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nanopublishing – Gigaom The industry leader in emerging technology research Wed, 17 Jan 2018 13:00:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 paidContent turns 10: A brief history of digital media Wed, 25 Jul 2012 14:29:07 +0000 Remember when Friendster was the hot social network, publishers doubted that ebooks would ever sell, and Netflix (s NFLX) thought DVDs in red envelopes was the future?

We do — that was that state of digital media when paidContent launched in 2002. Other weird things were happening back then too: People still got much of their news from television and newspapers, and they learned about major events after they had already happened.

There have been some huge shifts since 2002: Tablets and smartphones are now ubiquitous, lots of people read on their digital devices, and just about everyone is part of a social network or three. This summer is the tenth anniversary of our launch. In an effort to gain some perspective on the past decade in digital media, I’ve been reading back through paidContent’s archives — a collection of over 80,000 posts.

Since I was only a freshman in college when paidContent came to life, I often didn’t know, as I read through the stories from the early days, how things had begun or how they turned out. As I watched them unfold, I wanted to grab our readers’ arms and give them advice (“Don’t buy that Zune!” “Invest in Facebook!” “Go for the good Twitter handle now!”). But I also realized how difficult it is to predict success.

Some takeaways from my trip through the archives:  Some companies — AOL (s AOL) and Yahoo (s YHOO) come to mind — have been consistently bad at predicting what consumers want. And a couple of companies, namely Apple (s AAPL) and Amazon (s AMZN), have been very good at it. Also, being a native digital company helps, but it’s no guarantee of success (what up, MySpace?). And after all these years, it’s still not clear what content customers will pay for, or how much they’ll pay.

Streaming and Moviebeaming

What do analysts, CEOs and bloggers have in common? None of us can predict the future. Roger Ebert joked in 2002 that “on-demand streaming movies on the Web, like HDTV, are five years in the future — and will be for at least another 10 years.”

If Disney’s Moviebeam had been the only game in town, Ebert probably would have been right. When it launched in three cities in 2003, customers paid $6.99 a month to use a device that could hold 100 movies and plugged into the back of a TV set. They also had to pay for each movie they watched– billing was done via the phone line. The company went through various unsuccessful iterations before India’s Valuable Group bought it in 2008. It was never heard from again.

Netflix almost went down the same road. It had a plan to release a Moviebeam-like “proprietary set-top box with an Internet connection that could download movies overnight.” But instead, it decided to forge ahead with streaming — starting with a complicated “quota hours” system in 2007 and moving to unlimited streaming in 2008. By 2010, the majority of subscribers were streaming something, and the company began offering streaming-only subscriptions, though CEO Reed Hastings said that same year that the company would keep shipping DVDs until 2030. (We’ll see about that.)

ABC (s DIS) was the first network to sell episodes of its shows on iTunes, back in 2006, and to stream shows free with ads on — and later on AOL. But by the time premium subscription service Hulu Plus launched in 2010, the platforms getting the attention were devices with built-in access, like Internet-enabled TVs, Blu-ray players, and tablets.

Return of the living dead

Speaking of AOL: It’s something of a miracle that the company still exists. In 2000, when it merged with Time Warner, it was valued at $350 billion, and the next year, more than 24 million people in the U.S. were paying for its Internet access service. By the end of last year, that number had dwindled to just 3.3 million subscribers. Here’s a quick recap of some of AOL’s miscues over the years:

Though AOL was once a high flier, no other company ever liked it quite enough to buy it. Google bought a five-percent, $1 billion stake in AOL in 2005, leading analysts to wonder if Microsoft missed out. That resulted in a $726 million writedown in 2009. Time Warner (s TWX) bought back Google’s stake and finally spun off “the albatross” in December 2009.  AOL is still promising a bounceback. “The executive team expects a profitable content business by next year,” CEO Tim Armstrong said in May 2011.

Yahoo hasn’t fared much better. The company launched Yahoo Platinum in 2003; for $9.95 a month, subscribers got access to audio and videos.  The program was dead by October of that same year. It later tried a Twitter-wannabe microblogging service (“Meme…where you share everything that you find that’s interesting,”). Perhaps the smartest move Yahoo ever made was not buying AOL.

Where did these companies go wrong? In 2010, former Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin pondered that question in an interview with the New York Times (s NYT). The AOL-Time Warner deal was “undone by the Internet itself,” he said. “I think it’s something that no one could have foreseen, and to this day, whether Apple is going to dominate entertainment or whether Amazon is going to dominate publishing, all the old business plans are out the window. How do you get paid for content?”

Know what’s cool? A billion dollars

In 2006, an RBC Capital analyst estimated that a certain social networking company would be worth $15 billion in a few years, based on “raw, unprecedented user/usage growth.”

Six years later, Facebook (s FB) went public with a valuation of $104 billion. Too bad the analyst wasn’t talking about Facebook but about MySpace. The social networking company that Rupert Murdoch acquired for $580 million in 2005 sold for just $35 million in 2011.

Why did Facebook soar while MySpace — and other social networking services like Friendster — sank? It allowed people to build real connections using their actual personal information, and rolled out a product that was ready to scale and had good technology. Other companies realized sharing was important too — in 2005, Yahoo SVP Jeff Weiner called sharing “the next chapter of the World Wide Web” — but Facebook was able to implement it in a way that kept users coming back. The site surpassed Yahoo and AOL for “stickiness” in 2009, when Nielsen found users spending an average of four hours and thirty-nine minutes a month on Facebook.

Social has already disrupted some industries — witness the rise of Twitter and the way it has changed the way news is reported, with stories like Osama Bin Laden’s assassination breaking there first. In a sign of the importance of these emerging platforms, newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times are launching “Everywhere” initiatives to deliver news to readers where they are already hanging out.

Fast food and music don’t mix

Hard to believe it now, but there was real skepticism that iTunes’ 99-cent songs would be able to compete with peer-to-peer file-sharing services. “According to academics who’ve studied the economics of digital music distribution,” we wrote in 2003, the year iTunes launched, “the cost still seems too high to attract users of peer-to-peer file trading services.” The piece cited an economist who believed “the appropriate price of a downloaded song is 18 cents.” In fact, Real Networks dropped its song prices to $0.49 in an attempt to compete against Apple.

In the end, consumers choose selection and convenience over P2P networks. We called iTunes “a kickstart for the micropayments industry.” Was it? While Steve Jobs said in 2004 that Apple wouldn’t hit its one-year, 100 million songs downloaded goal, global digital music sales crossed $1.1 billion in 2006. In April 2008, Apple surpassed Walmart (s WMT) as the largest music seller in the United States.

The company that arguably started the digital music revolution — Napster — didn’t survive. Once it no longer offered “free,” it was done, though it tried to reincarnate itself: launching a mobile music service, “Napster To Go,” with AT&T (s T) in 2004 (the one smartphone that supported it could hold up to 6 songs), partnering with Circuit City on a digital music store, getting itself acquired by Best Buy in 2008 ,and then being bought back by Rhapsody in 2011. Unfortunately, Rhapsody was already losing out to newer (and free) streaming services like Pandora (s P) and Spotify.

The partnerships with Circuit City and Best Buy (s BBY), though, were probably the kiss of death. One of the big trends of the past 10 years has been brick-and-mortar retail stores’ consistent failure to compete effectively against digital-native companies. Best Buy wasn’t the only retailer to try to crack the digital-content business — and fail: Target and Sears both took a shot. And McDonald’s sold digital content over its WiFi network and even tried DVD rentals in its restaurants.

Do you like the feel of paper?

Just as digital music didn’t really take off until Apple introduced the iPod, the ebook revolution didn’t take place until the arrival of the Kindle. In paidContent’s early years, ebooks were written off as a failure in part because publishers couldn’t figure out what to do with DRM. (In 2003, “temporary electronic ink” that would disappear after a few months was floated as a possible solution.) Barnes & Noble (s BKS) decided to stop selling ebooks in 2003, and Yahoo stopped selling them in 2004.

Meanwhile, Amazon and Google were pushing forward. Google launched Google Print — now called Google Book Search, and still besieged by lawsuits seven years later. Amazon tested two now-defunct programs: Amazon Pages, which allowed customers to buy access to digital copies of select pages from books, and Amazon Upgrade, which bundled print books with online access to the complete work.

Customers weren’t biting. Then Amazon came out with the Kindle in 2007 for $399. Less than two years later, Amazon was selling more Kindle books than print books, and ebooks now make up over 20 percent of some big-six publishers’ sales. Barnes & Noble has had some success with its Nook e-reader and digital bookstore, but bankrupt Borders shuttered all its stores in 2011. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice suit against Apple and five big publishers for allegedly colluding to set e-book prices drags on.

Good thing Steve Jobs looked beyond ringtones

A Forbes survey back in 2002 found that “business professionals” would be willing to pay for “news content to be delivered to their cellular devices,” and some media companies tried early mobile experiments. Verizon (s VZ) offered a cell phone version of the Yellow Pages — which, at $19.95 per year, gained 15,000 subscribers in three months. But starting in 2004, everyone decided the future was in ringtones. A $4 billion global business by the end of the year, one company projected.

So, so many ringtones. You could buy them from Rolling Stone or from an ATM-like device called E2Go. A fall 2004 marketing campaign let you mix your own ringtones on Levi’s website. Billboard launched a top ringtones chart.

Could ringtones “prove to be a passing fad”? we wondered late in 2004. Luckily, yes — a new technology came along to shake up the mobile market. No, it wasn’t the $500 ESPN phone, but the iPhone, which came out in 2007. And by opening its platform up to third-party app developers, Apple got users ready for its next ecosystem-changing device, the iPad, in 2010.

