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BRASIL BY BUS VIAGENS E SOLUÇÕES LTDA – (“BRASIL BY BUS”), limited liability company organized under the laws of Brazil, registered with CNPJ/MF under nº 15.448.440/0001-83, headquartered at Avenida Jacutinga, nº 457, cj.33, Moema neighborhood, CEP 04515-030, in the city of São Paulo, SP, establishes this TERMS OF SERVICE OF BRASIL BY BUS, hereinafter called “Terms of Service”, to the USER, which will be any person registered in the BRASIL BY BUS website (http://www.brasilbybus.com.br) according to the conditions described below.

The present Terms of Service aims to elucidate the rules and conditions that will guide the use of services offered by BRASIL BY BUS. By using the electronic platform BRASIL BY BUS to purchase bus tickets, the USER automatically adheres and agrees to submit, in part, to the conditions set forth herein.

    1. BRASIL BY offers the USER a digital platform (http://www.brasilbybus.com.br) containing a research tool for bus tickets, as other travel-related services, and promotes mediation between the USER and road transport companies to purchase bus tickets.

    2. To buy bus tickets from the BRASIL BY BUS platform, the user must register in the company website, indicating the personal information and registration data indicated.

    3. The search tool will be used by the USER, registered or not, and for the purchase of ticket (s) the USER must fill in, among others, the following criteria:

      a) Origin city;

      b) Destination city;

      c) Departure date;

      d) Return date;

      e) Departure time;

      f) Return time;

      g) Number of passengers;

      h) Name of passenger(s);

      i) E-mail to receive the voucher;

      j) Passenger’s ID number(s);

      k) Valid phone number to purchase confirmation.

    4. After the search criteria are filled, the platform indicates the USER the tickets available for the selected date and time, discriminating the transport company and the price of the passages, among other information.

    5. The USER wishing to purchase a ticket should pay as set forth in item 2 below.

    6. The BrasilbyBus.com portal sells tickets up to 50 minutes before departure time. After this period, the portal blocks the online booking for these tickets.

    7. BRASIL BY BUS is not responsible for any loss or damages suffered by the USER due to failures from problems with the telecommunications services in the system or services used by the USER, nor for any viruses that may attack the USER's equipment due to accessing, using or browsing the Internet or as a result of data, files, images, text or audio transfers.

    1. The USER wishing to purchase a passage shall make the full payment of the value indicated by the BRASIL BY BUS platform online.

    2. Payment can be made by bank billet (for Brazilian citizens only), or credit card, without disadvantages to any other forms of payment indicated in the BRASIL BY BUS site.

    1. The fees and taxes are BRASIL BY BUS's payment for the services offered in its electronic platform.

    2. The fees and taxes will include the value of the ticket indicated by BRASIL BY BUS on the platform and will not be refundable in case of cancellation, in accordance with item 4 below.

    1. It is assured to the USER the requesting to transfer the date or departure time, or even the cancellation of the purchase, as long as the request is made directly to the bus company booth at the place of origin of the trip, at least three (3) hours before the scheduled time for boarding.

    2. The USER may also request the cancellation of the ticket purchase on BRASIL BY BUS portal (https://www.brasilbybus.com), in "My Account". If so desired, the USER may make the cancellation online at least 4 hours in advance of the boarding time. If there is limited access to the portal, the user must inform BRASIL BY BUS, at least 24 (twenty-four) hours in advance, the cancellation request via e-mail contato@brasilbybus.com. You can only make the cancellation of an entire application on Brasilbybus.com portal; the partial cancellation request must be made directly with the bus company responsible for the trip.

    3. In case of cancellation of the ticket after 24h from the order approval, the fees and taxes will not be refunded, whether the cancellation is made by the portal DeÔnibusor directly with the bus company responsible for the bus route and ticket.

    4. In cases of deferred payment by credit card, the refund will be conducted in accordance with the transfer of the Administrator to Provider. Repayment of canceled tickets may take 30 to 60 days, from request day to BRASIL BY BUS, to be credited back to the user.

    5. The time transfer shall be conditioned to the tickets availability on the date and time chosen by the USER, being also assured to the USER the option for tickets with a open date and time for a maximum period of twelve (12) months, to be counted from the date of the original ticket, subject to price adjustment if not used within that time. For tickets that have expired 3 hours before the time of the trip cancellation term, the bus company responsible for the trip has the right to charge up to 20% of the passage as fine.

      Rescheduling of unused tickets must be made directly at the bus company booth. Online rescheduling is not possible in BRASIL BY BUS.

    1. Considering the content of Art. 70 and following of Decree No. 2,521 / 98, the ticket fare includes, as a franchise, the compulsory and free luggage transportation in the trunk and in the roof rack, observing the following maximum weight and size:

      a) Truck, thirty kilograms of total weight and maximum volume of three hundred cubic centimeters, limiting the larger dimension of any volume to one meter; and roof rack, total weight of five kilograms, with dimensions adjusted to the site, as long as the comfort, safety and hygiene of the passengers are not endangered;

      b) Exceeded the threshold provided, the passenger will pay up to half a percent of the price of the ticket corresponding to the conventional service, for each excess kilogram transported;

      c) The transportation of dangerous products, indicated in specific legislation, as well as those which, because of its form or nature compromise the safety of the vehicle, its passengers or other parts, is forbidden, in accordance with the Art.72 of Decree 2521/98.

    1. For the comfort and peace of mind of the USER, it is advised to the passenger to present themselves to the bus company booth for ticket printing at leat 1 (one) hour prior to the scheduled departure time, carrying an original ID with photo.

    2. The passenger ticket is nominal and non-transferable.

    1. BRASIL BY BUS’ may alter, anytime, this Terms of Service, in order to improve and upgrade the services offered by the company.

    2. The eventual alterations made by BRASIL BY BUS will be available on the company website, and shall be notified to the USER through the contact information indicated in the registration act and also in the next ticket purchase made by the USER.

    1. The passenger will have its boarding denied, or disembarkation determined, in accordance with Article 30 of Decree 2,521 / 98, when:

      a) Does not identify themselves when requested;

      b) Is in state of intoxication;

      c) Carries firearms without authorization from the relevant competent authority;

      d) Carries or wants to embark products considered dangerous by the specific legislation;

      e) Carries or wants to embark with domestic or wild animals, without proper packaging or violating laws or regulations;

      f) Wants to embark objects with dimensions and packaging incompatible with the roof rack;

      g) Compromises the safety, comfort or peace of other passengers;

      h) Makes use of sound apparatus, after having been warned by the vehicle crew;

      i) Demonstrates incontinence in behavior;

      j) Refuses to pay the fare; and

      k) Makes use of tobacco products inside the bus, at odds with the relevant legislation.

    1. BRASIL BY BUS does not own or have any ownership interest in companies that sell their tickets through its platform.

    2. In face of the provisions of Clause 9.1 above, BRASIL BY BUS is not responsible for any defects arising out of the performance and delivery of services provided by the road transportation companies.

    3. In cases where the USER or any third party initiates any claim or legal action against any of the bus companies that use the BRAZIL BY BUS platform, each and every one of USERS involved in claims or actions disclaim all responsibility from BRASIL BY BUS and its directors, officers, employees, agents, workers and representatives in relation to any defect caused in the provision of such services from the transportation companies.

    1. The registration data and the USER access information will only be used by BRASIL BY BUS to enhance the browsing experience, improving the provision of services to its customers, and to achieve the goals of its business.

    2. The registration data and user access information will not be provided to third parties, except in the case of supply of data by court order.

    3. The USER will answer for the accuracy of the data provided, otherwise will be subject to legal penalties.

    4. The USER undertakes to communicate to BRAZIL BY BUS immediately if he/she becomes aware of having unauthorized use of his/her account, or even account access by unauthorized third parties.

  11. FORUM

    1. The present Terms of Use are governed by the laws of the Federative Republic of Brazil and the international treaties and conventions to which Brazil is a signatory, being elected the Central Court of the District of São Paulo, São Paulo, with express waiver of any other, privileged it is or will be, to settle any doubt or pending litigation arising from this document.


