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Dear Cortney and Robert, I really like the way you sign your designs with a huge, funky art piece. It's gotta be hard to constantly find fresh pieces. Let me introduce you to Randel Plowman of A Collage A Day. I think one of these pieces, blown up to size, would really set a room on fire. You can thank me later. A little finders fee would do nicely. Or, Randel could whip me up a little sumpin' for that space over my mantel that has been empty for years now. Call me. I have even more ideas. Yours truly, donna
thirty three pick up
the shout out
All by Randel Plowman


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FCC Caves on Net Neutrality
Late Monday, a majority of the FCC's commissioners indicated that they're going to vote with Chairman Julius Genachowski for a toothless Net Neutrality rule.
According to all reports, the rule, which will be voted on during tomorrow's FCC meeting, falls drastically short of earlier pledges by President Obama and the FCC Chairman to protect the free and open Internet.
The rule is so riddled with loopholes that it's become clear that this FCC chairman crafted it with the sole purpose of winning the endorsement of AT&T and cable lobbyists, and not defending the interests of the tens of millions of Internet users.
Welcome to AT&T's Internet
For the first time in history of telecommunications law the FCC has given its stamp of approval to online discrimination.
Instead of a rule to protect Internet users' freedom to choose, the Commission has opened the door for broadband payola - letting phone and cable companies charge steep tolls to favor the content and services of a select group of corporate partners, relegating everyone else to the cyber-equivalent of a winding dirt road.
Instead of protecting openness on wireless Internet devices like the iPhone and Droid, the Commission has exempted the mobile Internet from Net Neutrality protections. This move enshrines Verizon and AT&T as gatekeepers to the expanding world of mobile Internet access, allowing them to favor their own applications while blocking, degrading or de-prioritizing others.
Instead of re-establishing the FCC's authority to act as a consumer watchdog over the Internet, it places the agency's authority on a shaky and indefensible legal footing -- giving ultimate control over the Internet to a small handful of carriers.
Obama's 'Mission Accomplished'
Internet users deserve far better, and we thought we were going to get it from a president who promised to "take a backseat to no one in my commitment to Net Neutrality." Watch as he and his FCC chairman try to spin tomorrow's betrayal as another "mission accomplished."
Don't believe it. This bogus victory has become all too familiar to those watching the Obama administration and its appointees squander opportunities for real change. The reality is that reform is just a rhetorical front for industry compromises that reward the biggest players and K-Street lobbyists while giving the public nothing.
It's not the FCC chairman's job to seek consensus among the corporations that he was put into office to regulate. His duty is to protect Internet users.
More than two million people have taken action on behalf of Net Neutrality. Tomorrow, we'll all get the carpet yanked from beneath our feet.
Net Neutrality is the freedom of speech, freedom of choice issue of the 21st century. It's the guarantee of a more open and democratic media system that was baked into the Internet at its founding.
On Tuesday, Obama's FCC is going to sell that out.

subset: commoncrawl


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It was about 14 years ago that a 20-year old indigenous rights activist Kalpana Chakma disappeared and is presumably dead. We know that she was kidnapped along with two of her brothers in the middle of the night, the day before the 1996 general elections.
She was the fiery and young general secretary of the Hill Women's Federation, a group dedicated to a peaceful Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). She spoke out against abuses committed by the Bangladeshi Army in the indigenous areas that make up the CHT. For this, she apparently paid with her life.
In human rights work, there is an immediacy that comes from ensuring that human rights defenders are protected now. We also lose sight of activists in countries like Bangladesh with the whirlwind of Guantanamo Bay, Gaza and other human rights crisis closer to home. But, we are sometimes forced to remember those rights activists who paid the ultimate price for defending the rights of their people. Kalpana Chakma was one of those individuals and we must not rest until we bring the people who kidnapped her to justice.


text: The land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, considered by many scholars to be the site of the Garden of Eden, forms the central passage of modern Iraq. Dominated by imperialism until its independence in 1932, the West Asian nation became known in the latter half of the 20th century for bloody ethnic clashes between its Sunni and Shiite Muslims. While a small number of Christians have inhabited the region for over 2,000 years, conflicts under Saddam Hussein—the Iran-Iraq war of 1979, the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and international tensions over the purported stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction—have resulted in their displacement and emigration. In 2004, the country was reestablished as a democratic republic after U.S.-led forces deposed Hussein. Humanitarian and missions efforts have slowly resumed, but Christians continue to leave the country amid threats, persecution, and economic hardship.


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Video Length: 5 Hours 48 Minutes
Friends and family try to be kind. They'll say things like "nice color" or offer other empty compliments for your paintings because they don't want to hurt your feelings.
But have you ever had a friend walk into your house and say, "Who did this painting?" - and then see them in disbelief when you say it was you?
I had that happen to me recently, and I have to admit it felt pretty darned good when they said, "You did this? Really? Wow, your work sure has improved."
What is really special is that everything changed in one week . One week of intense study and commitment to a particular style made a huge difference, a huge leap in my quality, and a huge change in how I was painting.
Imagine showing your friends one of your own paintings and then being asked who the artist is.
It would feel pretty good when you tell them it's your own work, right?
The reality is that a small amount of time with a great instructor can make a big difference. In fact, watching one master artist on a video, painting along, and then practicing that technique over and over again for just a week can make a monumental change in your painting ability.
What if you could learn to paint in a new way that would make people leap up and take notice like never before?
What if you did not have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars traveling to a workshop or paying for one-to-one coaching, but still got the benefits for a fraction of the investment?
What are we talking about?
Learning how to paint with a palette knife.
See, one of the most impressive skills you can master as an artist is painting with a knife...
Not many can do it.
Even fewer can do it well.
It's tricky.
In fact, it's almost a separate art form in itself.
Which is why those people who can do it well are able to create paintings that look far better than the average painter's.
Three Reasons Palette Knife Painting Is Awesome
You might be wondering:
"Why should I bother learning palette knife painting? Especially if I've never painted with a palatte knife or used a palette knife for anything but mixing."
It's a question we hear often.
So here are three reasons that learning it might just be one of the most rewarding things you ever do .
Reason #1: It's one of the fastest ways to take your art to the "next level."
If you're looking to "level up" as an artist, then using a palette knife to do all or part of your paintings is one of the best ways to do so.
I mean, there aren't too many people who even attempt it.
And most who do give it a go don't know how to do it correctly.
So when you CAN do it, you're going to stun yourself with just how great your paintings look.
Reason #2: It's FUN and gives you freedom.
Why did you take up painting in the first place?
Because it's fun.
And being able to "bring a painting to life" with a palette knife is one of the most enjoyable things you can do as a painter.
Reason #3: The energy in palette knife paintings tends to make them appeal to collectors.
So few people do palette knife paintings well that there are very few on the market. Therefore, when done well, they stand out and have great appeal to viewers and potential buyers.
Reason #4: When you know how to do it properly, you can finish a painting fast!
What if we told you it's possible to finish a complete palette knife painting in under two hours (and still keep it high in quality)…
Even if it's your first EVER attempt?
You'd be amazed.
And probably a little skeptical.
But get this:
It's our job to give you the very best art education possible. Which is why we ask only the greatest artists in the world to come into our studios to record their secrets.
And that's exactly what we've done here, because:
We've Persuaded One of the Great Palette Knife Painters to Give You Step-by-Step Training so You Can "Wow" Your Viewers
Not only is this person a fantastic teacher of palette knife painting…
She's also a world-class painter herself.
Who is it?
Michele Byrne
And before we tell you about the incredible training she's put on for you, here's a bit more about Michele:
After learning to paint as a child, Michele's gone on to become one of the most respected knife painters in the world.
In fact, you'd have to stick around for the entire day just to hear about all the awards she's won.
Michele's also written a book called The Art of Conversation…plus two other books and one other video on painting.
She's featured in prestigious art magazines such as PleinAir Magazine and Southwest Art.
And she also has paintings in both the Bennington Museum and the Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando, Florida.
Michele came into our studios for several days so we could record her palette knife techniques from start to finish.
The best part?
She walks you-step by step-through the precise process she uses to paint a masterpiece.
And what blew our minds was just how easy Michele has made this entire process for you. Heck, we'd even go as far as saying we've never seen anyone teach palette knife painting as well as Michele does.
Which is great news for you.
See, when you finish this video, you will know how to easilypaint a piece using a palette knife … even though it's something most painters struggle with.
And it shouldn't surprise you when your "art friends" ask you to teach them this skill after they see your work.
Or when more people want to buy your paintings!
It's called…
Palette Knife Painting with Michele Byrne
You get a 2-disc DVD version of the 4.5 hour training delivered straight to your home…
...or instant access to an online version so you don't have to wait around to get started.
Why is it a 2-disc DVD?
Because you also get an exclusive interview with Michele to go along with the training video! Plus, there is so much content it would not fit on a single DVD.
Here's a quick taste of what you'll discover in this in-depth training:
Michele typically starts a painting of people … the surprising effect leaving some blank canvas showing has on the outcome of your work … and even a "ninja" way of making people appear in your paintings WITHOUT actually painting them.
*The instruction in this video can be applied to water-soluble oil, traditional oil, and even acrylic paints.


