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Environmental Monitoring Can Open Floodgate of Opportunity
Watching water levels to weather potential damage can help security companies increase recurring monthly revenue.
It's a terrible oversight when the term and the revenue related to "monitoring" is only thought to be an alarm being activated, a central station handling the event and the authorities getting dispatched. Although most understand that it is much more than this, we can't assume that the consumer market understands the same. I witness it all the time when I am with a client and I overhear their sales staff trying to justify their fees. Most leave out the great facts and additional juice today's "monitoring" really represents.
One in particular is the advanced monitoring and control of environmental and energy management of a home or business. I find that many dealers only offer the monitoring of these nonsecurity events in response to client requests. I also find that the few companies that take a more deliberate, proactive approach to offering monitoring events other than intrusion and fire have experienced great success through higher closing ratios and increased average recurring monthly revenue (RMR).
High Value in Watching Water Levels
Environmental monitoring as high temperature, low temperature, high water, low water, flood, etc., has existed for a long time. The advancement comes in the way in which these multiple paths of communication and control are out in consumers' hands. Additionally, the valuable automated and remote interactive devices that are available to not only monitor but actually control the environment is tremendous. These devices are low cost and facilitate shutting off or turning on water mains, HVAC systems and virtually any other related devices that are electrically operated. They can be set to activate based on the monitoring of other devices, remotely through a smartphone or via a connected computer from anywhere in the world.
Although this isn't news to most, value-added applications can vary and this is where most miss opportunities. What also gets missed is that residential as well as commercial and industrial client types all find real value in monitoring these events. Through consumer focus groups I've sponsored, I've seen that many clients find more immediate value – and a reason for a purchase decision – solely based on a system that offered smoke, flood and freeze detection. Highlighting these services will not only bring you opportunity for increased installation and monthly monitoring revenue, but it may attract and maintain a client that you would not ordinarily attract with a straight intrusion offering.
I and other professionals I've met hold a very strong opinion that it's essential all residential installations should include water or flood detection in one or more areas of a home. Anyone who has ever experienced a leaking hot water heater, a burst washing machine hose, or leaking water softener, purifier or well system appreciates the benefit of early detection. Combining the simple and inexpensive wired and wireless detectors available along with central station monitoring that will immediately text, E-mail and/or call a client's call list without delay allows for the preservation of property. With the addition of the ability to shut water mains off, this proposition delivers maximum value to customers.
Provide Business Peace of Mind
One great device that offers high value is the combination freeze/water detector. Installing this near a home's washing machine, hot water heater and water softener offers great peace of mind. In a commercial environment the need is just as great and sometimes greater as some businesses only operate eight or 10 hours a day, five days a week. For a large amount of time the building is unoccupied and is subject to major damage if something causes water leakage or freezing during nonbusiness hours. Other pertinent applications include the monitoring of refrigeration or freezer equipment or rooms to assure that the temperature remains below a certain threshold, especially where food or medical-related cooling is required.
These are the obvious applications; taking it further and looking at the market for secondary winter or summer homes expands these opportunities even more. Locations where telephone service is not available in off-season times used to create issues; now most systems are standard with GSM communicators and wireless detectors.
As this column's name suggests, monitoring matters – and to your bottom line these days it could be the range of monitoring you offer that really matters.
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(CNN) -- With recent polls showing Sen. Barack Obama's lead increasing nationwide and in several GOP-leaning states, some Republicans attending John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign rallies are showing a new emotion: rage.
An angry supporter confronts Sen. John McCain at a rally in Wisconsin on Thursday.
At a rally in Minnesota on Friday, a woman told McCain: "I don't trust Obama. I have read about him and he's an Arab."
McCain shook his head and said, "No ma'am, no ma'am. He's a decent family man...[a] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. That's what this campaign is all about."
One man at the rally said he was "scared of an Obama presidency." McCain later told the man he should not fear Obama.
"I want to be president of the United States, and I don't want Obama to be," he said. "But I have to tell you, I have to tell you, he is a decent person, and a person that you do not have to be scared as President of the United States."
McCain's response was met with boos from the crowd.
When asked about these outbursts, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said that he didn't know who those people were and if they were there as supporters or to disrupt the rallies.
A day earlier, the same type of hostility toward Obama was evident at McCain-Palin rallies.
"When you have an Obama, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there going to run this country, we have got to have our head examined. It's time that you two are representing us, and we are mad. So, go get them," one man told McCain at a town hall meeting in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
Another man was more pointed.
"And we're all wondering why that Obama is where he's at, how he got here. I mean, everybody in this room is stunned that we're in this position," another man said at Thursday's rally.
"I'm mad. I'm really mad. And what's going to surprise you, it's not the economy. It's the socialists taking over our country," one said. Watch more of the anger at the rallies »
McCain urged his supporters to be respectful of Obama.
"We want to fight and I will fight. But we will be respectful," he said. "I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments. I will respect him and I want everyone to be respectful, and let's make sure we are." Watch McCain address attacks on Obama »
CNN contributor David Gergen, who has advised Democratic and Republican presidential administrations, said Thursday that the negative tone of these rallies is "incendiary" and could lead to violence.
"There is this free floating sort of whipping around anger that could really lead to some violence. I think we're not far from that," he said. "I think it's really imperative that the candidates try to calm people down."
On Friday, Obama said the "barrage of nasty insinuations and attacks" was a result of the Republican nominee's failed economic ideas.
"They can run misleading ads, they can pursue the politics of anything goes. It will not work. Not this time. I think that folks are looking for something different this time. It's easy to rile up a crowd, nothing's easier than riling up a crowd by stoking anger and division. But that's not what we need right now in the United States. The times are too serious," Obama said at a rally in Chillicothe, Ohio.
Recently, McCain's campaign launched a string of ads that question Obama's judgment and character.
The McCain campaign calls Obama "too risky for America" in a new Web ad that focuses on his political relationship with Bill Ayers, a founding member of the radical Weather Underground.
"Barack Obama and domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. Friends. They've worked together for years. But Obama tries to hide it," the announcer said in the 90-second ad.
The now-defunct Weather Underground was involved in bombings in the early 1970s, including attacks on the Pentagon and the Capitol. Obama was a young child at the time of the bombings.
Obama and Ayers, now a university professor, met in 1995, when both worked with a nonprofit group trying to raise funds for a school improvement project and a charitable foundation. CNN's review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved. CNN Fact Check: Is Obama 'palling around with terrorists'?
Obama, in an April debate during the primaries, called Ayers "somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8."
At a rally Tuesday in Clearwater, Florida, Sarah Palin said Obama was being "less than truthful" about his ties to Ayers. "His own top adviser said they were 'certainly friendly.' ... I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way that you and I see America -- as the greatest source for good in this world," she said.
Palin told the crowd that she sees "a pattern in how our opponent has talked about one of his most troubling associations." Watch more of Palin's comments »
One member of the Palin audience in Jacksonville, Florida, Tuesday shouted out "treason." And at another rally in the state Monday, Palin's mention of the Obama-Ayers tie caused one member to yell out: "kill him" -- though it was unclear if it was targeted at Obama or Ayers.
At several recent rallies, Palin has stirred up crowds by mentioning the "liberal media." Routinely, there are boos at every mention of The New York Times and the "mainstream media," both of which are staples of Palin's stump speech.
Some audience members are openly hostile to members of the traveling press covering Palin; one crowd member hurled a racial epithet at an African-American member of the press in Clearwater, Florida, on Monday.
And at a McCain rally in New Mexico on Monday, one supporter yelled out "terrorist" when McCain asked, "Who is the real Barack Obama?" McCain didn't respond. Watch as McCain ramps up his criticism of Obama »
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, on Friday told voters that the McCain-Palin campaign "would want you to be afraid of Barack Obama."
Some Republicans have also been critical of the McCain campaign.
Former Michigan Gov. William Milliken, a Republican, told the Grand Rapids Press he was "disappointed in the tenor and the personal attacks on the part of the McCain campaign."
"He is not the McCain I endorsed," Milliken said Thursday.
Some anger found at McCain-Palin rallies is directed at McCain for a different reason. Watch analysts weigh in on the recent attacks »
"I am begging you, sir, I am begging you, take it to him," another supporter said to the Arizona senator at the Wisconsin rally.
McCain, however, seems torn. On one hand, he is going negative on the Ayers controversy.
"The point is, Sen. Obama said he was just a guy in the neighborhood. We know that's not true," he said at the rally in Wisconsin. "We need to know the full extent of the relationship because of whether Sen. Obama is telling the truth to the American people or not."
On the other hand, McCain is trying to focus on the economic downturn plaguing the country.
"But I also, my friends, want to address the greatest financial challenge of our lifetime with a positive plan for action," he added.
Also, the McCains said months ago they didn't want their son Jimmy -- a Marine serving in Iraq -- dragged into the campaign.
But on Thursday, Cindy McCain brought up her son.
She criticized the Illinois senator for voting against a bill to fund troops in Iraq, a regular line of attack from her husband's campaign.
"The day that Sen. Obama cast a vote not to fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body, let me tell you," she told a Pennsylvania crowd before introducing her husband and his No. 2.
The vote Cindy McCain is referencing came in May 2007, when Obama was one of 14 senators who voted against a war-spending plan that would have provided emergency funds for American troops overseas.
A CNN fact check deemed the charge that Obama voted against troop funding "misleading." Obama supported a different version of the troop-funding plan -- one that McCain spoke against. Fact Check: Did Obama vote to cut funds for the troops?
CNN's Carey Bodenheimer, Dana Bash and Anastasia Diakides contributed to this article.
All About Sarah Palin • John McCain • Barack Obama

