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The #1 lawyer directory with 1464 lawyers in Los Angeles and 193,624 total listings.
Kessler & Kessler in Los Angeles, CA
Kessler & Kessler (All Law Firms) is practicing law in Los Angeles, California. This lawyer is listed on Lawyer Map under the main category Real Estate Agents in All Law Firms.
You can reach us on phone number (310) 552-9800, fax number or email address . Our office is located on 1901 Avenue of the Stars, #400, Los Angeles, CA,
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Kessler & Kessler 1901 Avenue of the Stars, #400
Los Angeles, CA 90067
Contact Kessler & Kessler to find out about hours of operation / office hours / business hours.
Office hours
Listed business hours are general only. Call (310) 552-9800 to learn about office hours.
Monday: 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Tuesday: 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Wednesday: 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Thursday: 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Friday: 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Saturday: Closed
Sunday: Closed
Phone: (310) 552-9800
Fax: No listed fax number.
Email address
No listed email address.


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Come ski with us!
Join REDS for an exciting day on the slopes surrounded by family, friends, and colleagues. Enjoy beautiful Northstar Resort in Tahoe all day, and dine with fellow REDS Dentists in the evening while receiving CE credits at a special presentation by Don Reid, DDS.
Our price includes discounts on lift tickets and lodging at the Northstar at Tahoe Resort as well as dinner and 2 CE units, however transportation, lodging, and lift tickets are not included in our price. Please plan accordingly.
See you on the slopes!
About Our Speaker
Dr Don Reid received his BS in Chemistry at UCLA and his DDS at Temple University. He served as an enlisted US Marine in Vietnam in 1968 and ten years later Lt. Comdr. Reid completed a General Practice Residency with the US Navy Dental Corps.
He is a founder of the Academy of Microscope Enhanced Dentistry, a Fellow with the International College of Oral Implantology, an international speaker and an experienced clinician in the treatment of bite problems. Since beginning dental practice in 1980, he has helped over two thousand patients attain the benefits of a stable and comfortable occlusion.
He is a graduate of the Misch International Implant Institute, Dawson Center for Advanced Dental Studies and Piper Center for Temporal mandibular disorders. He is a faculty club member with Spear Education in Scottsdale. He is a long standing member with DOCS and AACD and he loves to fish.
Event Info
Dinner and 2 CE Units
Date: Saturday, March 3, 2012
Time: Meet at 4:30PM for Food & CE
Location: Northstar Resort
100 Northstar Drive, Truckee, CA
Cost: $80.00 REDS Members and Guests
Sign Up Online!
Website © Redwood Empire Dental Society 2014. All rights reserved.

subset: commoncrawl


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De-mystifying the Independent Metal Industry.Get straight answers on any Earache-related topic without the bullshit.Guaranteed 100% rumour-free.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Why don't we re-issue obscure albums from the past?
Question: I was just reading a response to a question about downloads and the future of the recording industry, when a thought occured to me. In the past, (in this very forum), I have inquired about the possibility of Earache reissuing some of the more obscure pieces from the back catalouge, bands like Old Lady Drivers, Intense Degree, Filthy Christians, Sore Throat, ect. The response was always a "NO", based on the limited interest in those bands the first time around, and, obviously, the fact that every reissue bumps a new release by a deserving contemparary band. All this is understandable, but what about making some of these recordings available via download through the website? They would not necessarily have to be free....I bid on a copy of the Sore Throat CD with the 2 Earache LP's on it but had to back out after the price went over the $100 mark. I would GLADLY pay $10 or $15 just to hear the music! Of course, I can always go to a torrent site...but then I get no cover/lyrics/notes/ect. Just a thought...let me know what you think!! From: firstname.lastname@example.com
Answer: Yeah I get asked all the time on this blog about the most obscure titles from the Earache back catalog, and why we dont re-issue them. As you say, its usually because the bands were fairly small and did not sell well at the time of release, so never even made it on CD at the time, and then slowly fell off our radar. In a roundabout way its this obscurity which has made those bands sought after by fans, and highly collectable now. $100 for a Sore Throat Cd is insane, thats more than it cost to record the damn thing!. Ironic, don'tcha think?
Where you need to head for is Cyclone Empire website, in Germany.They are a distro and small label, and also specialise in out of print classics. They spotted the demand for these obscure titles and convinced us to print 500 of Filthy Christians, Confessor and Sore Throat, which they will exclusively sell at reasonable prices, not stupid ebay collector prices. We just have to find the bloody master tapes first tho, so some are not advertised yet, but will be in time.
Find them here: Cyclone Empire
A little-known fact is that the cover of Filthy Christians album is the infamous photo of the assassinated Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme who was shot and killed in 1986, while out walking in the city centre of Stockholm. This national tragedy marked the end of innocence in Swedish politics, and Scandinavian society in general. His murder was never solved. The gruesome death picture is impossible to find anywhere online, Filthy Christians chose to immortalise the event on their album cover.
2 comments:
I agree the scarcity or lack of a CD release makes some of these older records fascinating to those who didn't get them the first time around for whatever reason, e.g.. lack of awareness, lack of availability, and/or poverty. Now being somewhat comfortable in my middle age, I like the idea of buying some of these older artifacts. But like the individual that posed the original question, I don't want to pay $100 to eBay something old and used, especially if I can pirate it for free. This is the sticky middle ground of being willing and able to pay a reasonable price for something that is no longer in print.
So I am glad to read you will be making some of these things available again through a license deal.
However, it looks like you have to be a registered wholesaler to purchase anything from their website. Bummer. This is what always blows my mind: why make it hard for people to give you money?
I realize you may have licensed the items to Cyclone Empire, but will you sell any off of your own Webstore?
The given link refers to the cyclone empire wholesale/distro page. The customer shop can be found at:
But as stated in the main article, those CDs are still to be released so you won't find them there by now.


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General Grievous from Star Wars, first apperance 2005:
Compare to the Necron Lord(s) from Warhammer 40,000, first appearance 1998:
Both are elite robot warrior/commanders consisting of the mind/brain/soul of a formerly organic sentient piloting a skeletal mechanical body.
And just for fun…
(Compare usual colour scheme below)
And similarly:
See also similar comparison at Enchanted's Queen Narissa = Final Fantasy 8's Sorceress Edea.
Tags: gaycron, gaycrons, General Grievous = Necron Lord, Grievous = Necron, joycron, joycrons, Necron Lord, Star Wars Warhammer, Warhammer 40000, Warhammer 40k


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- Gorayeb Supports the Latino Community
Gorayeb Supports the Latino Community
A nation built by immigrants, progressing with common ideals. This video shows various jobs held by Latinos across the country and how Latinos contribute to the fabric of the United States. Gorayeb & Associates supports the plight of the Latino community in the United States of America.


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Boys & Girls Clubs Orange County Alliance Boys & Girls Clubs Orange County Alliance
Here's a sample of our volunteer opportunities:VIEW AS
Mission Statement
Our Mission is the Movement's Reason for Being
To enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens.
A Boys & Girls Club Provides
A safe place to learn and grow...
Ongoing relationships with caring, adult professionals...
Life-enhancing programs and character development experiences...
Hope and opportunity.
About Boys & Girls Clubs Orange County Alliance
In Orange County, 87,000 children and teens participate each year in Boys & Girls Club programs. While many of these children are at risk, they are not without hope. Each of the 16 Boys & Girls Clubs in Orange County offer these youth an opportunity to not only discover their own strengths, but to also mature with a foundation for successful, dynamic lives.
The Boys & Girls Clubs Orange County Alliance works on behalf of all 16 clubs in Orange County, raising funds and administering county-wide programs such as Readiness on the Road with the OC Children and Families Commission and RBI, in partnership with Angels Baseball.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has intercepted an order from an Iranian official instructing militants in Iraq to attack U.S. interests in Baghdad in the event the Obama administration launches a military strike in Syria, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
The American embassy in Baghdad was a likely target, according to unnamed U.S. officials quoted by the newspaper. The Journal said the officials did not describe the range of potential targets indicated by the intelligence.
In addition, the State Department issued a warning on Thursday telling U.S. citizens to avoid all but "essential" travel to Iraq.
President Barack Obama has asked the U.S. Congress to back his plan for limited strikes in response to a chemical weapons attack on civilians that the United States blames on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces.
The Journal reported that the Iranian message was intercepted in recent days and came from the head of the Revolutionary Guards' Qods Force. The newspaper said the message went to Iranian-supported Shi'ite militia groups in Iraq.
The Journal reported that the message informed Shi'ite groups to be prepared to respond with force after any U.S. military strike on Syria.
"Travel within Iraq remains dangerous given the security situation," according to the State Department's warning, which replaced an earlier one "to update information on security incidents and to remind U.S. citizens of ongoing security concerns in Iraq, including kidnapping and terrorist violence."
The department said that numerous insurgent groups, including al Qaeda's Iraq affiliate, remain active and "terrorist activity and sectarian violence persist in many areas of the country at levels unseen since 2008."
It added: "The ability of the embassy to respond to situations in which U.S. citizens face difficulty, including arrests, is extremely limited."
The State Department declined immediate comment. The CIA declined comment.
Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria; Reporting by Will Dunham and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Eric Walsh


text: Nowadays, we can find many inventions have made to help the people in many ways. By the way, the Dirt bike trailer has made. The dirt bike has long been most excellent form of recreation as well as in off-road travels. Those who have the desire to ride these forms of vehicles, as well as the […]Continue reading


