Timbaland Sues Insurance Co. Over Lost $1.8 Mil Watch ...

It's been two years, but Timba doesn't care!

The ridiculously successful rapper and producer is tired of waiting on the cash he swears his shady insurance company owes him!!

Timbaland recently filed a lawsuit against American Home Assurance Company? if they won't replace his $1.8 MILLION watch he lost, he's going to sue them for the cash-money!

His timepiece cost $50K to insure and the Give It To Me singer isn't keen on flushing that kind of dough down the drain!

If you remember, the same lost item that reportedly put him on suicide watch ? no pun intended ? a few years SexyBack back.

Wow!! It must keep super accurate time, LOLz!!

Where did the thing end up?!

In his daughter's belly, perhaps!?

In the court papers, Timbaland said:

"[My two-and-a-half-year-old daughter] picked [the watch] up and played with it until she became bored and discarded it somewhere? It has never been found."

Holy cannoli!

If we owned a metal diamond detector, we'd comb his yard for the multi-million dollar missing watch right the eff now!

Tags: daughter, give it to me, insurance, justin timberlake, lawsuit, lost watch, million dollar watch, money, music minute, nelly furtado, rap, sexyback, suicide, timbaland

Source: http://perezhilton.com/2013-01-29-timbaland-lawsuit-million-dollar-suicide-watch-lost-insurance-payment

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Caterpillar 4Q earnings fall by half

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) ? Caterpillar's fourth-quarter net income fell by half after it took a big charge for a deal in China that went bad, and because of slower growth in China and economic uncertainty in the U.S. and Europe.

Still, its adjusted profit and revenue were better than analysts expected. And while cautious about the global economic outlook, Caterpillar does expect conditions to pick up later in the year, outside of Europe. Shares rose 2.4 percent in premarket trading.

Caterpillar Inc. makes construction and mining equipment as well as power generators, so its growth rises and falls with the world's economy.

For the fourth quarter, Caterpillar earned $697 million, or $1.04 per share. That was down from a profit of $1.55 billion, or $2.32 per share a year earlier.

Revenue fell 7 percent to $16.08 billion as dealers reduced inventory.

The most recent quarter included a non-cash charge of 87 cents per share to write down the purchase of Zhengzhou Siwei. Not counting that, analysts surveyed by FactSet had been expecting a profit of $1.70 per share.

Caterpillar's purchase of Siwei last year gave it a new business ? roofing supports for mines ? in a country where mining is growing quickly. But on Jan. 18, Caterpillar said it had found "deliberate, multi-year, coordinated accounting misconduct" in the accounting at Siwei, and said it will write down its investment in the company by $580 million. It also said it dismissed several senior managers at the company.

For this year, Caterpillar expects revenue of $60 billion to $68 billion, with a profit of $7 to $9 per share.

Analysts had been expecting a profit of $8.54 per share on revenue of $64.58 billion.

Caterpillar said there's a wide range in its outlook because of the high level of uncertainty in the world. It expects relatively weak growth in the U.S. economy. Growth in China will improve, but not back to the levels seen in 2010 or 2011, Caterpillar said.

For all of 2012, the company's profits rose 15 percent to $5.68 billion, or $8.48 per share, up from $4.93 billion, or $7.40 per share, in 2011. Revenue rose 10 percent to $65.88 billion, from $60.14 billion.

Shares of the Peoria, Ill.-based company rose $2.32 to $97.90 in premarket trading.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-01-28-Earns-Caterpillar/id-8d45d5e0b8484fd18dc719db36bacebf

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Victims of Nazi anatomists named

27 January 2013 Last updated at 22:39 ET By Victoria Gill BBC reporter

Liane Berkowitz was just 19 years old when she was executed by the Nazis.

She was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 when they caught her putting up posters that displayed messages of protest against an exhibition of Nazi propaganda. She was pregnant at the time of her arrest, but this just led to her execution being postponed until after the birth of her child.

Liane's grim story did not end in her death; her body was one of thousands that were delivered to anatomists and used for dissection and experimentation.

The identity of victims who met this same fate is now coming to light thanks to researchers who are scouring legal records to identify the victims of Nazi terror who ended up on anatomists' dissection tables.

Liane was one of 182 people whose corpses were claimed by the anatomy researcher Hermann Stieve, who, at the time, was a leading anatomist at the University of Berlin.

The full names of the people on "Stieve's list" - the vast majority of whom were women - has now been published by Dr Sabine Hildebrandt, a German-born anatomist based at the University of Michigan.

"Stieve himself put this list together in 1946," explained Dr Hildebrandt, who has been investigating the history of German anatomy for a decade. Stieve's own thorough record of his macabre work has enabled her to identify his victims.

Stieve's crimes have been exposed, but Dr Hildebrandt has now focused her efforts of telling the stories of his victims.

"I wanted to find out who these people were," Dr Hildebrandt told the BBC. "I wanted to make them known again."

'Doomed women'

Stieve was interested particularly in reproductive anatomy; a key reason why so many victims on his list were women.

"Before 1933, he was able to source the bodies of executed men, but no women; Germany was not executing women."

"Then, suddenly, during the Third Reich, women were being executed too."

About half of these women, including Liane Berkowitz, were executed for treason; some were betrayed to the Gestapo by fellow citizens for airing their anti-Nazi politics.

William Seidelman, former professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, has also spent years uncovering links between "medicine and murder" in the Third Reich.

In a 1999 paper in Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies he revealed some of the details of how Stieve worked closely with the prison in Berlin where prisoners were executed.

"When a woman of reproductive age was due to be executed, Stieve was informed, a date of execution was decided upon, and the prisoner told the scheduled date of her death," wrote Prof Seidelman.

"Stieve was particularly interested in the effects of stress and psychological trauma on the doomed woman's menstrual pattern.

"Upon the woman's execution, her pelvic organs were removed for examination. Stieve published reports based on those studies without hesitation or apology."

Stieve referred to the organs he used as "material". His publications during this time were some of the first to suggest that stress - in the form of being sentenced to death - disrupted a woman's menstrual cycle.

In a mission to reveal the human lives behind this "material", Dr Hildebrandt studied through the personal files of Stieve's victims, which are held at the Memorial Site for the German Resistance in Berlin.

She cross-checked each file against a copy of Stieve's list that is on file at the German Ministry of Justice, identifying every person on the list.

Continue reading the main story

Nazi experiments

• According to medical historian Paul Weindling, almost 25,000 victims of Nazi scientific experiments have now been identified.
• Dr Weindling says there were different "phases" to the Nazi's experiments. The first was linked to eugenics and forced sterilisation.
• The second phase coincided with the start of the war. "Doctors began experimenting on patients in psychiatric hospitals," Prof Weindling writes in a BBC report. "Sporadic experiments were made in concentration camps like Sachsenhausen near Berlin, and anthropological observations at Dachau."
• The third phase began in 1942, when the SS and German military took greater control of the experiments. There was a surge in the numbers of experiments, with lethal diseases including malaria and louse-borne typhus administered to thousands of victims.
• During a fourth phase in 1944-45, explains Dr Weindling, "scientists knew the war was lost but they continued their experiments".

