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At the uppermost reaches of corporate America on a day late in April, an unusual gift is arriving by Federal Express messenger. One thousand chief executive officers of the nation's largest companies -- among them Lee Iacocca, chairman of Chrysler; Walter Wriston, chairman of Citicorp; and Frank Borman, chairman of Eastern Airlines -- are each receiving a small silver and blue computer terminal with a full keyboard and one-line display, no bigger than a paperback book. Unlike larger terminals, though, its native tongue is not computerese but ordinary, written English, punctuated with friendly audible beeps and boops. Switch it on and, with no special prompting, each industry titan is greeted by his own first name. The display line reads, "HI LEE."
IXO Inc., as the start-up company is called, is beginning a most unconventional product launch, further distinguished by three consecutive full pages of advertising appearing across the United States in The Wall Street Journal on that same day. The marketing tab for the day's blitz will come to about $375,000. Surprisingly, however, this little terminal -- the IXO Telecomputing System -- is not another technological tour de force from California's Silicon Valley or Boston's Route 128. Its genealogy is entirely different. Its older brother was a toy, its birthplace a three-decker house in an unassuming neighborhood in Cambridge, Mass., and its parents, a husband-and-wife team of astrophysicists.
An ordinary, full-size computer terminal in his third-floor Cambridge study reminds Bob Doyle of what drove him and his wife, Holly, to develop a tiny terminal for use even by technological illiterates. He is trying to use the conventional terminal to communicate with a remote airline-scheduling directory offered by The Source, a database subscription service. He flips through an instruction manual and types on a keyboard to enter four or five long series of numbers before the service is hooked up through the telephone line. At least two minutes have elapsed since he began. "I personally see this as a jungle," he says. "With our terminal, we've automated everything. We dial the number for you, too. And we don't have a manual."
The screen lists flights from Boston to Denver, but Bob Doyle, normally a very patient man, is getting fed up. He has typed his preferred flight time as 9 a.m. but the computer doesn't understand. It calls his entry an "illegal command." It wants the correct format: 0900. "Can you believe this?" he asks. "These programs are written by engineers.Nobody else can use them." Shaking his head in disbelief, he says, "That's what we'll be trying to overcome. The computer should be willing to guess, or at least ask you questions and give you a chance to say yes or no."
Building toylike terminals and teaching computers the language of human beings may not be the most likely work for two PhD astrophysicists. But since the mid-1970s, Bob and Holly Doyle, both 46, have spent very little time looking beyond the planet Earth.Instead, they have collaborated to put the much-touted powers of modern technology into the hands of ordinary, even frightened, grown-ups and their children.
Instead of teaching middle-aged Americans computerese in order to do such varied computer tasks as letting a salesman enter product orders from the field or letting a consumer pay bills from home, the Doyles plan to teach computers colloquial English. "We want our terminals to be usable by the totally untrained person," Holly says. "We don't think any training should be required." Her husband nods his head in agreement. But he adds, "If we're a success, we'll have displaced human beings as computer operators. The drudge work will be done by computers."
As ambitious as the goal may sound, thinking up creative solutions to problems has long been a way of life for the Doyles. "When Bob was a kid," Holly notes, "he always invented stuff." As an undergraduate at Brown University in the mid-1950s, for example, Bob wrote to CBS newsman Walter Cronkite suggesting a new device that could turn on the radio automatically for important news developments. Only recently has such a product been introduced -- by Dow Jones & Co. for alerting investors about stocks.
The Doyles' more studied approach in the early '70s to creative problem-solving, however, was motivated by the most practical of considerations: earning a living and supporting their two young boys. After completing their doctorates at Harvard University, where they met, they had temporary posts as research fellows there. But the chances of finding two suitable jobs for astrophysicists in the same city were next to nil. While Holly worked as a specialist in solar magnetic fields at Harvard's observatory, Bob spent part of the time away from his wife and family at Houston's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, supervising a staff of astronomers designing experiments for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Skylab space crews. By 1974, though, Skylab was grounded.
Deciding to stay in Boston, Holly continued her research at the observatory while Bob began to test commercial applications for some of his ideas. Around this time "Bob started to become interested in how people make money," Holly recalls. His first venture involved a method he developed for synchronizing a tape-recorded sound track with super 8 home movies. Placing a small ad in a trade magazine, he began taking orders for $250,000 worth of Japanese tape recorders he modified in his workshop.
Super 8 sound movies were overtaken by home video developments. But other ideas were germinating. Waving his arm at the walls of books and trade magazines lining his study, Bob says, "Whenever we read, we try to find good ideas to work on. We try to figure out if there's anything out there in the future we can help bring about."
In the early 1970s, Bob began to envision new consumer products based on the tiny semiconductor chips already widely used in calculators. Although microchips were costly at more than $20 each in 1974, Bob, Holly, and Holly's brother, Wendl Thomis, were developing a number of games for children and adults using these computer "brains" in the role of opponent.
They programmed the circuitry for the game prototypes on readily available single-board computers and carried them in briefcases to any interested toy company. They knew that the contents of each briefcase could be easily shrunk to a chip the size of a fingernail whenever the economics were right. Within a year, Bob recalls, "the cost curves were bombing down, and we knew it was just a matter of time before a single chip would sell for under $5."
The Doyles began peddling their toy prototypes and their bullish predictions of a big new market in electronic toys. The first toy company to bite was Parker Bros. In 1977, a game called Code Name: Sector, licensed from the Doyles, became one of the earliest semiconductor-based toys on the market. As Bob had anticipated, microchip costs had indeed fallen. Parker Bros., he says, "got them for about $3.50."
Code Name: Sector was a promising beginning, but it was only one of the ideas the Doyles had showed Parker Bros. In 1978 the game manufacturer, best known for such board games as Monopoly, introduced a second product, which looked like a space-age telephone receiver with 11 lighted buttons. As with the Doyles' previous game, it contained a microchip that gave it a brain. It could challenge the player at such familiar pastimes as tic-tac-toe, blackjack, or echo, a memory game. It could also learn musical tunes, which it could remember and play back. A press of its buttons evoked a beep or a boop. "There was nothing new in the games," Holly candidly admits. "We just added an array of lights and sounds." The Doyles designed the early versions with constant feedback from their sons, Derek and Robert, and neighborhood youngsters. Some games were challenging even for an adult. But within its red plastic case, the Doyles had built a friendly demeanor. "Even two-year-olds could enjoy it for the sounds," says Holly. Parker Bros. called it Merlin.
Although it cost more than $20 -- at least twice the price of the company's other products -- Merlin was an instant hit. But unlike many big toy industry winners that peak fast then fizzle, Merlin 's magic lingered. In 1980, it had sold about 1.6 million units and generated more in dollar revenues (estimated at $40 million at retail) than any other single toy or game. Packaged in 12 languages, Melin not only surpassed Simon, its arch-rival from Milton Bradley Co., but more than doubled the dollar sales of Monopoly. Lifetime sales are approaching the $150 million mark, and the Doyles and Thomis have earned more than $5 million from it so far.
But the Doyles didn't stop with Merlin. In the next two years they sold four other games to Parker Bros., including Wildfire and Stop Thief. While none was as successful as Merlin, in a market that was becoming deluged with other electronic products, there were no flops, either. "The Doyles really saw this market coming," says William Dohrmann, vice-president of new product research at Parker Bros. "They introduced us to the microchip at a very critical time."
By Christmas 1981, the market was glutted with electronic toys, but the Doyles, who had seen the proliferation of electronic toys as the inevitable prelude to a dramatic shakeout in the industry, had moved on to their next project. They fled the toy industry so quickly, in fact, that they left a bunch of game prototypes -- some of their best, they say -- in a third-floor closet. In a world that was becoming increasingly computer-oriented, they were racing to build a small terminal that could talk to all those computers and was as easy to use as, well, a toy.
