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Halo 5 Study by LordKomodoWatch
©2014-2017 LordKomodo
I've always wondered after Halo 4 what would Halo 5 be like? After coming up with my own theory I looked up other ones to find one that was more believable and I found this www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments… When I read this and watched the Halo 5 trailer again and knowing the Halo lore it sounds pretty believable so I made a picture based on this. Now I know in the new graphic novels the Arbiter has this new look based off of the Halo 4 elites. I like the new look but in my eyes I felt the Halo 3 Arbiter looks better ( meaning how he looked as an Elite, not his armor ). From watching the Halo 5 trailer and from Chiefs appearance he looks like he's hiding from someone judging by the large cloak. Also his visor looks damaged so I'm guessing he got into some sort of fight. My guess is that he left The Infinity without permission to do so and was fired upon or he left with Lasky's help and got into a firefight later on.
So yeah the Arbiters on the left, Chief is in the middle and on the right is my concept of what Medicant Bias would look like in Halo 5.
So yeah the Arbiters on the left, Chief is in the middle and on the right is my concept of what Medicant Bias would look like in Halo 5.
they look cool.
fortunately, 343 is hellbent on making halo 5 not cool. gotta grab that call of duty crowd!
fortunately, 343 is hellbent on making halo 5 not cool. gotta grab that call of duty crowd!
When I saw this, I thought it was legit concept art. For the first time at least.
Kick ass job
Wow this is epic i love the arbys new look !! Looks bad ass bro great job
great concept art
might just happen
might just happen
Dang...I certainly loving your thinking behind these designs
mendicant bias is a monitor who's personality was split between installations, half of him was on the ark and is presumed destroyed
I like how The Arbiter wears the same Ring on his head as the Prophets used to.
it looks better than halo 5 abiter in the the comics
Agreed, although I find 343's art style for elites cool it makes them look too animalistic. The elites in Halo 2 and 3 were better looking in my opinion. Also, the arbiters armor in the comic series looks too much like his Arbiter armor, he should have a more ceremonial or shipmaster like armor now that he's back in command.
The Halo 3 elites? you mean the gangly ones with the tooth pick wrists? I'm not a big fan of the art direction in 3, I find it pretty dull. I do like that they are keeping the Arbiters old armor design for Halo 5. At least, if the MC collection with Thel & Locke is of any indication.
Well if I was to choose from the Halo series which elites were the best it has to be Halo 2 and to be honest in my opinion Halo 2 also had the best campaign. The way the elites looked and talked in Halo 2 made them less brutish and more sentient like. When Halo 3 came out their armor looked cool but the elites looked more fierce and their teeth looked crazy but I still didn't mind the look. Halo Reach made them act and look more like brutes and 343's art direction was interesting but it too took away from their Halo 2 counterparts. When I saw Halo 2, it set the stage for not only it's story but the characters too. I do like 343's art direction and the new arbiter has a more fierce look but it still matches his voice and character so I'm happy with it.
3 factions arise together: ally covenant, forerunner remainders, and of course humans.
Shit! ...That Elite Armor Its Epic, It Could Be For A High Rank, Like Supreme Counciliour, And The Helm Of That Promethean Warrior Its Awesome
The Chief kind of looks like he's leaning or something. However, I love what you've done for Thel. I can tell Mendicant Bias' look is based on that ancient-Promethean concept art, nice job there.
Looks like Chief's screwed if he goes into war with that kind of armor. Well done.
I love the designs. 10/10 would play
Epic team more please
I wouldn't mind seeing these featured in the new Halo 5. That would be fantastic!
I heard a good suggestion about the cloak he is wearing, Somebody suggested to me that he's walking on whats left of reach, and that the sand is glass fragments, which are more abbrasive, needing a cloak to protect his armor's surface
Not my own suggestion but its one i liked
John and Mendicant Bias both look astounding. I really love the way you've given MB a Human/Forerunner-like form, even he doesn't have legs. I've quiet a big theory as to where and why John is, that also including MB of course. I'm really looking forward more of your work.I have to say I'm really liking your design for Thel. The armor retains the hierarchy like status as we saw in Reach, though I do think the mini holo-Halo is a bit much. I say that because it's reminiscent of the Prophet crowns. Nonetheless I prefer your version over the canon version.
While 343i obviously kept the base armor the same, the upgrades are iffy. They make him look more like deity from the Roman or Greek eras, which it may be that way for a reason. However I'm still hoping that the helmet is just a ceremonial piece given the mission he is on.
If you're curious as to what he looks like here are some links:
This is all found in the new comic series Halo: Escalation.
Yeah the Halo was a bit much. I was looking to Jul 'Mdama's helmet for inspiration when designing Thel's helmet but I'm most likely going to alter it so his helmet is more " combat ready " than just a ceremonial piece. And to me the Halo: Escalation design for Thel doesn't fit the art style that 343 is taking up with the Halo franchise. In Halo: Escalation, Thel's armor resembles too much of the Arbiter armor and as you said it looks like something from the Roman or Greek eras. Thel is now a ship master so it would look way different than how it looks in Halo: Escalation. I do however give the artist credit for keeping the Halo 3 elite armor look. When Halo 4 came out I always liked the idea of the Separatists looking more like the Halo 3 elites ( armor and appearance wise ) and the Halo 4 elites ( the Didacts Hand ) have a more brutish look.
Thats pretty cool
Awesome stuff as always buddy!
so what planet do you think Chief is on? I think he might either be on Reach's moon, The Ark, or possibly that Halo ring we saw in Halo 4 ^^ Though apparently Thel isn't Arbiter anymore. That leads to why he wears the cape (or cloak, whichever you want to call it)
I think Chief is on the Ark in the Halo 5 trailer. Judging by the giant sand storm could give hints to the Arks untstability after it was destroyed during the events in Halo 3. From seeing Chiefs large cloak I feel like he's trying to stay hidden from someone or something. Maybe he left the Infinity without permission and the UNSC thinks he's gone rogue or something else. Also his visor has been damaged so it seems like he was in a heavy firefight. But what makes me think that Mendicant Bias is the giant forerunner bird thing is that Chief doesn't seem afraid of it but instead holds out Cortanas chip so I think he's seeking guidance from him. In the terminals in Halo 3 Mendicant Bias speaks of correcting his sins and helping Reclaimer ( Chief ) so my best bet is that's him.
Woah I really love the designs here! Arbiter looks really awesome, wonderful armor I really like how the forerunner guy there looks too! And Master chief looks fantastic, of course ;D
I love the amount of details in these Really amazing work! :thumsbup: you got a nice style, keep it up ^^
I love the amount of details in these Really amazing work! :thumsbup: you got a nice style, keep it up ^^
Hey long time since I've seen you, How is it going? Also lovely work here, looks stunning!


