In a way, one could think that Precision Moment Targeting is like Facebook's advertising platform where it's not a pray or spray model, but catering towards a consumer's interest, background, and what they've been talking about.The launch of Precision Moments Targeting could be incredibly useful in Japan, where the company recently signed a real with Yahoo Japan, the largest media company in the country with "tens of millions" of uses across the Web and mobile services. At the time, Kiip said that the deal would see its service integrated into the Yahoo Japan iOS and Android apps and serve ads and rewards for completing activities within the app. Sounds like 'moments', to us.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has repeatedly said that one of the company's mobile goals is to create apps that helps you take care of your daily habits, including mail, search, weather, and more. Granted Yahoo Japan is only one company, but its reach isn't something to laugh about. And if Kiip rolls the same integration into other platforms and services, it could potentially get real interesting for the company.The company says that there are more than 511 million moments taking place each month and these include things like favoriting a song, finishing a task on your to-do list, or saving a recipe. It wouldn't be too far-fetched for a consumer to receive a coupon at a grocery store when they cross off items from their shopping list, or perhaps a special at a restaurant when saving a recipe for a particular dish.
To keep things interesting, Kiip has also teamed with comScore to be one of its data sources. Now, when advertisers reference comScore data and insights on mobile advertising, some of that will come from Kiip.Practically all common purchases, from a can of soft drink to a new pair of jeans, are more expensive in Australian cities than in urban centres in the US and UK, crowd-sourced data shows.Having recently moved to Sydney from London, I can attest to doing frantic calculations in my head while staring at a standard pack of chicken breasts, trying desperately to look at my new shopping experiences in a favourable light.So it was with trepidation that I faced up to the figures using a new online tool, Budget Direct, which shows users exactly what they are paying for goods and services compared to others in the world. Yes, a standard white loaf costs around $3.50 in Sydney, not the $1.64 it would in London. A kilogram of potatoes costs $3 in Melbourne but just $2.16 in New York.
2013年10月31日星期四
2013年10月29日星期二
As spy U.S. row grows, Europe threatens to suspend cash tracking tool
Merkel said Friday that she is open to the idea of suspending the SWIFT agreement, saying she "needed to look at this again more closely" and weigh "what we will lose for the security of our citizens and what we don't."Germany and other European governments have made clear they do not favor suspending the U.S.-EU trade talks which began last summer because both sides stand to gain so much through the proposed deal, especially against competition from China and other emerging markets.Still, the Europeans have said they will insist that the trade agreement includes stronger rules for protecting data as a result of the NSA allegations. Data protection laws in Europe are generally stronger than in the United States.
"It's obvious to us that we have to and will bring our European convictions regarding data protection, and protection of privacy and business information, into these negotiations," Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told reporters in Berlin on Monday.Elmar Brok, the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, told reporters that failure to resolve the differences over data protection could threaten the trade talks. Brok,Twiage's tool helps EMTs forward data a member of Merkel's party who was in Washington to discuss the spy allegations, said the challenge is to strike a balance between security and personal freedom."We are fighting for the rights of our citizens," he said.
The steady drumbeat of reports stemming from documents provided to various media by NSA leaker Edward Snowden has created a sense of urgency among European governments that, at the very least, they need to be seen in the eyes of their citizens to be doing something to stop the spying.At the same time, European leaders are anxious to avoid lasting damage in relations with their major ally. So far the issue has not hurt Obama politically within the United States because Republicans have blamed Snowden rather than the White House for the flap.In the latest allegation, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo published a document it said showed the NSA had eavesdropped on more than 60 million phone calls in Spain between Dec. 10 last year and Jan. 8. The U.S. ambassador to Spain was summoned to the Foreign Ministry for an explanation.
"It's obvious to us that we have to and will bring our European convictions regarding data protection, and protection of privacy and business information, into these negotiations," Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told reporters in Berlin on Monday.Elmar Brok, the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, told reporters that failure to resolve the differences over data protection could threaten the trade talks. Brok,Twiage's tool helps EMTs forward data a member of Merkel's party who was in Washington to discuss the spy allegations, said the challenge is to strike a balance between security and personal freedom."We are fighting for the rights of our citizens," he said.
The steady drumbeat of reports stemming from documents provided to various media by NSA leaker Edward Snowden has created a sense of urgency among European governments that, at the very least, they need to be seen in the eyes of their citizens to be doing something to stop the spying.At the same time, European leaders are anxious to avoid lasting damage in relations with their major ally. So far the issue has not hurt Obama politically within the United States because Republicans have blamed Snowden rather than the White House for the flap.In the latest allegation, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo published a document it said showed the NSA had eavesdropped on more than 60 million phone calls in Spain between Dec. 10 last year and Jan. 8. The U.S. ambassador to Spain was summoned to the Foreign Ministry for an explanation.
