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The Penn State Berks Chemical Society was honored for outstanding community outreach by the national office of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the worlds? largest scientific society. The 15th annual ChemLuminary Awards celebration was held in conjunction with the ACS National Meeting in Indianapolis, IN on September 8, 2013.
The Lehigh Valley Local Section of the ACS, which has 904 chemists and chemical engineers as its members, received two ChemLuminary Awards. One of these awards was for Best Student Member National Chemistry Week Event for which the Lehigh Valley Local Section partnered with the Penn State Berks Chemical Society to celebrate National Chemistry Week. A kick-off celebration at the Reading Public Museum was held where students and parents gathered to learn about nanotechnology and its many applications.
Penn State Berks representation in the Lehigh Valley Local Section includes Associate Professor of Chemistry Lorena Tribe, Immediate Past Chair; Research Support Technician Greglynn Gibbs, Public Relations Chair; Associate Professor of Chemistry Katie Amaral, Membership Chair; as well as Associate Professor of Chemistry Ike Shibley, Associate Professor of Chemistry David Aurentz and Associate Professor of Chemistry James Karlinsey, who have all served in multiple capacities as mediators and speakers.
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 164,000 members, ACS is the world?s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.


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Bob Dylan's Best and Worst Album Covers
My relationship with Bob Dylan is similar to my relationship with Woody Allen: I'm a fan of these old Jewish guys, and I get excited when a new release is announced. Even after "Knocked Out Loaded," even after the film "Celebrity," I keep the faith — and when I'm treated to a "Time Out of Mind" or a "Midnight in Paris," it's as if my steadfastness has been rewarded.
In this context, album covers and film posters (or their digital equivalents) become deeply important. What do they reveal? What do they say about this next project from the old master? And will it be any good?
It was thus with dismay that I first gazed upon the cover of Dylan's new release, "Tempest," which came out on September 11. It is, in my opinion, the worst Dylan cover ever — and there have been some doozies over the years. Fortunately, the songs on "Tempest" are actually quite good late-model Dylan, complete with retro stylings, apocalyptic pronouncements, bar-band messiness and biblical allusions. But the tossed-off nature of the cover has led me to muse on Dylan covers past and present, and to compile this highly idiosyncratic list, counting down the five best and five worst album covers from the bard's 50-year career.
The Best
5. Slow Train Coming (1979)
Jewish fans of Dylan may despise this album, the first of Dylan's short stint as a born again Christian. But the cover, with its subtle cross symbolism, vision of redemption and home-grown feel, perfectly captures Dylan's spiritual renaissance after a few years of drug and alcohol addiction — itself well captured on the cover of his previous album, "Bob Dylan at Budokan." Like "John Wesley Harding," which it narrowly beat out for the No. 5 spot, the cover of "Slow Train" is at once enigmatic and revealing. You want to know more.
4. World Gone Wrong (1993)
This cover is the first time we really saw the Dylan who now has been with us for 20 years: a grizzled old singer of traditional songs that pack emotional wallops behind deceptively simple facades (the songs here are all traditional folksongs, performed by Dylan and accompanied only by his own guitar and harmonica). Seated in front of one of his own paintings, Dylan isn't hiding his age here — quite the contrary. He wrote in the first volume of his quasi-memoir, "Chronicles," that he realized that in order to do these songs justice, he'd have to become a new man entirely. That man is pictured on the cover.
3. Greatest Hits (1967)
Few remember today that Dylan's first several albums, now classics, were not commercial successes. It was only after the electric period that his early work became known — and that, in large part, was because of this collection. The cover shot is iconic, situating Dylan right in the center of the 1960s, his profile backlit and his hair as if on fire. This Dylan would flicker out of existence only a few months later, to be replaced by the country crooner of his next few releases. But for a moment, electric Dylan was it.
2. Bringing It All Back Home (1965)
This is probably the most enigmatic Dylan cover of all. The image on the sleeve of "BIABH" signaled a rejection of Dylan's protest-singer past and a new phase of creativity and complexity. Who is the woman in the background? What is the significance of the magazines on the table? Dylanologists have puzzled over these questions for decades. But this album, in its music and its cover art, was the first indication that Dylan would not conform to expectations and would instead surprise and mystify.
1. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963)
Some images are just icons, and this cover is one of them. Capturing the youth and potential of the early 1960s, Dylan and his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, huddle against each other as they walk down a New York street. They are cold, they are poor, they are young and they are happy. No wonder this image has been copied and parroted so many times (see, for instance, Cameron Crowe's Tom Cruise flick "Vanilla Sky"): Is there a more iconic image of bohemian youth than this one?
Honorable mentions: "John Wesley Harding," "Oh Mercy,""Dylan & the Dead," "Blood on the Tracks," "The Basement Tapes."
The Worst
5. Dylan (1973)
Really, this cover shouldn't count, since the album was cobbled together without Dylan's authorization, and until the digital era was quite hard to find at all. (It's still unstreamable on bobdylan.com.) It's a terrible collection of leftovers and covers, and its tossed-off, dated and clichéd album cover signifies that. Pure dreck.
4. Empire Burlesque (1985)
There were several bad Dylan albums in the 1980s, and all had bad covers: "Shot of Love," "Knocked Out Loaded," but worst of all, I think, is the slickly produced, badly written and generally woeful "Empire Burlesque." The cover conveys everything that's wrong about this album: the desperate attempt to remain current and fashionable (computer font! Miami Vice jacket!), the obscuring of what's good about Dylan by superficial crap, and a factory-made look and feel that convinced all but the most faithful that Dylan had become a has-been.
3. Saved (1980)
Eerily prefiguring "Tempest," the cover of "Saved" has a similar serif font and thoughtless aesthetic. The album is a poor retread: Where "Slow Train Coming" was spiritual and sincere, "Saved" was a pedantic sermon. The cover reflects that. "Saved" has Dylan performing in a kind of aura sent from heaven, in some amorphously cubist goo that reflects the messy production of the hastily thrown-together album. If you want to hate the Christian Dylan, hate "Saved."
2. Planet Waves (1974)
I'll probably catch some flak for this one, since the cover is Dylan's own work, but I'm sorry, this drawing sucks. Dylan's unreleased work with The Band, "The Basement Tapes," came with a great cover that captured the whimsy and authenticity of the ensemble. But his only properly recorded album with them has a misdrawn peace symbol, a bad rendition of the Band's members and a tossed-off feel; it belongs on a cocktail napkin. Worse, like the cover of "Tempest," it undermines what's good inside: an underrated release in an underperforming cover.
1. Tempest (2012)
And that brings us to Dylan's new release, complete with 1983-era lipstick title font (see Klymaxx) and bargain-basement art direction. Did someone really get paid for this? There are better production values on Rebecca Black's "Friday." I think Dylan (or his team) is trying to evoke a mixture of the sacred and the profane here, since "Tempest" started out as an album of religious songs. But what he got looks cheap, like a first-year design student's first foray into Photoshop. A disaster.
Dishonorable mentions: "Love & Theft," "Christmas in the Heart," "Shot of Love," "Knocked Out Loaded," "Another Side of Bob Dylan."
Jay Michaelson, a contributing editor for the Forward, designed both album covers for his old garage band, The Swains.

subset: commoncrawl


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Windows 8, Windows Server 8, and Office 15: Tons of new information straight from Microsoft and its employees!
In addition to my passion for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), I'm an investigative researcher/blogger with a penchant for finding confidential information on the cutting edge of topics I'm passionate about. Without fail, the one product I chase the most is Microsoft Windows. Ever since the days of Whistler (Windows XP's code name), I've used the power of Google and other sources to flesh out undisclosed information to digest and make available to the masses.
Today, I continue that tradition by bringing you a post consisting of a culmination of Windows 8, Windows Server 8 and even Office 15 information I've discovered over the course of the past month or so. The information that follows is all directly sourced for your convenience and I've copied everything as it resides where it resides -- grammatical errors and all. While some of the specifics on this list are certainly more significant than others, I've listed all that I have in the interest of leaving no stone unturned and so as to appeal to the unique interests of each individual who reads this.
Additionally, I close the article with sources to much more Windows 8 and Office 15 information that will continue to whet your appetite should you find the contents of this article particularly piquant. Lastly, I'd like to go ahead and mention our resident Microsoft bloggers here on ZDNet: Mary-Jo Foley and Ed Bott. Between the two of them, the Microsoft coverage here on ZDNet is quite extensive, so please check them out and say hello sometime. And now, in no particular order of importance or significance, here is Windows 8 and Office 15 information-galore!
Windows 8 Client and Windows 8 Server
Windows Reliability, Security and Privacy Microsoft * Provide cryptographic guidance and review to Windows 8 feature teams * Provide guidance concerning ACL's and permissions for Windows 8 feature teams * Conduct security reviews and threat model analysis to reveal vulnerabilities and then provide guidance concerning fixes and mitigations. * Driving planning and specifications for telemetry enhancements for Windows 8. * Driving planning and specifications for self-host reporting for Windows 8. * Driving planning and specifications for ecosystem security reporting and analysis for Windows 8.
Worked on test tools/automation development for various core storage features of Windows 7 and Windows 8, including MPIO and storage CDB fuzzer. Contributed to the beta, RC and RTM releases of Windows 7. Contributed to M1/M2 of Windows 8. Influenced all Windows 7/Windows 8 Server SKU products.
Developed the functional specifications for the FQTSV3 version of the tool suite using customer requirements and feedback that will be available as part of the Windows 8 OPK/WAIK kits.