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The arrest of war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladić comes at an extremely crucial moment for Serbia. At a time when Croatia is apparently on the verge of having been given a fixed date for EU entry, when Chief Prosecutor at the Hague Tribunal Serge Brammertz said that Serbia has not done nearly enough to catch the two main remaining war criminals (Mladić and Goran Hadžić), at the time when the EU is considering reintroducing visas for some Balkan countries including, apparently, Serbia, it would seem that Belgrade had no choice but to take the issue of general Ratko Mladić off the table.
Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić. Both captured
Now, there's always the possibility of pieces just falling into place. After all the United States found Osama Bin Laden after ten years not far (relatively speaking) from where he was in the first place. But this being Balkans and all, you'll forgive me if I remain my cynical self.
Ratko Mladić was hiding under an alias Milorad Komadić in a village called Lazarevo. According to tweets by @Belgrade (editor of belgraded.com) Mladić was "found" in a village mostly inhabited by people from Mladić region of birth (a Serbian village South-East of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina) and was brazen enough to use only a modification of his real name as an alias: Milorad Komadić. You either need balls of steel or (at the very least) tacit goverment support to do something like that.
You'll remember that basically the same thing happened with Radovan Karadžić, who (using the assumed name of Dragan Dabić) lived in Belgrade practically under everyone's noses. Point being that both Karadžić and Mladić were trump cards Serbian government used whenever it found itself cornered by the EU. While there's still the capture of Goran Hadžić to attend to, the EU and (most likely) the United States will quite possibly grant certain concession to Serbia on a quid-pro-quo basis.
And this is basically it. What we saw today was – in my opinion – a closure of a deal where Serbian government bargained hard and most likely got what it wanted. EU foreign minister high representative for foreign affairs Catherine Ashton would not be in Belgrade today had there not been some sort of an agreement made. Although people tend to look down on her it is possible (and I'm only speculating here) that she had two envelopes with her: one if Serbia played ball, the other if it didn't.
And just to put conspiracy theories to rest: The fact that European Parliament reporter for Serbia, Slovene MEP Jelko Kacin said only earlier today that Serbia will not be granted candidate status without Mladić arrest in all likelyhood is a coincidence 🙂
Anyways, Ratko Mladić is apparently on his way to The Hague where he will once again be united with Radovan Karadžić. The Duo Horribilis will stand trial for war crimes just in time for the ICTY to complete its charter. Hopefully, they will not follow their political mentor Slobodan Milošević and take their own lives, but will be tried and convicted for their crimes so that hundreds of thousands of people upon whom they brought untold horror and suffering may finally find some sort of inner peace.
May whatever god they might believe in have mercy on their souls. They will find little forgiveness on this Earth.


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Giraffe – Juvenile – Giraffa camelopardalis
Giraffe – Juvenile – Giraffa camelopardalis
We realize stuffed giraffe (juvenile or adult) in shoulder or full mount.
The most amazing is the giraffe shoulder mount with turned neck !
Giraffe – Giraffa camelopardalis
The giraffe is a mammal as part of cloven hoofed animals and ruminants. This means that it is a mammal whose legs have fingers with horn as a kind of nail.
The giraffe is a herbivore animal native to the African savannahs and spread from Chad to South Africa. It is best known for his long neck. In the course of evolution, this animal has adapted to pick the leaves at the tops of trees because very few animals can reach them. The animal can reach up to 6 meters high. Thus the giraffe has a reserve of food always available.
The neck of the giraffe has also always interested scientists including NASA engineers who have studied the anatomy of the giraffe to understand the effect of gravity on blood flow. Indeed, when the giraffe lowers its head blood flow becomes very important. Also its heart must be powerful enough to irrigate the head of the animal when his neck is prepared.
There are generally 9 giraffe species according to their geographical distribution and differences in coat color.
Regarding the reproduction of the giraffe, there is often fights between males for females honors. Females can start putting down from 5 years. Gestation lasts 15 months. At birth, the girafon measures 2 meters for a weight ranging from 40 to 80 kg. The baby giraffe will remain with its mother for the first few months; the withdrawal will take place between 12 and 16 months but girafons continue to live with the females until the age of two years. Sexual maturity occurs between 3 and 4 years for females and 4 to 5 years for males


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TRANSFORMATION LIFE Michel Montecrossa's Michel & Bob Dylan Fest 2016 is released by Mira Sound Germany on Audio-CD, DVD and as Download.
TRANSFORMATION LIFE Michel Montecrossa's Michel & Bob Dylan Fest 2016 which was recorded live on Tuesday 26th July 2016 during the legendary Spirit of Woodstock Festival 2016 in Mirapuri is presenting the outstandingly revealing performances of 6 Michel Montecrossa songs and 6 Bob Dylan songs performed by Michel Montecrossa and his band The Chosen Few. TRANSFORMATION LIFE Michel Montecrossa's Michel & Bob Dylan Fest 2016 begins with Michel Montecrossa's brand-new after-Brexit Topical Song 'What The European Union Must Do Now – Was Die Europäische Union Jetzt Machen Muss', followed by the timeless Bob Dylan folk Protest Song 'Blowin' In The Wind'. The Michel Montecrossa Transformation-Reality-Song 'No Sugar' leads to Bob Dylan's bitter-sweet look-life-into-the face Love Song 'To Ramona'. Michel Montecrossa then goes on with his soulful 'Woman & Man, Man & Woman'. The tender Bob Dylan song 'Tomorrow Is A Long Time' connects to Michel Montecrossa's Mirapuri Song 'The Place Of The Free'. In the thoughtful 'Yes Or No Blues' Michel Montecrossa asks his girl "Tell me girl: Are you 'Yes' or 'No', or have you found the middle? Tell me girl: Are you unbound or do you move in circles? It's your mind. It's your heart. It's the whisper. It's the star." Then he extends the seeking and finding emotion into the performance of the Bob Dylan song 'Where Teardrops Fall'. The finale are the autobiographical 'Cyberrocker Ballad' by Michel Montecrossa, the self reflecting Bob Dylan song 'Most Of The Time' and 'Melancholy Mood', one of the Frank Sinatra songs which Bob Dylan also performed.
Michel Montecrossa says about his Michel & Bob Dylan Fest 2016:
"There is ordinary life and there is TRANSFORMATION LIFE. I live the TRANSFORMATION LIFE."Michel Montecrossa says about his Michel & Bob Dylan Fest series:
"The origin of the 'Michel & Bob Dylan Fest Series' was a man asking me if I could sing a Bob Dylan song in my next concert. I fulfilled his wish. After that I was asked ever more to include Bob Dylan songs in my concerts, as people said they like my way of singing Bob Dylan songs and they like to hear them together with my own songs as a positive and stimulating experience. Out of that the 'Michel & Bob Dylan Fest Series' evolved, beginning in 2001 and the 'The Michel & Bob Dylan Fest 2016' is the 16th time that it happened. It includes my own new songs as well as Bob Dylan songs from 1961 till 2016."
More about Michel Montecrossa sings Bob Dylan: www.Michel-BobDylan.com
All news about Michel Montecrossa: www.MichelMontecrossa.com
The Songs:
- What The European Union Must Do Now – Was Die Europäische Union Jetzt Machen Muss
- Blowin' In The Wind
- No Sugar
- To Ramona
- Woman & Man, Man & Woman
- Tomorrow Is A Long Time
- The Place Of The Free
- Yes Or No Blues
- Where Teardrops Fall
- Cyberrocker Ballad
- Most Of The Time
- Melancholy Mood


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If the patent is applied in India, but the country I would like to use the technology is included in Designated States, of which country's expiration date do you have to calculate?
Application number: WO2012IB57364 20121217
Priority number(s): IN2011MU03650 20111224
and no other applications.
Edit: it is WO2013093751 PACKAGING FOR LINEZOLID
Pub. No.: WO/2013/093751 International Application No.: PCT/IB2012/057364 Publication Date: 27.06.2013 International Filing Date: 17.12.2012


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SEPTA Bus Evacuated After Snake Found On Board
WEST PHILADELPHIA (WTXF) - A SEPTA driver was forced to evacuate a bus Sunday afternoon after a snake was located curled up on a seat.
According to a SEPTA spokesperson, a man got on the Route 52 bus with a snake around his neck just before 4:00 p.m. A jacket was used to cover and hide the snake.
During the ride, the snake got loose, and was found curled up on a seat.
SEPTA says the driver evacuated the bus and called animal control.
Everyone was able to safely exit the bus.
This is a developing