Monetizing mobile

Advertising has always been a fuzzy business — how exactly do you measure engagement and success? Well, that’s still the big debate about advertising in the digital era.  “If here’s anything that’s really holding back ad spending on the web, it’s the lack of good measurements,” Tim Armstrong, then Google’s VP of national sales, said in 2007.

Mobile advertising has also faced obstacles. In 2006, mobile carriers began allowing advertising despite fears of annoying customers. Customers were indeed annoyed — 79 percent of them found mobile advertising annoying, according to a 2007 Forrester study — but they could “see the potential benefits of mobile advertising and marketing to themselves,” particularly if they could get a useful special offer or coupon.

Further complicating matters for advertisers: The smartphone market is fragmented among different brands — marketers don’t want to spend the money to create different ads for Android and iOS — and there are two mobile ad universes: mobile browser and apps.

Nevertheless, mobile advertising has gained ground, crossing  $1 billion in the U.S. for the first time in 2011, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, totaling $1.6 billion for the year.

The next opportunity is social media advertising. And once again, it will be a challenge to figure out some standardized metrics. What’s a retweet worth, anyways?

Back to where we all began

Though micropayments worked well for music when Apple launched iTunes, the path to payments for written content has been rockier. In 2004, we wrote that “micropayments today are still characterized by a large number of competing transaction types” – including direct-to-bill, merchant aggregation, prepaid accounts and direct transfer – and “each of these face the current incumbent in digital content distribution: the flat-fee subscription model.”

Eight years later, it appears that the subscription model has won out. The iPad opened the door for magazine and newspaper publishers to create new revenue selling content on that platform, but the results have been mixed. When Rupert Murdoch’s “The Daily” iPad newspaper launched in early 2011, the company called it “the model for how stories are told and consumed.” We wrote, “The bet here is that while consumers are less and less likely to reach into their pocket for a few quarters to buy a newspaper, they might not care about the 14 cents on their credit card for a copy of an e-newspaper.” A year and a half later, The Daily has over 100,000 paying subscribers — but it’s living on borrowed time and may not get through the five years its publisher has said it needs to break even.

Writing for the web, of course, has been around for awhile. At the beginning of the decade, blogging was called “nanopublishing,” and the question was how blogs could support themselves doing it. All sorts of models have arisen. For example, Gawker tried a licensing deal with Yahoo, but that relationship ended a year later. The deal “garnered way more attention than we expected, but less traffic,” Gawker CEO Nick Denton said in 2006.

Some bloggers have stayed independent and make a living from advertising (or from their day job); others write their blogs under a newspaper, website or larger magazine’s umbrella — see the Dish’s Andrew Sullivan, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, WaPo’s Ezra Klein. Or, they go to work for the Huffington Post!

Magazine companies have grappled with whether to bundle digital editions with print subscriptions or charge for them separately. Time Inc. — which first put digital editions of its magazines behind AOL’s paywall in 2003 — started out charging separately, but today Time Inc. and Condé Nast print subscribers get the digital edition free. Hearst, meanwhile, is charging separately, and it said its digital business in the U.S. became “solidly profitable” for the first time in 2011.

Could there ever be a Netflix for magazines? Time tried it for print versions with its 2008 Maghound service. It failed, due to a lack of marketing and reader interest. Magazine publishers are trying again with joint venture Next Issue Media.

Many newspaper publishers, most notably the New York Times, tried paywalls at the start of the decade and then abandoned them – only to return to the model in the past couple years.  In its most recent earnings report, the NYT said it has 454,000 digital subscribers. Is that enough to sustain the newspaper in its 21st-century transition?  Probably the best answer to that came from  Vivian Schiller. But it was in response not to the NYT’s recent digital subscriber numbers, but to the NYT’s decision in 2004 to close the paper’s first paywall, known as TimesSelect. Schiller, then the SVP and general manager of, was asked whether TimesSelect had worked.  “It did work,” she said. “It’s just a matter of as compared to what.”

Birthday cake photo courtesy of Shutterstock user [Robyn Mackenzie].

TV photo courtesy of Shutterstock user [Somchai Buddha].

Zombie hand photo courtesy of Shutterstock user [lineartestpilot].

Piggybank photo courtesy of Shutterstock user [cardiae]

Fast food photo courtesy of Shutterstock user [Sergio Martinez].

Book photo courtesy of Shutterstock user [TrotzOlga].

Ringtones and apps photo courtesy of Shutterstock user [violetkaipa].

Cash register photo courtesy of Shutterstock user [titelio].

Magazines photo courtesy of Shutterstock user [bernashafo].

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DataSift Now Gulps Two Years From The Twitter Firehose Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:33:58 +0000 GigaOm]]> DataSift’s new Historics service promises to mine the Twitter archives going back two years for insights that could guide business decisions on future strategies. With an estimated 250 million tweets posted daily, Twitter is a huge trove of data about things as mundane as celebrity wardrobe malfunctions or as weighty as rebellions in the Middle East. What some have called the “Twitter firehose” can be an invaluable information source, provided the right data can be found and filtered. That’s what DataSift brings to the table..

Read the full post on GigaOm

This article originally appeared in GigaOm.

Is Twitter A Newspaper, Or Is It The Phone Company? Tue, 21 Feb 2012 02:31:41 +0000 GigaOm]]> seem to believe that a case could be made that Twitter is a publisher, like a newspaper, and therefore it can be sued for defamation as a result of a single tweet. That may be a stretch — especially in the United States, which has legislation that protects online commentary from such lawsuits — but it highlights the difficulties that Twitter could have as it tries to expand around the globe and into different legal environments.]]> Is Twitter a publisher and distributor of information like a newspaper, or is it just a dumb pipe like a telephone network? Lawyers in Australia seem to believe that a case could be made that Twitter is a publisher, like a newspaper, and therefore it can be sued for defamation as a result of a single tweet. That may be a stretch — especially in the United States, which has legislation that protects online commentary from such lawsuits — but it highlights the difficulties that Twitter could have as it tries to expand around the globe and into different legal environments.

This article originally appeared in GigaOm.

Russia's Launches Its Own Twitter After China's Microblog Explosion Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:27:56 +0000 Russia’s big portal is trying to ape Chinese companies’ microblog boom by launching its own Twitter clone. Futubra launched in beta Monday.

Alisher Usmanov, who owns almost a third of Group, also owns a majority of DST Global, which took a stake in Twitter itself with a 2011 investment.

Twitter has two million Russian-speaking users after translating its site to Russian last year, according to Yandex (via RIA). But the example of China, where microblogs – or, “weibo” – have exploded, shows indigenous services have gained more traction than foreigners.

Weibo use rose 296 percent to 249.9 million there through 2011, according to China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) data published today (via Reuters).

The growth is beginning to usher in a new era of greater transparency in society, as well as creating a huge new business opportunity for market-leading operator Sina (NSDQ: SINA) and Tencent, although China’s government has lately instructed operators to police messaging.

If Russian groups like can replicate their success, they could have a hit on their hands.

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has already endorsed the original Twitter when he appeared at the company’s San Francisco HQ in 2010 to send his first tweet on an occasion Biz Stone called “one of the most special days in the history of Twitter” (via TechCrunch). Some citizens used Twitter to protest the re-election of prime minister Putin but their messages were purportedly swamped by a pro-Putin botnet. Group CEO Dmitry Grishin (announcement): “We are excited by the opportunity facing Futubra as microblogging is a fast growing segment which fits well into the Mail.Ru Group vision of the growth in internet communications. The focus in the near term will be product development and the building of new online communities.”

Real Name Checks On Weibo Won't Come Cheap For Sina, Tencent Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:31:06 +0000 Penn Olson]]> With it now certain that China’s popular Weibo (microblogging) services – prime among them being Sina’s (NASDAQ:SINA) and Tencent’s (HKG:0700) – will have to implement real-name ID checks in the coming months, it appears that the system will not come cheap.

Indeed, each single online check of a user’s name and national ID number will cost a rumored 2 RMB (US$0.20). And so for Sina (NSDQ: SINA) and Tencent, the government-mandated checks could end up costing them hundreds of millions of RMB for their 250 to 300 million Weibo users.

But it was never going to come free. And it raises the complex issue of potential government ties to the company, called id5, that will process these real-name checks. That little-known company will be the prime beneficiary of these sixteen new regulations for microblogs. It is the government that charges the fee, but it’s id5 that will handle all the processing.

Sohu (NSDQ: SOHU) IT reports that the Beijing-based Time (NYSE: TWX) Weekly newspaper has tried repeatedly to question staff at the mysterious id5 about this, but journalists have been turned away.

If, say, 75 percent of Sina’s 250 million Weibo users turn out to be real people or companies – i.e. not spammers or zombie accounts – who wish to continue using the service, then all those checks would cost Sina a total of 375 million RMB (US$59 million).

Being Held Accountable For Your Tweets

The official line is that the real-ID clampdown will help stop false rumors (and maybe spam as well) spreading via the numerous Twitter-like services. But other analysts fear it’s a move to suppress free speech on these lively and increasingly popular sites. (Note that microblog users can still use cutesy and wacky nicknames – but Sina, Tencent, Netease (NSDQ: NTES) (NASDAQ:NTES), and all those other operators, will have every user’s actual name and number on file).