Lead cross-product design efforts for Microsoft's "cloud" services on Windows Live. Drive key design conversation on all "major bet" features for the World's largest online mail service/cloud computing platform. Collaborate closely with Principal/partner level program management to elucidate a long term product vision for Hotmail and associate services as well as the relationship between cloud services and Windows 7/Windows 8 devices.
Created prototype around role extensibility which is used as a proof of concept for the Win8 version of Server Manager.
PM owner of differentiator features for Win8 CHS IME.
I currently work as an individual contributor to the user interface team for Windows ".next" [and] I lead a team of software engineers part of the Windows ".next" user interface team for file management.
Windows 7 sustained engineering team. I test hardware compatibility on Windows 7 and Windows 8 builds.
Xbox LIVE File System for Xbox Kinect: designed and shipped a distributed storage system built on Windows Azure for customer data collection world-wide, resulting in improved acoustic models and skeletal tracking algorithms for Kinect and Windows 8 speech recognition.
•Work with printing Imaging team on Windows SE and Windows 8 •Test varieties of printers and scanners on Windows 7 and Windows 8
Software Development Engineer on contract to Microsoft. Working on Windows 8 Terminal Services.
Currently working on Windows 8 components using WPF & Silverlight
Assessed, identified and documented a Sensors platform implementation plan for Windows 8 performance with prototype performance markers in Windows kernel code (C++).
LOCATION: Redmond, WA TEAM: Windows 8 Experience (WEX) – Accessibility, Automation, & Application (AAA) PATENT FILED: Automated UI High-Contrast Text Verification
Since shipping Multitouch for Windows 7 I have moved on to other modes of input, landing on the "Advanced Input" team for Windows 8. I'm greatly looking forward to releasing what I truly believe will be the most important Windows ever shipped, and I'm anxious to see the reaction people will have to the ideas we've decided to pursue.
Did you catch that last sentence? Pretty big statement! And because this comes from someone's personal LinkedIn profile instead of from a pro-Microsoft blog or something of that nature, it makes it a much more genuine sentiment. I love seeing things like this. :) Now, head on over to page 2 and let the good times continue rolling!
Develop some new features for windows 7 and windows 8. - (win7)Improve the quality of ADO by adding SAL annotation. For example, - (win7)Improve User Experience by adding trace to ADO - (win8)Develop new feature for ODBC DM.
I worked within the CIMOM feature team implementing remote interfaces for Windows Management Instrumentation. Implemented an end-to-end prototype of a feature that may be included in Windows 8 or Windows 9. Asked to return next summer.
Development of the desktop search for Windows 8.
Intern for the Devices and Networking Experience group on the Connect and Manage team. Developed a feature for the Windows 8 out-of-box experience and provided design input for later stage implementation.
App development framework for Windows 8 (Latest)
Developing automation and Tests for Webservice and SQL backend components for new Windows 8 features
I work at the Modern User Authenticator team for Windows 8 at Microsoft. My work is focused at strong authentication including: smart cards, cryptographic providers, key storage providers and credential providers.
Part of Windows 8, Hyper-V Team.
Working on various system diagnostic tools that include Taskmanager for Windows 8
Design and implement Windows 8 IME touch experience.
Program Management lead conducting security reviews, threat models, code reviews, and penetration testing for Windows 8 features dealing with: Authentication Authorization Cryptographic usage, key management, and PKI Driving planning and specifications for telemetry enhancements for Windows 8. Driving planning and specifications for self-host reporting for Windows 8. Driving planning and specifications for ecosystem security reporting and analysis for Windows 8.
Drive the verification of H264 and MPEG2 video encoders on Windows 8 platform, including but not limited to implementing Bitstream analyzers and quality-performance measurement tools.
* Windows 8 Remote Desktop transport improvements for WAN scenarios - Own feature for bandwidth and latency optimization under varying network conditions - Design protocol and interface changes with requirement to maintain backwards compatibility - Requirement to scale to hundreds of simultaneously connected sessions while maintaining performance standards - Work closely with three other engineers - Design, document, and unit test, working in conjunction with program manager and test team - Lead security/design reviews, status meetings, and team sync-ups - Review the design, code, and security of other features - Triage, investigate, and fix incoming bugs in my feature and related feature areas
Security tester doing design revews and penetration testing for UX features in Windows 8.
Developer in IIS core team in Windows 8 helping on performance and many core.
Group: Microsoft PlayReady • Technical project lead for PlayReady integration into Silverlight 4.0, Silverlight 5.0 and Windows 8
PM for Windows Logo Kit technologies for Win 8. PM for Win 8 Sensors and Location advancements for the client platform.
Windows User Experience SDE (Nov 2009 - Today): Investigating, evaluating and proposing new features and prototypes (using C# and C++) for the Windows User Experience team as part of the Windows 8 planning phase. Currently I am in charge of the full design and develop (using Direct UI and C++) of a new Windows 8 control panel tool. Windows International SDE (Jun 2008 – Nov 2009): Use of C++ to fix bugs and refactoring of the Windows 7 font management system library (fms.dll) used on the fonts control panel and on the system font chooser. Use of C# to build a prototype to provide access to fms library from C# code. Use of C++ to build a Windows 8 prototype for fms that saved 50% ram memory and improved the performance on 20%
Manual/ automated; Video Driver Compatibility Testing and reporting in WTT for WinSE and Win8
I now work on Windows Server 8 Hyper-V and Virtualization Group.
Development Lead for backup solution for Windows server 8.
Currently working on several exciting, classified Windows 8 Touch functionality, collaborating extensively with the Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office suite, and Windows 7 Phone Mobile team. We are providing the official Windows 8 solution, which our partner teams will adopt. Shipped Windows 7 Multitouch Logo program to be consumed by Multitouch digitizer manufacturers. Among the major consumers were Dell, HP, Wacom, and IBM. The qualification program consisted of over 50 multitouch tests to be successfully completed in order to qualify a device as a Windows 7 Logo approved device. Architected and implemented a Touch injection tool to simulate Multitouch input. Worked on Windows 8 Speech Recognition, and have shipped Windows 7 Speech Recognition.
Driving client and server security and platform attestation based on the Trusted Platform Module for Windows 8 in the Platform Integrity Organization of the Microsoft Core OS Business Unit, Redmond, USA. - Extensive research with the TPM 1.2 and strong ties to TPM manufacturers, OEMs and the TCG - Significant contributions to the TPM v.next specification in the TCG - Architected, designed and wrote extended the TPM support in Windows 8 - Contributed to DRTM launched hypervisor prototype - Close relations to Intel's UEFI group around authenticated boot - Several cross group and organizational incubation projects that allow other features and products to leverage strong platform crypto and attestation - Filed 8 patents around TPM Data Protection, Secure Hyper Visor Launch and Platform Attestation - Several Windows 8 platform crypto and integrity features that cannot be disclosed at this time Result: Windows 8 will change the game in terms of platform security and platform trust.
How about THAT final sentence above? If employees are genuinely as excited as it seems they are, as a total Windows fan, I can't help but wonder what's in store for us and what we'll see by the time it reaches RTM status!
Managing the Windows 8 device compatibility project. Goal: Make sure devices that worked with Vista and Windows 7 also work with Windows 8.
Improve device ecosystem by analyzing disparate user and market data (NPD, RAC, OCA, etc.) to develop device test lists for Windows 7 and Windows 8.
EFI developer for Windows 8 on ARM.
For more about EFI, click here. Private LinkedIn Profile
Running IOstress on Windows 8 for FSF, FSM, and DFS builds. Converted the old IOstress automation to use WTT.
Lead the company to a new product generation of virtual computer personality with the release of Adaptive Persona v1 in Sept 2008. Virtualized personality or user state has been designated a key technology feature of Windows 8 by Microsoft.
Leading a team of program managers to develop and deliver innovative user experiences for printers, cameras, and entertainment devices for windows.next.
Currently at Microsoft Corporation, in the Windows.next engineering organization, responsible for engaging with large Windows OEM partners to facilitate and create amazing Windows.next hardware+software+services experiences. In a highly visible position, Steve manages the HP partnership for the Windows.next organization. This partnership spans the planning phase, software/hardware development phase, and ecosystem readiness phase. The primary objective of this role is to represent the voice of Windows to the various businesses of HP, the voice of HP within the various organizations of Microsoft, and supply leadership and partnership to successfully ship stunning examples of new HP+Windows.next product. This is a senior, self-directed and "do what it takes" type of role that involves operating at both the high-level stragegic and low-level technical extremes. Scope of initiatives include: • Multi-phase ecosystem engagement planning • Optimizing Windows.next and HP product roadmaps • Massively cross-group/organizational and/or matrixed organization communications and initiatives • Windows and HP executive communications • Stragegic business and technical engagement • Tactical business and technical engagement • Envisioning, facilitating and delivering to market stunning examples of HP+Windows.next hardware+software+services experiences.
Microsoft Partner Site White Paper
FUTURE OUTLOOK IDC believes that Windows 7 will become the Windows XP of the next decade. Regardless of how feature rich the so-called "Windows Next" product might be (expected by IDC to possibly arrive as soon as 2012), once momentum ramps up for Windows 7, it will be unstoppable and will propagate through the billion-plus installed base of Windows PCs.
You can read more about the IDC (International Data Corporation) here. Microsoft Research Document
In Windows 7, the Windows Experience group (WEX) centralized security testing in a lab with hundreds of machines. For Windows 8, all Windows fuzz testing will take place in a central fuzzing lab. This model shields the rest of the Windows organization from the details of fuzzing and enables compliance with the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle without needing dedicated security professionals in every Windows team.
