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If You're Trying To Lose Weight Curves Weight Loss Center Is Perfect For You Curves Weight Loss Centers are perfect for modern women of today so if you've been searching for the perfect fitness center to lose weight make sure you try Curves. Any woman of any size may benefit from visiting one of the many Curves Weight Loss Centers. This organization is quickly becoming one of the hottest franchises for real women who want to get into healthy shape. This company has locations in over 40 countries and there may be a few clubs near you.
The company is still growing strong and there is good reason for its outstanding success. The benefits of joining one of the Curves Weight Loss Centers are numerous and I'll share my personal experience with you to illustrate how well the clubs work with their clients.
I have had a life long battle with weight. The initial weight problems began when I started eating solid foods. Unfortunately, I never managed to get the issue under control well into my mid-thirties. I just assumed that I was meant to be overweight after experiencing failure after failure. Then a friend of mine suggested visiting Curves Weight Loss Centers.
At first, the notion was not the least bit appealing. I have lost hundreds of pounds on other programs and I have had numerous memberships to countless exercise facilities. Each experience left me feeling lower than the last. However, the Curves Weight Loss Centers are unique and they offer a fresh approach to weight reduction.
The first benefit of joining one of the Curves Weight Loss Centers is the feeling of community. Rather than working out for hours next to people who are in unbelievable shape, I had the benefit of working out with my peers in a fun and relaxed atmosphere. I was never comfortable in a gym before joining Curves.
Also, time is a huge factor in my ability to stick with a program. I have three kids and a tight schedule between working at the office, taking care of the house and attending to my family's needs, I really needed to spend as little time at the Curves Weight Loss Centers as possible.
The program is perfect for me because I only have to commit to 30 minutes three times each week. The Curves Weight Loss Centers offer flexible hours and the workout is so easy that I can wear my street clothes and not worry about breaking a sweat.
Finally, the Curves Weight Loss Centers offer a diet program that is so easy that I'm surprised that I hadn't used it in the past. I can eat a variety of foods and I don't have to buy prepackaged meals. The Curves Weight Loss Centers have helped me get into the best shape I have ever been. I guess that I wasn't meant to be overweight after all.


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Application Process International Students
Applying to D'Youville is Easy and Free.
Start by reviewing the application check list, which outlines the materials you'll need to submit in addition to completing the online application.
Apply Now!
Complete the Online Application.
- First create a log-in and password. If you can't complete the application in one sitting, that's okay. You can access the form as often as you like.
- You can download, complete, and mail in a paper application.
- If you have any questions about the application process, contact the International Admissions Office.
Tip: Keep your username and password in an easy-to-find location.
Admissions Decision
Admissions decisions are reached on a rolling basis. You'll receive your decision once all documents have been received, reviewed and evaluated. Once accepted, you'll receive a signed letter of acceptance as part of the D'Youville College enrollment packet. The packet will contain the following requirements with all instructions:
- Directions on how to wire and transfer school fees
- Mandatory student health insurance application
- Health requirements with health forms and information.
- Athletic department information
- D'Youville College Guaranteed Tuition Plan
- Required financial forms
- Directions to D'Youville College including airport information.
Tuition Deposit and Immigration Requirements
As an international student, you must obtain a Federal Form I-20 before you make an appointment with the US Consulate or Embassy in your country. Once the admissions office receives your $500 tuition deposit, the international student financial forms and supporting financial documentation, a financial review committee will determine whether to issue the I-20. The $500 deposit is applied towards tuition. The deposit will be refunded in the event a student visa is not issued.
- Contact the International Admissions office at (716) 829-7600 or by email at email@example.com.
- International Student Office - Contact Laryssa Petryshyn, Director, International Student Office at (716) 829-8119 or by email at firstname.lastname@example.com.

subset: commoncrawl


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29 October 2012
Accused of not being sufficiently creative on their Twitter account, NullCrew responded, "You mean like LulzSec, how they would say all this stupid shit? Yeah... We're not like that." This was immediately after NullCrew had pasted the haul from their latest victim, Ford Motor co, on Pastebin. What is noticeble is that NullCrew sometimes announces how they get into their victims' systems – in this case via an error-based SQL injection vulnerability.
The crew had also just published (on Saturday) what it terms its e-zine on Pastebin – but this was rapidly removed. It is still available on AnonPaste and details hacks into www.mt.gov (boolean-blind base SQL injection), www.la.gov (unspecified method, and "nothing worthwhile in the databases"), un.org (XSS in webtv.un.org), www.texas.gov and fhpr.osd.mil (both unspecified). A related post still on Pastebin and posted on Thursday 25 October, explains the rationale: a new international protest against what it calls "corrupt governments and agencies. By agencies, I'm talking about organizations like Monsanto for example."
In announcing this new operation, which it calls 'F-theSystem' it calls for groups to unite in their opposition. "You do not need to be in NullCrew, Anonymous, or any official hacktivist/activist group. You don't need any knowledge with technology. There are other ways to fight. Protests, Articles, Video footage..."
However, it is the online criminal expertise of NullCrew that will worry cyber law enforcement. Last month NullCrew hacked into Cambridge university. Earlier this month they breached Orange.co.uk, the World Health Organization, Sony (again), and dumped details from Foxconn and state.gov.
NullCrew has already been around for longer than the famous 50 days of LulzSec; and seem better at covering their tracks than predecessors like LulzSec and UGNazi. But one thing we can all be sure of is that the FBI and SOCA and Europol are all looking for NullCrew.
29 October 2012
Hahahah, and what whitehat wrote this masterpiece? Also, I'd reserve my opinions about how skilled 'NullCrew' is, because (to be quite frank) they're just the next line of Anonymous skidiots. If you don't believe me... well just wait and find out.81abe8ae18709d9c67b558be2d19ad3e
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The Bottom Line
- Very Slim Case Design
- Low Cost For Base System
- Uses Older DDR2 Memory
- Integrated Graphics
- Limited Expansion Capabilities
- Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 Dual Core Processor
- 500GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive
- 8x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Burner
- Intel GMA X4500HD Integrated Graphics
- Intel HDA 5.1 Audio
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Six USB 2.0, DVI, VGA
- 12" x 2.5" x 10.75"
- Windows 7 Home Premium
Guide Review - Systemax Venture H422i Slim Desktop PC
Mar 11 2010 - The first thing that most people will note about the Systemax Venture H422i is how slim it is. At just two and a half inches wide, it is one of the slimmest small form factor desktops on the market that still uses desktop components. If the standard black color is too dull, buyer's also have the option of white, red or blue faceplates at no additional cost.
Even with the extremely thin profile of the Venture H422i, Systemax has managed to use standard desktop components for added performance compared to many similar profile systems using laptop parts. The test unit came with an Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 dual core processor that provided decent performance that certainly is better than a laptop based processor but falls short of higher grade Core 2 processors or the new Core i3. The system also uses slower DDR2 memory rather than the newer and faster DDR3 which holds back the system.
Storage is one of the few parts on the Venture H422i that does use a laptop component. The thin profile of the case doesn't provide enough space for a traditional desktop optical drive. As a result, it uses a slower thin profile laptop DVD burner. The hard drive still uses a traditional desktop drive that provide a decent 500GB of storage space. The default $499 version comes with a paltry 160GB of storage space that is well below what most similarly priced small form factor desktops use when they use standard desktop drives.
To keep the costs and size of the Venture H422i down, Systemax has elected to use an integrated Intel GMA X4500HD graphics processor instead of a dedicated one. This limits the overall graphics capabilities of the system. It has enough performance to handle high definition video streams but it does not even have enough performance for even casual 3D games. Gamers, even casual ones, will want to look at larger and more robust small form factor systems.
The big problem with the Venture H422i is the lack of expansion possibilities. The system only features six USB 2.0 ports and lacks any other peripheral ports or expansion slots. This means that there is no way to add anything other than USB peripherals and if you have too many, you will need a USB hub as well. Most slim PCs while thicker at least have half-height expansion cards slots and either FireWire or eSATA for additional peripheral support.
The version of the Venture H422i test has a listed price of $640. At this price point, consumers have many other options out there that offer a greater level of performance and post-purchase upgrade options that make the Venture H422i a less than desirable option. The base $499 model is certainly functional and a decent choice for those wanting a basic desktop PC that doesn't take up much space. Still, be sure to check out similarly priced systems first.


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Downtown South Boston doors open for seasonal salute
- Last Updated on 07:53 AM 11/20/13
- BY The Gazette-Virginian
It's the Christmas holiday season and downtown South Boston is getting decked out in holiday finery.
The twinkling lights, decorations and music piped onto the street invite the townsfolk and visitors to stroll downtown and slip back in time to Christmas Past, when thoughts of peace and goodwill toward their fellowman and sugarplums filled hearts making people happy, said Destination Downtown South Boston Executive Director Tamyra Vest.
