Currency of information loses its value

Some, maybe even most,We are pleased to offer the following list of professional mold maker and casters. vice-chancellors are reluctantly coming to the view that the only way out is to charge students higher fees because everyone knows that the government can't, or won't, pay any more.

But there is now solid evidence from the US that raising fees merely delays the agony. Eventually a point is reached where students realise there is insufficient return on their investment to bother with university.

This issue of cost has become even more urgent since the advent of massive open online courses. They

demonstrate that universities of the future will not be able to make a living from imparting information because they are no longer the only or even the best aggregators of information. That role was usurped by the internet years ago. The latest and highest quality information can now be found in cyberspace for free. Universities that persist in barricading their courseware behind pay walls and academics who fret about their intellectual property are destined for the scrap heap.

The new university business model will need to begin with the frank admission that information is too cheap to bother selling. Information may require money and hard work to generate, but almost as soon as something has been discovered,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , it's out there for all to Google. So if the currency of universities is no longer information, how are they supposed to make a living?

Universities of the future will have two basic products to sell: credentials and support services. A credential is a public validation that the student has mastered the topic under investigation and to obtain this, students will need to pay for assessment backed by a reputable institution. And because no two students are alike, there will be a service industry for mentors (formerly known as lecturers) capable of navigating individual students through cyberspace.

Much of this can be achieved through automated programmed instruction but some students, mainly school-leavers, will want to interact face to face with tutors and friends. As a result, there will continue to be a market of indeterminate size for on-campus teaching in addition to the online format.

There is more than one potential business model in this new environment. Some universities will experiment with a form of cross-subsidisation. For example, Udacity is proposing to make employers pay to gain access to their graduates. Others will shift revenues to the future by making the initial experience free and charging for access later, such as the MOOC "taster" modules are doing. Or universities could try a variation of the rock-concert model whereby the music is downloadable for free but the live performances cost an arm and a leg.

Among the more promising approaches, however, is the so-called freemium model. It refers to a business model whereby the core product is given away for free and customers are charged for premium add-on features. For universities, this may mean giving away courseware and only charging students for the support services they want or need. The entry level premium product would be examinations leading to accreditation, but additional services could include moderated discussion groups,Thank you for visiting! I have been crystal mosaic since 1998. tutorial assistance and customised learning pathways. Because the cost burden of running a university is not in teaching but in research, freemium universities would need to find solutions to this challenge to avoid becoming mere diploma mills.

Academic staff in Australia are employed for about 40 per cent of their time to perform research and, under our existing business model, this work has to be cross-subsidised from teaching revenues.

Under the freemium model, few students would be willing to pay for research components of academics' salaries, even if it is they who are the ultimate beneficiaries of this work. One solution could be crowd-funding via which researchers rely on the massive online community to make small contributions that are pooled into very large grants.

Crowd-funding sites such as kickstarter.com are already achieving impressive results. Since launching in 2009, more than $350 million has been pledged to research projects, more than 2.5 million people have backed a kickstarter project, and at least 30,000 projects have been successfully funded.This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents. While only half the projects put up on Kickstarter actually get funded, that's still three times the success rate of Australia's main funding bodies.Find detailed product information for howo spareparts and other products.

Why the CB radio is entrenched in trucking culture

The modern trucker has an array of communications technology at his or her fingertips. I’ve heard one estimate that half of long-distance drivers carry laptops, 80-90% have cell phones, and some even pack iPhones.

This is not to mention company-issued equipment like satellite-tracking, electronic on-board recorders (EOBRs) and two-way radios.

But the faithful CB remains an important part of the highway driver’s tool kit. One would have thought this archaic and low-tech device would be obsolete by now,Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products. if nothing else because of the nationwide fetish for hands-free devices. But almost universally across the continent, jurisdictions have granted exemptions for the commercial use of two-way radios.

The CB is still the best way for truck drivers to communicate with each other while they’re rolling down the road. But I suspect that the Ontario government’s recent five-year extension (see related story, opposite page) wasn’t done because they admire CB radios.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale turquoise beads from china,

Rather, business communication tools like two-way radios and mic phones fall in this category and a disruption in these services would be unthinkable.

This should give the industry and equipment suppliers more time to solve the problem of hands-free microphone use.

Bluetooth technology has been a boon to drivers wanting to talk and drive,Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile, but FCC regulations prohibit the use of wireless mics during CB operation (Canada is in lockstep with the FCC on this one).

A few products are currently available for hands-free CB transmission, but these are wired solutions with remote microphones and buttons, not activated by Bluetooth.

So for the next five years (in Ontario, at least) truckers will be able to grab the microphone and yap away to their heart’s content. And really it’s nothing different from what they’ve been doing for more than 40 years: talking about Smokey bears, road conditions and whether or not the chicken coops are open; blabbing about their big iron; bitching about their jobs; and complaining about other drivers.

But baby boomers will remember the golden age of the CB radio.Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. For about 10 years in the 1970s, the general public connected with the romance of trucking, and the Citizen’s Band radio was part of the package.

In those days, “Breaker One-Nine” was as likely to draw as quick a response from a four-wheeler with a 20-foot whip aerial,A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister. as it would from a fellow trucker.

The stereotype of the rugged, frontiersman-like trucking hero caught the public’s imagination, and was reinforced by Hollywood which cranked out movies like Convoy and Smokey and the Bandit, and TV series like Movin’ On. CB radios and the accompanying jargon gave everyone a chance to discover their “inner trucker.”

CB stores sprang up overnight and the units sold like hotcakes. In 1978, another 17 channels were added to the original 23, for a total of 40, which is how it remains to this day.

The innovation of single side-band allowed the splitting of those 40 channels into upper and lower modes, giving discerning users more distance and clearer frequencies.

During the blizzard of ’78, when a huge weather bomb blanketed eastern North America, I was stranded in Woodstock, Ont. My little Hino wouldn’t run after the van had been almost split in half by a grocery chain tractor-trailer that ran into the back of me.

It was bitterly cold and the 401 was a wrecking yard with three-foot drifts between the rubble. Of course a major catastrophe like this sparked the snowmobilers and CB clubs in Woodstock into action.

Earlier in the day, I’d borrowed a Schneider driver’s CB and managed to finagle an invitation from a home base operator who offered me a place to stay.

So that night, when a front-end loader and a passenger van came down the highway to take us all to the Blandford Mall, I talked a snowmobiler into giving me a ride to that address.

For the next day-and-a-half, I stayed with a young couple and their kid in a Woodstock townhouse. They weren’t prosperous (the young man was a gas pump jockey) but they fed me and were good company.

Their neighbours had also taken in stranded truck drivers and it seemed everyone had a solid state CB at home.

Apps With Which to Pedal On

What did we do in the Dark Ages before bicycle computers and phone apps changed the way we ride? I don’t know about you, but I tracked my rides in spiral-bound notebooks,Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. relied on street maps designed for motorists, and asked my local bike mechanic for advice or went to the library to copy pages from bicycle repair manuals.

I’m going to confess right here and now that Strava and BikeMap are the only bicycle apps I’m using regularly. I ride several thousand miles each year and I’ve spent time playing with and exploring others, but they haven’t found their way to the home screen on my phone. Here are my thoughts on some cycling apps.

When you got on your bike this morning to ride to UCSB, were the gears clanking and not shifting smoothly? Are your brakes rubbing on the front wheel or making loud squealing noises every time you stop at a crosswalk on State Street? You’re late for Bike Moves – front tire’s flat and you have no idea what to do? Bike Repair HD is a user-friendly app for phone or tablet that takes you step by step through many basic bike repairs. At your fingertips are 73 of the most common bike repair problems with over 250 photo illustrations.

Click on the problem area – wheels, rear derailleur, chain, or handlebar/headset – and in plain English (no jargon!) you’ll find short simple instructions that will guide you through diagnosis and repair. With some simple tools (check out my previous column Tools: Here are the Ones You Need) you’ll be back on your trusty two-wheeler in no time at all. Other similar repair apps include Bike Doctor and Emergency Bike Repair.

This app isn’t designed for the weekend cyclist. Bike Gears is for the serious road warrior or dedicated bicycle builder. You can use it to quickly calculate gear ratios, gear inches, or development and gain ratios based on your bike’s measurements. The app has over 200 preset tire sizes and it also lets you enter your own custom tire-size for personalized measurements.A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister.

Designed by a cyclist, for cyclists, this is the app if you’re building a new bike from scratch. You can test out possible gearing configurations and get it right the first time. With Bicycle Gears you can find equivalent gearing configurations to reuse components you already have, or even to save weight by using smaller gears. If you’re doing some early holiday shopping, Bicycle Gears is perfect for bike mechanics, bike builders, coaches, and serious riders! You can also check out Bicycle Gear Head.