Energy-Aware VMs and Cloud Computing Virtual machines (VMs) become key platform components for data centers and Microsoft products such as Win8, System Center, and Azure.
So while I was here, in the three months we completely improved the scalability of STORM by maybe an order of magnitude. We also check in addition to the completion property we check spinlock properties as well. Because of all that, we managed to push more way more drivers through STORM. So we have more examples in WinDDK plus a number of drivers from Win8 enlistment.
Identity is a key pillar of Windows Next and is strategic to the future of all software at Microsoft.
We'll be working closely with the biggest bets in the company including Windows Next and Windows Azure to deliver compelling debugging experiences for each, as well as advancing the state of the art in debugging.
The next version of Windows Server Our design and research work for the next version of Windows Server has really been about the fundamentals. We think we have identified the core needs of IT management and ways to address those needs. While I cannot talk about the specifics of the solution proposals, the process page may provide some insight to the kind of activities we have gone through to get a solid design direction.
Microsoft Windows Server 8 | Server Manager + The Management Administration eXperience (MAX) team is tasked with creating an application to accompany it's latest version of the Windows Server product. I was added to the team to help with designing the basic UI for this new application based on stakeholder feedback from the teams user research. Problem: Based on the brand pillars and application goals pick a UI type and patterns to create a fresh new application. Be flexible in the design so that when Windows 8 is released that those styles can be applied to this new UI without having seen them before. Action: As a part of the UI/UX team I helped in the process of picking the current UI to be released. I added elements to the UI to support the different features and scenarios based on the best possible UX experience for our users within our v1 product restraints. Result: I was able to contribute in the creation of a brand new desktop/server application that should be used by IT professionals along side of Microsoft's System Center product line.
Office 15
Internship in a Microsoft Office team. During my internship I developed a graphic effect for Microsoft Visio that may be released for Office 15.
Working on OneNote @ Office 15 Planning, coordinating and executing manual and scripted tests Driving world readiness testing
Access 15 Developer Kitchen: Call for Participation We are holding the Access sessions of the Office 15 Developer Kitchen on March 28-31 and are looking for Access developers to share their early experiences with us. * Opportunity for you to get an advance preview of the Access and Office 15 story * Chance to spend face time with the product team and build hands-on solutions * Identify any major gaps prior to release * Provide input for Office 15 and Office 16
To note, Mary-Jo Foley previously covered the information above in more detail in her Office 16 post back in January. Microsoft Job Post
One of our key focus areas for the Office 15 is enabling great mobile to cloud scenarios that allow people to transition seamlessly from desktop, laptop, and mobile devices as well as with a wide range of cloud services.
We are the Office Mobile Shared Services Team (OMSS). We are bringing ready-to-use Information worker solutions (that include the Office suite of apps) across billions of mobile devices as part of the Office 15 Wave. We are a team that drives the charter and thinking around mobility across MBD (the division that builds Microsoft Office), to enable mobile-aware Office applications on several leading-edge mobile platforms. The software will enhance the productivity and satisfaction of mobile information workers and support a myriad of local device services (audio, video, GPS, crypto, sync, and more) as well as a rich set of cloud-based services.
We are just putting the last touches on Office Mobile 2010 on Windows Phone 7 which will be a very competitive device and a breakthrough for Microsoft in the Mobile Market. With Office 15 and Windows Phone 8 planning phase just getting under way, now is also the perfect time to join us and help shape the future of Office Mobile 15 on Windows Phone 8 as we plan to create the next wave of innovation that will lead our product to even greater heights. Very exciting…
We get mentions of not only Office 15, but Office Mobile 15 and Windows Phone 8 from this job listing! "Very exciting," indeed... Microsoft Job Post
Outlook is currently in the process of planning for Office 15. Right now is an excellent time to join and have an impact on what Outlook does for the next release.
The SharePoint Developer team is chartered to grow SharePoint customer and partner developer ecosystem as it transitions to the cloud in Office 15 release.
In this position, you will be a part of the product development team to define the feature and scope of these products and work cross-company to integrate the mobile experience with desktop, server and services for Office 15 wave.
And for much more information about Office 15, be sure to take a look at the following Office 15 blog post which contains the most known information to date on the product. Lastly, if you're interested in seeing the first images of Office 15 in the wild, be sure to check out this post. As for additional Windows 8 information, you can start by viewing the telling Windows 8 documentation leaked from HP in mid-2010. Likewise, you can view even more of the types of resumes and job ads scattered throughout this post here, here, and here. Lastly, you can keep up with ZDNet's coverage of Windows 8 blow-by-blow by referencing this Google query.
As you can see, Microsoft employees just love to keep their resumes up-to-date equally as much as Microsoft enjoys erring on the side of descriptiveness rather than non-disclosure where external job postings are concerned. When brought to light by the right search queries and methods of investigation, those two factors allow us to glean sometimes telling insight into the feature sets and progress of unreleased -- and sometimes undisclosed -- products.
With that said, what are some of your favorite features you've seen listed as coming down the pike for Windows 8 and/or Office 15 per this list? Do you think the gamble Microsoft is taking on Windows 8 will pay off or do you think it will flop? Please weigh in with your opinions, questions, feedback, and/or concerns in the comments section below!


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Introducing Test Studio to build end-to-end tests and maintain your app quality
I'm excited to announce a new tool, which is currently rolling out, to allow makers create and run tests for their applications. As more and more apps are used in critical business processes, we need a way to ensure that changes to those apps do not make the app stop working, and we can do that with tests. Test Studio provides a way to add and manage test cases, organize them into test suites, and run them to validate that changes in the apps did not break the expected functionality described in the tests. Tests can also be run outside of the test studio in a web browser which allows you to build the automated tests into your app deployment processes.
But what is a test case? It's simply a list of steps, which are expressions that can simulate interaction with the app and validate that the app is in an expected state after those interactions. Those expressions use the same functions that can be used in apps, with the addition of new functions that were added for testing purposes. For example, in your test you can fetch a record from a data source to validate whether the interaction with the app had the expected result. When a test finishes you also have the option to persist the test results, such as whether the test passed or failed, how long the test took and any additional information generated by the test, to a data table, SharePoint or via a flow for example.
To help with creating the test steps or expressions that are needed to interact with the app, you can open an existing app in "recording mode". As you interact with the app the test studio will generate the expressions that are used to perform that action. This gives you a great way to start creating tests and get acquainted with the syntax for the new test functions.
This first version is focused on Canvas app tests and it currently supports the most popular controls used in apps. But this is just an initial step. We'll be adding support for more controls soon, as well as new features to help you schedule your automated tests into your processes. This feature is still experimental, so we recommend you use it to write tests for non-production apps and provide us any feedback.
Testing your app
So, let's dive into testing in Power Apps. But before we can test something, we need an app. For this post, I'll work with one created from the "Start from your data" wizard, based on a SharePoint list.
Opening Test Studio
At this point, we can only add tests to apps that have been saved to Power Apps, so since this iteration of the app is ready, let's save it. You will also need to enable the Formula-level-Error management feature for the app as some test errors require this feature to work properly.
And now it's time for some testing. Just like the Monitor tool, you can find the entry point to the Test Studio in the new Advanced tools tray:
If you select the Open tests option, it will open a new browser tab with the Test Studio, connected to the existing authoring session:
Creating a new test case
Let's start creating a test right away. The easiest way to do this is to click the 'Record' button on the menu and to start interacting with the app. You will see your actions being recorded in the left pane. Select 'Done' when you have finished recording.
Editing your test case
Once you click 'Done', you'll see that the expressions used to recreate the actions you took in your the app are added as steps for the selected test case. We can now edit the existing steps, including updating the expressions, adding / deleting steps, and reordering them. Let's update the third step (where we set the title of the new entry) to
SetProperty('DataCardValue4'.Text, "Test entry")
Let's also add a new step at the end of the test to validate that a new entry was created in the SharePoint list. We can use a new test expression called an Assert to test this. Add the new test step with the following description:
Validate that there is one test entry
and with the expression below. This will assert that we can find the entry with the given title in the data source:
Assert(!IsBlank(LookUp(TodoList, Title = "Test entry")), "The entry should have been inserted")
The test steps should now resemble the image below:
Running the test case
Now click 'Publish' on the ribbon of the Test Studio. For now, we can only run tests once the app has been published. The tests are part of the app and we need to publish the app for the steps to be available for the "test runner". Once the app is published, you can now click the 'Play' button, and you'll see the test being executed.
Detecting problems in the app
Now that we have a test case, let's see how it can detect problems in the app. Going back to the original tab where the app is being edited, preview the app then delete the entry that we added (with the title 'Test entry'). Update the OnSelect property of the IconNewItem1 in the first screen to comment out the navigation to the edit screen:
NewForm(EditForm1); // Navigate(EditScreen1, ScreenTransition.None)
Save and publish the app. You may need to wait about a minute or so before the publishing is done in the back end. Go back to the tab with the Test Studio, select the test case again, and click Play one more time:
As we can see, the test failed when it tried to interact with the text input control that holds the title of the new item. If someone had inadvertently introduced that "bug" in the app, running the test would have caught it right away. We can then fix the app to avoid giving the users a bad experience.
Running the tests outside the Test Studio
If you select the ellipsis for a test case or test suite in the tree view, or select the 'Copy play link' in the top-right corner of the screen, you can copy a URL that can be pasted in a browser window. This will open the app in the browser and run that selected test or test suite. This allows for several scenarios, such as having different people executing the test (and, as the test runs with their own credentials, catch issues that the app maker may not be able to), or even provide a "walk-through" of the app by simulating the interaction of the app controls. It can also be used to schedule or automate the running of your tests from a release pipeline or using Power Automate UI flows.