The stage is set for "A Holiday Tradition in Downtown South Boston" — the 27th annual Christmas Open House this Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m.
The downtown stores will open their doors for customers' holiday shopping pleasure from 1 to 5 p.m.
Customers can enter to win a $100 downtown gift certificate.
All the merchants welcome visitors during this special holiday event and thank them for shopping local and supporting the community's economy, Vest said.
Youngsters can have their photographs taken with Santa at Moving Voices The Isadora Duncan Cultural Exchange located at 419A Main Street between the hours of 1 to 4 p.m.
Parents can feel free to bring their own camera and take photos while their children visit with Santa.
The public is invited to help celebrate "A Holiday Tradition in Downtown South Boston" during the 27th annual Christmas Open House Sunday afternoon.
Then on Saturday, Dec. 7, the South Boston Christmas Parade sponsored by Destination Downtown South Boston and Elliott Electric, Inc. will be held at 5 p.m., Vest said.
For more information or an application, go to www.downtownsobo.com or call 434-575-4208.


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Innovation takes many forms. But when it comes to the art of disruption, often it comes from quarters least expected. The breakthroughs that change the world are not something that can be forced or fully anticipated.
The foundation can be laid for disruptive innovation, however, as world-renowned research outfit Bell Labs well knows. Bell Labs, the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent, has been behind breakthroughs in innovation for generations.
Part of laying the foundation in 2014 means developing setting up hotbeds of local innovation and making sure that the ideas that come out of these hotbeds are able to quickly connect with agile developers than can start playing with the innovations to bring them to market, as Bell Labs articulated in a recent blog on disruptive innovation.
The company just announced plans to open a Bell Labs office in Tel Aviv, co-located with the Alcatel-Lucent CloudBand business developing cloud and NFV (network functions virtualization) solutions. The facility, led by famous Israeli computer scientist and academic Danny Raz, will be a critical "listening post" for telecommunications innovation.
"You have to embrace new ideas and allow disruption, at the same time as restructuring and refocusing," noted Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes during the keynote speech at the Israeli technology conference where he announced the new research office, MIXiii 2014. "You need to create the space to re-grow and allow some degree of risk taking."
Combes said that the idea behind the Israeli site is to start modestly but not be afraid of disruptive new ideas and be quick to invest or kill ideas.
Central to that is the relationship between developers and entrepreneurs.
"What is great is to be able to have researchers working closely to agile developers and entrepreneurs," he said in the speech. "That's a unique combination only a big company like us can do – and is what we are doing today in Israel, and around the world with the opening of 'creative' rooms and more than 250 university partnerships."
He also announced the Bell Labs Prize, an annual competition dedicated to the pursuit of truly disruptive solutions to solve the problems in ICT and networks that really matter. Prize winners will take home cash awards worth as much as $100,000 along with the chance to develop their ideas further at Bell Labs.
Innovation takes many forms, and Bell Labs wants to make sure it is at the forefront of the next disruptive innovations no matter how they get their start.
Meet the digital nomads, a growing group of heavy mobile data users that's redefining how service providers think about connectivity.
There is a small, but growing, new class of data users amongst us. You've likely spotted one – that man hunched over a laptop at your neighborhood coffee shop, the woman swiping through a tablet in the park, or even that teen on the train whose eyes are glued to a video on his larger-than-average smartphone.
They are the digital nomads. Unlike the hunters and gatherers of the past, these nomads are always connected, regardless of where they are, and their expectations for connectivity have never been higher.
Nomadism isn't confined to an age group or a gender. It's simply a behavior determined by heavy engagement with data using one or more portable devices – someone who is sitting down and concentrating, not just casually checking it on-the-go. It's a phenomenon that's been talked about in the past, but it's a behavior growing in prevalence thanks to the rise of wireless broadband in public places and the recent explosion of device form factors with which to take advantage of it.
Digital nomads may use any portable device, from a smartphone to a laptop, and likely own multiple, but the device this group of users is most likely to tote around is the tablet.
Tablets are highly portable – they work just as well on the sofa as they do on a train, in a stadium, or at a desk. The tablet category has also grown and morphed since Apple paved the way in 2010. It is now common to see larger-screen smartphones or "phablets" like the Samsung Note and smaller-screen tablets, like the Kindle Fire and, potentially, the rumored, soon-to-launch iPad Mini. Both new categories share the characteristics of the smartphone but have the data intensity of a larger tablet.
As a result, the digital nomad is using several times more data than the average smartphone user. They could be connecting via a home broadband network, a 3G or 4G cellular network via their phone or a data dongle, Wi-Fi, small cells, or some combination thereof. And, while they may not care which network they're on, provided it works well in their current location, the service providers should care immensely.
After all, it's up to the service provider to make sure the network is fast, the handoff is seamless, and the experience is comparable to that of in-home broadband. And, when any of those things fails to happen, it's up to the service provider to have one set of self-help tools and one number to call for support, whether the issue is on the fixed network, mobile network, or somewhere in between.
That's because nomadic users are not "broadband users" or "mobile users" – they are just data users above all else. That's a new way of thinking for many service providers.
Many operators have been busy deploying 4G LTE, filling in capacity gaps with small cell networks and managing offload to WiFi. This is all good, but a further network transformation will be needed to account for wireless nomads as the group continues to grow. Specifically, updates in policy and authentication are required to provide consistency of experience across different access technologies. Also, more sophisticated data plan pricing that takes into account fixed-mobile convergence – not only at the network level, but also in the IT that sits behind the network – would be much more conducive to the nomadic lifestyle.
If service providers are going to deliver the seamless experience and the kind of packages digital nomads really want to buy, there are a quite a lot of implications for the networks and the way they do business.
Luckily, this group also presents a host of new opportunities for service providers. And, just as it took a long time for the first species of nomads that roamed the earth to secure their niche, so the race to keep up with the wireless nomads is just beginning.
The fifth edition of the Global Innovation Index (GII)—which ranks 141 countries on the basis of innovation capabilities and results—was released last week in Geneva, Switzerland.
The index was developed by INSEAD eLab and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), with experience from knowledge partners Alcatel-Lucent, Booz & Company and the Confederation of Indian Industry.
For Alcatel-Lucent, assisting with the GII is part of its overall commitment to further innovation, the company said in a blog post. "Alcatel-Lucent is a global company with employees all over the world," the company said. "The GII is one of the places where we can exercise this role as a global citizen, dig deeper into innovative ideas and work closely together on common objectives with other global players."
In helping with the index, Alcatel-Lucent said it focused on the ancient collaboration between the public and private sectors because that relationship plays an important role in addressing today's problems in novel ways.
"Writing this paper gave us the chance to step away from our technical roots and to highlight the fact that innovation is about more than technical breakthroughs," Alcatel-Lucent said in the blog entry.
In the index chapter written by Alcatel-Lucent, public-private partnerships (PPP) and their relationship to innovation is examined. One example of PPP is the Living Cities project, an eco-sustainability project in the U.S. where local public organizations and private companies partner to revitalize urban areas.
One difference between the current situation of PPPs and the past is that information and communication technologies (ICT) are reinforcing and expanding these partnerships beyond previous limits.
This dovetails with the innovation work currently being done at Alcatel-Lucent, such as its GreenTouch consortium of industry experts and academics dedicated to pioneering innovation in eco-sustainability technology to achieve reductions in the energy consumption of ICT networks.
"Innovation in today's societies is about collaboration, about forming the sometimes seemingly impossible linkages between companies, industries, and public institutions to address challenges and opportunities that reach far beyond the scope or capability of any individual organization," Alcatel-Lucent said in its innovation blog. "This means also that the role of companies – like ours – is changing from providing just products and services to collaborative, innovative working with all sorts of players, including public and non-profit sectors."
Alcatel-Lucent also helped with GII methodology, although it reports that introducing new and novel components to the index was more challenging than initially suspected.
"The difficult part was to find reliable and coherent data that could support the innovation indicators for over 140 countries," Alcatel-Lucent said in its blog entry. "We recognized that the GII and related analysis cannot be built on shaky or incomplete data. Finding data for 140 countries to cover these indicators was, frankly, a bit of a nightmare. These are the kinds of challenges that only close, ongoing engagement with the process can reveal."
This was the second year Alcatel-Lucent participated as a GII Knowledge Partner.
Customers have growing expectations for mobile broadband services. Better networks, broader device support, ubiquitous connectivity and competitive prices remain essential, but they're no longer enough to keep customers coming back for more. Today's mobile customers demand a superior customer experience, one that focuses on making it easy to discover, use and enjoy applications, devices and services.
Service providers are feeling the pressure to deliver on these expectations.
A renewed focus on QoE
Rising smartphone use is thrusting quality of experience (QoE) back into the spotlight. Smartphones appeal to users because they promise easy access to e-mail, apps, social networking and video. But smartphones have hidden complexities. Many users struggle with smartphone setup, app configuration, usage tracking and connectivity.
