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Making Cotton candy without a machine

Are you really a cotton candy lover that is always buying cotton candy when you see it in a shop? Many people think that making cotton candy is really hard and impossible if you don’t have the right machine for making cotton candy. This isn’t really the truth.

Anyone can make cotton candy, without using a machine. It might be harder, and there might be lots of mistakes done before you are going to get it right, but with the right guide and the right tips, you will be able to eat cotton candy, without even using the cotton candy machine for home use. Here are some important things that you should know, before you start making your own cotton candy.

making your own cotton candy

The ingredients that you will need

The first thing that you should know about making your cotton candy at home without a machine, is that you should have the right ingredients. If you search online, you will find many different kinds of ingredients that people are using, to be able to have success with making your own cotton candy.

You need to make sure that you have good quality sugar to start with. There are some people that are buying the cotton candy sugar, and it can work, but this sugar isn’t everyone available. You should also make sure that you are buying high quality, clear corn syrup. This might be the hardest thing to search for, because this isn’t something that is available in every supermarket.

You should also make sure that you are using flavoring as well as food dye. Don’t just use the sugar without the dye or without the flavoring. Because then you will not really eat the real cotton candy that you know and love.

Tips with the method of making the cotton candy

If you ever have tried making your own cotton candy without the machine, you will know that this can be a messy business. You need to lay newspapers on the floor of your kitchen, or you need to do this outside, when there is absolutely no wind blowing.

Cleanup when you don’t lay newspapers on the floor is going to be really tough, because the cotton candy is getting hard when it touches the floor. You are going to scrub for a very long time, to get rid of the cotton candy in the floor.

It is also recommended that you are only using old pots and utensils. For the same reasons; it is really hard to clean. You don’t want to ruin your most expensive and newest utensils and pots. You can always use it next time when you are making cotton candy again.

You really don’t need to have a machine for making cotton candy, to be able to enjoy your own cotton candy at home. If you have the right recipe, you can make your own. It might not be easy to make, and it can be really messy, but if you don’t have a machine, and is in the mood for cotton candy, it is possible to make your own. You should just remember these tips before you start baking.

Using a flat iron for your hair

There are really a lot of benefits of using a flat iron. But, the secret is that you should use the best flat irons that you can find. This is the only way that you can enjoy all of the benefits. The other thing with benefits of using flat irons, is the way that you are using the iron. If you are using the iron the wrong way, then you are not going to have any benefits, then you are only going to damage your hair. This is why it is really important to make sure that you are using a quality flat iron, to be able to enjoy all these benefits.

You can really have versatile hair

This is something that women with natural, curly hair will understand better. If you have hair that is curly, you will know that you can’t do much with these hair. You can’t let it hang loose over your shoulders and you most definitely can’t straighten it without hours and hours of blow drying.

But, the moment that you have a flat iron, you will be able to get as many different styles as possible. You can straighten your hair for getting rid of that curl. You can even let your hair hang loose over your shoulders without the curls getting out of control. With a flat iron, you will be able to have really versatile hair without any problems.

You will always look if you are getting out of a salon

For many women, it is really important to look like that they have stepped out of the hair salon. But, if you are not a qualified hair stylist, and you don’t really go to a salon every day, it will be impossible to look like you have stepped outside a hair salon. Except if you have a high quality flat iron.

Using a flat iron correctly will give you the perfect looking hair, every day. Without struggling and without spending money for going to a hair salon. There are no reason why you should visit a hair salon, just to have smooth, healthy looking hair. A flat iron at home can really give you the same effect.

No matter what type of hair you might have; curly, straight, thick, thin or normal hair. The flat iron will give you smooth shiny hair, every day.

You don’t only need to straighten your hair with a flat iron

The one thing that not many people know, is the fact that you can use your flat iron for more than just flat ironing your hair. You can do so much more with your flat iron than just straightening. You can curl and even give some volume with using only your flat iron and some great quality hair products.

If you want to be able to enjoy this benefit of a flat iron, you should look online for some tips on how you can use your flat iron for more than just to straighten your hair. There are many tips online that will teach you how to use your iron for other things as well.

You don’t need to spend hours blow drying your hair

The one benefit that everyone will enjoy when they are using a flat iron is the fact that you don’t need to spend hours and hours blow drying your long, thick hair. All that you need, is to just use your flat iron when you have dried your hair.

The flat iron will give you your style that you want for the day, without actually blow drying the hair. But, remember that if you are going to use your flat iron every day, which you are going to need to use quality heat styled hair products for protecting your hair.

Using your flat iron can give you so many benefits. The most important benefit is that you will not ever have another bad hair day. The flat iron will ensure that you will always have the hair that you always wanted. The only thing that you really should remember is that you are only going to have the best hair if you are using the best flat irons that you can find on the market. The cheaper versions will not be beneficial to your hair.

Some Simple Tips to Improve Your Sleep

Do you feel that you’re not getting enough sleep? No matter how many hours you’re getting. And even if you really think that you have a good night rest, do you still feel tired and run down? Then these simple sleeping tips will improve your sleep, every single night.

Leave the caffeine before bedtime

So many of us love our last cup of coffee or tea just before bedtime. But, do you really think how the caffeine that you’re consuming might affect your sleeping at night? Caffeine is used for more energy and to get a person through the day, and that is why the energy drinks always include caffeine.

If you’re drinking caffeine drinks before bed time, it will most definitely affect your sleep at night. You will be struggling to fall asleep, and when you actually fell asleep, you’re not going to be able to have the deep sleep that’s needed for a good night rest.

Take the technology out of your room

The late night television watching or the working on a laptop before bedtime is something that so many of us are doing. But, actually it is the wrong thing to do. Researchers have proven that using your television, phone, laptop or even a tablet before bedtime can prevent you from sleeping.

The reason for this is the bright screen and the fact that you might worry about something that you saw on the television or work related.  An hour or a half an hour before bedtime, you need to leave all the technology outside of your bedroom, relax or take a warm bath before going to bed.

Be careful for going to sleep before you’re actually tired

Many people goes to bed and try to sleep before they are actually tired. This will result in you tossing and turning in bed without being able to fall asleep. It can also result in you not even falling asleep when you’re actually getting tired.

Trying to sleep just because you’re frustrated or bored isn’t the thing to do, when you’re tired. Make sure that you really know the difference between frustrated or bored and really tired and sleepy.

Don’t watch at your clock the whole time

Watch-Clock-Cant-SleepThere’s nothing more frustrating than lying in bed, watching the time goes by. And with every minute that you see going by, you’re stressing more and more about going to sleep. This can become a vicious circle that’s going on and on. And, before you know it, it’s time to get up for work.

If you’re tending to watch your time, frequently when you can’t sleep, you might want to remove the clock out of your room. If you don’t see how the time go by, you will not start to stress about not getting enough sleep.

Dim your bedroom light

Don’t use the excuse that you still need to get some work done in your room and that you can’t use a light that’s not as strong as normally. You’re not supposed to use your bedroom as an office and you know by now that working on your laptop or tablet will keep you awake even more.

You can dim your bedroom light, so that the light is not as bright as the other rooms. This is given a calming effect and can even be somewhat romantic if you’re married. The more relaxed you are when you’re going to bed, the faster you will fall asleep.

Try keeping a schedule of when you’re going to bed

sleeping-scheduleYou should try to make sure that you’re going to bed the same time, every night. This can make it easier to fall asleep. If your body does not know when it’s time to go to bed, you will not be able to fall asleep as easy as what people do, when they going to bed, the same time. Keeping the same bedtime schedule is important to get a good night sleep.

Everyone is going to struggle with falling asleep, or waking up tired and run down. There’s many reasons for not getting enough sleep, and stressing is one of the biggest problems in the world we are living today. Remember these tips, next time that you’re struggling to fall asleep. You might just find the problem that’s causing your sleeplessness.

You can looking for more information about this website:

If you can’t sleeping now. This video may be help you:

Pillows and Positions for Easing Neck Pain

Pillows and Positions for Easing Neck PainSleeping is supposed to be a natural thing that should be comfortable. It isn’t supposed to be uncomfortable and not supposed to have a neck pain when you’re waking up. If you’re waking up with a neck pain, then it might be time to look for another pillow and try to sleep in a different position. There’s many things that you should consider before you’re buying a new pillow for your neck, to improve your sleep without standing up in the morning with neck pain.

Type of position versus the pillow

The secret to buying the pillow is to make sure that you’re buying a pillow that will suit the position that you’re sleeping in. You most definitely can’t buy a pillow for laying on your back, if you’re sleeping on your stomach all the time.  The same goes if you’re sleeping on your side, most of the night.

If you don’t know what type of pillow to buy for the position that you’re sleeping in, then you should may be ask a professional for some pillow versus position advice.