Dr Hildebrandt noted the correct spelling of the names of the 174 women and eight men on the list, their exact dates of birth and death, their nationality, the reason for their execution and any other biographical information she could find.

Some of the files contained personal letters expressing final wishes of condemned prisoners. "Some of them expressed wishes to be reunited with their families in death," said Dr Hildebrandt.

One letter by Libertas Schulze-Boysen, a German-born resistance fighter who was once a member of the Nazi party, but left in 1937 and went on join the resistance and collect photographic evidence documenting National Socialist crimes of violence.

Libertas was arrested in September 1942 and sentenced to death for treason in December of the same year.

In a letter to her mother, she wrote: ''As a last wish I have asked that my 'material substance' be left to you. If possible, bury me in a beautiful place amidst sunny nature.''

Dark history

Dr Hildenbrandt said that her research made it "painfully clear" how little anatomists at the time were interested in the fate of the people whose bodies they were dissecting.

This left German anatomical research tainted by association.

Of the 31 anatomical departments at universities in Germany and its occupied territories between 1933 and 1945, Dr Hildebrandt found that "all of them - without exception - received bodies of the executed from execution chambers".

The issue only came to public attention in the past two decades.

Prof Seidelman explained that, in 1989, an anatomy lecturer at the University of Tubingen indicated that specimens he was showing were from Russian or Polish slave labourers executed during the Third Reich.

Prof Seidelman told the BBC: "The students were dismayed and demanded an explanation."

The university held a formal investigation, and all anatomy specimens of "suspect or uncertain origin" were buried in a special section of the Tubingen cemetery and, on July 8, 1990, a commemorative ceremony was held.

Continue reading the main story

Pernkopf's Atlas: A textbook tainted by Nazi association

• Eduard Pernkopf, chairman of anatomy at the University of Vienna between 1933 and 1945, was a member of the Nazi party whose sourcing of executed prisoners for dissections is on permanent record in his now infamous anatomical atlas.
• The detailed illustrations in anatomical atlas that Pernkopf produced made it famous among anatomy students.
• Pernkopf worked 18-hour days dissecting corpses while a team of artists created the images; he worked for over two decades on the book.
• AS Sabine Hildebrandt revealed in a 2006 paper in the journal Clinical anatomy, as well as confirming Pernkopf's strong affiliation to the Nazi party, this project "revealed the delivery of at least 1,377 bodies of executed persons to the Anatomical Institute of Vienna" during the Third Reich. "The possible use of these bodies as models cannot be excluded for up to half of the approximately 800 plates in the atlas."

Several universities, have carried out formal investigations into their own anatomy departments' procurement of bodies during the Third Reich.

Many institutes in Austria were also involved, notably the University of Vienna.

"The University of Vienna had a special streetcar hearse that delivered the cadavers from the execution chamber of the regional court to the anatomy institute," explained Prof Seidelman.

Eduard Pernkopf, who was chairman of anatomy there between 1933 and 1945, left a printed legacy in the form of a now infamous anatomy tome. It is now understood that many of the incredibly detailed illustrations in Pernkopf's atlas depicted the bodies of victims of Nazi terror.

Prof Seidelman said that researchers were at the "very early stage of the journey of revealing the stories of those humans who became 'experimental material'".

"They became inanimate objects," he added.

Dr Hildebrandt agrees that the issue still casts a shadow on anatomy today, and while a great deal has been published about the crimes of the perpetrators, "German post-war anatomy was built in part on the bodies of [the] victims".

She added: "It's time to return the names to the numbers - to give faces and biographies to the so far anonymous victims of anatomy in the Third Reich in order to remember and honour their humanity and the iniquities they had to endure."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21086388#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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Washington casts wary eye at Muslim Brotherhood

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama begins his second term straining to maintain a good relationship with Egypt, an important U.S. ally whose president is a conservative Islamist walking a fine line between acting as a moderate peace broker and keeping his Muslim Brotherhood party happy with anti-American rhetoric.

The White House last summer had hoped to smooth over some of the traditional tensions between Washington and the Brotherhood, a party rooted in opposition to Israel and the U.S., when Egypt overthrew dictator Hosni Mubarak and picked Mohammed Morsi as its first democratically elected leader.

But a spate of recent steps ? from Brotherhood-led attacks on protesters, to vague protestations of women's freedoms in the nation's new constitution, to revelations of old comments by Morsi referring to Jews as "bloodsuckers" and "pigs" ? have raised alarm among senior U.S. officials and threatens $1 billion in American aid to Egypt.

Though the Brotherhood was founded in Egypt, its influence and affiliates have spread across the Mideast and into North Africa ? where two recent terrorist attacks and a French assault on Islamist militants in Mali have presented Obama with a new front in the battle against extremism for his second term.

The White House has little interest in picking a fight with the Muslim Brotherhood, which has grown in size and stature across the region since the Arab Spring revolts. The Brotherhood and similar Islamist movements are regarded warily by monarchies in Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco. Its members are part of the opposition coalition seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad. It has small followings in Qatar, Algeria, and a like-minded ? although not officially affiliated ? ally in Tunisia.

When Egyptians elected Morsi, he offered words of moderation, brokered a cease-fire between Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza and bore down on terrorist dens in the Sinai Peninsula.

The Morsi-led government is "a new administration and they're obviously having growing pains," said a senior Obama administration official who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity so he could discuss the diplomatic relationship more candidly.

Since the Tahrir Square revolution two years ago, Washington has tried to help Egypt build a democratic state without appearing to tread on its sovereignty. Morsi won election last June with 51 percent of Egypt's vote.

A new eruption of political violence in Egypt over the weekend left about 50 people dead, deepening the malaise as the Morsi struggles to get a grip on enormous social and economic problems. He has declared a 30-day state of emergency and curfew in the three Suez Canal provinces hit hardest by the violence.

The White House is increasingly concerned about the direction the Brotherhood is taking Egypt: "It's not just about majority rule," the administration official said. "There are democratic principles that we continue to support."

Morsi's anti-Semitic comments, made in separate speeches in 2010 but which surfaced this month on Egyptian TV, also accused Obama of being a liar. They shocked U.S. officials who sprang to condemn them as counter-productive to American-supported peace efforts in the Mideast. But they surprised few people in Egypt, who have heard Brotherhood officials make similar statements for years.

Morsi initially struggled to respond to the U.S. backlash from the comments. His office issued a statement committing to uphold religious freedoms and tolerance, and condemning violence.

"The president strongly believes that we must respect and indeed celebrate our common humanity, and does not accept or condone derogatory statements regarding any religious or ethnic group," the statement said, without addressing the fact that Morsi himself made those comments.

The statement, however, did little to soothe U.S. lawmakers ? Democrats and Republicans alike ? who have balked at approving $1 billion in aid to Egypt that Obama promised in 2011 to help the new government settle an economic crisis that has drained the country's central bank and devalued the local currency in the revolution's aftermath.

"How would the American people feel about cutting money to education programs here and giving money to a government that is anti-Semitic?" Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., a member of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding to foreign governments, said.

"I don't think the administration has any right to say they are going to grant this foreign aid because I think this Congress may very well condition it," Wolf said. "I think there are a lot of questions, and I don't think it's a given."