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Accessibility Solutions in Wellington
Our accessibility experts are problem solvers. We help customers find customized mobility and accessibility solutions in Wellington for their homes and businesses. The customers we encounter every day all come from different backgrounds, stories, and situations. From customers who want age in place to a loved one recovering from knee surgery, we are here to help.
A Variety of Accessible Solutions Available to Wellington
Next Day Access Boca Raton offers a range of accessibility and mobility solutions: residential wheelchair ramps, grab bars, stair lifts, vehicle lifts, pool lifts, vertical platform lifts, scooters, power wheelchairs, and more.
Our solutions are focused on creating a safe, independent, and comfortable environment for you, loved ones, and caregivers. Each solution is customized to fit the specific needs of our customers.
Stair lifts, wheelchair ramps, and more accessible solutions available in Wellington
Rental Wheelchair Ramp or Purchase Options in Wellington
We get it. Finding the right solution for you or a loved one can be stressful and takes time. That's why our knowledgable accessibility experts can help you navigate different solutions and take the stress off of you. It's also why we offer the option to rent or purchase our products. Our rental program allows you to have a test run on most of our products. Whether it's for a week, three months, or a year, we can customize a solution for you.
Your Nearest Next Day Access is:
Next Day Access Boca Raton Location
Call Us:
Business Hours:
Mon – Fri: 9:00am-5:00pm
Saturday & Sunday: CLOSED


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Wild Alaskan Fish at Mariposa Coop Market
Otolith appreciates the Mariposa Coop for their diverse selection of highest quality food available. More than occasionally at Otolith we need a snack bar to keep us nourished on a busy day. Not all snack bars are created equal. Too much sugar is not our thing. And too much oats and puffed rice are just another way filling our stomach without nourishing our mind and body. The bars we like are available at Mariposa. It is a terrific market for buying the most healthful convenient snack bars made from responsible ingredients that taste delicious. Mariposa also sells a large variety of ethnic and local nutritious ingredients to satisfy any hungry dinner appetite.
Imagine our surprise when Otolith Sustainable Seafood started to distribute our wild additive free sushi-grade fish products at Mariposa Market Coop in West Philly and we saw salted cod for sale at Mariposa too! This is a very big deal Philadelphia. It might not be Otolith's cod, and Otolith, does have many great fish now available at Mariposa however, it is an adventure to find your own recipe for bacalao [salt cod] or any fish that matches your taste and give it a whirl. All romesco ingredients can be purchased at Mariposa too! The Salvador Dali exhibit may be over but it is never too late to look his work up online and create an inspired authentic meal at home in West Philly.
Now you can buy Otolith's Coho and Sockeye Salmon, Halibut, Flounder, Rockfish and Sablefish at Mariposa. Otolith Sustainable Seafood has online recipes for all of our wild seafood. Isn't it nice to have access to so many excellent healthful ingredients. We think it is too!
Mariposa Food Coop; West Philly's Neighborhood Grocery Store, 4824 Baltimore Avenue, Philadelphia, PA ; 215-729-2121. Mon-Friday 10am-9pm; Sat-Sunday 10am-8pm.


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Cloud Storage
To assist preservation and archiving efforts, a new cloud offering allows academics to store data with multiple cloud providers via a single interface.
As universities wrestle with the implications and opportunities of the cloud, it's clear that many academics have reservations about entrusting valuable data--in many cases, a life's worth of work--to a distant storage provider. Indeed, many academics distrust any system over which they don't have personal control--where they can't see and touch the actual hardware.
Such an approach is not always feasible in today's computing and economic environment, however, nor is it necessarily the safest way to protect data. A new service, known as DuraCloud, aims to assuage academic fears about the cloud by offering a more robust choice: providing redundant storage across multiple cloud providers.
DuraCloud is the latest product from DuraSpace, a nonprofit best known for sustaining Fedora and Dspace, two of the most dominant open source software platforms for long-term management of digital assets. Clients that sign on with DuraCloud can opt to store their data--as well as redundant copies--with one or more prominent cloud providers including Amazon, RackSpace, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego.
Clients can add or drop providers at any time, and may move content across them seamlessly. And regardless of how many providers they choose, universities have just one relationship to manage: the one with DuraCloud.
"We have a very long-term goal and mission of working with institutions--academic, government and cultural heritage--to be able to steward content for the long run," explains Michele Kimpton, CEO of DuraSpace. "DuraCloud was developed with this mission in mind. We are well positioned to mitigate risk because we're transparent, we're not in it for profit, and we're able to look at it through the eyes of the community. We have very different motivations."
Called a digital-preservation pioneer by the Library of Congress, Kimpton touts the system's transparency and security. "There are many cloud providers, but none of them are offering the services that we are," she notes. "There's a whole list of benefits to using DuraCloud, all without having to wrangle service details or manage technical operations."
Features offered by DuraCloud:
It's a feature set that certainly appealed to the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, home to the world's largest social science data archive: the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). "It's just good archival practice to store data in multiple locations," says Bryan Beecher, ICPSR director of computing and network services. "With DuraCloud, behind the scenes we can replicate information and put it into different clouds, and there's no difference to the user." ICPSR has always stored multiple copies of its data, but Beecher feels that DuraCloud allows his institution to do so at lower cost, with less maintenance, and with fewer vendor relationships.
DuraCloud's ability to scale as data grows is another plus to ICPSR, which--for the time being--will continue to utilize storage space at other institutions with which they have reciprocal relationships. These resources are not scalable, however, and hiccups--such as tripping the firewall--are fairly common. "If my stuff grows quickly, I can't just ask for another terabyte of space," notes Beecher, who plans to end these one-off relationships as DuraCloud adds more providers. (ICPSR currently utilizes Amazon through DuraCloud.)
Even with a solution that allows clients to store data across multiple cloud providers, both Beecher and Kimpton are acutely aware that many academics will need time to fully embrace the concept of cloud storage. "There's this knee-jerk reaction that you need to have physical control of content, but I'd say it's safer in the cloud," says Beecher, noting that just five years ago ICPSR managed a warehouse of data stored on magnetic tapes. "If an asteroid had hit Ann Arbor, everything would have been lost."
According to Kimpton, the cautious approach taken by academics is understandable. "More than anyone else, cloud users tied to academic institutions tend to question the merits and risks of cloud storage and services," she notes. "They ask the hard questions. How will I know where my content is? How do I know it won't go out of the US? What control do I have?" For Kimpton, these are all great questions, and she advises that everyone should ask them before signing on with a cloud provider.
Nevertheless, these questions all have answers, and Kimpton feels that it's important for colleges and universities not to use their concerns as an excuse to maintain the status quo. She calls the idea of technology no longer being controlled by IT departments "a revolution"--one that won't be easy, in part because IT departments are all about control and mitigating risk. "In my view, cloud computing as SaaS is going to be a commodity, like electricity, where you'll pay only for what you use. Adapting to this mindset--I think that's the next era."
Kimpton's hope is that a product offering multiple redundancies will ease worries about the cloud and smooth the transition for universities seeking secure archival solutions. To accommodate the various content-preservation needs of institutions, DuraSpace is offering three pricing structures for DuraCloud:


