text:
September 09, 2008
David Downton
7 comments:
Is that Twiggy? Fab!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousSeptember 9, 2008 at 8:32:00 AM PDT
These are amazing! I have seen his work before in fragments, but have to confess I didn't know who the artist was (embarrassed to admit that).ReplyDelete
love his work!ReplyDelete
Yes, James...that's Twiggy! And I miss her not being on Top Model anymore :(ReplyDelete
Carol...don't be embarrassed! I'd seen his work for quite awhile before I actually found out who he was. But so happy I know now!
d.sharp...love your's! :)
Um, YEAH!ReplyDelete
Wow, that's pretty inarticulate yet succinct of me, too, huh?
I love people that can sketch/watercolor like this. It amazes me.
Thank you so much for taking the time to comment. I always appreciate your thoughts. Your comment will appear as soon as I can publish it.
p.s. - Contrary opinions or constructive criticism are also fine but "The Bedlam" doesnt' serve as a platform for random (or anonymous) acts of offensiveness. Rude? Deleted.


text:
"Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary use words." This famous quote is often attributed to the twelfth century Catholic Friar, St. Francis of Assisi, though as far as we know he never actually made such a statement. Christians often share this quote as a reminder that the life of Christians should be a proclamation of the gospel itself and that the gospel proclaimed in spoken word is insufficient. Of course, this quote attributed to St. Francis has also come under criticism in an attempt preserve the necessity of preaching the gospel in words. Ed Stetzer goes so far as to say that "the quote is not biblical."
Is it really unbiblical to suggest that we should preach the gospel and only use words as necessary? Stetzer thinks so and makes his case by appealing to the Apostle Paul, particularly what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8:
The Apostle Paul summarized the gospel as the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ… The gospel is not habit, but history. The gospel is the declaration of something that actually happened. And since the gospel is the saving work of Jesus, it isn't something we can do, but it is something we must announce. We do live out its implications, but if we are to make the gospel known, we will do so through words.
The problem with this is that while it's fair to describe what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 about the gospel as a summary, we must remember that it's just a summary. As with any summary, there is much more detail to what the gospel of Jesus Christ is and that is found in the larger biblical narrative which is why Paul says that the death of Christ is "according to the Scriptures" (v. 4). Beyond the mere facts of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection, there is a kingdom with a particular end (telos) that cannot be separated from the gospel. Even more so, behind the historical facts of the gospel is the actually life which Jesus lived and called us to follow him in living too. We read of this life in the four canonical Gospels, the Gospel According to Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John. As Scot McKnight points out, these four books are called "Gospels" because they each are witnesses to the storied life that Jesus lived (The King Jesus Gospel, pp. 81-82). That's important because Jesus himself proclaimed the gospel in both word and deed. Put another way, Jesus both demonstrated and declared the gospel, the good news of the kingdom of God.
Unequivocally then, the gospel is preached in both word and deed, and therefore something which is both seen and heard. So rather than making a dichotomy between preaching the gospel in word and deed, turning this into an either/or issue, let's treat preaching the gospel in word and deed as a both/and issue. If someone thinks the gospel only needs to be lived and never proclaimed in word, then Ed Stetzer has a valid reason for concern and I join with him in voicing such concern. However, I suspect that some Christians regard the gospel demonstrated as less important that the gospel declared. I don't know of a Christian who would admit such devaluing of the demonstrated gospel but when we look at what is done, there are reasons for such suspicions.
"Jesus both demonstrated and declared the gospel, the good news of the kingdom of God."
Last week after various evangelical leaders met with Presidential Candidate Donald Trump, James Dobson of Focus on the Family declared that Trump had accepted Jesus Christ and therefore was now a Christian. Regardless of Trump's political views, there is good reason for raising questions about Trump's alleged conversion when months ago Trump said that he has never even asked God for forgiveness and did not have any need of repentance. However, as one article recently said, this is not about Trump:
But I think these things are less the failure of Trump's Christian infancy as much as they are a microcosm of the underlying problem with much of America's evangelical movement — we actually have no idea what it means to be Christian. We lack a meaningful understanding of faith and belief.
That's right, the issue is really a problem for Christians.
However, I believe such confusion about what it means to be a Christian flows from a misunderstanding of the gospel itself. If we think that demonstrating the gospel is somehow less important than declaring the gospel with the spoken word then it's easy to define a Christian based on what they say, such as claiming to have accepted Jesus Christ. Identifying a Christian has less or even little to do with the transformed living that comes from the Spirit at work as we repent and receive our baptism into Christ.
