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Alle Posts mit dem Tag "magazine"
Studio visits, exhibition reviews, and events… Photography fans, take a few hours (or even a few days…) and immerse yourself in the beautiful world that is Photograph Magazine. Don't miss their insightful profile of Jeff L. Rosenheim, curator of photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the May/June issue!
Pictured: Garry Winogrand, Park Avenue, New York, (1959). Courtesy of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
- 1 year ago,
- 33 notes
The London Auctions
Do market trends reflect the cultural zeitgeist or compensate for it? And if so, considering Europe's fiscal woes, should we expect to see happy paintings or brooding ones lead the way? Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, or darker, more twisted Surrealist fare?
Find out more in our report of London's Impressionist and Modern Art sales.
- 2 years ago,
- 12 notes
Berlin's Electro-Art Scene
Chelsea-caliber galleries line the old East Berlin thoroughfare Augustrasse and a stream of tech startups like SoundCloud have rebranded the city "Silicon Allee."
Along with precision engineering and techno music, Berlin has also become a home for digital and electronic art.
- 2 years ago,
- 18 notes
Summer Reading
Whether you're relaxing in the city or hitting the beach over the summer, don't forget to take one of these fantastic books on artists, curators, and critics with you.
Also, pictured is artist Sam Francis in his Californian studio in Santa Monica, 1979.
- 2 years ago,
- 4 notes
Terracotta Warriors
The life-sized terracotta soldiers protecting the tomb of the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huangdi (259 BC–210 BC), were accidentally found by well-diggers in 1974.
Since the discovery of the First Emperor's tomb, about 2,000 of these six-foot-tall clay figures have been uncovered.
While a person could travel to Xi'an, China, to visit this vast ongoing archeological project, closer to home Discovery Times Square is showing 10 of these warriors in a new exhibition in New York City!
- 2 years ago,
- 6 notes
Saatchi's New Chinese Ink Paintings
We sat down with Dutch-born, London-based art dealer Michael Goedhuis to talk about the new show of Chinese art he organized for Charles Saatchi in London.
- 2 years ago,
- 2 notes
Jeffrey Deitch At Art Basel
During a conversation with art advisor Josh Baer at Art Basel last week, Jeffrey Deitch talked about the threat of private museums to fundraising and programming at MOCA Los Angeles.
Read more about this conversation in artnet Magazine.
- 2 years ago,
- 2 notes
Art Market Watch
Recent articles in Artnet Magazine about art market expectations have garnered huge reaction from reporters at Hyperallergic, Gallerist NY, the Winkleman blog, and a number of dealers and collectors, so we thought it might be pertinent to break down the situation of a hypothetical power collector couple.
Read our break down of the situation.
- 2 years ago,
- 2 notes
Art Basel Looks Towards Asia
Dealers and organizers at Art Basel are predicting an increasingly Asian-ized future for the fair, especially after news broke that Swiss collector Ulli Sigg is donating most of his Contemporary Chinese Art collection, worth about $163 Million, to the Hong Kong M+ Museum.
Read more about Art Basel in artnet Magazine.
- 2 years ago,
- 1 note
Politically Engaged Art At Basel
Drawing well-suited dealers and collectors from all corners of the globe since 1970, Art Basel is "just as much a meeting place as a market place," as co-director Marc Spiegler likes to put it.
And while center stage is occupied by the big, expensive gestures made by big, rich artists, plenty of politically-engaged, socially-grounded artworks are still to be found in the city.
- 2 years ago,
- 5 notes
Istancool, also known as the Istanbul International Arts and Culture Festival, is a packed powerhouse of a long weekend that also serves as the perfect introduction to what is arguably the hottest city on the current global art scene!
Browse galleries and exhibitions happening in Istanbul, in time for the festival.
- 2 years ago,
- 3 notes
Basel's Independent Art Fair
Get a glimpse inside what's possibly the favorite — or at least the most fashionable — sideshow at Basel, Liste 2012.
- 2 years ago,
- 2 notes
Romanino and More at Christie's New York
At Christie's New York, Chilean millionaire baron "The Hoover" Alvaro Saieh won the star lot, Romanino's Christ Carrying The Cross,for US$4,562,400, outbidding LACMA, only art institution to compete for the lot.
The other notable consignment of the sale was a group of 12 pictures deacessioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Read more about the old masters sale in artnet Magazine.
- 2 years ago,
- 4 notes
The Art Market Crash
The problem with buying Fine Art is that, unlike short selling on the regular market, you cannot really make money by betting that the value of Fine Art will fall in the future.
Find out how to survive the coming art market crash in artnet Magazine.
- 2 years ago,
- 4 notes
Documenta 13 In Kabul, Afghanistan
Leading up to Documenta (13), artistic director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev held two years of lectures and workshops in Afghanistan.
Now, with her Documenta, Bakargiev seems to be positioning artists as suffering something akin to the trials of Job, acknowledging the contradictions of making art in the face of war.
- 2 years ago,
- 0 notes


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Search Tags: Philip Reitinger
Reitinger named to lead DHS cyber effort
DHS secretary Janet Napolitano today appointed Philip Reitinger as the deputy undersecretary of the National Protections Program Directorate.
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DHS Secretary announces key cybersecurity personnel
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DHS's Reitinger says his legacy is the team
The man behind much of the cybersecurity policy development at Homeland Security is stepping down. Federal News Radio has an exclusive exit interview with Phil Reitinger.
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DHS cyber lead Reitinger to leave
Phil Reitinger is moving on from the Homeland Security Department.
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DHS IG cites problems with CERT
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subset: commoncrawl


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FAIRBANKS, AK-The 19th Annual Beat Beethoven 5K started and finished at the University of Alaska Fairbanks early Saturday. For the first time in two years, there were new winners in Men's and Women's Divisions.
Stian Stensland won the men's division in 16 minutes 17 seconds. For the ladies, it was UAF's Allyson McPhetres finishing first in 18 minutes and 33 seconds.
Runners had to finish the 5k before Beethoven's Fifth Symphony comes to an end, about 31 minutes in length. Those accomplishing the feat received a voucher to attend one of the Fairbanks Symphony Association's concerts during the 2013-2014 season.
"A few meters behind on the top there and then it got onto the snow and got out right near Hess Village where we lived just 50 meters away from the course. Then I speed it up on the down hills and I got a gap on them right away and then just increased that towards the end there," McPhetres said.
"I just kind of went for it. I wasn't quite sure how it was going to go. I decided to just cruse and see what would happen and it was really fun, because I caught up to a couple of the guys and I was like "Okay, let's keep this going, let's push each other and stuff." It was really fun," Stensland said.


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In 1997 it was estimated that health care consumed about 14 percent of the gross national product, for a total of more than $1 trillion; about 10 percent of this amount was attributable to fraud and abuse (1). The Department of Justice has rated health care fraud as one of its chief priorities, second only to violent crime.
In the health care industry, the psychiatric profession has been targeted for a number of reasons, and psychiatric services are now being closely monitored. There has been a particular interest in the procedure code for medication management, code 90862, formally defined as "medication management with prescription, use and review of medication with no more than minimal medical psychotherapy," because of a recent nationwide increase in its frequency of use (Muszynski S, American Psychiatric Association, office of healthcare systems and financing, personal communication, 1999).