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8th January 2014
The global economy looks poised to display better growth performance in 2014. Leading indicators are pointing upward – or at least to stability – in major growth poles. However, for this to translate into reality policymakers will need to be nimble enough to calibrate responses to idiosyncratic challenges.
Consider the United States. Job creation has accelerated since last August. Household debt is now US$800 billion less than at the end of 2008, due to liquidation or refinance at lower interest rates. The current housing recovery does not seem exhausted as demand is expected to outstrip the pipeline of housing starts this year. Non-financial corporations have plenty of cash, empowering them to respond to improved prospects. Finally, the agreement in Congress on the federal budget for 2014-15, together with the political weakening of the opposition to adjustments of the public debt ceiling, point to an easing of the fiscal drag that harmed the US recovery last year.
But even with these positive factors there is a challenge as the Federal Reserve starts unwinding its "quantitative easing" (QE), beginning this month with a reduction of US$10 billion in its monthly asset purchases (currently at US$85 billion). Notwithstanding the limited size of this change – when matched with the US$2 trillion of assets currently held by the Fed – as well as Fed's "forward guidance" signaling that basic interest rates will remain low for an extended period, the initially muted reaction in bond markets was followed by 10-year Treasury yields crossing the 3% mark at the end of 2013. As 2-year yields also climbed, markets seem to believe that the Fed will be obliged to speed up the unwinding. The Fed thus must be sure to strike the right balance of actions and communication so as to avoid precocious interest rate hikes which could harm the recovery.
In the Euro-area, perceived risks of a currency breakdown and a financial and economic collapse have receded substantially. Despite sticky high levels of unemployment in crisis-ridden countries, the European Central Bank (ECB) forecast of 1.1% (GDP growth) plus 1.1% (inflation) for 2014 has been taken as a signal that the bottom of the crisis has been left behind.
The crisis still casts some shadows, however. The implementation of structural reforms in several member countries has fallen short. The public and private debt legacy in those countries still remains tall. Furthermore, the Euro-area institutional framework, which has now been fully recognized as essential, has not yet been refurbished enough. While the time horizon for tackling these issues will necessarily be long, there is a major immediate task to be faced by policymakers: the health check and prescriptions to which their banks will be submitted this year.
The vicious circle between fiscal fragility and national banks' balance-sheet deterioration that plagued crisis-ridden member countries has been broken, thanks to fiscal adjustment programs and, especially, the ECB's promise "to do what it takes" to impede a collapse. Nevertheless, the resurgence of bank credit to the private sector – particularly to small and medium enterprises – will be fundamental to consolidate the recovery. Such resurgence will only take place when banks are once again able to be funded and create credit at interest rates much lower than currently available. Therefore the Euro-area major policy challenge will be to calibrate the "asset quality review", stress tests, and new capital requirements making them tough enough to ensure that the exercise is credible, while simultaneously avoiding spooking markets.
China will also face the challenge of appropriately calibrating the implementation of its structformural re package. Higher penetration of non-state firms in several sectors, including the banking system, will require some slackening of regulation and phasing out interest-rate controls. Prior to that, however, the central government will need to rein in subnational finance and the "shadow banking" through which local governments have splurged on infrastructure and real estate spending in the last few years. Results from a public debt audit were released last month, showing that the debt of localities had risen 67% from the end of 2010 to June 2013. In that context, another important consideration when looking ahead is to remember the interbank market turmoil of December, which only ended when the Central Bank of China conceded to providing liquidity. This illustrated that authorities will have to step cautiously— a stone at a time— to cross the transition river, if an economic growth collapse is to be avoided.
Meanwhile, tax policy will be a key policy challenge in the case of Japan. Aggressive fiscal and monetary stimuli implemented during Prime Minister Abe's government have jolted Japan's economy out of its deflationary lethargy. However, Japan's public debt has climbed to levels around 250% of GDP. As part of the solution, the consumption tax will be hiked to 8% from 5% in April. There is also a scheduled decision in next November on whether to additionally increase it to 10% as of October 2015. It will be crucial that such a higher tax burden does not countervail the overall anti-deflationary direction of macroeconomic policy.
Finally, there is the case of emerging economies coping with the actual unwinding of QE. Last summer – in between Ben Bernanke's testimony to the US Congress in May, when he alluded to the eventual unwinding of the currently third round of QE, and the Fed meeting in September postponing its beginning – the so-called "fragile 5" (Brazil, India, Turkey, Indonesia, and South Africa) underwent massive capital outflows and large currency depreciation. Some analysts referred to that turmoil as a potential revival of the emerging-market crises of the 1990s. Those countries shared in common the presence of large, liquid, and integrated financial systems, as well as current-account deficits associated with substantial capital inflows and currency appreciation since the beginning of the US "unconventional monetary policies."
Now that the unwinding is really starting, the baseline scenario is not one of a repetition of the turbulence, since changes in asset values, exchange rates, and investors' positions have not reverted. The unwinding is to some degree already priced in. On the other hand, four of the "fragile 5" (Brazil, India, Turkey, and Indonesia) will have major elections in 2014. As they still remain vulnerable to sudden stops in capital flows, their macroeconomic performance will depend on the calibration of their macroeconomic policies and on political risks.
The bottom line is this: there is room for optimism about the global economy in 2014. The key is to temper this with caution given that the success of the global economy will hinge on policymakers' ability to strike the right balance in several key parts of the world.
Source:World Bank


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Trump makes false claim on photo IDs for groceries during rally
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- President Donald Trump on Tuesday wrongly claimed that shoppers need to show photo identification to buy groceries and accused Democrats of obstructing his agenda and his Supreme Court nominee during a raucous rally aimed at bolstering two Florida Republicans ahead of the state's primary.
Trump, addressing thousands of supporters in one of the nation's top electoral battlegrounds, also mounted a rigorous defense of his trade agenda, accusing China and others of having "targeted our farmers."
"Not good, not nice," he told the crowd as tensions with China continue to escalate, adding: "You know what our farmers are saying? `It's OK, we can take it." The Trump administration last week announced plans for $12 billion in temporary aid to help farmers deal with retaliatory tariffs from U.S. trading partners in response to Trump's policies.
Tuesday night's freewheeling rally lasted more than an hour and included numerous attacks on the media, as well as one glaring false claim. Trump was railing against the idea of noncitizens voting and advocating stricter voting laws when he claimed that IDs are required for everything else, including shopping.
"If you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card, you need ID," he said at the event at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa. "You go out and you want to buy anything, you need ID and you need your picture."
A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about when the billionaire president last bought groceries or anything else himself. Photo IDs are required for certain purchases, such as alcohol, cigarettes or cold medicine.
The comment came as Trump waded into Florida Republican politics, picking sides as he embraced U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis in a competitive primary for governor and backed the Senate campaign of his longtime ally, Gov. Rick Scott.
"We have to make sure Rick Scott wins and wins big," Trump told the crowd. "It's time to vote Bill Nelson out of office."
Trump, who is seeking Judge Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court in the fall, also made the case that voters need to elect more Republicans, pointing to Democratic opposition to his pick.
Democrats "don't want to give Trump any victory," he said. "They will do anything they can to not help the Trump agenda."
Trump has publicly threatened to shut down the federal government over his push to overhaul the nation's immigration system and fund his signature border wall, though officials say he has privately assured staff he wouldn't provoke a fiscal crisis before midterms. The president avoided making an outright reference to a government shutdown during the rally, saying, "We may have to do some pretty drastic things" unless Democrats support his agenda.
Instead, he spent much of the rally highlight strong economic numbers and praising DeSantis as "a tough, brilliant cookie." He predicted DeSantis will win against Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam in the state's Aug. 28 Republican primary.
Trump, who makes frequent trips to Florida and his private Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago club, criticized Nelson's policies and claimed the only time he sees the senator is "five months before every election."
"After a while, you forget who's the senator," Trump said.
Scott didn't join Trump at the rally but appeared with him at an earlier roundtable event.
DeSantis has tied his campaign for governor directly to Trump, appearing on Fox News more than 100 times to talk about federal issues and defend the president. DeSantis has campaigned with Fox's Sean Hannity and Donald Trump Jr. and uses humor in a new ad to show his alliance with the president, teaching one of his two children to "build the wall" with blocks.
Putnam, a state agriculture commissioner and former congressman, has run a more traditional campaign for governor, barnstorming the state with campaign events aimed at building upon his family's deep ties to the state.
Trump, in railing against the idea of allowing noncitizens to vote in some elections, said at the rally, "Only American citizens should vote in American elections."
He also advocated for requiring voters to present photo identification, even though Florida already has such a law on the books.
"The time has come for voter ID like everything else," Trump said, before making his claim about groceries.
"It's crazy," he added, "but we're turning it around."


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Dysgraphia Help
Dysgraphia is a type of learning disability in which an individual has difficulties putting thoughts to words when writing and the overall writing ability falls substantially below what is normally expected. Children with this sort of difficulty will find any sort of written activity to be a painstaking process and may have great difficulty constructing sentences and paragraphs in a grammatical or logical format and struggle tremendously with note- taking.
Dysgraphia Help – Some common symptoms of dysgraphia are:
- Cramped fingers when grasping pencil or pen
- Unusual pencil grip
- Frequent cross-outs or erasures in written work
- Inconsistent writing, mixture of upper and lower case letters, printed and cursive, variations in letter sizes and irregular formation of letters and slants
- Difficulties writing on the lines or within margins
- Very slow writing
- Easily fatigued while writing
- Illegible handwriting
- Many reversals of letters and numbers
- Some words are written backwards
- Letters might be out of order
- Difficulties organizing thoughts on paper
- Multiple spelling mistakes
- Errors in grammar and punctuation
- Sentences lack cohesion
Here are some examples of how to help a child with Dysgraphia overcome some of their difficulties:
In Preschool or Kindergarten:
- Encourage the correct pencil grip, posture and paper hold while writing. Try to reinforce this often before a habit is formed. Using a rubber band can help keep the correct finger grasp in place.
- Use different pens and pencils that are a comfortable fit for your little one. Sometimes-fat markers on the white board work best for little fingers.
- Use paper with raised lines to help guide staying within the lines.
A young child with Dysgraphia will need to practice letter formation using multisensory writing strategies to improve motor memory. They will need to move, touch, feel and manipulate real objects as they learn the habits and skills essential for writing. Some examples are:
1. Have the child first write the letter in the air with two fingers. Then they can trace over a yellow highlighted letter. Finally, they can write the modeled and traced letter independently on a whiteboard or piece of paper.
2. Use the wet-dry-try method. Children write the letter on a chalkboard with a wet sponge using the correct letter formation. Afterwards, they dry the letter with a dry sponge using the correct formation. Then, they rewrite the letter correctly again with a piece of chalk.
3. Build letters out of clay or play dough
4. Use shaving cream to write the letters
5. Trace letters on a piece of sandpaper or a bumpy surface
6. Speak out loud while writing the letters. For example, speaking through motor sequences, such as "b" is "first comes the bat, then comes the ball."
In Elementary School:
- Introduce a keyboarding program on the computer or tablet as soon as possible. Typing can make it easier for a child with Dysgraphia to write by alleviating the frustration of forming the letters.
- Give the child extra time to complete writing activities.
- Have the child proofread the work later in the day. It is easier to see mistakes after taking a break.
- Help the child create a checklist of editing their own work. This can include spelling, neatness, grammar, syntax, written expression.
- Encourage the use of a spell checker
- Students can first verbally talk into a recorder to express their ideas and then follow up by writing them afterwards.
- Create a well-organized plan that breaks writing assignments into small tasks.
- Use games and movement activities to reinforce spelling and sight words. Some examples are:
- Bounce a Ball – bounce a ball as you spell words. 1 bounce per letter.
- Cheerleader Chant – Give me an S, give me a P, give me an E, give me an L, give me a L, give me another L – what's that spell? SPELL!
- Jumping Jacks – Instead of writing the words, the student can spell them aloud while doing jumping jacks.
A student with Dysgraphia will benefit from being explicitly taught the steps of the writing process. Just as these students were taught to read in a step-by-step process, they will also need explicit and direct instruction in writing.
Students who struggle with Dysgraphia will need to explicitly be taught different types of writing such as expository and personal essays, short stories, poems, etc. This means that a teacher will need to provide these students with specific ideas and instructions. As part of these writing lessons, students will need to be given "visualization" strategies and mnemonics, which are a fun and easy strategy for remembering essential steps in the writing process.
Children struggling with Dysgraphia will need a structured, sequential, systematic, cumulative and multisensory writing program to help them build lasting memories. This might require more one-on-one sessions with a trained writing teacher, parent or tutor.
Learn more about the New PRIDE Reading Program
Karina Richland, M.A. is the Founder of PRIDE Learning Centers, located in Los Angeles and Orange County. Ms. Richland is a certified reading and learning disability specialist. Ms. Richland speaks frequently to parents, teachers, and professionals on learning differences, and writes for several journals and publications. You can visit the PRIDE Learning Center website at: www.pridelearningcenter.com