While we all, as Christians, including myself, struggle in someway to live congruently with the faith we profess, our faith in Jesus is intended to become an embodied life as much as it is a confession. Yet one only needs to open up the status feed on social-media to see that what Christians often believe in, value, and advocate for is far removed from Jesus… Like when a woman's right to choice or a person's right to bear arms eclipses all consideration of the thousands of unborn children or the numerous civilians who are being slaughtered by gun violence across America… Like when fear of terrorism, Muslim refugees, and undocumented immigrants justifies an expedient exemption from love our neighbors as ourselves and even loving our enemies… Like when the need to either be politically correct or politically offensive allows the demonization of either the police or the #BlackLivesMatter movement, depending on what side one falls on, or despise the LBGTQ community…. Like when sounds more like an echo chamber of Bill Maher or Bill O'Reilly than Jesus and the Bible that bears witness to Jesus. And like I said, one only needs to turn to social-media to see what I'm getting at.
"…our faith in Jesus is intended to become an embodied life as much as it is a confession."
The only way forward begins with a better understanding of the gospel, which includes understanding the gospel as an embodied way of life rooted in the mission of God. I've just finished reading Michael J. Gorman's book Becoming The Gospel which summarizes this saying:
From Paul's perspective the gospel itself is a powerful word of transformation, its content being given voice not merely in words but also, and inseparably, in actions. This does not eliminate the need for, or the importance of, words, but it does imply that the words have meaning and power only in action. God did something in Christ; Christ did something in becoming human and giving himself for us; the Spirit does something to and through the people who believe the good news of this divine activity.
Furthermore, the content of the gospel Paul preaches is so thoroughly rooted both in the peculiar Christological shape of this divine activity — the life and teaching, and especially the death and resurrection, of Jesus — and in the Scriptures of Israel, with their promises of the Spirit and of shalom, that people who believe such good news are ineluctably drawn into its strange Christ-shaped and Scripture-shaped reality. So if the gospel has to do with a faithful God, a Suffering Servant who inaugurates God's shalom, and a prophetically promised indwelling Spirit, then the individuals and communities who believe in that good news will be shaped in their minds and bodies, their thinking and their living, into Godlike, Christlike, Spirit-enabled people who in some real, if imperfect, way instantiate the message they believe (p. 298).
This connection between the gospel as historical reality and embodied life is what seems lacking, in varying degrees, among many Christians and local churches.
I've talked with more than a few churches over my years as a minister. Most are experiencing some decline and seeking renewal, desiring both spiritual and numerical growth. That's good but we must understand that renewal is the work of God which sprouts from the gospel as it is believed in word and embodied in deed. So I would like to suggest that we must give as much, if not more, attention to demonstrating the gospel in the way we live as we give to declaring the gospel with words — without drawing a sharp distinction between word and deed since what we believe, value, and advocate for with spoken words reflects and impacts how we live.
How we demonstrate the gospel matters more than ever if we are to have any credible gospel witness. In fact, in our post-Christendom society where our Christian voice is increasingly marginalized, how we demonstrate the gospel becomes a currency of sorts for gaining a hearing. Without demonstrating the gospel, we lose the audience of those who may be open to the declared gospel. Stated in the positive, demonstrating the gospel as our embodied way of life gives us the credibility for declaring the gospel and "preaching the word" then becomes an explanation of what is seen rather than just an argumentation for what we profess. After all, the only gospel of Jesus Christ others are going to see and hear is, as the picture above suggest, the gospel according to us… the gospel we embody in word and deed. So to invoke the alleged wisdom of St. Francis of Assisi again, "Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary use words."

subset: commoncrawl


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My presentation at Aalto University in Helsinki on The Modular Revolution. This is what you get if you give me a whole hour to talk.
The Modularity Revolution. How markets are created
What it means to be great
What makes a product great? I struggle with this question because being great is not just being better than good. Greatness is to goodness as wisdom is to smarts. Just like getting smarter and smarter may never make you wise, getting better and better does not mean ever becoming great.
Greatness is transcendental. It's hard to pin down. It inspires debate. It divides as much as it unites. It creates emotions as much as thoughts. It builds legends. It engages and persists. It lives in memory and penetrates culture. It implants itself in our consciousness persistently, to linger and dwell in our minds while we are bombarded with stimuli.
