh
When Sergey Brin and Larry Page were raising funds for their startup, the biggest challenge was convincing venture capitalists that Google could actually make money serving up minimalist, fast-loading, text-only ads. It was 1998, after all, the heyday of elaborate splash pages and animated, brand-touting banners that danced at the top of every portal. Sure, pages took longer to load, but broadband hookups would soon solve that problem.
Photo by Robyn Twomey
Susan Wojcicki, director of product management
Google didn't buy in – a stubbornness that proved brilliant. Six years later, those skinny little text-based ads are a huge moneymaker, accounting for more than $600 million in revenue last year, according to Forrester Research. And Google, once simply the world's best search engine, is fast reinventing itself as an advertising company.
At the heart of the new Google is AdWords, a self-service ad server that uses relevance-ranking algorithms similar to the ones that make the search engine so effective. Advertisers tell Google how much they want to spend, then "buy" pertinent keywords. When users type in a matching term, the ad appears near the search results under the heading "Sponsored Links." Each time a user clicks on the ad, Google subtracts the cost-per-click from the advertiser's account. When the account's daily budget is met, Google stops displaying the ad.
So far the system has proven easy to use and remarkably effective. Roughly 15 percent of ads displayed adjacent to Google searches (at the company's own Web site and on Google-powered sites like Yahoo! and AOL) result in clickthroughs – more than 10 times the click rate of the average banner ad. These clickthroughs are the golden leads of online commerce. One Dow Chemical business group reported 25 percent of its traffic comes through Google. Designer Hospital Gowns, a health care industry Web site, boosted sales 20 percent in six months.
AdWords has worked so well that last year Google began offering the system to other sites as a way for them to provide targeted ads. The new service, AdSense, places ads on Web sites of all stripes, from ABC.com and The New York Times on the Web to quirky blogs like Bananathing!
Pinpoint targeting has always been the goal for advertising, but has been unattainable for a couple of reasons. First, content providers have rarely been able to deliver to marketers enough well-described and narrowly focused consumers. Second, even when marketers get the perfect audience, they rarely have targeted ads; it costs too much to make multiple variations for micro-audiences. AdSense strips away these barriers.
Using Google's relevance-scoring algorithms, AdSense determines ad placement by analyzing the content of Web pages. The system delivers advertisers to the right niche publishers – and vice versa – automatically. What's more, it allows those advertisers to customize their ads for free. And because Google has a vast inventory to choose from, there's almost always a well-targeted ad to serve. No human has to intuit what's going to work for what audience; the stats pick the best match.
Since people reading blogs or news sites are less likely to be in purchase mode, AdSense clickthrough rates are lower than 15 percent but still far better than banner clickthroughs. Best of all for Web site owners, the investment is minimal: A few minutes to sign up and a little space at the top, side, or bottom of your page, and poof!, you're a local affiliate, taking in a few cents on every clickthrough. More than 150,000 sites have joined the syndicate so far. n
All of which makes Google an advertising company – though hardly in the typical Madison Avenue model. While most of the $500 billion ad world fixates on high-touch branding – spots designed to imprint a name on a consumer's mind – Google is going after low-profile but lucrative segments once lorded over by business directories and newspaper classifieds. Consider the $25 billion Yellow Pages business. Google recently added the location of a searcher to its blend of relevance factors, so if you query "Guinness keg," you won't see ads for liquor stores and distributors in some far-off city. "Branding has its place, but we're not focused on that," says Susan Wojcicki, director of product management. "We're selling very qualified leads."
Of course, even the best-laid algorithms can backfire. In December, two Verizon ads appeared on the New York Times site just inches below a commentary accusing Verizon of stealing from customers. Ouch. And to please big clients, Google has had to venture way, way beyond search into the uncomfortable (for engineers, anyway) world of schmoozing: Spend $10,000 per month and you'll get an entire Google account team at your service.
Such are the concerns that come with growth. Fact is, the company's statistics-driven approach to marketing has cracked a new category of customers and shifted the very notion of advertising from a blind bet to a quantifiable investment. Nineteenth-century retailer John Wanamaker famously complained that he knew he was wasting half of his advertising – but didn't know which half. Maybe he was just born too early.
Contributing editor Josh McHugh (firstname.lastname@example.com) wrote about TiVo in Wired 11.10.
The Secret R&D Army
How hackers give Google its wildest ideas.
By Jeffrey M. O'Brien
Froogle. Google News. Google Compute. The Deskbar. The history of Labs.google.com shows that all those PhDs at company headquarters think of search as a starting point, not a destination. But they also know that some of the best ideas for new uses of Google come not from their own big brains but from tens of millions of Google users.
That's why, almost two years ago, the company released a chunk of code called the application program interface. The API enables developers to build apps around Google search. By making the API freely available to any noncommercial site, Google hoped to inspire a community of programmers – smart, innovative, unpaid – to extend the engine's reach. It's working. "We get clever hacks, educational uses, and wacky stuff," says Nelson Minar, who runs the API effort. "We love to see people do creative things with our product."
What do developers get out of it? Officially, access to 3 billion Web pages. Unofficially, well, Google is bound to have some IPO billions left over for acquisitions. Here's a glimpse of a few of the best Google API apps out there.
Banana Slug (www.bananaslug.com) When you've hit a dead end on a Google search, try Banana Slug. The site adds a random word to your search from one of nine categories – Themes from Shakespeare, Jargon Words, Animals – to generate surprising results. Add "groundhog" to your "eternal wisdom" query, for example, and you find a sermon from Reverend Robert A. Hill on why Groundhog Day is the best holiday. Now, that's word from on high.
CapeMail (capescience.capeclear.com/google/index.shtml) So your smartphone has Net access. Cool. Too bad it's a crappy way to surf the Web. Thanks to the Google API, CapeClear lets you search from your email program. Type your query into the subject line, fire it off to email@example.com, and receive the results in your inbox.
Cookin' With Google (www.researchbuzz.org/archives/001404.shtml) Step one: Survey the fridge – scallions, last night's shrimp, half a head of broccoli, and a week-old orange. Step two: Type it all into the search box, hit Send, wait 0.3 seconds, and get 65 recipes that make use of your leftovers. Now you're eating Moroccan shrimp, rice, and orange salad – and cookin' with Google.
Google Alert (www.googlealert.com) Researching a thesis on sea turtle devastation? The old way: Scour the Web repeatedly for new info. The new way: Have Google Alert do an automated search for you every day and return the results by email or RSS feed.