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Auckland: New Zealand all-rounder Jacob Oram will be sidelined for the rest of this year after a knee surgery next week, but he remains determined to be fit for the 2011 World Cup scheduled to be held in the Indian sub-continent.
Oram, who sustained a injury in his left knee during a practice session for the ongoing ODI tri-series in Sri Lanka, will undergo surgery after an MRI scan revealed damage to his patellar tendon.
He had problems with the same knee before the T20 World Cup in the Caribbean, and had also injured it during July"s pre-tour camp in Darwin.
"If it does go to plan, then that gives me a month before the flight to the subcontinent for the World Cup," Stuff.co.nz quoted Oram, as saying.
"I"m looking at that as the carrot for me because I need something to keep me focused or I will probably slip into 'woe is me" mode and look at the 'R" word. I"m not ready for that yet."
"Obviously my body has gone past the hinting period – I think it"s yelling at me. But I"m pretty stubborn and I still have this big goal of going to the World Cup," he added.
The 32-year-old further said that giving up bowling was not an option for him to prolong his injury-plagued decade-long career.
"With the amount of injuries and limited game time I"ve had, my form has dipped and with that a bit of confidence," Oram said.
"I"ve also slipped down the batting order so I"m thinking if I give bowling up they"re not going to pick me as a specialist batter at seven or eight," he added.

subset: commoncrawl


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Res Investment - Kings Mountain, NC
Great investment opportunity quadplex 100% rented new roof 2010, mobile home park adjacent w/29 pads w/septic in place: pads rent for $225/mo. 4 rented pads presently. CC approved 500 gal. water tank/well. Good location--22AC. State Park behind property. Quad-plex rents for $450/mn on 3 which have been remodeled & $425/mn on 1 which not yet remodeled. Owner furnishes water(well). Total 33 septics.
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20% off Back to School stuff. For a more original year. Use code NODRAMA20
I got the funk… for you funky mutha f@©ers out there!
funk graphic grunge mighty boosh music naf4d text typography vector
I dig it!
Cheers Adam – that's good!
Welcome to Best Tees
superb design…………………………
Thank you Rosalin. :-)
Congrats !!! Your Awesome T is Features 08-27-2010
Thank you FF. ;-)
Who got the Funk? I got the funk! Love it!
Haha – you know where it comes from, cheers!
great design
Cheers MT. ;-)
Wow – three in one go!Thank you Jacqueline – that's great.
Yes, is this fair? I think so, as this is a graphic arts group, and you get it right each time!
Haha, of course it's fair – keep it up! lol. ;-)
great typo ;).
Cheers. :-)
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ISSUU Seems to load new PDF then stops only thing on the screen is the CANCEL option
None of the magazines are available
I'm getting errors and timeouts tonight.
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Site was up about an hour ago, but looks down now. Bummer. I just posted my pub link to our social media sites!
is anyone else having upload problems at the moment?
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Big problems with ISSUU. completely down and unreachable. What is wrong??
At this time I have just uploaded a new document but i am not seeing it listed in my library - i need to embed this to my page
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Newcastle are being linked with 31 year-old Atletico Madrid right-back Jesus Gamez in the Spanish press.
Futbol.as.com are reporting today that Newcastle manager Rafa Benitez is interested in signing a player who is now surplus to requirements at the top Spanish club.
Atletico Madrid right-back Jesus Gamez
Atletico have signed 24 year-old Croatian International right-bank Sime Vrsaljko from Sassuolo.
That makes Gamez likely to lose his place next season in the Madrid side who finished runners-up top Real Madrid in the Champions League and 3rd in La Liga behind Barcelona and Real Madrid.
Benitez wants to sign a center-back and two full backs as soon as possible, to further augment the squad after bringing in three good signings in three days last week.
It's going to be interesting, if this report is true, to see if Rafa can persuade the Spanish U23 International to join a second division English club after regularly playing in the Champions League over the last few seasons.
Gamez joined Atletico only a couple of years ago from Malaga and has played only 37 times for the Madrid and his contract runs out next summer, so it's probably a good time to move on.
Here's what some of the article in in Futbol.as.com is reporting translated form the Spanish:
"Jesus Gamez, after confirmation of the signing of Vrsaljko knows that his future lies away from the Vicente Calderon."
"And he could end up at Newcastle with Rafa Benitez, who next year will play in the second division of England."
"For Gamez is just one of the many players may have to move out as currently the staff is oversisized at 36 players."
"So, with the maximum of 25 players only that can be registered , they must have at least 11 players leave."
Gamez is versatile and can play on either side and in fact when he first joined he was played at left back by Atletico manager Diego Simeone.
Jesus was at Malaga from 2000 and in his time there the 6ft tall defender played 256 games for them with 21 assists.
We do expect Rafa Benitez to sign a couple of Spanish players this summer – we'll just have to wait and see if Jesus Gamez is one of them.
Comments welcome.


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Golden Gate Bridge Congestion Pricing Replaced With Parking Pricing Plan
"Commuters no longer face the threat of a congestion-based toll on the Golden Gate Bridge, which could have pushed the cost of crossing the span to at least $7. But in its place, drivers parking at meters along the route to the bridge - including on Lombard Street and Van Ness Avenue - will face varying rates that rise during the busiest hours and are designed to increase turnover and push long-term parkers to lots and garages."
"The plan to charge a congestion toll, in which tolls would increase during periods of heaviest traffic, on Doyle Drive or the bridge arose last August when the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the Bay Area a $158 million grant that included money to replace seismically unstable Doyle Drive..."
The bridge district agreed to a $1 peak toll, "but federal officials objected to the plan, saying the tolls were not high enough to dissuade many motorists from driving during the most congested hours."
Thanks to Gerald Cauthen


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Eddie Safarty
Laughing Matters ... The Men
Six gay stand-up comedians laugh themselves out of the closet in this special filmed during the Palm Springs Gay Pride Festival. Emmy winner Bruce Vilanch gets the crowd to bust a gut with his out-and-proud humor while Scott Kennedy provides a different flavor of "pink neck" Texas stand-up. The show also features hilarity from comedians Andre Kelley, Eddie Safarty, Bob Smith and "Desperate Housewives" regular Alec Mapa.