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I can imagine this cry continually being shouted out in back bedrooms, cube farms and open-plan agile pigpens alike. Every couple of years or so, a new feature is mooted that will enhance the Java language, ostensibly to make it more "modern" and keep it competitive with the likes of C#, Ruby, and even (who woulda thought?) JavaScript.
As soon as the proposed new feature appears on the horizon, excitement bubbles up. Arguments break out on community hubs such as JavaLobby and TSS, where developers swear blind that they can't possibly be an effective Java programmer without the new feature – in whatever form it ends up taking. (Okay that's a slight exaggeration, but reading some of the threads, it does feel that way!)
The grass is always greener, and when one of these developers spots SomeOtherLanguage with Feature X, their sperm count can be heard dropping through the floor. Just Google for Java is dead if you're willing to lose a chunk of your life wading through the Chicken Little doomsayers painting their imagined projections for all to see.
This isn't to put the new language features down. Generics proved to be a fine update to Java; and annotations (despite initial worries over their applicability and potential for misuse) has proved useful. I often find myself using annotations to provide metadata, e.g. to bind bean properties with Oracle columns; note I don't use them for runtime config such as deployment descriptors, though – that would be a definite misuse.
Next up we have closures. I'm sure they will provide a very nice addition to the language, but judging by some of the discussions going on, you would think that developers have suddenly lost their mojo until closures become part of the language; sitting around listlessly, waiting, waiting, until they're empowered to start developing again.
And after closures, I'm sure the Java language will periodically stop working until we get Pikmins, "native" aspects, property reference syntax, everything that Groovy has, everything that Ruby has including dynamics, syntax-level XML support, syntactically sweetened catch clauses, functions as first-class objects, dynamic arrays, switch statements for Strings, immutable Collection classes, deterministic destructors, a using statement just like C#'s,and so on forever.
When Java first appeared and gained popularity, it elevated legions of programmers from the "knives and daggers" of C and C++. We saw genuine productivity improvements. We haven't suddenly lost this ability to develop efficiently.
language features to improve our lives and keep Java competitive:
Whining about how difficult the language suddenly is to use until the new feature frees us from our shackles, or using the feature's absence to proclaim Java's imminent death: Bad to the point of being sad.


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Create an Account - Increase your productivity, customize your experience, and engage in information you care about.
The NPDES Permit requires compliance with all applicable water quality regulations related to stormwater runoff as well as ensuring that all of the county's Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (MS4s) are functional and well-maintained. The Permit also requires the county to document enforcement statistics for each reporting year. Enforcement action typically includes monetary penalties, notices of violation, written warnings as well as citations issued to owners and/or operators.
Illicit Discharge Violations: This violation type covers a wide variety of infractions of state water quality standards. Failure to properly install adequate erosion and sediment controls can result in the discharge of turbid waters from a development site into adjacent waterways, wetlands or other natural systems. Illicit discharges are the discharge of anything other than stormwater runoff into Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) facilities.
Illegal Fill Violations: The deposition of fill requires a County permit, except when it involves under five cubic yards that is in upland (non-floodplain and not wetland). Filling in wetlands or in floodplains is regulated and permits (County and/or Water Management District) may be required for such activities.
Illegal Dumping Violations: This violation category includes the disposal of "waste" or trash or refuse of any kind in areas other than legal collection sites.
Erosion and Sediment Control Violations: Improperly installed erosion and sediment control Best Management Practices (BMPs) or lack of such BMPs, may result in violations of state water quality standards resulting from sediment discharge into wetlands or downstream areas. Each active construction site meeting the 1-acre threshold is expected at the site to include a display of a Notice of Intent to Issue (NOI) and the Surface Water Pollution Prevention Plan with appropriate BMPs.


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With a dramatic view of the Lloyd Jones Barn Pavilion across a spring-fed pond, the Pond Amphitheater consists of a naturally occurring set of limestone steps that climb up a gentle hill. The steps form a unique natural seating and viewing area for wedding ceremonies, musical performances, speeches or any manner of public performances. The view down to the stage and across to the Pavilion is unforgettable.
Surrounded by prairie grasses, wildflowers, oak trees and singing birds, the Pond Amphitheater is one of several special spaces on the White Oak Savanna property that will help make your wedding a distinctive, visually dramatic experience for you and all your guests.
For additional information, please click here to send us an email inquiry or feel free to telephone White Oak Savanna at 608-636-5776.


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Ease It By
While checking out the site of the future Fostoria Rail Park this Norfolk Southern freight crept very slowly around the curve. This GE C40-9W, numbered 9978, was dragging a short train of autoracks into yard just beyond. It gave us a good opportunity to grab some shots, but the lighting and sloppy ground didn't cooperate.


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Phone: 01782 783963
Bedding Plants
We can supply a wide range of top quality bedding plants to suit your needs.
Patio Plants
We can meet all your needs and requirements with a range of patio plants.
Perennial Plants
We stock a wide range of perennial plants to meet all your needs and requirements.
Other Products
We offer a wide range of other products and accessories to meet all your requirements.


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The aim of the XVII Greenmeeting of the Americas, Greenmeeting Brasilia 2019, is "IN SEARCH OF SOLUTIONS" for local and global environmental problems, with innovative and objective discussions, involving the largest number of institutions and segments of society, Brazil and the Outside. Broadening its reach and democratizing discussions beyond the government, technical and academic segments, bringing to light the successful experiences that allow its application in areas with similar problems.
"Greenmeeting" seeks to work on the concept of sustainable development in the decision-making of the economic, social and environmental pillars, in order to achieve greater importance, coordination and integration between the three dimensions of sustainable development, with a view to overcoming the prevalence Of sectoral visions, after the definition of sustainable development as a world priority, through Rio 92.


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Home » Contact
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Write for Us or Suggest an Article Topic
Here is your chance to write that fabulous post about traveling with your family. Or perhaps you want to help other "would be" traveling families with some advice that you wished you had known prior to traveling. We are looking for a range of articles. You will need to supply a biography (see an example here) and the article including photos. We will provide a link to your biography on the article and a link to your website, Twitter & Facebook profile if included.
Want to become a Product Reviewer?
Fill in the details and perhaps give us a little bit of information about who you are and what you do so that we can match our products to you.
Why Should You Advertise on VagabondFamily.org
VagabondFamily.org is compiled & edited by two experienced travelers who are currently in their second year of traveling the world with their young children in tow. We have a large and loyal readership, many of whom have been following our journey since it began. The website is continually updated with relevant information and plenty of guest posters. Long-term travelling families is a fast growing niche and getting in early will provide you with the best opportunity to reach our readers.
Want to Contact Us?
Email: email@example.com
Twitter: @Vagabond_Family
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vagabond-Family/187114321319861


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For a home that is conveniently located and offers a variety of amenities, look no further than the Lion's Gate community by Showcase Home Builders. For over two decades, we have been a trusted name in new home construction in Christiansburg, VA. We are proud to work with both residential and commercial construction clients. Our team is proud to help customers across the New River Valley build the home of their dreams and will work closely with you to ensure you find the right floor plan to fits your needs and desires.
Amenities include:
- Low HOA dues
- Gas Heat
- Tank less Gas Hot Water Heaters
- Gas Fireplace
- 9′ Tall
- Single Level Homes
- Single family with basement
- Ceramic Tile
- Upgraded Appliances
- Granite Counter Tops in kitchen
- Double car garages
- Laminate Flooring in Living and Dining Room
- Exterior Maintenance Including Mowing & Snow Scraping
- Sidewalks Throughout the Community
Phase II of this project includes 41 homes, while Lion's Gate Phase I contained 51 homes. Showcase Homebuilders is proud to be a Quality Builders Warranty home builder. This distinction is backed by Liberty Mutual and sets us apart as a builder of integrity. Every home we build is backed by a 10-year Quality Builders Warranty. This is a promise to you that you will receive a home that is filled with expert technical knowledge and careful craftsmanship.
Home Builders in Christiansburg, VA You Can Trust
For over 20 years, Showcase Home Builders has been a trusted name in new home construction and townhome construction in Christiansburg, VA. We are proud to service both commercial and residential clients, and are dedicated to helping you find the right floor plan to fit your desires and needs for your new home.
For more information about our new home constructions services or commercial services, please contact us today at 540-382-5885.


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Dakos (pronounced NTAH – kos) is the name of a Cretan barley rusk. This salad is made using this rusk as its base and it is topped with cubed tomatoes, crumbled feta, myzithra (a whey cheese made in Crete) or anthotyros (similar to ricotta) and flavoured with oregano.
The rusk is also called krithrokoulouro or Koukouvagia (owl) in Crete, but to be frank I don't know why they are so called. Probably because the rusks look like the owl's eyes 🙂 Ntakos is a lovely mezes or a light meal on its own and very healthy.
From all the places I have been in Greece, Crete is my favourite.The Cretan people are wonderful and very hospitable.Wherever you go they will offer you tsikoudia also called raki or what is called tsipouro in other parts of Greece and Zivania in Cyprus.
It is the traditional Cretan alcoholic drink, which is made from the leftovers of the grapes when making wine. The pomace is distilled and what is produced is a very strong drink containing 35 – 65% alcohol. It has a very strong taste and this you will receive as a treat from the locals in every village, city, restaurant, or coffee shop.Even when traveling on the Cretan ships you will be offered tsikoudia. By accepting it is a confirmation of a new friendship and part of the welcoming procedure. A couple of shots are enough to make you stumble so don't overdo it if you don't want to get drunk.
Their food is fantastic. Spicy and aromatic.There isn't a single herb you can't find in Crete.When we were traveling to Sfakia, we stopped near the edge of a gorge and I picked some sage. Travelling around you will see the goats on all hillsides, and maybe that's the reason the meat is so nice and tasty.
As for their cheeses, most of them are unique and not made in other parts of Greece, staka, malaka, xynomyzithra, myzithra, graviera, kefalograviera the list is endless.
No wonder why every neighbourhood in Athens, has its Cretan products' shop.
There is one just near my house and today I got the barley rusks and myzithra.
Most of the herbs I have, I've brought them from Crete when I visited during summer.
One of our favourite things we used to eat in Crete is Dakos. Barley rusks, either big or small ones, wet under the tap just for a few seconds or quickly dipped into a bowl with water, finely cubed or grated tomatoes are added on top and soft fresh myzithra cheese and feta cheese, salt and oregano and topped with extra virgin olive oil on top.
Dakos Salad
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Serves: 8 as an appetizer / salad or 4 as a main dish
- 4 barley rusks
- 2 tablespoons olive oil, on each
- 2 large ripe tomatoes, cut into 1 cm dice
- A couple of basil leaves, finely cut
- Salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 300 grams xynomyzithra* (or crumbled feta cheese or feta and myzithra or anthotyros (similar to ricotta))
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- A few capers and olives (optional)
- More olive oil and oregano to serve
- Cube the tomatoes and season with salt, pepper and oregano. Αdd a few slices of olives, some capers as well as the basil and mix.
- Spread the tomato mixture over the dakos and add the crumbled cheese on top.
- Finally top with the olive oil and sprinkle with more oregano.
- Let it rest for 10 – 15 minutes for the rusk to absorb the juices and soften.
Note: In Chania, they use xynomyzithra, a local cheese which is produced only in Chania and is something between feta and myzithra. A mixture of feta and myzithra or anthotyros (whey cheeses similar to ricotta) will also work well.
You can find many more Greek recipes in my cookbook "More Than A Greek Salad", and "Mint, Cinnamon & Blossom Water, Flavours of Cyprus, Kopiaste!" both available on all Amazon stores.
Kopiaste and Kali Orexi,


