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Groupon Lets Merchants Process Deals With Smartphones

Daily deals juggernaut Groupon has just introduced a new mobile redemption-tracking app to streamline and improve the merchant experience.

The app, which is available now in the Android Market and will be available soon in the App Store, allows merchants to scan and verify Groupons using the built-in camera on their mobile device.

In its announcement, Groupon also said it will be shipping Android phones and iPod touch units with the app preloaded to thousands of businesses. This will be part of a featured promotion for the group deals site.

Like Eventbrite's latest app, the Groupon Merchant App is designed to speed up the redemption and redemption tracking process. Redemption and purchase data is transmitted to the existing server on so that business owners can track redemptions and customer check amounts in real time.

This will speed up processing and reduce the number of errors associated with hand-entering coupons or using paper notes. Merchants can just scan the barcode on the Groupon and the database will be updated automatically.

Groupon also plans on launching more comprehensive merchant analytics tools. These tools will offer merchants a way to stay in touch with new Groupon customers.

It's great to see Groupon offering better tools for its merchants to deal with Groupons and manage new customers. It's also yet another example of how mobile apps have transformed the smartphone into the ultimate gadget Swiss army knife.

Merchants — are you excited about the ability to scan and process Groupons with an iPhone or Android app? Let us know.


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Major News Publishers Jump on the Daily Deals Bandwagon

From luxury service providers to digital media giants, it seems like just about every online business is trying to carve out a slice of the multibillion-dollar pie that is the daily deals market, thanks to the relatively rapid success of startups like Groupon and LivingSocial.

The McClatchy Company is the latest to join the fray, announcing Thursday that it will begin hosting daily discount offers on its local newspaper websites using Second Street's Deadline Deals platform. McClatchy is the third largest newspaper company in the U.S., publishing more than 30 daily newspapers, including The Miami Herald and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and 43 non-dailies.

McClatchy joins several other publishers in the space, including The New York Times, which announced its first offer Thursday: a two-hour, $325 cooking class from Manhattan food market Eataly.

Image courtesy of Flickr, leoncillo sabino

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Microsoft Mulls Yahoo Bid, Non-iPhone Sales Up at AT&T: Today's Top Stories

Welcome to this morning's edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on four particular stories of interest today.

Microsoft Bid for Yahoo Gaining Momentum

Microsoft is working with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm, to put together a bid to buy Yahoo, according to unidentified sources.

Non-iPhone Sales Improve at AT&T

AT&T's third-quarter earnings — which were in line with expectations at $3.6 billion on revenue of $31.5 billion — suggests that the company has become less reliant on the iPhone, with sales of Android and other non-iPhone smartphones amounting to almost half of its 4.8 million smartphone sales last quarter.

Nokia to Announce Windows Phones Next Week

Nokia will unveil its first Nokia Windows Phones at the Nokia World event on Oct. 26 to 27 in London.

Google Apps Support Coming to Google+ "Imminently"

Google has announced that Google+ will support Google Apps accounts "imminently." The company also disclosed that 3.4 billion photos have been uploaded to the service in the last 100 days, and that it will soon begin supporting pseudonyms.

Further News

  • Apple Stores across the U.S. were closed Wednesday from 1 to 3 p.m. to honor the memory of founder and former CEO Steve Jobs.

  • Lytro, the first focus-free camera, will launch with a price tag of $399 in early 2012.

  • Samsung's Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus tablet is now available for pre-order at $399 for the 16GB model, or $499 for 32GB.

  • Steve Jobs’s biographer, Walter Isaacson, will be interviewed on Sunday night’s episode of 60 Minutes.

  • The Economist has finally released an iOS app compatible with Apple's in-app purchasing and subscription policies after the iOS 5 update disrupted the functionality of its previous one.

  • Twitter buzz about the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to build.

  • users can soon run ads on their blogs via a partnership between WordPress parent company Automattic and ad network Federated Media.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59


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Will Twitter Predict the New Hampshire Primary?

All of the candidates duking it out for the Republican nomination have a social media presence. But can the activity surrounding their accounts reveal anything about their chances to win elections?

Last week, we asked if Twitter could predict the Iowa caucus. The results weren't perfect, but they did call for a much stronger showing by former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum than the national polls projected.

Indeed, after the closest Iowa caucus in American history, Santorum was defeated by an absolutely razor-thin margin.

For Tuesday's primary, we asked Globalpoint Research once again to analyze Twitter for us. Their weighted metric combines tweet volume and retweets with detailed sentiment analysis. Here's what they found:

Twitter Sentiment

These results give Mitt Romney a slightly higher lead than the latest polls, but they don't have any glaring difference with the most recent polling data from New Hampshire.

If Twitter is indeed predictive of the results, then Tuesday night should see a clear Romney victory, with a closely contested struggle for second place between Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum. There are no outrageous spikes in the data, but on Twitter, as in many polls, Jon Huntsman has been picking up steam.

Will any of these predictions will hold true? Stay tuned — we'll find out Tuesday night.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, JamesBrey


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3 Slick Analytics Dashboards to Monitor Your Business Website

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

If you're running a company website without an analytics dashboard, you may as well be stumbling around in the dark. Building a viable and sustainable web presence in any industry is all about understanding the needs of your users and tailoring your service to fit their needs — how can you do that if you don't even know what your users are looking at or how they got to your website?

The good news is that analytics dashboards simple to implement, and they also come in a variety of shapes and sizes to suit the needs and goals of your small business. While some people swear by Google Analytics or the tracking plug-ins found organically within their specific web hosting or content managing service (think WordPress analytics), there's a lot of information you may not be getting from these sources. For example, while Google Analytics does a great job tracking individual page vies, it doesn't necessarily break down any meaningful social sharing or referrals. You may want to know why a specific webpage on your site garners major traffic, but Google Analytics will only note that it comes from Facebook.

If you'd like to obtain a more tailored or granular look into your website, it's best to make an investment in a third-party analytics dashboard that offers exactly the data that you need. You may find that you'll not only be able to target the audience interested in your website, but you'll also be able to optimize the content and structure to bring in more potential consumers in the long run.

Do you have an analytics dashboard you swear by? Let us know in the comments.

1. Analytics Catch-All: Chartbeat

Do you maintain a website that has only a few pages of static content or delivers periodic (but not super-frequent) content updates? Then you may benefit from Chartbeat, a pumped-up analytics dashboard that offered real-time analytics before Google did.

The service's dashboard is really simple — log in at any time and get a bird's-eye view of every user on your site, including what page they're on and where they came from. In addition to marking key traffic flow, Chartbeat also keeps tabs on the "engagement level" of each user. Specifically, anyone controlling the dashboard can check the level of users who are reading or writing on or about a particular page, as well as how many users are considered "idle." The combination of this data can give you the best idea of when, where and how users are reaching your site, allowing you to adjust your content or SEO accordingly.

Interested in how it works? Chartbeat actually offers a free 30-day trial of its services, and from there pricing plans begin at $9.95 per month. If you have a small budget to spend on analytics, this tool could serve you well and help you grow your online business. And If you're in ecommerce, be sure to keep an eye out for Chartbeat's savvy, up-and-coming cousin, Shopbeat.

2. Social Savvy: HootSuite

HootSuite is an oldie, but a goodie — it's still the premier dashboard for companies looking to get analysis of their social media efforts. If your company spends more time on Facebook and Twitter than a website or blog, HootSuite doubles as both a social media manager and analytics tabulator.

In many ways, your never need to leave the HootSuite dashboard to manage your day-to-day engagement. The platform allows you to write and schedule posts on nearly every social media website in existence (the company recently added Digg, InboxQ and Trendspottr to its ever-growing list of served platforms) and then track the resulting conversations and referrals. The dashboard also pulls in data from Google Analytics and Facebook Insights to provide data of how campaigns are directly affecting home websites and Facebook Brand Pages.

Another reason HootSuite remains popular is its low cost. The Pro Plan price for the dashboard is a paltry $5.99 a month, and it offers all of the above features. One downside, however, is that if you're looking for a whole team to be simultaneously locked in to the system, you're going to have to pony up an extra $15 for each additional admin. But if you're looking for a way to deftly manage social media in a way that will drive potential companies or your website — and to a sale — then HootSuite is a dashboard worth paying for.

3. High Roller: Parse.ly Dash

Is yours an up-and-coming company with high content output and striving for major visibility in the web space? Well, it's time to make investment in Parse.ly Dash, the "predictive dashboard" that pays special attention to what's trending right now and how to capitalize on what everyone is talking about on the Internet in real-time.