RateMyProfessors.com (www.ratemyprofessors.com) The mission was admirable: Create a site that allows college students to rank their teachers. The problem: Too many jokesters typing in "Professor Hugh Jardon" and "Professor I. P. Freely." So the developers turned to the Google API to create an automatic verification tool. If Google finds enough mentions in conjunction with, say, "PhD" or "university," a professor makes the cut. It's a whole new kind of tenure.
How to Kill Google
Want to topple the Web's darling? It's simple – build a trillion-page, ad-free, up-to-the-minute search engine for everything ever put on the Net.
By Paul Boutin
Do you Yahoo!? Of course not – you Google. But for how much longer? Just as the search giant stole the thunder and traffic from big Web portals, competitors are set on becoming the next Google. Inktomi and AlltheWeb are racing to beat it with bigger, fresher indexes. Teoma and Viv�simo organize results by subject, so a search for "explorer" separates pages about Ferdinand Magellan from those about Ford's SUV. As the stakes get higher, Yahoo! is buying up companies to arm itself with better technology. Microsoft, thinking bigger, discussed buying Google last fall. Any company that really wants to beat them should quit messing with small improvements and shoot for the moon with these search strategies.
Crawl 'em all
Google has 3 billion pages in its database, with AlltheWeb and Inktomi close behind. But there may be a trillion more pages hiding in plain sight – in online databases such as WebMD and The New York Times' archive, and they can't be reached by hopping from one link to another. To get at them, a search engine needs to submit a query to each site, then consolidate the results onto one page. CompletePlanet lets visitors search more than 100,000 such databases, but only a few subjects at a time. No current service is powerful enough to churn through all trillion possible results at once.
Keep 'em all
Google is fast replacing Lexis-Nexis as the research tool professionals turn to first. But Google lets you search only its most recently crawled version of the Web. Pages that were changed or deleted prior to the last crawl are lost forever. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine preserves a fraction of the Web's page history. What if you could search every version of every page ever posted?
Follow the feeds
News sites and blogs are supplementing their pages with RSS feeds – a service that pushes new content to subscribers as soon as it's published. Google doesn't track RSS feeds, and bloggers gripe that their posts take two to three days to show up in search results. An engine to which Web site owners could upload RSS would provide the latest version of every page.
Don't give away the formula
When Google debuted in 1998, its search results were free of the marketing pages that clogged other engines. Even though Sergey Brin and Larry Page had published their PageRank formula while at Stanford, it was tougher to fool than other scoring systems. In 2000, Google gave out a free PC toolbar that displayed the PageRank value of any Web page, unwittingly handing Google gamers a cheat sheet.
"How Would You Redo the Google Interface?"
Four designers share their (re)visions.
Joshua Davis
Joshua Davis
Graphic designer
"The concept is simple: Map real physical information to the virtual space of the Internet. Design guru Edward Tufte let me use him as my test subject. A search of his name returns info from the domain registry's Whois database. From that, we know Tufte lives in Cheshire, Connecticut, and the page would pull in details about his actual surroundings. This alone brings a bit of physicality to a domain."
Photo by John Deane
Jenny Holzer
Jenny Holzer
"I'd provide a secret, a surprise, every time someone visits Google. The user would get the covert stuff that makes fate. The homepage might include a declassified report on Kuwaiti UFOs, a national security directive (shown here), the express wish to see the Bushes in the White House from Enron's Ken Lay, or a 1984 State Department "Where in the world is Rumsfeld?" document that questions whether then-envoy to the Middle East Donald Rumsfeld was somewhere in Iraq or perhaps back at his Searle job. All the documents would be real and available on the Web."
Shepard Fairey
Shepard Fairey
Propagandist, artist, designer
"I wanted to respect the branding and format that Google has established, and therefore I stuck with the structure of its interface to avoid user confusion. I like its simplicity, but I don't like the colors. It needs to encourage more of an emotional attachment with the user. I'm surprised they never thought to turn the o's into an infinity symbol. The number Google is finite, but it's so large that it is infinite for all practical purposes."
Product and innovation firm
"'The Google button. It's your trusted link to relevant information anywhere.' This concept moves Google from World Wide Web to world-at-large. It positions Google as a global infrastructure that provides a physical, context-aware link to relevant information. By taking advantage of context, Google can provide targeted information in almost any capacity."
Google vs. Gates
They're obsessed with success and each other. Call it a (death) match made in heaven.
By Kevin Kelleher
Every few years, a new rivalry emerges in the tech world – Apple and Microsoft, Netscape and Microsoft, Oracle and Microsoft. See the pattern? Now it's Google and Microsoft. And Google may be the perfect nemesis – the best of its predecessors rolled up into one.
Like Oracle, Google is a category killer. Like Apple, Google has brand cachet and a loyal following. Like Netscape, it has the energy of youth and is touted as the trigger for the next tech boom. Meanwhile, Microsoft remains, well, Microsoft. Big. Strong. Rich.
Until recently, the mutual admiration and fear between the companies was reserved for board meetings and cubicle chatter. Now it's open to the public. In the spring of 2002, Google introduced an engine tailored to search Microsoft-related Web pages. Then Microsoft indicated in early 2003 that it would revamp MSN Search to return faster, algorithmically driven results without banner ads – � la Google. A few months later, Google moved further into Microsoft territory with the Deskbar, a search box that sits on the Windows OS. Come fall, Microsoft reportedly bid $10 billion to buy Google, but the offer was spurned. At the World Economic Forum in January, Bill Gates weighed in. "They kicked our butts," he said – then quickly declared that Redmond's next-gen engine would out-Google Google.
Why is Microsoft so obsessed? Because it knows search is a key component in the future of computing. Microsoft's next-generation OS, Longhorn, is conceived as a unified interface for a PC, its local network, and the Web. For it to work, Longhorn needs a sleek search utility. If Microsoft can't buy Google, it'll resort to its time-tested strategy: copy the best technology and integrate it on the desktop.
At the same time, Google has become more than a typical search engine. Its search box is a phone book and a dictionary. It can check stock prices, provide news, track FedEx packages, perform metric conversions, locate airplanes, offer street maps, and supply weather conditions. It'll search retail outlets by zip code and, with Froogle, scour the Web for products. In short, Google execs are innovating like they're running from someone. "People at Google don't talk about it, but it's pretty evident," says Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch. "Microsoft's making a move into search that's equal to its move into Web browsers. That's got to make you nervous."
For all their differences, the two companies have a lot in common. Microsoft looks at Google and sees its own past, full of promise. Google looks at Microsoft and sees the future – a swaggering company that dominates the tech landscape. It's a classic battle between youth and experience or, as Google likes to believe, good and evil.
Kevin Kelleher (firstname.lastname@example.com) wrote about Java in Wired 11.12.Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article.

