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Hear Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the new Wikia Search, describe his open source search engine. Mr. Wales made his comments as part of a longer interview in July 2007.
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Good evening I am Chris Shipley I am the executive producer of the DEMO conferences and the co founder and chairman of the Guidewire group and I welcome you to this meeting of INFORUM a division of the common wealth club by and for young people who share interest and a passion for civic issues. Tonight I am joined by Jimmy Wales he is the founder of Wikipedia and also the founder of other Wiki related projects including the charitable organizations Wikimedia foundation and the for-profit company Wikia. Wales was ranked 12th in Forbes magazine, web celebs 25 and listed in 2006 in Time magazine's 100 influential people. He has changed the way millions of people access and influence information when he opened the collaborative authoring software the Wiki software to the world's internet users. Creating a website with boundless encyclopedic information that site is called Wikipedia. Recently Wales launched Wikia which is building the rest of the library with 1000s of wiki communities and it is intended to be a search engine to compete with Google and that emphasizes a greater transparency and promises less spam. Please welcome Jimmy Wales. Jimmy you had a have had a a rich career before you founded Wikipedia but I think that is certainly what you were so well known for and what so many people here tonight are interested in learning about so lets may be start in the middle of your carrier with Wikipedia and talk about sort of the origins of that project. So the the basic idea for Wikipedia came from watching the growth of the free software movement. So for many years free software, open source software had been steadily growing and becoming more and more important throughout the industry. And I was watching this happen and seeing programmers coming together to collaborate often times and clearly volunteer context and creating really fantastic software. If you remember the the early days of open source software people really tended to dismiss it as you know, well this is something fine a few hobbyists will play around with it. But overtime we were seeing you know, kind of Linux and apache and Perl, PHP all these stuff that really runs in the internet is the open source software. And so I realized that the free licensing model created a new type of social condition for people to be able to collaborate together. But for all the rest of us, if we want to collaborate to build something, you know, well what did you have available so if you wanted to co author a document with lots of people you could e-mail around word documents which is like a night mare. And you totally don't want to try to do that so I realize that hey there is a there is an opportunity here to have the same type of collaboration the same kind of social model but three things other than just software. And so Wikipedia was like the first thing there I mean the encyclopedia project I should say. So when I started I had PhD in philosophy and we had a project called Newpedia which was organized in a very top down very structured very academic format and was a complete and total failure. So when you say top down talk about what you mean by that? So what I mean by top down is that in order to participate in Newpedia you had to apply to become an editor, apply to write an article. People had to prove their credentials in fact for a period of time. That guy who was running it had people faxing in their credentials to prove they were you know, PhDs or were not. And the hurdles to participation was so enormously high that it just really failed but at the same time, what was good about it was that a large group of people had been talking for a couple of years, really good people about how to create an encyclopedia what it should be like. And we did all that before Wikipedia and so once we found out about the Wiki editing concept which had been on the web for since 1995 and decided to try that we already had a great community built up and so it was just able to get started right off bat. So the Newpedia community was able to transfer was that A fair number of them transferred yeah not everybody, but it's more that, a lot of the ideas and the spirit and that people knew we were working on this and that we have a lot of the I would say the ideology behind Wikipedia came from - the really strong commitment to free licensing for everything, the really strong commitment to neutrality to open this to transparency, all of those things came about as results of those discussions within the Newpedia community. So all the big ideas you might have tackled for a a giant collaboration, why the encyclopedia. It just seemed very obvious to me, and I remember when I had the idea, I was in a complete panic to get start because I thought somebody else would do it first. And then for you know for the two years of Newpedia which were failure in the first couple of years of Wikipedia, well pretty much nobody noticed right. But an encyclopedia is a really fantastic it's low hanging fruit for collaboration because it's a pretty easy thing to do. So if I say, you know encyclopedia article about the golden gate bridge right. Everybody in this room has more or less the same idea of what that supposed to be. You need to have the history of the bridge, you need to have all the facts that link and and so forth. You need a couple of pictures on there, may be one in the day, one at night. You kind of have a good idea what an encyclopedia article should tell you. We can fight and quibble about the details but we we all have a clear vision for what it is we are trying to accomplish. So for the encyclopedia, you know every article, you pretty much know what you are supposed to be doing and that's really important in a collaborative environment because if you say, you know every one in this room tonight we are going to get together and we are going to write a poem about rain. Well good luck figuring out what the hell that suppose to mean right, but because there is no structure and there is no simple obvious idea, so really encyclopedia is pretty easy. So we know that the traffic to Wikipedia is is quite tremendous. What is the collaboration community? How large did that community become? So it's kind of hard to measure, because you know we we tend to think of the community as being people who have a certain degree of involvement and commitment. If you come to Wikipedia as many many people do, you click on edit and you fix a spelling error or you make a sentence a little bit better, some little thing like that. Well you have helped in your own small way and that's wonderful but you are not really part of that community. I normally look at some statistics like the number of people who are making at least one hundred edits in a month and things like that. So you know if we want to talk about the really really active community we are talking about, may be around 3000 people in English and you have to keep in mind that English although it's the largest language in Wikipedia, is actually less than one third of the total work. So there is you know, equally large you know twice as many people who are not working in English, working in other languages. So may be 9000 people were wider like the core community And the number of entries today are approximately. The number of entries in English is 1.8 million some odd it's always on the front page of Wikipedia so I didn't look today so I can't tell you the exact number. And like I said that's less than one third of the total so it's over 6 million in in all the languages and so in terms of number of languages, we now have about 130 languages that have at least 1000 articles. So 1000 articles is not really much of an encyclopedia but that's the number that I always keep an eye on because, once I see there is a 1000 articles in a language I normally find there are five to ten really hard contributors, 20 to 30 others helping them. And that's when they really start to become a community, they have had a few fights, they have made up. They start to thinking about how they can get more people to come in, they started e-mailing academics, they started trying to make a press coverage in their local area. So I I consider the number of languages to be like a 130 or so right now. So when you you started your first experience with Newpedia, you - you were screening credentials of of users, what and what was your imagination about what what that credential user would look like and how does that today compare with the credentials if you will, the people with the profile of the members of these, most active members of your community. Yeah so, so this was a real struggle from the very beginning and I never thought it was a good idea to ask for credentials from people but was talked into it and there was some possible reasons for it. But what was really missing from that approach was, all the people who would just like to help out in their own way, whatever that way might be, so some people can contribute to Wikipedia, by being a subject area expert and some times those credentials or credentials that are very traditional and very ordinary. So for example I met a - an ornithologist at Cornell University who regularly checks up on the bird articles in Wikipedia - he doesn't write all that much but he checks that on it, and he has met a few people in the community. That's actually a - really convenient area to talk about this phenomenon because in ornithology they have had a long standing, very favorable relationship with the amateur community of bird watchers. So lot of the data that they have collected over the years comes from passionate people who are just really into birds and they like to go out and hunt for rare birds and report back to scientists on what they have seen. So they are very comfortable with this idea that they are passionate amateurs. And in some other fields, that's not been as common and so some times they are little less comfortable I'm guessing neuro-science wouldn't be favorable - Yeah yeah the, for some reason the brain surgeons really frown on the armatures and I just don't know why. There was a great there was a great April fool's article, I can't remember if it was in the Onion, or it was the CNet April fool's edition that, - said I was having WikiLasik so I was going to, you know, it may take the community a few tries but I am sure that they will get it right, anybody come by my house and yeah. So in terms of how does how does the community differ, another way that it differs, so some people are contributing as topic area experts but without traditional credentials. So the math professor is also World War II history buff and that sort of thing. We also have people who just like working in the communities, so they like doing things like spell checking or mediating conflict or just going through and rewriting, I mean I have met many journalists who say, you know as professional writers, you know this well I don't really contribute to Wikipedia, but some times I will see really tortured sentence and I cant take it, so I fix it, you know. And that's just different ways of contributing that may not be, and in fact in many in many cases you know, if you if you have a a physics professor, they be not be the best writer in the world, particularly in terms of explaining it to general audience and so you get these collaborations between very different kinds of people. So I think one of the the questions that, comes up around this issue of credential and the authority of the community really is to do with - what actually should be, in an encyclopedia and you left that largely to the community to determine what - what entries are appropriate for data and which which are not and how do those debates what's that process like? You know, so we have always aimed to be as compressive as we can be, and so there is several ideas that emerge for a long period of time, so one of the the old sayings in the community is wiki is not paper, so if somebody makes an argument that we shouldn't have something because its just why we are taking up this much of space, well its all on a computer disks, it does not really take up any space right, and we are not constrained by, needing to print out 30 volumes and so there is no reason to limit the content based on sheer size of the text. At least not in terms of the physical size - right. At the same time though we do know that there are limitations, that isn't to say there are absolute no limitations. So one of the classic limitations is verifiability, one of the things that can happen is, you know any person in this room who could