We use words such as "iconic" or "epic" to capture this permanent "mental tattoo" that we get from greatness. As important as this notion is, we struggle to define it. We don't even have a proper word for it. Perhaps it is what art tries to be, or what drives us to achieve beyond surviving. As vague a notion as it may be, it is one of the most important notions I can think of. Greatness is the cause, perhaps, of our ascent.
In the absence of any measurement of greatness, how do we spot it?
It may just be down to "knowing when we see it". But not everybody does.1
- Language is another indicator. When people attach brands to entire categories we get an indication of ubiquity and permanence. As much as the brand owner fears it, the genericization of a trademark is very probably an indication of greatness in consumer products. Aspirin, iPod, xerox, jell-o and app are examples where brands became words. [↩]
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Meaningful Contribution
What if Apple did make a car? How significant could their products be? What would it take to influence the industry's architecture?
The global market is forecast to reach 88.6 million vehicles in 2015 and there are many ways to segment it. One could look at geography or at product configurations or the emergence of new powertrain technologies.
One could also look at the participants.
In 2014 Toyota was the top selling automaker with a total sales volume of 10.23 million vehicles. The following graph shows the leading 15 producers and the percent of total production.
Critical Path #159: The Appification of TV, Revisited
Horace and Anders revisit Apple TV and answer listener questions in this special 2 hour episode.
Source: 5by5 | The Critical Path #159: The Appification of TV, Revisited
Soft Underbelly
Executives at car companies have suddenly had to answer questions about potential entrants into their business. This is a big change. I don't recall a time when this was necessary for over 30 years. For decades the questions have been about labor relations, health care costs, regulation, recalls and competition from other car makers. To ask questions about facing challengers posing existential questions must seem terribly impertinent.
For this reason, Bob Lutz, in his dismissal of Apple's entry, is not alone. The industry has a century of history and has seen little disruption in the classic sense. I wrote a long piece on the fundamentals of the industry titled "The Entrant's Guide to the Automobile Industry" which explained why this industry has been so resistant to disruptive change. At best a massive effort over multiple decades usually leads in a small shift in market share.
However, one should read that post as a thinly veiled threat. Just because disruption seems hard does not mean it isn't possible. Indeed, the better you understand the industry the more easily you can observe its vulnerability and the more rigid the industry seems the more vulnerable it may be to dramatic change.
The formula for successful entry is the same for all industries: compete asymmetrically. This means introduce products which change the basis of competition and deter competitive responses by making your goals dissimilar from those of the incumbents. This is classic "ju-jitsu" of disruptive competition.
Here's how it would work.
Bob Lutz suggests that there is no profit to be gained from selling cars on the premise that costs are very high while pricing will be held down by competition. That may be true but entrants could deploy new processes that lower the costs of production. Traditional car making is capital intensive due to the processes and materials used. There are however alternatives on the shelf. iStream from Gordon Murray Design proposed switching to tubular frames and low cost composites. BMW has an approach using carbon fiber and other composites. 3D printing is waiting in the wings. All offer a departure from sheet metal stamping.
With new materials, costs for new plants can be reduced by as much as 80% and since amortizing the tooling is as much as 40% of the cost of a new car, the margins on new production methods could result in significant boosts in margin.
There is a downside however. What is usually compromised when using these new methods is volume and scale of production. So that becomes the real question: how many cars can Apple target? 10k, 50k, 100k per year? Could they target 500k? That would be 10 times Tesla's current volumes but only a bit more than the output of the Mini brand.
Now consider that the total market is 85 million vehicles per year. For Apple to get 10% share would imply 8.5 million cars a year, a feat that is hard to contemplate right now with any of the new production systems. On the other hand selling 80 million iPhones and iPads in a single quarter has become routine for Apple and that was considered orders of magnitude beyond what they could deliver. Amazing what 8 years of production ramping can offer.
So the answer to the operating margin might be in a combination of new processes and new ramp strategies.
But there are more levers of change.
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Founders of CBSSportsline, Match.com, iVillage, RealNetworks and more
- The forgotten technical co-founder of Amazon.
- The woman who carpet-bombed the world with AOL CD's.
- The founders or CEOs most of the major search engines of the 90s.
And there's more every week.
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How quickly will ads disappear from the Internet?