subset: commoncrawl


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Top 5 Viral Searches From the 2014 ACM Awards
As much fun as watching the ACM Awards is, keeping up with what people are searching during the awards show may be even more entertaining. During the 2014 broadcast fans were eager to find out who was dating who, how a certain star lost so much weight and what hosts Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan were talking about when they said Jake Owen only has nine fingers.
Below are the Top 5 most searched phrases that landed on a ToC story, with a brief explanation of each. Searches for stars in bikinis and stars who were pregnant (there are none) just missed this list. As did requests to find out how tall Justin Moore is, if certain country stars are gay, and who Jason Aldean is dating now.
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How Old is George Strait?
This search phrase showed up early and never really went away. Fans seemed to enjoy George Strait's two performances and were genuinely pleased to see him win Entertainer of the Year. But the pressing question was about his age. He's 61, but most fans landed HERE.
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Tim McGraw (Feat. Faith Hill), 'Meanwhile Back at Mama's
Faith Hill's cameo may have been the night's only "No way!" moment, and given how often these two perform together it really wasn't that much of a surprise. Both looked stunning as they sang a new song from McGraw's upcoming album. Their chemistry was enough to convince us that despite the sporadic tabloid reports that say otherwise, everything is OK in the McGraw household.
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Luke Bryan's Wife
Caroline Bryan is always a hot search during awards shows. In year's past the singer has been tearfully accepting major hardware, but all anyone wanted to know about was the hot blonde in the front row. She's a good looking woman, and during the ACM Awards she stood out again. Fans found all they need to know HERE. The mother of two made our list of Hottest Country Wives as well.
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Lee Brice, 'I Drive Your Truck'
Lee Brice stole the show as far as performances go. His rendition of 'I Drive Your Truck,' coupled with the song's ACM win, sent searches for more about him and it into overdrive. Fans were able to find the entire song HERE, and learn the story about the lyrics HERE.
- 1
Jake Owen's Finger
Shelton and Bryan mentioned Jake Owen's missing finger during their opening monologue, and the internet went BOOM! All night long people were checking back to see what happened. They learned all about it HERE, but they got to see a gruesome photo of the missing digit HERE. Warning: It's ugly!


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Coffee gets its legsAdding disposable beverage transports to the lineup can give a jolt to the industry's leading gross profit margin category—hot dispensed beverages— while reinforcing a retailer's brand image. Such bulk transports, pioneered by vendors like LBP Manufacturing (www.lbpmfg.com), enable customers to take multiple cups of coffee—10 to 12 per fill-up—on the move, adding an extra layer of convenience for construction crews, tailgaters, office workers or anyone else in need of large quantities of joe. Convenience retailers including Royal Farms and Cumberland Farms have already rolled out their own "branded" carafes through vendor International Dispensing Corp. (www.idcdispensing.com). The internal bladders of these durable carafes can hold more than 100 oz. of coffee, and have the ability to keep product hot for up to three hours. At a cost of $3 to $5 per unit for IDC's carafe, the full transport carries an SRP of $9.99 to $12.99. The carafe may also be used to boost sales of hot soup or cold dispensed beverages. BD |
Tough gloveAs more sophisticated foodservice operations become prevalent in the convenience store industry, so do the possibilities of foodservice-related injuries and illnesses. Retailers must strive to keep employees safe while maintaining quality and efficiency. But they have plenty of options to help take some of the human error out of the food prep process:
'The new sandwich' America has adopted Mexican food as its own. And 7-Eleven Inc. (Dallas, TX) hopes one day it can say the same of sushi. While sushi is already a staple among the college set, yuppies and consumers living healthier lifestyles on the coasts, 7-Eleven President Jim Keyes hopes to make "onigiri"—also known to the Japanese as rice balls—part of America's collective diet. Rice balls are about as popular in Japan as the sandwich is in the States. "The movement toward the onigiri, or rice ball product, is certainly in development," Keyes tells Reuters. "But we are probably two or three years away from being able to have the right quality and taste combinations." Keyes is a realist. He's not considering puffer fish fillets and seaweed rice balls for 7-Eleven's U.S. stores. Rather, he intends to create versions that would appeal to the minds, eyes and stomachs of American customers. Rice balls stuffed with barbecued pulled pork or Cajun beans, for example, might make their way onto the menu. This wouldn't be the chain's first foray into sushi; 7-Eleven has tested sushi in some New York and California stores. But 7-Eleven isn't the only convenience retailer looking to take a chance with sushi. Bill Knight, an Exxon distributor in South Florida, is building a NexStore Marketplace convenience store with ready-to-go cuisine such as pizza, Cornish game hens and sushi. The store's menu items will be designed by a "recipe engineer" and crafted by on-site chefs. BD |
Add a little magicRetailers looking to lift sagging fountain sales can inject some life into the lineup with customized straws that seem to defy science. The Magic Straw from Whirley Industries/DrinkWorks (www.whirley.com) uses a patented splitstraw design that's so "sleight of hand," it's easy to see how a magician played a part in its creation. Both a traffic driver and a profit center, the Magic Straw attracts interest because customers of all ages wonder how liquid sipped up the bottom half of the straw can flow into the top half, since the two The use of themed characters as the focal point of the severed straw offers a branding platform to promote cartoon characters, sports and entertainment icons or personalities of any kind. The product incorporates either a stationary molded character or a "bobblehead," enabling retailers to capitalize on public interest in magic and media-driven collectibles. Wholesale pricing is based on minimum orders, but is less than $1 per straw. BD |