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Archive for Jason Denwood
Best fans: Keep cool while the heat rises
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Pocket-lint Podcast #123 - McLaren, Microsoft, Samsung and HTC
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Panasonic Viera TX-L47ET50B
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King & Wood Mallesons
As the first and only global law firm to be headquartered in Asia, King & Wood Mallesons is connecting Asia to the world, and the world to Asia. With unparalleled depth of both inbound and outbound capability, King & Wood Mallesons is uniquely placed to support regional clients as they internationalise and international clients as they look to invest or expand into Asia. Strategically positioned in the world's growth markets and financial capitals, the firm is powered by more than 2,700 lawyers across more than 30 international offices spanning Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. As a top 10 global firm by lawyer numbers and the only firm in the world able to practise PRC, Australian, Hong Kong, English, US and a significant range of European laws, King & Wood Mallesons is providing clients with deep legal and commercial expertise, business acumen and real cultural understanding on the ground where they need it most. This presents very exciting opportunities for our trainees. King & Wood Mallesons advises clients on the full spectrum of commercial, financial and specialist legal services, with a principle focus on: antitrust and regulatory, banking and finance, corporate M&A and securities, DR/litigation, projects (energy and resources), funds / private equity, intellectual property, real estate and tax.
The two-year training contract is divided into four six-month seats. Trainees will spend two seats (which may include a seat abroad or client secondment) within the following areas: finance, mergers and acquisitions, equity capital markets, private equity, venture capital and investment funds. Trainees are given early responsibility and are supported throughout the training contract. The deadline for applications is 31 July 2016.
The firm holds 3 Vacation schemes (2 weeks in the Spring and 2 x 2 weeks in Summer). We recruit around 60 vacation scheme students per year. The vacation schemes are a great way to see what the firm is about and allow students to meet our current employees. It is also an important way for the Firm to see the students, with 80% of our current Trainee intake completing a vac scheme. The deadline for the vacation scheme is 31 January 2016. The firm welcomes applications from all disciplines and all universities. Applications must be made using the firm's online form. The same form can be used to indicate your interest in an open day, a vacation scheme and/or a training contract. The firm wants ambitious, commercially minded individuals who seek a high level of involvement from day one. Candidates must have a strong academic record, be on track for, or have achieved, a 2:1 or equivalent in their undergraduate degree, and have demonstrated strong team and leadership potential.
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robotogamez - Free Online Games -
Baby Hazel Nature Explorer
Baby Hazel Nature Explorer:
Today Baby Hazel will be visiting the outskirts along with her cousin, Ashley. They have to collect various items required for Ashley class assignment. Lets join the kids to explore farm, forest and riverside. Assist kids in making crafts using all the collectible items by fulfilling all their needs. Enjoy.
Baby Hazel Nature Explorer
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Driver of SUV that caused chain-reaction wreck possibly intoxicated, police say
Published 2:57 pm, Friday, October 9, 2015
SAN ANTONIO — Police say a man who caused a chain-reaction crash on the Northeast Side Friday that sent him and a woman to the hospital may have been intoxicated.
Police said the crash happened around 2 p.m. at the intersection of Thousand Oaks Drive and Scarsdale.
Officers said they had received phone calls reporting a white SUV driving erratically in the area. The crash happened when that SUV slammed into a car at the intersection and then flipped.
The initial impact sent both cars into other vehicles, police said. Authorities shut down east and west bound lanes of Thousand Oaks in the area while they work to clear the area.
The driver of the SUV was taken to an area hospital along with the woman involved in the wreck.
News Channel
It was not immediately clear which vehicle the second person was in. Neither of the injuries are considered life threatening.
Text "NEWS" to 72727 to sign up for breaking news from mySA
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Deck the Kitchen with Christmas Pot Holders
November 14, 2016 | Christmas Quilts, Kitchen Quilts|
Choose from 8 Pieced and Appliqued Holiday Designs!
Make one or make several of these charming pot holders to use over the holidays. They will add a welcome note of Christmas cheer throughout the season.
A dancing snowman, candy cane, little tree and more are pieced, appliqued or both to create cheerful quilted icons of the season. Make some for yourself and others to give.
All of the patterns are easy to make. Add a layer or two of Insul-Bright batting (find it here) for heat proofing.
Dig into your fabric stash and have fun with this cheery project. You'll have one finished up in no time, and several in an afternoon or two.
The finished pot holders are in two sizes: 8″ x 8″ and 7 1/2″ x 9″.
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Employer Partners
Employer partners promote the mentoring opportunity internally to staff and identify suitable, qualified mentors. Since the launch of the program, over 50 organizations have offered The Mentoring Partnership to their staff as an opportunity to enhance their leadership and coaching competencies, and develop their cross-cultural skills.
How the organization benefits
- Creates opportunities for professional development
- Supports a culture of mentoring
- Advances the diversity agenda
- Makes a positive contribution to the community
The role of a corporate partner
Employer partnership generally involves: engaging employees/members to become mentors, marketing The Mentoring Partnership internally and hosting orientation events for their mentors and mentees. This may include:
- Circulating mentoring materials to their employees/members
- Encouraging employees or members to become mentors
- Hosting on-site information sessions to recruit mentors
- Hosting orientation sessions at the launch of each mentoring cycle, as well as networking or training sessions, mentor recognition events or other mentoring events
- Providing incentives to mentors (e.g. membership benefits, professional development credits, learning credits, performance evaluation value, lieu time, etc.)
Support for employer partners
The Mentoring Partnership makes every effort to ensure that internal marketing and recruitment needs of the program are met. The Mentoring Partnership delivers staff information sessions and provides materials that promote the program, including email templates, posters and promotional brochures.


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Author Guidelines
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Journal of Control and Systems Engineering
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Virtual Reference Feedback Tuning Control Design for Closed Loop System
The problem of designing two-feedback controllers for an unknown plant is studied based on input-output measurements within a linear setting. The virtual reference feedback tuning control is a direct method that aims at minimizing a control cost of the 2-norm type by using a set of data about the plant. No model identification of the plant is needed. For the optimization problem in designing controllers, an iterative separable least-squares identification method is proposed by means of the separable principle. The identification method not only searches for the global optimum solution of the designed criterion with respect to the parameter vectors, but also reduces the possibility of convergence to a local minimum. When applied the virtual reference feedback tuning to a two-degrees of freedom control system, the extension of the filter expression used to reprocess the input-output measurement data is derived. Based on this filter , we can prove the equivalence between our virtual reference feedback tuning control and the model reference adaptive control Finally the simulation example results confirm the theoretical results.
Virtual Reference Feedback Tuning; Nonlinear Least-Squares Method; Global Optimum
Wang Jian-hong,Zhu Yong-hong
Er Wei Bai, "Kernal based approaches to local nonlinear nonparametric variable selection," Automatica, vol. 50, iss. 1, pp. 100-113, Jan. 2014.
Paul M J and Vanden Hof, "Identification of dynamic models in complex networks with prediction error methods," Automatica, vol. 49, iss. 10, pp. 2994-3006, Oct. 2013.
Anne Van Mulders, "Identification of systems with localised nonlinearity: from state space to block structured models," Automatica, vol. 49, iss. 5, pp. 1392-1396, Apr. 2013.
Guido Guardabassi, "Virtual reference direct method: An off-line approach to data-based control system design," IEEE Transactions of Automatic Control, vol. 45, iss. 5, pp. 954-960, May 2002.
M.C. Campi, "Virtual reference feedback tuning: a direct method for the design of feedback controlllers," Automatica, vol. 38, iss. 4, pp. 1337-1346, Apr. 2002.
M.C. Campi and A. Lechini, "An application of the Virtual Reference Feedback Tuning method to a Benchmark problem," European Journal of Control, vol. 9, iss. 2, pp. 66-76, Feb. 2003.
M. Gevers and L. Ljung, "Asymptotic variance expressions for closed-loop identification," Automatica, vol. 37, iss. 4, pp. 781-786, Apr. 2001.
Maarten Schoukens, "Identification of Wiener Hammerstein systems by a nonparametric separation of the best linear approximation," Automatica, vol. 50, iss. 2, pp. 628-634, Feb. 2014.
Wang Jian hong and Wang Dao bo, "Subspace predictive control applied to active noise and vibration control," Journal of Vibration and Shock, vol. 30, iss. 10, pp. 129-135, Oct. 2010.
G. Pillonetto, "Kernal methods in system identification, machine learnning and function estimation: a survey," Automatica, vol. 50, iss. 3, pp. 657-682, Mar. 2014.
T. Soderstrom, "Errors-in-Variables methods in system identification," Automatica, vol. 43, iss. 6, pp. 939-958, Jun. 2007.
Copyright © 2013 Bowen Publishing, New York,USA - All rights reserved.


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|« Date » · « Thread »
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|Dave Brondsema <d...@brondsema.net>
|multiple skin descriptors, skin versions
|Thu, 29 Jan 2004 20:04:20 GMT
I just implemented support for multiple skin descriptors. I'm behind a proxy (and <setproxy> with username/pwd doesn't seem to work for <get> tasks) so I couldn't test it against the default skin descriptor, but it should work fine. You can see in default-forrest.properties or the seed site's forrest.properties how it works. A local skin descriptor could be specified by using ${user.home}/forrest.properties. It would be nice to concatenate this property from default-forrest.properties and ${user.home}/forrest.properties and ${project.home}/forrest.properties instead of them taking precedence over each other. But I'm not sure know how the best way to implement that would be. I also want to have install-skin work to delete the existing skin, if any, so it can be used to update skins also. But that could be dangerous if (for example) forrest-site was deleted and then there was no .zip for it to replace it. Perhaps we could put all the skins in the default skin descriptor? But how then would we keep the skins there up to date? I suppose we could do it manually each time we do a forrest release. We do support versioned skins. Speaking of which, the forrest version in forrest.build.xml is 0.5 but the description says 0.6-dev. Shouldn't the version be 0.6-dev? Would this adversely affect version specific .xmap and .xconf files? -- Dave Brondsema firstname.lastname@example.com http://www.brondsema.net - personal http://www.splike.com - programming http://csx.calvin.edu - Calvin club
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swabnoun [ C ]uk /swɒb/ us /swɑːb/
› a small piece of soft material used for cleaning a cut or for taking a small amount of substance from a body, or the substance itself that can then be tested拭子,药签,药棉棒;用棉签取下的化验标本
(Translation of "swab" from the Cambridge English-Chinese (Simplified) Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)
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Though dogs can take care of themselves, they choose not to—instead focusing their efforts on chasing squirrels, licking marmalade off babies, and learning American Sign Language. Give your hardworking dog the attention it deserves with today's Groupon: for $25, you get $60 worth of canine pampering and care services at Country Paws Boarding's Breslau location on Hopewell Creek Road.
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Chiara Tiddi – Field Hockey Captain for ItalyOn GreenFields TX World Cup Hockey Field
"We really like this hockey pitch"
The Italian Hockey Captain informs us that her team is comfortable on GreenFields TX artificial turf:
"We really like this pitch. We think it is comfortable. The game is speedy. The ball goes really fast. I think the play in the Hockey World Cup will be good."