A San Francisco start-up, Strava can best be described as a GPS-enabled social network for cyclists and runners, allowing you to add other riders as friends and track their progress as well as your own. Strava does this by tracking segments of your ride such as a favorite local hill. You can then compare your performance riding up Gibraltar or San Marcos Pass with that of everyone else who has ridden the same section. Every time you upload a ride, Strava automatically checks if you included any segments and then lets you know how you rank – showing your position on the segment’s leader board. Reach the top of the table and you get a King or Queen of the Mountain award and a natty little gold crown on your upload. A number of professional riders have signed up, so if your club run takes you along one of their training routes you can even compare yourself against the big boys. Strava provides basic GPS tracking, speed or route and distance data, and is free.

It rocks to be able to support local businesses! Founded in Santa Barbara, Digifit, the first app developer to bring heart rate monitoring to the iPhone, now features a suite of apps that can track your cardio,We specialize in howo concrete mixer, running, and cycling workouts. ibike is a free download but you’ll have to buy additional hardware to turn your phone into a full feature cycling/fitness monitor. Digifit has a handlebar-mounted case for your phone and plug-in sensors available so that you can track your cardio workouts using, for example,Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. a heart-monitor belt, speed and cadence sensor, or power meter. Digifit can also use GPS to map your routes and provide pace, distance, and speed without sensors.

There are a lot of apps that allow you to track data from your daily rides. I haven’t looked at all of them so I can’t swear that this is the best, but it has all the basic features and is intuitive to use. Whether you are cycling for leisure or training for a race, Cycle Tracker Pro will track your route and help boost your performance.

As you ride, you can see your time,One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. pace, speed, calories burned, training intervals, splits; view map in real time, take photos, listen to music and receive audio feedback. After your ride you can view your history with stats, route map, splits, and cumulative graphs for distance and calories burned. You can also share photos and share your rides with friends on the Cycle Tracker Pro website. Other similar apps include: The Bike Computer, Cyclemeter GPS Bike Computer for Road & Mountain Biking, and Cycastic GPS.

Divided Daufuskie debates special tax district

While proponents of a special tax district on Daufuskie Island circulate a report answering common questions from voters door to door, an opposition group led by a former councilwoman who resigned in protest over the measure is launching her own campaign less than two weeks before Election Day.

The referendum landed on the ballot with Beaufort County Council’s approval in August, two months after the Lowcountry Regional Transportation Authority recommended exploring a special tax district as an answer to strengthening a service widely viewed as inadequate to spark commercial development and too costly for the limited runs it provides.

But divisions over the tax district have surfaced in the island community of about 400. Few disagree that a beefier service also linking Daufuskie to Savannah would help bring opportunity, but opponents doubt the revenue from it will be enough and question whether a special tax district comes prematurely. Those in favor see the special purpose tax district as the only viable option to provide a stable source of funding to leverage the grants and partnerships necessary to lift a public ferry service off the ground.HOWO trucks are widely used and howo spare parts for sale are also welcomed .

The referendum allows the county to tax district residents up to 16.5 additional mills, or $0.66 per $1,000 of taxable value for primary residences and $.99 per $1,000 for all other property owners. If passed, a five-member commission appointed by County Council would act in an advisory role, with ultimate authority in Beaufort.

It took signatures from 15 percent of voters in the tax district to clear election rules. The affluent golf course community Haig Point wasn’t included because the development already includes private ferry service in its homeowner dues — an exclusion resented by some.

The 16-page independent report produced by the Daufuskie Island Council’s Ferry Task Force explains the legal framework of the special tax district, current costs, some alternative funding options and ferry operations, though the task force left questions about the location of ferry landings, expected revenue generated, levels of service and other arrangements unanswered.

Chuck Hunter, an Island councilman who first voted against a special tax district because he didn’t believe there was enough information, chaired the task force.

“I think this committee had to be able to give completely factual information,” said Daufuskie Island Council Chairman Bill Greenwood, a supporter. “If they had to reach further than what would be a 100 percent fact, they chose not to.”

Greenwood challenges marine transportation expert AJ Weis’ argument that a service can’t compete for grants before it’s more established, arguing a public model lends itself to partnerships with the Lowcountry Regional Transportation Authority and Chatham Area Transit across the state line.

“LRTA is an entity that has been functioning, is functioning, is in the transportation business, and he (Chairman Dick Stewart) certainly can get money,” he said.

Stewart favors a special tax district as the most reliable source of funding, though he called for further study at a June 4 County Council Finance Committee meeting. He said it’s tough to say whether LRTA’s current crop of grant connections would fit the ferry service, but he doesn’t see its fledgling status as a non-starter and grant criteria change with time.

“I don’t necessarily agree with that because we compete successfully for land-based facilities, so I don’t see that as any different for water-based facilities,” he said.

The county couldn’t find funding for further study, according to County Administrator Gary Kubic,We have a wide selection of dry cabinet to choose from for your storage needs. and revenue generated from an oft-mentioned alternative, tax increment financing,If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. couldn’t be used to fund general operations, though it could go to capital and infrastructure improvements, according to Staff Attorney Josh Gruber.

Tax-increment financing essentially pays for redevelopment through anticipated increases in property values, leaving risks if those gains don’t cover the debt.

A partnership with Chatham Area Transit to provide service between Savannah and South Carolina’s coastal islands would require legislative approval, though such agreements across state lines aren’t uncommon,Gecko could kickstart an indoor tracking mobile app explosion. said Executive Director Chad Reese.

“It could work,” he said. “It’s as much political as it is legal.”

Reese argues regular public transportation to Daufuskie would raise property values by allowing for the free flow of resources and the growth of commercial development on the island.

“The investment in public transportation is the best form of investment in transportation that can be made,” he said.The oreck XL professional air purifier, “Every one dollar invested equals four in growth and development.”

The classic nudes of the Silverman Collection

For anyone interested in German and Austrian art before the Second World War, there is only one place to go and that is to the Richard Nagy gallery in London where the Silverman Collection of art is on display.

It is not just that it is a quite breathtaking collection, with half a dozen masterpieces and some of the finest paintings of Otto Dix, Egon Schiele and Ludwig Meidner anywhere. It is also such a strongly personal gathering of art by a collector who has bought the pictures that appealed to him not for their name or their value but for what can only be described as their anger. "I like paintings of torment," he told an interviewer, "of tension, of the human condition"

Well, there is plenty of that in his chosen field, which may explain the singular lack of the art in UK public galleries. The British tend not to like angst in their art, still less when it is painted by their former enemies. Even among private collectors it is a limited speciality, confined mostly to Jewish Americans from the East Coast, seeking the culture of their roots but also, perhaps, an explanation of the cataclysm that befell Europe at the time.

Benedict Silverman fits that bill, although he lays no claim to middle-European ancestry. But there is clearly something in the art that speaks to him directly. One of his first purchases was of a black wash and charcoal sketch, Standing Boy by Egon Schiele, from 1910. It was one of a series of studies the artist made when only 20 of street urchins. It's an exquisite work but a painful one, as the boy, his hands thrust into his jacket pockets, looks with tightened eyes on the world about.

It was a picture, Silverman implies in an interview published in the catalogue, that reminded him of his own childhood, or lack of it. When he was only six his mother had been carted off to a mental asylum suffering from post-natal depression after the birth of twin girls. She remained incarcerated until her death in old age, unbeknownst to her son who was left bringing up his sisters.

The theme of loss and disruption runs throughout his holdings. His own favourite picture is a superb gouache and watercolour by Egon Schiele, Woman with Homunculus,Find detailed product information for howo tractor 6x4 and other products. from his most creative period in 1910.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. He drew it after he had taken his girlfriend for an abortion. The black-haired girl, naked except for black stockings, turns back to look at you, the figure of a child clutching her side, her eyes both accusing and resigned. Schiele died, tragically, of the Spanish flu in 1918, aged only 28, planning a life-size canvas of the Last Supper representing himself and the young artists whose task it would be to create a new world after all the destruction of the old. Silverman's collection includes an oil and tempura study for the final work, which was never completed. It's one of the most valuable paintings in the collection and,Thank you for visiting! I have been crystal mosaic since 1998. in its way, the most optimistic as the figures set about the meal with an air of determination and experience.