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At IFAT 2018, trade fair for water, sewage, waste and raw materials management, microplastics is a major concern. Finding avoidance strategies and possible measuring methods for microplastics less than 5 mm in diameter is a priority for many, and to this end an alliance of research institutes and companies has formed. Technical solutions were on display at the fair in Munich last week.
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) responsible for the research program "Plastic in the Environment," was also be at the fair. The program will run until 2021, investing 35 million euros in 18 projects with partners in science, industry, associations and municipalities.
The Department of Urban Water Management from the Technical University of Berlin also had a booth at the fair focusing on the impact of tire wear on the environment, namely how much tire wear is released into the aquatic environment through road runoff.


text: A complex of two traditional Cretan style houses in village of Galatas Nea Kydonia Chania. This property stands on own land of approx. 570m², in short distance to the main village square. These two charming houses are arranged around a beautiful courtyard. The main building is a two storey house of 88 m² and the ground floor consists of a kitchen and a living room. An internal staircase is leading up to the 1st floor where the view to the surrounding landscape is wonderful. First floor consists of two bedrooms. Next to the main building, at the west side of the yard there is one more, used as storage of approximately 42m2. Several traditional elements on both buildings can be observed such as the stone blocks around the doors, the stone vaulted structures-arches and the wooden ceilings. All buildings need extended rehabilitation works to improve them.


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The cubby house garden shed creates a warm, snug place for children to play and create. Their own space to inspire the imagination
The is a great garden shed for clubs to meet, store equipment with room to spare. This excellent outside room comes in kitset form and can be shipped all over Australia!
The kitsets come with full instructions showing step by step photographs and all parts required to put them together including treated ground bearers, screws, nails, sealant, door and keys.
We recommend a builder put this together or a handyman with some trade skills required.
If putting a kitset shed together is out of your skill range – click HERE for our Kitset Assembly Service.
Phone and email support available.
These sheds are proving to be very popular and attracting much interest!
Size: 3x3x2.8m (9m3)
Wall Thickness: 28mm
Floor Thickness: 18mm
Roof Thickness: 18mm
Roof Material: Water Proof Asphalt Shingle – Ancient Black
Comes with ground treated runner beams
Clear window and door panes are acrylic – Perspex
Doors are lockable and come with key.
We send full paper instructions and a link to a video of two builders putting it together. Phone and email support available if you need it. It is recommended that a builder puts this together or a handyman with some trade skills.
Delivery Times & Cost
You wont believe the incredible shipping rates View Shipping Information and Pricing for sheds to Australian States Here We believe in keeping things as straight forward as possible and a set rate for every state.


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Apex Mortgage LLC is committed to helping you find the right mortgage product for your needs. We understand that every borrower is different, and we offer a variety of products to meet your individual requirements. We make the process of securing a mortgage simple and straightforward by offering you the latest in financial tools that enable you to make sound financial choices.
Apex Mortgage LLC
Ph: (410) 715-4567Fax: (410) 715-5677Licensed by PA dept of Banking and Securities license # 27930 | Licensed by the Virginia State Corporation Commission as MC 3301 | DC | MD | NMLS: 143255 ( www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org )Licenses


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Christmas Eve got real scary, real early for a Las Vegas, Nevada couple and their infant. At 10:10 a.m. Las Vegas Metro police received multiple calls of shots fired from the Ventana Apartment Homes on the Northern side of the city.
When police arrived on the scene they found one man with gunshot wounds on the scene. That man was transferred to University Medical Center where he was pronounced dead. Police also impounded an Infiniti G35 that was left on the scene by the suspect.
The story that came to light through the police investigation is one of sheer terror. Just before those 911 calls came in, there was a simple knock at the door - as we've seen all too often in these stories. As the woman of the house opened the door four armed intruders barged through the door attacking the woman.
What happens next is still not completely clear. What is clear is that the couple, defending their newborn fought back. At some point, the so called "victims" opened fire with firearms. Neighbors reported hearing the gunfight start inside the house and then continue outside the house. As Las Vegas Metro PD Lieutenant Ray Steiber explained, "There was a multitude of gunfire. We believe some occurred in the residence and then it carried out into the parking lot".
The wounded intruder was abandoned by his three accomplices - two black males and a black female. Police are actively searching for the three and believe the impounded Infiniti belongs to one of them.
The man and woman were taken to the hospital for treatment related to the melee. Authorities have disclosed that the infant was not wounded and neither parent suffered from gunshot wounds.
This is one of those nightmare scenarios that is becoming all to common. Right now we are being bombarded by messages about, as the press calls them, "high-capacity clips" and how they have no use for the average American.
I have no problem wanting more than 10+1 rounds to defend my family if four people come through the door. How about you?


