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The Mapleson Cylinders - Program Notes
|The Mapleson Cylinders -- An Historical Introduction
by David Hall
Tuesday, March 20, 1900--Today, my long cherished desire is satisfied. I purchased an Edison "Home" Phonograph for $30. In the evening, I took it up chez Helen. People there all spent a merry evening with the beautiful instrument.
Wednesday, March 21--Dear old Leo Stern invited me to see his phonograph. His Valse, sung by his wife, Miss Susanne [sic] Adams--perfect. He kindly presented me with a Bettini recorder and reproducer--delightful, valuable gift.
Thursday, March 22--For the present, I neither work properly nor eat nor sleep. I'm a phonograph maniac!! Always making or buying records. The Bettini apparatus is simply perfect.
April 28--Sailed for Europe by SS Statendam, Holland-America Line....Managed to get the phonograph outfit and nearly a hundred wax cylinders safely on board together with our numerous belongings.
March 25, 1901--During this season, have made a fine collection of phonograph cylinders. Melba and Jean de Reszke's voices.
It was early in the brand new twentieth century that Lionel S. Mapleson (1865-1937), Librarian of New York's Metropolitan Opera Company, acquired a new toy that would provide him with yet another hobby besides his already cherished one of photography. The diary excerpts quoted above convey vividly the extent of his fascination with the Edison "Home" Model which he purchased, and the direction in which his new hobby led him. (Leo Stern, who gave Mapleson the Bettini recorder and reproducer for his "Home" Model A, had been soloist for the world premiere, in London on March 16, 1896, of Dvo[rcaron]ák's Cello Concerto, under the composer's direction.)
A ledger entry in Mapleson's diary indicates the actual purchase date as March 17: "Bought phonograph $25. Records $12." This directly contradicts the earlier stories that Thomas Edison presented Mapleson with the phonograph used for his Metropolitan Opera cylinder recordings. The machine shown in the photographs of Mapleson with its outsized recording horn is clearly the "Home" Model A "suitcase" type, while the machine acquired from Edison was the much larger "Triumph" Model A, which may still be seen at the Mapleson Music Library in Lindenhurst, Long Island. (At the moment, details are lacking as to how the "Triumph" Model A came to be used. The "Home" Model A seems to have disappeared, possibly left at the Mapleson family home in London.) It should be remembered that Mapleson's machine, which recorded on two-minute wax cylinders, was, like today's tape recorders, relatively portable, powered by a compact clockwork spring motor. Also like the tape recorder, its recordings could be erased, by means of a simple shaving device mounted on the machine, allowing repeated use of the waxes--a property obviously exploited by Mapleson, quite a few of whose cylinders are very thin, having been shaved down numerous times (and not always cleanly, giving rise to "double exposure" effects).
In his position as Librarian at the opera, the thirty-five-year-old London-born Mapleson was on easy terms with the Metropolitan's illustrious stars. One weekend at the end of March 1900, he persuaded Marcella Sembrich, sans accompaniment, to try in front of the recording horn the final cadenza of Johann Strauss's Voices of Spring waltz, duly documenting the occasion at the close of the cylinder with a recorded announcement of his own. By the beginning of the next year, with a new opera season well under way, Mapleson decided to try his machine under front-line conditions, crowding himself and his machine (with its horn) into the prompter's box at the opera house. The first of his surviving operatic recordings captures the voice of Nellie Melba in the "Alleluia" from the Act II fiesta scene of Massenet's Le Cid; the date was January 16. Following the initial try, Mapleson glued an opera program "snake" around the cylinder container, listing title, date, and cast. (Mapleson annotated his cylinders variously--sometimes directly on the container or its glued-on "snake," sometimes with a loose slip of paper placed inside. Almost all of the cylinder containers with opera snakes bear a large-type stencil with the legend "L. S. MAPLESON RECORD MET OPERA NEW YORK.")
Three days later, at a matinee performance of Le Cid, he was back in the prompter's box, this time after the voice of the great Jean De Reszke as Rodrigue. Part of the aria "O noble lame étincelante" from Act I, with its spectacular pageantry of trumpets and chorus, was captured. Melba in Lucia, Faust, Roméo et Juliette, and Traviata, Jean De Reszke with Lillian Nordica in Huguenots, with Milka Ternina in Tristan, and with Lucienne Bréval in L'Africaine, as well as Jean solo in Siegfried and in his final Metropolitan appearance as Lohengrin, were among the moments captured on wax that first season, from which, all told, more than two dozen cylinders survive. It was not realized at that time, of course, that those cylinders with De Reszke and Ternina would stand as sole audio documentation of these remarkable artists, for neither was to be represented subsequently on commercially-issued recordings.
The 1901-02 season saw an apparent curtailment in Mapleson's amateur recording activity. Very likely he realized that the sonic results he was getting from the prompter's box with a modest-sized horn were something less than an unqualified success, and the chances of achieving satisfactory results from the flies, to which he eventually was banished, were extremely poor. The eventual solution was construction of an enormous recording horn, almost as big as Mapleson himself, with which he would eventually carry out his recording from a catwalk, some forty feet above the stage. A distinct improvement in sonic intelligibility is noticeable in the best of the items from the 1901-02 season, caught at the end of January and in February, including the vivid vocal personality of Emma Calvé in her renowned Carmen, Marguerite in Faust, and Santuzza in Cavalleria, as well as a striking take of Albert Alvarez in "O noble lame" from Le Cid.
With the 1902-03 season, Mapleson seems to have gained a measure of genuine mastery in the operation of his apparatus. More than sixty waxes survive from that season--some, in sheer scope, verging on the spectacular. Here are Nordica in a substantial part of the Immolation Scene from Götterdämmerung, the festive closing pages from Meistersinger, a striking series from Tosca with Emma Eames and Emilio De Marchi, the creator of the role of Cavaradossi. Then there are no less than ten takes from the February 7 performance of Lohengrin with Johanna Gadski as Elsa. There are spectacular things from Walküre with Nordica in full cry as Brünnhilde, a fine glimpse of Gadski as Sieglinde, and topnotch Wagnerian conducting by Alfred Hertz.
But suddenly, following the March 1903 revival of Ero e Leandro by Met conductor and composer Luigi Mancinelli, from which Mapleson recorded three fragments, there appears to have been an abrupt cessation of his performance recording. A number of reasons have been suggested for this, including the hypothesis that things dropping from the catwalk, whether cylinders or bits of apparatus, were menacing the lives and limbs of the expensive talent below. In March 1903, the commercial disc recording industry, as represented by Columbia, announced its Grand Opera recording series with major Metropolitan Opera stars (the Victor Talking Machine Company would soon follow and achieve dominance, thanks to the success of Enrico Caruso), and this may have suggested to Mapleson--or encouraged the opera management to suggest to him--that his amateur activities could become problematic. Alternatively,
Aural evidence from half-a-dozen of the surviving cylinders shows vividly how Mapleson used his recording machine in a family way--and well after 1903. At the end of a Jean De Reszke-Lucienne Bréval cylinder of the Act IV duet from Meyerbeer's L'Africaine recorded on March 15, 1901, we suddenly find ourselves in the Metropolitan Opera Library, with Mapleson and his young boys, Alfred and Louis, telling us, "We are in the library and have just come home from a windy walk on Brooklyn Bridge--Goodbye!," and we learn among other things that the year is 1909! Here were great singers, caught in full flight outside an inhibiting recording-studio environment. What on earth possessed a person of Mapleson's knowledge and taste to treat these unique documents as mere throwaways?
Combining evidence from Mapleson's diaries and from family vignettes heard on some of the cylinders enables this conjectural reconstruction of Mapleson's phonographic activity: 1900-01: experimental recordings, chiefly under private circumstances. Cylinders and machine taken to England during summer visit to sister Violet (a journey undertaken every year save the summer immediately preceding Mapleson's death). 1901-04: all major Metropolitan Opera stage performance cylinders made during this period. (It was apparently Mapleson's habit to wait until the new opera season got comfortably underway before starting to record.) Cessation of opera recording at the end of 1902-03 season; a few Sunday-evening-concert orchestral recordings made in early 1904, then evidently a loss of interest. 1909: under stimulus of two growing sons, Louis A., aged 5, and Alfred John, aged 3, the phonograph is brought into play as an entertainment vehicle for father and children: "History repeats itself, we have the phonograph working again" (diary entry for Feburary 6, 1909). We do not know whether it was the "Triumph" or the "Home" Model A, but all of the family sound-vignettes with the children seem to date from 1909 and after.
A measure of insight is offered by Rose Heylbut and Aimé Gerber (the latter associated with the Met as paymaster since the turn of the century) in their book,
Mapleson would take his machine down to the prompter's box during a performance, insert a blank cylinder, and "take" the different arias and often entire scenes, at the moment they were being sung in the House. No one thought of objecting; no one had the faintest notion that Mapleson's hobby might contain the germ of an important commercial enterprise, involving permissions, restrictions, rights and fees. It was considered to be simply a wonderful lark, and the next morning would see the artists who had been "taken," and many of their colleagues, hurrying at an early hour to Mapleson's office to hear the results. There would be comments, then, on the wonders of an age that could make such things possible. That was all, and it was quite sufficient for all concerned. These voices of Ternina, Nordica, and many others who made no (or few) public recordings were faithfully caught by Mapleson's wax cylinders. These cylinders are still in existence, though frequent use and the wearing down of the soft wax have made them less than worthy replicas of the glories they once held. [My italics.]
The earliest published report I have found concerning the Mapleson cylinders, appearing as part of the New Yorker magazine's "Talk of the Town" (December 18, 1935, p. 12) under the heading "Librarian," offers yet another view. Mapleson is described here as "...seventy-one, a pink-cheeked old party with a testy disposition and starchy cuffs." After recounting Mapleson's career and antecedents (he came of a long line of British music librarians and was a nephew of the celebrated impresario Colonel James H. Mapleson), the writer takes note of the 1901-03 recording activity, then tells us: "Now, he locks his door and plays the records on his phonograph once in a while, but he has consistently refused all sorts of fat offers from phonograph companies for the privilege of re-recording the old cylinders. 'They're much too personal.'"
And so matters stood until 1937, at which point William H. Seltsam (1897-1968) of Bridgeport, Connecticut, enters upon the scene. Since late 1931, he had been developing his International Record Collectors' Club (IRCC) as the foremost enterprise devoted to the preservation--and dissemination to a devoted clientele--of the great vocal recordings of the pre-electrical era, including great actors as well as singers. Originally a modern dance enthusiast with great interest in contemporary music (he had planned a Henry Cowell issue for IRCC that never was realized), Seltsam turned to historical recordings when his hearing deteriorated after a bout of scarlet fever. Under the title of Secretary, he ran the IRCC from 318 Reservoir Avenue in Bridgeport while also holding down a full-time office job, continuing well into the LP era, with only his death on December 27, 1968, marking finis to IRCC as an active operation.
The year 1937 marked a major milestone for the IRCC, for in September it was able to announce "the first successful re-recording of cylinders to disc" (other than what had been done in the past by Pathé in France from their giant master cylinders). Among the retired divas who had taken an interest in Seltsam's enterprise were Olive Fremstad and Geraldine Farrar. It was Fremstad who made Seltsam aware of the existence of the Mapleson cylinders, and Farrar who provided the entrée to the Mapleson lair. In December 1936, she wrote to Seltsam: "You could write to him at the Met about December 15th (the opera opens the 21st) and here's a card that might help. I hope you obtain results--for recordings of the Golden Era indeed!"
William H. Seltsam
Acting on Farrar's advice, Seltsam wrote to Lionel Mapleson on Monday, January 18, 1937, for an appointment the following Saturday (January 23), which was granted. Accompanied by his attorney and friend, William D. Whalen, Seltsam apparently came away with two cylinders for experimental purposes; one an excerpt from a 1903 "Ride of the Valkyries," the other an unidentified cylinder of the spectacular cabaletta from the Queen's aria in Act II of Les Huguenots. Farrar wrote to Seltsam in early 1937: "I am glad you saw Mr. Mapleson who is a very delightful gentleman, with a wonderful experience in matters musical. I am sure the cylinder records will add great interest to collecting." And on February 1 Whalen sent a letter of thanks to Mapleson, giving his reaction to a first hearing of the cylinders: "What a sensational thrill we received upon playing the other cylinder. It was the great Melba!" (See Program Notes, Side 2 Band 1, for the further history of that cylinder.)
Before Seltsam's work could get seriously underway, Mapleson died on December 21, 1937 (he had suffered a stroke the previous June); but Seltsam managed to acquire on loan from the Mapleson estate the cylinders still in the old man's possession at the time of his death (120 in all, plus the two experimental items). These remained in Whalen's custody at his New York office at least through the fall of 1939, and Hobbies magazine carried in its April 1938 issue an article by Whalen reporting the acquisition of the collection and the hope for IRCC disc transfers. The first of these was the Huguenots cylinder attributed to Melba, and as of September 8, 1939, Seltsam reported to Alfred Mapleson that a hundred copies had been sold.
In an article in The Gramophone (November 1938, pp. 263-64), Ira Glackens, the collector and author of the definitive biography of Lillian Nordica, described the first sampling of the cylinders, at the Glackens home at 10 West 9th Street in Manhattan: The cylinders are the early two-minute variety of wax varying from pale honey-colour to dark brown. Brittle from age and a number of them cracked or chipped at the edges, the feat of removing them from their containers or from the wooden spools fixed in rows to the bottom of boxes, inserting them on to the mandrel of the tiny machine, letting the reproducer gently down and then with ears glued to the end of the little tin horn--waiting to hear what, if any, sounds might emerge--was accomplished without damaging a single record. Alternate emotions of excitement and, it must be confessed, disappointment, left the writer and his collaborator at the work, George Bishop, exhausted from the strain.
Nevertheless, Seltsam and his associates (among them Bishop, Glendon R. Good, George Laviolette, and from 1942 the audio engineer John Raynor) labored valiantly from 1938 to 1966 to elicit at least minimally intelligible representation in disc format of Mapleson's sonic documentation--initially on 78 rpm shellac discs, after 1956 on LP. All told, sixty-four cylinders were transferred and issued by the IRCC (including, as we shall see, eight items produced in
The New York Public Library's involvement with the Mapleson cylinders began in late October 1939, when it acquired a batch of a dozen of them, not known about previously, from Herbert B. Bretnall, a collector active during the middle 1930s. The late G. Lauder Greenway (1904-1981), long a friend and staunch supporter of the Library's efforts to build what later became the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound (and also at one time Chairman of the Board of the Metropolitan Opera Association), arranged for their purchase by the Music Division, whose Chief was Carleton Sprague Smith, with Philip L. Miller (subsequently Smith's successor) as Assistant Chief in charge of all matters pertaining to sound recordings. The outbreak of World War II and consequent shortages of materials prevented the Library from marketing its own discs from this new group of Maplesons, but in February 1941 the twelve cylinders were transferred to master lacquers at the Music Division of the Library of Congress, whose recording engineer at the time was Jerome B. Wiesner, subsequently a world-renowned figure in electronics and radiation sciences. (The war also put a stop to Seltsam's IRCC publications, and during the interim he undertook compilation of what became the massive reference work Metropolitan Opera Annals. ) While Seltsam initially made no secret of his chagrin over not having acquired all of the known Mapleson cylinders, a working relationship did develop and six items from the library's cylinders were issued by the IRCC in 78 rpm format in 1948; in 1959, in LP format, the representation was enlarged to eight.
Yet another group of Mapleson cylinders surfaced in the middle 1950s, acquired by Aďda Favia-Artsay of Valhalla, New York, a distinguished collector of historical recordings and for many years a lively and informative columnist on this subject for Hobbies magazine. These too came from Bretnall, who, according to Mrs. Favia-Artsay, had himself discovered them in a junk shop on Court Street in Brooklyn. In 1959, on a privately-issued LP entitled Met Stars, 1901-03, Henry Herrold, a Long Island collector, included items transferred from nine of the ten Favia-Artsay Maplesons (the tenth contained non-vocal material).
Meanwhile, the indefatigable Lauder Greenway had in mind to bring together in one place all the extant Mapleson cylinders. The Favia-Artsay set was acquired for the Library in early 1960, while April of 1962 saw delivery to the Library of the cylinders in Seltsam's possession; this was with the understanding that the IRCC would retain publication rights during Seltsam's lifetime. Seltsam had negotiated with Alfred Mapleson the formal purchase and acquisition of title to these cylinders a month before.
As already indicated, inexperienced handling of the fragile wax cylinders, together with the already damaged condition of a substantial number, exacted a toll between the time they left the hands of Mapleson and his heirs and the time they became in toto holdings of The New York Public Library. Until 1967, when they were transferred to tape at the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives, the content of three of the twelve cylinders from the 1939 Library group existed only in the form of master lacquer copies made at the Library of Congress in 1941. These included one of Melba in the Valse from Roméo et Juliette, a Faust trio that includes part of an encore, and the opening part of the Nordica-Georg Anthes duet from Tristan. While a few playable bits survived on the first two, the Tristan cylinder, already cracked from end to end, was hopelessly shattered in the course of the Library of Congress transfer operation, according to Philip Miller, who was present at that particular catastrophe.
According to George Laviolette, whose association with Seltsam and the IRCC enterprise began at the tender age of seventeen, similar misfortunes beset their work with the Maplesons, some of them literally exploding on the mandrel. Among the items noted by Ira Glackens in his 1938 Gramophone article that subsequently became casualties was at least one of the three Sembrich cylinders from Act I of Traviata. Of the 122 Mapleson cylinders received by Seltsam, ninety-eight reached the Library in 1962; a further sixteen appeared to have been lost until their rediscovery at the Mapleson Music Library on Long Island in 1981 (they had apparently been sent back to the family, possibly in connection with an exhibit of Mapleson memorabilia that took place at the Museum of the City of New York around 1940)--leaving eight presumed casualties.
The reader may wonder how so explicit an accounting of the cylinders of the Seltsam batch has been possible. It was the result of a stroke of extraordinary good fortune: in the course of a visit from this writer in late July 1981, George Laviolette generously
Ira Glackens
Given the thoroughness with which Glackens and Bishop examined the collection, both visually and aurally, it can remain only a matter of the greatest surprise and disappointment that the IRCC not only failed to retain the Glackens/Bishop catalogue numbers for its own purposes, but also evidently lost or misplaced a considerable number of the identifying slips and containers. For the fact is that the Glackens/Bishop inventory provides a veritable Rosetta Stone for the identification of nearly half of the cylinders originally delivered to Seltsam (and for establishing that the cylinders discovered at the Mapleson Music Library must once have been in Seltsam's hands). From examination of specific instances, it seems most unlikely that the detailed identification and dating provided by Glackens and Bishop came out of thin air. (Yet another source of puzzlement is why Seltsam decided to return to Alfred Mapleson certain of the cylinder containers annotated in Lionel Mapleson's hand. This came to light in part of The New York Public Library correspondence between Seltsam and Philip L. Miller of the Library's Music Division in December 1940.)
From 1962 until 1981, the Mapleson cylinders at the Library remained virtually untouched, save for a detailed visual inspection undertaken in February 1967 by the present writer--then newly in charge of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound--and John Stratton. The latter's writings on the Mapleson cylinders for The Record Collector (July/August 1961) and Recorded Sound (July 1967, July 1968) are among the most authoritative on the subject. At this point, intensive investigation was undertaken, continuing over a ten-year period, into ways and means whereby the Library's Mapleson cylinders might be transferred afresh to magnetic tape with minimal wear and tear on the cylinders and with the assurance of getting from them the maximum remaining intelligible information, with minimal adulteration from excessive equalization and attempts to filter out surface noise.
A first tentative step along this road took place in early 1969, when one of the Nordica Götterdämmerung cylinders was given a trial run at 200 rpm on a newly-built playback apparatus at the Library of Congress developed by its Chief Engineer, Robert Carneal. The results of three takes, done with varying degrees of equalization, were listened to by this writer and John Stratton in early March: while a compromise take with moderate equalization was deemed acceptable relative to what had been issued by the IRCC, we were not sufficiently firm in our conviction that the time was yet at hand to tackle the entire collection.
The next break came in 1978, following the annual conference of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, held that year at the Library of Congress. Wilfried Zahn of the Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv in Frankfurtam-Main had given a most impressive demonstration of his restoration work with early cylinder recordings. Before his return to Frankfurt, discussion with this writer and the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives audio engineer at the time, Sam Sanders,
With the arrival in early 1979 of a new audio engineer, Tom Owen, at the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives, the decision was made to redesign what had been a state-of-the-art sound restoration laboratory in 1968 to fully updated specification, and to undertake a thorough restudy of the Mapleson cylinder transfer problem, starting from the point reached by Zahn. Mr. Owen's article below describes that process and the subsequent transfers. Following their completion, much work remained to be done in clarifying the provenance and attribution of unidentified cylinders, as well as filling in details in the whole story. Seltsam's legatees, Glendon R. Good and George Laviolette, were generous in their assistance, and visits to the Mapleson Music Library yielded much information--not to mention the aforementioned sixteen cylinders, which were taken on loan back to the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives, and the usable items added in 1982 to both the master and research tapes.
Beyond the achievement of a complete new transfer of the recordings, the Mapleson Cylinder Project has also been able to clarify much that until now has remained ambiguous or erroneous concerning details of program content, dating, etc. Because our interest in the Mapleson cylinders was not narrowly restricted to the aspect of operatic documentation, we were able to gain interesting insights into Mapleson himself. We concluded a wide range of collateral investigation that went beyond the published literature and extended to personal interviews and correspondence with those who worked on the cylinders with William Seltsam. In December 1981 the present writer paid a full day's visit to the Mapleson Music Library at Lindenhurst, Long Island, where Alfred J. Mapleson and his son Peter graciously allowed access to Lionel Mapleson's diaries and photograph albums, which yielded three additional photographs of the Mapleson recording apparatus, two with Lionel, the third with his wife Helen.
Helen White Mapleson
We should like to discover much more about Mapleson and the cylinders--for example, about those cylinders that eluded Seltsam: how many were there and where are they now? According to Alfred Mapleson, many of the choicest items went with Lionel to London on his spring voyages to the family homestead at 65 Bartholomew Road. Highgate, London, and what has survived in the United States is to an extent "the bottom of the barrel." If any of those taken to England did survive attic storage and two world wars, they all disappeared after March 1, 1953, upon the death of Lionel's sister Violet, the lone Mapleson survivor at Bartholomew Road. Other rumors tell of a batch of more than a hundred cylinders sold by Alfred Mapleson at a dollar apiece to a Brooklyn collector. Whether any of these mysteries will--or can--be solved remains conjectural, but if these rumors contain even an element of truth, we may not have heard the last of the Mapleson cylinder saga