If you're looking for analytics that drill down, separate and categorize every page on your website, Parse.ly Dash will be more than happy to serve you. You can sort your content by author, topic, page and referral to get a good idea of not only where everyone is looking, but what sort of content to produce further down the road. Parse.ly Dash will actually suggest what topics your website should write about, and what trends are just breaking on the surface. The analytics dashboard offers multilateral control to the user in a more comprehensive way than most products do — you can essentially use it to plan for your website's future content based on what your users respond to best.

All of this control comes at a hefty price. The basic plan starts at $500 a month, well out of the price range of most startups and average businesses. But, if you're looking to produce a content-heavy and highly engaging website, Parse.ly Dash will help take your website to the next level.

Disclosure: Mashable's CTO is an advisory board member for Parse.ly Inc.

More Small Business Resources From OPEN Forum:

- Should Small Businesses Follow Everyone Back on Twitter?
- Are You Falling into the Pricing Trap?
- How to Take Your PR Pitches to the Next Level

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Jirsack


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How to Change Your LinkedIn Password

As many scramble to change their LinkedIn passwords following the news that 6.46 million of them may have been compromised in a security breach, we've noticed that it's not as easy as you'd think to update your log-in information.

A Russian hacker says he has stolen 6,458,020 encrypted passwords and posted them online (without usernames) to prove his feat. The breach comes on the heels of news that LinkedIn's iOS app potentially violates user privacy by sending detailed calendar entries to its servers.

SEE ALSO: LinkedIn Hacker Steals 1.5 Million Passwords from eHarmony [REPORT]

"While our investigation continues, we thought it would be a good idea to remind our members that one of the best ways to protect your privacy and security online is to craft a strong password, to change it frequently (at least once a quarter or every few months) and to not use the same password on multiple sites," LinkedIn wrote in a blog post on its site. "Use this as an opportunity to review all of your account settings on LinkedIn and on other sites too. Remember, no matter what website you’re on, it’s important for you to make sure that you protect your account security and privacy."

The blog post also includes best practices on how to create a strong password.

Although it's not too difficult to update your LinkedIn password on a PC, changing your LinkedIn password is more challenging via a mobile device. For a full walk through, check out the gallery above.

In the meantime, LinkedIn plans to update its users via Twitter with new information as its made available.

"The best thing to do right now (and in general) is to follow us on Twitter: @LinkedIn and @LinkedInNews," a LinkedIn spokesperson told Mashable.


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10 Weird iPhone Games You've Got to Try

Are you looking for iPhone games that have strayed very, very far off the beaten path?

If you're looking for some of the strangest stuff available in the iTunes Store, we've picked out 10 titles are just plain weird. Some are have bizarre main characters, like zombie Chopin in Frederic - Resurrection of Music or a giant, rolling pizza in Pizza Vs. Skeletons.

SEE ALSO: 15 Vintage Video Games You Can Play on Your iPhone

Others are unique because of their weird animation or strange twists on gameplay, like one title where you swipe at a mutant face growing out of a hand.

Have you played any strange iPhone games lately? Let us know what you think of our list in the comments.


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Top 5 Apps Your Kids Will Love This Week

Chris Crowell is a veteran kindergarten teacher and contributing editor to Children's Technology Review, a web-based archive of articles and reviews on apps, technology toys and video games. Download a free issue of CTR here.

Math is the foundation of all learning, from literature to music and everything in between. This week, we have Math Doodles and the Motion Math Hungry Guppy to satisfy any number-crunching child's appetite.

But if your kids aren't quite ready for math just yet, these apps are sure to set them down the right path. Also worth the download: PlaySquare: WordWorld's Happy Birthday Dog, a free app the publishers call “touchable television.”

SEE ALSO: The Top 5 Apps Your Kids Will Love This Week

Children's Technology Review has shared with Mashable five top apps from its comprehensive monthly database of kid-tested reviews. The site covers everything from math and counting to reading and phonics.

Check back next week for more Top Kids Apps from Children's Technology Review.

Image courtesy of Flickr, aperturismo.


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8 Questions We Still Have About the PlayStation 4

Sony announced the PlayStation 4 with a lot of fanfare and in-your-face visuals. The two-hour presentation inundated the media and gaming industry with a lot of pretty lights and sounds, but left more questions that needed answering.

While we're not expecting to see the PlayStation 4 on store shelves until late in the year, there's a lot we hope to learn before then. Even Sony doesn't have all the answers right now — the company admitted that many things are still being ironed out. With so many gaming options on the marketplace for 2013, including Microsoft's rumored next-generation Xbox, gamers have a lot of choice, so here are the biggest things we'd like to see answered soon.

1. How Much Will This Cost?

This figure could be all over the place. Sony had the most expensive console by far at the last cycle; a PS3 was $600 at launch, a number plenty of people balked at. This was in 2006, too, a time before powerful tablets and cellphones took our gaming mobile, or Android-based consoles were on the horizon. While these might not have the processing power of the PlayStation 4, the market's diversity proves gamers can find content in a lot of places, and Sony will have to consider that in the price.

Along with the system cost, there are the potential extra monthly costs of playing. While the PlayStation Network has been free for years, with the exception of the premium PlayStation Plus membership, Sony might take another look at pricing. Its presentation confirmed free-to-try games in the store, a powerful social service that allowed players to share game video, and games served to other devices.

In a roundtable with journalists Thursday, Sony's worldwide studios president Shuhei Yoshida said the company was investigating a lot of different pricing structures dependent on what consumers want. He couldn't confirm if any part of the online experience would remain free, or if Sony would offer it all to gamers without charging them.

2. Will the PlayStation 4 Play Used Games?

After Sony patents were uncovered last month that discussed technology that would associate a game disc's identifier with an account, there was speculation if the upcoming console would refuse to play used games. (Similar rumors are also circulating about the next Xbox.)

Sony didn't exactly put this rumor to rest. Yoshida says that "PlayStation 4 discs will work on any of the consoles." But then he added that publishers could decide to lock their titles, similar to what EA has already begun doing on recent games like Dead Space 3, which requires a code from the box if players want to play online.

When a reporter in the room pointed out the console maker was also a game publisher, Yoshida admitted Sony had not yet decided how to handle used games that it publishes. How Sony's first party games will be handled will likely set a precedent for others publishing on its console.

3. What Does The Console Look Like?

Sony doesn't even know that yet, Yoshida confirmed. We'll probably see something closer to E3 in June.

We originally wondered if Sony would do something bold like ditch the optical drive, but Yoshida's other comments about used games dissuaded that idea.

4. What About Old Games?

The PlayStation 4 is not backwards compatible, Yoshida said. Neither game discs nor old games bought on the PlayStation Network will work on the system. But Sony talked about the power of Gaikai's streaming services harnessed with PlayStation Cloud, and said that older generations of PlayStation games would eventually be accessible. While this is exciting news, it leaves us with two questions: can we re-download games we already own for free? It would be total gouging to have to pay full price for games twice. And when will these older libraries come to the PS4?

5. What Does the Touchpad Do?

The PlayStation 4's DualShock 4 controller's touch pad can't be ignored. It's prominently placed in the center of the controller's face, and changes its whole look. While Sony was happy to brag about this addition, there is little idea of what it does.

A Killzone Shadow Fall developer said on Late Night with Jimmy Kimmel that the touch pad was useful for navigating between menus, but that's a lot of real estate to devote to that function. Will we see more games moving from mobile to the PlayStation Store that feature touch controls? Was this influenced by the OUYA design? We have yet to see this demonstrated with any of the game technology.

6. How Will the PS4 Support Indie Developers?

The PlayStation 4 presentation focused on how great the console is for developers, and included a video talking to those working at studios large and small on how great the new features are. 2012 was also a big year for indie games in the PSN Store, with such massive successes like Journey and Sound Shapes. With a bigger store potentially coming to the PlayStation 4 ecosystem, how will Sony attract indies to provide quality content for the system?

Yoshida said he already respected the iTunes model, and hoped Sony could do something similar with the next-gen PlayStation Store, but of course couldn't announce any specific plans. With so many indies focusing on mobile because of the ease of publishing, can Sony attract them with a self-publishing model that resemble's Apple or the upcoming Android home consoles?