Few of Schiele's contemporaries shared his belief in that future. Ludwig Meidner, whose work is too little known over here, foresaw what was coming in 1913 with Apocalyptic Landscape in a violent vision of tumbling buildings, huge explosions and raging waters. His worst fears were realised once the war had started. The Incident in the Suburbs from 1915 depicts two men struggling desperately against each other as they flee the collapsing buildings. For Meidner, it represented the ruptures of society caused by the war. For Silverman, it appealed as a picture of the viciously competitive real estate market in which he started out. Meidner's feelings are mirrored in a powerful Cubist oil on board painting by his friend George Grosz, completed towards the end of the year. It is a nightmare view of a world balanced on the edge of chaos, the figures and emblems of the corporate world bustling around the figure of a lone female tightrope walker.

"I like paintings that hit me in the stomach," says Silverman. That is certainly true of the works of Meidner and Schiele. It is also true in a more cerebral sense of the works of Otto Dix. The collection contains two truly stupendous works by Germany's answer to Goya. One is a small nude done in the manner of Cranach. Venus with Gloves from 1932 is as compulsive as it is disconcerting, the classical simplicity of the nude subverted by the emaciation of the body,HOWO trucks are widely used and howo spare parts for sale are also welcomed . the wistful fragility in the eyes and the black of the gloves and falling skirt against the whiteness of the body. You could spend hours just looking at it without ever fully understanding the picture or the sitter.

The same could be said, but even more so, of the great masterpiece of the Silverman Collection, Otto Dix's Self Portrait with Model. Painted in 1923, it is one of the largest oils in the exhibition and quite the most disconcerting. The artist stands, all formal and constricted, in shirt and tie and well-groomed hair. He looks out of the picture with a set face and empty eyes. Beside him is the nude model, full fleshed, her arms above her head,We specialize in howo concrete mixer, looking down with wide-eyes, thinking of something else. Power and control are there, but it is the model that seems freest, and the artist most imprisoned by himself.

'Black mold' meningitis a challenge

The black mold creeping into the spines of hundreds of people who got tainted shots for back pain marks uncharted medical territory.

Never before has this particular fungus been found to cause meningitis. It's incredibly hard to diagnose, and to kill — requiring at least three months of a treatment that can cause hallucinations. There's no good way to predict survival, or when it's safe to stop treating, or exactly how to monitor those who fear the fungus may be festering silently in their bodies.

"I don't think there is a precedent for this kind of thing," said Dr. Arjun Srinivasan of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health officials and doctors have tracked down most of the 14,000 people potentially at risk for fungal meningitis, blamed for the deaths of 24 people and sickening more than 300.

"This is definitely new territory for us," he said.

The fungus' brown-black color signals an armor that — along with being injected near the spine — helped this mold sneak past the immune defenses of otherwise healthy people, said Dr. Arturo Casadevall, a fungal disease specialist at New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

"What we're dealing with here is fundamentally different" from a typical fungal infection, he said. "This is a bug that most of us don't know much about."

Doctors are beginning to detail in medical journals the first deaths in this outbreak, and the grim autopsy findings make clear that treating early is crucial, before the fungus becomes entrenched.Load the precious minerals into your mining truck and be careful not to drive too fast with your heavy foot. In one case, a woman died in Maryland after the fungus pierced blood vessels in her brain, leading to severe damage.

People getting treated earlier "seem to be doing OK," with fewer of the strokes that characterized the outbreak's beginning, said Dr. Carol Kauffman of the University of Michigan. She has advised the CDC and co-authored advice in the New England Journal of Medicine on how to handle the complex medication used in treatment.Directory ofchina glass mosaic Tile Manufacturers,

People who got contaminated steroid shots made by a Massachusetts pharmacy have been told to be on guard for months for meningitis symptoms. But the CDC said Wednesday that the biggest risk for getting sick seems to be within 42 days of receiving one of the implicated back injections.

"We know the farther out you are from receiving an injection, the lower your risk becomes for developing meningitis or other infections. We want to emphasize that," CDC's Dr. Tom Chiller told a conference call for physicians on Thursday.

Still, public health officials recall a 2002 meningitis cluster linked to steroid injections contaminated with a different fungus; one of those victims got sick 152 days after the shot.

Fungal infections don't get a lot of attention, but they afflict millions around the world, said David Perlin of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , who is studying better ways to diagnose them. Most are skin infections like athlete's foot, but fungi also can cause pneumonia, sinusitis and other problems.

Serious infections tend to strike people with immune systems weakened because of cancer, AIDS or other problems. Fungus-caused meningitis in particular is extremely rare — especially in otherwise healthy people like in this outbreak — and it's "very bad news," said Michigan's Kauffman.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck.

The main culprit in this outbreak is a black mold called Exserohilum rostratum, common in dirt and grasses. Only 33 human infections previously had been reported, mostly eye or skin infections in people with weak immune systems, Casadevall said.

Here's how scientists think it's sneaking into the well-guarded spinal cord and brain of a healthy person:

· The steroid injected near the spine reduces inflammation, one of the immune system's defenses against contamination.

· The mold grows quietly until enough accumulates for it to burrow a tiny hole, or abscess, into the lining of the spinal canal, said Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University. Reaching the spinal fluid inside offers a direct pathway to the brain.

· The fungus' color signals how intractable it is. Brown-black molds produce melanin, the same chemical that helps human skin tan. It guards against the sun's mold-killing ultraviolet rays — and inside people, it fends off both antifungal drugs and other immune-system attacks, Casadevall said.

The good news: Black mold is treatable with a drug named voriconazole, with far fewer side effects than the older treatment initially recommended when the outbreak began.

Still, Kauffman cautioned doctors to carefully monitor patients because differences in metabolism can make levels surge in the bloodstream, causing hallucinations, confusion, nausea and occasionally liver damage. On the flip side, their bodies may process the drug too quickly to battle the fungus. Plus,Find detailed product information for howo tractor 6x4 and other products. voriconazole can interact badly with a list of other common medications.

Barnes & Noble warns of credit card

If you really want to be safe, you might be better off using cash for those quick purchases.

Barnes & Noble Inc. said Wednesday that customers who shopped at 63 of its stores — including seven in the Chicago area — may be victims of thieves who took credit or debit card information in what the bookstore chain called a "sophisticated criminal effort,'' the latest reminder of how crooks can steal consumers' financial information.

The data thefts, which occurred as recently as last month, used a "bug'' planted in one PIN pad device at each of the affected stores, the retailer said. After the breach was discovered, Barnes & Noble said it disconnected the pads at its nearly 700 stores.

It's not known how many customers were affected, the company said. A spokesman for the FBI said Wednesday that the agency had been investigating the breach at Barnes & Noble since September.

Last year, scores of customers of Michaels craft stores in the Chicago area and nationwide reported having money swiped from their bank accounts also through stolen debit card information.

And while the emerging use of mobile phones as digital payment devices offers convenience, "mobile wallet" technology comes with its own set of security concerns, especially given the nascent nature of the industry.

Nationwide, 42 percent of American consumers say they've experienced credit card fraud in the past five years, up from 32 percent in 2010, according to an October survey conducted by ACI Worldwide, which supplies payment systems, and Aite Group, a research and advisory firm.

As big retailers have stepped up efforts to repel thieves, card fraudsters have increasingly homed in on individual retail locations, which they consider softer targets, according to Dan Glennon, senior vice president of marketing and strategy at Cybera Inc., a Nashville, Tenn.-based firm that sells point-of-sale security solutions to retailers.

Smaller retailers and single locations are considered more vulnerable because they are less likely to have sophisticated security mechanisms in place.

Larger retailers are more apt to have more security or a technology person on site tracking and managing their security profile, Glennon said.

But whether it's a large retail chain or a mom-and-pop shop, ultimately what thieves are looking for is vulnerability, said David Fish, senior analyst at Mercator Advisory Group, a Maynard, Mass.-based consultancy.

There are several ways PIN pads and card readers are used by thieves to capture consumers' personal financial information.

Employees can be duped by those posing as keypad repair technicians who then alter or swap out PIN pads for ones that record credit card or bank account information or broadcast it wirelessly to accomplices at a remote location, experts say.

In other cases, thieves can attach "skimmers," or bugs, to card readers at gas pumps and ATM locations that collect and transmit personal data. Such skimmers can range from homemade devices or sophisticated circuit boards that are purchased on the Internet.

Armed with the account data, thieves can make duplicate plastic cards and use the accompanying personal identification numbers to make cash withdrawals.The Kunyu Mountain Shaolin china kung fu school is located at the foot.

Staying ahead of thieves is difficult,The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. according to the National Retail Federation, a trade group. That Barnes & Noble was able to detect the PIN pad tampering shows the security "measures in place are clearly working," said Vicki Cantrell, senior vice president of communities at the National Retail Federation.