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Baby & Kids Bedding Information for Australia
Find the perfect bed, mattress and bedding for your child to make sure they sleep soundly every night. Compare our deals on baby and kids' bedding from Toys R Us, Deals Direct and other leading Australian retailers online and in your local area to save on the essentials when getting the bedroom ready for your new arrival.
Your child's bed and bedroom furniture should fit in with the room's existing style, whether you've gone traditional with a wooden cot, chosen a modern and spacious white look or created a vibrant play room with bright colours, Disney characters or friendly animal designs. Cribs and toddler beds are available in many different styles to suit every home and match your child's personality, including beds shaped like race cars, fire engines and other novelty designs to make bedtime fun.
Choosing children's bedding isn't only about style of course, and you will need to check that the beds and soft furnishings you buy are the right size for your growing child, will fit comfortably into your available space and offer enough support for their bodies while they sleep. Extra storage is always handy too, and you can look for furniture incorporating drawers to keep their clothes and toys tidy when not in use.
Look for matching baby blankets,quilt covers and pillow cases or buy complete bedding sets for a harmonious look in your kid's room, and stock up on spare sets so you will always have fresh sheets and covers ready whenever you need them.
To read Baby & Kids Bedding reviews check out the Lasoo blogs for daily professional and consumer Australian product reviews.