7. What Games Will Be Out at Launch?

Launch lineups are ridiculously hard to set up, with games often taking longer to develop than anticipated. At the same time, launching with an anemic list of games doesn't help a console's chances. While lots of publishers and developers partnering with Sony spoke at the presentation, not all were even showing games; Square Enix, Quantic Dream and Media Molecule only showed concepts.

A couple of those titles have been confirmed for launch: first-party Killzone Shadow Fall and Ubisoft's highly anticipated Watch Dogs. While there are still many months for games to pop up between now and launch, Sony is also still promoting huge games for the current-gen PlayStation 3, including Naughty Dog's The Last of Us and Quantic Dreams' Beyond. Let's hope they fill out the lineup much more before launch.

8. When Will We See the Console?

Holiday 2013 is the best answer we could get for that, which is reasonable. We don't expect to get a clear answer on this until June at the earliest, though it's worth noting that Nintendo announced its Wii U launch date only 80 days before it was to arrive in stores.

What questions do you have about the PlayStation 4? Let us know what you're curious about in the comments.

Controller and game images courtesy Sony Computer Entertainment America. Used games image courtesy wlodi.


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8 Vines to Follow During SXSW

Tech trend experts descend upon Austin, Texas, for the Interactive portion of the 2013 South by Southwest conference. This time of year, the city probably has the highest density of early adopters — those most likely to be experimenting with young video-sharing network, Vine.

If you can't trek to Texas this year for SXSW, but you want to feel like a part of the action, here are a few Vine accounts to follow. Experience the conference like you're on the ground — six seconds at a time.

Who are you following? Any great Vines we're missing? Let us know in the comments.

1. Justin Bolognino

2. Omar Gallaga

3. Digital Gypsy

4. Luis Gutierrez

5. Amit Jotwani

6. Austinist Film

7. Sam Decker

8. Mike Bianchini

Composite image by Mashable, Nina Frazier.


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Google Fiber TV Gets HBO and Cinemax

Google Fiber TV customers won't have to look elsewhere for their Game of Thrones fix anymore, as Google has just added HBO and Cinemax channels to its TV lineup.

For $20 per month (tax not included), customers will be able to add an HBO package to their plan. The package, which is available today, includes HBO, HBO2, HBO Signature, HBO Family, HBO Latino, HBO Comedy, and HBO Zone.

And for $10/month (plus tax) customers will be able to enrich their plan with a Cinemax package that includes eight channels: Max, MoreMax, ActionMax, ThrillerMax, WMax, @Max, 5-StarMax, and OuterMax.

Those who want both can get a $40/month (plus tax) premium package including HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and STARZ.

Of course, all of this goes for the lucky folks who can get Google Fiber at all. Google's superfast broadband internet service is currently available only in the Kansas area, with Austin, Texas, being the next city in line. Still, it's nice to see that Google is serious about its TV offering, even if Fiber itself is still far from being widely available.

Image courtesy of HBO


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Is Google Building a Games Console?

The Sony PlayStation 4, Micrsoft Xbox One and Nintendo Wii U can look forward to yet more competition soon, if a new report is to be believed. Google is building a videogame console based on the Android OS, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cites "sources familiar with the matter." Google would neither confirm nor deny the report.

The rumor comes in the same week as the release of the Ouya, a $99 Kickstarter-backed console and controller combo that runs a version of Android and fits into the palm of your hand. It is not, however, quite plug and play.

SEE ALSO Ouya: Fun For Hackers, Not Ready for Retail

If Google were to develop its own console, it could count on a lot of useful feedback from Ouya's passionate user base. It would also have a library of Android games ready to go on day one: there are more than 100,000 games in the Google Play store.

By contrast, the PlayStation 3 currently has around 800 games available. And although admittedly they are nearly all higher production values and far more expensive than the average Android title, Google could be betting there's a market for a wider variety of casual games you can just pick up and play on your TV.

According to the Journal's sources, Google is also working on a digital watch that runs Android, as well as a successor to that much maligned and much delayed orb-like media player, the Nexus Q.

Apple is also rumored to be working on a games console. So that marketplace may soon get very crowded indeed.

Image: Justin Sullivan, Getty News


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The NFL's Best and Worst Fans Online

Rejoice, fellow sports fans. September is almost here, delivering us from the slow and ploddingly uneventful summer months. Soon enough, we'll welcome the NFL back into our homes and hearts when the league's regular season kicks off on Sept. 5.

But let's play a fun game in the meantime. Which NFL teams have the best fans bases? Which NFL teams have the worst fan bases? Such topics are nearly impossible to truly answer — after all, fandom is felt more than figured — but one tech company thinks it's found a way to quantify the question of quality support.

Online ticket broker TicketCity recently used an algorithm to rank the most engaged fan bases in college football, and now it's applied the formula to the pro ranks.

Its secret sauce analyzes fans by both online and IRL metrics to spit out a list of rankings. Twitter follows, Facebook Likes and "talking about" data, game attendance, ticket prices and percentage of stadium capacity filled at home games are all taken into account.

Is this formula the ultimate and final measure of team fandom? No way. Is it a fun way to account for both digital and real-world support, while possibly giving you some bragging rights over your NFL-addicted friends? No doubt. Here below is TicketCity's rankings of NFL fan bases from top to bottom:

  1. Dallas Cowboys

  2. New England Patriots

  3. Green Bay Packers

  4. New York Giants

  5. Pittsburgh Steelers

  6. Chicago Bears

  7. Denver Broncos

  8. New Orleans Saints

  9. Houston Texans

  10. Philadelphia Eagles

  11. Baltimore Ravens

  12. San Francisco 49ers

  13. Washington Redskins

  14. Seattle Seahawks

  15. New York Jets

  16. Atlanta Falcons

  17. Indianapolis Colts

  18. Carolina Panthers

  19. Tennessee Titans

  20. Detroit Lions

  21. Minnesota Vikings

  22. Arizona Cardinals

  23. San Diego Chargers

  24. Buffalo Bills

  25. Cincinnati Bengals

  26. Cleveland Browns

  27. Oakland Raiders

  28. Jacksonville Jaguars

  29. Miami Dolphins

  30. Kansas City Chiefs

  31. St. Louis Rams

  32. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

How does your team stack up? Let us know in the comments.

Image: Ronald Martinez/Getty Images


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A Vision Older Than the Country Itself, Turkey Opens Transcontinental Train

A railway that tunnels under the Bosphorous Strait in Istanbul opened Tuesday on the Turkey's 90th anniversary, making it the first transportation system to connect Europe and Asia.

The Marmaray tunnel, named for a combination of the nearby Sea of Marmara and "ray," the Turkish word for rail, runs 8.5 miles, less than one of which is underwater. The Bosphorous Strait runs through the middle of Istanbul, a city that sits partly in Europe and Asia.

Turkey has dubbed the tunnel the "project of the century," but an Ottoman sultan first had the idea in 1860, 63 years before Turkey became a sovereign nation. Another sultan had architects submit plans in 1891, but construction technology proved insufficient for the task, so the idea was tabled all the way until workers broke ground in 2005.

With Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan as its champion, the modern project was slated for completion by 2009, but it progressed at a turtle's pace because digging was constantly halted by archeological finds such as a fourth century Byzantine port, complete with 34 1,000-year-old ships.

But perhaps the timing worked out. Now, on a historic anniversary for country, a 153-year-old vision has come to life.

Istanbul, a city of around 14 million people, has legendary traffic problems. Before the train, two bridges provided the only way for people to get across the Bosphorous Strait. Government officials hope that the estimated 1.5 million passengers per day will ease congestion.

But traffic will continue, and Erdoğan's vision is far from finished. He wants to build a twin tunnel, this time for cars, as well as a third bridge over the strait. He also has plans to construct the planet's largest airport.

Image: OZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty Images


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Report: Apple Working on Wireless, Solar Charging for iWatch

Apple customers test out iPads and accessories.
Apple customers test out iPads and accessories.
Image: Jeff Pachoud/Getty Images

Apple is reportedly working on a battery for its not-yet-announced iWatch that could be charged both wirelessly and from the sun.

According to a New York Times report, the company is looking to build a smarter battery for its long-rumored smartwatch. The report notes that Apple engineers have experimented with — and are still testing — solar charging for the iPod and iPhone, too.

Apple is eyeing a wireless battery with magnetic induction for the iWatch that wouldn't need to be plugged in, the report stated. Induction charging would allow the device to be charged via a base with electromagnetic fields that would create voltage to fuel the iWatch. This technology is already found in some devices, including Nokia's smartphones. However, the report stated the experiment is still a few years away from launch.