could write an article about their grandmother, well someone here must have a famous grandmother, that will be fine, but most of us just have a regular old grandmother and there is not a lot that you can write about my grandmother, that anyone else could really confirm. I could write down some family stories, but you would have no idea if I was telling the truth or not, there is no way to verify it, so the community would say - that's not verifiable there is really no way for us to verify that. So that's one of the rules that that has come up over time, in terms of limiting this, another that's come up more recently as Wikipedia is gotten bigger and bigger and bigger in the English language especially is some consideration particularly with biographies of living people, that there are incentive problems, that some times if somebody is some body is very very famous, there is no problem, we need to have an article and there will be many different people with an interest, we can keep the article well referenced and neutral. But sometimes, if somebody is not very famous if they are only very famous for doing something bad, its really hard to maintain the article, it's really hard to write a balanced article, small town politicians - right who have some people who hate them, some people who like them, they come to Wikipedia and they fight and we don't like it, so get rid of them all. Those are the kinds of things where we realize that there are constraints; in the social model on how detailed we can be and still maintain quality and accuracy. So part of that social model I think and again it goes back to this credentialing idea, is really about transparency and trust and - and that's starts to lead the questions of of motive and of of incentive perspective, these sorts of things. Talk a little bit about the role of transparency and in understanding who the authors are and how they, what their motivations are for participating in the in the community So in in all Wiki's - part of what makes a Wiki work is the transparency. So when you make an edit at Wikipedia, Wikia or any other Wiki, it goes in to the history right, so everybody can go back and review all of the past versions that have ever been there. If you have a user id, a stable identity over time, people can, with one click see all of your contributions. So that you can build a reputation over time, people can come to know who you are, and decide whether or not they trust you, based on a long pattern of behavior which is exactly the way we do it in the real world. If you meet some one new at work, you don't know, are they good, or they are not good, and over a period of time you learn whether or not you can trust them, then you being to rely on them. And there are a lot of social pressures right to, continue to behave well. All of that is really important in Wiki's setting as well. When people imagine Wikis as being, you know, 10 million people each adding one sentence each, I always struggle against this idea of the wisdom of crowds and swarm intelligence in those kinds of things. So I don't think they are really accurate description of how this works. If you think of it as 10 million people each adding one sentence each, it seems a miracle that it isn't just rubbish. When you begin to realize that, you know the the articles about bridges right are [0:16:58] [by and large] written by people who are members of wiki project bridges which is a sub group in Wikipedia and these are just people who love bridges, and for what ever reason is their hobby know everything they used to know about bridges and they discuss how to make the articles better and they keep one on each other, they come to trust each other and its that small group that that can monitor each other that's really important and the transparency is what really makes that possible. When you get this this authoritative group and it's really got the world's most enthusiastic bridge experts, bridge hobbyist may be even, there comes a few question of sort of sourcing of information, the quality of the information and the ability for Wikipedia itself to be the authoritative encyclopedia. How do you see that how do you see Wikipedia gaining that authority as a reference, we know that lots of people do refer to it, but is this now, you know, is it moving to the point being a citable reference in a in a bibliography. Is it gaining that authority in the market? Right so in general no and in general I don't think it should. I always say you know, when I was in academics and when I was in the university, if I tried to sigh at encyclopedia Britannica, I would have been laughed out and appropriately so, that isn't the role of an encyclopedia in the research process and isn't something that we should aim at, as an example one of the one of the old rules, social rules of Wikipedia is - no original research. And there is a two fold reason for that as there are from, from many of our rules there is the the epistemic or the knowledge oriented reason and then the social reasons. So the knowledge oriented reason is, if someone's doing original research so original historical research or actually the rule came about in the early days because of of trying to do with physics crackpots of whom there are many online. So somebody comes in and they want to post their their new theory of magnetism which they have just dreamed up. Well we really aren't qualified to evaluate that, and open into community like this, its it's just not the sort of thing that we would be particularly good at, and so from a knowledge point of view we want to say, well there is other citable you know, sources, other references, other places we could go to confirm what you are saying, and if the answer is no, we say we are - have a really hard time doing with that because as a community its one thing we can check to see if the - the journal article you sighted from the Journal of Physics actually exists. And what it says, but we can't necessarily like start working through your equations or whatever. And then the social reason is, it it actually works out socially very well to have this rule of no original research, because when - a physics crackpot shows up instead of having to say you are a crackpot, please go away you can say thank you for your wonderful contribution, we just aren't qualified to evaluate it. It's - looks like highly original research, you should submit it to the Harvard Journal of Physics and I am sure they love that we say that, but so that's basically you know how we deal with that right and so because we consider ourselves tertiary source or we are not a primary source and that would be you know, raw historical document. We're not a secondary source we aren't a peer reviewed academic journal, we aren't a - a - something that's been published. We are a tertiary source, so we are a source that points people to other things so we are starting point for research, we we aimed to be a highly reliable and accurate starting point for research and that is a good thing. And when we fail at that, we are not happy about that. But to try to become a citable source is just not really what I think we should be trying to do So you talked about social rules and I thought it - just to hear you elaborate on that for a bit. And particularly, I think there is a Wikipedia etiquette of sorts about how one one edit someone else's work, how one submits there's certainly etiquette around, writing your own biography, these sorts of things. Can you can you just expand on that a bit so we can understand what those rules are? Yeah so, a lot of that is what you can characterize as kindergarten ethics. I mean a lot it should be fairly obvious. One of the oldest rules of Wikipedia in fact perhaps the oldest rule depending on how you count it is ignore our rules which is sounds a little scary, but the point of it is, the rules of Wikipedia should always be something that you don't have to consult and detail before knowing what you should do. Its all be fairly obvious that if there is something that is not obvious like - a stylistic tradition or something like that well if you violate it, you shouldn't get in trouble, somebody should just come along and help you and fix it. It's really important to to the project that we and its important for all, Wiki communities, in fact for all online communities, its important to have certain social standards that's, look there are certain ways that we want to try to interact with each other. One of the things is - assume good faith. This is something you will see Wikipedians say a lot. Somebody comes to an article, they start messing it up. You can assume that they are evil or you can assume that they are trying to do something useful right. Maybe its hard to see what it is that that they think they are doing, but if you assume that there - they probably have some good intention in there, some where, you can address them in a respectful way, you try to draw them out to say what is that that you are trying to accomplish here, I feel like the edits you made weren't that helpful but you know lets talk about it and so when we succeed at that we have much better dialogue, we have much better quality of work in the end than if we just had flamewars back and forth and this is really a big part of, the Wiki culture and what - what is I think the real change here from you know like a web form for discussing politics for this is a Wiki for discussing politics is there are the incentives built into the very mechanisms of the software to encourage people to be a little friendlier and be a little more reasonable hopefully. Then you have one of the the advances that Wikipedia is responsible for in Wiki software sort of separating but - but keeping next to one another, the articles that the document essentially and the conversation so that those things can happen in tandem. Yes, so every page has you know the article and then the - and then the discussion tab. And the discussion tab is itself is a Wiki which is actually very important for the - the social environment. Because, if somebody comes in and they start flaming being really rude or not just someone else would just delete their comments, everybody else doesn't have to see it and but that is all transparent, you can see who deleted what and why and somebody started deleting other people's comment, well they better have a good reason for it or they - they get in trouble and so on and so for so it's - it's a circular kind of incentive mechanism that keeps you honest. And yes, so separating those two out was very important, I mean it seems fairly obvious now but I remember in the very early days of Wikipedia when Tim Shell posted on the mailing list said, hey, you know we should really not be discussing you know the articles - in the articles which shall have separate space for that and that immediately got adopted as a convention later built into the software and yeah that's very helpful From - from Wikipedia grew the Wikimedia foundation. Tell us a little bit more about that So the Wikimedia foundation is a nonprofit organization that I have founded. It's a 501(c)(3) charity in the US. And the Wikimedia foundation owns Wikipedia, Wiktionary and the bunch of other sister projects that we can use and so forth. We had we spent about a $1 million last year and we'll spend around $2 million to $3 million, we think this year. The bulk of the money goes for hardware and bandwidth and we are supported primarily by small donations. So, the vast majority of the money that Wikipedia has ever received has been in the form of $50 to $100, €50 to €100 mostly from the U.S. and Europe, significant amount from Japan, Australia, and really all around the world last year we had donations from over 70 different countries in different amounts; some by small but small countries. And so, the foundation now has seven full time positions, seven full time employees and it's a number nine website in the world, and I bet nobody else can have a ratio like that. So the one of the things to understand, lots of people when they have just used Wikipedia, and probably this audience has - has used it more and knows a little bit more about it. But, lots of people are you know, I get interview questions and I realize after two or three questions, what they really want to know is where the Google blogs, where is the compound, where the campus with the 600 people administrators monitoring everything. That doesn't exist and in fact the the employees the office of the foundation has almost nothing to do with editing the actual content. There is one guy, Kerrey who takes phone calls in the office from people who are complaining and don't know how to fix something themselves. He liaisons with the community to let people know about the problems, sometimes he'll fix it himself. Other than that, one person you know calling