Pillow advice for different types of sleeping positions

Here’s some important tips and information that you need to be aware of, if you’re looking for the best pillow for your position that you’re sleeping in:

  • pillow-for-back-sleeperIf you are sleeping a lot on your back, you should invest in a pillow that will support the natural curve in your neck. Sleeping with a pillow not supporting the curve, will let you wake up with a sore and stiff neck.
  • If you’re a side sleeper the thing that you should look for when buying a pillow is supporting more than just your neck. Then it is important to buy a pillow that will ensure that your whole spine is parallel and in a normal position. By not buying the right pillow, you will have more than just a sore and stiff neck. You will also have a stiff and sore back.

pillow for a side sleeper

  • When you’re a stomach sleeper, then you should maybe forget to buy a pillow, or your pillow should be very thin. By using a thick pillow, will let your neck bends upwards, and causing discomfort and neck problems.

When you’re buying a pillow for you, personally, you need to consider how big you are as well. The bigger you are, the thicker your pillow should be. If you’re not comfortable, you might not have the right thickness when it comes to your pillow.

Who really thinks about what type of pillow they are buying, when it’s time for a new pillow? And who really thinks if the pillow is thick enough for the type of body they need. Normally people won’t really spend too much time buying a pillow, but as soon as you’re starting to struggle with neck pain in the morning, you will realize that it may be time to buy a new, better quality pillow for the position that you’re lying in, most of the time.

Right Mattress can Relieve Low Back Pain

We don’t always realize that the right mattress can really relieve some back problems like lower back pain. And, that it can improve our overall sleep quality. We’re tend to buy the cheapest type of mattress that we can find, no matter if the mattress is good quality mattress or not.

Every mattress has another function, and provides a different type of support. It is important to know how to choose the right mattress for you, personally. Here’s some important tips on how you can buy the right mattress for you personally. Especially if you’re struggling with lower back pain, or feeling tired in the morning.

The importance of choosing the right mattress topper

It is really very important to choose the right mattress for you, and your body type. You can’t just buy the best and first mattress that you can find. And, most definitely not buying the cheapest mattress that you can lay your hands on.

Not getting enough sleep can lead to all kinds of health problems. Concentration throughout the day and your energy levels are also affected when you are sleeping on the wrong bed. We really don’t always realize the importance of choosing the best memory foam mattress and topper that we can find.

The cheaper mattresses are cheap for a reason: they will not last as long, and will not give the support and the great night rest like you and your family need and deserve.

Testing the mattress

mattress-testing-qThe first thing that every new mattress buyer should do, is to test the mattress, before you buy the mattress. And, the more kinds of mattresses you’re testing, the better. This is so that you find the best mattress that will be the most comfortable for you.

It can be hard to test a mattress before you buy it, when you’re buying a mattress online. But, luckily there’s many shops that you can visit to test the mattress. Then, you will know which mattress you can buy online will be the most comfortable for you.

Struggling with lower back pain

If you one of the many people that’s struggling with lower back pain, then buying the best mattress topper for lower back pain are very important. If you don’t buy the right type of support, you can make your problem worse by not giving the right kind of support when you’re sleeping.

Finding a mattress with the right back support will ensure relief for lower back pain, and even be able to improve your condition overall.

Not getting a good night rest

If you’re not sleeping the way that you should, and you’re not laying at night, awake stressing about something, you might not sleep in the correct type of mattress for your body type.

Getting enough sleep and sleeping the correct amount of hours sleep, should let you feel refresh and away, in the mornings. If you’re feeling not refresh and feel like you can still sleep for hours, then it might be time for a new mattress. And, a different kind of mattress that you already have.

We need to buy so many things and pay so many debts each month, that when we need to buy a bed, we tend to buy the cheapest one that we can find. We’re trying to save money. But, is it really worth buying the cheapest mattress at the end of the day? When it comes to buying the right mattress, you might not struggle with low back pain anymore, and you will be improving your quality sleep. Night after night. The better the quality mattress, the longer the mattress will stay in great shape, and the better night rest you will get.

Sleep Disorders and Sleeping Problems

There’s comes a time in everyone’s life that we’re struggling to fall asleep or to get a good night rest. Some are just struggling for a while and then everything gets back to normal. However, there’s some people that are having real problems falling asleep or getting a good night rest. If you’re struggling more than normally, you might have a sleep disorder or serious sleeping problems. Here is some valuable information about sleep disorders and sleeping problems.

The difference between a sleep disorder and just sleeping problems

There’s a huge difference between a sleeping disorder and just having some sleeping problems. Normally, with sleeping problems, you can’t fall asleep for some time, and then before you even realize it, you sleep through the night without any problems and feel refresh in the morning again.

However, if you’re struggling with a sleeping disorder, you will not find a good night rest, no matter how hard you’re trying. And, the problem doesn’t go away as soon as your stress levels decrease. You will also feel sleepy, and irritable throughout the day. Sleep disorders can be diagnosed and treatment options are available. The problem normally is that people are too afraid or too ashamed to go to their doctor, to diagnose a disorder and for some treatment.

Knowing the signs of a sleeping disorder

It is important to know all the signs of a sleeping disorder. Especially, if you’re struggling with getting a good night rest and feeling refreshed and rested in the morning. Some of the most common signs of a sleeping disorder might be:

  • Do you feel tired throughout the day and irritable?
  • Having problems in staying awake, no matter where you are and what you’re doing?
  • Even fall asleep when driving, or you struggle to stay awake when driving,
  • Struggle with concentration a lot,
  • People telling you that you’re always looking tired and run down,
  • Struggling to control your emotions and always wanting to take a nap during the day?
  • Do you need to take lots of caffeine drinks to stay awake during the day, no matter how early you really went to bed every night?

You might need to have some of these symptoms more than once to have a sleeping disorder. By partying all night and feeling run down and irritable during the day, doesn’t mean that you’re having a sleeping disorder. It means that you’re needed to party less and sleep more.

These signs aren’t proved that you’re struggling with a sleeping disorder, this is just some of the symptoms of having a sleeping disorder. Self- diagnoses aren’t recommended and very important that you visit your doctor with your symptoms. It can be treated, and you don’t have to struggle with this disease every single day.

Sleeping problems and sleeping disorders can happen to anyone. If you have sleeping problems, you need to make sure that you’re searching for the source of the problem and getting the problem fixed. It normally will then cure your sleeping problems. However, if you’re really having problems sleeping and have some of the symptoms above, then you might have a sleeping disorder and then you need to go to your doctor. Sleeping disorders can be controlled, and you don’t have to feel tired and run down, every day. It can be treated, you just need to seek some medical assistance.

Protect your mattress from bed bugs

We don’t want to share our bed and mattress with uninvited friends like bed bugs. We all hate the feeling that we’re not alone in the bed and that there’s some nasty little bugs crawling on you and biting you, preventing you from getting a good night rest. And, the worst part is if you’re sleeping in another bed, away from home, and you don’t know if there’s nasty bugs sleeping with you.

You need to make sure that you’re protecting your mattress from bed bugs. Here’s some of the most important tips that everyone should follow to keep bed bugs away.

Wash and heat dry your bedding

It is really important to wash and heat dry you’re bedding frequently. The washing should be done weekly and it is important to use hot water and heat dry to dry your bedding. The extreme heat of the hot water and heat dry will kill all living bugs, including bed bugs and germs.

Washing stuffed animals and pillows are also important. Especially if you have small children in the house. You don’t want your child to sleep among bedbugs, and bed bugs are loving stuffed animals and pillows to hide in. Washing the toys and the pillows has the same instructions and your bedding. Hot water with a heat dry, every week with your bedding.

Freeze the bed bugs

You can freeze the bed bugs if you know for sure that you’re really having bed bugs with you at night. Freezing can be tough to do, because you should be really freeze the bedding with ice. The best way to do this is in the middle of winter, when it’s snowing outside.

Then, you can take your mattress and put it outside in the snow. The cold will kill all living things crawling in your mattress. This is also a great way of refreshing your mattress again.

Using a vacuum

You can use a vacuum to clean out as many bed bugs as possible, but you need to be aware of the fact that you might not kill them all. This isn’t a permanent solution. This is just to make the amount of bed bugs less and to limit the bites that you’re receiving at night.

You can also vacuum stuffed animals and your pillow to remove all bad bugs from these things. Also this isn’t a permanent solution, but will keep them away long enough, so that you can use other, a more permanent solution.

Calling in a professional

If you’re not able to get rid of all the bed bugs in your mattress, you don’t need to throughout the mattress and buy a new one. Remember that the bedding, pillows and anything else on the bed may also have bed bugs. Sometimes the problem is too large to try to fix it yourself. Then, it might be time to call in the professionals to come and kill the nasty bed bugs for you.

They know how to get rid of these nasty creatures, and how to get rid of them for good. You don’t really have to deal with this yourself, and the professionals will not think that you and your house aren’t clean. These things happen, and bed bugs are more common than many people may think. It is easy to find a professional that get rid of all kinds of bugs, including bed bugs. It might cost you money, but it will be worth spending the money.

Some of us, don’t want to think about bed bugs and the fact that they are sleeping with us every night, and that they are biting us, while we are sleeping. But, the facts are that they really do exist and that they can really bite you and your children while you’re sleeping. Getting rid of these bugs can be hard, but with the right tips and the right professional, you will be able to sleep alone in your bed, without any nasty bugs.


