text:
Summer has officially started and, with it, Major League Baseball is gearing up to warn players and their fans of the dangers of skin cancer. Major League Baseball, the Major League Baseball Players Association and the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) are kicking off their 10th annual Play Sun Smart campaign.
"We're seeing more and more skin cancer in young patients. Melanoma, the most virulent form of skin cancer, kills more than 8,000 Americans every year," said AAD president Dr. C. William Hanke, an Indianapolis dermatologist. "The sun is very high in the sky during the next three months. There's less thickness of the atmosphere to filter out the damaging ultraviolet wavelengths, so the danger of unprotected sun exposure is increased. And sun exposure is the most important risk factor in skin cancer."
This year's Play Sun Smart campaign will feature a public service announcement with baseball commissioner Allan H. "Bud" Selig, Houston Astros second baseman Mark Loretta, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Derek Lowe and New York Mets pitcher Johan Santana.
For these men, it's personal. Selig and Loretta both survived melanoma, and Lowe had a skin cancer removed from his nose in 2003. Santana lost a close friend to the cancer in 2007. In fact, Loretta was diagnosed after being screened at a Play Sun Smart Event in 2004. "It saved his life," Hanke said. Major League Baseball will also be distributing sun safety-tip cards in ballparks, and sun safety messages will be announced during games.
Some one million new cases of skin cancer will be diagnosed this year, and baseball players are at particular risk, because they spend so much time in the sun, experts say. A 2005 AAD survey found that teenage boys--often found at ballparks around the country--are the least likely of all people to use sunscreen. That omission could catch up with them when they're older, since middle-age and older men have higher rates of skin cancer than any other gender or age group.In the past decade, more than 19,000 skin cancer screenings have been conducted through the Play Sun Smart program, including baseball players, major league baseball staff and their families. According to Hanke, those screenings have hit homes run for cancer detection, spotting 600 suspicious lesions, including 463 suspected basal cell carcinomas, 63 suspected squamous cell carcinomas and 66 suspected melanomas. "That's the whole ball game right there," Hanke said.
More information
Visit Play Sun Smart to find related activities in your area.
HealthDay News, June 20, 2008


text:
Child Rights UN seek ways to stop online child abuse
30 Sep 2013, 07:37 am Print
New York, Sept 28 (JEN): Experts from the fields of law enforcement, research and academia gathered this week at a United Nations meeting in Vienna to find ways to combat the exploitation of children online, which has become more prevalent due to technological advances.
"The exploitation of children is not a new phenomenon, but the digital age has exacerbated the problem and created more vulnerability to children," said the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Yury Fedotov.
While advances in information and communications technologies (ICTs) have not necessarily given rise to entirely new forms of child abuse, they have in some cases changed the nature and dimension of the exploitation.
Through the Internet, online predators can gain access to children faster and in higher volumes, using chat rooms, emails, online games and social networking sites to find and groom victims. Cyberspace has also significantly increased the ability for offenders to access child sex abuse material.
"Prior to the Internet, an offender was thought to have a huge collection with 150 images of children; Friday a 150,000 image collection is quite standard, and a 1.5 million image collection not unheard of," said Dr. Joe Sullivan, a forensic psychologist who works with child sex offenders.
Children and young people are also adopting new technology earlier and more often, and unwittingly exposing themselves to online child predators at an unprecedented rate. Sexual abuse for private and commercial purposes, child trafficking, cyber grooming and cyber bullying are just some of the risks the digital age has brought to children across the world, noted a news release issued by UNODC.
"Before, non-vulnerable children had parents to act as a barrier as to whom they were in touch with – now this is gone," said the Assistant Director for Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation at INTERPOL, Michael Moran.
According to UNODC, the majority of victims are girls and online predators hide under anonymous identities in cyberspace. However, their online trail has made it easier in certain instances to indentify them.
Experts agreed that better education and awareness are essential to protecting children and emphasized that parents must work to overcome the 'generational digital divide' and take a vested interest in the technology they give their children, educating them on their safe use and on the potential ramifications of careless online behaviour.
"Parents and educators need a good understanding of how sex offenders work," said Dr. Sullivan. "They are often surprised at how sophisticated offenders are, and at the levels of manipulation they go through to gain access to children."
While currently there is no consistent legislation across countries regarding online child abuse, Fedotov said UNODC is in a unique position to help countries deal with this issue at the global level.
"We can encourage effective cooperation between countries in investigations, and support global awareness efforts to educate parents and children on the safe use of ICTs. But everyone must play their part – including the private sector, which is ultimately the major driving force behind technological developments."
More Rights
- US: Former school teacher pleads guilty of having sex with high schoo boy 20 to 30 times
- Report shows 39 percent children are currently out of school in Pakistan
- 'Ten weeks of hell' for children in Gaza: UNICEF
- Weather-related disasters displace 43.1 million children in six years, UNICEF reports
- Five-year-old Kansas girl raped, murdered, key suspect arrested

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Getting both kids outside with paint is no easy task, so I came up with a way to do it that was easy to grab and go when inspiration strikes. Of course after I got it outside my son decided he wanted to play soccer instead. Luckily friends stopped by to pick apples and one was more than excited to paint ! I was more than happy to oblige and my son was happy to help his friend's mom pick apples instead. Remember never force kids to do art , the goal is to enrich and appreciate and forcing won't achieve either.
- Gather your materials. For this I used a clip board, liquid paint in many colors, a water color set and paper.
- You might notice that there is no water in the materials. That is because You can pop the dried water colors out, and gently place liquid paint in, so you don't have to run back inside for more water.
- Pop the water colors out.
- Pour in liquid paint.
- Place back in case.
- Clip the lid of the water color case under the clip board to keep it in place and find a perfect spot to paint, he chose a great spot under an apple tree.
It did take a little convincing that it was ok to mix the colors, if you have a child who is really reluctant , pack along multiple brushes, which is much easier than packing and refilling water when you are far from a faucet.
Katie Meets The Impressionists by James Mayhew is an art fairytale! Katie goes to the museum with her grandmother and before she knows it she is in the paintings and the world of the painters and their families. Katie goes from painting to painting gathering flowers for her grandma and exploring a world on the other side of the canvas. What I enjoy about this book is that it brings the paintings to life for readers and it shares the back story in a way that children can connect to and imagine the possibilities when they go to museums! Of all these books this one held my son's attention the least. I like to think it's because he's not a fan of impressionism, but I think it was simply a little long for his not quite 3-year-old attention span. Maybe if Renoir had painted garbage trucks…seriously though this is a fabulous book and worth a read!


text:
Fujinon is a branch of Fujifilm, a Japanese company with headquarters in Tokyo. They specialize in photography and other imaging. Fujinon lenses that were first introduced in 1960s that we can find in cameras and binoculars are one of the most widely used in the world. With over 50 years of experience, exceptional quality and innovative manufacturing using the best materials and solutions developed unique product in visual world. In the 1970 Fujinon integrated fluoride corrected chromatic aberration glass elements (CaF2), in 1980s developed special Floating System (FS) that corrected curvature of the lens and improved resolution in the corners and in the 1990s they introduced special glass with Aspheric Lenses (AT and AT2)
Special Fujinon lenses nowadays are integrated in many different products such as satellites optics, mobile phone camera lenses, digital cameras and binoculars. Fujinon lenses in binoculars are using EBC coatings, that increases light transmission rate by keeping down reflection. The view-through is incredibly bright even on larger binoculars that helps to discover comets. Fujinon company is environmentally friendly, using eco-glass. The construction of binoculars is waterproof and completely protected when facing the harsh weather conditions.


