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For as long as I have worked in financial services IT (and some time before), video has been trumpeted as the "next big thing" for retail financial services but has not taken off as predicted. Yet I wonder if this solution that Bank of Moscow has rolled out and the news week before of Bank of America is piloting video for wealth management might change that....
The vision presented by technology vendors has been compelling; the idea that an expert in a branch or in a contact centre could cover many other branches by being video conferenced in to that critical customer meeting. At a stroke travel expense could be reduced as there would be no need to have advisors moving around doing one day a week at each branch of their territory. Customer experience could also be improved radically, as no longer would a customer wanting advice on a pension (or other regulated product) be told to "....make an appointment and come back when the advisor is in".
The financial arguments have also seemed compelling. Training staff to sell regulated products is expensive and HNW (High Net Worth) and other attractive target customer groups are not the customers who frequent high street branches. My last blog post ("Where did it go wrong for Barclays branches?") went into this more detail, but there are very limited returns from basing expensive people in branch and relying on passing trade and the business marketing can drive to those branches.
To a certain extent the puzzle is why video has not been used earlier, and I think the problem has been partly technical and partly organizational.
The organizational problems are understandable. Branch managers like to be able to see their staff, and when measured on sales they want to have control over the people doing the selling. Having them physically in the branch is one of the easier ways of meeting that need. Similarly, branch sales advisors have enjoyed the status they have within the branch and moving to a contact centre environment (even a video contact centre) has been seen as a demotion. Given the low barriers to setting up as an IFA if you are already qualified, retention of qualified staff has been an issue for all the major banks. Finally, the customer experience of early video conferencing did not meet the hype, and this has stayed in the minds of many business users and customers.
The poor experience of early video conferencing solutions were largely a result of the technical limitations imposed by making any solution cost effective. Early approaches lacked common standards and, as with much in telecoms and IT, the rise of IP (Internet Protocol) has helped hugely to drive down costs and increase compatibility. IP hasn't solved everything, and there are still 'debates' among vendors (sometimes pursued to the levels of near religious war) about the relative merits of the H323, H264 and SIP protocols but common standards have made a huge difference to costs. Furthermore, IP protocols put video conferencing much more into the world of IT and software and into a world where the user experience matters. I would argue that the problem with many of the initial video conferencing solutions was that they were so focused on the technical challenges that they tended to neglect the user. The poor quality image with a slow refresh rate and of early video conferencing (as well as the difficulty and poor user interfaces for setting up calls) has been largely addressed in the solutions from today's the leading vendors. In fact user experience has been one of the key features of both Cisco Telepresence and HP Halo and may be significant factor why these are succeeding where more specialized predecessors have failed.
I find it especially interesting in the case of Bank of Moscow is that this integration is based on Avaya. Avaya are noted for their strength in contact centre, most notably around the ACD (the system that distributes calls to agents) and video is a relatively new area for them. It is a sign of the impact of protocols that Avaya (who have launched their next generation of contact centre based on SIP as a standard) are able to integrate video into what has historically been a voice environment.
In other words, the historic obstacles to video of user reluctance and technical inhibitors have been largely addressed and video can be deployed. The question, though, is will video deliver?
I believe there is one more hurdle to overcome that many vendors have not yet appreciated. The technical, the business case and the usability by non-IT staff are merely pre-requisites for video to be deployed. For video to succeed in this type of retail financial services it remains to be seen how it affects the psychology of consumers. Will consumers be prepared to take financial advice in a video session? Will the technology prove too distracting or disorientating for some demographics to engage in the integration?
These questions remain unanswered, but it will be interesting to see if video can deliver on its potential.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Has video finally arrived for branch and contact centre?
For as long as I have worked in financial services IT (and some time before), video has been trumpeted as the "next big thing" for retail financial services but has not taken off as predicted. Yet I wonder if this solution that Bank of Moscow has rolled out and the news week before of Bank of America is piloting video for wealth management might change that....
Posted by Alex at 3/10/2011 11:46:00 AM 1 comments
Labels: Bank of America, Bank of Moscow, Banking, Barclays, branch contact centre, Contact Center, video, Video Call Centre
Monday, January 31, 2011
Where did it go wrong for the Barclays branches?
It was a surprise last week for me to see the news that Barclays was to sack 1,000 Financial Advisors from their branch network.
It's a while now since I last worked on bank branch IT, but when I did (only four years ago) the focus was very much around replacing old branch systems and enabling branch as a sales channel. The market was full of software vendors offering everything from the RFID identification of clients to analytics engines that ensured the presentation of the best offer to clients. Many of these products also talked about their multi-channel capabilities (by which they meant internet) and a very significant focus of the market was on enabling sales in branch. Occasionally lip-service was paid to contact centre or ATM or mobile, but the main focus of the analysts, consultants and many banking executives was on branch based sales.
So where did it go wrong for the Barclay's branch advisors? At a superficial level, being a sales person at a bank with a strong brand, at one of the few banks not to need a government bail-out and with a large UK retail market share would seem very attractive. Barclays has a good SMB business banking franchise, so that would suggest lots of small business owners to sell products to.
I think part of the answer is that the target market is still attractive and still there. The number of individuals just below High Net Worth (HNW) status continues to grow and these individuals need advice. The true HNW demographic that is targeted by the Barclays Wealth division, part of Barclays Capital, so although there may be some overlap the branch advisors had a significant number of potential customers. The branch advisers were meant to target individuals who were below the £500k asset threshold required for Barclays Wealth, but I suspect the advisors didn't for a number of reasons.
Firstly these higher earners or asset significant individuals do not regularly visit branches. I'm prepared to bet that most Finextra readers (especially those who live & work outside a city centre) have not been to a bank branch in a long time and this seemed to be the case for many Barclays branch customers.
Additionally, as Barclays acknowledge, buying habits have changed substantially and as Barclays say the reduction in branch advisors is "…reflecting a growing trend of customers purchasing and managing their investments online". The problem for Barclays is that the wealthy middle class individuals who they most want to target are some of those who have most readily adopted the internet as a comparison shopping channel. The growth of UK financial services comparison sites (Go Compare, Money Supermarket.com, etc…) has had a profound effect on insurance (I last wrote about it in this blog post on Aviva 2008) and clearly is catching up with retail banking. There seems to me little point marketing to customers on the basis of brand when most customers can purchase products without engaging with any of the brand value propositions and can instead buy more easily on price, on line. Barclays are acknowledging some of this reality with the launch of their online "Investor Zone" and all their retail investment services will now go through this route on a non-advice basis.
The problem is I'm not quite sure where these leaves branch banking. Advisers in branch were expensive, but were always justified as necessary for selling the higher margin, usually longer term products. The trouble was that branch advisers were not necessarily that well utilized and many of the more aware customers preferred to use either on-line purchase without advice or the service of an Independent Financial Advisor (IFA). I thought Barclays had the right idea with their centralized Barclays Financial Planning team when they had that operating as a central team, based from a contact centre. That model, where an IFA qualified adviser could remotely cover the branches too small to have a dedicated financial adviser seemed to me to combine the necessary level of coverage and scale that was necessary to be cost effective. However, the model didn't seem that successful in practice and I wonder if that was due to the maturity of the technology. At the time, multi-channel was not easily possible in an integrated manner and this made things very difficult when trying to run a sales business that was regulated by both OfCom and the FSA. Longer term, I wonder if video could be the solution for the centralized adviser model (though it's been talked about for long enough) or whether we may seem some of the ideas Bradford and Bingley toyed with, of having an IFA in branch who is more independent than the traditional tied financial advisor. The one area this has always neglected is how the internet channel can be supported by advisors in the contact centre and that, with or without video, strikes me as the best future for low cost advice.
Posted by Alex at 1/31/2011 08:28:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: Barclays, branch contact centre
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Whither voice biometric security after the UK Department Work & Pensions drops anti-fraud trials?
An interesting story last month on Silicon.com, that the UK Department of Work & Pensions has abandoned its trials of voice biometrics as an anti-fraud tool.This is not a snap decision, as Silicon.com reports that the DWP has spent at least £2.4m on trials since May 2007. This is one of the largest payment organisation's in the UK, so its decision is of interest to most organization who need to validate customer identity and handle payments. Voice biometrics has had a lot of interest from the financial services industry, so the DWP's decision may well lead a number of banks to study it closely.
What makes it especially interesting is that fraud is such a huge problem for DWP (the DWP's own estimates put their annual fraud losses at £5.2bn per annum) and voice biometrics has promised so much to reduce fraud. Indeed, as anti-fraud has been one of the major pitches of the voice biometrics industry, why on the surface might it have failed at the DWP?
The first part of this is to understand what types of problem voice biometrics are good at tackling. In my experience, voice biometrics are a useful tool in identity validation. Passwords tend to test "do you know what you should know?". By comparison, biometrics can test "…are you who you say you are, even if you do know your password?". There are valid arguments about biometrics accuracy, but provided they are not used as a single factor authentication when taking a voice sample over a poor quality public telephone line, I believe that they remain a valuable addition to the security toolkit.
I have to admit that while I haven't worked directly with DWP, I do have some knowledge of the issues they face from work with local government and other government departments.
Identity theft is the sort of fraud that voice biometrics is ideal for tackling, but traditional identity theft in the form of impersonation is relatively low. This is partly because although the amount stolen in benefit fraud is large the value of individual claims is relatively low and identity theft impersonation is generally uneconomic.
A much bigger problem (where voice biometrics could perhaps play a part) is false identity. The problem here is that once you let a false identity into the system through one channel, then it can 'validate' itself through other channels and become very hard to detect. Preventing false National Insurance numbers being created is crucial and this is perhaps an opportunity for voice biometrics, at least to prevent serial fraudsters creating multiple identities themselves.
The biggest problem, though, for the DWP is the complexity of the system and the massive fraud figure of £5.2bn (2.1% of all expenditure) is as much a reflection of error as it is of more exotic types of theft. This error can be genuine on the part of claimants, or deliberate, but either way it is the complexity of the system and the lack of real time information that prevents its resolution and detection.
Surprisingly, this was the problem that the DWP tried to tackle with voice biometrics, basically trying to use tone & emotion detection and similar mechanisms to detect claimants lying. I have to admit some doubt here as to whether this is a practical application in real time. In the world of call recording it has long been used as an application that can detect calls where customers (or call centre workers!) have become angry, but this has not tended to be a real time application. The other problem is the inbound call to DWP. At the risk of stating the obvious, claimants of benefits are more likely to be stressed than average and especially so when talking to the DWP. Furthermore, most of the demographic who regularly deal with the DWP are likely to be calling on mobile phones rather than landlines (so poor call quality) and be may well not have strong English language skills (so will be more hesitant, accented and less standard).
My suspicion is that the best way for the DWP to tackle fraud would be to use more process simplification and back this up with analytics rather than try and fix the front end with technology. Once that's done, voice biometrics could have a very valuable anti-fraud role to play, but as the solution to the right problem.
Posted by Alex at 12/02/2010 08:23:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: Biometrics, Contact Center, DWP, fraud, Speech recognition, voice biometrics
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
CC Expo reflections (Contact Babel) & Cisco's latest Contact Centre Announcements
The blog has struggled to find time to comment since CC Expo, so regrets not having done a follow up post recently. One notably omission from my last post was of Contact Babel. As analysts go, they are one of the ones that I rate very highly. The huge bonus of visiting them on the stand is that they were giving away CDs of "The UK Contact Centre Decision Maker's Guide", which is a publication I use the report regularly as it's one of the few to give details on things like the number of multi-channel interactions in UK contact centres. If you missed them at the stand, then the good news is that the report is available for free download from their website.
The other interesting things happening this week were major announcements from Cisco about their contact centre portfolio. The two most exciting parts of this were Social Miner (an integration for the contact centre to track social media) and the Open Recording Architecture (ORA) that will allow capture and recording of media across the network, both inside and outside the traditional contact centre.
For those interested in more, there is a good public webinar on the ORA on the CRMXchange site today.
Presented by Ken Rehor, Product Manager, Cisco
Date: November 11th, 6-7pm GMT, 7-8pm CET
Registration: click here
Contact centers handle thousands of customer conversations a day, but unfortunately much of the enterprise intelligence that could be gleaned from those conversations is never used because it's either too expensive to capture, or too difficult to mine for useful information.
By attending this webcast you will discover how to take an open-standards, network-based approach to recording that addresses these challenges.
You will learn about:
• Example topologies and scenarios for network-based recording
• Sample open Web APIs that facilitate integration of network recording with business applications
• How network-based media forking facilitates live/silent monitoring
• Multiple methods of media playback
Speaker, Ken Rehor, Product Manager, Cisco
Ken Rehor works in Cisco's Voice Technology Group on the application of new speech technologies for customer care. Prior to joining Cisco, Ken held various consulting and R&D roles at industry leaders including AT&T, Lucent Technologies, Bell Labs, Nuance, and Vocalocity. Speech Technology Magazine named him one of the industry's 20 most influential people for his pioneering work as principal founder of the VoiceXML Forum and one of the original authors of the VoiceXML 1.0 specification. Ken is co-chair of the VoiceXML Forum's Conformance and Speaker Biometrics Committees. He is co-editor of industry standards such as VoiceXML 2.0, 2.1, Call Control XML 1.0, and the forthcoming VoiceXML 3.0. Ken holds seven patents in the area of web-based telecommunications. Ken earned BSEE and MS EECS degrees from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Posted by Alex at 11/09/2010 06:56:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: Call Centre, Cisco, Cisco Call Centre Express, Contact Babel, Contact Center, CRMxchange, ORA Open Recording Architecture, Social Miner, UCCE, UCCX
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
CC Expo 2010
It's that time of year again and the UK Contact Centre industry is once again in Birmingham at the NEC for Call Centre Expo. This year feels a bit different from previous years (as covered by the blog at: "Contact Centre Expo 2009 - Day Two" and here for 2008), and I think there are signs both of economic recovery and a fundamental shift in the way customer service is provided.
The blog's view of top trends this year:
• Cloud is real & here to stay – Last year this was an emerging trend. This year the number of cloud based vendors had, if anything, increased. Interestingly, this was both the cloud based contact centre and the CRM vendors. I was particularly impressed by the Salesforce.com stand (and loved the squeezy cloud giveaways!). For me it was interesting to see how far ahead CRM is over voice and that where CRM leads, voice is likely to follow. For the moment there is still seems a customer preference for deployments of voice kit on premises (perhaps driven by some lingering concerns over QoS) whereas the same customer will happily consider cloud based CRM. Among the voice vendors, the most credible seemed to be New Voice Media, with a large stand next to Cisco by the entrance with a host of smaller vendors (such as Virtual-Call-Centre.eu ) further inside the show. The difference between Cloud and Hosted is perhaps worth a separate post, but the trend is clear.
• Where were the traditional vendors? – For me this was one of the big surprises. Cisco had a brilliantly located stand right in front of the entrance. Genesys also had a good, well designed stand further in with some excellent hard copies of white papers & case studies (though I can't find them on their website). I found Aspect with a smaller stand in a quieter section (& no mention of all the Microsoft advertising they had last year), but where was Avaya/Nortel? There were signs of the odd Avaya partner, but this was a real surprise given that last year the show was plastered with Avaya/ BT partnership advertising. I was also surprised not to see any sign of Mitel, especially as NEC was present (and who are traditionally only a small player in the UK market).
• Overseas destinations have really shifted – Over the last few years nearly every English speaking emerging market has taken a stand and pitched for offshore contact centre business. This year I was pleased to see that only the serious seemed to have stayed the course and Bangladesh were there with an impressive stand for the third year running. BACC (the Bangladesh Association of Call Centre & Outsourcing) has significant support from the Bangladesh government and I was impressed how well they understood that for outsourcing to work they had to provide more than just a proposition based on cheap labour.
More curious (and completely unexpected) was the French Pavilion. I have to admit that France with a 35hr working weak and strong unions has never struck me as a natural destination for outsouring work. Indeed, from my experience of working there, French companies have been very enthusiastic (if discrete) about building offshore contact centers in French speaking North Africa (see my blog post: "Offshoring and mainland Europe" for example). Still, there was a charming chap from Invest in Champagne-Ardenne and he stressed the benefits of Chalons-en-Champagne. things such as rents 25% cheaper than Greater Paris and a high quality working environment. All nice things to be sure, but I'm not sure that these would lead to much business at the UK Contact Centre Expo. I was even less convinced by Team Cote d'Azur, as while it's a lovely place it's not somewhere that I think of as low cost. I would agree with them that it is very high tech and multi-lingual, as Sophia Antipolis houses outposts many of the world's top tech firms and I would agree that they have an existing contact centre base, with the very substantial American Express Travel contact centre operation base there, but I still struggle to see it as a destination for investment. More likely to be successful were the French IT firms on the stand. I was impressed with digitaleo (who offer a rather nice SMS application) and A2iA who already have a reference list of deployments at blue chip UK companies and some very interesting document recognition & processing applications.
• CC Marketing seems to be having a "Life on Mars moment" – A real surprise was that as the economy has improved, some contact centre marketing seems to have regressed to the 1970s or some other pre-feminist "Mad Men" era. The RoCom stand with its pretty nurses was of debatable taste, but could perhaps claim some justification around a marketing message of "heal your contact centre". The guiltier stands should perhaps remain nameless. I'm not sure the use of hotpants, models in very tight t-shirts or 'ironic' marketing messages/ innuendos across the models chests really deserves a link or much recognition. I do find it disappointing that marketers should be so unimaginative in a industry such as contact centre which has so many women in senior business positions.
• Analytics, analytics, analytics – The final trend that I found very interesting was the focus on analytics. Some of this was from familiar vendors such as Nice, who have long done very interesting analysis on the data in voice and video recordings. The less expected was from IBM, who were back at the show sponsoring a series of seminars on analytics. To a certain extent this illustrates the transition IBM has made away from hardware (most contact centre vendors offer an IBM server on Unix or Linux somewhere in their product) and away from the applications like IBM Call Path and IBM Direct Talk (for those old enough) and the more recent IBM Websphere Voice applications. Here was IBM positioning innovative high-end, high value services rather than their traditional approach of pushing product. Equally interesting, but somewhat different, was Autonomy. This is the first time I've seen their focus on contact centre and it was impressive. Autonomy has always had enormous strength when it comes to analyzing unstructured data and contact centre looks a very suitable environment for them as contact centre generates structured and unstructured, multi-source, multi-channel data in a way that only the web channel can rival. I was impressed with the very chunky 'Autonomy Promote' brochure I was given (a mere 210 or so pages!) and felt that Autonomy could soon be a major challenger to the more traditional voice recoding analytics vendors and workforce management tools.
• Social Media- Definitely one of the hot topics. Genesys had Social Media as a hot topic and did a very good presentation on it, as well as some good case studies and white papers on their stand. Cisco and a number of Cisco partners also had some very good things to say on the subject.
What was also interesting was what was absent. I saw very little of IVR or Speech Self-Service, and comfortably the best of what there was, was the pitch Mark Pritchard from JAMIP. I was very taken with the JAMIP approach to self-service, especially their flexibility around enterprise or cloud based delivery and their very innovative approach to win/win pricing. The pricing in particular struck me as something that made them stand out and was supported by the reference from their work with the NHS (UK National Health Service). Overall, I thought they provided one of the more innovative propositions on display. Another notable absence was that of Eastern European companies. Last year I was impressed by several of them, but this year there seemed to be hardly any.
That's my take, I'd be delighted to hear what you think or of any trends that I may have missed.
Posted by Alex at 9/21/2010 07:27:00 PM 3 comments
Labels: Avaya, Bangladesh, Cisco, Cloud, Contact Centre Expo, France, Genesys, IBM, IBM Websphere Voice, JAMIP, Offshore, Social Media
Saturday, September 11, 2010
The economy & mixed news for the UK Contact Centre Industry
It's a very strange contact centre & customer service industry in the UK at the moment.
On the one hand, there is real fear of a double dip recession and the impact of government cuts. You might not spot this immediately, as according to CCF magazine, HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs - the UK tax collection agency), is able to hire a massive number of new agents - despite the downturn and the state of the public finances. CCF reports that HMRC will be able to recruit up to 20% more agents to cope with the latest tax blunder. Now by my calculations, the HMRC agent numbers are in the region of 6,000 (or so), so this means perhaps 1,000+ temporary jobs. It also highlights the cost of poor CRM and contact centre technology. CCF cites a source as saying,
"A computer system, which the source said 'still doesn't work' despite being on the fourth release, is also making it difficult for call centre workers to identify callers. "The initial identifier is in fact the employee number and not the National Insurance number, which causes all kinds of problems.""
The caller identification problems are on top of being unable to answer calls, to the extent of not answering 40 million of them a year according to the BBC. This is partly from HMRC still being a user of TDM telephony in the call centres and so not having the call routing flexibility that IP and VoIP would bring.
Still despite HMRC being able to hire, the long term trend in government spending is clear. C&WW (Cable & Wireless Worldwide), one of the largest government telecoms suppliers issued a profit warning in July (reported by the Register here) based on the proposed cuts in public expenditure. The cuts are sufficient for the C&WW share price to have dropped by 20% as the market assessed how little government work there would be in the years ahead. Even if individual government agencies are temporarily allowed to increase their workforce, the long term direction of government spending seems clear.
Less clear, though, is the direction of consumer spending. Much better news than HMRC (though sadly on a smaller scale) is the news from the Aussie news site CallCentres.net that the Australian company Flight Centre is to open two new UK contact centres and recruit 16 agents. New jobs are always good news and this is particularly good news as it suggest that the private sector is seeing signs of growth and for a sector like travel that has a large element of discretionary spending, this suggests increased consumer confidence.
It may be grim in the public sector, but it is not all doom & gloom outside....
Posted by Alex at 9/11/2010 01:46:00 PM 1 comments
Labels: CCF, Contact Centre, Flight Centre, HMRC, TDM, UK, VoIP
Monday, June 07, 2010
Instant Messaging ....and its strange survival in B2C banking
The BBC News website had a great article last week on the slow but steady decline of Instant Messaging.
It was not so long ago that Instant Messaging (IM) was seen as the tool that would replace e-mail. Some technology players still think this might happen (think of Google Wave, for example) but the majority now view IM as a technology that has passed its peak. Instant Messaging had some great advantages over e-mail, such as immediacy, the ability to see it the other party was present and small message size, yet it largely failed to prevail.
The BBC provides some thoughts on why this has happened, such as the initial incompatibility of IM platforms and, perhaps more importantly, the rise of social networking sites. Facebook may have an inferior instant messaging system to the stand-alone applications, but it is very convenient and integrates everything into a single interface.
The one area where Instant Messaging is growing is the "Click to Chat or Call" functionality that you find on websites. While I don't have hard statistics, my suspicion is that banks (and insurers) are steadily investing here. Over the last few months, I've had an increasing number of requests from financial institutions to help them integrate web chat into their contact centres.
There's a number of things that I think are driving this. Firstly, banks have trained consumers well not to respond to e-mail for fear of phishing. This is a valuable security development, but it does make communicating with consumers difficult, especially when outbound calling is heavily regulated and traditional post can also have low response rates in relation to cost. Instant Messaging integrated into a bank's website offers a cheap way of potentially capturing a high value interaction that might drop out of the web channel.
Secondly, and more interestingly, IM offers a mechanism for bridging channels. Traditionally, channels that could serve customers remotely were restricted to voice (real-time & interactive, but finite information presentation) or post (slow & static content, but information rich). Adding IM to the website (or part of the website once the consumer has commenced a product purchase) allows the financial institution to start the transaction in the information rich web environment and then move the transaction into something more interactive, be it a pure IM chat or an IM chat that progresses into a call. This, is the other cause of the decline of the stand-alone IM application, that development of Skype and the increased availability of bandwidth removed some of the great advantages of IM.
The final factor is that IM is blending into social media and new channels such as Twitter. Facebook and banking still looks to me to have significant potential issues around privacy and security, but launching an IM capability on its website gives a bank the opportunity to start experimenting with new service capabilities with some control over the environment. I've looked at this back in 2008 (see my blog post "Online banking and contact centre" for a look at what Rabbobank was doing with IM), and this need to experiment with a selection of functionality at a targeted audience remains a very valid approach.
To me this is a key point. Cloud based services offer a great potential for the rapid deployment of these web 2.0 and IM type technologies, but all the ones I have worked on have run into security or operational issues. It's not that cloud can't be secure, rather that cloud providers struggle to guarantee that they comply with every detail of a bank's security policy, especially when it comes to managing changes in that security policy.
In short, a premises and application based IM approach still enjoys a lease of life in banking. Cloud, social media and web 2.0 approaches may all offer greater functionality, but the underlying security concerns do mean that IM remains an attractive channel strategy option in the B2C financial services world.
Posted by Alex at 6/07/2010 05:48:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: Banking, Cloud, Contact Center, Facebook, Google, Google Wave, Instant Messaging, Skype