subset: commoncrawl


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Feb DT Part 2A quick show and tell of the remainder of my Feb DT projects for ATDML. We were given papers from various My Mind's Eye ranges.
A little bit of paint splattering on this one. Made using the left over scraps and a little bit of paint splattering.
Photo is of Gracia's birthday trip to the beach last April.
Love this photo of Gracia, Hannah and Sophie when they went to Malta last summer.
Gracia and Megan fooling around and pulling faces! I love that Gracia has so much fun with her friends.
Doilies cut with Silhouette, punched butterflies and stickers from coordinating sticker sheet.
Reasons to be cheerful:-
1. Gracia is home for Easter.
2. So looking forward to next weekend.
3. Off to bed with a nice cup of tea, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest (on my tablet) to read and a hot water bottle.


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Outnumbered… but never outfought
Your skill in battle will shape history
The Samurai Warriors series makes its debut on PlayStation 4, bringing the turbulent Warring States era of Japanese history to life.
Fight to unify Japan under one ruler or explore the regional conflicts and clashes among factions. Follow dozens of characters on their quests for glory or conquest.
The power of PlayStation 4 brings more detailed battlefields, realistic characters and – most importantly – more on-screen enemies to smash than ever before.
Change the tide of battle with powerful techniques, including new Hyper Attacks and a powerful Rage Mode. Raise the spirits of your comrades and crush your opponents' morale by breaching their lines and defeating their standard bearers. Switch characters in the middle of combat to change your tactics and outmanoeuvre your foes.
Outnumbered by a thousand to one? Good odds.


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Supermarket Sweets: We Try the New Cherry and Red Velvet M&M's
Taste-test, Aisle 1.
If you've taken a stroll down the seasonal candy aisle of your grocery or drugstore lately, you may have seen something tempting hidden among all of the heart-shaped boxes of Valentine's Day chocolates: cherry and red velvet M&M's. The packaging and tinting of the milk chocolate candies suggests that they'd be an appropriate Valentine's Day treat for your significant other, but are they worth the splurge? We tested both flavors to find out.
You'll have to head to Walmart to try the red velvet flavor, since it's an exclusive, but it's only worth the trip if a super-sweet, vanilla frosting-flavored candy is what you're after. Had M&M's branded this flavor as such, I'd be tipping my hat, but without any discernible cream cheese flavor, naming these candies "red velvet" is a misnomer. The novelty factor was enough to convince me to go back for a second handful, but the candies are so cloyingly sweet that I couldn't make it through more than 1/8th of the package.
If you're portioning these out amongst several people who might be intrigued by a one-time taste of something different, it could be worth picking up a bag, but I'd never choose them over standard M&M's.
The cherry flavor is more widely-available. I saw them at my local grocery store, CVS, and Walmart, priced in the $3 range... but please, don't buy any.
Ripping open the package releases a cloud of artificial, chemical-tinged cherry aroma that smells like a car air freshener, and things only get worse if you're brave enough to taste them. I was hoping the candy coating would taste similar to cherry Skittles, but what it really tastes like is cherry Nyquil. Blech.
Bottom line: neither flavor is better than the standard-issue peanut, dark chocolate, or milk chocolate M&M's, all of which are available in a Valentine's Day appropriate color palette.
Want more of the sweet stuff? Follow us on Twitter @SeriousSweets
All products linked here have been independently selected by our editors. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy.