text:
Cool, It Works! - Issue 03 - Files, Texture Effects, Coronas, & More by (09 September 1999) |
Return to The Archives |
Welcome to another action packed episode of my little column. Not much to say here in the intro section, so let's just get to it shall we? Alrighty then... |
File Reading/Processing
A few years back, I was reading some source that John Carmack had released .. I think it was the common file handling code included in the Quake1 tools source code. And I noticed that he was doing something I had never thought of when processing files. He would read the entire file into memory, process that glob of RAM and then free it when he was done. I had never considered that, and at the time, was very cool to discover. There's only one file read operation (albeit a large one, but still, only one), and the rest of the processing takes place in RAM so it's really fast. And how exactly do you read the file into a glob of RAM? Like so... here is a small chunk of my Tfile base class..
FYI : m_pbBuffer is a byte* member variable. That's really it. You open the file, allocate a chunk of RAM that matches the file size, and read it into that buffer. Now if you take a byte* and start walking through that chunk of data, it's just like you were walking through the file itself by reading byte at a time. Except much faster... When processing the data, I use a byte* to walk through the file data in RAM ... the file is over when the value that variable points to is NULL. So I loop something like this...
Now finding this was cool enough in itself because of how much faster my file operations became. But it was REALLY cool because it set me up with the tools I needed to make... |
Package Files
Basically this is a large file that has many smaller files inside of it. Sort of like a ZIP file, but I don't use any compression ... and similar to the PAK files that Quake engines use. I'm doing this mainly for ease of distribution when the game is done. Much easier to keep track of 1 texture package than 500 PCX files. It's not the most convenient thing in the world to have to constantly rebuild package files when a graphic or model changes, but I've written some utility programs and batch files that make the job little more than a few mouse clicks - so it's not so bad. The internal format is VERY simple and straightforward. I have a conversion program that reads a directory structure, and stores the files it finds in there inside the package file. I have an unwritten rule that you can't go deeper than 1 subdirectory deep. I don't have hierarchies in my package files ... just a list of files, laid down end to end. The file starts off with a simple header. Basically just a list of filenames, their offsets into the package file and their size. So to retrieve a file from the package file, I open it, scan the table of contents looking for a matching name ... when I find it, I seek to that spot in the file, and read in the number of bytes that the table of contents says to. What does this give me? A glob of RAM that contains the data that was in the original file. Now I can just point my file handling routines at that glob, and process the file as normal. Cool huh? |
Masked Textures
This took me a while to figure out how to do in OpenGL. What this effect is, is like if you have a chain link fence. You want to render the fence wires, but leave out the filler between them. This filler is usually some common color ... and in other API's I've used, I could specify the specific color to leave out and it would render correctly. But not in OpenGL. Until someone told me where to look... OpenGL accomplishes this through something called "alpha test". Basically what happens is, you can tell OpenGL that you are rendering textures with an alpha channel (RGBA instead of RGB), and tell it what your bottom threshold for alpha values is. Any pixel that has an alpha value below that threshold will not be rendered. Effectively masking the texture. So here's what I do ... I read in my PCX file. I convert the RGB data I get into RGBA data - basically, copying it to a new data buffer and filling in the alpha value for each pixel with 255. I know what color I want to be masked out, so I loop through that new data buffer and for each pixel I find of that color, I change the alpha value to 0. Then in my OpenGL setup, I add these lines ...
...and when OpenGL does it's texture mapping, it throws away pixels that have an alpha value of less then 0.05 ... so textures containing pixels with less than 0.05 alpha get masked out. |
Translucent Textures
There's a few ways to do translucent surfaces in OpenGL. The simplest and quickest is to just specify an alpha value when you select the polygons color. So where you would normally say ...
... you say this instead ...
... and you would get a 50% translucent polygon. This is the easiest and cheapest way to get translucency, but this is not really very cool for most applications. We'll talk about how my engine is handling translucency next time, but the above statement is good enough to let us do a simple effect like ... |
OK, here's your eye candy for this installment ... coronas! Actually, these are so easy it's sick. Heh. Basically you know how to render a sprite (we talked about it last time). So with that knowledge, what is a corona? Basically, a corona is a texture of a sphere of light (or some other nice looking effect) that is rendered as a partially translucent sprite. The trick to the corona effect (as seen in Unreal) is to make the sprite grow larger as you move away from it and shrink as you get closer. That's it. Now, you can achieve this pretty easily by choosing a distance at which the corona renders at 100% of it's size. Say, 350 units. So if the camera gets closer than 350 units, you start scaling the corona down. And of course, scale it up if it gets more than 350 units away. And you should probably have something where , say, if the camera gets further way then 900 units, you shut off the corona. You don't want it to grow too large or it'll cover half the world. ;) The last thing you have to do now, is to check line of sight to the corona. If your line of sight to the corona is blocked by something, don't render it. Pretty simple. So if you see it through some bars, as you slide past the bars the corona will pop on whenever you see the light source through the bars and off again as a bar slides into your view. One thing that makes them look really nice (which I don't do yet, but Unreal does) is to make them fade in and out when they come on or turn off. This is slick, and when I get it working, I'll talk about it. Heh. |
Next Time
OK, that's it for this installment. Next time we'll talk about ... stuff! Seriously, I don't want to make commitments on what we'll talk about from column to column because that locks me into writing about those things ... and if something cool happens and I want to write about that instead, I want the freedom to do so. :) So see you next time! |
Article Series: |


text:
Average pages per100
Publishing frequency11 issues per year
Subscription440 SEK
International subscription699 SEK (Europe), 799 SEK (rest of the world)
Retail price per copy69 SEK
Visit websiteEditor-in-chiefJonas Olsson
Joined EISA in 2012
Published byFörlaget Hifi & Musik AB
AddressVattenverksvägen 8 131 41 Nacka, Sweden
Phone+46-(0)733 60 33 88
HemmaBio was launched early 1995, with the goal of delivering un-biased testing along with articles on improving the home cinema environment as well as film reviews and product news to the emerging group of home cinema enthusiasts, a goal that still holds true today.
Mostly our testing can be placed into one of two categories: audio and video. In both cases listening or viewing is complemented with appropriate measurements to ensure that our testing meets the highest standards.
Today we are the leading home cinema magazine in scandinavia, always evolving in step with our readers.
"We are proud to be a member of the EISA, Europe's finest organization for audio and imaging magazines."


text:
The 5 things to know
What you need to know before getting your glass replaced.
1Am I using a reputable installation facility?
A reputable installer will:
- Allow you to choose which glass brand you want to use
- Understand the importance of using an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) equivalent to protect you and the value of your car
- Be able to explain the critical performance specifications of your vehicle glass (such as Solar Optimization) and what they mean to you.
Am I getting replacement glass with equivalent performance specifications to my original equipment?
Your car's windshield and sidelites came off the dealership lot with specific performance characteristics. Some aftermarket replacement glass parts do not match these original performance specifications. These inferior glass products can have:
- Reduced or no acoustic properties
- Non-Solar Optimized properties (think - increased heat buildup in your car & needing to use the air conditioner a lot more)
- Poor optics
- Poor surface control (think - wind noise & wiper blade missing spots)
All glass is not created equally, demand that your glass be replaced with it's original performance specifications.
Am I choosing replacement glass that meets or exceeds Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards?
One of the main reasons for these standards is to ensure that your windshield can resist breakage and penetration in a collision. Choosing a glass that meets or exceeds these standards helps reduce injuries, fatalities, and the ejection of vehicle occupants during a crash. OEM equivalent glass from Pilkington exceeds FMVSS.
Am I getting a value by choosing a less expensive glass?
Of course, price matters. But installing inferior replacement glass can create a host of new problems that may cost you more in the long run. Quality windshield replacement glass should:
- Be accurately cut and finely polished during the edging process to ensure proper fit, minimize wind noise, and minimize cracks (lower quality aftermarket glass will often be manufactured to lower tolerances, resulting in ill-fitting installations, leading to a number of potential problems like leaks, stress cracks and increased vulnerability to damage).
- Have surface control so the wipers fit the glass appropriately
- Offer the same performance specifications of your original equipment insofar as solar protection, noise cancellation and performance of added features like rain, light and/or condensation sensors are concerned.
Will the glass be installed using high quality urethane adhesive?
High quality adhesives are tested in extreme temperatures (hot and cold) to ensure proper bonding is in place. These adhesives dry faster, so your car can be ready within a "safe drive-away time." Inferior adhesives may not set as quickly, endangering you and your passengers if there is an accident immediately after installation. Be sure that the safe drive away time for your installation is explained to you, as it varies depending both on the type & quality of glue as well as the number of airbags in your car. A good technician will be familiar with and forthright about the products he or she is using.


text:
- Home
- Government
- Boards & Committees
- Planning & Zoning Commission
- Future Hoover
- City-Wide Comprehensive Plan
City-Wide Comprehensive Plan
Comprehensive Plan Documents
Comprehensive Plan (Adopted 07-2019) (Amended 12-2020)
Bike & Pedestrian Plan (Adopted 07-2019)
Supporting Documents:
Population and Economy Study
Library Strategic Plan
Major Street Plan Summary
Transit Report
New Stormwater Permit Q&A
Literature Review
Town Hall Input Summary
Town Hall Input Raw Data
Online Survey Results
Lorna Road Report
Community Advisory Committee Comments
Press Release - July, 2019
Mayor Frank Brocato proudly announces the City of Hoover has adopted its first ever Comprehensive Plan.
After a nearly two year process, the 9-member Planning and Zoning Board unanimously approved the 178-page document at its monthly meeting Monday night, July 8, 2019.
The plan outlines goals and provides guidance for smart, sustainable development and redevelopment city wide. It also places a high priority on quality of life and management of continued growth.
City growth and development is a partnership between the citizens, city government and the development community; this plan seeks to protect and enhance the City of Hoover without placing undue regulatory burdens on the private market.
It is important to remember this is a living document that will be revisited and refined for many years to come.
Mayor Brocato made the adoption of a comprehensive plan a centerpiece of his administration, and he championed the creation of the first in-house City Planner position on the city's staff
"As the Mayor Hoover, I promised we would undertake a planning process to guide future development, emphasize redevelopment, and grow our city in a smart and responsible way," Brocato says.
"Under the leadership of Chairman Mike Wood, the Hoover Planning Commission has adopted a plan that does all of these things. I am very grateful to the Planning Commission, City Planner Mac Martin, the stakeholders who volunteered as part of this process, and all the members of the public who made their voices heard and contributed to such a great outcome. This is a very exciting plan that will serve us well as we continue Building Community Together."


text:
Early HTML/CSS/jQuery for the Admin
gcardoso May 8, 2012 3:05 PMIn order to try a new approach for the development process, it was decided to implement a version of the admin in HTML/CSS/jQuery using Twitter Bootstrap. We do not expect this to be the final interface (both in terms of content and visual design) but want to verify how much of this client side can be used in the development.
The HTML was written using basically Bootstrap components. I tried to write as little CSS as possible (css/admin.css).
The code can be seen at: https://github.com/cardosogabriel/gatein-client
I want to make clear that this early version has the following problems:
- HTML is not valid because of the use of elements <rel="tooltip"> in tags <button> and <a>. This is a bootstrap's element to enable tooltip. So maybe we need to think in another way to enable the tooltips…
- I used an approach that fixes the sidebar. Although scrolling only the content to be a good strategy, we could have problems in displays with lower resolutions since the sidebar can grow with more portals or menu options. So I'll check if is better to put a scroll bar in the sidebar to (which reinforces the app aspect) or to make it not fixed (scroll with the content).
- I fixed the title / main actions. However, the fixed elements don't work well with the responsive design that comes with Bootstrap. So this approach requires some coding in the responsive CSS.
- The CSS was not written using LESS CSS. Need to learn about it.
- The page was just tested in modern browsers (FF 12 and Safari
- Some other elements are not being well displayed when the with is decreased. Need to check what is happening.
- Some javascript I wrote is just for now (e.g. when you click "Save changes" or radio option "Private" and the button "Add Permission".
With this experiment I could conclude that Bootstrap offers nice UI elements and saves a considerable work. A negative point is that more elements in the HTML are necessary (to make their structure work) and some of them are not valid on W3C validator. A good point is that we could achieve a acceptable layout with not much CSS customization.
Considering that to have a little bit more code won't harm the accessibility, I believe it is an interesting approach to save time. Just remembering that we need to define better the how the top bar / sidebar are presented and to work on the visual design / transitions.