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President Donald Trump paid a holiday visit Thursday to wounded service members at Walter Reed National Medical Center, hailing them as "some of the bravest people anywhere in the world.''
During his visit, the president awarded the Purple Heart to 1st Lt. Victor Prato of the 127th Airborne Engineer Battalion, who was injured last month while deployed in Afghanistan.
Prato, 25, of Somers, New York, suffered multiple soft tissue injuries following a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device blast, according to the White House.
"One of the most powerful moments of my life watching @POTUS give the Purple Heart to this American Hero,'' wrote press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Twitter, where she posted a photo of Prato. "Amazed by the strength and resilience of the men and women in our Armed Forces.''
Trump also met with other sick and injured service members from all branches of the armed forces, Sanders said.
Trump told reporters as he was leaving the White House en route to the medical center that he was going to "say hello to some of the bravest people anywhere in the world.''
"We're just going to wish them a merry Christmas, a happy New Year,'' he said. "We love those people.''
Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia local news, events and information
The president last visited the military hospital complex in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside of Washington, in April.
During that visit, he awarded a Purple Heart - his first - to an Army sergeant recently wounded in Afghanistan during what is now America's longest war.
Trump is expected to return to the facility in the new year to undergo a physical.


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Abuses at the Border / Rosa Maria Rodriguez
Posted on March 22, 2014
On March 7th I returned to Cuba from Miami and they seized seventy
pounds of food from me. I doesn't matter that I bought the ticket at the
travel agency, sent the money and packages to my Country through "Go
Cuba," which is rumored to belong to the Cuban government and that
currently offers 100 pounds free of charge. It was a traumatic flight on
a Gulfstream Air Charter, for which we checked in to the terminal in
Miami at 9:00 AM and left for Havana twelve and a half hours later.
Even before the new travel and immigration law went into force in
January last year, for an ordinary Cuba to face the predators at
customs, is not a setback when it comes time leave for abroad. The
problems arise when you come home with the "junk" and other material
needs to relieve some personal and family shortages with some of the
"enemy's money" in your purse.
The foreigners and Cubans living abroad run into the same luck when they
travel to Cuba. It's the government of my country that has converted the
capital's Jose Marti Airport into a stress chamber, psychological
torture and extortion border for many travelers coming to this country.
I imagine the same happens with the other air terminals around the
country. You have to face the arbitrariness, helplessness and caprice of
a raw crude tyranny, where the law is an exhibitionist who walks naked
through the streets and the airfields, nothing more. A return with the
excitement of a reunion and here they seize our things with enthusiasm.
I returned melancholy about the family I was leaving behind, but
compensation by the reunion with the family I founded almost 32 years
ago: my two sons and my husband anxiously awaiting my return, who had
announced they would be picking me up. I was among the first to get off
the plane and also to collect my bags when they were spit out from the
belly of the plane.
As I was going through the last control they announced the seizure. The
food that my mother and sister, people with low resources living in
Miami, had collected for months, was stolen by the Cuban border
officials with their complex cheating Chinese-style thievery. Is it true
that the authorities make laws so convoluted in order to facilitate the
corruption of their officials, or were they "sent to kill" by the
political police? And if so, why?
What did I do or say that upset them so much that they took reprisals on
my arrival in Cuba? I told them everything humanly possible based on
what I'd been told by General Customs of the Republic in New Vedado,
whom I consulted repeatedly prior to leaving and whose telephone number
is 881-9723.
I replied, but I couldn't insist too much to avoid their taking
reprisals and making it worse. It seems that the customs laws are one
thing and those at the airport are something else. Even so, they tried
to coerce me into saying I'd brought a router, which is simply
prohibited to Cuban citizens to import.
Before my argument–which showed evidence of computer skills– that it was
a wireless car, they chose to remain silent without consulting a
specialist to confirm my explanation. Or is it, that thought I was meek
and were pressuring me to upset me and get even more advantages? The
other lady they also took things from that night broke into tears at the
announcement of the confiscation. As she was an elderly lady, the
attended to her quickly and gave her special treatment to avoid a
medical emergency. She is living in Miami, and like me, was not allowed
to pay for excess baggage.
However, behind us the people on the same plane went through the door
laughing with their carts piled higher than ours, leaving behind
officials who had attended them with smiling faces.
The sent me off to a corner of the terminal and punished me by making me
stand there for three hours. They ignored that I'd been traveling since
9:00 AM in the Miami airport. When the airport emptied of passengers,
the chief came with a gentleman with a green sack into which they threw
all my mother's and sister's food. Looking at the color of the bag I
could only think that it was a messages. I left there about one o'clock
in the morning.
It wouldn't surprise me if in a short time they make widespread the
pillaging of the suitcases which weigh a certain amount when the
tourists leave home and weigh "a few kilos more" per capita when they
land at Cuban airports.
In addition to the confiscation, they fined me 1,450 pesos and to told
me that I had a month to claim it. I decided that despite my
indignation, I'm not going to challenge the customs authorities, because
in Cuba there is not a State of Law. Nor will I put myself in the orbit
of the bureaucracy and complicity with the entities in the industry,
because all that happens when you engage with such machinery is that you
wear yourself out. Also because the situation can occur that "winning"
the case sends the wrong message about my commitments and loyalities.
This new setback only reaffirms for me that I'm on the right track when
it comes time to fight and denounce the arbitrariness of a dictatorship
that's teetering. My appetites are freedom, democracy and social justice
for Cuba, which contrasts with the petty and unjust greed of those who,
like the customs workers, symbolize the "boogeyman," stealing the pants
off the trapped travelers through questionable and abusive legal
figures. Bon appetit!
20 March 2014
Source: Abuses at the Border / Rosa Maria Rodriguez | Translating Cuba -
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Words, in the end, are all that Churchill admirers can point to. His actions are another matter altogether.
During World War II, Churchill declared himself in favor of "terror bombing." He wrote that he wanted "absolutely devastating, exterminating attacks by very heavy bombers." Horrors such as the firebombing of Dresden were the result.
In the fight for Irish independence, Churchill, in his capacity as secretary of state for war and air, was one of the few British officials in favor of bombing Irish protesters, suggesting in 1920 that airplanes should use "machine-gun fire or bombs" to scatter them.
Dealing with unrest in Mesopotamia in 1921, as secretary of state for the colonies, Churchill acted as a war criminal: "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against the uncivilised tribes; it would spread a lively terror." He ordered large-scale bombing of Mesopotamia, with an entire village wiped out in 45 minutes.
In Afghanistan, Churchill declared that the Pashtuns "needed to recognise the superiority of [the British] race" and that "all who resist will be killed without quarter." He wrote: "We proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation. … Every tribesman caught was speared or cut down at once."
In Kenya, Churchill either directed or was complicit in policies involving the forced relocation of local people from the fertile highlands to make way for white colonial settlers and the forcing of more than 150,000 people into concentration camps. Rape, castration, lit cigarettes on tender spots, and electric shocks were all used by the British authorities to torture Kenyansunder Churchill's rule.
But the principal victims of Winston Churchill were the Indians — "a beastly people with a beastly religion," as he charmingly called them. He wanted to use chemical weapons in India but was shot down by his cabinet colleagues, whom he criticized for their "squeamishness," declaring that "the objections of the India Office to the use of gas against natives are unreasonable."
Churchill's beatification as an apostle of freedom seems all the more preposterous given his 1941 declaration that the Atlantic Charter's principles would not apply to India and the colored colonies. He refused to see people of color as entitled to the same rights as himself. "Gandhi-ism and all it stands for," he declared, "will, sooner or later, have to be grappled with and finally crushed."
In such matters, Churchill was the most reactionary of Englishmen, with views so extreme they cannot be excused as being reflective of their times. Even his own secretary of state for India, Leopold Amery, confessed that he could see very little difference between Churchill's attitude and Adolf Hitler's.
Thanks to Churchill, some 4 million Bengalis starved to death in a 1943 famine. Churchill ordered the diversion of food from starving Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and even to top up European stockpiles in Greece and elsewhere. When reminded of the suffering of his Indian victims, his response was that the famine was their own fault, he said, for "breeding like rabbits."
Madhusree Mukerjee's searing account of Churchill's role in the Bengal famine, Churchill's Secret War," "documents that while Indians starved, prices for foodgrains were inflated by British purchases and India's own surplus grains were exported, while Australian ships laden with wheat were not allowed to unload their cargo at Calcutta (where the bodies of those who had died of starvation littered the streets). Instead, Churchill ordered that grain be shipped to storage depots in the Mediterranean and the Balkans to increase the buffer stocks for a possible future invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia. European warehouses filled up as Bengalis died.
This week's Oscar rewards yet another hagiography of this odious man. To the Iraqis whom Churchill advocated gassing, the Greek protesters on the streets of Athens who were mowed down on Churchill's orders in 1944, sundry Pashtuns and Irish, as well as to Indians like myself, it will always be a mystery why a few bombastic speeches have been enough to wash the bloodstains off Churchill's racist hands.
Many of us will remember Churchill as a war criminal and an enemy of decency and humanity, a blinkered imperialist untroubled by the oppression of non-white peoples. Ultimately, his great failure — his long darkest hour — was his constant effort to deny us freedom.
Written By: Shashi Tharoor is author of "Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India." He chairs the Indian Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee.