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Color Run A Big Boost To United Way

Published 08/11 2014 04:49PM

Updated 08/11 2014 06:39PM

The Color Run made the streets of Erie glow and also brought thousands of dollars to a local non-profit.

The happiest 5-k on the planet took over the streets of downtown Erie this weekend. And with more than ten thousand participants the event was a success.

Running through the colorful trail wasn't the only perk, partial proceeds from the event were donated to the United Way of Erie.

This is the first time Erie has hosted the event and it helped rake in about 22,000 dollars for the United Way.

Copyright 2016 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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East County Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2010 6 years ago

Lakeridge Falls death under investigation

by: Pam Eubanks Senior Editor

Authorities are investigating the death of a man in Lakeridge Falls.

A Manatee County Sheriff’s Office report states an individual was found today deceased in the backyard of his residence in the 4300 block of Kariba Lake Terrace from an apparent gunshot wound. The incident is still under investigation, but there are strong leads indicating suicide is a possible cause of death.

The name of the victim has not yet been released.

Contact Pam Eubanks at [email protected].

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Abraxas announces signing of Nordheim Definitive Agreement, provides financial update
Wednesday, Nov 21, 2012

Abraxas Petroleum Corporation (NASDAQ:AXAS) is pleased to provide the following divestiture and financial update.

Nordheim Definitive Agreement

Abraxas today signed an agreement to sell the Company's 25% working interest at the Nordheim Project in the Eagle Ford shale to a large institutional buyer for proceeds of $19.1mm. The sale is subject to customary closing conditions and purchase price adjustments and reflects an effective date of September 1, 2012. The asset consists of 544 net acres in DeWitt County, Texas and approximately 64 boepd (56% gas; 26% NGLs; 26% oil) of net production. Abraxas will retain the rights to its Edwards production, reserves and upside across both its Nordheim and Wagner lease blocks. Closing is scheduled for December 17, 2012. Petrie Partners acted as financial advisor for Abraxas on the sale.

Financial Update

Per the Abraxas' November 12, 2012 release, the Company's borrowing base was recently raised to $150mm from its previous level of $140mm. As of quarter end September 30, 2012, the Company had $134mm drawn on the facility and $2.6mm in cash. The $150mm borrowing base already reflects the removal of reserves and production associated with the Nordheim sale. In addition to the $19.1mm Nordheim sale, the company recently announced the sale of its Alberta Basin properties in Montana for $2.85mm. The approximately $22mm of combined proceeds from these sales will immediately go to reducing borrowings on the revolver, which stood at $134mm at quarter end. Thus, pro forma liquidity post the sales will reflect current borrowings, less net proceeds from the sales, compared to a $150mm borrowing base.

Bob Watson, President and CEO of Abraxas, commented, "We remain committed to delivering shareholder value by executing on our well articulated plan of growing production and reserves, delevering the balance sheet via this production growth and noncore asset sales and refocusing the portfolio. The asset sales will consist of positions in which we have low working interests and/or assets with little associated reserves, production or cash flow. The Nordheim and Alberta Basin Bakken sales with combined proceeds of approximately $22mm is evidence this transformation is underway."

Abraxas Petroleum Corporation is a San Antonio based crude oil and natural gas exploration and production company with operations across the Rocky Mountain, Mid-Continent, Permian Basin and onshore Gulf Coast regions of the United States and in the province of Alberta, Canada.

Safe Harbor for forward-looking statements: Statements in this release looking forward in time involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause Abraxas' actual results in future periods to be materially different from any future performance suggested in this release. Such factors may include, but may not be necessarily limited to, changes in the prices received by Abraxas for crude oil and natural gas. In addition, Abraxas' future crude oil and natural gas production is highly dependent upon Abraxas' level of success in acquiring or finding additional reserves. Further, Abraxas operates in an industry sector where the value of securities is highly volatile and may be influenced by economic and other factors beyond Abraxas' control. In the context of forward-looking information provided for in this release, reference is made to the discussion of risk factors detailed in Abraxas' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission during the past 12 months.

Source: Abraxas Petroleum Corporation

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Anti-abortion site vows Webcam vigil

Site that lost large court case says it will videocast women entering abortion clinics

Feb. 4 -- The Webcam announcement was featured prominently on the Web site on Thursday, but on Friday the site was no longer accessible, having been shut down by its Internet service provider.

"Imagine being able to log onto the Internet and see real-time video footage of people coming and going from abortion clinics simply by clicking a hyperlink," reads a notice on "The Nuremberg Files" Web site. "Because of the cooperation of various sidewalk counseling groups that regularly occupy the perimeters of baby butcher shops around the world, we will soon be able to provide you with this service, free on the Internet."

The site doesn't state when or specifically where the Webcams will operate, only that "arrangements are almost complete to deploy live Web cameras at abortion clinics from Europe, throughout the USA, to Japan and the Orient."

Neal Horsley, who runs the Web site, was one of 14 defendants who last Tuesday lost a federal lawsuit brought by doctors and other plaintiffs. The defendants are expected to appeal the verdict, while plaintiffs are seeking an injunction to shut the site down.

Other defendants were sued because of controversial "wanted" posters they distributed.

Shut down
The site, called "The Nuremberg Files," was not accessible Friday. A spokesman for Pathway Communications of Carrollton, Ga., which had hosted the site, said its Internet service provider had shut it down overnight, citing violations of its appropriate use contract with subscribers.

The spokesman said the site operators were looking for a "bolder ISP" to host the site.

Verdict questioned
The eight jurors ruled that certain content on posters and the Web site amounted to threats even though those threats weren't explicit.

If upheld, the jury's verdict could redefine the limits of free speech.

But Herman Schwartz, a First Amendment expert at American University in Washington, felt the verdict went too far. "We haven't really reached the stage in free speech that merely saying things without the likelihood that they'll be acted on soon amounts to a threat, a real threat," he said.

"The anti-abortion people have been saying these kinds of things for years," he said. "This talk that they're murderers, that they're mass murderers even, is protected speech. We're very solicitous of speech, even the speech we hate."

The verdict might also be on shaky ground because U.S. District Judge Robert Jones used a lesser standard than the Supreme Court, which said threats must be likely to cause "imminent lawless action."

Jones told the jury that the posters and Web site should be considered threats if they can be taken as such by a "reasonable person."

As part of the tight security surrounding the case, the judge said the names of the eight jurors will never be made public.

Controversial content
If upheld, the verdict could redefine what is considered constitutionally protected political speech because the anti-abortion materials contained no explicit threats of violence, only veiled messages, such as crossing through the names of abortion providers who were killed.

"The Nuremberg Files" lists hundreds of what it calls "baby butchers" and invites readers to send in such personal details as the home addresses of doctors who perform abortions, as well as their license plate numbers and even the names of their children.

Three times, doctors whose names appeared on the list were killed, most recently last October when Dr. Barnett Slepian was gunned down by sniper fire in his home outside Buffalo, N.Y. His name on the Web site was promptly crossed through.

Moreover, Wild West-style posters offered a $5,000 reward for information about the "Deadly Dozen" doctors branded "Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity."

The plaintiffs
Planned Parenthood, the Portland Feminist Women's Health Center and four doctors filed the lawsuit against anti-abortion activists in 1995, citing the "Deadly Dozen" posters offering cash rewards for information about certain doctors who provided abortions.

The suit was later expanded to include "The Nuremberg Files" Web site.

Throughout the three-week trial, abortion doctors on the list testified that they lived in constant fear, used disguises, bodyguards and bulletproof vests, and instructed their children to crouch in the bathroom if they heard gunfire.

The plaintiffs sued under the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, that makes it illegal to incite violence against abortion doctors and their patients.

While the law has been used often against people who have firebombed clinics or attacked doctors, this case, filed in 1995, was believed to be the first not to result from a violent confrontation or a direct, person-to-person threat.

The American Medical Association was so concerned about the Web site that it recently set up a crisis team to contact people on the list and met with FBI and Justice Department officials to discuss the matter.

The defendants
Attorneys for the 14 defendants, who include the umbrella group American Coalition of Life Advocates, contended their clients were peaceful protesters engaged in a vigorous political debate.

Horsley has argued that nowhere is there a threat to do bodily harm and that the site's purpose is to build a dossier on abortion doctors in hopes of providing evidence against them if they are ever put on trial, as Nazi war criminals were at Nuremberg.

Defendants had indicated that no matter what the verdict, their tactics would not change. They also said any monetary award would have nothing more than a symbolic impact because they have transferred their assets to make themselves "judgment-proof."

One defendant, a Reformed Lutheran pastor from Bowie, Md., who spent nearly four years in prison for setting fires to clinics in the 1980s, said before the verdict that a Planned Parenthood victory could lead to more violence.

"If you are blocked of public protests," Michael Gray argued, "then people are left saying, 'What are we going to do? It leaves only one option: the covert use of force -- vandalism, blowing up places and terminating doctors."

MSNBC's Miguel Llanos as well as The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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text:
Chinese consumer associations fight over Apple's overbearing clauses

Several consumer associations in different parts of China are jointly criticizing Apple's maintenance terms, including the use of spare parts, the ownership of old spare parts, and compensation for repairs, as these clauses are deemed unfair to consumers in the territory.