text:
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP) — "Lord, thank You for the life of this beautiful little girl. Thank You for adding to the heritage of this family. Help her parents raise her in the fear and admonition of Your holy name. Even as we celebrate her birth, I pray that by Your sovereign grace she will experience new birth through faith in Jesus Christ. Lord, give her a future husband who loves You and serves You and will protect, provide and love her as Christ loves the church. In Jesus' name, Amen."
As I lifted my head in that hospital room after praying for the family and their newborn baby, I carefully gave the child back to her mother. I saw the grandparents who were in the room glaring at me with astonishment on their faces. The grandfather spoke up and said, "What kind of prayer was that? Why would you already be talking about a husband? She may not even get married! Who knows what she will become?"
These grandparents were not liberal progressives. They were Bible Belt conservative evangelicals who would heartily defend every word of the Bible as God's inerrant Word and would be appalled at the notion of legalizing same-sex marriage.
The moment hit me like a ton of bricks. Without a doubt, the proponents of same-sex marriage have lost an understanding of what marriage really is — but, in alarming ways, so have evangelicals.
The end result of the widespread legalization of same-sex marriage will not be a broadening of the definition of marriage but the destruction of the institution. We evangelicals must acknowledge that our own failure to communicate the meaning and Gospel significance of marriage has hastened the cultural confusion and decline of the sacred institution. Evangelicals often tell children that their education, career and individual success should be firmly in place before they should even think about marriage. After all, if they marry too young, they won't be able to accomplish their individual dreams and become successful people who lead lives of significance.
At the same time, we act befuddled that a generation we have taught to put themselves first does not understand the importance of self-sacrificial relationships beginning with marriage and family.
Too often we feed our children the junk food of narcissistic self-esteem along with a side of the American dream then wonder why they do not have a healthy Christian worldview. We pair culturally shaped dreams about what our children will become along with a romanticized view of love and marriage, which is rooted in notions of self-fulfillment rather than self-sacrifice. Christian marriage, however, is a Gospel-magnifying, self-sacrificial commitment that teaches us what love is over time as we practice long-term fidelity.
The current divorce culture is grounded in the same perverse idea of marriage as a means of self-fulfillment. If marriage is simply about your means to a personal end, then it's right to consider it an addendum to the pursuit of your personal goals and to walk away when it's no longer functioning to your benefit. After all, many evangelicals reason in abandoning their spouse, God would not want them to live in an unhappy, unfulfilling relationship — a reasoning that sounds eerily similar to the contemporary argument for same-sex marriage.
In some ways, the younger generation has become more conservative in recent years, as seen by its growing opposition to abortion, while at the same time approving of same-sex marriage. Why? Evangelicals must be willing to face the reality that what we have taught them in our churches about marriage as self-fulfillment provides them no logical reason to oppose same-sex marriage.
Our assertion that marriage is a lifelong monogamous relationship between a man and woman marked by a lifetime of fidelity rings hollow when we have taught them that self-oriented achievement should be valued above marriage and children. When an evangelical parent tells a college-educated daughter who is planning to become a stay-at-home mom, "Are you sure? I don't want you to waste your gifts," it is evident that many evangelicals are just as confused about marriage as the homosexual community. When an evangelical father says to his son, "What do you mean you're getting married? You need to finish law school," it is clear that the confusion regarding marriage doesn't stop at the LGBT meeting.
How can evangelicals effectively defend marriage in the culture when we no longer practice and advocate Christian marriages in our churches?
Could it be that evangelical churches and Christians have been offering an edict about marriage but not an alternative? Could it be that the evangelical sexual abstinence movement has fallen short because it has simply focused on saying "No" to promiscuity without a reciprocal "Yes" in championing Christian marriage? Could it be that evangelical impotence in dealing with the pornography crisis in our churches is partly because we have allowed marriage and sex to be defined in terms of self-fulfillment rather the Gospel-centric, self-sacrificial commitment?
The Creator of the universe pronounced that it was "not good" (Genesis 2:18) that man should be alone, and He gave to man a woman who was bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh (Genesis 2:23), with whom he was to become "one flesh" (Genesis 2:24) and "be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28). The apostle Paul declared that this marriage union was created to be a living picture of the mysterious one-flesh Gospel union between Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:32).
Being pro-marriage will begin with evangelicals who stop saying it is good that man should be alone until his 30s after he has a good education, career and individual achievements. And with evangelicals who stop saying don't be fruitful and multiply too much; after all, you will not to be able to afford a nice home in a good neighborhood. In fact, we ought to tell them the good news that Christian marriage and the glorious Gospel it represents liberates them from the ball and chain of trying to live the American dream.
David E. Prince is pastor of preaching and vision at Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., professor of Christian preaching at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.


text:
High page yield
Integrated ink tanks
Hybrid ink system
Print, Copy, Scan
Up to 48001 x 1200 dpi
2 FINE Cartridges (Black and Colour)
Refillable ink tank printer
Approx. 8.8 ipm2
Approx. 5.0 ipm3
Borderless 10 x 15 cm: Approx. 60 seconds4
Yes (A4, Letter, 20 x 25 cm, 13 x 18 cm, 13 x 13 cm, 10 x 15 cm)
A4 colour documents printing5
Black: 6,000 pages per ink bottle*
Colour: 7000 pages*
* Estimated supplemental yield
10 x 15 cm colour photo printing6
Colour: 2000 Photos*
* Estimated supplemental yield
Plain Paper
High Resolution Paper (HR-101N)
Photo Paper Plus Glossy II (PP-201)
Photo Paper Pro Luster (LU-101)
Photo Paper Plus Semi-gloss (SG-201)
Glossy Photo Paper "Everyday Use" (GP-501)
Matte Photo Paper (MP-101)
Rear tray: Max. 100 sheets (plain paper)
A4, A5, B5, 10 x 15 cm, 13 x 18 cm, 20 x 25 cm, Envelopes (DL, COM10), Letter, Legal
Plain paper: 64 – 105 g/m²
Canon photo paper: up to 275 g/m²
LCD (1.2 inch segment mono)
Hi-Speed USB (B Port)
Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7 SP1
.NET Framework 4.5.2 or 4.6 is required
Windows: 3.1 GB disk space, Internet Explorer 8
Display: 1024 x 768 XGA
Approx. 6.3 kg
Approx. 445 x 330 x 163 mm
Approx. 53.5dB(A)13
10 – 90 %RH (no dew condensation)
AC 100 – 240 V, 50/60 Hz
Off: Approx. 0.2 W
Standby (connected to PC via USB): Approx. 0.6 W (scanning lamp off)
Standby (all ports connected): Approx. 0.6 W (scanning lamp is off)
Time to enter Standby mode: 10 minutes 48 sec
Copying: Approx. 9 W14
All specifications subject to change without notice.
Print speed may vary depending on system configuration, interface, software, document complexity, print mode, page coverage, type of paper used etc.
Ink yield may vary depending on texts/photos printed, applications software used, print mode and type of paper used. For yield information see www.canon-europe.com/ink/yield
Scan speed may vary depending on system configuration, interface, software, scan mode settings and document size etc.
Copy speed may vary depending on document complexity, copy mode, page coverage, type of paper used etc. and does not take into account warming up time.
All brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.
Microsoft, Windows and the Windows logo are trademarks, or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.


text:
Let's say one works in a hypothetical company that has several developers that rarely worked together on projects and the Boss didn't believe that code reviews are worth the time and cost.
What are various arguments that could be presented in this scenario that will portray the benefit of code review? Furthermore, what are the potential arguments against code review here and how can these be countered?


text:
I've been prototyping a new GROUP BY implementation (DERBY-3002) which provides support for the new ROLLUP keyword. As part of this work, it's important to be able to get some data about the relative performance of the current Derby GROUP BY implementation versus the new proposed implementation.
So I've been working on building a simple GROUP BY benchmark.
Happily, Derby already has a quite sophisticated benchmarking infrastructure:
- The wisconsin.java and WISCInsert.java classes provide support for loading a scalable Wisconsin benchmark schema to an arbitrary size.
- The perf.clients package provides general benchmarking capability, with generic classes to manage the overall benchmark.
- A somewhat similar benchmark was written not too long ago to measure index join performance.
Once I get a reasonable benchmark, which I hope to be able to do this week, I'll then use it to collect a set of performance numbers against the current Derby trunk, and against the DERBY-3002 patch.
This will hopefully give us some hard data regarding the performance of the new GROUP BY algorithm.