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1 Min Read
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Global currency regulation rather than capital controls will help emerging economies through the crisis, Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Thursday. "The 1998 (Russian crisis) had shown that capital controls are not very efficient during the crisis. Shadow exchange is growing and the outflows persist. Our strategy now is a more responsible macroeconomic policy," he said.
"In this global crisis we also felt the need for regulation of global reserve currencies," he added.
Writing by Gleb Bryanski, Editing by Lin Noueihed


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Discussion in 'Off Topic' started by Matthew Hawley, Sep 14, 2013.
Any SWTOR players here on XF?
I tried it out when it first went F2P but I just wasn't drawn to it. It was the first MMO I ever tried so I also didn't really have a great idea of what to expect... although, by comparison, I was hooked by FFXIV:ARR within an hour.
Are the servers still deserted?
No, most of them are medium and some are heavy.
I play A LOT. I have a 55 juggernaut, 55 shadow, 55 guardian, 55 sorcerer. 44 assassin, 34 commando, 25 powertech, 21 sniper...
Separate names with a comma.


text: We haven't heard a good Apple story for a while, but the rumour mill is back with a bang with news of three iPhone models for 2013.Not only that, the China Times claims two of those handsets will be here in June, which really isn't that long off - although if you look out of the window, it might not seem like it.Those models will be a slightly updated iPhone 5S, along with a far more intriguing proposition - the iPhone Math. The story claims this is Apple's attempt to supersize, even if it isn't supersizing that much. We're talking a 4.8-inch display, which is unlikely to worry Samsung and its Note stable. Other than that, both devices will have improved internal components and an eight-megapixel rear-facing camera.'Math' is probably a working title. Apple is unlikely to take such a radical approach to naming a phone -it might be a translation issue, with iPhone Plus also talked about for a name. That sounds more like it.So what about this third phone? Well, it seems Apple will launch another iPhone a year or so after its last big update. The only thing known (or rumoured) about that is a much-improved 12-megapixel rear-facing camera.The original report claims that shipping of parts will ramp up for the first two phones in March, with production for both kicking off in April to create volume for those June launches.All speculation right now, but it is speculation backed up with a lot of detail, particularly from the production side. If we were giving this rumour a mark, I think we would go for a 6/10. Maybe even a 7/10.Source: Cult of Mac


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4800 West 92nd Avenue Westminster, CO 80031
Home | News | News Archives
A relay team from Westminster Fire Department took first place in the Firefighter Combat Challenge World Championships in Myrtle Beach, S.C. on Nov. 17.
Firefighters from the U.S. and other countries competed in the event, considered the Olympics of firefighting. ESPN billed it "the toughest two minutes in sports."
The WFD five-member relay team beat out 64 other teams to earn the first World Championship for the department after 20 years of sending competitors.
The 2012 WFD Combat Team members were Luke Gearhard, Courtney Van Marter, Matt Meyer, Brett Miller, Chris Dinges, Shawn Caswell and Nick Vinson.
In addition to the relay team win, three WFD competitors - Van Marter, Miller and Gearhard - achieved the coveted "Lion's Den" status this year.
Men must finish the course in less than 100 seconds and women finish in less than 3 minutes to get into the Lion's Den.
Gearhard and Miller competed against 145 firefighters in the men's open division; Miller is now ranked 6th in the world.
Van Marter ran the course in 2 minutes, 48 seconds earning her a rank of 3rd in the world in the women's category.


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Rooms were new and designed in style. The beach (wooden stage) was quite big and there were enough sun beds. The sea was fab. The staff for cleaning were too lazy. The rooms were not clean enough.


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Contact Info & Directions
Contact Info
Braintree Public Schools
Colbert Administration Building
348 Pond Street
Braintree, MA 02184
Superintendent's Office
Frank Hackett, Superintendent, firstname.lastname@example.com
Mary Ann Cuddahy, Administrative Assistant, Superintendent/School Committee, email@example.com, x8476
Treacy Lewald, Administrative Assistant, Human Resources, firstname.lastname@example.com, x8477
Janice Weitbrecht, Administrative Assistant, email@example.com, x8478
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From Route 3 south / Route 93 (128)
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At second set of lights, take a left onto Pond Street.The administration building is just up the hill on your right.
MAP - Click Here


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RANDY BLUE really outdo themselves most of the time, and our hot hot cutie today is a prime example. Christian Lorok is your cute-as-hell, boy-next-door type. The gleam in his naughty eye will make your knees go weak and your member twitch with anticipation in your pants. Let's take a look at a few images featuring Christian rooting around his tight butt with his favourite toy.
Christian stares at us with a lusty, mischievous glare. Yummy cock in hand, he's getting stoked up to put on his show for us. What a cutie! He reminds me of my first teenage lover, Chris. Chris couldn't get enough, just like myself, and the bliss and lust we shared was incredible. I sure would like to share some bliss with Christian here. How about you?
When fingers wander, you never know where they'll end up. That sweet look on Christian's adorable face tells us a lot. Like....anal exploration is on the menu. Mmmmm....that's a dish I think I could eat up in no time!
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9801Turlock Saddle Shop
Expand Messages
- Mar 2, 2010I had promised some of you a report on the Side Saddles and Portugese saddles at the Turlock Saddle shop.
I had a chance to pop by yeasterday and sit on and handle both.
The Side-Saddles come in black. The one I sat on was a hair short for me. It has a nice wide gullet and appears to be built on bascially and English all purpose tree. It was stable on the saddle rack with no girth or stirrups. I would change the angle of the leaping horn a little (which is fairly easy to do) to fit me better. The leather was descent quality. Probably not something I would want to hunt all day on, but at $195, not a bad option for a saddle to hack around on a little.
The Portuguese saddles were very comfortable and encouraged a really straight leg position. The gullet was wide and shallow. I suspect the saddle would tend to roll or rest on the spine with the wrong horse-rider combination. Descent quality leather. The $195 price tag is hard to argue with, recognizing that it is not the same quality as some of the European produced saddles.


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Harvested on March 23, 2015, this pre-Qing Ming Dragon Well is everything we have come to expect a the first harvest.Very hard to find outside of China, this delicious brew is sweet yet nutty with an amazingly smooth finish.Easily recognized by the hand-flattened, yellow-green leaves and distinct fragrance this spectacular tea is mellow yet flavorful with an almost sweet finish.One of China's most well-known, celebrated teas, Dragon Well is grown in the mountains of Zhejiang Province in the village of Long Jing. When in Long Jing you can see this tea being pan fired almost everywhere you go.This exceptional pre Qing Ming green tea is a real treat for tea drinkers.Quality Note
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I love this tea. I have been drinking it every morning for the past year.
I love this tea. I have been drinking this every morning for the past year. I never tire of it.