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Truck crash closes Kuranda Range for 10 hours

7 News, June 2017

Four people have been injured in crashes today on highways connecting Cairns to the Tablelands.

The Kuranda Range was closed off from six o’clock this morning and when drivers sought another route they then faced more delays on the Gilles Range Road.

Categories: newsTags: , , , ,

Brianna Piazza

Journalist and travel writer.

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what to do

06 Dec 2018

Top DUI Lawyer Explains Best Way to Handle a DUI Stop

The best way to set the officer at ease, is to already be ready when he approaches your vehicle: windows down, dome light on, engine off, radio off,
hands on the wheel at 10 and 2, take a deep breath and do not make any sudden movements.

Jason Beahm 0


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Forum: General discussion RSS
Winamp and BA as a service
Djtale #1
Member since Aug 2006 · 1 post
Group memberships: Members
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I want to run winamp & ba as a service so that i don't need to logon on the computer.

The problem is that when winamp runs as a service (with firedaemon), ba doesn't recognize my mounted directory where i have all my audio files. i tried using the unc path (eg: \\\audio_files ) but it still doesn't recognize.

Do you know how i can do to resolve this problem ?

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About Me

Hi my name is Brandon and this is my financial and investing blog!

A little bit about myself, I am a 22 year old college student, studying in the engineering field. I currently invest in ETF’s, stocks, 401k, and peer-to-peer lending. I am looking into real estate investing, options trading, and drop shipping in the future.


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Senate and House pass sweeping Republican tax bill

By Thomas Kaplan and Alan Rappeport

WASHINGTON – Republicans took a critical step toward notching their first significant legislative victory since assuming full political control, as the House and Senate voted along party lines Tuesday and into early Wednesday to pass the most sweeping rewrite of the tax code in decades.

The $1.5 trillion tax bill, which is expected to head to President Trump’s desk in the coming days, will have broad effects on the economy, making deep and lasting cuts to corporate taxes as well as temporarily lowering individual taxes.

The endeavor was not without hiccups, however, as three small provisions in the final tax bill agreed to by the House and Senate were found by the Senate parliamentarian to violate the budget rules that Republicans must follow to pass their bill through a process that shields it from a Democratic filibuster. As a result, the bill changed slightly in the Senate, and the House will need to vote on it again since both chambers must approve identical legislation. Among the items that were deemed out of order was the title of the bill: the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

The approval of the bill in the House and Senate came over the strenuous objections of Democrats, who have accused Republicans of giving a gift to corporations and the wealthy and driving up the federal debt in the process.

As the final vote approached in the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, gave his closing argument against the bill and scolded his Republican colleagues for talking during his remarks on the floor.

“This is serious stuff,” Schumer said. “We believe you’re messing up America. You could pay attention for a couple of minutes.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, called the tax bill a scam, saying it “is simply theft – monumental, brazen theft from the American middle class and from every person who aspires to reach it.”

On Tuesday afternoon, the House voted 227-203 to pass the bill, with 12 Republicans voting against it and no Democrats voting for it. Eleven of the 12 Republicans were from California, New Jersey and New York, states that would be hit hard by a provision in the bill limiting the deduction for state and local taxes to just $10,000. The Senate approved the bill early Wednesday.

The Senate voted 51-48, with no Republican defections and no Democratic support.

Under the final tax bill, the corporate tax rate would fall to 21 percent, from the current 35 percent, a move that Republicans are betting will increase economic growth, create jobs and raise wages. Individuals would also see tax cuts, including a top rate of 37 percent, down from 39.6 percent. The size of inheritances shielded from estate taxation would double, to $22 million for married couples, and owners of pass-through businesses, whose profits are taxed through the individual code, would be able to deduct 20 percent of their business income.

But the individual tax cuts would expire after 2025, a step that Republicans took to comply with budget rules, which do not allow the package to add to the deficit after a decade.

The tax changes will affect businesses and individuals unevenly, with winners and losers often being determined by industry or geography.

An analysis by the Tax Policy Center found that the bill would reduce taxes, on average, by about $1,600 in 2018, increasing after-tax incomes 2.2 percent, with the largest benefit going to the wealthiest households.

The reach of the bill extends beyond taxes. It strikes at a core component of the Affordable Care Act, eliminating the requirement that most people have health coverage or pay a penalty, a move that the Congressional Budget Office projects will increase premiums for people who buy insurance. It also would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas drilling, a defeat for environmentalists who have fought against such action for decades.

The last-minute parliamentary stumble involved three small components of the bill, according to Senate Democrats, including a provision that would have allowed the use of 529 savings accounts for home-schooling expenses and part of the criteria to be used to determine whether colleges and universities are subject to an excise tax imposed on their investment income. The parliamentarian even ruled against the bill’s name, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, since the provision creating the name did not influence spending or revenue, as each provision must under Senate budget rules.

The chief tax writer in the House, Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, was unruffled.
“Our belief is, ‘So what?’” Brady said on Fox News. “If we can get to vote twice on cutting taxes for families and small businesses, glad to do it.”

Republicans in Congress moved with remarkable speed in their bid to enact the biggest tax overhaul since 1986, unveiling legislation to rewrite the tax code, marshaling support for their effort and devising a compromise between the House and Senate in under two months.

The success within reach would be a stark contrast with their attempt this year to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, a quest that was encumbered by internal divisions among Republicans and ultimately ended in humiliating failure.

“People wanted to get it done,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said of the tax rewrite. “That’s the single biggest difference.”

It would also give Trump a signature accomplishment as the first year of his presidency nears an end. After the House vote, Trump took to Twitter to congratulate House Republican leaders as well as “all great House Republicans who voted in favor of cutting your taxes!”

Shortly after 1 a.m. Wednesday, Trump acknowledged the Senate’s vote in a tweet: “The United States Senate just passed the biggest in history Tax Cut and Reform Bill. Terrible Individual Mandate (ObamaCare)Repealed.”

In recent days, critics of the tax bill have argued that it will enrich a number of Republican lawmakers who supported it. They pointed specifically to Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Trump himself, who both hold real estate investments that will get favorable tax treatment through the legislation.

The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, pushed back on the notion that Trump would save money as a result of the tax plan. “I know that there are a number of provisions that would negatively impact the president personally,” Sanders said.

At the Capitol, the mood among Republicans was largely triumphant. But Democrats were already looking ahead with a focus on next year’s midterm elections, when they hope to wrest control of the House and Senate. Polls have shown that the Republican tax overhaul is unpopular with the public, and Democrats hope to turn the biggest Republican legislative achievement into a liability in next year’s races.

Schumer warned that Republicans would come to regret rushing the tax bill through Congress on their own.

“This tax bill will be an anchor around the ankles of every Republican,” he said.

Protesters also made themselves heard as both chambers voted. As senators cast their final votes on the bill, protesters rose in the gallery of the chamber and began chanting “Kill the bill, don’t kill us.”

On the floor of the Senate, the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, observed the proceedings, as senators mingled. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Jeff Flake of Arizona laughed as they spoke to each other while protesters implored them to change their minds and vote down the legislation.

But Republicans predicted that their support of the tax bill would be vindicated as voters see its effects.

“I frankly think Democrats have overplayed their hand,” Brady told reporters, “because when people back home and our local businesses see the tax relief, they’re going to know they weren’t really told the truth by the opponents of tax reform.”

While the effect of the bill on people’s bank accounts and on the broader economy remains to be seen, there was little debate on Tuesday about the magnitude of what Republicans were on the verge of accomplishing.

Bob Packwood, the former Republican senator from Oregon who helped lead the 1986 tax effort, said that this year’s bill was at least as sweeping as the one that Ronald Reagan signed into law 31 years ago, even though the bills had different goals.

“They have achieved things that I was unable to achieve,” Packwood said.