subset: commoncrawl


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New Google tools help businesses build their own maps
SAN FRANCISCO - In a world where location-based information is increasingly valuable, Google is hoping to leverage its own mapping expertise by selling software that makes it easy for businesses to build their own maps showing customer locations, building sites and other useful information.
Google says its Maps website and related services, including mobile apps, are already used by more than a billion people around the globe every month. Businesses and other organizations also use simple programming tools to integrate Google Maps and navigational services into more than a million websites and mobile apps.
The new service, dubbed Maps Engine Pro, is designed to let small and mid-size businesses build more sophisticated maps to help them visualize and analyze their own internal sales records, manufacturing data or government archives of things like building permits, weather patterns or even pet licenses.
"This is aimed at helping businesses and business users get more value out of information they already work with every day," said Heather Folsom, a product manager for the new service.
A restaurant chain might want to examine city building records to identify densely populated neighborhoods where a new outlet could be located, she suggested, or a small bicycle manufacturer might use its own sales records to identify locations where there is high interest in its products.
Google's new commercial software uses it mapping tools and an underlying database of information that Google has compiled from public records, its "Street View" cars and geopositioning satellites. Google has previously sold access to its "Maps Engine" database to big organizations that have their own mapmakers and programmers with the skills to use that data. It also lets businesses use Google's basic, consumer-style maps in a limited fashion for free, with a sliding fee scale for more extensive use.
Other tech companies such as Nokia and Microsoft also see commercial value in providing digital mapping services to business users, said Ted Schadler, an industry analyst with the Forrester research firm, who predicted, "we're going to see a pretty big battle start to shape up around maps."
Google's new products are part of its small but growing effort to market software to businesses. Google said last week that it made $1.2 billion in third-quarter revenue outside its core advertising business, up 85 percent from a year ago.