I was always bemused by the notion that the Internet was able to exist solely because most users did not know they could install an ad blocker. Like removing Flash, using an Ad blocker was a rebellious act but one which paid off only for early adopters. But like all good ideas, it seemed obvious that this idea would spread.
What we never know is how quickly diffusion happens. I've observed "no-brainer" technologies or ideas lie unadopted for decades, languishing in perpetual indifference and suddenly, with no apparent cause, flip into ubiquity and inevitability at a vicious rate of adoption.
Watching this phenomenon for most of my life, I developed a theory of causation. This theory is that for adoption to accelerate there has to be a combination of conformability to the adopter's manifest needs (the pull) combined with a concerted collaboration of producers to promote the solution (the push). Absent either pull or push, adoption of even the brightest and most self-evident ideas drags on.
Ad blocking offers a real-time example of this phenomenon. On desktop or even laptop computers ads were tolerable and the steps required to naviagate in order to implement effective1 blocking were non-trivial. In addition, no platform vendors were keen to promote products which hindered revenues for their most important ecosystem partners.
Ad blocking as an activity had neither the pull nor the push.
- By effective I mean a combination of whitelists and customizations [↩]
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Apple Assurance
Apple is categorized as a vendor of consumer electronics. More specifically, a member of the "Electronic Equipment" industry in the "Consumer Goods" sector. If indeed this is what it's thought to be selling, there is a problem because it isn't what its customers are buying.
Apple's customers buy a mix of hardware, software and services under a brand that assures a certain quality of experience. This bundling and integration of otherwise disparate things is why the brand is such a success.
This anomaly between what Apple is thought to sell and what buyers actually buy can leave the casual observer confused. As a result the company's categorization as vendor of hardware deeply discounts its shares. It is, in other words a less valuable business. This is because a seller of consumer electronics does not benefit from "system valuation" since there is minimal loyalty to the product after the sale.
The consumer electronics vendor has no network to leverage, no ecosystem adding value after the sale, no platform and works through multiple levels of distribution to reach the customer. In contrast, a system vendor can expect benefits from network effects, ecosystems, and a coveted relationship with the end user.
The result is that the valuation of a consumer electronics vendor is based on the momentum of individual products. Apple has always been valued this way. Each hit product is considered to be a stroke of luck/genius and the chances of recurring are discounted to about zero. Regardless of the fact that it has a track record of "home runs", Apple's hit rate is not considered sustainable.1. Certainly Apple is not valued as being able to generate reliably recurring revenues.
But what if we were to value Apple on the basis of what people are buying rather than what it's thought to be selling?
The model is simple enough: determine the number of users, estimate the lifespan of the products, and figure out the services attached to the products; then, given the price, obtain a price per product per day. You then can get a recurring revenue figure.
I did just that and the results are in the following table:
- The P/E ratio is the primary indicator in this analysis [↩]


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Last week my wife underwent a surgical procedure to correct her repeated bouts of tachycardia, i.e. rapid heart beat. She first began having this condition in 1988. The procedure was done at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Gatos, California. It was an outpatient procedure, and she was awake without anesthesia during the operation. The doctors cauterized a second heart node that was causing the problem.
Since the operation, her heartbeat and blood pressure have been normal and she feels great! She has been happy and cheerful, and I haven't see her like that for some years.
In another 15 minutes, it will be June 5, 2016 -- our 40th wedding anniversary. This has been a great gift from medical science, and we will be looking for fun and entertainment to celebrate our life together.
Pro-Choicers Support Abortion For 3-Year-Old Toddlers
42 minutes ago


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Are you running out of space at home? Or maybe your bedroom furniture needs to be refreshed? Due to popular demand, we are pleased to offer a unique range of bespoke, fitted furniture.
Working with renowned bedroom furniture manufacturers - Mallard - you are guaranteed to find a style that suits your needs.


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Budweiser has been at the heart of US beer drinking since 1876, but did you know that it was part-founded by a German?
Mr Adolphus Busch settled in St. Louis, Missouri back in 1857, establishing the Anheuser-Busch Company with his father-in-law, and together they launched Budweiser, a revolutionary light lager, inspired by the brewing techniques of České Budějovice in the Czech Republic - a place also known as Budweis.
In subsequent years, however, the beer has become synonymous with all things starry and striped, surviving the Prohibition era and flourishing towards the end of the Twentieth Century, before being taken in European hands in 2008, when it merged with InBev, a company headquarted in Belgium.
However, clearly it's missing its old stomping ground, if the latest plans are to be believed.