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Whether it happens with that key memo left unfinished, the last scene of a movie unwatched or an epic gaming battle interrupted, it's likely that, at one time or another, you've been left with a dead notebook battery at the worst possible moment. What can you do about it?
"Notebooks are not as efficient as they could be," says Robert Meyers, data center product manager for the Energy Star Program at the Environmental Protection Agency, "and they waste a lot of energy."
The payoff for being aware of how much power your system uses and how to control it can be huge -- because every watt saved can run the notebook that much longer. "The natural incentive is that greater efficiency translates directly into longer battery life," Meyer says.
In this article, I'll go through 11 ways you can cut down on your laptop's power usage. Some may be appropriate for your style of work and/or play, some not; but even if you follow one or two, it could give you those crucial extra operating minutes.
But first, it might be useful to look at which components are the most power thirsty in your device -- and how they are being improved.
What uses battery power?
While there's a lot of variation between an 11-in. Chromebook with an Intel Celeron processor and a 17-in. gaming laptop with an Intel Core i7 Extreme chip, each has a similar array of components that turn electricity into an interactive computing experience.
There are six components that are the major power users in a computing device. They are listed here roughly in order of power use, although that can vary based on the notebook itself. They have each been redesigned over the past decade for greater efficiency, but there's still work to be done.
1. Processor
The processor is a power hog, often using as much as half of the total power in a system. Smaller is better; as the size of the microscopic wires and electronic architecture within the chip shrinks with each generation, its power use declines.
A decade ago, the best Intel processors used the company's 90-nanometer (nm) production process, codenamed Dothan. Today, the company's Haswell chips have 22nm architecture -- less than one-quarter the size and roughly 100,000 times smaller than the width of a pencil point. Chips made with 14nm microarchitecture, a.k.a Broadwell, have been promised for later this year or in early 2015.
Meanwhile, current AMD processors are made using a 28nm process, including the new Karavi laptop CPUs, but the company's Project SkyBridge promises a series of new chips for mobile devices using a 20nm manufacturing process.
2. Graphics processors
Graphics processors are often integrated into a notebook's system, but can significantly drain a battery as well. For example, Intel Graphics 4000 and 5000 integrated video chips typically range in power use from about 15 watts for the HD 4200 at the entry level to upwards of 50 watts for the Iris Pro 5200.
AMD's Radeon graphics engines also vary in how much power they pull. For instance, the mid-range HD 6290 graphics chip consumes about 18 watts at peak use, while the more sophisticated HD 8650G chip uses upwards of 35 watts.
Plus, many high-end engineering and gaming notebooks also have discrete graphics chips with dedicated memory from Nvidia or AMD that can consume a lot of power when they're being used.
3. Display
Displays have improved -- no doubt about it. The move in the late 2000s from CCFL backlighting to LED backlighting reduced a typical LCD's power drain by about 25%.
More recently, Panel Self-Refresh (PSR) technology can lower power use even further by stopping screen refresh if what's being displayed doesn't change. This can add as much as 20 minutes to a battery's run time, according to Ajay Gupta, director of commercial notebook products at HP. PSR is currently used on a limited number of devices, including the HP EliteBook Folio 1040 and the LG G2 smartphone.
In the long term, display power use could decrease by another 40% by using Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) screens that produce their own light and don't require backlighting. These screens are currently being used in phones like the Nokia Lumia Icon.
4. Storage
Traditional hard drives that use rotating magnetic discs are giving way to SSDs that store data on solid-state chips. Solid state storage still costs four to five times what a hard drive goes for, but uses a lot less power.
For instance, the 500GB Seagate Momentus Thin 2.5-in. mobile hard drive (starting at $50) uses 1.20 watts, while a 480GB Crucial SSD (about $236) consumes 0.28 watts, less than a quarter as much. And more lower-cost laptops -- including such lightweight models as the HP Chromebook 11 -- are shipping with SSDs.
According to Gupta, the next step is to stop making SSDs that mimic 2.5-inch hard drives in size and shape, and move to M.2 circuit board technology that puts all the components on a small circuit board, such as the one included in HP's EliteBook 840. This can reduce power use further, he says.
5. Fan
Every watt used inside a computer system turns into heat -- and so the system has to be cooled in order to keep running. The less power used, the less cooling is needed. As a result, current systems that use power more efficiently also use smaller fans that don't need to run as often (and so conserve power themselves).
In fact, there are now some fan-less notebooks such as the HP Spectre x2 that don't have fans but remove heat through passive techniques.
6. AC adapter
The technology that turns a wall outlet's alternating current into the direct current that a notebook needs has made great strides: From being roughly 50% efficient 20 years ago to between 80% and 90% efficient today. Still, a lot of power is wasted, because for most computers the adapter still draws phantom current after the system's battery is fully charged.
Today, some adapters -- like that of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch -- are smart enough to shut themselves off when the battery is full. Hopefully, more are on their way.
According to HP's Gupta, a high-efficiency adapter could be made for a single voltage, like the 110 volts we use in the U.S., rather than switchable between 110- and 220 voltage for global use. Theoretically, it could hit 94% efficiency, he says.
What you can do now
Whether you have a Windows-based system or a Mac laptop, there's a lot you can do right now to make its energy use more efficient and get more life out of its battery. The tips and tricks that follow may not work for every system, but even if you choose one or two, you can make your notebook more efficient.
1. Slow down your CPU
The processor is a great place to save a few watts.
If you're using an older Windows-based system, start with your Control Panel Power Options page, go to the Change advanced power settings section and click on Processor to adjust its maximum processor state. I aim for a balance between performance and power use, and typically set the processor's maximum power use to 95%.
If your machine is recent enough to have a Haswell processor -- and therefore has Intel's Turbo Boost overclocking -- anything less than 100% prevents the CPU from raising its clock speed (and power use) when the computing load increases. In other words, if you want to keep your battery use down, lowering the maximum processor state will add even more power efficiency, even if it takes a moment or two longer to complete some tasks.
Unfortunately, at the moment, there's no easy way to easily disable or control Turbo Boost in a MacBook. Your best bet is an open-source XCode-based command-line tool called Turbo Boost Disabler for Mac OS X.
While you can't easily control Turbo Boost in a MacBook, the Intel Power Gadget can keep you informed.
If you're just interested in how much power your processor is using (including its clock speed and core temperature), you can use the Intel Power Gadget.
2. Add more memory
Regardless of whether you use a PC or Mac, when it comes to performance, more RAM equals better performance and lower total power use. RAM chips use so little power that adding 4GB or 8GB has a marginal impact on its total power use -- more RAM can, however, save power by reducing the system's use of virtual memory.
How? Virtual memory is actually hard drive space that is used to store items from memory when the system runs out of unused physical memory. Because the hard drive uses a lot more power than RAM chips, using virtual memory eats into efficiency and battery time. So adding RAM can not only make your system more efficient, but save battery power as well.
3. Make storage more efficient
Compared to a conventional hard drive, an SSD not only speeds things up but also uses less power -- so you might want to consider upgrading your storage. However, if you can't afford a new drive (or just don't want to bother), a traditional hard drive's hunger for electrons can be tamed by adjusting its power management settings.
For Macs, you can control when the drive goes to sleep in the System Preferences Energy Saver pane. In the Battery tab, start by checking the box that says Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible. Apple sets 10 minutes as the default period of inactivity before the drive nods off, but you can tap into the system's pmset utility to adjust it. Here's what you do:
Go to Terminal (which you'll find in the Utilities folder, or you can just search for Terminal). Type sudo pmset disksleep X, where X is the length of time in minutes that you want the system to wait before putting the drive to sleep. (Warning: You'll need the administrator's password to do this.)
The pmset utility lets you set when your Mac's hard drive goes to sleep.
With a Windows system, you can use the Change Advanced Power Settings page in the Power Options portion of the Control Panel.
I generally set my system's hard drive to turn off after 10 or 15 minutes of inactivity. It'll take a second or two for the device to spool up when you need it, but the extra minutes of battery life make it worth the wait.
4. Lessen your display time
Fewer pixels put less of a power load on the graphics chip, video memory and display panel. So although I'm wowed by the latest high-resolution notebook screens, I don't really do much more than view the occasional YouTube video. As a result, when I shop for a notebook, I get the lowest resolution screen that is acceptable for my purposes. These days, that's generally a 1280 x 800 display.
But no matter what the resolution is, a major way to save on battery life is not to have the display running when you don't need it.
For a MacBook, open up the Energy Saver window and adjust the position of the slider control at the bottom marked Turn Display Off After. You can vary the time before the screen shuts down from "never" to as little as one minute.
Apple's Energy Saver window lets you adjust when to turn your display off.
I also dim the screen a bit when on battery power by hitting the F1 button several times until I get to a brightness that is comfortable but not too bright. (If you dialed down too far, the F2 button makes the screen brighter.)
Windows lets you set your power plan for turning off the display and putting the computer to sleep.
With a Windows system, go to the Power Options page and edit the power plan to suit how you work and play. When I'm running the system on battery, I generally set the screen brightness to roughly 80% and have the screen turn off after 15 minutes of inactivity.
Many current Windows laptops also use function keys to make it easier to dim or brighten the screen.
5. Put it to sleep
While you're tweaking your power plan settings, go ahead and set a period of inactivity after which your computer will go to sleep.
How long you wait before putting your system to sleep can affect battery life profoundly. The best approach is to use trial and error to find a balance between battery life and convenience -- for example, my own settings put the computer to sleep after 45 minutes of inactivity. Your mileage may vary.
In a Windows system, go to the Control Panel, click on the Power section and select Change plan setting. Here, you can adjust how long a system will wait before it goes to sleep.
For even more efficiency, EnviProt's Auto Shutdown Manager, a $15 Windows utility, models how you use your computer and can intelligently put the system to sleep and wake it up. It even tabulates how much power has been saved and the amount of carbon dioxide you've kept out of the atmosphere. You can try it for free for 45 days.
And you don't have to wait for the automatic triggers to kick in. Go ahead and manually put the system to sleep if the computer is sitting idle with nothing going on -- by doing this, you can save as much as 15 watts. (Most Windows systems let you press a function key to put the computer to sleep; which one you use depends on your specific system.)
Among other things, Auto Shutdown Manager shows which components shut down when.
You can put any MacBook instantly to sleep by opening the Apple Menu in the upper left corner of the screen and clicking on Sleep. Or you can just close the laptop's lid.
If you want to adjust when your system goes to sleep automatically, go back to the Energy Saver/Battery page and use the Computer sleep: slider control; you can have it sleep anywhere between 1 min. and Never.
Adjusting when the system goes to sleep automatically is a little trickier if you have a MacBook Pro that was built before late 2008/mid 2009. Go to the Terminal program and type sudo pmset sleep X, where X is the number of minutes to wait before putting the computer to sleep.
6. Tweak your graphics
Some Windows notebooks, like Toshiba's Tecra W50, have both integrated and discrete (usually high-end) graphics technology. The higher-end graphics technology on a mobile workstation or gamer's system can itself consume upwards of 60 watts of power.
If that's your setup, go conservative and use the lower-power integrated graphics whenever the workload doesn't demand all-out video power, such as for Web browsing or writing emails. If you've got discrete graphics from Nvidia or AMD, you should also have a utility that lets you manually or automatically make the change based on load.
I'd also suggest that, when you're using the integrated graphics, use the most aggressive power management settings you're comfortable with. You can usually make power adjustments using either Intel's HD Graphics Control Panel or AMD's Start Now Technology screen, depending on which processor your computer is using.
This goes for Macs as well: A 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display can be ordered with Nvidia's GeForce GT 750M graphics accelerator with 2GB of video RAM. The system automatically switches between integrated and discrete graphics when you've checked the box in the upper left corner of its Energy Saver window.
If you want to manually go between graphics adapters on a MacBook Pro, you can install the free app gfxCardStatus, which tells you which of your applications are more power-hungry and lets you manually toggle between integrated and discrete graphics.
7. The 7% solution
Nearly every Windows-based notebook comes from the factory set to shut itself down when 7% of battery power remains. This buffer is meant to be an extra safety margin to provide enough power to shut the system down and not lose key data or documents. But in actual fact, it wastes 10 or 15 minutes of precious battery life.
Several years ago, I started setting my notebooks to leave a 1% or 2% power reserve instead -- as a result, I added more time to work, and I've never had a problem.
If you have a Windows system, you can do this by going to the Control Panel's Power Options and clicking on Change Advanced Power Settings. After opening the Battery section, adjust the Reserve Battery Level to something lower than 7%.
For Macs, there's no direct equivalent -- but there's an app called Low Battery Saver that can tweak the settings that warn you when your system's running low on battery power and put it to sleep. The app costs $1.99.
8. Smarter outlets
You can also make your outlets more intelligent with a power strip that senses how much current is flowing and shut itself off when a threshold indicates that the system is charged.
For example, both Bits Limited's Smart Strip surge protectors and Belkin's Conserve Valet have auto-switching technology that shuts off the power when your device's battery is charged.
9. Don't run what you're not using
It seems obvious, but a lot of people seem to forget this basic principal: If you're not using it, turn it off. In other words, to conserve power, it's best to turn off all nonessential components. I think of it as akin to turning off the lights when I leave a room. For example, when my laptops are not being used, I generally turn off Bluetooth and disable unused ports.
This goes for mobile devices, as well. For example, whenever I'm on a plane, if there isn't a Wi-Fi connection (or if I don't want to pay for it), I keep my device in Airplane mode.
10. Manage your apps
While Microsoft says that unused but live Windows 8 apps don't diminish performance, I still feel strongly that, no matter what OS you're using, it's best to shut down any program that won't be used anytime soon.
11. Clean your machine
Your system is a power waster if it's dirty, so give it a good cleaning every couple of months.
I start by blowing the fan and vents clear of dust bunnies with a can of compressed air. Next, I wipe the battery's terminals down with alcohol pads to clean any built-up gunk that might be robbing the notebook of full battery power. (Unfortunately, many newer systems have the battery sealed inside, preventing this kind of maintenance.)
The power bottom line
I tried some of these power-saving techniques on my trusty old HP EliteBook 2560p: I kept the system from going into Turbo Boost mode, added RAM, installed an SSD, dimmed the screen, adjusted the sleep and display timing, reduced the battery reserve time, turned off Bluetooth and W-Fi and closed older apps when finished using them.
The results? I was able to reduce my laptop's thirst for electrons by 20% from a peak of 36.6 watts of power before the changes to 29.1 watts after, as measured by Joulemeter, software that measures power consumption (I averaged the results of three runs).
More to the point, I increased my system's battery life by 33 minutes to 4 hours and 40 minutes of runtime between charges.
Of course, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and this increase in power efficiency and extended battery life came at the cost of all-out performance. I ran "before and after" tests using the system's score on PassMark's PerformanceTest benchmarking software, and the laptop's score fell from 1,750.0 to 1,698.6, a 3% drop.
The good news? I wouldn't have known about the difference if I hadn't measured it -- it was not a noticeable decline.
For me all the work, setting changes and a slight loss of performance has been more than worth it. I get more life out of a charge, my system is more efficient and I don't have to plug in as often. I call that a win-win.
This article, Boost that battery: Tips and tricks for laptops, was originally published at Computerworld.com.
Brian Nadel is a frequent contributor to Computerworld and the former editor in chief of Mobile Computing & Communications magazine.
Read more about laptops in Computerworld's Laptops Topic Center.