Storing test results
When the test is run outside the Test Studio, you don't get to see the green/red marks indicating whether the test passed or failed. To access the test outcome, you can use one of the behaviors that you can see from the test settings:
The formula that you enter for the OnTestCaseComplete action will be executed whenever a test is finished (successfully or not) in the app. In the formula you can, for example, store the result of the test into a data source, or start a flow that you have in your app with it.
Within the OnTestCaseComplete expression you have access to a new variable, scoped to that rule only, called 'TestCaseResult', which is an object with the following properties:
- StartTime: the moment the test started
- EndTime: the moment the test finished
- TestCaseId: the identifier for the test case; this is a value that uniquely identifies the case, so even if you have multiple cases with the same name, they can still be reason separately
- TestCaseName: the name that you can set for the test case in the Test Studio
- TestCaseDescription: the description for the test case in the Test Studio
- TestSuiteId: the identifier for the test suite that contains the test case
- TestSuiteName: the name that you can set for the test suite in the Test Studio
- TestSuiteDescription: the description for the test suite in the Test Studio
- Success: a value that tells you whether the test passed (true) or failed (false)
- TestFailureMessage: if the test failed, a message that indicates which step failed and why
- Traces: a table of values with additional information about the test (all calls to Assert and Trace generate entries in this table)
If we have a data source with corresponding properties, we could have this expression in the OnTestCaseComplete to save the results for the test:
StartTime: TestCaseResult.StartTime,
EndTime: TestCaseResult.EndTime,
Result: If(TestCaseResult.Success, "PASS", "FAIL"),
SuiteId: TestCaseResult.TestSuiteId,
SuiteName: TestCaseResult.TestSuiteName,
SuiteDesc: TestCaseResult.TestSuiteDescription,
TestId: TestCaseResult.TestCaseId,
TestName: TestCaseResult.TestCaseName,
TestDesc: TestCaseResult.TestCaseDescription,
FailReason: TestCaseResult.TestFailureMessage
Or if you want to send the entire object to be analyzed by a flow, you can use the JSON function to wrap the object and send to the flow:
Organizing test cases in suites
One test case represents one certain scenario where the user is interacting with the app. An app may have many tests, and to better manage them it may make sense to group the test cases into related areas. Those are called test suites, a grouping of test cases that "belong together". Just like you can play a single test case (either directly in the Test Studio or in a separate browser tab/window after copying the play link), you can play an entire test suite which is equivalent to playing all test cases of that suite in order. Once the first case of the suite is done (and the logic defined on the OnTestCaseComplete action is executed), the second test case is executed (and again the OnTestCaseComplete logic once it's finished), then the third, and so on.
It's important to reinforce the behavior explained in the previous paragraph. The first test in a suite will always start as if the app had been just opened. Once that test finishes, the next test will start from that point in the app. One advantage to this mode is that you can use it to break down a large test case into multiple ones within a single suite. However, if a test case expects the app to be in its initial state when it starts, it may fail if the previous test in its suite modified it. For example, leaving the app in a screen other than the first one. In many cases you can use the OnTestCaseComplete action to reset the app state if that's what your suite needs.
Like when a test case finishes, when you're running an entire suite, Power Apps will execute the formula defined in the OnTestCaseComplete behavior of the test object. That behavior has access to a new variable, called 'TestSuiteResult', which is an object with the following properties:
- StartTime: the moment the test suite started
- EndTime: the moment the test suite finished
- TestSuiteId: the identifier for the test suite
- TestSuiteName: the name that you can set for the test suite in the Test Studio
- TestSuiteDescription: the description for the test suite in the Test Studio
- TestsPassed: the number of tests that run successfully in the suite
- TestsFailed: the number of tests that had failures in the suite
Going deeper
Now that we've taken a quick tour through the Test Studio, let's dive a little deeper into some of the new test functions that can be used within test cases. Here's a summary of them (for more details, go to the function reference)
- SetProperty: used to simulate interaction with most of the input controls.
- Assert: used to verify that a certain condition is true in the test and cause the test to fail if not. The first parameter to the function can be any logical (true/false) expression that you can write with the Power Apps language, and it can also take an optional second parameter that describes what the assertion is about.
- Trace: used to add additional information to the TestCaseResult record that can be accessed in an expression within the OnTestCaseComplete behavior. Trace is a table with a row for each of the Assert and Trace functions that were called within the test. The records of the rows have two properties: Timestamp (date/time value) and Message (text value).
- Select: this function has been in the product for a while, but it could only be used to simulate the select action of a control within the same screen. In test cases this restriction has been lifted, so a step in a test case (which doesn't belong to any screen) can use this function to simulate the selection of a control on any screen – although during the test execution if the control is not in the current screen the action will fail, as a user could not do that in the app. The function has also been enhanced so that we can also select controls inside galleries, with additional (optional) arguments to that function to determine the row of the gallery to be selected, and the control inside the gallery. Currently only 1 level of nesting is supported, galleries inside of other galleries are not for this new functionality.
Test runner details
If you took a look at the URL generated by the 'Copy play link' option in the Test Studio that we mentioned before, you'll see that it's very similar to the URL that you get when you play the app from the Power Apps Maker Portal (make.powerapps.com). It has an extra query string parameter that triggers the test runner logic. It means that the test cases are great at testing the app exactly because they're running with the same app that is used by users. You can, for example, add additional query string parameters to that URL and access them via the Param function.
This also has another very important point to be aware of . Since the tests run as if a user was interacting with the app, it can also create / update / delete records from your data sources, so be careful in your tests not to take actions that could, for example, remove records that it shouldn't from your data source. One option is to have a specific column in your data source that flags items as test-only, a prefix in the name / title of the records, or something that can be used to identify test objects which can be ignored when the app is being used by "regular" users.
We want to hear from you
I already mentioned it before but it's worth saying it again, but this is the first version of this feature and we want to let you start exploring and using it now. We'd love to hear your feedback, so we can prioritize the next set of improvements, any features that are missing, or any of the current behaviors that may not be ideal.
What kinds of tests are you writing? Is there anything that is too hard to understand, and that we could make easier? There is a 'Provide feedback' link in the Test Studio which leads to our community forum for sharing your ideas. We really want to hear your feedback!
There is some work that we already know that we need to complete which we have already started such as:
- Full control coverage for recording and playback capabilities. This includes both native and those based on the Power Apps Component Framework (PCF), and controls within components
- Better support for automation, such as running tests in Azure DevOps on a daily / scheduled cadence. Stay tuned as we'll have further posts on options to schedule and automatically run your tests soon.
Let us know what you think as you start building tests for your apps!


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The Fleetline was introduced in 1941 as a 4-door sedan. The years 1949 through 1952 models, the fasback was the only model offered, and dropped the fleetline for 1953. This version is based on the 2 door aerosedan introduced in 1942.
This version includes innovative snow caps for rendering in snow scenes, complete geometry underneath.
Poser / D|S version includes completed geometry, dial driven doors, windows, hood, trunk, wheels and removable snow.
Fedoraville Vehicles Volume 1 features 8 movable objects you would find along the great highways of America in the 1950's. Populate Fedoraville(tm), a home town that never was in 50's America, an original Meshbox Design series.
individual elements, car, snow pieces
Register your model order and get the .3DS version of this model. If you purchase on Mirye Store, you are automatically registered
The contents of this model set are based on the software package it is used with. Please check to see that you have selected the right version for you
This set is designed for professional designers and game developers that require additional rights, such as real time playback in games, simulations and more.
This set is compatible with Blender 2.7.1 and higher.
This set is compatible with Poser 6 or higher and DAZ Studio 4.0 and higher.
version has an organized runtime, with character based models (c) and separate OBJ versions of model.
This set is compatible with Shade 9 or higher.
This set is compatible with Vue 6 or higher.
This set is compatible with Bryce 5.5 and higher.


text:
Online education inspires eager students in Latin America
| ARMENIA, El Salvador
Roosemberth Palacios sports braces on his teeth and a curly mop of hair. At 16, he finds high school boring. So after school, he logs onto his computer and hunts for challenges.
He's found them in difficult online courses offered by professors at Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He says he's aced a course called "Machine Learning" by hotshot Stanford professor Andrew Ng, scoring a perfect 100. And he took a sophomore-level course by MIT professor Anant Agarwal called "Circuits and Electronics," tallying 91 percent.
To patch up some weakness he saw in his own math skills, he took a course, "Numerical Analysis," offered online by the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland. The class was in French.
The world of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, is roiling academia at universities in the United States, where they are labeled either the future or the downfall of higher education.
A few superstar professors pull in upward of 10,000 students around the globe into free, or nearly free, courses. But others perceive the courses as a dangerous fad that will shrink faculties, turn existing professors into glorified teaching assistants and replace meaningful classroom discussion with message boards and student-led forums.
Lost in the debate about online learning, however, is its impact in far-flung regions of the globe, places like the electrical engineering department at the University of El Salvador and the modest walk-up apartment of the Palacios family, above the medical clinic of Dr. Roberto Palacios Navarro, Roosemberth's father.
"At school, he hardly studies. He just shows up and takes the exams," Dr. Palacios said of his son. But it isn't for lack of ambition. "He wants to learn," he said.
Added the son: "I don't like simple things."
That is evident within minutes of arriving at the open-air, tile-floor home, where the teenager shows off a workbench where he solders circuit boards and flips through the pages of his own proposal to build an unmanned helicopter.