Part of the proposed $1 billion aid package depends on International Monetary Fund approval of its own $4.8 billion loan to Egypt. But that loan has stalled for months because of Egypt's instability.

Despite its misgivings about Morsi, the White House still is pushing Congress for the funding, acknowledging that Egypt's downfall all but certainly would roil the already turbulent Mideast and North Africa.

"It's not in our interest to have an economic collapse in Egypt," said the senior Obama administration official.

The Brotherhood describes itself as a non-violent social organization dedicated to instilling Islamic values in the society. In Egypt, where it formed, the group was repressed by former regimes for decades and has struggled with adjusting to its new role leading the government. Its members, fearing a coup, are widely blamed with attacking anti-Morsi protesters outside the presidential palace in Cairo last month in clashes that left at least 10 people dead.

"What they missed was the fact that they are a governing party now, and to be getting into street battles when you also have commanding presence in the Egyptian state shows inexperience and panic," said Nathan Brown, a professor at George Washington University who has been researching Islamic movements for nearly a decade. "This is the kind of group that will be a pain to deal with for the United States, but it's not al-Qaida; it's not a security threat."

He added: "The biggest fear on the part of the (Obama) administration is a political breakdown in Egypt. They are worried that a collapse in the Egyptian state would be destabilizing on the region, and might allow the flow of arms and fighters among more radical movements in the region ? especially in trouble spots like Sinai and Gaza."

Obama administration officials said Morsi's promises to abide by Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel, and continued security cooperation with Israel over the volatile Sinai Peninsula shows his willingness to be a reasonable partner. Morsi's work in November to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rules was "a good first step," the senior Obama administration official said.

But Washington remains wary of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, "who come from a very conservative viewpoint with issues that are very important to America," said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

Gillibrand was part of a delegation of U.S. lawmakers who met with Morsi in Cairo this month shortly after his 2010 statements surfaced. She stopped short of saying Morsi appeared chastened but described him as mindful of "how important America is to the viability of his presidency and the economy."

She said lawmakers want to see what actions he takes, "and we want to see if his words match those deeds and actions," Gillibrand said.

___

Follow Lara Jakes on Twitter at https://twitter.com/larajakesAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/washington-casts-wary-eye-muslim-brotherhood-081823131--politics.html

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A look at notable deadly nightclub fires

Firefighters work to douse a fire at the Kiss Club in Santa Maria city, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013. Firefighters say that the death toll from a fire that swept through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil has risen to 180. Officials say the fire broke out at the club while a band was performing. At least 200 people were also injured. (AP Photo/Agencia RBS)

Firefighters work to douse a fire at the Kiss Club in Santa Maria city, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013. Firefighters say that the death toll from a fire that swept through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil has risen to 180. Officials say the fire broke out at the club while a band was performing. At least 200 people were also injured. (AP Photo/Agencia RBS)

A fire that swept through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday and killed more than 230 people appears to be the deadliest in more a decade. Here is a look at some of the biggest nightclub fires in the past century:

? A blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, broke out in December 2009, when an indoor fireworks display ignited a plastic ceiling decorated with branches, killing 152.

? A December 2004 fire killed 194 people at an overcrowded working-class nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after a flare ignited ceiling foam.

? A nightclub fire in the U.S. state of Rhode Island in 2003 killed 100 people after pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling.

?In China's worst nightclub disaster in recent years, a fire blamed on a welding accident tore through a disco in the central city of Luoyang in December 2000, killing 309 people.

?A fire at the Ozone Disco Pub in 1996 in Quezon City, Philippines, killed 162 people, many of them students celebrating the end of the school year.

?In 1977, 165 people perished and more than 200 were injured when the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky, which touted itself as the Showplace of the Nation, burned to the ground.

?A fire killed 492 people at Boston's Cocoanut Grove club in 1942, the deadliest nightclub blaze in U.S. history. The fire led to the enactment of requirements for sprinkler systems and accessible exits with emergency lights not linked to the regular lighting system.

?In 1940, a fire ignited the decorative Spanish moss draping the ceiling of the Rhythm Night Club in Natchez, Mississippi, killing 209 people. Hundreds of patrons ran to the only exit. The windows had been boarded shut to keep unwanted guests from sneaking in.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-01-27-Nightclub-Fires-Glance/id-774b0545c35c443db6478025ffa55bc7

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laragomez: louboutin How To Help Grieving Teens Cope With Death

written by bianhu8v722 on January 26, 2013 in Uncategorized with no comments

For grieving teens, the value of availability from their family and friends is what they really need especially in these trying times of mourning and death. When we talk about being available, I mean being approachable, caring,abercrombie milano, sympathetic and most of all,louboutin pas cher, being appropriate?like stop saying some things offensive and jokes must be minimized?for now.

Teens and grieving are two most sensitive issues to deal with, since individuals at this stage in their lives are sensitive, how much more if they deal with the topic of death and bereavement. It?s more helpful if they have an adult caregiver, but their family and close friends can suffice if the grieving teens know that people close to them are always willing to talk to them anytime and no matter what it?s all about,louboutin, just as long as they have someone to hear their hearts out,moncler.

Though you?re dealing with grieving teens,hollister deutschland, treat them as adults and talk to them as honestly as you can and this includes doing away with the use of euphemisms; for example, don?t refer to death as ?passed away? or ?left us?. Also, never assume that grieving teens would come to you and initiate a conversation.

They?re very vulnerable at this stage, and they?re be thankful if you ask them if they want to have a talk about whatever it is they want to open up. But then again, it?s perfectly fine if you?re being asked a difficult question and you don?t know how to answer it, so you can say,hollister uk, ?I don?t know.? It?s better than trying to be pretentious that you know but in fact you don?t.

Most especially if they got some spiritual questions that?s way beyond your knowledge. It?s best to admit your limitations and seek the help of your spiritual professional such as your priest,hollister, rabbi,hollister france, imam, minister,hollister, etc. If ever you?re teenager is expressing some beliefs or faith which is different from the traditional family customs, try your best not to react disapprovingly.

Bear in mind that some older teenagers may start to widen their own beliefs and faith practices to prepare themselves for potential losses in the future,air jordan. And this may necessitate some religious ?testing? of some sort on the teen?s part. If this happens, you can refer him/her to your local faith professional.

Grieving teens may also be susceptible to some sudden mood swings expressed at unexpected times. Hence, support groups and grief counseling are also helpful ways to cope with grief and loss.

About The Author
The author of this article,abercrombie, Amy Twain, is a Self Improvement Coach who has been successfully coaching and guiding clients for many years,doudoune moncler. Amy recently published a new home study course on how to boost your Self Esteem. Click here to get more info about her Quick-Action Plan for A More Confident You.
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Source: http://laragomez19.blogspot.com/2013/01/louboutin-how-to-help-grieving-teens.html

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The Definitive Video Marketing Guide From Newbie To Viral Video ...