text:
"We're focused on public policy, but not on Washington process. We care about policy as experienced by people across America. About the problems in people's lives that demand a shift from government policymakers and about the way policies from Washington are shifting how people live.
We'll tell those stories at Web speed and frequency.
We'll ground them in data — insights from empirical research and our own deep-dive analysis — to add big-picture context to tightly focused human drama."I couldn't help but be reminded of Janet Yellen's first public speech as Fed chair on March 31. She took the approach Tankersley is aiming for. She began with the data:
"Since the unemployment rate peaked at 10 percent in October 2009, the economy has added more than 7-1/2 million jobs and the unemployment rate has fallen more than 3 percentage points to 6.7 percent. That progress has been gradual but remarkably steady--February was the 41st consecutive month of payroll growth, one of the longest stretches ever....But while there has been steady progress, there is also no doubt that the economy and the job market are not back to normal health. That will not be news to many of you, or to the 348,000 people in and around Chicago who were counted as looking for work in January...The recovery still feels like a recession to many Americans, and it also looks that way in some economic statistics. At 6.7 percent, the national unemployment rate is still higher than it ever got during the 2001 recession... Research shows employers are less willing to hire the long-term unemployed and often prefer other job candidates with less or even no relevant experience."Then she added three stories:
"That is what Dorine Poole learned, after she lost her job processing medical insurance claims, just as the recession was getting started. Like many others, she could not find any job, despite clerical skills and experience acquired over 15 years of steady employment. When employers started hiring again, two years of unemployment became a disqualification. Even those needing her skills and experience preferred less qualified workers without a long spell of unemployment. That career, that part of Dorine's life, had ended.
For Dorine and others, we know that workers displaced by layoffs and plant closures who manage to find work suffer long-lasting and often permanent wage reductions. Jermaine Brownlee was an apprentice plumber and skilled construction worker when the recession hit, and he saw his wages drop sharply as he scrambled for odd jobs and temporary work. He is doing better now, but still working for a lower wage than he earned before the recession.
Vicki Lira lost her full-time job of 20 years when the printing plant she worked in shut down in 2006. Then she lost a job processing mortgage applications when the housing market crashed. Vicki faced some very difficult years. At times she was homeless. Today she enjoys her part-time job serving food samples to customers at a grocery store but wishes she could get more hours."The inclusion of these anecdotes was unusual enough for a monetary policy speech that Yellen felt obligated to explain herself, in what could be a perfect advertisement for Storyline.
"I have described the experiences of Dorine, Jermaine, and Vicki because they tell us important things that the unemployment rate alone cannot. First, they are a reminder that there are real people behind the statistics, struggling to get by and eager for the opportunity to build better lives. Second, their experiences show some of the uniquely challenging and lasting effects of the Great Recession. Recognizing and trying to understand these effects helps provide a clearer picture of the progress we have made in the recovery, as well as a view of just how far we still have to go."Recognition of the power of story is not new to the Federal Reserve. I noted in a January 2013 post that the word "story" appears 82 times in 2007 FOMC transcripts. One member, Frederic Mishkin, said that "We need to tell a story, a good narrative, about [the forecasts]. To be understood, the forecasts need a story behind them. I strongly believe that we need to write up a good story and that a good narrative can help us obtain public support for our policy actions—which is, again, a critical factor."
But Yellen's emphasis on personal stories as a communication device does seem new. I think it is no coincidence that her husband, George Akerlof, is the author (with Rachel Kranton) of Identity Economics, which "introduces identity—a person's sense of self—into economic analysis." Yellen's stories of Dorine, Jermaine, and Vicki are stories of identity, conveying the idea that a legitimate cost of a poor labor market is an identity cost.


text:
Diageo hopes for UK frozen cocktail frenzy with Parrot Bay
The company will launch the 'freeze and squeeze' cocktails – which use a technology that Diageo is seeking to patent, which we covered last December – onto a UK RTD market worth £530m (or $803m, Mintel estimates) after successful 2012 trials with the UK's second-largest retailer Asda.
The cocktails will also be sold in seven other countries across Europe, although we were unable to confirm with Diageo precisely where as BeverageDaily.com went to press.
Parrot Bay single-serve RTD cocktails (RRP £2.49 per 250ml) come in Berry Daiquiri, Citrus Daiquiri and Pina Colada flavors, and are packaged in a pouch that is frozen before consumption.
Tapping 'explosive' US growth
Louise Robbie, senior innovation manager, Diageo Great Britain, cited "explosive growth of frozen alcoholic cocktails in the United States (+261% volume growth, Symphony IRI for the 52 weeks ending March 20 2011)".
Thereafter, Diageo had tested the Parrot Bay cocktails in three European countries, Robbie added, and saw great results. "So now is the time to roll the product out further," she added.
Robbie said the UK launch would "open up huge sales opportunities for the off-trade by offering consumers a new and exciting way to serve drinks during ever popular 'casual get-together' occasions".
In a March 2012 Mintel report, 'White Spirits and RTDs', Jonny Forsyth said the UK RTD market had a "split personality".
"Revenue is still dominated by the major alcopop brand, Bacardi Breezer, WKD and Smirnoff Ice," he wrote.
Sub-sector went toxic...
"However, investment in the once hugely profitable alcopops sub-sector has been virtually non-existent since the sector became toxic due to its association with underage/binge drinking," the analyst said.
New RTDs were now being marketed as a better-quality category, Forsyth added, "a convenient alternative to mixing 'long serves' and cocktails among the younger convenience-led generation".
"This new sector is seeing huge investment - particularly from Diageo - in both innovation and marketing spend," Forsyth said.
"Mintel's consumer research shows these products fulfil a need for portable/convenient mixer options to take to a picnic, barbecue or even a party at someone's house," he added.
As such, Mintel said new market entrants had stabilized RTD value freefall, but still predicts that the sub-category will suffer a 9% UK revenue decline from 2011 to 2016 (2011: £549m; 2012: £530m, 2015 £500m).
Heading off US health concerns
Discussing the wider performance of US RTDs and white spirits in a similar report last November, Mintel said that Diageo had a 36.8% market share as RTD market leader in 2010/11, although Beam Inc. was the only firm to grow sales significantly that year with its Skinnygirl brand.
Food and drink analyst Beth Bloom wrote: "Dollar sales in the category are forecast to grow another 23% through 2017, 13% when adjusted for inflation.
"This is due in part to the resurgence of a cocktail culture, interest in premium products, and product innovation in the category, including flavored spirits and 'light' RTDs," she added.
With millennial consumers driving adult beverage trends, Bloom said Mintel research showed that 21-34 year-olds were more likely than average to consume white spirits and RTDs, and were more likely to do so with high frequency.
One problem spot for RTDs was that Baby Boomers and older consumers may be put off by higher sugar levels and a lack of appealing flavor profiles, Bloom said.
"Promoting products that offer low calories and sugar can help to grow business among all consumer groups," she added.
RTD manufacturers should note consumer interest in mixers, Bloom said, with juice and soda the two most popular to pair with white spirits, "which may translate to stronger sales among RTDs that feature these components".


text:
Over the past few months, I can say with little hesitation that the WWE program I've enjoyed the most is the WWE 24/7 roundtable show, Legends of Wrestling.
Being the TV viewer who enjoys shows like TSN's The Reporters, that fact may not be surprising; but even more than the idea of a group of knowledgeable gentlemen waxing nostalgic and making pro and con arguments about the legacy of wrestlers past, Legends of Wrestling has given a kayfabe-shattering perspective on wrestling's history.
You can only imagine, then, how excited I was to watch the new WWE boxed set featuring three episodes from the show. Forget the matches included (though there are some good ones here), I want to hear some good old-fashioned back-and-forths from WWE's best analysts.
Well, I was happy with what I received… on one of the discs.
You see, the majority of the Legends of Wrestling shows I've watched have been debates and discussions that focus on a topic, such as the Monday Night Wars, the territories or bad asses (just to name a few). Here, however, we get one of these subjects, Heatseekers, while the other two discs look at specific wrestlers, in this case Ric Flair and Sgt. Slaughter on one disc and the Junkyard Dog and Jerry Lawler on another.
In Heatseekers, we learn about some of the drama kings backstage. Getting a good variety of looks here keeps the conversation lively between our panelists — Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler, Michael Hayes, Eric Bischoff and Mick Foley — some of whom can easily be described as heatseekers. (I'll let you decide for yourselves who those individuals are.)
There are some really good stories shared, and I won't spoil them here. Suffice it to say, very few of the classic primadonnas are talked about here, including, perhaps surprisingly, Paul Heyman and Vince Russo. Another highlight is discussion about Marcus "Buff" Bagwell and, naturally, his mom.
Perhaps the most interesting discussion is reserved for Lex Luger, who while being criticized is also applauded for his work and position in NWA/WCW. It's an interesting mix which entices the viewer to watch more on Lex (who conveniently is on the '90s DVD as well).
The "profiles", meanwhile, were filmed as part of a series where the roundtables looked at the stars of the 1980s, seemingly around the time when that decade's best and brightest were profiled on a DVD release, and by comparison you're getting weak discussion here. While each of these stars (to varying degrees) are discussion-worthy, there's little here in terms of debates or arguments, which are the real fuel in the fire of the Legends of Wrestling shows. If you were to debate the merits of, say, Flair versus Hulk Hogan over the greatest superstar in the '80s or Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels in the '90s, then you have enough to go with to make a compelling show. As is, I didn't get nearly the same amount of enjoyment out of watching these two Legends of Wrestling discs as I did Heatseekers.
Of course, there is another reason why I didn't enjoy these discs as much as Heatseekers. You see, the panelists that WWE chose for the '80s discs include four great personalities — Michael Hayes, Pat Patterson, Jim Ross and Dusty Rhodes. Unfortunately, there's a fifth member of this crew that just doesn't belong — Mike Graham. Graham, to me, just didn't fit in here, especially when you consider that Lawler, Foley, Flair, Tazz and Bischoff have found themselves at the table at other debates. I'd much rather have seen "Uncle Eric" talk about Slick Ric than Graham.
That's not to say that you should avoid these two discs. For the wrestling fan who generally likes roundtables and want to learn road stories about Flair, Slaughter, Lawler and JYD, I'd highly encourage picking up the Legends of Wrestling discs. Just know that the quality isn't quite the same as it is on the Heatseekers disc or some of the other shows WWE has done.