Because of his knack for acing tests, Roosemberth was selected more than a year ago to take part in a gifted students program at the University of El Salvador, in the capital, San Salvador, some 20 miles to the east of this town. It was at that program where he heard a talk by Carlos Martinez, an electrical engineering professor and strong advocate for online courses. The teenager signed up for the "Circuits and Electronics" course.
He had to go to an Internet cafe a block from his home to hear the lectures by Agarwal, who is president of edX, a nonprofit consortium set up in 2012 by MIT and Harvard that has offered 72 courses online.
"Sometimes I had to stay up very late. I'd tell myself, 'It's worth losing a little sleep over,'" the adolescent said.
But he was excited by the courses.
"They've been really worthwhile because I'm learning things I don't learn in school and that I don't think they even teach in the university here," he said. "For instance, we don't learn artificial intelligence here. We don't have labs for it."
US academics who offer online courses say the ability to reach undiscovered bright students in the developing world is one of the benefits of online learning.
"Nobody would disagree that, by and large, intelligence and ability are distributed equally around the globe," said Armando Fox, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of a lab there studying online courses. "It's in everyone's best interest to find and cultivate that talent."
Mr. Fox said online courses also have the effect of "raising the bar" for university professors, many of whom have ambivalent reactions to online courses.
"You look at another person's lecture and you think, 'Wow! That person has a really great technique or ideas. Can I emulate that?'" Fox said. "The other way is to say, 'Uh oh, I'm in trouble because the other teacher is making me look bad.'"
That tension exists at the University of El Salvador, this nation's largest public university, although with an ideological overlay. Some see the online courses, which are offered mainly by edX and two for-profit entities, Coursera and Udacity, as an encroachment on regional academic autonomy.
"There are those who see this as a 'Yankee invasion,'" said Martinez, the crusader for online courses at the electrical engineering department.
Since early 2012, Martinez has convinced scores of students and a handful of faculty to take online courses. He said the professors have been impressed by some of the teaching techniques in the MIT "Circuits and Electronics" course.
"It comes at you faster. They tell you in 50 minutes while our own courses last 100 minutes," Martinez said.
Online courses increasingly are offered in different languages, including Spanish, French, and Chinese. Technology helps ease the burden for Spanish speakers of understanding lectures in English. Most lectures have subtitles. A Google translating tool for simultaneous translation can also be used.
Already, the impact of online courses is rippling across Latin America.
"Approximately 10 percent of the 1.3 million people on the edX platform come from Latin American countries," Dan O'Connell, a spokesman for edX, wrote in an email from Cambridge, Mass., the consortium's headquarters. They come not only from populous countries like Brazil and Mexico, but also places such as Haiti, Belize, and Uruguay, he added.
In El Salvador, students with better English skills chip in to post questions to a global student forum for each course, seeking clarification of material they have not understood well.
"It helped that we had previous knowledge of the subject. So if a word was badly translated, you still get the gist," said Josue Arana, a 25-year-old senior electrical engineering major.
"These students got into these courses enthusiastically," said Jorge Zetino Chicas, an engineering professor and photovoltaic systems expert. Part of the reason is that teaching styles differ. "We teach from textbooks. They (MOOC professors) apply what they teach. This helps with understanding."
Mauricio Rodriguez, an engineering student, cracked a grin while telling of an MIT professor's experiment for an online "Electricity and Magnetism" course he took.
"The professor attached electrodes to a cucumber and you could see the cucumber burn," Rodriguez said. It was better than any textbook description of the principle under discussion, he added.
The university offers no credit for the online courses, but students covet the prestige of a certificate for a completed course from MIT or other renowned institutions.
Word of the online courses has spread to students outside of the sciences and engineering.
Nahiely Mendoza, 24, who graduated with a law degree in December, said she looked over the online listings and grew excited.
"I wanted to take 'Intellectual Property,' but I got in too late. So I signed up for 'Justice' by Professor Michael Sandel," Mendoza said, referring to a Harvard professor who's hugely popular course deals with justice, equality and democracy.
"I felt it was much harder than our university courses," Mendoza said. "I was used to classes that were more controlled by the professor." But the online course had study groups with people from all over the world. She was hooked and has just signed up for two more, one on globalization and another on 20th century ideas, both offered through edX from the University of Texas at Austin.
"I'm entertained by studying," Mendoza said.


text:
Follow us:
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Martha Stewart proclaimed her innocence in a letter to the public Thursday, and thanked the public for support she says she has received in her legal battles.
The day after a federal indictment and her resignation as chairman and CEO of the company that bears her name, domestic style trendsetter Stewart published a letter in an advertisement in USA Today and on a new Web site wwww.marthatalks.com. In it she vowed to clear her name of the charges of lying to investigators who were probing her December 2001 sale of ImClone Systems stock.
"I simply returned a call from my stockbroker," she said in the letter, which is addressed to "my friends and loyal supporters."
"Based in large part on prior discussions with my broker about price, I authorized a sale of my remaining shares in a biotech company called ImClone," the letter continued. "I later denied any wrongdoing in public statements and in voluntary interviews with prosecutors. The government's attempt to criminalize these actions makes no sense to me. I am confident I will be exonerated of these baseless charges, but a trial unfortunately won't take place for months."
The letter is described as a personal statement from Stewart, not issued by or on behalf of her company. The letter promised to continue to present her side of the case on the Web site, and said it would allow members of the public to contact her as well.
"I want to thank you for your extraordinary support during the past year -- I appreciate it more than you will ever know," she said.
Stewart resigned Wednesday as chairman and CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, the company she founded, just hours after authorities released a nine-count, 41-page indictment federal indictment against her and Peter Bacanovic, her former stockbroker, which accused them of obstructing justice and making false statements. Stewart, 61, will remain on the board and continue to serve as what the company called its "chief creative officer."
But the accusations sidestepped a question that has captivated the public for a year: Did insider information allow the former stockbroker and one-time New York Stock Exchange director to avoid losses in her ImClone Systems Inc. investment?
"This criminal case is about lying, lying to the FBI, lying to the SEC and lying to investors," James B. Comey, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, told a news conference. "This is conduct that will not be tolerated by anybody."
Stewart entered federal court in Manhattan and surrendered to federal authorities. At a nine-minute arraignment Wednesday afternoon, she and Bacanovic each pleaded not guilty to all nine counts, possibly paving the way for a trial that would draw tremendous publicity. They were released without bail.
The indictment comes a year after it was revealed that Stewart in late 2001 sold 3,928 ImClone shares a day before a regulatory setback sent the stock tumbling. Investigators had been trying to determine what Stewart, a friend of ImClone's then-CEO Samuel Waksal, knew ahead of a sale that netted the multi-millionaire about $229,000.
Wednesday's indictment focuses on Stewart's public statements and private dealings with investigators during the past year.
Specifically, she was charged with two counts of making false statements, while one false-statement charge was made against Bacanovic. Each faces one count of obstruction of justice, and Bacanovic was charged with perjury and making and using false documents.
The lone charge of securities fraud leveled against Stewart deals with making false statements regarding her own company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, that allegedly defrauded investors by artificially propping up the stock price.
Martha Stewart's lawyers seized on the absence of insider trading charges, the focus of so much speculation.
"The indictment reveals that the predicate for the entire investigation -- the accusation that Martha Stewart sold her ImClone shares based on inside information -- has proven to be false," her lawyers, Robert Morvillo and John Tigue, said in a statement.
That matter will be left to a civil suit filed Wednesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission in federal court in Manhattan. The suit accuses Stewart of getting an illegal tip from Bacanovic saying that Waksal, and Waksal's daughter, had placed orders to sell ImClone shares on the morning of Dec. 27, 2001.
Determining the truth about what happened between Stewart, her stockbroker and the ImClone shares may be difficult, according to one legal expert.
"The problem has always been who said what to whom and the lack of a paper record," said Jeffrey D. Bauman, a law professor at Georgetown University.
Stewart became one of the nation's wealthiest people by taking Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. public in October 1999, during the last gasp of the 1990s bull market. But the company whose identity is so tied to Stewart's became unprofitable this year and has lost millions in market value as customers defected and legal costs climbed.
In the CEO's job, Stewart will be replaced by Sharon Patrick, the company's president and chief operating officer. Jeffrey Ubben, whose investment firm ValueAct Capital Partners owns 22 percent of the company's class A stock, has been elected chairman.
"My decision reflects the enormous sense of responsibility I feel to our shareholders and to all those who have worked so hard to make Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia a success," Stewart said in a statement that announced her resignation.
The company also said that Arthur Martinez, a director and former chairman and CEO of Sears Roebuck, has been named "lead director" and will preside over all board meetings.
Ahead of Stewart's resignation, but after her indictment Wednesday, shares of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO: Research, Estimates) jumped 48 cents, or 5 percent, to $10. But the stock is still down 47 percent over the last year.
According to the terms set during Wednesday's arraignment, Stewart must give the court 72 hours notice if she intends to travel outside the country. Bacanovic was asked to turn in his passport.
A guilty conviction on all counts could mean a prison sentence of as much as 30 years for Stewart and 25 years for Bacanovic, the U.S. Attorney's office said.
On Dec. 28, 2001, a day after Stewart sold her shares, ImClone (IMCLE: up $2.85 to $37.17, Research, Estimates), a New York-based biotechnology company, said the Food and Drug Administration rejected its application for cancer drug Erbitux, sending ImClone shares tumbling.