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Frog design was asked by Newsweek magazine to provide ideas and design direction for "resurrecting the Republican brand," featured the (December 29) print issue.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Newsweek Features frog design's Concepts for "Resurrecting the Republican Brand"
Frog design was asked by Newsweek magazine to provide ideas and design direction for "resurrecting the Republican brand," featured the (December 29) print issue.
Posted by Rick at 4:47 PM
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Before the Levees Break: A Plan to Save the Netherlands
On a late fall afternoon on the western edge of the Netherlands, coastal engineer Marcel Stive stands atop a 40-foot dune. He stares out beyond the posse of wet-suit-clad surfers wading into the breakers of the North Sea. Where the surfers see inviting waves, Stive sees dry land—and a distant storm.
Posted by Rick at 8:53 AM
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Modular Robot Concept Design Digs In
A new robot concept is raising the hopes of the building industry that the high-tech future will be populated with smart excavating robots that will easily replace the high-cost of insurance-needing human contractors.
Posted by Rick at 7:46 AM
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Sunday, December 28, 2008
Barcelona opens a design center
Spain's Dhub is officially open.
Posted by Rick at 4:12 PM
No comments:
Is IDEO still king of innovation?
As the playing field for design management becomes more crowded, does IDEO still have an advantage?
Posted by Rick at 4:06 PM
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Ford's Green Plan to Drive Sales
Promising a slew of new green vehicles, the troubled Detroit automaker is turning to top design firms to make those cars innovative and appealing.
Posted by Rick at 4:03 PM
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How Apple Could Survive Without Steve Jobs
This isn't a question. It's a suggestion.
Posted by Rick at 4:01 PM
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2008 Design Company of the Year: Nike
In 2008, Nike Design was about heritage, pioneering technology and an entirely new way to build shoes, proving that--even in design--some things are better with age.
Posted by Rick at 3:57 PM
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Applying "design thinking" to, um, design
Lessons from the development process of Google's Chrome.
Posted by Rick at 3:55 PM
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Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Google's Mayer: Staying Innovative In a Downturn
The mantra that's been flooding the Googleplex this year? 'Scarcity brings clarity,' explains Marissa Mayer, Google Vice-President.
Posted by Rick at 12:09 PM
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24 Fantastic Future Wonders of Green Design
The 'green movement' has swept the world and architecture is at the forefront of the new industrial revolution - buildings being by far the biggest energy-sappers in the world.
Posted by Rick at 11:54 AM
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Five Questions
A short video talking about design thinking.
Posted by Rick at 11:22 AM
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Great concept designs never fade away, they always remain alive in the memory of designers and the Nokia Aeon is definitely one of them.
Posted by Rick at 11:06 AM
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Supervision is the personal financial assistant you wish you had. The electronic budget diary scans receipts, charts money coming in/out, talks to your bank, and gives you monthly expense details so you can balance your finances more effectively - or for most people, at all. The display doubles as a touchscreen and comes with a stylus so you can manage your monies the old fashioned way too.
Posted by Rick at 11:04 AM
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Tuesday, December 23, 2008
What's design got to do with it?
The film 'What's design got to do with it?' shows how a selection of Danish companies have successfully used different design disciplines and design strategies. The video shows that the concept of 'Danish Design' is changing and undergoing a very interesting development these years.
Posted by Rick at 3:48 PM
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The Ideas Exchange
To reach customers better some firms have taken the idea of a focus group to its logical extreme and created huge online communities.
Posted by Rick at 3:31 PM
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Blog covering the happenings at the Institute of Design at Stanford.
Posted by Rick at 3:24 PM
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Green Appliances and Kitchens
As the Consumer Marketing Manager of Sub-Zero and Wolf, Christopher Parr knows what people want in their kitchens, and knows what it takes for a fridge to be green.
Posted by Rick at 3:17 PM
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Sucking Waste Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Here is an infrastructure investment America should consider: an Envac waste disposal system. Instead of filling our streets with garbage bags and waiting for trucks to pick them up, many European cities (they invest in infrastructure that isn't for cars there) are trying out these clever underground vacuum systems.
Posted by Rick at 3:14 PM
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Simple Is Not As Simple As It Seems
An article in the New York Times says customers are being more attracted to "simple" products:
And, as it turns out, the buyers of consumer electronics could very well have been a leading economic indicator. Over the last year, they chose to buy two inexpensive and simple products, the Wii and the Flip, over competing gadgets bristling with more features.
Posted by Rick at 3:05 PM
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Larry Burns: Reinventing the car
General Motors veep Larry Burns previews cool next-gen car design: sleek, customizable (and computer-enhanced) vehicles that run clean on hydrogen -- and pump energy back into the electrical grid when they're idle.
Posted by Rick at 12:17 PM
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Monday, December 22, 2008
What makes a 'User Experience expert'?
So what is the added value that a user experience expert brings?
Posted by Rick at 8:20 AM
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Sunday, December 21, 2008
Robert Brunner
Before Jonathan Ive, there was Robert Brunner, the designer behind Apple's original, iconic PowerBook. Brunner, now has a new product-design studio, Ammunition, worked with Amazon.com's Lab126 unit, also staffed with Apple veterans, to design the Kindle e-book reader
Posted by Rick at 8:45 AM
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Apple Store - Glass Staircases
A unique and eye-catching feature of Apple's high-profile stores is the glass staircase, intended to attract visitors to visit the second (or even third) floor, which most retail shoppers avoid. Besides the visually interesting design, the stairways and their accompanying glass bridges are engineering and architectural marvels, and made possibly by recent advances in glass technology that allows its use in more demanding applications.
Posted by Rick at 8:37 AM
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Six Design Lessons From the Apple Store
Here are a few design ideas and lessons, to learn from the Apple Store.
Posted by Rick at 8:32 AM
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20 Cool Interaction Design Concepts
Here are twenty interaction design concepts, both 2D and 3D concepts. Every interaction designer out there should have a look at these concepts to get inspired!
Posted by Rick at 8:14 AM
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Saturday, December 20, 2008
21 Simple But Impressive Corporate Web Designs Of Top Brands
If you want to come up with some creative web design ideas or just need to motivate and inspire yourself, browse these 21 simple but impressive corporate web designs of top brands.
Posted by Rick at 3:44 PM
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IDEO Labs
Welcome to IDEO Labs workshop, playroom, garage, and launch pad. This is a place where they show bits of what they're working on, talk about prototyping, and share their excitement over the tools that help them create.
Posted by Rick at 3:37 PM
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Sunday, December 14, 2008
Social Innovation
How can we unleash and leverage the power of the global design community on some of the world's most intractable problems? Find out here.
Posted by Rick at 9:17 AM
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Speed bumps that won't flatten your tires
Designers Jae-yun Kim & Jong-Su Lee say it's time to move on! No more of this silly giant bumps in the road when we could advance!
Posted by Rick at 8:17 AM
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Liquid Mongoose adds Picasa to its repertoire
Liquid Mongoose, the purveyors of the do-it-yourself DVD and music CD sleeves has put out a new version of its bookmarklet that supports Picasa Web albums.
Posted by Rick at 8:13 AM
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Saturday, December 13, 2008
The visual thinking weblog
Visualization can be a very powerful tool. Even simple images have the power to be provocative, insightful, challenging, and even funny
Posted by Rick at 4:12 PM
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Feeling Muji
Satoshi Yasui is the kind of designer who can riff on any product--including socks. Not just any socks, but comfy ones with a 90-degree heel, knit for a perfect fit by Czech grandmothers, that he and his 15-member design team at Muji transformed into one of the Japanese retailer's roughly 7,000 products.
Posted by Rick at 4:08 PM
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Thursday, December 11, 2008
A green city blooms in the desert
Abu Dhabi, which reckons the world will wean itself from fossil fuels, is building a city that runs on solar power, recycles all waste, and bans cars. How will it work?
Posted by Rick at 7:42 AM
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Saturday, December 06, 2008
10 Futuristic Concept Laptop Designs
Technology grows too fast and to keep ourselves synchronized with the modern trends, we must take into account every progress whether that may be of past or of the future.
Compiled below is a list of the most futuristic concept laptop designs, some of which have won achievement awards while the rest are just too cool to know about.
Posted by Rick at 2:01 PM
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10 Top Social News Sites Ranked by Design
Digg, Reddit, Mixx, Slashdot, and so on. They are all great social news and media websites, but how do they rank in terms of how easy they are on the eyes?
Posted by Rick at 1:59 PM
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Creative and Unsual Bike Designs
Collection of creative and unusual bicycle designs from around the world.
Posted by Rick at 1:55 PM
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Mobile Optimized Websites, More Harm Than Good?
Many websites automatically redirect iPhones to mobile versions of their sites. Many of these sites often deliver limited content, wasting space, and eliminate zooming.
Posted by Rick at 9:36 AM
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2008 Masters of Design
A Dutch superstar, an unyielding architect, a force for good, a style soothsayer, a digital visionary and 71 perfect products. That's what you'll find here in our fifth annual report on the intersection of business and design.
Posted by Rick at 9:17 AM
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Tuesday, November 18, 2008
2008 International Design Excellence Award
Out of 1517 entries, 35 were awarded the coveted Gold award, while 77 received Silver awards and 93 won Bronze awards. For the first time this year, 389 finalists were named in addition to the winners. For the first time in the history of the competition, the expert jury bestowed two "Best in Show" awards: one to SizeChina, a design research project that assembled data from a representative cross-section of people from mainland China to create the first-ever digital database of Chinese head and face shapes; and the other to Apple's now-iconic iPhone.
Posted by Rick at 7:48 AM
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Sunday, November 16, 2008
Beautiful and Expressive Packaging Design
Packaging design has the primary goal to attract customers' attention. For this purpose, package designs can not simply inform the customers, but also provoke feelings and communicate emotions. An effective packaging looks attractive, impresses with its creativity and is just nice to have on the shelf.
Posted by Rick at 4:29 PM
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Founded in December 2007, Dzine blog Is all about designs. Here you can find inspirational designs and some good tips in logo, graphics and web designing. The goal of this site is to share quality graphic design resources, graphic design tips and much more good inspirational designs and useful information in designing, precisely and regularly.
Posted by Rick at 4:23 PM
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Packages You Won't Need a Saw to Open
A number of retailers and manufacturers have a gift for holiday shoppers: product packaging that will not result in lacerations and stab wounds.
Posted by Rick at 4:14 PM
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Blog Interface Design 2.0
Blogs have permeated just about every corner of human interest from arphids to zoology and continue to grow at a furious pace. Despite their popularity, many blogs suffer from interface design shortcomings. Unlike issues of spam and authority, these problems have relatively straightforward solutions that could considerably increase the utility of blog content.
Posted by Rick at 10:49 AM
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Are Digital Marketing + Social Design Compatible?
Social media and marketing is no longer an 'emerging media' buzzword, but a discipline that nearly every marketer has embraced. What tactics are smart marketers eyeing? Where does the discipline lie within an agency? What kinds of new social media models will emerge in 2008?
Posted by Rick at 10:44 AM
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Music on your arm
Now you can carry music on your arm.
Posted by Rick at 10:40 AM
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Design Matters
Posted by Rick at 10:36 AM
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Seven Habits of Highly Effective Green Cities
What all greening cities -- and we use the word "greening" as no city, not even Portland, is yet truly green with a capital "G" -- have in common is vision and policy plan for smart growth. After that, the other important factors seem to be:
- Good streets for bike and pedestrian traffic
- Robust transit
- Lots of green canopy
- Expanding and connecting of open spaces
- Natural storm water management techniques
- Renewable energy for metropolitan power generation
Posted by Rick at 10:28 AM
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NOTCOT Inc is a growing network of design sites currently including NOTCOT.com and innovative community contributed sites NOTCOT.org + NotCouture.com + Liqurious.com (+ previously TasteSpotting.com).
NOTCOT is a visual filtration of ideas + aesthetics + amusements. NOTCOT's two sites have become the daily sources of inspiration for creatives everywhere, fighting the good fight against "creative block" since 2005 with visually stunning imagery, the latest in international trends, and a passion for all things well designed.
Posted by Rick at 10:20 AM
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Miami Dade College is a Super Building
Located at Biscayne Boulevard and NE 5th Street in downtown Miami, the Campus Center for Miami Dade college looks like something out of OMA's handbag.