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Next Steps for a Beyond Horizons (2.0) Community

January 4, 2018

The following piece was prepared collaboratively by Lisa Gustinelli, Jonathan Nalder, and Paul Signorelli; each of us is publishing and sharing it on our own sites in the spirit of the collaboration that the piece documents. Please repost.

We’re a community that knows how to work, play, and, when necessary (as we have recently learned), grieve together. The key to dealing with those unexpected moments of grief seems to be in looking ahead as we bury our dead and tend to the survivors.

Those of us who were part of the NMC (New Media Consortium) global family, tribe, and community of learning for many years were stunned, a couple of weeks ago, by the sudden, completely unexpected news that our NMC friends/staff/colleagues had been suddenly laid off during the holiday season and, as the official (unsigned) statement distributed by former Board President Gardner Campbell via email noted on December 18, 2017, the “NMC will be promptly commencing a chapter 7 bankruptcy case. A trustee will be appointed by the court to wind down NMC’s financial affairs, liquidate its assets and distribute any net proceeds to creditors…” Those who loved the ed-tech reports issued through NMC’s Horizon Project, which documented ed tech projects, developments, trends, and challenges across both formal and informal learning sectors, are concerned that a project with more than 16 years of insights and impact worldwide could die along with the NMC.

Here one minute, gone the next: It’s the classic Talebian Black Swan—something so stunningly unexpected and world-changing for those involved (akin to the first, completely unanticipated sighting of a black swan where only white swans had previously been seen) that it shakes our beliefs and perceptions to the core. (None of us has been able to overlook the irony that one of the biggest Black Swans we have encountered came in the form of the dissolution of the very organization that had brought the concept of the Black Swan to our attention through a combination of conversations, articles, and a summit some of us attended in January 2015—three years ago this month.)

Dissecting the situation to determine what caused this particularly unwelcome Black Swan to land in our pond is going to keep a lot of people busy for a very long time.

Frankly, that’s not our concern. As we heard so many times decades ago on the original Star Trek television show, “He’s dead, Jim,” and others will have to handle the NMC funeral and respectfully deal with what remains of the corpse.

In less than two weeks, however, numerous members of the community that was originally fostered and sustained through the New Media Consortium have come together to determine what we will do to continue our work and play and exploration together in a post-NMC world. It only took us a few days of intensive online conversations and phone calls to determine that our greatest asset—one that cannot be monetized by any trustee or sold  through any bankruptcy proceedings—is the extended, collaborative, global group of innovative educators-trainers-learners-doers (what one of us lovingly calls “Edunauts”) who produced, under Creative Commons licensing, much of what made NMC such a dynamic organization with such far-reaching impact.

We are members of a vital, vibrant, dynamic community. That community is not dead, even if the organization that helped it grow and thrive is. By the end of the same week the announcement of the NMC’s immediate dissolution appeared, four of us (Lisa, Jonathan, Paul, and Bryan Alexander) had initiated community-wide conversations that led to creation of a landing place for the community: the Beyond the Horizon community on Slack.

We are at a very early stage in the evolution of this community—in some ways, it feels as if the NMC’s body hasn’t yet been placed into the ground—but we are already seeing the genesis of a community bootstrapping itself forward in hopeful and promising ways:

We are, individually and collectively, working as friends/colleagues/collaborators/cultivators, each tilling the vineyards we know best, collectively working toward the same goal of moving past this tragedy and keeping the momentum of this community going. And we hope you’ll join us, informally and formally, as we continue the learning journey the NMC community was on for nearly 25 years.

NMC Horizon Library Report 2014 (Pt. 6 of 6): Educational Technology on the Four- to Five-Year Horizon

September 5, 2014

It’s all about connections, we realize as we read the final section of the newly-released (first ever) New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Project educational-technology report on libraries. Skimming that section about technologies “very likely to drive technology planning and decision-making” in academic and research libraries four or five years into the future leads us through concise discussions of the state of the Internet of Things and Semantic Web/Linked Data developments—two technologies that are firmly grounded in connections.

NMC_HorizonReport_2014_Library_cover_borderThe Semantic Web/Linked Data section of the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Library Edition has plenty to say to anyone involved in libraries and other training-teaching-learning organizations: “Semantic applications and linked data have the potential to be immensely powerful educational resources” that allow us to “more effectively sift, query, and gather relevant information,” Horizon Report lead writer Samantha Adams Becker and her New Media Consortium colleagues remind us.

As is the case with big data, the semantic web “might be able to help people solve very difficult problems by presenting connections between seemingly unrelated concepts, individuals, events, or things—connections that it would take many people many years to perceive, but that could become obvious through the kinds of associations made possible when the semantics of the data are exposed” (p. 44).

For libraries and those who staff them, the implication is obvious: as organizations and people dedicated to providing access to information—and, more importantly, helping others find meaningful uses for that information—they become even more dynamic in their roles as community partners and resources when tools like a semantic web speed up the search process. For other trainer-teacher-learners, the implications are a bit more subtle, but no less important: semantic-web applications almost certainly would facilitate the training-teaching-learning process in ways we can’t even begin to imagine and change the way we support the process of change/transformation that is at the heart of successful learning.

nmc.logo.cmykThe 2014 Library Edition does not paint an unrealistic picture of where we are in terms of developing and employing a semantic web in our work: “While the evolution of the semantic web is still in its infancy for libraries, the worldwide linked open data movement is just beginning to adopt international standards for digital repositories that contain bibliographic information” (pp. 44-45). It is equally blunt about the state of development of the Internet of Things: “While there are many examples of what the Internet of Things might look like as it unfolds, it is still today more concept than reality, although that is changing rapidly” (p. 42).

But the fact that the report does help us focus on what is possible and what is being imagined—and provides examples of current semantic-web and Internet of Things initiatives—does help us understand some of what is currently happening and, more importantly, what may be possible within the four- to five-year adoption horizon described in this section of the report. Looking back over more than five years of reading and being involved in Horizon Project work, I realize how quickly those four- to five-year horizons become today’s horizons—and how important it is for all of us involved in training-teaching-learning to keep up with what is developing in the world of educational technology if we don’t want to be left behind the learners we are attempting to serve.

NB: This is the final set of reflections in a six-part series of articles exploring the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Library Edition.

NMC Library Horizon Report 2014 (Pt. 5 of 6): Bibliometrics/Citation Technologies & Open Content

September 3, 2014

Because trainer-teacher-learners are faced with and often focused on short-term, day-to-day pressures to produce new learning content—NOW!—we all-too-rarely take time to explore what the best peer-reviewed articles and open content might offer us in our efforts to produce more effective learning opportunities for those we serve.

NMC_HorizonReport_2014_Library_cover_borderThe newly-released New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Project educational-technology report on libraries inspires us to look beyond that narrow field of vision. It is a fabulous tool that also helps us remember that we are part of “an expansive network of education collaborators” that can help connect us to “researchers, faculty, and librarians who are creating, adapting, and sharing media—and numerous repositories brimming with content” (p. 40).

While the focus on academic and research libraries within the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Library Edition means that report is often directed at those working within those types of libraries, the content within the section about technologies “very likely to drive technology planning and decision-making” in academic and research libraries during the next two or three years can easily be adapted to any trainer-teacher-learner interesting in exploring ways to apply educational-technology developments to the work we do in a variety of settings.

The first of those two technologies—bibliometrics and citation technologies—would, at first glance, appear to be of far more interest to those working in academic and research libraries than to those in other types of libraries and other training-teaching-learning organizations. But a quick skim of the section, with its summary of tech developments that help us “better gauge an author or journal’s impact,” reminds us that there are plenty of ways for us to sift through the drinking-from-the-fire hose flow of information that threatens to drown us.