the office with the complaint is probably not very helpful because they are they are quite swamped with it and try to keep servers running so. If it is it's a highly distributed community, not an organization and I think part of a trend that we are its clearly unfolding and I think very powerful this movement from really centralized organizations out into communities. And then Wikipedia may be well the strongest example of the power of a community to to inform, to shape and certainly that seems the work of the foundation as well. Yeah, exactly but I mean it's also important to recognize I think the the limitations of that, right? So, the Wikipedia community can do something really amazing which is why this great encyclopedia, maintain it, and monitor it, always be trying to improve and so forth. But the foundation and the community have not done such a great job, of actually pushing the software forward. We have very limited resources for doing that at the foundation and so actually over the years as its typical for free software and one of the common criticisms which is usually but not always valid is, it tends to be very geeky the user interface can be a little bit clunky. So if you go to edit an article in Wikipedia, its supposed to be easy and obvious what you are doing but in many cases it really isn't; it's gotten to be quite complex. So this is part of the reason why you know, I started Wikia is basically as a for-profit company and we have funding, we have a lot more programmers, a lot more employees, we have many people doing usability, study, design because we really do feel like this is just the first stage of this revolution. But in order for it to go further, we need to make editing of Wiki and collaborating in a community as easy, and intuitive and obvious for people as using a word Processor. So, you know if you remember the very early days of people using word Processors, you could always you know, you could see the paragraph codes and we didn't have WYSIWYGs for a long time. And then over the years, you know we got better and better and there are certain conventions that developed and I pretty learned more or less how a word processor works. We are just starting that process now in collaborative editing and so we are really trying to push that forward just to make it possible for a whole another circle of people to get involved in sharing their ideas and thoughts. Did you originally expect that the developer community would would advance the platform in the way that the editorial community advanced the document? Yeah. And I mean, I am not I am definitely not saying that they haven't advanced it - right. Because I mean media Wiki is a fabulous piece of software, it does what it does really really well. But it isn't completely user friendly, right. And so, it's amazingly successful in some ways and not successful in another ways. There is a - you know its its completely open source software, so there is developing community. There is an extension architecture that people are using to create extensions to the software to do different kinds of things but it's still quite difficult. It turns out that the learning curve to joining the media Wiki development community and really getting involved in making a difference it's much steeper than it should be, it takes people a long time to get involved and to really help us push it forward. So that's we are trying to fix that but it's you know it's a big job You described, Wikia is building the rest of the library? Yeah. So if you think about an encyclopedia, you know traditional library encyclopedia is normally - 30 35 books, its usually like this big or so. But then imagine everything else in the library, all the other possible books and works that people might collaborate on. And so the the idea is that we see that people can come together and collaborate on all kinds of things. Now there was a time when I thought - this is the only thing that makes this work, the only way you can really have a successful Wiki is neutrality the neutrality principle of Wikipedia is very helpful as a social mechanism for helping people to get along. But then I saw Uncyclopedia which is a parody of Wikipedia, which is absolutely hilarious, its certainly not neutral I am not sure what it is exactly but neutral is not the first adjective that pops in my mind. But it was is a very - what it is very successful Wiki and you have 10s of 1000s of articles. And so that was the first example where I really - the light ball sort of went on and I said you know it's not just the encyclopedia we actually can just do this lots of other things. So now we have over 3000 communities building everything from Uncyclopedia, which I thought was so funny that I bought it and from Uncyclopedia to help that because these sites we have the WoWWiki which is all about world of warcraft. So if anybody hears the fan of world of warcraft they would check out the Wiki. Although if you are a real fan of world of warcraft you are probably not here, you are probably playing the game. So but all these different kinds of things that people are building that are not the traditional encyclopedia, some of them are clearly advocacy there is sfhomeless Wikia sfhomeless.wikia.com where the local homeless advocacy community is coming together and documenting best practices, what are all the resources available in the area, talking about that, that's a really great one. And just really great people are using this tool. It's clearly not neutral right they are advocates and they are trying to push something forward and do something beneficial. And so it turns out hat what is needed to make a Wiki work is not neutrality but a shared vision. So when I talked earlier about the shared idea of you know you know of what an encyclopedia article, about the Golden Gate Bridge is supposed to be. It works equally well if you say if you say well this article about George W Bush is supposed to be a parody of an encyclopedia article. Okay everybody kind of knows what that is to. And in fact within that community they have certain house style and sort of inside jobs that they have built over times so that the whole thing has a certain theme to it and so forth. So it's really amazing that kind of things that are going to constitute the rest of the library and so that's what people are working on. Are you finding because these other Wikis the rest of library tend to have a a much more clear perspective they are not to your point neutral that the communities behavior interacting in any different way. You are learning anything about the social dynamic when there is a a clear perspective? Absolutely yeah. You will find things like you know the the the style of interacting can be very different. So we have a site ArmchairGM armchair general manager is the idea so armchairgm.com there it's a sports community so its all about sports and so they interact with each other very differently from Wikipedia, right there are bunch of sports nuts and they sort of tease each other taunt each other, they have you know they leave comments and they sort of have these fun little debates and is like a lot of little advocacy going on in there and we actually we had a lot of cool software for them very recently social software so they can friend each other and give each other gifts and things like this and make foe so now can be enemies with each other. But it's all good natured right. In Wikipedia I have to say around the lot of political articles I don't think it would be a good idea if we had to we had to mark people as foes and I think having this sort of spirit of togetherness is better but - in a sports community were its all just a bunch of people kind of joking around and having fun writing about sports, they write news article about what is going on its words, it's a totally different flavor and yet its something that the community likes to do and its offering the license and everybody, you know they are having fun with it. Now the other part of Wikia is search and search you claim that it will be better than Google and - and lesser spam. Talk about the vision that And not as many calories and you will look better while you are using it But - but will you get a date Yeah no so I - I actually am a little more cautious than all that right that, the I have been talking about search. So for me its - its like it's almost a political statement more than anything else, it's a political statement about what we as citizens of the world should expect from the search engines which are driving most of the traffic on the internet. We should expect a certain amount of transparency, openness, participation. All of those things are super important and this is really a statement that I think we can build this and I want the community to come together and try to build this. So, I view it that way and then Fast Company Magazine had me on the cover with this sort of cool picture and it said Google's worst nightmare and there I was - my picture, I don't - I don't know what about that - my mom bought 10 copies so - somebody liked it. But we really aren't comfortable sort of in that role of of like you know sort of the Google killer. But it's a great story so whatever. So, basically what we were doing we are bringing people together to say look we want to we want to cerate a search engine, all open source software, human participation, so we were right now, we are in the early design stages. I heard Jeremie Miller who is here tonight from Iowa. He was the founder of Jabber which is the open you know, instant messaging protocol and he comes from this long line of you know how instant messaging, its it's these close silos, if you are on one service you can't chat with somebody on another one. But it is very different from e-mail where it doesn't matter where you have to email, you can email somebody on a - it's a simple idea right? And so Jeremie invented the protocol so that we can begin to to break up those silos and monopolies and that's beginning to have a bigger and bigger impact all the time and you know Google talk supports Jabber and it's right default in Apple iChat and there is bunch of clients that support it. So that is what true Jeremie and I together with this shared idea that - this kind of stuff should be you know open, transparent and there is a huge number of different kinds of benefits that come with that. So the questtion I have in these is well I guess fundamentally is whether human powered search really can scale if you talk about and you think about the massive amount of contact even just in your own in your Wikipedia alone and then multiplied across the internet all of these documents. How do you scale human powered search? Is this algorithmic? Human assistance or Yeah - so I mean the way I look at this is that the - the philosophical question I think is pretty easy to answer which is the stuff that computers do well, they should do their part and the stuff that humans do well, they should do that part. Well, that doesn't answer all the question right? That's a sort of broad statement of how we should divide up the work. I can give you a really great example I was on my cell phone the other night and I wanted to go see Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix which just came up. My daughter really wanted to see it. So, in my cell phone which is really hard to type on and so forth in the browser I typed in Google in the mobile search engine which is pretty smart. It knows I am in san Francisco, it always tells me that and so I typed in Harry Potter, phoenix, show times and I got all of the times, when Harry Potter is showing in phoenix Arizona. Well, I thought well that is a computer for you right? And that's not really criticism of Google because I don't know if anybody is doing that correctly right now. That's the kind of thing that you can always expect algorithms that are going to trip up on until computers are smart enough that you know that they can hold talks and conferences like this. I think we have to say look algorithmic searches has certain really strong limitations. That kind of mistake would never happen at Wikipedia right? You would never have that kind of weird ambiguous thing were somebody starts writing about Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix and starts talking about phoenix Arizona .That just would be crazy right? So that's an example where what I saw is being needed at that point and nobody is really designed how to do this share would be if you are - if you are there at that page and you realize that your the computer is doing something stupid and really needs to be told that this new movie came out its called the 'Harry Porter and the Order of Phoenix' and so people are searching for Harry Porter and Phoenix; they probably don't care about Arizona. Right. That's not really what they are