As the Doyles began designing the terminal in early 1979 some of their earliest insights came from, of all places, Merlin. The same musical tones that had been fundamental to Merlin 's personality became their low-cost solution to making the component known as the modem, which any terminal requires for linking a telephone with a computer. The use of a microchip to create the tones accomplished internally what other terminal manufacturers were achieving only with another piece of peripheral hardware offered at $200 or more. The telecomputer would thus be more portable than other terminals.
Another priority was to develop a keyboard that would be unintimidating enough for a computer neophyte to use, while permitting talk with computers using standard English dialogue. A book about the problems of man-computer communications, written by James Martin, a former IBM executive, led the Doyles to include four buttons on their keyboard labeled "yes," "no," "don't know," and "help." "We have a very low-brow approach, and we wanted to make things very simple," Bob comments. "We always like to think we're inventors and sometimes we invent. But mostly we studied Martin."
In September 1980, Bob Doyle set up a meeting in New York with a man he knew only by reputation. Ben Rosen had become one of Wall Street's gurus in electronics at Morgan Stanley & Co., an investment firm. Now he had his own research firm. Entering Rosen's office, Bob Doyle was uncharacteristically nonchalant about his new product, the prototype for what became the gift to the 1,000 CEOs a year and a half later. "He just put it on my desk," Rosen recalls.
Rosen asked what he was supposed to do with it. "If I have to tell you how to use this thing," Doyle replied, "then we're in real trouble." After fiddling with the paperback-size microterminal for a moment, Rosen identified a telephone connection on the back and hooked it up using the phone connection on his desk. Says Rosen: "All of a sudden I was using it." With the small, typewriterlike keyboard, Rosen responded easily to the questions flashing across the display-line screen, in English.
When it informed him that the terminal could connect him to remote data bases, using phone numbers stored in its memory, Rosen -- without any coaching from Bob Doyle -- connected first with the Dow Jones News Retrieval Service in Princeton, N.J., and then to a simulated airline reservation service the Doyles had developed on a computer in their Cambridge basement.
The single-line display was confining, but Rosen could control how fast the words crossed the screen; the textual material paused at punctuation marks, which were underscored by beeps and boops, a lot like Merlin 's. Rosen was especially taken with the "yes," "no," "don't know," and "help" buttons, which he saw as a sort of olive branch to noncomputer people. "It had never been done before," comments Rosen.
But the mass-market potential for the microterminal wasn't clear to him until Doyle told him of cost projections for a retail price of no more than $500 initially, with big discounts for volume purchases and declining prices down the road. At those prices, Rosen thought, the Doyles' microterminal had real potential. "What they were bringing to the party was something cheap and friendly," says Rosen, whose opinions tend to carry a lot of weight with investors. "I offered to help in any way I could."
At that point, the Doyles were in great need of help. They had set out the previous January to license the production of their microcomputer to a large company, as they had with Merlin and the other toys. But the responses from Digital Equipment, IBM, ITT, GE, and GTE didn't lead to any concrete agreement.
The Doyles told anyone who would listen in those months that the microterminal's initial appeal would be for the nation's big corporations, which have vast amounts of internal data stored in large computers. This would be a portable, easy to use, and inexpensive record player for existing records. It would enable large numbers of employees to enter and retrieve information from company computers independent of specially trained and high-paid computer operators. A large, national retail chain, for example, might provide its hundreds of store managers with microterminals to facilitate rapid reporting of overnight cash positions, price adjustments, and inventory records.
The Doyles were confident that there would be multiple applications for consumers, too. Just as calculators moved from the office to the home when people wanted to balance their checkbooks, the Doyles were sure that the microterminal would, too. And it would be only a matter of time, they thought, before the applications spread to entertainment, with such things as nationwide contests using financial or sports data.
During more than six months of dog-and-pony shows with their terminal, the Doyles heard a familiar refrain: "This isn't our business." Bob kept saying, "This isn't anybody's business, but it could be your business." The argument had little impact, though. "Within a lot of big companies," he comments, "new ideas are like viruses. They have their own immune system."
To become more persuasive, the Doyles recruited Jeff Rochlis, one of toyland's most successful marketers. As president of Mattel Inc.'s electronics division Rochlis had led it to the No. 1 spot in electronic handheld games and then into Intellivision. Rochlis, however, was having no better luck licensing the terminal he had labeled the "telecomputer." And he didn't foresee any major breakthrough. Nobody could succeed in marketing it, he believed, without first understanding its mass-market possibilities and what distinguished it from the array of other fancy new terminals and personal computers.
Almost everyone focused on what the Doyles and Rochlis actually saw as secondary. The appeal, Rochlis notes, "was in the human engineering features that made it easy to use." With that relization, they set out on an altogether different course. They decided to establish their own company.
On May 6, 1982, at the Culver City, Calif., headquarters of IXO Inc., Jeff Rochlis made a major presentation to investors. Bob and Holly flew in from Cambridge. The company's venture-capital investors, now including Ben Rosen, had put in almost $10 million and were getting a detailed look at IXO's progress.
Rochlis had a lot to tell them. IXO had assembled an impressive management team from such places as Dow Jones and had signed up Michael Suchoff, who had built the telecomputer prototype for the Doyles. There were several senior people from Mattel, including Jeff Bachman, who had been the $1.13 billion toy company's top finance man, and Alan Secor, who had headed operations in the electronics division. By May the telecomputer was in production at a rate of 3,500 a month with a subcontractor in Costa Mesa, about 40 miles south. There are plans to shift manufacturing to Hong Kong and Taiwan this fall.
While it might be months or longer before Rochlis could meaningfully appraise the marketing blitz unleashed the previous week, venture capitalists were encouraged by the early accomplishments. Unlike other start-up company presidents, Rochlis issued monthly reports to investors. And he had brought the company into production five months ahead of schedule and nearly $1 million under budget.
Pleased as the investors were with Rochlis's ability to get things done, they were really putting their money on the creative abilities of Bob and Holly. The Doyles could give IXO the edge it would need to become more than a maker of little terminals. Their concept of a company-run access center offering terminal users service applications and entertainment, for example, could lead IXO into a new industry tied to personalized software. Not coincidentally, that business would be far more insulated from ruthless price wars than is usual for makers of electronic hardware.
"We feel we've invested in a stream of ideas," says Karen Camp, a vice-president at Palmer Organization, a venture capital firm in Boston.
Also appealing to the investors was the Doyles' unusual -- and perhaps inimitable -- point of view. "As the Doyles thought about microcomputers in toys, they thought about how children play," says Howard Anderson, president of Yankee Group, a Boston electronics research firm. "To be accepted, those toys had to be touchy-feely and warmy-fuzzy with lots of audio feedback." Anderson bought a piece of IXO in the belief that "the Doyles understand software better than anyone else in the country."
With IXO off and running, the Doyles know competition will intensify. A company called Axlon Corp., of Sunnyvale, Calif., has entered the market already with a low-cost terminal designed to communicate in specialized computer dialogues. To think IXO can find any meaningful protection under patents on the design of the modem or the display, Bob Doyle notes, would also be naive. "We intend to be a moving target," he says. "By the time they've got the first thing copied, we'll be on to something better."
IXO already has launched an aggressive cost-cutting program, and it is designing new telecomputer models to speed into production at the right time. IXO's roots in the fast-turnaround toy industry, says Alan Secor, "give us six months on most other companies." But in contrast to most high-tech companies that strive to be state-of-the-art, IXO is committed to waiting for cost-effective technologies before integrating new components into future products. "Our main aim is to be one inch behind technology," Michael Suchoff says."Anything less would cost too much."