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The Ultimate Fashion Luxury 5th, 6th and 7th October' 2017: The industry of fashion encompasses of various designer houses, trends, styles, and concepts that have been quite famous amongst the ardent fashion lovers and followers all across the globe. But one fashion concept that has been tremendously popular and has been ruling the roost as compared to the other theories is BESPOKE. But there are seldom designers in the fraternity that truly understand, follow, and stay astute to its high rules and repute. We at L & K Bespoke Tailor: the acclaimed Travelling Tailor in Melbourne are coming down to your city in a veryRead More →


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With the "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" sitting atop the box-office list—as now seems automatic for each of Peter Jackson's vivid renderings of Middle-earth—we're treated to a new round of public accolades for author J.R.R. Tolkien. With each movie's release, we've been reminded of the Oxford professor's rarefied position in the genre: his epic imagination, unique storytelling abilities, and foundational role in fantasy's history.
Modern fantasy is a vast and commercially successful realm. HBO's gritty, bawdy "Game of Thrones" is one of the most successful shows on cable, wooing critics and audiences with smart dialogue and sophisticated plotting. Schoolboy wizard Harry Potter anchored a colossally successful book and film series, spawning college quidditch teams and making its author, for a time, wealthier than Queen Elizabeth. Online, an estimated 8 million subscribers play "World of Warcraft," a multiplayer game that unfolds in a shared universe of sword-wielding heroes and horrific monsters. A movie adaptation is in the works.
Clearly fantasy has evolved in a way that makes it a touchstone in the culture. But how much of its success do we really owe to Tolkien's influence? Questioning Tolkien's status as the father of fantasy fiction might seem as presumptuous as marching into the villainous realm of Mordor through the front gate. But the closer you look at contemporary fantasy, the less Tolkien you see. Harry Potter owes more to Peter Pan than to Bilbo Baggins. The moral and political complexity of "Game of Thrones"—both the TV series and the George R.R. Martin books on which they are based—didn't exist in Tolkien's universe. (Those astonished by the lusty mix of betrayal, nudity, and casual violence in "Game of Thrones" are perhaps unaware these have been standard devices in fantasy for decades.) Indeed, Martin, along with the majority of notable fantasy writers of the past 30 years, sidesteps Tolkien almost entirely.
Tolkien may overshadow other fantasy writers in name recognition, and his high-handed purity and saintly protagonists may define fantasy in the popular imagination. But the real strengths of modern fantasy, what makes the genre increasingly popular, are qualities that come from other sources entirely. Most important is a parallel, overwhelmingly American, tradition of fantasy that has its roots in the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s—and whose surprising influence and foresightedness suggests that sophistication doesn't always come from the libraries of Oxford.
I n the broadest sense, the roots of fantasy extend to the very foundations of world literature. What are "The Odyssey" and "Beowulf" but "Lord of the Rings"-style epics? Fantasy in the narrower modern sense, however—a distinct category of derring-do with a stereotypically medieval setting, where magic and nonhuman races mingle—began in the Victorian era. That period gave rise to fantastical storytellers such "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" author Lewis Carroll and William Morris, the noted British textile designer and socialist campaigner. Morris's 1894 epic "The Wood Beyond The World"—a ripping quest novel in which the protagonist journeys to an unfamiliar world, makes the acquaintances of a comely heroine, and is menaced by ogre-like "mini giants"—can be seen as a direct precursor of modern fantastical writing.
That writing began to blossom as a genre with the rise of the pulps, the cheap and lurid fiction magazines of the first half of the 20th century. Chief among them was Weird Tales, which began publication in 1923. Established by J. C. Henneberger, a Chicago journalist, Weird Tales published gothic horror stories and lusty adventure yarns, the latter typically set in reimagined versions of Middle Ages Europe or Asia.
It was in the feverishly penned pages of Weird Tales, and rivals such as Unknown and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, that several of fantasy's most authoritative voices gained prominence. One was Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian; another was Fritz Leiber, one of the acknowledged inventors of "low fantasy," which emphasizes gritty realism and is skeptical as to the possibility of Arthurian chivalry in a pre-modern world. Weird Tales also published H.P. Lovecraft, the Providence-born horror pioneer whose dystopian dread informs much modern imaginative fiction.
The pulp writers were contemporaries of Tolkien, but operated in a far darker milieu. Howard's Conan stories are rip-roaring and full-blooded, a tapestry of amoral protagonists, exposed flesh, and gory action. Leiber showed fantasy could be urban—and urbane. His wry Lankhmar series is set in a vast fetid city of the same name; his recurring "heroes," Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are, respectively, a thuggish hired sword and a wiry thief. Through their eyes, Leiber investigates the murky side of human nature, the characters indulging in such unTolkien-esque pursuits as boozing, wenching, and dueling. A cesspool of inequity, populated with feuding guilds, conspiratorial cults, and cutthroats lying in wait, Lankhmar feels vividly alive in a way Middle-earth arguably never does: You can almost smell the exotic spices, the open gutters, the freshly spilled blood.
Tolkien, meanwhile, was giving the world a different sort of fantastical writing. Middle-earth represented a lifetime's work for the Englishman, who started sketching its fabulous races, swooping topography, and imagined languages as early as 1917, on sick leave from the army. His first novel, "The Hobbit," was published in 1937. Typical of Tolkien, it contains plenty of peril and lots of backstory, but it is ultimately simplistic in its moral outlook. A heroic quest is undertaken by a doughty band, an evil dragon is defeated, and important lessons are learned. Granted, one of the heroes is killed at the end—but it is a noble passing, a respectable warrior's death. "The Lord of the Rings," the more ambitious and grandiose trilogy that followed, synthesized Anglo-Germanic heroic literature with a similarly black-and-white worldview, one colored by the conflicts of the 20th century. There is good and evil in Tolkien and very little between. The moral ambivalence of those American fantasy magazines—and of the world we actually inhabit—is largely absent.
Tolkien's work did one undeniably important thing: It reached people who had never even heard of Leiber, Howard, or Weird Tales. The book particularly caught on in colleges, colonizing a highbrow new audience for what had been a fairly marginal and pulpy genre. As "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" achieved a critical mass of fandom through the late 1960s and early 1970s, fantasy and Tolkien started to become synonymous in the wider culture.
A t the peak of Tolkien's ascendancy, a new force arrived that would drive the development of fantasy: hobby gaming. First published in 1974 by two war-gaming fans with a taste for epic adventure, the complex pen-and-paper "role-playing" game Dungeons and Dragons quickly began to redefine the genre. D&D put fantasy's tropes in the hands of a new audience who might have been disinclined to sit through hundreds of pages of Tolkien's plodding prose, and provided a way to mix and match them. In a way, it open-sourced the genre.
D&D did borrow characters straight from Tolkien—its imagined realms teemed with dragons and orcs, halflings and dwarves. D&D's designers, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, were clearly well-versed in Middle-earth, and it is often assumed the game represented an early kind of Tolkien fan fiction. But its roots were far more diverse. D&D's intricate magic system is thought to have been based on American fantasy writer Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" cycle; the gaudy, grubby warrior medievalism of the game owes more to the lurid imaginings of Robert E. Howard than to Tolkien's donnish pastoralism. The game's chief motive is usually a treasure-driven quest of shifting alliances or a straightforward monster-slaying spree—a far cry from Tolkien's noble band united to save the world from creeping evil.
Forty years on, that more worldly and cynical sensibility exerts far more influence on fantasy—and on the wider culture—than does Tolkien. "World of Warcraft" and other popular online gaming franchises, as well as the popular collectible card game Magic The Gathering, flow from the distinctive sensibility established by Dungeons and Dragons. Many of the authors responsible for some of the most influential works of the post-Tolkien era are gamers themselves. George R.R. Martin has role-played, as has Terry Pratchett, creator of the greatly loved "Discworld" books. Dungeons and Dragons was likewise an inspiration for Steven Erikson, whose sprawling "Malazan Book of The Fallen" saga is, in terms of universe building and narrative ambition, perhaps the most significant fantasy sequence of the past decade.
By contrast, the most Tolkien-esque strains of fantasy have largely tumbled by the wayside. Terry Brooks's "The Sword of Shannara," a surprise blockbuster that reached The New York Times Best Seller list in 1977, was so indebted in tone and structure to Tolkien that today it reads like the literary equivalent of a covers record. That isn't to suggest that people have stopped writing, or reading, fantasy that follows Tolkien's old-fashioned sense of moral certainty. But these books have dwindled steadily in number and cultural heft, so that today "classic"—i.e Tolkienesque—fantasy exists as merely a subcategory of a wider genre.
Why has fantasy fiction prove so enduringly popular? Clearly part of the appeal lies in the way it speaks to our imagination. More than that, however, it lets writers work through complicated moral questions at a distance from the real world. It explores very human themes—loyalty, ambition, how to govern a society—in a setting imaginary enough to avoid coming across as partisan or preachy.
The works that do this best—most recently "Game of Thrones," "The Malazan Book of the Fallen," Joe Abercrombie's "First Law" novels—draw their mood and internal architecture from books with a very different worldview and moral code than "The Lord of the Rings." Tolkien will always have his place in the canon; after all, it's fun to lose yourself in "The Hobbit" for three hours in a theater. But as people read the books and watch the bloated movie adaptations, it does no service to the genre to suggest that his work is the model for all that followed. It makes it all too easy for those new to these fantastical worlds to assume Tolkien's prudishness, his sometimes archaic prose, and his Boy Scout characters are failings not of one man stooped over a desk in postwar Britain, but of all fantasy—for all time.
Ed Power is a writer and critic specializing in books, music and television.