looking for. That's a human judgment that could be fed back to the search engine and I think Google spends a lot of time trying to do that, Yahoo all the major search engines. They try to do as much as they can but this is were the scaling issue comes in. Any small number of employees at Britannica can't keep up with Wikipedia. And any small number of employees at a closed proprietary search engine can't keep with a properly empowered community. And so, as I talked about Wikipedia and the idea earlier that if you really want to collaborate on writing documents, emailing around word documents isn't the right way, we need tools to do it. If we really want to collaborate; we really want to bring together human minds to help us search, the current tools are what we need. Right. We have to work on thinking about how we can get information from people, how we cannot let people participate in a way that we can monitor their behavior, we can monitor each others behavior, reward that behavior, diminish bad behavior, all those kinds of principles that go into making a Wiki work are also really needed in this area. So just to clarify then, you are really looking at how humans tune algorithms; not how humans deliver better search results. Sure. Good. Something like that. We have a just a few more minutes for our conversation, but I would like to invite you to join the conversation as well and to do so just please go to the microphones in the aisle and you can begin to line up now. And as you do that, Jimmy - a question; you used to comment a moment ago, "Citizens of the world" and certainly Wikipedia and much of your work is finding its way around the world, you travel extensively. But Wikipedia and its social construct aren't accepted every where, when you talk about the fact that in China Wikipedia is not publicly open. Yeah. So we were completely blocked in China and we have been for quite some time now; about an year and a half I guess. And we don't like that. Chinese language Wikipedia is the eleventh largest, it is the large community it's growing perfectly fine - turns out, lots of Chinese people don't live in China. And so, it has a really active participation from Taiwan, Hong Kong, the U.S. and around the world. And actually quite a bit participation from China because the firewall is fairly porous and so there are some really brave people who edit Wikipedia despite its been blocked. I was in Hong Kong and meeting with some of the Beijing Wikipedians, we had a special meeting. With this point we have been blocked for like six months and you know I said I am worried that you know you guys are going to sort of go off into something else. And so frustrating you know Wikipedia and they said, "We are with you forever." So these people are very dedicated and so people within China are going to continue to edit Wikipedia and eventually they all realize that its foolish to block Wikipedia. But the I am going to be in China in just in September and I am trying to set up as high level meeting as I can. We have deliberately not really tried to pursue it at low level, bureaucratic levels; simply because our legal advisors tell us we don't even have standing to file a case, we don't exist in China and the only way to exist in China is to agree to censor and we are not going to do that ever. So it's really more of a at the political level. So I am trying to reach out as high level as possible to explain to them that well Wikipedia the neutrality policy is quite important, its not a haven for dissidents The community policies things quite well so at least in theory we are not that sort of site that should be blocked. I have no idea of that arguments going to be persuasive or not. But this is the only one I have to make. Might the community of Wikipedia participants in China though as a community make it a decision to accept concessions in order to see this open. So the external Wikipedia community and its rules and its social dynamic might that community make different rules, and is there room for that - for that in the Wikipedia world. Yeah. So having so, there is a couple of answers to that may be. So one answer is local language communities do make their own policies to a certain extent. There are certain core policies that I set on from the beginning. The neutrality policy is non negotiable I always said. Certain ideas about participation and openness in a vague sort of way, decisions about exactly who to ban and when and why and what kinds of behavior; you know, one of the rules is no personal attacks. But saying, no personal attacks is very culturally variable like what people would consider to be a personal attack or not can vary widely in different cultures. So, they make all those decisions for themselves. So some of the basic things; yes, they can make for themselves. Could they choose for themselves to you know ban editors from Taiwan who don't toe the Chinese Government, "No, that isn't going to happen." But its kind of an academic question you know, in the first place because having met with the mainland Wikipedians, they say basically you know they have no interest in that, they have not asked us to compromise at all. In fact they are taking great pride in. The mission for all of us is really about free access to the sum of all human knowledge for every single person on the planet; they mean it and we mean it and so there is been no desire from the community that we should compromise. If we if they wanted to do that, they can go to Baidupedia who - that's a - Baidu is the one of the big search portals and big portal sites in China. They copy all of our content and claim its all copyright of them which is not true, but and they let people edit and they censor and whatever and almost on one participates because that was just not that interesting. They want to take part in real movement so.


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Kristin Ess tugging at my heart strings.
For a long time I didn't pay attention to any Kristin Ess products because, as a stylist myself, it goes against everything I believe in to buy hair care at a grocery store, drugstore, or superstore for that matter. I basically preach the use of salon quality products behind the chair. When someone picks up a product in the salon and asks "What can I get at Target that will do the same thing?" (yes, people really ask that), I promptly and honestly reply, "nothing." And I mean it.
Well, it must have been the Insta story that broke the camels back. Yesterday yet another blogger I follow had posted a picture of a Kristin Ess display, and coincidentally, I happened to be fresh out of my regular shampoo and conditioner - so you can bet I was on my way to Target that afternoon. Fairly certain I was about to be let down, the hype still had me wanting to see for myself. After all, I had just poked around her Instagram and there was no doubt this woman is great at what she does - textured, effortless, cool - she's on it. So I bought what I use the most of: shampoo, conditioner, and pomade.
The whole drive home I thought, what a waste of time. I'm probably going to return all of this. Earlier, in the store I sampled some working spray, not even thinking about the fact that this was not a tester (I'm the reason you should always take from the back). The fragrance was so intense it was starting to give me a headache. Undeterred, that night I used my new shampoo and conditioner, and though the fragrance was still a bit strong, Lo and behold! it was my only (slight) gripe. You guys! It's so good! What am I going to tell my clients? My boss? St. Peter at the gates?! My hair was so soft this morning, and the pomade left a super cool, flexible texture in my hair all day long. I've been convinced. I'm not suggesting Target for all of your cosmetic endeavors (c'mon), but the Karen Ess line is an awesome option for cool looking, fancy feeling hair care.
Which Kristin Ess product should I try next? Leave me a comment - I love to talk shop!
Here's the Deal: My face dried up like matzo meal.
I thought I had it all figured out - for a little over a year I was really happy with my skin. My routine was simple and effective. I washed my face twice a day, toned with Estee Lauder, slathered myself in Truth Serum, and resurfaced regularly with a few night gels. I was perfecting my routine one step at a time, and my next step was to rid my shelf of all cruel and toxic products. Funny enough - that's when shit hit the fan, and my skin decided to turn on me. What once glowed like a marvelous globe of Sephora synthetics, was now a giant sad dry patch.
Now, to be fair, it's possible that some other factors were affecting my skin. It could have been stress. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that I had traveled between three climates in one month. Did I black out and pet a street dog named Mateo? Was it a gluten thing? Should I have not done the Ess-a-Bagel eating contest on First Avenue? Who knows! My dermatologist told me I had a dirty cellphone. She sent me home with a prescription for a (very pricey) topical antibiotic that after a week was delivering lack luster results. I did some research on my doctor's recommendation, and wouldn't ya know it? After all this work trying to clean up my act, this stuff was the most toxic of them all! So I tossed it to the back of the cabinet and decided have a shot at this myself.
Once again, I broke down my entire routine and came to a few conclusions: I cleanse too much, exfoliate too much, and moisturize too little. Now in the morning, rather than washing my face with water, I wake sleepy skin with a Rose Infused Witch Hazel. A few pumps of Glossier's Soothing Face Mist softens the skin and preps it for moisturizer - and by the way, it's true what they say about lotion and damp skin: it really does help to lock the moisture in. So seal it up with Priming Moisturizer and you're on your fucking way!
Now the day is done, your lunch was cold, your boss was a bitch, and it's time to take your makeup off. Glossier's Milky Jelly Cleanser, a holy grail product for many, is perfect for dissolving makeup and general filth. Baptize yourself with a rich evening serum like Kiehls Midnight Recovery and massage a generous amount of Priming Moisturizer Rich all over your mug. You'll thank me in the morning.
3 texturizing products | & how to use them
Texturizing products are the short cut to effortless looking hair. There pretty much isn't a single type of texturizing product I don't want to get my hands on, but you may have a preference as far as what works best for you. To keep things simple, I picked three different kinds of texturizing products and made a quick video demonstrating how to apply and what they do. Written explanations are below!
Here they are in order of lightest to heaviest finish:
SALT SPRAY - "Sea, salt, wind." The R+Co. Salt Spray (Rockaway) is the best salt spray I've ever used. It mists onto your hair as light as water, but it's formulated with nourishing ingredients and even Indonesian sea weed to swell the cuticle and give it a soft grit. You can use this on damp hair before air drying if you like. I prefer to mist it throughout dry hair and tousle it a bit.
SPRAY WAX - If you find spray wax intimidating you need to face this fear. These types of products spray in a very fine mist and pack a ton of flexible hold into a style. If you want your hair looking really wild, or need to bring some life into day two hair, or even hair that is just feeling too soft and slippery, mist a little bit of spray wax in there and shake it out. It's also really great for holding bangs and framing pieces off of your face.
STYLING PASTE - You'll probably notice in my "3 products" video that I actually showed four different things, but two of them are styling pastes. I used Evo's Crop Strutters Construction Cream this time around, but had to give R+Co's Badlands Dry Shampoo Paste a cameo. These two are incredible. Here is the main difference you will find between the two: Evo's is a thick, somewhat tacky cream. R+Co's has a smoother feel when broken down between your hands and has a very fine, gritty finish (it's also a dry shampoo!). To use a styling paste, take a small amount (between a pea and a dime) in your hands, rub them together to distribute onto your palms evenly and scrunch, twist, and separate your hair where you want to create texture. This is a great product you can use when you want to keep the perimeter of your cut looking blunt and "piece-y."
I'm wearing all Glossier in this post! Cloud Paint in Haze | Generation G in Zip | Stretch Concealer in Medium | Boy Brow in Brown | shop with me on my Glossier Rep Page! Orders $30+ include free shipping. First time orders get 20% off! For the rest of you, a limited time promo code for 2 Cloud Paints for $30 can be entered at checkout: "2BLUSH" Enjoy your face!