However, legitimate factors have contributed to an increase in the use of this code, including issues related to psychopharmacology, treatment philosophy, and practice patterns of high-volume providers as well as legal reasons. This column reviews such legitimate factors and describes Medicare policies and audit procedures that may have the effect of making psychiatrists reluctant to treat severely mentally ill outpatients.
Advances in psychopharmacology have created situations in which conditions formerly thought to be manageable by psychotherapy alone are now treated with psychotherapy augmented by medication. Medication augmentation pertains not only to various types of depressive reactions but also to obsessive-compulsive disorders and anxiety states.
Certain other illnesses, such as severe schizophrenic reactions, are traditionally thought to be primarily treatable with psychopharmacology. In the past the treatment of many of these illnesses was rather straightforward, but increasingly complex algorithms that address the treatment issues are being developed. The algorithm developed by the Texas Schizophrenia Medication Algorithm Project mandates that all patients with schizophrenia be converted from conventional antipsychotics to atypical antipsychotics, even those who are doing well on conventional antipsychotic therapy (2).
Supporters of this algorithm suggest that it be used as a prototype for medication decision making in the rest of the country. If the algorithm is widely adopted, code 90862 would be used more frequently because of the necessity of following patients closely during the changeover period. During this interval, patients would be continued on maintenance dosages of conventional antipsychotic medications while atypical antipsychotic medications are titrated up to maintenance dosages. Then patients would have to be followed equally closely during the subsequent downward titration of conventional antipsychotics. The surge in the use of code 90862 may be temporary but could well continue for years, because the changeover would involve 1 percent of the population, or approximately 2.5 million people.
Algorithms of even greater complexity and specificity that require a higher level of diagnostic sophistication have been developed for schizoaffective and bipolar treatment. A recently published algorithm addresses the treatment of five different types of acute manic presentations and encompasses 15 steps (3), involving lithium or divalproex used either alone or in various combinations with three other types of anticonvulsants, calcium channel blockers, clozapine, and thyroid preparations. The new algorithms contribute to the complexity, and the efficacy, of psychopharmacology.
Even when some of the medications listed above are used alone, increased psychopharmacological oversight is required because of complications associated with their administration. For example, lithium has a narrow therapeutic index, and clozapine carries the risk of agranulocytosis. With clozapine, white blood cell counts have to be evaluated either biweekly or weekly, and under certain circumstances twice a week. Serum lithium evaluations have to be done periodically, but equally important, the patient must undergo frequent clinical evaluations because of the possibility of toxic reactions in the intervals between blood tests.
To make matters more complicated, recent advances in the understanding of pharmacodynamic interactions involving the cytochrome enzyme system have added an exponential complexity to the practice of psychopharmacology. We now appreciate that not only can psychiatric medications influence the metabolism of other concurrently administered psychiatric medications, but also such influences can be exerted by a variety of other drugs. This increase in interactive complexity is another factor that will necessitate closer psychopharmacological surveillance and contribute to more frequent use of medication management codes.
The fact is that more and more chronically mentally ill patients are being actively treated with new medications for other chronic medical illnesses. I recently admitted a new patient to a board-and-care home who was on 18 different medications for the treatment of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, arthritis, and diabetes.
There is an increasing capitulation, rightly or wrongly, to the philosophy that psychopharmacological approaches may be preferable to the customary psychotherapeutic approaches of the past. This changing view has several sources. One is managed care, in which medication management is regarded as more efficient than psychotherapy. Also, because of the high cost of hospitalization, increased pressure for early discharge is exerted by Medicare and other third-party payers. Thus more and more severely disturbed psychotic patients are being released into the community after only brief stays in the hospital. Such patients are most effectively treated psychopharmacologically, but they may require more visits, which is another reason why code 90862 services are being used—and will continue to be used—more frequently.
One advantage of more frequent visits is that, besides addressing psychopharmacological problems, they enhance the psychotherapeutic relationship. The importance of this relationship is sometimes overlooked in the treatment of severely mentally ill persons and may be instrumental in preventing future decompensation.
A high volume of 90862 services may be generated in several different types of settings besides traditional office practices and hospitals. These settings include specialized practices that render on-site services to residents of board-and-care homes, partial hospitalization settings, locked facilities, specialized clinics such as lithium or clozapine clinics, and managed care settings, especially those in which clinicians split responsibilities, with a nonmedical clinician providing psychotherapy and a psychiatrist providing pharmacotherapy.
High-volume practices immediately generate suspicion because of an aberrant procedure code profile. A physician in such a practice may be automatically targeted by a computer for a Medicare audit simply because the profile is aberrant, and for no other reason. What looks like poor quality of care may only appear that way, because high-volume providers with specialized foci may be able to work much more rapidly than generalists, particularly when the high-volume provider sees the same patients recurrently. Such psychiatrists can work very efficiently if they know the patients and their problems and have organized the patient's drug history on the basis of their own progress notes as well as information from hospital summaries.
Quality of care should not be inferred from numbers alone but can be inferred from several other factors such as usefulness of the progress notes (a quality not necessarily related to length), patients' complaints, evaluations of coworkers and house staff, and, under certain circumstances, patients' criminality rates, rehospitalization rates, and suicide rates. (Approximately 10 percent of deaths among patients with schizophrenia are suicides, according to some estimates).
Unfortunately, the increased use of code 90862 has been perceived by some Medicare administrators as abusive or fraudulent, and recent efforts have been made to control its use by mandating time intervals, such as requiring 20 minutes per session; by lowering allowed charges at a time when psychopharmacology is more complex and more effective than ever before; and by attempting to implement a two-tier system in which 90862 would be used only for patients who are "ineffectively controlled" and M0064 would be used for patients who are "stable from a psychopharmacological point of view" (4).
While such patients may be easy to identify at the extremes of a normal distribution, most patients fall within the extremes, and the ambiguity creates an inevitable dispute between psychiatrists and Medicare auditors about the use of the correct procedure code. "Ineffective control" appears to be a concept borrowed from the treatment of hypertension or diabetes, conditions in which control can be quantitatively determined. Psychiatry lacks such precision.
These coding problems would appear to be a trivial matter except that a $10,000 penalty is imposed per occurrence if an auditor determines that a physician is guilty of upcoding, or deliberately using a code that has a higher reimbursement than the code that should be used. It is the auditor who determines whether violations have occurred as a result of "deliberate ignorance." In most audit situations, once the allegation of deliberate ignorance is made, it will be up to the physicians to prove that they were ignorant. Ignorance, unlike knowledge, is difficult to prove, and it is even more difficult to prove that such ignorance did not deliberately occur.
Such proofs will be rendered even more challenging because programmatic incentives now exist for auditors and prosecutors to recover money. These incentives are included in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Moreover, levying the $10,000 penalty does not necessarily depend on the discovery of a physician's fraudulent intent. HIPAA expressly states that "no specific intent to defraud is required" (5). The act specifically identifies "deliberate ignorance" as a sufficient condition for the implementation of these penalties.