Altmetrics_LogoThere is, for example, an introduction to altmetrics—an alternative to bibliometrics that “takes into account a scholar’s online social media imprint as well as their ability to publish their own research in repositories and disseminate it though  blogging or other avenues” (p. 38). If you’ve been relying on Facebook and LinkedIn likes and Twitter links to online resources when you’re trying to keep up with new developments, you’re going to find altmetrics to be a tremendous upgrade in terms of leading you to thoughtful, well-developed resources that keep your knowledge current. And if you want to further understand and use bibliometrics to your advantage—and the advantage of those you serve—you might also want to move beyond the report’s summary and skim David A. Pendlebury’s white paper on “Using Bibliometrics in Evaluating Research.” His simple observation, on page 7 of the paper, that “the goal of bibliometrics is to discover something, to obtain a better, more complete understanding of what is actually taking place in research,” helps us understand why bibliometrics is a topic we ought to be exploring more frequently and more diligently. We come full circle by following a link from the report to Mike Taylor’s “Towards a Common Model of Citation: Some Thoughts on Merging Altmetrics and Bibliometrics,” an opinion piece published in the December 2013 issue of Research Trends.

Moving into the second two- to three-year horizon technology—open content—we’re on much more familiar ground: “Open content uses open licensing schemes to encourage not only the sharing of information, but the sharing of pedagogies and experiences as well….As this open, customizable content—and insights about how to teach ad learn with it—is increasingly made available for free over the Internet, people are learning not only the material, but also the skills related to finding, evaluating, interpreting, and repurposing the resources” (p. 40).

ACRL_MOOCs_OERs_ScanWe come across reminders that “open” means far more than “free of charge”: it refers to learning resources that “are freely copiable, freely remixable, and free of barriers to access, cultural sensitivities, sharing, and educational use” (p. 40). Our models are increasing visible and, under the right conditions, appealing: massive open online courses (MOOCs), when they are well-designed and well-facilitated; open textbooks and textbooks that are evolving to provide engaging learning opportunities; and colleagues within libraries and other learning organizations where development of open educational resources is increasingly being explored and promoted.

It’s obvious, as we read and reflect upon the 2014 Library Edition, that resources like this one do not need to and should not remain siloed away—read only by the obvious audience of people within academic and research libraries. The fact that the report has, within its first month of availability, already been downloaded more than a million times—the most popular Horizon Report to date in terms of initial readership—suggests that its audience extends far beyond those directly involved with academic and research libraries. And if learning facilitators worldwide are among the readers, learners worldwide are going to be the beneficiaries.

NB: This is the fifth set of reflections in a six-part series of articles exploring the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Library Edition. Next: On the Four- to Five-Year Horizon—the Internet of Things and Semantic Web/Linked Data

NMC Library Horizon Report 2014 (Pt. 4 of 6): Electronic Publishing and Mobile Apps on the One-Year Horizon

August 29, 2014

Libraries—among the key organizations in our lifelong-learning landscape—are “poised to be major players in the digital revolution as academic electronic publishing becomes more sophisticated,” the writers of the newly-released (first ever) New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Project educational-technology report on libraries remind us.

NMC_HorizonReport_2014_Library_cover_borderElectronic publishing and mobile apps, in fact, are technologies “very likely to drive technology planning and decision-making” in academic and research libraries during the next 12 months, the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Library Edition confirms.

While those of us immersed in training-teaching-learning within and outside of libraries won’t be surprised to read that electronic publishing and mobile apps are important technologies having a tremendous impact on and providing magnificent possibilities for libraries and other learning organizations, we have a lot to gain by paying attention to this particular report.

The section on electronic publishing, for example, includes a reference to libraries taking “resources that are generated locally” and “turning them into teaching materials as new publications”—an idea that has parallels in what we’re seeing as learners contribute to a new concept of textbooks by creating content used by other learners within connectivist MOOCs (massive open online courses), for example. This theme connects nicely to the idea that mobile apps are critically important within these and other learning organizations because, as the report notes, we are spending considerable amounts of time (an average of 60 hours each week) accessing content through our digital devices (p. 34). If libraries and other learning centers are going to be where the learners are, they are going to be engaged in electronic publishing and using mobile apps to get them there.

nmc.logo.cmykLibraries-as-publishers, furthermore, parallels what we have been seeing in online learning for a variety of organizations in at least two ways: we are continuing to redefine the concept of publishing to carry us far beyond a print-based focus (e.g., seeing the posting of blogs, YouTube videos, slide decks, and a variety of other learning objects as “publication”), and we are having to acknowledge our roles as publishers when we make our digital learning objects available for a specific audience (as when we use a company intranet or make our learning objects available only to registered learners) or take a more open approach as through publication in the form of content on MOOCs.

This, of course, raises another training-teaching-learning concern documented in the 2014 Library Edition: the long-standing concern that resources created with today’s digital formats are tomorrow’s inaccessible (i.e., lost) resources: “there is a need for libraries to assess their publishing programs and envision methods for future-proofing them….Only 15% of surveyed libraries developed a strategy for sustaining their publishing services long-term…” (p. 35). The same could be said for anyone creating learning objects designed to be used over a long period of time, and it’s far past the time when we should be preparing for the problems our lack of attention is creating for us.

As we shift our focus to that second one-year-horizon technology (mobile apps), we continue to benefit from considering the training-teaching-learning implications that course through the report: “Mobile apps…are particularly useful for learning as they enable people to experience new concepts wherever they are, often across multiple devices” (p. 36).

UNESCO--Reading_in_the_Mobile_EraWe are reminded that apps are making us change the way we think about software: “…mobile apps are small, simple, and elegant,” particularly when compared to “desktop applications that stack feature upon feature on a one-size-fits-all approach” (p 36). They are inexpensive. And the best of them “seamlessly create a full-featured experience”—which, of course, helps learners focus on the essentials of their learning process rather than finding their attention divided between learning how to use the technology and learning what they initially set out to learn. Exploring the resources cited within the report leads us to links to the Bavarian State Library in Germany and its apps allowing users to “explore ancient texts with augmented reality, location-based features, and geo-referencing in historical maps” (p. 37) and a UNESCO report (Reading in the Mobile Era: A Study of Mobile Reading in Developing Countries) that offers insights into how the use of mobile devices for reading is removing barriers to literacy for significant numbers of learners.

What we are left with, as we scan the one-year-horizon section of the 2014 Library Report, is an invitation to step back from our normal immersion in electronic publishing and mobile apps. Acknowledge how significantly each technology is developing. And think about what we can do to use these technologies to the advantage of the organizations and people we serve in our roles as trainer-teacher-learners—and more.

NB: This is the fourth set of reflections in a six-part series of articles exploring the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Library Edition. Next: On the Mid-Range Horizon—Bibliometrics/Citation Technologies and Open Content

NMC Library Horizon Report 2014 (Pt. 3 of 6): Key Challenges for Libraries, Learning, and Technology

August 28, 2014

We have plenty to celebrate as we consider that fantastic intersection where libraries, learning, and technology meet. We also have plenty of short-term, mid-range, and long-term challenges to address at that same intersection, as the newly-released (first ever) New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Project educational-technology report on libraries reminds us.

NMC_HorizonReport_2014_Library_cover_borderAlthough the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Library Edition focuses on academic and research libraries, the challenges that are documented within the report can easily be considered in the overall library-as-learning-center environment, and are also well worth the attention of those involved in training-teaching-learning outside of libraries since libraries so clearly are an important part of our lifelong-learning sandbox.

Among the “solvable challenges” (“those that we understand and know how to resolve”) is the challenge of embedding academic and research libraries in the curriculum. (Other trainer-teacher-learners can read this section and consider what it suggests in terms of embedding their own learning opportunities into the public and special libraries as well as the non-library settings they/we serve—after all, if we’re going to be effective in meeting our learners’ and our organizations’ learning needs, we need to be where those learners are at their moment of need.) When Report lead writer Samantha Adams Becker and her New Media Consortium colleagues suggest that “[l]ibrarians need to broaden their own concept of their role in the design of curriculum and provide outreach to faculty to help them understand how librarians can add to the education of students” (p. 20), they are reinforcing something any trainer-teacher-learner recognizes: we need to be demonstrating, in positive ways, how we facilitate and support the learning process for those we serve—and demonstrate, through our actions, how committed we are to being accessible to those learners.

