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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Survey says: Can't trust those polls
OTTAWA -- British Columbia's stunning election upset has turned on its head one of the strongest arguments pollsters have always used against banning or restricting public opinion surveys during campaigns.
Since George Gallup pioneered political polling some 75 years ago, pollsters have maintained their surveys are vital to the health of democracy.
They expose for all to see the true state of voter opinion, the pollsters contend. To ban or limit them would be to return to the bad old days when biased, unreliable survey results were strategically leaked by political parties to advance their own partisan interests.
"Our polls speak truth to power," Ipsos Reid senior executives Darrell Bricker and John Wright argued in a statement two years ago, responding to criticism from some of their own industry colleagues who'd challenged the credibility and accuracy of political polls.
"Not doing polls, or doing fewer of them, means that there will be no checks on bad polls (in this sense, the more polls the better), and that the political elites (including the media) will push their own distorted view of public opinion."
Yet, in last Tuesday's B.C. election, it was the public polls that turned out to be seriously distorted, giving the NDP anywhere from a six to 13-percentage-point lead over Premier Christy Clark's seemingly doomed Liberals.
It was the Liberals' internal party polls that accurately pegged the result: a healthy Clark majority.
"We had it nailed," Don Guy, one of the Clark team's top strategists, said in an interview.
"We couldn't get anyone to believe us because of the public polls."
Various explanations have been offered by pollsters whose surveys failed so spectacularly to predict the B.C. result: Voters made up their minds in the polling booths; turnout was lower than anticipated.
But Guy, a pollster by profession, believes it's more serious than that.
"It's a chronic problem and 'problem' is too weak a word to describe it," he said.
Guy is not alone. An increasing number of pollsters are worried about a credibility crisis facing the polling industry, fuelled by methodological problems and a proliferation of fly-by-night polling firms offering free surveys to undiscerning journalists who are slavishly addicted to horse-race numbers.
Unlike many of the polls published in the media, parties pay big money to conduct sophisticated surveys with large samples.
During the B.C. campaign, Clark pollster Dimitri Pantazopoulos used old-fashioned, live telephone interviews to conduct his surveys -- not the cheaper online or automated phone surveys increasingly used for media polls.
Online surveys -- which use a self-selected panel of people who sign up to take part in a company's polls -- produce all kinds of anomalies, said Guy. Not everyone has Internet access; those that do tend to be younger and more inclined to support the NDP.
Media polls tend to be weighted to try to take account of such anomalies and make the sample representative of the general population. But Guy said that skews the result since not all segments of the population are equally likely to vote, a factor Pantazopoulos's surveys did take into account.
For instance, Guy said, 18 to 34-year-olds "do not vote and, in particular, under 30s do not vote anywhere close to their incidence in the general population, whereas 55-pluses dramatically overachieve relative to their incidence in the population."
Perhaps the most crucial difference between media polls and the B.C. Liberal party's internal polls was the emphasis on the horse-race numbers.
"That is the number I pay the absolute least attention to," said Guy, "because the choice that someone expresses about attachment to a political party if an election were held tomorrow is about the weakest possible measure or predictor of behaviour you can imagine."
Rather, Guy said party polls looked at "issues, emotions, trends, personalities, characteristics, concerns, worries, fears, hopes -- all those things that campaigns are founded on."
It's that kind of intensive polling that allows a party to fine-tune its message, micro-target constituencies, shift undecideds and motivate voters.
"If (campaigns) were founded on who are you going to vote for tomorrow, then we wouldn't have campaigns," Guy observed.
-- The Canadian Press
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 19, 2013 A4
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Canada to benefit from a strengthening U.S. economy in 2014, says RBC Economics
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ECB says ditching austerity would not help euro zone
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BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - ECB policymakers rebuffed suggestions that Europe should ease up on austerity and said that while the central bank has room to cut interest rates, such a move would not necessarily help the economy much.
European Central Bank Vice-President Vitor Constancio said that seeking to stimulate economies by stopping measures aimed at cutting government debt could merely increase countries' borrowing costs rather than triggering growth.
Finance leaders of the G20 economies last Friday edged away from a long-running drive toward cutting spending and raising taxes in rich nations, rejecting the idea of setting hard targets for reducing national debt in a sign of concern about a sluggish global recovery.
With budget cuts blamed for a second straight year of recession in the euro zone, the EU's top economics official Olli Rehn indicated over the weekend that more flexibility on tough economic targets was needed.
His boss, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, said on Monday that austerity had reached its natural limits of popular support.
Recent surveys and data have pointed to economic weakness spreading to the euro zone core, and on Wednesday Germany's Ifo sentiment indicator came in weaker than the most pessimistic of forecasts as poor exports undermined Europe's largest economy.
"We certainly still have some margin of maneuver to take decisions, and as (ECB) President Draghi said in the latest press conference, we stand ready to act if economic conditions continue to provide bad news, as has unfortunately been the case," Constancio told the European Parliament in response to a question.
But ECB policymakers did not accept that weaker growth was a reason to change course on reform, insisting that more balanced budgets were essential to revive sustainable growth.
"Economic adjustment, both internal and external, has been significant, has implied high costs in terms of unemployment and should not (be) put into risk of unraveling now," Constancio told the European Parliament.
Joerg Asmussen, who sits on the ECB's Executive Board, also spoke of a risk of slipping back and warned against taking the current market calm for granted.
"(A) sound fiscal condition is really a precondition for growth," he told the Financial Times. "If one postpones fiscal consolidation to a later day, that comes not without risks."
ECB Governing Council member Ardo Hansson said EU states must push economic reforms further, strengthen public finances and avoid complacency.
German Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann had a stern message for France, the euro zone's second major economy, which is slipping already this year from commitments to cut its budget deficit.
Lessons should be drawn from earlier breaches of debt limits, Weidmann said. "France especially has an important role to serve as an example for credibility of the rules and trust in the sustainability of public budgets."
(Additional reporting by Eva Kuehnen in Frankfurt, Alexandra Hudson in Dresden and David Mardiste in Tallinn, writing by Sakari Suoninen; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)
That's what you get when you force the other weaker economies into measures where they try and make bricks with no straw.
Printing money only restores banks to health and prop up failing companies at the expense of long term economic health and will prolong the recessions
It's that simple.
The one currency cannot be used for all 27, very different and diverse Countries.
However, the lunatics in Brussel won't let go of this madness until there's widespread rioting and blood shed in the streets which unfortunately, is likely to happen.