HIPAA requires a similar $10,000 penalty per occurrence for rendering "unnecessary medical services." In this case, the burden of proof is on physicians to show that their services were necessary. In this regard, the proposed two-tier system creates another problem in that the literature contains no clear definition of an acceptable frequency of service for patients who are "stable from a psychopharmacological point of view." In an adversarial audit, the psychiatrist may be hard put to defend a given visit as "medically necessary" for a "stable" patient when the audit is conducted in isolation from other factors. The fact is that the chronic psychotic patient is unpredictable, and when the unpredictable happens, such as suicide or arson, and no recent progress note exists, it can be a legal, ethical, economic, and professional disaster for the treating physician. Even if we did not consider the ethical implications of benign neglect, the litigious climate in which American medicine is practiced does not permit clinicians this option.
In the above instances, in which civil penalties are generated in a Medicare audit, it is the responsibility of physicians to prove their innocence, unlike criminal proceedings, in which one is presumed innocent until proven guilty. These facts are not generally appreciated by most psychiatrists or other physicians.
Psychiatrists who assume responsibility for the most difficult cases in which medication management codes are used more frequently will generate procedure code profiles that are aberrant. The profiles will automatically trigger computer-driven audit selections. Psychiatrists and other physicians selected for audits will find that in such circumstances their guilt will be presumed, and they will have to prove their innocence. Some physicians will pay a heavy price because of the draconian financial penalties associated with upcoding or rendering unnecessary medical services. These charges will frequently be difficult to defend against because of ambiguously worded procedure code descriptors or poorly understood concepts of medical necessity, especially in the proposed two-tier system of medication management.
The net effect of these policies is that psychiatrists will opt out of the outpatient treatment of severely mentally ill patients, which will result in increased hospital readmission rates and higher overall Medicare costs. It behooves the national Medicare administration and regional carriers to work with respected and experienced practitioners in this field to obtain a more realistic and clinically appropriate concept of how medication management should be implemented.
Dr. Fleishman is a staff psychiatrist at St. Mary's Medical Center at Golden Gate Park, 2305 Van Ness Avenue, Suite F, San Francisco, California 94109 (e-mail, firstname.lastname@example.com). Steven S. Sharfstein, M.D., is editor of this column.
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Watching the Jewish Community Watch and Its 'Wall of Shame'
A young man's brazen blog about alleged child sex-abusers in the Chabad community divides Crown Heights
The Keller case was not Seewald's first encounter with unchecked sex abuse. As Seewald spoke to victims, he says he came to terms with his own experience of being molested by a counselor at sleep-away camp. When he mustered the courage to post his story on his still-anonymous blog, omitting his alleged perpetrator's name, he received an email from someone who said he had an identical experience at the same sleep-away camp. When Seewald figured out that they had been molested by the same person, the counselor's name appeared on the Wall of Shame. It was then that Seewald no longer wanted to conceal his identity. "I was Meyer Seewald and I was sharing my personal story and feelings with other victims. It was an open relationship. They knew who they were talking to and sharing their deepest pain and secrets with," he said.
Then Seewald made a major error. In August 2012, a special-education teacher named Daniel Granovetter wrote a since-deleted personal account on a Crown Heights news site, titled "I Was Falsely Accused," describing how he was arrested after an autistic boy he tutored accused him of abuse, though the investigation was eventually dropped when the child retracted his claim. "In people's eyes I was no longer a Jew, let alone a human being," Granovetter wrote in a harrowing account. "I was regarded as a monster, an out-of-control filthy, dangerous beast capable of snatching little children and sexually abusing them."
Granovetter told me Seewald confronted him outside his home "rather aggressively," demanding Granovetter confess to molesting the child. When Granovetter refused, he was featured on the JCW Wall of Shame, which he said has destroyed his career and social standing.
Shortly after the incident, Seewald removed Granovetter's name and picture from the blog, releasing a statement that there was insufficient evidence against the teacher. Granovetter, who told me over the phone that forgiveness is his nature, removed his story criticizing JCW from the news site and replaced it with one praising Seewald's work, placing blame on the student who falsely accused him rather than JCW. Seewald admitted to me that it was a mistake to confront Granovetter when there was a police investigation under way, but like Granovetter's reputation, JCW's credibility never fully recovered from the debacle.
Now Seewald has found himself pitted against an aging group of sex-abuse-awareness activists in Crown Heights, led by Hecht, who told me he disagrees with Seewald's insensitivity toward the families and religious institutions of the accused. Hecht is prone to talking in parables. "When we come in with a shotgun and shoot up whole building and only get one guy, we call that collateral damage," Hecht told me when I asked him about JCW. "Seewald doesn't care about collateral damage."
Hecht and Seewald have both encountered the limitations of the legal justice system. Of the victims who press charges, many are beyond the statute of limitations. Furthermore, the Brooklyn District Attorney's office has a record of granting Orthodox abusers generous plea deals, resulting in many confessed abusers still living, unregistered, among their victims.
Ironically, Hecht's endorsement might be just what Seewald needs to win over the religious establishment. Of the 14 Chabad-Lubavitch camps in the United States, only two have agreed to meet the project's guidelines. Rabbi Moshe Shemtov, who runs Camp Gan Israel in Detroit, said that he takes sex abuse seriously, but he said he declined to share his staff list with Seewald, because JCW lacked the official backing of any Chabad institutions, such as Hecht's, behind the E.M.E.S. campaign.
"Supposedly, he has a list of offenders that no one knows about," Shemtov said. "He doesn't have any official credibility with anyone I know." Sex abuse, he said, "is too sensitive to ignore, but it's also too sensitive for someone to grab and twist any way they want."
As Brooklyn's ultra-Orthodox communities grapple with sex abuse, Hecht, who made a name for himself in the 1980s as a "Jewish cult buster," says leaders in Crown Heights have been taking proactive measures to combat sexual abuse for 30 years, involving the police when they deem it appropriate. Hecht maintains, as opposed to secular civil officials such as the NYPD, that rabbis should be granted the discretion to determine whether victims are lying. "The last time I remembered, I was ordained as a rabbi," said Hecht. "If the person [victim] came to me, I have at least the responsibility to decide if it's true or not true, because they want guidance."
Not all Crown Heights leaders agree with Hecht. Prompted by the Keller case, in July 2011, two out of three members of the Crown Heights Rabbinical Court, which reportedly tried to implement a gag order preventing members the Chabad community from speaking to news media or reporting crimes to the police in 2010, signed a letter asserting a ruling that the laws of mesira, the halachic prohibition against reporting Jews to secular authorities, do not apply to cases of sex abuse. The abuser, they wrote, is like a rodef, a murderer, in which case, a religious leader "is forbidden to remain silent." Motti Seligson, a spokesman for Chabad, claims that the Beit Din is not affiliated with the movement, though Rabbi Avrohom Osdoba, the court's senior member, claimed it is—in strong terms. "I have been voted in by the entire community and I was confirmed by the Rebbe," said Osdoba, in a phone interview with Tablet.
In the wake of Seewald's revelations, Chabad and other institutions have made a noteworthy push to raise awareness about the issue of sex abuse. For example, in the winter of 2012-2013, all yeshivas and elementary schools in Crown Heights implemented an educational initiative informing children about appropriate touch.