Send your hair questions my way! ig: shannon_brigid e-mail: email@example.com
lazy hair tutorials || air dried & messy waves
I wish I had a dollar, or a vodka soda, or a damn french fry for every time someone sat down and told me they wanted something "low-maintenance." While that is important information, I can assure you that low-maintenance is assumed until you tell me otherwise. I always tell my clients that no one comes in asking for a high-maintenance routine, and that it's something I can relate to because I prefer to keep things simple myself. My follow up question is usually "What is your current routine and how do you prefer to go about it?" Fifty percent of the time people tell me they just wash it and don't do anything at all. That is absolutely perfect if that is what you like to do, but don't expect your hair to look like anything else ever in that case. Not to sound like a grouch, but I hear it all too often: "I want this style but I don't want to do it." Unfortunately zero effort does not give us effortless hair (as much as I would love that too). There are so many ways to keep a low-maintenance yet styled hair routine. This one is my favorite this summer:
Step one:
Wash you hair with good shampoo and conditioner. Find something made for your hair texture and issues that is salon quality. Two out of the three times a week I wash my hair I use R+Co.'s ANALOG Cleansing Conditioner (co-wash, as some call it). It's hydrating and weightless on the hair.
Step two:
Towel dry, but don't be rough. Squeeze the water out of your hair with a soft towel or even a cotton t-shirt to prevent roughing the cuticle and causing frizz.
Step three:
Comb through your foundation products. Use a moisturizing cream to smooth your cuticle. I use R+Co. HIGH DIVE every single time. It smells incredible, nourishes your hair, and has a heat protectant formulated into it, so you don't need to apply one separately.
Step four:
Softly blow your hair dry about 30% and scrunch while you go to create a wave. Once you've gotten some of the water out, spray R+Co. SAIL throughout your entire head of hair and continue to scrunch. At this point I usually blow dry my hair to about 50-60% and continue to use SAIL as I scrunch and twist texture into my hair. If you prefer and if you have the time, just let it air dry.
Step five:
Once your hair is dry you can define the texture by using a styling paste to create a piecey look. I like to add a few defined curls in with my 1" curling iron. You can do as much or as little as you prefer at this point. (For soft, creamy paste try UNITE's Second Day, but for something with a little more grit and for some root lift, head for R+Co. BADLANDS Dry Shampoo Paste.)
That's all there is to it. Not including your shower products it only takes 3 things to keep your hair healthy and styled. DM me on instagram if you have questions and if you try it and love it send me or tag me in a selfie or something. This works with everyone a little differently, but always looks effortless and cool so I'd love to see what you're doing.
-I'm wearing Generation G in Zip in this post! Shop Glossier with me: glossier.com/reps/shannonlauritsen 20% your first Glossier order!-
ig: shannon_brigid youtube: shannonbrigid
Renaissance of Personal Style
The July 2017 issue of NYLON Magazine has this really cool spread called "Girls On Film," (it starts on page 84). Initially it was the hair in the spread that caught my eye, but as I flipped through I was reminded of this really cool photo series of Madonna shot by photographer Richard Corman in 1983. I first saw these photographs last year when I was online looking for old pictures of the East Village (you know, just a little self-inflicted torture). You can see all of the photographs on Richard Corman's website, including the contact sheets of the black and white series. They're so fucking cool.
The styling in the NYLON spread is no doubt outrageous and a lot less street than dear Madge in those portraits - but I love it. The suits, the embellishments, the insanely deep side part - so good. Now this is something I was sure would never come back. These are the (much more stylized) portrayals of the outfits our moms were wearing in the pictures of Christmas Eve at Aunt Tammy's house in 1985. Teen me looked at those photographs stored away in shoe boxes and was like "lol mom wtf."
So I'm sitting there with my coffee and my magazine thinking about how it has all come back. There are always going to be trends and always the risk of missing the mark, but so many trends run parallel with each other these days. Case in point, the same NYLON issue has a spread featuring designers like Dior, Osman, and Karen Walker who have tapped into different genres like folk, disco, and country for inspiration - and it's all awesome. Think about that dangerous garbage pit of time known as your Instagram explore page. There are so many looks flying around, and I like to appreciate them all no matter what degree of intention is behind them.
Then I got to thinking of a conversation I had with a friend a while back about whether or not periods of time could be defined by their look anymore. We couldn't think of how to uniquely describe the trends at this very moment - or how it will be looked back on 40 years from now. I pretty much blame everything on the internet, but between that and the side effects of fast fashion these days, everything is sort of a mashup of everything that came before it. For the longest time I thought that was such a shame - until today. It dawned on me flipping through this insanely eclectic (as they always are) issue of NYLON and started thinking... it's not bad that so many trends are recycled, that nothing feels 100% new anymore, because maybe... maybe we've entered the Renaissance of Personal Style. Now how fucking cool is that? I was excited at the thought and so inspired by the magazine in my lap. It was this realization that was a breath of fresh air. No better time than now for self-expression and a personal renaissance, so best not to waste it, I think -whatever that means for you.
Check out Richard Corman's book of Madonna portraits. Madonna NYC 83
get set.
Glossier Phase 2 // Boy Brow - Generation G (Zip) - Stretch Concealer
Cloud Paint Duo // Beam - Dusk Mask Duo // Moon Mask - Mega Greens
The Supers // Pure - Glow - Bounce Phase 1 // Milky Jelly Cleanser - Balm Dotcom - Priming Moisturizer
Use these sets to balance and care for your skin. Shop through my link for 20% off your first order and free shipping over $30. Enjoy your happy face!


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Educators, Activists, Entrepreneurs, and Lawyers Win Berkman Awards for Internet Innovation
Winners include Esra'a Al Shafei, Richard Baraniuk, John Breen, Jeffrey Cunard and Bruce Keller, Carl Malamud, and Noah Samara
Cambridge, MA - Announced Friday, May 16, at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society's tenth anniversary gala dinner, recipients of the Berkman Awards were chosen for their outstanding contributions to the Internet's impact on society over the past decade.
The international group of winners was selected from an open nomination process and comes from a range of fields including human rights and global advocacy; academia; communications and media; and law. The five cash award winners received $10,000 with no conditions on how the funds must be spent.
"There is an amazing amount of public interest innovation and activity on the Internet, and selecting these award winners from an extraordinary field of nominees and finalists was a daunting task," said John Palfrey, Harvard Law School Clinical Professor and Berkman Center Executive Director. "We hope that these Internet heroes will continue to lead and inspire, making the positive potential of networks a reality."
A Berkman Award went to Esra'a Al Shafei of Bahrain, the 21-year-old director of student-owned MideastYouth.com, whose mission is "to inspire and provide young people with the freedom and opportunity of expression, and facilitate a fierce but respectful dialogue among the highly diverse youth of all sects, socio-economic backgrounds, and political and religious beliefs in the Middle East." MideastYouth.com fights for social change with podcasts, blogs, social networks, and online video.
Engineering professor Richard Baraniuk received a Berkman Award for founding Connexions at Rice University. Connexions lets teachers share digital texts and learning materials, modify them, and disseminate them online using a Creative Commons license. This free, open-source platform is a building block towards a system of open educational resources.
John Breen was recognized with a Berkman Award for creating FreeRice.com. FreeRice asks site users to answer multiple-choice vocabulary questions and, for every correct answer, donates 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Programme. According to the website, over 27 billion grains of rice have been distributed thus far.
Carl Malamud received a Berkman Award for creating Public.Resource.Org. Malamud is making US case law and government documents freely available online. He has also made images from the Smithsonian freely available on the Flickr photo sharing site and pushed to get broadcast-quality video of all congressional committee hearings posted online by the end of the 110th Congress. He is working with the National Technical Information Service to digitize and put NTIS' multimedia online. Malamud is making the work of governments more transparent and providing citizens around the world with greater access to legal information.
A Berkman Award was given to Noah Samara, the Ethiopian satellite expert who founded WorldSpace, whose satellite network provides radio and data services to Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and Europe. His work has been cited as a major conceptual influence on XM satellite radio. WorldSpace was one of the most innovative uses of communications satellites when it was launched. In addition to the commercial satellite radio and data service offerings, Mr. Samara has provided the leadership to leverage the project to provide information and entertainment services to people in extremely rural parts of Africa and Asia.
The Berkman Center gave its highest honor, an award for pro bono service, to Jeffrey Cunard and Bruce Keller of Debevoise & Plimpton. Two of the leading Internet lawyers in the world, Cunard and Keller were honored for their pro bono service as lawyers and educators. Over the past five years, despite their demanding private practice, Cunard and Keller have volunteered thousands of hours as classroom and clinical teachers at Harvard Law School. For several years, on a weekly basis during the term, they have flown to Cambridge from Washington and New York, respectively, to teach in person. They have co-authored, and continuously updated, the leading treatise on copyright law in a digital era.
The awards presentation was the finale of the Berkman Center's year-long, tenth anniversary celebration, Berkman@10, and marked the end of the Berkman@10 conference, a landmark event on "The Future of the Internet," held on May 15 and 16, 2008, in Cambridge, MA.
About the Berkman Center
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is proud to celebrate its tenth anniversary as a research program founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. Founded at Harvard Law School in 1997, through a generous gift from Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman, the Center is now home to an ever-growing community of faculty, fellows, staff, and affiliates working on projects that span the broad range of intersections between cyberspace, technology, and society. More information can be found at http://cyber.harvard.edu.