text:
Child tax credit: Who gets it?
The House passed a bill Friday that would gradually increase the child tax credit and make it available to higher income parents. However, the bill lets expire a provision that makes the credit available to millions of low-income families.
The basics:
— The child tax credit provides up to $1,000-per-child to parents with children younger than 17.
— The credit is gradually reduced for individuals making more than $75,000 a year and married couples making more than $110,000 a year.
— The credit is reduced to zero for single filers making more than $95,000 in modified adjusted gross income. Married couples cannot get the credit if they make more than $130,000.
— Millions of low-income parents who don't make enough money to pay federal income taxes can still claim the credit. These families get payments similar to tax refunds when they file their tax returns.
— Nearly 37 million taxpayers claimed the child tax credit in 2012. The total value of the credits: $57 billion.
The bill:
— Indexes the credit amount to inflation, so it would gradually rise above $1,000 as consumer prices go up.
— Increases the income limit for married couples from $110,000 to $150,000. Under the bill, the credit would gradually be reduced for married couples making more than $150,000. It would be reduced to zero for married couples making more than $170,000.
— Indexes the income limits to inflation, so they would gradually increase as consumer prices rise.
— Requires low-income families receiving payments under the child tax credit to provide the Social Security number of at least one parent.
The fallout:
— In 2009, Congress passed a temporary measure making the tax credit available to more low-income families as part of a giant economic stimulus package. The measure has since been extended through 2017.
— The measure required families to earn more than $3,000 a year in wages to qualify for payments under the child tax credit. Before the measure, families had to make more than $10,000 in wages to qualify.
— The bill does not address the lower threshold, letting it expire unless Congress takes further action.
— If the measure expires, the White House says 5 million of the poorest low-income families would lose the credit. An additional 6 million low-income families would see the amount of their tax credits reduced.
Sources: Joint Committee on Taxation; White House.


text:
Executives who think that the dot-com collapse, channel conflict, and consumer fears of identity theft have combined to make E-commerce strategy a low priority should think again. Ten years after Amazon.com and eBay made "E-tail" a household word, companies in many industries are taking a second look at E-commerce, and finding ways to overcome old problems and tap new opportunities.
Last year, E-commerce sales hit $69.2 billion, and while that equates to less than 2 percent of all retail sales, it is a startling 23.5 percent jump from the previous year. Analysts believe the online channel may account for 7 percent of all retail sales by 2010. That's a potential increase of nearly $200 billion, which means companies that were turned off or got burned the first time around have plenty of incentive to try again.
And many are. No longer seen as a separate entity (with its own dreams of IPO glory), today's E-commerce effort is framed as an integral part of a multi-channel sales-and-marketing strategy predicated on giving customers what they want the way they want it. That means company strategies vary widely. One retailer's Website may sell a fraction of the inventory displayed at its stores, while another may sell quite a bit more. Some see their E-commerce platforms as the carrot enticing customers into their shops — or, if they are manufacturers, into the shops of their channel partners. Others see E-commerce as a way to reach customers who can't, or won't, shop any other way. Rather than build dot-coms because their competitors have them — often the motivation 10 years ago — companies today think deeply about the purpose of their E-commerce effort before giving it life.
They are also thinking about how to give it life, and again the lessons of the past are proving invaluable. Many companies have learned that they don't need to build their own Websites or conduct postsale order fulfillment, inventory management, or customer service. If a business is built around shipping palettes to Nordstrom stores rather than shipping individual products to customers' homes, why should it restructure its entire operation to accommodate the E-tail channel? There are a host of companies that will provide everything from Website software to logistical support to customer service — and some even provide it all. The upshot is that, far from worrying about being "disintermediated" by new Web companies, old-line firms can partner with these service providers and maintain their dominant positions.
"What's really startling is that E-commerce is being dominated by traditional retailers, and not by entrepreneurial companies and travel Websites," notes Bart Weitz, a professor and director of the Miller Center for Retailing Education and Research at the University of Florida. "During the last ten years, traditional retailers have learned how to use the Internet as a tool to develop better relations with their customers, to really know their [buying] preferences. When I walk into a store, nobody knows who I am. But when I venture into a company's virtual store, I am a known entity with specific preferences. This information now carries over into all my interactions with that company."
But plenty of credit is due to Amazon.com and eBay, the pioneering dot-coms that essentially defined the space by encouraging consumers to confidently key in their credit-card numbers and trust that the merchandise would arrive on time. Both companies built a consumer-value proposition based on reliability and dependability. "They created trust, and that was a huge thing in a self-regulating environment," says Patti Freeman Evans, retail analyst at Jupiter Research.
Reason to Believe
According to Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the Center for eBusiness at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they also proved that the Internet is an extremely effective low-cost channel. "It is too expensive for me to sell my aunt's old chair in the attic to someone in Idaho," he says, "but thanks to eBay, I can do that very cost-effectively. Transaction costs on the Internet are but a fraction of what they would be offline."
And while current investment in E-commerce technology is lagging the growth in E-commerce sales, analysts expect companies to soon wake up and realize that the potential for solid ROI is there. "Companies have learned that the Web is a very profitable channel," says Carrie Johnson, principal analyst at Forrester Research. "After the bubble burst, it didn't look as though most companies believed the Web could actually become profitable and contribute to the bottom line. Now we know the majority of online sellers are profitable and there are ways to do business economically that satisfy both Wall Street and internal P&L objectives."
Increasingly, companies are discovering that in order to be a successful online seller, you must first be a savvy buyer. Sorting through the many outsourcing options can be daunting, but companies say it's worth it. And often they speak from painful experience.
A case in point is Linens 'n Things. With its 500th store recently opened, the $2.7 billion retailer has a solid brick-and-mortar presence on which to build — or rebuild. When the company launched its first E-commerce platform five years ago, it handled order fulfillment in-house and operated its own call center. It then decided that E-commerce wasn't its core competency. "We looked at where we could gain some opportunity and decided to outsource parts of our E-commerce strategy," says Kathy Kimple, vice president of Internet operations. "We evaluated all the permutations out there. For example, we played with keeping the Web design and the call center, and outsourcing the fulfillment piece. We talked to Amazon.com, to Fry, to fulfillment companies like SubmitOrder and ClientLogic, and before long, it started to look like a menu from a Chinese take-out. Ultimately, we decided to outsource the whole kit and caboodle to GSI."
Launched in 1999, GSI Commerce was founded on the belief that if online sales were to account for just a fraction of a company's overall sales, then investment in the technology, not to mention the fulfillment and warehouse end of things, had to be kept low. "E-commerce today makes up 2 to 3 percent of business transacted per merchandise category and will maybe grow to 7 or 8 percent in five years. But that still doesn't justify making huge investments in it," says Michael Conn, senior vice president for corporate development at GSI. "We saw an opportunity to aggregate the business of numerous retailers onto a single platform that provides more features and functionality than they could develop independently."
GSI competes with Amazon.com in offering a comprehensive, single-source E-commerce outsourcing option (see "Amazon Finally Clicks," Spring 2004). "Amazon.com and GSI are going head-to- head on every single deal," says Forrester's Johnson. "GSI is the leader right now." She points out that Amazon.com is challenged by channel conflict — being a seller itself, while also offering a technology platform to other sellers. The irony of that is hard to miss, given that similar channel conflicts initially prevented several brick-and-mortar companies from pursuing the online channel. But now GSI can count everyone from Timberland, Reebok, and palmOne to Major League Baseball and even the Public Broadcasting Service among its clients. "We store the goods, take orders from customers, and then pick, pack, and ship the order from two massive fulfillment centers in Kentucky. We even do gift wrapping, gift cards, refurbishment of returned items, and monogramming of soft goods like towels," Conn notes.
What sold Linens 'n Things on GSI was "the continuing cost of technology and the need to hire more people with expertise" in IT to run things, Kimple says. "GSI has the ability to leverage the expenses and capital required to run a world-class Internet business — thanks to the partners that send checks to them every year. They have a high sense of urgency when it comes to delivering a great experience for our Internet guests, who often go online to do research and then come into our stores to buy."