The Doyles aim to do almost all they can to encourage competitors entering the business to build products like the telecomputer. To speed the development of remote applications and services, they hope all terminal makers will adopt the IXO keyboard format, and to encourage this they intend to license features like the "yes," "no," and "help" keys for a token fee -- perhaps as little as $1 per year.
In a few years, in fact, they say IXO may abandon the terminal business altogether to concentrate on the English-language services the company intends to offer over the phone lines through its own access, or service, center in Culver City. "If all we had was a low-cost miniature terminal," says Bob Doyle, "we'd be in for a real dogfight. But, if everyone uses the same keyboard, the market for services will develop a lot faster."
In large companies, lots of potential applications for small terminals such as the telecomputer exist today. As part of its business development effort, IXO plans to help large commercial customers develop custom programs for their computers to facilitate intracompany transactions, such as sales order entry and access, using standard English. The rationale is simple: Without new software programs to enable the computer to translate English into its own language, telecomputer users would have to learn the same idiosyncratic computer language commands used by computer operators at any other terminal -- a direct affront to the Doyles' way of thinking.
The big companies may have their own specialized applications, but within the year IXO plans to start offering its own fee-based services through the access center. All of them will be in English, of course, and will be available to those with IXO telecomputers as well as to users of competitors' terminals. At one end of the spectrum, the access center is likely to offer personalized financial information. One of its services, for example, might give an investor up-to-the-minute performance reports on his or her own investment portfolios, comparing the value to, say, the major stock market averages or other financial yard-sticks. Another might be a customized news-clipping service that would collect items on any subject named, perhaps sending everything to a personal electronic mailbox. Still another might tell the least costly way to fly between two points.
But the imprint of Bob and Holly Doyle is likely to be most obvious at the opposite end of the spectrum. While they don't openly discuss the details on specific products -- few, in fact, have been worked out -- the Doyles are confident that the IXO access center will become a kind of on-line funhouse for the electronic age, involving nationwide participation by television viewers of events ranging from football games to Academy Awards. IXO might also design games based on manipulation of data such as stock quotations. One possibility can only be thought of as an elaborate version of Monopoly -- with the game lasting perhaps weeks or even months. At the beginning, players, operating out of homes and offices around the country, would be given a fund of play-money with which to "buy" stocks at their actual trading prices. They might match wits with Wall Street's best-known and highest-paid money managers. Whoever amasses the greatest fortune would be the winner, and IXO might give out fancy prizes.
Whatever games and services the Doyles end up offering through the IXO access center, they are certain to have one thing in common: They will all be conducted in everyday, conversational English -- a language engineers and even computer operators should, with a bit of practice, be able to master.


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- KNIA / KRLS - http://kniakrls.com -
PCM Girls Blanked by Hoover
Posted By Sports On May 21, 2014 @ 5:52 am In Today's Local Sports | Comments Disabled
The PCM girls' soccer team could not find the back of the net yesterday against Des Moines Hoover, losing 3 – 0. The Mustangs played good defense, and Coach Bill Sowder tells KNIA/KRLS Sports he was extremely happy with the intensity his girls showed, playing their second game in as many days. PCM drops to 3 – 11 on the year and will get a day to rest before getting back on the pitch tomorrow night against Centerville.
Article printed from KNIA / KRLS: http://kniakrls.com
URL to article: http://kniakrls.com/2014/05/pcm-girls-blanked-by-hoover/
Click here to print.
Copyright © 2009 KNIA/KRLS. All rights reserved.

subset: commoncrawl


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...just back from Torridon with a bundle of images needing processing.
Every Saturday across Scotland thousands of people leave their holiday cottages and the refuse goes out, this is the sight at the more remote ones. The road to a quiet cottage near Red Point in Wester Ross.
Normal service will be resumed tomorrow with my images From Torridon Trip 2012.
|Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM
|Recording media:
|RAW (digital)
|Apres Holiday...
|28 Oct 2012 - 6:37 AM
|Highlands, Humour / fun, Landscape / travel, Photo journalism, Scotland, Wester ross
|Voting Disabled
Welcome back Dougie - I hope you had a wonderful time - are these your bottles?
Morning Ann, no my lot were in the bottle bank, where they should be.
Great trip lots more to come.
Very thoughtful of them to weigh down the lid though
Nice to see you back, Dougie, and the folk up there are much tidier and aware of their environment than many down here, everything neatly arranged for recycling.
Lovely composition Dougie, and good to see that they're so tidy. I enjoyed your last couple of uploads very much too. Looking forward to the new crop.
Welcome back, Dougie...why can't folk take their bottles home and dispose of them as they should? Laziness abounds, unfortunately.
That road appears to be disappearing straight into the water, unless there is a hidden ferry quay there?
p.s. Looking forward to more from this trip.
Was wondering if you'd got lost somewhere ! The empty wine bottles a sign of a good relaxing holiday ! Look forward to seeing your uploads .
I love St Andrews-did you google the Botanic Gardens there ? Please let me know if your heading there and I can meet up with you ! Gill
No plans at the moment Gill but I'd give you a shout for sure.
A good display of the backside, but at least they are not out on the fields
Man leaves his mark on the environment in so many ways and so many places. Nowhere is safe... Thought provoking and depressing. At least they have weighted the bin down, and it looks as though the bottles might get recycled. But why do some people need to buy so much material that gets thrown away immediately afterwards?
Looks like they have had a good time and at least they have tried to leave things neat and tidy good to see you back and glad you to and a good one
I wish they would bring back returnable deposits on pop bottles (and insist on them for supermarket trollies too). It wouldn't solve the problem of empty wine and spirit bottles but at least it might make space for them in the bin.
A very 'modern' landscape composition with the refuse assortment replacing the wet boulder
Glad you're back, Dougie. I look forward to the latest photos.
Yes this is sadly the case. There are so many holiday cottages now so lots of sights like this. Lucky you having just been to Torridon. It is such a beautiful part of the world and when we were there last April we had a superb evening boat trip. Ann.
Ha, ha, ha.... after having emptied all those bottles, this track could be quite dangerous to drive!
Well seen and superb pov, good composition as well.
Well observed and captured Dougie.
Regards Richard.
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New York, NY, United States
The Materials group at Shapeways is responsible for pushing the boundaries of what people can create. A great material can open up new product categories, drive huge growth for the company, and expand people's minds as to what's possible with 3D Printing. As Product Manager - Materials you will work closely with Supply Chain and internal Production to predict demand, launch new materials, improve existing materials, and monitor the success of our materials portfolio.


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Pachalee sat down at the bar and shook out a single slim Russian cigarette which the young boy at the bar lit for her.
"Thank you."
I watched her for a while from across the bar as she drew smoke lightly into her lungs. She managed to look both elegant and relaxed dressed in her cream-gold blouse and knee length skirt. She had the same presence as a film noir femme fatale. The kind who knows where the body is buried and knows how to keep the hero on his toes right up until the point she blows a hole in his back with the gun she keeps in her make-up bag.
Putting an age on her was near impossible. She was over thirty and maybe under fifty. She wasn't young though her high cheekbones made her seem it. She wore her make up well. It didn't look caked on to hide pock marks, acne or stubble. It looked as though it had been carefully applied. The fact was, however, that katoeys rarely fall out of bed as women. Remaining feminine and elegant (if they are the type who seek elegance) is a full time job. They never look completely like natural women but, on the other hand, the best of them never ever look like men. Most of us wake up in the morning being what we are. The ladyboy wakes up in the knowledge that she has to maintain herself. As the years roll on this becomes even more of an effort.