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MIAMI (MarketWatch) — I love the stock market, but I hate losing money. This is a serious problem because to make money, you have to learn how to lose. Because of fear, at times I've been out of the market during some of the strongest bull markets.
And then I found an answer, one that literally put my mind at ease.
The answer is put options. I wish I had learned earlier about the power of buying puts as a hedge against fear (and potential losses).
Here's one strategy I like: To protect my individual stocks and mutual fund positions (my long-term portfolio), I buy put options on SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust
For example, to help protect a $50,000 portfolio that invests primarily in stocks that track the S&P 500, you would need to buy around three put contracts. Next, you have to choose how long you want to keep the protection (it's called an expiration date). The longer the protection, the more it costs. You can choose a month, a year — all the way up to three years.
Here's how it works: Although you won't get 100% protection in a correction or a crash, as your stocks plunge the value of your put option rises. It's like buying an insurance policy. You hope that the market doesn't crash, but if it does, your losses are limited. That should help put you to sleep.
Costs and benefits
Only you can decide if the cost of put protection is worth it. Like any insurance, it's not cheap. As of March 6, three SPY put contracts with a $150 strike price (or 1500 on the S&P 500) that expire on June 22, 2013 costs $336 each (subject to change), totaling $1,008 plus commissions ($336 x 3 contracts). That's the cost for three months of protection. If the market crashes anytime before June 22, the put limits your losses.
Your risk: In this example, the most you could lose is $1,008, which is the cost of the three puts. Why three put contracts? Each put represents 100 shares. Since you have the right to sell 300 shares at $150 per share, that is $45,000 worth of stock.
If you wanted 10 months of protection for a $50,000 portfolio, as of March 6, a LEAPS put on the SPY with a $150 strike price that expires on January 18, 2014 costs $808 each (subject to change), totaling $2,424 ($808 x 3 contracts). That's the price you have to pay if you truly fear a market crash.
What are LEAPS? Their full name is Long-Term Equity AnticiPation Securities, and they are long-term option contracts, identical to standard options except for the longer time period (from nine months to three years) Your risk: Again, it is the cost of buying the options. In this example, the most you can lose is $2,424.
There is another complication when you buy puts. If SPY drops in price, and you have a winning put position on the expiration date, your option could be exercised. This means that your option is converted into a short position in SPY shares. This is not a sound idea. To avoid this from happening, sell your profitable put before the expiration date.
Don't buy puts if you've never traded them before. Start by reading books on options. Also, go on the Internet and visit the Options Industry Council (OIC) and Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) websites, or take free classes with the OIC. You can also call your brokerage firm.
Stock idea of the month
Last month, Amy Smith, author of How to Make Money in Stocks Success Stories, used the Can Slim® Investing System to choose Lumber Liquidators Holdings Inc.
Smith's newest stock idea is HomeAway Inc.
"The earnings in the most recent quarter were up 100%," she says. "Those triple-digit numbers captured the interest of institutional investors. The stock shot out of price consolidation on very big volume. When a stock gaps up with that much volume (491% above average), institutions have picked up shares."
Should you run out and buy this stock? In Smith's opinion, no. "Earnings come out on April 24th," she says. "Although HomeAway is a little bit extended right now, you can look for a new entry point. If there is a pullback, however, it must be on low volume."
As long as the stock pulls back on low volume, it means institutions are holding on to their shares, Smith says. "If it's on high volume, it means that institutional investors are selling."
Note: Read more about what Smith has to say about HomeAway and Lumber Liquidators at www.michaelsincere.com.
Michael Sincere is the author of "Understanding Options," "All About Market Indicators," and "Understanding Stocks." Full disclosure: Michael Sincere and Amy Smith do not own shares of HomeAway.


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Our diabetes journeyPosted: November 15, 2013
November is Diabetes Awareness Month. Below, diabetes nurse Andrea Patterson shares the story of her daughter's diabetes diagnosis and her family's journey with this disease.
As parents, we spend our lives doing our very best to protect our children -- from the boogie-man, from strangers and even from getting their hearts broken. As nurses, we do our very best to help our patients heal, get better and go home. On March 27, 2009, I felt as though I had failed at both. This is the day our then 6-year-old daughter was diagnosed with insulin-dependent Type 1 diabetes. As a mom, I hoped and prayed that maybe they were mistaken. There was no way my baby had diabetes. Diabetes is something older people have, right? Diabetes is something that runs in families or that is genetic, right? As a pediatric diabetes nurse, I knew better. I knew that although it was the worst night of our lives, it definitely was not a mistake.
Despite our new diagnosis, we were among the lucky ones. We caught it early by noticing the symptoms. As a nurse, I was familiar with the frequent urination and the constant thirst and hunger. On a whim that morning, I decided to take a trip to her pediatrician's office to get it checked out. Long story short, she had high blood sugar, which landed us in the ER, then landed us in the hospital for a weekend with a new onset diabetes diagnosis.
For 48 hours, we were overwhelmed with information: diabetes education, nutrition education, insulin administration teaching, how to choose a meter, how to use a meter, school care plans, insulin vials, insulin pens, needles, syringes, glucagon teaching, appointment information and class information. After all of that, on the day of discharge is when it finally hit me: my baby, my little girl, is diabetic and will be taking insulin for the rest of her life. I broke down. My heart ached. Was it something I did? How can I fix it? That was the first day I cried, but it definitely has not been the last.
That was more than four years ago. Over the last four years, we as a family have decided to not let diabetes be the center of our lives. We have decided to all make healthier food choices and to not let her be alone in this journey. I think this has helped her to adjust as well as she has. There are days when she is fed up and has just had enough. There are days when we don't want to count carbs or even think about diabetes. Diabetes has not been easy. Diabetes is a life-changing, life-altering event, but it does not have to be a life-devastating one.
I cannot imagine how difficult it is to have to prick your finger as many as 10 times a day, to take insulin injections several times a day, to check your blood sugar before you take a bite of food or before you go outside to play with your friends. I never tell my daughter that I know how she feels or that I understand. I tell her it is OK to have whatever feelings she has, but that we must accept those feelings and move past them so that we can continue living our lives. In our home, at a minimum, we must check our blood sugar in the morning and before bedtime -- no negotiations. There are days when she does not follow the rules, and we discuss the consequences of those actions. We have discussed with her the long- and short-term complications of noncompliance. We sometimes make a game out of keeping her blood sugars within normal range throughout the day.
Since being diagnosed, we, of course, know that we did nothing to cause our baby to have diabetes. We know that sometimes things happen without a reason. Although we often did at first, we choose not to sit around asking "Why us? Why her?" anymore. We choose to let her have a little bit of control in her life and allow her to live her childhood to the fullest with just a couple of extra steps along the way. At the end of our day, we may have diabetes, but diabetes does not have us.
Want to learn more about Endocrinology at Le Bonheur?Endocrinology
Want to find an appointment for your child?
Call 1-866-870-5570.