But some companies have found that a soup-to-nuts outsourcing approach is not for them. Take the case of The Finish Line, a $1.2 billion retailer of athletic footwear, clothing, and accessories. Like Linens 'n Things, it initially launched a homegrown E-commerce platform several years ago. By 2002, it had outgrown the capabilities of its Website but had developed critical expertise in order fulfillment, customer service, and inventory management. Wanting to upgrade the bad but keep the good, it decided to make a larger investment in its Website "to give our merchandisers and marketers more tools to get the message in front of the consumer," says Kent Zimmerman, The Finish Line's director of E-commerce. "With our old site, every time there was a problem, we just threw new servers at it or wrote new code."
The retailer, with 625 stores nationwide, tapped Art Technology Group (ATG) to design a new Website that offered the ability to customize promotions to consumers by testing and measuring how each individual uses the site (see "Counting More Than Clicks"). "We learned, for example, that our customers prefer to see a page with a single shoe in six different colors, rather than a shoe in just one color, even if that color has been their preference in the past," says Zimmerman. The new site is helping The Finish Line win more sales and reduce product abandonment — "where someone fills up a shopping cart and then inexplicably leaves the site before paying," he explains. Recently, the dot-com added a "sneak peek" program in which customers get updated information on the next hot sneaker before it hits store shelves. "We're starting to embrace the site as a research tool to drive more traffic into our stores, rather than just another retail channel," says Zimmerman.
ATG's Website software offers the ability to perform standard transactions — like search, order status, or product information — as well as more-sophisticated cross-selling and up-selling personalization services, including the ability to "morph" the site as a customer moves through it, targeting him or her with specific products based on buying preferences.
In between the do-it-all approach of an Amazon.com or GSI and the relative specialization of a company like ATG is a vast middle ground, where companies such as Fry offer a blend of consulting and technology. "We provide everything you need up to the actual fulfillment — someone putting the product in a box and shipping it to the customer," says David Fry, founder and CEO.
Fry walks customers such as T.J. Maxx through their online options. "Companies come to us and say they want to create an online presence, but they are not sure what that involves," he says. "We talk with them about the merchandise that might best be sold online, and how we would develop and host the site. We also provide the servers and infrastructure to get the Website running, and then integrate it all into the company's fulfillment system, inventory system, customer-service system, and credit-card processing. They do the purchasing, credit-card clearing, marketing, and merchandising, as well as manage the site. Essentially, they are the merchant and we are the store."
Waterford Wedgwood USA went to Fry in August 2002 to launch its first E-commerce site. The maker of fine crystal and collectibles had previously sold its products only through specialty shops and retail department stores like Macy's and was concerned about the effect that E-commerce would have on its longstanding retail relations. "We fretted about channel conflict," says Jennifer Korch, director of Internet marketing at Waterford.com. "We had sold only to brick-and-mortar establishments, from large retail stores to gift shops. Our customers were concerned about Waterford's E-commerce plans, and we needed to educate them that a Website, even one predicated on direct-to-consumer sales, actually complements their business."
While the company has yet to assuage all traditional outlets, it is making headway, Korch says, particularly when it comes to online programs designed to push consumers to stores. "For example, we use the site to tell consumers about limited-run items that are available only to members of the Waterford Collectors Society, a paid membership organization, at specified stores. These are high-priced, beautiful items, and we rely on human interaction to sell them," she says. "We also promised retailers that we would never sell any product on the Website at a lower cost than it would be in a retail environment."
Fry's software is at the heart of Waterford.com, and Fry works closely with Waterford's IT and marketing departments to ensure that customer order data is transferred back and forth from the Website to Waterford's order and inventory system. "Fry offers the technical knowledge to run an E-commerce business, including Website development and hosting," says Korch. "We do everything else in-house, including customer care and distribution." The latter, she says, was challenging, because the company was used to being a wholesale manufacturer that shipped big palettes to stores, versus being a retailer that ships to customers one at a time. Waterford reengineered its warehouse operations to fulfill individual orders — twice each day, customary warehouse operations halt to give Waterford.com's Internet orders priority.
Given the challenges and risks involved, why bother? "Our reach is just so much larger online," says Korch. "We offer a more comprehensive selection of items online that cannot be matched by any store." Despite that, she says, "we see the site as a branding tool first and a selling tool second."
Analysts caution that the economics and convenience of outsourcing can be at odds with the desire to integrate all sales channels as tightly as possible. It can be done, but it requires careful oversight of your outsourcing providers, making sure that their current and future capabilities are in line with your needs. As Weitz says, "Even if you give away the store, you don't want to give away the store."
A Decade to Remember
In the 10 years since eBay and Amazon.com began to ring up sales, E-commerce has been through a stunning series of ups and downs. Here are some highlights.
Amazon.com sells its first book online; eBay launches; Netscape goes public at $28 a share and ends the year at $139 per share; Netscape and Microsoft add Secure Sockets Layer technology to Web browsers, facilitating safer E-commerce.
Sergey Brin and Larry Page create Google.
EBay sells its millionth item: a Sesame Street Big Bird toy; IBM launches $4 million media campaign to encourage E-commerce.
Congress investigates whether online travel entity Orbitz violates antitrust law; the FTC warns Websites to tighten their data-protection policies; the Internet Tax Freedom Act provides a three-year moratorium on levying sales tax on Internet purchases (extended for five years in 2000).
The business.com domain name sells for $7.5 million; Amazon.com reaches its 10 millionth customer; Wall Street analyst Henry Blodgett says, "The [Internet] plane can still climb, but not too steeply…"
Nasdaq average plunges 63%, and the Dow Jones drops 16%; the Pets.com sock puppet sells for $20K (on eBay); Yahoo and eBay are hit with large-scale denial-of-service attacks, sparking security concerns.
EBay lists its half-billionth item; the number of U.S. Web users surpasses 100 million; a Forrester survey finds that more companies cut E-business budgets than increased them, and many said more cuts were likely.
Netflix goes public; the University of Maryland creates a Website, businessplanarchive.org, to chronicle the dot-com collapse while there's still something to chronicle.
Apple launches iTunes, bringing some order to bear in online music sales; a survey finds the B2B E-commerce market is seven times larger than the B2C market, as brick-and-mortar companies tap the power of the Web.
Toys "R" Us sues Amazon.com over an exclusivity agreement; Google goes public at $84 a share; online holiday shopping tops $23 billion, a 25% rise from 2003.
The Supreme Court removes barriers to interstate (i.e., online) wine sales; businesses scramble to meet new data-security standards imposed by a consortium of credit-card companies.
Counting More Than Clicks
If you build it and they come, how will you know? For as long as companies have been involved in E-commerce, they have been attempting to measure Website traffic and the ultimate business value of an online presence. A class of software known as Web analytics now constitutes a $258 million market, according to IDC, and will increase to nearly $400 million by 2008.
Not only is the market growing, it's also changing. The initial users of Web-analytics tools were Web masters and IT staffers, says Gartner analyst Bill Gassman, and they focused on technical information, such as the top 10 pages viewed. Today, leading vendors of Web-analytics software, such as WebTrends, Omniture, WebSideStory, Coremetrics, and others, design their products to meet the needs of ROI-oriented business users who are far more interested in who buys from a site (and why) than who visits it.
"[Customers now want] segmentation data so they know who is buying what, and they are interested in the results of advertising campaigns," explains Gassman. "They also want to find out why people are not doing exactly what the company would like them to do on the Website."
But companies need to be careful, warns Forrester Research analyst Bob Chatham. According to a study he recently authored, the data that organizations get from Web-analytics applications may be a lot less accurate than they expect. One problem is a shift in technology: earlier software relied on log files, which essentially count computers, not people. That is, the files sometimes count as a single visitor all people who access a Website from the same IP address (all employees of a given company, for example). And the software may fail to "see" people who visit a Web page that has, in the interest of efficiency, been cached (stored temporarily on another server) by the ISP.
Newer products use page tags, or small units of code on a Web page, that transmit information about any browser that loads that page. These tags enable companies to track a visitor as he or she moves from one page to another.
Chatham cites one Forrester client who discovered that a shift from older Web-analytics software that used log files to newer versions that use page tags resulted in an apparent 40 percent change in traffic. But even with the use of newer technology, monitoring Websites is tricky. Site developers often forget to tag pages, which hamstrings data collection. Some software arbitrarily defines a Web session as a 30-minute visit and, once that time expires, counts that same visitor again. And in what is perhaps the biggest challenge, many users now disable the "cookie" function of their Web browsers (a small ID file created when they visit a Website) in order to protect their privacy, which makes it impossible to recognize them as return visitors.
"Web teams need to develop a set of best practices around the use of tags," says Gassman. "It's a huge change, but it means the difference between 'comfort information' and truly actionable information." This may be that rare case in which companies must battle information underload. — Alan Earls