These charges have been levied before, and industry insiders believe that Baidu (NSDQ: BIDU) (NASDAQ:BIDU) had to pay up for its (failed and shuttered) microblog, Shuoba – but that the search engine giant ended up paying more than the rumored 2 RMB that it’ll cost in 2012. It’s not clear if the real-name requirement deterred users, or if Shuoba simply failed to take off because it arrived too late to be a contender.

Sina’s and Tencent’s shares have been stable since the new regulations were outlined on December 16th – but the full pain of implementation has not yet begun. It will be costly for the companies, and could drive some users away from using any Weibo platform.

Follow this developing issue on our ‘real-name’ tag as it becomes mandated on other areas of the Chinese web as well.

[Source: Sohu IT news (article in Chinese), via Bill Bishop’s Digicha]

» This article originally appeared on Penn Olson, Asia Tech News For The World, and is reproduced here with permission.

This article originally appeared in Penn Olson.

Five Ways Twitter's New Redesign Makes It More Like Sina Weibo Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:52:51 +0000 Penn Olson]]> Twitter’s slick new redesign has brought it – visually and practically – closer to China’s most dynamic microblogging platform, Sina’s (NASDAQ:SINA) Weibo. It shows, perhaps, that Sina’s rapid rate of change on its most popular service is now actually leading the way for Twitter. How the tables have turned!

More seriously, though, the two companies have a very different philosophy, so we won’t engage in the kind of “copycat” name-calling that we usually discourage. Whereas Twitter has been evolving very slowly, and espouses “simplicity,” Sina (NSDQ: SINA) has been throwing major new features at its Weibo platform – such as social gaming accompanied by a virtual currency – in an aggressive land-grab approach that’s more typical on the Chinese web where it’s necessary to seize users before a rival does pretty much the same thing.

And so, inevitably, the fast-changing Sina Weibo service – which is up against Tencent’s (HKG:0700) microblogging site that has the same generic ‘weibo’ name – is already doing some things that can be seen in Twitter’s latest redesign this week. And that’s no bad thing. Here are five key areas where it has grown more like Weibo (all five images can be clicked to enlarge):

Customized Brand Pages

Twitter’s brand pages get the same nice redesign as all users get, and seem to have only one differentiation in terms of layout: the option to customize the long rectangle above the tweets (see the area showing the sea of sugary soda in the picture below). Weibo’s brand pages have a vastly different look to those of regular users, allowing them to embed a corporate video at the top, and lots of other tweaks. It’ll be interesting to see if Twitter relents and permits more customizations in future for its branded pages:

Embedded Videos, Photos, and GIFs

Twitter now has much better support for embedding images in the site, obviating the need for so much clicking away. Of course, a lot of third-party Twitter apps have been doing this for some time, which is why a lot of Twitter’s core users prefer desktop or web apps – such as Tweetdeck, or Echofon – to the page.

Weibo, meanwhile, has had these baked-in videos and images er… baked-in since its roll-out last year:

Photo Albums

…And all those photos and GIFs will now be added into a ‘recent images’ folder on Twitter, just as Sina Weibo has been doing since a redesign earlier this summer. But Sina’s folders are more powerful, allowing you to add multiple folders, or view only your friend’s images in a highly visual stream:

Separate Page for Mentions

Twitter’s new ‘@connect’ tab finally gives all your important mentions the separate space they deserve, just like Weibo’s area for all your comments – yes, it has blog-style comment too – mentions, and retweets:

More Info in Side Panels

Finally, Twitter’s side pane now shows more information, such as suggestions as to who to follow, and some of the hottest trends. Of course, Facebook has been doing this for even longer, as part of the way it draws you in to the service:

Having said all that, I really like the redesign, and I like how it follows Twitter’s ethos whilst also adding some much-needed features.

The twitter redesign should be automatically showing-up for many people, but if not I believe you can force it to do so by downloading the updated mobile apps whilst signed-in to Twitter’s new preview page.

» This article originally appeared on Penn Olson, Asia Tech News For The World, and is reproduced here with permission.

This article originally appeared in Penn Olson.

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Twitter's Promoted Tweets Advertisers Can Squat Rivals' Brands Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:17:48 +0000 Twitter apparently allows its clients to buy adverts using rivals’ brand names.

I noticed UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s had bought ads on against searches for rivals like “Tesco”, “Waitrose” and “Lidl”.

Users searching for those brands saw Sainsbury’s Promoted Tweets, which Twitter recently started selling in the UK.

That is interesting because brand-squatting in keyword ad systems has been a contentious legal topic of late.

  • Last year, the European Court of Justice ruled that Google (NSDQ: GOOG), as an advertising vehicle, was not culpable if companies breached trademarks by placing ads against rivals’ trademarks.
  • But the court then advised Marks & Spencer individually be found liable for placing ads for its own florist service against Interflora’s brand name.
  • A French court had ruled Google liable for trademark infringement when it allowed fake Louis Vuitton goods sellers to buy AdWords using the LVMH brand’s name. But the ECJ overturned that verdict.
  • We recently reported how Lovefilm has bought Google ads for “Netflix” ahead of its rival’s UK and Ireland launch in Q1 2012.

Twitter told paidContent: “We comply with the laws of the countries in which we operate.”

paidContent contacted Sainsbury’s rivals to seek their opinion. Waitroise said: “We are aware of this. We’re not planning any action.” Others did not respond.

Sainsbury’s campaign, which was running on last week, has now ceased. Tesco has since bought Promoted Tweets using its own brand name…

Another company has had the same experience. “We noticed that a competitor was creating Promoted Tweets and bidding on our brand name as a keyword,” Mail Chimp’s marketer Amanda Lauter wrote back in July. “That’s not really a big deal in and of itself, since it’s the kind of thing that happens with Google Adwords all the time.

“But the content of these particular tweets was unsavory and misleading, and literally had nothing to do with MailChimp. So we did what any self-respecting brand would do, and started our own little ‘brand integrity’ Promoted Tweets campaign.”

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority, which was recently granted regulation of online marketing, told paidContent it only regulates the content of advertisers’ own websites and can only investigate complaints made to it.

Tesco has previously asserted online rights it claims to trademarks.

Weibo’s English Ambition Is To Plug Western Companies In To China Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:37:17 +0000 The world’s largest microblog service does not want to take on Twitter on its home turf. But it does want to further limit Twitter’s chance of success in the Far East.

We have recently been reporting Sina’s Weibo of China, which has surpassed Twitter with more than 200 million users, will launch an English-language version soon.

But now the company tells Technode: “It’s not about accessing the overseas market, it’s about (helping) the overseas companies to access the Chinese users.”

Weibo reports “good demand of overseas services which want to connect to Sina (NSDQ: SINA) Weibo’s service to entertain Chinese users“. Flipboard and Instagram will be adding share-to-Weibo integration while Flipboard will also be launching a Chinese version, the company tells TechNode.

So Twitter can rest easy that Weibo does not want to launch a competitive English-language service targeted at western consumers, which always seemed an unlikely proposition given the relative continental disparity and cultural differences in the respective services.

Weibo’s potential value to western businesses who want to break in to the fast-growing Chinese economy was illustrated when George W. Bush’s younger brother Neil recently started microblogging about his business interests on Weibo in Chinese.

Twitter is currently selling Promoted Tweets ads to western companies in the west and might have been able to take this opportunity to Asia; but Twitter is a relative unknown there with a relatively miniscule user base.

Any threat to market-leading Weibo on the business microblog marketing front comes from second-placed Tencent, whose own microblog service already opened up in English in September.

With Launch Of The Verge, SB Nation Parent Rebrands As Vox Media Tue, 01 Nov 2011 07:19:39 +0000 As of Tuesday, SB Nation no longer stands alone. The sports site, which has grown from a federation of sports blogs to a prominent network and sports hub, will joined by The Verge, a personal tech site from Joshua Topolsky and the team that once pumped energy into Engadget. It’s the first new vertical for the company that started as Sports Blogs Inc., and to mark the transition, will now be known as Vox Media.

Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Tyler Bleszinski cofounded the company. SB Nation has expanded aggressively organically and through acquisitions under Jim Bankoff, who started as an advisor and became CEO in January 2009 when it had roughly 1 million uniques. Internal figures from *Google* Analytics peg it at more than 25 million monthly uniques now.

It has had plenty of fuel, raising nearly $24 million from investors including Accel Partners, Khosla Ventures and Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) Interactive Partners. As important, Vox Media has invested in developing technology that is used to power the sites and their journalism; that’s one of the aspects that drew Topolsky, who can wax rhapsodic about the various elements. The company also provides a common sales platform. Vox Media has nearly 90 employees.

Bankoff plans to use both to expand beyond sports and tech but he isn’t ready to talk details. In a pre-launch interview, he said, “Our mission to empower talented web voices. Tomorrow we’re all focused on making sure The Verge gets off to a strong start. We definitely will be pursuing other verticals with the same mindset.”

In the case of SB Nation and The Verge, that would be young, tech savvy affluent males. The Verge launches with BMW, Sony (NYSE: SNE) and Samsung as sponsors. Marty Moe, an AOL (NYSE: AOL) vet like Bankoff, is publisher and gets founder credit with Topolsky. The about section on the new site sets an interesting tone when it comes to the way the company and the verticals are set up: “The Verge is a technology-focused news publication founded in 2011 by Joshua Topolsky and Marty Moe in partnership with Vox Media and its CEO Jim Bankoff.” Moe is also chief content officer of Vox Media.

The Verge, which went due to go live overnight, is the first big test of what Vox Media can do outside sports. Bankoff is banking on Topolsky and a team of nearly 30 full and part-time staffers to create a full-blown 24/7 personal tech site from scratch without having to incubate the expertise. To take advantage of the post-announcement momentum and build an audience, the team has been operating a blog called This Is My Next, which already has drawn 3 million uniques and more than 10 million pageviews.