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Lexie Koss, 617-384-9100, firstname.lastname@example.com
MideastYouth.com (Esra'a Al Shafei)
(+973) 39755-355, firstname.lastname@example.com
Rice University (Richard Baraniuk)
Jade Boyd, 713-348-6778, firstname.lastname@example.com
World Food Program (John Breen)
Jennifer Parmelee, 202-653-0010, email@example.com
Bettina Luescher, 646-824-1112, email@example.com
Public.Resource.Org (Carl Malamud)
707-827-7290, firstname.lastname@example.com
WorldSpace (Noah Samara)
Katie Staker, 301-960-1214, email@example.com
Debevoise & Plimpton (Jeffrey Cunard and Bruce Keller)
Matt Cobey, 212-909-7310, firstname.lastname@example.com
(Photographs of acceptance speeches were taken by Berkman Center intern Yvette Wohn.)
Stay in touch
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May 11, 2015 •
Education, Events, Top Stories •
IT News Africa •
Comments Off on eLearning Africa 2015: Ministers to discuss building on Africa's progress in education
As attention moves from the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), political leaders will join education experts and investors at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa later this month to discuss the role...
March 11, 2014 •
Mobile and Telecoms, Top Stories •
Charlie Fripp •
Comments Off on eLearning a focus for Africa
More than ever before, Africans are turning to ICT-supported learning to grow their economies. In 2013, the eLearning Africa Report found that 40% of African technology-assisted learning professionals were using ICTs specifically for skills training, up from...
January 13, 2014 •
East Africa, Southern Africa, Top Stories, West Africa •
Chris Tredger •
Comments Off on African e-Learning service providers at the top of their class
With South African media reports claiming that space is limited at public tertiary education institutions, the reality facing many who have matriculated is that whilst their efforts may have earned university exemption, they may not necessarily have secured a...
May 22, 2012 •
Mobile and Telecoms •
Chris Tredger •
Comments Off on Connectivity essential to education in Africa
The Honourable Max Ahouéké, Minister of Communication and Information and Communication Technologies of the Republic of Benin, will present the results this week of a major survey of the impact of new technology and improved connectivity on education...
May 29, 2009 •
Top Stories •
Charlie Fripp •
Comments Off on Senegal hosts eLearning Africa conference
Senegal's president, Abdoulaye Wade, has outlined his vision for radical change in African education, and criticised European governments for restricting access for African students to educational institutions in their contries...
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text: In spite of Leslie Easterbrook has story vital best film role to her credit, it happens to come civility of anybody of the most tough comedy franchises of the 1980s (and concisely into the 1990s). Playing off her looks, Easterbrook first gained notice as Marilyn Monroe-wannabe Rhonda Lee on the hit sitcom Laverne and Shirley from 1980 to 1983. Along with a supporting role in the sex comedy Private Attend (1984), Easterbrook at made her eye-opener indicator as Sgt. Callahan in the hit


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English | CBZ | 13MB
Before a new adventure begins, take a journey back 1,000 years to the reign of King Grayskull. Newly victorious over Hordak, it is a time of great victory and celebration for the King and Castle Grayskull stands in all of its regal glory. But an ominous prophecy weighs upon the crown, and sinister forces are already at work to see that it comes true.


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Police: Robert Noon III drove wrong way on Sunrise Highway service road in stolen car
Police say a man was arrested after leading police on a pursuit and driving in the wrong direction on the Sunrise Highway service road.
Authorities say they spotted a truck that had been reported stolen on Montauk Highway. When officers attempted to pull the Jeep Grand Cherokee over, they say the driver hit the gas.
Authorities say 39-year-old Robert Noon III approached Sunrise Highway near Hospital Road and got on the highway heading west in the eastbound lanes at around 1 a.m.
Police chased Noon for one exit, but then called off the pursuit due to safety concerns.
About an hour later, a car crash was reported in front of a home in Bohemia. A local homeowner says he saw someone run off after the crash. Police believe it was Noon leaving the scene.
Noon was eventually arrested at a home on 13th Street in Bohemia that he had frequented when he was in trouble with the law, the homeowners told News 12. They say Noon was banging on the door until they let him in. He then hid in a back room until police arrived on the scene.
As News 12 has reported, Noon was charged in a string of burglaries on the East End last year. He has also been incarcerated before for a home invasion.


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Energy Economics Weekly Briefing: China's New Energy Vehicles
- China's government leaders have outlined an ambitious plan to increase the sales and production of new energy vehicles.
- As in other countries, without substantial subsidies or carbon taxes, aggressive targets will be difficult to achieve.
Get this week's full report at the link.
To receive weekly briefings via email, click here or email email@example.com.
About this project
Energy Economics Weekly Briefings, by UMEI Senior Economist Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, feature an economist's look at the national transportation, energy, economic, and environmental landscape.
Hughes-Cromwick recently completed an appointment as Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Commerce during the Obama Administration. At the Department of Commerce, Hughes-Cromwick worked on several administration initiatives to improve data quality, measure the digital economy, and expand manufacturing, trade and investment. She assisted Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker on global macroeconomic matters in support of her commercial diplomacy, trade, and foreign direct investment initiatives. Hughes-Cromwick also supported the development of the Obama Administration's economic forecast.
Prior to joining the U.S. Department of Commerce, Hughes-Cromwick was chief global economist at Ford Motor Company and an Adjunct Professor at U-M's Ross School of Business. She led Ford's global corporate economics group with major responsibility for the Company's global economic, financial, and automotive industry forecasts used to support business strategy, finance, and planning.


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7. Limitation of Liability YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOU ASSUME FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR USE OF THE SITE AND ANY SOFTWARE OR FIRMWARE DOWNLOADED THEREFROM. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT ANY INFORMATION YOU SEND OR RECEIVE DURING YOUR USE OF THE SITE MAY NOT BE SECURE AND MAY BE INTERCEPTED OR LATER ACQUIRED BY UNAUTHORIZED PARTIES. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOUR USE OF THE SITE AND ANY SOFTWARE OR FIRMWARE DOWNLOADED THEREFROM IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. RECOGNIZING SUCH, YOU UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT, TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, NEITHER VTECH NOR ITS SUPPLIERS, LICENSORS, PARENT, SUBSIDIARIES, AFFILIATES, DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, AGENTS, CO-BRANDERS, OTHER PARTNERS, OR EMPLOYEES WILL BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE, EXEMPLARY OR OTHER DAMAGES OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF PROFITS, GOODWILL, USE, DATA OR OTHER TANGIBLE OR INTANGIBLE LOSSES OR ANY OTHER DAMAGES OR LOSS BASED ON CONTRACT, TORT, STRICT LIABILITY OR ANY OTHER THEORY (EVEN IF VTECH HAD BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES), RESULTING FROM THE SITE OR SOFTWARE OR FIRMWARE DOWNLOADED THEREFROM; THE USE OR THE INABILITY TO USE THE SITE; UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO OR ALTERATION OR DESTRUCTION OR DELETION OF YOUR TRANSMISSIONS OR DATA OR DEVICE; STATEMENTS OR CONDUCT OF ANY THIRD PARTY ON THE SITE; ANY ACTIONS WE TAKE OR FAIL TO TAKE AS A RESULT OF COMMUNICATIONS YOU SEND TO US; HUMAN ERRORS; TECHNICAL MALFUNCTIONS; FAILURES, INCLUDING PUBLIC UTILITY OR TELEPHONE OR INTERNET OUTAGES; OMISSIONS, INTERRUPTIONS, LATENCY, DELETIONS OR DEFECTS OF ANY DEVICE OR NETWORK, PROVIDERS, OR SOFTWARE; ANY INJURY OR DAMAGE TO COMPUTER EQUIPMENT; INABILITY TO FULLY ACCESS THE SITE OR ANY OTHER SITE; THEFT, TAMPERING, DESTRUCTION, OR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO, OR ALTERATION OF, ENTRIES, IMAGES OR OTHER CONTENT OF ANY KIND; TYPOGRAPHICAL, PRINTING OR OTHER ERRORS, OR ANY COMBINATION THEREOF; OR ANY OTHER MATTER RELATING TO THE SITE OR THE SOFTWARE OR FIRMWARE DOWNLOADED THEREFROM. NOTWITHSTANDING ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY CONTAINED HEREIN, VTECH'S LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ANY CAUSE WHATSOEVER AND REGARDLESS OF THE FORM OF THE ACTION, WILL AT ALL TIMES BE LIMITED TO THE AMOUNT PAID, IF ANY, BY YOU TO PURCHASE A VTECH DEVICE OR SOFTWARE. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or the limitation or exclusion of liability for incidental or consequential damages. Accordingly, some of the above limitations may not apply to you.
Tag Archives: privacy
Where's Wally? Tracking the president with GPS
Is the security of wearable technology really a big deal? Is the security of IoT devices really such a big deal? I mean, my fridge, my light bulb, my other cliché, what use are they to an attacker? Who really cares where I am, how fast my heart is beating or what my typical pace is over any given distance?
Maybe this photo of the President of the United States sporting his shiny new fitbit Surge gives you all the answer you need. The POTUS, wearing a fitbit, with GPS, being tracked 24/7, by a third party… See where I'm going?
The Internet of Things (IoT) and even more broadly, the Internet of Everything (IoE) are still nascent areas of technology where individual physical devices with embedded electronics, software and sensors are internet connected in order to provide greater value by exchanging data without the need for direct human intervention. This rapidly expanding arc of the information technology rainbow has attracted much attention recently from security researchers; with presentations at the high profile security events, breaking the security of home security systems, cars and many others.
Whilst this research is important in practical terms, hopefully driving some manufacturers to resolve the issues identified, it is also somewhat misdirected.