The end result is that smartphone users are turning to service providers more often — with problems that take more time to resolve.
Research by Alcatel-Lucent and WDS highlights the challenges associated with smartphone support:
This isn't what customers expect when they sign their smartphone contracts.
Avoiding aggravation at the help desk
Service provider help desks should be reliable sources of quick answers and effective solutions. Great help desk experiences can enhance QoE and strengthen customer–provider relations. But despite providers' efforts, the help desk often remains a source of aggravation for many (smartphone) users.
The main problem is that help desk agents aren't always equipped to deliver fast, reliable solutions. Many lack easy access to timely intelligence about devices, applications, services and networks. They hunt for solutions manually — often across dozens of systems — or escalate issues to higher-tier support. For customers, the end effects are long wait times, frequent transfers and repeat calls.
What customers expect from support
So what kind of support do (smartphone) customers expect from service providers? The answers are straightforward:
Knowledge helps service providers deliver
Service providers have in-depth knowledge of customers, devices, services and networks. This puts them in an ideal position to deliver the enhanced support and simple experiences customers want. The challenge is to make this knowledge available to the right stakeholders and systems at every point of customer interaction.
Systems that deliver the right tools, information and visibility to the right places at the right times can dramatically improve the customer experience. With support backed by data-driven insights, customers can:
Engage with agents who know what services, devices and apps they use, and who can identify problems, solutions and new opportunities in real time. This cuts handling time and gets customers back on track faster.
Get support on all services from one well-informed source. This reduces escalations and transfers, and saves customers the trouble of explaining their concerns to agents who can't actually address them.
Access automated configuration capabilities or apps that instantly connect them with the help desk using their channel of choice. This can eliminate complex configuration issues and allow customers to get support at their convenience.
All of these things can inspire customer satisfaction. Customers can feel confident that they can solve problems on their own or get help from someone who understands what they're experiencing. The end results are fewer and shorter help desk calls, less frustration and more time for enjoyment and discovery.
Beyond the help desk
The relevance of data doesn't stop at the help desk. With effective data mining and analysis, service providers can use their knowledge of customers to enhance and optimize many aspects of the customer experience.
For example, providers can apply their knowledge of customer usage data to present customers with valuable incentives — like unlimited mobile video downloads in off-peak hours at no additional cost — delivering more value for money. They can draw on similar knowledge to empower the help desk to extend compelling targeted offers. Or, they can use it to confirm that customers are getting the best possible value from their mobile packages.
Service providers can combine customer, network and usage insights to take a more proactive and positive approach to bandwidth management. For instance, to offset unpopular bandwidth and usage caps, providers can give customers compelling real-time opportunities to try different consumption patterns. These could include dynamic data pricing or free streaming of content sponsored by content providers.
Data-driven insights can also influence customer experience in more subtle ways, such as preventing bill shock. With the right insights, service providers can watch for abnormally high usage or billing charges in special conditions such as international roaming. They can then trigger alerts to offer transparency and choices that prevent undesirable surprises.
Getting "motivated" about customer experience
Alcatel-Lucent's recently launched portfolio of Motive Customer Experience Solutions (CSX) addresses the concerns outlined above. The CXS portfolio helps service providers forge stronger and more valuable customer relationships and foster long-lasting brand loyalty by building customer-focused improvements into their products and services.]]>
As traditional TV collides with the internet, unprecedented changes are taking place in the video industry. The biggest trend is what Alcatel-Lucent calls 'main-streaming:' video streaming as the new normal mass market model for how consumers get their video.
In short, consumers want video content anywhere, anytime, on any device. In an early 2011 report, Neilson said U.S. consumers spent 34.5 percent more time watching video on the internet, and 20 percent more time watching mobile video, than they did in early 2010. No doubt that number has grown since—and will continue to grow.
Online video is popular with consumers because it satisfies an appetite for flexible consumption. Plus, the success of online services like Hulu+ and Netflix indicate customers are willing to pay for that flexibility.
Content delivery industry players like Netflix and Hulu offer video using ad-funded or direct-subscription business models. These content providers pay traditional content delivery networks (CDNs) like Amazon and Limelight to publish video content online, because doing so theoretically helps ensure quality of service (QoS).
Trouble is, CDNs are making promises they can't keep. The structure of their platforms—where caches are located at the edge of ISP networks—simply can't provide guaranteed adequate QoS for end users. This presents a significant opportunity for network service providers.
"Network service providers are the only one who can ensure QoS, because they own the physical connection to the end user," Alcatel-Lucent explained in a white paper about main-streaming. "QoS can be a differentiator for them compared to other players in the media value chain, and they have a unique opportunity to leverage this position."
QoS is not the only concern, though. The impact and focus surrounding main-streaming varies depending on which side it's viewed from.
End-users want improved quality of experience (QoE). Content owners want secure delivery and guaranteed QoS. Service providers want (or rather, need) support for a wide range of streaming and downloading technologies, and optimized traffic to meet demand while reducing transport costs.
"On-net CDN, or service provider CDN, is a key component to answer the needs of all players in the value chain, by allowing a better QoE for consumers while reducing the cost of transporting video," Alcatel-Lucent explained in its white paper.
On-net CDNs own the networks over which video content is transmitted. At the last mile, service providers take over with content closer to the end-user through caching deep in the network.
By partnering with on-net CDNs, service providers can increase revenue, reduce transport costs and improve user experience through multiple business models using multi-screen video platforms.
Retail Model – the network providers becomes a content retailer, dealing directly with content providers to secure distribution rights—enabling high profit potential. Because of operational requirements, Tier 1 providers are most likely to adopt this model.
Wholesale Model – premium content delivery services are established for direct use by application and content providers. ACPs publish content directly into the operator networks, and network providers are compensated as a CDN provider. This model—appealing to Tier 1 broadband access providers—has smaller profit margins but also requires less overhead.
Transparent Caching – enables over-the-top (OTT) content delivery, with service providers deploying caching island to intercept OTT traffic, thereby reducing infrastructure costs and improving QoE. Content is delivered to subscribers without a direct relationship with content providers.
Major players in the video content industry, such as Verizon, are adapting to the new reality of main-streaming by adopting IP-video solutions like Alcatel-Lucent's Velocix. For Verizon, which initiated a CDN deployment in 2008, Velocix helped speed up time-to-market, boost operational efficiency, enable multiscreen integration, and efficiently control costs for content delivery.
The success of on-net CDN as part of the main-streaming value chain depends on several key building blocks of service, publishing and storage and delivery: the control tier (management interface, network performance, usage reporting), the storage tier (provides content), and the delivery tier (delivery digital assets to end-user devices).
Deploying a CDN is a specialized effort
"A common misconception is that an existing network team can be used to design, deploy and operate digital media delivery infrastructure, but the skill set required are very different to those found to run a network," Alcatel-Lucent notes in its white paper. "This is not just about deploying some boxes/cache into the network, but operating a CDN network requires some tools and expertise."
Design, ingestion, resiliency, security, management, monitoring and reporting, and portal are key elements of any CDN deployment. The Velocix IP-video solution addresses these by being purpose built with efficient caching options, smart content replication, on-board instrumentation, low touch operation, troubleshooting tools, go-to-market support, monetization options, and speedy time-to-market features.
It will take dedication, teamwork and technology to achieve the future we want in terms of reducing poverty, advancing social equity, and ensuring environmental protection. That's the message behind upcoming Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, this June in Brazil.
Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) and others are focusing heavily on technology as one key aspect in achieving a better future. At a Rio+20 planning conference earlier this month, Philippe Richard, who heads up green strategy at Bell Labs, participated in the closing panel, where he highlighted the role information and communications technology (ICT) plays in sustainable development.
"ICT is a mandatory enabler if we want to succeed in time," Richard stressed in an ALU Corporate Responsibility blog entry. "The technology required for making a difference will mean leapfrogging for many." To help push successful sustainable development, ICT must also be efficient and ubiquitous. "Ultimately access to broadband must be a top public policy priority for inclusive global sustainability," Richard added.
ALU has been busy working on ICT solutions as a component of sustainable development, through Bell Labs. Its GreenTouch initiative is a co-creative platform the enables meaningful collaboration as part of the green economy. "Alcatel-Lucent's ICT solutions contribute towards the much needed, low-carbon economy, including perspectives relative to national energy consumption patterns," Richard noted.
A key message during the planning conference was that long-term results for sustainable development and the green economy depend on technology investments that yield OPEX savings—rather than short-term CAPEX deals. ICT has a lot of potential in this area, but needs more investment.
"Unfortunately, we are not going fast enough because of financial and economic roadblocks," Richard said. "Even if the best technology is available, deployment is hindered by those limited by CAPEX only based decisions. This is where UN agencies, EU/global policy makers can help by providing appropriate policy support and incentives (including carbon pricing)."