Asked what would make The Verge different from all the other tech sites, Topolsky quickly replied, “The quality of the content — authoritative, trustworthy, great content. Not just ther quality but the breadth.” That includes in-depth reviews and longer-form magazine-style articles a la Wired. Other features include a products database integrated with the news, comparison tools, and an emphasis on community. The latter shouldn’t be confused with creating a site on user gen content, “This is not crowdsourced content. It’s curated editorial content we’re paying top dollar for,” Topolsky stressed. He compares the site to an app that will get constant iteration.

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Anthony Rose’s Social TV Startup Zeebox Is Now Live Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:34:15 +0000 The TV engagement product co-founded by ex BBC iPlayer chief Anthony Rose launched on Thursday evening to ride the booming trend in two-screen social TV interaction.

Zeebox, which paidContent exclusively previewed back in August, is so far available on iPad. It has gained Apple’s coveted “App Of The Week” status inside iTunes Store.

Appearing initially as a TV EPG, it shows users information, apps and further downloads about shows they are watching, creates live hyperlinks out of material discussed in shows and lets users both follow show-based social network chat and see what their friends are watching.

Taken as a package, there may be sufficient enough compelling features of Zeebox that many people will use it to stream TV shows’ Twitter hashtags rather than through other Twitter clients.

But Zeebox itself isn’t yet sure how any of this translates in to a hard business opportunity for it.

Speaking with paidContent, CEO and co-founder Ernesto Schmitt claims broadcasters and advertisers are keen to use Zeebox to drive up engagement while some TV producers are asking for their galleries to be fed Zeebox’s minute-by-minute data on TV show popularity.

But, though Zeebox will take an affiliate slice of custom it sends towards iTunes and to other downloads that relate to shows its app lists, Schmitt is non-committal on whether it will license its data back to broadcasters or sell in-app ads against corresponding moments in TV show commercial breaks, for example.

Indeed, Zeebox is a venture-funded startup. It is throwing out several interesting ideas that speak to the intersection of TV and social technology, without yet daring to fix its business in stone. For now, Rose and Schmitt just want to see good adoption.

Web, Android and iPhone versions are due later.

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Posted in Uncategorized

Creative surroundings

I’ve spent a lot of time with writers lately. Last weekend, I attended and presented at a Shreveport, Louisiana conference sponsored by the NOLA STARs, a chapter of Romance Writers of America. I had a great time, met some new friends, reconnected with a few I hadn’t seen in a while. What a warm and welcoming group they are!

Yesterday, I attended the monthly meeting in Little Rock of the local RWA chapter, Diamond State Romance Authors. Local author Shayla Kersten led an interesting discussion on self-editing, including reminders we can all use of how to tighten and punch up our writing. Afterward, several of us went out for lunch and more talk about writing. To be honest, I considered not going to the meeting. I settle so comfortably into my rut of staying at home to write and putter that I have to make myself get out and about at times. I’m so glad I went yesterday! I had a lovely time, met a couple of  local authors I can already tell are going to become friends, and had the chance to swap writing stories, something I always enjoy.

I’ve mentioned before that I am always fascinated by discussion of how different people create. The ambiance they require — music or coffee shop chatter or total silence. The plotting process — detailed synopses or seat-of-the-pants storytelling? Starting with character sketches or conflict ideas? Linear progression or random scenes later organized into a cohesive story? (Yes, I know someone who writes that way).

If you’ve read this blog, you probably know by now that I write on a laptop in my den — rarely in the office I built for that purpose — listening to music through headphones and gazing out the patio door that is my window to the outside world. I still don’t quite understand why I have so much trouble writing in my nice office — perhaps the feng shei is off or there’s something too restrictive and business-like about the idea of working at a desk surrounded by files and office equipment.

We all hear stories about J. K. Rowling writing parts of her early Harry Potter books on napkins in coffee shops, and I have several writer friends who write in coffee shops and libraries. Others enjoy going on writing retreats with other writers, spending an entire day or weekend writing with brainstorming breaks. I find it difficult to write anywhere but home. Maybe it’s because I leave my house so rarely that I go into sensory overload when I do. The sights and sounds and smells of home are so familiar that they barely penetrate my consciousness as I immerse myself in my story. But out there … so much to see, so many people to study, so many conversations all but inviting me to eavesdrop, so many sounds and scents to investigate. Coffee shops come with the temptations of delicious and calorie-laden drinks and treats, while libraries are filled with intriguing books and magazines to peruse.

I’ve been told by another writer friend that I have the attention span of a gnat, and trying to write out in public certainly proves that to be true! I get lots of story ideas when I’m out and about, but it’s at home in my den where I commit them to the pages.

Where do you feel most creative? In your home, a studio, a coffee shop? Wherever it is, I hope you find time in the coming week to let your imagination run free.

March is more than halfway over! Don’t forget to enter the drawing for the autographed book to be given away on April 1. Click the Enter to Win! tab above for details.

Award-winning, best-selling author of women's romance fiction.

One thought on “Creative surroundings

  1. I have an office in my house with a desk, good lighting, office chair, etc. I never write there. I always write at my kitchen table. I’ve wondered if maybe I should get a bigger desk, decorate the office, and add some organizational bins for paperwork. Nah. I’d still be in the kitchen.

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The Tea Rooms Give Afternoon Tea A Vintage Kick

I had never had a proper afternoon tea until a few years ago but once I tried it I was hooked. I am now the proud owner of not one, but two, tiered cake stands that I really should use more often. It’s a delightfully girly activity that I tend to do when friends or family are visiting Glasgow & there are a few places here that I’d recommend but I’ll save that for another time. Last month my sister in-law was over so we went to The Tea Rooms at The Butterfly & The Pig on Bath Street. I was here for a hen night earlier in the year & we had a grand time. The Tea Rooms is about half way along Bath Street just above The Butterfly & The Pig pub. If you fancy hot food instead of sandwiches then I have also eaten downstairs and the fish cake was lovely. Both places have a quirky feel to them with lots of old mismatched furniture, crockery & decoration. Having developed a bit of a vintage look obsession in the lead up to my wedding, this suits me down to the ground. It has quite an informal feel to the place so you don’t need to dress up, which makes it perfect for a mid-shopping lunch.

The building itself is very Glasgow in its tenement style and high ceilings. We were sat at the back of the room and there was a gorgeous old staircase above us with a beautiful window at the top.

We went in for afternoon tea so we never even looked at the menu but, having been in before, they have a good selection of breakfast items, soups, sandwiches, savoury tart and they do high tea later on. The afternoon tea is priced at £12.50 per person or you can pay an extra £3.50 to have a glass of prosecco with it. If you want something fancier they also do it served with a glass of Moet for £20 per person. We just went for the tea option because we were chilly and wanted a nice cup of tea to warm us up. Some soft drinks were also ordered and they arrived straight away but our tea never came with them. I was freezing cold so I ended up asking for it but I think they must bring it out when your food is coming so next time I’ll ask for it when I order.

Our food arrived quickly and we surveyed our feast – a mixture of sandwiches, cakes, scones, oaties and some crisps. I love the pickled cucumber that comes with it – I even made some a few days afterwards at home. Last time the oatcakes had come with smoked salmon on them but neither of us are keen on smoked salmon so we asked if we could have anything else in place of it and they gave us chicken with some chutney. They were surprisingly filling but a great start to the gluttony that is afternoon tea!

We had made some changes to the sandwiches but, if I remember correctly, they usually give you a selection of coronation chicken, ham and cheese, roast beef, egg and tuna. The bread was thick and soft and the fillings were plentiful with lots of flavour & they were seasoned well.

We never finished all of the sandwiches because we wanted to try the cakes before we got too full. We sliced the cakes up so that we could try a little of each. First we had blueberry scone with jam and cream – I had never tried blueberry scone but I liked it so much that I’ve been looking up recipes. The courgette and pistachio cake was moist & flavoursome and the cherry & almond slice was rich. I never tried the walnut one but Steph said it was delicious. There was a chocolate cupcake but the cake slices were definitely the winners on our table because they were so moist all the way through.

Our waitress offered to box up anything that we did not eat – a welcome touch that brightened up our elevensies the next day. Even when they take you the bill they keep it in-keeping with the theme of the place.

I’m looking forward to going back soon for some of that courgette cake – it’s making me hungry just thinking about it.

The Tea Rooms on Urbanspoon

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(EN) (DA) (FR) (DE) (IT) (ES) (PDF) – LanguaL is the multilingual thesaurus about Agriculture | Anders Møller and Jayne Ireland

“LanguaL stands for “Langua aLimentaria” or “language of food”. It is an automated method for describing, capturing and retrieving data about food. The work on LanguaL was started in the late 1970’s by the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as an ongoing co-operative effort of specialists in food technology, information science and nutrition. The original name of the thesaurus was Factored Food Vocabulary (FFV). Since then, LanguaL has been developed in collaboration with the US National Cancer Institute (NCI), and, more recently, its European partners, notably in France, Denmark, Switzerland and Hungary. Since 1996, the European LanguaL Technical Committee has administered the thesaurus. The thesaurus provides a standardised language for describing foods, specifically for classifying food products for information retrieval”

Stefano KaliFire‘s insight:

PDF 268 pages

See on www.langual.org

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Does birth control mimic pregnancy symptoms?