Budweiser is apparently planning to - at least temporarily - rename itself, simply: 'America'.
According to a filing with the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, it has sought approval for new labels, which also include phrases such as "E Pluribus Unum" (the motto of the United States), "from the redwood forest to the Gulf stream waters this land was made for you and me," and "indivisible since 1776." It has since confirmed that the new labels will be present from 23 May through to election season in November.
In a recent interview, Anheuser-Busch InBev US Marketing VP Jorn Socquet hinted that the brand would utilise the forthcoming Olympics and Copa America football tournament - being held in the US - in their plans. He said, "You have this wave of patriotism that is going to go up and down throughout the summertime. And we found with Budweiser such a beautiful angle to play on that sentiment."
If this isn't the official music for the marketing campaign, then we'll be sorely disappointed.


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|CDs can be ordered simply by e-mail!!
Price of 1 CD is 15 € !
Both CDs in a pack are only 25 €
Postage and packing are € 3.00 per order.
Mail to: firstname.lastname@example.com
Or directly from our iTunes-Channel:
|Greengrass meets Bluegrass
Our debut album from 2009
|A Simple Life
Best Country-Album 2011
|No Name
New CD in work
|Eine Sternenklare Nacht
Christmas Song from 2015
|Herzlichen Glückwunsch
Birthday Song from 2017
|She Needs Disco
Discosong from 2017
|Eins, zwei, drei!
Team Handball Song from 2017


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Get out of school
It became quite clear to me very early on that pretty everything there is to learn about working in the creative department of an agency is best learned on the job.
I'm not saying degrees and education aren't important. I just think that being an art-director or copywriter should be a cadetship or apprenticeship rather than a formal learning process.
Now I hear a college in the US is offering a Masters in Branding.
Yes you read that correctly.
I hope this course covers more than brand guideline related case studies!


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A man (35) sustained bruising and swelling to his face after being assaulted in Nelson.
The incident happened in the early hours of Sunday, when the victim was attacked at a flat above a shop, in Scotland Road.
DC Shaun Hanna, of Burnley CID, said: "We believe that the victim may have tried to gain the attention of passers-by on Scotland Road during the assault and we are looking to speak to anyone who may have been in the vicinity at the time of the attack.
"We are particularly keen to trace two Asian men, aged approximately between 18 and 21 years, who we believe may have spoken to the victim through the window. We believe they may not have realised the man was in distress at the time and we would urge them to come forward with any information."
Anyone with any information should contact Lancashire Police on 101 quoting log reference LC-20150315-0151.
Alternatively, contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.


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Sparkling Cider Mini-Bottles - Graduation
Product Description
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Case of 12; each bottle measures 2" round x 7 1/4" tall. Allow up to 5 full business days for this product to ship.
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text:
The MIT Technology Review reports that Johan Bollen at Indiana University claims to have figured out how to predict stock market moves up to six days in advance by analyzing messages sent via Twitter.
Bollen utilized an algorithm, called the Google-Profile of Mood States (GPOMS), that records the level of six states: happiness, kindness, alertness, sureness, vitality and calmness.
Going on the belief that the rise and fall of stock market prices is influenced by the public mood, Bollen took 9.7 million tweets posted by 2.7 million tweeters between March and December 2008 and looked for correlations between the GPOMS indices and whether Dow Jones Industrial Average rose or fell each day.
Their conclusion? There really is a correlation between the Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the GPOMS indices--calmness.
"We find an accuracy of 87.6% in predicting the daily up and down changes in the closing values of the Dow Jones Industrial Average," says Bollen.
There are, of course, scientific holes all over Bollen's experiment.
But crazier things have attracted a heckuva lot of interest.
Collectible gold coins, anyone?
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How to Avoid the Post Weaning SlumpPrint
Rearing heifer replacements is the second largest cost on farm, accounting for 20% of total farm costs (FeedforGrowth, 2016) Nobody wants to throw that hard earned money away, so it's vital that calves don't suffer from a post weaning check.
Although most farms today view 8 weeks as the ideal weaning target, it's crucial that other factors are taken into consideration.
Calves are not born ruminants, although they do possess microscopic papillae, so they are genetically programmed to become ruminants, but there is a long process before we can safely call an animal a ruminant. In the first four weeks of life the calf relies heavily on milk as its main source of nutrients for survival and growth, systems such as once a day feeding are simply not efficient during this period of life as calves will not consume enough starter and are not yet properly developed to fully utilise it.