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DETROIT (AP) — Ford, GM, Chrysler and Nissan all reported double-digit U.S. sales increases last month, signaling the best April for car and truck sales in six years.
A rebound in pickup truck sales led the way, especially for the Detroit automakers. Small businesses are replacing aging trucks that they've kept since the Great Recession.
Ford's sales increased 18 percent, with the F-Series pickup gaining 24 percent. At Chrysler, sales rose 11 percent, led by the Ram pickup, with a 49 percent sales increase. GM also saw an 11 percent sales jump, with Chevrolet Silverado pickup sales rising 28 percent for the month.
Nissan reported a 23 percent sales gain over April of 2012. The only laggards were Toyota, with a sales decline of 1 percent, and Volkswagen, with a drop of 10 percent.
Americans continue to buy new cars and trucks even though unemployment remains high and economic signals of late have been mixed. All automakers report monthly sales Wednesday, and industry analysts expect an overall increase of around 10 percent over April of last year. That would make it the best April since 2007.
Chrysler Group LLC said it sold 156,698 cars and trucks last month. Sales of the Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV increased 27 percent. Dodge brand sales rose 18 percent, with the Dart compact car posting its best month ever with sales of nearly 8,100. But the Chrysler brand struggled, with sales falling 13 percent.
Ford Motor Co. sold 212,584 cars and trucks. The F-series pickup remains the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. Sales totaled 59,000 in April. And sales of the redesigned Escape SUV rose 52 percent.
General Motors Co. reported sales of 237,646 cars and trucks. Even with gas prices on the decline, compact cars remain popular. Sales of the Chevy Cruze rose 21 percent.
Nissan sales were boosted by demand for the recently redesigned Altima midsize car and Sentra compact. The company also took a step toward boosting future numbers. It announced price cuts on seven models that make up 65 percent of its U.S. sales. The cuts, effective on Friday, run from $580 on the top-selling Altima to $4,400, on the Armada big SUV.
VW's sales drop was led by its top-seller, the Passat midsize car, which fell 10 percent.
Despite a slight drop, Toyota was optimistic about the rest of the year. Sales chief Bill Fay said the overall market increase is a good sign for all automakers, "especially with new products, low interest rates and plenty of pent-up demand."
Chrysler predicted that total U.S. sales will hit an annual rate of 15.4 million in April. That's a little higher than most analysts' predictions. April is likely to be the sixth straight month of sales above a 15 million yearly pace.
Barring an unexpected event that causes a real estate price collapse or rapidly rising job losses, there's little to stop sales from growing further in the next few years, industry analysts say.
"I don't see any significant hurdles on the horizon," said Alec Gutierrez, a senior market analyst at Kelley Blue Book. "I don't see us taking a step back, provided the unemployment rate at least holds steady."
He expects U.S. auto sales to end the year around 15.3 million cars and trucks, up 5.5 percent from last year's 14.5 million.
U.S. unemployment stands at a stubbornly high 7.6 percent, but that hasn't slowed auto sales much.
Aside from unemployment, almost every factor that affects car and truck sales is positive. Interest rates are low — the average four-year loan on a new car is 2.4 percent, according to Bankrate.com. Also, credit is widely available, even to those with low scores. Used-car values are high, so car buyers can get good trade-in value for their old cars. Lease deals are good. Gas prices have fallen since February.
In addition, home-building is on the rise, up 7 percent from February to March. That means better sales of big pickup trucks as companies and laborers return to the market. Kelley Blue Book expects big pickup sales to rise more than 26 percent in April over a year ago.
Many businesses and consumers need to replace older trucks and cars. The average age of a U.S. vehicle is 11.2 years. Plus, automakers have rolled out dozens of exciting new models in the past year, drawing buyers into showrooms.
"Relatively lower gas prices coupled with small business demand improving for trucks resulted in a strong showing for small and large pickups in April," said Jesse Toprak, senior analyst for the TrueCar.com auto pricing site.
One category that's soaring is small crossover SUVs. Sales rose an estimated 22.5 percent in April, according to Kelley Blue Book. Fuel-efficient models such as the Ford Escape, Honda CR-V and Mazda CX-5 are driving sales, Gutierrez said.
Kelley Blue Book estimates that auto prices fell slightly in April compared with a year ago, to an average of $31,326.