Apple is also reportedly considering a charging concept that would include a solar layer added to the iWatch's curved screen that could give the device power from the sun.

Last week, a report surfaced that Apple's upcoming iOS 8 software will be largely fitness and health-focused and will launch later this year. The news suggests the long-rumored iWatch, which would likely integrate with fitness apps, is nearing a debut, too.


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Researching online music networking in the Web 2.0 era: Soundcloud and the demise of MySpace

On: September 28, 2010
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About Hans Terpstra
I'm a 28 year old student who previously got his BA in filmstudies. The reason I chose to do a MA in new media is because I'm currently in the process of setting up a weblabel with the crew members of RSA, our drum 'n bass group. So indeed, in my spare time I produce electronic music and of course another passion of mine besides that is film.

MySpace passed on?

With the current steady rise of social networking sites, it is by all means an important question to ask how to research these in the field of new media studies. Furthermore, a lot of these sites offer services destined for a particular group of users. Of course when it only concerns interests like geology or animals, one can join a specific group on a general social networking site and form contacts with the people around there. But in other instances, such as the case with musicians is, social networking sites need something much more important; an outlet for letting people’s music be heard to others and therefore creating a solid fan base for the musician (if their music is to be liked by them that is). Like any other social networking site, people can leave their comments for the musician, appreciate or depreciate their material and ‘befriend’ them. First sites like MySpace gave musicians the opportunity to create a ‘musician’s page’ instead of a normal personalized page. It gave musicians the chance to upload some of their music to be streamed, post dates of gigs, promote albums, and network with a broad range of musicians who had also joined the community. Today however, it seems that the users of MySpace are flogging to Facebook, and the musicians are embracing the adaptability of multiple services to make sure all their fans are reached. Therefore I want to give a short outline of how to research social networking sites in the light of the online musician, and how he or she can build on a career by using a site like Soundcloud to achieve this. I will first outline how musicians started used social networking sites since the emergence of Web 2.0, and then outline what aspects of a site like Soundcloud are viable when researching music networking sites in general.

A little history of musician’s struggling on the internet is in order here. Before Web 2.0, there were hardly any people convinced of the fact that they would buy all their music off the internet one day instead of in a shop. There also weren’t many musicians who thought that their sole existence of their musical career would one day rely on promoting themselves online. A musician’s website was more a ‘visitiors card’ where you could order CD’s, check out tour dates and look at their discography, biography, and enjoy sounds and pictures. But in this age of social networking, a band’s website has become essentially obsolete. Artists should be right in the network of their fans in this 2.0 era, make them feel like they’re their ‘friend’ (based on the assumption that a musician has to accept a user and this therefore creates a form of interactivity between the fan and artist). Or as David Beer puts it, social networking sites are actually quite radically reworking the definition of the word ‘friendship’ since one can have 60.000 friends on their Facebook page and about 8 physical friends in the physical friends, stressing the importance of separating these. Despite the questionable nature of the word ‘friend’ in this context, acoording to Ross (et al) this is one of the core aspects of social networking since it is designed to hold stronger relationships with people who have similar interests in a particular area. A website with a simple e-mail address for contacting is too distant in this day and age of piracy and declining music sales, requiring artists to get closer to their fan base. Or at least make it looks like it. Tim Wall and Andrew Dubber argue that becoming a fan of an artist is basically a socializing phenomenon on its own, since before the internet and social networking sites emerged, fans expressed their fandom in social activities like making mixtapes for other fans, writing fanzines and organizing conventions. All this seems to happen online now through social networking sites, requiring less organizational capacity in terms of spatial, temporal and financial means.

Myspace for musicians logoThis concept was first established with the social networking site MySpace and their profiles for musicians. Add to this the emergence of YouTube (all these phenomena were more or less established around 2005) which could integrate videos of musicians onto their MySpace page, and all other advantages like finding similar people who like the artist, post instant feedback, and get subscriptions on newsletters. But as we all know now, a social networking site not coming along with the times is doomed to fail sooner or later, and it seems that MySpace is dying rapidly now, being terribly beaten by services like Facebook and Twitter. And looking at a site like Facebook one couldn’t wonder; MySpace doesn’t look very attractive with its bold lines, endless scrolling and confusing frames all over the place. An old-looking website which is insufficiently customizable to meet up to the soft, slick designed sites like Facebook with their easy look and bubbly fonts.

Facebook logoMusicians, obliged to leave the dying world of MySpace, have to automatically move on to the new developments of social networking simply because their fans are moving on. Most professional musicians now reach their fan base by Twitter and Facebook, since these are simply the biggest social networking sites now. But do they offer anything like ‘musician pages’ as MySpace had? Not only that, but it also offers customization from a social networking service like Twitter or Soundcloud, and it is this power to offer adaptability with sites like these that accounts for a large part to Facebook’s glory.

Soundcloud logoIt is here that Soundcloud comes in. It’s essentially a tool for musicians to get their music around the previously mentioned social networking sites and forums in a clear and professional way. In this way, it is not a wholly packed social networking site like MySpace or Facebook, but basically a means to give a listener more visual and time-related overview of the artist’s music. Visually, listeners can see the waveform of the song, and pinpoint certain parts of the song in the waveform to highlight, such as a beautiful phrase or particular moment that speaks to the listener, which are called time-linked tags. Furthermore, these visualized songs can be implemented anywhere, in forums, Twitter, and of course Facebook (see the image below for one of my own songs presented in Soundcloud fashion). According to an article in Computer Music from last year, more than 250.000 users have joined the network including high-profiled artists like Beck and Moby. It is of course here where research questions begin to rise, for instance why musicians are flogging to Soundcloud in big numbers and why a one-stop approach like MySpace had its days, apart from its terribly outdated design.

Gloom by Reactor Grits

A visualized song as provided by Soundcloud

First of all, when conducting research on musicians using social networking sites, it is important to stress the easy of use and overview of these sites, or it’s GUI (Graphical User Interface) that they employ. One of the main reasons a site like MySpace is losing the battle is obviously because its GUI is looking confusing, incoherent and disseminated; it jumps with one click from page to page and the separated sections sometimes seem to look all over the place. A site like Facebook stays more on the same page, and clicking to perform actions just makes a small change on that page without being all over the place. It is also much more graphical, compact, and easier on the eye. MySpace’s overwhelming backgrounds with frames sometimes completely disappearing in them made it look like an epileptic’s nightmare. From this point of view, we can also understand the virtues of Soundcloud. The waveform which can be implemented anywhere makes a song easy to navigate for certain parts, more so to pinpoint. This all stresses the iconic aspect of Web 2.0, where both text and sounds can be made into icons and visualizations, making them more clear and intelligible and thus easier to access for a broader audience. Fans want to see the visualized song to have better structural understanding and to highlight parts which can be communicated easily to other fans to show what part of a song springs out.

Facebook's GUI
Facebook’s GUI

Secondly, the adaptability of services like Soundcloud and Twitter into sites like Facebook, can give musicians the option of just choosing the best way to satisfy their fans, however they see fit. Soundcloud itself for instance stresses it has no rivalry wit established social networking sites, but do offer better copyright guarantees to an artist’s music than Facebook as many argue. In this way, musicians can choose the applications which suit them best from their own point of view and be not solely dependent of one single social networking site providing all the services and accompanying rules. This can be seen as another new aspect of Web 2.0, where users can implement multiple services from many sites focusing on diverse aspects of social networking on one central webpage, a convergence of social networking services if you will. In this light it can also be argued that MySpace is losing to Facebook because its lack of customization and adaptability.

Soundcloud embedded into Facebook
Combining Facebook with Soundcloud

A third and very important aspect is the distribution of music by social networking sites. Where sites like MySpace and Facebook pose limitations on file size, certain file formats and can show a considerable decrease in sound quality after uploading, Soundcloud only offers a limitation of uploading a maximum of five songs per month but virtually accepts audio files from any size in any format, which can also be downloaded by others unaltered in quality as the producer intended. If a producer fears piracy or copyright infringement, the download option can be turned off and the song will being downgraded in quality to the extent that it’s not suitable for musical theft but more than acceptable as a high quality listening stream. The process of uploading is, especially in comparison to file sharing protocols like FTP, straightforward and easy with Souncloud taking care of most of the things considerable. This makes clear that Souncloud is taking things aboard that producers stress as important, such as piracy and copyright infringement, straight away into the process. An important virtue of this specialization of adaptable services is thus that it tries to get to the bottom of the field it is representing, something that a site like Facebook finds harder to do since there are too many fields to consider.