According to local newspaper the Beijing News, the China Consumers Association -- a government funded consumer watchdog group -- last week  called on its arms in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, Jiangsu and Shandong to look into the issues regarding Apple’s maintenance raised by many Chinese consumers, among which they found at least five “unfairness” terms.

One of the repair clauses requires customers to allow Apple to use refurbished parts to fix products, and deem the old spare parts to be owned by Apple. The Association said the terms are in violation of the “Three Guarantees to Consumers” stipulated in China, which requires Apple to always use brand-new parts for repair when products are returned with the warranty period. It added that if consumers have paid for services after the conclusion of the warranty period, they are entitled to decide who should keep the replaced parts.

Another Apple clause indicated that the company is only responsible for the cost of repairs if damage is caused while the product is being repaired, and it will assume responsibility for damage or loss of data, procedures, or removable storage media. The consumer watchdog group said Apple has limited the scope and amount of the repair compensation and even exempts the responsibility of operators, which “should be invalid provisions”.

The group added that Apple should be held accountable for data losses in cases where it occurs as a result of botched repairs. Current policies have freed its authorized maintenance centers from accountability.

The Association also criticized other maintenance clauses, including damages due to transport reasons will not enjoy free repair, and failure to take products deemed as a waiver of ownership. The latter was even suspected as illegal seizure of property of the consumers, commented the group.

Apple didn’t comment on these accusations so far today.

According to local reports on Thursday, some local Chinese Industrial and Commercial Bureaus have initiated investigations on the matter.

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text:
Freedom Box: Freeing the Internet one Server at a time

Eben Moglen, renowned free-software attorney, has proposed a new open-source software-based approach to the Internet to avoid censorship, network restrictions, and centralized control.

Free software isn't about free services or beer, it's about intellectual freedom. As recent episodes such as censorship in China, the Egyptian government turning off the Internet, and Facebook's constant spying, have shown, freedom and privacy on the Internet are under constant assault. Now Eben Moglen, law professor at Columbia University and renowned free software legal expert, has proposed a way to combine free software with the original peer-to-peer (P2P) design of the Internet to liberate users from the control of governments and big brother-like companies: Freedom Box.

In a recent Freedom in the Clouds speech in NYC, Moglen explained what he sees as the Internet's current problems and his proposed solution. First, here's the trouble with the Internet today as Moglen sees it:

[6:13] "It begins of course with the Internet. Designed as a network of peers without any intrinsic need for hierarchical or structural control and assuming that every switch in the net is an independent free standing entity who's volition is equivalent to the human beings who control it ... But it never really worked out that way."

The Software Problem [7:18]: "It was a simple software problem and it has a simple three syllable name. Its name was 'Microsoft'. Conceptually there was a network which was designed as a system of peer nodes, but the operating software ... that came to occupy the network over the course of a decade-and-a-half was built around a very clear idea that had nothing to do with peers. It was called 'server/client architecture'."

The Great Idea Behind Windows [9:22]: "It was the great idea of Windows, in an odd way, to create a political archetype in the net that reduced the human being to the client, and created a big centralized computer, which we might refer to as the server, that provided things to the human being on 'take or it leave it' terms. And unfortunately everyone took it because they didn't know how to leave once they got in. Now, the net was made up of servers in the center and clients at the edge. Clients had quite a little power and servers had quite a lot ... As storage gets cheaper, as processing gets cheaper, as complex services that scale in ways that are hard to use small computers for ... the hierarchical nature of net came to seem like it was meant to be there."

Logs [10:44]: "One more thing happened about that time ... Servers began to keep logs. That's good decision ... But if you have a system which centralizes servers, and the servers centralize their logs, then you are creating vast repositories of hierarchically organized data about people at the edges of the network that they do not control, and unless they are experienced in the operation of servers, will not understand the comprehensiveness of [server-collected user data.]."

The Recipe for Disaster [12:01]: "So we built a network out of a communications architecture designed for peering, which we defined in client server style, which we then defined to be the dis-empowered client at the edge and the server in the middle. We aggregated processing and storage increasingly in the middle and we kept the logs -- that is information about the flows of information in the net -- in centralized places far from the human beings who controlled or at any rate thought they controlled

This ended up creating "an architecture that was very subject to misuse, indeed it was begging to be misused. Now we are getting the misuse we set up...There are a lot of reasons for making clients dis-empowered ... There are many overlapping rights owners, as they see themselves, each of whom has a stake in dis-empowering a client at the edge of the network. To prevent particular hardware from being moved from one network to another, to prevent particular hardware from playing music not bought at the monopoly of music in the sky."

In particular, Moglen has no love at all for Facebook. "The human race has susceptibility to harm but Mr. Zuckerberg has attained an unenviable record. He has done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age. Because he harnessed Friday night, that is, 'Everybody needs to get laid,' and turned into a structure for degenerating the integrity of human personality and he has to remarkable extent succeeded with a very poor deal, namely 'I will give you free web-hosting and some PHP doodads and you get spying for free all the time.' And it works.

How could that have happened? There was no architectural reason. Facebook is the web with, 'I keep all the logs, how do you feel about that?' It's a terrarium for what it feels like to live in a Panopticon built out of web parts. And it shouldn't be allowed. That's a very poor way to deliver those services. They are grossly overpriced at 'spying all the time', they are not technically innovative. They depend on an architecture subject to misuse and the business model that supports them is misuse. There isn't any other business model for them. This is bad. I'm not suggesting it should be illegal. It should be obsolete. We're technologists we should fix it."

Page 2: [Fixing the Internet] »

Fixing the Internet

So, what's the solution to this client/server architecture and all the abuses against freedom and privacy it enables? Moglen turns to inexpensive server hardware. He told the New York Times that "cheap, small, low-power plug servers," are the start. These are small devices "the size of a cellphone charger, running on a low-power chip. You plug it into the wall and forget about it." Almost anyone could have one of these tiny servers, which are now produced for limited purposes but could be adapted to a full range of Internet applications, he said. "They will get very cheap, very quick," he continued, "They're $99; they will go to $69. Once everyone is getting them, they will cost $29."

Such plug-in servers are already shipping. They include the TonidoPlug, the SheevaPlug, and GuruPlug.

The point of these Freedom servers is to address the privacy and control issues of "social networking and digital communications technologies, [which] are now critical to people fighting to make freedom in their societies or simply trying to preserve their privacy where the Web and other parts of the Net are intensively surveilled by profit-seekers and government agencies." This needs to be done "Because smartphones, mobile tablets, and other common forms of consumer electronics are being built as 'platforms' to control their users and monitor their activity."

So what will these Freedom Boxes do? The current goals for the project are:

1. Safe social networking:, in which, without losing touch with any of your friends, you replace Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and other centralized services with privacy-respecting federated services.

2. Secure backup: Your data automatically stored in encrypted format on the Freedom Boxes of your friends or associates, thus protecting your personal data against seizure or loss.

3. Network neutrality protection: If your ISP starts limiting or interfering with your access to services in the Net, your Freedom Box can communicate with your friends to detect and route traffic around the limitations. Network censorship is automatically routed around, for your friends in societies with oppressive national firewalls, or for you.

4. Safe anonymous publication: Friends or associates outside zones of network censorship can automatically forward information from people within them, enabling safe, anonymous publication.

5. Home network security with real protection against intrusion and the security threats aimed at Microsoft Windows or other risky computers your network;

6. Encrypted email, with seamless encryption and decryption;

7. Private voice communications: Freedom Box users can make voice-over-Internet phone calls to one another or to any phone. Calls between Freedom Box users will be encrypted securely.

What runs on these servers is where Linux and open-source software comes in. The one firm software decision that's been made so far is that the base operating system will be the latest release of Debian Linux This version of Debian is the one that, for better or worse, contains no proprietary hardware drivers or software.

Page 3: [Free Software for a Free Internet] »

Free Software for a Free Internet

The other software details have yet to be worked out. I spoke to Moglen today and he told me that "technical leads will be announced shortly, and their responsibilities will begin with hard decisions about roadmap and parts."

"Developers [will be] self-organizing to work on elements of what they think Freedom Box needs. This is by community for community. When our technical management has coalesced, it will begin directly communicating with volunteers and compensated developers." For more on what's going on with the programming side, see the Freedom Box Wiki.

When it comes to networking software specifics on how to deal with Internet restrictions, Moglen said, that "By tunneling encrypted streams among Freedom Boxes that will allow one Box to encapsulate traffic that its own upstream won't permit and tunnel it to a friend's or associate's box that has a different upstream connectivity provider and can successfully route the traffic."

I, for one, am going to be watching this project very closely. To maintain true freedom, the world needs Internet systems under the control of the people and not just governments and corporations.

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text:
The CRM Watchlist Part V: Different Strokes

The Recap Again:Why would you speak to me that wayEspecially when I always said that IHaven't got the words for youAll your diction dripping with disdainThrough the painI always tell the truthOh, damn. You're here.