text:
Analysis & Opinion
Holographic imaging guides cardiac doctors in minimally invasive procedures
31 October 2013
Cardiac doctors have trialled a 3D holographic imaging system as an aid in minimally invasive heart procedures. Jessica Rowbury speaks to Dr Elchanan Bruckheimer, a paediatric cardiologist who presented the results of the trial at a recent cardiovascular symposium
Imaging how proteins interact
26 September 2013
Winner of Edmund Optics' 2013 Higher Education Global Grant Program for the Americas, Professor Simon Alford at the University of Illinois at Chicago explains his work on protein-protein interactions and the importance of the optical equipment from Edmund
SuperSpeed interface to be adopted super fast
21 August 2013
Carlton Heard at National Instruments says USB3 Vision, the new machine vision standard based on USB 3.0, can only lead to more industrial cameras embedded in machinery. And, he says, its uptake could be faster than all other vision standards that have come before it
On the road: test driving a driverless car
9 August 2013
Following a successful trial of its BRAiVE autonomous vehicle on the streets of Parma, Italy, last month, Dr Alberto Broggi, director of VisLab, speaks to Imaging and Machine Vision Europe about the sensors used in its driverless car
Land of promise? Opportunities and threats inside Asia
29 July 2013
Exports of machine vision products from Germany to Asia outstripped those to the rest of Europe for the first time, according to a recent VDMA report. Greg Blackman analyses the opportunities and threats posed by the Asian markets
News categories
Harnessing the Sun's energy
19 July 2013
Finding the right government-backed industry scheme for you
5 July 2013
Vision central to complying with Falsified Medicines Directive
24 June 2013
Machine vision opportunities outside of industry
10 June 2013
Diversification key for vision market growth
6 June 2013
Computer vision to speed police investigations similar to Boston bombing
25 April 2013
Driver assistance with time-of-flight at IS2013
21 March 2013
US vision market to grow 4 per cent in 2013, according to AIA
22 February 2013
Maintaining standards
18 February 2013
Vision 2013 cancellation reflects mature market
15 February 2013
Take a bow: Paul Kellett to retire from AIA
20 November 2012
Vision market growth flat for 2013, according to industry bodies at Vision show
13 November 2012
Wide dynamic range stereo camera wins Vision Award
12 November 2012
Vision Award candidates announced
24 July 2012
German MV market to grow 5 per cent in 2012
11 July 2012
European MV market up 16 per cent in 2011: market data presented at EMVA conference
24 April 2012
Technology day showcases the benefits of 3D imaging
2 March 2012
North American vision market to grow in 2012
20 January 2012
AIT dental scanner wins Vision Award
15 November 2011
Record 2011 sales but growth slowing is message from Vision in Stuttgart
14 November 2011
Vision Award shortlist announced
27 July 2011
Vision sales predicted to grow 20 per cent in 2011: EMVA conference reveals market survey data
18 May 2011
ISE 2011 showcases diverse image sensing technology
28 March 2011
Vision industry strong at AIA business conference
25 January 2011
Vision 2010 sees record visitor numbers
16 November 2010
Sick crowned Vision Award winner
16 November 2010
Vision Award shortlist announced
26 August 2010
Vision 2010 exhibitor figures up
8 July 2010
Vision industry set to grow according to EMVA survey
21 June 2010
Vision aids earthquake research
7 June 2010
AIA market study predicts growth in MV sales
20 May 2010
Report suggests vision markets on road to recovery
13 April 2010
Robotics and vision research discussed at BMVA event
26 March 2010
European Commission to support research on enhanced road safety
24 February 2010
Imaging Special Interest Group launches
16 February 2010
Centre for electronic imaging opens
10 December 2009
Mood buoyant at Vision 2009
13 November 2009
Digital camera interface, CoaXPress, wins Vision Award
12 November 2009
AIA, EMVA, JIIA sign cooperative standards accord
12 November 2009
Tough times for 2009, but industry sees signs of recovery
21 October 2009
Marketing and standardisation key areas for EMVA
16 September 2009
Vision dimmed by recession
24 August 2009
Shortlist announced for Vision Award 2009
23 July 2009
Partnership leads to Scientific CMOS
23 June 2009
EMVA meets in Ireland
27 May 2009
AIA releases upgrade of GigE Vision standard
24 April 2009
EMVA business conference to visit Dublin, Ireland
21 April 2009
Machine vision market remains resilient in face of global recession
26 February 2009
Multicore next big thing for vision
12 December 2008
Machine vision market remains buoyant - news from Vision 2008
7 November 2008
Supercomputing Systems scoops Vision Award
7 November 2008
Vision 2008 boasts packed programme of events
23 October 2008
What to expect at MVIS
29 September 2008
Scientists construct 3D models from 2D images
14 August 2008
Machine vision market set to grow
17 June 2008
Expanding horizons in Berlin
23 April 2008
EMVA's 6th European Machine Vision Business Conference
20 March 2008
Headcounting traffic cams to hit the streets
25 February 2008
Flir becomes major shareholder of Cedip
17 January 2008
New CMOS supplier founded by former FillFactory employees
15 January 2008
EMVA greets its 100th member
19 December 2007
'Shape-from-shading' technique scoops Vision Award
15 November 2007
Expanded standard for camera specifications
9 October 2007
3D models from low-end digital images
24 September 2007
Vision Award shortlist announced
28 August 2007
Full programme and new dates for vision conference
11 June 2007
Conference secures top level speakers
4 May 2007
Imaging and Machine Vision Europe announces conference
9 March 2007
The Sun always shines on EMVA
2 July 2006


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Need right tool for java coding standards & code review
Kather Basha
Joined: Apr 12, 2004
Posts: 20
Aug 04, 2005 01:07:00
Hi all,
for my current j2ee project we are in the process of selecting right tool to define coding standards and to review existing
Kindly help any one to get into right path regarding this.
Kather Basha.
Ilja Preuss
Joined: Jul 11, 2001
Posts: 14112
Aug 04, 2005 05:27:00
Besides a good code formatter (there are several out there, and most IDEs come with one), you don't really need a tool, in my not so humble opinion. What you need is a very basic, informal coding standard that is *in the heads* of your team, and which gets refined while your team closely collaborates on the project (assuming that they are colocated). Pair Programming, for example, is a very good "tool" for propagating a team wide coding standard.
The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny - it is the light that guides your way. - Heraclitus
Rick O'Shay
Ranch Hand
Joined: Sep 19, 2004
Posts: 531
Aug 04, 2005 06:51:00
There's no substitute for a battle-tested and informed software engineer with an interest in keeping up-to-date on best practices but there are plenty of books out there that will help. First carve your requirements in to coding standards (easily automated with tools like Jalopy from Triemax) and code structure (you will need skilled developers and highly regarded books on the subject) and finally development process: Evo or UP or XP.
Those are three separate areas where the code beautifier (formatter) is the least important because it can be automated.
Stan James
(instanceof Sidekick)
Ranch Hand
Joined: Jan 29, 2003
Posts: 8791
Aug 04, 2005 12:11:00
Some of the static code review tools do a pretty cool job of spotting potential bugs, but most of them primarily critique your indenting and commenting. A good code formatter will take care of indenting, and the "standard" level of commenting they suggest is redundant at best and counter-productive or dangerous at worst. Go with human reviews.
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of the idea. John Ciardi
Geoffrey Falk
Ranch Hand
Joined: Aug 17, 2001
Posts: 171
Aug 04, 2005 13:27:00
Take a look at
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform
David O'Meara
Joined: Mar 06, 2001
Posts: 13459
I like...
Aug 04, 2005 18:04:00
I agree partially with Ilja, you need to 'live' these values and try not to patch it after the fact.