Uploading music in Soundcloud
Uploading music in Soundcloud

For now it hopefully is being clearer what to look at in musical online communities of the Web 2.0 era we seem to be still living in. An important shift I wanted to stress to look out for when carrying out research in this era, are aspects like visualization and icons replacing text and even sound not only for better universal understanding, but for easier pinpointing of certain aspects within the visualized text and sound. Another core aspect of the Web 2.0 era, the emergence of outsourcing certain elements of a social networking site which offers more specialization and depth in achieving one’s goal on their personalized page, decentralizes on one hand the capabilities of a social networking site but on the other makes it a space for convergence of many open source services who provide a more in depth service for the goals of the user. These services seem to have exact knowledge of what an artist is looking for whilst trying to reach their fans online, not only by providing them a means of presenting their music in a professional and clear way, but also by protecting their own interests in terms of copyright infringement. This goes hand in hand with easy distribution of the music itself, and its presentation and linking visually to any place online where a fan base can be expanded.

Beer, David. ‘Making Friends With Jarvis Cocker. Music Culture in the Context of Web 2.0.’ In: Cultural Sociology, 2:2 (2008): p. 223-241.

Computer Music, 145 (2009): p. 78-79.

Ross, Craig, et al. ‘Personality and motivations associated with Facebook use.’ In: Computers in Human Behavior, 25:2 (2009): p. 578-586.

Wall, Tim, Andrew Dubber. ‘Experimenting with Fandom, Live Music, and the Internet. Applying Insights from Music Fan Culture to New Media Production.’ In: Journal of New Music Research, 39:2 (2010): p. 159-169.

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Tag Archives: calendar decal

He who fails to plan is planning to fail

Hello!  I am so sorry for not having a fresh new post in more than a week!  Agh, but I promise I have a good story to tell in an upcoming post. Now on to today’s post:

Living in small places, such as a dorm or a small studio apartment, can be quite a challenge sometimes.  It takes a certain skill to balance how to personalize your place without cluttering it up.  Now, some may think that you should only bring the bare necessities to college, and that’s fine, but for me, I truly believe that a dorm should feel a little bit like home.  It should be comfortable and personal, a place of rest for your body and mind.  With that being said, I have finally come up with a new topic to talk about for the next couple of weeks: my dorm.  Basically I’m going to show how I’ve set up my dorm room, how I organize it, how I decorate it, and things that I have found useful or not so useful to bring to college.

I live in a double, which means that there are two people in the room.  We each have a twin bed and a desk at the end in front of our closets.  We also have a 3 drawer chest that doubles as a side table next to our beds and a two drawer storage area underneath our bed.

Today, I’ll be focussing on my desk- arguably the most important place for a successful college life.  For my desk, I like to keep it solely school related.  I find that having too many things stuffed into drawers is distracting and may cause me to lose important assignments.  I also like to keep my desk top clear except for my desk lamp, my computer, and all my school books (having them all in front of me serves as a constant reminder of the work I need to do).  I also have a router (we don’t have wifi because of our ugly concrete walls) that I actually keep on the post of my bed.

My cute little stuffed monkey is the only piece of decor I keep on my desk. 🙂

I also love using 3m command hooks.  These are super useful in creating extra space to hang various items so you don’t lose them, while not damaging walls as to comply with most dorm rules.  At the side of my desk I keep my school bag on a command hook (Michael Kors Quilted Hamilton).  This is a great spot so that I can grab it on the way out of my room and unpack it at the end of the day.

On my other bed post, I keep reusable grocery bags since the county I live in has outlawed plastic shopping bags.

My desk has 3 drawers, 2 on top are a good size, and the bottom one is huge (I know it’s cut off in the picture, but it’s about double the depth of the other 2).

In my first drawer I keep my writing utensils, which for this semester is just a pack of my favorite Pilot G2 ink pens in 8 different colors.  I also keep highlighters, dry erase board markers, some sharpies, scissors, tape, stapler, paperclips, and other various office supplies that I reach for on a frequent basis.  I bought the white drawer organizer fromt the dollar store and I highly recommend using something like this to organize school supplies versus a pencil holder.

In my second drawer, I keep my four folders for my classes, which I have talked about before in this post.  They are the Mead trapper keeper folders in various colors.  I also keep two sets of cards in case I need to write a letter to anyone.

In the bottom drawer, I keep a billabong backpack, a Mickey Mouse binder, a Mead binder/notebook, and my Michael Kors laptop sleeve.

For the wall next to my desk, I have put up a whiteboard decal calendar and memo board.  I also have 2 more command hooks to hang my keys and umbrella.

I told you those concrete walls were ugly!

That’s how I have my desk area set up.  I’m quite satisfied with it and have found it an effective studying area that keeps me motivated and on top of my tasks.  How do you keep your desk area organized?

Also, be sure check out my giveaway here.

Material Detox


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Let’s Go To Early A.A.

Let’s Go to Early A.A.
Revised and Updated in July, 2012

By Dick B.
Copyright 2012. All rights reserved

Their Society’s Names and Varied Approaches

The phrase “early A.A.”—which I often now call “old school A.A.” — refers to the early fellowships and meetings held by AAs in Akron, Ohio, between 1935 and 1939. They called themselves a Christian Fellowship. They were frequently likened to First Century Christianity because so many of their principles and practices were similar to those of the Apostles as recorded in the Book of Acts.

Some called them the alcoholic squad. Some thought A.A. itself emerged from and was associated with “A First Century Christian Fellowship” (also known as the Oxford Group). Some said they were the “Alcoholic Squad of the Oxford Group.” Most later wanted to call their fellowship “The James Club”–so named for their favored Bible book, the Book of James. On the East Coast a few AAs were regularly attending Oxford Group meetings often led by the Reverend Sam Shoemaker, Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in New York. Shortly thereafter (in 1939 and the early 1940’s), Cleveland AAs called their Fellowship “Alcoholics Anonymous,” naming it after A.A.’s newly published basic text Alcoholics Anonymous. Their founder Clarence H. Snyder said that they took with them to Cleveland “most of the old program” plus the Big Book, the Twelve Steps, the Oxford Group’s Four Absolutes, and the Holy Bible. The Cleveland AAs quickly became the fastest growing group in America, emerged from one group to thirty in a year, And were actually recording a ninety-three percent success rate with alcoholics who really tried.

The First Three AAs – Christians All

Bill W. could be called A.A. Number One, and he became a Christian when he went to the altar at Calvary Rescue Mission in New York and accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Shortly, still drinking, he went to Towns Hospital deciding along the way that he had better call on Jesus for help (to whom he and many others referred as the “Great Physician”). Upon arrival Bill cried out to God for help, instantly experiencing a blazing and “indescribably white light” that filled his room. He sensed the presence of God. And he said to himself, Bill, you are a free man. This is the God of the Scriptures. And Bill never drank again.

Dr. Bob could be called A.A. Number Two, and he had been a devoted Christian since his boyhood days in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. He met with Bill W. after what he and others believed was an answer to his prayer for deliverance. The two men hit it off. And Bob declared that Bill had been cured by the very means he had been trying to employ, but he had never grasped or used the “service to others” technique which Bill had learned from his Oxford Group meetings in New York. In a short time, Dr. Bob had his last drink, and the two men set out to find another drunk to help.

A.A. Number Three, attorney Bill D., was the man they found. Bill had always believed in God, been a deacon in his church, and a Sunday school teacher. Bill W. and Dr. Bob told him he could be cured if he turned to God for help and then started helping others.

Each of the first three AAs recovered and was cured at a time when there were no Twelve Steps, no Twelve Traditions, no Big Books, no drunkalogs, and no meetings as we know them today. All three declared in writing that they had been cured of their malady. See Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., pp. 179-181 and 191.

The Early A.A. Program the Pioneers Developed

Interestingly, all three of the original AAs believed in God, had accepted Christ, and had studied the Bible. Their own techniques were individually very simple: (1) Decide to quit drinking for good. (2) Turn to God for help. (3) Begin helping others in turn. But all three wanted to be able to pass the recovery idea along to others.