Enhanced Feeding Programmes
There is much focus on enhanced feeding programmes in the industry at present, where calves will consume sometimes over a kilo of powder, this is perfectly acceptable providing it is a good quality, digestible product. If you want to gain DLWG of a kilo, you have to put more than a kilo of powder in, especially if you want to capitalise on that all important early feed conversion.
Intakes at weaning should be one of the key criteria for weaning. Calves that have been on an enhanced milk feeding programme are sometimes at more of a risk of experiencing a weaning check and sometimes it can be for such simple reasons such as not providing enough water and limiting calf feed availability.
Traditionally, weaning protocols have dictated that calves should be eating 1kg of concentrate for three consecutive days for weaning to commence, but this is not the case today. A calf needs to eat double the amount of calf feed as what they received in milk powder, for example a calf consuming 175g/L at a rate of 8L a day would need to be eating 2.8kg of Start n Wean for three consecutive days before weaning can commence, this is easily achievable and we currently have several herds feeding milk at this rate through a H&L100 machine and calves are consuming the required amount of calf feed.
Developing the rumen
Rumen development is driven by the fermentation of calf feed by rumen bacteria. The acids created by rumen fermentation encourage papillae development in the rumen. Rumen papillae are responsible for absorbing the products of fermentation, used to produce energy. It is therefore very important to drive dry feed intakes to promote papillae growth and thus create a sound rumen to prepare the calf for a non – milk based diet creating a sound rumen to drive the future performance of the animal.
We should consider the first eight weeks of a calves life as the process of putting together the engine that will drive that animals future production. I often use the example of having two Ferraris that look identical, have the same price tag but when you open up the bonnet, nobody wants to see a Fiat 500 engine! A poorly developed rumen will never produce a milky heifer.
Importance of water
But it's not all about calf feed intake, water is crucial to support rumen development and to avoid weaning checks. A calf needs to drink 4L of water per every 1kg of dry feed consumed. At weaning, calves on a high plane of nutrition need to be drinking almost 12L of water, if you have water buckets and only one per pen of calves, it is crucial to add additional water buckets in the last two weeks of weaning.
Ideally, we should be moving away from using water buckets and moving to self - filling water bowls, these will ensure clean water is available at all times, try to avoid the small bowls, use bigger ones to make water drinking easier and more appealing to calves. Even in the first week of life where calves eat little to no dry feed, they will still drink water, this is how they regulate their bodies and excrete excess minerals.
Grouping Calves
Grouping calves before weaning is also a very important factor and research shows us that calves grouped before weaning have higher dry feed intakes and are heavier at weaning.
Of course we do need to pay consideration to other weaning criteria, such as doubling their birth weight, but nowadays if you're feeding a good quality milk powder and starter feed there's no reason why calves can't more than double their birth weights.
Weaning calves at 10 weeks old rather than 8 weeks old, is advisable when following an enhanced feeding programme. Why not give our Wynngold Turbo Start or Wynngold Rich Cream a try as part of your enhanced feeding programme and join the growing number of LifeStart farmers.
Visit the LifeStart website for more information.