She looked at me and smiled. Her eyes sparkled catching the bar lights. Small crows feet showed at the corners of her eyes but, otherwise, her skin looked young. "I'm Pachalee. Are you Roy?" Her voice had some gravel but it was mainly honey. The gravel could have had as much to do with the cigarettes as her gender.
I nodded.
"You were studying me. Do I pass?"
She stood up and straightened her skirt before walking towards me and sitting on the next stool so her face was less than a foot from mine. Her perfume mixed with the menthol of her cigarette spun a kind of intoxicated feeling through my gut and I found myself gazing at the pearl white of her teeth between the shining blood red glimmer of her lips.
"I have known a number of men in my life. I'm not a young inexperienced girl. I know the burning conflict in your heart when you decide to meet someone like me."
"You speak very good English."
"Thank you. I learn from book." She laughed.
The conflict was there. It was true. I grew up with an aversion to homosexuals and homosexuality that is, I think, typical of most western men. I remember my first feelings on first seeing a couple of men kiss on a World in Action documentary and feeling that wave of utter disgust. I remember laughing at all the clichés of camp men with handbags and being horrified at the scenes in prison movies where a guy might be raped by another guy. As I got older I became at first tolerant and then, when I had my first openly gay friends, completely accepting of the idea. But it always remained with me as something beyond my understanding. Why would a man ever want to go with a man when God had given us women who were pretty and smelled nice and a near perfect design for all our sexual needs?
So why did I become interested in ladyboys?
Where did that fascination begin?
Maybe the first time that I felt some deep dark yearning was in Barcelona. There was this "woman" in a skin tight multicoloured costume. She walked with an exaggerated femininity and had legs that that seemed to go on forever. I saw her walking towards me and immediately got this sense of wow. As she came closer to me she locked eyes with me and I felt flooded with this sudden irrational and intoxicating erotic intensity. In all my life I'd never felt anything so sexually powerful. It was as if she looked right into me and knew exactly what I wanted from her and without any kind of playful coyness it made her smile this wide deep and dirty smile. There was no clue in her that she was anything but wholly female but I later saw pictures of her in a Spanish magazine extolling her life as a woman born as a man. I never heard of her or saw her again but the notion that this being was a transsexual laid something deep deep inside me. Had I met her socially and found her half as self obsessed, materialist and boring as the average Thai ladyboy I dare say I'd have been able to forget her pretty swiftly. But the fact she was this erotic enigma who'd had such a powerful effect on me I had to sit down for half an hour left this seed inside me.
When I came here to Bangkok I wasn't looking for ladyboys. And once I found myself in bars full of incredibly sweet and feminine playful girls the last thing in my mind was some erotic fantasy of ladyboys. But I'm sure that deep down there was a part of me which expected, maybe, I'd run into someone on the streets of Bangkok who just might have as powerful an erotic effect upon me as that Italian model in Barcelona.
The friends I made here, however, had a considerably different outlook. For most of them, ladyboys were thieving Aids-ridden men in drag who you wouldn't touch with a barge-pole. I always objected to this point of view but only philosophically. I never made any approaches. And of course the kind of ladyboys I met going around the bars weren't often the kinds of women who were liable to tempt me. There are some who look pretty when they shut up but most ladyboys populating the bars have all the eroticism of dick grabbing pantomime dames.
As the years move on, however, the sweet and feminine playful girls can start to seem like money-grabbing harpies who make the same jokes over and over again and whose conversation, in either English or Thai, is enough to make you want to jump into the Chao Phaya. I started to think more and more of the deep dark feelings I had about that one ladyboy. It was nothing to do with wanting to get buggered (I can't think of anything I desired less) or seeing some woman with big tits and a giant hard on. It was, for risk of sounding like some fucking aesthete, much deeper and much more subtle. Maybe I just wanted to meet some magical hermaphrodite.
Pachalee's advertisement caught my attention mainly because it wasn't an obvious sexual overture. "Mature Thai Ladyboy seeks the company of a man with good taste".
She chose the bar. A pleasantly dark place with piano jazz and a mixture of Thai, Chinese, Japanese and farang clientele enjoying drinks in lounge chairs. Through the large wall size window fairy lit party boats crawled along the river.
"What made you answer my request?"
"I don't know. What made you put it there?"
"I like company but I don't like Thai men much."
"Isn't that a little racist?"
"Of course. But then when a man like yourself chooses to live in Bangkok instead of marrying a nice Englishwoman and starting a nice little family of English children isn't that racist ?"
"True. I have just about every major human vice. I'm racist, sexist, lazy, boring.."
She smiled… "Not lazy."
I took a drink and she lit another cigarette taking care not to blow smoke my way. "Can I ask you a really rude question?" I said.
"Absolutely not…" she laughed. "But I'm forty three years old and I'm still in possession of everything… I keep them in a glass jar under my bed."
"That wasn't what I wanted to ask."
"Oh? See… Now you made me admit to everything for no reason."
"I was just wondering if you'd ever lived outside Thailand."
"About eight years. I studied in England when I was in my twenties; I had a boyfriend in Germany for a while. He wanted to marry me but I never wanted to. He was the kind of man who's good for a young girl but I knew I didn't want to be with him forever. And I love Thailand. I might not want to spend time with Thai men but I like the weather. I like that nobody really cares what you are here. Would you be sitting with me like this in London?"
"Of course."
"Why not? Why wouldn't I?"
She leaned in close to me. "Let me tell you a secret. I don't like gay men. If I speak to gay men after about ten minutes I want to hit them. There's something missing from his soul. He might know how to dress and how to dance but in some way most gay men feel like straight men who have failed at staying straight. Do you know what I mean?"
"Not exactly."
"Okay. All my life I have been a katoey. You know? Some people think a katoey is the same as a gay man. Some katoey are really just very effeminate gay men. Not me. The problem is that for someone like me life is very hard because I know what I am. I am not a woman and I would not want to be a woman. At the same time I am not a gay man or a man in drag."
"I know."
"I may be something else but I could never say what that something else was because most katoeys, like most gay men, make me want to hit them. Unfortunately the same thing goes for men who want to go with katoeys. These are like straight men who just want to do something that is dirtier than usual because they are so bored with normal sex that they need to feel they are doing something unusual and dirty just to feel alive. But then, for most men, what happens in Bangkok doesn't really count. A man on holiday in Bangkok can do all kinds of things that he would never do back home and then go home feeling as though nothing in him has really changed." For the first time her poise was minutely broken. "I'm sorry but I want you to understand me. I'm not looking to be someone's excursion into weirdness and I'm not looking for money. I have a business here. I have a shop in River City which exports Thai antiques."
I interrupted her and explained myself to her. I explained the feeling I'd had when seeing the model. She seemed somehow pleased. She seemed even more pleased when I talked about how I hadn't felt this again since but was intrigued by her advert. She joked with me about the difference between what middle class Thais are brought up thinking about the English and what the English are really like. I told her about some of my friends in Bangkok and she laughed always maintaining her poise.
The bar was closing and I paid the bill. She said she'd pay next time. We left the bar together and walked along the river until there was no way to go but into the streets. I hailed her a taxi and she kissed me on the cheek saying that she didn't expect I'd call her again but that if I wanted to she'd be really happy to hear from me.
I felt at a bit of a loose end. I hadn't at any point been able to keep it in my mind that she was anything other than a woman. I didn't know what this said about me but I didn't get much sleep that night. Not until I'd wacked one out anyway.
© Roy Wilson. All rights reserved by the author.