The banking, technology and retail industries are eager to push the use of mobile wallets, where consumers load their credit or debit cards onto smartphones and use their mobile devices to make purchases. Despite enthusiasm from major players like Google, American Express and Verizon Wireless, factors such as competing technologies and a lack of consumer adoption mean the mobile wallet is not poised to replace traditional payment forms in the short term.

Barriers to adoption include "a lack of phones with the technology enabled, low merchant acceptance,Find detailed product information for Low price howo tipper truck and other products. and a robust way to pay through cards," according to Javelin Strategy & Research, a consulting firm for the financial services industry.

For starters, the iPhone — including the newest version released last month — is not equipped for near-field communication, a commonly used technology for mobile payments that transmits data over short distances.If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. Near-field communication underpins the Isis Mobile Wallet,Find detailed product information for howo spareparts and other products. a joint initiative by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless that launched this week in Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City.

Economy Seen Expanding 1.9% On Stronger Consumer Spending

The U.S. economy probably expanded at a slightly faster pace in the third quarter compared with the previous quarter, supported by solid consumer spending and a recovery in housing that has gained steam in recent months.

But some economists warn that while there is some tentative evidence that certain sectors of the economy have recently turned a corner, it is hard to foresee a significant and sustained acceleration in overall gross domestic product growth without a definite resolution to the euro zone crisis and America’s domestic fiscal problems.

GDP, the value of all goods and services the nation produced, rose at a 1.9 percent annual rate after a 1.3 percent gain in the previous quarter, according to the median forecast of 84 economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters. That’s still short of the 2.We specialize in howo concrete mixer,5 percent to 3 percent pace economists say is needed to bring down unemployment.

he Commerce Dept. will release the GDP report at 8:30 a.m. EDT on Friday, just 11 days before the presidential election.

Consumer spending, which accounts for 71 percent of GDP, is expected to have grown at a rate of at least 2 percent in the July-September period, after increasing at a 1.5 percent pace in the second quarter. Meanwhile, a surge in housing starts points to a significant positive contribution from residential investment.

“One of our main messages about the U.S. is that growth may be slow, but it is not fragile,” Dean Maki, chief U.S.Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. economist at Barclays, wrote in a note to clients. “We view overhang from the crisis, downside risk from the European debt crisis, and uncertainty about U.S. fiscal and monetary policy as factors that attenuate hiring and investment spending, but that are unlikely to create a recession.”

Retail sales rose a solid 1.1 percent month-on-month in September, and strength was fairly broad-based. August’s data was also revised higher to show a 1.2 percent increase instead of the originally reported 0.9 percent gain.

More importantly, the “core” measure of sales (which excludes gasoline, autos and building materials and feeds directly into economists’ GDP tracking models), increased a robust 0.9 percent in September. On a three-month average annualized basis, core retail sales are up 4.4 percent, reflecting a notable pickup since the summer.

And September’s better-than-expected retail sales report isn’t all about Apple.

Admittedly, some of the rise in sales in September was due to the release of the Apple iPhone 5, which will then subtract from growth in the coming months. Retail sales of electronics fell in the months after the release of both the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4s. But the 4.5 percent monthly rise in electronics sales in September added just 0.1 percentage points to overall retail sales, according to Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics.

While recent data have been better, economists are reluctant to give an all-clear sign, citing the dreaded "fiscal cliff."

“Unless the fiscal cliff is avoided, consumers face a large tax increase at the end of the year. As we approach the cliff, we are concerned that consumer spending will slow as consumers react to the uncertainty shock, delaying big-ticket purchases because of the uncertain tax and economic outlook at the start of the New Year,” Joshua Dennerlein, U.S. economist for Bank of America Corp. in New York, said in a note.

There are signs that activity has started to improve outside of the consumer sector.

Societe Generale Senior U.S. Economist Brian Jones expects residential investment to add a little over one-quarter percentage point to third-quarter real GDP growth. However, Jones added that even if his projection is on the mark, residential investment would account for just 2.75 percent of real GDP, well below the recent peak share of 6.2 percent recorded in the summer of 2005.

Residential investment has now contributed positively to real GDP growth in five consecutive quarters, a trend that is expected to continue.

The surge in housing starts to a four-year high in September suggests that the residential real estate recovery is truly gathering pace. Compared with a year earlier, new construction was up by nearly 35 percent.High quality mold making Videos teaches anyone how to make molds.

In another positive sign, sales of newly built homes in the U.S.We specialize in howo concrete mixer, rose in September to their highest level in more than two years. Meanwhile, home prices rose for the seventh straight month in August, up 0.7 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from a month earlier, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency's monthly home-price index.

Jones had assumed that a farm-led reduction in private inventories attributable to the summer’s severe drought would pare 0.4 percentage points off GDP growth. “While we continue to believe that reduced inventories of agricultural products will produce a significant drag, available data through August point to a sharp pickup in stock-building by manufacturers, merchant wholesalers and retailers,” Jones said.

He now expects the change in private inventories to expand by $18.8 billion over the three months ended September to $60.2 billion, adding almost six ticks to the third-quarter GDP growth.

Capital Economics Chief U.S. Economist Paul Ashworth appears to be less optimistic. He is calling for a below-consensus third-quarter GDP growth rate of 1.3 percent, and he is concerned that growth could turn out to be even weaker because inventories may end up being an even bigger drag.

“We think it would be premature to conclude that the U.S. is about to embark on strong and sustained recovery,” Dales said. “The fact is that we have been here before and there are few reasons to believe that this improvement has longer legs than the ones that began in late 2010 and 2011.”

On both those occasions, the economy improved once Europe appeared to be getting its fiscal house in order and after the Fed provided more policy stimulus.The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. But on both occasions, the European fix proved to be nothing more than a temporary Band-Aid and the Fed’s policies did not boost the real economy by as much as hoped, Dales said.

Combo inoculants hold promise for best of both worlds

How can a homofermentative inoculant improve milk production by 2 to 3 pounds per cow per day? Can farmers expect that from all homofermentative inoculants? And what are expectations for L. buchneri and the combo inoculants? Those are some of the questions addressed by U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center research engineer Richard Muck during World Dairy Expo in Madison earlier this month.

Muck admits he thought inoculants were improving dry matter digestibility, but two trials with alfalfa silage – and homofermentative inoculants as well as the heterofermenter, L. buchneri – didn’t show that. Muck admits that was “disappointing to us.” However, gas production was lower with some inoculants than predicted.

Muck points out that the main products of rumen fermentation are: Rumen microbes, volatile fatty acids and gases. With inoculants they’ve measured more rumen microbes and less of the gases. Rumen microbes are one of the main sources of protein for the cow. It appears what may be causing the difference in animal performance with inoculated silage is that cow is getting more protein, which supports more milk production. He reports that “inoculated silages from 3 of the 4 inoculants (researched in the lab) produced 8 percent more rumen microbes than untreated silage.China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. That could support up to four pounds more milk per cow per day,If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. he adds.

Muck went on to share results of a lactating cow trial with alfalfa silage (treated with L. plantarum). There was a “nice response” in pH,The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. he mentions of 4.93 untreated silage and 4.56 inoculant-treated. The alfalfa silage was fed at 50 percent of the ration, along with corn silage, high moisture corn and soy hulls. The additional two pounds more milk with the inoculant wasn’t statistically significant. The MUN (milk urea nitrogen) level is noteworthy. Muck says the 10 percent reduction in milk urea N indicates better N utilization by the cows on the inoculated silage, suggesting more rumen microbe production. (That’s also a potentially positive environmental impact with less ammonia loss.)

What more does Muck need to know? He says they have to confirm that more rumen microbes were actually produced in the trial, but he’s fairly confident that’ll show up. He also needs to figure out “why” certain inoculants are causing silages to produce more rumen microbes, and confirm that the in vitro test really does screen for inoculants that can produce a significant animal response.

The bottom line? Muck says there’s “sound evidence that some inoculants can increase rumen microbe production in vitro,The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte.” and that “these increases can explain the milk production increases observed with some inoculants.” He adds that the inoculant they tested in their production trial increased milk and reduced MUN like they’d expected. MUN is a good indicator of better nitrogen utilization by the cow.

There’s “good strong evidence” that makes these products look even more attractive now, notes Muck.

“We now have increased confidence that some inoculants can truly increase milk production 2 to 4 pounds per cow per day,” he states, admitting more research is needed to understand why this is happening. He says they also may have a “tool for looking for better inoculants in the future.”