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NWSB Editor and Insider Chris Anderson gives you his prediction of Oregon's offensive starters in 2013. Though the Oregon Ducks' 2013 college football campaign is still just about four months away, it's time to start breaking down a team that could very well see themselves in the final BCS National Championship Game (thank the college football gods). Returning stars such as Marcus Mariota and De'Anthony Thomas obviously make it into the starting rotation but there are a few players who may be new to you.
Projecting Oregon's 2013 offensive starters
Fresno State vs. Oregon Ducks NCAA love 'em & hate 'em Week 2
NWSB Editor and Writer Chris Anderson talks about his love 'em and hate 'em from the Oregon Ducks' contest against the Fresno State Bulldogs. After jumping out to another impressive lead at halftime, the Ducks would play a shaky third quarter as they surrendered 10 points without putting any on the board. Turnovers coupled with a few sloppy play at times rejuvenated a Fresno State team and saw the Ducks having to battle back despite a big lead heading into the fourth quarter.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Police in South Carolina have arrested a man they say encouraged his brother to eat cocaine to destroy evidence. The brother died shortly after.
Twenty-three-year-old DeAngelo Rashard Mitchell of Charleston has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and distribution of cocaine.
North Charleston police say 20-year-old Wayne Mitchell died less than an hour after eating cocaine when the brothers were arrested Nov. 30.
DeAngelo Mitchell had posted bail and was allowed to go free before police found out he had contributed to his brother's death.
Police say they learned the brothers had discussed in the back of a patrol car what to do with the cocaine they had. They say DeAngelo Mitchell encouraged his brother to eat it.
It wasn't clear if DeAngelo Mitchell has an attorney yet.