IoT devices themselves are almost invariably sold as a "black box" solution,; little to no user interface and no options for aftermarket security or tweaking. They are most often low memory, low storage, low processor-power devices designed primarily to harvest data and forward it on for the actual processing. And there's the rub. The data is sent off-device, to the cloud, where it can be processed, mined, correlated and cross-referenced. Where it can be BIG data.
It is a simple matter for a security researcher to acquire a piece of interesting technology and begin to dissect it for vulnerabilities. Of course it takes skill to do so, but there are no significant barriers aside from that. You buy the kit and you break it.
It is a far more complex minefield to navigate if you set out to test the security of the back-end to those devices. In fact, more often than not it is illegal. To probe the security of someone else's data centre without their permission, to break in and see what treasure is there for the taking, that ventures outside the realms of research and into the criminal, so the good guys don't do it.
The bad guys, of course, don't have to play by those rules, targeted attacks are their stock in trade, and data centres are fast becoming targets of choice. If the President of the USA is wearing technology x, then technology x's back-end suddenly presents a juicy looking target for criminal or state-sponsored attack and they won't be discerning about who else's data they make available either.
Data in general is gold dust to attackers, the more of it one can accumulate, the more tailored, credible and successful one's attacks can become. All too often devices destined to be connected and used online are designed and produced either by traditional organisations who have typically not had to pay attention to digital security during the manufacture and design process or by entrepreneurs who are too interested in getting their first product to market to be slowed down by some nagging security concern.
It is becoming a significant challenge to regulatory bodies and to governments to ensure that safety standards, which have previously focused on the physical risks of a product and its components, accurately and clearly identify digital risks and outline the minimum safety criteria. Perhaps in the near future we can hope for a kind of digital kite-mark, offering at least some assurance that physical goods and their supporting infrastructure have been designed and built to a defined standard of digital security, that security was baked -in, not glossed over and that none of the small parts may cause choking. The need for this becomes ever more urgent as pretty much every £100+ good becomes connected in some way, in fact Gartner estimated in 2013 that by the year 2020 (have you watched our award-winning web series yet?) there will be more than 30 billion "connected devices".
What you really accept when you use How-Old.net
Microsoft had an apparently unexpected hit on their hands with the unveiling of the "How Old Do I Look?" service at the Microsoft Build conference last week. By the weekend my Facebook feed was filling up with friends from all over the globe sharing the results of their own submissions to the service. For the three of you that haven't come across this viral hit recently, "How Old Do I Look" allows a user to upload a photo and will attempt to correctly guess the age of the subject of the picture, with the results ranging from the spectacularly awful to the incredibly accurate.
My vanity drove me to the website to upload a picture of my ageing mug. Before uploading though, unlike most users it would seem, I paused to read the Terms of Use linked from the landing page of the service. After being initially reassured by the clear and unambiguous "P.S. We don't keep the photo" right below the upload button, the ToU told a very different story…
From the "Materials Posted on this Website" section of the ToU (my own bolding):
"[…] by posting, uploading, inputting, providing, or submitting your Submission, you are granting Microsoft, its affiliated companies, and necessary sublicensees permission to use your Submission in connection with the operation of their Internet businesses (including, without limitation, all Microsoft services), including, without limitation, the license rights to: copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate, and reformat your Submission; to publish your name in connection with your Submission; and to sublicense such rights to any supplier of the Website Services"
These are actually the standard ToU for Microsoft's Azure cloud services, they are broadly similar to the ToU of many, many other online services. While I am not trying to insinuate that Microsoft have some sneaky photo-stealing agenda, these ToU do really serve to illustrate a couple of perennial problems in information security.
– The scale of customers' unwillingness to inform themselves of what exactly they are agreeing to when making use of information technology.
These terms were not hidden away, they were clearly linked from the front page of the service, yet not one of the people I spoke to had bothered to click through. Perhaps we have been educated into apathy. Many companies are certainly guilty of producing reams and reams of agreements and terms that a customer could never reasonably be expected to digest (*cough*iTunes*cough*) but this was not an example of that. These Terms were relatively clear and concise and not overly long.
– The cult of overasking.
It seems that the developers of the How Old service had no intention at any time of storing your images, or of "publishing your name in connection with your submission", but instead of crafting a Terms of Use document specifically for their own service, potentially one that could have been far more brief, human-readable and accessible, they fell back on the default Microsoft Azure ToU.
These kinds of clauses help no one. In most cases the motivation behind such a broad legal definition of rights is a technical one. The service provider needs to cover the processing, caching, and publishing of user submitted data. They need to legally define the normal operation of their service. However, the legal eagles, in attempting to define that service, grant themselves such a broad swathe of rights, going on to qualify them with phrases such as "without limitation" that the end result is Orwellian in scope.
When the rights reserved by the operators of "How Old" are pointed out to the users of the service they are clearly concerned, often to the extent that they wish they had never used the service. This isn't fear-mongering, this is a natural and understandable reaction to the feeling that a faceless corporation is "taking liberties" with their data or duping them with a "bait and switch" scam. "We don't keep the photo (but we can if we want to)".
These things must end. It is our own responsibility to keep ourselves informed of the content of agreements that we make. Whether that's a pen and ink signature on an agreement of a digital click of acquiescence. We need to reject terms with which we are uncomfortable and push back on overly greedy legal documents.
At the same time, the legal officers, particularly of the global mega-vendors have a duty to become more tech-savvy. To be able to better define the technical rights necessary for the operation of a service accurately, without the need for land-grabbing phrases such as "without limitation"


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Ride behind a 1960 Alco diesel engine on a train with each car decorated for the season. Santa Claus greets passengers, and Mrs. Claus helps serve delicious cookies. Enjoy hot chocolate while reading along with "The North Pole Flyer" Christmas story. Round trip is approximately two hours long (there are no stops to deboard).
December 6-7, 13-14, 20-21
401 E. Whitestone Blvd.


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The uprising in Egypt is triggering calls for similar unrest elsewhere in the Middle East:
* In Jordan:
Muslim Brotherhood leader Hammam Saeed predicts that Arab governments aligned with the United States will topple.
"People have woken up and are ready to unseat the tyrant leaders who remained in power because of US backing," he said.
* In Yemen:
President Ali Abdullah Saleh's supporters broke up a march to the Egyptian Embassy by protestors chanting, "The people want the regime to fall!"
* In Iran:
Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi compared the protests in Egypt to those in Iran after its contested elections of 2009.


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Wednesday, 31 March 2010
Mikisoq development art
In the summer of 2008 I had the big fun of working on development art for the 3D feature Mikisoq for A-film. The site is just launched please check it out.
I did a whole bunch of location designs together with director Jesper Møller and Søren E Olsen who started it all several years ago.
Posted by bjarne-h at 10:57 1 comment:
Labels: Mikisoq, Production Design Animation
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Malcolm Hill
High school: Belleville East.
Class: Senior.
College: Illinois.
Malcolm Hill
High school: Belleville East.
Class: Senior.
College: Illinois.
Position: Guard/forward.
Height: 6-5.
Team highlights: East won its first 11 games and was ranked no lower than No. 6 in Class 4A by the Associated Press during the regular season. Won two games against O'Fallon and went 13-1 in conference play before being upset 70-59 by O'Fallon in a regional semifinal.
Individual highlights: A second-team selection for the second straight year, Hill averaged 25.3 points and 6 rebounds while making 58 percent of his 2-pointers, 36.5 percent of his 3s and 80.2 percent of his free throws.
FYI: With the departures of seniors Brandon Paul and D.J. Richardson, Hill should make an immediate impact in Champaign next season.
Alvin Ellis
High school: De La Salle.
Class: Senior.
College: Minnesota.
Position: Guard.
Height: 6-3.
Team highlights: Despite losing three Division I players to transfers the last two offseasons, De La Salle (17-8, 8-3) won its first five games, including the championship of the Hinsdale South Thanksgiving Tournament, and finished second in the Catholic League South.
Individual highlights: De La Salle needed a little bit of everything from Ellis, and one of the state's most improved players delivered. He averaged 20.2 points, 5.7 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 2.7 steals and 1.6 blocks.
FYI: Ellis signed with Minnesota in the fall, but his future is still uncertain after the firing of Gophers coach Tubby Smith.
Billy Garrett Jr.
High school: Morgan Park.
Class: Senior.
College: DePaul.
Position: Guard.
Height: 6-5.
Team highlights: As if beating Simeon in a Public League semifinal wasn't enough, Morgan Park won its first state championship since 1976 with a 63-48 victory over Cahokia in the Class 3A final. The Mustangs (33-3) also won the prestigious Proviso West Holiday Tournament for the first time.
Individual highlights: Garrett's driving layup over a taller defender with 10 seconds to play gave Morgan Park a 54-53 victory over Simeon in the city tournament. He averaged a team-best 17.9 points despite playing a fast-paced style that doesn't cater to his strengths.
FYI: Garrett will join his father, DePaul assistant coach Billy Garrett, in Lincoln Park.
Kyle Davis
High school: Morgan Park.
Class: Senior.
College: Dayton.
Position: Guard.
Height: 6-0.
Team highlights: Morgan Park reached triple digits three times during the regular season and twice in the state playoffs. The Mustangs defeated their seven postseason opponents by an average of 38.3 points and beat Class 4A semifinalist Proviso East by 25 in the Proviso West tournament final.