I'm new to the whole bc. I did have unprotected sex and started the pill 3 days after including morning after pill but It was wierd.  the first week that I started I felt depressed, fatigued I was also spotting I also had gotten a rash on my neck and was getting wierd food cravings and backaches and felt itchy on my back and grew pimples on my back something that never happens and when I would shave my legs they got so irritated. Are these bc side effects affects does birth control mimic pregnancy?


text:
Sooos I don't know how to calm this issue down

Im comparing so much my self with his exs

My boyfriend's friend called me with my boyfriend's ex name yesterday and it destroyed my mood so much..I compare my relationship with my boyfriend with his two big past relationships all the time. They were really ugly both of them by the way. The mainly reason is because even though he lost contact with them for good and he doesn't talk about them, his two exs even though they broke up with him they are always around somehow. Like they want to show they were here before me. One of them liked a photo I posted to him or liking his profile photos and he deleted her and the other one she found excuses to see him for stuff she remembered she had in his place.. He told me he wants to marry me one day and we are living together, but also he was living together with these two before and he admitted that he was thinking to ask his pre-previous ex to marry him one day. I am overthinking I know and every relationship is unique but I don't want to be just an other attempt of love for him because the others failed..I love him so much but all of these thoughts are stopping me from enjoying it


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At what point does your period stop?

Rose 🌹 • 18 months down, but finally pregnant with Baby no. 1!
I'm 2 days late now and 12 dpo. I'm NEVER late but all Hpts have been negative so far.
At what point does your body know to stop your period?
Is it possible my egg was fertilised and is just being slow to get to the uterus and implant? But it's still fertilised so no period?


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Pointy cervix?

Kasey • 27 and pregnant with Baby #1 as of 3/26, after only 1 month of ttc!
I've read about checking your cervix, and CM, your cervix is described as being shaped like a doughnut, and you should be able to feel the opening. Mine feels hard and pointy.....all the time. I can't feel an opening at all. What do you think, normal or abnormal?


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He only promises that we do not suffer alone.

“Twenty centuries of Christianity,” I said.  “You’d think we’d learn . . . In this world, He only promises that we don’t suffer alone.”

A Marine chaplain says this in a short story by Phil Klay about the Iraq War (p 167).  The story is fiction but the point is real.  Most people pray for God to protect them, their families, and their friends.  Many pray only in moments of death and desperation.  But it’s the wrong thing to pray for.  Pray to feel the presence of God.  Period.

Of course it’s not this simple.  Lots of people, including me, pray for more.  Some pray for salvation.  It’s perfectly human, but it’s the wrong way to think about God.

Religion is about meaning, and religion is about suffering.  Buddhism has one answer, don’t cling.  Don’t cling to life, don’t cling to attachments, and don’t cling to yourself.  Christianity has another answer: God will suffer with you.  Your suffering will not be lessened, but you will not be alone.  You will be less subject to your suffering.

Nietzsche argued that God is dead because there is no longer a convincing answer to the question “why do I suffer?” (Genealogy of Morals, III.28)

Continue reading He only promises that we do not suffer alone.


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The Yahoo Sports Fantasy Golf season has concluded.

  • Thank you for your participation this year and congratulations to all the winners.
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Dalat: Waterfall Canyoning, RAINY SEASON CANCELLATIONS, Crazy Houses and Pizza

After an absolutely another HORRIFIC journey from Nha Trang on the worlds hottest bus and being the worlds most hungover people, we finally arrived in Dalat.  It was bloody freezing compared to the hot climate of Nha Trang, because we were so high up in the mountains now, and it was actually nice and refreshing! Especially for our hungover frail bodies that had been subjected to a 50 degree bus for the last 5 hours!

A lady pulled up and piled us into a taxi and sent us off to her hotel, which actually turned out to be great.  The rooms were ideal, with a massive tv, nice showers and the breakfasts were good!  The lady who owned it was really lovely too and she became my best friend as soon as she gave me some home made dark chocolate that literally tasted just like Lindt.
The main reason people go here (and as it turns out; the only thing to do here) is for the waterfall canyoning.  This can be booked through any hostel or hotel when you get there for a reasonable price.  The canyoning tour involves an 18m abseil down a vertical cliff, hiking, cliff jumping, swimming and getting a beast of a selfie while you hang inside a waterfall.
We had a good nights sleep after watching a dvd in the room with the tastiest pizzas, all ready to be fresh as a daisy early in the morning for the canyoning trip.  We got picked up at 8am on the dot and met the rest of our group.  We arrived at the top of a steep cliff that looked as though it descended into a thick forest.  It looked a bit dodge when it started to rain and I warned everyone I was very likely to slip and roll all the way down.  We geared up in all the equipment and trekked down the cliff for about 20 minutes until we reached a bent tree, where we learnt the techniques of abseiling and how to tie the knots etc.P1080538
Once we had all had a go and felt ready to get going, our guide disappeared for around 15 minutes, only to appear again looking guilty and apologetic.  Cancelled.  Bloody cancelled!!!
Turns out he only just realised it was rainy season and we couldn’t go ahead because some stupid dolls head had opened the dam so we definitely couldn’t do it.  We decided it was for the best as they probably knew what they were talking about more than us, so we begrudgingly began our hike up the slippery steep and VERY muddy cliff and back to the car
We trip advisor’ed mP1080539ore things to do in Dalat and the only other thing that really looked of interest was ‘the crazy house’.  haha oh my god it was such a let down!! Some people really loved it and could really appreciate the architecture, however it seemed a bit pointless and ridiculous to us!
It was basically a lady that had studied architecture in Russia for years and came back and tried to go against the rules to make it alternative.  It is pretty cool but it’s just weird!  You can stay there too, so when we were walking around it we were literally peering into peoples bedrooms that were on holiday there!  There was even a honeymoon suite that Matt decided to walk into and have a proper look around which could have definitely been awkward had the honeymooners been enjoying married life!!
P1080548 P1080540 P1080542
We sat on a crazy chair, drinking crazy coffees and discussed our plan for Dalat…turns out there was nothing else to see and they could not guarantee the canyoning would be on the next day so we decided to leave the next morning and have another pizza night watching dvds…FATTIES!
So Dalat was ultimately a bit of a fail…obviously excluding the pizza feasts!

3 responses to “Dalat: Waterfall Canyoning, RAINY SEASON CANCELLATIONS, Crazy Houses and Pizza

  1. Pingback: Nha Trang – Russians, VinPearl Water Park, Mud Baths, Paella and Vodka! | goodasgoldbro·

  2. Pingback: Ho Chi Minh City – Cu Chi Tunnels, Birthday Bar Crawls, Sky bars and War Remnants Museum | goodasgoldbro·

  3. Pingback: Kuta Lombok – Beach Parties, Surfing, Pies and Flat Tyres | goodasgoldbro·

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Defense, VA say progress continues on health data sharing

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Defense and Veterans Affairs officials reassured Congress Wednesday that they are creating a system to exchange standard clinical health data, which will allow the two departments to share electronic health records today and even more in the future, Nextgov reports. “All of these terms, like integrated record, carry an awful lot of weight and are interpreted differently by different people. My view is that by 2014, we will have integrated records that we share with VA.”

Read more about it here…

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Jonah - Week 2

Jonah: God's Relentless Grace

Speaker: Ty Neal
Date: August 11, 2013

At times, we are all great runners. Sometimes we run from responsibility, other times we run from hardships or strained relationships. But what about God? Have you ever tried to run away from Him? You can run from God, but you cannot outrun his relentless grace. Join us as we dive into the book of Jonah and learn about one man's running and rebelling, an undeserving city and a God who pursues us all with an unrelenting grace.

Jonah 1:4-16

Other Sermons in This Series


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Listening to the rain

 to the welcomed rain

 my heart rejoices

 how we celebrated the “three day rains”

which provided us with a great relief

from the seeding and often from the bank.

Now,  I watch

the rain droplets form

 diamond-sparkling spider webs on the screen.

I give thanks for a shelter from the rain,

and Spirit’s sweet fire within to warm my dream time.

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Former CT Resident Charged with Attempt to Travel to China with Stolen US Military Documents

Screen Shot 2014-10-29 at 9.46.18 PM

Yu Long, 36, formerly of New Haven, has been arrested and charged with attempting to travel to China with sensitive proprietary documents that set forth detailed equations and test results used in the development of technologically advanced titanium for US military aircraft.

The documents were taken from a Connecticut defense contractor where Long had been employed. The arrest and charges against Long were announced by Deirdre Daly, United States Attorney for the District of CT.

Long was arrested on a federal criminal complaint on November 7, 2014 at a residence in Ithaca, NY, after he had attempted, two days earlier, to fly to China from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, in the possession of the sensitive, proprietary material.  He initially appeared in federal court in Syracuse, NY on Nov. 8 and 10, 2014, where he was ordered detained pending his transport to Connecticut to face the charges.

Long appeared Tuesday morning before U.S. Magistrate Judge William Garfinkel in Bridgeport, who ordered the criminal complaint to be unsealed and Long to remain in custody.

As alleged in the complaint affidavit and in statements made in court, Long holds Chinese citizenship and is a lawful permanent resident of the U.S.

From approximately August 2008 to May 2014, Long worked as a Senior Engineer / Scientist at a research and development center for a major defense contractor in Connecticut (“Company A”).

Both during and after his employment there, Long traveled to the People’s Republic of China.  Most recently, on August 19, 2014, Long returned to the US from China through JFK Airport in New York and, during a secondary inspection screening by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, Long was found in the possession of $10,000.00 in undeclared US cash, registration documents for a new corporation being set up in China, and a largely completed application for work with a state-controlled aviation and aerospace research center in China.