These days, Seewald wants people to know that under his brash armor is simply a Chabad kid who feels betrayed by his community and rabbis. Defending his Project E.M.E.S video he said: "I was emotional in the video because it hurts. My heart and soul have been ripped out from what I have heard and seen. There have been countless nights that I have not slept or when I do my sleep is filled with nightmares. I need to make sure that what I have seen happen to hundreds of thousands of children does not happen to your child."
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In Al Jazeera, an Electronic Mirror for the New Emir of Qatar
Agents of Influence counsels the young emir of the wealthy Arab nation who must decide how to use his powerful TV network


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Paula's Best Dishes
Hosted by Paula Deen
Hangin' Out
Today Paula and her son Bobby are just hangin' out in their favorite spot, the kitchen. First up, they're getting the fryer going with amazing Deep Fried Pickled Okra with a Creamy Chile Dip. Then, it's Turkey Black Bean Burgers with Corny Salsa served along with Cheaters Grilled Fries with Cajun Seasoning that will satisfy even the biggest of appetites. And of course you have to have a salad, it's Bobby's favorite, Lemony Coleslaw with Raisins. To finish things off right, they are whipping up Creamy Chocolate Malts that are truly heavenly! (Episode: PB0807H)
Recipes from this episodeAll Paula's Best Dishes Recipes
Fried Pickled Okra with Creamy Chipotle SauceRecipe courtesy of Paula Deen
- Cook Time:
- 7 min
Chocolate Malted MilkshakeRecipe courtesy of Paula Deen
Cheater's Fries with Cajun SeasoningRecipe courtesy of Paula Deen
- Cook Time:
- 23 min
Turkey Black Bean Burgers with Corny SalsaRecipe courtesy of Paula Deen
- Cook Time:
- 15 min
Lemony ColeslawRecipe courtesy of Paula Deen


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Mauricio, Many thanks for your email. The Grano de Oro was great on each occasion, the Britannia good with helpful staff. Si Como No was fine when we had a better situated bedroom and the swimming in the sea at Manuel Antonio as fabulous.
We liked that area a lot. We had an excellent to Tortuguero, but for some rain. All in all, it was a fantastic holiday with 4 really good days in Houston at the end. We're very grateful to you for your excellent itinerary, hire of the vehicle and general arrangements.
Perhaps we tried to drive too far bearing in mind the condition of the roads. Hope this is helpful Mauricio, Warmest wishes, Tricia
Mauricio, We had a good time in San Pedro. Banana Beach Resort was nice, spacious and clean. We both loved very casual atmosphere in the hotel and in town as well. We had breakfast included as well and it was excellent (every day something different, and if one couldn't eat breakfast it could be exchanged for a drink at the bar). Even weather improved after second day and stayed very nice until the last day, so we were very lucky.
Janusz did some diving, I did snorkeling on a reef. Thanks for arranging everything, we were met in Belize City by your representative and transfers were handled very well, so you have a satisfied customer. Keep in touch, Gabriela
Mauricio, Yes, I had a wonderful stay at Ramon's Village. The accommodations were perfect and the staff were all very helpful and friendly. I can't think of anything I would change. Thank you for your assistance in making my stay a most pleasant one. Sincerely, Kathleen
Laura, We have now been back from our Galapagos tour for a while, but its certainly not a distant memory. It was a wonderful holiday, truly unique, and made special by all at Klein Tours and on the Legend. Everything went smoothly from our arrival at Quito airport until our return.,We will be traveling again. I am personally keen to visit Antarctica, but I am not sure that would be done as a family tour. I suspect that those expeditions are not designed for children. Our other target destination is Cuba, do you offer any options there? Again thanks for your help. All the best, Bill D.
Mauricio, It's taking a while to settle myself back to work. The trip was great. I was very impressed by how smooth our transportations were. We were picked up on time and all of the activities went well without any hiccups. The hotels exceeded our expectations.
We fell in love with the Pacuare Lodge. The hotel is very charming. I love the bathroom with screen windows that let me see the view of the river and the forest outside. The staff there were amazing and the food was spectacular. We also love Selva Verde Lodge. There was a minor mishap here when they first put us in a very old room with no A/C, and a cockroach. We asked to move and we got to stay in a new bungalow.
Though a bit further away, it was very nice in the midst of the rain forest. I wish we could have stayed there another day (Monteverde) so we could go visit the biological preserve. Overall, we had a great time and we want to go back to Costa Rica again.
We definitely want to do Aventuras Naturales trips again. Thank you very much for being helpful and informative throughout the booking process. Best, Bay
Mauricio~ I wanted to thank you for all your help with the car. Everything worked out great with the drop off and pick up. We had a great trip and really loved your country. We'll be back for sure. Thanks again! kim
Mauricio, I'd been meaning to let you know anyway that all the arrangements went very smoothly and we had a great time. what a wonderful country! Many thanks for all your help Jane
Sandra, We had a fantastic trip and the majority of our plans worked out well. We enjoyed our time at Casa Marita on Isabella Island where we celebrated the New year with the owner and other guests. it was a multi national gathering and we were treated like members of the family.
We were given a New Year meal and the wine flowed freely! Our flight to Santa Cruz on the 5 seater plane was interesting! and I am still amazed that I had the courage to get on board. We were met at the airport by our guide for the Beagle yacht cruise.
The yacht was beautiful and we had a marvellous itinerary and an amazing guide- Balantina. her English was excellent and her knowledge of natural history and facts regarding the islands and the wildlife was superb. We thoroughly enjoyed the cruise and the snorkelling and kayaking.
The 3rd part of our trip was at the Finch Bay Hotel in Puerto Ayora. This is an amazing place to escape and unwind. The hotel was clean and the staff worked under the motto"everything is possible". The atmosphere was very laid back and relaxed. There was no TV, no traffic noise and very few children -all in all an ideal place to stay and we can highly recommend this hotel to your clients and our friends.
Thank You for all the organising at your end. The trip was excellent and we had a very very good holiday. I will try and send you a few photos. Look forward to your reply Helen


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In March 2012, New York City was named the most economically competitive city in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The distinction is a testament to the policies and focus of Mayor Bloomberg, and one that the administration knows must never be taken for granted. To maintain the City's competitiveness the administration is committed to supporting the future of New York City's schools, economy and infrastructure with a significant expansion of the City's Digital Roadmap.
New York City's powerful strides have established a strong foundation for this future achievement. The following initiatives in the areas of access, education, open gobernment, engagement and industry will accelerate the momentum of the City's digital initiatives.
Mayor Bloomberg announces the public-private partnership with AT&T to bring free public Wi-Fi to 20 City parks.
To establish a truly connected city, the City of New York will continue to expand public Wi-Fi access through partnerships that pose no cost to taxpayers, responding to the top request from the public for technical innovation.
In June 2011, Mayor Bloomberg and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson announced a public-private partnership that would bring unlimited free public Wi-Fi to City parks. Currently, 23 locations in New York City parks have Wi-Fi hotspots with work underway on the remaining three locations at Hunts Point Riverside, the High Line and Foley Square. When the $5 million project is complete, New Yorkers will be able to choose from 26 Wi-Fi hotspots locations in 20 City parks.