text:
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Seasonal temperature averages
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10 Steps To Know What You Want In Life
Last vacation we were in Europe for the first time, we really enjoy each day. I would love to live
Self esteem is directly associated with two main questions that a person asks himself: "How do I feel about me?". "How do I feel about who I am?" .The ways we approach these questions usually depend in our family origins. But remember, self esteem cannot be inherited. There are two types of self esteem. The first is global self esteem which is about who we are and is usually constant. While situational self esteem usually defines what we do and is dependent on roles, happenings and circumstances in our lives. Situational self esteem depends on how we feel about our current situation or place. We may show high self esteem at one moment but low self-esteem in the next.
Last vacation we were in Europe for the first time, we really enjoy each day. I would love to live
With self confidence , the more you value yourself and your abilities. You are more relaxed, free of self-doubt, fear and anxiety. You are not concerned with what others think of you and you are motivated to act and take risks in life. Self confidence will give you peace, less stress and better quality of sleep.
Try these 4 self confidence tips from my own personal experience,
Healthy living means making positive choices to improve your physical, mental and spiritual health. This choices include: eating healthy, stay physically active and having enough rest.
The surging popularity of pilates, often done together with yoga, has aroused the curiosity of many people wanting to rev
If you want to learn how to raise self esteem and confidence, personal mental health is essential. Personal mental health help individuals to be more happy and successful, realize their own abilities and cope with the normal stresses of life. It is the foundation of your well-being .
Unless you're living under a rock, you've probably heard of the tragic passing of stars such as Robin Williams, Chester
Healthy relationships improve all aspects of your life. If the relationship isn't working, it can also be a tremendous drain. These tips can help keep a healthy relationship strong. Find out how self-esteem affects your relationships.
If you've ever gone through a series of disappointing relationships, you have to admit that the idea of giving up
" I appreciate your newsletter and enjoy the contents. As a professional and a recovering addict and alcoholic your letters provide a great deal of insight and information. Perhaps we could team up sometime. " Sincerely. Ben R. Read more
What is self-esteem?. It's how you think and feels about yourself. If your self-esteem is low you can use hypnosis
Perfect gifts that will inspire, build self-esteem, and make your love ones feel special and good about themselves.