The application materials highlighted certain of Long’s work history and experiences that he claimed to have obtained while employed at Company A, including work on F119 and F135 engines.  The F119 engine is employed by the U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor fighter aircraft, and the F135 engine is employed by the U.S. Air Force F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft.

According to the criminal complaint and statements made in court, on November 5, 2014, Long boarded a flight from Ithaca to Newark Liberty International Airport, with a final destination of China.  During Long’s layover in Newark, CBP officers inspected Long’s checked baggage and discovered that it contained, among other things, sensitive, proprietary and export controlled documents from another major defense contractor, located outside the state of Connecticut (“Company B”).

Further investigation determined that the U.S. Air Force had convened a consortium of major defense contractors, including Company A and Company B, to work together to see whether they could collectively lower the costs of certain metals used.  As part of those efforts, members of the consortium shared technical data, subject to stringent restrictions on further dissemination.

Company B reviewed the Company B documents found in Long’s possession at Newark Liberty Airport and confirmed that it provided the documents to Company A as part of the consortium.  Company B further confirmed that Long was never an employee of Company B.  A review of Company A computer records indicated that Long had printed the documents while employed at Company A.  The documents bore warnings that they contained sensitive, proprietary and export controlled material, which could not be copied or communicated to a third party.  Moreover, since 1989, the U.S. has imposed a prohibition upon the export to China of all U.S. defense articles and associated technical data as a result of the conduct in June 1989 at Tiananmen Square by the military of the People’s Republic of China.

The complaint charges Long with transporting, transmitting and transferring in interstate or foreign commerce goods obtained by theft, conversion, or fraud.  The charge carries a maximum term of imprisonment of 10 years and a fine of up to $250,000.

Acting U.S. Attorney Daly stressed that a complaint is only a charge and is not evidence of guilt.  Charges are only allegations, and a defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

This investigation is being led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New Haven in coordination with Homeland Security Investigations in New Haven and Newark.  U.S. Attorney Daly also thanked the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Ithaca, Syracuse and Newark, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service in New York and Newark, and the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the Northern District of New York and the District of New Jersey, for their efforts and assistance in this matter.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Stephen Reynolds and Krishna Patel of the District of Connecticut, and Trial Attorney Brian Fleming of the Justice Department’s Counterespionage Section (CES).


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Grow Youthful: How to Slow Your Aging and Enjoy Extraordinary Health
Grow Youthful: How to Slow Your Aging and Enjoy Extraordinary Health

What the law allows pharmaceutical drug manufacturers to do

Lies, deceit, falsification

Most pharmaceutical research is lies

No pesky natural or traditional home remedies

Lies, deceit, falsification

According to Harvard Medical School professor Arnold Rehman, the role of the big pharmaceutical companies has changed from "developing the drugs that society really needs to trying to extract as much money as they possibly can from the healthcare system". (9) The overriding objective of pharmaceutical drug companies is to maximise their profits.

In 2000 the pharmaceutical industry spent two and a half times more on marketing than on research.(3) However a study in 2012 found that the situation is much worse - for every $1 they spend on basic research, they invest $19 in promotion and marketing. (10) Clearly there is no "crisis of innovation" as the pharmaceutical industry claims. Instead, big pharma is milking its powerful position whilst lying about its intentions. They have no incentive whatsoever to provide the cheapest, most effective treatment alternative for any ailment. On the contrary, they try to hide or discredit all remedies and cures that are alternatives to their current, most expensive, patented drug, even when these alternatives are demonstrably superior.(4, 8)

"The goal of a health-care system should be to keep people well, not to make stockholders rich. Today, the US health-care system too often serves to enrich wealthy investors and executives, while impoverishing, and even bankrupting, many working families." (15)

A successful pharmaceutical drug reduces your symptoms, keeps you dependent for the rest of your life, and extracts all the money you can possibly pay.

Six golden rules for pharmaceutical companies (Black humour).

The pharmaceutical drug industry is based on patents and legal approvals. The granting of a patent and approval for sale for a drug or a manufacturing process provides the lifeblood for drug companies. They will do anything to secure as many patents as possible in order to stifle their competition, and maximise their profits by selling at the highest possible price.

It currently requires enormous capital for testing and approval before a drug is approved for sale to the public. In America, it often takes ten years and $1 billion to get a new drug onto the market. Only the biggest few companies have the resources to do this. This is just one way that pharmaceutical companies stifle their competition - they simply make it too expensive to compete - and they continue to lobby (bribe, threaten and lie to) to make testing as expensive as possible. This also ensures that nearly all testing of pharmaceutical drugs is financed by themselves, rather than other impartial bodies that do not have this conflict of interest.

The bigger and more profitable the industry, the more it can afford to lobby (bribe, threaten and lie to) politicians and decision makers to pass laws that benefit the industry.

Marcia Angell, M.D. is an American physician, author, and the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. She has had a distinguished and high-ranking career. This article draws on her book The Truth About The Drug Companies.(4)

Usually new drugs approved for patent and sale are me-too drugs, with a slightly altered molecule to an existing drug. In the USA, the testing required for drugs does not require that they be compared with their close cousins, with any other drugs, or with any natural or traditional medicines. It is sufficient to show that they are effective in curing a particular ailment. The fact that they may be less effective than all the alternatives is deliberately concealed. Frequently a new and less effective me-too drug will go on sale with a new patent, a high price, and a campaign to hide or discredit the expired-patent drug it is replacing.(4)

Many drugs are ineffective, with falsified studies (1), lobbying pressure, and placebo effects distorting their use. "In more than half of the clinical trials for six leading antidepressants, the drugs did not outperform the placebo".(5) With pharmaceutical companies funding the research into and testing of their own products, there is tremendous pressure on the researchers to come up with the desired results - regardless of whether the drugs really work or not. Huge bribes, threats, and the making or breaking of careers are all at stake. "It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published."(4)

Statin drugs are an example of a pharmaceutical that is promoted using falsified trials and a massive campaign of misinformation, bribery and corruption. A study has found that "the epidemic of heart failure and atherosclerosis that plagues the modern world may paradoxically be aggravated by the pervasive use of statin drugs." (11)

"Today, the USA pays, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Meanwhile, nearly one of five Americans cannot afford to fill the prescriptions their doctors write." (15) Healthcare expenditure on hospitals, doctors and the conventional medical system is growing faster than both inflation and GDP. It now accounts for 18% of GDP. (16) The irony, as Grow Youthful shows, is that in nearly every case there is a better alternative to these expensive prescription drugs.

Most pharmaceutical research is lies

85% of trials of pharmaceutical drugs are completely funded by the company which will be selling that drug. This is a blatant conflict of interest.

Most research findings published by pharmaceutical companies are false. Up to three quarters (75%) of published research in the medical literature concerning pharmaceutical drugs is ghostwritten by public relations firms. Pharmaceutical companies routinely hire ghost writers or professional media consultants to ensure that the results of studies read the way that they want them to read - and they conceal potentially serious or even fatal side-effects. (1)

Drug companies withhold complete information on clinical trials, undermining the the ability of doctors, hospitals, other scientists and researchers, medical bodies and associations, and the government itself, to make informed decisions. (7) British MPs have expressed "extreme concern" that drug manufacturers appear to publish only about 50% of their completed trial results, (8) and warned that this practice has "ramifications for the whole of medicine". Richard Bacon, a senior member of the committee (7), said that the drug companies do not allow access to past trials "which bear on the efficacy and safety of medicines in use today". He also said that trials which gave a favourable verdict were about twice as likely to be published as trials giving unfavourable results.

Dr Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, told the MPs that the pharmaceutical industry published more positive results than negative results from their trials, and "when you add together the published and unpublished evidence, you get a very different picture of the quality and effectiveness of those drugs". (7)

From The Economist "... the results of half of clinical trials are never published. These missing data have, over several decades, systematically distorted perceptions of the efficacy of drugs, devices and even surgical procedures. And that misperception has sometimes harmed patients." (8)

As well as being fully aware that some of their drugs are toxic, harmful and cause death and misery, pharmaceutical companies also sell drugs that they know are ineffective. Yes, they sell drugs fully aware that research shows they are useless in up to 95% of the cases for which they are prescribed. (12, 13)

"We could stop almost all psychotropic drug use without deleterious effect", says Peter C Gotzsche, questioning trial designs that underplay harms and overplay benefits. These drugs are responsible for more than half a million deaths in the Western world each year, in return for minimal benefits. (14) In addition to half a million deaths, multiple millions suffer devastation to their lives because of these psychotropic pharmaceuticals.

Washout. A common technique used in pharmaceutical trials is the washout. Before the official trial begins, all subjects are given a dose of the drug. Those subjects who show any negative side-effects are not picked for the official trial.

A research article (6) published in 2005 came to the following conclusions. It seems that the manipulation and suppression of research results for financial reasons has worsened since then. (1)

"... most claimed research findings are false."

"The greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true. Conflicts of interest and prejudice ... are very common in biomedical research."

"There is increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims."

Suppression of adverse findings and avoidance of necessary research particularly applies to the genetic modification of food.

A leading cause of illness and death

Pharmaceutical drugs are the third leading cause of death in the USA (most other countries too). And for each person who dies from a drug, there may be a hundred suffering from the side-effects of the pharmaceutical medications that they are taking - sometimes knowing that the drugs are causing illness, but more often existing in a haze of confused sickness and ailments, not having connected the dots...