The Recap Again:

Why would you speak to me that way
Especially when I always said that I
Haven't got the words for you
All your diction dripping with disdain
Through the pain
I always tell the truth

Oh, damn. You're here. I was listening to Vampire Weekend.  Let me get the headphones off...just a sec...I'm kinda...tangled..agggh....okay. Damn.

Well, we're in the homestretch. This is Part #5 of the Watchlist which is where I take the companies that for one reason or another defy categorization and let you see them as victors on their own. They are Spartacus.

The URLs and the names of the winners of Parts I-IV:

  1. Finally, the CRM 2011 Watchlist: Part I - SAP, Oracle,, Microsoft
  2. The CRM Watchlist Part II: The Usual Suspects - NetSuite, RightNow, Sage, SAS, CDC Software/Pivotal, SugarCRM
  3. The CRM Watchlist 2011 Part III: Representing the Pillars - Marketo, Eloqua, Infusionsoft, Jitterjam, Sword-Ciboodle, GetSatisfaction, Moxie, Genesys, Pegasystems, InsideView
  4. The CRM Watchlist 2011 Part IV: the Social Mainstream - Lithium, Jive, Radian6, Attensity, KickApps, Nimble, INgage Networks

Different Strokes for All Kinds of Folks

What makes this group interesting is its diversity, though I'm sure it meets very few federal guidelines.

I found it curious a few month ago, when I got a PR email that said that IBM was getting into "Social CRM." I attempted to noodle on this without the benefit of any further knowledge than I had and came up with some facts and some speculation.  The facts were, IBM had this product called, Lotus Connections (now at version 3.0) that was focused primarily on enterprise collaboration. Fact#2 - IBM had purchased SPSS for $1.2 billion in 2009 for SPSS's mad skills when it came to predictive analytics which could include some customer analytics.  Fact #3 -IBM had acquired Unica in mid 2010, one of the leaders in marketing automation of years past - and one of the first, BTW, to actually provide a usable non-math major only UI for a marketing automation product - this, of course, goes back a few years.

Hmmm. None of the facts added up to "Social CRM" exactly unless you linearly combined Lotus Connections (Social) and Unica (CRM) and came up with it that way. Nope. That made no sense as a support to the claim.

So I speculated.  Maybe Lotus Connections was going to add outbound channel connectors and customer community tools or an API for integration to traditional CRM suites or...something like that.

Nope.  None of that. This seemed to be pretty much a jump on the bandwagon and a pretty slick attempt to grab some thought leadership in the space.

But it got me to thinking, because, after all this is IBM and IBM has the chops, culture and funds to do things and get things that other companies could only dream of.  So here was a chance for IBM to do something that they never have - become leaders in social CRM. They have been leaders in the social software space with the conversion of the Lotus "division" to the IBM Collaboration Solutions Group within the company.  Lotus Connections, especially the 3.0  version, strengthened the enterprise level product by adding some much needed features such as:

  1. They call it social analytics - I call it social network analysis. They have three widgets that have been added to the Profiles component. What makes them particularly significant is that they are widgets that embrace the notion of the social customer.  They include a) Do You Know: a recommendation engine based on your activity on the social web and your existing network. b) Things in Common: this is the "someone like me" widget that deconstructs that relationship -showing you how  you are "like" that someone. and c) Who Connects Us: how you connect to an individual person - social networking analysis.
  2. Community customization - among other things it incorporates a feature that I have recommended more than once to some of the community/socnet platforms out there when they didn't have it - the ability to create and administer a "sub-community" within a community so that  you can focus in specific areas - in the case of IBM, since Lotus Connections is internally focused - specific projects.
  3. Huge refresh to the wiki, blogging, forums, activities, profiles, and social bookmarking features - that were already decent.

These are just examples of what Connections 3.0 offers. But again, it doesn't have much in the way of outbound social channels for customers though there is nothing that says you can't invite customers in.

But what makes IBM intriguing is that they are entering the fray through both thought leadership and by developing a very, very good collaboration application using a division of the company near and dear to me - Lotus.

Is that enough for them to be a SCRM provider?  No. They have never been a strong CRM provider, leaving a lot of that to iEnterprises , an exceptional partner who has developed not only a Notes CRM, but their own CRM, mobile versions of CRM and connectors for Lotus Notes to SugarCRM, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics CRM,, and Siebel. IEnterprises has kept IBM at least relevant in CRM.

But they have so much going for them with SPSS, Unica, Lotus Connections 3.0, and their clear interest in Social CRM, that it makes them more than intriguing. It makes them a company to watch - very, very closely. I wouldn't put it past IBM to be a player by early part of next year.  But we'll have to see.  Of course, I will keep you posted.. While they may not be coming from a position of historic strength in CRM, they are still entirely capable of making a fast transition. Which, to play where they want, Social CRM, they have to.

Back in August 2010, I wrote this piece on the entry of Cisco into the world of enterprise collaboration via their Quad suite. I speculated about this as an indication that they were interested in taking it further and coming into the world of Social CRM.

Turns out I was right.

As we know now, Cisco is coming in, and doing it the right way. They've launched a social media analytics product called SocialMiner and a social customer care product named kind of nicely Finesse which brings the agent into a 2.0 world. They've significantly extended their communications hardware and software platforms. Among the cooler applications - which they've established use cases for and managed to price it reasonably is Cisco TelePresence, well worth looking at.  In fact, in July 2010, the leader of what passes for as close to a Social CRM salon we have, Tatyana Kanzaveli, did a Social CRM Meetup with major SCRM thought leaders via TelePresence in what may be the coolest CRM related event ever. Given that what has driven SCRM from day one is a communications revolution, not a business revolution, Cisco's improvements in their communications platform is a powerful entry into what is a growing area of interest for businesses everywhere.

Thing is that they thought this one out.  Their management team for this push into SCRM, seated in the Cisco Collaboration Business Unit (CCBU), is run by John Hernandez, a customer service leader with experience at both Watchlist winner Genesys and Nortel. The rest of the team has equal and in some cases even more experience than John in this world. So they are well suited for what they are doing.

Another plus for Cisco in their entry is that they have mucho dinero to back it up, have a strong outreach to influencers, journalist, and analysts. AND they know how to ride the wave of a trend, having foreseen this one as far back as 2008 with the launch of their "human network" branding and marketing campaigns. They still have one of my all time favorite commercials for that - their first - with the Baba O'Riley song by  the Who - the one also used by CSI-NY. What that means spiritually I don't know, but the commercial nailed the communications revolution part of the equation - i.e. the most important one.

Don't underestimate their trend-tracking actions. They are emerging now because of a careful assessment of the customer's needs and wants, not just the rise of SCRM.  They see that the customer is more demanding, more peer-focused, and more cognizant of the environment thus the push around TelePresence cutting travel costs and emissions. In other words, they are acting on the trends, not just monitoring them.

They also know how to partner. In the customer care a.k.a. contact center world that they star in they have alliances with Oracle (Siebel, Oracle, PeopleSoft), SAP, Microsoft and - meaning, given their scope, skills and target markets, the right choices.

What's interesting here, and of course, as always, provides an element of uncertainty of results, is that Cisco, by its own admission is transitioning from a communications focused company to a collaboration focused company that uses unified communications (well, okay, they didn't say the latter part, I did) technologies to foster that collaboration.  The uncertainty lies in the change in culture required to meet that transition. They have the technologies to foster it - via Quad and Telepresence, SocialMiner, et. al. They have the leadership, and partners to support it.  But the question is, does their own culture foster collaboration - so that they can meet more than just the technological needs of their target base?  Can they be, to their potential customers, a "company like me?"

What Cisco has to do in 2011since SCRM is driven by customer service (human interaction), not contact centers per se, is become a bit more focused on the "human" and a little less on the "network", so to speak at least. Meaning, even though their corporate culture is aimed at customer success - its more focused on technological success.  Just read everything they write on collaboration. Its focused on the value of hardware and software - not the way that Cisco helps you do your job.

Focusing on and delivering any kind of success is commendable, but "any" is not enough in the era of the social customer. They need to humanize their culture (which given the immensely friendly nature of the customer care folks like John Hernandez, shouldn't be a big stretch) and provide the thought leadership that the human network commercials imply they can. They truly get it. Now they have to expand out to a broader population that they can show they get it. Then, all they have to do is what they are already good at - which means continue to communicate - but in the customer's metaphor, not the products.

This might be my most intriguing choice for 2011 because, they are so damned interesting. And provide actual value.

When I was a kid I used to see this old cartoon from the 30s or early 40s that showed this little fish chomped up by a bigger fish chomped up by an even bigger catch the drift, err, tide. In any case, that's how I've thought of Infor and also how I've thought of their product that gets them on this list.

It began as E.piphany (no typo, it was this weird spelling back then) then was chomped up by  SSA Global which was then chomped up by Infor. In case you haven't figured it out, chomped up = acquired.

Its the Epiphany (contemporary) Interaction Advisor engine that gets my serious Watchlist attention.  Infor is actually improving and reviving the product - major improvements - which is a relief because it was a genuinely excellent product that SSA Global wasted. Infor's name for the product is the Infor CRM Epiphany Interaction Advisor - something that's pretty damned awkward for such a smooth operator.