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Signature in the Cell
There is a Mind who was before all things and through whom all things are held together. Hence, I believe in intelligent design. But am I in the Intelligent Design (ID) movement? No.
The recent book, Signature in the Cell, by ID movement leader Stephen C. Meyer, illustrates why.Meyer holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Cambridge and is an expert in the philosophy of science. Admittedly, I am only an amateur in his area of expertise, but there were times as I was reading his book, when I was enthralled by the highly articulate explanation of how the tools of scientific logic enable us to become quite certain about the cause of natural events in the distant past. Similarly, his discussion of attempts to meaningfully define science was outstanding. He showed how the term has taken on new meaning based on practice. Today, as it is carried out by almost all practitioners, science has become synonymous with methodological naturalism. Meyer may have been overly optimistic when he wrote, "recently however, this [definition] has begun to change as more scientists are becoming interested in the evidence for intelligent design" (p. 437). Still, I enjoyed his discussion of the political and philosophical maneuvers of those with a vested interest in how this term ought to be defined. This is Stephen Meyer at his best. He is very effective in communicating philosophical issues to a general audience. Perhaps it is no surprise then, that a world-class philosopher, Thomas Nagel of New York University, recommended Signature in the Cell to The Times Literary Supplement as one of the best books of 2009.It is important to emphasize, however, that the Intelligent Design movement is not purported to be philosophical or religious in nature. The leaders, including Stephen Meyer, emphatically declare this is a scientific movement and it needs to be judged on the quality of its science, not its philosophy or theology. So Meyer has expanded his extensive reading list to include numerous journal articles and books within the field of biochemistry, molecular biology and genetics. His purpose has been to assess the quality of the scientific interpretations of the data as it relates to the origin of the information inside of cells. He has reached the conclusion that the sciences of biochemistry, molecular biology and genetics have come to a dead end and that the only reasonable scientific explanation now is that the information inside of a cell is the product of an external mind.Many scientists think that as life began, its source of information was found in RNA molecules. There are specialized reasons for this, which are not germane to the point I want to make. Suffice it to say, however, that Meyer suggests that the two different conditions for making two of the key building blocks that characterize an RNA molecule are incompatible (p. 303). In other words, the conditions under which one building block could have been synthesized on the early earth would have resulted in the destruction of the second building block, and vice versa. Since there is no way that both could have been produced simultaneously on a primitive earth, Meyer declares that RNA could not arise without the input of a mind. As he was writing these words, however, some elegant experiments were taking place at the University of Manchester that showed there is a way, a very feasible way that both building blocks could have been produced through natural processes.1
In Chapter 14, as Stephen Meyer brings his discussion about the feasibility of RNA's role as the early storehouse for cellular information to a conclusion, he recalls a twenty year old conversation with a philosophy professor about origin-of-life-research: "The field is becoming increasingly populated by cranks. Everyone knows everybody else's theory doesn't work, but no one is willing to admit it about his own." Following this statement, Meyer fast-forwards into the present, and writes of his own assessment of the field twenty years later: "I found no reason to amend these assessments" (p. 322). As a geneticist, I am taken aback by this assessment. The work he had just been discussing is the work of Jack Szostak who was awarded the Nobel Prize a few weeks ago. I've heard Dr Szostak speak a number of times. He is no crank. He is widely regarded as a brilliant mind. Read his Scientific American article for yourself (see footnote, below), you'll see he is also very frank about the strengths and weaknesses of his current thoughts about life's origins. Also, his work is by no means at a standstill. Only a philosopher, I suppose, or someone else quite naïve about how science proceeds at a lab bench would be able to make such an assessment.
Immediately prior to Meyer's assessment about cranks in the field of origin-of-life-research, he had also been discussing the work of Gerald Joyce of The Scripps Research Institute. I have also been privileged to hear Dr. Joyce speak on at least three occasions. He, like Szostak, is widely regarded by biochemists and molecular biologists as brilliant. Like Szostak, I find that his discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the RNA world model is cautious. He knows there are many unanswered questions, but he has made great strides at answering some of them. At the time of writing Signature of the Cell, Dr. Meyer correctly concluded that no RNA molecule had ever been evolved in a test tube which could do more than join two building blocks together. However, while the book was in press, Gerald Joyce and Tracey Lincoln published an article in Science in which they demonstrated that evolved-RNA can take on a second function, the all-important replication activity. In just 30 hours their collection of RNA molecules had grown 100 million times bigger through a replication process carried out exclusively by evolved RNA molecules. So another dead-end pronouncement by Meyer was breached even while the book was in press.
I want to give one more example which demonstrates Meyer's disappointing tendency to reach premature conclusions based on his unsuccessful attempt to move from philosophy into genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology. Dr. Meyer evaluates the work of the population geneticist, Michael Lynch of Indiana University. He points out the Lynch has proposed that "the structure of the genome can be explained by a neutralist theory of evolution based mainly on genetic drift" (p. 470). Meyer concludes in just a sentence or two that Lynch is wrong and that genetic drift is less likely than natural selection. Again, I am very puzzled by this conclusion in what is purported to be a science book which is examining scientific data. Lynch is one of the finest population geneticists in the world. What experiment or calculation has Stephen Meyer done to put himself in a position to tell Michael Lynch which of two possible scenarios is more likely? Yet he does this in a single sentence.
Signature in the Cell is by most accounts considered to be a highly successful book. From a philosophy perspective, it is considered by at least one leading philosopher to be one of the best books of 2009. From a religious perspective, Meyer, on the basis of this book, has just been declared "Daniel of the Year" by the widely read evangelical periodical World Magazine. From the public persona perspective it has sold very well—Amazon.com had it on one of its top ten lists for the 2009 best sellers.
However, the book is supposed to be a science book and the ID movement is purported to be primarily a scientific movement—not primarily a philosophical, religious, or even popular movement. Meyer argues throughout the book that his theory about the origin of information is scientific, not religious. He makes it clear that he wants it to be considered on its scientific merits alone. I am comfortable with this. Let it be evaluated on the basis of its science. Like him, I believe in intelligent design. However, I am also a scientist. So I need to evaluate this book in the way that he calls all of us to do, as a work of science. I must consider whether this philosopher, this Christian brother, this best-selling author, and this leading debater has been successful at analyzing the data of the world's leading scientists—people who have given their careers full time for many years to asking (and answering) very sophisticated questions about whether material causes have created information.
There is no question that large amounts information have been created by materialistic forces over the past several hundred million years. Meyer dismisses this without discussing it. What about at the very beginning, 3.5 billion years ago? Everyone doing the science, Meyer notwithstanding, would say the jury is still out. There are some very elegant feasibility experiments going on at the present time. However, it is far too early for a philosopher to jump into the fray and declare no further progress will be made and that this science is now dead. If the object of the book is to show that the Intelligent Design movement is a scientific movement, it has not succeeded. In fact, what it has succeeded in showing is that it is a popular movement grounded primarily in the hopes and dreams of those in philosophy, in religion, and especially those in the general public. With all due respect for the very fine people associated with the ID movement, many of whom I have met personally and whose sincerity I greatly appreciate, our hopes and dreams need to be much bigger than this. The science of origins is not the failure it is purported to be. It is just science moving along as science does—one step at a time. Let it be.


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The footer for graduated sites is a mess! Meta and Area 51 are stuck in the middle of the list of graduated sites, since it lists sites in order of creation.
Updated proposal with better category names:
This way, sites are logically arranged instead of in chronological order (after all, chronology being unlogical is why we have the voting system, isn't it?). Better yet, with this re-organization, we can make it easier to find the right site for our questions.


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For the first time in the Rose Bowl's 90-year history, fans will get to visit the locker rooms, run through the tunnel and tread on the hallowed ground that has hosted notorious football players and international athletes.
Not only will fans get to tour the UCLA Bruins current locker room. They'll now have access to the original 1922 Bruins locker room, which may be surprisingly small for some fans.
"We have used this for storage so this is the first time we actually opened it and actually get to go inside," said Kayla Kilpatrick, Rose Bowl tour coordinator.
The old locker room will eventually be used to store memorabilia for the tour.
"We actually found a lot of artifacts and old photographs we're going to hang on the walls to make it more like a museum feel," Kilpatrick said.
The tour will also cover the post-game press conference room and the press box, which offers a breathtaking view of the field from above.
And, of course, there's a point in the tour when fans get to run onto the field and maybe throw a pass or attempt a field goal.
Get Los Angeles's latest local news on crime, entertainment, weather, schools, COVID, cost of living and more. Here's your go-to source for today's LA news.
The 1 1/2-hour tour offers a chance for fans to add their own memories to the lifetime of memories that live in the historic stadium.
Tours begin Saturday and will be offered Thursdays through Sundays year-round (except on game days).
The price of the tour is $17.50 for adults and $14.50 for children. Group rates of $12 per person will be offered seven days a week for groups of 20 or more. Education tours are $9 per student.
For more information, visit www.rosebowlstadium.com or call 626-275-2714.


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Slacker.com is a great internet radio station offering just about every genre of music for free, 24 hours a day. I listen to it on my computer in my office and also on my phone (Android).
Slacker is based here in the San Diego area. They contacted me several years ago and asked to serve as a music consultant for their bluegrass station.
From what I understand, that's what makes Slacker different from other internet radio stations like Pandora. Each Slacker station is professionally programmed by someone who really knows something about the genre. It's not programmed by a computer.
You can, however, create your own station by using Slacker's computer. Just enter the name of your favorite recording artist and Slacker will create a customized radio station with music by your favorite plus others who are similar. You can skip songs you don't want to hear or play songs over and over. It's pretty cool.
Slacker is free, but the free version includes commercials. Pay a small fee and you can get rid of the commercials and do a few other things that you can't do on the free version.
The bluegrass station is a sub-genre of Slacker's "Country" station. Check it out and let me know what you think.


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Source: Sen. Feinstein's OfficeJune 5, 2012
Feinstein Statement on National Security Leaks
Washington—Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, today released the following statement regarding recent leaks of sensitive national security information:
"I am deeply disturbed by the continuing leaks of classified information to the media, most recently regarding alleged cyber efforts targeting Iran's nuclear program.
Today I sent a classified letter to the president outlining my deep concerns about the release of this information. I made it clear that disclosures of this type endanger American lives and undermine America's national security.
I have spoken with Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, about the possibility of a joint hearing to investigate these leaks.
The Intelligence Committee will soon mark up the FY13 Intelligence Authorization Bill, and it is my intention to include provisions requiring:
- A timely notification of authorized disclosures and the rationale for those disclosures;
- More forceful investigations of unauthorized disclosures;
- Additional authorities and resources for the U.S. government to identify and prosecute those who violate various federal laws and non-disclosure agreements by revealing highly classified information.