No pesky natural or traditional home remedies

This is why drug companies are not interested in natural or traditional products, which are usually more effective than pharmaceuticals, and have no side-effects. There are thousands of examples of effective natural cures that are not used because there is no financial incentive for anyone to do so, or because they have been actively discredited.

Here are a just couple of examples:

1. Gotzsche P.C. et al. Ghost authorship in Industry-initiated Randomised Trials. PLoS Medicine 4, no. 1, (2007): e19

2. removed

3. New Doctor. Medicare Fact sheet 10. Issue 75, Winter 2001.

4. Angell, Marcia. The Truth About the Drug Companies. Scribe Publications, 2005.

5. Bruce Lipton. The Biology of Belief. Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles. Mountain of Love / Elite Books. 2005.

6. John P. A. Ioannidis. Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Med. 2005 August; 2(8): e124.

7. Report in The Guardian Newspaper 3 January 2014, referring to a review of 20 existing studies by the non-profit Cochrane Collaboration. Also a review by the Department of Health, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, and subsequent discussion by members of parliament.

8. The Economist. Spilling the beans, Failure to publish the results of all clinical trials is skewing medical science. Retrieved online 25 July 2015.

9. Jacky Law. Big Pharma, How the world's biggest drug companies control illness. Constable & Robinson, 2006.

10. Donald W Light, Joel R Lexchin. Pharmaceutical research and development: what do we get for all that money? BMJ 2012;345:e4348.

11. Okuyama H, Langsjoen PH, Hamazaki T, Ogushi Y, Hama R, Kobayashi T, Uchino H. Statins stimulate atherosclerosis and heart failure: pharmacological mechanisms. Expert Rev Clin Pharmacol. 2015 Mar;8(2):189-99. doi: 10.1586/17512433.2015.1011125. Epub 2015 Feb 6.

12. Mukherjee D, Topol E J. Pharmacogenomics in cardiovascular diseases. Prog. Cardiovasc. Dis. 44, 479-498 (2002).

13. Schork N J. Personalized medicine: Time for one-person trials. Nature. 2015 Apr 30;520(7549):609-11. doi: 10.1038/520609a.

14. Peter C Gotzsche. Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good? BMJ 2015;350:h2435.

15. Bernie Sanders, US senator. An agenda to fight inequality. The Lancet. Volume 389, No. 10077, p1376-1377, 8 April 2017.

16. U.S. health care spending grew 4.3 percent in 2016, reaching $3.3 trillion or $10,348 per person. As a share of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for 17.9 percent. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Retrieved 28/12/17.


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Easy DIY Kid’s Chores Chart

Christie from A Lemon Squeezy Home wanted to devise an easy solution to help her kids keep track of their chores. She recognized this as great way to teach her kids how to contribute their part around the house and give them a sense of responsibility and accomplishment. Each night before bed Christie chooses which chores need to be done for the next day and moves them onto each bored. How easy is that?

With a few frames, little wooden discs and magnets to create the movable pieces she now has an easy to display chores chart for each child.

Check out A Lemon Squeezy Home for the full tutorial.

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Street Sweepers for Sale Help Keep Neighborhoods and Communities Clean

Keeping neighborhoods and communities clean enough to ensure the health and safety of their residents requires efficient methods that only mechanized cleaning offers. At the same time, the methods and equipment used should not put an undue burden on a municipality’s budget.

Here are some reasons why local community councils and governments should invest in outdoor cleaning equipment for the benefit of their constituents.

Avoid Disease and Outbreaks

A clean environment helps prevent the spread of diseases and other health hazards. Regular sweeping and washing of roads and sidewalks could prevent them from becoming breeding grounds for disease-carrying insects such as mosquitoes. Read more from this blog:

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So, I’ve included a couple of prototypes of my faux voodoo dolls, seen above.  Along with the dolls I will be offering the styrofoam targets, blowdart guns (with darts) and fabric pens for writing the victims names.

In time, I will be including my small windsocks, humorous “fill in the blanks” letters home for the writing challenged, and anything else I can think of.  Feel free to send me an email if you are interested in any of these items!


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Wednesday, 27 May 2015

I Love Promarkers DT Card - Anything But Square

Good morning,

Yay it's Wednesday - halfway through the working week and a long weekend to look forward to for me.  Yipee!  Also, as if that wasn't reason enough to celebrate, we have a fab new challenge starting at I Love Promarkers.  Our theme is 'Anything But Square' so if like me you're in a bit of a rut join us and try something new! The design team have come up with a lot of different shapes so be sure to check out our blog page for inspiration.  This week our sponsors are Opal Crafts who have kindly donated a voucher for the winner.

I have used one of my own images this week and it's a rubber stamp - Fifi Goes Walkies by Sugar Nellie.  This is the first time I've inked it up although I've had it for a wee while.  It was purchased on one of my jaunts to my favourite craft shop the Papercraft Boutique in Elgin as was the Cart-us Country Rose paper pad I've used.  It's really worth the almost 80 mile round trip from Inverness as it has some great products that I just can't get locally.  I know the internet is fab but sometimes you just need some retail therapy!

I've coloured the image with Promarkers to match the papers and added some Stardust Stickles to the wings.  I went for a circular card as I found some old La Pashe card blanks in my stash recently that I'd forgotten about.  I've used Spellbinders Lacey Circle nesties as well as X-cut plain and scalloped circle dies and a LOTV sentiment.  I've finished off the card with some crystal and green gems.

Thank you for stopping by.

Hugs, Shona xx

Tuesday, 26 May 2015

Dream Valley DT Card - Anything Goes

I should have posted this yesterday morning but things have been really hectic simce my last post and I didn't manage to get anything scheduled.  Iona was involved in a dance festival all weekend with her cheerleading and dance team, luckily it was a local one so there was no travelling but it was still very time consuming - good fun though!  It was back to work yesterday then Parent Council at school last night and work again today so it's been non stop!

Anyway, the important news is that there is a new challenge underway over at the Dream Valley blog.  Our theme this time is everyone's favourite 'Anything Goes' so why don't you join us!  Our sponsor is Sherri Baldy Designs who have a fab prize for our winner.

So, on to my card...

I have used one of the sponsor images for my DT card and I've coloured it with Promarkers.  The papers are Forever Friends and were a magazine freebie some time back.  The sentiment is a rub off from Kaisercraft and the ribbon is by Docrafts.  I've finished off my card with pink and green pearls.

That's me for tonight, I'm still trying to get caught up with things!

Hugs, Shona xx

Wednesday, 20 May 2015

I Love Promarkers DT Card - Tags

Good morning!

It's Wednesday so it's the start of another fab challenge over at I Love Promarkers, our theme this week is 'Tags' and we'd love you to join in the fun!  Our sponsors this week are Eureka! Stamps who have a fabulous prize for our winner.

We each got to choose an image to work with so as my Christmas cards are a bit thin on the ground so far this year I decided to go for 'Caroling Angel'.  I've coloured her with Promarkers but also paper pieced the dress and wings.

I've used Docrafts Victorian Christmas papers and sentiment.  The tag, lace and ribbon are also all Docrafts.  I've added some buttons tied with twine and pearls to finish my card.

Thank you for stopping by.

Shona x

I'd like to enter my card into the following challenges:

Tuesday, 19 May 2015

Quick Cheer Bow

Tonight I have something completely different to show you.  As some of you may know my daughter Iona goes to Cheerleading and dancing.  Well, this weekend there is a big 2 day 'Cheer Festival' in our home city.  Iona will be competing in Solo Pom Dance as well as Cheer, Pom, Jazz and Hip Hop teams!  We got her a cute little dress for her solo so I wanted to make her a Cheer Bow to match.  I followed a simple You Tube tutorial I found on Pinterest which you can find here.  The spotty bow is to match her dress the zebra one was a prototype I made a while back.  I used a loom band to cinch in the fabric in the middle but some people use a cable tie pulled tight.  Either way it will be covered by a strip of ribbon when finished off.  I find grosgrain ribbon works best as it is quite stiff and holds it's shape quite well.

Anyway extra practice has been keeping both Iona and I busy this week and we probably won't be around much until next week apart from my scheduled DT post tomorrow.

Bye for now,
Hugs, Shona (and Iona) xx

Thursday, 14 May 2015

Birthday Blog Hop at C.R.A.F.T Challenge!!!

Happy Birthday To Us
Happy Birthday To Us
Happy Birthday Dear CRAFT Challenge
Happy Birthday To Us!

Can you believe it? CRAFT Challenge is already 6 years old. Originally started by Tracy from Just Tracy Crafts and with a DT mostly recruited from Trimcraft forum members (Hence the term CRAFT Challenge, which stood for Crafters Residing Are Friendly Trimmies. Or if you wished alternative meaning of Can't Remember A Flipping Thing) on the 4th of May 2009.

We have now grown to be a large team of Design Team Members from all around the world, supplemented with lots of Guest Designers who join us for a month at a time.

We have always welcomed all kinds of craft, not just paper craft (unless specifically stated so in the challenge at the time) and are happy to have such a large group of faithful followers.

So, how are we going to celebrate this milestone?

Well, how else can we celebrate than to have our yearly Blogaversary Blog Hop?

We all feature one of our sponsors for this blog hop on our blogs and I have the honour of featuring and offering a prize from the following sponsor. You can win this prize by adding your name to Inlinkz at the end of this post. I would love to see your comments as well.

The prize to be won is 3 images from Lacy Sunshine Stamps.

How can you get to win any of the prizes provided by our sponsors?

That is easy! Just follow the route on our blog hop (you can also find that in our side banner), Our Blog Hop lasts for the duration of this challenge, which means a closing time of Wednesday 6pm GMT on the 20th of May 2015.