Infor seems to be determined to take that terrific interaction engine that could and put it back on the map which is of course what gets them on the map with me - that and a few other things.

From what I can see, Infor is treating the interaction advisor engine as a platform, but rather than offering out to the masses - in the fashion of a platform, they are using it to spin off some very specific, highly focused applications that are both horizontal and vertical in nature. For example, they recently put together an Interaction Advisor for the hospitality industry that as they put it, "maximizes the customer relationship from the slot machine to restaurants, to shops to the guest's room."  They have another for the retail industry announced last week called Epiphany Shopping Advisor. They have one called Churn Advisor that not just optimizes a telco's customer experience but also locates the weak points that might cause churn.  What makes these powerful is that they are products geared to a real-time customer experience throughout an entire customer lifecycle, that takes all channels into account AND, if that wasn't enough, they capture and analyze all the data that the interactions create.

One of their coolest applications is the Infor Epiphany Email Advisor, which takes live emails - meaning those sitting in your customers' email in-boxes -and according to their online customer behavior adjusts the offers that they may be getting in that email.

Infor has all the traditional CRM products too - they actually offer a suite -sales, marketing and customer service. But they treat it almost incidentally to their interaction advisor engine. Probably rightfully. I don't know how good or bad it is -  they've never offered to show it to me and I've forgotten to ask because my focus has been on the interaction advisor platform.

The power of their products lies in the customers involvement in the creation of the products. Its interesting but Infor, in the submissions to the Watchlist, was the only one who emphasized their use of Customer Advisory Boards to get feedback on design of the UI and the functionality.  Something that all the companies who won could learn from - and something that indicates a culture that has begun to adopt the social customer's perspective on business - and has figured out their response to it.

However, even though Infor is out there diligently demoing the Interaction Advisor to all who will watch and listen, they haven't done a good job to date on thought leadership or industry  participation, which is part of the dance you have to do.  This is something they need to seriously step up in 2011 - I mean amp it up big time or they will get nowhere with what is a genuinely terrific product.

I wouldn't have made them a company to watch if I didn't think they could. I do and I think they will. 2011 here comes Infor.

There was this famous song written in 1913 and sung by Al Jolson (who starred in the first talking movie ever - The Jazz Singer. Here's a two minute clip of the movie - wow, is it dated, but this is the reason you can be a Trekkie) called "You Made Me Love You."  The first lines went like this:

You made me love you
I didn't wanna do it
I didn't wanna do it
You made me want you
And all the time you knew it
I guess you always knew it

You made me happy sometimes
You made me glad
But there were times
You made me feel so bad

Know what?  I've loved and lost twice in the Partner Relationship Management (PRM) space - twice. I've had my heart broken two f---ing times.

I have always been a big fan of PRM. It seems to make so much sense because it enables the management and engagement of your partners - a significant piece of your overall enterprise value chain. Its the same way that Supply Chain Management and the occasional Supplier Relationship Management software successfully took care of another side of this ecosystem.  AND to that end there have been some excellent PRM products such as Siebel PRM (now Oracle PRM) and especially in its day Channelwave, ClickCommerce, and, while - until now (hint, hint) - the SaaS space has only produced some not so great PRM, the idea of PRM remains so appealing to me.

But, alas, back in 2001 and again in 2004, PRM broke my heart - because apparently it was only appealing to me - not a whole lot of businesses. - It was an industry segment that while enormously useful from what I could see - just didn't make it.

So, my broken heart told me "bury the hurt, Paul, don't let it get you again. That's twice you heard the siren call, felt the heat. And twice that you were lured and crushed. Beaten." It was kind of a variation on the theme, "if it happens once shame on them, twice shame on you." Well, to me it was "if it happens twice, shame on them..."

But I was happy. I didn't have to deal with PRM once Channelwave sunk in the channel...hit by a...wave...of...umm...indifference. Okay, I'm stretching there.

But, sigh, then along comes Relayware. It started with a PR request that said "hey, wanna see me, huh, big boy?" And in my mind, it was Alyssa Milano (Great tweeter, and baseball fan. Sigh.), Gwyneth Paltrow, Elizabeth Banks and whatever other Hollywood actresses I think are hot (okay, sue me, I'm a guy) beckoning to me for an audience, so I said, "sure."

And, to my surprise, I saw what might be the most complete PRM product and certainly the best thought out PRM product I've ever seen. Bar none.  Just to give you a flavor, I'm going to show you the components, without comment, lifted straight from their website that are part of their most comprehensive offering Partner  Lifecycle Management:

  • Administration Manager
  • Partner Account Manager
  • Registration and Approval Manager
  • Sales Opportunity Manager
  • Content and Portal Manager
  • Communications Manager
  • Partner Training Manager
  • Event Manager
  • Fund Manager
  • Customizable Joint Marketing
  • Loyalty and Incentives Manager
  • Partner Locator

That is a thorough job - and, you'll have to take my word for it here, or take a look for yourself, if you don't trust me, each of these components is both full featured and well integrated.

Plus Mike Morgan, the CEO is both a really engaging guy and knows the space really well.

Additionally, they actually, unlike most of the other choices so far, don't have the problem of thought leadership. Nor do they have the problem with market impact. Both of them are reflected in the fact that the analysts - institutional and independent highly respect these guys and they are seen as a premier product.

BUT there are several things they need to "cure" as a company and an obstacle not of their doing that make this, let's just say, interesting.

Their needs:

  1. They are a PRM company without much of a partner ecosystem. I'm not a "you must eat your own dog food guy" - I actually think that's silly. For example, if you're a small company selling to Fortune 1000 companies, why would you need that level of functionality.  I rest that  part of my case. But in this case, they do need to eat their own dog food - meaning, not use their software, but have a VAR/SI/Consulting firm/Technology partner ecosystem that is meaningful, not piecemeal.  Maybe they do but I don't see any reference to it anyway. Just 2-3 companies, who may be great at what they do but are not the kind of reference partners that I'm talking about. Nor nearly the scope.
  2. They need some LARGE systems integrators to buy into their vision and mission which is quite clear - and that means a PRM sub-practice (part of CRM? Perhaps.), at least at this stage, at the large SI. Small companies only selling for an enterprise ready product - that this is - its oh so scalable - and pricey - doesn't do the trick. They  need an entré through the large SI's pipeline.
  3. They need to not emphasize the PRM is the new CRM. It isn't. Its PRM. Its an extension of CRM frankly to the larger ecosystem. At least the way I see it. But, then again, we've seen how THAT's helped the market.

The part that's not of their own doing? PRM needs a market.  Right now, Relayware has a great product, smart leadership, a clear vision and mission, thought leadership and market impact. But some of the latter is relative. There is no real PRM market still.

I think this is a company that can make the market potentially, small as they are at this point. But I don't want to have my heart broken a third time. They won't break it - they're way to smart and way too pretty - in a platonic way of course. But the lack of a market could.

Final lines from You Made Me Love You?

You made me cry for
I didn't wanna tell you
I didn't wanna tell you
I want some love that's true
Yes, I do, 'deed I do
You know I do

Gimmie, gimmie, gimmie, gimmie what I cry for
You know you've got the brand of kisses
That I'd die for
You know you made me love you

Don't disappoint me.

Gist and I go way back. I've been a user of theirs by design and a little bit by default since 2009.  The design was that I think that their integration with Outlook is excellent and does what Microsoft's Social Connectors don't.  The default was that I was using Xobni too, another interesting though in my mind, not quite to Gist's standard, product, but it crashed my system.

So I got to know Gist and, know T.A. McCann a little bit. And I liked what I saw.

First, let's make something clear. This isn't a full blown social CRM product. This is a plugin that aggregates social information in ways that actually have some meaning because of the way that the info is organized for the user to see.  All the information from my Twitter followers and Facebook friends, among other things - all their social information and activities  - are aggregated and produced along with the relevant conversations (relevant to me - context people, context) are provided fully integrated into my Outlook contact data or my Gmail or Google Apps contact data or even Lotus Notes. They also have native iPhone an Android mobile apps (both of which I've used - and like).

This is a good thing. But it goes deeper. Aside from the integration, I get a daily report emailed to me (my choice) on what my network is doing. Then I can go to their site and see how relevant the contacts are to me -based, I think, on the activity in relationship to me that Gist captures and presents. While those numbers are off in terms of absolute relevance, they are something of an indicator of the level of interaction that they and I have.

Gist has not only garnered some awards and a following for their well thought out and executed integrations, which now extends to - another reason that they can be included on this list, without trepidation. They were a Gartner Cool Company back in 2009 for example.  They have over 5500 fans on Facebook - not too shabby there either. And Mr. McCann is a busy dude, out there meeting who he has to to make this company work.

They are successful enough to be the subject of recent rumors that RIM, makers of the Blackberry, want to buy them.  I don't know if they are true or not, so don't ask me, but the very fact that they can engender that kind of rumor shows their growing impact in the market.