In addition, through a $10 million commitment by Time Warner Cable and Cablevision in the City's cable franchise agreements, Wi-Fi access will grow to an additional 32 public parks and spaces. Access is free for up to 30 minutes per month, $0.99 per day thereafter, and free at all times to Time Warner Cable and Cablevision broadband subscribers.
The City is also exploring others ways to evolve existing public infrastructure—and connect more New Yorkers. To this end, the City is participating in two innovative pilots that transform payphone kiosks into Wi-Fi hotspots. Begun in April 2012, the pilots involve public pay telephone franchisees that operate more than 600 public pay telephones in the City, giving New Yorkers access to free Wi-Fi hotspots at 15 existing Van Wagner-franchised payphone kiosks for six months. Additionally, Titan, another public pay telephone franchisee, is currently deploying a Wi-Fi hotspot 11-month pilot at three kiosks in midtown Manhattan. The City will evaluate the Wi-Fi pilot programs to determine the long-term viability of free Wi-Fi as part of the next generation of payphone infrastructure.
The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) recently approved a pilot program to test alternatives to existing in-taxi technology systems. The TLC was approached by Square,Inc. with a viable proposal for a mobile, in-taxi technology system that allows customer to use their credit card swipe technology. Additionally, the TLC invited authorized providers of in-taxi technology system to submit proposals for similar alternative in-taxi technology systems.
Rendering of the Cornell NYC Tech Applied Sciences building on Roosevelt Island.
In order to maintain New York City's competitiveness and economic vitality for decades to come, Mayor Bloomberg continues to invest in a 21st Century education system that equips the City's children and workforce for a successful future.The following programs and institutions provide science, technology, engineering and mathematics training for students from high school to the doctorate level, engaging local entrepreneurs and community at every opportunity to ensure the holistic development of a vibrant innovation ecosystem.
Perhaps nothing has captured the imagination of the technology community as powerfully as the landmark announcement of the new Cornell NYC Tech, to be constructed on Roosevelt Island.
In December 2011, Mayor Bloomberg announced that the City would help develop the first initiative in Applied Sciences NYC, the Cornell NYC Tech, an historic partnership of two of the world's top institutions in science, engineering, technology and research to build a two-million-square-foot applied science campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City.
Responding to resource needs expressed by the rapidly growing technology industry, the campus is expected to host thousands of faculty and students, and the NYCEDC projects that it will lead to the creation of hundreds of new technology companies, generate billions of dollars in new economic activity, spark expansion in under-developed neighborhoods and employ tens of thousands of New Yorkers in a variety of well-paying jobs.
The technology community has rallied around the school, which will be led by Dean Daniel Huttenlocher. Dean Huttenlocher has also begun to identify ways in which Cornell NYC Tech will connect with the local education and technology community. This includes an initiative that will train 200 public school teachers to teach math and science and a mentoring program that pairs local startup entrepreneurs with budding innovators in the Cornell NYC Tech campus. In addition, it will include a $150 milllion revolving financing fund for NYC-based startups.
While the University completes its campus on Roosevelt Island, Google Inc. announced that it would allocate 22,000 square feet of its New York headquarters to Cornell NYC Tech, starting July 1, 2012. This donation marries one of the world's most innovative companies with one of the most innovative economic development strategies any city has undertaken.
Building on the success of the initial Cornell NYC Tech announcement, in April 2012, Mayor Bloomberg announced the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), to be located in Downtown Brooklyn, following an agreement among the City, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) and a consortium of top institution and technology companies.
The Center for Urban Science and Progress will be a partnership of top global institution, led by NYU and NYU-Poly, and will focus on research and technology development that addresses urban challenges such as infrastructure, technology integration, energy efficiency, transportation congestion, public safety and public health. Other highly-regarded members of the consortium include: the City University of New York, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Toronto, University of Warwick, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and technologyleaders IBM and Cisco.
The school will seek to apply math and science to better the City of New York and serve as an urban innovation model for the world.
Finally, to prepare New York City's high school students for a successful future in a technology-driven world, in April 2012, Mayor Bloomberg announced the City would open the Academy for Software Engineering in September 2012. This new school, sited at Washington Irving High School, serves students in grades 9-12 and exposes them to innovative career options in technology and programming. In order to ensure that the school's curriculum is centered on skills in high demand by the internet industry, the board of the Academy for Software Engineering includes NYU Professor and hackNY co-founder Evan Korth, Facebook New York's head of engineering Serkan Piantino and venture capitalist Fred Wilson, who is also a major funder of the institution. In addition, the proposed program connects students with local entrepreneurs to expose them to professional work environments and opportunities for experiential learning.
Public response to the school has been overwhelming, and the City seeks to replicate its success throughout the five boroughs.
Left: By using strategic data analysis, the City has been able to identify a greater number of cigarette tax violators—hitting a rate of 77% using targeting methods compared to only 29% previously.Right: Developers can view the 311 Content API documentation via the Open311 Wiki
Open Government measures have demonstrated that by working together, the private sector and public sector can achieve far more to benefit society than ever before possible. Digital technology has exponentially increased the potential of the public-private partnership, and some of the most exciting initiatives of the past year, including the Reinvent NYC.gov hackathon and the Made in NY Digital Map have been the product of such partnerships.
Building on the launch of the expanded NYC Open Data Platform and the 311 Inquiry API, 311 will pursue a phased 311 "Write" API, allowing external applications to send service requests to 311. This architecture stands to dramatically increase the scale, reach and efficiency of 311. Much like the open API structures of Facebook and Twitter, which have sparked the development of hundreds of thousands of applications and entire industry verticals, the 311 Write API will start to complete the process of truly opening City data to developers.
A key element of the City's Open Government plan is greater transparency, and to engage New Yorkers more deeply in civic life, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) announced in April 2012 that live coverage of City Council hearings are now available online at council.nyc.gov. This development makes New York City the largest municipality to carry live legislative hearings. Additionally, NYC Media, part of MOME, has worked to rebrand and redesign many of the aspects of the NYC Gov channel to now include government facts, informative City Council maps and committee profiles of each member.
EFFICIENCY THROUGH STRATEGIC DATA ANALYSISPerformance data shines a bright light on how well cities are addressing the public's diverse concerns—from potholes to playgrounds. And the best data efforts draw not just on agency records and systems, but also on New Yorkers themselves, including questions they ask of and complaints they file with 311. Combined, this information helps agencies manage workloads, leverage strengths and close gaps.
To this end, New York City is moving beyond mere performance measurement; the City is weaving together data from sources across local, state and federal agencies to gain unprecedented insight into public conditions and trends, and it is applying the latest technology and predictive analyses to get ahead of the difficult issues facing our communities.
Mayor Bloomberg has assembled an expert analytics team in his Office of Policy and Strategic Planning to lead the City into this new era of data-centered innovation. The team conducts the kind of aggressive data mining and analysis that brings the complete "digital fingerprint" of just about any complex urban problem into focus—and helps determine which tools of government, across agency boundaries, can best address it.