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VisionChina Media Inc. (NASDAQ:VISN)
Q2 2010 Earnings Call
July 28, 2010 8:00 pm ET
Helen Plummer - IR Officer
Limin Li - Chairman and CEO
Scott Chen - CFO
Philip Wan - Morgan Stanley
Dick Wei - JPMorgan
James Lee - CLSA
James Marsh - Piper Jaffray
Chenyi Lu - Cowen and Company
Paul Keung - Oppenheimer
Warren Wang - Hamon
Nan Li - SIG
Good evening and thank you for standing by for VisionChina Media's second quarter 2010 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions)
I will now turn the call over to your host for today's conference, Mrs. Helen Plummer, Investor Relations Officer for VisionChina Media.
Helen Plummer
Hello, everyone, and welcome to VisionChina Media's second quarter 2010 earnings conference call. The company's second quarter earnings results were released earlier today and are available on the company's IR website at www.visionchina.cn as well as on newswire services.
Today you will hear from our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Limin Li, who will talk about our industry, our company's strategy and business operations; and Mr. Scott Chen, our Chief Financial Officer, who will take you through our financials and key operating metrics. After their prepared remarks, Mr. Li and Ms. Chen will be available for your questions.
Please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, our future results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in our Annual Report on Form 20-F and in other documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. VisionChina Media does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law.
As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. In addition, a webcast of this conference call will be available on VisionChina Media's Investor Relations website at www.visionchina.cn.
I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Li.
Limin Li
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are very happy to see that by the end of the second quarter of 2010, VisionChina Media had taken great strides to overcome some of the short-term difficulties seen in the last quarter.
In the second quarter, we achieved total revenue of $31.8 million, surpassing our expectations with a quarter-over-quarter increase of 36% and year-over-year increase of 3.3%. Moreover, we returned to positive gross profit in the second quarter, giving us even greater confidence in our future.
Several positive factors are providing further evidence that the negative environment of the first quarter was temporary and that VisionChina Media has entered new phase of sustainable growth. We are seeing gradual recovery in the outdoor advertising market, strong progress in our integration with DMG following the acquisition as well as rapid growth of our in-house sales team.
Since the opening of the World Expo in Shanghai, our 13-line Shanghai subway network has been transporting hundreds of thousands of international and domestic expo visitors each day. A variety of programs and real-time information about expo are being broadcasted on network, capturing our target audiences' attention and making VisionChina Media one of the most effective outdoor ad, mobile, television advertising platforms for advertisers in that city.
Price and utilization in our subway network have both increased significantly. And during the second quarter, the utilization rate during primetime hours on Shanghai subway reached 90% and average utilization in our Shanghai subway network was 59% as opposed to 36% in the first quarter of this year.
Just three days ago, Sinomonitor, one of China's leading marketing research agencies, announced that 90.3% of Shanghai residents received Expo related information through subway, mobile television and also noted that Shanghai residents are now more accustomed to obtaining relevant information from subway mobile televisions.
In addition to receiving information via our subway television network, the same group also received Expo related information from other media sources. 86.7% received Expo related information on traditional television, 55.9% through the Internet, 43.7% on bus mobile television, and 27.6% from other outdoor advertising.
Subway mobile television has become highly effective, delivering mass media to audiences that appreciate.
In the next decade, China is going to construct more than 158 new tracks nationwide, with most of them including digital broadcasting capabilities. As the leader in digital out-of-home broadcasting for subways and buses, we expect subway to be a strong growth point for our company going forward.
In terms of media resource expansion, in July, we successfully renewed our exclusive contract with Beijing Subway System for the next five years. This was a critical next step for VisionChina Media as the renewal further solidified the company's market leadership position allowing us to approach 100% of the subway mobile television market share in China.
The acquisition of the six advertising agencies we made in 2008 was a strategic decision during a period of rapid growth for the company. Over the past two years, these six advertising agencies have supplied a large number of quality clients and a significant part of company's advertising income and have been invaluable in training and upgrading our in-house sales teams.
However, after reviewing projected revenue contribution from the acquired agencies, we believe it is prudent to take an impairment charge at this time on three out of the six advertising agencies we acquired in 2008 to better reflect our current business.
Projected revenue contribution from the customers of the remaining three acquired agencies remains in line with company's expectations, and no impairment charge is being contemplated for these agencies.
At the end of the second quarter, together with several key employees and some major long term shareholders I entered into a subscription agreement to buy additional new shares of VisionChina Media. This reflects the faith that my employees, long term shareholders, and I have in the company's long term development, and at the same time allows us to support the company with a stronger cash reserve.
With the ongoing realization of post-acquisition synergy, the expansion of market size, and the strengthening of our market position, VisionChina's exclusive mobile television will continue attracting advertising clients. Our ability to grow a strong in-house team to build well established client base and expand our market share that will allow for steady growth in the second half of the year, creating value for our shareholders.
I will now hand over the call to our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Scott Chen, to discuss our financials and operating metrics in more detail.
Scott Chen
Thank you, Mr. Li. Just a few comments before I take to you through our operating results and financial results. As just mentioned, we saw a broad rebound in the second quarter, which is driven by growth across our business, but particularly on the subway set of our business.
For the first time this quarter, we saw our subway business contribute nearly 50% of our total revenue. Of particular importance was the significant increase we saw in pricing and utilization on our DMG acquired subway lines, which demonstrates the strong synergies of our acquisition.
While our subway assets are performing strongly, unfortunately it is now clear that the future revenue visibility for three of the six advertising agencies acquired in 2008 has decreased compared to original expectations. While each of these three agencies continues to generate revenue, the certainty of future revenue particularly from historical clients is unclear.
This decrease in revenue visibility has led us to take a non-recurring non-cash impairment charge for these three advertising agencies. The remaining three agencies acquired in 2008 continued to perform in line with expectation and are not impacted by this impairment charge.
Now turning to our second quarter operating results, total broadcasting hours in the first quarter of 2010 increased slightly to 47,928 hours. Average advertising revenue per broadcasting hour rose to $636 in the second quarter compared to $470 in the first quarter of 2010. On average, the company sold 6.34 advertising minutes per broadcasting hour compared to 5.01 advertising minutes per broadcasting hour in the first quarter of 2010.
During the second quarter, 614 advertisers purchased advertising time on the company's advertising network compared to 419 advertisers in the first quarter of 2010. Each of these operating metrics demonstrates the strong rebound of our business versus the first quarter.
Now turning to our second quarter financial results, total revenues were $31.8 million in the second quarter of 2010, exceeding our guidance and achieving an increase of 36% from $23.4 million in the first quarter of 2010. Media cost, the most significant component of advertising services costs, was $23.3 million in the second quarter of 2010, representing a 1.2% of total advertising service costs.
Gross profit in the second quarter of 2010 was $3.1 million compared to a gross loss of $4.5 million in the first quarter of 2010. Advertising service gross margin was positive 9.8% in the second quarter of 2010 compared to negative 19.4% in the first quarter of 2010. The increase in gross margin was due to a significant increase in revenue during the second quarter.
Selling and marketing expenses were $7 million in the second quarter of 2010, an increase of 17.2% from $6 million in the first quarter of 2010. The increase in selling and marketing expenses for the second quarter is attributable in part to the corresponding increase in revenue for the quarter. General and administrative expenses were $2.4 million in the second quarter, an increase of 17.4% from $2 million in the first quarter of 2010.
Loss from equity method investments amounted to $0.09 million in the second quarter compared to $0.03 million gain in the first quarter of 2010. Operating loss was $95.5 million in the second quarter of 2010 compared with an operating loss of $12.5 million in the first quarter of 2010.