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Donovan Named Assistant Coach With The New York Liberty
By ODU Athletics
April 29, 2009
New York, NY - April 28 - New York Liberty president and general manager Carol Blazejowski announced today that Anne Donovan(ODU'83) has been named assistant coach.
"It is a rare and significant moment for any organization when someone of Anne Donovan's caliber joins its coaching staff, and it is particularly true for the Liberty today," said Blazejowski. "With Patty at the helm, Anne's decades of winning experience and a deep and talented roster, we feel we have assembled the components we need to pursue our ultimate goal - bringing New York the WNBA championship it so richly deserves."
A Ridgewood, New Jersey native, Donovan's primary responsibilities with the Liberty will include assisting head coach Pat Coyle in player development, game preparation and scouting, as well as planning practices and individual player workouts.
"I have admired Anne Donovan as a player and coach and am thrilled she will be joining me on the Liberty sidelines," said Coyle. "Anne knows how to teach, motivate and inspire players, and she clearly knows how to win. We look forward to her impact on our franchise and an exciting season for our fans."
Donovan began her WNBA career as the interim head coach of the expansion Indiana Fever in 2000, followed by head coaching positions with the Charlotte Sting (2001-2002) and the Seattle Storm (2003-2007). She amassed a regular-season record of 93-77 (.547) with four playoff appearances in Seattle, including the 2004 WNBA Championship title. Her coaching career began at the collegiate level where she was an assistant at her alma mater Old Dominion for six seasons (1989-1995) before taking the helm at East Carolina University (1995-1998).
"It is very exciting to have the opportunity to return to the east coast and join the Liberty family," said Donovan. "Since the league's inception, I have been impressed with how well this organization has been run and I look forward to assisting Pat in putting the most prepared and competitive team on the floor each night."
Donovan owns a remarkable 132-10 (.930) all-time record on the sidelines for USA Basketball. As an assistant coach, she helped the United States capture gold at the Olympics in 1998 and 2004. While serving as head coach, she led the 2008 U.S. Women's Senior National Team to gold in Beijing and as a result was chosen with Mike Krzyzewski as co-recipients of the 2008 USA Basketball National Coach of the Year award earlier this year. As a player, she won gold as a member of the 1984 and 1988 U.S. Olympic Teams, 1983 and 1987 Pan American Games Teams, 1986 World Championship Team and the 1978 and 1979 U.S. Olympic Festival East Teams.
A Naismith Award winner and three-time All-American selection at Old Dominion, Donovan was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA on May 15, 1995. She was one of the twenty-six inductees in the inaugural class of the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in June of 1999. Additionally, she is a member of the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame, the Old Dominion Sports Hall of Fame and the CoSIDA Academic All-American Hall of Fame.
During her career at ODU, Donovan scored 2,719 career points for a 20.0 per game average. She hauled down 1,976 career rebounds for a 14.5 per game average and still owns the NCAA record for career blocked shots with 801.
Score season tickets for the 2009 Liberty campaign by clicking here or calling 212-465-6083.


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Four men have been found guilty of the rape and murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in December in New Delhi. The WSJ's Paul Beckett tells Deborah Kan why there is still a long way to go for women to be safer in India.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
... the ... it gave ... me a hand during one in New Delhi last December being found guilty by a court in New Delhi ... I'm Deborah con joining me now as I he's added there Paul Beckett ... to what is in India during ... this case ... so all I know what to think the reaction is I think a lot of people were expecting guilty for where the war on ... men ... I think there was the expedition is to do this thing was we reporters he respects that ... the defense kind of tumbled when ... one of the medicine to being on the bus ... in the oven to that one day he did this with this new email even though it tell you that one guy said ... I was there so somebody else ... I think it was widely expected it's been pretty quick play in the extended two and this is a very high profile cases a fast track court ... I and and ... nine ten months seems a long time some of the distinctions between this and this is what ... it paid out in terms of sentencing what can we expect ... it well though since this region since the protests over ... the coming has increased the severity of punishment for ... sexual crimes that they would face possible death of incentives that were so common to it ... a K ... and a I G has meant a loss to really get changed and because of this case and they become ... stricter to add ... hopefully a man and protect women against actual violence ... um are we seeing any impact in those laws Nenad has been at the end since since last December ... I think is eleven bags in terms of ... the mass of this ... crime was to sit by the court that the number of reported rapes is actually increased which in some ... ways is a good thing and that ... doesn't lessen the more advantages has more it's been reported ... on the key to all of that and and that is going to say that stiffer punishment is a bad thing ... but the key to all of it is enforced absence laws and that will take a much much longer time for much tougher job you have to make these more efficient course more efficient ... those ... those numbers is one thing in implementing them ... the Encore's said there were five adults in all one of them had died ... in prison ... do you know anything about that investigation that less certain that it was still in dispute with the prison authorities said ... this is the family so ... question ... analysis but I don't think that the ... results ... ok and and a juvenile obvious anti last month was handed down a few years and in some sort of a ... prison for juveniles ... of a was there any backlash from and how how was what was the public reaction ... that that wasn't too much to think that I knew that to ... you is ... a prudent and you know it ranks in the questions and some agitation over whether he really was a juvenile but since that was ... verified to court satisfaction that I think ... that is the juvenile justice system for ... the things that was ... much of it that I think the thing to watch here is whether the four convicted did they get that Alsea ... eyes to get life in prison and I think I will be plenty of people including the victim's parents can ... receive our sentence ... and cake thanks Fran that's all back at my people watching this case for more on it you can get it out for more live coverage I should say that it WS J dot com and ever con ...


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Twins don SU2C shirts to show support for Ryan
FORT MYERS, Fla. -- To show their support for general manager Terry Ryan, who recently underwent surgery to remove a cancerous growth from his neck, all 110 Twins players and staff members wore matching black Stand Up To Cancer T-shirts on Saturday for their first full-squad workout.
Ryan, 60, was diagnosed with squamous-cell carcinoma earlier this month after a lump was found in a lymph node in his neck. He underwent surgery on Feb. 11 at the Mayo Clinic and was released from the hospital three days later.
Ryan also received a positive report from doctors at the Mayo Clinic on Thursday, and is currently resting at home in Minnesota.
Twins director of baseball communications Dustin Morse came up with the idea for everyone to wear the SU2C shirts, and manager Ron Gardenhire thought it was a great gesture.
"It was good idea by Dustin, I thought, for Terry and anybody else who is going through this," Gardenhire said. "I've always said the Twins try to do the right things. ... Another circumstance presented itself, and Dustin rose to the occasion. He's our mighty media man. So I thought it was pretty cool."
Left-hander Brian Duensing, who is one of the longest-tenured Twins in the clubhouse, said he was proud to show support for Ryan and others who have been affected by cancer.
"We always think of ourselves as a family, and he's one of the members of our family," Duensing said. "He's run into a little bit of a tough time here, and we wanted to do something to support him. We thought this was a good way to do it."