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D.O.T Type A Wireback Silt Fence is a temporary sediment control device used on construction sites to protect water quality in nearby
streams, rivers, lakes and seas from sediment (loose soil) in stormwater runoff. A silt fence is a temporary sediment barrier made of porous fabric.
It's held up by wooden or metal posts driven into the ground.The fabric ponds sediment-laden stormwater runoff,
causing sediment to be retained by the settling processes. D.O.T Type A Wireback Silt Fence is the perfect option for silt control on your construction site, work location or other facility requiring sediment or silt control. The silt fence has often been used for erosion control, silt control, and small amounts of water control on your site.


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Rachel Zoe's going to show us—again—how to make maternity clothes chic!
The 41-year-old fashionista is pregnant with her second child with husband Rodger Berman, a source confirmed Thursday to E! News.
Baby No. 2 will join their 2-year-old son, Skyler, in the family fold.
A rep for Zoe had no comment.
In May 2013, Zoe admitted that dressing her baby bump was easy the first time around, but she worried if she would be so fortunate in the future. "Sky was good to me and my pregnancy and I don't think I would get that lucky twice," she told SheKnows.com. "He kind of stayed contained in one area. So I found myself wearing clothes that had a lot of stretch and draping, and I always went for comfort."
"You can either embrace your tummy and wear things that are more fitted and be like, 'Hey, look at me,' which is beautiful and amazing, or you can wear more volume and sometimes, depending on the person, can actually create more volume," she explained. "If you are carrying a larger pregnancy then I think you almost just want to embrace it and cradle it with jersey. And just say here is my tummy!"
Let's just say, we can't wait to see Zoe's second round of pregnancy fashions.


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Whole Foods Market Best Butcher Contest and Rooftop Party
Whole Foods Market
Saturday, July 21, 2012 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM (EDT)
Event Details
Join us on the rooftop of our P Street location as 4 of our very best butchers compete head-to-head to see who will move on to our National Competition in NYC.
Event Details Include:
Live Music
Cooking demonstrations by celebrity chefs
Local Beers
and mouthwatering hors d'oevres featuring Whole Foods Market quality ingredients.
All proceeds will benefit DC Central Kitchen
Please bring a print out of your ticket. Metro is encouraged. Parking attendants will also be on hand to direct attendees to parking.
When & Where
On the roof top!
1440 P St NW
Saturday, July 21, 2012 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM (EDT)
Add to my calendar
Whole Foods Market
Must be 21. Each attendee will receive two free drink tickets at the door. Beer is also will be available for puchase.


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The City of Portland, in an effort to better serve its customers, is testing new operating hours for the Treasury Office. Beginning November 20, the office will stay open until 6:30 PM twice a month in December, January, February, and March. The Treasury Office processes vehicle and boat registrations, and collects property taxes and stormwater payments. The City will track how many transactions it conducts during this pilot to ensure that the hours meet the needs of customers, and should there prove to be a demand might increase the frequency.
The office is currently open from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM. The office will now stay open from 8:30 AM to 6:30 PM on the following Wednesdays: November 20, December 4, December 18, January 15, January 29, February 5, February 19, March 4, and March 18.
The City is also in the process of implementing queue management software for the Treasury Office in order to improve wait times for customers. The technology will allow customers to be able to determine least busiest times to visit, see wait times in real time, sit until called to the counter, and even go away and come back at a more preferable time.
These efforts are the results of the City's new director of innovation and performance management working closely with members of the Finance Department and Treasury Office to improve customer service.
As a reminder, auto registration renewal transactions can be conducted online and property taxes can be paid online.


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The Punter
Regular price
The Punter
Sue Smith
Watercolour on paper
32.5cm x 23.5cm
Purchase of work displayed in your artbnb accommodation
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Chella Vaidyanathan
From Emerging Leaders
Chella Vaidyanathan
My name is Chella Vaidyanathan. I joined the University of Miami in February 2007. Currently, I am the subject librarian for History, Political Science, U.S. Govt. Information, and International Documents. I also serve as the subject liaison for the Departments of History and Political Science. I am very excited to be selected as one of the participants in the 2009 ALA Emerging Leaders Program.


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Bookseller Borders' decision to file for bankruptcy protection and close about 200 stores is another blow to the publishing industry, but it could provide a boost for independent booksellers and archrival Barnes & Noble.
Borders said Wednesday it was seeking bankruptcy protection and would close about one-third of its 642 stores. The filing comes after company's long struggle to adapt to changes in the industry, including online sales and electronic book readers, and to deal with overexpansion during better times.Story: Borders files for bankruptcy, to close 200 stores
Industry analysts said Borders' loss could be Barnes & Noble's gain because the two booksellers operate so many stores close to each other. Michael Souers, an industry analyst with Standard and Poor's, said he suspects many of the stores that Borders has targeted for closure are near Barnes & Noble's stores.
"Overall, the country is pretty much oversaturated with bookstores in general, and so if there's a couple of bookstores right close to each other it's likely that they're performing less well than if there was only one bookstore within 10 miles," Souers said.
Related: complete list of store closures by state
In a statement, Barnes & Noble spokeswoman Mary Ellen Keating said the company regrets that the publishing industry has suffered this loss and looks forward to continuing to serve its communities.
Barnes & Noble has had struggles of its own, and the company said last year that it was exploring options including a possible sale. Keating said in an e-mail Wednesday that process is still ongoing.
More must-see stories
Wild Wall St.
Has the market volatility got you nervous? These cartoons may give you a little comic relief.
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- Wild Wall St.
The other potential winner in Borders' woes: That small, neighborhood bookstore on the corner.
"I think that independent bookstores definitely have a shot at benefiting the most from store closures," said Michael Norris, a senior analyst with Simba Information who follows the industry closely.
Although independent booksellers still appear quaint on the outside, Norris said many have done an impressive job in recent years of adapting to changes in the industry.
Many now have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and e-mail newsletters. In addition, their trade group, the American Booksellers Association, entered into a partnership with Google to provide electronic book sales. Norris said local booksellers also have benefited from "buy local" campaigns and other efforts to draw community to their stores.
"They basically offer a lot of value that goes beyond simply the lowest price," Norris said.
Oren Teicher, chief executive of the American Booksellers Association, said the trade group's membership has stabilized in the past year after a long period of decline.
The organization currently has about 1,500 members doing business at about 2,000 stores. Teicher estimates that about 500 independent bookstores have closed in the past decade, but he said membership today is about the same as it was last year.
Norris said his annual survey of independent booksellers also has shown a steady increase in the last few years of the percentage of stores reporting an increase in year-over-year sales.
Although it is easy to blame Amazon.com for Borders' woes, analysts say the online bookselling powerhouse may not see as big an advantage from the bankruptcy filing.
Amazon.com has been a fierce rival both because of the convenience and competitive pricing of its physical books and because of the success of its Kindle electronic reader. By contrast, Borders was slower to embrace online and electronic book sales.
Still, Souers of S&P said he expects that few people will switch from Borders' eReader effort to Amazon.com's because of the bankruptcy filing. By contrast, he said it's much more likely that a person will walk across the street from a shuttered Borders bookstore to an open Barnes & Noble.
Norris said it also would be a mistake to say that the advent of electronic readers is the only reason for Borders' bankruptcy filing. He said the company made a number of missteps in the years leading up to its filing, including a loyalty program that was weaker than many competitors. The company also faced growing competition from traditional competitors, online retailers and big box stores such as Costco and Walmart.
"It's kind of like 'Murder on the Orient Express – you can't pin the murder on the last guy that stuck in the knife,'" Norris said. "There's just a lot of factors involved."
© 2013 msnbc.com Reprints


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See what's new with book lending at the Internet Archive
The untold story of "Eisenhower's 'Rhine Meadows' Death Camps - A Deliberate Policy of Extermination" of the Surrendered German forces by the Allies, in post-war Germany (Rheinwiesenlager).
This German made documentary was originally produced by 'Volksfront-Medien' but we have translated it and added to it with clips from other sources, and narrated it fully in English. Additional background information has been added for further context.
Part 1 The 'Rheinwiesenlager' German language documentary translated into English, with additional information and interviews (50 minutes) Part 2 Deanna Spingola reads a chapter from her book dealing with the subject of these camps and provides further background information regarding the camps, the high perpetrators and their policies (30 minutes)Part 3 A Memorial March for the victims of these camps held in Remagen, Germany in 2011, also translated / narrated in English (10 minutes)
Website: Justice for Germans: http://justice4germans.com
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on August 21, 2013