They drew on the early Christian techniques of their Christian forbears—the Great Evangelists like Dwight L. Moody; the Gospel Rescue Missions (where Bill himself had accepted Christ); the conversion meetings of Young Men’s Christian Association lay brethren (who converted a major portion of Dr. Bob’s boyhood village), the Salvation Army’s one-on-one outreach to derelicts with Salvation, a Bible, and a call to join what some called “God’s Army (as vividly portrayed in Harold Begbie’s popular book Twice-Born Men), and the intense meetings of the Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor (in which Dr. Bob had been active as a youth)
Gradually, they developed their own types of daily meetings. They fellowshipped together daily, studied God’s Word daily, prayed together daily, sought God’s guidance daily, read daily Bible devotionals, led others to Christ, and broke bread together.

By November of 1937, a small group of forty pioneers had attained continuous sobriety, of both short and long duration. Bill and Bob concluded that God had shown them how the message could be passed along to others. And they claimed a 75% rate of success. This, in turn, caused Bill to seek and obtain authority to write a book about the program. And the program was investigated and then summarized by an agent of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.—Frank Amos. You can find that summary on page 131 of A.A.’s own DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers. In The Dick B. Christian Recovery Guide, 4th ed., 2012, we have laid out some sixteen principles and practices that the pioneers used to implement the summarized program.

Some Key Features in the Old School A.A. Program

Unlike the circumstances today, recovery often began when a distraught wife would seek out A.A.’s co-founder Dr. Bob Smith in Akron with the desperate hope that he and what he called the “Christian Fellowship” could “fix” the seemingly errant alcoholic spouse.

As implied in A.A.’s textbook, there often followed a preliminary investigation with the alcoholic’s family of his behavior, background, religious leanings, and degree of alcoholic sickness. And the “pigeon” (as he was frequently called) was then usually hospitalized in Akron City Hospital in the earliest days. He was “defogged” in a process which involved tapering him off with paraldehyde and whiskey. He was allowed only the Holy Bible as reading matter in his hospital room. And Dr. Bob would visit the patient daily and also read the Bible with him.

Very soon, he was visited by a veritable army of recovered alcoholics who told him of their own drinking history and recovery. They told him that Dr. Bob had the answer to his problem, but the visiting drunks did not disclose this “answer.” Dr. Bob himself usually visited the newcomer daily, explaining to him the medical aspects of his alcoholism problem. Finally, after several days, Dr. Bob gave the man the “solution.” The patient was asked if he believed in God. And only one answer was acceptable if the man wished to get well. If the man responded that he did believe in God, he was told to get out of bed, get down on his knees, and surrender to God. This meant accepting Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. This was accompanied by a prayer led by Dr. Bob. And, having done this, the “pigeon” was discharged from the hospital, often given a Bible, and then told to find drunks to “fix.”

In the Midwest, the newcomer’s next move was frequently to a home–the home of Dr. Bob, Wally G., Tom L., and later, Clarence S. and others. In the East, drunks were housed in Bill Wilson’s home, but (as Bill and his wife said) not one ever got sober there through the year 1939. In fact, both Bill and his wife acknowledged that they had not succeeded in getting anyone to “stay sober” in Bill’s first six months of witnessing.

In the Midwest, the alcoholics lived Christian fellowship in a very spiritual atmosphere. If you look at what the Apostles are recorded as doing in the First Century, you will see the parallels between their principles and practices and those of the A.A. Akron Christian Fellowship. And more than one independent observer remarked, “Why this is First Century Christianity!”

Each morning, there was Quiet Time. And it was conducted by Dr. Bob’s wife, Anne Ripley Smith. It was attended by AAs and their families. Anne would begin the meeting with prayer, read from the Bible, lead the group in prayer, and then have the assemblage get quiet and seek God’s guidance. Anne also often shared from the journal she began in 1933 and continued to build through 1929. The groups and individuals also frequently used daily devotionals such as The Upper Room a Methodist Bible study quarterly. They also used The Runner’s Bible, by Nora Smith Holm; My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers; Victorious Living, by E. Stanley Jones; and Daily Strength for Daily Needs. There was frequent discussion of every-day living problems in terms of the Bible’s applicability to their solution.

There was frequently counseling with Dr. Bob and his wife, Anne Ripley Smith. Daily reading of the Scriptures was stressed. Daily individual reading of devotionals such as The Upper Room and The Runner’s Bible, and many other Christian books of the day was much encouraged. One A.A. historian commented he felt the lives of A.A. pioneers and their families seemed to be one continuous meeting.

There were daily meetings, just as the First Century Christians fellowshipped together daily. Meetings themselves were not considered essential, but not daily. Quiet Time was. Once a week there was a “regular meeting.” Not actually like a typical Oxford Group meeting, it was even called a “clandestine lodge’ of the Oxford Group. Regular meetings were Oxford Group meetings, but not particularly in form and in substance because often the drunks would meet in one room, and the Oxford Group people in another. One day each week, a “setup” meeting was held. God’s guidance was sought through prayer and listening; and a leader for the regular meeting was chosen as was a topic for that meeting. The regular meetings were, in Akron, held on Wednesdays at the home of Oxford Group leaders T. Henry and Clarace Williams. The Williams couple had dedicated their home to God and, with their Oxford Group friends such as Henrietta Seiberling, were also dedicated to helping alcoholics recover. The meetings rarely if ever involved discussion of drinking or alcoholism. But they invariably involved surrenders for those new people who had not already surrendered to God at the hospital or at Dr. Bob’s home.

The “real surrender” was a must for newcomers. They were taken upstairs with two “elders” praying over them. They accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, asked God to take alcohol out of their lives, and strengthen them to live according to cardinal Christian principles.

There were frequent social gatherings, particularly on Saturday nights, providing support and comfort for the alcoholic and family members. Oxford Group literature was widely distributed in the Fellowship, and T. Henry had tables in his furnace room where Oxford Group and other Christian literature was available for the taking. Dr. Bob himself frequently loaned out Christian literature to the alcoholics and their families. He kept a journal of books he circulated; and he often questioned a borrower (when a book was returned) as to what that person had read and learned.

Descriptions of the content of the weekly fellowship meetings has varied. Variations seem based upon who was providing the account, who had led a particular meeting, and what particular time period in the early days was involved. But there were some common ingredients. Bill V. H. (who got sober in early 1937) estimated the proportion of Oxford Group to non-Oxford Group people in Akron at about 50-50. He recalled that Oxford Group literature was passed out. And he specifically remembered: “How we all challenged ourselves on the Four Absolutes of the Oxford Movement [sic].” Clarence S. (who got sober in early 1938) said the pioneers’ whole recovery program was based on the Bible and the Oxford Group. Wally G. (who got sober in late 1938) said: “T. Henry’s meetings ran more or less along Oxford Group lines. . . . Early meetings used Oxford Group terminology witnessing, stories, restitutions, shared confessions.” Dr. Bob’s children said the little group of recovering people formally met at the Oxford Group meetings but kept in constant communication with each other at get-togethers in their homes. Dr. Bob’s and Anne’s home was the hub. And there was also much colloquy by telephone.

Meetings opened with prayer and with reading from the Bible (or Scriptures mentioned in the Bible devotionals such as The Upper Room and My Utmost for His Highest). Sometimes discussion topics would be on a Bible subject, sometimes on a topic in the devotional, and occasionally on some other topic vital to the lives of those present. There was Quiet Time with prayer and listening for divine guidance. Frequently there was prayer in the meeting itself or during a surrender upstairs to meet a particular person’s needs. Dr. Bob kept the meeting focused on the newcomer, usually making an announcement on that topic. Arrangements were made to take a team to the hospital to see the newcomers still hospitalized. Meetings closed with the Lord’s Prayer in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (of which it was a part)—the Sermon itself being considered the basic spiritual philosophy of the Fellowship. Names, phone numbers, and addresses were exchanged. Social time followed. And, in the later days in Akron, members went to Kistler’s Donut Shop for sociality. They often broke bread together in the homes.

Whether done at the hospital, at Dr. Bob’s home, or at T. Henry’s, surrender was a requirement for every newcomer. This “surrender” meant surrender on your knees to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Particularly at T. Henry’s, a new man was taken upstairs, was told to get on his knees, was prayed for by Dr. Bob and others, and then became born again through confession of Jesus Christ (See Romans 10:9). The man asked God to take alcohol out of his life; and there is evidence that this surrender process came from James 5:13-16.