Video marketing guide designed to take you from a new comer to a viral video marketing king. To see the licensed products I recommend and use click here - http://bit.ly/WFUejG

The initial step of profitable online video marketing whether you are focusing on YouTube video marketing or more general internet video marketing is market research. The reason why is that you want to make sure that the specific industry niche you are going after is profitable otherwise you are just wasting your time. There is no point in going into a market expecting to make money when there is no one there looking to buy.

You are going to be spending a lot of time creating your marketing video and hours searching for video marketing tips so you want to make sure all that time does not go wasted. You can not afford to skip this step.

To see the products that I license, click here http://bit.ly/WFUejG and either myself or one of my team members will contact you to offer personalized help if you choose to market the same products.

0:30 Step 1 of Video Marketing
1:43 What to look for when doing market research
3:20 Youtube video marketing research
5:10 Product options for profitable marketing

Here is more video marketing tips from one of my colleagues:

How To Utilize Online Videos In Your Business Campaign

Keeping in touch with customers via flat newsletters and traditional emails can become rather boring for both you and your audience. Consider the possibilities offered by video marketing! This article will help you out with a few basic tips and tricks to get you started. After that, it's up to you to quickly adapt to this highly effective tool in advertising.

Video Marketing

When considering video marketing, you have to think about the idea of search engine optimization. You should always include a transcript or overview of your video for people that would rather read instead of watch the video. This is a great idea, and you should make sure you keep up with it as you post videos.

Make sure your audience will be receptive to video marketing before you launch your new campaign. If your typical customers are not likely to use YouTube or share videos on social networks, you should probably focus on other marketing methods. Use surveys to determine how likely your customers are to subscribe to this new campaign.

To help garner even more views embed your video in your website. Most people when they think of video marketing think only of posting a video on YouTube. Instead, post it on your website and include a link on your Facebook wall and Tweet about your new video on Twitter.

Video marketing does not have to be complicated. One of the most popular formats is simply a regular video, without any bells and whistles included. Of course, if you can, those videos with flash animations have also proved popular, as well as picture slide shows with a voice over and music.

If you decide to create a series of videos, it is important that you remain consistent. Try using the same length and format for your videos and use similar title pages and credits so viewers easily recognize your video marketing campaign. If possible, release your videos on a certain day of the week to build anticipation.

Make video marketing a part of your strategy, but do not rely on it entirely. Remember, it can be expensive to continuously post new videos. In addition, it can be time consuming to make them and put them up online. Therefore, while they are very valuable, you should engage in other tactics as well.

Video is a great medium for conveying ideas. This works in business by showing customers what makes your business special. A short video describing your products or highlighting your experience will go a long way to making that sale. Remember to be clear and make any ideas your convey simple to understand so that your video marketing campaign will be a total success.

You've got to use what's at your disposal in business, and having video marketing is certainly an advantage! Hopefully this article has given you a good introduction to this method of marketing and got you thinking. The next step is to step up to the mic and tell the world about your business!

To license products so you can make 100% commissions and not have to pay high licensing costs click here - http://bit.ly/WFUejG

To watch Video #2, click here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRtjVIphELE

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnWJ2Cu3ZsQ

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Hubble finds appearances can be deceptive: Looking at the stars in NGC 411

Jan. 26, 2013 ? Globular clusters are roughly spherical collections of extremely old stars, and around 150 of them are scattered around our galaxy. Hubble is one of the best telescopes for studying these, as its extremely high resolution lets astronomers see individual stars, even in the crowded core. The clusters all look very similar, and in Hubble's images it can be quite hard to tell them apart -- and they all look much like NGC 411, pictured in a new image.

And yet appearances can be deceptive: NGC 411 is in fact not a globular cluster, and its stars are not old. It isn't even in the Milky Way. NGC 411 is classified as an open cluster located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a small sister galaxy near our own. Less tightly bound than a globular cluster, the stars in open clusters tend to drift apart over time as they age, whereas globulars have survived for well over 10 billion years of galactic history. NGC 411 is a relative youngster -- not much more than a tenth of this age. Far from being a relic of the early years of the universe, the stars in NGC 411 are in fact a fraction of the age of the sun.

The stars in NGC 411 are all roughly the same age, having formed at one time from one cloud of gas. But they are not all the same size. Hubble's image shows a wide range of colors and brightness in the cluster's stars; these tell astronomers many facts about the stars, including their mass, temperature and evolutionary phase. Blue stars, for instance, have higher surface temperatures than red ones.

The image is a composite produced from ultraviolet, visible and infrared observations made by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. This filter set lets the telescope "see" colors slightly further beyond red and the violet ends of the spectrum.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/nCwqd3lMSz0/130126092923.htm

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Egyptian mourners bury 35 killed in Port Said riot

PORT SAID, Egypt (AP) ? Thousands of people who have turned out for a mass funeral for 35 people killed in rioting in the coastal city of Port Said are chanting against Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

Mourners in the funeral procession were shouting "There is no God but Allah, and Morsi is God's enemy" after praying for the dead Sunday at the city's Mariam Mosque.

There were no police or army troops in sight, but the funeral procession briefly halted after gunfire rang out. The source of the gunfire was not immediately known.

Health officials say at least 37 people were killed, including two policemen, in rioting on Saturday. The violence erupted after a court handed down death sentences to 21 local fans involved in a deadly melee at a soccer game last year.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egyptian-mourners-bury-35-killed-port-said-riot-115329316.html

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Fitium: What's Inside? How Will It Help You Lose Weight? Fitium ...

If you?re looking for the official Fitium diet website ? click here

What is Fitium?

Fitium is a revolutionary online weight loss system which has helped thousands not only lose weight, but live a healthier lifestyle.

How does Fitium work?

The key idea behind Fitium is that there is ?no one size fits all diet?. Our genetics, lifestyle, age, fitness, health and diet mean that the same diet can help someone lose weight, whilst making another gain weight!
Fitium takes a different approach, and seeks to understand how your body works, in order to provide a personalised plan designed to help your body lose weight naturally, and keep it off!

Let?s see how it works:
Understanding why you are gaining weight
When you first sign up, you?ll complete a short 8-minute assessment which help Fitium understand how your body works, and pinpoint areas which are causing you to gain weight.

Your personalised diet plan
Fitium then helps you identify your ideal weight, and creates a personalised plan to help you reach it. Your plan will feature an easy to follow blueprint which includes:

• How many calories you need to consume
• Which calories to prioritise
• Which foods to avoid (including recommended substitutes)
• Specific recommendations to address your key weight gain factors
• Tailored advice to help blast your stubborn fat zones

Lose weight from the first week
Starting a new habit or change is not easy, and there are many factors that can derail your progress. So?Fitium have developed the 7 Day Accelerator course to guide you through the first week, help you avoid common pitfalls, turbocharge your results and ensure you have the best strategies for long term success too.

?Take the guesswork out of what to eat
Fitium takes the pain out of creating tasty yet healthy meals by providing breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner meals tailored to your exact diet needs. These meals are filling, packed with nutrients and are designed to help you lose weight naturally.

Get support and stay on track each step of the way
Making lifestyle and diet changes can be overwhelming, especially if you are balancing family life and work. So our team has developed weekly coaching challenges to help you implement your new diet plan, one step at a time, and get closer to looking and feeling great.