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Willa Bodysuit
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Attachments PT-175 D:Mine
PrimeTech's line of prime movers reflects the company's long experience and is designed to meet the needs of our international customer base. With our wide range of interchangeable FAE front attachments our prime movers are in fact multi-purpose carriers for use in forestry, agriculture, construction and demining, combining maximum productivity with low operating costs.
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Web-erasing: Strom's JADE blog inspires Bell bill
The woman jailed for publishing the address of an undercover drug enforcer has apparently inspired a new measure in the General Assembly that might let police officers pull their addresses offline–- even though civil libertarians say that the underlying law that criminalized the I HeArTE JADE blog and put its creator behind bars for a month is unconstitutional.
"This bill was inspired by a local website that seeks to identify undercover policemen," says bill patron Rob Bell (R-Charlottesville). "The site includes photos of their homes that come from government sites. For the safety of the officers, I want to help them get that stuff off the government sites."
Bell's bill, HB1382 (one of 41 he's introduced this session) was originally written so that any person or business–- such as a blog or newspaper–- publishing an officer's address was required to remove it after receiving a written demand.
"It doesn't look much like the original," says Bell. "This is more narrowly drawn."
And that's a good thing, says Kent Willis of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"It had a pretty low threshold before," says Willis. "All it took was a written demand from an officer with no court proceeding. Any officer could write any person and say, 'Take it down; I feel threatened.'"
Under the revised bill, an officer must petition a circuit court to remove his address and phone number on government websites. In Albemarle and Charlottesville, property records are available online.
But what about amending a bill that the ACLU considers unconstitutional?
"There's more than one blatantly unconstitutional law on the books," says Willis. "It often takes the court to change the law."
Willis cites Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 ruling in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that sodomy laws like Virginia's still-on-books ban on oral sex and other consenting adult practices was unconstitutional. Even though Virginia's sodomy law made such practices felonies, Willis notes that the General Assembly "couldn't muster the gumption" to vote it down.
As for the person who inspired Bell's new bill, Elisha Strom calls it "pretty rotten" because government websites are a key trove of information for the average citizen.
"Overall, it's trampling on everyone's freedom except law enforcement's," says Strom, who spent a month in jail following her July 16 arrest. "Most people wouldn't bat an eyelid about this, but in the long run it's taking more freedom away from us."
33 comments
New Hampshire has no state sales tax, so in theory it is easier to buy a car there. Would you presume that that the "iron pipeline" also runs from New Hampshire regarding automobiles used in crimes? "We'd have gotten him if he hadn't made his escape in that easily acquired car from New Hampshire..." Get a clue. You have more crimes in New York (City) because you have more criminals there. If they didn't use guns, they'd use something else. Seems to me that New York (state) should get rid of all their trees since they could readily be a source for clubs...
NYC needs to solve its own crime problem without pushing it off on any one of the other 49 states. This means you, Mr. Bloomberg...
And Mr. Bell helped today to get rid of that pesky "one gun a month" nonsense. Does that help Law Enforcement?
Let me take a wild guess here....
Islander is a jade coppie?
GSOE wrote ââ?¬Å?Here's another example of how Facebook proves some people are too stupid to carry a badge and gun"
I don't know if it proves some people are too stupid as much as it proves some officers genuinely believe the police should be the only ones with guns. Either way, Tuason's comments definitely don't make law enforcement look so great in the eyes of the public. Even cops are pissed about it.
doesn't matter: If you let those mean New Yorkers steal YOUR guns and use them, maybe it "deserves YOU right"... BTW if you don't want NY trash stop accepting payment to dump it in VA landfills.
While Strom and her site seem obsessive and stalkerish, she has been careful (since her arrest) to use legally obtained information. I HeArTe JADE is creepy but legal. It is hard to get rights back once we allow them to be taken away.
Sorry. Above was suppose to read, "I would like to think such a bill would protect..."
Maybe officers shouldn't post pictures on facebook that appear as if they are high. It's even funnier when the picture on Strom's website links to a police brutality case.
Have you been living under a rock for the past several years? Everybody knows why she did/does it.
I will tell you the same thing I posted a while back. I knew a former local married cop who had his girlfriend on the side, like most do. He told his girlfriend that he was living with his sister. This sister was actually his wife. Anyhow, he led this girl on while he was getting the milk free. Ya know, don't buy the cow if you're getting the milk free. Well, when the girlfriend found out the truth... that the girl he was living with was actually his wife... all hades broke loose. This is why I call him a "former" cop above. This affair gone wrong was just the tip of the iceburg. He had already been involved in so many wrongdoings that the police chief finally gave him walking papers.
What's the old saying, "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." :)
Perhaps if NY put more effort into actually keeping their criminals in prison longer, they wouldn't be out and about buying/stealing guns. They treat honest people who have guns to protect themselves (and get caught with them) worse than the real criminals, e.g. poor fool Plaxico Burress who might as well have held up a convenience store the night he got caught with his pistol. His sentence probably would have been the same.
Quote Gasbag Self Ordained Expert One who appears to have two names, what is up with that?
Guess the world will never know. By midnight that officer had pulled his friends list and today he eradicated his whole Facebook account.
Law Enforcement sure has its fair share of sensitive fellows, doesn't it?
Happiness is a warm gun
Well if Va. causes gun crime in New York. Then why are most illegal guns in Conn. coming from New York. Where guns are under tighter control. Could it be because New York criminals are traveling out side of New York to commit crimes in both Conn. and Va. If New York had more crime control and less gun control then everyone would be better off
Brooklyn wrote "And Mr. Bell helped today to get rid of that pesky ââ?¬Å?one gun a month" nonsense. Does that help Law Enforcement?"
Does that hurt Law Enforcement?
But how is either question relevant?
That "pesky one gun a month nonsense," as you refer to it, had nothing to do with LE unless, like with us ordinary citizens, it prevented officers from personal monthly multi-gun-purchases.
People keep letting Law Enforcement stick their fingers in every piece of the prospective laws pie and all they're going to wind up with is an inedible dessert that they won't be permitted to even toss at a clown.
An inspiration? Moi? Say it ain't so!
Even if Mr. Bell, at the behest of the local fru fru officers, gets his way, it will not legally prevent me or any other citizen from publishing elsewhere the same information (that will be) formerly found on government sites; in fact because it won't be found on those sites anymore, it may be that some people will take it upon themselves to publish it elsewhere.
Bell and buddies can all pat each other's rumps for their effort though.
GSOE, with all due respect, that just does not make sense. Guns travel from places with less-strict gun laws (like Virginia) to places with more strict laws (like NY). If it is harder to get guns, fewer of them will be on "the street". The NRA spends millions trying to convince people that "Laws simply hamper the honest law abiding citizen".
Yeah, yeah, we know all about New York blaming VIRGINIA for all their gun problems. Get over it. It was never true... and it still isn't.
And whether you like it or not, gun rights are finally being handed back to it''s citizens. We have made it very clear to our representatives that they represent us, not the anti-gun lobby. If you want a second opinion just keep an eye on the pending gun legislation and votes in Virginia.
Brooklyn, no law in any state has ever prevented a criminal from getting a firearm if he/she wants one. Laws simply hamper the honest law abiding citizens.
duplicate - original post lost in space
How she is getting some of her information. Some of it is obvious... fb, news articles, etc. Who is she shacking it up with now? or who is leaking the information?
I like her 2-17-2010 post on the blog.
One of the cops looks like he is totally stoned out of his mind. But we all know cops do not use drugs off duty.
One sitting at a table with beer and beer bottles.
One playing with a toy tractor????
One with the proverbial donut gut (I am guilty of this too).
One who appears to have two names, what is up with that?
quote: "They (NY) treat honest people who have guns to protect themselves (and get caught with them) worse than the real criminals...
That's the direction Virginia was headed. The tide is turning now though. We let the legislators know we were fed up with their hitching their wagons to anti-gun agendas. There has NEVER been a "majority" of residents in Virginia that wanted to see more gun control laws.
I am wondering what fueled Ms. Strom's scorn? It is obvious she devotes (or wastes, depending on point of view) quite a bit of time on her little project that will ultimately end up in her likely being prosecuted a second time for her activities. So tell us Ms. Strom, what is your fascination? Or what did Jade do to you? And what thrill do you get out of chasing cops around? Just help us all to understand, because I do not believe many of us do. Keep in mind..the police did help get your allegedly abusive ex out of the picture, right? According to Kevin's site this seems to be the case. So if the police helped you, why are you out to get them?
Seems like you can't keep your NY thieves up north, and OUT of VA- the criminals that steal OUR guns AND use them on NY'rs, HEY, that's okay! The criminals know better that to harass a Virginian that MAY be armed - LOL. The idiots WILL find guns - and they will find them ANYwhere. Outlawed or NOT. NONE of the guns were actually BOUGHT FROM the VA Gun Shows!!! They were stolen or ILLEGALLY obtained. DUH. Maybe your big NY government will wake-up and let REAL citizens own guns and PROTECT themselves AND take control. Deserves you right. Keep your trash, criminals and drugs "up" there!
Deleted by moderator.
I think like to think such a bill would protect the "family", moreso than the actual cops.
If such a bill is passed, it should include all law enforcement. Namely... cops, former cops and retired cops. While being a sworn deputy sheriff in Virginia in 1997, I felt pretty uncomfortable when a rookie and now former cop screwed up, and subsequently ended up releasing my home address to the media and placing my family in danger.
I'm a big boy, I like to think I can take care of myself. But my family should not have been at risk because the cops screwed up so badly!
Well, sadly enough, to me it proves one thing. They can go up and down the Internet and post whatever they want about themselves, including PICTURES. But when somebody else does it, it's a cardinal sin and there sould be some sort of half baked law to deal with it!
Not to mention, a lot of intelligent, honest and decent cops have gotten in big trouble by posting stupid stuff on their on their various "look at me, I am the biggest and baddest SOB in the valley" web pages. One cop was fired recently when he wrote about and acknowledged the "us vs them" attitude is alive and well in law enforcement, and there wasn't a dayum thing anybody could do about it. Well, he found out his chief CAN do something about it. He had even bragged about police brutality and how it was his word against the suspects. And how anybody who messed with him received a fast dose of street justice if he didn't shoot them first. The foolishness on his Facebook page wasn't true, he was just running off at the mouth. But it cost him his job. (If he had been some kid running off at the mouth about shooting up a school..... he would be arrested.)
Here's another example of how Facebook proves some people are too stupid to carry a badge and gun....
And here's an interesting discussion of Facebook. But keep in mind, some of the participants are cops, some are just pretending to be cops.
Everyone should check this out:
Bell is so into freedom, ha!
Better yet, scroll down to the bottom and look at the gun poll here....
Of all places, Washington, D.C. and the metro area, 75% of Americans think guns should be allowed in restuarants.
Here's another poll...
86% of Americans think concealed weapon permit holders should be allowed to carry their guns concealed in restaurants. The way the law is worded now I would have to take my coat off and display my firearm if I walk into a restaurant with an ABC license.
Name, I was pointing out the correlation between lax gun laws and easier gun access for criminals. Ever heard of the "Iron Pipeline"?
Ya know what Islander? Good idea!
Help Wanted: Seeking Jack-of-all-trades. Duties include accumulating and organizing information about members of Law Enforcement. Applicant must be physically fit, capable of operating cameras and other recording devices, and have full command of the English language. Ability to whimsically mock Officers, as well as self, helpful but not required. Email resume to address found in above link.
So why don't the cops, prosecutors and Reps like Bell change drug laws so folks won't be so darned upset with them. Would Bell, no way, he slammed HB 1134 & HB 1136 for marijuana decrim & medical use! No wonder folks are just a little peeved.
Ya know what Strom? Help is available. SEEK IT.
"If such a bill is passed, it should include all law enforcement. Namely"Š cops, former cops and retired cops."
Seems like we'd be opening a can of worms. I mean, why stop there? Why not anybody who works or has ever worked for law enforcement, to include clerical and office staff and their families? How about court officials and their families? Court-appointed attorneys and employees of legal firms? Heck I have a few cop buddies - if they feel threatened, might not their friends and associates also feel threatened? So why not me and my family? Why stop at the immediate family? Maybe we should include extended relatives?