Muck characterizes the homofermenters as the best choice to improve DM recovery and animal performance. They’re a good fit for hay-crop silage, but less likely to be successful on corn silage. However, in vitro tests with corn silage (BMR and regular) indicate production of more rumen microbes (i.e. an effect on the cow). He admits he’s starting to change his tManufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing,une a tad.

Aside from their preferred use on alfalfa silage, positive outcomes with homofermenters are more likely to occur with corn silage when it’s harvested on the dry side or immediately after a killing frost.

The heterofermentative inoculants like L. buchneri, he says, consistently increase bunk life/aerobic stability (an issue in warm weather with corn and small grain silages). Studies show L. buchneri raises acetic acid and results in higher-pH silage. Because acetic acid inhibits yeasts and molds, L. buchneri-treated silage is more aerobically stable. Heterofermentative inoculants work more consistently across a wide range of conditions, while success with homofermenters are best in hay crop silage with a wilt time of a day.

In terms of DM loss, L. buchneri is intermediate between untreated silage and homofermentative inoculants. That’s not surprising because carbon dioxide gas is made and lost while producing acetic acid. Typically there’s a 1 to 2 percent improvement in DM recovery over untreated silage. In lactation trials with L. buchneri, acetic acid also increased. However, there’s been no effect on DM intake by cows and generally little or no effect on milk production (except in keeping silage cool).

But when combining the two types of inoculants – homofermenters and L. buchneri – it seems there is indeed potential to “get the best of both worlds,” notes Muck of the DM recovery and animal performance of a standard inoculant and the bunk life/aerobic stability of L. buchneri. The potential for more milk appears to be happening on more than one crop, he notes, admitting that more animal trials are needed though.

This ag engineer reminds producers that the bacteria in the inoculant has to be alive when it goes on the crop to work. Keep the inoculant tank cool the best you can in the heat of summer. He also prefers to add the inoculant on the forage harvester as there are multiple opportunities for the inoculant to be mixed with the crop; good distribution is important.

ECS Launches 'Payment in a Box' for North America

ElectraCard Services (ECS), a leading electronic payments solution provider, today announced the availability of a prepackaged, functionally rich, high performance payment switch. The integrated solution meets the needs of financial institutions, local Independent Service Organizations (ISO), retailers and merchant processors and enables them to more quickly adapt to innovation in their markets.

ECS ‘Payment in a Box’ bundles HP Integrity NonStop servers and electraSWITCH iTx series to deliver high reliability, extreme scalability and superior price performance. The integrated solution is based on the newly introduced HP Integrity NonStop NS2100 server, allowing customers who require a mission-critical application environment to extend the reliability of NonStop fundamentals at a lower price point.We specialize in howo concrete mixer, This bundled solution comes complete with support, installation and training services.Gecko could kickstart an indoor tracking mobile app explosion.

electra iTx series platform is a next generation transaction platform, built from the ground-up on open standards and industry best-practices to support the service oriented architectures (SOA) that are fast becoming the technology backbone of today’s leading organizations..Find detailed product information for howo tractor 6x4 and other products. It bridges the divide between the old and new payment worlds by increasing the agility and flexibility of traditional payments technologies. The iTx series provides flexibility and speed to market for the entire payments chain.

Expanded functionality of the iTx series includes the ECS answer to the Software Development Kit (SDK) and brings a powerful business rules engine and workflow manager called electraRULES Business Manager,The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. which eliminates customization and shortens the time to launch new services. electraRULES model-driven development environment enforces granularity and reuse of business assets unseen in traditional approaches allowing for seamless composition and decomposition of processes and business services. The Java engine at the core of electraRULES is proven to support massive degrees of scale and parallelism, and allow our customers to extend and customize the platform to fit their needs. It also comes with a highly configurable message transformation engine called electraMAP, which maps message formats and protocols to integrate with external systems using online messages, offline extracts and SOA services. ‘When coupled together, iTx series is game changing technology,’ stated Dale Van Stratten, SVP and Head of ECS Americas.

ECS selected HP for its deep industry expertise, global delivery capabilities and to ensure infrastructure longevity. Like other financial organizations, the company put its trust in HP and the NonStop platform because it delivers fault tolerance, continuous availability and data integrity required by retail, wholesale and central bank payments systems. electraSWITCH on HP Integrity NonStop is among the few PA-DSS certified payment solutions.High quality mold making Videos teaches anyone how to make molds. electraSWITCH iTx series is a high performance payment engine on NonStop. electra is handling 9 million transactions per day and 50 million debit cards at a large bank in Southeast Asia. ECS has extensive experience on HP Integrity NonStop and have completed numerous migrations from competing platforms including several from ACI platforms.

‘As part of our strategy to offer customers a compelling solution and make their migration experience simple, reliable and affordable, we have collaborated with HP to create this packaged payments offering,’ commented Van Stratten.

Azerbaijani border could lead to war

In a region where a fragile peace holds over three frozen conflicts, the nations of the South Caucasus are buzzing with drones they use to probe one another’s defenses and spy on disputed territories.

The region is also host to strategic oil and gas pipelines and a tangled web of alliances and precious resources that observers say threaten to quickly escalate the border skirmishes and airspace violations to a wider regional conflict triggered by Armenia and Azerbaijan that could potentially pull in Israel, Russia and Iran.

To some extent,Our vinyl floor tiles is more stylish than ever! these countries are already being pulled towards conflict. Last September, Armenia shot down an Israeli-made Azerbaijani drone over Nagorno-Karabakh and the government claims that drones have been spotted ahead of recent incursions by Azerbaijani troops into Armenian-held territory.

Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center in Yerevan, said in a briefing that attacks this summer showed that Azerbaijan is eager to “play with its new toys” and its forces showed “impressive tactical and operational improvement.”

The International Crisis Group warned that as the tit-for-tat incidents become more deadly, “there is a growing risk that the increasing frontline tensions could lead to an accidental war.”

With this in mind, the UN and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have long imposed a non-binding arms embargo on both countries, and both are under a de facto arms ban from the United States.The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. But, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), this has not stopped Israel and Russia from selling to them.

After fighting a bloody war in the early 1990s over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a stalemate with an oft-violated ceasefire holding a tenuous peace between them.

And drones are the latest addition to the battlefield. In March, Azerbaijan signed a $1.6 billion arms deal with Israel, which consisted largely of advanced drones and an air defense system. Through this and other deals, Azerbaijan is currently amassing a squadron of over 100 drones from all three of Israel’s top defense manufacturers.

Armenia, meanwhile, employs only a small number of domestically produced models.

Intelligence gathering is just one use for drones, which are also used to spot targets for artillery, and, if armed, strike targets themselves.

Armenian and Azerbaijani forces routinely snipe and engage one another along the front, each typically blaming the other for violating the ceasefire. At least 60 people have been killed in ceasefire violations in the last two years, and the Brussels-based International Crisis Group claimed in a report published in February 2011 that the sporadic violence has claimed hundreds of lives.

“Each (Armenia and Azerbaijan) is apparently using the clashes and the threat of a new war to pressure its opponent at the negotiations table, while also preparing for the possibility of a full-scale conflict in the event of a complete breakdown in the peace talks,” the report said.

Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus Institute in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, said that the arms buildup on both sides makes the situation more dangerous but also said that the clashes are calculated actions, with higher death tolls becoming a negotiating tactic.

“This isn’t Somalia or Afghanistan. These aren’t independent units. The Armenian, Azerbaijani and Karabakh armed forces have a rigid chain of command so it’s not a question of a sergeant or a lieutenant randomly giving the order to open fire.If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. These are absolutely synchronized political attacks,” Iskandaryan said.

The deadliest recent uptick in violence along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and the line of contact around Karabakh came in early June as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was on a visit to the region. While death tolls varied, at least two dozen soldiers were killed or wounded in a series of shootouts along the front.

The year before, at least four Armenian soldiers were killed in an alleged border incursion by Azerbaijani troops one day after a peace summit between the Armenian, Azerbaijani and Russian presidents in St. Petersburg,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing, Russia.

“No one slept for two or three days [during the June skirmishes],” said Grush Agbaryan, the mayor of the border village of Voskepar for a total of 27 years off and on over the past three decades.The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. “Everyone is now saying that the war is coming. We know that it could start at any moment."

Azerbaijan refused to issue accreditation to GlobalPost’s correspondent to enter the country to report on the shootings and Azerbaijan’s military modernization.

Huntington's 'Strange and Fearful Interest' is a rare view

The Civil War's terrible toll forced Americans to contemplate death and dying in ways they never had before. The four-year conflict claimed an estimated 750,000 lives.