Tackle the real reasons you gain weight
Don?t let your environment or lifestyle sabotage your weight loss. Fitium has developed tried and tested strategies to help you deal with emotional eating, social occasions, stress and day to day situations which can get in the way of your progress.

?Monitor your progress and reach your diet goals
Fitium provides an easy to follow dashboard to help you monitor your progress, track your meals, review your activity and keep an eye on your health vitals. This results in improved accountability and has been proven to double weight loss in many studies.

Fitium Review. Who is behind Fitium?

Fitium?was designed with the help of a doctor, nutritionist and personal trainer, distilling years of experience into an easy to follow system, you can access online 24/7 from the comfort of your home.

Click here to read more about the team

Fitium is not just a diet but a lifestyle

Many diets focus on the symptoms, instead of tackling the root causes of weight gain they offer ?band aid? solutions which tend to be short term, and unsustainable in the long term.

Fitium works differently by first understanding what is causing your weight gain, and by helping you tackle the nutrition, mindset and lifestyle changes you need to not only lose weight, but improve your health for the long term.
By completing the accelerator course, and the ongoing coaching challenges you will unlock the keys to sustainable weight loss as well as look and feel great.

Need some help to make weight loss dieting work?
If you seek expert advice on losing weight naturally, click here.

The Fitium.com website: What?s inside the Membership Area?

7 day accelerator course to provide you with everything you need to get started fast, and ease you into your new lifestyle +?Weekly coaching challenges developed by the team to help you stay on track and get ongoing improvements

?Optional video workouts to workout at home

A personalised diet plan based on your body?s requirements to maximise your weight loss

Meal Planner ? ATailored meal plans based on your diet plan, featuring tasty meals you can create from home, and exact serving sizes to support your weight loss goals

A health dashboard to help you monitor your progress, and keep track of your physical activity

Ongoing support from the expert team through hundreds of practical guides (with more added on a monthly basis) and Q&A sessions

A food diary to help you track your meals, calorie intake and analyse key nutritional stats

Fitium Review. Fitium Plans and Pricing

There are 3 different plans available for you ? a month-by-month plan, a 6 month/bi-annual plan and a yearly plan.

We would recommend starting right out with the yearly plan. Why, you ask?

Well, not only is it the yearly plan give the best value by far ? at $2.48 per week!! ? but having a yearly membership will make you stick to the plan and finally accomplish your weight loss goal! Plus, there is an iron-clad 30-day Money Back Guarantee. So if you aren?t satisfied with what Fitium has to offer you, just ask for a refund. But if you love it, as we know you will, you get to stay at the lowest price possible.

A little sneaky but a great tactic, don?t you think?

Click here to see the plans and sign up now

6-month plan$74.99

Sign Up Now

• $2.87 per week
• 37% Savings

1-year plan$129.50

Sign Up Now

• $2.48 per week
• 45% Savings

Fitium Review. Customer reviews of Fitium

Some Customer reviews of Fitium Diet Plan found on the web

?Fitium is good if you follow the challenges.To get the most of the site you need to follow the coaching challenges which I found really motivating, especially as I have a tendency to easily get bored.

I lost 3 stones in two months on this plan and actually enjoyed the process. I didn?t have to make drastic changes to my diet, and the suggested meals were tasty and filling. On other diets I have always felt hungry or would get aches and pains in the middle of the day, but with the?Fitium diet plan I sometimes couldn?t finish my plate!

I recommend opting for the three or six month package deal, as it works out much cheaper than the monthly payment option.?

Perhaps one of the most thrilling aspects of this weight loss dieting program is that you get your own and personalized fitness coach. To be honest, this is something that you will definitely not come across with any other program out there.

In fact, as online health sites go, this is one of the best performers we have seen in terms of providing their customers with the capability to shed weight and improve their fitness. The end result is a great looking body, slim and toned figure and a much healthier aspect.

Customer reviews of Fitium submitted by our visitors

Fitium Personal Diet Plan SKU UPC Model

The meal plan is the best part

Fitium Personal Diet Plan

I have always struggled with figuring out what to eat on a day to day basis. I really hate to diet and I honestly don?t have the skills OR the imagination to keep thinking of tasty recipes to make from only a few ingredients. Now, I just go on Fitium, click on Build meal plan, and I have a whole week of meals and recipes! WWhat could be easier than that?! Fun and tasty too?

Response: Thanks Tamara, sounds like you\?re loving the recipes! Have you had any results with the program yet?

product 0.3

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5.0 5.0 1 1 I have always struggled with figuring out what to eat on a day to day basis. I really hate to diet and I honestly don?t have the skills OR the imagination to keep thinking of tasty Fitium Personal Diet Plan

Click here to submit your review.

---

Source: http://medicinezine.com/weight-loss/fitium-inside-lose-weight-fitium-review/

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Schools must provide sports for disabled, US says

In this July 28, 2012 photo provided by Lisa Followay, Casey Followay competes in the the USATF Junior Olympics in Maryland. Breaking new ground, the U.S. Education Department is telling schools Friday, Jan. 25, 2013, they must include students with disabilities in sports programs or provide equal alternative options. The directive, reminiscent of the Title IX expansion of athletic opportunities for women, could bring sweeping changes to school budgets and locker rooms for years to come. "I heard about some of the other people who joined their track teams in other states. I wanted to try to do that," said 15-year-old Casey Followay, who competes on his Ohio high school track team in a racing wheelchair. Current rules require Followay to race on his own, without competitors running alongside him. He said he hopes the Education Department guidance will change that and he can compete against runners.(AP Photo/Lisa Followay)

In this July 28, 2012 photo provided by Lisa Followay, Casey Followay competes in the the USATF Junior Olympics in Maryland. Breaking new ground, the U.S. Education Department is telling schools Friday, Jan. 25, 2013, they must include students with disabilities in sports programs or provide equal alternative options. The directive, reminiscent of the Title IX expansion of athletic opportunities for women, could bring sweeping changes to school budgets and locker rooms for years to come. "I heard about some of the other people who joined their track teams in other states. I wanted to try to do that," said 15-year-old Casey Followay, who competes on his Ohio high school track team in a racing wheelchair. Current rules require Followay to race on his own, without competitors running alongside him. He said he hopes the Education Department guidance will change that and he can compete against runners.(AP Photo/Lisa Followay)

FILE - In this Aug. 6, 2012 file photo, 19-year-old Eric Dompierre, left, who has Down syndrome and is the kicker for the Ishpeming High School varsity football team, prepares for the first day of practice at the Ishpeming Playgrounds in Ishpeming, Mich. Breaking new ground, the U.S. Education Department is telling schools Friday, Jan. 25, 2013, they must include students with disabilities in sports programs or provide equal alternative options. The directive, reminiscent of the Title IX expansion of athletic opportunities for women, could bring sweeping changes to school budgets and locker rooms for years to come. (AP Photo/Detroit Free Press, Andre J. Jackson, File)

FILE - In this Aug. 6, 2012 file photo, 19-year-old Eric Dompierre, right, who has Down syndrome and is the kicker for the Ishpeming High School varsity football team, arrives on the field for the first day of practice at the Ishpeming Playgrounds in Ishpeming, Mich. Breaking new ground, the U.S. Education Department is telling schools Friday, Jan. 25, 2013, they must include students with disabilities in sports programs or provide equal alternative options. The directive, reminiscent of the Title IX expansion of athletic opportunities for women, could bring sweeping changes to school budgets and locker rooms for years to come. (AP Photo/Detroit Free Press, Andre J. Jackson, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Students with disabilities must be given a fair shot to play on a traditional sports team or have their own leagues, the Education Department says.