However in our case we use Eclipse wilth a standard set of formatting rules used by everyone (and enforced) and JCSC to check code quality, although code reviews does most of this for us.
Stuart Gray
Ranch Hand
Joined: Apr 21, 2005
Posts: 410
Aug 05, 2005 04:42:00
If you are into static analysis tools,
are fairly good.
Ulf Dittmer
Joined: Mar 22, 2005
Posts: 37545
Aug 05, 2005 05:11:00
With PMD it's easy to add your own rules, something you will want to do sooner or later.
When selecting a tool I find it important that it integrates seemlessly into the build environment, whether that is
, Eclipse, NetBeans or IntelliJ. Otherwise it just won't get used as much as it should be.
Other options you might look into are JCSC, Hammurapi, lint4j and jlint. My favorites are PMD and Hammurapi (which produces very nice reports that are cross-referenced with the source code).
Ping & DNS, my free Android app for network diagnostics
Stan James
(instanceof Sidekick)
Ranch Hand
Joined: Jan 29, 2003
Posts: 8791
Aug 05, 2005 21:01:00
I have to admit my comments on tools were based on research a couple years old. A third party is applying Hammurapi to some of our code. I'll keep an open mind until I see what they come back with.
With a little knowledge, a
cast iron skillet
is non-stick and lasts a lifetime.
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Latest from The Spokesman-Review
Video: See black bear test BearVault food canister
CAMPING — My Sunday Outdoors feature story focuses on bear-proof food canisters — where they are being required for campers and which one to buy.
The video above looks at the story from the bear's point of view.
This bear is very determined, but it doesn't get a reward for trying to steal a camper's food out of a BearVault brand container.
Bear awareness needed during big-game hunts
HUNTING — Bears are still out and active throughout the fall as hunters are out for deer and elk hunting — a potentially hazardous mix.
Being bear aware is particularly important for hunters because stalking and harvesting game increases a person's chance of bumping into bears, says Jamie Jonkel, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks bear management specialist.
"When travelling through dense brush or field dressing an animal, be extra aware and do what you can to warn wildlife of your presence," Jonkel says. "Always have bear spray close at hand."
Jonkel says this has been an especially busy fall for grizzly bear activity, especially in Western Montana.
He offers these safety tips for hunting in bear country:
- Always carry bear spray, have it within easy reach and know how to use it.
- If you are going to be alone in bear country, let someone know your plans.
- Watch for fresh bear sign.
- After making a kill, get the carcass out of the area as quickly as possible.
- When field dressing the carcass, keep your can of bear spray within easy reach.
- Use special precautions if you must leave and return to a carcass, including placing the carcass where you can observe it from a distance when you return.
- Do not attempt to frighten away or haze a bear that is near or feeding on a carcass
Check the Deer, Elk and Antelope Hunting regulations available online and at FWP offices, or go to FWP's Living with Wildlife web page for more information on hunting in bear country.
Wolf nips grizzly cub in butt, outruns sow's wrath
WILDLIFE WATCHING — Here's another take on that spectacular wildlife watching opportunity posed in mid-September by the death of a bison 400 yards from a road in Yellowstone Park.
- Five grizzlies and five gray wolves challenged each other for three days as they jockeyed for a place at the dinner table.
In the YouTube video above, Deby Dixon — who took a videography course at Spokane Falls Community College from S-R photographer Colin Mulvany — captured an instructive wildlife moment as a wolf nips a yearling grizzly cub in the butt.
Wildlife biologists say this is not uncommon. An Alaska biologist described the same practice to me as he was explaining wolf behavior.
Wolves learn and survive by observing, testing the waters and pushing the limits. Even among grizzlies, wolves are quick enough to get away with murder.
Photos catch five wolves, five griz on one carcass
WILDLIFE WATCHING — A dead bison 400 yards from a main road in Yellowstone National Park in September provided the rare opportunity for visitors to see five grizzly bears — rare in itself — and five gray wolves vying for meals off the same carcass at the same time.
I was there, underarmed in dim light with a slow 300mm lens on my camera, but thoroughly enjoying the spectacle through spotting scopes with another 100 or so specators parked along the road between Gardiner and Cooke City.
Other photographers, including Pete Bengeyfield of Dillon, Mont., scored memorable shots, such as these two, using 600mm telephoto lenses and 1.4x extenders.
When I watched the proceedings, all of the grizzlies — the boar as well as the sow and her three yearling cubs — were on the carcass at the same time. It appeared to me that the boar and sow had made rare peace because the five of them had a better chance of keeping the wolves at bay.
Read Bengeyfield's perspective and see more photos in this story from the Billings Gazette.
Click continue reading (below) to see another photo here.
Trail cam photos capture grizzly bear hoedown
WILDLIFE WATCHING — Enjoy an intimate family moment with grizzly bears attracted to a scratching pole by some sort of powerful lure, a bruin's equivalent of ecstasy.
The video starts slow and builds to a frenzy of rubbing. Fun.
According to PetaPixel.com, the trail cam photos were compled by Glenn Naylor, a Park Ranger, photography enthusiast and founding member of Bow Valley WildSmart who lives and works in Alberta.
Compiled into a video called "What goes on when you are not there!" this camera wound up snapping a bonanza of photos.
Naylor says he doesn't want the photos to give people the wrong impression about bears in general. Although the footage is cute and humorous, he says, "bears are not cuddly and friendly, they are wild animals that should be treated with caution and respect."
See Naylor's YouTube channel.
Ask question before helping hunting buddy pack out game
HUNTING — "Is it dead, yet?"
Maybe that's a question you need to ask if your hunting buddy calls and asks for help packing out his bear. From the Associated Press:
KALISPELL, Mont. — Montana wildlife officials say a black bear wounded by a bow hunter bit the arm of the hunter's companion before succumbing to its injuries.
State Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokesman John Fraley says a man was hunting Tuesday near Thompson Falls when he shot the 150-pound female black bear with a bow and arrow.
The hunter waited for several hours to try to make sure the bear was dead before he started tracking it.
The hunter located the wounded bear and shot it twice more with his bow. The bear then ran down a hill and encountered a man who had arrived to assist the hunter. The bear bit the second man's arm before it died.
The injured man was treated at the hospital in Plains and released.
Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials say the hunter legally tagged the bear.
Bear awareness needed during early season hunt
HUNTING — After several recent human-bear encounters in Idaho and Wyoming, wildlife managers are reminding hunters and others heading into the region's backwoods to properly store their food and garbage to keep conflicts with the curious and ravenous predators to a minimum.
Idaho Department of Fish and Game officials say anyone who leaves food out is baiting bears.
The animals have a tremendous sense of smell and become habituated to humans if they discover people are associated with easy meals.
The agency urges hunters to keep a clean camp, store garbage in bear-resistant containers or high in trees — out of reach of black bears and grizzlies.
In mid-August, four people in and near Yellowstone National Park were injured in separate bear encounters, though all escaped with minor bite and scratch wounds.
A bull-and-bear day in Boise?