The operating loss in the second quarter of 2010 was primarily due to the non-recurring non-cash impairment charge of $89.1 million for three of the six advertising agencies acquired by the company in 2008. Again, the remaining three agencies acquired in 2008 continue to perform well and are not impacted by this impairment charge.
The company recorded net interest expense of $0.7 million in the second quarter compared with a net interest expense of $0.8 million in the first quarter of 2010. Net loss attributable to VisionChina Media shareholders, a GAAP metric, was $93.2 million in the second quarter. Again, the net loss in the second quarter of 2010 was primarily due to the non-recurring non-cash impairment charge of $89.1 million.
Basic and diluted net loss per share, a GAAP metric, attributable to VisionChina Media shareholders in the second quarter of 2010 were both $1.15. Net loss attributable to VisionChina Media shareholders, excluding share-based compensation expenses, amortization of intangible assets, impairment loss and income tax credit in connection with the impairment loss, a non-GAAP metric, in the second quarter of 2010 narrowed to $2.3 million compared to a net loss of $8 million in the first quarter of 2010 due to strong growth in quarterly revenue.
The company had cash and cash equivalents of $65.6 million as of June 30, 2010. The company's net cash use in operating activities in the second quarter was $14 million. Depreciation and amortization in the second quarter of 2010 was $4.4 million and capital expenditures were $1.1 million.
Now, turning to our guidance. The company estimates total revenues, which consist of advertising services revenues only, in the third quarter of 2010 to be between $36.7 million and $39.7 million.
The third quarter 2010 net income attributable to VisionChina Media shareholders, excluding share-based competition expenses and amortization of intangible assets, again a non-GAAP metric, is expected to be between a net loss of $1.1 million and a net profit of $0.8 million. These estimates are based on an exchange rate of RMB6.8086 per U.S. dollar.
The company noted its guidance is based on its current network of 23 cities that as of the release date have already been secured by contracts. If the company's network expands to additional cities either organically or through acquisitions, management's forecast could be affected.
Thank you again for joining today, and I will now open your call to questions.
Question-and-Answer Session
(Operator instructions) And our first question comes from the line of Philip Wan with Morgan Stanley.
Philip Wan - Morgan Stanley
Could you please share with us some more details about the Beijing contract renewal? For example, did you experience competition when it came to negotiation? And for example, what should we expect for cash downpayment as well as media cost step-up in the following quarter?
Scott Chen
I'll begin by answering that question, and I'll ask Mr. Li to provide more details about the renewal process. This has been a long process for us to renew the Beijing contract. We did put out a press release about two weeks ago to announce that we've secured a five-year agreement with Beijing. We are still in the process of discussing certain terms of the signed contract with them. So at this point, it's still not defined yet exactly when there will be cost increases associated with the new contract.
For the moment, we're still operating under the current contract, so that we've been operating since the beginning of the year, and costs have not increased. We have paid a deposit for the Beijing contract in connection with this new signed contract that we have entered into. The deposit is significantly less than we'd originally anticipated internally. The deposit that was paid so far, the total was a RMB3.5 million deposit plus a RMB1.5 million amount which is yet to be paid as part of that deposit.
Going forward, though, we do expect again that the new contract will come into effect following further discussions on certain key terms. But again, for the moment, we are still under the original contract that we've been operating under since the beginning of the year.
As for the competition of the Beijing assets, I'll ask Mr. Li to provide some comments on the negotiation process.
Limin Li
With the participation of three candidates in this open bidding process, we won the concession of the Beijing subway system for the next five years, allowing us to approach 100% of the subway mobile television market in China and giving us greater confidence in our future development.
We negotiated a new contract upon the expiration of previous short-period attention just to ensure the continuous operation of the Beijing subway system for us in Beijing. Currently, we're still in a negotiation with the Beijing subway authorities in more detail in terms of payment schedule and the program transmission, broadcasting transmission. And we are very, very confident that we will be able to sign a contract with better terms.
Our next question comes from the line of Dick Wei with JPMorgan.
Dick Wei - JPMorgan
I wonder, during the quarter, how much revenue is contributed from the Shanghai subway system or the Shanghai city. And could you classify like whether this could be called like a one-time spending from the World Expo related customers? And I guess, if you can give any visibility for beyond the World Expo, that would be helpful.
And secondly, for the rest of the three ad agencies, how much goodwill is related to those three agencies currently on the balance sheet?
Scott Chen
For Shanghai what we saw in this quarter, what was a significant increase in revenue. Revenue more than doubled in Shanghai during this quarter. We for the quarter generated above RMB$44 million in revenue from Shanghai, which was a significant increase from the previous quarter, and this is significantly more than Shanghai had generated in terms of quarterly revenue before the acquisition as well.
So for us we definitely do think that this demonstrates a significant amount of improvement in synergies in the operation of Shanghai since the acquisition with DMG.
In terms of goodwill, the goodwill remaining on our balance sheet from the remaining three agencies is about $47 million remaining in goodwill on our balance sheet related to the three agencies that had not been written down.
Dick Wei - JP Morgan
(Inaudible). Thank you. Scott, if you can also give some visibility on the company outlook for the rest of the year for Shanghai. Do you expect like a drop post-World Expo in Shanghai in Q4? Any color that you can share with us?
Scott Chen
Okay. Obviously, Shanghai is undergoing the Shanghai Expo right now. There is likely some impact the Shanghai Expo is having on the advertising market in Shanghai. But it's pretty clear from the operating that we see internally that the increase in revenue that we saw in the second quarter was driven by pricing and utilization gains. And we feel that those are sustainable after the Shanghai Expo.
We believe that the gains that we saw in the second quarter are not driven by one-time increases in advertising spending with ('83) Expo. We definitely do see that there are improvements in pricing, improvements in overall network quality in Shanghai, and just general growth in overall city passenger volume on Shanghai subway lines.
So these are things that we expect will continue following the Expo, and are not related to one-time pricing spikes that were related to the Expo.
Again, we do think that there are synergies that were derived internally from the DMG acquisition, and that's what's driven primarily the gain in Shanghai for the second quarter.
Our next question comes from the line of Eddie Leung with Bank of America.
Unidentified Analyst
This is Thomas calling on behalf of Eddie. Just a quick question. Can you provide us with a rough idea on the revenue contribution from the Tier 1 cities, as well as the utilization in Tier 1 cities? Thanks.
Scott Chen
Revenue contribution for the Tier 1 cities in the second quarter averaged about 67%, which is largely in line with what their contribution has been historically as well. Average pricing in the Tier 1 cities has increased for us in the second quarter versus the first quarter. Average pricing, as we measure revenue per hour has increased about 35%. So we do see a strong rebound from the first quarter.
In terms of utilization, the metric again that we used is minutes of broadcasting per hour. In the Tier 1 cities on average, it's a broad average, but on average it's ranged around 7.3 minutes of advertising per hour. Again that's an average representing a broad range. So that encompasses certain assets that are lower than that, certain assets that are significantly higher than that.
But on average, the utilization in the Tier 1 cities is averaging about 7.3 minutes of advertising per hour, which again is an increase over Q1 for the Tier 1 cities.
Our next question comes from the line of James Lee with CLSA.
James Lee - CLSA
Thanks for taking my question. My first question is regarding the Beijing subway deal. Scott, is there any way you can give a sense what is the media cost per year on the current agreement and the consensual agreement to maybe increase the overall cost? So is that something we should think about going forward as we model in the (out years)?
And also, I just want to get a sense of the acquired agencies and what's the growth rate year over year? Thanks.
Scott Chen
For the Beijing contracts we have signed a five-year agreement. There is recurring costs associated with that five-year agreement. The difficulty we're facing right now is that again there are certain technical aspects of the current contract that we're still in negotiation with. And so it is currently anticipated, in the current contract we signed a step-up in cost. But because of the technical aspects of the contract, we're still negotiating a final price with them.
We don't want to implement those discussions at this point by talking too much publicly about what the cost increase is. Again, for the moment, we are not paying any cost increases. We are still paying the costs that we have been paying since the beginning of the year under the original contract extension. Those payment terms have been extended at this point.