text:
Our Profile
We specialize in brand business building and growth equity opportunities, utilizing a unique Brand Anatomy Process as well as employing an exclusive Digital Anthropology. Brand Anatomies organize, summarize and define business intentions; Digital Anthropology intersects those intentions and makes them true, faster.
Our Expertise
Experience the exceptional
Our Work
What we like to be judged on.
Who we've worked with
Work with a purpose
We are driven to do great work by the knowledge that it can truly change lives. We are proud to contribute our time, talent and resources to an organization that has been doing that for more than 30 years. Kids 'n Kamp, an independent non-profit organization, is devoted to the social, educational and emotional needs of children with cancer. By providing family activities, tutoring, counseling and support opportunities, the Kids 'n Kamp network touches the lives of more than 1200 area children and their families each year. Over the years, the organization has grown, offering programs throughout the year with a single goal in mind: helping children and their families, whenever and wherever help is needed.


text:
Devyani Khobragade gets full diplomatic immunity, on her way to India
New Delhi/New York – Diplomat Devyani Khobragade left for India on Friday after a deal between the India and US in which she was granted diplomatic immunity from charges of alleged visa fraud and lying about underpaying her domestic help. Her arrest and alleged humiliation nearly a month ago had strained ties between the two countries.
An Indian diplomat accused of lying about how much she paid her housekeeper was ordered out of the United States on Thursday after she was indicted on two criminal charges and Indian authorities refused to waive her immunity, authorities said.
Devyani Khobragade, who had been strip-searched when arrested, left the country by plane Thursday night after being charged by a federal grand jury with visa fraud and making false statements in a case that has triggered an outcry in India, a senior U.S. official said. She's accused of fraudulently obtaining a work visa for her New York housekeeper.
A U.S. government official in Washington who wasn't authorized to speak about the case publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity said the U.S. accepted India's request to accredit her to the United Nations, which confers broader immunity than what she enjoyed as a consular official. It would be almost unprecedented for the U.S. to deny such a request unless the diplomat was a national security risk.
The United States asked the government of India to waive the immunity, but the Indians refused, so the U.S. then "requested her departure" from the country, the official said.
At a court hearing late Thursday involving only lawyers in the case, U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin was told by Khobragade's lawyer, Daniel Arshack, that he had told Khobragade not to board a flight Thursday afternoon until he had informed the judge presiding over her case that she has diplomatic immunity and had been ordered by the Department of State to leave the country.
The judge said it seemed odd that bail conditions continued to contain language that Khobragade could not leave New York when the Department of State had ordered her to do so.
"If she wants to go from India to China or something, it is not anybody's business right now. To say you may not travel outside the Southern District is kind of silly at this point," the judge said. "They have ordered her out and agreed she has diplomatic immunity now."
The judge said Khobragade "is permitted to obey the order of the State Department without any adverse consequence to her and her sureties," though she said Khobragade could be arrested and forced to answer the indictment if she returned to the United States without diplomatic immunity.
Arshack said Khobragade, whose nighttime flight from Kennedy Airport was delayed a couple of hours before finally taking off, was "pleased to be returning to her country."
"Her head is held high," the lawyer said. "She knows she has done no wrong and she looks forward to assuring that the truth is known."
Authorities say Khobragade claimed to pay her Indian maid $4,500 per month but gave her far less than the U.S. minimum wage. The indictment said Khobragade had made multiple false representations to U.S. authorities, or caused them to be made, to obtain a visa for a personal domestic worker. She planned to bring the worker to the United States in September 2012 when she worked at the Consulate General of India in New York, according to the indictment.
Her arrest last month sparked outrage in India after revelations that she was strip-searched and thrown in a cell with other criminal defendants before being released on $250,000 bail.
The maid, Sangeeta Richard, said in her first public statements on Thursday that she had decided to come to the U.S. to work for a few years to support her family and then return to India.
"I never thought that things would get so bad here, that I would work so much that I did not have time to sleep or eat or have time to myself," she said in a statement released by the anti-trafficking group Safe Horizon.
She said she tried to return to India because of how she'd been treated but her request was denied.
"I would like to tell other domestic workers who are suffering as I did — you have rights and do not let anyone exploit you," said Richard, who has been vilified in India and accused of blackmailing her employer.
Khobragade, India's deputy consul general in New York, has maintained her innocence.
In a letter to the judge on Thursday, prosecutors said there was no need for an arraignment because Khobragade had "very recently" been given diplomatic immunity status; they also mistakenly said she'd already left the United States.
A spokesman for prosecutors later clarified that the mix-up came because the Department of State advised that she was to have left the country Thursday afternoon.
The charges will remain pending until she can be brought to court to face them, through a waiver of immunity or her return to the U.S. without immunity status, the letter from the office of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said.
Arshack said he was pleased the Department of State had recognized Khobragade's diplomatic immunity.
He said the confusion over whether his client had left the country was "emblematic of the series of blunders which has contributed to the false charges brought against her." He said Khobragade did not make any false statements and paid her domestic worker what she was entitled to be paid.


text:
Kansas City, MO – Salvador Perez drove in three runs, including the go-ahead run in the bottom of the eighth, and the Kansas City Royals snapped a seven-game losing streak with a 6-4 win over the Washington Nationals.
With two outs in the eighth and with Craig Stammen (7-6) pitching for the Nationals, the Royals loaded the bases on two walks and an infield single.
Perez, who also had a two-run home run in the first, hit a grounder towards Ian Desmond, who bobbled the catch. He tried to beat Billy Butler to third to end the inning, but Ryan Zimmerman was unable to tag him out in time, allowing Eric Hosmer to score.
David Lough followed with an RBI single to right.
"We've been playing such good baseball, it's tough to let that kind of game," said Desmond. "We played so well, so many good things happened in that game to let that last inning ruined it, ruined the rest of the trip. We've been playing better and we're showing signs."
Royals reliever Kelvin Herrera (5-6) pitched 1 1/3 scoreless innings to pick up the win while Greg Holland avoided trouble in the ninth to notch his 35th save.
"You can't compete until you can win more games than you lose," said Royals manager Ned Yost. "You have to be able to be over that .500 mark to compete. So, we have to get used, as an organization. We're doing a real good job. These guys are getting great experience. They're learning how to deal with all kinds of pressure."
Alex Gordon homered to lead off the first. After Emilio Bonifacio walked, Hosmer knocked an RBI single to center, but was caught stealing second. Two batters later, Mike Moustakas singled to right center and Perez delivered a two-run shot to left.
The Nationals had a chance to score in the third. With one out, Anthony Rendon doubled to center and Denard Span hit an infield single. However, Zimmerman and Bryce Harper were retired.
Desmond got Washington on the board with a one-out solo shot in the fourth.
In the seventh, Denard Span smashed a two-out solo shot to center. Zimmerman followed with a base hit to left before Harper smacked the first pitch he saw from Royals starter Ervin Santana over the left-field wall to tie the game.
In the ninth, Holland gave a leadoff single to Span and a two-out single to Jayson Werth, but struck out Desmond to end the game.
Game Notes
Gordon has 11 career leadoff home runs, tying the Royals record set by David DeJesus and Willie Wilson ... Desmond has 44 home runs over the last two seasons, second-most for a shortstop. Only J.J. Hardy has more with 45 ... Span went 4-for-5 and is on a nine-game hitting streak ... Harper has 40 career home runs, third-most by any player before his 21st birthday ... The Royals will play a scheduled make-up game against the Rays on Monday. The game is to atone for the May 2 snowout when the clubs managed to get into the fourth inning, with Kansas City holding a 1-0 lead.


text:
If you are just getting started in saltwater and have a question for our salty experts, post them here. We are here to make sure you are successful !
Use this control to limit the display of threads to those newer than the specified time frame.
Allows you to choose the data by which the thread list will be sorted.
Order threads in...
Note: when sorting by date, 'descending order' will show the newest results first.
Forum Rules


text:
I loved Daria growing up, which really isn't that big of a surprise because who didn't love Daria, right? At the time, the show was exactly what I needed to cope with middle school (and life in general). Daria was sarcastic, monotone, and aware of being too smart and self aware to deal with everyone around her: a familiar scenario I empathized with deeply. As I've been rewatching the show recently, reminded of how perfectly it captured how I felt as a kid and still feel to this day, I noticed that this time it's not Daria and Jane who command my attention. Instead, I found myself focusing on a girl just as intelligent and snarky as Daria, but even more fringe and alternative than either could possibly fathom: Jodie Landon.
Look at her. Gaze upon the one person who is even more aware of the irony and hypocrisy of the world than Daria Morgendorffer. This is the one person who has even more right and insight to call everyone out on their shit. Meet Jodie Landon – popular girl, home coming queen, model student, and young woman of color.
I used to bask in the Daria comparisons. To be called "Daria" was considered an acknowledgment of your mental acumen, acerbic wit, and general allure as a disgruntled misanthrope. Now that I'm grown, I can't help but think that however "Daria" I may be, the person I truly relate to is Jodie. In a sea of white faces, who couldn't even begin to comprehend the term "privilege," yet alone unpack it, she was the lone POC girl.
Daria is a feminist show with a feminist main character, with that teen angst telegraphed through sarcastic quips. Jodie isn't really that different from Daria, except she's black, more tolerant of her less-than-stellar classmates, and further out in the sidelines. Although it's Jodie's standing as one of the "cool kids" that makes her a secondary character, her marginalization is an accurate reminder of the real life standing WOC often have in feminist spaces.
It's hard for me to know where to begin talking about some of the issues I have in regards to feminism and the limited spaces it offers POC. As of late, I'm more and more disappointed in my supposed allies, when attempts to talk about my individual experience as a feminist of color go nowhere. This isn't a new complaint, either. One of the repeat offenses of post-modern feminism is the mammoth failure to factor race and privilege into the ongoing dialog. When you're a person of color, there is no such thing as separating race and gender – it's a package deal, baby. It shouldn't be that great of a stretch to acknowledge that race is an enormous factor in how a woman lives and perceives her experience; it's her race that sets the tone of how others will approach and treat her as a woman. If you get the urge to tell me that I'm wrong, you probably aren't a person of color and you should just sit back down and pay attention.
I look forward to the few seconds or minutes when Jodie gets screen time. Besides comfortably going toe to toe with Daria, Jodie is point blank about Lawndale's almost blinding whiteness, and so freaking meta about her status as a token black character that it hurts. Daria may snark endlessly about buying into the patriarchal system and everyone's general need to get a clue, but Jodie's cynicism runs on a deeper level because she knows that she can (and most likely will) be collateral damage of the same system Daria may only marginally suffer. Daria can walk away relatively unscathed, or if she chooses to be continually vocal about her complaints, there is always some sort of sympathetic space for her as a white woman. The same doesn't hold for Jodie.
But the beauty of Jodie is that she copes and works hard on her escape plan. Witness her greatness, as she nips Daria's whining in the bud (S2E8, Gifted):
Daria: Look Jodie, I'm too smart and too sensitive to live in a world like ours, at a time like this, with a sister like mine. Maybe I do miss out on stuff, but this attitude is what works for me now.
Jodie: Then you'll understand what works for me now. At home, I'm Jodie – I can say and do whatever feels right. But at school I'm The Queen of the Negros, the perfect African-American teen, the role-model for all the other African-American teens at Lawndale. Oops! Where'd they go? Believe me, I'd like to be more like you.
Daria, in one of her rare moments of sympathy, gets it, because she's not a bad person and she is smart. I am not trying to single out all the white feminists out there, but I am calling out all you Darias: can you understand where Jodie is coming from?