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Ultra-Darwinism and Creation's Sabbath: An Interview with Conor Cunningham, Part II
In his recently published Darwin's Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get it Wrong, Conor Cunningham, the Co-Director of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham, surveys the vast expanse of evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, philosophy of mind, naturalism, and intelligent design and skillfully argues against the reductive logics of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and their creationists interlocutors. By engaging... Read More
Listening on the Day of Silence: Khora and Holy Saturday
When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. He said, "I have sinned by betraying innocent blood." But they said, "What is that to us? See to it yourself." Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, "It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since... Read More


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Level 3 Communications, Inc. (NYSE:LVLT) provides local, national and global communications services to enterprise, government and carrier customers. Driven by large acquisitions and the need to build an Enterprise Platform for Growth, Level 3 adopted Agile, creating an innovative, productive delivery system for prioritizing and managing projects, programs and its portfolio of corporate imperatives.
Sponsor: Rally Software Development


text: Super rich eye Thames to bypass Olympics gridlock Share this story email Share this story «Previous 5 of 8 Photos Next » Read the story « » Britain OLY London 2012 Thames Highway In this Wednesday, July 4, 2012, David McIntosh, a former British Royal marine, currently employed by the Protection Services International company, travels on London's river Thames. Companies like Protection Services International are just one of the many catering to the super rich who are coming to the London games and demand top security and easy transport. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)


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Nintendo launches Brain Age edition DS handheld
updated 03:45 pm EDT, Mon August 20, 2007
Nintendo DS Brain Age
Nintendo today officially unveiled the DS Lite Brain Age Edition, offering one of the first game-specific versions of the handheld available in North America. The new model comes in a unique, two-tone crimson/onyx color and also ships with a copy of Brain Age 2 to get users started on the intellectual training game, as well as a matching black travel case with red trim. The system is otherwise unchanged from the DS Lite released last year. Both the stand-alone game and the Brain Age Edition console should be available in shops this week, with the latter selling for $149.


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Just make your Parts Express online purchase total more than $100.00 in merchandise and we will ship it fast and ship it free to you.
Free Shipping Offer Details/Exclusions:
The 3800 series of low-cost casters are perfect for equipment racks, bass bins, movie and soundstage equipment, or storage containers for the weekend band to the professional touring musician. Other applications include light-duty material handling equipment, food service carts & equipment, bakery racks & equipment, miscellaneous dollies, mobile cases, displays, mobile wire racking, stock carts, textile applications, warehouse & manufacturing applications, etc.
Specifications: • Sold individually. • 3" Braked Swivel Caster • Overall height: 3-3/4" • Top plate: 2-1/2" x 3-5/8" • Bolt hole pattern: 1-3/4" x 2-7/8" slotted to 3" • Plain bearing
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Be the first to hear about new and exciting products,special pricing and incredible deals!
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Danny Williams, CEO of Integrity First Bank, and Joe Miles, president, are celebrating 50 years of banking in Mountain Home. The bank opened its doors in 1963.
- Filed Under
It was not the best of times to launch a new bank in Mountain Home on Dec. 14, 1963.
A U.S. president had been assassinated just three weeks earlier, and four young Brits with appalling haircuts seemed to own the next generation of banking customers.
President Lyndon B. Johnson had reversed John F. Kennedy's plan to draw-down troops in South Vietnam and proclaimed his intent to defeat communist forces there. ...


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West Seattle weather alert: Thunderstorm moves throughAugust 2, 2014 at 8:02 am | In West Seattle news, West Seattle weather | 21 Comments
8:02 AM: If you didn't hear the thunder just now – forecasters are warning that despite the sunshine, a thunderstorm is about to move through, bringing heavy rain. Past that, though, the forecast says sunny and 80s for the afternoon.
8:15 AM: It's been raining for going on 10 minutes now. Still partly sunny out there, and more thunder in the distance. (added) Commenter DTK offers the real-time radar link.
9:11 AM: More thunder – so it's not over yet (as the radar suggested) …
21 Comments
Ha. I just heard the thunder too. I checked yahoo weather and the weather channel. No mention. I check here and shazam! Awesome. If you have any links regarding the impromptu thunderstorm, please post and share.
Comment by BrianF — 8:05 am August 2, 2014 #
It is currently thundering, pouring and sunshining brightly here in Arbor Heights!
Comment by Andi — 8:05 am August 2, 2014 #
It's mentioned in the forecast – http://www.atmos.washington.edu/data/city_report.html – but NO short-term weather alert, which is surprising.
Just started pouring in Admiral neighborhood.
Comment by TMO — 8:10 am August 2, 2014 #
Thunder at 8:00 in the morning? Now big raindrops. In the Midwest this is called a sunshower.
Comment by Not sleepless in WS — 8:11 am August 2, 2014 #
Real time radar:
Comment by DTK — 8:12 am August 2, 2014 #
"Not sleepless," I was going to dub it a sun-derstorm. I like sunshower better.
When I heard the thunder I looked up the radar on weather.com and saw the storm over WS. Looks like it won't last long though.
No wonder our kitty was slinking around…
Comment by Kipseawa — 8:38 am August 2, 2014 #
Just lost $300 in self leveling underlayment (concrete). Guess I shouldn't trust the "zero % chance of rain" for the next 5 days.
-First world problem :(
Comment by Danny Downer :( — 8:57 am August 2, 2014 #
Awakening to
Thunder rumbling and rain
Blue sky over mountains
Comment by JayDee — 9:00 am August 2, 2014 #
That was very weird: pouring rain and thunder with bright sunshine. I know we get all kinds of weather, but all at once? ;-)
Comment by Ray West — 9:09 am August 2, 2014 #
Here it comes again!
Comment by Ray West — 9:23 am August 2, 2014 #
Danny, Yes, in the scheme of things, probably a "First World Problem".
However, I don't think you are being a "Downer" by sharing your frustration here, especially if 300 bucks isn't something you can generally toss around with ease.
Comment by miws — 9:49 am August 2, 2014 #
Because it's not really a thunderstorm unless the internet tells you so.
Comment by Chris — 10:33 am August 2, 2014 #
Chris, I know, it sounds silly, but there is a basic human need – among some, anyway – for "was that what I thought it was? am I the only person who heard/saw that?" Often it's "just" a thunderstorm. And then, there was "O-boom-a" …
Also saw lightning in what seemed to be relatively blue skies – had to confirm with the person I was with that I wasn't seeing things complements of my cold medicine.
Comment by Graham Morgan — 12:34 pm August 2, 2014 #
I REALLY appreciate this story because I was completely puzzled when hearing what sounded like thunder, but outside did not look like that was possible; and it was too early for Blue Angels; so thank you
Felt like I woke up in Hawaii this morning….humid and sunny with rain and thunder.
Comment by Bradley — 2:39 pm August 2, 2014 #
There was a short term weather alert this morning about the thunderstorm. https://nwschat.weather.gov/p.php?pid=201408021349-KSEW-FPUS76-NOWSEW
Comment by Paul — 3:29 pm August 2, 2014 #
First thing I did was go to the map on the NWS Seattle main page looking for an alert. Didn't show, though your link shows it was timestamped more than an hour earlier. But they did mention thundershowers in the city forecast, updated at 7 am, which I linked.
Sorry, comment time is over.
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Archive for Blogging
Energy Marketing: 12 Reasons Why Energy Marketers Should Blog
There is a lot going on in the energy industry right now (some good and some not so good) and the media likes to target the industry. So how can you, as a leader in the Energy Industry speak up and get involved in shaping the image of the industry as well as your position?
One of the best and most manageable ways is to create a blog. It's inexpensive, easy to do and allows you to get your fresh content out to the people you want to reach.
A blog will help;
- Drive Website Traffic: According to HubSpot, companies that blog get 55% more website visitors, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages. So what does this information mean to you? Blogs make it easier for you to be found and drive site traffic… the more traffic you have the more opportunities you have to increase business.