"In terms of the population, it's as if about 7 million people were killed today," says Jennifer Watts, a curator at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

The immensity of the losses was as unprecedented as the immediacy of the images of military life — and death — recorded by enterprising photographers. Their pictures of bodies lying in bleak fields brought home the consequences of faraway battles.

To mark the Civil War's 150th anniversary, the Huntington is presenting an exhibition that, says Watts, "explores how photography and other media were used to describe, explain and perhaps come to terms with this national trauma."

"A Strange and Fearful Interest: Death,Allows you to securely organize any group of cable ties or wires. Mourning, and Memory in the American Civil War" features more than 200 pieces, including photographs by Alexander Gardner,Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. Mathew Brady, Timothy H. O'Sullivan, George N. Barnard and Andrew J. Russell as well as lithographs and ephemera.

The exhibition, which opened this month, grew out of the Huntington's desire to showcase rarely seen original photographs and other items in the extensive Civil War holdings the San Marino institution has amassed since key acquisitions were made by its founder, Henry E.We are pleased to offer the following list of professional mold maker and casters. Huntington.

Another inspiration was Drew Gilpin Faust's 2008 book, "This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War." Faust, a historian and president of Harvard University, examined "the impact death had on the American psyche," says Watts, the Huntington's curator of photographs and the show's curator.

"This involved not just logistical aspects but the whole framework of society … pensions, identification of soldiers, national cemeteries," Watts says. "Faust also looked at how people had to make sense of what happened both as individuals and as a society for which there had to be some moral reckoning beyond the fact that the Union was preserved and slaves were free."

"A Strange and Fearful Interest" — the title comes from a quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. — is built around three themes: the battlefront, the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and the commemoration of the war.

It opens with pictures of the living. Watts notes that photography, which came of age technologically during the war, provided "a tether between home and battle," with soldiers and loved ones finding comfort in each other's portraits.

Watts says the Huntington collection contains "some of the photographs and photographers that are absolutely essential to understanding the war." A number are represented in the "Battlefront" section, including what she calls "a haunting, iconic" picture of men killed in the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg that was taken by O'Sullivan and printed by his then-employer, Gardner.

The image, one of whose titles is "A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg," depicts "bloated bodies, surrounded by the detritus of battle … left there because there were too many bodies to handle."

Usually, she adds, "we see this piece on its own,Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. but it had a second life when Gardner included it after the war in his two-volume masterwork — which is in the show — his 'Sketch Book' of photographs with text that told a cautionary tale for future generations."

Also on display are images by Gardner and James F. Gibson who, while working for Brady, took pictures of fallen soldiers at Antietam, the 1862 battle in Maryland that produced about 23,000 casualties in a single day. "The first photographs of American dead on the battlefield came from there," says Watts.

Weeks after the September clash, Brady displayed the Antietam images in his New York gallery. "You will see hushed, reverend groups standing around these weird copies of carnage," the New York Times wrote about the exhibition, "bending down to look in the pale faces of the dead."

Public fascination greeted pictures from the front, which were disseminated through the publication of woodcuts derived from photographs in illustrated magazines and through stereographs and deluxe volumes. The era's cumbersome field photography was better suited to aftermath and other non-action scenes, explains Watts, who adds that more Northern photographs survive in part because Southern photographers faced greater constraints.

After four years of bitter fighting, America moved from what Watts calls "the madness of what had just finished to the madness to come" — the murder of Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth in April 1865.

"There was an unbelievable outpouring of grief," Watts says. "Obviously,An indoor positioning system (IPS) is a term used for a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building. the South felt differently and not everyone in the North liked Lincoln, but he was a father figure to many … and he became more popular in death than in life."

The speed of events after the shooting — which occurred days after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox — outpaced photographers' ability to record them. So this section includes lithographs and items such as the "wanted" notice seeking Booth and his conspirators, funeral train memorabilia and what Watts calls "the granddaddy of deathbed prints" — an artist's proof of John B. Bachelder's engraving based on a painting of the dying president by Alonzo Chappel, who inflated the number of relatives and dignitaries in the room to more than 40.

Watts says the hanging of four conspirators, which Gardner photographed, represents "the final brutal act of the period."

At war's end, the nation sought to remember the fallen and to heal its wounds. These efforts were exemplified by the commemoration of the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg, during which Union forces rebuffed Lee's invading Confederate troops in Pennsylvania after the sides suffered an estimated 51,000 casualties in three days.

"Gettysburg became the crucible of Civil War myth and memory," Watts says, "and is now the most monumentalized place in America" — hence an exhibition wall covered with William H. Tipton photographs of regimental markers.

In "A Strange and Fearful Interest," Watts says, "we're presenting original works in a contemporary installation" that includes an "aural landscape" commissioned from artist Steve Roden, computer kiosks that offer closer looks at selected images and online features accessible through the Huntington's website. She hopes the exhibition, which runs through Jan. 14, "provides a compelling visual record of the war."

App developers get ready for Windows 8 debut

With Windows 8, Microsoft’s new operating system (OS), the technology giant is attempting to rethink its platform to bring in big changes to the user interface and navigation. One of the biggest components of this platform’s success would be application developers.

Microsoft has announced that developers from 120 markets (including India) will be able to publish their Windows 8 apps and start selling them online on Windows App Store from October 26, when the new OS will be commercially launched.

The sheer number of apps, both free and paid, was the primary reason why Apple and Google succeeded with their iOS and Android platforms, respectively, and also where Research in Motion (RIM) failed with its BlackBerry OS. With 3,500 developers participating at its AppFest earlier this month, Microsoft is throwing the red carpet to welcome developers.

However, app developers in India are in a dilemma, for they have to choose between Windows 8 and Android. Vishal Gondal, managing director – digital, DisneyUTV, says: “This is the first time that you will have an OS, which is tightly integrated with a number of devices and which is outside of the Apple eco-system.We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. It is only in an Apple environment that a user gets a seamless experience between gadgets such as Mac, iPad and iPhone. The other advantage that Microsoft has is the number of users already using Windows. iOS, in that sense, is still restricted to a certain segment of users in India,Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS.” points out Gondal.

The other advantage of Windows 8 is that it lets app developers monetise their applications. Amrish Goyal, director, Windows business group at Microsoft India, says: “Microsoft will offer developers the option of using in-app transactions to make money or get the money upfront from the users for their apps. Alternatively, the developers can rely on the ad-funded model. The minimum price of an app, according to Microsoft, will be as low as $1.49 or as high as $999.”

Microsoft, like Apple, will keep 30 per cent of the app price on sales up to $25,000. For app sales beyond this, the Redmond-based company will keep 20 per cent. This revenue-sharing arrangement for a company like Rovio, which made a killing selling Angry Birds, could mean a potentially larger pay cheque from Microsoft over competing platforms.

Predictably, Microsoft has managed to get the attention of Indian developers. “After iOS, we will be considering the Windows platform for our apps, before we even think of Android where monetisation is extremely difficult,” says Mohit Sureka, founder and CEO, Spiel Studios. According to him, while the company is not looking at Windows 8 apps for PC, it will consider developing gaming apps for the Windows 8 platform on tablets and smartphones, once the OS is commercially launched. Spiel Studios has published several iOS apps such as Propel Man,The Kunyu Mountain Shaolin china kung fu school is located at the foot. that even featured among the top-10 apps on Apple’s India app store.

Girish Nuli, managing director and CEO of Antara Software, a Bangalore-based start-up that is ready with a health care app for Windows 8 web and mobile platform, says: “We evaluated other mobile OSes, but realised that Windows had a formidable reach in India. Our app, Active Life,The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. is ready for Windows 8 app store and we are looking to monetise the app with in-app purchases.” Nuli is also working on adding a few more health care and education apps for Windows 8 soon.

Even developers who don’t have a Windows 8 app are betting the platform would open new doors. Nilay Arora, business head at ibibo Games, says: “We have been monetising our Android apps via in-app advertisements, and it has worked all right till now. But, we will use in-app upgrades on Windows 8 platform to monetise the app, since the company is providing a secure payment gateway.” With seven apps on the Android platform and two on the Apple iOS, ibibo Games believes while Android platform provides the company a better volume scale today, Microsoft’s new platform would give a wider distribution network to its apps.

Developers also see Windows 8 as an alternative to Google’s Android OS, one of the most popular OSes.Find detailed product information for howo tractor 6x4 and other products. “The Android ecosystem is fragmented at the moment, as developers have to configure apps according to different devices and the experience varies for each device. Secondly, there is no real business model surrounding Android. Google has not provided for any payment mechanism. Although one can depend on advertisement revenue, that is still very small,” said Gondal.