What do they have to do?  A few things:

  1. Integrate with more CRM systems. The idea is that Gist becomes a core part of a CRM system system or an Enterprise 2.0 system.  Rich social data is important to contemporary companies and the more sy systems they integrate with the better their entry point into the market.
  2. Competition in their part of the universe is only going to get tougher.  Its coming from the standalone plugins like them and through native integration like IBM does with Lotus Connections or attempts at it such as Microsoft's Social Connectors.  Scale, scale, scale and much better, more refined metrics. If you're going to measure relevance, then don't do it halfway, which is kind of where it is now.

These guys are going somewhere. They are worth watching in 2011.  Where they end up at the of this year, is, I can say definitively, solely up to them. But they'd better decide where they want to be by the end of the year, right now. That way, they can chart their own destiny - and we can watch them follow it.

Clarabridge had been fired as a shot across my bow for the last 2 years roughly, but especially in 2010. I kept hearing about how good their text and sentiment analysis engine was and that they represented an area of analytics called collective intelligence which was up and coming and that they were a good company to deal with.

So I began to track them.

And they were all of the above. And the area, "collective intelligence" perhaps a little specious a name, is important.

What I particularly liked about Clarabridge is that their name would pop up in odd places, which also means that it was popping up in the expected places too. I would hear of their name in partnership with companies that were quality companies who could use the Clarabridge engine as a complementary service such as Watchlist winner Vovici (look down...a little further...).  They had some of the standard expected partners too - Teradata among them.  As far as I'm concerned, when establishing alliances/partnerships for vendor companies, the mix needs to be those partners who will get you into the target markets that you need to be in and provide complementary technology and/or services and some who get you to markets that are niche but a potential revenue stream.

I also saw that the approach that they took with their products was in line with the contemporary requirements of the 21st century business.

That usually means greater and more granular customer insight.

What does that mean in Clarabridge-talk?  It means they use an 11 point intensity scale for sentiment analysis. You get more than the usual 1-5 or the positive, negative, neutral we're all so caught up in and yet, is so limited, when it comes to the nuances of emotion in the customer-company interrelationship.  This means, in human terms, that you'll be able to distinguish between irritated and furious and angry.  Which means a lot when it  comes to both taking action, deciding what your response is going to be and for longer term insight in general.

But their products go a lot further than that - though that appeals to my "we understand our own emotions in a terribly granular way" argument a lot.

They went out on a limb in 2010 - a big thick branch actually - and announced Clarabridge Professional, which they call " "the industry's first self service, SaaS based sentiment and text analytics product."  Some of that characterization is a bit self-serving because "self-service" is actually "Users can upload their data" meaning "manual" but what makes this a smart, smart idea is that they they are uploading data into category models - templates, if you will, that will spit out analysis of the unstructured data in minutes.  Lovely, for the small and and lower end of the midmarket businesses.  Apparently, the midmarket in particular felt this way, because within 9 months of the release of Professional, they had 800 customers.  Not-too-shabby.

Their enterprise edition, considerably more complex, has a set of problems associated with the complexity, though has real power too.  I had Scott Rogers, a thought leader in SCRM and someone who has not only used Clarabridge but knows the customer insight applications space give me a short fair assessment, which I want to pass on to you:

The categorization methodology (using word clouds) is very flexible, ranging from fast and simple to set-up to highly complex (and, not only tedious, but requires caution of the part of the user).

Beyond just volumetric measures and trending of word cloud strings, etc, gleaning real actionable insights from the output is difficult, and requires a good analyst to make sense of the data."

That says it, I think quite well, so now whassup for them in 2011.

Clarabridge is a company with a bright, accomplished set of high tech industry veterans (who have the added power of being foodies) who know how to manage a company.  As a result, cash positive, well financed, and 105% growth in 2010.

Not bad. I'd say I'm very pleased on my 11 point scale.

But we ain't done yet.

They have a lot to do in 2011. While I'm clear that I think that Customer Insight  Applications are perhaps (along with Knowledge Management) the keys to SCRM in 2011, the category of collective intelligence as nuanced as they can provide still has to be established. Right now, sentiment analysis is associated with 1-5 at its most granular. This goes way beyond that and the value proposition, while clear, needs data to back it up. Its real new and the promise is big.  Clarabridge has a chance to take a real leadership position here. They need to make the case in 2011.  Not 2012.

Really Simple Systems

Really Simple Systems might have the shortest entry of the lot.  They are what I consider perhaps the best traditional CRM package for small businesses in the market.  Know why?

They provide all three pillar components - sales, marketing and customer service - and they do it in a way that both is functionally reasonably complete - certainly complete enough for small businesses - and actually reasonably priced.  They've got the usual three tiers, but the first tier is a 2-user max cloud-based free edition of CRM that provides basic sales functionality - they have over 1000 users of it. The enterprise edition is designed to appeal to large small businesses or midmarket players. It provides competent functionality for all three CRM pillars - sales, marketing and customer service. Note the word, competent in conjunction with marketing functionality - not one you hear that often in suite level CRM especially not small business. But, here it is. And about time, let me tell ya.

These guys were the 2010 winners of Sift Media's Software Satisfaction Award for CRM - which I was a judge on. Here's what I said after they won:

"Really Simple Systems won the Software Satisfactions Awards for a really simple reason - they produce a very good hard core traditional CRM product that their customers can actually use, actually like and can afford. Hard to beat that, isn't it?"

Double that and its what I think today.

But lest you think they are perfectly positioned, let me throw out what I think they have to deal with in 2011.

Pretty easy actually.

  1. They are strictly traditional - and they have broadened their target markets beyond the small businesses they were solely focused on in 2009. That means that social functionality, as they move upmarket (even saying that their enterprise edition can appeal to a "division of a large company") needs to be incorporated or they need to partner with a social CRM vendor to provide the social data that midmarket and "divisions" of large enterprises crave.
  2. They need to move a lot faster on thought leadership. This company is an operationally sound, smartly run, and quiet company. They need to be louder in the marketplace. Small business, still their sweet spot, despite all the upmarket products and talk, is probably the most highly targeted area that remains largely unpenetrated and has a lot of competitive products emerging, with varying degrees of noise.  Really Simple Systems to remain competitive is going to have to make some noise.

Brent Leary will be covering much of the small business choices out there on Social CRM: The Conversation, probably next week - but I had to include Really Simple Systems because they live up to their name and yet still manage to provide actual ways for small business people to do their jobs.

How quaint.

Vovici is a company that takes care of business.  I've been following them for a long time, have had little interaction with them - except as of late - and yet, they  are truly the giant of enterprise feedback management (EFM).

In fact, I used to hate surveys - except for the highly specialized customer experience mapping surveys - which I use in my consulting work when it gets to the customer experience mapping side of things.  But after seeing Vovici's EFM and realizing that their survey methodology is the core of their EFM system, I'm converted. Seriously.

Key to the Vovici difference is that their survey mechanism is dynamic - as opposed to the more typical approach which provides. What allows that at the core is what they call (or will as of this year) Panel Profile Builder - or at least will in 2011. Essentially what it does, as I understand it, is use customer data as it is recorded to increase feedback quality. Meaning that using their Community Builder and their Panel Profile Builder, you can actually create feedback communities - e..g panels that can be queried and the feedback that is captured can be used as insight to help refine the panel, the questions and also to dynamically alter the relevance of the individual panelists responses.

What makes them powerful is that they can use their system to scale up towards ungodly amounts of participants and yet still get granular feedback - and incorporate it into individual customer records. They are integrated with Oracle and for that.

Their EFM suite can be customized to pretty much any level imaginable from look and feel, to an OEM white label to field levels to workflow and business rules. Plus they are SAS70 compliant - meaning as secure as they come.

If this was all, I'd say great, but what really makes Vovici stand out is that they  have a highly experienced stellar management team led by Jeffrey  Henning, one of the company's founders.  His blog at their site, according to Vovici, gets 40,000 visitors a month. Not too bad for a corporate maven.

These guys spend time not only on the operational, but thinking through what the thought leadership initiatives have to be in their segment of the industry.  They recognize that Voice of the Customer programs to create the right customer experience are the essential core of loyalty and advocacy and their entire product line and solutions offerings are true extensions of this philosophy. But they also have a framework and methodology associated with all of this. So for example in 2010, they announced the existence of the Customer Experience Wheel (take a look at slide 11). Its premise isn't particularly new. It focuses on the "moments of truth" to use the industry jargon - those key points of customer interaction which have the most important impact on the customer's relationship to the company.  But what made this valuable is that it is visually broken out in very easy to digest pieces so that it is clear what makes or breaks the customer relationship.

That said, there are some things I would do immediately that Vovici, with all this solidity, doesn't do.

  1. Make the website more comprehensible. I went to it several times to understand what they meant about something and, reading the site's explanation of that something left me hanging badly. For example, Online Communities. Not that the idea was complicated. But what they call online communities didn't seem to be addressed directly. All in all, EFM is not a simple subject and it needs to be simplified. Take the Customer Experience Wheel as a great example of the simplification.
  2. A lot of their thought leadership, while incredibly good and interesting, is internally generated. Remember what I said about collaboration between third parties and vendors around key ideas. Focus on them.
  3. Integrate with other CRM vendors beyond Oracle and There are a lot of large enterprise players out there and they don't all use those two.  Vovici has a huge amount to offer.