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Zand, Elderberry Zinc, Herbalozenge, Sweet Elderberry, 15 Lozenges
Flash Deals are limited time, limited quantity promotions, so act fast! Limited to: 1 unit of 1 flash deal product per order. If you order more than one unit or re-order or order other flash deals, you will pay our regular low price. Flash Deals are ineligible from all other promotions.
Zand, Elderberry Zinc, Herbalozenge, Sweet Elderberry, 15 Lozenges
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|Supplement Facts
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Norway Shooting, Bombing: Bill Maher Insists Suspect Is a 'Christian Terrorist'
Norway Shooting, Bombing: Bill Maher Insists Suspect Is a 'Christian Terrorist'
Amid the debate over whether "fundamentalist Christian" was an appropriate label for the man behind the attacks in Norway last week, comedian and TV host Bill Maher didn't hesitate on Friday to use that label.
"That's what he was. He's a Christian terrorist. He wanted to start a Christian onslaught against the Muslims," said Maher on his HBO show "Real Time."
He went on to say that religion itself was the problem and that Christianity "is perfectly capable of coming out of its dormant phase and once again becoming the violent blood-lusty religion it was under the crusades."
"They're in just as much denial as the Muslims," he argued.
Maher, who calls himself a rationalist, is no stranger to bashing religion, or more specifically religious extremism. His 2008 film "Religulous" mocks religion as ignorance, dangerous and bigoted.
On his show Friday, he pointed to the 13th century Inquisition, the Crusades, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing carried out by Timothy McVeigh, and most recently the bombing and shooting in Norway that left 77 dead.
Initial reports indicated that Anders Behring Breivik was a fundamentalist Christian. Though Breivik identified himself as Christian on his Facebook page, he said in a 1,500-page manifesto that he is suspected to have written that he did not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God.
Conservatives and Christians have been quick to denounce what they feel is a mislabeling of the terror suspect.
Fox News Host Bill O'Reilly blasted the liberal media for playing up the Christian angle in the Norway tragedy.
"No one believing in Jesus commits mass murder. The man might have called himself a Christian on the net, but he is certainly not of that faith," O'Reilly said.
But Maher rejected that statement as he listed past killings carried out in the name of religion.
"Religion ... gives people license to commit crazy acts," he contended.
Margaret Hoover, a Republican strategist who was part of the panel on Maher's show, shot down his argument and the comparison between Breivik and Islamic extremists.
"He's a nut who calls himself a Christian but he isn't connected to a global terror network that is trying to perpetuate terrorism on everyone else in the name of an organized and well-funded terrorist network," Hoover said.
She added that 50 million people were killed in the 20th century in the name of atheism and communism – or what she called "ideology run amok."
Eliot Spitzer, former governor of New York, agreed, arguing that it's "fanaticism" and not religion that is the enemy.
"Fanaticism in any ideology and lack of tolerance is when you get danger," he said.
Breivik, who has anti-Muslim and anti-immigration views, admitted to last Friday's attacks in Oslo and Utoya Island but has denied criminal responsibility, saying they were "necessary."
His lawyer said he may plead insanity in court.