The report writers also note how a first-rate learning facilitator “transforms the library space into a physical and virtual learning environment” (p. 20)—a challenge many of us have accepted and continue to explore as creatively as possible. It’s an idea well worth pursuing for anyone who still sees academic classrooms and workplace learning labs as the places where learning takes place and sees libraries as places to go (onsite or online) for materials that support rather than provide learning opportunities. As we continue to see the lines between “classrooms” and “libraries” as learning spaces blur—to the advantage of anyone interested in learning—we also need to keep thinking bigger and bigger to explore how we can more fully integrate library and other learning programs into our efforts in ways that connect libraries, library staff, and other key players in our local, regional, national, and global learning communities through a blending of onsite and online learning opportunities. (MOOCs—massive online open courses—as I frequently write, are just one of the many variations we are just beginning to explore.)

Moving to a second solvable challenge documented in the 2014 Library Edition of the Horizon Report series, we are treated to a concise and inspiring section about “rethinking the roles and skills of libraries”—a topic that again easily extends to any contemporary trainer-teacher-learner: “The challenge is in keeping institutions flexible enough to adapt to…new roles while finding leaders that can build sustainable models and collaborate across departments to meet the ever-changing needs of their institutions” (p. 22)—and, I would add, the ever-changing needs of their learners.

ARL_LogoA particularly intriguing part of the “rethinking roles” discussion is recognition of ‘the need for ‘superliaisons,’ or library staff that assist a variety of departments with their specialized skillset” (p. 22)—a concept drawn from the New Roles for New Times publication series from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Where the ARL report on Transforming Liaison Roles in Research Libraries includes a fabulous reminder that “no liaison is an island” (pp. 12-13), the Horizon Report inspires us to think about how superliaisons might benefit any learning organization or community of learning. Furthermore, it actually makes me realize that any great trainer-teacher-learner needs to be cognizant of the importance of being a superliaison in a much broader sense: being a liaison between what happens in our formal and informal learning spaces and what happens when our learners are called upon to apply their learning far beyond the confines of onsite and online learning spaces.

nmc.logo.cmykThe 2014 Library Edition of the Horizon Report series carries us further by documenting two difficult challenges (“those that we understand but for which solutions are elusive”) and two wicked challenges (“those that are complex to even define, much less address”). The wicked challenges of “embracing the need for radical change” (pp. 28-29) and “maintaining ongoing integration, interoperability, and collaborative projects” (pp. 30-31) are, like the solvable challenges, topics that ought to be on the minds of all trainer-teacher-learners—not just on the minds of our colleagues in academic and research libraries. And because the latest Horizon Report so effectively captures the essence of those challenges, it is already helping to shape the conversations that will help us at least partially address them.

NB: This is the third set of reflections in a six-part series of articles exploring the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Library Edition. Next: On the One-Year Horizon—Electronic Publishing and Mobile Apps

NMC Library Horizon Report 2014 (Pt. 2 of 6): Key Trends for Libraries, Learning, and Technology

August 22, 2014

There’s a rich and rewarding experience awaiting trainer-teacher-learners who explore the “key trends” section of  the newly-released (first ever) New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Project educational-technology report on libraries: lead writer Samantha Adams Becker and her New Media Consortium colleagues deftly lead us through concise summaries of trends that are “accelerating technology adoption in academic and research libraries” in a way that helps us read beyond the (virtually) printed pages and clearly see how those trends affect us and the learners we serve.NMC_HorizonReport_2014_Library_cover_borderBecause the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Library Edition focuses on academic and research libraries, we’re never far from the connections between libraries, technology and learning in this report. We also, if we think of the ramifications of what the 2014 Library Edition suggests, are constantly reminded of what the world of libraries and library staff members suggests in the overall lifelong-learning environment that serves as our own playing field.

Looking, for example, at two of the six trends that are accelerating technology adoption in libraries (and other learning organizations)—an increasing focus on how research data for publications is managed and shared, and the impact the open movement is having on creating greater access to research content—we see parallels between what library staff and other trainer-teacher-learners are facing. Library staff members who serve library users through data-management efforts are increasingly struggling not only with how to manage data to the benefit of those users/learners, but are also grappling with the changing nature of publications and data sets: “The definition of a publication itself is evolving beyond the constraints of static text and charts to take on a format that is more interactive” (p. 7)—a challenge of extreme importance to those managing and facilitating access to information resources and to any of us thinking about the formats we use in preparing and using materials to facilitate the learning process.

It’s a theme, trend, and challenge that carries over into what the report describes as the “evolving nature of the scholarly record.” Just as the scholarly record managed by library staff members is “no longer limited to text-based final products” and “can include research datasets, interactive programs, complete visualizations, lab articles, and other non-final outputs as well as web-based exchanges such as blogging,” the learning materials used in training-teaching-learning are increasingly comprised of interactive programs, complete visualizations, articles we prepare and share, and other non-final outputs including blogging and even blog sites used as stand-alone and elements of blended-learning opportunities—as we saw earlier this year through Tom Haymes’ blog/website that was part of an onsite presentation he facilitated and also serves as a lesson-in-a-blog.

nmc.logo.cmykWith each turn of a page, we find more within the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Library Edition that helps us re-examine the training-teaching-learning world we inhabit. And more that inspires us to seek ways to effectively use the changing environment to our advantage. When we reach the section describing another key trend—the increasing use of mobile content and delivery—we read about the impact it has on anyone associated with libraries and sense the impact it has on training-teaching-learning overall.

“Some libraries are furthering this trend by loaning devices such as tablets and e-readers to patrons, just as they would a printed book,” we are reminded (p. 8). And it doesn’t take much to carry this into the larger learning landscape, where many trainer-teacher-learners have moved well beyond the question as to whether mobile learning (m-learning) is catching on and are, instead, incorporating the use of mobile devices into onsite and online learning opportunities. There’s even a wonderfully circular moment when, in reading the report, we come across a reference to an online learning resource—23 Mobile Things—that can be used on mobile devices to learn more about the use of mobile devices in libraries and other learning environments. Yes, it really is that sort of report: it illuminates; it engages us in the subjects it reviews; and it rarely leaves us short of additional learning resources. (Among my favorites are the links to “11 Case Studies Released on Research Data Management in Libraries,” from the Association of European Research Libraries, and to Klaus Tochtermann’s “Ten Theses Regarding the Future of Scientific Infrastructure Institutions [libraries].” “11 Case Studies” includes one that documents a library’s training-teaching-learning function by describing a blended-learning opportunity designed ultimately to help researchers. “Ten Theses,” Tochterman writes in his preliminary note, was crafted to “address fields of development where libraries need to undertake particular efforts in the future,” e.g., pushing content to the user rather than making the user come to the library—or, in our case, to the learning facilitator; offering viral and decentralized services; and having high IT and high media competence.)

There is far more to explore in the “key trends” section than these blog reflections suggest. And it’s a tribute to New Media Consortium CEO Larry Johnson, Samantha Becker Adams as the lead writer, and everyone else at NMC that the report will have a much wider audience than those affiliated with libraries. There is plenty of content. Plenty of depth. And plenty of reason for all of us to take advantage of what has been written so we can familiarize ourselves with contemporary tech trends while keeping up with and meeting the needs of those who rely on us to support them in their own learning endeavors.

NB: This is the second set of reflections in a six-part series of articles exploring the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Library Edition. Next: Key Challenges

NMC Library Horizon Report 2014 (Pt. 1 of 6): Documenting Where We Are and Where We Might Be Going

August 21, 2014

When a wonderful friend and colleague retired from library work after 40 years in the industry, he wistfully reflected upon one consequence of his departure: that he would not be part of all that would be happening with libraries over the next 20 years.