Written by Rebecca Richards – Calf Specialist
Follow @richardscalf1


text: DigitalSTUDY: Which GOP Members Have Positive Social Media Buzz?When it comes to politics, topping the social media buzz charts doesn't always mean you're topping the polls, and nobody knows this better than Rick Perry. Social media monitoring platform Fizziology reports that Rick Perry is the most buzzed-about 2012 GOP candidate by a landslide, but he is also the candidate responsible for the largest share of negative buzz.By Megan O'Neill|December 21, 2011 ShareBy Megan O'Neill|December 21, 2011 Share When it comes to politics, topping the social media buzz charts doesn't always mean you're topping the polls, and nobody knows this better than Rick Perry. Social media monitoring platform Fizziology reports that Rick Perry is the most buzzed-about 2012 GOP candidate by a landslide, but he is also the candidate responsible for the largest share of negative buzz. Read on to find out more. Earlier this month, from December 7-13, Fizziology measured the social media buzz surrounding each of the 2012 GOP candidates using Facebook, Twitter and a sampling of blogs. They shared their data with us. Rick Perry led in relevant social media mentions with 221,296 mentions in a week, followed by Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Michele Bachmann. Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman closed out the list with the least number of relevant social media mentions.Over the course of his campaign, Rick Perry has proven himself to be a master of rallying negative social media buzz (it's sometimes hard to believe he isn't doing it on purpose!). The social world, as well as Perry himself, has guffawed at his speeches-gone-wrong for months now. But the real negative buzz began when Perry released his 'Strong' campaign, in which he said, "I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian, but you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school."The video, which has over 7 million views on YouTube and a whopping 701,903 dislikes, sparked more negative buzz for Perry than ever before, and it was during the week of the video's release that Fizziology put together it's stats. They report that, "Not only did this ad rain negativity upon Perry in social media, it also provided many people with content to create parodies of the video. With this ad dominating conversation, his supporters were quiet, with very few if any signs of encouragement. His negatives were 75% with only 7% positives—the worst sentiment mix of the candidates."While Perry was taking the brunt of negative social media heat, Ron Paul's positive social media buzz was surging. Fizziology reports that, "His positives of 59% and negatives of 8% show that he might be surprisingly strong in the Caucuses—especially as his base is currently the most passionate in social media."Not surprisingly, it seems that when politicians make known their more "unpopular" opinions then we see an increase in negative buzz. While Rick Perry saw the largest increase in negative buzz, thanks to his 'Strong' ad campaign, Fizziology reports that other candidates saw similar trends (though on a much smaller scale) as a result of their own unpopular opinions. Bachman and Santorum saw more negative chatter than usual, due to anti-gay comments and Newt Gingrich also saw a spike in negatives (up to 47%). Fizziology reports that, "Driving the negatives were his comments about Palestinians being an 'invented people' and the perceived hypocrisy around his signing of the 'Marriage Vow.'"It will certainly be interesting to see how negative and positive buzz surrounding the candidates takes off and changes as we get closer to the Iowa caucus on January 3 and as the 2012 caucuses and primaries take place over the coming months, as well as how social media buzz compares to actual voting results.Image credit: Christopher Halloran via Shutterstock Megan O'Neill is the resident web video enthusiast here at Social Times. Megan covers everything from the latest viral videos to online video news and tips, and has a passion for bizarre, original and revolutionary content and ideas. Sharehttp://adweek.it/2khPwvA copy Adweek Adweek


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Hi everyone! I'm looking for opinions on digital picture frames - it seems like it's hard to find frames with decent sync technology built in, especially since FrameChannel went belly-up. I'm looking for a photo frame, probably in the 10 inch range, that I can push pictures to. Maybe that's via an RSS feed, maybe that's via email, or a Web service. The point is I need the ability to put pictures on the frame remotely without any local interaction. Yes, you guessed it, this is for both set of grandparents and I want to be able to add photos to the frame remotely so they'll just show up.
I've spent a few minutes researching potential photo frames, but what I've found has shocked me: it's a virtual wasteland of cancelled products and failed companies. Many of the picture frames I was familiar with a few years ago no longer exist. I'm looking for suggestions - though in searching for an image for this post, I came across the Kodak Pulse and it looks like it might do the trick. It can't pull down photos from RSS feeds, but I can email photos to a special email address and they'll appear on the frame - so that's the next best thing.
Any others I should be looking at?
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Rapidshare ordered to police internet
10. September 2013
Germany's Federal Court of Justice decided in a recently published judgment that file hosting services should monitor external website links to their websites to ensure they do not direct internet users to illegal content.
Rapidshare's monitoring obligations
The judgment comes after the German collecting society, GEMA sued the online storage provider and file hoster Rapidshare.
Rapidshare users were able to upload any content to the file hosting website and were able to create collections of links.
GEMA accused Rapidshare of hosting 4,815 copyright-protected music files, which were made publicly available without GEMA's consent.
Germany's Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) has now confirmed that file hosting providers can be held liable for copyright infringements conducted by their users (15.08.2013, I ZR 80/12).
Link collections
In addition, file hosting services will be required to monitor at regular intervals external websites for copyright-infringing collections of links which refer to the file hosting service.
Monitoring obligations
The judgment means that file hosting services will be required to trawl the internet for copyright infringements, even though they may have no actual knowledge of a particular breach.
The court has issued no guidance on how wide the monitoring requirement is, how many links a file hosting service must monitor and how many company resources should be invested in such a task.
Lawyers at Wilde Beuger Solmecke are of the opinion that these new monitoring requirements on file hosting providers go too far.
The BGH's full judgment can be downloaded here.
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