And here are our little rules for this challenge/blog hop:

What can you win on our challenge blog?

The winner of the winning sentence wins the special pack by Trimgym's Digital Stamps and Images.

You should have come here from Myrna's blog and as you can see your next stop isRuth aka TipTop's blog. The start and finish of this blog hop are at CRAFT Challenge Blog.

And here is my project for this week, hope you like it. I have used 'Cupcake Sticky Wings' byLacy Sunshine Stamps.

My materials:
Lacy Sunshine Cupcake Sticky Wings Digi Image
Stardust Stickles on wings
LOTV Perfect Pair Papers
Kaisercraft Rub On Sentiment
Sizzix/Craft Asylum heart border die
X-cut circle/scalloped circle dies
Ribbon, buttons, pearls and kraft card from stash

And now for our Blog Hop route:

CRAFT Challenge Blog (you are here at the start of the hop)
Shona (you are here now)
CRAFT Challenge Blog (you are here at the end of the hop)

And here is the letter to be collected on this blog:

Your next stop is Ruth aka TipTop's blog. Enjoy the rest of your hop! Don't forget to add your name to Inlinkz below to be in with a chance of winning the prize on my blog.

I'd like to enter my card into the following challenges:

The Stamping Boutique Challenge - Die cut or punch
CHN Patterned Paper Challenge - May

Wednesday, 13 May 2015

I Love Promarkers DT Card - Flowers

Good Morning,

So it's Wednesday!  If you work Monday to Friday like I do then you're probably as pleased to see Wednesday as I am as it signals the halfway point of the working week.  It's also the day we start new challenges at I Love Promarkers so it's a win win!  Our theme this week is 'Flowers' and we have the fab Paper Shelter sponsoring us.  They have a fantastic prize for our winner.

I've chosen one of their images for my DT card, this one is Purity and I've coloured her with Promarkers.

The paper is a single 12x12 sheet I picked up in a craft shop and I don't know the brand, I just liked the design.  I've used a combination of Memory Box, Marianne, Spellbinders and Sizzix dies for the fancy circles, paper flowers and leaves.  The sentiment is LOTV and I've added some various ready made flowers from my stash, pearls, spotty organza ribbon and cotton trim from The Works.

This is a bit fussier than my normal style of card but I quite like how it's turned out.

All the best,
Shona xx

I'd like to enter my card into the following challenges:

CHN Patterned Paper Challenge - May
Crafting By Designs - Flowers
The Crafter's Cafe Challenge #116 - Feminine
Crafty Gals Corner Challenges #19 - May Flowers

Monday, 11 May 2015

Dream Valley DT Card - Things With Wings

It's still Monday!  Unusually 2 of my DT challenges have fallen on the same day so here I am again!  This time I'm here to tell you about our new challenge starting over at Dream Valley Challenges.  Our theme this week is 'Things With Wings' and we are sponsored by the fantastic Crafts and Me.

I have used one of their gorgeous digis called Poppy for my DT card.  I've coloured her with Promarkers and added Stardust Stickles to the wings and Cotton Candy to the edge of the image.

The paper and doily are from an ancient 12x12 pack from Stampin' Up and I've used a corner die by Marianne with a different shade of pink underneath to hide a corner of the paper that had been cut into.  I'm not usually as resourceful as this but I really wanted to use this paper and that's all I had left!  The sentiment is by LOTV and I've added spotty organza ribbon and some pearls to finish off my card.

Thanks for stopping by and can I take this opportunity to apologise for not commenting on others' blogs recently.  I've been busy at work and home and more recently had a tummy bug so I've more or less just been on here to keep up with my DT commitments and not had time for much else.  Will try to catch up/keep up as best I can.

Shona xx

Cutie Pies DT Card - Layer it up!

Good Morning,

Monday again and no bank holiday this week - boo!!!!  But, it is the start of a new challenge over at The Cutie Pie Challenge and we'd love love you to join us.  Our theme this week is 'Layer it up' and as always your project must include a CUTE image to be in with a chance of winning a prize.

Our sponsors this month are the fab Pink Gem Designs and Crafty Ribbons who have some fantastic prizes on offer.

I had yet another baby girl card to make (where are all the boys???) so I chose an old favourite digi from Pink Gem - Baby Girl Sleeping Teddy and have coloured it with Promarkers to match the LOTV Perfect Pair papers.

My sentiment is also by LOTV.  My doily and scalloped circle dies are by X-cut and the Precious Hearts are by Memory Box.  I've finished off my card with spotty organza ribbon, pearls and gems.

Thank you for looking.

Hugs, Shona xx

Wednesday, 6 May 2015

I Love Promarkers DT Card - Anything Goes

Good Morning!

Wow, it's Wednesday - the week is just flying past after having the Bank Holiday Monday off!  Today is the start of a new challenge over at I Love Promarkers and we have everyones' favourite theme 'Anything Goes'!  Woop woop!  We'd love you to join us, just make sure that you use some Letraset products - Promarkers, Flexmarkers, etc on your card.

This weeks sponsor is Letraset who have a fab prize for the winner

I took the opportunity to ink up one of the stamps I bought from the new Gorjuss collection.  This one is called Dear Apple and I've coloured her with Promarkers to match the papers which are also from the Gorjuss collection.

I've die cut a corner embellishment using a Marianne die and added grosgrain and gingham ribbon.  The letter stickers were cheap sale ones I picked up in Hobbycraft and I've finished off my card with some buttons and gems.

That's all from me just now, I'm off to work unfortunately :(

Shona xx

Saturday, 2 May 2015

CRAFT Challenge DT Card - Use a Charm/Add Metal

We have a fab challenge running over at the CRAFT Challenge Blog just now and we'd love you to join us.  Our theme this week is 'Add a Charm or Use Metal'.  There are so many lovely metal embellishments out there just now such as ornate corners, butterflies, fancy metal brads as well as the more traditional charms so you should have no problem finding something to fit the theme!

Our sponsors this time are Bugaboo and Oddball Art who have some super prizes on offer for the winners.

I've made a Christmas card for my DT offering and I've used a digi image by Scribbles called Snow Fun which I've coloured with Promarkers.

The paper is from a Pippin Wood magazine freebie by Docrafts and I've added a snowflake charm.  My sentiment is by LOTV and I've finished off my card with red pearls and spotty organza ribbon.

That's me for now.

Have a lovely weekend.

Shona xx

31 Day Blog Challenege - Day 31 Weird Quirk of mine

I missed the last day by a day.  I didn't sleep well Thursday night so by time I got home from work last night I didn't have the energy to move off the sofa - sad but true and I don't veg out that often so I didn't feel too guilty lol!

Ok, I think my weirdest quirk is cotton bud (Q-tip) spotting!  Not that I try to spot them on purpose mind, but I seem to have a radar that seeks them out in all sorts of public places lol!  I spot them in supermarket car parks, on the pavement, the weirdest ever was when I got in a taxi and there was one in the footwell.  I don't understand how just odd ones pop up all over the place and nobody else seems to notice.  It's just so gross the only thing worse would be having to pick one up yuck!!!  It's like the cheese touch (if you've ever seen Diary of a Wimpy Kid)!

Now you must think I'm really weird, just as well this one was the last day lol!!!!

Shona xx


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Clogged Toilet Repair Fix

Clogged Toilet Repair Pricing

Clear Choke Unit Rates (SGD)
Clearing toilet bowl choke From $40
Clearing bathroom/kitchen floor trap choke From $40

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    "Yesterday I called HDB Plumbers at around 10:30 and told them about my clogged problem, within an hour the plumber Mr Tan came! Mr Tan was amazing, friendly and efficient. He had all the parts needed in the van and nothing was too much trouble. He explained everything to me and where the problem was. In less than two hours the clog was all sorted and everything was back to its working order! "

    Barathan Revi
    Barathan ReviCondominium Owner @ Tampinese


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2D & 3D Visualization

We have over 11 years of experience in the field of drafting and design with projects ranging in size from 500 sf remodels to 150,000 sf commercial facilities. Our wide range of experience makes us versatile enough to tackle any size or type of job. Our design services include: 3D Product Visualization, Architectural Visualization, and Drafting Services.

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Alzheimer’s disease is not one illness but has three distinct types

Alzheimer’s disease consists of three distinct subtypes, according to a study carried out by researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles and published in the journal Aging.

The researchers say their findings could lead to more targeted treatments being developed.

It was discovered that one subtype in particular is a ‘fundamentally different condition’ from the other two. Dr Dale Bredesen, the study’s lead author, says this will help the development of personalised treatments in the future.

‘Because the presentation varies from person to person, there has been suspicion for years that Alzheimer’s represents more than one illness. When laboratory tests go beyond the usual tests, we find these three distinct subtypes.

‘The important implications of this are that the optimal treatment may be different for each group, there may be different causes, and, for future clinical trials, it may be helpful to study specific groups separately.’

The three subtypes are inflammatory, non-inflammatory and cortical.

Cortical Alzheimer’s typically affects younger people, and affects a larger area of the brain. The first symptom of the condition isn’t memory loss, but the loss of language skills. Because sufferers generally don’t have the ‘Alzheimer’s gene’ it is often misdiagnosed.

Bredesen says the next step in his research is to find out if there are different underlying causes behind the subtypes, and whether or not optimised treatments would be appropriate.

  • Roy White

    Interesting subject, but this appears to be more of an introduction to an article than an article itself. Would have liked to read more about the 3 subtypes.

  • Rob

    This is not true