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May 26, 2011
The Defense Authorization Act or H.R. 1540, aka The Forever War Act of 2012, was overwhelmingly approved by the House of Representatives earlier today on a vote of 322 to 96.
The Senate will now vote on its own version and then the two bills will need to be reconciled before going to Barry Obama for his signature into law.
The law authorizes the United States to use military force anywhere it says there are terrorists, including within the borders of our own country. It represents the largest hand-over of unchecked war authority from Congress to the executive branch in modern American history.
The founders were seriously opposed to handing this much power over to executive, fearing tyranny. If enacted into law, this provision will make Obama a dictator who can wage war without the consent of the American people.
The Emergency Election Sale is now live! Get 30% to 60% off our most popular products today!


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Criminal Lawyers represent clients in actions initiated against individuals by the federal or state government. Unlike in civil law, those who are prosecuted for a crime are guaranteed the right to assistance of counsel. The Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees this right.
This right, generally, must be invoked by the individual and applies only after the initiation of formal adversarial proceedings – whether by way of formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information, or arraignment.
Criminal lawyers are there to support an arrested individual; an individual questioned by police but not formally charged; or an individual charged with a crime. Criminal Lawyers are able to provide clients with a valuable knowledge and understanding of the charges and implications of your actions.
If you are facing criminal charges, you should consult with a criminal lawyer to defend you through each stage of the criminal justice process. With the assistance of a criminal lawyer, you may attain a considerably better outcome than if you tried to handle your case on your own. If you intend to dispute the criminal charges against you, it would be beneficial to seek the assistance of a qualified criminal lawyer.
Some of the ways a criminal lawyer may be able to help you include:
If you have been charged with a crime, you should speak to an experienced criminal lawyer to determine if any of your rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution have been violated.


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Here's a list of helpful threads for Hunters, if you have any suggestions/additions, please post it in this thread.
WoD Threads
Azortharion's Universal Hunter Guide, a one-stop shop for all questions hunter-related.
What is the best pet for…
[Weakauras] Clampys' Hunter Aura Group! (Updated for 6.0.3)
Tier 17 Hunter Raiding Tips and Tricks
Hunters have a new IRC channel, #beastcleaves on irc.quakenet.org! If you don't know much about IRC but still want to have some questions answered by knowledgeable hunters, reference this post on how to easily connect to our IRC chat via webpage: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...8#post27921868


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All News Releases By Date
EPA Proposes Veto of Mine Permit Under the Clean Water Act
Release Date: 03/26/2010
Contact Information: EPA Press Office, email@example.com, 202-564-6794, 202-564-7873
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced its proposal under the Clean Water Act to significantly restrict or prohibit mountain top mining at the Spruce No. 1 surface mine in Logan County, W. Va. Spruce No.1 mine is one of the largest mountaintop removal operations ever proposed in Central Appalachia. The project was permitted in 2007 and subsequently delayed by litigation. The Spruce No. 1 mine would bury over 7 miles of headwater streams, directly impact 2,278 acres of forestland and degrade water quality in streams adjacent to the mine.
EPA's proposed determination comes after extended discussions with the company failed to produce an agreement that would lead to a significant decrease of the environmental and health impacts of the Spruce No. 1 mine.
"Coal, and coal mining, is part of our nation's energy future, and for that reason EPA has made repeated efforts to foster dialogue and find a responsible path forward. But we must prevent the significant and irreversible damage that comes from mining pollution -- and the damage from this project would be irreversible," said EPA Regional Administrator for the Mid-Atlantic, Shawn Garvin. "This recommendation is consistent with our broader Clean Water Act efforts in Central Appalachia. EPA has a duty under the law to protect water quality and safeguard the people who rely on these waters for drinking, fishing and swimming."
EPA has used its Clean Water Act veto authority in just 12 circumstances since 1972 and never for a previously permitted project.
The proposed determination, signed today by Regional Administrator Garvin, identifies numerous potential adverse impacts associated with the Spruce No. 1 project:
· Water Quality Impacts: The mine will cause adverse impacts to drinking water, native aquatic and water-dependent communities in the Spruce Fork watershed. Drainage from the Spruce No. 1 project is likely to include high levels of total dissolved solids (TDS) and selenium which adversely affect the naturally occurring aquatic communities. These include birth defects in fish and other aquatic life and can also result in toxic effects to embryos, resulting in abnormal development or death for those organisms.
· Fish and Wildlife Impacts: Mining waste placed into headwater streams will impact fish and wildlife which depend for all or part of their lifecycles on these headwater systems. Ecosystem functions performed by headwaters are lost when the headwater stream is buried or removed. These functions are lost not only to the headwater stream itself, but also to downstream aquatic ecosystems.
· Mitigation Impacts: The project's mitigation plan inadequately evaluates the nature and extent of mining related aquatic impacts and therefore fails to replace streams' lost ecological services. Natural stream channels buried by mining will be replaced, in part, by ditches being built to drain stormwater off of the mine, not to compensate for natural stream losses. These ditches will also drain water contaminated by mining into streams adjacent to the mine.
· Cumulative Mining Impacts: EPA believes that the Spruce No. 1 project, in conjunction with numerous other mining operations either under construction or proposed for the Coal River basin, will contribute to the cumulative loss of water quality, aquatic systems, and forest resources. The Coal River basin is already heavily mined and substantially impaired. Landscape and site specific assessments reveal that past and current mountaintop mining has caused substantial, irreplaceable loss of resources and an irreversible effect on these resources within the Coal River basin.
CWA Section 404(c) authorizes EPA to restrict or prohibit placing certain pollutants in streams, lakes, rivers, wetlands and other waters if the agency determines that the activities would result in "unacceptable adverse impacts" to the environment, water quality, or water supplies. This authority applies to proposed projects as well as projects previously permitted under the CWA. A final decision to restrict or prohibit the Spruce No.1 mine will be made in EPA Headquarters based on a recommendation from the Regional Administrator, public comments, and discussions with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Mingo Logan Coal Company.
The proposed determination is being published in the federal register and EPA is taking public comment for 60 days. EPA is also scheduling a public hearing in West Virginia to provide an additional opportunity for public input.
The proposed determination: https://www.epa.gov/region03/mtntop/spruce1documents.html
Search this collection of releases | or search all news releases
View selected historical press releases from 1970 to 1998 in the EPA History website.