- Build credibility & establish yourself as an expert: Being a blogger that is consistent and true to a single topic is one of the fastest ways to be perceived as an expert. After all, if you are consistent, you have done a great deal of research and have developed a lot of comprehensive content related to your specific topic.
- Show that you have an Industry Commitment: People want to work with "liked-minded" people. An industry related blog shows that you care about the industry enough to write about it and share valuable insight with others in your industry.
- Give you a place to voice your perspective: The media world is no longer in control of the "Voice of the People". A blog gives you a platform to help shape the image of your company and industry as well as dispel the myths and misconceptions that riddle the energy industry.
- Enable yourself to be a better communicator: Writing a blog is somewhat of a liberating feeling. It forces you to think different and deeper about the topics you are writing about. You will get a greater sense of empowerment as it relates to your subject matter… after all, to your subscribers and followers, you are the expert
- Gain a more in-depth understanding of issues impacting your industry: Writing a blog forces you to really think about key topics that impact your industry. By having to really think though an issue, you gain a better and more complete understanding of the issue and are able to be more concise in your communications.
- Provide a platform to create and cultivate open discussions: Your blog posts will provide great talking points for your subscribers and followers that are not just following your blog, but also on other Social Media networks that you re-post your information to.
- Establish exponential impact online: The great thing about the internet verses "Traditional Media" is that it is exponential. Once it's out online it is always there. You can really maximize your time and efforts over the long-haul.
- Increase your search relevance: As you strategically write and "TITLE" your posts, you will want to decide on what KEY SEARCH TERM you would like to try to dominate. If you are consistent with your blog posting and focus on the same search term, you will quickly become search relevant.
- Increase the size of your digital footprint: 80 to 90% of people conduct an online search before making a business transaction. By having a constant blogging strategy, you will be able to increase your odds of being found online. And this goes without saying… the more effort you put in to your blogging program, the more you will get out of it!
- Build "Brand Advocates": Over time, a lot of people who follow your blog will end up becoming Brand Advocates for your cause. They will become promoters of your blog and help you to promote it to their network of friends, followers and fans. This is the ultimate goal… you want your information to be compelling enough for others to want to forward it… that's the power of Digital Communications.
- Create community awareness & trust: A blog enables you to consistently engage with the community at large. You will be able to write about issues that impact the community, answer questions quickly and effectively before the can get out of control and ultimately build trust with in the community.
These are just 12 reasons why you should blog… there are many others.
If you have any additional information you would like to share on this topic, please feel free to comment.
Energy Marketing: Marketing Success Is Closer Than You Think.
Having a successful advertising & marketing strategy doesn't have to be a costly endeavor for energy marketers.
Football coach Jimmy Johnson once said "The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra."
Social Marketing doesn't have to be a big undertaking.
To be successful you just need that "Little Extra".
- Little Extra TIME: Once your Social Marketing Program is up and running, you should only have to put in an hour or two a day to keep in running smoothly.
- Little Extra RESEARCH: With the proper tools in place, the information required to conduct your Social Marketing program can be right at your finger-tips.
- Little Extra CONTENT: Outlining a predefined strategy for providing valuable content will help keep you focused, stay on-task and maintain consistency.
- Little Extra COMMUNICATION: Having the ability to interact and respond in real time with your Target Audience will help your company save time, shorten the buying cycle and become more efficient
The use of this new media will allow you to reach decision makers in areas you have never explored and could open new markets that you haven't even considered.
To Get What We Have Never Had
We Must Do What We Have Never Done.
Social Marketing For Energy Marketers: Is Twitter A Scam?
As a marketer for the power & energy industry, do you believe that Twitter is a Scam? Or, have you started to embrace this Social Marketing trend?
I believe that the fear of the unknown is what holds a lot of energy marketers back from diving in the the Social Marketing arena.
As with most bloggers, I love getting good feedback on my posts… I get some good and some bad. Either way it helps to keep me motivated and stay focused.
I like to (and think it's a must) take part in LinkedIn Discussion Groups. The other day, I posted a discussion topic based on one of my recent posts (most popular to date) 10 Twitter Mistakes Made By Marketers In The Power & Energy Industry, and I follow up on every comment that is made to my posts & discussions.
I received an interesting comment and wanted to share it with you. This comment made me think a bit about how the power & energy industry always seems to be behind the times when it comes to embracing new and unique marketing strategies. The industry really needs to start changing their mind-set if they want to stay ahead of the curve in this dynamically changing global market.
Here's the comment that was made:
Twitter is a scam. Most of those "followers" aren't even real people.
Check it yourself. Send a message to one of your followers who just showed up, with no connection to you and nothing in common.
You won't get a reply.
Go ahead. I dare you.
Here was my response:
Thanks for contributing to the conversation. You are not alone in this thought process. Although I can understand how some people think Twitter is a scam, I would have to respectfully disagree.
Of course there are a lot of people employing automated systems out there to try to increase their follower-ship, but the true power of Twitter (and other Social Media Tools) comes from the followers YOU actually pursue and build relationships with based on providing them with valuable content.
This is a TIME investment. You just can't create a Twitter Profile and then sit back and wait for people (or in your example, automated systems) to follow you. That is not what Social Media/Marketing is all about.
Remember, true marketing is about developing relationships based on like-mined topics. That is the beautiful thing about Social Marketing, you are able to create a "follower-ship" based on mutual interests.
The key take away here is
- You need to be very strategic in how you implement your Social Marketing Strategy.
- You need to be proactive in gaining your followers, subscribers & fans.
- Have realistic expectations when it comes to "Spam Followers"… you will get them.
- Make sure you have realistic & measurable goals.
- And most importantly, make sure your are consistently contributing valuable content to all of your Social Media Channels.
In the end, people want to follow (and do business with) people they know and trust… Social Marketing is by far one of the best ways to make this happen.
I'd love to hear your thoughts and stories about Twitter.
Please leave a comment – Do you think Twitter is a scam or is it a valuable marketing tool?
10 Twitter Mistakes Made By Marketers In The Power & Energy Industry
Many marketers in the power & energy industry are finally jumping into social media but have no strategy. A good number seemingly are checking off a list of social media tools they have subscribed to show their participation. What is more telling is their lack of credibility and comprehension of how to use social media to generate new business for themselves.
Twitter is one of the social media tools that can be used as a tool for your company's social media marketing strategy to generate online traffic and a pipeline for new business leads. It is the leading traffic generator to my Wright-To-Know blog.
Here are ten mistakes marketers in the power & energy industry should avoid if they want to generate new business through Twitter:
- Signing up then not participate. A tell-tale sign that Twitter is nothing more than a check-off on your social media check-list. When you rarely post to Twitter it will show.
- Self Promotional Tweets. Marketers that sound more like cars salesmen, constantly using promotional Tweets to tout their company's new hires, new business acquisitions, awards, etc.
- Hiding behind the Company's veil. Using your company's name as the Twitter account without revealing who is doing the Tweeting. Even Ford Motor Company gets this right, having allowing @ScottMonty to be their social media spokesperson under his own Twitter name rather than through the company's name. It's awkward to try and engage with a company. Social media is about people. A lot of the same principals of face-to-face networking applies to social media networks such as Twitter.
- Auto Responses. These drive not only me but will drive your followers crazy. They are impersonal, and usually contain no value other than to clog up your Direct Message box forcing you to scan through dozens and dozens to reach those who have sent you a personal one.
- Little if any value to your Tweets. 80 to 90% of my tweets are resources for my audience to help them with their new business challenges. They are a combination of posts from my blog and other resources that I usually find and pass on in my morning ritual of reading my RSS feeds in Google Reader. I use a tool called bit.ly to post an article, along with a shortened URL to Twitter.