Usually overlooked by A.A. histories has been the vital role played by Dr. Bob’s wife Anne Ripley Smith. Anne had been a teacher and was well-versed in the Bible. She was legendary in her kindness to, and work with, newcomers and their families. They often confided in her when they did not feel free to do so with Dr. Bob or others. Many regularly participated with Anne in Quiet Times lasting more than an hour early each morning at the Smith home. Anne often communicated with people by phone, and she always attended meetings. Possibly the most important single part of her work, however, involved the material she recorded in, and taught from, the spiritual journal she compiled between 1933 and 1939. In it, she had many comments on the Bible, Oxford Group principles, Christian literature to read, and most of the specific principles that wound up in the Twelve Steps. She staunchly recommended the Bible as the source book for daily reading. She also recommended reading on the life of Jesus Christ, Oxford Group life-changing stories, and other relevant Christian literature of the day. See Dick B., Anne Smith’s Journal 1933-1939 (www.dickb.com/annesm.shtml.)

Anne and Dr. Bob were fervent Bible students. So much so that when he was asked a question about the program, Dr. Bob would often ask the person, “What does the Good Book say?” Dr. Bob’s and Anne’s son said that in the early days the “God’s Big Book [the Bible]” was the reference book in the Smith home.

Bill Wilson called Anne Smith the “Mother of A.A.” and a “Founder.” And he dubbed Dr. Bob the “Prince of all Twelfth-steppers”–the AA cofounder who personally helped over 5,000 alcoholics without pay. The Akron A.A. team of Dr. Bob and Anne has never been equaled in personal, spiritual recovery outreach. It was truly the heart of A.A.’s spiritual beginnings.

Sources: Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd ed., DR.BOB and the Good Oldtimers, The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, The Akron Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous, Anne Smith’s Spiritual Journal, That Amazing Grace, The Good Book and The Big Book, Turning Point: A History of Early A.A.’s Spiritual Roots and Successes, Children of the Healer; and two important resources by Dick B. and Ken B.. The Dick B. Christian Recovery Guide, 4th ed.; and “Stick with the Winners,” a 27 video class that can be accessed online.

dickb@dickb.com; http://www.dickb.com.

Gloria Deo

About mauihistorian

Uses pen name Dick B.: Writer, Historian, Retired attorney, Bible student, CDAAC, and active and recovered A.A. member with over 25 years of continuous sobriety. Published 42 titles and over 650 articles on the history of Alcoholics Anonymous and the Christian Recovery Movement. www.dickb.com
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Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Arevik is free

This is old news, but still worth reporting.

In my April 20 post Help Arevik: innocent, pregnant, imprisoned, I wrote about young Armenian woman Arevik Shmavonyan, who wished to reunite with her beloved (and father of her child) David in Bulgaria but was instead detained at Busmanci for overstaying her visa.

On July 22, Arevik was released (hattip Svetla Encheva). Svetla made and published in Facebook some beautiful photos, one of which I cropped and posted above.
I hope everything is all right with Arevik, David and their baby. According to my calculations, s/he must already have been born, but I cannot find any information about this.
Update: On Nov. 17, Arevik gave birth to a boy who will be named Erik. Thanks to Svetla for keeping us informed.

1 comment:

sexshop said...

This can't work in reality, that's what I think.


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Judge King's Update on Compliance with MBTA/BCIL Accessibility Settlement

Meeting Info

Date: December 6, 2017 at 1:00pm - 3:00pm   Add to Calendar

Location: Second Floor, Transportation Board Room - 10 Park Pl, Boston, MA

Attendees: Representative from various departments

Event Description

Judge Patrick King will be hosting a public hearing to discuss the MBTA's progress towards complying with the MBTA/BCIL settlement. Please come and share your feedback, questions, and/or concerns.

This meeting space is accessible to people with disabilities. American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters, CART, and assisted listening devices will be present. If you need a reasonable accommodation (such as handouts in alternate formats, etc.) and/or language assistance to fully participate, please contact Kurt Echols at MassDOT at 617-222-5254 or on or before December 1, 2017. Such accommodations will be provided free of charge.


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 Applications Now Being Accepted for Master Gardener Course | Montgomery County Government

Alert:Due to inclement weather and possible hazardous driving conditions, Montgomery County offices open one hour late Wednesday, January 17.

County News

Montgomery County Government
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(  Map  |  Directions  )
Clarksville, TN 37040
(931) 648-8482
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Applications Now Being Accepted for Master Gardener Course

The Montgomery County Extension Office is now accepting applications for the spring Master Gardener course. All classes will be held at the Montgomery County Extension office on Wednesday's from 10 am – 2 pm beginning March 4th and ending May 27th.

Please keep in mind that this is a volunteer based organization that depends greatly on your time and commitment to the program. You will be required to complete 40 hours of volunteer service within the first year after the class sessions to receive your official Master Gardener certification. The volunteer hours and responsibilities will be reviewed on orientation night to clarify any questions.

Please read the followingvery carefully:

  • Applications will be accepted on a first-come-first-serve basis. Applications are available at the county extension office or may be printed below.
  • Completed applications & payment must be received by February 25th.
  • The first sixty (60) completed applications received will be automatically accepted into the class. All others will be place on a waiting list and notified if there is an opening.
  • The fee for the class is $125.00 or $150.00 forcouples. Please remit payment with your signed application! Checks are payable to Montgomery County Extension.
  • Once yourapplication has been received, you will be sent a letter notifying you whether or not you have been accepted into the class this year.

Send completed applications & payment to:

Karla Kean, Extension Agent

Montgomery County Extension

1030 Cumberland HeightsRoad, STE A

Clarksville, TN 37040

Please feel free to call or email Karla with any questions at kkean@utk.edu or 931-648-5725.


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Massive Wireless Security Protocol Vulnerability Disclosed

A major flwa in the WPA2 wireless network protocol was disclosed by security researchers this week.

The Belgian researcher who discovered the weakness, Mathy Vanhoef of KU Leuven, dubbed the new category of attacks "KRACK" for "key reinstallation attacks."

KRACK exploits a flaw in the way a client joins a WPA2-protected network, a procedure known as the four-way handshake. Critically, Vanhoef noted that the flaw exists in properly configured wireless networks. "The weaknesses are in the Wi-Fi standard itself, and not in individual products or implementations. Therefore, any correct implementation of WPA2 is likely affected," Vanhoef wrote on a Web site created to explain the vulnerability,

By manipulating and replaying cryptographic handshake messages, KRACK tricks the victim system into re-installing keys that are already in use, Vanhoef wrote. While the attack does not reveal the wireless network password, it does allow some to all of the network traffic to be visible to an attacker, depending on the encryption protocol in use.

Like any wireless attack, KRACK requires the attacker to be within wireless signal range of the target, and only circumvents the encryption provided by WPA2, not the encryption of the underlying data using Transport Layer Security or other types of protection. (In a proof-of-concept video on his Web site, however, Vanhoef used the SSLStrip tool in combination with KRACK methods to simulate a man-in-the-middle attack to view an Android phone user's encrypted Internet traffic.)

"Attackers can use this novel attack technique to read information that was previously assumed to be safely encrypted. This can be abused to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, photos, and so on," Vanhoef said. "Depending on the network configuration, it is also possible to inject and manipulate data. For example, an attacker might be able to inject ransomware or other malware into websites."

Vanhoef began notifying affected vendors in mid-July and had originally planned to go public with details in August, but began working with industry organizations as the scope and scale of the problem became evident.

The coordinated public release of the details of the attack Monday morning caused a flurry of activity in the security community. A CERT Vulnerability Note #228519 titled, "[WPA2] handshake traffic can be manipulated to induce nonce and session key reuse," went out Monday with a list of 15 affected vendors, including Cisco, Intel, Juniper Networks, Red Hat, Toshiba and others. Vanhoef's own tests found Android, Linux, Apple, Windows, OpenBSD, MediaTek, Linksys and others vulnerable, although the problems are particularly acute for Android and Linux.

Because of the early notice, Microsoft has already issued fixes for the flaw, a Microsoft spokesperson said in an e-mail: "Microsoft released security updates on October 10th and customers who have Windows Update enabled and applied the security updates, are protected automatically. We updated to protect customers as soon as possible, but as a responsible industry partner, we withheld disclosure until other vendors could develop and release updates."