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"Blinding Moment" by Gert Jonke, translated by Vincent Kling; reviewed by Hans Gabriel
New literary translations inevitably make several implicit assumptions. Aside from the artistic value, or at least the uniqueness or originality, of the original work, a translation implicitly assumes that there is an audience that would or should be interested in the sort of work being translated and yet remains unable to appreciate or even access it in the original language. And of course, there is the implicit assumption, despite the usual variety of acknowledgments of inadequacy, that the translator is able to capture enough of both the spirit and the letter of the original to make the endeavor worthwhile. Blinding Moment, Vincent Kling's new selection and translation of Gert Jonke's work (Ariadne Press, 2009), offers satisfying justification and support for each of these assumptions.
The volume is subtitled "Four pieces about composers." The formal range of the selections alone from dramatic to lyric to narrative prose justifies the generality of the term "pieces," but this designation also implicitly links Jonke's "pieces" - his linguistic composition(s) - with the pieces of music they treat. None of them, in any case, "is [very] likely to be mistaken for a standard biography" (172), as Kling makes clear in his detailed discussion of these texts in the Translator's Afterword. Instead, this designation prepares the reader for what Kling describes as "Jonke's comic vision," for his "resolutions [that] are often lyrically heightened apotheoses" (151). In other words, Jonke's "pieces" unite his protagonists' timeless, idealized musical composition(s) with strictly defined historical moments in their real lives. The resulting "madcap exaggeration" (151) reminds Kling of Bakhtin's "carnival humor" (176). But the unabashed mixing of the sublime and/or ridiculous with a recognizable historical or biographical moment is perhaps more reminiscent of the preoccupation with the tragi-comic or "grotesque" of Jonke's late European neighbor Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Or one could perhaps speak of a hyperbolic enactment of the Schillerian aesthetic state, in which the real and the ideal aspects of these composers' lives and artistic productions are captured in an aesthetic moment of extreme interaction and coexistence in Jonke's own blatantly artistic/artificial, musically structured literary composition(s).
The first such moment, "The Head of George Frederick Handel," is the most difficult to categorize in traditional terms. Kling does well to characterize it as "transmuting more or less standard biography into a dazzling monologue of Handel's last moments as woven around the facts of his life" (171). The second "piece" is lyrical, and is the only one that does not treat a biographical moment per se. Instead, the real and the ideal interact more broadly as heaven and earth, as nature / the gods and humankind. It is the birds, borrowed from Messiaen's musical "catalogue," that provide the aesthetic glue. Kling describes quite nicely how Jonke "transmutes" Messiaen's original musical material into his own linguistic composition. But Jonke's use of the birds for his "madcap" interweaving of ideal and real also has interesting literary echoes. Situated almost perfectly between the birds' soothing reassurance of the wanderer in Goethe's Über allen Gipfeln and the bird's brusque rejection of the wanderer in Nietzsche's Der Wanderer, Jonke's linguistic (re-)composition of Messian's musical "Catalogue D'Oiseaux" oscillates exuberantly and lyrically between these two extremes, ironically reversing the transformation of these two literary predecessors from written works to musical compositions by Schubert and Schönberg, respectively.
The final piece, and the one that gives the collection as a whole its title, illustrates just how integral a part of the fun this exuberantly ironic (re-)compostion is for Jonke. "Blinding Moment" not only recomposes the historical final moment of Anton Webern's life as a musical one. It also simultaneously (re-)composes the opera Wozzeck of Webern's close friend and fellow composer Alban Berg in narrative form. Thus, when Jonke's narrator opens the "Novelle" with the words "Langsam, Raymond, langsam," we are hearing the opening words of Berg's opera as well. By repeating the words in this real biographical setting, Jonke's text simultaneously intertwines real and ideal in exuberantly "grotesque" fashion and reverses the transformation by Berg's opera of Georg Büchner's play, itself a "grotesque" retelling (as the Captain acknowledges in one of Büchner's scenes) of a real biographical moment from the life of the soldier Johann Christian Woyzeck.
In other words, Jonke appears to be striving for a sort of "real-ideal" "sympoesie" a la German Romanticism, a sort of formal synesthesia in which musical (re-)compositions of literary and real-life historical moments are themselves linguistically (re-)composed into literary and real-life historical moments, so that the formal distinctions are both upheld and transcended in a heightened euphoric aesthetic apotheosis, to use Kling's description. This aim is perhaps most evident in the third of the four pieces, the "Theater Sonata" on Beethoven entitled Gentle Rage or the Ear Machinist. As the title already suggests and as Kling observes, "Synesthesia, the bewilderment of perception by the displacement of one sense function to another, becomes for Beethoven, as it does for Handel, a kind of higher awareness, not a confusing muddle" (182-3). "And if the watcher can watch the watcher in infinite regress," Kling continues, essentially describing German romantic irony as it applies to Beethoven's increasing deafness, "[…] then this potentially disorienting mise en abime […] becomes a means of heightened awareness for Beethoven, giving him additional resources to overcome impairment" (183).
One could argue after reading these four pieces that Jonke intends his compositions to serve the same function for his (ideal) readers. Of course, for these pieces to do so completely, such readers need to know not only their Messiah and their Messiaen, but also their Austrian and German literature. It is no small praise for Kling's translation to add, however, that with the appearance of this collection, Jonke's readers no longer have to know German. Kling's translator's afterword illustrates his critical sensitivity to what is at stake in Jonke's pieces and to their musical, literary and political context. The intertextuality of Jonke's work extends beyond the formal parallels to German romanticism and to the musical composition(s) they treat, however, to specific verbal connections such as the opening words of Blinding Moment and Berg's opera and the title of Gentle Rage and Adalbert Stifter's Gentle Law. Here, Kling's Praxis matches the sensitivity of his theoretical treatment. His translation walks convincingly the fine line between forcing Jonke's text into an unconventional English that makes these connections explicit on the one hand, and rendering the German into a completely unassuming and apparently self-evident English that effaces them on the other.
Jonke often seems determined in his writing to deny the possibility of any such delicately balanced translation. The fact that Kling is able to maintain this balance through the variety of prose, lyric and dramatic dialogue that he selects only adds to his accomplishment. Most notable in this regard are his renderings of Jonke's gleefully exaggerated word agglutinations that, however improbable in the original, are still theoretically possible according to German word-formational convention. In these instances, Kling opts for an effective and playful variation as opposed to consistency. He sometimes follows Jonke's lead with impossible but still comprehensible English agglutinations, but he also takes the more standard English route, and in some cases, he even opts for both. Perhaps the most extreme example, itself a sort of linguistic "Blinding Moment" from the piece of the same name, illustrates Kling's skill in mixing it up. When Jonke's exuberance produces Militärgetriebewindhosenüberlandverwirbelwinddetonationssprengstoffzerstörungsfanatikern, Kling counters with "world-subjugating vortexbylandproducing, military gearandmeshdriven, detonating explosivedevices outfitted fanatics" (111). This both is and is not English. But it is this very balancing act on the edge of the language that allows Kling's translation to communicate the "grotesque" uniqueness and interest of Jonke's original pieces. After all, they themselves are and are not German, are and are not merely linguistic texts, are and are not "standard biography." Whatever one chooses to call Jonke's "pieces," Kling's translation remains admirably faithful to their difficult spirit and letter. This collection therefore allows English-speaking audiences to experience the quintessential "entweder und oder," to use a particularly Austrian turn of phrase – the quintessential "either and or"- of both Jonke's composition(s) and of the composition(s) they treat.
Hans Gabriel The University of North Carolina School of the Arts


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Is it possible to access the microSD card on an Asus Transformer or is there some way to mount this so it is accessible remotely?
When connected via USB to a PC the SD card in the keyboard dock is available but the microSD card in the main tablet is not.
I have read some articles for similar Android devices which mention that the microSD card is mounted but I can't seem to see it.
It would be good to not have to remove the microSD from the main tablet every time I want to copy files to it since ejecting it isn't exactly easy!
Edit I've used the rather nice http://code.google.com/p/swiftp/ FTP tool, from this I can't see the microSD card either.
Edit Part Deux I've actually returned the Asus Transformer as there were too many problems with it, whether these were Asus problems or Honeycomb problems I couldn't determine. caveat emptor


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Residents of New York City who are looking to put a little outdoor adventure into their lives will be pleased to learn of an upcoming event that aims to help them do just that. The first ever Outdoor Rise festival is scheduled to take place June 17-23 and will offer a full week of competitions, classes, lectures, films and more. Best off all, the event is scheduled to take place across all five boroughs and will be absolutely free.
Outdoor Rise is sponsored by Discover Outdoors, an organization that is dedicated to improving the "quality of life through meaningful outdoor experiences." With that in mind, there are some big plans for the upcoming festival with events such as daily yoga classes, kayaking and stand-up paddle boarding opportunities on the Hudson River, bouldering in Central Park and organized hikes along a variety of trails. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. There will also be photography workshops, guest speakers, adventure films and more. For a full schedule be sure to check out the events calendar on the Outdoor Rise website.
The hope is that that this event will not only provide a rare opportunity for outdoor adventure to the very metropolitan New York crowd, but also give someone the chance to connect with the outdoors in ways that they never have before. Many people who live in NYC might not even know that these opportunities exist right outside their door, and the dedicated team at Discover Outdoors wants to remind them of this fact. Along the way, they might even inspire them to bigger adventures.