Microsoft’s Goyal emphasised that apart from computers and tablets, the Windows 8 OS also supports apps on Xbox console and smartphones, providing developers a much larger opportunity than its rivals. Windows has sold 630 million licences in about 200 countries and has a 90 per cent share of the OS market, which indicates the upgrade potential for Windows 8. The new OS, says Goyal, will also allow users to make purchases for their Xbox 360 gaming and queue them up for download on the console. In other words, Microsoft hopes to unify the OS across device platforms.

Ficarra Design Associates contemporary interior

With its distinctive Dutch Caribbean architectural style and Gulf Shore Boulevard North address, Naples Casamore is for those captivated by a luxurious, fully amenitized European village lifestyle.

Twelve, three-story, single-family residences designed by Stofft Cooney Architects and built by BCB Homes stand as a unique achievement that offers open, free-flowing floor plans with high ceilings and tall windows that capture Southwest Florida's natural light.

Naples-based Ficarra Design Associates is creating and executing a contemporary interior design for one of the four-bedroom Casamore residences that is as unique as the building itself. Bold design features and interior details, lighting treatments that accentuate the visual impact of an assortment of extraordinary finishes, and a color palette that includes gray, taupe and eggplant tones all contribute to a style with a level of clean-lined sophistication.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck.

"The uniqueness of the Casamore residence's architectural style offers an ideal venue for the execution of a bold,If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. contemporary interior design," said Ficarra Design Associates Founder and President Lisa Ficarra. "The owners of the residence recognized the possibilities early on, articulated their vision and then provided us the freedom to create this type of style. It is an exciting project that will ultimately contribute to the overall one-of-a-kind ambiance that has already established Casamore as Naples' newest landmark location."

Ficarra's emphasis on unique, high visual impact finishes is apparent upon arrival at the home's ground level entry. The flooring is predominantly a textured white ceramic tile with elements that sparkle.

Ficarra has taken the flooring a step further with the creation of a rectangular Calcutta marble tile accent that has a circular stainless steel inlay. The inlay plays against a stairway that features steel posts with cable railings. Each step is accented by a geometric stainless steel inlaid border. Cove lighting at the uppermost reaches of the three-story stairwell casts a soft glow.

Driftwood toned hardwood flooring throughout the second level introduces Ficarra's color palette. A powder room near the top of the staircase features the same ceramic flooring found in the entry. The white wall tile is done in a wave pattern that is accented by soffit lighting mounted directly overhead. A floating vanity cabinet with an onyx countertop lit from underneath and a mirror suspended on wires extending from the ceiling provide additional memory points. The vanity is separated from the toilet area by a frosted glass half-wall with a stone top.

In addition to its tall windows that offer a view of Casamore's environs, the residence's living room features a fireplace in a combination of shell stone and wood veneer. A series of wood-stained beams with cross pieces are used to create a ceiling treatment with a contemporary feeling that plays against furnishings with espresso wood accents. The espresso tone is continued in the adjacent club room's contemporary built-in wall unit. The club room space also features a deep coffered ceiling with beams and Lutron window shades that vanish into an indiscernible soffit when raised.Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS.

An additional space on the second level serves as both a guest bedroom and his-and-her office. The room has a full bath and a zoom bed that can be stored in the wall.

Ficarra's contemporary design is on full display in the kitchen. The upper perimeter cabinetry is a polished chrome with glass fronts while the lower cabinets have horizontal grained, gray-washed wooden door fronts,Largest gemstone beads and jewelry making supplies at wholesale prices. a look that is continued on the front of an island base that is framed with espresso toned trim. A metallic shadow Pompeii quartz counter top and backsplash on the perimeter play against the island's green, gray and eggplant toned top. The designer's penchant for making visual statements with lighting is evident again in the island's step-up counter that is done in espresso finished wood with three Cristallo white glass inserts that are lit from underneath. A tiered, multilevel Plexiglas table in the breakfast nook was designed by Ficarra Design Associates' Alexandra Hutchinson.

The driftwood toned hardwood flooring continues in the third level vestibule and hallways. The entry to the master suite includes a walk-in morning kitchen that features a stepped-coffer ceiling and cabinetry with a dramatic curvilinear molding design in espresso brown over a white background. The cabinetry plays against a Calcutta stone counter and backsplash and a gray, silver, bronze and dark brown stainless steel horizontal inlay in the hardwood floor.

In the master bedroom, a vaulted ceiling contributes to the volume of the space. A chunky frame detail on the headboard wall and suspended lighting fixtures over matching night stands continue Ficarra's contemporary twists and visual surprises. The master suite includes his-and-her baths. Her bath has a fantasy white marble floor with diamond shaped taupe bubble glass insets. The bubbles run up the shower wall and are also used as the flooring under a free-standing tub that is centered on a window. His bath reprises the stainless steel accents in the morning kitchen's floor, this time in the bath's cream-toned marble floor and shower. A free-standing dark espresso vanity provides a perfect contrast to the lighter toned marble.

Ficarra continues her attention to ceiling treatments in the guest bedrooms on the third level.Load the precious minerals into your mining truck and be careful not to drive too fast with your heavy foot. One of the bedrooms has a unique beamed ceiling design while the other has a stepped coffer.

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Like a champion gymnast perfecting a winning routine, Roy Lichtenstein developed a deft, tight, virtually foolproof art style, one that was based on agility rather than brawn and, though narrow in range, was capable of surprising variations and extensions.

The look of this art isn’t big, but it’s smart; cool and dry, but accessible. Connoisseurs and know-nothings alike can enjoy it, and for some of the same reasons. And there’s the recognition factor: very high. Once you’ve encountered his work, you’d know it anywhere. Catch a glimpse of a Lichtenstein out of the corner of your eye from a moving cab, and it will register, half-seen.

“Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective,” a traveling exhibition now at the National Gallery of Art here, is the first major survey of his work since his death, at 73, in 1997. It’s a big show and has a few slow spots, but on the whole it moves right along. Its 14 thematic sections have been edited with less-is-more dispatch. There aren’t many labels to detain you. Most important, Lichtenstein’s large-featured images, with their Ben-Day dot patterns; thick, black contours; and flat, bright colors are almost ergonomically comfortable to the eye.

Lichtenstein, born and raised in Manhattan, was focused on art from the start. Barely out of high school, he enrolled at the Art Students League and studied painting with Reginald Marsh. After a three-year Army stint during World War II, he earned an M.F.A. from Ohio State University, and worked here and there before moving to New Jersey in 1960, then back to New York City the following year.

Like almost everyone else, he had been turning out brushy paintings — there are a few in the show — in an Abstract Expressionist vein. But by 1960,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , that model felt style-cramping and uncool. There had to be other options, and he found one: he started painting cartoons.

The earliest example, “Look Mickey,” from 1961, is the first thing you see in the exhibition: a picture of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, adapted from a Disney children’s book.

Lichtenstein would later say that he painted it for his kids. In reality, he painted it for himself, to get as far away as possible from where he’d been.

He kept going in this new direction. He clipped ordinary images — a hot dog, a pair of Keds,Interlocking security cable tie with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. a manicured female hand doing housework — from tabloid newspapers, comic strips and advertisements; made drawings of the images; transferred those drawings, enlarged, to canvases; and painted them. He set everything in the paintings against fields of Ben-Day dot patterns to suggest the look of cheap commercial printing, initially creating the patterns with a dog’s grooming brush dipped in paint.

What he was making, of course, was Pop Art. He didn’t invent it, but he was quickly pegged as one of its defining exponents, and his career took off. In 1961, through a fellow artist, he met the dealer Leo Castelli, who agreed to represent him, and immediately added him to a group show of other stars on the rise,The Kunyu Mountain Shaolin china kung fu school is located at the foot. including Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Frank Stella. Andy Warhol would soon join the team.

Lichtenstein’s first Castelli solo, in 1962, sold out before it opened. He was clearly at the beginning of a heady ride, though he experienced it largely from the perspective of his studio, where he spent most of his time, refining and toning the formal aspects of his art and judiciously expanding its repertory of themes. He became comfortable working in thematic series, keeping several in progress at once.

In the early 1960s he continued to paint everyday objects, but switched from color to black and white. He also moved from Disney comics to a romantic genre produced by DC Comics, from which he adapted a line of close-up images of the faces of lovelorn, emoting young women. The 1963 “Drowning Girl” become one of his best-known pictures.

By this time, too, he was attracting disapproval. His work was criticized for being lightweight, nostalgic, uncritical, conservative: pseudo-populist art for the carriage trade. With the Vietnam War moving into high gear, and resistance at home on the boil, the perceived ideological defects of his art seemed particularly glaring.