It all boils down to investing wisely and starting early enough in development projects to make a lasting difference. Smart procurement, coordinated policy and reward programs for transformative technology are all important elements in creating a sustainable green economy.
For Richard, his colleagues at Alcatel-Lucent, and others involved in sustainable development, 'green' is the next big revolution of the 21st century. With forecasted 27% increase in energy consumption associated with communications service provider networks now through 2016, the time is ripe to capitalize on ICT opportunities, including potential for 15% global emissions reduction by 2020.
"We have an enormous and still relatively untapped potential, to dramatically help other economic sectors to be greener," Richard concluded.
People working in the Chinese information and communications technology (ICT) industry are open to the concept of going green, but need support and education to achieve carbon reduction targets using technology. That is the conclusion of a recent research study conducted at China's Tsingua University Media Lab on behalf of Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) titled, "Green Information Communications Technology in China."
The study involved surveying 1,072 ICT industry professionals from enterprises, associations, government departments, and higher education institutions in Beijing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Nanjing. It found that most Chinese companies are aware of green technology efforts. In fact, 59 percent of respondents plan to go green. More than 90 percent of the professionals who participated believe technology can support a low-carbon economy through energy consumption reductions and motivating society to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
"The study found that 39 percent of businesses in China planned to reduce carbon emissions by 1-20 percent within the next three to five years with the national target of 17 percent in China's 12th five-year plan," ALU noted in announcing the research. "However there was resistance to adopting more sustainable policies due to what they see as high capital, time and human resource investment requirements," they stated.
This suggests that a coordinated approach between the Chinese government, education authorities, enterprises and the technology industry will be the most successful way to reduce carbon emissions on a national scale using ICT.
"The relationship between ICT and the environment is complex and multi-faceted," noted Rajeev Singh-Molares, President of Alcatel-Lucent's Asia-Pacific Region, in the report. "Enterprises, government bodies and academic institutions need to work in tandem to spur the development and innovation of green ICT through environmentally sustainable models."
Education is a key component of driving growth of ICT applications in a green economy.
Although the ICT industry in China overall has a consistently high view of this technology's role in a green economy, knowledge levels of survey respondents varied when it came to ICT applications for carbon emissions reduction.
"Only 7.1 percent of enterprise respondents, 3.9 percent of college respondents and 16.7 percent of respondents from relevant departments of the government/associations could identify ten low-carbon technology applications… Respondents of ICT enterprises were most knowledgeable about green ICT's ability to improve logistics and to provide alternatives to face to face communication," the researchers found.
Based on results of this research study, ALU recommended that the Chinese government take several steps to promote ICT as a means of achieving carbon emission reductions and growing the green economy:
"With the information industry becoming one of China's fastest growing economic sectors, green ICT provides a leapfrogging opportunity to mitigate some of the challenges in our environment, including climate change, energy efficiency and biodiversity among others," Singh-Molares concluded.
In this day in age, no matter what business you are in, the customer is king.
As we touched on last week (and commands further attention), European telecom operators are not cutting it when it comes to delivering a stellar – or even an adequate – customer experience. This weakened Quality of Experience (QoE) tendency is forcing tech-savvy consumers to side with the company that is most responsive to their communications needs and not necessarily the one that offers a specific kind of service.
Typically consumers base their requirements on the strength, speed and coverage of their network, the depth and breadth of their product and services portfolio and, least of all, price. But this is the case no longer.
A recent study conducted in EMEA by European Communications – the results of which appear in a recent special edition, "Customer Experience" – found overwhelmingly that telecom operators are losing their edge when it comes to QoE. Alarmingly, only17 percent of operators say they have a 360-degree view of their customers.
Most important, in a subsequent interview with Ben Geller, senior director of marketing at Alcatel-Lucent, he said the study reveals that the main differentiator between telecom operators these days is found not in the services offered but the customer experience overall.
"The real differentiator [between companies] has ultimately become the customer experience offered," said Geller. "The days of customer acquisition are largely gone. Markets are pretty much saturated and essentially, the strategy has become one that is not based on grabbing market share, but rather, on retaining market share and getting more value out of the customers that you already have."
That means even if even if network service is consistently reliable, a bad experience or interaction can have major impact, including lost revenue from the customers that switch to another operator, which lowers customer lifetime value (CLV) and the sets forth an inability to monetize service portfolios.
In fact, more than 70 percent of consumers are willing to spend 10 percent or more with businesses that exceed their expectations, but when customers are dissatisfied, their likelihood of churning increases by a factor of 10, according to statistics from Alcatel-Lucent.
In line with the findings and the need to take a more holistic view, Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) offers Motive Customer Experience Management solutions that can help service providers make a good impression by getting it right the first time.
Using Motive CXM solutions, service providers can:
Those service providers with good QoE are able to reduce their support costs and ultimately improve their bottom line. However, it is imperative to keep in mind there is no one-size-fits-all solution or prescribed path to improve QoE, Geller noted.
"Every provider has their own unique set of problems they are trying to solve," he said. "Some [operators] are going to want to start with better monetizing the assets that they have…others might want to be able to minimize the number of incoming calls for tech support, while others, still, will have no idea where they want to start."
The GreenTouch consortium was formed with the ambitious goal of inventing new technologies that could reduce the energy expenditure of telecommunication networks by a factor of 1000 by 2015. Two of the newest members of the consortium are the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, two premier research institutes in India. We recognized that India faces certain unique challenges and Green is not only far more relevant in emerging markets such as India, but also that emerging markets require certain unique technical challenges in the field of Green Networking. With this in mind, the Green Telecom and IT Workshop was co-organized by Bell Labs and IISc with support from GreenTouch to explore collaborative opportunities, on April 4-5, 2012.
The Workshop was kicked off with two exciting keynotes by Dr. Gee Rittenhouse, President of the GreenTouch consortium and Prof. Rod Tucker from the University of Melbourne. Dr. Gee Rittenhouse outlined the vision of GreenTouch. He outlined some ongoing projects in wireline and wireless networking that would help achieve this goal. Dr. Rod Tucker then delved into the details of why research in Green networking was absolutely essential. His analysis showed that while Telecom comprised about 2% of total energy consumption today, with the rapid growth in data traffic, this fraction could reach alarming proportions in a few years.
Further, on Day two there was a keynote talk by Prof. Vinod Sharma from IISc. Apart from these key notes, there were 21 technical talks from Academia and Industry comprising IISc, IIT Delhi, IIT Chennai, IIT Mumbai, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), IBM Research, Microsoft Research and Bell Labs. The talks were divided into 6 sessions comprising Green IT, Green Access (2 sessions), Green Routers and Transport, Green Devices and Energy Harvested Networks.
The speakers from Bell Labs were Thierry Klein, Peter Vetter, Peter Winzer, David Neilson, Milind Budhikkot, Rouzbeh Razhavi and Vikram Srinivasan. They outlined various approaches by Bell Labs Researchers to tackle the 1000X goal ranging from small cells, dynamic spectrum access and cloud RAN on the wireless side, to bit-interleaved PON, quantum communications and spatial multiplexing and green routers and interconnects on the wireline side.
It was interesting to note that almost all the Academics from India were focused on the design of energy harvested networks. The key challenge in India is that cell sites do not have reliable access to the power grid and up to 70% of the operators OPEX is energy related. Prof. Jamadagni from IISc and a member of TRAI outlined the regulators proposals on making a significant fraction of base stations in rural and urban areas run on energy harvested sources by 2020. Prof. Jhunjunwala from IIT Chennai explored the optimal mix of energy sources (solar, battery and diesel generators) in order to minimize the operator's OPEX. Prof. Vinod Sharma in his key note talk explored the fundamental information theoretic and queuing theoretic limits of communications in energy harvested scenarios. Other Indian Academics talked about the design of algorithms for communications in energy harvested scenarios, including using cooperative relays etc.
In addition to the technical talks, there was a Panel discussion on "The Innovation Opportunity and need for green telecommunications in India". The Panel was moderated by Suresh Goyal, Head of Green Research in Bell Labs and included Gee Rittenhouse, Prof. Rod Tucker, Arun Seth (Chairman Alcatel-Lucent, India), Mrs. Shachi Devi ( CTO, Indus Towers), Harish Hande (Co-founder, SELCO, India, Magsaysay award winner), Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, (Professor, IIT Chennai) and Srikantan Moorthy (Senior Vice President and Group Head, Education & Research, Infosys). The Panel discussion was extremely lively and spanned a broad range of topics from Green Telecom to sustainability. The lively debate highlighted some of the unique challenges faced in India from a sustainability and Green perspective.
On the whole, the workshop was well attended with around 150 participants spanning Academia and Industry. It helped build bridges between IISc, IIT Delhi and other Green Touch partners and several areas of potential collaboration have been identified.