Two animal incidents marked the news yesterday in Boise: A bear found wandering in the North End, which was tranquilized and taken off to the forest north of Lowman for release; and a bull rampaging down the Greenbelt in Eagle after breaking out of its pasture. Initially, authorities warned people to beware on the Greenbelt near Merrill Park yesterday morning as they hunted for the bull, but no capture was ever reported. "They didn't seem very concerned by yesterday afternoon," said Ada County Sheriff's spokesman Patrick Orr. "It was swimming in the river. … They were pretty confident it was going to swim back to the pasture it broke out of."
The black bear, pictured above, was first sighted around 7:30 Thursday morning behind the Boise VA hospital on Fort Street; it then led sheriff's deputies and Fish & Game officers on a few hours of "hide and seek," Orr reported, before the F&G officers were able to get close enough to tranquilize it. Fish & Game warned that dry conditions in the mountains could drive bears to visit town over the next few months, so they advise those living near the foothills to keep trash sealed up and don't leave food outside.
Bear hits town for take-out dinner
WILDLIFE — Apparently picnic baskets are no longer big enough for this bear in Colorado Springs… or maybe she just ordered takeout.
Either way, she's no stranger to food from human sources. Enjoy this.
Montana tests dogs for deterring wolves, bears from livestock
PREDATORS — Defending livestock from wolves and grizzly bears appears to be going to the dogs in Montana.
Study in Montana tests effectiveness of dogs to deter wolves, grizzlies
The National Wildlife Research Center, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services in Utah, has provided $80,000 to study the use of different breeds of dogs to keep wolves and grizzly bears away from livestock in Montana, including Kangals, a long-legged Turkish breed.
—Great Falls Tribune
Hot news: Keep bear spray where the sun don't shine
CAMPING — "Bear spray left in car. Becomes bomb. Very impressive."
That's a post with the photo above from Hal Herring in Montana, who performed an unintentional science experiment by leaving a canister of bear spray in the back of his Subaru open to direct exposure to the hot summer sun.
Manufacturers say aerosol cans can burst above temps of 120-130 degrees. But the main thing is that the canisters should always be covered — in a duffle, in an uncooled cooler, wraped in a towel under the seat of a car, but NEVER left to the full intensity of the summer sun in an enclosed vehicle.
"Check out the super shred on that bear spray holster…reckon there was a little force there?" Herring notes.
Webcam: See Katmai griz fishing for salmon
WILDLIFE WATCHING — Nevermind if you cannot go to Alaska — you can thrill at the sight of huge brown bears fishing for salmon at an iconic waterfall via a live feed from a Webcam in Katmai National Park.
Click here for the live view documenting the annual gathering of about 100 brown bears descending on a mile-long stretch of Brooks River to feast on the largest sockeye salmon run in the world.
If the link above does not work, paste this URL into your browser:
Bear activity closes popular Harrison, Beehive Lakes trails in Selkirks
HIKING — Bear activity has prompted the Idaho Panhandle National Forests today to temporarily close popular trails to Beehive and Harrison Lakes in the upper Pack River drainage of the Selkirk Mountains.
The two trails and the surrounding area are closed to the public until further notice to ensure public safety, said Jason Kirchner, Forest Service spokesman in Coeur d'Alene.
A bear recently entered a camp site near the Beehive Lakes Trail and was able to remove camping equipment and human food, he said.
Campers have to step up and follow simple bear-wise rules to protect campers who come after them as well as public access to these coveted backcountry areas.
This bear — the people involved couldn't verify whether it was a black bear or grizzly — likely had been lured by food previously.
One group's sloppy camping can unnecessarily screw up the outdoor experience for everybody, as this instance proves.
And neglecting to hang or protect food usually brings a bitter end for the bears, as it did this month for bears that had become food-conditioned in Montana's Smith River State Park (see story).
Here are the rules from the Panhandle National Forests
There is a mandatory food storage order in effect from April 1 through December annually. All food and beverages including canned food, soda and beer, garbage, grease, processed livestock or pet food and scented flavored toiletries must be unavailable to bears and stored in bear resistant containers at night and when unattended. For more information on proper food storage, members of the public are encouraged to visit the Idaho Panhandle National Forest's food storage web site.
Temporary closures are the first step in ensuring public and bear safety when problematic encounters occur.
For more information please contact the Sandpoint Ranger District at (208) 263-5111 or visit the Idaho Panhandle National Forests Website.
Bold bears force closure of Montana's Smith River campsites
PARKS — Apparently because of sloppy campers who came previously, people with coveted Smith River floating/camping permits have been getting disappointing phone calls.
Montana state parks officials have closed the Smith River State Park between Camp Baker and Eden Bridge because black bear looking for food and showing no fear of humans are turning up at the boat-in camps.
Bears have been getting into food storage coolers, they said.
No one has been injured, but to play it safe, the river has been closed since Saturday.
The bear activity has resulted in the need to close numerous boat camps, making it difficult to provide adequate and safe camping opportunities for those floating the central Montana river. People put in for the permits in a lottery each spring and only a fraction of the hopeful crowd draw reservations.
The river will be closed until wildlife managers can resolve the situation.
People with upcoming permits to float the river are being contacted by Smith River State Park staff.
Hungry bear causes closure of Lake Chelan backcountry campsite
CAMPING — A backcountry campground near the head of Lake Chelan has been closed indefinitely because of a black bear that was lured by the taste of food and garbage left unsecured by visitors.
The National Park Service announced Thursday that Tumwater Campground, located about 12 miles from Stehekin Landing, is closed until further notice.
A bear received a "substantial food reward" when it got into a garbage can at the primitive campsite on Monday, the agency said. Though the can has been removed, the bear is expected to return to the campground to look for more food.
The nearby High Bridge Campground will also be monitored by park staff to make sure the bear does not go there in search of an easy meal.
The agency said that a camp closure of two to three weeks in generally enough to convince a bear that there is no more food there.
Bear barks up wrong tree as hunter takes stand
HUNTING — A black bear gives a hunter a moment he'll never forget. Check it out.
Surprising predator gets some blame for killing Yellowstone Park elk calves
WILDLIFE — Which predator gets the blame for poor survival of elk calves in Yellowstone National Park?
A. Gray wolf.
B. Grizzly bear.
C. Lake trout.
Answer: All of the above.
Check out the Billings Gazette story on the latest suprising research — which shouldn't be all that surprising to wildlife enthusiasts who understand the complex ways nature is connected.
Camera collars let biologists tag along with bears
WILDLIFE — Biologists at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game are getting a peek into what city bears do all day.
Six bears were equipped with rugged video cameras attached to collars around their necks, which are allowing biologists to get a good idea of how the four black and two brown bears spent their time last summer.
Homeowners need to be 'bear aware'
WILDLIFE — The region's black bears are out of their winter dens and on the move, looking for food sources that might help them regain weight lost during hibernation.
Homeowners can avoid problem encounters with bears by being aware.
High calorie human foods are a major attractant, particularly if they are easy to obtain, such as out of a bird feeder or garbage can.