There is a cost increase baked in. The magnitude of that cost increased for the new contract. Again, it's still yet to be determined until we finalize negotiations with Beijing Metro. So we hope to be able to provide you more information about that probably in the coming months, because for the time being, again, we still aren't affected by the cost increases and we're going to be paying the original contract extension price that we have through 2010 upto this point.
I know that that's at this point a little bit vague, but again this is something that is still an ongoing work in progress and we don't want to influence our current instructions with Beijing by talking too much about potential cost increases at this point.
In terms of the acquired agencies, your question was, how much they've grown year-over-year?
James Lee - CLSA
No. What's the decline? What's the revenue decline year over year you're seeing from these three agencies? It would be great if you can give us a sense, a clarity, of what's the revenue contribution from the three that's remaining versus the three that's left?
Scott Chen
Okay. Well, the revenue contribution for the acquired agencies in the first quarter, according to data that we have collated from our sales force, the total contribution for the first quarter was about 29% of revenue. That's for the six agencies. When we're contemplating this impairment charge, it's not that the three agencies have ceased providing revenue. All the agencies are still contributing revenue.
What we've determined though is that going forward, the ability to project revenue for three of the agencies is much lower than in the past, and much lower versus expectations. And so that's why we are taking this right down at this time. But they all still do continue to generate revenue.
The six agencies as a whole contributed, again, according to our sales data, just under 30% of our total revenue, and that is down from last year.
James Lee - CLSA
Got it. Now, can we get a sense on the Beijing subway contract? Sorry if I didn't make myself clear. I was asking the media cost under the old agreement. How much you are paying for it?
Scott Chen
For all the assets in Beijing right now, we're paying, and again, this is under a number of different contracts because line 4 is separate from the rest of the Beijing system. Under the current agreement, we are paying approximately RMB$11 million per quarter. That's the current extension that we're paying.
Keep in mind though that this current extension does have a price that is lower than historical prices, meaning that before this extension was granted at the beginning of 2010, the Beijing assets were operated under a number of different contracts and those were operated separately by us and DMG.
Now last year, under these separate contracts, the total cost for the Beijing system, all the lines of Beijing, was a bit higher than what we are paying now. So what we are paying now is a preferential rate, and any increase in the new contract that we are going to sign is based off the increase of last year's rate rather than an increase based off of this current preferential rate.
James Lee - CLSA
Got it. Thanks so much.
Our next question comes from the line of James Marsh with Piper Jaffray.
James Marsh - Piper Jaffray
A couple of quick questions. One, Scott, I was hoping you had the year over year ad revenue per broadcast dollar numbers. I know you gave us the first quarter and second quarter, but I was hoping if you had those numbers on a year-over-year basis since they were helpful.
Scott Chen
Sure. Just give us a second to find the year-over-year comparison.
James Marsh - Piper Jaffray
I guess while you're looking at those numbers, maybe you could just talk a little bit about the difference between the selling process for subway and bus? And do you have sort of the same agency relationship on the subway side or is that more direct sales?
Scott Chen
Sorry, James. Can you repeat the last question? I apologize.
James Marsh - Piper Jaffray
Yes, the second question, just while you're kind of digging up the other information, I was hoping you could compare and contrast the selling process between the subway business and the bus business? Is it different? And then do you have more internal sales or is it still agency as well? I'm just trying to figure out how different they are.
Scott Chen
Yes, I'll provide some comments and then Mr. Li who has headed a sales force can provide some insight as well. From my observation, the sales force selling between bus and subway is no different. We do provide our internal sales teams with support for both businesses equally. In terms of sales, the percentage breakdown between direct customer discussions and agency discussions does not look to me any different.
The process is really determined by what customers want in terms of targeting their audience as opposed to the sales process itself. I'll pass it to Mr. Li. Perhaps he can give a little bit more insight about the differences, if any, in the sales process.
Limin Li
Both subway mobile television and bus mobile television fall into the category of public transit mobile television, and there is approximately 70% overlap in terms of audiences. There is also 70% overlap in terms of the advertising clients for the above-ground bus mobile television and below-ground subway mobile television.
Right now, the sales force is a combination of our in-house sales team and external advertising agencies, including foreign agencies. So we could effectively use the combination of above-ground population and below-ground commuters to improve our coverage and enhance our effective reach.
Scott Chen
James, getting back to your original question, advertising revenue per broadcast hour, are you asking for a year-over-year comparison?
James Marsh - Piper Jaffray
Yes, that will be helpful.
Scott Chen
Right. So our advertising revenue per broadcast hour in this quarter is $636. A year ago in the second quarter, it was $865. There is obviously a decrease here in our advertising revenue per broadcast hour. One thing to keep in mind is that this year the number of broadcasting hours has increased with the integration of DMG. And so that does affect the ratio to a certain extent. The amount of revenue that we're generating, again, is divided by a broader platform, a larger number of broadcast hours.
Our next question comes from the line of Chenyi Lu with Cowen and Company.
Chenyi Lu - Cowen and Company
I have a couple of quick questions. This quarter, you have 614 paying customers for the quarter, which is higher than the previous couple of quarters. My question to you is do you see the increase across the board, all the different market categories, and do you see a sustainable growth going forward in terms of customers.
Scott Chen
Chenyi, we have had a larger number of customers over the past two quarters. That has not changed the percentage mix by revenue, though, from our industry. So we do think that a larger number of customers is broadly based across our historical industry base. Our platform, because it's very focused on mass transit writers, our demographic is very much geared towards consumer brands marketing, household products, over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, retail and fashion. Those types of daily use products have always been very strong in terms of our customer base.
Going forward, yes, we do think that that is sustainable, because these sectors do represent the bulk of the advertising market in China. And so we do feel that we are very well positioned with our platform to attack this large opportunity in front of us.
Chenyi Lu - Cowen and Company
So would that also imply that the revenue growth should continue to be strong quarter-over-quarter starting from this quarter?
Scott Chen
Yes, we do think that with the pickup in our subway business after the integration with DMG, we do feel that we've rebounded from the first quarter. And yes, we do have a solid base of continued growth from this point forward. Again, at the same time, we're taking steps here to deal with the agency acquisition that the company made in 2008. By taking this write-down, we do hope that we are able to put those acquisitions behind us and continue a base of growth with those acquisitions as well from this point forward.
Chenyi Lu - Cowen and Company
So basically, would that also imply that you're getting more synergy from DMG acquisition right now, and also the revenue from Shanghai should continue to grow quarter-over-quarter beyond the Shanghai Expo?
Scott Chen
Yes, exactly. We do think that the growth in the subway business in the second quarter demonstrates the beginning of synergies that we're able to achieve with the DMG acquisition.
What we saw in the first quarter was advertisers pushing back on the pricing increases that we implemented across DMG's lines. We've seen customers come back to us now in the second quarter. And so we do think that this is the beginning of a phase of growth in the subway business resulting from the integration with DMG. And again, that process is just starting for us.
Chenyi Lu - Cowen and Company
Okay. I know you guys have a write-off of about $80 million. Can you give us the forecast going forward for this amortization of intangibles? Would that be lower than $3 million per quarter or would that be the same?
Scott Chen
It will be a bit lower. Let me calculate the exact number here. We're anticipating a decrease in our quarterly amortization expense of about $440,000 going forward.
Chenyi Lu - Cowen and Company
So that would imply about $2.8 million per quarter going forward, right?
Scott Chen
Yes, let me just check that figure. Yes, that's exactly right, about $2.8 million per quarter.
Chenyi Lu - Cowen and Company
And then your new guidance also includes this lower amortization as well, right?
Scott Chen
Yes, that's right.
(Operator Instructions) Our next question comes from the line of Paul Keung with Oppenheimer.
Paul Keung - Oppenheimer
We've asked this question in the past. I want to make sure you confirm here. Now you've seen this trend in your subway business. What percent of that business you're getting is actually coming from your customers' TV budget? And two, what percent do you think of your customers' spending is representing at this point? In other words, how many of these customers are really more on a trial basis going to subway and whether you've got penetration actually growing with some of your clients?
Scott Chen