In response, he might have pointed — maybe he did — to yet another of his series derived from DC Comics, this one made up of billboard-size paintings of fighter-plane battles, and jagged wall reliefs in the form of exploding bombs. Hung together, floor to ceiling, they add up to the show’s most dynamic installation. And while they may not exactly be “political art,” they don’t read as Pop jokes, either.

Lichtenstein was adamant about keeping personal content out of his work. But surely, at some level, this series, if not a response to the Vietnam War, reflects his own experience of World War II — he had been posted at an antiaircraft training base — and the threat of nuclear catastrophe that haunted America in the postwar years.

By the mid-1960s Pop Art, after its short, flaring, emphatic moment,One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. was itself becoming part of the past.

Lichtenstein saw this and began adjusting his work accordingly. He couldn’t do much to its basic form; the defining elements — dots, lines, color — were by now unalterable. What he could change was content, and, with mixed success, he did.

Cartoon figures went out; cartoonish still lifes and art historical homages came in. The still lifes are clever, if slight; the homages, which stretch over many years, admirably diverse but unrevealing. The most elaborate are dedicated to Picasso, a Lichtenstein hero, and seem intended as affectionate spoofs. But they add nothing to the many spoofs, intended or not, that Picasso did of himself. Over all, the work gives little reason to consider an old view of Lichtenstein, as a spectacularly gifted lightweight, inapt.

But there are more interesting things ahead, among them the four large 1974 paintings collectively titled “Artist’s Studio.” Inspired by Matisse’s “Red Studio” and “Pink Studio,” these are near-walk-in-size depictions of rooms, or maybe one room, empty of people but filled with art. A connection to Lichtenstein’s other artist tributes is obvious. But in this case he has cooked up a self homage. Matisse and Picasso are on hand, but what we’re really getting is a jumbled and informal four-part Lichtenstein survey, beginning with “Look Mickey,Gecko could kickstart an indoor tracking mobile app explosion.” and going from there.

Local artists creating a Mosaic Floor

A small group of local artists are currently working on a project that will not only be a part of an upcoming exhibition, hosted by The Arts Zone,Find detailed product information for howo tractor 6x4 and other products. but one that the artists hope will find a home in the community for residents and visitors to enjoy.

Artist Jackie Boss explained that the project, a Mosaic Floor, is currently being created at the home of The Arts Zone located in the L'Utopia Building on East Sunrise Highway.

"We are doing a community project here and the idea is to create a Mosaic Floor for an exhibition and then to find a home for it," Boss confirmed, revealing that the project originated from the fact that there was a lot of scrap material in the form of tiles around the island that could be recycled into a work of art.

"And it just seemed to me – I been living on the island for five years and I haven't seen a lot of public art which surprised and confused me – that it just didn't seem right.

"So when we got this art group started, where we have an art studio and artists come on a regular basis, we wanted to start doing community projects; therefore we are starting with this, which is going to be a Mosaic Floor."

Boss explained that the floor will be constructed from 14 x 14 inch concrete slabs "... and if all goes well and we can have good participation, the idea is to make it, roughly, 11 feet wide by 17 feet long."

It is going to be big, she said.

"It will be the focal point of an exhibition that the art group has and after the exhibition it will need a home. What do we do with this big beautiful piece and all the work that was put into it?

"So we are looking for a sponsor to assist with buying the additional materials, but then we want the floor to go somewhere in a public space."

Boss said that she is aware that the group will have to contact the Grand Bahama Port Authority to find a home for the piece; however, she has an area in mind.

"One of the areas that I have in mind is outside of the Rand Memorial Hospital ... there is a big grassy area and what better place for a piece of public art that people can enjoy. All we need to do is add a couple of benches, trees and then you have an urban park for the community," Boss noted.

Essentially, she added,Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. the artists want to do something for the community, involve the community and then it will be a reciprocation of the community appreciating that they have talented artists in their community.

She explained that work on the project actually started some three weeks ago, but the collection and breaking down of the tiles for the project began back in August of this year.

"We went around found some tiles, we went to couple of the tile places in town and grabded some scraps and then we actually had to purchase some tiles, because we wanted some specific colors.

"Our purpose for collecting the tiles was just to see what we would get, then design around what was available to compliment each other."

She added that there was no point in creating something that needed a lot of red, orange and yellow, and those colors can't be found.

"So we just started at the border with the blues and whites ...We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. the central part will be neurtral colors,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing, because they are so easy to come by. We are also incorporating some shadowed glass, from a previous art project (we are recycling it) for the floor."

Boss noted that other materials used for the project include – concrete, mortar and grout.

"The art group itself managed to put together some funds to purchase hand tools that they needed, so right now we are working with what they have."

Currently five artists consistently work on the project, Boss said, but there are other artists that "sort of" participate casually.

The exciting aspect of this project is that there will be a single image inside the border and Boss is the only one who knows what that image is.

"It's a secret even from those working on it," she added.

The only clue that The Freeport News got from Boss was that the image will be of a Caribbean flavor.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck.

Peter Adderley of Creative Works said that this is a wonderful art project, "and we want to encourage art teachers, art students, lovers of the arts and people who genuinely love Grand Bahama to come and assist with this project.

"The end product is going to be something wonderful for a green space, people could come and enjoy the beauty of Grand Bahama."

Signs of rigging in Tau tender

The City of Johannesburg stands accused of rigging a large tender in favour of Regiments, an ANC-connected empowerment firm central to a consortium that made the mayor's wife a -multimillionaire.

Johannesburg mayor Parks Tau's wife was cut into a Capitec Bank black economic empowerment (BEE) deal in 2006, landing her a stake now worth about R10-million. This was about a year after Regiments, which came to lead the BEE consortium, won a five-year multimillion-rand fund management contract from the city's treasury. Tau, who was elected mayor last year, was the mayoral committee member responsible for the treasury at the time.

The Mail & Guardian exposed the apparent conflict a fortnight ago.The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. Regiments and Tau have denied wrongdoing and the latter asked the public protector to investigate.

Now it emerges that Johannesburg recently chose Regiments to perform the fund management contract for another five years – following a tender process seemingly tailored for it as the incumbent.Find turquoise beads from a vast selection of Jewelry & Watches.

Although Regiments's bid was arguably the most expensive, it was the only firm left standing after each of its 11 competitors, including large banks and specialist fund managers, was disqualified on a technicality or for lacking a "track record".

In December 2006 Capitec Bank, the microlending upstart now yapping at the heels of the large retail banks, announced its BEE deal with Coral Lagoon, a consortium that the M&G revealed last month was put together by an ANC fundraiser who, in turn,Our vinyl floor tiles is more stylish than ever! roped in Regiments Capital.

Regiments appears to have strong links with Luthuli House, although it denies being "set up or facilitated" by the ANC.Thank you for visiting! I have been cry stalmosaic since 1998. Those cut into the consortium included the Batho Batho Trust, established by ANC leaders, as well as connected individuals such as Philisiwe Twala-Tau, Tau's wife, and Gugu Mtshali, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe's life partner.

Coral Lagoon's Capitec stake jumped to R1-billion in value after a controversial debt redemption funded by the Public Investment Corporation in February this year. This gave the two women free shares of R10-million each.

After the M&G highlighted the apparent conflict in Tau's wife benefiting from a consortium involving Regiments while the company benefited from the Johannesburg tender, Tau asked the city's integrity commissioner and the public protector to investigate. He said: "I am confident of my innocence from impropriety. It is important that when such allegations arise, we should subject ourselves to scrutiny."

Tau's spokesperson, Fred Mokoko, said earlier there was no conflict because Tau had not participated in the adjudication of the tender awarded to Regiments. He said nothing about Tau's ongoing duty to oversee the contract – directly as political head of the city's treasury department until last year and then indirectly as mayor.

Regiments denied wrongdoing on the basis that different divisions of the group were involved in the Johannesburg and Capitec deals and the two transactions were "initiated and concluded over different time frames". It also said the Coral Lagoon consortium was "pre-existing" by the time it was invited to participate, implying it was not responsible for Twala-Tau's inclusion.

Eight bidders are disqualified. This includes financial majors Nedbank, Old Mutual,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , Investec, Standard Bank, Sanlam and Rand Merchant Bank, each allegedly for not submitting municipal bills for the company or its directors.

A spokesperson for Old Mutual, which was disqualified for not submitting a company municipal bill, said this week: "To date we have not received any communication from [the city] as to whether we were unsuccessful in the tender. We would like to clarify that we did submit directors' rates bills."

A Sanlam spokesperson said: "We did provide municipal accounts for all the directors except for [one] as she was out of the country at the time. We indicated this in the tender and said that we would provide this if required at a later date."