More Info: Website url: https://sites.google.com/site/greenworkshops4/?s_cid=smm_tmc0304_bl
Pictures from the workshop: https://picasaweb.google.com/bell.labs.blog/GreenTelecomITWorkshopByIIScAndBellLabs?authuser=0&feat=directlink&_cid=smm_tmc0304_bl
One of the challenges faced by mobile network service providers deploying 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) is using it to deliver popular multimedia content to a mass audience in the most efficient and effective manner. In the past, operators had two options: unicast or broadcast.
For those unfamiliar with the terms, below is a brief description of each:
Recently, a new technology call evolved multimedia broadcast multicast service (eMBMS) entered the scene. It makes possible the efficient broadcasting of content only to interested recipients. An added attraction is that eMBMS is highly scalable. It uses only a fraction of the capacity compared with unicast. This gives operators the best of both worlds: the flexibility of unicast and the efficiency of broadcast.
The latter benefit of eMBMS is highlighted in a recent Alcatel-Lucent TechZine article, "Further Efficiencies with eMBMS." Researchers RJ Vale, Network Architect for Alcatel-Lucent's Corporate CTO Technology Advisory Group and Harish Viswanathan, CTEO Advisor on M2M and Devices at Alcatel-Lucent, not that while having the ability of broadcasting personalized content leverages the inherent capabilities to broadcasting:
"To increase this efficiency even further, near-live, perishable and pre-published content can be multicast to specified users during off-peak hours. The content is loaded into their mobile device's flash memory for viewing (or other use) at a later time."
In addition, it is noted that network operators that embrace application enablement through open APIs in combination with eMBMS and preloading have powerful tools for both creating new services and addressing the coming explosion of mobile data traffic in a manner that puts less stress on network loads and thereby reduces costs.
"These advantages allow Mobile Service Providers (MSPs) to offer optional low-priced bundles, on top of data plans, with usage quotas," note Vale and Viswanathan. They added that, "A MSP could gain significant savings when even a small percentage of the content has been preloaded and is consumed by a large number of users during peak periods."
Preloading content for eMBMS is not surprisingly best suited to data—such as advertisements, software driver updates, TV series installments, software patches, or daily news. The reason is that this information is time insensitive, available before its publish time, or is intended for time-shifted consumption.
As the ALU researchers state, "This content can be packaged as free or low-cost mobile services with an array of choices for consumption at a user's convenience…For subscribers, the experience would be much like having access to unlimited content, while MSPs could get a higher yield from the bandwidth allocated to eMBMS."
The potential applications are nearly endless. Some examples: coupon services, special restaurant deals, or deal-of-the-day mobile app offers. The full posting provides a lot of detail about business models and solution architectures for preloaded eMBMS deployments that should be considered by any mobile service provider seeking to leverage the effectiveness of the 4G LTE deployments and do so cost efficiently.
Two opposing forces are driving the need for more efficient use of energy – the increased use of mobile device coupled with the power needed to sustain their use are necessitating that the telecom industry step up its efforts to improve eco-efficiency overall.
Given the trend of increased demands of today's mobile users – and the proliferation of new and different end-user applications and devices – an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is a smart choice for service providers who are also looking for new revenue opportunities.
"Consumers are no longer content with a simple telephone; they want broadband and accessibility, wherever they are, on any device they choose. They want access to information, plus instant and reliable communications," a recent whitepaper by Alcatel-Lucent (ALU), "Alcatel-Lucent IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS): Eco-efficiency Makes Economic Sense," points out.
At the same time, while a "green" lifestyle may not drive demand for new communications services, it changes the way we live and work, and in many cases, reduces our environmental impact. According to Alcatel-Lucent, telecommunications can reduce the environmental impact of other industries as well, by changing the way people live and work.
Considering this "anywhere, anytime" phenomenon continues to grow rampantly, service providers need to work toward a solution that will benefit the earth, as well as their own bottom lines.
The amount of electricity needed to browse the Internet and talk on the phone in the U.S. alone shows that a new system is needed. According to the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), data centers and telecom systems account for 3 percent of the U.S total electricity demand, and the proportion is growing rapidly.
Since the telecommunications industry uses so much electricity, the industry can make a positive impact on total energy consumption, not only by reducing its consumption through more efficient network infrastructure, but also by helping other industries to reduce their impact.
For example, Alcatel-Lucent IMS solutions help service providers reinvent communications across fixed, mobile and web, while paving the way for a smooth migration to all-IP networks with scalability and security.
"Technologies that can be enhanced with IMS (video conferencing, presence aware messaging, and anytime access) reduce or eliminate the need to travel to meetings or commute daily," the whitepaper said.
The Alcatel-Lucent End-to-End IMS Solution helps operators offer multimedia communication services including voice, video, web, messaging and other conversational services using the most effective communications tools, whether it is their PC, TV, mobile phone, or home phones.
In fact, Alcatel-Lucent claims its IMS solution reduces the environmental and economic impact by over 90 percent, compared to a TDM-based solution. The service allows service providers to respond to the demands of today's consumers, while also opening the door to new revenue streams.
As importantly it highlights Alcatel-Lucent's commitment to ecosustainability as a vendor and as an enabler for its customers to be responsible stewards as well. As ALU CEO Ben Verwaayen says, "Corporate Responsibility is our business imperative. It defines our organization."
Mobile network operators are always looking for new ways to more efficiently use their existing infrastructure without making large capital expenditures. With the explosion of tablets and smartphones, which will increasingly be used for a variety of video applications, streamed as well as interactive, use of a 4G LTE channel for delivering multicast services such as mobile TV is viewed as one way to do so. The reason is simple. It enables network operators to offer mobile TV without the need for additional expensive licensed spectrum and without requiring new infrastructure and end-user devices that might be required to unicast content.
A recent Alcatel-Lucent TechZine article, "eMBMS for More Efficient Use of Spectrum," describes the enhancements to LTE specifications that have been standardized to accommodate rapidly changing user demands and concomitant network requirements. Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS) is now a multicast standard for 4G LTE precisely because it allows one-to-many distribution of video content.
"For example, during live streaming of major sports or news events, unicast must send the same video to every user individually," explain RJ Vale, Network Architect for Alcatel-Lucent's corporate CTO technology advisory group, and Harish Viswanathan, CTO advisor on devices and machine-to-machine (M2M) technology for Alcatel-Lucent. The authors state that eMBMS makes licensed spectrum usage more efficient by leveraging multicast capabilities. These capabilities, "take advantage of the inherent broadcast qualities of wireless networks to send video only once to reach an equal number of end users." This reduces the cost per bit sent.
The authors' detail why the underlying structure of eMBMS is what makes it more efficient.
The example given puts the numbers in stark relief. "In one-to-many transmissions, a large number of mobile devices can tune in and receive the video from a single transmission…So, if eight mobiles within a sector all want the same content, multicast can transmit it just once. But unicast would have to transmit it eight times — using on the order of eight times the resources that would be required in multicast." In addition, eMBMS sessions can be set up dynamically to share resources using unicast sessions, operating on a single frequency across a group of cells to improve reception.
Initial deployments of eMBMS, a standard supported by 3GPP R9, are slated to begin this year (2012). As the article highlights, eMBMS can be used to expand the capabilities of LTE networks by using the same frequency layer for multicast, broadcast and unicast. This goes to the heart as to how and why operators can not only save money and but also provide an improved customer experience because of better reception and throughput.
eMBMS deployments, Vale and Viswanathan note, involve a somewhat complex interplay of network elements:
With these elements rolled together into a solution, eMBMS provides a valuable alternative to unicast for distributing a variety of preloaded and live multimedia content.
In addition to the inherent cost savings derived from content delivery being one-to-many instead of one-to-one, as stated above the fact that eMBMS sessions can be set up dynamically — and share resources with unicast sessions — eliminates the need for dedicated spectrum. Lower cost of using a scarce and expensive resource and a better customer experience sounds like a solution that is likely to be in the future of many of us.
Sustaining a successful public transportation system, such as train service, depends on that system being both convenient and safe. For train passengers, especially women, safety (both actual and perceived) can be a major issue.
In a recent article in TRACKTALK, "What puts women off using the train?" Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Associate Dean at University of California Los Angeles' School of Public Affairs and Urban Planning, shined a light on the critical role video surveillance and passenger information systems (PIS) can play in helping female travelers feel safe. As she noted, "Dark and deserted stations and trains are understandably off-putting and can encourage people to seek alternative means of transport, or even not travel at all, to avoid feeling threatened, or in some instances becoming a victim of crime."
For the uninitiated, PIS are electronic information systems that provide real-time information about estimated arrival and departure times, as well as brief descriptions regarding the causes of disruptions. PIS not only can be strategically located at transportation hubs but their information can be accessed remotely via a web browser or mobile device. As the author says, video surveillance solutions like those developed by Alcatel-Lucent (ALU), using a new Critical WAN Infrastructure solution based on IP/MPLS, go hand-in-hand with PIS as tools that, when combined with human staffing, can address the most pressing aspects of safety for all train passengers.