That includes some of the trickiest problems—those that do not fit neatly within agency portfolios and that seem insurmountable given the strain on existing resources.
For example, illegal conversions, apartments that unscrupulous landlords have illegally subdivided to cram tenants in for greater profit, continue to be a problem. Every year, the City receives thousands of complaints about these properties, which are often unmonitored and unsafe for the families who live in them. For a long time, City agencies had no way to hone in on the properties that posed the greatest risk of fire where residents could be hurt or killed. Then analysts began looking at several previously unexamined sources of data about fires across the city—and a pattern emerged. The data used, including the property owner's financial condition, the building's history of complaints, the construction date and neighborhood demographics all showed a link to fire risk. Strategic data targeting allowed building inspectors to prioritize properties that required immediate investigation and streamline the process for examining complaints. As a result of this efficiency, high priority complaints were addressed faster, resources were strategically deployed, and the rate for vacating illegal conversions jumped from 13% to 70% with no increase in the operating budget.
Another example of the benefits of strategic data targeting concerns cigarette tax violations. By examining pertinent data points, the City has been able to identify a greater number of cigarette tax violators—hitting a rate of 77% using targeting methods compared to only 29% previously.
Finally, data analysis is sharpening more than just enforcement. The City is improving health and human services delivery by employing information across agencies to deliver care and benefits better tailored to each individual citizen's needs—while also cutting costs, and the City is finding new efficiencies using data analytics to examine operational challenges that range from routing garbage trucks to defending against tort litigation.
The City of New York's digital media audience has doubled over the past year thanks to the strategic efforts of agency social media managers, and the launch of the central NYC Gov channels in February 2012. In addition, the City was ranked #1 in a national study of digital engagement performed by the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Plans for digital media engagement add to these achievements with steps to overhaul New York City's website and programs to leverage social media in emergency scenarios.
To build on the success of the citywide @nycgov Twitter account and to engage the Latino community via social media, the City of New York launched @nycgob, a Spanish-language feed of crucial City government news, services and announcements.
Among the estimated 200 languages that are spoken in New York City, Spanish is the second most prevalent language after English, and the 2009 U.S. Census Bureau reported that over 1.8 million Spanish speakers live in New York City. In addition, the most recent Pew Internet Report on Twitter Use found that 14% of Hispanic adult internet users use Twitter in general and that Hispanic cell phone owners are almost twice as likely to use Twitter as white, non-Hispanics (12% and 7% respectively). With @nycgob, the City of New York is able to serve and engage more Spanish-speaking New Yorkers via social media.
SOCIAL MEDIA SAVING LIVES: EMERGENCY MANAGEMENTPowerful Tools for Greater Efficiency
For the first time, the City of New York will implement a Citywide social media management platform, a decision motivated by the effectiveness of the tool during Hurricane Irene in informing and engaging with millions. Leveraging the platform Hootsuite, the City will be able to do more with less—increasing productivity, measuring impact and engaging with New Yorkers to help them utilize City services.
Most crucially, Hootsuite provides the capability for centralized messaging in the event of an emergency—ensuring that the widest possible audience benefits from a consistent message. During Hurricane Irene, the results of City broadcasting on social media were staggering: there were over two million impressions of City tweets, and the City of New York doubled its following, rising to over 54,000 followers on @nycmayorsoffice. Importantly, the City implemented policies to make sure that during the course of the emergency situation, City social media managers maintained absolute accuracy, ensuring an informed, connected public.
With Hootsuite, the City will be able to send a single tweet from over 70 City Twitter accounts and reach hundreds of thousands of followers with a consistent message. The City will also be able to field questions and concerns, enabling two-way dialogue with millions to better allocate resources and respond to needs.
Introducing Amplify: A Crowd-Powered Twitter Application for Emergency Messaging
In addition to tools for agency social media managers, the City of New York will introduce a new Twitter application called Amplify that engages the public to increase the reach of information in an emergency. With Amplify, the public is able to register to retweet messages from the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) in the event of a "severe and imminent" danger.
The application has the potential to exponentially increase the distribution of key information from the City as it gains users. As with any Twitter application, users are able to remove the application at any time.
Amplify was developed by students of Professor Evan Korth from New York University's computer science program, in partnership with the Office of Emergency Management and the Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications.
The City's website, NYC.gov, is the digital face of New York City government to the world, andthe City is committed to enhancing it to best serve the needs of the public. Using the valuable insights gleaned from the Reinvent NYC.gov Hackathon in January 2012, the City of New York issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) from vendors to provide design and front-end development for the relaunch of NYC.gov. The RFP was a vital step in the Reinvent NYC.gov initiative to re-architect and redesign the user experience of the City's website, which attracts over 25 million visitors a year.
The Reinvent NYC.gov strategy is guided by design references from the Reinvent NYC.gov Hackathon, and is centered on three core goals:
Help the user find what he or she wants, as quickly as possible, without specialized or internalgovernment knowledge—in the model of 311.
Provide information and media that inform New Yorkers of services and spark engagement.
Make NYC.gov more accessible to more people through search and mobile optimization.
To achieve these aims, the City will pursue a five-part, user-centric content strategy to:
Anticipate needs with navigation and most requested links based on common search terms.Respond to needs with vastly improved search.Approximate needs with personalization.Inform with user-tailored content creation and curation.Engage users with dynamic social and mobile features.
The City of New York received a large number of RFP responses and held a public hearing in June 2012 to announce the selected vendor, Brooklyn based design firm HUGE. The re-architecture is underway, and the full website relaunch is planned for 2013.
The new NYC.gov website will be more intuitive, usable and efficient than ever before, demonstrating the administration's commitment to customer service and transparency. In addition, a data-driven model will be used to determine navigation and taxonomy, helping to ensure that resources are deployed where they are most needed. Finally, the new NYC.gov will operate as browser-agnostic mobile website to serve the fast growing number of mobile users accessing NYC.gov. Wherever possible, the content presented on NYC.gov will be also be made available to the public via API or RSS Feed.
To ensure the success of public-private partnerships and constantly evaluate engagement efforts, NYC Digital, in partnership with the Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications, will conduct listening sessions with local communities and partners with the aim of collecting feedback concerning the main areas of focus of the digital roadmap: access, education, open government, engagement and industry. Through these sessions, the City will share updates with the public and encourage feedback and suggestions to make improvements that serve New Yorkers.
To facilitate these listening sessions, the City, in partnership with the New York Tech Meetup, launched an NYC Gov Meetup, leveraging the homegrown startup's format used widely within the tech community. New Yorkers interested in participating in the first listening session in fall 2012 are encouraged to sign up for the NYC Gov Meetup: meetup.com/nycgov
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARYDigitization of Historical Documents
Today libraries serve a crucial role in connecting the public to information online and offline, and thanks to upcoming developments, their scope will expand dramatically. Thousands of historical documents, including handwritten material by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and papers from authors such as Mark Twain, will soon be accessible to the public online, thanks in large part to a generous gift of $500,000 from The Polonsky Foundation to the New York Public Library. The project, which began in January 2012, and continues through 2014, will digitize approximately 11,000 manuscripts from the Thomas Addis Emmet Collection, located within the Manuscripts and Archives Division, and almost all the papers of several major American authors in the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at The New York Public Library. The Emmet Collection documents the founding and early years of the United States—the move toward independence, the Revolutionary War and the establishment of the federal government. The Berg Collection's holdings of Nathaniel Hawthorne, his wife Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman will also all be digitized. An estimated 35,000 pages will be scheduled for digitization beginning in January 2013 and will be made available through the Library's website.