- Fail to generate Twitter traffic 'to anything". I have recommended to power & energy companies that they should have a blog that becomes the "gateway" to company and generate traffic to the blog through tools such as Twitter. The blog serves as the central component to your social media strategy.
- Failing to use 3rd party Twitter tools. These tools can help you identify your best target audience and build your Twitter account's data base of followers within the ratios mandated by Twitter. Your company's blog content can stay fresh with new postings but older posts have a very long shelf life from not only SEO but also through repurposing posts to Twitter using some third party Twitter Tools. At our firm we have a process in which we syndicate our clients content over and over again… very much like a traditional media schedule. It's naive to think if you have written a post and everyone has read it.
- Using the reply function when you should use a direct message. Not every reply needs to be share with your entire Twitter audience. Almost all replies should probably be sent by Direct Message to the person.
- Failing to engage in the conversation. It amazes me that most marketers in the power & energy industry have reservations about engaging with their prospective audience. Social media and tools such as Twitter, provide the most efficient means of creating personal network with your company's best prospects. I have thousands of followers on Twitter alone and it is easy to stay engaged and be part of the conversations without it requiring an undue amount of time. I probably spend no more than 15 minutes a day responding through Twitter.
- Allowing the early adopters of Twitter to mandate how your company should use it. Face it, Twitter has superseded anything envisioned by its creators or early adopters "way back in 2006." It's amazing that it was the celebrities, not ad agencies, that first figured out the value and potential of Twitter.
Energy Marketing: 25 Tips For Marketers To Drive Traffic To Your Blog
If you are in charge of the marketing for your energy company, you should have your blog be a central component to your social media strategy for new business.
It is the site that you want to bring your prospective customers & clients to, the gateway and face of your company.
"Build it and they will come," is not the answer to generate traffic to your company's blog. You must employ proactive tactics to create awareness and interest among prospective customers. The more traffic that you can generate, from among your target audience, the more inbound new business leads that will follow.
Denise Wakeman, Online Marketing Advisor and Founder of The Blog Squad, has created an excellent list of tips to generate traffic to you blog. I would encourage you to create a list of "to dos" from her suggestions. For more details, be sure to check out her article, "19 Tips for Driving Traffic to Your Blog"
Here are the 19 tips:
- Publish as frequently as possible
- Pay attention to the headlines (blog post titles)
- Send an email broadcast
- Add a link in your email signature
- Include multiple subscription options on your blog
- Try article marketing
- Comment on blogs in your industry
- Do some guest posting
- Conduct surveys and polls
- Submit your blog to directories
- Make a Google profile
- Syndicate to Twitter
- Syndicate Facebook
- Syndicate to LinkedIn
- Use Hootsuite
- Distribute your video
- Add the retweet button to your posts
- Consider share buttons
- Use social bookmarking
Denise's list isn't an exhaustive list of tactics but these are the core that you need for your own list. Just be sure that someone from your company is charged with implementing it or work with your agency to make sure they know how and what to do.
I would add at least six additional tips:
- Make your target audience crystal clear. If you can't clearly and narrowly define your audience you wont build significant traffic.
- Optimize your posts content for search. Identify and dominate a few key words that your target audience will most likely use to find you. Use these words consistently in your posts titles and copy.
- Knowledge is power. Get in the habit of checking your blogs analytics frequently. Keep it simple, but know at least daily the number of unique visitors, page views, top posts, how people got to your blog, search terms and incoming links.
- Don't be afraid to re-purpose older blog content through multiple social media channels. Posts that I've written a long time ago are still pertinent and continues to generate traffic to my blog.
- One thing to not do that will impact traffic. Don't sell! The moment you start to sell on your blog is when you will most likely LOSE your audience.
- Identify who your audience is in your post titles. This is especially helpful when you re-purpose your content on Twitter and an important part of SEO for your blog.
Energy Marketing: 14 Tips For Creating A Blog For New Business
To keep your power and energy company's new business pipeline full, create an informative blog.
The primary "gateway" to your company is shifting away from the website (static, online brochure) to a value based blog. As important as it is to have a website for your company, it is now becoming more important to have a blog that adds value to your audience.
Benefits for creating a blog for your business:
- Is better designed for SEO
- Provides more "benefit" to your prospective target audience
- Gives your audience a reason to come back frequently
- Is a platform for dialogue and rich feedback from your audience
- Generates new business leads for your products and services
Here are 14 tips and recommendations on how to get started:
- Use the WordPress.com blog platform. It is easy to use. You don't have to involve your IT Department or initially anyone from your creative department. Keep the process simple. To begin just concentrate on doing two things: reading and writing. Content trumps everything.
- Own your URL. WordPress is a free service but they do charge $10 to allow you to use your own URL. It is a necessity to own your URL. It will allow you to change blog platforms in the future without losing your traffic.
- Identify your audience. One of the most critical questions to answer, "who am I writing to?" Your blog will have no focus and you wont be able to generate traffic without choosing an audience. Think "narrow and deep" rather than "wide and shallow.
- Create the subtitle for your blog before your blog title. The subtitle should be your "descriptor" that states clearly what your blog is about. Mine is "Digital & Traditional Marketing Intel To Power The Energy Industry." The descriptor statement is more important than your blog's title so create one that is crystal clear.
- Identify the categories that you will be writing to. This provides an outline for your blog and will help you to stay focused. I would suggest keeping them around 10 to 12 instead of a large number.
- Prominently provide a way for your readers to subscribe to your blog. Place it toward the top, above the fold in your sidebar.
- Use your photo as a logo. Keep it consistent, not only for your blog but across all other social media platforms (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.).
- Get in the habit of publishing a post 5 days a week, Monday through Friday. These can even be written and a publish date and time preselected.
- Re-purpose your blog's content through an email newsletter that highlights the posts that are trending higher in traffic. This simplifies the creation of a newsletter which helps you to be consistent. Also repurpose posts through Twitter and tools such as Tweetlater. These things will also greatly increase your blog's traffic and traffic generates new business opportunities for your power and energy company.
- Write your posts the way people read online. They usually don't start reading a posts word-for-word, they tend to scan. Make your posts scan-able.
- Lead with the "nugget" the "benefit." The inverted pyramid style of writing that copywriters use. Peoples attention span and patience for online reading is much shorter than print.
- The "Top Level Executive" or "President" should have a prominent role writing for the blog. They are the consistent face of your company in the power and energy industry and prospective customers want to know the "leaders" perspective. People always want to work with people they know, like and trust. A blog provides a great way to introduce yourself to them.
- Create a list of keywords your audience will most likely use to find your blog. Check these keywords with Google's Key Word Tool. Select the words or phrase that you should try and dominate in search.
- Read. Read. Read. – The more you can stay current on the news, tends & happenings in your audiences industry, the easier it is to continue your writing (posting). Get an RSS reader and start subscribing to blogs and news sources that pertain to your target audience.
SEO For Energy Marketers: Website SEO "How To" Presentation From Google
Are you Search Relevant? Everyone wants to know how they can increase their websites search relevance on Google, but few actually go to the source to find out the basics.
Google's presentation (video below) isn't the end-all to understanding SEO and getting the results you desire, but it is a great place to start. Optimizing your website is one of many ways your can become search relevant if done properly.
Page ranking is based on both Relevance and Importance. The more specific your search term or title (Be Narrow) the better… this will aide in your over all "Relevance". The more relevant and constant information you publish (Go Deep) the more "Important" your information appears to the search engines. You can and should think about other SEO strategies that go well beyond your website (see other posts on this blog)
For the most part, Google has a very simple process in which they determine the relevance and importance of your website and its subsequent pages. Here are 4 of the basic processes they follow;
- Discovering: Google first needs to know that your site exists. A lot of companies build their website and assume that the search engines just magically know they are there… that's not the case. Make sure you submit your URL directly to Google Add URL and you should also consider submitting an XML Sight Map. This will help index all of your site pages quicker with google and other search engines find your content.