Yes, those are very good questions, but unfortunately I think it's very difficult to generalize across our customer base, how much of our spending is coming from the TV budgets and what portion of their spending represents their overall budgets.
I think the second part of that question may be easier. What portion of their spending on our platform does that represent of their overall budgets? We still believe that the revenue being spent on our platform represents a relatively small part of the budgets of our key customers.
In this quarter, looking at our top 10 customers, it's very clear that we are enhancing our customer base and really attacking the key multinational and domestic household consumer products brands. So just a glance at our top 10 list quarter, it is a very strong group of customers. It's a very, what we feel, sustainable group of customers. And it's customers that do for the most part focus their advertising on traditional television.
So these are clients like Amway, Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, Sanjing Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline. These are our top five customers this quarter, and these are, again, very well known brands that do focus most of their advertising on traditional television.
So the revenue that they're spending on our platform we still think is a very small part of their overall budget and a relatively small part of their TV budget in fact. We do think, though, that for customers like Amway and Proctor & Gamble and Unilever to continue to spend on our platform, they continue to grow their spending. It does mean that we are taking more and more revenue from their traditional television budgets. But obviously, at this point, it's difficult to gage exactly how much that is.
We still think as a ballpark that we're still in single digits of their overall ad budgets, single-digit percentage.
Paul Keung - Oppenheimer
And the next question relates to the Beijing subway. I know you can't provide the detail. But roughly at what point in time or what milestone would trigger switching to the new concession terms? At what point in the future should we expect it?
Scott Chen
The key terms that we're discussing right now, all regard service levels. So the digital broadcast network that we're operating in the Beijing subway network, the screens within that network have to maintain a certain amount of uptime in terms of the screen maintenance and the availability of the digital television signal. So those types of metrics.
We have internal quality control metrics that the metro system has to live up to. This type of service quality is something that we've been discussing with all of our subway partners, but we've been discussing this with Beijing for some time.
Once the Beijing metro achieves the level of service quality that we internally have set, that's the trigger for entering into the new contracts in full. Again, this is a discussion that we've been having with them for some time. We're working with them to make sure that our service standards are maintained.
Right now, it's anticipated that we'll be in this discussion for some time on a month-to-month basis with Beijing metro, to work with them on these service issues. It has an impact of revenue. Revenue in the second quarter here in Beijing has grown consistently from the first quarter. So we, at this point, are comfortable with our contract position in Beijing.
We're going to continue to work with them to enhance the service quality. On a month-to-month basis we're going to be reviewing the service quality and determining when is the appropriate time to switch to the new contract.
Again, the key points that we're discussing with them right now are service level and also some definitions about future expansion of the Beijing metro system. We are working with them on how to define the expansion of the Beijing metro system in terms of new lines as well as expansion to current lines, which again will have impact on the future costs associated with the Beijing contract.
I know that's a little bit vague, but hopefully that gives you a sense of some of the things that we're still discussing with Beijing metro. And again, hopefully we'll have more information to update again on a month-to-month basis.
Our next question comes from the line of Warren Wang with Hamon.
Warren Wang - Hamon
(Foreign Language)
Scott Chen
Just to review those questions, there were three questions there. The first one was relating to what our expectations were for the fourth quarter and for next year. Specifically for the fourth quarter, with the end of the Expo, would that have any impact?
And also next year, with the continued integration with DMG and the growth in the subway business, how that will impact our business?
The second question relates to our top 10 customers and a breakdown in terms of overall percentage of revenue. And the third question relates to our operating metrics and how much potential growth do we see in our operating metrics for the coming quarter.
Let me just take those questions one by one. In terms of the first question, what our expectations are for the fourth quarter and our expectations are for next year, in general, again, we provided guidance here for the third quarter. And so based off of our current visibility in our business, we are going to provide guidance on a quarter-by-quarter basis and not get too far ahead of ourselves.
But what we do expect for the remainder of this year, including the fourth quarter, is continued growth. We don't expect that the end of the Expo at the end of this year will have a negative impact on our business. Again, we feel that the growth in Shanghai that we saw in the second quarter was primarily driven by operational gains and pricing gains that we've implemented as a result of the DMG acquisition. And we don't feel that our results were overly impacted by the Shanghai Expo itself.
And so given that we're growing the business from the start of the acquisition at the beginning this year, we do think that we will be able to carry growth momentum through the second half of this year and into next year as well. We do believe that subways, particularly the Shanghai Metro System and Beijing Metro System, all these large metro systems, we do feel that that's a source of long term sustainable growth.
We do feel that the DMG acquisition was structured properly to provide us with a basis for growth, meaning that there are no earn-outs associated with an acquisition. And the sales teams from the DMG sales force have been integrated into our sales force.
So actually the integration was a full complete integration, meaning that individual sales people were combined into different sales teams. And so we actually don't have any more sales force that are strictly separate as part of DMG. Everyone has been consolidated; everyone's being compensated the same, and again there are no earn-outs associated with the DMG acquisition.
In terms of our top ten customers, again, we are very confident in our top ten customers and the quality that they represent. The major brands include Amway, Proctor & Gamble, Uniliver, Sunjing, GlaxoSmithKline, (Sin Tong), (inaudible) and young brands, McDonalds. These are very high quality brands in our top ten list. We feel these are very sustainable. And for the second quarter, they represented about 38% of our total revenue. And we do again feel that that's a very healthy percentage for our top ten brands. We do expect these brands to continue to invest with us going forward.
In terms of operating metrics, we have seen a significant improvement in our operating metrics in the second quarter. Again it is off of a low base in the first quarter, but across our bus and subway business in the second quarter we have seen average pricing gains and utilization gains. And so, again, the strength that we saw in the second quarter we do expect that to continue in the second quarter. That is accounted for in our guidance for the third quarter.
And so right now we do feel that the overall advertising environment is strong. We feel that integration with our subway assets with DMG has worked out very well this quarter, and we do feel that this is such a solid basis for new growth across all of our operating metrics in the second half of the year.
Our next question comes from the line of Nan Li with SIG.
Nan Li - SIG
I just have a quick housekeeping question. In terms of the earn-out payments relating to the acquisition of DMG, I remember last time you mentioned there is still like about $10 million that has not been paid yet. So I'm just wondering how much cash payment has been made in this quarter and how much would be made in the remaining of this year? Thank you.
Scott Chen
Yes. Actually there is no earn-out payments associated with DMG. Just to be clear, we have upcoming installments that are due to DMG, but they are not related to any earn-out mechanism. This is just an installment plan for the consideration that was entered into at the beginning of this year.
As the contract currently stands, there is $60 million in consideration left to pay for DMG. That's divided into two $30 million installments, each of those due at the one and two year anniversaries of the acquisition. So at the beginning of 2011 we will be paying $30 million in consideration to DMG. And at the beginning of 2012, we will be paying $30 million in consideration to DMG.
Just to be clear, again, the $30 million payments, there is the option for the selling shareholders of DMG to receive shares. Those shares amount to $10 million at each payment date. Again, that's an option on their behalf. But the protection mechanisms built into the original contract do stipulate a minimum floor price for those shares. And so that minimum floor price was set, back when the contract was signed in October.
So there are protections built into the original agreement. Those minimum share prices, we've publicly disclosed those back in October, but they are significantly higher than the current share price.
And ladies and gentlemen, I show no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Helen Plummer for any closing remarks. Please proceed.
Helen Plummer
Thank you all for joining us today. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at email@example.com.
You may now disconnect.
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