Disabled students who want to play for their school could join traditional teams if officials can make "reasonable modifications" to accommodate them. If those adjustments would fundamentally alter a sport or give the student an advantage, the department is directing the school to create parallel athletic programs that have comparable standing to traditional programs.

"Sports can provide invaluable lessons in discipline, selflessness, passion and courage, and this guidance will help schools ensure that students with disabilities have an equal opportunity to benefit from the life lessons they can learn on the playing field or on the court," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement announcing the new guidance Friday.

The groundbreaking order is reminiscent of the Title IX expansion of athletic opportunities for girls and women four decades ago and could bring sweeping changes to school budgets and locker rooms for years to come.

Activists cheered the changes.

"This is a landmark moment for students with disabilities. This will do for students with disabilities what Title IX did for women," said Terri Lakowski, who for a decade led a coalition pushing for the changes. "This is a huge victory."

It's not clear whether the new guidelines will spark a sudden uptick in sports participation. There was a big increase in female participation in sports after Title IX guidance instructed schools to treat female athletics on par with male teams. That led many schools to cut some men's teams, arguing that it was necessary to be able to pay for women's teams.

Education Department officials emphasized they did not intend to change sports traditions dramatically or guarantee students with disabilities a spot on competitive teams. Instead, they insisted schools may not exclude students based on their disabilities if they can keep up with their classmates.

Federal laws, including the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, require states to provide a free public education to all students and prohibit schools that receive federal money from discriminating against students with disabilities. Going further, the new directive from the Education Department's civil rights division explicitly tells schools and colleges that access to interscholastic, intramural and intercollegiate athletics is a right.

The department suggests minor accommodations to incorporate students with disabilities onto sports teams. For instance, track and field officials could use a visual cue for a deaf runner to begin a race.

Some states already offer such programs. Maryland, for instance, passed a law in 2008 that required schools to create equal opportunities for students with disabilities to participate in physical education programs and play on traditional athletic teams. And Minnesota awards state titles for disabled student athletes in six sports.

Increasingly, those with disabilities are finding spots on their schools' teams.

"I heard about some of the other people who joined their track teams in other states. I wanted to try to do that," said Casey Followay, 15, of Wooster, Ohio, who competes on his high school track team in a racing wheelchair.

Current rules require Followay to race on his own, without competitors running alongside him. He said he hopes the Education Department guidance will change that and he can compete against runners.

"It's going to give me the chance to compete against kids at my level," he said.

Some cautioned that progress would come in fits and starts initially.

"Is it easy? No," said Brad Hedrick, director of disability services at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and himself a hall-of-famer in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association. "In most places, you're beginning from an inertial moment. But it is feasible and possible that a meaningful and viable programming can be created."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-01-25-Disabilities-School%20Athletics/id-6b86ddba0516406eae0286482390a41d

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Organic ferroelectric molecule shows promise for memory chips, sensors

Friday, January 25, 2013

At the heart of computing are tiny crystals that transmit and store digital information's ones and zeroes. Today these are hard and brittle materials. But cheap, flexible, nontoxic organic molecules may play a role in the future of hardware.

A team led by the University of Washington in Seattle and the Southeast University in China discovered a molecule that shows promise as an organic alternative to today's silicon-based semiconductors. The findings, published this week in the journal Science, display properties that make it well suited to a wide range of applications in memory, sensing and low-cost energy storage.

"This molecule is quite remarkable, with some of the key properties that are comparable with the most popular inorganic crystals," said co-corresponding author Jiangyu Li, a UW associate professor of mechanical engineering.

The new carbon-based material could offer even cheaper ways to store digital information; provide a flexible, nontoxic material for medical sensors that would be implanted in the body; and create a cheaper, lighter material to harvest energy from natural vibrations.

The new molecule is a ferroelectric, meaning it is positively charged on one side and negatively charged on the other, where the direction can be flipped by applying an electrical field. Synthetic ferroelectrics are now used in some displays, sensors and memory chips.

In the study the authors pitted their new molecule against barium titanate, a long-known ferroelectric material that is a standard for performance. Barium titanate is a ceramic crystal and contains titanium; it has largely been replaced in industrial applications by better-performing but lead-containing alternatives.

The new molecule holds its own against the standard-bearer. It has a natural polarization, a measure of how strongly the molecules align to store information, of 23, compared to 26 for barium titanate. To Li's knowledge this is the best organic ferroelectric discovered to date.

A recent study in Nature announced an organic ferroelectric that works at room temperature. By contrast, this molecule retains its properties up to 153 degrees Celsius (307 degrees F), even higher than for barium titanate.

The new molecule also offers a full bag of electric tricks. Its dielectric constant ? a measure of how well it can store energy ? is more than 10 times higher than for other organic ferroelectrics. And it's also a good piezoelectric, meaning it's efficient at converting movement into electricity, which is useful in sensors.

The new molecule is made from bromine, a natural element isolated from sea salt, mixed with carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen (its full name is diisopropylammonium bromide). Researchers dissolved the elements in water and evaporated the liquid to grow the crystal. Because the molecule contains carbon, it is organic, and pivoting chemical bonds allow it to flex.

The molecule would not replace current inorganic materials, Li said, but it could be used in applications where cost, ease of manufacturing, weight, flexibility and toxicity are important.

Li is working on a number of projects relating to ferroelectricity. Last year he and his graduate student found the first evidence for ferroelectricity in soft animal tissue. He was co-author on a 2011 paper in Sciencethat documents nanometer-scale switching in ferroelectric films, showing how such molecules could be used to store digital information.

"Ferroelectrics are pretty remarkable materials," Li said. "It allows you to manipulate mechanical energy, electrical energy, optics and electromagnetics, all in a single package."

He is working to further characterize this new molecule and explore its combined electric and mechanical properties. He also plans to continue the search for more organic ferroelectrics.

###

University of Washington: http://www.uwnews.org

Thanks to University of Washington for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126465/Organic_ferroelectric_molecule_shows_promise_for_memory_chips__sensors

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Love triumphs over hate to make exotic new compound: Compound could be useful in batteries, semiconductors, memory devices

Jan. 24, 2013 ? Northwestern University graduate student Jonathan Barnes had a hunch for creating an exotic new chemical compound, and his idea that the force of love is stronger than hate proved correct. He and his colleagues are the first to permanently interlock two identical tetracationic rings that normally are repelled by each other. Many experts had said it couldn't be done.

On the surface, the rings hate each other because each carries four positive charges (making them tetracationic). But Barnes discovered by introducing radicals (unpaired electrons) onto the scene, the researchers could create a love-hate relationship in which love triumphs.

Unpaired electrons want to pair up and be stable, and it turns out the attraction of one ring's single electrons to the other ring's single electrons is stronger than the repelling forces.