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Taken the day before my daughter's wedding, when I had 2 good eyes.
This post could be pages and pages in length but I will condense it so that you and I will both save time. It may or may not have some gross pictures. OK, it will. In a previous post, I talked about having the herpes simplex virus in my eye. This started in July and when I posted about it in August, something else was happening in my eye that I didn't know about. I'll back up just a bit. By the end of July, the epithelium over the cornea was starting to slough off. It caused some pain so I went to my eye doctor. He put a contact bandage on my eye and I went merrily on my way. During this time, I was training for a marathon. I was to the point of running 16 miles on Saturdays. I ran 4 days a week and the other 2 days, I did water aerobics. If you know what's going to happen, then you're a lot smarter than I am. I had no idea it was wrong to wear contacts in a swimming pool. I've done it for years. However, this time, I had a "chink" in the armor because of the tiny area in my cornea that had sloughed off. Did you know that amoeba live in water, including chlorinated pool water? Well, they do. Did you also know that amoeba can get in your cornea, multiply and eat your cornea? I know that now! It's called Acanthamoeba keratitis (AK).
Acanthamoeba keratitis is a rare but serious infection of the eye that can result in permanent visual impairment or blindness. This infection is caused by a microscopic, free-living ameba (single-celled living organism) called Acanthamoeba. Acanthamoebacauses Acanthamoeba keratitis when it infects the transparent outer covering of the eye called the cornea. Acanthamoebaamebas are very common in nature and can be found in bodies of water (for example, lakes and oceans), soil, and air.
In the U.S., most AK cases are in contact lens wearers. I'm learning that we shouldn't wear our contacts in the shower, swimming pool, lakes or hot tub. NEVER soak or clean your contacts in tap water. Use only commercial grade lens cleaner and soaking solution. Consider yourself warned!
OK, back to me. When I went to my cornea specialist, the end of July, he was pleased with my progress in healing from the herpes simplex. My eye looked normal and the cornea was healing. At the beginning of August, my eye became very inflamed, and my vision was limited. I went back to the eye doctor and he assumed the herpes virus took a turn for the worse. He increased the dosage of steroid drops and had me return in a few days. I learned something else in this process. Amoeba on steroids are much more aggressive and become stronger. It took almost 3 weeks to diagnose my problem. By then, my cornea was extremely cloudy and my vision was gone. I could see light and shadow, but no images. My eye was sensitive to light, and there was a lot of pain. My head ached constantly. I was sent to the Moran Eye Center in Salt Lake City where I was diagnosed by using a confocal microscope and scraping the cornea for a culture. I left the eye center with 3 different kinds of pills and 8 different drops, NOT ONE was a steroid drop! :) I was to put half of these drops in my eye every hour, then the other half the next hour. The doctor let me know that what I had was the worse kind of eye infection and some people have lost their eyesight and/or their eye(s) because of it. I was overwhelmed and scared. I went in to the restroom at the eye center, while waiting for all the prescriptions to be filled, and had a little bit of a sob session.
I work as a speech technician at an elementary school. School was starting the day after my visit to Moran. Needless to say, I didn't go. In fact, I didn't go to work until September 27th. The days in between were filled with weekly doctor visits, audio books (it hurt to look at a book, phone screen, TV screen, light, or pretty much anything), prayers, pacing, new grand babies (it helps to hold a newborn baby while pacing), sleepless nights, and pain killers. There were many funny, wonderful, and inspiring things that happened during that time too. But, like I said at the beginning of this post, I'll try to condense it.
Nothing better than holding a newborn baby. Glad he couldn't see that his grandma was a pirate!
The first week in October, Dr. W., my cornea specialist, was concerned that the AK was getting worse. He sent me back to the Moran Eye Center for another confocal scan. It showed that the amoeba were dying off, but now I also had a fungus infection! I was prescribed more drops to put in my eye every hour. It would take up to 40 minutes to get all the drops in my eye, then, twenty minutes later, I'd have to start over again. I was a slave!
Almost all of these drops needed to be refrigerated. I couldn't leave the house without having an insulated "eye" bag with ice and my drops. I used a spread sheet to keep track of all of it. One of my drops to kill the amoeba was a diluted pool cleaner.
For the first time, I felt it would be better to just remove my eye. A few weeks after the fungus diagnosis, Dr. W. stated that we need to remove the cornea because it was getting so thin and ready to perforate. I didn't know exactly what would happen if it perforated, but it didn't sound very pretty and I was ready to have that diseased cornea off my eye.
I hesitate putting up this picture. I know it's gross but this is what was under my eye patch before the transplant. You can tell how even the skin under my eye is affected by all the drops. It would have been perfect for Halloween.
Having the cornea transplant was the beginning of recovery. The fungus is gone, the acanthamoeba is gone, but it left a wake of destruction. My eye is damaged in different ways. The most obvious being the pressure is low and won't build up. My eye is shrinking. The cornea has "failed" because it is swollen and cloudy, however, I feel it successfully did what it needed to do. As of this writing, I'm scheduled to have another cornea transplant. Two to four weeks later, I will have another surgery, where a retinal surgeon will inject silicone oil in my eye to help maintain the pressure. Hopefully, with these two surgeries I will regain some sight.
What I've learned:
Prayer is powerful. There were many, many people praying for me. God does hear and answer our prayers. There were tender mercies and miracles during this painful and frightening time and still continue to be.
I am blessed. This is only an eye. I can still walk, run, play with my grand kids, be with my husband, work, and eat Peanut M&Ms.
Modern medicine rocks!
Acanthamoeba Keratitis is horrible! (I was going to say, "sucks", but I wouldn't let my kids say that so I shouldn't either) I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. And yet, it's all OK.
Attitude is everything. I had a few pity parties, even got refreshments for the party, but it didn't help. When I had a more positive outlook, I seemed to heal faster; both mentally and physically.
We can do hard things.