Posted by Rick at 10:17 AM
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Are Designers also Marketers?
Bokardo is a blog about interface design for social web sites and applications.
Posted by Rick at 10:13 AM
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20 cool interaction design concepts
Here are twenty interaction design concepts, both 2D and 3D concepts. Every interaction designer out there should have a look at these concepts to get inspired! As the products are totally different they have not been ranked, just numbered, enjoy!
Posted by Rick at 10:04 AM
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Shanghai and Industrial Design
Waikit Chung, born and grew up in the Netherlands and graduated with a Bachelor and Master Degree in Industrial Design from the Delft University of Technology. This is his blog on design.
Currently, he's designing experiences for all kind of people at Asentio Design in Shanghai, China.
Posted by Rick at 9:53 AM
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What makes IDEO so... IDEO?
Want to see what makes a firm like IDEO an almost magical appeal when you're a design student -- what makes it so successful at continually turning out concepts that not only answer design questions, but answer them in ways that are often so far off the beaten path that they create entirely new product definitions? Read on
Posted by Rick at 9:48 AM
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Quito 1: Paisajes Emergentes
In August of this year, a design competition was launched to generate ideas to repurpose Quito's Mariscal Sucre International Airport after its planned closing in a couple of years.
Posted by Rick at 8:17 AM
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The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) is the voice of the industrial design profession, advancing the quality and positive impact of design.
Posted by Rick at 8:14 AM
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Industrial Design Sandbox
Here's a neat blog site I've discovered regarding thoughts about industrial design, its future, and present.
Posted by Rick at 8:11 AM
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Saturday, November 08, 2008
Compressed-Air Cars Planned for Airport Test, US Launch
If Luxembourg's Motor Development International gets its wish, the next wave of alternative-energy vehicles will be a real bunch of windbags.
Posted by Rick at 2:43 PM
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50 Strange Buildings of the World
Here are some rather odd and different building designs.
Posted by Rick at 7:45 AM
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Liz Diller: Architecture is a special effects machine
In this engrossing EG talk, architect Liz Diller shares her firm DS+R's more unusual work, including the Blur Building, whose walls are made of fog, and the revamped Alice Tully Hall, which is wrapped in glowing wooden skin.
Posted by Rick at 7:35 AM
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Friday, November 07, 2008
Amazon designs new packaging
No more jaws of life to open that package from Amazon.
Posted by Rick at 3:16 PM
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Sunday, November 02, 2008
The Future of Healthcare Is In Your Hand(set)
Cell phones changed everything in emerging markets. Isolated communities got a taste of access and upward mobility they'd never known before. Entire economies shifted as people were able to leapfrog roadblocks to communication. Now mobile technology is promising to transform healthcare in the same way.
Posted by Rick at 8:14 AM
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Designer Open 2008
DESIGNERSOPEN 2008 is one of the biggest design events in the east of Germany. During three days (24-26 Oct.)
Posted by Rick at 8:10 AM
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How Blog
Here's a great resource for information on design.
Posted by Rick at 8:04 AM
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Saturday, November 01, 2008
Alli packaging for GSK consumer healthcare
In preparation for the launch of alli, the first FDA-approved over-the-counter diet pill, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare sought IDEO's help in designing the product's packaging. IDEO looked closely at key behaviors of dieters as well as stages of the dieter's personal journey, conceiving a system of tools and materials to support individuals physically and emotionally, before, during, and after their diet.
Posted by Rick at 3:08 PM
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Design Thinking
A blog who main topic is 'design thinking.'
Posted by Rick at 3:04 PM
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Reconsidering Nike
Nike has come a long way since its early attempts to green its supply chain.
Posted by Rick at 2:51 PM
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Design Mind magazine launch
Watch/listen to a few comments from Frog executives and the creative team behind Design Mind about print and the publication itself.
Go to Design Mind magazine.
Posted by Rick at 11:49 AM
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Design Thinking and Marketing
What does "design thinking" actually mean?
Posted by Rick at 11:47 AM
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Getting people to imagine
Where do you learn experience design and interactive design? Are the D-schools doing a good job producing design thinkers? What about cross-disciplinary designs? How expensive are D-schools?
Posted by Rick at 11:43 AM
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Organic Essentialism
World's most lightweight suitcase.
'Onehundred&ten' is the world's most lightweight suitcase, designed by ross lovegrove
for british high-end luggage maker globetrotter.
'Onehundred&ten' is the world's most lightweight suitcase, designed by ross lovegrove
for british high-end luggage maker globetrotter.
Posted by Rick at 11:18 AM
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Banpo Bridge
Just a twist of design, a splattering of paint, a cheeky addition to something old can make it look brightly cheerful and attractive to the eyes again.
Posted by Rick at 11:16 AM
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50 Stunning Examples of a great redesign: My Top Picks
A redesign can be worth its weight in gold if you get it right. There is a thin line between freshening up your design, and taking a step backwards with a redesign. Sometimes a redesign can be subtle and simple, and other times it can be a huge re-vamp of a company and it's goals. Check these.
Posted by Rick at 9:36 AM
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Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Work is a pleasure in tomorrow's office
Work stations with a built-in treadmill and portable meeting rooms are just some of the developments that may become commonplace in the offices of the future.
Posted by Rick at 8:43 AM
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Monday, October 20, 2008
7 Ingredients of good corporate design
For a good corporate design, we need to be aware of two main elements, which can be further broken down into a total of seven "ingredients".
Posted by Rick at 8:18 PM
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Sunday, October 05, 2008
Incredible Custom Shoes Designs
Here is a mix of cool custom designs for shoes.
Posted by Rick at 7:47 AM
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Creative Bus Stop Advertisement Designs
To catch the eye gives cause to design something completely different.
Posted by Rick at 7:41 AM
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Saturday, September 20, 2008
Gadgets we love...because of fine design
American industrial designers are the secret heroes of the marketplace, finessing products to make them easier to use and help them sell better. Here's how five top firms have been busy shaping our world.
Posted by Rick at 4:43 PM
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8 concept cars that'll never see production
These prototypes may never go into production, but you'll find elements of their designs in the cars of the future.
Posted by Rick at 4:20 PM
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Friday, September 12, 2008
Information Architecture for Audio: Doing It Right
Audio content is becoming increasingly prevalent. But do you know how to design it effectively? Jens Jacobsen combines information architecture, journalism, usability engineering and interface design to resolve some of the issues that arise from introducing audio. He shows us how he makes his magic..
Posted by Rick at 7:58 AM
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Saturday, September 06, 2008
Futuristic PCs
Review the fourth Microsoft-sponsored Next-Gen PC Design Competition, which this year encouraged entrants to dream up futuristic designs that not only feature eye-catching aesthetics, but also cater to people's passions
Posted by Rick at 8:22 AM
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Wednesday, September 03, 2008
(Re)building a town
When a tornado leveled Greensburg, Kansas a class of college students took it on to help rebuild the town - with an eye on the environment.
Posted by Rick at 12:39 PM
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Monday, September 01, 2008
Take on the urban with Beema
Beema is a inner city trick bike by Andreas Martin that allows you to take on any obstacle that the urban area throws up; chairs, banks, rails or just the street. It fills the gap between FMX, scooter and BMX.
Posted by Rick at 4:36 PM
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Design for Social Impact
How can we unleash and leverage the power of the global design community on some of the world's most intractable problems? How can we increase the collaboration between the design industry and the the social sector? And do so in a systematic and sustainable way? Read this great PDF article to find out.
Posted by Rick at 4:33 PM
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5 Unusually Inventive Kitchen Furniture Concepts
When you think of interesting design in the home, the kitchen typically isn't the first room that springs to mind.
Posted by Rick at 4:28 PM
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Crazy: City-In-a-Pyramid Could House a Million Dubaians
A particularly optimistic design firm in Dubai called Timelinks has proposed designs for the Ziggurat, a complete city to be layered inside of a massive pyramid that could serve as home for a million people at a time.
Posted by Rick at 4:14 PM
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Web Design: Black Layouts
Here are some beautiful designed black layouts.
Posted by Rick at 4:11 PM
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Friday, August 22, 2008
Some interesting desgn concepts
According to Wikipedia, a concept car is a car prototype made to showcase a concept, new styling, technology and more. At Toxel, they believe that concept cars are made to inspire!
Posted by Rick at 12:37 PM
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text:
- in Bible , blog by robinsampson
Charlotte Mason Homeschooling
The Heart of Wisdom teaching approach creates lesson plans using Charlotte Mason's methods, and teaching to the four learning styles (the Four-Step Lessons). It's a new, creative way to organize and utilize Charlotte Mason's unique methods.Charlotte Mason was an educator in England during the nineteenth century, and her methods are currently experiencing a rebirth among American home schools. "Twaddle" and "living books" are terms coined by Mason.
"Twaddle" refers to dumbed-down literature; material with an absence of meaning. "Living books" refers to books that are well written and engaging—they absorb the reader—the narrative and characters seem to come alive. Living books are the antithesis of cold, dry textbooks.
Charlotte Mason believed children should be educated through a wide curriculum using a variety of real, living books. Her concern was for students to develop a lifetime love of learning. She based her philosophy on the Latin word for education, educare, which means "to feed and nourish." This method focuses on the formation of good study habits, reading a variety of books, narration, copywork, dictation, keeping a nature diary, keeping a spelling notebook, and preparing a timeline book.Click to See Timeline Resources
The Heart of Wisdom teaching approach organizes each of Mason's unique methods into a four-step process which is incorporated into all of its unit studies. The Four Steps
Motivating students
Motivate the student by making the lesson interesting on his/her level—not "dumbed down."
Teaching ideas and facts
Get the facts from living books, reference books, nature, humanities, the Internet, etc.
Experimenting with concepts and skills
Do something with what has been learned. Copywork, dictation, adding to a nature notebook or timeline book or portfolder.
Integrating new learning into real life.
Narration; tell back what has been learned; share with others.
Narration is literally telling back what has been learned. Students are instructed to read a passage from the Bible, text from a suggested resource, or content from a web site and then tell what they have learned, either orally or in writing. This is a perfect activity, and one which you will find frequently in the third step of the 4Mat System. This process involves sorting, sequencing, selecting, connecting, rejecting, and classifying information. Miss Mason found that if you use narration consistently, review is unnecessary. Narration increases the mind's ability to remember.
Copywork and Dictation
Copywork and dictation are underrated. Both provide ongoing practice for handwriting, spelling, grammar, etc. Both are good exercises for teaching accuracy and attention to detail, and students discover things about the text they are copying that they would be unlikely to notice otherwise. In dictation, the child writes as the parent reads. Students learn correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and other language mechanics when they compare their work to the original and correct their mistakes. Timeline Book Charlotte Mason recommended preparing a handmade Book of the Centuries or timeline book. Below is a sample timeline page. Click to see more samples.
"Upon the knowledge of these great matters—History, Literature, Nature, Science, Art—the mind feeds and grows. It assimilates such knowledge as the body assimilates food, and the person becomes what is called magnanimous, that is, a person of great mind, wide interests, incapable of occupying himself much about petty, personal matters. What a pity to lose sight of such a possibility for the sake of miserable scraps of information about persons and things that have little connection with one another and little connection with ourselves!" —Charlotte Mason (Vol. 4, p. 78 — The Original Homeschooling Series)
Timeline Pages
The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach: Bible-Based Homeschooling
The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach is for all homeschoolers who want to make the Bible the center of their school day. This giant 500+ page book provides you with the methods, program, and resources for a course of study where students spend half the school day studying God's Word and the other half studying God's world (academics). Students study history chronologically and science in the order of the days of Creation. This book will encourage, motivate you and instruct you, step by step, how to give your child a Bible-focused, comprehensive education from preschool through high school; one that will train him or her to read, to study, to understand, to love to learn and, most importantly, to desire and seek true wisdom. This approach can be used for all grade levels.
When homeschoolers are asked about this book, one word continues to come up over and over–Wow!
Read the excerpt today to see what all the wow is about.
- The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach (FREE 60-page excerpt PDF File)
- Purchase the Paperback here
- Save 50% Get the Printable eBook Here