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In 1770, a physician named Samuel Flower came to the Baton Rouge area from Reading, Pennsylvania, and within a decade purchased the land where he would build Greenwood. In 1810 a fire destroyed the original Greenwood, but Flower built a larger house on the site, which is the present Butler-Greenwood Plantation home. Samuel Flower died in 1813, and the title of Greenwood eventually passed to his daughter, Harriet, who married Judge George Mathews in 1809. Mathews was an important figure in the early judicial history of the state, being one of the presiding judges of the Louisiana Supreme Court in its early phase. By 1860, Harriet and her son, Charles Mathews, were running a plantation of 1,400 acres worked by 96 African-American slaves living in 18 dwellings. After Harriet's death in 1873, the management of the estate fell on Charles's wife, Penelope. The history of Greenwood Plantation provides an excellent illustration of how southern women managed great southern plantations. The house possesses a degree of architectural significance despite the loss of its historic three-story side wing. The Butler-Greenwood Plantation is located on 8345 US Hwy 61, 2 ½ miles north of St. Francisville The house features bed and breakfast accommodations and guide tours Monday-Saturday from 9:00am to 5:00pm, Sunday 1:00pm to 5:00pm for which there is a fee. Please call 225-635-6312 for further information. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Reverse evolution in fish, claims an article in EurekAlert, 15 May 2008.
Researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre, Seattle, have studied armour plating in stickleback fish in Lake Washington. Fifty years ago the lake was very murky, due to pollution, but following a massive clean-up the lake is now much clearer. The stickleback fish are more visible to predators in the clear water, so researchers claim the fish have evolved to be more armour plated over the last four decades. In the late 1960s, just after the clean-up was complete, only six percent of sticklebacks in Lake Washington had complete covering of armour plating. Today, 49 percent are fully armour plated and 35 percent have a partial covering.
According to EurekAlert, "This rapid, dramatic adaptation is actually an example of evolution in reverse, because the normal evolutionary tendency for freshwater sticklebacks runs toward less armour plating, not more." The change occurred because "The sticklebacks in Lake Washington contain DNA from both marine (saltwater) fish, which tend to be fully plated, and freshwater sticklebacks, which tend to be low-plated. When environmental pressures called for increased plating, some of the fish had copies of genes that controlled for both low and full plating, and so natural selection favoured the latter."
The amount of plating is under control of a gene called Eda, which comes in two forms: one causes low plating and the other complete plating. Catherine Peichel, who led the study, explained: "Having a lot of genetic variation in the population means that if the environment changes, there may be some gene variant that does better in that new environment than in the previous one, and so nature selects for it. Genetic variation increases the chance of overall survival of the species."
Editorial Comment: This is another example of the misuse of the word "evolution". Nothing has evolved here. Before the lake was cleaned up there were both partially and fully armoured fish. All that has happened is that fish with the partial armour gene have been eliminated from the population, leaving those with the full armour gene to breed. As the fish have a lifespan of only about three years, it doesn't take long for the proportion of fish with the favoured genes to become dominant.
This is an example of natural selection, but as we have said many times before, natural selection is not evolution. Selection means to choose from pre-existing options. It does not create the options or change them into other options.
Evidence News 11 June 2008
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"For outstanding theoretical contributions to the fundamental understanding of the statistics of isolated chains, polymer dynamics, phase behavior of blends, and equilibrium polymerization."
Background:Karl Freed received a BS in chemical engineering from Columbia University in 1963, an AM (1965) in physics and a PhD (1967) in chemical physics at Harvard University, and then was a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow (1967 – 68) in the Department of Theoretical Physics, Manchester University, Manchester, England before joining the James Frank Institute and Department of Chemistry, where her currently is the Henry G. Gale Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus, and a Senior Fellow in the Computation Institute. His current research interests include the influence of monomer molecular structure on glass-formation in polymers and the miscibility of polymer blends, equilibrium self-assembly and dynamics, solvation of polymers, proteins, and nucleic acids, the prediction of protein structure and the folding pathways without use of machine learning or homology, refinement of protein structures, and modeling the unfolded state of proteins. He has held Sloan, Guggenheim and Dreyfus Foundation Fellowships and is the recipient of the 1976 American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry and the 1973 Marlow Medal from the Faraday Society. Freed is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Physical Society and is a member of the Biophysical and American Chemical Societies.
Karen Winey, Chair; N. Balsara; S. Cheng; R. Colby; M. Muthukumar


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Gugu Badhun People Exploration Permit Backlog Project Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) | ||
Date: | 15 June 2004 | |
Sub Category: | Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) (Native Title Act) | |
Place: | ||
Click this link to search this location with google maps | ||
State/Country: | Queensland, Australia | |
Click this link to search this location with google maps | ||
The area of the ILUA is located to the west of Ingham in north east Queensland and is comprised of the following tenement areas: EPM 13006; EPM 12699; EPM 13132, excluding sub-blocks: TOWN2755: d, g, h, m, n, o, q, r, s, v, w; TOWN2756a; TOWN2830: k; and TOWN2831: f, g, l, m and r; and EPM 13191, excluding that portion in Native Title Claim Q6018/01 Ewamian People #3 as at 11 May 2002. The area of the ILUA is within the Dalrymple, Etheridge and Herberton Shires and the Cairns & District and Townsville ATSIC regions. | ||
Legal Status: | Registered with the National Native Title Tribunal | |
Legal Reference: | National Native Title Tribunal File No: QI2002/056 | |
Subject Matter: | Compensation | Exploration | Future Act | Mining and Minerals | Native Title | |
Summary Information: | ||
In the Gugu Badhun People Exploration Permit Backlog Project Indigenous Land Use Agreement the Gugu Badhun People have agreed to the grant of Exploration Permits (EPs) and Mineral Development Licences (MDLs) by the State of Queensland. The right to negotiate provisions of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) do not apply to these grants. This will enable the backlog of applications for tenements in the agreement area, made to the State by grantees, to be processed without requiring the longer timeframes of the right to negotiate process that would otherwise apply. EPs may be granted to an 'Explorer' for up to 5 years, subject to a set of 'Native Title Conditions' specified in the agreement and provided that the Explorer has paid the compensation amount required under the agreement. Explorers may be granted an MDL subject to the same provisions, as long as they have also been granted an EP under the ILUA and do not have any 'outstanding dispute' with the Gugu Budhun People nor have 'breached any conditions' relating to that EP. On being granted a tenement, the grantees may conduct 'Exploration Activities' in the area. EPs and MDLs granted under the ILUA may be renewed, provided they remain subject to the conditions of the agreement. |
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Gugu Badhun People Exploration Permit Backlog Project Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) Map - ( Image | Thumbnail | PDF) |
Glossary |
Native Title (Australia) | Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) (Native Title Act 1993 (Cth)) (Australia) |
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The recall involves only 2001-2004 model year Escapes with V6 engines and cruise control.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Ford Motor Co. is recalling 421,000 Escape crossover SUVs in the United States to fix a problem in which a speed control cable can become stuck resulting in unintended continued acceleration.
Only model year 2001 through 2004 Escapes equipped with V6 engines and cruise control are involved in the recall.
A total of 485,000 Escapes are being recalled globally, according to Ford.
When the gas pedal is pressed almost all the way down, a cruise control cable can become stuck between the engine cover and a cruise control cable cover. The problem can occur whether cruise control is in use or not.
If this happens, the engine will not return to a slower speed even after the driver releases the gas pedal.
NHTSA had recently opened an investigation into stuck throttles in Ford Escapes and virtually identical Mazda Tributes after receiving 99 complaints, including at least one involving a death, according to NHTSA documents.
To fix the problem, Ford dealers will increase clearance around the engine cover. The recall is expected to begin on August 6. Escape owners can contact Ford at 1-866-436-7332 for more information.
Mazda has not announced a recall on the Mazda Tribute crossover. Ford Motor Co. (F, Fortune 500) owned a controlling interest in Mazda at the time the recalled Escapes were made and the two companies shared engineering on some vehicles.
"We are aware that Ford has issued a recall on their Escape model," Mazda said in a statement. "Throughout, our engineering team has been working with NHTSA as well as counterparts from Ford, but we do not have any status updates we can provide as to next-steps at this time."
Since parts for the repair will not be available right away, dealers will render the cruise control system inoperable until a more permanent repair is made.
Ford is advising owners of V6 Escapes with cruise control not to push the gas pedal close to the floor until the vehicle has been repaired.
Ford Escapes have been the subject of two other recent recalls, but those were on the new 2013 Escape, a completely redesigned vehicle that shares little or none of its engineering with older Ford Escape SUVs.


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Design House Stockholm
We have distinguished ourselves as a publisher of design rather than a conventional producer, working in the same way with designers that publishing houses work with authors. Rather than selecting a designer to make a specific product, all designers are invited to bring their personal ideas, of which some are selected for development and production. We look for products that add something new to their genre, products with personality and character. Our collection does not have any specified boundaries - if a product is considered good enough and realistic to produce, we develop it. No matter if it is a mug, a chair, a couture collection or a piece of jewelry. The ambition is to be a mirror of the very best Scandinavian design today - the term 'Scandinavian' referring to a philosophic and aesthetic perspective, rather than geography and nationality. To gather a collection of design classics with timeless appeal and qualities that outlives temporary trends. These are the foundations of Design House Stockholm.


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Eminem has announced that Relapse, his long-awaited new album, will be released on 19 May. However, in a move that no-one had predicted, he's also revealed that he'll be putting out another record, Relapse 2, later in the year.
His press release reads: "A lot of people were expecting Relapse to drop last year. I was one of them. Then Dre and I went back in the studio in September for a few days, and that turned into six months.
"We were on such a roll; we wound up with a ton of new music produced by Dre. Putting out Relapse 2 will let everyone get all of the best stuff."
Interscope-Geffen-A&M boss Jimmy Iovine said last year that Eminem had "hit a streak", but the news that he'll be releasing two albums in 2009 still comes as a massive shock.
Whether this will further delay the releases of Dr. Dre and 50 Cent's albums, which were in a queue behind Relapse, remains to be seen.
A new single from the album will debut on radio and TV on 7 April.
(Via MTV)


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Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Places and custom check-ins for Facebook
You are welcome to check out a new version of our mashup Places from Facebook.
Mashup lets you search for places, show them on the map, copy locations to mobile, see friends activity, check-in anywhere as well as prepare mobile web pages for customized check-ins. By default mashup shows places for the local area. But it could be used for any geographical area.
You can directly pass the following parameters to the basic URL:
lat - latitude
lng - longitude
q - query for search
lang - language code for the map (E.g.: lang=en or lang=de etc.
For example, Facebook in London
For customized check-in place owner (or advertising/marketing agency, for example) can define all the aspects of check-in - data to be posted on user's wall, data to be returned as a confirmation, Google Analytics code for stats monitoring etc. This version provides own analytics for check-ins too. And of course you can still use Facebook's dashboard for places pages - mashup creates standard check-ins for Facebook.
In other words – any small business can create public (or private) "Foursquare-like" system for own visitors. Using all the power of Facebook's user base.
Also this version supports the newest API from Facebook - geocoded postings. Now you can write reviews for Places.
P.S. And here you can see a mobile version for this mashup.
P.P.S. See also QRpon – customized check-ins for Facebook
P.P.P.S. and here you can see Places from Google for the same area.
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