text:
Watch more on this story with Becky Anderson on Connect the World, CNN International TV at 19:00 GMT.
Story highlights
FIFA "cannot ignore" the issue of workers' rights, but Qatar says it will act
Blatter: FIFA is launching "a consulting process" to determine the 2022 Qatar dates
There are fears players and fans could suffer in the searing heat of Qatar's summer
A Qatar ministry says it is taking concrete steps to ensure labor laws are respected
No decision will be made on a shift in the date for soccer's Qatar 2022 World Cup before the 2014 World Cup is played, FIFA President Sepp Blatter said Friday.
There has been controversy around plans to stage the 2022 contest in Qatar's intense summer heat, prompting calls to move the tournament to the winter.
It had been expected ahead of the executive committee, or ExCo, meeting that a decision on whether to shift the tournament from Qatar's summer to the winter months would come Friday.
But the executive committee for football's world governing body, which has met over the past two days in Zurich, has "decided to launch a consultation process among main stakeholders for Qatar 2022 dates," Blatter said via his official Twitter account.
Read: What have we learned about FIFA and the 2022 World Cup?
At a news conference in Zurich, Blatter also said that Qatar "needs to intervene" after allegations of abuse of migrant laborers working on infrastructure projects for the 2022 tournament – and that the Gulf state has said it will act.
"This is not FIFA's first responsibility, but we cannot ignore it, and it touches me. But it is not an intervention by FIFA that is going to change something. It is Qatar that needs to intervene, and Qatar has confirmed to me that they are going to do it," he said.
Qatar has provided a letter setting out what ministers have already started to do, he said.
The delay in announcing a decision on changing the dates for the contest will allow FIFA time for broader consultations on the issue with key stakeholders, such as players, clubs, national football associations and TV broadcasters who pay huge sums for the rights to the games.
Blatter said it would also mean the 2014 World Cup in Brazil could be played without being overshadowed by questions over Qatar.
Blatter: Doubts over heat
Blatter stressed that there is no possibility of taking the 2022 World Cup away from Qatar, as some critics have demanded.
He plans to visit Qatar with members of the executive committee to see how the preparations are going, as well as to meet with Qatar's new emir, he said.
Read: Qatar defends worker abuse claims
Asked about remarks last month in which he said FIFA may have made a mistake in choosing Qatar for the 2022 World Cup back in 2010, Blatter said his words did not relate to the choice of location. "The mistake was to think that we could play this competition easily in the summertime," he said.
"There are some doubts as to whether it is a good period to play in this heat."
He acknowledged that FIFA "could have made this declaration that it is too hot a little bit earlier" but said there is still plenty of time before the tournament is played.
Earlier Friday, FIFA Vice President Jeffrey Webb said, "I don't think there should be a decision today. We definitely have not been presented with an analysis. We don't know where the stakeholders are, so I think it would be irresponsible for us to take a decision today."
The World Cup is usually played in the northern hemisphere's summer months, but concerns have been raised over the safety of players and football fans in Qatar, given that temperatures in July can soar to 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 Celsius).
Read: What's riding on the Qatar question?
All 54 member associations of UEFA, Europe's governing body, last month voted against holding the tournament in the Qatari summer.
But a winter World Cup would cause chaos with the European domestic season, with many clubs fearing that they could lose out financially.
The secretary general for the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, Hassan al-Thawadi, delivered a progress report Thursday to FIFA's ExCo on the Gulf nation's preparations for the event.
Al-Thawadi has said that innovative cooling technologies will ensure that conditions are not too hot for visitors during the tournament. The Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee has also said it is committed to ensuring workers' safety and well-being.
Ali Al Khulaifi, an international relations adviser at Qatar's Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, said this week that Qatar is taking concrete steps to ensure that its labor rules are enforced, including making it easier for workers to report abuses by their employers.
CNN's Alex Thomas reported in Zurich and Laura Smith-Spark wrote in London.


text:
US stocks recover modestly from big drop
Published 12:00 am Tuesday, February 4, 2014
The U.S. stock market is ending higher a day after suffering its biggest loss in more than seven months.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 72.44 points, or 0.5 percent, to close at 15,445.24 Tuesday. The Standard & Poor's 500 index climbed 13.31 points, or 0.8 percent, to 1,755.20. The Nasdaq composite gained 34.56 points, or 0.9 percent, to 4,031.52.
The market is creeping back from a 326-point drop in the Dow on Monday prompted by disappointing news about U.S. manufacturing.
Michael Kors jumped $13.24, or 17.3 percent, to $89.91 after the fashion retailer reported stronger earnings.
Yum! Brands jumped $5.90, or 9 percent, to $72.06 after the owner of KFC reported better-than-expected earnings late Monday. It also indicated it remains confident about its earnings growth forecast for the year.


text:
This question is specifically concerned with storing keys in the cloud, and is somewhat applicable.
But I've got a laptop and a desktop computer at home - I'm the admin on both of those systems, and of course have my .ssh directory/contents read/writable by only me.
I also have another server @ my dad's house, where I'm an admin. And a few of my friends also have servers where I have accounts.
The obvious concern (as I've looked around questions here) is that if either my friend or his box was compromised, then the attacker would have my key. Obviously they can now try to brute force/dictionary attack my private key.
Obviously I want to be able to access these systems without having to provide a password, and frequently I make HostA -> HostB -> HostC type connections. Should I be generating a new private key for each of these hosts? Or at least the hosts that are not directly under my control?


text:
HEALTH chiefs in Winchester have insisted that plans for a major NHS shake-up are on track despite calls from some experts for greater clarity.
The proposals, which could see A&E and maternity units in Winchester downgraded, went out for 'public engagement' last year and NHS bosses are analysing the response.
In December Mindy Noble, a breastfeeding counsellor and chairman of Hampshire Maternity Services Liaison Committee (HMSLC), called for health chiefs to clarify the options being considered.
Mary Edwards, chief executive of Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: "We as a hospital are clear that consultant-led hospitals are the way forward but we are aware it's our decision but are mindful of what the public want. We think the Keogh report is right and agree with its findings."
Under the proposals, some specialist services could be centralised and moved away from the Royal Hampshire County Hospital to a new emergency hospital north of the city.
As reported, Winchester could be left with a walk-in unit for less serious A&E cases, and a midwife-led maternity unit for natural births only.
At present, about 3,000 women per year give birth at the RHCH which has the full range of obstetricians, paediatricians, anaesthetists and midwives.
Mrs Edwards said: "The public engagement shows us that most of the public recognise that it's safer and better to have hospitals that specialise."
On January 28 health chiefs will attend an overview and scrutiny committee at Hampshire County Council to present their response to the public engagement.
In February a formal public consultation process will begin.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here


text:
In 1993 Fredro Starr's group Onyx pissed off reverends, barbershop owners and bootleggers with their NRA friendly debut album "Bacdafucup." More than twenty years later the South Jamaica Queens native has added television and movies to his resume, but has never left the music far behind.
After releasing two solo albums and several mixtapes, the onetime "Moesha" star has released a new album with MC/producer The Audible Doctor called, "Made In The Streets." The Audible Doctor is a native of Madison Wisconsin and in-house producer for The Brownbag Allstars. But many know him as one of the main forces behind NY's legendary Fat Beats record store.
The video for the first single, "Everyday Hell" is a visually minimal but sonically full throwback to hip-hop's dark, asphalt-flavored era.
Watch it below and stream the album after the jump.
NINETY-NOW: Fredro Starr & Audible Doctor Present "Made In The Streets" was originally published on theurbandaily.com


text:
Cult Classics: GameCube
Part 2: Fear, frolf, farming and a bit more drumming.
Following on from part one, Keza stops understanding the alphabet and starts hugging everything vaguely chronologically. We've also done a quick check and she doesn't claim anything was released in "1005" in this one.
1080 Avalanche
- Developer: NST
- Release: 2003
Apparently even Ikaruga and Skies of Arcadia outsold this, which is pretty unbelievable considering that snowboarding games have always been popular. SSX is a better all-around snowboarding game, but as far as actually racing on a snowboard goes, 1080 Avalanche is about the best there is. It goes a lot faster than any other in its genre, and as a result it's more intense, with no nonsense endless-combo tricking or flawless landings - doing any tricks at all puts you at a huge risk of falling over. It's probably been superseded by more recent snowboarding games, all things considered, but as a pure racer 1080 is still exciting.
What we said: "1080 is easily the best snowboard racing game I've played."
Ribbit King
- Developer: Bandai
- Release: 2004
This came out on the PlayStation 2 as well, but seeing as it didn't appear in the PS2's Cult Classics list, it seems only right to include it here. Ribbit King is a mental game in which you play frolf - a version of golf, except played by catapulting frogs through the air with a mallet. I don't think much more really needs to be said to justify Ribbit King's place on this list, apart from that it's fun in multiplayer and amusing for a good long while in single-player. Think Mario Golf with randomly appearing elephants and a ball capable of swimming, running away from the hole and being eaten by snakes and you're on the right lines. Getting the frog in the hole is only a small part of this inspired game - usually it's about getting him to high places for a points bubble, into a pond or near a hazard like a giant trampoline, snake or whirlpool. Essentially you get points when funny things happen, which gives it just the right element of randomness to make it a weird and hilarious multiplayer classic.
What we said: Nowt. Amends: made.
Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat
- Developer: Nintendo
- Release: 2005
Jungle Beat was played by even less people than Konga was, even though it's the most innovative and addictive 2D platformer to grace the last generation of consoles. The bongos control a little Donkey Kong running around lovely-looking levels, smashing enemies in the face and collecting bananas whilst trying not to touch the ground and break his combo. It starts off simple - run, jump, hit things - and ends up extremely nuanced, as you search for unbroken paths through levels, desperate to keep your combo, devastated when you accidentally hit the ground. The bosses are funny and interesting and the levels are amazingly varied for a game whose control consists entirely of left bongo, right bongo, both and clap. It's a terrific achievement. Apart from all that, though, Jungle Beat actually makes you feel like a bloody great monkey. Few things in games feel more natural and physical than drumming your hands to run and, especially, actually pounding your fists into an enemy, and Jungle Beat keeps the primal feeling going with loud, animal yells, bangs and thwacks and satisfying visual feedback. Just try to play it without banging your chest. It's impossible.
What we said: "If the Revolution needs a poster-child, then Donkey Kong Jungle Beat is surely it."