Loukaitou-Sideris researched this topic in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada, and found that women train passengers are most concerned about their personal safety in several types of situations:
"Darkness, isolation, and limited opportunities for surveillance were all identified as the major reason that anxiety might increase among passengers, particularly women," the author said. However, she found that unfortunately there is a gap between security measures that women feel are appropriate, and security measures operators generally choose to provide.
Transport authorities, Loukaitou-Sideris found, tend to prefer installing technology like closed-circuit TV (CCTV) video surveillance rather than adding more security staff, because it costs less. Video surveillance, of course, is only effective at actually stopping crimes if security staff is watching the feed and responds promptly when there are issues. "Technological solutions that are currently available and widely used such as communication points, and emergency buttons are viewed as a positive means of drawing attention," stated Loukaitou-Sideris. She added, "However, concerns though remain about where exactly the operator at the other end of the line might be, and how quickly they will be able to respond."
While the most fear-inducing possibility is a violent crime like rape or other physical assault, instances of intimidation, verbal assault and groping are much more common yet hard to prove, and thus tend to haunt female passengers. Women, Loukaitou-Sideris says, feel that if there were more security staff around, these "lesser" crimes would occur less often.
That said, if used appropriately, video surveillance and other technology can and does make passenger safer. For example, accurate information about train arrival and departure times—displayed on screens at the platform, or delivered through other means like on-board communications—helps passengers minimize the time they spend waiting at an unstaffed station.
Where Alcatel-Lucent's Critical WAN Infrastructure Solution serves a vital function is to automate and simplify operations management. As TRACKTALK highlights, as a result of the increased desire by transit authorities around the world to protect not just passengers but critical physical assets that might be targeted by terrorists, there has been an increasingly holistic approach to railroad security. This is driving the need for interconnected surveillance and alerting. In this regard, several perspectives — social, economic, customer and transit system operations — must be taken into account.
It may sound a bit obvious but this approach must rely on a networking environment that is always on, always available, and can provide a level of granularity that enable authorities to accurately identify trouble spots and people and react quickly. In short, there can be no alternative to being on constant watch and having trained professionals ready to react to any contingency.
Finally, Loukaitou-Sideris states that security must be balanced with efficiency. After all, the goal is to get people to use the system. The implementation of cumbersome and time-consuming security practices, especially for mass transit systems in urban hubs, could dissuade not just women but all potential customers from riding the train. She found that, "Anything that delays the transport process makes public transport less attractive compared with automobiles…Airline passengers are able to tolerate more delays, but it is not the same for rail passengers who would not wait for hours to go through security. In busy cities where thousands of people are flowing through stations this is impractical anyway."
While we live in an increasingly dangerous world, having a high-performance communications network that can support all aspects of rail security (in stations as well as throughout the physical transit network) is no longer being viewed as a luxury, but as a necessity. Finding the optimal balance to assure safe journeys with minor inconvenience is a complicated task which is why transit authorities are working closely with communications solutions providers to achieve that balance.
In an increasingly competitive marketplace, service providers (SPs) are staying one step ahead by finding new and innovative ways monetize their offerings. For providers who recognize and leverage it effectively, the emerging new social conversation experience arising from the pervasive adaption and use of social media is proving to be a valuable tool in this endeavor.
Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) has been busy developing solutions for fixed and mobile SPs to help them leverage the evolution of social media. On the mobility side, much of this development has been focused on two technical projects—Rich Communication Suite (RCS) and RCS-enhanced (RCS-e)—led by the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA).
In a recent white paper, "Building a Social Conversation Experience with RCS and RCS-E," Alcatel-Lucent researchers explain that RCS (developed in 2008) is intended to: "Leverage the global interoperability and ubiquity of existing voice services and Short Message Services (SMSs) and enrich them with Internet-type features more in line with user demand."
As of early 2011, when the more compact iteration of the capability RCS-e was launched, the RCS Group had more than 100 members, including service providers, device manufacturers, and infrastructure and software vendors. Alcatel-Lucent is among them.
The RCS standard, as the white paper notes, has three key attributes:
Since it was first developed, trials of RCS services were conducted by many service providers, including two 2010 nationwide tests in Spain and France. ALU has been involved with all the trials gleaning valuable insights about the new social conversation and what tools will most effectively give providers a leg up when developing services users demand.
The researchers stated that, "Users have a strong interest in Instant Messaging capabilities, mainly because IM corresponds to service already offered to them through other means." It is thus not surprising that they further found, "Accordingly, for them, integration with social networks is logical."
Because RCS is technically complex, some providers in the development group created a simplified version: RCS-e.
"RCS-e aims to provide assured services by delivering a simplified extension to voice and text, enabling subscribers to send IMs, video chat, and image/video share and transfer/exchange files in real time," ALU's authors state.
RCS-e has three key attributes, using the power of RCS to offer streamlined improvements:
The goal of RCS-e is to increase subscriber adoption of SMS services, using enhanced service activation, user discovery, service capabilities, and delivery assurance.
"With such assured services, there is no need to suspend one service or to bring up a new client and reestablish communications," the authors say. In fact, the white paper concludes that, "This strategy attempts to replicate the success of SMS with a rich set of new services by providing the same mobile ubiquity and service assurance as SMS."
The rapid global user adoption of IM, chat and texting of all sorts including he extraordinary ascension of Twitter has proven there is an insatiable demand for non-voice communications. In fact, it is a demand that is constantly seeking new conversation experiences that enrich social interaction. The good news, as ALU and those working on the development and rollout of RCS and RCS-e have discovered, is that improving the social conversation through these tools is a desirable means for SPs to not only captivate customers but also to monetize/profit from what can be a central role in evolving social media ecosystems.
As active transactional individuals in the Internet age, here are a few questions to ponder for a moment.
These are not existential questions. In fact, as pointed out in a previous blog, they are the subject of an important new book, Identity Shift : Where Identity Meets Technology in the Networked-Community Age, written by Alcatel-Lucent's Allison Cerra and Christina James.
I recently had the privilege of speaking with author Cerra to get deeper detail and insights into her work with Ms. James. It happened to coincide with an Ad Age article by Michael Learmonth entitled, "CMOs Explain Why They're Flocking to Vegas for CES," which was fortuitous.
The book is about advancing the science of understanding behavior (aka shifting IDENTITY) and the role and criticality of trust in a world of accelerating technologic change. The article had a great quote from GE CMO Beth Comstock that validates why the Cerra/James work goes far beyond being an academic exercise. Comstock says she and other marketers need to be at CES because, "I'm a marketer and that makes me a behavioralist…How is tech changing the behavior?" Finding the answer to that and other questions like the ones above is why CMOs should attend CES. She might have added, as the book does, that there is a vice versa involved here since what the Internet has done is profoundly change the nature and relative power in buyer/seller relationships.
A look between the covers
OK, so maybe this is not just a deeper dive between the traditional covers but the virtual ones as well. It is instructive to look at the flow of the sections of the book to get to the meat of the matter.
As mentioned in the previous blog, the research model employed is Ethnography. This approach goes beyond the number crunching of demographics and psychographics to focus on how close-up observation of human interactions correlate, corroborate and yield insights that can be extrapolated and used with insights from larger behavioral studies.
Cerra fleshed out the authors' "3-P Model of Identity." and why understanding the categories and where and how they intersect, as well as relate to the issue of trust, is so critical as a tool for causal explanations of what was observed and how the observations can be applied.
Presentation: This is the predominant thing most of us worry about. It is about how the world views us. In the physical world we tend to have more than a modicum of control over our image/reputation. However, in virtual world our image is as much created by anyone else as by us. This creates tension according to Cerra, "I can choose who I want to be, but have little or no control necessarily over who I am." In the context of identity management online it means having a presentation strategy that encompasses our various persona modes —personal, professional, visible and known and anonymous.
Protection: Cerra says this is the one that grabs the headlines, but it turns out the research indicates people say they are very concerned, yet for the most part willingly provide information online without taking precautions. As she pointed out in the interview, "Not all harms are created equal. We are equipped with primal senses that guide us as to whether "fight or flight" is the path to feeling safe about our privacy, loved ones, and valuables." She noted that physical defenses are rendered useless in the virtual world, and that the dynamics of constantly changing and blurred personae at any given decision point are all related back to the issue of trust in terms of behavior. This is a case of "watch what I do and not what I say", since actual behavior can veer widely from stated intention.
Preference: This aspect of the role of identity looks at how, when, where and why future actions can be understood in the context of what we prefer is likely to be what we want. In fact, preference is an important component of sites such as Amazon, Pandora, Spotify, etc.
Cerra cautions that the conscious and sub-conscious dynamics of these aspects of identity can turn on a dime which is why observation of individuals as they act are key.