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In This Issue
- Questioning "Earned Value Management" on IT Projects
- Hot Links
Questioning "Earned Value Management" on IT Projects
Earned Value Management (EVM) is an objective technique used for measuring project progress. EVM has its origins with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) as far back as the 1960s, although the term EVM was only coined in the late 1980s. EVM has been in the Project Management Institute's A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (a.k.a. the PMBoK Guide) from the very first edition in 1987, making it a staple of project managers' intellectual toolkits for over two decades. EVM can be applied on any type of project, although I will limit the scope of this discussion to IT projects only. Some (if not all) of the issues that I identify below may be applicable to non-IT projects.
EVM is a four step process.
- First, you define the work to be done in the form of a detailed project Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) or equivalent.
- Second, you prepare cost estimates for each item in the WBS (called "planned value" or PV), encouraging your teams to perform "realistic" estimations as you'll be measured against these estimates later; for example, on a traditional project, the creation and acceptance of your requirements specification may be worth 15 points out of a total of 237 for your project (or 6.3 percent if you choose to work on a percentage basis).
- Third, you must define the earning rule for each work item, although most organizations choose a single earning rule for each project and sometimes for all projects to simplify and make consistent the EVM calculations; for example, you may choose to get credit only when the item is complete or can you take credit for half the work being done at the point where half of the work has been performed, strategies called the 0/100 rule and 50/50 rule respectively. Alternately, you may come up with another strategy on your own -- personally, I prefer the 0/100 approach as I'm a firm believer in the agile philosophy that "done means done."
- Fourth, you execute your plan and measure progress along the way.
Proponents of EVM claim that it is an objective approach to communicating progress to stakeholders, enabling you to declare that you're X percent done at any given point in a project. They also claim that it can be used to determine whether a project is on budget and on schedule, potentially providing an early warning of potential performance problems. As I argue in this newsletter, I don't believe that EVM is very good at these things for IT projects, particularly agile ones. However, I do admit that EVM may the best option for traditional teams due to the inherent opaqueness of the methods followed by those teams.
In theory, EVM sounds like a great thing. You're earning value after all, and who can argue against that? In practice, however, EVM is at best a euphemism for tracking budgeted costs expended and at worst it's simply a justification for bureaucracy. To see why this is true, let's examine the claims of EVM proponents.
The first claim is that EVM enables you to objectively measure the value being produced by project teams. Their inherent assumption is that these project teams are actually earning value for your organization, yet in practice we know that this couldn't possibly be true. To see what the problem is, let's work through an example. Let's say that your team is part way through a project, claiming that they've achieved 65 percent earned value (EV). Your team has followed a traditional approach to development, creating a detailed requirements document, then an architecture model, then a prototype, then a design model, and now they've started working on the actual software and are about three quarters of the way through. You claimed 14 percent EV once the requirements document was accepted, 20 percent EV at the point the architecture was accepted, 33 percent when the detailed design was signed off, and will eventually claim 85 percent EV once the programming effort ends. You've had several major code reviews and by passing them you've been allowed to make the claim that you've achieved 65 percent EV. Then, disaster strikes and you lose funding as the result of an economic downturn. Senior management asks your team to ship whatever you can, but several critical components haven't been coded yet and still need several months of development. And you would still need to perform system and user acceptance testing -- another few months worth of effort. It's clear to senior management that none of their investment can be realized quickly, so the project artifacts are "put on the shelf" in the hope that some day they'll be useful to a future project team. Of course, by then the business requirements and technology platforms will have changed. In short, even though your team had claimed 65 percent EV, no actual practical value had in fact been "earned".
The second claim is that EVM is an effective way to track whether your team is on budget and on schedule. This is, in fact, true, although it's based on the assumption that you had identified an effective plan in the beginning. We know from hard-earned experience that this is a very large assumption when it comes to IT projects. To create an accurate plan, you must have a good understanding of both the requirements your project is to fulfill and the technology that you're going to use to fulfill it. Although the technology issues generally prove to be straightforward, albeit with the occasional hiccup along the way, understanding the requirements early in a project proves to be difficult at best. The reality is that people are not very good at defining up front what they want, that the business environment will change, and that how people understand their requirements will change throughout an IT project. If we do decide to freeze the requirements early in a project, following what is known as a "big requirements up front (BRUF)" approach, the result is that, on average, a large percentage of the functionality delivered by the actual team is never used. The Standish Group has found that with a BRUF approach, an average of 45 percent of the total functionality delivered is never used, and that 19 percent is rarely used, implying that teams who take a BRUF approach produce 55 percent "earned value" (at best) regardless of what they actually claim.
So, if EVM isn't a practical option for IT projects, what should we do? First, as the agile community likes to point out, the only true measure of progress on a software development project is the delivery of working software. Agile teams choose to produce potentially-shippable software at the end of each iteration, providing concrete and visible feedback to their stakeholders as to their actual progress. My experience is that the majority of stakeholders prefer this sort of tangible evidence of progress instead of intangible numbers. Second, recognize that the majority of our stakeholders aren't really interested in whether we're on schedule or on budget. Heresy you say! No, just a willingness to question the assumptions of the project management community. In August 2007, Dr. Dobb's ran a survey exploring how people define IT project success, and we found that 80 percent of people preferred to focus on producing a good return on investment (ROI) than being under budget, and that 62 percent wanted teams to ship their systems when they're ready to be shipped rather than forcing adherence to a schedule. In other words, the priorities are to spend the money wisely and ship quality systems. (When given the choice, 87 percent of respondents indicated that shipping high quality software is more important than being on time and on budget). The implication is that instead of measuring progress against your plan, as EVM enables you to do, you should instead be focusing on ensuring ROI and product quality. The agile practices of implementing requirements in priority order and allowing requirements to evolve throughout the lifecycle ensure greater ROI, and agile practices such as test-driven development (TDD) and refactoring promote greater quality.
Tracking EVM is clearly better than doing nothing, but it's an incredibly fragile metric at best because it assumes that the project team is actually producing a potentially-shippable system at all times during the development lifecycle and that the original plan is reasonably accurate. The first assumption is true of agile teams but is questionable at best for traditional teams. The second assumption is incredibly naive regardless of your development paradigm. In short, EVM is highly questionable for IT project management. As IT professionals we can and should do better. If we need to use euphemisms such as "earned value" to sell our projects, then perhaps it's time to euthanize the methodologies of yesteryear and instead adopt agile strategies that actually produce visible value to our stakeholders.
I'd like to thank Kevin Aguanno, the Agile Center of Competency lead at IBM Canada Global services and editor of Managing Agile Projects for his valuable feedback regarding this newsletter.
Hot Links
The Wikipedia page on EVM is a good starting point for learning more about the subject.
My April 2007 newsletter, The Dire Consequences of a Fixed-Price Project, explores the impact of too much up-front planning on IT projects.
The article Agile Requirements Change Management shows how agile teams focus on producing greater ROI by implementing requirements in priority order, shows how to manage changing requirements effectively, and describes why requirements "change" throughout a project in the first place.
The book Managing Agile Projects encompasses a collection of articles about agile project management written by leading voices within the agile community.
My December 2007 column Defining Success overviews the results of Dr. Dobb's 2007 Project Success Survey.
The questions, a summary slide deck, and the original source data from Dr. Dobb's 2007 Project Success Survey are available for free download.
See the principles behind the Agile Manifesto, including the idea that the primary measure of progress is the delivery of working software.
See my [email protected] blog.
The Agile Alliance homepage is the best starting point for anyone interested in agile.
The Agile Models Distilled page provides links to overviews of a wide variety of models.
The Principles of Agile Modeling v2 are described here.
The Practices of Agile Modeling v2 are described here.
Check out the Agile Modeling mailing list.