Stewart had long maintained that she had an agreement with her broker to sell the shares when they fell below $60. But both the SEC's suit and the indictment dispute that contention, saying Stewart sold the shares after learning that Waksal, who left ImClone last year, was trying to unload his stock.
"By selling when she did, Stewart avoided losses of $45,673," according to the SEC.
That kind of profit motive is, of course, minimal for Stewart, who in 2000 and 2001 was named on Forbes magazine's list of the 400 wealthiest Americans.
In criticizing the charges against their client, Stewart's attorneys cited the government's record on corporate fraud.
Are the charges being filed "because the Department of Justice is attempting to divert the public's attention from its failure to charge the politically connected managers of Enron and WorldCom who may have fleeced the public out of billions of dollars?" the lawyers said in their statement.
They also asked if the government brought the case "because (Stewart) is a woman who has successfully competed in a man's business world by virtue of her talent, hard work and demanding standards?"
But in an informal Web site poll, a majority of more than 82,000 readers said the government was not being too hard on Stewart.
"The worst thing they could do is bring this case and lose it, so they must be very confident in their case," said Jeffrey Toobin, CNN's legal correspondent, who interviewed Stewart this year for the New Yorker magazine.
Bacanovic's lawyer, Richard M. Strassberg, said the charges "victimize an innocent man -- Mr. Bacanovic in order to further the government's more than year-long pursuit of Ms. Stewart in a case that is unprecedented in many ways, and appears to be in the criminal justice system solely because of Ms. Stewart's celebrity status."
Waksal is due to be sentenced this month on the securities fraud charges he pleaded guilty to last year. Recent optimism over ImClone's cancer treatment, Erbitux, has pushed ImClone stock up six-fold since October.


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Reneé Rapp to Lead New Comedy Series The Sex Lives of College Girls
Mean Girls queen bee Reneé Rapp has a sweet new gig. Rapp is set to star in the new HBO Max comedy series The Sex Lives Of College Girls, according to Deadline. Written and produced by Mindy Kaling, The Sex Lives of College Girls follows the lives of four roommates and students at the prestigious New England Essex College.
Rapp, who is known for playing Regina George in Mean Girls, will make her television debut as Leighton, a fourth-generation legacy student at Essex College. Hailing from one of the richest families on New York City's Upper East Side, Leighton is more reserved than her roommates, who think she's blunt, judgmental and entitled.
The series will also feature stage alum Alyah Chanelle Scott, who was recently seen as Nabulungi in The Book of Mormon national tour, as Whitney. Joining them are Pauline Chalamet as Kimberly and Amrit Kaur as Bela.
More details, including production timeline, to be announced at a later date.


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On this trip we stopped and I jumped the fence and took a few photos. I love the architecture, I find it utterly appealing. These may appear tenuous references but for me it reminds me of the supermarket scenes in Fantastic Mr Fox and also for the large scale works, particularly in supermarkets, of Andreas Gursky.
The contrast of the classic 70's bricks with the blue metal framed windows, the clock that stopped, everything about it is utterly bewitching. I love that it's there, but it's empty, suspended.


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PerfectTUNES R1.5
The main update is to AccurateRip which is more efficient (if there are AR Tags), and Album Art can search more art.
DeDup able to display large numbers of duplicates (previously would close)
DeDup more accurate at detecting duplicates
Album Art is able to search more art from internet
Album Art now has a maximum size (KB) option
Album Art: if have artist as Beetles, The then remove ', the' on manual Fix
mp3 will update id tag from v1 to v2 if embedding art
AccurateRip can now check incomplete albums (or non lossless) if previously ripped with dBpoweramp (and has AccurateRipResult tag)
AccurateRip better able to detect errors
AccurateRip indicates 'Track Not Present in AccurateRip' in technical log
Bug Fixes
Accuraterip - was removing (xxx) from album title which could blend 2 albums together.
m4a decoder crash


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John I. Alber is the full time technology partner for Bryan Cave LLP and also leads that firm's Client Technology Group. The Client Technology Group includes lawyers, business analysts, web developers, graphics and multimedia professionals, litigation support specialists and others. The group works with Bryan Cave lawyers and clients to develop innovative tools to help prevent or resolve legal problems. John joined Bryan Cave in 1981 after judicial clerkship. In 1988 he left the practice to become CEO of a transportation industry technology company. He rejoined the firm as technology partner in 1999.
Knowledge management projects undertaken based on good intentions alone can succeed only by accident. Success is far more likely if projects are undertaken with specific, measurable goals in mind. Predicting and then monitoring return on investment is a classic means of increasing the likelihood of success in IT projects. However, rather than using abstract ROI calculations that are too easily manipulated by project proponents, it is preferable to use measures that closely track a firm's business and the interests of clients. Leverage, effective rate and profit component are such measures. Knowledge management projects should not be undertaken until the business intelligence tools necessary to measure results are in place. It is preferable to undertake knowledge management projects incrementally, both to mitigate risk and to permit managing such projects (using business intelligence tools) toward a higher net benefit to the firm and to clients..
Allocating Scarce Resources for Knowledge Management
The legal literature, both in the United States and abroad, is rife with pronouncements on the value of knowledge management. This is typical:
Knowledge management is an increasingly important source of competitive advantage for organizations. Knowledge embedded in the organization's business processes and the employee's skills provides the firm with unique capabilities to deliver customers with a product or service. (Gottschalk 1999).
The legal marketplace has responded to such pronouncements with a wide variety of knowledge management products. Perhaps because of the perceived value of knowledge management, pricing for many of these products is quite high, and relatively unrelated to their development costs.1 For example, it is possible for a large law firm to spend a half million dollars acquiring a knowledge management suite and then spend hundreds of thousands of dollars more a year maintaining that products suite. And firms are spending such sums nowadays. Moreover, some large firms have also gotten very aggressive at developing their own knowledge management products, in some cases, systems costing millions of dollars. (see, e.g. Jones 2002, Parsons 2004).
Too often, such knowledge management projects are undertaken on good intentions alone. Firm management is gripped with a broad, amorphous sense that is essential to do something about knowledge management.2 The result is very often a decision to spend money—and very likely a great deal of money. These investments consume scarce funds that might otherwise be used for marketing, client development, building practices or other activities at the core of a law firm's business.3 Such investments can be justified only on the assumption that they will have a profoundly positive impact on the operation of a law firm. That assumption, however, needs to be quantified and then tested and the best means of doing so is to do some form of return on investment analysis.4
Here is a key question with respect to such analysis, however: do the firms making large investments in knowledge management have any idea what sorts of return on investment they are achieving with such projects? I think the answer, generally, is that they cannot have such information because they lack the tools to measure return on investment for knowledge management products. I believe that the very first step in any knowledge management initiative should be to acquire or create the tools necessary to measure the relative success of such an initiative. Such tools, if selected or constructed correctly, will do far more than merely measure the success or failure of a knowledge management tool suite. They can provide law firm owners with key information about their core business activities.
The ROI Spreadsheet Game
Information technologists are not babes in the woods. They know that savvy managers will demand a return on investment analysis before spending what may amount to millions of dollars on a knowledge management initiative—at least one would hope they would demand that. Professional information technologists have therefore developed a more than passing acquaintance with return on investment techniques. Given a little time and a spreadsheet or two, they can demonstrate a positive return on investment.
The problem with traditional ROI analysis is that it is very rarely predictive. It is most often used as part of the sales process designed to convince firm management that a large-scale project is necessary. And it is hardly ever subjected to a post-project analysis.
Getting funding for an IT project (and in most firms, KM projects fall in the IT domain) is, in the eyes of many IT professionals, a "competition" and ROI analyses are tools to use in that competition:
In the ongoing IT investment drought, technology managers are finding that a return on investment (ROI) analysis is no longer just a helpful tool to assess the viability of a technology investment, but a prerequisite for funding. If you want to win the competition for capital playing out in every firm, it's a necessity that you build your ROI model right. (Scheer 2002).
As you might expect, a very significant number of ROI analyses done to justify IT projects show a positive result:
ROI numbers often come from the guesswork IT managers use to justify projects to senior management. A recent study from Jupiter Media Metrix points out that e-business ROI studies are often conducted by in-house staff–workers who may not be sufficiently objective or adequately trained to conduct such analysis. The study found that 59 percent of in-house ROI studies generate a positive result and that only 17 percent of the surveyed companies hired outside firms to conduct or oversee their ROI studies. (Mello 2001).
There are many, many ways to calculate what some call "return on investment," but the classic approach is to determine the net benefits of a project in dollars and then divide that in some manner by the costs of the project. The result is expressed as a percentage. Even within this definition of ROI, there is quite a bit of latitude.
To get an idea of just how much variation is possible in ROI calculations, it will help to examine a scenario and calculate ROI several different ways:
ROI Calculation Scenario
Let's assume a firm is considering a new knowledge management package that will cost about $1,000,000 to set up. That might be typical of a full-scale, off-the-shelf system for a global firm. Once installed, it will cost about $250,000 a year to maintain but yield $750,000 in alleged annual benefits. The result is a net benefit of about $500,000 a year. Let's assume that benefits will be measured over a three year period.
You can calculate the expected return on such a project at least three different ways:
Cumulative ROI
Cumulative ROI = 150%
This is calculated as:
Total net benefits/ Initial costs = $1,500,000/ $1,000,000This formula adds the project's net benefits over three years and divides by the initial cost. This calculation, often called cumulative ROI (CROI), yields the highest number, making it rather popular. But CROI puts together several years of returns instead of breaking them out. Think of it as your local bank advertising a 3% return on passbook savings committed for three years, when they are really paying just 1% a year. This method also ignores the time-value of money.