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Support SSO by hosting a fundraiser in your local community, high school or university, or among friends and family. Do-It-Yourself (DIY) events are incredibly flexible; from a bowl-a-thon to a bake sale to a dinner party, DIY events are a great way to raise funds for SSO's programs and services and help raise awareness of mental illness in your community.
We are looking for individuals to help host Peace of Minds events, including walks and yogathons across Ontario. If you are interested in joining Peace of Minds as a volunteer coordinator, please contact:
1 800 449 6367
The best way to keep up with latest information from SSO
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Thursday, May 29, 2014
A Free School For Kids In New Delhi, India
It is an unusual school in an unusual location and is run by an unusual teacher.
Rajesh Kumar is a shopkeeper by profession but spends hours every morning teaching around 80 children from the poorest of the poor in India's capital.
The 43-year-old visited the construction of the Delhi transit station a few years ago and was disturbed by the sight of many children playing at the site instead of attending school.
When he questioned the parents working at the sites they all said there were no schools in the vicinity and no one cared.
Consequently, his open-air class room was born - between pillars and beneath the tracks of the Delhi transit system, known as the Metro.
Every few minutes a train passes above, the children unperturbed by its sounds.
There are no chairs or tables and the children sit on rolls of polystyrene foam placed on the rubble.
Three rectangular patches of wall are painted black and used as a blackboard.
Anonymous donors have contributed cardigans, books, shoes and stationery for the children, as their parents cannot afford them.
One unnamed individual sends a bag full of biscuits and fruit juice for the pupils every day - another incentive for the children to turn up for their studies.
This is so… Wow! I applaude this amazing people!
Source of poster & test:
A. Chynal G+ Homepage
2 comments:
- Deepak Chauhan said...
it's the super thing ever
- May 29, 2014 at 10:59 AM
- Stranger in a Strange Land said...
Yes indeed, DC
Kindest regards,
- May 29, 2014 at 6:43 PM
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


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Sunday, December 21, 2014
Nurse Jennifer
What is it about this woman that makes me cry every time every time I speak with her?
Nurse Jennifer called me again this week. She's the nurse from my insurance company who has been checking up on me ever since I got out of the hospital last month.
She made the first call the day after I had been discharged from Lutheran Medical Center.
I was in such a fragile emotional state at the time that I started blubbering uncontrollably as she gave me all this great advice about making my apartment safe should I decide to have surgery.
Later I thought Jennifer was calling solely as a company employee, making sure that I wasn't needlessly racking up medical bills.
However, I have since come to believe that this lovely woman has genuine goodness in her heart that has nothing to do with profit or loss.
Each of our chats starts off the same way. Jennifer recites some legal boilerplate spiel about the call possibly being recorded for instructional purposes and how the company values my privacy.
But then the tone of Jennifer's voice immediately shifts from robotic to empathetic and she's ready to hear my story and offer me advice and comfort.
I decided to call her the other week when I returned to work after getting a colonoscopy. It seemed that nothing whatsoever was working for me. I felt trapped, angry, and isolated, and I needed to talk to someone immediately—or sooner.
I could've reached out to a number of people but something made me call this total stranger who is just a voice on the telephone. But it's a very special voice to me. So I dialed her number and promptly freaked out all over the phone.
Voice of Reason
"I want to quit my job!" I wailed. "I can't take it anymore!"
Jennifer listened to me while I ranted and whined and then gently advised that this was probably not a good time to make such weighty decisions since I was so agitated and confused.
"I've been there," she said with incredible sincerity. "I know what it's like."
Hearing her talk so gently and so sensibly helped calm me down. We agreed that if things really got so bad at work that if I couldn't take it, then, yes, I should probably think about bailing.
She promised to call me in a week and, yes, I got all teary-eyed. Lord, I'm such a mutant…
Jennifer was as good as her word and she called me a few days ago. I was feeling much better by then, both emotionally and physically, and I had a clearer idea of what I wanted to do.
I told her I was getting second and third opinions on my condition and she said that was a good idea. And then we agreed that it was time to close the file on my case.
My company is switching to a new insurance carrier on the first of the year, much to my regret, so it is unlikely that Jennifer and I will speak again. I thanked her profusely for all her help and wished her and her family the best for the holidays.
"If you need to call me," she said before she rang off, "please feel free."
"I will," I said, my voice cracking, "take care."
And once again I started to cry.
10 comments:
- Bijoux said...
Oh, Rob . . . Believe it or not, I know exactly how it feels to be talking to a stranger on the phone and break down. There are times when it's impossible to hold it all together, especially when you are dealing with health issues or concerns about a loved one.
I hope things continue to improve for you and I wish you a very Merry Christmas.
- Rob K said...
Thank you so much, Bijoux!
It's so nice to know someone else knows what it's like to freak out like that.
Take care, much love, and have a very Merry Christmas!
- Jay said...
Mutant? No. I'd call that perfectly normal. It's often the kindness of strangers that opens the floodgates. What a lovely lady she seems!
I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up. I'm determined to start blogging again in the new year, but in the meantime I've been shelving the whole Blogosphere except when something which seems important catches my eye on Facebook. Seems you're still in that dark tunnel, my friend! My advice is simply this: kick back and enjoy Christmas. Enjoy the love of your family and friends, and say to yourself 'I'll deal with this in the New Year'.
Even if you have to deal with it before then, it might just help you relax for a while. Don't meet trouble halfway - that's what my mother used to say!
And yes, I'm a fine one to talk!
- Rob K said...
Heu, Jay, great to hear from you!
I think you make an excellent point about the kindness of strangers. Perhaps it touches us because it is so unexpected.
No worries about not keeping up--except for the fact that I miss the hell out of you!
I intend to take your advice, enjoy Christmas and handle my troubles in the New Year.
Your Mon had it right--now let's both listen to her.
Take care and Merry Christmas!
- Jay said...
Oh, that's so sweet of you, Rob! Thanks! :)
Yes, I wish I'd listened to my Mum more ...
- Rob K said...
We still can! In fact, I think it's more meaningful to heed their words now that they've left this world. It becomes a tribute to their memories.
- Ron said...
Rob, Jennifer is no doubt an angel sent from God and I truly believe that. Often when we are going through challenging times, help and guidance will come our way in the means of DIVINE intervention.
I remember back when I was going through financial bankruptcy and felt just like you, SEVERAL angels were sent to help and support me through it all.
I have a feeling that things are all going to turn around for you in the New Year and that 2015 is going to be a year in which all your wishes and goals will manifest for the best!
So keep the faith, buddy, and know that you are loved and supported. And not only from your friends here on this earth, but from God above.
Have a Merry Christmas, Rob!
- Rob K said...
Gosh, Ron, what wonderful comments.
I like your view of divine intervention--it's certainly better than my (often) negative outlook.
And while we're talking about angels, I'll have to include you and all my other blogging buddies on that list!
Thanks so much for all your support and warm wishes, buddy! Let's all make 2015 our best year ever!
Merry Christmas!
I think I missed this post when it first came out! But if you still need a Nurse Jennifer or a stand in please reach out to me! I am always all ears! Start with my email firstname.lastname@example.com and if you use it I will share my number as well :) I always want to be available if a friend is in need!
- Rob K said...
Oh, Shae, that is so kind of you! I'm ready to start blubbering right now!
Let me extend the same offer to you. I'm at email@example.com and anytime you need to reach out to someone, please don't hesitate!
Take care!