Idaho Fish and Game officials urge homeowners who live rural and suburban settings to take small precaution that can make a big difference in safety and to the welfare of the bears. Whether it's a black bear or a grizzly, a bear lured into a yard or campground by food or garbage is likely to be killed for public safety.
"All bears are opportunists; their whole life revolves around food," Fish and Game conservation educator Evin Oneale said. "They remember every single location where they receive a food reward, and if they get one from your residence, or your neighbor's residence, they will be back for more."
The result is always the same – a dead bear.
Read on for easy solutions for homeowners living near prime bear country.
Photographer documents grizzly out of its den
WILDLIFE — It's time to start packing your bear spray again.
Grizzly bears are emerging from their winter dens pretty much right on schedule.
This photograph comes this week from Yellowstone Tour Guides, which has quite an assortment of photos showing the park's wildlife winning and losing the struggle to survive winter.
Alberta ranchers want hunts on problem grizzlies
ENDANGERED SPECIES – Although Alberta grizzly bears are officially a threatened species in recovery mode, ranchers are asking officials to resume hunting at least for the problem bears in the southwestern corner of the province.
A grizzly bear recovery plan was initiated in 2008 after studies found fewer than 700 grizzlies left in Alberta. Grizzly hunting had be curbed in 2006.
Continued research indicates the bear population healthier than previously known in some areas, especially in the southwest.
Across the province, 15 grizzly bears were killed in 2012 by poachers, motorists and landowners: one problem bear was destroyed; five were killed in self-defence; four were hit on roads; two were poached; and two were mistaken by hunters for black bears. One death was ruled as an unknown cause.
Read more in this Calgary Herald story.
39-year-old black bear ready to emerge from den
WILDLIFE — Minnesota wildlife biologists have a long history with the oldest wild black bear known to be roaming free in the woods (videoed in her den, above).
Tagged No. 56 by researchers in 1981, the the 39-year-old sow is still in her winter den in the Chippewa National Forest.
According to the Duluth News Tribune, No. 56 has outlived virtually all of the 550 black bears the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources collared and tracked in the past four decades.
In addition to the research data, she's also produced about 28 cubs in her lifetime, with her last litter at the twilight age of 25. Nowadays, the old girl is no longer in the mood for parenting or exhaustive courtships, researchers say.
In the summer before denning this winter, No.56 mostly meandered around the forest and took a lot of long naps. Although she had recently lost some weight and a few teeth, biologists say she's still in pretty good health.
March is the month bears normally begin emerging from their dens In the Rocky Mountains. Males generally are the first to come out. Sows with cubs usually emerge weeks later.
Spring black bear hunt applications due Feb. 28
HUNTING — Hunters have until Feb. 28 to apply for black bear spring hunting permits in Washington.
Video: humorous commercial bears viewing
WILDLIFE — Bear with me on this….
The ability of computer generated animation to mix fantasy with reality is a bit alarming, but also quite humorous in the case of this creative Canadian ad for a clothes washing machine reveals.
Researcher not surprised that grizzly checked out Missoula
WILDLIFE — New kid on the block in Montana …
Data from radio collar tracks Montana grizzly's trek near Missoula
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks bear manager Jamie Jonkel said he wasn't surprised to learn that a female grizzly bear had traveled on the fringe of Missoula in the fall of 2011, as his department has been predicting the big bruins would be expanding into the area for years. — Missoulian
Burned bear cub recovering, may be released
WILDLIFE — An orphaned black bear cub burned in a wildfire last summer is recovering and may be released in June, an Idaho wildlife sanctuary official said.
The 4-month-old bear nicknamed "Boo Boo" was discovered by a fisherman in a tree along the Salmon River in August days after the 312-square-mile Mustang wildfire complex passed through the area.
The cub had second-degree burns on all four paws and was malnourished when U.S. Forest Service and Idaho Fish and Game workers rescued him.
After spending a few weeks at the Idaho Humane Society, the cub has been rehabilitating since September in the Snowdon Wildlife Sanctuary near McCall. He lives in a 2-acre forested enclosure with five other orphaned cubs.
Snowdon board member Diane Evans-Mack said Boo Boo is on the road to a full recovery, according to the Ravalli Republic.
"You wouldn't even be able to notice that his paws were ever burnt now," she said. "We don't see him every day, but even when we saw him in September, two weeks after the fire, we noticed just looking at the paws that they were much better. They were still a little bit sensitive, but he was climbing trees and running around."
The sanctuary tracks the bears' activity with cameras. Some of the pictures on the sanctuary's website show Boo Boo and another of the bears playfully wrestling with each other at night.
Evans-Mack said the plan is to release Boo Boo into the wild in June, and he may be collared so the sanctuary can keep track of him.
"We are going to end up holding Boo Boo through the winter, and we'll wait until the spring bear hunting season is over because he would be a little too naive to be out there," she said.
The cub's diet consists of fruit, greens and dry dog food.
"Dog food is actually something that helps him put on a lot of weight," Evans-Mack explained. "We have interns that go in and use dry dog food, and that puts a lot of fat on the bears. We get donations from local markets of fruits and some greenery that they would discard anyway. We give them salmon sometimes. "
Palouse woman finalist for national Extreme Huntress title
HUNTING – Thia Anderson, a mother of three boys and nurse practitioner who works in Pullman, is among 10 finalists from across the country in the Extreme Huntress 2013 Contest presented by Tahoe Films.
She needs online votes from supporters by Jan. 1 to help her win the title and an Alaska brown bear hunting trip that will be filmed for TV.
Anderson, who volunteers as a hunter education instructor, wrote an essay that first attracted the judges' attention in their quest to find the world's most hardcore female hunter. Here's an excerpt:
"I am lucky to have many opportunities to hunt the way I love to hunt: unguided, spot-and-stalk on public land," she said,noting that stalking a bear ranks as her most rewarding hunt so far.
"I spotted a bear on a ridge a half mile away, with one hour of shooting light left. While my husband watched with binoculars from the opposite ridge, I hurried down the steep canyon and up the other side and was able to stalk to within 75 yards and drop the tremendous 300-plus-pound color-phase boar with one shot.
"Being an extreme huntress is not about the number of animals taken, the size of trophies on the wall, or the exotic places visited. It is about having a passion to hunt that is so ingrained and intense that absolutely nothing will keep you from doing what you love the most. I am such a huntress and I have never met anyone, man or woman, quite like me."
Click here to check out the 10 finalists, VOTE and earn a chance to win prizes.
Feds consider hunting season on Yellowstone-area grizzlies
ENDANGERED SPECIES — Federal authorities are laying groundwork for possible trophy grizzly bear hunts around the Yellowstone area as soon as 2014, the AP reports.
It's the surest sign yet that more than 30 years of federal protection for grizzlies in the area is nearing an end as their population recovers.
Rabbits, bears, cougars must be well-cooked, too
HUNTING — While we're on the subject of parasites and other buggers in the meat of the fish and game sportsmen might bring home from the field, here are a couple of subjects I did not cover in today's outdoors column:
Rabbits should be well-cooked before consumption to avoid tularemia. See details.