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Amanda Beard is an award-winning illustrator and designer born and raised in Beverly, Massachusetts. She received her BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012 and is currently lead designer for a professional theatre and a brand management company. Outside of her day job, Amanda does freelance illustration and design and maintains her own line of art and stationery. Her work has recently been exhibited at The Center on the Common, Harvard, MA; the Walter J. Manninen Center for the Arts at Endicott College, Beverly, MA; Visionspace Gallery, Lynn, MA; Studios at Porter Mill, Beverly, MA; and the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators, New York, NY. Amanda currently lives in Somerville with her spectacular roommates and adorable four-legged studio buddy, Pica.
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text:
See Affiliates Pro in our shop for the latest information about our product.
For usage instructions please refer to the documentation.
See Affiliates Pro in our shop for the latest information about our product.
For usage instructions please refer to the documentation.
We would like to set different affiliate groups on our site. For example, Group A gets 10% off for the link they share and Group B gets 15% off for their link but Group C gets only 5 % for their link. Does that make sense to you and can this plugin manage to do that on our wordpress site?
Hi Chris,
Yes, that is supported via the system's Rates – the link points to the related documentation section, where you can see details on that and how these integrate with our Groups plugin.
So you could easily set up a couple of groups like those you mention and create a couple of related rates that grant the desired percentages. Affiliates in those groups would have their commissions calculated accordingly, and you could also use a general rate for affiliates who don't belong to any of those groups (if that is desired).
Hello Kento, I'm confused on how this applies to my specific situation. I am using ARMember as the base plugin which happens to work with the theme we have chosen. For added context we are selling movie subscriptions giving people access to buy or rent video content. I understand that Affiliate Pro integrates with ARMember…However when I imported both plugins and then went to the specific plan I have created in ARMember, there is a toggle that lets me turn on Affiliates Pro…However, it then only gives me an option to enter only 1 number for the referral amount (fixed or percentage)…Is there a way that I can somehow get the Groups and Rates feature to crossover all the way to ARMember?
Hi Maureen,
Thanks for asking! From what you describe, it seems that their integration only contemplates a preset commission, but doesn't support rates. Possible approaches:
1) Extend their existing integration
Their integration would have to be extended to support rates specifically. Examples of such advanced integrations can be reviewed and taken as the code base for such an extension, for example as the Affiliates Events Manager integration does. Note that even if the integration were extended to use rates, it would still not be as tightly integrated as we have e.g. the WooCommerce integration. So you would not be able to create rates that target the membership plugin, but you could take advantage of formula-based rates which would allow to pinpoint specific memberships via the use of formulas. I don't know if they would be willing to extend their integration though, it's a lot of work and seeing that they also have their own affiliate extension, it might not be worth it for them. If they won't do it, you could hire a developer to do it for you.
2) Use their affiliate system instead
3) Use WooCommerce with WooCommerce Subscriptions, Groups and Groups WooCommerce instead. This combination would be perfect if you prefer to use our Affiliates Pro. Here everything is already integrated to work together.
I hope this helps you to decide which way is the most appropriate one for your deployment.
Hi good day,
I installed the group plugin. How can an affiliate be assigned to a group or select a group during registration via the affiliate registration page? Also, failed login on the affiliate login page redirects to admin login
Hi Micah, please direct this question at our premium support forum for Affiliates Pro where our team will be able to help you further. Cheers
Quick question: Looking for a Woocommerce affiliate plugin and really like your plugin. Our order form runs on Gravity forms, and there is a field in the form where the customer can choose the quality of the product (we call it 'basic' and 'prime'), each choice leads to different pricing, but they are NOT separate products, just a form field in the products themselves.
We would like commissions to be paid ONLY when a 'prime' quality is chosen. Is this possible with your plugin?
Looking forward to your response. Cheers!
Hi Itay,
Yes that's possible, you need to use Formula-based Rates for that which allow you to determine the commission based on the referral context. You will need to implement the affiliates_formula_computer_variables
filter which receives the form ID and entry ID of the form submission in its context among other data, and provide the desired commission rate similarly to the example given in our documentation.
Hi, we have subscription offers on our products. If an affiliate gets a referral where the customer buys a product with subscription, will the affiliate get commission for each instance when the subscription activates and a payment is completed? Like for example if the customer chooses to get a delivery every two months, will the affiliate get a commission each time or only for the initial purchase?
Hi Katrin,
Both ways are possible. You can choose to enable recurring referrals which would grant commissions on renewals, or have that disabled so that only the initial referred order produces a commission. If you enable recurring referrals, you can also set a time limit, or leave them enabled forever. On this documentation page for our advanced WooCommerce integration that comes with Affiliates Pro, you can see this documented under the heading "Recurring Referrals".
I wanted to check whether Pro and Enterprise plugin needs to be renewed every year for updates or is it one time payment?
can with this plugin not registered users to refer a friend and both get discount codes?
Hi Andrian,
Thanks for asking! This isn't directly supported, although we do have the Affiliates Coupons extension that makes it easy to create coupons that affiliates can use to refer customers.
Hi, Affiliate Pro seems to be a great plugin to establish an affiliate network.
I'm wondering if there is also an option to pay affiliates with store credit which they can spend in my shop?
AffiliateWP has this kind of option: (link)
Thanks for asking. There is https://woocommerce.com/products/store-credit/ which you could use to send to affiliates based on their Totals – http://docs.itthinx.com/document/affiliates-pro/totals/
The Store Credit also allows to import store credit coupons – How to import store credit coupons? which could be used in combination with the exported totals from Affiliates Pro to make the process easier for periodic payouts to many affiliates via that system.
I am using Affiliates Pro 4.9.0. According to your documentation, [affiliate_name] is a valid token that outputs the affiliate's name in all notifications. Unfortunately, this token is not working. Instead, all emails simply output the actual token itself, "[affiliate_name]" instead of the affiliate's name. How can we correct this?
For this please submit a support request via https://www.itthinx.com/forum/affiliates-pro/ and our team will be able to help you further. We will likely need to review your settings, once you have posted the request one of our team will follow up with you accordingly.
Hi, this sort of credit usage is quite unrealistic for as ad it requires too many manual steps carried out.
Do you plan to make an more integrated use of credit on the cart or checkout page as it has been done by affiliatewp?
We feel your extension more flexible compared to affiliatewp regrading mlm, complex commission calculations etc but this would be a major drawback as all of our customers do only use the credits for their own purchases!
(i would like to get an individual pre sales contact as we have some other questions to clarify before we decide which extension to buy)
Thank you,
Hi Stefan,
You've posed in reply to a question which is not related, I don't know which credit usage you refer to. But from what you explain, I could recommend to use an extension like WooCommerce Points and Rewards to grant credits to your affiliates. Ideally, you would use the reports that you can export from Affiliates Pro or Affiliates Enterprise to bulk-import the desired credits with that extension.
For additional questions, please post them here and I'd be happy to answer them.
Hi Lento, yes you are right, I wanted to respond to your post or 28 June 2021.
Can you please, that you only provide that complicated and time consuming process to pay customer/affiliates with credits for the own purchase??
Its incredible for such a sophisticated affiliate plugin like yours to have this drawback compared to others, where its fully integrated.
Hi Stefan,
Thanks, I see you refer to this comment.
There I mentioned the possibility of using the Store Credit extension. This is still a viable way of handling accumulated commissions and reward your affiliates via credits. The link to the section I mentioned in that comment has changed, the current documentation has a section How to bulk/import store credit coupons? which suggests to use the Customer/Order/Coupon CSV Import Suite – this can be used to import credits accumulated from commissions.
You could use this e.g. on a monthly basis to handle the accumulated commissions that our system provides. The steps involved would be:
1. Export accumulated commissions via Affiliates > Totals > Export.
2. Convert the obtained data file from our TSV to the CSV format acceptable for the import via the Customer/Order/Coupon CSV Import Suite extension. For this step I would recommend a script that generates unique codes for the first column.
3. Import the converted data.
The process can be done in a few minutes and incorporated into a monthly review and handling of commissions pending payment.
The strength of our system is that it allows to work with a multitude of independent payout processes, thanks to the data it provides. I believe this to be a better solution than trying to incorporate a fixed way of handling affiliate credits within our system itself.
I am using Affiliates Pro 4.9.0, Woocommerce Subscriptions w/ just three variable subscription products and PayPal Standard. I created a 20% and 25% rates for the WooCommerce objects as illustrated here: https://nimbus-screenshots.s3.amazonaws.com/s/cc8d2fec88774595bc0babf0ea9d4101.jpg