NMC_HorizonReport_2014_Library_cover_borderIf he were to read the newly-released (first ever) New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Project educational-technology report on libraries, he would have even more cause to wish he had additional time to invest in these essential partners in community-development and lifelong learning.

The report—available online free of charge and focused on trends, challenges, and developing technologies in academic and research libraries, but essential reading for the much larger audience of people interested and involved in academic, public, and other types of libraries worldwide—is likely to quickly become a seminal work; more than 100,000 people downloaded the report within 24-hour period immediately following its formal unveiling. By documenting where we are and where we might be going, the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Library Edition will contribute substantially to conversations and decisions that help sustain libraries as responsive key players in the extended and expansive onsite and online communities they serve.

As an essential reference tool in and of itself, it provides a wonderful grounding in the basic language and learning landscape of the continually-evolving world we inhabit within and beyond the physical and virtual spaces of libraries as lifelong-learning centers. To read the report is to become aware of critically-important terminology including “device-agnostic” and “ubiquitous learning” (p. 9), “distant reading” and “macroanalysis” (p. 16), “creative destruction” (p. 29), and “competency-based learning” (p. 31). It also draws attention to first-rate learning resources including JISC (p. 4), the University of Leipzig research group Agile Knowledge Engineering and Semantic Web (AKSW) and its cutting-edge projects (p. 6), the 23 Mobile Things online course (p. 9), the Coalition for Networked Information (p. 14),  the Center for Digital Education (p. 26), the Ohio State University Libraries “Digital Initiatives Program Guiding Principles,” and others. It provides links to numerous articles while also mentioning more specialized reports and books. And as if all of that were not enough, it has a feature not included in previous Horizon Project reports: an extensive section of endnotes and links to online articles and resources that could keep us busy for many months to come. All in all, it’s a magnificent and well-written work of scholarship (crafted by lead writer Samantha Adams Becker and her New Media Consortium colleagues) that documents what we are—and should be—considering as trainer-teacher-learners working on behalf of dynamic communities worldwide.

nmc.logo.cmykAs is the case with all Horizon Project reports, the library edition provides concise descriptions of important developments in technology—“the technologies which the members of the expert panel agreed are very likely to drive technology planning and decision-making over the next five years” (p. 32)—placed within a one-year horizon/time frame, a two- to three-year horizon, and a four- to five-year horizon indicating when those technologies are “forecasted to enter…mainstream use…”

Anyone wanting an expansive overview of the ed-tech landscape will find it on page 33 of the report, as well as on the project wiki. (Going online takes us to yet another magnificent resource, one in which we discover that each technology is linked to a brief description—in essence, a concise tour of contemporary educational technology—and the list is far from static: “new technologies are added within these categories in almost every research cycle” for the various Horizon Project reports.)

The central sections of the final pages of the report lead us through discussions of how electronic publishing and mobile apps are driving technology planning and decision-making within the current (one-year) horizon; how bibliometrics and citation technologies and the open-content movement will have the same impact during a two- to three-year horizon; and the Internet of Things, along with the semantic web and linked data are likely to have significant impacts within the four- to five-year horizon.

With all of this before us, we engage with the 2014 Library Edition as a stimulating report on libraries, learning, and technology as well as a document that will serve effectively as a primer for those earning a degree in library studies to become part of a global community of practice. And the report also serves as a stimulating refresher course for experienced library staff members and library users. By documenting important elements of the library landscape of our times, it helps us identify and celebrate our successes while shaping the conversations that will build upon our past and present to lead us into a dynamic future.

NB: This is the first set of reflections in a six-part series of articles exploring the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Library Edition. Next: Key Trends

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5 FREE Online Tools for Project Management and Teamwork

Efficient collaboration is a crucial ingredient to success. These free project management tools will help you to manage your project on a budget.We all like something for free. When you own a small business, money can slip through your fingers remarkably easily. Cash gets spent on marketing, travel, software, hardware, rent, and everything in between.

Additionally if you outsource work or your team are based in different locations, collaboration and teamwork can be tricky when there’s nothing left in the kitty for expensive project management and collaboration software.

It’s with this in mind that we’ve identified 5 awesome, free tools that are absolutely invaluable to businesses of all sizes. Let’s get started!

Disclaimer: I’m not being paid by any of the below organisations to say nice things, they’re just tools I’ve found super useful personally.

free project management tools Teamwork SlackLink: https://slack.com/
If you have a team spread over multiple sites, Slack is well worth a look. At its core, it’s a chat-like communication tool with a whole host of organisational features. You start off by creating a team and inviting everyone who needs to communicate; then you create channels (effectively different chat rooms/conversations for that team to share) relating to different projects, locations, departments, and whatever works for you. Then you just need to get nattering! You can use Slack to share files, links and resources, and you can tag other users if you want their attention. Slack is also available as an app for Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone, and integrates with a whole host of external apps and services.

Google Drive

Link: https://www.google.com/drive/
Google Drive launched in 2007, making it one of the first Cloud storage systems. It differentiates itself from many storage functions through its own cloud office suite where you can create text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, and drawings. As well as being able to edit and sync document changes over all of your devices, the sharing functionality is an invaluable asset. When you create a document, you can add other users with editing privileges to collaborate together – with changes made by others displaying in real time. The sharing and permissions functions are incredibly easy to use and understand, telling you in plain English who can do what with each document.

Boomerang for Gmail

Link: http://www.boomeranggmail.com/
Email is essential for communication, and therefore collaboration. Boomerang is a lifesaver for us night owls, and can help turn your email inbox an organisational tool. If you’re burning the midnight oil and need to send an email, a few horror scenarios spring to mind. Some worry that an email time-stamped outside of normal working hours may give an unprofessional impression, some are concerned that their team won’t exactly thank them for making their phones ping at 2 in the morning. Whichever camp you belong to, Gmail users are in luck. Boomerang’s Chrome Extension lets you schedule email to send tomorrow, next week, even months in advance if need be.

Another neat thing is that you can set any email to ping back to the top of your inbox after a certain amount of time has passed, or if an email you’ve sent has not been responded to within a given time. The free version provides 10 scheduled emails or pingbacks per calendar month.

Project Management

free project management tools Teamwork TrelloLink: https://trello.com/
Serial list makers like myself are in safe hands with Trello. It allows you to produce “boards” which are effectively a grouping of lists, of which each list entry is called a “card.” It has a really intuitive drag and drop style interface where you can invite other users to view, comment, upload files, and collaborate. Trello is available for use through most recent browsers, and also as an app for Windows, iOS, and Android; so if you do need to collaborate with others and want up-to-the-minute updates, you can receive notifications for each activity you want to keep an eye on. Though these collaborative features are nice, Trello’s unique organisation system is just as useful for one-person teams.

Link: https://asana.com/
Asana is a firm favourite of mine. In some ways it’s is like a cross between Trello and Slack, but with powerful project management and delegation features. You can arrange your “to do” tasks into boards like Trello, into sortable lists, or display them in a calendar view so you can see what’s on the horizon. The free version allows for teams of up to 15 people, allowing you to assign tasks to users, state a “high/med/low” priority to each task, and generally keep an eye on everybody’s progress at a glance. For longer term endeavours, you can group tasks into projects; or if you want to drill down to a macro level, you can add subtasks to each task. Users can chat within tasks, within their teams and with individual team members. Asana is available through most browsers and also has an iOS and Android app.

Sidenote: If you’re a gantt chart kind of person, you have two options with Asana. You can either pay for Asana Premium and gain access to the platform’s own native gantt charting feature Timeline or set up a free account with Instagantt and sync your Asana account.

Organise your teams with these free project management and collaboration tools. Click To Tweet

What free tools do you use to collaborate? Do you feel that the tools on this list may solve your project and teamwork woes? Are there any tools you use that we’ve not mentioned here? Let’s have a chat down in the comments!


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Nikon D850

Nikon D850 Vs Nikon D800E/D800 Review: 5 Reasons Why I Upgraded

I am a professional hobbyist and have been shooting with a Nikon D800E for the past 5 years. Generally for what I did, which was mostly night landscape and event photography, I was happy with my D800E. I had a few issues though, but really didn’t seem to find a good enough alternative camera that addressed them.