Bear and cougar meat should be well-cooked before consumption to avoid trichinosis. See details.
Elk hunter kills charging grizzly bear on a Thanksgiving to remember
Elk hunter in Wyoming national park kills charging grizzly bear
In what is being categorized as a first, elk hunters shot and killed a charging grizzly bear in Grand Teton National Park on Thanksgiving morning, according to the Jackson Hole Daily.


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Wordox (Classic Game) Reviews
Newest Review: ... can find it here the unofficial form in any case better then ever www.wordsteal.com or www.markbyers.com and hope to ... more
Customer Wordox (Classic Game) Reviews (5)
by - written on 29/01/03, updated on 29/01/03 (Very useful, 800 readings)
Bored with movies for the moment. It's that time of year when there really isn't anything worth watching anyway...well, aside from The Ring maybe but as that's a remake of one of my very favourite horror movies I'll probably not like it too much. I could bore you with the umpteenth Lord Of The Rings review but no, I'll bore you with this instead. Yet another way to waste time online. Hurrah! In fact, this is one of the very worst timewasters there are online, it being very easy to actually spend hours here without actually realising it once you get to know people at the various sites which offer it. Wordox is basically Scrabble but with a ... Read the complete review
by - written on 18/11/02, updated on 18/11/02 (Very useful, 374 readings)
I was first introduced to Wordox one boring afternoon about a year ago. Fortunately, the work network won't let me play it otherwise I'd never get anything done. Wordox is a variation of Scrabble, with a couple of wicked little twists, for you to play on line, against your mates or with total strangers. *+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+* Where? +*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+ I generally play on flipside - for some reason the UK address is not responding right now but try it http://uk.flipside.com, failing that however www.flipside.com will do the trick. A quick scan of google shows that it is available at multiple sites and in a variety of languages - I ... Read the complete review
by - written on 11/10/01, updated on 11/10/01 (Useful, 462 readings)
I have to admit it. "Wordox" has got me hooked. If you like Scrabble, crosswords and all that jazz, you'll probably become a Wordox addict like me too. The rules - being very similar (but NOT the same) as Scrabble, are easy to learn for players of the board game. You are presented with a whole screenful of "tables" you can either join or find an empty one to host a game on. Up to four players can join and you can choose your opponents by looking at their skill rating beside their handle. There are two websites which host Wordox: - http://www.uproar.co.uk and http://uk.flipside.com And...on the Flipside ... Read the complete review
by - written on 11/12/03, updated on 12/12/03 (Somewhat useful, 399 readings)
Wordox was a great game, addictive, and huge fun. It's clever, and quick, and you can chat at the same time. It's much faster and more fun than Scrabble. It's the best word game on the Net, and I'm a word freak. Hundreds of people used to play it and hundreds more would like to do so. But if anybody out there can tell me how you actually get to access the darn game now, I'd love to hear from you. Please post here. Both Uproar and Flipside seem to have blown the thing outta the water. The Uproar version was oh so terribly cutesy, with lil tables and funny noises (which I'm not into), the flipside version was way better. But you can't Read the complete review
by - written on 04/01/06 (Not useful, 487 readings)
you can find it here the unofficial form in any case better then ever www.wordsteal.com or www.markbyers.com and hope to see you soon Mike AR rmageddon. ps tell all your friends we love new faces and want the old timers back also so COME ON IN meet new people, join a fun community, play games rated or non rated there is even an unmoderated l;obby for the adults who need it or just plain want ... Read the complete review


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Owen Suffolk (Born: 1829 / Australia)
The Battle of Life
Up! and arm for life's struggle,
We shall conquer in the fight,
If we arm us for the battle
With the weapons Truth and Right;
Though the world's arrayed against us,
We will shrink not from the strife,
For invincible is duty
On the battlefield of life.
In the vanguard of the battle
Foremost comes our foeman Sin,
Like a giant in his prowess,
With an aspect stern and grim.
But, though mighty in his power
We'll preserve a dauntless air,
And we'll fight this dreaded foeman
'Neath the sturdy shield of prayer.
Next is Poverty approaching,
Weapons sure and sharp she wears,
And she's backed by thronging thousands -
By a countless host of cares.
Still, this terrible invader
We'll repel with robust health,
And with energy and labour
Soon we'll win the ally Wealth.
Every step is fraught with struggle,
Cares full armed our path oppose;
Hopes are falling fast around us;
Wounded are we, too, by woes.
Yet our courage must not falter,
We must fight Care hand to hand;
Other hopes will soon support us
If we firmly take our stand.
In the sorried ranks of batte,
With the flag of Right unfurled,
Let our well-tried virtues make us
Victors ever in the world.
Noble to the things we fight for!
Glorious be the deeds we do!
Foeman to the false and evil,
Champions of the good and true!
Fight we as God's soldiers bravely,
Let us conquor by his might;
His Almighty arms shall aid us
Ever in the cause of right,
Fight on to life's last moments,
Faith at last shall conquer death:
Dying - still we'll shout in triumph,
'Victory' with our last drawn breath.
Onward, then, to dare the struggle,
Though we fall upon the field;
Better be struck down in battle,
Than like cowards tamely yield.
Shrink not from the stern encounter,
Duty ever strength supplies;
And from every fall we meet with,
Anteus-like, we'll stronger rise.
Read poems about / on: poverty, courage, evil, faith, strength, power, truth, world, death, life, god, hope, soldier, rose
Comments about this poem (The Battle of Life by Owen Suffolk )
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If I had 8 homes each would be very different... Or would they essentially be the same? Interior design changes as quickly as fashion dictates it, but eclectic mix is always in, right? So here is my virtual travel across the world.... Enjoy!
amarauderinrye: Amberley in West Sussex, which is a magical little village with the most picturesque cottages in the universe. I know I won't have time for all these places, but I'll post them anyway JUST IN CASE!!!! Maybe I'll save some old fellow's life in the airport with my quick and expert use of the AED and he'll turn out to be the Duke of Wealthingham and tell me I MUST stay in England for a month while he PAYS FOR EVERYTHING!!!! Yeah! It could happen. Anything can happen. (Slawek Staszczuk on flickr)


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Very Merry Spruce Tree
They may just break into a rousing rendition of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" when you surprise them with this lovely spruce. When spring arrives, the fragrant tree can be transplanted outdoors. More
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Ukrainian says he was held captive for 14 years
- Published: 23 Jan 2011 at 00.00
- Newspaper section: News
A Ukrainian engineer who says he was held captive and forced to work at a Bangkok factory for 14 years will meet Department of Special Investigation officers tomorrow to detail his allegations.
FREE MAN: Anatoliy Vdovychenko says he was confined to a factory premises.
Anatoliy Vdovychenko, 57, was rescued from the Thai-owned oxygen equipment factory located at the Rangsit industrial complex on Jan 11 after Ukrainian consular staff confronted the owner and threatened to call police.
This article is older than 60 days, which we reserve for our premium members only.You can subscribe to our premium member subscription, here.