In addition, in 2013, the Brooklyn Public Library will open the Leon Levy Information Commons, a physical space with powerful digital infrastructure to meet the evolving needs of library users. The facility will be a flexible, technology-rich center offering a 30-seat wireless training space; seven private meeting rooms featuring electronic whiteboards; bar-style seating for laptop users; 25 PCs featuring standard software and advanced editing programs; and a help desk providing reference and information services and on-demand training. This groundbreaking new space will further enable patrons to exchange ideas, learn new skills and access information in a digital context.
In April 2012, the City of New York convened its first Youth Employment Symposium with the aim of connecting New York City's technology industry with public programs that provide employment and professional development to tens of thousands of young New Yorkers. Hosted by NYC Digital and the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City, the technology community responded with strong interest in civic partnerships to support diversity, and early sector commitments include involvement from Buddy Media, Facebook, Huge, Shapeways and others.
To build on the positive response to the Symposium, NYC Digital and the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City will introduce a new initiative that seeks to realize the City's technology potential, primarily through two programs:
Increasing Diversity
The program will begin by placing the inaugural class of minority and female students in jobs at technology companies. In addition to work opportunities, the students will attend courses at at technology companies. In addition to work opportunities, the students will attend courses at the program aims to place 100 students by the end of 2013.
Adopt-an-App Innovation Pipeline: Matching Private and Academic Sectors with Civic ProjectsThe new initiative will introduce a digital project matching program, partnering with the private sector as well as academic. Students in the program will complete one technology or design class, where they will develop and launch a new project in partnership with a City entity over the course of a semester. The success of the City's apps wish-list, first piloted during the Reinvent Green hackathon, will serve as a model for Innovation Pipeline in matching civic volunteers with existing City needs.
NYC Generation TechIn addition, the New York City Economic Development Corporation is developing several groundbreaking technology programs that seek to train New York City's workforce and students. One of the pilot programs, NYC Generation Tech, which launched in summer 2012 and will include opportunities for students to build mobile apps, learn about the fundamentals of entrepreneurship, participate in a business plan competition and receive mentorship from NYC tech firms.
Building on its success in assisting small business owners through training and workshops, the Mayor's Office of Small Business Services (SBS), together with NYC Digital, will introduce Digital Toolkit, a new program to equip small businesses with the tools and training they need to grow online. Through NYC Business Solutions Centers, the Digital Toolkit program will leverage partnerships with technology companies throughout the City, including founding partners Mashable,
Tumblr and Google that are committed to creating curriculum and training materials that meet the digital needs of small businesses. Mashable will develop a "how-to" curriculum for building an Internet presence and leveraging social media, which will be made available online and in workshops led by NYC Business Solutions instructors. In addition, Tumblr will provide out-of-the-box Tumblr themes for small, New York City-based businesses, specifically designed for the Digital Toolkit. The goal of the program is to provide business owners with the training and resources they need to grow in a modern economy.
Supporting the City's Film Industry through Technology Training
Recognizing that digital technology is significantly impacting the media industry, the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) plans to introduce new programs to further the goal of a diverse and well-trained workforce. Partnering with the Mayor's Office of Small Business Services (SBS), MOME will introduce industry training grants that will support media companies who train their employees in new technologies and software. The City will also expand the SBS Strategic Steps Program to media and entertainment sectors. Through this nine-month executive education program geared towards women and minority owned businesses, media and entertainment entrepreneurs will learn from a comprehensive curriculum and engage in networking opportunities to help their businesses grow.
In June 2012, the Mayor appointed Tokumbo Shobowale as the City's first Chief Business Operations Officer to lead a concerted initiative in making government more responsive and efficient when working with New York City businesses. A primary focus of the initiative is to provide a more efficient and transparent online experience at NYC.gov for businesses to meet the City's permitting, licensing and other regulatory requirements. Businesses will be able to access clear information for operating in the city, apply and pay online for licenses, permits and other credentials and follow the status of their applications, plans and inspections.
Present Clear and Simple Information Online
The City will provide straightforward information about government requirements for starting and operating a business by providing new guides, online how-to videos, and a more unified customer experience on NYC.gov, including the Business Express site and 311 Online.
Apply and Pay Online
Businesses will be able to apply online for licenses, permits and credentials they need to open their doors and operate legally and safely in the city—with the goal of processing 80% of new business applications and renewals online by the end of 2013. In addition, business owners will be able to make payments for licenses, permits and other fees online at NYC.gov.
Check Status Online
Over the next year, business owners will be able to check on the status of their licenses, permits, dates and results of scheduled inspections and plan exams online, providing them with immediate insight and transparency in their transactions with the City at every step in the process.
To further support the rapidly transforming media industry, MOME recently announced plans for the "Made in NY" Media Center, which will provide an opportunity for established media and entertainment industry firms in the city to interact with emerging ones, with the goal of shared innovation and mutual learning. Informative panels, lectures, training and events will bring industry subsectors together and provide a focal point for the growing community. The Center will also provide affordable workspace to emerging media entrepreneurs and companies, including a well-designed space for educational programming that serves the media community.
In addition, NYC Digital will explore public-private partnerships with media center participants by helping them gain access to City programs and identifying potential points of collaboration. The Center will provide a space to connect the expertise of the digital media community with the City's resources and services. In partnership with NYCEDC, MOME issued a Request for Proposals for organizations or companies to develop, market and manage the "Made in NY" Media Center, and will review applications in the summer of 2012.
In order to serve the constantly evolving needs of the startup community, Mayor Bloomberg established The Mayor's Council on Technology and Innovation, a group of New York City-based leaders who identify new opportunities for the City and address areas of interest to the technology sector. Deputy Mayor Robert K. Steel chairs the Council, and members include:
John Borthwick, Betaworks, Founder & CEO
Marc Cenedella, TheLadders, Founder & CEO
Perry Chen, Kickstarter, Founder & CEO
Susan Crawford, Cardozo School of Law, Professor, former Special Assistant to President Obama for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy
Ntiedo Etuk, DimensionU, Co-Founder & CEO
Jonah Goodhart, Moat, Founder & co-CEO
Eric Hippeau, Lerer Ventures, PartnerMitch Jacobs, On Deck Capital, Founder & CEOLawrence Lenihan,FirstMark Capital, Managing DirectorSusan Lyne, Gilt Groupe, ChairmanHilary Mason, bit.ly, Chief ScientistBarry Silbert, SecondMarket, Founder & CEODavid Tisch, TechStars NYC, Managing Director
Eric Hippeau, Lerer Ventures, Partner
Mitch Jacobs, On Deck Capital, Founder & CEO
Lawrence Lenihan,
FirstMark Capital, Managing Director
Susan Lyne, Gilt Groupe, Chairman
Hilary Mason, bit.ly, Chief Scientist
Barry Silbert, SecondMarket, Founder & CEO
David Tisch, TechStars NYC, Managing Director
The Council is currently exploring a number of public-private partnerships that incentivize the expansion of fiber connectivity for businesses, and welcomes additional input from the technology sector.