For example, I really didn’t like the Nikon’s white balance in low light. I found that I preferred the white balance in the Canon Mark III in low light to be more attractive and closer to my taste; however, being a Nikon fan at heart with lots of Nikon equipment – all I could do was some in-camera adjustments, which still didn’t satisfy me, but I learned to live with it.

The other issue I had was that given the massive 36M pixels that the D800/D800E had, it was tough to get top sharpness even with the best Nikon lenses. And despite having my camera calibrated by Nikon I had to spend a lot of time with Auto-Fine tune feature to make it better. Now I must add that I am very picky about sharpness and perhaps what mattered to me may not matter as much to a lot of other people. I just like my images super sharp at 100%.

Lastly, I really enjoy low light photography but given that I do more landscape, I didn’t really see upgrading to a Nikon D4S or D5 as a good option. The high megapixel count is really handy to have.

When the Nikon D810 came out, again I didn’t really see much reasons to upgrade. From time to time I found myself considering the D5 but again the lack of megapixels (for large prints, zooming and cropping) would hold me back. Not to mention that it’s price point is quite sharp.

And now this brings me to today. When the Nikon D850 was announced, the specs seemed very attractive; however, I was still not sure if it would address my specific needs and more importantly if it made sense to spend thousands more for issues that I had learned to live with.

I finally took the plunge and went on the waiting list to get the new Nikon D850 body. The night that I got it I knew I was going to be very happy with it but decided to wait to write a review about it until I had had a chance to use it a little bit more. And frankly after a few events, I was not impressed with some of my photos which I will address below. But let’s start with the top 5 reasons why I love my upgrade to the Nikon D850.

1. Auto White Balance

Like I mentioned above, I didn’t like the white balance on my D800E, especially in low-light where there was this yellow tone and the whites were washed out. I must add that I had this exact same feeling with my Nikon D90, and D7000. So I had just learned to live with the Nikon Auto White Balance. Well, I am pleasantly surprised. I think the Nikon D850 has done a great job in making the Auto White Balance to be so much closer to what it should be especially in low light conditions. This enhancement alone was very exciting for me.

Both of the images below were taken at ISO 12800, F2.8, 1/60s @ 35mm.  The first image is the Nikon D850.

2. Low Light Photography

Wow! I really didn’t think that the two-stop difference was going to be that different. Considering that I have a lot of fast 1.4 lenses. Well, I was wrong. Frankly in low-light under the exact same conditions, even with giving the D800E a couple of more stop light through the lens, it is a night and day difference. The pictures are just not in the same category. The D850 is a clear winner by a big margin.

In addition, even pictures taken at high ISO come out useable.  This is impressive and I am not sure how much better the D5 is but I am happy with it.  The two images below are a from a picture frame in a relatively dark room.  They are both taken at F2.8, 1/60s, 35mm.  The 2nd image is actually from the Nikon D850 at ISO 16800 while the first one is from Nikon D800E at ISO 12800.

3. 46 Megapixels And The Dynamic Range

Ok so 36 Megapixels was just out of this world when it came out. The level of details I could capture and how much zoom/crop I could do was very impressive. In fact I did a test with a my friend’s Nikon D7000 and his Sigma 50-500mm lens at 500mm against my D800E equipped with a 70-200 lens at 200mm, and I was able to get better zoom at 100% and sharper images when cropped.

The 46 vs 36 is a great bonus, at a distance it does capture additional details that even the D800E doesn’t. In addition, I seem to see a better dynamic range in the D850. I haven’t had too much time to play with this feature but at a glance seems much better.

Nikon D850 Sensor

4. Sharpness

When you pack that much megapixels into a photo, it’s tough to get super sharpness (at 100%) even with the best lenses. Add that to the inconsistencies that the D800 series had with front and back focusing and it would stand out – at least to me. To clarify, I do have high expectations and my issues were with photos shot at F1.4-F2.8 aperture when viewed at 100%. This expects a lot from the camera body and lens at 36MP!

However, I am pleased that even with greater megapixels, my initial experience with the D850 has been much better. Given the same conditions, I am able to get sharper pictures. I must add that in my limited testing, I find that I get shaper images when using the single point focus vs any of the other focus mode.

Nikon has introduced new 153 focus points – the same as the Nikon flagship D5. In addition there are new modes such as Group focus point. However, I am finding that generally (again in the limited testing that I have done) that I am getting sharper images using the single point mode. But I need to play more with it. At least I am able to get sharper images in comparison.

5. Comfort

The first time I held a Nikon D4, I fell in love with how comfortable it was. Initially I thought it was because of the battery grip, so I purchased one for my D800E, but it wasn’t. It just wasn’t as comfortable to hold as the D4 or D5 is even though both of those two cameras are heavier.

Well, that has changed and the grip on the D850 is deeper and hence a lot more comfortable. I was pleased with this.

Final Thoughts

In summary the above 5 reasons made my upgrade from the Nikon D800E to Nikon D850 well worth it. Not to say that there aren’t other reasons. For example, I am looking forward to trying the wireless (although initial reports are not that impressive). I just think that in 2017, I should be able to easily sync my pictures into my iMac Aperture library.

I also like to share few learning curves I went through. In the last two couple of evening indoor events that I took the D850 to, I found that overall I wasn’t too impressed with my pictures. They looked good on the screen but when I would zoom in or view them at 100%, it was really grainy and not sharp at all.

After doing some investigation and comparing it to my D800E night photos, I realized that even though I was shooting with a Nikon SB900 external flash (but attached) the pictures were mostly shot at ISO 8000, 12000 even 32000! It didn’t make sense. So I changed the max ISO to be 5000. It got better but the pictures were still grainy. I also didn’t remember my D800E night photos to be so grainy.

So here is what I found, when shooting with a flash, my D800E auto-ISO would hover between 400-1200 but generally on the lower side despite having ISO 6400 set as the maximum; however, for some reason the D850 just uses whatever ISO it feels like and generally it is 6400 and above!

The two pictures below are an example of this situation.  Under exact same conditions, the Nikon D850 in full manual mode with auto ISO is shooting this image (the first image) at ISO5600 but the D800E is shooting it at ISO 400 (2nd picture).

This was really disappointing because I didn’t want to limit the ISO to be so low but then the pictures were not acceptable to me with such high ISO when I had a great external flash. Until finally I found a new feature that I am happy with. In the new D850 Auto ISO setup, there is a new setting to set a maximum for the auto ISO when a flash is used. This solved the problem. I still don’t understand why the basic auto would use such high ISO but at least I can control is separately now.

Lastly, I like the new touch screen, but something I find a bit annoying is the picture preview. It is slower than my D800 but I can live with it.

All in all, I am very happy with my new camera and glad that I upgraded.

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Dashboard Distillation

January 2015

By Clint Ewell and Tom Hughes

Yavapai College’s award-winning Web-based reporting tool extracts finance, student, and human resources data that make it easier for stakeholders to connect costs with productivity.

How would things work if you could predict the answers to various financial “what-if” scenarios?

At Yavapai College, a community college in Prescott, Ariz., we can. To make informed decisions, our leaders use our Instructional Cost Dashboard, a Web-based business intelligence tool that calculates discipline-level instructional cost data, subsidy data, and faculty productivity data. The dashboard has helped us to reallocate costs, determine tuition pricing, make adjustments to class capacities, inform staffing decisions, plan programs, report profit and loss, and spark entrepreneurial ideas to generate revenue.

Honored with a NACUBO Innovation Award in 2014, the instructional dashboard can be applied to other institutions. Here are the details of its planning and implementation.

How It Works

The Instructional Cost Dashboard presents the Yavapai College (YC) instructional costs per student credit hour by discipline, using the methodology defined by the National Higher Education Benchmarking Institute’s Kansas Study of Community College Instructional Costs and Productivity.