- Crawling: The "Google-Bots" need to and will scour your website for new and updated content. They will also be checking links and cross-linking with in your site. Make sure that you don't put a "road-block" up for them. Review all of your links making sure they work.
- Indexing: Treat each webpage as if it was the only one you have… making it unique unto it-self. Be specific with each page title, keyword & meta descriptions. Make the information relevant to that particular page and then create "cross-linked references" in the body copy to other pages on your site.
- Ranking: The Ranking is based on the two principals I discussed at the beginning of this post – Relevance & Importance, based on the "search query" and interest of the user. That is why it is important to be strategic when you Index your pages.
Energy Marketing: 5 Ways To Impact Your Marketing Program
Stop being everything to everybody. People want to work with and buy from companies that are the best at what they do. Your goal isn't just to keep offering "stuff", but to understand the needs and desires of your marketplace and the trends in which it is going.
- Go Narrow. Go Deep: Consider eliminating products and services that don't define who you are and what you stand for. Be purposeful in the product & service offerings you want to present to your loyal followers in your marketplace. This builds trust and credibility by being an expert not a generalist.
- Read. Read. Read: You need to set up a process in which you can get consistent real time feedback from your customers & prospects as well as industry insights. Use tools such as; electronic feedback forms, RSS readers, online polls, blog comments, etc. to create an ongoing flow of inbound information to help shape your message and your product offerings.
- Create Content: You need to continually be refining and shaping your message and how you present it to your market. Be creative not only in the content you create but the with the mediums you choose. Write a blog, develop SlideShare presentations, create youtube videos, create webcasts, host webinars and distribute the recorded programs, design process maps & arresting graphics… your options are nearly endless.
- Expand Your Reach: Your strategy should not only include traditional marketing outlets such as; trade magazines, direct marketing, news releases, etc., but also you should start stepping up your digital marketing. Leveraging the online marketing tools will help you get your message to the right people and will also aide in your organic Search strategy.
- Be News Worthy: Get your team together and have a brainstorming session on what you; do, have, seen, heard, tried, built, etc. Write New Releases and distribute them online through the various PR distribution sites. Also, don't forget to submit your releases to all the trade magazines in your industry… the ones you advertise in as well as the ones that you have been considering.
Obviously there are many other things you can do to impact your marketing strategy but this is a good starting point. Feel free to add to the list for others to consider
Digital Marketing For Energy Industry: Create an eNewsletter from your Facebook Fan Page
Now you can Create an eNewsletter from your Facebook Fan Page as well as other social networks with this NutshellMail application.
Automatically send the latest feeds from your page to your fans' email inboxes. A free Email Newsletter application allows your agency's fans to keep track of new activity on your agency's Facebook Fan Page.
The NutshellMail Facebook application allows users to add an "Email Newsletter" tab to their fan page, letting fans opt-in to receiving emails that highlight recent content from your page.
The NutshellMail online service that lets users send and receive your messages from social networks, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter, in your email inbox. You can easily create an automated email newsletter campaign.
The free Email Newsletter application enables your fans to keep track of new activity on your page.
- Automatically send the latest feeds from your page to your fans' email inboxes.
- Increase readership and fan engagement
- Encourage more shares and comments
- No work for you — use your existing feed
Start diving in to the application section on Facebook and the other social media sites. You may be surprised at the number of useful tools available to you.
Simple Tips On How To Increase SEO For Energy Marketers
Being Search Relevant on Google and other popular search engines has become a very important part of the marketing mix for Energy Marketers.
If you build it they will come… not true. If you build it, you need to let them know where you are, how to get to you and what you have to offer is of value to them. Maintaining your SEO program is not a one time process that you can check off of your to do list and walk away from.
To maintain your search presence you need to Be Consistent - Be Relevant - Be Searchable - Be Valuable
Here is a very nice interview with Stephanie Leffler CEO at Juggle, LLC and former Senior Vice President Channels & Partners at Network Solutions that will give you a little more insight and a few tips on strengthening your SEO Ranking.
She states;
- Good Content: Be the authority… make sure you put out a lot of good content through articles, blogs, etc.
- Increase Inbound Links: Google looks at links as a type of "Voting System". Make sure you link keywords not generic links
- Title Tags & Meta Tags: The tags placed are on your website and are based on your keywords & phrases


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Hurricanes Interactiv-eReader eBookGrade 3|Grade 4|Grade 5
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Which president barked likes a dog - and why did another bark like a seal? Who threw lavish dinner parties with 29 courses - and who was so disliked that his parties were boycotted? Which president had 80 pairs of pants? And which liked to remove his pants (and everything else) for a dip in the pool, expecting everyone around him to skinny-dip too?
The presidents of the United States have been different not only in politics, but also as people. Kathleen Krull and Kathryn Hewitt look at our nation's fearless leaders with the eye of a gossipy neighbor, dishing the dirt on bad habits, bad fashion, and bad manners (and more than a few good things in between).
Lives of the Presidents has long been a favorite in this popular and solidly researched series of collective biographies. Updated to include Barack Obama and George W. Bush, this acclaimed volume is perfect for presidential buffs and trivia lovers of all ages. Recommended for Grades 4 and up.
©1992 Kathleen Krull (P)2013 AudioGO
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Given the size of the social work faculty, there is no committee structure within the department. However, there is an Advisory Board to the program that was established in Fall 1992. The purpose and structure are as follows:
- To develop and maintain ongoing ties between the social work practice community and the program/department.
- To provide opportunities for students, field instructors and social work practitioners to contribute to the program's educational policies and curriculum content.
8-10 members representing students (currently enrolled and alumni/ae), field instructors, and social work practitioners from a range of fields of practice; Program Director and Field Education Director. The student who attends the meetings is either the President of the Social Work Club or someone chosen by the club President to attend. View a list of our members >>
Meetings are held as needed, usually 2-3 times a year. All Social Work faculty are invited to attend.
Board members have the opportunity to offer feedback, suggestions and recommendations to address the areas listed below, as well as others identified by the board:
- student preparation to meet community needs;
- expectations for students in field education and ability of agencies to meet these needs;
- anticipated changes in the curriculum and/or structure of the program; and
- the maintenance and development of educational policies regarding student recruitment, admission, advisement, retention, and graduation.


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Summer is a great time to enjoy outdoor activities. So whether youre swimming, barbecuing, or dining outdoors the following tips will help ensure that you, your family, and friends enjoy every moment.
Be sure everyone can identify dangerous plants such as poison oak, ivy and sumac. If someone touches one of these plants, rinse the area right away with soap and running water for at least five minutes.
Never underestimate the power of an insect bite or sting. Insect stings may cause serious problems and even death for those with allergies. Go to a hospital right away if you develop hives after a sting, or have dizziness, breathing trouble or swelling around the eyes and mouth. Be sure to check the label on insect repellent. Select a product that is safe for the age of the user. Follow the directions for application on the label.
Lighter fluid, gasoline, torch and lamp oils can be deadly if swallowed. Watch children closely at all times when these are being used
Use camp stoves, grills, and generators outside, never inside buildings or tents.
Inhaling chlorine products can irritate the respiratory system. Homeowners who have swimming pools should store pool chemicals in a safe and secure place, out of childrens reach.
Always wash hands and counters before preparing food and clean utensils for cooking and serving. Additionally, make sure you wash hands, cutting boards, utensils and dishes with hot, soapy water after handling raw meat, poultry or seafood. ■