text:
If you've landed right here, it indicates you have realized that you might want some skilled advice in handling your economic affairs. Monetary planners can also assistance you stay disciplined about your economic strategies. Open the doors to function in roles such as Investment Manager or Senior Finance Manager as you acquire sophisticated capabilities in economic choice-generating and practice. A planner will not only appear at your major picture monetary situations, he or she will sift by way of all the information, from your month-to-month investments to long-term retirement planning.
At Vancity, our group of knowledgeable, accredited investment specialists are accessible to offer you with strategic suggestions and financial solutions. Be confident to operate with an investment expert who considers your general economic goals, values, and attitudes even if they specialize in a distinct area such as taxation, estate arranging, or investments.
Attorneys, accountants, insurance agents, bankers and other monetary specialists also can be good sources because planners normally operate with them to carry out a client's program. They might tack on an alphabet soup of letters just after their names, but CFP (brief for certified economic planner) is the most considerable credential.
By using this web page, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Qualifications: Very first, make sure that the individual you decide to operate with has a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) designation.
You most likely ought to not entrust your finances to any planner who does not fully answer all questions and supply the disclosure form. The very best Certified Monetary Planner or monetary advisor for you will fully grasp your revenue management, retirement organizing and wealth management requirements so that you can achieve your targets.


text:
Social question–answering services such as Yahoo! Answers (YA) are becoming highly prominent venues for online information seeking. While their immense popularity indicates their success, there is a need to measure their effectiveness and how satisfactory information they provide to the information seekers. To study these questions of effectiveness and user satisfaction, we collected a large amount of data from YA. For operationalizing the constructs of effectiveness and user satisfaction, we considered the amount of time lapsed between a question being asked and answered, and the asker choosing an answer to be satisfying, respectively. Using data mining, we show that the majority of the questions on YA get at least one answer within a few minutes, however, it takes longer to receive an answer that satisfies the asker. We also demonstrate that the sooner an answer appears for a question, the higher chances it has being selected as the best answer by the asker.
With emerging online information sources, information seeking behavior is changing. A variety of of sources have emerged, including social or community question–answering (social Q&A) sites such as Yahoo! Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com/), AnswerBag (http://www.answerbag.com/), and WikiAnswers (http://wiki.answers.com/). A common and defining characteristic of these sites is that anyone can pose their information need on almost any topic as a question, and receive answers from the community of users that belong to that particular site (Harper, et al., 2008). In recent years, these services have become increasingly popular. Yahoo! Answers is reported to have more than 200 million users worldwide [1], with 15 million users visiting daily [2].
While social Q&A sites may be relatively new, asking questions to experts via an online form — digital referencing — has been around for a while. This area is considered to be an online or virtual version of traditional reference services, where a patron can receive information from reference librarians or other experts (Mon, 2000). Several works have tried to compare such digital referencing or expert Q&A services with social Q&A in order to draw their pros and cons (e.g., Shah, et al., 2008).
Rather than comparing with other forms of online Q&A services, in this paper we focus on understanding the effectiveness of and satisfaction with a typical social Q&A service, since it is considered to be one of the core research agendas in this area (Shah, et al., 2009). We choose Yahoo! Answers (YA) due to its scope and accessibility, examining its effectiveness in terms of retrieving information and providing satisfactory answers. Hence, we will address the following research questions:
- How quickly is a specific question answered?
- How quickly does a question receive an answer that satisfies the interrogator?
- What is the relationship between a satisfactory answer and its position (or rank) in a list of answers?
The remainder of the paper describes how we collected a large amount of data from YA, mining it to answer these research questions. We conclude with a few interpretations and implications of our findings.
To answer our research questions, we performed data mining on a large set of data retrieved from YA. This section describes our methodology for data collection, as well as a basic description of the data.
Collecting the data
We used YA's Application Programming Interface (API, at http://developer.yahoo.com/answers/) support for collecting questions and answers data. However, APIs have a daily limit so collecting a large amount of data in a short period of time is not possible. We, therefore, ran our data collection processes for more than two years (between Fall 2007 and Fall 2009) to create a corpus of a reasonable size. This resulted in a collection of over 3,000,000 questions, with over 16,000,000 answers.
On YA, an interrogator can choose an answer that satisfies his or her information needs from a set of answers. This selected answer is denoted as the "best answer", and with that, the question is considered "resolved". We only collected those questions that have been resolved. In other words, interrogators of these questions had picked the best answers from a set of answers they received; hence, answers were not possible for these questions. This approach was selected because we wanted to look at the selected answer for each question, since having an answer chosen as the best answer marks a given question resolved. This creates one of the limitations of our approach to identifying effectiveness and user satisfaction. Since we only studied questions that were resolved, we only looked at situations where at least one satisfactory answer was provided, thus, making the service appear very effective. It is beyond the scope of this work, due to its methodology, to consider situations where no satisfactory answer was posted.
Description of data
Table 1 provides a summary of the data, where the number of questions and their respective answers are presented within the 25 subject categories of YA (http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/index). We do not know the actual size of the YA dataset, which constantly grows. We do, however, believe that our data is a reasonable sampling of it.
Table 1: Summary of Yahoo! Answers data. Category Number of questions Number of answers Arts & Humanities 155,034 748,097 Beauty & Style 155,625 922,294 Business & Finance 148,808 489,885 Cars & Transportation 152,045 584,804 Computers & the Internet 157,524 530,176 Consumer Electronics 151,241 476,891 Dining Out 98,599 597,079 Education & Reference 134,265 448,545 Entertainment & Music 130,064 1,207,108 Environment 90,235 556,815 Family & Relationships 136,315 887,881 Food & Drink 135,576 803,592 Games & Recreation 134,406 395,745 Health 115,402 423,612 Home & Garden 123,430 454,242 Local Businesses 97,664 250,407 News & Events 105,701 765,140 Pets 130,701 739,300 Politics & Government 133,020 1,026,122 Pregnancy & Parenting 128,634 969,644 Science & Mathematics 132,275 366,106 Social Science 114,450 500,394 Society & Culture 133,626 1,056,102 Sports 123,900 702,559 Travel 130,049 503,078 Total 3,248,589 16,405,618
We note that the category "Entertainment & Music" had the highest average number of answers per question (more than nine), followed by "Society & Culture" and "Politics & Government" (seven to eight). Questions in these categories are often seeking opinions rather than a specific answer [3].
For each question, we collected its subject, content, category, username of the interrogator, number of answers, and the time when the question was posted. For each answer, we collected its content, username of the individual providing an answer, rating (if there was any), and the time when the answer was posted. Given that the rating is posted only for the interrogator selecting a given answer, having a rating for an answer also tells us which was chosen.
This section presents our analysis of the data based on our three research questions.
1. How quickly is a specific question answered?
First, we looked at how many answers a given question received. Figure 1 depicts a scatter plot of number of questions–answers. As we can see, the majority of questions received fewer than 10 answers. In fact, based on our data — about 16,000,000 answers for about 3,000,000 questions — we can derive that, on average, each question earned five to six answers.
Figure 1: Scatter plot of number of questions and answers. Each data point (represented with a cross) indicates how many questions receive how many answers.
Receiving five or six answers per question may seem encouraging, but a more important question is how soon one could receive at least one answer. This could, in a sense, indicate the effectiveness of YA. To answer this question, we computed the time lapse (in minutes) between the posting times of a question and its first answer. The results are summarized in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Time lapse between a given question and the first answer to be posted.
We can see that more than 30 percent (965,867 out of about 3,000,000) of the questions received their first answers in less than five minutes, and only about eight percent (259,120 out of about 3,000,000) of the questions took longer than one hour to secure their first answers. In other words, more than 90 percent of the questions received at least one answer within an hour. Given that millions of questions are posted on YA, these statistics are indicative of the effectiveness of this system. Note that we did not collect unresolved questions from YA, so there may be a number of questions for which no satisfactory answer was received. We have observed that many of these sorts of questions ask for opinions or advice rather than a solution or specific information; thus, by nature, they are irresolvable. Such observations are supported by Harper, et al. (2010), reporting that only about 34 percent of questions on YA are factual questions.
2. How quickly does a question receive an answer that satisfies the interrogator?
Interrogators select answers from a set of answers that best fit their information needs. Liu and Agichtein (2008) regard this as an indication of user satisfaction. When selecting an answer, an interrogator can also rate that answer on the scale of 1 to 5. Figure 3 illustrates the rank distribution for answers in our dataset. A large portion of the answers have rating=0 (no rating) as they were not selected. Among the selected answers, most received a rating of 3 or higher. This has been regarded as the indication of high quality answers by Shah and Pomerantz (2010) [4]. In other words, interrogators were not only satisfied with a given answer; they also found these selected answers to be of high quality.
Figure 3: Distribution of answer ratings.
Let us consider these answers with respect to time. While receiving a quick response for a posted question may demonstrate the effectiveness of the system, it still remains to be seen if these answers satisfy the needs of a given interrogator. To analyze this, we looked at the time lapsed between the time a question was posted and an answer was given and selected. This is shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Time lapse between a given question and selected answer.
It is notable that about one–third of the best answers took more than an hour to appear. This is interesting to see in contrast with Figure 2. We noticed that while many answers are posted within a few minutes of a given question being posted (Figure 2), the answers that satisfy an interrogator takes longer to appear (Figure 4). The appearance of better answers after the first 5 minutes may be attributed to the fact that a delayed answer may use earlier posted information to generate a more refined or comprehensive answer. Thus, a delayed answer may have a higher likelihood of being selected as the best answer. A large number of best answers arriving after 60 minutes may likely related to cases when an interrogator does not select an answer in a reasonable time, and the community decides on an answer by voting.
3. What is the relationship between a satisfactory answer and its position (or rank) in a list of answers?
While answers for a given question may be posted by a variety of individuals, each answer potentially can be influenced by answers already posted. Let us examine which answers, in a list of answers, were selected to be the best.
Figure 5 illustrates rank distribution for the best answers. We can see that the answers that appear at rank 1 (first answer) for a given question had a greater chance of being selected as the best answer. We also see a tall peak for rank=6. On average a question on YA receives five to six answers; hence the last answer may be chosen as the best answer. It should also be noted that once an interrogator selects an answer to be the best, the question is considered to be resolved and closed. We collected only resolved questions and their answers, which also explains the peak for rank=6. We plan to explore this phenomenon in future research.
Figure 5: Rank distribution for best answers.
This finding that the higher an answer appears, the better chances it has for being selected as the best answer was also noted by Shah and Pomerantz (2010).
Let us now examine the results as displayed in Figures 2, 4, and 5. Figure 2 essentially tells us that the first answer to a question appears quickly, however Figure 4 indicates that the eventual selected answer may not appear immediately. Figure 5 indicates that the best answers tend to appear higher on a list of answers. This can be explained by noting that there are many questions for which answers do not appear immediately (that is, for more than an hour). When the answers eventually appear, they are selected as the best answers at early ranks. Figure 6 illustrates rank distributions for best answers that appear after more than 60 minutes of the initial postings of questions. Relative to Figure 5, we note that there is a gradual decrease in the number of best answers as we go down the ranks, without a spike at any particular rank. This may indicate a level of difficulty for these questions. On the other hand, there are many questions for which answers appear quickly (within 5–10 minutes), and at some point the interrogator selects one as the best (on average, rank=6) and closes the question (Figure 5).
Figure 6: Rank distribution for best answers appearing after 60 minutes.
Combining these factors, one could even explain or evaluate question difficulty, and possibly improve content quality using the following guidelines:
- If a question has not been answered for over an hour, it could be difficult or poorly posed. Interrogators may be contacted in these cases to revise their questions.
- Interrogators could be informed about the average response time for questions akin to a given posted question. YA provides on–the–fly suggestions for similar questions already posted. This feature could be modified to inform interrogators about response rates, encouraging patience and deliberation before selecting the best answer.
Social or community Q&A services, such as Yahoo! Answers, are significant since a large number of online information seekers are increasingly using these resources. Individuals providing answers on these sites are in a way fulfilling the role of traditional reference librarians or field experts. It is still remains to be seen how their answers compare in quality with those from traditional reference sources. However, there are ways to test the effectiveness of these services in terms of providing information seekers satisfactory, if not high quality, information.
In this paper we addressed questions about effectiveness and user satisfaction by mining data collected from YA. Our analysis indicated that YA provides a very effective platform for one to post a question and secure an answer quickly. However, a satisfactory answer may take longer depending on the difficulty of the question. While we measured user satisfaction by examining the interaction of interrogators with YA, other approaches have been utilized. For instance, Kim ,et al. (2007) and Kim and Oh (2009) examined comments by interrogators in order to understanding perceived relevance and satisfaction. Finally, the methodologies used in this study provide some evidence for evaluating question difficulty and content quality.
About the author
Dr. Chirag Shah is an assistant professor in School of Communication & Information (SC&I) at Rutgers University. He received his Ph.D. from the School of Information & Library Science (SILS) at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests include various aspects of interactive information retrieval/seeking, especially in the context of online social networks and collaborations, contextual information mining, and applications of social media services for exploring critical socio–political issues.
E–mail: chirags [at] rutgers [dot] edu
1. http://yanswersblog.com/index.php/archives/2009/12/14/yahoo-answers-hits-200-million-visitors-worldwide/, accessed 4 February 2011.
2. http://yanswersblog.com/index.php/archives/2009/10/05/did-you-know/, accessed 4 February 2011.
3. There are many questions in these categories asking for opinions, generating thousands of "answers". We did not include these opinion-seeking questions in our dataset since were not "resolved".
4. Dividing up five–rating responses to two categories (in this case, high quality and low quality) is often done in literature on usability. See, for instance, White and Kelly (2006), and Liu and Belkin (2010). The rationale behind this approach is that the five–point scale may be appropriate for individuals to respond, but too fine for a meaningful quantitative analysis.
F.M. Harper, J. Weinberg, J. Logie, and J.A. Konstan, 2010. "Question types in social Q&A sites," First Monday, volume 15, number 7, at http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2913/2571, accessed 4 February 2011.
F.M. Harper, D. Raban, S. Rafaeli, and J. Konstan, 2008. "Predictors of answer quality in online Q&A sites," Proceedings of the 26th Annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 865–874.
S. Kim and S. Oh, 2009. "Users' relevance criteria For evaluating answers in a social Q&A site," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, volume 60, number 4, pp. 716–727.http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.21026
S. Kim, J.S. Oh, and S. Oh, 2007. "Best–answer selection criteria in a social Q&A site from the user–oriented relevance perspective," Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, volume 44, number 1, pp. 1–15.http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/meet.1450440256
J. Liu and N.J. Belkin, 2010. "Personalizing information retrieval for multi–session tasks: The roles of task stage and task type," SIGIR '10: Proceedings of the 33rd International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, pp. 26–33.
Y. Liu, J. Bian, and E. Agichtein, 2008. "Predicting information seeker satisfaction in community question answering," SIGIR '08: Proceedings of the 31st International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, pp. 483–490.
L. Mon, 2000. "Digital reference service," Government Information Quarterly, volume 17, number 3, pp. 309–318.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0740-624X(00)00046-0
C. Shah and J. Pomerantz, 2010. "Evaluating and predicting answer quality in community QA," SIGIR '10: Proceedings of the 33rd International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval.
C. Shah, S. Oh, and J.S. Oh, 2009. "Research agenda for social Q&A," Library & Information Science Research, volume 31, number 4, pp. 205–209.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2009.07.006
C. Shah, J.S. Oh, and S. Oh, 2008. "Exploring characteristics and effects of user participation in online social Q&A sites," First Monday, volume 13, number 9, at http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2182/2028, accessed 4 February 2011.
R.W. White and D. Kelly, 2006. "A study on the effects of personalization and task information on implicit feedback performance," CIKM '06: Proceedings of the 15th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management.
Editorial history
Received 1 August 2010; revised 30 January 2011; accepted 2 February 2011.
"Measuring effectiveness and user satisfaction in Yahoo! Answers" by Chirag Shah is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Effectiveness and user satisfaction in Yahoo! Answers
by Chirag Shah.
First Monday, Volume 16, Number 2 - 7 February 2011
A Great Cities Initiative of the University of Illinois at Chicago University Library.
© First Monday, 1995-2019. ISSN 1396-0466.