I then created an active affiliate user, used their affiliate link as a dummy user and completely purchased a subscription using a debit card. Woocommerce Subscriptions reflected the successful transaction (putting the order in Pending status) and Affiliates Pro correctly identified the new customer as a referral by the affiliate. However, the affiliate's pending payout total is still $0. There's no where in the system that shows a 30% commission of $7.50. Why isn't the rate correctly reflected from the transaction?
Side note: Woocommerce Subscriptions is oddly showing a "Staging" label although all changes were made on the live site.
Any insight would be appreciated.
While your order is pending, the commission is not considered for payout until it is completed or processed (depending on settings). Please review the documentation on how Totals are handled and the section on the WooCommerce integration for details.
Please make sure that your post any support requests via https://www.itthinx.com/forum/affiliates-pro/ where our premium support team is happy to help you further. The comments in this section take longer to attend to and it's not really intended for support requests.
for the affiliates pro plugin,
– if customer click on the referral link and purchase something as a guest, can customer get discount and referral earn referral fees?
– if customer click on the referral link and register, referral earn referral fees and does customer earn anything?
– if customer click on the referral link and register, the following purchase from the customer will auto earn referral on referral fee correct? how about customer, does he earn anyting?
– For the case where a customer should get a discount, the system supports referral by coupon: https://docs.itthinx.com/document/affiliates-pro/affiliate-program-management/coupons/
– No
– You would use Affiliates Permanent for that: https://www.itthinx.com/shop/affiliates-permanent/
for the Affiliate Registration Forms, I would like my affiliate to upload image or file, how can i do that ?
Hi Woon,
You could use one of the form plugin integrations that support affiliate registration: https://docs.itthinx.com/document/affiliates-pro/setup/settings/integrations/
Hi there, I'm using affiliates pro and want to know if there is a way to find out which affiliate a specific order came through? I've looked around and can't seem to find a way. So I start off with the order number and need to see if it's been allocated to an affiliate. Grateful for any help thanks!
Hi Tamara,
Under Affiliates > Referrals on top of the list there is a search field where you can input the order number.
Thanks so much Kento, very helpful. I have another question, grateful for your support.
We are currently experiencing a weird issue with the plugin which looks like it's only recording/ reporting some of the affiliate referrals, but not all. We have several customised other plugins on the site so we're trying to determine if there might be a conflict somewhere.
It would help me if you could let me know where the plugin gets its raw data and if we can pull this in some other way to compare that data to what is actually displayed in the reports. Is this possible? Thanks!
If there is another way I need to ask for this sort of support pls let me know. Thank you!
I'm George and will follow-up after Karim's comment.
The basic requirement for a successfully recorded referral, is to have the wp_affiliates cookie with the correct affiliate id, stored in your browser. Since you already have referrals for your affiliates, then it's better to proceed with locating the conflict. The easiest way is to disable all your other plugins apart from Affiliates Pro and any necessary integrations like Affiliates WooCommerce integration and then make a few test referrals to find out to source of that issue. During this process it will also be useful to enable WP debugging and review wp-content/debug.log file for issues on your site in general.
All the data rendered in reports comes from the plugin database tables and therefore it would be of no use to make such a comparison. IMO, the issue with failed referrals resides somewhere else and if the aforementioned process doesn't give you any clues, then it would be better for you to start a new topic under the Affiliates Pro forum and create a temp admin account for me to have a look at your Dashboard, using george at itthinx dot com as the email address.
Kind regards,
Hi I am new to affiliates pro. I have been through the set up documents think I have everything working.
I have a few questions
1. I wanted to know if I can set an affiliate to get $25 every 4 weeks on a subscription product for 70 days and than change to $10 ongoing?
2. Can I reassign a client to another affiliate?
3. can a client be assigned to two affiliates? one for 15% and the other for 10% as one referred them and the other is working to keep them in the business?
Hi Michael,
Thanks for using our software!
#1 For this I would recommend to use formula-based rates which can be implemented accordingly. You could compute which commission rate should apply based on the customer's subscription and use that in the formula-based commission amount calculation. Please have a look at Rates under the heading Formula-based Rates for details.
#2 If the customer was referred via affiliate link, then this would not be something you could do, as it's up to the customer to visit an affiliate's link and you wouldn't have control over that. If you would like to assign a customer to a specific affiliate, then you could use Affiliates Permanent.
#3 It probably depends on how these affiliates are related. You could envision a solution based on Affiliates Enterprise using its Tiers.
Please make sure to request support here for further help and our team will be happy to help you further.
I need to translate the plugin but whatever I do with loco translate is not working for full translation. any help
I can send you translated files for affiliates and affiliates-pro so you can add them in next update? how about that?
Hi Andrian, that would be great and we would certainly welcome your contribution. I see that you followed up regarding some untranslated strings although you seem to have concluded the full translation. Could you please send a brief overview of what strings you found were not translated and we will make sure to include them if possible. You can send the translated files over to support at itthinx dot com and please make sure to include a link to our conversation here. Thanks!
I would like to ask how the site is calculated for the Pro version. Is this per domain or per instance?
Hello. If an affiliate places a link for a SUBSCRIPTION ORDER, but doesn't use their referral link by mistake… how do I attribute that current order and all subsequent ones to that affiliate? I know I can go to "referrals" and create a manual commission. But I want to ensure that all subscription orders that go through, also get attributed to that affiliate.
Hi George, please post a support request on https://www.itthinx.com/forum/affiliates-pro/ with this and your premium support team will help you further with that.
I have a two-part question:
Does Affiliates Pro allow me to provide our affiliate partners with a link to provide their customers to track when customers click on our link and contact us
1. Enabling affiliate partners to track each individual customer from the Initial click through the payment process to see what/how much they have earned?
2. Enabling me to monitor each customer who clicked on a link, which affiliate partners referred each client to see who/how much earned on each commission?
Hi Keith,
I would recommend to have a look at the documentation pages to learn about the system in I believe that both your questions are covered by it.
Hi Guys
I have installed and used your plugin for a new site we are building for a client. My question is this, is there anyway that we can set the affiliate code or change the affiliate code that has been automatically generated by your plugin please?
Hi Rob,
Thanks for using our tools! I guess what this is in line with what you want: Affiliates by Username?
Hi, for some time now I cannot update the Affiliates Pro and Affiliates Woocommerce Integration plugins on my site. The key is in the system. Any ideas? Thanks
Your license and updates period has expired, you can simply renew it https://www.itthinx.com/shop/affiliates-pro/
I am trying to login to get my licence key for Affiliates Pro purchase but I lost my password.
But I don't receive the email to reset my password when I use the option.
How can you help me ?
My account email is firstname.lastname@example.com
Hi Didier,
You should have received one by now, please make sure to check your spam/junk folder. Please note that the license for that account expired in 2017, to renew access please purchase Affiliates Pro.
Will Affiliate Pro allow me to do the following commission:
0-25 purchases = 20% commission
26-50 purchases = 25% commission
51+ purchases = 50% commission
If so, how is this done? If not, do you have a product that allows for this?
Oh and I have just one product.
Hi Amy,
For this you could consider using formula-based rates. If you have a look at the documentation page for Rates in Affiliates Pro, you will find details on how these work under the heading Formula-based Rates. You would have to implement the affiliates_formula_computer_variables
filter where you could compute the right percentage based on the number of orders, add that as a variable and use it in the formula to calculate the appropriate commission amount. As you can see, it is very flexible but will require you to code the filter.
We are working on a affiliate site while your plugin (Affiliate Pro) & add-on (Affiliates Coupons) seems perfectly fits our needs. We would like to see whether we can visit your DEMO site while we can make sure the setting/control are cope with our design? Thanks~~
Hi Garry,
Thanks for considering our system! I would recommend to give the free version a try first which you can install directly. If that one feels good for the site you are building, Affiliates Pro will extend on it and you can then decide to use it.
2 doubts regarding the Affiliate Pro:
1- Is the € 49 for the Affilliate Pro license valid for 1 year?
2- Are the commission settings for each affiliate flexible? or should it be one for everyone?
Thank you.
Hi Leandro,
1 – Yes, please see Terms & Conditions for details.
2 – Very flexible as our system provides Rates, so yes you can have those per Affiliate and much more.
I would like to setup different commission rates based on program a level
Something like
free program level 1 and 2 2% level 3 &4 1%
paid 288 program level 1 &2 5% level 3& 4 2% level 5 &6 1%
I'd also like the last program to have unlimited levels