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Winter Weather:
Latest Forecast | Live Traffic Conditions | Your Winter Pics | Weather Center | Live Radar
Man Pleads Guilty To Crashing Client's Lamborghini
David Juntunen owns Top Gear Autoworks in Minneapolis and took the wrecked vehicle back to his shop in hopes of fixing the damage without anyone knowing, Jason DeRusha reports (0:56).
WCCO This Morning - October 16, 2013
WCCO This Morning - October 16, 2013
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Not 2 Be Missed
Majority think U.S. losing science edge
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More than half of Americans queried in a recent poll doubt that the United States will be the world leader in health care by 2020, and nearly 60 percent think a country other than the United States will lead the world in science and technology by that time.
Scientists and policymakers at the annual Research!America forum in Washington, where the poll results were released yesterday, said the numbers reveal a startling degree of public skepticism toward the United States' ability to compete globally in scientific research.
JZ Analytics asked 1,005 likely voters which nation they thought would lead the world in health care by 2020. Forty-seven percent did choose the U.S., while more than a quarter said someone else, without specifying a country. Eighteen percent thought the European Union would, while the rest said China, India or Brazil.
Only 42 percent of those polled said they thought the United States would retain its position as the world leader in science and technology by 2020. Twenty-six percent predicted China would assume that mantle, and 23 percent said India would.
JZ Analytics conducted the poll for Research!America, a health-research organization.
At a panel discussion at the conference, experts blamed the public's perception on a lack of long-term thinking by lawmakers who fund national science endeavors. While China and the EU have taken steps to increase their research budgets, the United States more recently has struggled to keep its research budget from declining, said National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins.
Collins, who helped usher in one of the United States' biggest recent scientific accomplishments, the sequencing of the human genome, said that if a project similar in scope and scale came along today, he doubts the country would be bold enough to fund it.


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Life-saving cancer breakthrough
BY Katherine Scott body+soul
Researchers claim that a ground-breaking new blood cancer drug with "the potential to save lives" is only months away from human trials.
Patient trials for a revolutionary new cancer treatment discovered by Melbourne researchers could begin within the year.
In research published in the journal Cancer Cell, scientists claim that the new drug can be used to kill leukaemia and lymphoma cells by blocking their protein production. This would effectively eliminate the need for chemotherapy, sparing cancer patients the serious side-effects.
"What we have been able to show is that cancer cells have this unexpected dependence on making new protein and if you interfere with that you can kill the cancer cells and spare the normal cells," Associate Professor Ross Hannan of the Peter McCallum Cancer Centre said.
"We've demonstrated that cancer cells are far more dependent on their ability to make ribosomes than normal cells, and therefore, much more vulnerable if these 'protein factories' come under attack," he said.
"We have a new drug in our hands that, if tested successfully, has the potential to save lives."
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From BoingBoing:
Microsoft is ready to pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to remove its news content from Google, according to the Financial Times. Microsoft has also approached other "big online publishers" with similar deals.
"One website publisher approached by Microsoft said that the plan 'puts enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to index with them",' wrote the FT's Matthew Garrahan. " . . . Microsoft's interest is being interpreted as a direct assault on Google because it puts pressure on the search engine to start paying for content."
This he calls a "ray of light to the newspaper industry."
Now, every site in Google is currently there by choice. As it could conceivably change its mind and shank Balldock and Murmer with fair use, let's assume that they're planning on exclusivity. End-user license agreements, paywalls, spider-blocking, that sort of thing. Maybe even encryption and plugins and other delights. Sayonara, RSS!
All I know is that Fox + Microsoft = Very Bad Shit.
Paul Klee's Boat, Anzhelina Polonskaya's newest bilingual collection of poems available in English, is an emotional journey through the bleakest seasons of the human soul, translated with great nuance by Andrew Wachtel. A former professional ice dancer(!), Polonskaya left the. . .
In Seiobo There Below, Lázló Krasznahorkai is able to succeed at a task at which many writers fail: to dedicate an entire novel to a single message, to express an idea over and over again without falling into repetition or. . .
There are curious similarities in three Italian mystery series, written by Maurizio de Giovanni, Andrea Camilleri, and Donna Leon.1
They're all police procedurals, and all set in Italy: Naples, Sicily, Venice.
The three protagonists are Commissarios: Luigi Ricciardi, Salvo. . .
Poetry always has the feel of mysticism and mystery, or maybe this feeling is a stereotype left over from high school literature class. It is generally the result of confusion, lack of time committed to consuming the poetry, and the. . .
Our Lady of the Flowers, Echoic is not only a translation, but a transformation. It is a translation of Jean Genet's novel Notre Dame des Fleurs, transmuted from prose to poetry. Originally written in prison as a masturbatory aid (Sartre. . .
Equal parts stoner pulp thriller and psycho-physiological horror story, a pervasive sense of dread mixes with a cloud of weed smoke to seep into every line of the disturbing, complex Under This Terrible Sun. Originally published by illustrious Spanish publishers. . .
From the start, Daniel Canty's Wigrum, published by Canadian press Talonbooks, is obviously a novel of form. Known also as a graphic designer in Quebec, Canty takes those skills and puts them towards this "novel of inventory" and creates a. . .
Throughout his career—in fact from his very first book, Where the Jackals Howl (1965)—the renowned Israeli writer Amos Oz has set much of his fiction on the kibbutz, collective communities he portrays as bastions of social cohesion and stultifying conformity. . .
Antoon gives us a remarkable novel that in 184 pages captures the experience of an Iraqi everyman who has lived through the war with Iran in the first half of the 1980s, the 1991 Gulf War over the Kuwaiti invasion,. . .
Every fictional work set in L.A. begins with a slow crawl through its streets in the early hours of the morning right after sunrise. Maybe it's always done this way to emphasize the vast sprawl of the city and highlight. . .


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Today's a post is a guest post by Joseph Campbell, a prolific iOS developer who has over 40 apps on the App Store.
If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way."
- Napoleon Hill
So you're a new iOS App Developer or thinking about getting into the field? Well let me say I was once there too, as I've been developing iOS apps around 21 years now. Oops, forgot to explain that I meant them in dog years! Time, as you will find in this space, moves swiftly. I started out on iOS 3 with the iPad and now we are looking at version 7. The pace of change is fast and furious indeed.
So how did I decide to get into iOS development? Well it all started with the iPad as I was anything but an Apple fan boy. I was originally the "PC" guy. Sure I had an iPod but I thought Macs weren't serious business machines. And the iPhone? Well let's say I "was" a Black Berry fan and having lived the Gen-1 smart phone wars, I just didn't see the iPhone as a game changer at the time.
However, the iPad was a horse of a different color and it placed real computing power in a user's hands with a battery that could match its use cycle. It truly was and remains the "perfect storm" of technological design. So in short I purchased one, yes the infamous iPad 1!
And well I wasn't alone, many of my colleagues also bought one and during slow meetings, we would compare apps and purchase new ones as we sat round the conference table together. Being the "geek" I am, I started doing the math and the numbers were mind boggling! There seemed to be millions being made and I wanted a piece of the pie!