Discounted ROI
Discounted ROI = 124%
This is calculated as:
Present value of net benefits/ Initial costs = $1,243,000/ $1,000,000To calculate Discounted ROI, one first chooses a discount factor—a number that reflects the cost of tying up a firm's cash—and then applies that discount factor to a stream of revenue (in this case, the three year net benefit stream). Typically, a discount factor approximates opportunity cost, or the return sacrificed by devoting funds to this project rather than to other investments (e.g., marketing). A discount factor of 10% applied to the $1,500,000 three year net benefits yields total benefits of roughly $1,243,000.
Average ROI
Average ROI = 50%
This is calculated as:
Average annual net benefit/ Initial costs = $500,000/ $1,000,000By averaging the yearly benefits, this ROI determination comes closest to the textbook definition of an accounting rate of return. It is also a conservative number. Like other types of ROI, however, it tells you little about the payback period—how long before the project recovers its start-up costs. In this case, the payback period is two years.
As you can see, changing the calculus can yield widely different results. That is troubling enough in itself. There is plenty of room to bamboozle a technology committee or a management group, just in the math alone. But there is a more fundamental problem with any ROI calculation: while the upfront costs are easy to determine, the net benefits are, essentially, an exercise in creating fiction. The more intangible the benefits involved, the more likely they are to be wrong:
ROI analysis works best for projects that are easy to measure and are likely to yield such tangible cost benefits as lower headcount, reduced transaction costs, or lower inventory levels. ROI is not an effective tool for evaluating e-business initiatives that produce intangible benefits such as customer satisfaction or improved communication. ROI favors cost-cutting initiatives over projects aimed at revenue growth. ROI analysis may do nothing for a company that is grappling with a change in the competitive landscape or overall business environment. For example, research and development projects may not make a strong ROI case, but companies that fail to innovate will eventually be outpaced by competitors or miss growth opportunities. (Mello 2001).
Where there are very tangible figures at hand, ROI calculations can provide some useful information. Say, for example, that a project is aimed at reducing costs associated with storing archived paper files. You can easily calculate the costs of paper, duplication, floor space, etc. that would be avoided by electronic storage of those files. You might have some faith in the benefits calculus in such a case.
It is quite another matter if the benefits case is projecting revenue increases. Though knowledge management projects have sometimes been sold as cost avoidance initiatives (e.g., if you catalog work product so that you can find it more easily, you should be able to create similar work product for less), knowledge management projects are inherently revenue centric. They may lead to a faster, better, cheaper way to do something, but bringing those reduced costs to the bottom line requires tinkering with the very fundamentals of the business—with hourly rate, timekeeping and other factors at the core of a firm's business model. Such endeavors are inherently speculative—intangible by definition. So what to do—should we abandon any pretense of determining ROI? Should we give up?
Measure What's Important to the Firm and Clients
I suggest that in setting goals for knowledge management projects, we should strive to relate initiatives as closely as possible to the firm's core business model and to clients' interests. We should not accept vague promises of revenue increases. Rather, we should use measures of success that immediately translate into benefits for the firm and clients. Fortunately, there are such measures.
The three measures that accomplish this best in my view are:
(1) Leverage
(2) Effective rate delivered to the client, and
(3) Profit component5Leverage
There are may ways to measure leverage. Perhaps the simplest entails creating a ratio of partner hours to non-partner hours. You can add many subtleties to this calculation, but the net result is still to determine the effectiveness with which work in a particular group is moved to younger or less experienced lawyers.
At first blush, high leverage sounds like a bad deal for clients. However, in a well-managed firm, quite the contrary should be the case. If associates and young partners are well-trained and provided with tools that make it possible for them to accomplish expert work to high standards of quality and to do so sooner than is the case at peer firms, clients benefit by having a larger pool of talent available to do their work. They also benefit by getting a lower effective rate for the work they have done (because of the lower cost of younger lawyers).
Effective Rate
Effective rate is an average of all hours billed to a client. To calculate it, simply divide total fees by total hours on an engagement or for work done by a particular group across engagements. If you agree to a blended rate when serving a client and you do a good job of managing the engagement, then the effective rate ought not to be higher than the agreed blended rate.
Profit Component
When an engagement is concluded (and probably before), it makes some positive or negative contribution to the profits of a firm. Allocate that on a partner basis, or a matter basis or a group basis, and you have a profit component. (See Laws 2003). This can be roughly equivalent to calculating earnings per product or per business unit in a publicly held corporation. Doing it successfully requires the ability to allocate costs very precisely. For example, if you want to look at the profit component for a group of lawyers using a new knowledge management tool, you will have to track costs across all the matters on which they use the tool and then arrive at a profit component for the group. That can be difficult, both technically and culturally (firms have to decide whether they want to know profit components by group).
If a knowledge management product is accomplishing something useful, it should have a positive impact on at least one of the measures above. An example may illustrate the case:
A group of lawyers within the firm specializes in doing work on behalf of regional banks in connection with loans made by those banks. The bulk of the work involves documenting loans. The agreements involved are complex and important to these clients. However, across all of the loan transactions handled by the group there is a good deal of repetition.
The group proposes to develop a knowledge management system jointly with a group of clients that would automate large parts of the documentation process. As transactions come together, the client would enter information into the system, answer questions posed by the system, and, occasionally, consult by phone on the particulars of the transaction.
The hope in using this new system is that far fewer partner hours will be required to complete the transactions. As a consequence, fees to the client can be held down. Indeed, it is hoped that a flat fee billing arrangement will become possible.
Clearly, a goal when designing such a system is to make possible the creation of high quality documents that meet the clients' needs, and to do so with less partner time involved. Should that happen, leverage and effective rate will surely be impacted to the benefit of the client. If the firm is successful in pricing this automated work correctly, then there should also be an increase in the profit component for the work.6
If that proves the case, then this firm will have achieved an optimal result from a knowledge management initiative: the clients will have benefited from lower rates and from a broader pool of talent to apply to their work. Likewise, the firm will have benefited by achieving revenue with a lower cost basis than was previously the case. The more such work the firm can do the more profitable it will become. However, in contrast with the situation very often occurring with work billed by the hour, the firm's increased profits are not in conflict with the interests of clients – they are simply the result of better management. Hourly billing pits the firm's interest in increasing hours against the client's interest in containing hours. This model avoids all that and in the process rewards both sides of the transaction.
The Primacy of Business Intelligence
It is possible to imagine knowledge management projects like the one described above going very well. But it is also possible to imagine them going very badly wrong. In fact, it seems likely that some significant number of knowledge management projects will go wrong from time to time. That is the nature of the beast. Innovation involves risk of failure.
The question is, when such projects go wrong, how do you know that? Project sponsors have a significant incentive to paint a rosy picture, and they may well be the only ones in command of the facts necessary to determine the success or failure of an initiative. Without a light to shine on such projects, you'll likely be in the dark.
Hence, before any major knowledge management initiatives are undertaken, a firm must first develop the means to obtain critical business intelligence. Put another way, business intelligence tools must be the first knowledge management initiatives undertaken. And such business intelligence tools must give firms the ability to assess the relative success of other initiatives, including knowledge management initiatives. A starting point would be the ability to measure leverage, effective rate and profit component.
My own firm created a business intelligence suite that permits every partner to obtain very detailed information about the clients and matters for which that partner is managing work. Because a vast and well-thought-out data warehouse underlies that suite, it is also possible to analyze leverage, effective rate and profit component for knowledge management projects.
However, it is no longer necessary to create business intelligence tools from scratch. Several firms are now providing data warehouse-based analytic tools that, with some modification, can be used to analyze KM efforts. See for example the tools created by Redwood Analytics and The Satori Group.
Creating, or even buying, business intelligence tools is not a matter for the faint of heart. It requires deep consideration of a firm's business processes, its cultural values and its goals. And it takes time…a lot of time. Nonetheless, if a firm is to assess the impact of its innovation, such work is indispensable.
Minimizing Risk
Purchasing an off-the-shelf knowledge management package may lead firms into attempting to adopt wholesale, firmwide knowledge management initiatives. Such an approach is hardly a formula for success. It is far preferable to initiate knowledge management projects on a small-scale, one group at a time.7 Business intelligence tools can then be used to monitor the groups closely as the initiative progresses. Where results are not as expected, then steps can be taken to redefine processes, substitute different people or otherwise adjust the project to optimize results.
This iterative approach also permits much more granular risk management. Very broad initiatives can get completely derailed by small and very predictable failures that occur early in the process. Breaking a firm's knowledge management efforts up into smaller pieces not only contains the effects of failure, but it makes successes more easily repeatable. Knowledge management efforts conducted by this method are best viewed as "experiments." As in any experimental environment, some will succeed and some will fail. The key is to be able to determine which is which and have enough intelligence (both data and insight) to be able to duplicate successes and avoid failures going forward.
Gottschalk, P (2002), "Law Firm Clients as Drivers of Law Firm Change", The Journal of Information, Law and Technology (JILT) 2002 http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/02-1/gottschalk.html.
Gottschalk P, "Use of IT for Knowledge Management in Law Firms", 1999, The Journal of Information, Law and Technology (JILT), http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/99-3/gottschalk.html.
Jones, A, "Brobeck Rolls Out Legal Knowledge Management System," Law.com, April 8, 2002, http://www.law.com/jsp/statearchive.jsp?type=Article&oldid=ZZZNO7UMLZC.
Kay, S. "Cost, Value and ROI for Knowledge Management in Law Firms," LLRX.com, August 31, 2003, //www.llrx.com/features/kmcost.htm.