Individual highlights: A tenacious defensive guard, Davis led Morgan Park in scoring in eight of the last 10 and the final six regular-season games. He averaged 16.8 points and nearly five steals per game.
FYI: Davis transferred to Morgan Park from Hyde Park following the first semester of his junior year.
Alec Peters
High school: Washington.
Class: Senior.
College: Valparaiso.
Position: Forward.
Height: 6-7.
Team highlights: Won 28 of its first 29 games before being upset by Bartonville Limestone in a Class 3A regional final.
Individual highlights: Peters averaged 22.6 points and 9 rebounds and shot 53.6 percent from the field, 44.3 percent on 3-pointers and 83.3 percent on free throws.
FYI: Peters chose Valparaiso from more than 20 scholarship offers.


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What wxperience do you have releating to this subject?
plz in need this for mybook report
plz in need this for mybook report
This is a questions that calls for your personal experiences. Do you have a friend who's life changed because he/ she lost one or both parents. Losing a parent doesn't always have to do with death, it might also occur because of divorce. Possibly you've had a great adventure of your own, or may you've been on a cruise and can relate to ocean travel. Look at your experiences and then relate them to the text.


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Deadzone THE Article: The Future's So Bright We Need Shades
March 12, 2014 by crew
Well it's been another month so now another article! The past month has been a wild ride with Survey Two for the Deadzone Kickstarter coming out and then the extremely successful Dreadball Xtreme Kickstarter. We'll have a look at them and then discuss what we hope the future bring for the Warpath universe and Mantic Games.
More From The Deadzone Kickstarter
Survey Two for Deadzone was a fun surprise. We all knew it was coming but the new stuff in it and previews of what was to come got us excited, all over again. Sure it was filled with all the old bits and pieces you might want to add to your pledge but it was the new things that got us going. And for those who didn't pledge for the kickstarter last year, no worries because all these miniatures should be available this summer for all of our drooling maws!
First up we got to see the sprue for the Deadzone Zombies. Some people might not like the fact that each body part is a separate piece but we love the idea of mixing and matching to create some awesome looking undead. Also note that these walkers have guns! I'd like to see Rick and Carl (The Walking Dead) deal with that!
Also new are the yet unseen Dead Figures which includes one of each of the four main factions. And if you haven't guessed, they're dead. We guess it adds a little gore to the battlefield but we're not quite sure how useful they are.
Here is where the survey got my pants tight, as Jack would say. A Female Enforcer Pathfinder on and off her bike. Personally I'm not sold on the monocycle she's sporting here. It seems a little clown college to me but I guess they had to do something different from the Forge Father's bikes. It is different, I'll give it that but I'm a sucker for vehicles so this is a no brainer buy.
Also another auto-buy are the Striders. Due to some material changes the great men at Mantic have decided to give us two Striders for the price of one! Irresistible.
Now for a little comparison; as a kickstarter exclusive they have made an alternate sculpt of The Survivor. The exclusive one is the arm down version but personally We like the proactive look. Post below which one you guys think looks cooler.
The Enforcers were short changed in the initial release due to problems with the hard plastic but now we get some much needed back up in Survey Two. There is a new offering of a Warpath Enforcer with Thermal Rifle/Fusion Gun and also we get to see the much anticipated Hard Plastic Enforcers in Peacekeeper armour!
These guys look super tough and we hope they keep the dynamic poses! No longer will the Plague laugh at their puny armour!! No longer will they be called skinny twerps and have sand kicked in their faces!!!
Another new unseen mini is a poor Enforcer who got all Plagued up holding an "experimental weapon"… whatever that is. Also the guys at Mantic listened to the fans and have added the option to buy Reb Soraks for cheap and a whole new type of Sorak called a Swordspawn. Maybe his combat knives will be a little more effective than the Blaster the regular Soraks wield! The Marauders also get a un-cyberfied version of the Mawbeast if you want one of these cuddly guys running around.
The Marauders also have something called an upgrade pack which includes five Metal Helmeted Heads, BFGs and other Special Weapons. What this will do for these guys is unclear. We had hoped it would improve their foolish, greenskin mugs but maybe we can wish for at least balaclavas to hide their shame.
The Asterians and Forge Fathers are getting some new minis too with something called a Pulse Bombard Weapon drone for the space elves and a Jotunn Urban Demolisher for the Dwarves. What these are is up for debate but I'm sure we'll get some concept shots soon. The Forge Fathers also have a couple of Warpath heroes to choose from which we hope come with Deadzone stats cards thus bringing the two games together (but more on that later).
Lastly, the big surprise with the Survey is a new type of scenery sprue appropriately called the Deadzone Scenery Expansion Sprue.
It's nice to see the line of terrain expanding already even after getting the Fortification and Landing Pad sprues and before we get our hands on the Damaged scenery sprues. More fun toys to build blocks with!
It looks like we will be receiving all this in June so until then we'll just have to play with the old stuff that most of us are still assembling and painting. Speaking of new stuff…
Right now the Dreadball Xtreme kickstarter is just ending. We thought we'd talk a little about all the new stuff it will be adding to the Warpath universe that Dreadball, Deadzone and Warpath share. It seems Mantic likes coming up with new races for their pantheon. Every time we turn around there are new aliens inhabiting the ever expanding galaxy for the Corporation to exploit and turn into enemies. With all these new races we can see the future for Deadzone expansions laid out and we can't wait for some stat cards for these guys. Lets have a look at them.
The Asterians
So it seems the previous incarnation of Asterians in Dreadball were just a bunch of posers and the real ones are here to fight. These guys are described as brutal, warlike Asterians; maybe more of a Dark Space Elf? We love the Mohawks and mean looks and we'd kill to see these ladies toe to toe with some Plague.
The Plague
Sure they are genetic experiments mixing the Plague with other aliens and (sort of) tame, trained Dreadball players but the opportunities for modding are endless.
These guys are entirely modular so more mix and matching or even add some new arms (or tentacles) to your existing Plague!
The Mechanites
These guys would be awesome to use in Deadzone as some kind of Robot Security Force. Once again they are all individual parts you can choose to assemble how you want and they even come with weapons, which makes adding them to Deadzone even easier.
The Crystallans
Another new race/team is the Crystallans. These guys are arch enemies to the Forge Fathers, who blew up their home planet and will be made in blue, crystal plastic.
The Rebs
Not to be left out are the Reb aliens playing DreadBall. This gives Reb Deadzone players more options for your forces. Just add some weapons and you have a whole new unit.
There are new and old alien types in here. Imagine a centaur race running around with your Rebs or the four armed guy! Also there is a Sphyr team with their own axe to grind against the Corporations.
These guys used to live on a water world before a Corporation weapon test turned the place into a desert. There seems to be a lot of world ruining going on in the Warpath universe. Someone might want to check into the safety practices there!
Along with the teams there are also tons on free agents with enough back stories to fill books.
Vlorox Spinpede & Avaran Treebeast
Brute Force
Lyra the Fixer
Now we can just hope for some Deadzone stat cards for all these guys! These worlds keeps expanding even when the core games aren't in the limelight. It's what Mantic has perfected in their systems. Just look at Warpath. There hasn't been an update to the core system in years and yet the universe has expanded immensely. This brings us to the question, what is next?
What the Future Holds
Mantic has already promised a Warpath kickstarter, which will probably happen late this year. With it we can assume a new rule set and a whole bunch of new armies to play. As Deadzone players; what can we hope for in the future? Personally, as we have stated many times, we would love the addition of vehicles beyond the bikes and Striders we've been given so far.
We can also hope for a system similar to Dust Tactics/Warfare where each unit has stat cards for both systems and maybe even rules for DreadBall play. As there are today I'm sure the armed forces of the future have sports teams. They would go out to play exhibition games or even be college teams like Army or Navy in the US College Football system. Imagine Corporation Marines vs. a Nameless Team on the pitch.
If Mantic doesn't give Deadzone players the opportunity to buy Warpath minis to use in Deadzone or Dreadball figures in Warpath I think they're really missing out. Then again they've already proved that they understand what there fans want. In the Mars Attack kickstarter they added stat cards for Deadzone and a Martian Dreadball team. Lets just hope they keep up this cross pollination and expand it to all their Warpath universe games. Then again we've already spend too much on Mantic, maybe they shouldn't do it, maybe we want to be able to clothe and feed ourselves instead of buying into everything Mantic does.
If you would like to write articles for Beasts of War then please contact me at [email protected]!
"No longer will the Plague laugh at their puny armour!!"
Supported by
"Imagine Corporation Marines vs. a Nameless Team on the pitch.."
Supported by


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SOUTH AMBOY — On July 25, The Amboy Foundation presented a $1,000 check to the Dowdell Library Foundation to support the Sadie Pope Dowdell Public Library of South Amboy. The check was presented by Joseph Mullane, vice president of Amboy Bank, and Mariola Jones, manager of the bank's South Amboy branch.
The Amboy Foundation's contribution will be used toward purchasing additional computers for the library's children's room. A key goal of the Dowdell Library is to be proactive in providing electronic educational resources for children and young adults.
Mimi Pichey, president of the Dowdell Library Foundation, noted, "The Amboy Foundation's generous gift will provide lifelong learning opportunities to the South Amboy community. We are very grateful to Amboy Bank and its foundation for their support."
The Dowdell Library Foundation is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization. For more information, visit www.DowdellFoundation.org or call 1-732-316-1078.
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