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D.C., herniated discs, l'amour, por que no, tango, travelling
Exactly two years ago, newly in love and two years into tango, I came to D.C. for a tango festival. Because we were poor, we volunteered, and I—being the kind of girl who did this sort of thing in the first quarter century of my life—went with the boys. For three hours or so, we lugged heavy blonde-wood squares from van to loading dock, up several flights in the service elevator, and into a carpeted ballroom, where we flopped them down and screwed them to a frame to build the dance floor. To spare my back the heavy lifting, I went straight for the power drill and started screwing in the squares. At the end of the festival, I unscrewed them. For hours, I went from screw to screw to screw (about sixteen screws per square) with a wheezing drill (about eighty squares in all), bent at the waist. I thought nothing of it at the time. B., to his credit, did say, "Careful you don't hurt your back."
I hurt my back.
This mostly means I see a lot of chiropractors, physical therapists, and this one soft-spoken Korean ballerino who elbows my bones into alignment. It mostly means I don't get to dance much anymore. This causes me (and B.) considerable anguish. I don't mind the pain, per se. Just when the pain says, so emphatically: thou shalt not dance!
This year, we went again. It was an impulse purchase, two student passes and a hotel room. I packed a suitcase full of slinky cotton things that move well, plus ostentatious earrings and the mascara tube I rarely use. I packed two pairs of heels plus floppy practice flats. I packed Advil, Arnica, and a lumbar pillow.
(I felt a bit like an alcoholic. Hi, my name is Meghan, it's been eight months since my last milonga. And even then, I really only danced with B. We've been to a few prácticas and afternoon affairs, but I can't tell you the last time I went dancing.)
As tango festivals go, Por Que No is Triple-A. Another few years and it will likely number among the majors, but for now it's a relatively small crowd—300 dancers or so—three nights, three teaching and performing couples, nine classes daily, five DJs, two afternoon prácticas. It's got a really nice non-judgmental vibe, a secret cocoon-y-ness about it. It happens in the massive Doubletree Hilton & Convention Center, tucked out on the Arlington fringe of the capital. We had to cut across an empty lot to get there from the Metro, avoiding the longer path under a complex network of intersecting underpasses. Our room had a view of the Pentagon, the Washington Monument, the Capitol building, the White House, and a mall – not to mention several looping highways and a wide swath of construction. When the hotel dining options got too tiresomely expensive, we trudged back to the main road for suburban franchise fare.
But you don't come to a tango festival for the location or the food. If the festival is good, you'll not leave the artificial air shaft of your accommodations until you check out, three to five days later, sore and soaring. You'll eat what you can scrounge up like a woodland creature: dried fruit, nuts, bananas. And you'll dance.
I danced. I also sat and watched (more than I danced). I sat and rubbed my lumbars, stretched my hamstrings and my glutes. I lay on the ballroom carpet with my knees up on a banquet chair. I did homework during classes, keeping one ear on the lilt and twang of the instructors, hopping up now and again to try an exercise.
I also didn't dance. I had to stop, just when the boleos and sacadas were getting interesting. I had to take myself up to the 14th floor pool by myself and let my hips unclench in water. I had to sit and watch and not get asked to dance. But what a gift to sit and watch and listen to Tanturi, to Fresedo, Pugliese, and Caló. There's always more to tango than just dancing.
And then, when our night was over, B. and I ate Doubletree complementary cookies and watched Netflix in our king bed with the District sparkling out beyond our blinds. We slept extremely late.
The best part was the warmth, remembering there is this tango family out there that will embrace you (forgive the pun) even when you've been AWOL for two years. That will offer to put temporary tattoos on your boob. And that will, very generously, take your rusty gimp-ungraceful ass out for a spin.
Also: I got cabeceo-ed by a superstar. And tripped.
We spent last night on the Bolt Bus, the mid-Atlantic midnight lurch back to New York, and waking up this morning (after five hours' sleep) felt like the good old days when I could dance for hours and the only thing that hurt me was my feet. I tried to conjure up some bitterness about Tango Por Que No and for the injury that hasn't healed and maybe never will. I couldn't.


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|Project by Reaper621
|posted 01-09-2012 10:25 AM
|2193 views
|1 time favorited
|11 comments
Please disregard the mess… I still need to clean my basement…
This is a desk I built for myself, to use in my law firm (obviously, the current position is not the final resting place). Eventually, this desk will have a much larger brother, but that's to come later this year. I have been doing carpentry in some fashion since I was 5 – 21 years now, and over the years, my father and I have picked up numerous tools and techniques.
Construction is solid walnut, with 4 coats of catalyzed lacquer finish. I was unhappy with the finish, and later this week will be applying some wipe on poly to the top, and buffing it out. Each of the sides is made with 2 raised panels, and the back has 3 raised panels. The top measures 34×60, and the whole unit sits 31 inches tall. I do have quite an overhang (3 inches, 5 in back), but that was just a personal preference, and I am quite happy with it. The two side panels are glued up, and the rest is assembled using pocket hole screws. (After gluing the two sides, I figured a 3 panel would be a pain)
-- Laywer by day, Carpenter by later in the day.
11 comments so far
#1 posted 01-09-2012 03:50 PM
Very nice!
The walnut wood for this desk would be astronomical where I live. Beautiful wood!
It's handy to have some practical skills, isn't it?
-- Tom, Surfside Beach, SC - Romans 8:28
#2 posted 01-09-2012 03:55 PM
Nice work, looks great!
-- Jack, Albuquerque
#3 posted 01-09-2012 04:32 PM
Very nice desk! Welcome to LJ !
#4 posted 01-09-2012 04:41 PM
Very nice walnut. Better to have a large overhang than a large hangover. LOL
-- The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. Ron, Crossville Tn
#5 posted 01-09-2012 05:08 PM
Welcome to LJ's. The desk looks wonderful, especially since walnut is my hands down favorite species. I could see how the back overhang could be very useful for clients signing documents or reading on their side of the desk.
-- "Man's ingenuity has outrun his intelligence" (Joseph Wood Krutch)
#6 posted 01-09-2012 05:47 PM
Outstanding. I love walnut and I love this desk. Really shows off a lot of bf of my favorite wood.
-- My dad and I built a 65 chev pick up.I killed trannys in that thing for some reason-Hog
#7 posted 01-09-2012 09:00 PM
Very nice build. Have you considered placing a piece of glass on top of the work surface to protect it from indentations?
-- Randy -- Austin, TX by way of Northwest (Woodville), OH
#8 posted 01-09-2012 10:27 PM
Love that walnut ,a fine looking desk great job.
-- https://www.artisticwoodstudio.com/videos wood crafting & woodworking classes
#9 posted 01-10-2012 12:04 AM
Thanks! I appreciate all the comments!
I have to agree with the general consensus – this wood is beautiful. After years (over a decade) of preferring oak, I finally had a chance to use this majestic material, and I fell instantly in love with it. The smell, the grain, the texture – it's a beautiful species. When I can afford to, the whole office will be replaced with walnut.
BTKS – exactly. They need to get close to that top. A client has to be comfortable when seeking counsel.
Randy – My mother has insisted I do this. I have a glass guy I go to, just need to price it out. I can report the cost here if anyone is interested?
Tom – I bet it would be incredibly expensive. Walnut usually fetches 6/bf here in Missouri, but I just happened to find a supplier who will sell to me at 2.50, surfaced to 3/4 and kiln dried. Best. Vendor. Ever. My whole desk cost me about 150 in wood.
I plan to put some of my other interesting adventures up eventually, glad to be a part of this community!
-- Laywer by day, Carpenter by later in the day.
#10 posted 01-10-2012 01:20 AM
Beautiful job! Any drawers?? You forgot to show us that part. More pics please. Very nice job with the raised panels.
-- Tim, Myrtle Beach, firstname.lastname@example.com- Just one more tool, that's all I need! :)
#11 posted 01-10-2012 01:23 AM
I didn't make drawers for this one. When I require drawers, I will make a set of drawers like the barrister's bookcase plans you can find at woodcraft. I wanted the desk to be all open, so I would have plenty of room to swing my legs. (I'm quite tall, and my legs are like tree trunks. Need lots of room)
-- Laywer by day, Carpenter by later in the day.
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Welcome to the official website for the HURL Elkhorn Endurance 53 Mile, 52K, and 15 Mile Runs! Experience real Montana….Leave Civilization Behind!
Held annually on the first Saturday in August in the remote, rugged, and wild Elkhorn Mountains near Helena, Montana in Jefferson County. We are just off Interstate 15 – 6.5 hours from Salt Lake City, 4.5 hours from Spokane, 7.5 hours from Boise, and 3.5 hours from Billings. Helena is centrally located between Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks – 3-1/2 hours from the Saint Mary Visitor Center at Glacier National Park and 3 hours from the west entrance to Yellowstone National Park at West Yellowstone. See the "Where's Helena?" Tab for information on things to do around Helena and Jefferson County, Montana.
Spectacular Montana scenery, breathtaking climbs, technical descents, miles of challenging single track trail, primitive roads, dirt, rocks, forests, meadows, and cold, clear creeks to splash through. NO PAVEMENT. Enjoy all of the above on this remote, back country run through the rugged and beautiful Elkhorn Mountains. We invite you to come to Montana for a run you won't soon forget.
Don't just take it from us….check out the following links for comments from survivors.
HURL Elkhorn 50 Mile, a good pain
HURL Elkhorn 50K – Life is good
Eric Ashley – HURL Elkhorn Race Report
HURL Elkhorn, A Volunteer's Perspective – Andrew Cupino
The HURL Elkhorn Endurance Runs are a 100% volunteer effort, from aid station volunteers up to the race director. We put on this event to show off the incredible trails we have in our backyard. All left over entry fees are donated to local non-profit organizations, or organizations that help us with our event. In 2017 we donated to Prickly Pear Land Trust, Capital City Amateur Radio Club, Elkhorn Search and Rescue, Capital Trail Vehicle Association, and the Montana City Volunteer Fire Department.
In co-operation with the Helena National Forest
Special Thanks to:
CAPITAL TRAIL VEHICLE ASSOCIATION, and
We are excited to team with the Beaverhead Endurance Runs on the Beaverhead-Elkhorn Endurance Challenge. #howmuchmontanacanyouhandle?
Ultimate Challenge: Finish the HURL Elkhorn 53 Mile and the Beaverhead 100K. Earn the Ultimate Recognition Award. The award will be presented at the finish line of the HURL Elkhorn Endurance Runs.
Grand Challenge: Finish the HURL Elkhorn 53 Mile or 52K and any other race distance combination from the Beaverhead Endurance Runs (53 Mile – 55K; 52K-100K; or 52K-55K). Earn the Grand Recognition Award. The award will be presented at the finish line of the HURL Elkhorn Endurance Runs.
The 2018 HURL Elkhorn 53 Mile is worth 4 qualifying points and the HURL Elkhorn 52K is worth 2 qualifying points for the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc®. Click below for more information.
The 2018 HURL Elkhorn Endurance Runs (53 Mile, 52K, and 15 mile) are part of the 2018 TrailRunner Trophy Series. Click on the Trophy Series logo below for more information.
Questions? Comments? Email the Race Director at: email@example.com