All in all, this company truly rocks and their EFM system convinced me to change what I think of something that I never particularly trusted.  That says a lot. They can capture more market with their excellent products, smart thinking and terrific management. But that's up to them, now, isn't it?

Zuora won a slot last year, one of a much smaller Watchlist of 18.  Yet, they really didn't fall into the realm of CRM so this year I vowed that companies like Zuora, Successfactors, and Workday, though worthy of winning stuff, weren't going to be on this list because they really didn't qualify.

So, I was at Dreamforce 2010 and ran into Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo. We go back quite a few years to when he was CMO and then Chief Strategy Officer of Thus,  we made sure we had a chance to talk. Damn if he didn't tell me how  they were now positioned which took him straight from not on the list anywhere to a candidate for finalist who didn't even appear on the final candidates list. In other words, he won after the fact.

Why? Because Tien, in his infinite wisdom, realized that Zuora, who handle subscription based billing and payment, was actually operating as, not the back office, not the front office but the middle office. Meaning that their raison d'etre is to handle that layer of transaction and transaction behavior that sits between the operational parts of business and the customer-company interactions.  Which puts them back on the Watchlist radar.

Tien's and his co-founders vision is based on the idea that we have a subscription economy that his rapidly evolving.

To do this, Zuora first developed their SaaS based Z-Billing product now in its 2.0 incarnation to handle dozens (I think they have 30 templates that are provided with the product - but don't hold me to that) of different subscription based billing models. If it doesn't fit a template, it can be customized. They have a set of super powered metrics to bench against - monthly recurring revenue, total contract value,  various churn metrics, you name it.  They have this integrated with Z-Payments which is tied to all the payment gateways including credit cards, Paypal, etc. They have Z-Commerce which is their platform for building custom solutions. For the purposes of their Watchlist win, they also have Z-Force, a native integration that ties into the applications and can serve as the "mid-office" piece  -pricing, quoting, orders, renewals. etc.

What makes this powerful is that there is a vision and thought leadership associated with the product set. That would be Tien's world - the subscription economy which is based on the simple premise that the business world is evolving to this "payments over time" model. In other words, people are willing to pay over planned periods of time for what they need. I think that its an extension of the model that evolved around a service economy of a few years ago, when products become commoditized to the point that the real value was in the services that grew up around the use of the products. Sometimes the products (software being a good example in many instances) were given away and the customer would subscribe to the services that the products "unlocked." What better way to pay then with a regular payment over time for the life of the provision of the services?   For a good discussion on the subscription economy, go here.

Zuora mastered this approach. They have been wildly successful, signing up  (Q1 2010) more than $1 billion in contracted subscription revenue - just for the quarter. They have a powerful, highly experienced management team, a strong set of partnerships/alliances including (of course), NetSuite, Microsoft, VMWare, VISA, Paypal. They have a strong group of mid-tier and top-tier systems integrators working with them - Astadia, Bluewolf, ATG (now Oracle) and Deloitte among others. They just got a second round of funding of over $20M in November so they are set there - and they have a top tier customer list.

So  this is a company that put together the whole package.  The management team, the partnerships, the marquee customers, the thought leadership, the market presence and the strong funding and revenue growth.

What else could they do? Not much more than they already are.  In fact, they ended up the second highest scoring company on the list after Not bad for a company I wasn't planning on including. But they belong here - and - if their path stays as clear as it is and Tien's subscription economy vision bears out, they are going to be the enterprise that they want to and do it the way that they want to do it -  something not seen that often in the roller coaster world of software and high tech.

Conclusion #5

Simple. I'm beat. This is nearly 7000 words and that is as big as anything I've written so far.  However, there is one thing that stands out here that I would be remiss if I didn't mention it. The only thing that any of these companies have in common is that they are able to serve Social CRM with their specific specialties. They don't have much in common with each other. But SCRM leads us to this new, fertile, areas that give a wide range of products, services, tools, and experiences play.

Next and final Watchlist will be the consulting companies and systems integrators.  Then its them.

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Big Web Show 69: Chris Cashdollar on

HAPPY COG Creative Director Christopher Cashdollar is my guest in Episode No. 69 of The Big Web Show, the weekly podcast on “everything web that matters.”

In 35 lively minutes, Chris and I discuss the joys and challenges of redesigning typography mega-site; nimble versus waterfall; process versus inspiration; running a creative department that is interactive in every sense of the word; the two sides of a design education (learning and teaching); fostering collaboration; and the transition from doodling eight-year-old to graphic design student to interactive creative director.

Chris is a multi-disciplinary graphic designer with twelve years of interaction design experience. He is currently the Creative Director for Happy Cog Philadelphia, and an adjunct instructor for Drexel University’s Westphal College of Media Arts and Design.

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ZetaTalk: Newton's Clock
written May 19, 2004

What are the forces that keep the Solar System running, like clockwork, the Earth turning so that only a fraction of a second is lost in a year? It is known by man that the outer planets will speed up and slow down when approaching or leaving each other, termed perturbations caused by the tug of gravity. Then why would the planets return to their prescribed place, afterwards? The rigidity of Newton’s Laws are set aside at such times, while human theorists sputter about with Conservation of Energy abstractions, supposedly some elf in the cosmos registering the slowing and inserting a commensurate acceleration later, with some kind of cosmic balance scales, ignoring the fact that the last adjustment would carry by the weight of momentum to be a permanent effect, all other factors being equal. Newton states that the status quo continues, contradicting man's explanation, but man cannot put his theories together on the same page, though continues to state they are all infallible. Why are perturbations only temporary? As with all things in the solar system, the answer lies in the Sun, which dominates the scene.

We have Stated that the Earth, along with Venus and Mars and the Earth Dark Twin coming up behind her, have all halted in their orbits, presented with Planet X coming toward them in its retrograde orbit. This is not immediately clear to humans gazing at the sky, as Venus and Mars were coming up behind the Earth at the time the Earth halted in its orbit, and choose to keep their distance from each other, so the distance approximates what was expected, though making the cover-up Artists nervous.

We have Stated that the Dark Twin coming up behind the Earth would be one clear piece of evidence in the fog of the cover-up proving a halted orbit. There all along, but like the dark asteroids that absorb, rather than reflect, light, a stealth planet.

We have Stated that the Moon, unlike the planets, is Earth centric and seeks to hug the Earth’s middle and even during the pole shift will not leave the Earth, such is the force of this hug. We have stated that the Navy timekeepers, in anticipation of this time, preset the Moon rise and set Times after the discovery of Planet X in 1983 by the IRAS team, so that a slowing rotation would not be noticed by the Moon Phases coming early until the last days. This has been the case during most of the past year, one of the strongest indications outside of an erratic Moon orbit that something is terribly amiss.

We have Stated that the Constellations at first simulate what is expected due to the tilt of the Earth toward the Sun and the Lean of the Earth toward Planet X, but that the constellations will eventually be noticeably Out of Place. Where this tilt and lean simulate the constellation pattern expected, it puts the Arc of the Sun too high in the sky, which many have noticed.

We have Stated that slowing would increase significantly after the orbit halted, but would be masked by the automatic adjustment that human clock systems insert, a loss of approximately two hours for every month that passes in order to allow the Sun to be overhead at noon, the night sky overhead at midnight. For the Earth to align, in her rotation, to the clock systems, it would have to slow that two hours per months, so that the position to gaze into the night sky is appropriate for a mid-Winter position, not late Spring. To the relief of the cover-up artists, the Earth slowing kept pace, and where they had no explanation for this, it allowed the cover-up to continue past the level Orange alert called during orbit halt, when imminent panic was expected and Almanacs were put on the FBI list as terrorist tools, in anticipation of the need for denial and panic control. By what magic then did the Earth continue to turn, facing in the correct direction as the months passed?

We have Stated that Rotation is caused by elements in the Earth’s core, by no means homogeneous, chasing after what it is attracted to or repulsed by. In that the Sun dominates the scene, it should be no surprise that these elements are within or controlled by the rotation of the Sun, and this is the case. The entire solar system sweeps in the direction of the Sun’s rotation. The Earth faces the Sun, once a day, in keeping with the Sun’s own rotation presentation, a touch point from matter on the Earth’s surface and within its core to similar matter within the Sun. Likewise, perturbed planets in the solar system, temporarily out of place as they pass each other, are pulled back into their orbit positions not by some vague Conservation of Energy theory but by outreach arms from the Sun snapping them back into place.

When will serious Slowing, out of sync with Newton’s clock, commence? When Planet X, during its passage, inserts itself between the Earth and the Sun, standing, as we have stated, as the only voice the Earth can hear, the Sun’s voice blocked. In that the presence of Planet X is lost in the glare of the Sun, in the blaze of light reflecting from the dust cloud shrouding Planet X, this Slowing will be the single most compelling indicator that the long wait is about to end and the time to travel to safety has arrived.