Universal laws
Based on the model, and a close analysis of observed behavior as tested against a broader look at the actions of 5,000 individuals, the authors came up with what they call "universal rules." They are examined in the book to demonstrate how the power of rationalization and confluence exemplified in these laws, "lay the foundation of behavior and perceptions that unites consumers, no matter their age, socioeconomic status or gender…Represent the entry point for understanding individuals in a virtual world – whether as ourselves or as consumers we attempt to serve."
The laws are as follows:
It is all about trust
The section following universal laws on identity attributes during life stages is worth a read because it shows that when it comes to transactional issues and how we behave when faced with a decision, even taking into account the laws, where we are in our life and what is important to us at that stage matters. However, at the end of the day, the 3P Model and the universal laws, roll up into that "behaviorist" thing, i.e., given our various personae in a virtual world, whether we are driven by presentation, protection, preference or looking through the world via age-colored glasses, it all comes back to trust.
In other words, at any given moment in time, based on the policies and rules we associate with the virtual dissemination of our volition via electronic means, what level of control are we willing to give up/tolerate to not only get what we want, but to feel good about the experience. Why the book is such a breakthrough is the application of its analyses as predictive of what identity profiles are willing to accept, including such things as privacy conditions and opting-in versus opting-out models of interaction, to be transactional. This includes a thorough discussion related to the title that our identities are not static but are constantly shifting. In fact, they need to be mediated by us manually, automated through the enforcement of our policies and rules, or in partnership with trusted service providers.
In fact, as Cerra highlighted, the book goes a step further. It provides a peek into the value of the analysis. She offered a couple of titillating findings from the authors' testing of 20 possible identity-oriented services against the 3P profiles:
In addition, they found that when they measured trust there was a 60 percent correlation with a willingness to pay for identity services. And, reflecting the universal laws, customers love or hate of a brand seemed to bear little or no correlation with willingness to pay if a customer perceived value in the offering. As Cerra stated, "it turns out that what I say is different from what I do and from what I value." This is certainly a profound finding for CMOs.
Getting closer to finding the Holy Grail
As the saying goes, "the bottom line is the bottom line!" CMOs as accurately observed are behaviorists. They do need to understand technologic change and its impact on shifting consumer transactional tipping points. CES is the perfect place for them to get educated. However, they also should read, Identity Shift: Where Identity Meets Technology in the Networked-Community Age, if they want deeper context.
People do not buy and use technology for technology's sake. The Internet changed that aspect of the buyer/seller relationship forever. It has also accentuated the need to recognize, understand and act upon the shifting nature of our multiple personae, especially as more and more of who we are, and how we act/transact moves into the virtual world.
A marketer's Holy Grail is being able to target a market of one with perfect knowledge as to what can/should/will motivate a transaction. A consumer's Holy Grail is having perfect knowledge, absolute comfort when they purchase something, and control over the terms and conditions of a transaction. Are we there yet on either front? No! In fact, as we all know there are no perfect worlds. However, there is certainly invaluable illumination to be gained from the quest.
That said, thank you, Allison and Christina, for your contribution to making the journey well worth it.


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From the Blogosphere


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Think about a game session. No, I mean the physical in real life manifestation of our gaming experience. If someone were standing behind you … and they described your actions to someone else via a cell phone, what would that sound like? Umm yeah Bob … well.. He is typing.. Well clicking — left click right click left click right click … he just hit the 5 key about fifty times … Squirming … He is squirming in his seat.. Wait .. Cursing.. Lots of grunting .. More cursing … Deep sigh … he just smashed the keyboard with his fists … He muttered something about a nerf.
This could be someone playing Worlds of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Dark Age of Camelot or someone with a really skewed way of composing and sending an email. MMORPG Games are fiction. MMORPG Games are rules. All games don't need a narrative backdrop to be fun, but a solid fun filled MMORPG experience requires a rich narrative context for player activities and infusing the experience with purpose outside of basic progression and conflict resolution.
This is what my colleague, good friend, and Chairman of our English Department and I teach in our English class. As a Faculty Fellow teaching a first year writing seminar entitled English 115F: The Worlds of Wordcraft at Vanderbilt University, we explore how narrative forms express themselves in movies, book, epic poems, and MMORPGs. In particular, we explore Lord of the Rings.
Over the next few columns, I intend to discuss the lore and comparative narrative of
- Champions Online
- Lord of the Rings Online
- Warhammer Online
- Age of Conan
I chose these as I possess direct experience in each game and the associated narrative backdrop.
Let's start with the game that isn't — just to ease into the topic! Star Wars the Old Republic: Threat of Peace. As Lucas Arts and Bioware spin up the hype machine for an apparent 2010 release, the website presents a masterful rendition of how a game studio places the narrative experience at the center of a magnificent marketing and design pitch.
The most visible expression of the context narrative is a two act series of web comics. Bioware , Lucas Arts, and Dark Horse Comics present the lustful reader with tasty morsels of the future gamespace. These comic tidbits exist extraterritorially to the actual game landscape, but they open a deeper, richer level of immersion when you actually enter the universe.
Presently, it looks like the Star Wars team boasts a collection of 16 comics in two acts. There appear to be two more issues in Act 2 yet to be released. The series tees up the reader for an ominous foreshadow of future events in the story and the player's journey in the game:
Star Wars The Old Republic: Threat of Peace – Act 1: Treaty of Coruscant
"Decades of war between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire have ripped the Galaxy apart."
That first line in the first issue of the first act straight away sets up a major narrative element. There is a conflict. There exist combatants. You, the player will pick a side. The side you pick suddenly creates a whole new meaning . This would be meaningless key tapping and button pressing without this fiction. You are a Republican fighting the Sith. It matters that you defeat them. This evil scourge must be purged from the galaxy, because we want the little children to have a safe and happy future.
If you are not emotionally invested in the stories, then it seems a bit odd to play MMORPGs. This type of game melds story + rules to create an experience in which the player becomes emotionally invested. The game mechanics, art, and crafting systems exist to carry forward the narrative structures created by the players and enabled by the narrative framework set down by the game producers. The really good MMORPGs provide a rich mosaic of novels, short stories, comics, movies, and a fan culture that breathes life into the virtual worlds in which we learn, play, and fight for our side the conflict.
In the next episode, I will go explore Champions Online and discuss its narrative and creative framework including deep character customization, the nemesis system, and the background associated with each of the game's major areas.


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By Dr. Gary Chapman
What if Christians really were?
Eighty percent the United States' population claim Christianity as their religion,1 and two billion people in the world accept that label to define their belief system.2 What if all of these people truly were Christ-like?
The word Christian is not a word that the early believers we read about in the New Testament chose to call themselves. It was a title they were given by those who observed their lifestyle and recognized them as people who followed the teachings of Christ (Acts 11:26). And what was the central theme in Jesus' teachings and actions? Without question, His theme was love. When a Jewish leader of His day asked Him, "Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?", He answered that all the moral teachings of the Old Testament were summarized in two commands: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself'" (Matthew 22:36-403).
The Greatest Commandment
Jesus also made the supreme role of love clear to His disciples when He said, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:34-35). He made love the distinguishing mark of His followers, wanting us be known for our love—and not just toward fellow believers, but also to our "neighbors," a category that includes anyone we encounter.
Imagine what would happen if all the Christians in the world were known for genuinely loving their neighbors. I believe that one of the reasons the contemporary church has not made a greater impact on secular society is that we've strayed from this theme laid down by our Lord. We have been influenced by culture far more than we've influenced culture. We have fought fire with fire; hatred with hatred. We have sometimes exalted ourselves and put others down—often in the name of defending the Truth. We have treated others with disrespect in an effort to convince them that they are wrong and we are right. To many secularists in Western society, "Christians" are seen as a right-wing political party that is motivated to promote its own agenda while attacking others in the process.
I'm not suggesting that Christians refrain from involvement in the political process. As citizens, we should be involved on every level and in every corner of society, but our attitude is to always be love. We are to seek the good of others, treating all individuals with dignity and respect, even when we disagree intellectually or politically with their position.
The Secret of the Early Church
In his book The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark, a sociologist of religion, set out to understand how the early Christian movement managed to grow from a few thousand followers to 30 million—half the population of the Roman Empire—in just 300 years.
He indicates that in the first centuries of the Christian era, two major epidemics claimed up to one-third of that empire's population. In the face of these terrible conditions, political leaders and their non-Christian religious priests simply fled the cities. The only social network left was that of the early church, which provided basic nursing care to Christians and non-Christians alike along with the hope that transcended death. Even secularists acknowledged that early Christians did indeed love their neighbors "as if they were their own family." What changed the minds of Roman elites was neither political overthrow nor oratorical persuasion; it was personally knowing followers of Christ and watching their response to disaster. Cultural transformation resulted from the Christian community simply being itself.
Perhaps the closest similar contemporary events have been the Asian tsunami of 2004 and Hurricane Katrina. Our nation as a whole responded magnanimously to both catastrophes, but in many instances, it was the church that became the vehicle for ongoing help, long after the waters receded.