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1-844-873-3700 Mon-Fri 9am - 5pm Mountain time
Subscribe to our email listto stay updated
home » urban yards » carmine jewel cherry
Call us at 1-844-873-3700 to discuss your project or Subscribe to our email list to be notified when the season begins
Prunus cerasus x fruticosa Carmine Jewel
(new stock expected: fall of 2018)
Carmine Jewel Cherry is a hardy deciduous shrub and hybrid variety of the University of Saskatchewan Sour Cherry. It produces dark, black cherries with small pits that are good for pies and wine making. The hardiest of the dwarf sour cherry varieties, Carmine Jewel Cherry is a beautiful accent or landscape/orchard tree.
Carmine Jewel is often the first cherry ready in the summer.
Carmine Jewel was released in 1999, making one of the best established varieties from the University of Saskatchewan fruit program. It is the most common cherry in commercial production on the prairies. By it's fifth year an average bush yields 20-30 pounds.
Fruit Size: 3.5g
Brix (Sugar content): 17
Colour: Unique dark purple skin & flesh
Harvest: Early - late July to early August
Final Height: 2m
Price includes University of Saskatchewan Royalty.
Stock Type: Tissue Culture minipot (2.5")
Age: 1 year (1+0)
Size: 15-30cm (6-12")
SOLD OUT(new stock expected: fall of 2018)Notify me when this product is restockedOr call 1-844-873-3700 to request this product when it becomes available
Zone: 2aHeight: 3 m (10 ft)Spread: 1.8 m (6 ft)Moisture: normalLight: full sunFall colour: orangeBerries: large (3.5 gram) black cherries that are best for making pies and jamsFlowers: whiteGrowth rate: mediumLife span: mediumSuckering: lowPollution tolerance: medium
Ships to Canada: yesShips to USA: no
A huge assortment of trees, shrubs, and berry seedlings at prices garden
centers, tree farms, and plant nurseries just can't match.
Click here
to see how it all works.
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© 2003-2018Tree Time Services Inc.All rights reserved
TreeTime.ca is pleased to offer free
or low rate shipping throughout Canada, with British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and
Ontario being our most popular provinces.
We also regularly ship to the United States.
Here is a list of our most popular Canadian cities:
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I attempted to dye my hair blonde once before. I was going to one of the Harry Potter book premieres as Rita Skeeter, and I thought blonde boxed dye on brunette hair sounded like a good idea. Observe:
Obviously, this was a very successful endeavor. I totally intended for my hair to turn orange.
I've always had a thing for Jennifer Aniston's hair. It's basically perfect. It's also probably the only blonde I could pull off in real life.
Photo by Francis Specker / via InStyle
image via Your Hairstyles
image via Best Hair Trends
Have you ever dramatically changed your hair color? Am I nuts for thinking I could pull off blonde hair?


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Автор: Pavel Tsatsouline
Название: The Naked Warrior
Издательство: Dragon Door Publications
Год: 2003
Формат: PDF
Количество страниц: 218
Язык: Английский
Размер: 2.59 MB
Для сайта: bukvy.net
Master the Secrets of The Super-Strong Using Bodyweight Exercises Only The Graduate Course In Instant Strength Gains "I went from 5 to 10 pullups in one week."
"I could do one wobbly one-legged squat…
[Two weeks later] I did 5 clean, butt-to-ground pistols."
"Last night I did 15 one-arm pushups with each arm.
Two months ago I couldn't do one complete rep."
Have you noticed—the greater a man's skill, the more he achieves with less? And the skill of strength is no exception. From the ancient days of Greek wrestling, to the jealously guarded secrets of Chinese Kung Fu masters, to the hard men of modern spec ops, warriors and allied strongmen have developed an amazing array of skills for generating inhuman strength.
But these skills have been scattered far and wide, held closely secret, or communicated in a piecemeal fashion that has left most of us frustrated and far from reaching our true strength potential.
Now, for the first time, Russian strength expert and former Spetsnaz instructor Pavel has gathered many of these devastating techniques into one highly teachable skill set. In The Naked Warrior Pavel reveals exactly what it takes to be super-strong in minimum time—when your body is your only tool.
Gain more brute strength in days than you did in years of bodybuilding or calisthenics
Discover the martial secrets of instant power generation—for rapid surges in applied strength
Discover how to get a world-class powerlifter's quality workout—using your body only
Master the one-arm/one-leg pushup for crushing upper body force
Forge super-piston, never-quit legs with the Spetsnaz favorite "Pistol"
Discover the magic of "GTG"—guaranteed the world's most effective strength routine
Be tow-truck strong—yet possess the rugged looks of a stripped-down racer
Get a harder, firmer, functionally-fitter body—and be as resilient as hell whatever you face
No gym, no weights, no problem—get a dynamite strength workout at a moment's notice—wherever you are.


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Lena Dunham is So Happy to Have Boyfriend Jack Antonoff Home from Tour!
Lena Dunham is all smiles as she heads to a Bleachers concert on Wednesday night (September 27) at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood.
The 31-year-old former Girls star looked pretty in a black blazer over a red dress as she attended the show of her boyfriend Jack Antonoff's band.
PHOTOS: Check out the latest pics of Lena Dunham
Lena recently took to Instagram to share a photo of herself and Jack as he arrived in town for their tour stop.
"Home from tour in a blur of love and poodles," Lena captioned the below photo.


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7:15 AM - 7:45 AM All Pro Dads
Kershaw County School District's Program for
Artistically Gifted and Talented Students
Grades Three through Six
(Dec. 15 deadline)
Dear Parents,
Don't forget: our school is participating in the SchoolStore program this year. This online program helps our school earn cash without students selling door-to-door, collecting money or delivering products. Over 400 merchants, including Sears, Target and WalMart.com, have joined together to offer up to 50% of sales to our school for shopping through SchoolStore.com.
Remember when you are doing your holiday shopping to use the site! You will get the same deals, discounts, and prices that you normally do, and all Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales will be there as well!
To shop and support our school, simply go to www.schoolstore.com and select our school, then click the tab that says "Merchants" and shop!