Now I must share that many, many moons ago I did write game software for Apple II, Commodore Vic20 and TI-99. In those days, I learned 6502 Assembler and already understood a lot of the Enterprise (business) software market from my day job (which I still have today). I had already been working at a senior architecture level for several of the world's largest companies. So while I was not a "keyboard" guy, I did have a lot of the pieces to help jump start my learning about object oriented programming.
With this I discovered Apple and iOS used C# (pronounced C Sharpe) and a model, view, controller frame work. Ok, I could deal with most of this so I shelled out my first $100 check for a developer account and set off for the Apple store to buy my first Mac! To start with I purchased a Mac Mini with a HDMI output and DVI to VGA adapter as I had to have two screens. So first big tip, two screens makes things go much faster. Yes, you can do this on an 11 inch Macbook Air but don't. Remember, time is money and computer screens are cheap!
So I had my developer account, along with a Mac with XCode downloaded. I was ready to get coding. However, what kind of App to write was the question ahead of me. From past experience I knew games weren't typically the best idea for a one man shop. Game sales are short-lived, and tend to be the domain of "teams". You'll also be competing against coders in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) nations who can do things really cheap. So unless you are targeting a simplistic overdone game with a "paper toss" style, it's a good idea to stay away.
What really wowed me about the iPad was content delivery, especially its ability to be interactive. So this was the path I decided to take – to develop a (basic) interactive book app (This was before Apple announced "book-like apps" would no longer be accepted). It's also worth noting my day jog has taken me around the world many times so I had a fair amount of knowledge and images from various places to create travel guides. This made an interactive book app a doubly good fit!
So with my first app coded, it was time to get it up the App Store and what a pain that was! I almost gave up and if not for all the hours of coding invested I would have! Finally I had to open a case with Apple (note you get one free call with your developer fee) and with this discovered there was a "bug" in Apple's Keychain app on the Mac and the Apple tech walked me though a rather complex command line fix. So with that done, it was finally uploaded for review and the wait [for approval] could begin. Now before I scare you off, this entire process is much better today, so there's no need to overly fret.
Since there are already so many stories about waiting for Apple's approval, let's fast forward to the tips I'll share with you that I've learned after 3 years of independent iOS development experience and 40 apps.
- Tip 1: Code is a Commodity! The geek in me weeps a little in saying this but it's the truth. Mobile apps are pretty much disposable so don't spend a ton of time on "the art of coding". While I believe it is a requirement to understand coding, don't become a slave to code. After coding my first app (which I threw away later) I hired out model & controller development. I didn't hire out to one of the high priced development houses either as I looked on the mobile developer boards and found skilled "kids" to do most of the work for a couple hundred bucks. I would also recommend not farming it all out to one person or company as you will most likely find a carbon copy of your app in the App Store. I typically will use two developers and farm out the model & controller, then write the views myself.
- Tip 2: Content is King! As Napoleon Bonaparte once said – "A picture is worth a thousand words". With the iPads tactical abilities and content display, it's easy to understand why the device has become such a success in this space. Additionally, as mentioned by The Canadian Professor of Communications and futurist Marshall McLuhan, "the message is the medium" in that whatever "medium" we receive or consume content from will in fact shape the "content" and how we perceive and ingest it.
- Tip 3: Make Graphics the Focus! The graphics should be appealing and should help tell a story. This goes for almost every sort of app. We're starting to move away from skewamorphism where we needed a "notebook" icon to tell us it was a note book, or simulated leather in a planning application. In this same vein, we're seeing new generation weather apps which tell us the story of what it's like outside with one image! Folks, this knowledge is power and while the general consumer of this information doesn't see it, you as the developer absolutely must do so if you want to be successful. There are tons of garbage apps in the App Store and with nearly a million apps, Apple will likely have to start curating the apps available for quality purposes.
- Tip 4: Re-use content whenever you can! Content reusability is also a key to success as whenever I'm looking to design content, my eye looks towards the future as to what are the possibilities of reuse? For example, can I simply change the color of an object (say in Photoshop) and repurpose it in another app? Or possibly make simple modifications, typically by erasing something which allows it to serve double duty? Remember, sweat the assets, digital or not and use a cataloging system (Aperture works great) to track your assets as it's easy to forget something you already have.
While I know that was a lot of pretty heady stuff, it's important for success. Do you know what's doing the real work in the app? Well, it's not the code in case you're wondering. I'd like to place an emphasis on Tip Number 3. It's the imagery that conveys your value proposition to the buyer.
This is what you're going to trade them for their $0.99 – $2.99. It's through the use of images and graphics that this is achieved. Worth keeping in mind too is that the length of attention spans in the digital age have shrunken almost as fast as transistors and Moore's Law!
So you could have built an amazing app but if you don't have a strong message, it's likely you won't see much sales. Believe it or not – the mobile app market is still a word of mouth market.
Remember when at the start of this post, I mentioned how I would sit with that iPad 1 at a conference table with 5 other people and compare apps? Together, we would influence 4 other buyers who would go on to influence another 5 and over time, this multiples to a surprisingly large number of people. Do you remember "six degrees of Kevin Bacon (or Brad Pitt)"? Well, the word of mouth market is even more powerful with social media today, so getting a quality message across in a short period of time is critical for success.
One could pen an entire book around iOS content development and these few paragraphs are only a teaser of its importance. Whew, we've covered a lot of ground in a short time and as I approach my 40th app in the App Store, my hope is that I'm helping pay it forward for all the help that was given to me.


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X Paranormal Presents Britt Griffith from SyFy's Ghost Hunters
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Currently at The Pasadena Playhouse:
Aladdin and His Winter Wish Stars Ben Vereen & Jordan Fisher
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- $60.00 - $75.00
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- $32.00 - $40.00
Tony Award-winning entertainer Ben Vereen (Pippin, Jesus Christ Superstar) lights up the genie's lamp in this all-new holiday production from the creators of American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance. The show also stars Jordan Fisher (Teen Beach Movie, The Secret Life of the American Teenager) as Aladdin, along with Ashley Argota (True Jackson VP), Bruce Vilanch (Hairspray) and Richard Karn (Home Improvement). Produced in the style of a classic British Yuletide panto, which traditionally takes a well-known fairy tale and gives it a wacky, melodramatic modern makeover, Aladdin and His Winter Wish updates the classic tale from Arabian Nights with pop hits from Bruno Mars and others, along with dancing, magic and an appearance by a live pony. The show is a follow-up to last year's successful A Snow White Christmas and also features a pre-show Winter Wonderland in the courtyard with carolers, crafts, Santa visits and more. Learn More
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view more less of this reviewI learned a lot about the paranormal by attending this event. There was even a paranormal incident that happened with the ghost lamp they have at the Pasadena Playhouse. It was a great event.
X Paranormal is a paranormal research/investigation group based in Southern California that is dedicated to helping people troubled by paranormal activity in their homes (at no charge). Through controlled scientific experiments, research, and field investigations, they search for understanding the mysteries of the paranormal.
This event's running time is approximately two hours and 30 minutes, with a 10-minute intermission.