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San Jose Earthquakes will host the LA Galaxy at Stanford Stadium for the annual California Clasico on June 28. The match, which will be nationally televised on NBC Sports Network, is set to kick off at 7:30 p.m. PT.
Tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday, Jan. 31 at 10 a.m. PT and will be available by visiting the club's website or by calling 1-800-225-2277. Tickets will also be available through a special Visa pre-sale starting on Thursday, Jan. 30. Individual tickets for all other Earthquakes games except for the match at Levi's Stadium are already on sale. Fans can purchase tickets by visiting the SJEarthquakes.com or by calling 1-800-225-2277. Groups of 10 or more should call the Front Office at 408-556-7700 to inquire about group rates.


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For girls in 5th - 6th grades
Recommended by NYAA (Charlie Horner)
For a full list of USA Field Hockey Clubs in PA, visit USA Field Hockey's website at: http://www.usafieldhockey.com
First Class Field Hockey
33N 8th Street
Lehighton, PA 18235
First Class Field Hockey is a local field hockey club located in and around Lehighton, PA and the Lehigh Valley Area. First Class started in 2007 and has taken teams to the National Field Hockey Festival and the National Indoor Tournament each year.
Website: http://firstclassfieldhockey.com
High Styx Field Hockey
199 Scull Hill Loop
Bernville, PA 19506
High Styx's mission is to provide year-round field hockey training for the serious student athlete. We do this by teaching proper mechanics, techniques and strategies and by promoting respect for the players, coaches, umpires and spectators.
GAMEFACE INT'L, (formerly Grand Slam) 2816 Old Pricetown Rd, Temple, PA 19560, is the official indoor training center for the High Styx Club.
Website: http://highstyx.org
Contact: Sylvia Leffler-Shunk
True North Field Hockey
906 Heather Lane
Easton, PA 18040
Contact: Andrew Griffiths Phone: 484-560-1499
Site Currently Unavailable: http://www.truenorthfh.org
Marojoka Hockey Club
26 West Market Street
Bethlehem, PA 18018
Contact: Martin Romeril
Website: http://www.marojoka.org
Mystic Hockey Club
PO Box 23
Tatamy, PA 18085
Mystic Hockey Club is a program designed to instruct players in proper fundamental skills and with a deep understanding of cutting edge tactics. The attributes of Teamwork, Friendship, and Dedicated Training are the hallmarks of the club. Mystic has sent over 400 players on to college field hockey.
Indoor practices are at Iron Lakes 3625 Shankweiler Road Allentown, PA 18104
Website: http://mystichockeyclub.com
Contact: Phil Danaher
Phone: 610-905-9202
Private I'S Vipers
832 N Lewis Road
Limerick, PA 19468
The Viper Field Hockey Club Team is a premier Field Hockey Club comprised of player from Southeastern Pa, Northern DE, Northern Maryland and Southern NJ. The club fields division teams in the U10 / U12 / U14 / U16 / U19 age groups. The Viper Field Hockey club competes in local and regional tournaments throughout the year.
Contact: Charles Mulvany
Website: http://www.viperfieldhockey.com
W C Eagles
The Training Center
Spring City, PA 19475
We are a competitive field hockey club located in Spring City, PA. Director of Coaching Jun Kentwell is a former Chinese National Team Player and Coach and current International Umpire. Our focus is on total player development for players ages 8 to 18. We offer private individual and small group coaching in addition to our Club Program.
Contact: Jun Kentwell
Website: http://www.wcfieldhockey.com
X-Calibur Field Hockey
2073 Little Conestoga Road
Elverson, PA 19520
The X-Calibur Field Hockey Club strives to create a place whole lifelong learning occurs. Our players develop the ability to advance their individual and team skills, and their minds. X-Calibur's founding staff strives to teach that success comes from the heart; from the desire to never give up even when it looks hopeless. This is a tradition we hope to continue. Come join the legend and help it grow!
Contact: Clarence Jennelle
Website: http://www.xcaliburfieldhockey.com
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While UFC 158's main event features Nick Diaz's bid to unseat UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre, the division's next title challenger is also expected to be determined at the show.
UFC President Dana White today said once-beaten Johny Hendricks (14-1 MMA, 9-1 UFC) would likely earn a shot at the title should he look impressive at the event against Jake Ellenbeger (28-6 MMMA, 7-2 UFC).
"I'd have to say if Johny Hendricks looks good and wins his fight, it will probably be Hendricks (next)," White said.
UFC 158 takes place March 16 at Montreal's Bell Centre. St-Pierre vs. Diaz headlines with Hendricks and Ellenberger also meeting on the pay-per-view main card. Today's comments were made at a pre-event press conference promoting the event.
There are some who believe Hendricks should have been the one fighting St-Pierre at UFC 158. After all, the 29-year-old currently boasts a five-fight win streak that includes knockout victories of perennial contenders Martin Kampmann and Jon Fitch. Meanwhile, Diaz was defeated by Carlos Condit in February 2012 and has since been sidelined while serving an NSAC-ordered suspension after failing a post-fight drug screen.
St-Pierre, who openly lobbied for the fight with Diaz, is not among those people.
"I think for me Nick Diaz is the No. 1 contender," St-Pierre said. "He's proven himself many times before. There's a story between us. It's a big fight everyone wants to see.
"Nick wanted that fight for a long time, and I wanted to have that fight for a long time. Now it's time to do it."
St-Pierre and Diaz, of course, were supposed to fight in late 2011 before the challenger no-showed a pair of promotional events and was pulled from the card. That didn't keep him from trashtalking the champion in later interviews, which is a primary reason St-Pierre is so insistent on the matchup.
However, St-Pierre also points to Hendricks' razor-thin split-decision win over Josh Koscheck as a reason he does not deserve top-contender status.
"Johny Hendricks, when I watched the fight with Josh Koscheck, according to me, Josh Koscheck should have won that fight, so I didn't want to fight a guy that lost to a guy I already beat," St-Pierre said.
But all of that doubt could be erased should Hendricks down Ellenberger in UFC 158's co-main event.
Of course, in the ever-changing world of the UFC where timing often dictates opportunities as much as anything else, White said that scenario is simply the most likely and not a guarantee.
"Who knows?" White asked. "We'll see what happens."
For more on UFC 158, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.