The basic challenge to Christians today is the same: to be people of love on a daily basis—whether in response to a social crisis or not. I believe there is no greater power to change the climate of our society and the world than Christian love. But for many, love is a nebulous word. So let me define a loving person as one characterized by the following seven traits that Scripture points to:
When we seek to develop these qualities through the power of God's Spirit, He uses us as His instruments to change the world.
You might wonder, In a world of constant conflict, does love stand a chance? We read daily reports of the inhumanity people inflict on one another, some even perpetrated in the name of religion. In fact, it's apparent that religion will continue to play a major role in what happens globally over the coming years. The question is, Does love stand a chance within the world's religions? Or, as those of us who claim to be Christians should ask ourselves: Does love have a chance within the Christian faith? Can we rediscover the reality that we love God because He first loved us—and that because we love God, we are compelled to love others (1 John 4:19-20)?
The apostle Paul had this vision clearly in mind when he said, "For Christ's love compels us ... [and] those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again" (2 Cor. 5:14-15). Paul spearheaded the growth of the early church by proclaiming love, and over the last 2,000 years, to the degree that the church has evidenced love, the church has been successful. It was not the military Crusaders who account for the survival of the faith. It was the love of common Christians for all mankind that kept the church alive and growing.
The Mark of the Believer
Christians have never been exempt from life's difficulties. History shows that Jesus' followers have suffered earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, landslides, accidents, sickness, and other hardships. They have often been persecuted simply because they were believers. How can a person endure such things and still passionately desire to follow Christ?
The answer is found in having a clear understanding of what the Lord seeks to do in our lives: "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers" (Rom. 8:28-29 NIV). God's clear intention is to make us Christ-like in attitude and lifestyle. He is even able to use harsh experiences for that purpose. Often, it is in the midst of trials that we find our greatest opportunities to experience His love—and to be agents of sharing that love with others.
I recently saw this demonstrated by a 52-year-old mother of five who was dying of cancer. I'd observed her life for a number of years and found her to be one of the most loving people I'd ever met. She faced death with realism and yet with a positive spirit. I'll never forget the day she said to me, "I've taught my children how to live. Now I want to teach them how to die." Mature love sees even death as an opportunity to love others.
Perhaps you're wondering how you, an ordinary Christian, could ever become such a lover—someone whose life is marked by love. This is where Christianity parts company with many other faiths. Most of the world's religions are based on self-effort. But for the Christian, the key to becoming a loving person lies not with us but with God. It is His love that we seek to share. And it is His Spirit who pours divine love into us and enables us to communicate it to others. Our role is to open our hearts and minds daily to receive that love—and to look for opportunities to share the treasure with others.
Why, then, aren't all Christians such lovers? The reality is that we are morally flawed. At the core of who we are, two dynamic forces—the "old self" and the "new self"—are in conflict (Eph. 4:22-24). The new self fills us with desire to be lovers of God and of others, but the old self pulls us toward self-centered living. And if we keep our distance from God, the old self will likely dominate our lifestyle. But when we "draw near to God ... He will draw near to [us]," and the new self will control our attitudes and behavior (James 4:8).
At the University of Virginia, these words are engraved over the entrance to Cabell Hall: "You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand." That sentence captures the essence of the believer's calling. What if all Christians answered that call, seeking daily to be like Christ? What if we all decided to go down further on that path of true love, tasting its fruit in our relationships—and never again being satisfied with the dullness of a self-centered lifestyle?
Authentic love is the most powerful weapon in the world for good. I'm convinced that not only does love indeed stand a chance in the contemporary world; it is, in fact, our only chance of survival. And it's how the world will know us as true followers of Christ—true Christians.
1Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk, Operation World: 21st Century Edition (Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster Lifestyle, 2001), 658. 2Ibid., 2.3All Scripture quoted is from the NIV Bible.
Gary Chapman is the author of Love as a Way of Life: Seven Keys to Transforming Every Aspect of Your Life.
Copyright 2014 In Touch Ministries, Inc. All rights reserved. www.intouch.org. In Touch grants permission to print for personal use only.
January 01, 2013 07:31 AM
January 01, 2013 01:53 AM
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Husband and Wife Plead Guilty to Federal Charges,
Forfeit Over $1 Million in Assets
Contact Person: Beth Drake (803) 929-3000
Columbia, South Carolina– United States Attorney William N. Nettles stated today that John Melvin Cannon, 61, and Kasondra Cannon, 45, both of Lithonia, Georgia, pled guilty before United States District Judge J. Michelle Childs in Greenville yesterday. John Cannon pled guilty to conspiring to launder money, and Kasondra Cannon pled guilty to aiding and abetting the possession of cocaine. According to the facts presented at the plea hearing, the Cannons, husband and wife, worked together to facilitate the storage and distribution of in excess of $1 million worth of cocaine over a 10 year period. John Cannon actually distributed the cocaine to customers in the Upstate of South Carolina, and Kasondra Cannon, in conjunction with her husband, deposited hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug proceeds in financial institutions. The couple also used the drug proceeds to purchase vehicles and construct elaborate primary and vacation residences in Georgia. Through its investigation, the Government was able to identify approximately $800,000 in unexplained wealth the Cannons generated over a five year period. As a result of their guilty pleas, the Cannons will be forfeiting to the Government $364,000 in cash agents seized from the Cannons' vacation home, the Cannons' primary home and vacation home, numerous vehicles, trailers, boats, and ATVs, jewelry, and other property the Cannons purchased with drug proceeds. The value of all of the forfeited property exceeds $1 million.
Neither of the Cannons has been sentenced. Judge Childs will sentence these defendants after reviewing their respective pre-sentence reports.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, the Greenville County Sheriff's Office, the Greenville Police Department, and numerous local agencies in Georgia partnered to investigate the case, and Assistant United States Attorneys Andy Moorman, Lance Crick, and Jamie Schoen prosecuted the case.
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Ethiopia's endangered wolves are dying of rabies
Ethiopian Wolves, one of Ethiopia's most endemic mammals, are currently dying because of a rabies outburst in the Bale Mountains National Park.
The main habitat for the Ethiopian Wolf are areas 3200 ms above sea level, namely Abune Josseph Mountain, Semine Mountains National Park, Guasa Menze Gera heather moorlands, Arsi and Bale Mountains. The planet's around 300 individuals are expected to be found in the Bale Mountains, where the disease is currently raging.
After the deaths of the Ethiopian Wolves at the end of September, blood and tissue samples were sent to Addis Ababa Pastor Center for laboratory investigation and it was found that the cause for the deaths is rabies.
In order to control the outburst, a team of 10 people from Oromiya Agriculture Office, Ethiopian Wildlife conservation Authority and Ethiopian wolf Conservation Project went to the area to start a vaccination campaign. While the group was lead by Dr. Fikadu Sheferaw, Dr. Claudio Silerio, the Oxford University canine specialist, is among the members.
Even though an estimated hundred Ethiopian wolves are thought to be infected, the group managed to capture and vaccinate only 5 wolves up to yesterday.
Ethiopian wolves have a behavior of living in a family constituting up to 13 individuals; they are territorial.
The objective of the vaccination campaign is to separate and vaccinate uninfected animals in order to prevent further damage.
Ato Addisu Asefa, Biologist Bale Mountains National Park and a member of the team said that the spread of the disease is very worrying. He further explained that a similar outbreak in the year 2003 has killed almost 90 Ethiopian wolves while around 40 wolves died of distemper two years before


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(This is from the campaign office of , who is vying for the 10th Congressional District)
Pierce County Councilman and Congressional Candidate in the 10th District Dick Muri recently received endorsements from former U.S. Senator Slade Gorton and the Mainstream Republicans of Washington.
Mainstream Republicans of Washington was founded as a moderate voice within the Republican Party. Muri's record on protecting the environment by preserving hundreds of acres of wilderness throughout his tenure as County Councilman made him a great fit for an endorsement from this organization, which has been a political entity for over 30 years.
Of former U.S. Senator Slade Gorton's endorsement, Muri noted, "Slade has been an influential player in Washington State politics, and his endorsement is of immense importance to me."
Dick Muri is running in the new 10th Congressional District—an open seat—in a district that heavily favors Pierce County, where he beat Congressman Adam Smith in 2010. Muri has been a member of the Pierce County Council for nine years, serves as the Executive Pro Tem, and previously served on the Steilacoom School Board. He has been endorsed by key Republicans like retired Congressman Sid Morrison, Representatives JT Wilcox and Hans Zeiger, Thurston County Sheriff Gary Edwards and over 100 local elected officials and Republican Precinct Committee Officers.
Dick and his wife Mary have been married for 33 years. They live in Steilacoom, WA and have four grown children and four grandchildren. The family attends St. John Bosco Catholic Church.