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Writing an article is not easy. Not everyone has the talent to compose a good paragraph let alone write an entire article. Even a good article writer may have an off day when he finds it hard to finish an article and it takes him hours to compose a couple of words. In writing an article, there are several things that you need to remember. Here are some of those things.
Write an outline
This should always be your first step in writing an article. You will need a good outline in order to have a guide in writing an article. With an outline you are able to organize your thoughts better and arrange your article in a way that it is presented systematically. An article outline will allow you to keep your thoughts and be able to put it on paper without forgetting anything. An online is your article's structure ad foundation and just like any stable structure, the foundation has to be solid a good article outline is a must.
Create a good opening
Writing is a lot like any performance art. You will need to captivate your audience from the beginning in order to get them to listen to you. This is why it is a must to have a good opening statement to begin you article with. Your opening statement in most cases will determine whether your article is interesting for your readers or not. Furthermore, opening sentences are often shown on search results so readers can take a sneak peek on what they can read on your articles. That makes it very important to have a good opening statement.
Be credible
A good article is something that is written in a credible tone. To do that you will need to do a little research regarding your articles. You do not need to experience everything first hand and in most cases you will be writing about something you have limited knowledge of but doing a little research is a must in order to give accurate information. Do not claim o be an authority on something if you are not but t least be credible.
As an article writer, you probably already how much this field is growing in the modern world, however, that isn't to say that it is an expertise that newcomers cannot get into. While the world turns to technology to aid in commerce and socialization, it is no wonder that the positions available for article writers has begun to broaden. Despite the facts that article writers were once a socially elite group of people, if is now becoming far broader than that. No longer are magazines and newspapers the only way to get your work published, in fact, being published on the Internet has become a great deal more popular, especially with freelance article writers or article creation companies.
With all of that said, there are still things that you should stop to consider when you are thinking about how easy it is to become an article writer these days. First, you will be expected to create new, useful, and exciting content at the request of your client. Whether you are working with a professional editor, a company who sells articles, or on your own, the quality of your articles is an absolute must. Generally, these writers will specialize in a few topics. This will help to ensure that the writer knows all there is to know about what they are putting down in the form of text. However, if you are pushed beyond your ordinary, don't allow it to halt you in your stride. Many writers are shoved outside of their boundaries, only to find that they are all the better for the experience.
Just like any other form of art out there, article writing is a very specialized balance between fact and fluff. As the artist, it is your responsibility to keep your readers interested without confusing them. The filler of your content will help to keep the readers engaged, however, without the fact involved, you cannot be taken very seriously. Overall, you should try to emulate the writers that are housed by Niche Writers, a company that will always push their content and article writers to a new level of greatness, while providing their clients with the best possible work out there.
When you stop to think about becoming an article writer, you should think about how writing is just like a cook who is trying to season to the pallet of hungry consumers, you have all the power on whether or not your dish is received poorly or extremely well. As an article writer, you are going to need to be creative, entertaining, and highly energetic. No one wants to read an article that is boring, so have fun with it! One thing to keep in mind when you're trying to get into the field of being a freelance or employed writer is that you should never poach from another author. This, as you can imagine is a very big no-no.
While it is perfectly fine to use other articles as inspiration for your own, there is no reason for you to take their work. If you have trouble with coaxing your muse out to play, listen to some music, turn on your favorite film, or ask your editor for some helpful hints. Overall, when you have inspiration and a little bit of creativity it is extremely easy for you to become the best possible article writer than you can be. Remember, if you aren't passionate about the topics, whether they are fun and exciting or technical, you may want to speak to your editor, generally, they will try to cater to your own personal preferences to optimize the quality of your articles. This all falls back down to human nature. Without enjoyment, we will ultimately hit the wall and burn out.
In sort, becoming an article writer in today's Internet savvy world is as easy as 1, 2, and 3 all you have to do is put yourself out there, find a company that is willing to take you under their wing. Companies like Niche Writers who care about their writers and all that they have to offer their customers. On the flip-side, if you're looking for a tenacious bunch of writers who will help to create the best possible content for your website, you will want to give Niche Writers the thought they deserve.


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Having problems with your PC Laptops ?
HP Laptop Recovery Parition "Not Found" error!
\015 I have a HP laptop with one physical HDD but with two logical disks: One, the C: and the other the Recovery partition named D:.\015\012One day, I wanted to test out Win7 RC without using Virtual OS tech.\015\012So I made myself another 50GB partition out of C:, renamed the new partition D: and renamed the Recovery Partition R:, and "hid" it.\015\012Now I wanted to create a recovery disk in case I crash my system.\015\012So I opened the Recovery Disc Creation Utility but it said that the recovery partition was not found. Doh! So I went and unhid the partition.\015\012But it still reported the same problem.\015\012So I went and googled the problem and somebody said that deleting the extra partition would help. So I did that. But it still had the problem.\015\012so I went and googled it again and somebody else said that marking the partition "active" in Disk Manager would solve the problem. So I did the thing, and it still had the problem.\015\012To make things more complicated, I still have my Windows 7 and Windows Vista option on my boot menu but on MSconfig or EasyBCD it says there's one entry: HP Recovery Manager.\015\012I searched up how to buy recovery CD's and the easiest way to buy is only available to those who are in the US or Canada. I am a Korean living in Papua, Indonesia. So what am I supposed to do??\015\012So here's my question: First of all, how do I get this partition back and second of all, how to I fix this OS entry problem?\015\012\015\012System Info:\015\012HP Pavillion dv6-1101ax\015\012Windows Vista Home Premium x86\015\012250 GB Physical HDD x1\015\0124 GB of DDR3 RAM (3GB Useable)\015\012AMD Athlon x2 QL-64 @ 2.1 GHz\015\012ATi Mobility Radeon HD4650 Graphics\015
Answers :
To resize a partition with Windows Vista, follow these steps:\015\012Be sure to back up any valuable information, because there is a\015\012slight chance that data can be lost when dealing with partitions.
\015\0121) Click on the Start menu
\015\0122) Right click on Computer and click on Manage
\015\012\015\0123) You may get a User Account Control dialog here; just click Continue
\015\0124) In the left pane, open up the Storage category and click on Disk Management
\015\012\015\0125) Here, you will find your partitions for your disks. Right click on the partition you'd like to modify.
\015\012\015\0126) Click on Extend Volume or Shrink Volume to extend or shrink the selected partition.
\015\0121) Click on the Start menu
\015\0122) Right click on Computer and click on Manage
\015\012\015\0123) You may get a User Account Control dialog here; just click Continue
\015\0124) In the left pane, open up the Storage category and click on Disk Management
\015\012\015\0125) Here, you will find your partitions for your disks. Right click on the partition you'd like to modify.
\015\012\015\0126) Click on Extend Volume or Shrink Volume to extend or shrink the selected partition.
Repair Help & Product Troubleshooting for PC Laptops
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Suggested Questions/Answers :
HP Laptop Recovery Parition "Not Found" error!
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I have had several issues w my toshiba laptop,
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Operating system not found on my laptop
Unfortunately the OS got corrupted and you need to re install the Operating system.\015\012There is no other way to fix the problem but use the recovery disc.\015\012\015\012If you dont have a recovery disc you may want to contact the manufactu ... PC Laptops
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Acer e Recovery Error code: 0xC0000003Open image failed. Found
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Rebooting on Dell D600 Latitude
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Acer Aspire 5100 Bios
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Re: your suggestion for my Dell Lattitude D600 Hard Drive Problem
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Audio please my hp compaq presario v2000 does not play sounds. i have tried on several occassions to install sound driver but all turned out to be a futility. i checked from the audio compartment of the machine and found out this sentence" no audio device". please help me out. thanks
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MBR Error i erase the drive erase on laptop tried to reboot but i am getting mbr error 1 & 3
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My laptop not working
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Sp3 toshiba satellite l20 182
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Compressed boot manager
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Dell "Drivers and Utilities" CD
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If you get a telephone call from one of those computerized calling machines, don't hang up. It may be the Orlando Police Department wanting to tell you about a crime problem in your neighborhood.
Thanks to a $5,200 gift from the third graduating class of its citizen police academy, the department soon will have a calling machine for use in its community relations program.


text: Hi guys, My friend from Megaupload knows as Bramos is in jail now as he has been arrested by the FBI in New Zealand. We as friends started a FB page and Youtube video. We would like to create a buzz around Facebook and hopefully in blogs around the world. Who can help me with this as I am sure there are people that liked Megaupload a lot and would like to support this technical brain of Megaupload! We gave the project name: #FreeBramos Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/FreeBramos Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUInkcbV_1g Tactics (tips are welcome) Services are welcome how-to are welcome Thanks in advance!


text:
Homeliss Derilex - HD's Vs. The SP-1200
Posted on Thursday 17 March 2005, 16:14 - updated on 14/04/09 - Music News - Permalink
Homeliss Derilex - HD's Vs. The SP-1200
(CD) Pockets Linted Entertainment POC7030, 2005-03-17
Tracklisting :
01. Live And Direct
02. Spark
03. W.F Fard
04. Get Ready
05. Shine
06. Deep Thought
07. What It Is
08. Church On Sunday
09. Benson And Hedges
10. Hip Hop feat. Big Wig
11. Situation Decelation
12. The 3rd
13. Outlaw
Links :
epitonic.com/artists/homelissderelix.html (some MP3s)
Biography :
Bay Area-based rap duo Homeliss Derilex are back and set to release their third album "HD's vs. The SP 1200" on Pocketslinted Entertainment. The 14-track album is a raw melding of Bay Area bravado and old skool east coast influence.
Formed in 1988, Homeliss Derilex consist of MC Grand and producer Architect. The two met in 1987 and decided with their similar raw, grimy styles that they would form a group. In 1991 the pair released "Surviving The Game", and in 1992 "Fraudulent" on Malvado Records. In 1993 the pair recorded their break out single "Cash Money" on Stones Throw Records. The same year Grand released a single with Peanut Butter Wolf and Fanatik call "The Visitor". They soon linked up with Strong Arm management and Bay Area up and coming producers like DJ Design (Foreign Legion, Look Records). Later that year, legendary Bay Area rapper JT the Bigga Figga took an interest in the group.
"It was cool", recalls Architect, "but JT's label Buc Fifty was a gangsta rap label and they didn't know what to do with us."
In 1995 Grand relocated to Long Beach, where Artchitect was living and they started working with Coolio. But again, HD had their vision and style that just didn't fit with the more west coast gangsta style.
"They wanted us to be part of their faction, but we weren't feeling the gang persona", says Grand. "So we came back to the Bay."
Production on the album is done by Architect. "HD's vs. The SP 1200" will be released in January 2005 on Rasco's imprint Pockets Linted Entertainment.