After a series of conversations with the Council and leading businesses and technology entrepreneurs throughout New York City to determine the most critical issues as well as solutions that will ultimately allow the expansion of broadband connectivity, the Mayor's administration announced the following initiatives to be implemented over the course of 2012:
Potential Two-Year Broadband Program Impact
Soon the prestige of a New York City address or area code will extend to the digital realm. With its application for .nyc in 2012, New York became one of the first cities in the world to pursue its own geographic top-level domain. A top-level domain, or TLD, is the last part of an Internet address, such as .com, .org or .edu. Following a public Request for Proposals, the City of New York entered into an agreement with NeuStar, which has assumed all upfront costs associated with the TLD, including marketing, promotion and over $185,000 in application and maintenance fees to the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN will administer the allocation of TLDs. Following the public launch of .nyc (anticipated in 2013), the City of New York will receive 40% of revenue generated by sales of domain names in the .nyc TLD. The .nyc TLD will be made available to New York City individuals and organizations in strategic phases, beginning with public institutions and nonprofits, followed by locally licensed businesses and local residents, and finally entities providing a business or service specific to New York City.
With the historic launch of the .nyc TLD, the City will embrace its digital future in a powerful way and bring an unprecedented level of geographic authority to the digital sphere. In addition, the City will generate revenue, help residents locate government services, encourage local businesses to thrive, market and promote tourism, and spread the dynamic image of New York City around the world. Crucially, the City of New York will establish a community advisory board and convene public listening sessions to encourage meaningful input into the development of the .nyc strategy.
Tracking progress and sharing lessons learned is crucial to a city's ability to realize its digital goals. The City of New York will continue to drive innovation in partnership with municipalities around the world who share universal, urban challenges and opportunities.
Following the May 2011 release of New York City's Digital Roadmap, a number of cities expressed interest in developing an international digital index to track municipal progress across the globe, including:
Industry: A Vibrant Digital Sector


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Springfield - Crime Stoppers needs help solving a string of car burglaries.
About 13 vehicles had windows broken in, and 8 of those vehicles had items and money stolen. The break ins occurred in the early morning hours of July 30th, in the central west area of the city.
Reports say that four young males were seen wearing orange, white, gray and black tops.
If you have any information involving these car burglaries, call Crime Stoppers at 788-8432, or got the website cashfortips.us to submit your tip.
Evangelist Franklin Graham prayed on a sidewalk outside the Pentagon Thursday after his invitation to a prayer service inside was withdrawn because of comments that insulted people of other religions. More>>
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Chatting with Jack about the matter, though, I started thinking about what Catholics in the United States thought about abortion. I had made a post a few months back about how the different religious denominations responded to a question about gun control in one nationally representative survey. The survey, the Cooperative Congressional Election Survey (CCES), is run by Stephen Ansolabehere at Harvard University and is sponsored by several other universities. With around 30,000 respondents every run, the survey is a really great measure of political concerns.
So I checked out the last 3 available years of the CCES--2007, 2008, and 2010--to see how Catholics responded to the following question on abortion:
"Which one of the opinions on this page best agrees with your view on abortion?
- By law, abortion should never be permitted.
- The law should permit abortion only in case of rape, incest, or when the woman's life is in danger.
- The law should permit abortion for reasons other than rape, incest, or danger to the woman's life, but only after the need for the abortion has been clearly established.
- By law, a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of personal choice."
Here's what I got:
An interesting thing: both extremes (the "never" and "always" responses) have increased since 2007. But overall, the one that has been consistently increasing over the past three years has been the "always" response.
Just some food for thought.


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In John Hichwa's physical education class the playbook is pretty diverse.
"We're interested in competition, we're interested in basketball, football, baseball, all of those things, but we also have so much more," Hichwa said.
Here, Vermont teachers are his students and together they're tackling a major problem.
"We are in an obesity crisis; one-third of our kids are obese," Hichwa said.
After more than 30 years working with kids, the former National Middle School Teacher of the Year is turning his attention to fellow educators, helping them rethink the way they're keeping kids active, And in this gym, they learn by doing.
"It has to be fun, it has to be inclusive, it has to be interesting, it has to be meaningful," Hichwa said.
Hichwa is with the Sports Play and Active Recreation for Kids or SPARK program. The initiative has trained tens of thousands of teachers around the world. This month, dozens of physical education teachers from across the state came together in Burlington to learn how it works. At its core is a push to keep all kids moving.
"We're looking for more activity, we're looking for meaningful stuff, we're looking for inclusion," Hichwa said.
And that inclusion is coming in the form of dance, fast-paced games and unique activities collected from years in the gym.
"John's awesome," said Lisa Paquette, a phys ed teacher at the Lyndon Town School.
"I am learning all these new tricks for my tool kit," said M.J. Jennings, a phys ed teacher at Union Elementary School.
Gone are the coach's whistles. Here, music sets the pace in a program designed to introduce moderate to rigorous activity from the minute class starts.
"I can say ready, set move, but I put music on it automatically gets them to go," Hichwa said.
"Everything that we are learning here is about movement," said Emmanuel Riby-Williams, a phys ed teacher at Union Elementary School.
SPARK takes the attention off "star athletes," instead favoring activities that target all ability levels.
"Gone are the days when it's for those who play sports and those who do not play sports are left in the background," Riby-Williams said.
The program also stresses students working in different pairings all class long.
"We change partners often. Many students can be successful; stronger students can help weaker students," Paquette said.
Skills like baseball and basketball are still in the mix, but they come with a twist. Teachers are encouraged to bring more than one ball or bat into the action to up the exercise.
"The more often we can get an implement in a kid's hand-- a bat, a ball, a racquet, a beanbag-- the more engaged they're going to be, the more activity they're going to get," said Lindsay Simpson, the physical education consultant for Vermont's Agency of Education.
Activity that's coming with a healthy dose of academic reinforcement. Classroom concepts are regularly brought into the fold.
"We counted by ones, we counted by twos, you could count by fives, you can do a math game with a partner," Paquette said.
They're skills that are making students sweat, but they also focus on patience and teamwork.
"They're integrating so much more than just movement," Simpson said.
It's an effort that's challenging kids in new ways and making for a phys ed experience that might surprise folks who haven't made it to a school gym in a while.
"I think it is going to surprise them to see that everybody can be successful, and a physical education class isn't about winners and losers, it's about sustaining a healthy lifestyle and learning to like physical activity," Paquette said.
A goal for kids Hichwa knows his older students take to heart.
"I want them to leave here with the idea that they do make a difference in the life of a child," he said.
The Vermont Agency of Education is working to secure additional funding to help expand this type of training across the state.
Related Story:
Get Moving, Part 1
Two other gubernatorial candidates shared the gazebo with Scott Milne and Gov. Peter Shumlin for Saturday's debate.
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