In a post on his personal blog, Alex Hudson, CTO at the Iron Group, ranked his impressions of risk by platform. "Attacks against Android Phones are very easy!" he wrote. "Best to turn off wifi on these devices until fixes are applied. Windows and Mac OS users are much safer. Updates for other OSes will come quite quickly, the big problem is embedded devices for whom updates are slow / never coming."

Hudson also pointed out that the main attack was against clients, not access points. "Updating your router may or may not be necessary: updating your client devices absolutely is! Keep your laptops patched, and particularly get your Android phone updated."

Meanwhile, vendors that are focused on other layers of security were quick to pounce on the incident as further evidence of the need for multifaceted security approaches.

"There's no stopping users from connecting to public Wi-Fi hotspots, so it's up to the enterprise to layer on protection mechanisms. This vulnerability speaks to the importance of ensuring that all connections from endpoints leverage strong encryption, such as the latest versions of Transport Layer Security (TLS). Intermediary proxies can ensure that regardless of what the application supports, all connections from end-user devices leverage strong encryption," said Rich Campagna, CEO of Bitglass, in a statement.

While WPA2 has not been impervious to attack, the flaw represents a significant chink in the armor of one of the more robust quarters of computer security. Previous attacks on WPA2 mostly involved hitting surrounding technologies, such as vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), or required either password-guessing or an attack from a table of hashed passwords that could only succeed if the correct password was already included.

It will be possible to issue patches in a backward-compatible manner, meaning that KRACK doesn't create a need for a WPA3, Vanhoef noted. Nonetheless, the combination of unpatched and unpatchable systems mean attacks based on this new method are likely to be a factor in wireless network attacking and defending for a long time to come.

About the Author

Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

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'Hitchhiking' viral therapy deals a double blow to cancer

June 13, 2012, University of Leeds

Scientists have shown how a promising viral therapy that delivers a double blow to cancer can sneak up on tumours undetected by hitching a ride on blood cells.

The work, led by researchers from the University of Leeds and The Institute of Research (ICR), reveals how the 'hitch-hiking' is shielded from in the that might otherwise neutralise its anti-cancer properties.

The findings, from a study in patients, suggest that viral therapies like this can be effectively injected into the bloodstream during routine outpatient appointments - just like standard agents – making them potentially suitable for use against a wide range of cancers.

Reovirus is a promising new way of treating cancer that attacks the disease on two fronts. Not only does the virus kill directly, but it also triggers an immune response - like a vaccine – that helps eliminate residual cancer cells.

Many patient trials of reovirus are currently underway, including several in the UK led by the same University of Leeds and ICR scientists. Up until now, however, doctors have not been sure about the best way to deliver the experimental treatment. Although the virus can be injected directly into tumours, this is a relatively complicated procedure requiring considerable technical expertise. This delivery method also makes it difficult to treat tumours deep within the body, such as the liver, lungs, pancreas, and stomach.

Researchers had been concerned that reovirus might not reach the tumours it was supposed to treat if it was delivered intravenously, like standard are. They had expected that antibodies in the blood would mop up and neutralise the virus before it arrived at its intended target.

But now tests on a small group of patients have shown that this is not the case. In fact, not only did the virus stay active during its journey through the bloodstream but it also homed in on cancer cells, ignoring nearby healthy tissue.

University of Leeds' researcher Professor Alan Melcher, who receives funding from Cancer Research UK, jointly led the study. He said: "It seems that reovirus is even cleverer than we had thought. By piggybacking on , the virus is managing to hide from the body's natural immune response and reach its target intact. This could be hugely significant for the uptake of viral therapies like this in clinical practice."

Dr Kevin Harrington from The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, who jointly led the study, said: "Viral treatments like reovirus are showing real promise in patient trials. This study gives us the very good news that it should be possible to deliver these treatments with a simple injection into the bloodstream. It would have been a significant barrier to their widespread use if they could only have been injected into the tumour, but the finding that they can hitch a ride on blood cells will potentially make them relevant to a broad range of cancers. We also confirmed that reovirus was specifically targeting cancer cells and leaving normal cells alone, which we hope should mean fewer side-effects for patients."

The study involved 10 patients with advanced bowel cancer who were due to have surgery on tumours that had spread to the liver. All patients were given up to five doses of the reovirus in the weeks before surgery as outpatients.

Blood tests carried out shortly after treatment found the active virus associated with blood cells. Samples taken later showed that the hitch-hiking virus did not overstay its welcome with the cells and was cleared quickly from the system.

When researchers looked at pieces of tissue removed during surgery up to four weeks later, they found 'viral factories' and active virus in the , but not normal liver. This confirmed that the reovirus had been delivered specifically to the cancer after being injected into the .

Dr Julie Sharp, senior science information manager at UK, which part-funded the research, said: "This promising study shows that reovirus can trick the body's defences to reach and kill cancer cells and suggests that it could be given to patients using a simple injection. We look forward to seeing how this research develops and if this could one day become part of standard cancer treatment."

Full details of the work are published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Explore further: Harmless human virus may be able to boost the effects of chemotherapy

More information: Adair, RA, "Cell Carriage, Delivery, and Selective Replication of an Onocolytic Virus in Tumor in Patients," Science Translational Medicine, 2012.

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text:
New molecule with anti-cancer and anti-metastatic properties

September 4, 2012, CNRS
Liminib stabilizes the microtubules. Microtubules are filamentous structures that can be visualized using specific antibodies. Thus, in a same cell, the total microtubules can be on labeled in red and the stabilized microtubules in green. Unlike the control cells, numerous green, stabilized microtubules can be observed in the Liminib treated cells. The scale bar (in white, bottom right hand photo) represents 10 µm. © Lafanechère/CNRS

A new molecule with anti-cancer and anti-metastatic properties has been discovered by teams from CNRS, CEA, the Institut Curie and Inserm, in collaboration with Australian and British researchers. This anticancer drug acts on cells resistant to conventional chemotherapy thanks to an entirely novel action mechanism. It targets not only the multiplication of cells but also their mobility and thus could prevent the formation of metastases. Published in Cancer Research, the results obtained in vitro and on animals could, in the medium term, lead to the development of alternative anti-cancer treatments.

The appearance of resistant tumors considerably limits the efficacy of conventional chemotherapy treatments. In addition, the dissemination of metastases is the most frequent cause of death of patients suffering from cancer. It is for this reason that the researchers explored various , particularly the development of that are active on resistant cancers and which prevent the formation of metastases.

It took nearly ten years for a group of biologists and chemists from CNRS, CEA, the Institut Curie and , in collaboration with Australian and British scientists, to succeed in their quest of discovering and characterizing a new anti-cancer and anti-metastatic molecule. To do so, the researchers used a robotic high-throughput screening platform: nearly 30,000 molecules were tested until one from the chemical library of the Institut Curie exhibited the sought-after activity on tumorous cells and was thus selected. Known as Liminib (or Pyr1), this new molecule has been identified as an inhibitor of LIM Kinase (LIMK). Overexpressed in invasive carcinoma, LIMK represents a relevant that is generating considerable interest in numerous laboratories. This kinase is known to regulate the dynamic of the internal skeleton of the cell, constituted of a network of fibers, including filaments of actin and microtubules that allow the cells to move and multiply, two properties actively used by cancerous cells.

Liminib is thus the first LIMK inhibitor discovered that exhibits anti-cancer properties. This molecule blocks the mobility of the cells by disorganizing the cytoskeleton of actin and also brings about a stabilization of the microtubular network, thereby preventing the cells from multiplying, through a mechanism different to that of Taxol, a widely used anti-cancer drug. The researchers show that Liminib is toxic to several cancerous cell lines in vitro, including cell lines resistant to chemotherapy. In addition, the results of a "pilot" preclinical study conducted on a mouse model are encouraging: they reveal not only good efficacy but also good tolerance to the new molecule. In the medium term, this work could lead initially to the development of alternative treatments for patients for whom therapy is no longer an option.

Explore further: Cell discovery strengthens quest for cancer treatments

More information: Pharmacological inhibition of LIM Kinase stabilizes microtubules and inhibits neoplastic growth. Prudent R, Vassal-Stermann E, Nguyen CH, Pillet C, Martinez A, Prunier C, Barette C, Soleilhac E, Filhol O, Beghin A, Valdameri G, Honore S, Aci-Seche S, Grierson D, Antonipillai J, Li R, Di Pietro A, Dumontet C, Braguer D, Florent JC, Knapp S, Bernard O, Lafanechère L. - Cancer Research (online since the 3 July 2012. The paper version is due to be published in September 2012)

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