In this way, we can compare our cost efficiency to that of nearly 350 of our national peers. In most cases, the dashboard will also indicate why our costs vary from the national norm: usually because of the faculty carrying load (student credit hours per semester); the number of nonfaculty instructional support staff; or the proportion of credits taught by adjunct instructors.

In addition to the national costs data, Yavapai College has integrated into the model the variable revenues per student credit hour (primarily tuition, fees, and state appropriation), so that we can easily see which disciplines are financially self-sustaining and which are being subsidized. The model graphically presents a side-by-side comparison of the 10 disciplines with the highest subsidies and the 10 disciplines that are the least efficient compared to our national peers (see figures 1 and 2).

Because there is a high level of replication, the lists often present the college with opportunities to reduce subsidies by learning how our national peers manage costs for a particular discipline, rather than by simply raising tuition or fees.

Everyday Examples

The dashboard creates a transparent source of information that we can use to inform difficult reallocation discussions. Rather than mandating across-the-board cuts, we now can focus our cost-reduction efforts more productively.

Here are several examples that demonstrate how we put the dashboard into action:

Hiring more adjunct instructors. Recently, one of our full-time faculty members retired. Per the dashboard, the retiree’s discipline received a $450,000-per-year subsidy (revenue, minus expense) and a $350,000 premium (YC cost, minus national average cost). Since we had a reasonable ratio of adjunct and full-time professors for this discipline, we decided to backfill the retiree’s teaching load with adjunct instructors. This will reduce our cost premium for this discipline, compared to our national peers, by approximately $50,000 per year.

Reducing cost premiums. We recently investigated our discipline with the largest subsidy. To no one’s surprise, this allied health discipline had a high subsidy, with instructional costs well beyond the variable revenue. However, according to the dashboard, we were operating this discipline less efficiently than our national peers. Our new program director has changed faculty load to be more in alignment with national norms, which has already begun to lower our costs.

Through attrition, we have also been able to reduce the total size of the program, while still meeting the workforce training needs of our district. So far, these changes have allowed us to reduce our cost premium for this discipline by $150,000 per year compared to our national peers.

Keeping cost premiums to maintain quality. We also investigated one of our science disciplines that was operating at a substantial cost premium compared to our national peers. After further discussions with the faculty members and their dean, we learned we were using a relatively unusual combined lecture-lab pedagogy, which helped students immediately apply what was being learned in the lecture. We decided that, in this case, the cost premium was a good value, and we did not make any operational changes.

Determining tuition and fees. First a quick disclaimer: Yavapai College no longer establishes course or program fees. We have moved to differentiated tuition, with three primary levels and a handful of disciplines that charge market-based pricing. Tier 1 is general education, Tier 2is lab courses, and Tier 3 is allied health and career technical education.

The dashboard has the ability to generate a variety of reports, some of which have columns for student credit hour; profit or subsidy per student credit hour; and cost premium (compared to national average) per student credit hour—with each discipline listed on a consecutive row. By grouping disciplines into their Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3 pricing levels, we can examine how efficiently we are managing the tier, compared to the national norm. If we are less efficient, we are less likely to raise the price of that tier. Instead, we would rather improve how we are managing the costs of those disciplines.

Rather than across-the-board price increases, we have started to tailor price increases based on revenue needs, discipline efficiencies, and market conditions.

Faculty Now Pay Attention

At first, faculty and instructional staff did not pay much attention to the dashboard. However, once it became apparent that its data was being used to make budget decisions, people started to kick the tires, and in some cases question the methodology and the data. With faculty and staff input, we discovered and resolved some bugs, and we now have accurate, reliable data. The discussion has now moved from denying the data to understanding what the data really mean, and what actions, if any, are appropriate.

The methodology used to create the dashboard—considering revenues, costs, and productivity—has seeped into our culture and is now part of how we consider new programs. For example, our community has expressed interest in a culinary program, which can be a very costly investment both in initial capital outlay and in annual operating costs. As part of his due diligence, the dean of this area requested Kansas Study instructional cost data. (As a Kansas Study participant, we have access to all of the data collected—not to just the disciplines for which we provided data.)

With increased understanding of instructional cost drivers, the dean proposed starting a hospitality degree program, which has much lower operating costs and no capital costs. As part of the program, we can offer a culinary certificate that YC will provide by renting high school culinary kitchens and using adjunct instructors during the pilot phase of the program.

In another new program example, dashboard methodology helped us think creatively to build a new viticulture and enology program, which will meet community workforce needs. With the help of our foundation, we made a $3.2 million investment in a teaching winery and estate vineyard to support the resurgence of the wine industry in the Verde Valley region of northern Arizona.

At first, we were concerned about the initial capital outlay compared to the projected number of students to be served. But as our financial modeling process matured, we included all the variable revenues, which in this case included not only tuition and state appropriation, but also the sale of the wine. Our models forecast that this program will be not only financially self-sustaining (i.e., cover its instructional costs), but will also generate enough revenue to pay back the initial capital outlay over time.

Without the dashboard methodology, we probably would have pursued a much more modest scope for this program.

Step-By-Step Instructions

Building an instructional cost dashboard requires a crossfunctional team of professionals with skills in programming, database administration, and business intelligence or reporting software proficiency. Also necessary is detailed knowledge of the institution’s finance system, payroll system, human resources data, chart of accounts, and student information system.

To successfully implement an instructional cost dashboard, your institution must be willing to commit the necessary personnel and financial and technology resources to generate a return on your investment. We suggest implementing the dashboard in stages—the first version of the dashboard does not need to include every data element to be a useful tool.

Our dashboard was a true team effort. Our leaders supported the vision to create a cost dashboard, the office of institutional effectiveness and research led the programming, and the budget office helped to navigate the complex finance and human resources data tables and to validate that costs were accurately attributed to disciplines per Kansas Study methodology.

A successful implementation involves six steps:

1. Involve the right people with the right skill sets and experience.

2. Participate in the Kansas Study. Through this process, the institution will learn how and where its cost-related data is stored. As a result, expect to make changes or corrections to the way expenses are categorized.

3. Build data tables to store institutional discipline and cost data.

4. Build data tables to store Kansas Study benchmark data.

5. Write queries in the reporting tool to extract data and produce summarized information. We developed our dashboard using Cognos, an IBM business intelligence solution.

6. Share dashboard results with faculty and academic managers to validate the data. If necessary, make corrections. To be accepted and used by faculty, academic managers, and administrators, data and information from the dashboard need to be transparent.

What Next?

Our current efforts revolve around educating academic managers and faculty to ensure that they understand and are comfortable using the dashboard data to inform decision making. While we have already incorporated the dashboard into several college processes—including budgeting, new programming, and tuition setting—we are exploring whether it may become part of the academic program review process.

We are also discussing expanding the dashboard to monitor noncredit instructional costs and noninstructional costs, although no related national benchmarks for community colleges exist at this time.

With the new economic reality in postsecondary education created by state disinvestment, now, more than ever, easy and quick access to relevant cost data is necessary for informed decision making.

CLINT EWELL is vice president of finance and administration services, and TOM HUGHES is director of institutional effectiveness and research, Yavapai College, Prescott, Ariz.

Related Topics
Organizational Effectiveness


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03. January 2018 - 21:00
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GoDanz Body Iso Drills January | GOdanz Kizomba | Wednesday, 03. January 2018

January 2018 Advanced Course: (5 wks)
Body Isolation Drills to music for men and women!

Class consists in:
Follow-the-leader to music
Breakdown/explanation/technique of how to move-finding which muscles to use and not use; visualization of your body in relation to a centre; measuring movement.
Follow with Music
Drill isolation while walking
Incorporate movement in specific core moves with styling

Isolation means to disassociate body parts while dancing.
Focus on how many ways the torso can move. Then the hips. Then crosspollinate them (haha), mix and match.

or add $5
and start at 7pm with workshop theme of the week for intermediate posts (7-10:45pm)