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Thousands of small New Jersey employers are now deciding whether to keep their old, pre-Obamacare health plans for another year, or make the switch to new plans that conform to the Affordable Care Act.The ACA made sweeping changes to health plans starting Jan. 1, 2014, but in November 2013 President Barack Obama announced that small employers and individuals could keep their old plans if insurers agreed to renew them.
Insurers in New Jersey didn't continue offering their old individual policies, most of which were "basic and essential" plans that were in substantial noncompliance with the ACA.
However, the option to keep the old plans was available in the small group market. Depending on their insurance carriers, many small employers with fewer than 50 workers were able to keep their old, pre-ACA plan into 2014.
Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, the state's largest small group insurer, kept the old policies alive through an "early renewal" option. Small groups whose old plans were set to come up for renewal in 2014 were given the option of renewing them early, before Dec. 1, 2013 — and thus keep them for another 12 months.
Now, Horizon is offering to renew for another year old plans that come due in the fourth quarter of 2014. Horizon told NJBIZ that this option is available to approximately 13,450 small groups whose plans are up for renewal during the fourth quarter of 2014.
Last year, UnitedHealthcare also allowed its small group clients keep their old plans, and is now renewing them for another year. Unlike Horizon, which will only renew old plans that come due in the fourth quarter, UnitedHealthcare is renewing old plans that come due at any point in 2014.
Insurance brokers are now working with small employers covered by Horizon and UnitedHealthcare, and analyzing their options to see if it makes sense to stick with the old plans, or to switch over the new ACA plans.
William Corson, vice president of group benefits at AEPG Wealth Strategies in Warren, said the cost differential between the old and new plans varies widely from one employer group to another. "I'll see one client and the (new ACA policy) is 40 percent higher, and then I'll go to a different client a half-hour later and the new ACA policy is less than what they are currently paying."
Sean Keegan, senior groups account manager at AEPG, agreed: "I looked at one group and the old plan rate was 20 percent higher," but the premiums were flat if he switched the client to a new ACA plan. "And then the next group I pull off the pile, it's the exact opposite." He said that, in one case, "The new ACA plan was a much better price" than the old plan.
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AmeriHealth New Jersey did early renewals last year, but is not renewing old plans for a second year. Both Aetna and Cigna opted not to renew the old plans, but instead moved to the new ACA plans.
Mike Munoz, senior vice president of sales and marketing, AmeriHealth New Jersey, told NJBIZ: "In December 2013, we offered small groups an early renewal option to maintain their current policies for this year in order to ensure a smooth transition. We now are focused on migrating all of our subscribers to ACA-compliant plans to assure adherence and allow members access to the enhanced benefits available through the ACA-compliant plans. Our systems are ready for this transition."
AmeriHealth said about 450 groups took advantage of the early renewal option.
Meanwhile, Cigna spokesman Mark Slitt said: "In 2013, we had already migrated our New Jersey small group and individual customers to ACA-compliant plans before we received regulatory guidance about retaining non-ACA-compliant plans. That was a small number of customers, and as far as I can tell, we did not receive any customer requests to keep the non-compliant plans."
The 2014 ACA plans require pediatric dental coverage and have different deductibles and other features, but in New Jersey they aren't significantly different from the old plans, which are already subject to certain ACA rules as well as New Jersey's health insurance mandates, which in some cases go beyond federal law.
For example, all plans, both old and new, must offer preventive care without copays and let parents keep their children on their policy until age 26.
But a major change with the new ACA plans involves how the insurance carrier quotes the premiums to the small employer. In the past, the insurer would give the employer a "blended" rate. For example, every single individual in the group and every family in the group would have the same premium. Under Obamacare, every individual in the group gets a separate premium, primarily depending on age; family coverage varies by the ages of the parents and the ages and number of their children.
Keegan said for one of his small group clients, an employee with a spouse and three children paid $1,000 a month under the old plan, which increased to $1,800 a month under the new ACA plan.
Insurance brokers said some employers are coping with the new rating structure by averaging the premiums to avoid wide swings in premiums from one worker to another.
Insurance broker David Oscar of Altigro said it's not necessarily a good deal to stick with an old plan: "It all translates to dollars and cents. If the dollars and cents are not attractive, what is the point?"
One of his clients is a law firm that pays $29,000 a month in premiums. If the firm sticks with the old plan, that will rise to $33,000 a month. Oscar said he will recommend that this client save money by switching to a new ACA plan, at $27,000 a month.
Another client had a choice between an old plan with a $3,000 deductible and a new ACA plan with a $6,000 deductible. Oscar said the premium for the old plan is $30 a month more than the ACA plan, but it's worth paying a slightly higher premium to get a plan with a far lower deducible.
Steven Paragone, employee benefits specialist at Northeastern Benefit Services in Princeton, said whether to stick with the old plan or move to a new one "is a case-by-case, client-by-client needs analysis." And, he said, in addition to cost, benefit designs are a big factor. "We are looking at the overall plan design, and what the employer is trying to do with their benefit plan to attract and retain quality employees. Price is a major driver of the decision, but that is certainly not the only consideration."
Christine Stearns, vice president of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, said the transition to the ACA has been difficult for many small employers. "So any continued relief from the (insurance) carriers to ease the move into the post-ACA world for these small employer groups is helpful for many of them."
Right now, carriers are renewing old policies into 2015 — and they could continue even longer.
In March the federal government announced a two year-extension of this "transitional" option, saying the old plans could be renewed until Oct. 1, 2016 — and thus remain in force through 2017.
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1. Mexico
The top priority in a crowded fixture list this year: qualify for the World Cup in some style. And all of the pieces are in place to fulfill that goal. Javier 'Chicharito' Hernández leads a deep and talented group from the front. His predatory instincts offer plenty of cutting edge to moves concocted by Andrés Guardado and Giovani dos Santos in midfield. Veteran operator Carlos Salcido supplies a bit of pragmatism in central midfield with fullbacks overlapping and wingers flying into dangerous areas. The central defensive duo of Héctor Moreno and Francisco Rodríguez provides the necessary solidity to a side that operates in possession frequently and sometimes leaves gaps to exploit on the counter.
Best case scenario: Mexico coasts through its home fixtures and snatches road victories at Jamaica and Honduras early in the schedule to confirm its place as the top side in the region by some distance.
Worst case scenario: The neat work in midfield falters in front of goal. Somehow, one of the rivals – potentially the United States – sneaks out of the Azteca with all three points. Qualification is secured with time to spare, but questions are raised about whether de la Torre is the man to take this talented side to Brazil.
2. United States
Nothing less than a fairly comfortable ride through the Hexagonal will suffice for the region's second-best side. U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann hasn't enacted the sweeping revolution many expected, but he has cobbled together a side capable of churning out results. Clint Dempsey offers most of the imagination and sharpness in the final third, particularly with Landon Donovan currently unavailable. Michael Bradley performs much of the hard work linking the play through midfield and shuttling the ball into advanced areas. Carlos Bocanegra and Tim Howard lead a rearguard bolstered by the presence of dynamic fullbacks Timmy Chandler and Fabian Johnson. Klinsmann must hope the potential frailty in central defense and the dearth of wide options does not impair his side's efforts, but the overall strength of the side means this particular gauntlet should unfold in a relatively straightforward manner.
Best case scenario: Klinsmann guides the Americans through a difficult opening slate (away to Honduras, home to Costa Rica, away to Mexico and away to Jamaica) with a minimum of fuss. Those early points – five or more would do – build the foundation for a berth before the final day.
Worst case scenario: Early success eludes a group impacted by the relative inexperience of several starters and the Hex turns into its usual slog. A place in Brazil is ultimately secured, but the arduous path ultimately prompts inquiries about how far this group can progress in the main event next year.
3. Honduras
Los Catrachos enter this Hexagonal with their sights set on a second consecutive World Cup berth. Longtime fixtures Amado Guevara and Carlos Pavón (top scorer in the Hex last time around) retired from international soccer after the trip to South Africa, but plenty of talented players still remain to replicate that Hexagonal success. Most of the key regulars – familiar figures like Jerry Bengtson, Roger Espinoza, Maynor Figueroa and Boniek García – ply their trade in MLS or the United Kingdom. Central defense and wide play loom as potential strengths, but there are concerns that Espinoza won't receive the proper support in central midfield with Wilson Palacios and Hendry Thomas out of the mix or the goals might dry up if Bengtson and Carlo Costly fail to receive the proper service.
Best case scenario: Victory over the United States in the first fixture – and perhaps a home draw against Mexico in the second – paves the way for a relatively simple qualification process. A repeat of Jonathan Bornstein's late equalizer against Costa Rica isn't necessary to cinch a trip to Brazil.
Worst case scenario: The difficult pair of matches to open the Hex create some doubt about the quality of this side. Those doubts increase in June and prompt an unexpected scrape for fourth place instead one of the three guaranteed berths in Brazil. A potential journey to New Zealand awaits.
4. Panama
This baseball-mad country returns to the Hex after a one-cycle absence to pursue its first World Cup berth. Former star Julio Dely Valdes manages a veteran-laden group capable of producing the necessary results to make history. The strength of this team comes straight down its spine: Jaime Penedo in goal, Felipe Baloy in central defense, Gabriel Gómez in central midfield and Blas Pérez (and the currently injured Luis Tejada) up front. Direct play and set pieces play to the physical strength of the side, though the counter is always an option given the pace available on the flanks. Depth up front, imagination and quality in midfield and vulnerabilities at fullback present potential trouble spots.
Best case scenario: A bright start inspires belief that a first World Cup berth isn't out of reach. The hard work through the first eight matches renders the final two matches – away to Mexico and home to the United States – irrelevant.
Worst case scenario: Dely Valdes watches his team stumble through a manageable start to the campaign. The early missteps prove costly with those final pair of matches likely to ensure the World Cup drought continues for another four years.
5. Costa Rica
The pain of last cycle – Bornstein's last-second intervention at RFK Stadium prompted a playoff defeat to eventual semifinalists Uruguay – still lingers as the Hex approaches. This Costa Rica side isn't as strong as the group that nearly traveled to South Africa last time around. Established stars Bryan Ruiz and Álvaro Saborío offer plenty of potency in the attacking third, but a suspect rearguard may place too much emphasis on producing goals. Jorge Luis Pinto will try to accelerate the development of several young players – including Arsenal starlet Joel Campbell and Everton reserve Bryan Oviedo – to supply additional support. He may need all hands on deck to ensure this group somehow manages to squeak into World Cup contention.
Best case scenario: Pinto accentuates the positives with Celso Borges and Christian Bolaños providing plenty of help to Ruiz and Saborío from midfield. The young players continue to develop, particularly at the back. And the final match – home to Mexico – means something.
Worst case scenario: Ruiz and Saborio find themselves isolated. The defense crumbles in front of the stranded Keylor Navas. Pinto starts to search for another gig by early fall as Costa Rica turns its focus to 2018.
6. Jamaica
Reggae Boyz boss Theodore Whitmore will hope to conjure up the magic of 1998 to direct his country back to the World Cup. In a nod to the work Rene Simoes did that year, Whitmore enticed five English-based professionals – including Huddersfield Town striker Jermaine Beckford and Reading midfielder Jobi McAnuff – to join the ranks. Those players increase the available options, but they do not solve the cohesiveness concerns and the selection issues (Darren Mattocks and Luton Shelton were both omitted from the squad to face Mexico). Former midfielder general Whitmore organized his side well and relied on the counter during the semifinal round, but the usual problems – profligate finishing and spotty service – popped up on cue. If the recent imports fail to sparkle or undermine the defensive efforts, then the Jamaicans will struggle to compete.
Best case scenario: All of the fresh faces settle well and take to CONCACAF World Cup qualifying immediately. Whitmore steers his team to fourth spot and a playoff victory over New Zealand.
Worse case scenario: Chaos reigns. Results suffer. Viewings of those three cherished group stage games from France replace the usual debates about the national team as the Hex progresses.
Follow KYLE MCCARTHY on or shoot him an email


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Suno Resort 2012 Collection Photos
Suno Resort 2012
>> Max Osterweis and Erin Beatty sourced Hawaii and its tourists for the beach scenes and florals that graced their heavily-printed Suno Resort 2012 collection. "Resort is always less about artistic expression and more about having fun," Beatty said. "After all, isn't going on vacation supposed to be about having a good time?" Necklaces were fashioned from South American worry dolls and swimwear pieces, too, got some play.