Laws, T, "Profit Components," reprinted from Legal Times, June 30, 2003, http://www.hildebrandt.com/Documents.aspx?Doc_ID=1260.
Martin, K, "Show Me the Money – Measuring the Return on Knowledge Management," LLRX.com, October 15, 2002, //www.llrx.com/features/kmroi.htm.
Mello, A, "Why ROI Can Sometimes Lie," ZDNet TechUpdate October 3, 2001, http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2816181,00.html.
Parsons, M, "Knowledge Management: Measuring Success," LegalIT, January 4, 2004, http://www.legalit.net/ViewItem.asp?id=15487.
Scheer, B, "How to Build the ROI Case for IT Projects," Internet Week, March 26 2002 http://www.internetwk.com/columns01/bscheer032602.htm.
1 Pricing is also a function of who is entering the KM arena. Many of the vendors are old line legal vendors, who have developed cash cows over the years. One suspects their consequent dependencies on cash flow distort their value calculations with new products. The marketplace seems ready for an audacious startup that can more closely match price with value. <back to text>
2 See Kay 2003 for a defense of the intrinsic value of KM. Kay views the ROI case as a necessity to satisfy firm management. <back to text>
3 This is not to suggest that knowledge management is not also at the core of a law firm's business. Rather, the point is that allocation of capital involves choice based on a prioritization of needs. <back to text>
4 This is far from an accepted proposition among knowledge management professionals. See Kay 2003. <back to text>
5 See Martin 2002 for a more thorough look at such measures. <back to text>
6 Our own experience at my firm is that business intelligence tools not only help monitor the projects, but they also make it easier to raise ROI by giving partners tools to analyze pricing and staffing decisions. For example, in a real estate lending undertaking very similar to the scenario described above, the partner in charge used BIS tools to closely analyze staffing ratios and pricing, with very positive results. <back to text>
7 Vendors may not always make an incremental approach easy. Their preferred pricing models are often based on firmwide enterprise licenses, which can make projects undertaken on behalf of small groups disproportionately expensive. <back to text>


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Selecting the Appropriate Powder Blender
February 24, 2009
By Ken Langhorn
Vertical blenders offer a combination of gentle blending and complete discharge |
Selecting a powder blender can appear to be a simple task, the importance of which is often under-estimated. Although there are a few common varieties that seem to work well for powders and other solids, hastily choosing any blender can result in process inefficiencies or poor product quality. In a competitive market, gains in process efficiency and quality can be the difference between profits and losses. Therefore, choosing wisely is an important decision. The first step is to look at the candidates. The three most popular powder blenders are ribbon blenders, vertical blenders, and tumble blenders.
Ribbon blenders consist of a horizontal agitator mounted in a U-shaped mixing trough. The agitator shaft has an outer ribbon, which is located in close proximity to the trough. The pitch moves product toward the discharge opening. A second ribbon on the agitator shaft is located closer to the axis of rotation. This inner ribbon is pitched so that it motivates product in the opposite direction of the outer ribbon. While operating at approximately 400 ft/min, the ribbon blender is capable of blending solids in very short cycle times.
The vertical blender vessel is cone shaped and includes a single auger agitator. The auger, which has a constant diameter and pitch, is located parallel and in close proximity to the vessel sidewall. In addition to rotating on its own axis, the auger agitator is also rotated around the center axis of the vessel, which sweeps the vessel sidewall over the full circumference. The auger lifts materials from the bottom of the vessel to the top. As a result, material opposite the auger cascade down toward the bottom of the vessel to fill the void created. The type of agitation is very gentle on the materials and consumes low energy.
Tumble blenders are either double-cone- or V-shaped and rotate on a horizontal axis approximately mid-height on the vessel. With an appropriate batch volume, the contents are split every time the vessel is inverted. The speed of rotation is adjusted so the contents slide to the lower portion of the vessel as it is rotated. The V-shaped tumble blender offers a thorough and gentle mixing action that can be optimized using mathematical formulas, since the splitting of the batch is somewhat predictable.
Each of these three basic designs has comparative strengths and weaknesses. In selecting the appropriate solids blender, it is important to consider the advantages of each design and carefully select the blender that will offer the most benefit for the intended application. The first step toward making a prudent choice is to list and prioritize the characteristics and parameters that are most important to you. Some common examples include:
Completeness of discharge.
Ease of cleaning.
Easily degradable solids.
Reduction of lumps.
Space limitations.
Quantity of each material contained within the batch.
Heating or cooling requirements.
Completeness of Discharge
V blenders are ideal for friable solids. |
Tumble blenders have the advantage in this category. The shape of the vessel lends itself to complete discharge of most powders without agitator obstruction. Vertical blenders also provide benefits from having a steep cone and nearly complete discharge, but they do contain an auger agitator that can retain minimal powders. Running the agitator can assist in a more complete discharge of materials. Ribbon blenders retain a small quantity of powders since the outer ribbon does not contact or wipe the surface of the trough. But, gravity will not assist since the surface is horizontal.
Ease of Cleaning
The ease-of-cleaning advantage is tipped in favor of the tumble or vertical cone designs. However, all designs are easily accessible for cleaning. Smoother finishes on the wetted surfaces improve cleanability.
Easily Degradable Solids
Tumble blenders and vertical blenders are capable of thoroughly blending materials without affecting particle size or causing other physical damage. The higher speeds and agitator surface area in a ribbon blender are capable of imparting more shear stress on delicate materials.
Reduction of Lumps
Ribbon blenders are best suited for reduction of agglomerates that are relatively easy to break. High-speed choppers and lump breakers are available as options on all three designs to reduce agglomerates.
Space Limitations
Dual-action ribbon blender agitators ensure homogeneous blends in short cycle times |
Ribbon blenders require significant floor space, but have relatively low overhead requirements. Vertical blenders have a small circular footprint but require significant ceiling height. Tumble blenders typically require the most space to accommodate the mixer base, as well as ample overhead space for the vessel to rotate.
Quantity of Each Material Contained within the Batch
Tumble blenders are best equipped to thoroughly blend batches that contain materials present in very minor percentages, such as active ingredients. Vertical and ribbon blenders follow closely in this category. Techniques such as where and when materials are added to the blender can minimize differences between designs.
Heating or Cooling Requirements
Drying applications often benefit from having both a jacketed-vessel and a vacuum-capable design. All three designs offer this capability.
Ribbon blender designs are normally the most cost-effective blender solution, especially when considering volume production. The tumble blender will price similarly on smaller volumes, but is slightly higher in price in larger production sizes. The vertical blender is most costly in smaller sizes but comparably price-competitive in large production requirements.
After weighing the strengths and weaknesses of each design, and choosing an initial favored candidate, conducting a small-scale test is the best way to proceed before making a final decision. You will then be able to eliminate guesswork in your choice of the best design for your specific application.
Ken Langhorn is technical director, Charles Ross & Son Co. (Hauppauge, NY), a manufacturer of industrial mixers, blenders, dispersers, and dryers for the process industries. Langhorn can be reached at [email protected]. For more information on Charles Ross & Son Co., visit www.mixers.com.
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Long before Facebook and Twitpic, photos were shared by simply handing someone a print. No camera made this easier than the once-ubiquitous Polaroid. Nothing represented instant gratification better in the film era than having a print develop before your eyes, ready to hand out in a minute. Unfortunately for Polaroid, the advent of digital photography sounded the death knell for its iconic instant print cameras. A brief reprieve in the form of inexpensive sticker-printing versions was ended by the cellphone camera revolution.
Now, after a decade in remission, Polaroid has returned with a full-up digital camera that incorporates instant printing technology. The Polaroid Z340 is a 14MP digital with an integrated Zink-enabled (Zero Ink(Opens in a new window)) printer. In a nostalgic touch, the new camera prints 3x4-inch images, the same size as the original Polaroid film(Opens in a new window) cameras. Remarkably, all this fits in a one-pound, seven-ounce package, about the same weight as a mid-range DSLR, although over twice as heavy as a typical point-and-shoot.
More problematic for the Z340 may be its limited battery life. In this day of "snap away" photography, the Z340 can only print 25 images, and capture an additional 75, on a single charge. As a special purpose camera for sharing, that may be fine, but serious shooters will find that they'll need to have another camera, for when printing isn't needed. The image quality of the Z340 is not what you'd expect from a typical $299 point-and-shoot either -- it's quite a lot lower -- but of course that's not why you'd buy one.
As a travel photographer, I delight in sharing my images with people around the world as I photograph them. In the Polaroid era this was easily accomplished by snapping a few extra images on its instant film and handing them out. Since the advent of digital, that process has become much more complex. Traveling with a small digital printer, setting it up, then waiting as the 4x6-inch prints chugged out was hardly as thrilling as handing out prints right on the spot. The Z340 is an exciting new development for anyone who wants to return to that thrill of instant gratification. For those willing to settle for lower image quality and tiny 2x3-inch prints, Polaroid also offers the PoGo Instant Digital Camera(Opens in a new window), which is available for under $200.As befitting a digital reinvention, the Z340 goes well beyond what was possible with film. You can not only review your images in the 2.7-inch LCD before deciding which ones to print, but also crop or add your own custom borders. The prints show up in under 30 seconds, much faster than waiting for Polaroid film to develop. Of course, in addition to the usual SD card for storing your digital images, you'll also need to buy special paper packs, which list for $19.99 for 30 sheets. The camera is available now, so there's no excuse for those who want instant sharing without the hassle of uploading.
Read more at Polaroid(Opens in a new window)