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Where do you go when you want to find African American content on the Web? If Patrick McElroy has his way, your destination will be www. EverythingBlack.com an Internet directory that boasts over 2,000 African American Web site listings. McElroy is the president of the Freedom Group, an Atlanta-based Internet consulting firm and owner of EverythingBlack. Ironically, McElroy started out designing Web pages for others.
"The Freedom Group started out as a Web design company focused on building sites for African American businesses," says McElroy. "We got a lot of resistance from black companies that didn't believe there was a place for them on the Web." In response, McElroy and partner James Harris decided to build a place where African Americans could come and congregate. Launched in February 1997, EverythingBlack is one of the most comprehensive black-oriented directories on the Web. But, like many other newly launched advertising-driven Web sites, it has yet to turn a profit.
"Large advertisers are spending 90% of their ad dollars with a handful of mega sites like Yahoo and Excite while the rest of us are basically fighting for scraps," explains McElroy. For black-oriented sites the problem is compounded because many advertisers don't believe African Americans are a substantial portion of the Net audience. "I had a conversation with some white friends of mine who worked at an advertising agency and couldn't be convinced that there was any merit to buying space on black Web sites," says Harris, chief technology officer of the Freedom Group.
Shortly after that conversation, the duo mounted an e-mail campaign to prove that there were 1 million black Internet users. Introduced at the same time as the Web site, the drive spanned four weeks and eventually netted only about 80,000 responses, a far cry from their goal. McElroy, however, was encouraged by the findings. "We did a lot of things wrong in terms of the technology, but we were able to capture demographic data on black Internet use that wasn't available anywhere else," he states. For the first time someone was able to provide information on household income, education, gender and other information regarding the Net's black constituency.
McElroy and Harris' insistence that the Net was ripe for black-targeted marketing efforts was validated late last year by two different studies conducted by the Commerce Department and Vanderbilt University that put the number of African American Internet users at 5 million and 6 million, respectively. But by then the Freedom Group's focus had changed. "Rather than rely on advertisers to recognize the value of our market, we're beginning to move to a marketing model that places value on the quantifiable constituency that we have," says McElroy. "Not every company wants to reach 30 million surfers. Many will do just fine with an extra couple of thousand customers."
To test their marketing concept, EverythingBlack negotiated the rights to develop a How Stella Got Her Groove Back screen saver and offered it for free, along with audio clips from the movie to visitors. Over 5,000 screen
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text:
Seung-Hyun Chae, Ph.D. joined SK Hynix in 2017 and his primary focus lies on advanced package reliability.
Prior to joining SK Hynix, Seung-Hyun Chae was Member Group Technical Staff (MGTS) for Texas Instruments in U.S.A. During his 8 years at Texas Instruments, Chae spent time working on Chip-Package Interaction (CPI) based design rule development, solder electromigration (EM) reliability, package reliability improvement, and material characterization/methodology development. In 2007, he interned at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, NY, U.S.A.
Chae received a B.S. degree from Seoul National University, Seoul, S. Korea and a M.S/Ph.D. degree from The University of Texas at Austin, U.S.A., all in Materials Science and Engineering. He authored or co-authored two book chapters and more than 20 technical articles. He is a recipient of SRC (Semiconductor Research Corporation) Mahboob Khan Outstanding Industry Liason Award in 2013.
You can hear his presentation at S6. Electropackage System and Interconnect Product(STS)


text:
These portable Conductivity and TDS meters come standard with functions that minimize, even eliminate errors in other manufacturer's meters. Models are made for a variety of environments - rugged and compact, rough environments, and even waterlogged environments.
The manufacturer of this item has mandated a minimum price at which we may advertise this product.To see our discount price you can:
Tel: (866) 433-6682, (281) 359-8538, Fax: (866) 433-6684, (281) 359-0084


text:
ISO732x provide galvanic isolation up to 3000 VRMS for 1 minute
per UL and 4242 VPK per VDE. These devices have two isolated channels
comprised of logic input and output buffers separated by silicon dioxide
(SiO2) insulation barriers. ISO7320 has both channels in the same direction
while ISO7321 has the two channels in opposite direction. In case of input power or signal loss,
default output is low for devices with suffix F and high for devices without suffix F. See Device Functional Modes for further
details. Used in conjunction with isolated power supplies, these devices prevent noise currents on
a data bus or other circuits from entering the local ground and interfering with or damaging
sensitive circuitry. ISO732x have integrated noise filters for harsh industrial environment where
short noise pulses may be present at the device input pins. ISO732x have TTL input thresholds and
operate from 3 V to 5.5 V supply levels. Through innovative chip design and layout techniques,
electromagnetic compatibility of ISO732x have been significantly enhanced to enable system-level
ESD, EFT, Surge and Emissions compliance.


text:
State Improves On Inclusive Education
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
April 30, 2003
ALBANY, NEW YORK--The state Department of Education had good news Monday for students with disabilities and advocates for inclusive education.
According to a "Report Card" on the state's public education system, more "special needs" students spent more time in regular classrooms, their grades improved overall, and the numbers of those moving on to higher education increase dramatically during the last school year.
For the first time, more than half of all students in special education programs -- 51 percent -- spent more than 80 percent of their day in general classrooms instead of segregated programs.
In 2001, 36,249 such students attended New York colleges and universities, up from 24,953 just five years earlier. The graduation rate for students with disabilities in two-year community colleges is nearly the same as for those without disabilities.
These are significant improvements, say officials, who point out that New York has been under pressure from the federal government to improve its inclusive education of students with disabilities.
There is still much work that needs to be done. Black students are still labeled for special education at a much higher rate than white children. Also, much progress on inclusion has been occurring in the pre-kindergarten ages rather than the higher grade levels.


text: Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B367 Safari/531.21.10) Hello all, As per title is it possible to upload documents say CV, transcript etc to a job application site? I tried but the upload button is grayed out, this means in iPad you WILL never be able to upload? Anyone can help on this as using iPad has become a mainstream device for me and I have been using my MacBook pro less! Thank you.


text:
Bed bug
F015/6220 Royalty Free
Please login to use the price calculator
Credit: SEBASTIAN KAULITZKI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Release details: Model release not required. Property release not required.
Keywords: 3 dimensional, 3d, arthropod, arthropoda, arthropods, artwork, bed bug, bed-bug, bedbug, biological, biology, cimex sp, cimicid, illustration, insect, insecta, insects, invertebrate, invertebrates, one animal, parasite, parasitic, pests, plain background, science, scientific, three dimensional, white background
Licence fees: A licence fee will be charged for any media (low or high resolution) used in your project.


text:
Liverpool defender Stephen Sama admits he sticks close to Jamie Carragher.
Sama is eager to learn as much as he can from the Reds icon.
"I have always liked William Gallas but since coming here I've looked up to Jamie Carragher. He has given me some great advice and been a real inspiration to me. He's a fantastic defender," he told liverpoolfc.tv.
"Just being here is incredible. Liverpool are one of the biggest teams in the world and I feel so proud to be here."


text:
A man was shocked by electricity Tuesday while he was working on power lines in Port Wentworth. He has been taken to a local hospital for treatment.
At about 2:30 p.m., the 35-year-old subcontractor for Georgia Power Co. was in a raised bucket working on power lines in the woods off of Ga. 21 near railroad tracks by Bonnybridge Road when something went wrong and a jolt of electricity went through him, said Port Wentworth Police Chief Matt Libby, director of public safety for the city.
Co-workers brought the man down, called 911 and began to render aid. Libby said they performed CPR and utilized an AED. Firefighters arrived and took over care before turning the injured man over to Southside Fire/EMS medics, who took him to an area hospital for further treatment.
"He had a pulse and was breathing on his own by the time they left," Libby said.
Libby lauded the quick response and training of the man's co-workers.
"If he survives, the only reason is because his co-workers knew what to do," Libby said.
No further information on the condition of the man, who has not been identified, was immediately available.
Georgia Power deferred comments to South Carolina-based Sumpter Utilities, which a spokesman identified as injured man's employer. Sumpter did not immediately have information about the incident.