The process links the rings not by a chemical bond but by a mechanical bond, which, once in place, cannot easily be torn asunder.

The study detailing this new class of stable organic radicals will be published Jan. 25 by the journal Science.

"It's not that people have tried and failed to put these two rings together -- they just didn't think it was possible," said Sir Fraser Stoddart, a senior author of the paper. "Now this molecule has been made. I cannot overemphasize Jonathan's achievement -- it is really outside the box. Now we are excited to see where this new chemistry leads us."

Sir Fraser is the Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern. In the late 1980s, he was one of the early pioneers to introduce an additional type of bond, the mechanical bond, into chemical compounds.

The new Northwestern compound has attractive electronic characteristics and can be made quickly and inexpensively. Down the road, it may be possible to expand this first linked pair into a longer chain-like polymer where this methodology could be useful in new technologies for batteries, semiconductors and electronic memory devices.

Driven by curiosity, Barnes only began to look at the radical chemistry of the ring cyclobis (paraquat-p-phenylene) two years ago, nearly 25 years after the ring was first made.

"I wondered what would happen if we took it all the way to the max," said Barnes, the paper's first author and a member of Stoddart's group. "Can we take two of these rings, each with four positive charges, and make them live together?"

The rings repel each other like the positive poles of two magnets. Barnes saw an opportunity where he thought he could tweak the chemistry by using radicals to overcome the hate between the two rings.

"We made these rings communicate and love each other under certain conditions, and once they were mechanically interlocked, the bond could not be broken," Barnes said.

Barnes' first strategy -- adding electrons to temporarily reduce the charge and bring the two rings together -- worked the first time he tried it. He, Stoddart and their colleagues started with a full ring and a half ring that they then closed up around the first ring (using some simple chemistry), creating the mechanical bond.

When the compound is oxidized and electrons lost, the strong positive forces come roaring back -- "It's hate on all the time," Barnes said -- but then it is too late for the rings to be parted. "That's the beauty of this system," he added.

Most organic radicals possess short lifetimes, but this unusual radical compound is stable in air and water. The compound tucks the electrons away inside the structure so they can't react with anything in the environment. The tight mechanical bond endures despite the unfavorable electrostatic interactions.

The two interlocked rings house an immense amount of charge in a mere cubic nanometer of space. The compound, a homo[2]catenane, can adopt one of six oxidation states and can accept up to eight electrons in total.

"Anything that accepts this many electrons has possibilities for batteries," Barnes said.

"Applications beckon," Stoddart agreed. "Now we need to spend more time with materials scientists and people who make devices to see how this amazing compound can be used."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Northwestern University. The original article was written by Megan Fellman.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. J. C. Barnes, A. C. Fahrenbach, D. Cao, S. M. Dyar, M. Frasconi, M. A. Giesener, D. Benitez, E. Tkatchouk, O. Chernyashevskyy, W. H. Shin, H. Li, S. Sampath, C. L. Stern, A. A. Sarjeant, K. J. Hartlieb, Z. Liu, R. Carmieli, Y. Y. Botros, J. W. Choi, A. M. Z. Slawin, J. B. Ketterson, M. R. Wasielewski, W. A. Goddard, J. F. Stoddart. A Radically Configurable Six-State Compound. Science, 2013; 339 (6118): 429 DOI: 10.1126/science.1228429

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/electronics/~3/XJ_pqCmMTeI/130124150756.htm

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Apple TV would signal future innovation

19 hrs.

Martha C. White , NBC News contributor

Somebody pass Apple the remote ? Wall Street wants the channel changed.

Skittish investors sent Apple stock down 12?percent Thursday, one day after the computer giant?s quarterly revenue came in below estimates, and some analysts worried that weaker demand for its products was an indication that the company?s innovative prowess died with former CEO Steve Jobs.

?In any other context, the idea of punishing a company that delivered an 18 percent year-over-year increase, bringing quarterly revenue to $54.5 billion, would be absurd, but Apple, in a way, is a victim of its own success. Investors now expect the company to come in and reinvent entire practices and product categories, as it did with listening to music and cell phones, and they expect the next candidate for an iMakeover to be the television.

?We don?t think the old game plan is working,? Keith Bachman, analyst at BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a research note Thursday, lowering his 12-month target price from $640 to $580.

Related:?Why?stocks?rallied?even?while?Apple?got?crushed

While analysts tend to have more or less a clear consensus about the hurdles to entering the television market, they?re not unified around a clear idea of what "Apple TV" would come to mean. Whether or not they believe Apple management has a vision and the means to execute it shape their longer-term view of the company?s future.

?If products we hoped for like an iOS-based TV, and significant enhancements to platform components like Siri and iCloud don?t appear to be in store for 2013, we would lose confidence in the pace of innovation at Apple,? Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope wrote, lowering his 12-month target price from $760 to $660.

Analysts also voiced more prosaic, near-term concerns in response to Apple?s report and forward-looking guidance: A faster timeline for introducing new products and a slate of offerings that includes cheaper devices both could eat into Apple?s profit margin. ?I think that the challenge of the company would be present today with or without Jobs,? Doug Kass, president of Seabreeze Partners Management, said in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday.

But these factors wouldn?t matter as much if Wall Street believed that Tim Cook has the Next Big Thing up his sleeve. On the subject of TV, Cook was emphatic but vague on yesterday?s conference call. He touted the two?million-plus unit sales of the Apple TV set-top box and told analysts, ?I have said in the past this is an area of intense interest for us and it remains that, and I tend to believe that there is a lot we can contribute in this space.?

In an interview with NBC?s Brian Williams in December, Cook also expounded on TV, saying, ?It?s a market that we see that has been left behind.?

?It?s definitely the next area where investors are looking in terms of innovation,? said Brian Colello, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar.

The TV industry doesn?t necessarily need ? or want ? Apple, though. ?The difficulty is that the vast majority of TV content is owned by a small handful of companies who?s primary business model is bundling and cable [and] satellite distribution,? Andy Hargreaves, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, said via email. ?Those companies have little interest in contributing content to a service that could disrupt their primary business model.?

When Apple reinvented the way we listen to music, it presented the ailing record industry with a solution to flagging sales and rampant piracy. When it turned the smartphone from an executive tool to a go-everywhere gadget, mobile carriers came around to the realization that they could create a whole new revenue stream by selling data plans to casual users.

Today, Americans have more choice than ever when it comes to their TV-viewing habits: They can digitally record a show to watch later, access streaming content from sources like Hulu or Netflix, get premium sports or movie content via subscriptions stacked onto their cable bundle and so on.

It?s a jumble of options that can be hard to sort and search through, and often requires juggling multiple remote controls and services. Smart TVs that attempt to corral this overflow of content are on the market, but they?re not user-friendly enough to be appealing to the masses, Colello said. ?There have been some improvements but nothing is seamless yet, so Apple has an opportunity to close the door and make that a seamless interface,? he said.

Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffrey, also thinks a focus on TV content delivery could be Apple?s silver bullet. ?The question is, how can Apple improve the user experience without disrupting the amount of money the content providers are making,? he said. ?They can do things around content that can make the experience much different,? he said. In theory, a viewer only would have to go to a single platform and use one, intuitive remote control ? maybe one that understands plain English ? to search for or schedule shows to watch.