I would like to know if the purchase with an affiliate coupon results in recognition in your plugin?
Thank you
Thanks for asking, yes that's possible – see http://docs.itthinx.com/document/affiliates-pro/affiliate-program-management/coupons/ for details.
My site has a key entered for upgrade but is not upgrading. How can I find out if my service has expired vs some other conflict or issue?
Hi Jim,
If it does not appear on the https://www.itthinx.com/downloads/ page for you while logged in, your access has expired. If you still have access, please use https://www.itthinx.com/forum/affiliates-pro/ to get in touch with our premium support who will be happy to help you further.
When I look at Totals, it is not showing commissions due. I have to physically go to Referrals and look at each order that is accepted and enter the amount due the affiliate under "Amount" in order for it to show how much I have to pay the affiliate. I have the "Rate" set to .1 for 10% commission. What am I missing? How can I fix this?
Hi Valerie,
Please have a look at this section in the documentation which explains it in detail http://docs.itthinx.com/document/affiliates-pro/totals/ – you will want to use the appropriate status to see the totals that are due, i.e. use the status Accepted for that case. For further help please use our premium support channel where our team will be happy to help you further: https://www.itthinx.com/forum/affiliates-pro/ Thanks for using our system!
I am reinstalling Affiliates pro after migrating my site to a new location and I am getting this error upon activation:
Fatal error: Declaration of Affiliates_Link_Renderer_WordPress::render_affiliate_link($IXAP101 = Array, $IXAP156 = NULL) must be compatible with Affiliates_Link_Renderer::render_affiliate_link($IXAP101 = Array, $IXAP156 = NULL, $IXAP88 = Array) in wp-content\plugins\affiliates-pro\lib\ext\wordpress\class-affiliates-link-renderer-wordpress.php on line 2
Please advise.
Hi Jim,
It seems that the files you have copied are inconsistent so I would advise to delete the whole folder and just install it again. If you need further help please post a support request in the Affiliates Pro section of our premium support forum.
I'm having difficulty with my Affiliates Pro plugin.
Right now we have a sales report that gets sent out twice a day using the data that Affiliates Pro collects.
It is done as a CRON event.
The problem is that the sales report will also count orders that haven't been fully processed. The most common problem is that when an affiliate is processing an order and the credit card information is put in incorrectly. If they attempt to make an incorrect payment with the credit card multiple times, it will all count.
So say you have an order for $200. But the credit card is input wrong twice before going through. Affiliates Pro will report it as $600 that was purchased, instead of the correct $200.
How can we correct this so the reporting is more accurate?
This is the code we used for reference:
global $wpdb, $affiliates_db;
$service = 'export';
$params = array();
$params['tables'] = array(
'affiliates' => $affiliates_db->get_tablename( 'affiliates' ),
'affiliates_users' => $affiliates_db->get_tablename( 'affiliates_users' ),
'referrals' => $affiliates_db->get_tablename( 'referrals' ),
'users' => $wpdb->users,
$params['from_date'] = date("y-m-d");
Affiliates_Totals::get_mass_payment_file( $service, $params, get_option( 'blog_charset' ) );
$report = ob_get_contents();
Hi Felix,
Your $params
should also provide an indication of the referral status so that only accepted (valid yet unpaid) referrals are included: $params['referral_status'] = 'accepted';
Thank you so much. That was really nice and helpful.
I was wondering what's the parameter or hook if I just wanted to grab an overall sales total from a specific period? The total across all affiliates, and able to narrow it down to just that day.
Two more questions.
1. Is there a way to import existing data/affiliates/transactions from AffiliateWP?
2. This is a little more complicated. I use Gravity Forms for sales. Can I assign a different rate to different products/options?
Example: my GF form so far sells only 1 product. In the past I have simply assigned one commission (like 10%) to the order total. In the future I'd like to offer either a second product or an add-on option for the first product, but I'll need to assign a lower commission rate (3%) to it.
Product 1: $10 (commission: 10%)
Product 2: $50 (commission: 3%)
I think I've seen you offering something like this in WooCommerce but I have to stick with GF. Is this possible to achieve with AffiliatesPro?
Hi Yvonne,
#1 You can use the free Affiliates Import to import affiliate users https://wordpress.org/plugins/affiliates-import/ – transactions cannot be imported.
#2 Yes that is possible if you use two different forms. You can then use different rates per form. Please have a look at the Rates section here http://docs.itthinx.com/document/affiliates-pro/rates/ – if you are doing a more complex setup with more products, I would also recommend to consider using WooCommerce which is also supported (with even more complex rate setups possible).
Well, thanks.
#2 I'm aware of the possibility to use different forms for different rate calculations, but that's what I was trying to avoid. I actually wanted to sell product #2 as an add-on to product #1 to create the most convenient and successful order flow for the customer. However I can't pay the same commission on both since the price calculations on each product are very different.
But I understand that's asking a lot.
WooCommerce is unfortunately not an option since the customer needs to provide a huge amount of personal customization data, with many depending on conditional logic.
Thanks for trying to help anyway.
Hi Yvonne, thanks for explaining! You might be able to use the rates still in this case but it would require you to implement the commission calculation within a filter, based on the products related to the submitted form. If you check under "Formula-based Rates" on http://docs.itthinx.com/document/affiliates-pro/rates/ you will see that there is the possibility to pass variables to the rate so you could basically use the filter that is mentioned there to compute the desired commission amount and then pass it back to the rate via a variable. It requires a good understanding of how things work in Gravity Forms but if that's an option for your project it should work.
I couldn't find an answer to this question.
I have 3 different websites that I'd like to use. However I don't want my affiliate partners nee to register 3 times, but only one time, while still being able to earn commissions with my 3 sites. Is that possible with Affiliates Pro or would I have to set up/install Affiliates Pro on each of my 3 sites and run it individually?
Hi Yvonne,
You would have to set it up on each of the three sites as the affiliate program cannot be shared among different sites.
Hi I have a legal CBD business and have acquired square's CBD friendly processing sector recently. Before this I have had both PayPal and Stripe dump me and ban me for selling CBD (terms and conditions violations according to them). Would I be able to use you pay outs if I am unable to qualify for a PayPal or stripe account?
Thank you!
Hi Rachel,
Thanks for considering our system! The way you handle affiliate payments with it is quite independent of the payment platform you will be using. This is because the system does not handle payments to affiliates automatically, instead it provides the means to have them processed automatically via the payment platform. So, also in your case, you would obtain the totals due periodically from the system in the form of a text file, which you could then use to process the payments in bulk if your payment platform supports it, or issue them manually.
Please have a look at the Totals in the documentation for Affiliates Pro or Totals for Affiliates Enterprise for details on the process.
Hi Vira,
The plugin is used on thousands of sites and works fine, so that wouldn't be the problem. But we can help you figure out any particular issues on your site. Please use this premium support forum to post your support request: https://www.itthinx.com/forum/affiliates-pro/ and we will be happy to help you further.
I intend to create an affiliate system where the person would get a commission on the entire cart value and not just the single product price he is referring to (just like amazon affiliate).
Could you please help me in achieving this?
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Joined January 4, 2010
Although Strawberry Hill Books is primarily an internet business, visitors are always welcome by prior appointment. We are based in the High Weald of East Sussex in the UK, between Battle and Heathfield. The business which started at the beginning of 2010 was based on a book collection that took 50 years to assemble. In our first year we shipped in excess of 1000 books to buyers all over the world. The management of Strawberry Hill Books are the second generation of their family to be in the collectable book business. We have books in many categories but specialise in English Literature, Modern First Editions, British History, Biography, Exploration, Travel and Natural History.
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text:
Listen to Weezer's Cover of Toto's 'Africa'
Giving in to a fan's social media campaign, Weezer have recorded a version of Toto's 1982 smash "Africa."
You can check it out below.
Back in December, a Cleveland-area teenager named Mary created a Twitter account called @weezerafrica and tweeted at Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo, "It's about time you bless the rains down in Africa." Last week, the band appeared to be trolling her by covering another huge hit from Toto IV, "Rosanna."
Shortly after starting her campaign, Mary spoke with Noisey and said that the idea came to her after discussing the song's use in Stranger Things with her friends. But she also admitted that it "was just a goofy joke. It was from Weezer was talking about they were inspired for their new album Daydream, what inspired them. So I jokingly said, 'Oh, I bet they were inspired by 'Africa' by Toto for their new album.' ... It was just an absurd joke. And then I was like, 'I wonder if I can get them to cover the song?'"
She ran the idea past Weezer drummer Patrick Wilson, who responded that he "laughed" at her suggestion.
Watch Toto's 'Africa' Video
Joke or not, roughly 340 tweets later, including a retweet of an endorsement of the project from Toto singer David Paich, Mary has gotten her wish. The band has unveiled its cover of "Africa" with a screenshot of her original tweet in the artwork.
So does Mary have another song in mind for her next Twitter campaign? "I don't know what's next," she said. "Just let me enjoy this for a while."