text:
Juan Martín
Juan Martin
|1948 (age 70–71)
|Flamenco music
|Composer, Guitarist
Juan Cristóbal Martín is a Spanish flamenco guitarist[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] and an author of flamenco guitar method books.
Martín started learning the guitar at the age of six. In his early twenties he moved to Madrid to study under Niño Ricardo and Paco de Lucía.[9] He played in clubs in Málaga, Seville and Granada. He soon moved to London, where he has developed most of his career. One of his first recordings was Picasso Portraits (1981) based on the music he played at Picasso's 90th birthday celebrations.[10] Each section is a depiction of a painting by Pablo Picasso. Although it was not released until the 1990s, he recorded a track with Rory Gallagher in 1984 (on the album, Wheels Within Wheels). Also in 1984 his track "Love Theme from The Thorn Birds" reached number 10 in the UK Singles Chart.[11] He recorded with Herbie Hancock in 1987 and has played on stage with Miles Davis.[12]
Juan Martín is the author of several textbooks on flamenco playing, including El Arte Flamenco de la Guitarra,[13] issued with cassette tapes and later with vinyl sound sheets, and 'Solos Flamencos' issued with CDs and DVDs. Both tutorial books, printed in English and Spanish, are successful in the English-speaking world.
He now divides his time between London and Málaga.
He has an English wife, Helen. They have a family business called Flamencovision.[10][14]
- The Exciting Sound of Flamenco (1974)
- The Flamenco Soul (1976)
- Ole, Don Juan! Flamenco En Andalucia (1977)
- Romance (1978)
- Picasso Portraits (1981)
- Serenade (1984) (with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra)[11]
- Painter in Sound (1986)
- Through The Moving Window (1990)
- Painter in Sound (1990)
- Musica Alhambra (1996)
- Music Alhambra (1998)
- Luna Negra (1992)re'released 1998
- Arte Flamenco Puro
- The Andalucian Suites I-IV (1998)
- Camino Latino (2002)
- Live En Directo (2005)
- El Alquimista (The Alchemist) (2005)
- Solo (2009)
Juan Martín and Antonio Aparecida
- Riquezas (2002)
- Guitar Nights: The Four Martins (2003) : Martin Taylor, Martin Simpson, Juan Martin, Martin Carthy
- ^ www.flamencovision.com - Juan Martin's website - Retrieved on 2016-03-26.
- ^ TRUE TALES OF THE ART: Juan Martin plays Picasso | GIG CITY. Gigcity.ca (2011-11-12). Retrieved on 2012-12-16.
- ^ Juan Martin and his flamenco ensemble to perform in Calgary. Calgaryjournal.ca. Retrieved on 2012-12-16.
- ^ iTunes - Music - Juan Martin. Itunes.apple.com. Retrieved on 2012-12-16.
- ^ Flamenco a way of life for Juan Martin. Nsnews.com (2011-10-28). Retrieved on 2012-12-16.
- ^ » Flamenco Master Juan Martin in Calgary Jazz Elements: jazz & blues music blog with news, reviews, concerts & more, with a Canadian focus. Jazzelements.com (2007-10-15). Retrieved on 2012-12-16.
- ^ Juan Martin and his Flamenco Company - UK tickets, tour dates, news, gigs and concerts. Allgigs.co.uk. Retrieved on 2012-12-16.
- ^ Juan Martin Flamenco Dance Ensemble. Barbican (2009-05-21). Retrieved on 2012-12-16.
- ^ Interview in Classical Guitar magazine, May 2007, p.11.
- ^ a b JMI: Juan Martin, Jproductions.com, archived from the original on 2012-02-04, retrieved 2012-12-16
- ^ a b Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19th ed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. p. 352. ISBN 1-904994-10-5.
- ^ JUAN MARTIN music, discography, MP3, videos and reviews. Progarchives.com. Retrieved on 2012-12-16.
- ^ El Arte Flamenco de la Guitarra, Flamencovision, retrieved 2015-05-26
- ^ FlamencoVision. FlamencoVision. Retrieved on 2012-12-16.
External links[edit]
- Juan Martín biography at esflamenco
- www.flamencovision.com Website of Juan Martín