Munster thinks Apple plans to go beyond the set-top box. ?Our feeling is, and we feel strongly about this, is that it?s an actual television... given Apple?s DNA of design as a feature, plus the only way to truly fix the remote control problem is to put it all in one panel,? he said.

Trip Chowdhry, managing director of equity research at Global Equities Research, suggested Apple could make use of new display technology to develop TVs with ?ultra? or ?4HD? high-definition resolution.

It?s an intriguing idea, but Colello said Apple doesn?t have the luxury of time on its side. ?Apple does not have several years to do this,? he said. ?I think the stock tells you that investors are antsy already.? TV is the best category for Apple to redeem itself with a new blockbuster, he said. ?It would be an important signal after Steve Jobs? passing that innovation still exists at the company.?

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/apple-tv-would-give-investors-important-signal-future-innovation-1C8106563

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Big crowds turn out for Stan Musial visitation

ST. LOUIS (AP) ? The entrance to the Cathedral Basilica looked more like that of a St. Louis Cardinals game on Thursday, just the way Stan Musial would have liked it.

Thousands of fans turned out for Musial's public visitation at the ornate Roman Catholic church, many of them bundled up against the bitter cold in red Cardinals jackets. Musial, a 24-time All-Star who remained a beloved figure in his adopted hometown a half-century after his playing career ended, died Saturday after years of declining health. He was 92.

Family, close friends and perhaps some of baseball's biggest names will be back at the cathedral for a funeral on Saturday. Thursday was for the fans.

Hours before the event began, hundreds lined Lindell Avenue leading to the steps of the cathedral. Just an hour into the six-hour visitation, 1,400 people had arrived, according to a woman keeping track.

When a bell chimed once as the doors opened, 68-year-old Evelyn Bourisaw, dressed in a red coat, exclaimed, "Time to play ball!"

Among the first to go in were Audrey Kissel, 86, and Erma Bergman, 88. The two were kindred spirits of Musial, not only of his generation but also former ballplayers. Kissel played second base and Bergman pitched in a women's professional league during World War II.

Rope lines moved mourners toward the open casket. Musial was dressed in a red blazer and a Cardinals necktie. His harmonica was in the front pocket.

Retired car salesman Bill Sanders, 64, was like many fans, as taken with Musial's good-natured ways as his considerable baseball prowess. Sanders noted that not once in a 22-year career did Musial get tossed out of a game.

"He was a true gentleman," Sanders said. "He even liked the umpires."

Certainly his baseball accomplishments were plentiful: a .331 lifetime average, seven NL batting titles, 475 homers and 3,630 career hits (1,815 at home and an equal number on the road). He helped the Cardinals to three World Series championships in the 1940s and another after his playing days ended ? he was general manager of the 1967 team that beat the Red Sox in seven games.

The GM job was short-lived, but Musial was a frequent figure at Busch Stadium, showing up for most opening days and many postseason games, sometimes playing the harmonica, always striking a pose of that unusual left-handed batting stance.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/big-crowds-turn-stan-musial-visitation-215113341--mlb.html

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Supercharging Salesforce Portals to Imporve Customer Service

In today?s socially connected world customer service is more important than ever. You can offer promotions and incentives, but unless you can get those customers to spread positive feedback about your company, you won?t be in business for long. So how can you improve customer service and keep those customers? happy? In this post we will describe how Cloud Extend can be used to supercharge the process of case creation within the Service Cloud portal to reduce the time it takes to process a trouble ticket, whether by customer self-service or via a customer service agent.

So lets begin. A common use of Cloud Extend is to guide portal users through the process of quickly setting up a Case object in Saleforce.? So when the customer calls the support hotline, they are dealt with promptly rather than kept on hold for an eternity.

There are three main considerations in this type of Cloud Extend application:

1. The Process Guide
2. Validating Data Entry
3. Ensuring Business Rules are followed

So let?s address each of these items in turn.

The Process Guides

With Cloud Extend, you can build a process wizard that will guide a Portal user (or any other Salesforce user) through a series of steps. The steps can be a combination of screen steps (which prompt the user to enter data and make choices), automated steps (which do work for the user by creating Salesforce objects, sending email, creating tasks, etc), and data decision steps. Here is a sample Cloud Extend guide:

Cloud Extend guides can be run from a Saleforce portal, in which case a portal user is guided through a process to enter data and create objects in Salesforce.?? The Cloud Extend guide will have access to any Salesforce objects and fields to which a portal user has access.

Now let?s examine the second of our three considerations ? validating data.

Validating Data Entry

Since a Cloud Extend guide walks a user through all of the data entry steps, and Cloud Extend screens can contain detailed instructions on how to enter the data, errors in data entry are greatly reduced. In addition, Cloud Extend guides can automatically enter data and create relationships between objects based on the context of the Cloud Extend guide.

Of course, there are still times when users will make errors or do the wrong thing. You can design Cloud Extend screen steps so that any data field is required to be entered correctly before the Cloud Extend guide will advance (even if the data field is not a required field in the underlying Saleforce implementation). This is useful because a data field may not always be required (so it not practical to make it a required field in Salesforce), but in the context of a particular step in a process, the data field is required:

It?s always useful to perform data validation on entries for data fields (for instance, to ensure a due date for a Task is not set to a date prior to today). Salesforce has excellent facilities for defining validation rules in the Saleforce implementation, and Cloud Extend honors all Salesforce validation rules.?? If a user attempts to enter data that causes a validation rule in Saleforce to fail, the Cloud Extend guide will not advance, and instead will prompt the user to correct the entry.

Now onto our last consideration ? business rules.

Applying Business Rules

Because Cloud Extend guides can branch based on user input, many ?business rules? (such as ?do X if the customer is calling about Product A?, ?do Y if the customer is calling about Product B?) can be implemented directly in a Cloud Extend guidance tree:

Cloud Extend can also perform flow decisions based on the values of data fields in Salesforce. Therefore, business rules such as ?Do X if this is a Large Company, Do Y if this is a Medium-Sized Company, Do Z if this is a Small Company? can be implemented easily:

And data decisions can also be based on the value of fields in Salesforce.?? For example you can set the threshold values or parameters for the business rules individually per process ? i.e. the process of lead qualification for one client might define a Large Customer as over $1B in annual revenue, while another client might define a Large Customer as over $50B in annual revenue.

Putting it Altogether

The final step is to combine the three items to create efficient support processes.? For example one customer in the energy industry created a set of guides to handle account creation and querying that drastically reduced call waiting times and increased support throughput (for full details see the guest post here). Another customer in the telecoms industry wrote guides that revolutionized their case resolution processes and? improved service levels by 90% (read more here).

So no matter your industry or your type of Salesforce portal, you can supercharge your CRM with the easy to use Cloud Extend.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013 at 5:10 pm and is filed under Active Endpoints, Cloud, Cloud Extend. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Source: http://www.activevos.com/blog/active-endpoints/supercharging-salesforce-portals-to-imporve-customer-service/2013/01/23/

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