text:
- Hockey Club Series (Hoodies)
- >
- Cigar City
Cigar City
per item
Our one of a kind hockey lace hoodies are made from made from 50% polyester, 50% cotton material to provide the perfect material that provides both comfort and style. These hoodies are a great way to stay warm while showing off your love for the game of hockey with beauty edition hockey lace as the drawstring. We ask that if you order one of these, that you please order a size up as they run small to their true size.Welcome to Cigar City Hockey Club!


text:
Jobless Rate Inches Up for Older Workers
By Carole Fleck , September 06, 2013 03:45 PM
The dog days of August brought a slowdown in summer hiring. Employers created a tepid 169,000 jobs last month, less than what economists expected, and the unemployment rate for older workers inched up to 5.1 percent, the government reported Friday.
Men aged 55 and older saw their jobless rate decline in August to 5.4 percent from 5.6 percent the month before. The situation was reversed for older women: the rate rose to 5.2 percent last month from 4.9 percent in July.
Nationally, the unemployment rate dipped one-tenth of 1 percent to 7.3 percent in August, a four-year low, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But labor economist Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute says the unemployment rate declined "for all the wrong reasons." She says that if more unemployed workers were in the market looking for a job, they'd be counted among the unemployed, and the jobless rate would have actually increased. But the rate fell because so many discouraged job seekers stopped looking for work because they believed their prospects were so grim, and consequently, weren't counted among the unemployed.
In a healthy, robust economy, Shierholz says, about 159.3 million people would be in the labor force today. But there were just 155.5 million in the workforce last month. "That means there are about 3.8 million missing workers - jobless people who would be in the labor force if job opportunities were strong," she says.
Also, more boomers and older adults retired from the workforce, which pushed down the labor force participation rate in August to about 63 percent, the lowest level since 1978.
Related: Some Good News for Older Workers
The share of workers who've been unemployed for more than six months rose in August from 37 percent to 37.9 percent. But for those 55 and older, nearly one in two (47 percent) have been out of work for at least that long.
Among all ages, some 11.3 million people were out of a job last month, about the same as in July. But as we all know, older workers have suffered disproportionately when it comes to the time it takes to land a job. The average duration of unemployment for older job seekers rose to 50 weeks in August from 49 weeks in July. For those under age 55, the duration rose to 34 weeks in August from 32.9 weeks in July.
Employers in the retail and food and beverage industry added the most jobs in August, followed by the health care and professional and business services industries, the BLS said.
Photo: Sen. Mark Warner/flickr
Also of Interest
- Workers' Pay Raise Next Year: 3 Percent
- Retire at 62...65...70? Social Security Calculator Shows You the Money
- Obama Touts Insurance Rebates and Lower Premiums in 2014
- Join AARP: Savings, resources and news for your well-being
See the AARP home page for deals, savings tips, trivia and more


text:
And here we are – back again already with round 2 of the August update !
With the heat of last summer gone and the cool days of winter still in the air – it was time to get the big veggie beds back into service.
Last summer was so incredibly hot and dry, that there came a point when we decided


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New York: In Indianapolis, an open house event tends to draw 10 people on a good day. But after the snowiest winter on record for the US Midwestern city, prospective home buyers were champing at the bit: 45 people came to an open house late last month, according to mortgage executive Greg Block.
"The realtor was dumbfounded," said Block, vice-president of lending at Texas-based Open Mortgages. "The winters were so brutal across the country that people just hunkered down and didn't do anything." As much of the US thaws out from a particularly frigid winter, signs are also pointing to a warmer national housing market.
Anecdotal evidence from homebuilders, mortgage lenders and brokers suggest demand in the residential housing market is picking up, potentially paving the way for a broader acceleration in an economy that has been in a slow-growth mode since pulling out of the financial crisis.
Housing is an important part of the economic fabric, contributing about 18 per cent to gross domestic product including private residential investment as well as consumption spending on housing services, according to the National Association of Home Builders. The positive reports from across the country are supported by data from the Mortgage Bankers Association showing that the volume of home-purchase mortgage applications has climbed more than 13 per cent in the past five weeks, near its highest point in two months.
Other positive economic indicators — including better-than-expected auto sales and solid private sector hiring in March — also could underpin strengthening consumer sentiment that is critical to gains in the housing market. US consumer confidence, as tracked by the Conference Board, last month hit its highest levels in more than six years.
"We also believe that most everything is pointing in the right direction," said Rex Gordon, vice-president of corporate land at The Drees Company, a privately held homebuilder that sold 1,648 homes last year. At Drees, which sells mostly single-family detached homes in metropolitan areas across the country, foot traffic to its model locations was up about 8 per cent in the past four weeks compared with a year ago, Gordon said.
"Yes, construction was hit real hard because of the weather, but from a sales standpoint we've been encouraged," Gordon said. "The vibe is good; our sales people are happy. They're all working with prospects all the time."
To be sure, some figures show that the housing market has been tepid. Housing starts fell for the third straight month in February, while homebuilder sentiment ticked up but remained mostly poor in March. Sales of existing homes have fallen 14.5 per cent in the past seven months, while sales of new homes have flattened after rising in the back half of 2013. Also, mortgage applications may be up — but they are rising from the lowest levels in 18 years.
And what rebound that may be underway is not benefiting every builder, yet. Beazer Homes USA Inc reported that net new orders fell 9 per cent in the quarter ending March 31.
Still, some of the conditions that may have undercut demand are disappearing. Aside from the poor weather dampening construction and keeping home buyers indoors, the 16-day US government shutdown last fall also may have weighed on would-be buyers, because it contributed to general uncertainty about the economy, according to homebuilders.
"The fourth quarter with the government shutdown put a lot of people on the fence, so I think there was a lot of pent-up demand," said Jared Weggeland, director of sales and marketing at Southern Homes in Florida.
At Southern, which builds homes averaging about $185,000 in Central Florida, January and February sales were the highest for those months since 2005, and "March was even better," Weggeland said. "Demand is extremely high right now."
Another factor that could energize the housing market is home buyers seeking to capitalize on low interest rates before those rates potentially spike higher. Take Renee Barrett, a nurse's assistant in Las Vegas, who got a pre-approval for a $249,000 mortgage a week ago.
Barrett is hoping to buy a home as fast as she can, believing interest rates could easily pop back up to 7 per cent or more. A 30-year mortgage rate is currently around 4.56 percent.
Las Vegas' home prices fell by more than half during the housing bust. But the market has been recovering for a couple of years now and that recovery may be picking up pace. Rick Piette, a mortgage lender in the city, said his typical bill for credit checks for pre-qualification letters doubled from January to February.
"I have seen an uptick in demand for the pre-approvals," Piette said. "I think the demand for the mortgages will follow, too."
At Guaranteed Rate, a top 20 US mortgage lender, March was the best month for new loans in half a year, said chief executive Victor Ciardelli. The company locked in $1.2 billion in loans for new purchases and refinancings last month, or around 26 per cent more than it did in February.
The cold winter "had a significant effect on business," but between pent-up demand among home buyers and tight inventories in the marketplace, the company is now seeing more multiple bids on homes, Ciardelli said.
Martin Connor, Toll's chief financial officer, said that given the company's luxury home focus "when we see consumer confidence statistics rising, that generally bodes well for us."
Rob Henger, director of mortgage banking with Tennessee-based FirstBank, said he believes that confidence is back. The company's retail mortgage division saw a 16 per cent increase in credit applications in March from February, after they rose 19 per cent in February from January.
"The damage to our industry and the public perception of housing and mortgage banking I think is 24 months behind us," said Henger. "Today, there's a renewed confidence."