2013年10月24日星期四
Twiage's tool helps EMTs forward data
Running the Twiage app on a smartphone, an EMT can dictate notes and send them to the hospital as text, and also share photographs of a patient's injuries, identification, and EKG readings. It's like Twitter for triage. Get it? Twiage.The company was born out of a recent hackathon at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Fittingly, Twiage is the brainchild of an MIT grad named Crystal Law, who also happens to be an EMT.In addition to the smartphone app, there's a version of Twiage for Google Glass, which means John Rodley is involved.Rodley has been working for months on an app called ArrtGlass that uses the wearable computer's first-person camera to let a doctor who cannot be in a hospital room see a patient through the eyes of someone at the bedside.
At the hackathon, Twiage won the Ariadne Labs Prize, which comes with a chance to pitch for a $100,000 grant in the coming months. Ariadne Labs, a center for health systems innovation, opened last year as a joint venture of Brigham and Women's and the Harvard School of Public Health.When Disney's animators were feeling constrained by their digital tools, Sarah Frisken got the call. A former boss of hers was running Disney's research-and-development division, and he told Frisken that the animators felt they could not do their best work using existing software. "It was taking them twice as long to use the digital tools, and they wanted them to be more responsive," Frisken said.She spent four years developing what became the Sketch Drawing Engine for Disney.
The guiding philosophy, Frisken said, "was that it is so easy to pick up a piece of paper and sketch out an idea. We wanted to do that same thing with software, where you could just open it and start to draw."This past summer, Frisken, a former Tufts computer graphics professor, released a new version of the software, called Mischief. She is targeting professional artists and designers who tend to use a tablet and stylus for input — though you can use a mouse, too. The software sells for $65, and it is available for Macs and PCs. The company, 61 Solutions, still consists of just Frisken and a handful of contractors. She has boot-strapped the Cambridge start-up so far, but may try to raise outside funding.October is National Pizza Month, which at some of the start-ups I visit is sort of like saying October is National Oxygen Month.
At the hackathon, Twiage won the Ariadne Labs Prize, which comes with a chance to pitch for a $100,000 grant in the coming months. Ariadne Labs, a center for health systems innovation, opened last year as a joint venture of Brigham and Women's and the Harvard School of Public Health.When Disney's animators were feeling constrained by their digital tools, Sarah Frisken got the call. A former boss of hers was running Disney's research-and-development division, and he told Frisken that the animators felt they could not do their best work using existing software. "It was taking them twice as long to use the digital tools, and they wanted them to be more responsive," Frisken said.She spent four years developing what became the Sketch Drawing Engine for Disney.
The guiding philosophy, Frisken said, "was that it is so easy to pick up a piece of paper and sketch out an idea. We wanted to do that same thing with software, where you could just open it and start to draw."This past summer, Frisken, a former Tufts computer graphics professor, released a new version of the software, called Mischief. She is targeting professional artists and designers who tend to use a tablet and stylus for input — though you can use a mouse, too. The software sells for $65, and it is available for Macs and PCs. The company, 61 Solutions, still consists of just Frisken and a handful of contractors. She has boot-strapped the Cambridge start-up so far, but may try to raise outside funding.October is National Pizza Month, which at some of the start-ups I visit is sort of like saying October is National Oxygen Month.
2013年10月22日星期二
Paramus police charge West New York man in 'Tool Town' generator thefts
"This study suggests the tremendous power of using systems biology and bioinformatics to better understand health and disease," Hood said in a statement. "These systems approaches convert blood into a window that will readily allow us to distinguish health from disease —While the species of the crow family and if disease, which disease. This is just the beginning. The principles used to develop this classifier should be applicable to a range of unmet diagnostic medical needs."A West New York man has been charged with stealing more than $5,000 worth of portable generators from a borough hardware store.Jose Portalatin-Boigue, 52, was observed by multiple passersby as he fled Tool Town on Route 17 Sunday at around 4 p.m., Paramus Police Chief Kenneth Ehrenberg said. The store was closed at the time in accordance with Blue Laws enforced by the borough and Bergen County.
Officers were dispatched to the scene, where they found the store's front door had been pried open, and three generators had gone missing.Witnesses said that a man had fled the scene in a 1999 Dodge Van, and were able to provide police with a license plate, according to Ehrenberg.That information was broadcast to area law enforcement agencies, and Paramus officers Laki Pothos and Jay Makroulakis quickly stopped the van as it traveled east on Route 4.Portalatin-Boique was taken into custody and charged with burglary, theft and possession of burglary tools. He was taken to the Bergen County Jail, where he was held on $15,000 bail. Significant African opinion appears hostile to the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
In Kenya, President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto, both under ICC indictment for crimes committed during post-election violence in 2007-2009, included in their campaign rhetoric that the ICC was a tool of Western imperialism. This view is shared by many.Others argue that the ICC is somehow "unfair" because its current cases all involve Africa. In Kenya, the parliament has called for the withdrawal from the Treaty of Rome that established the ICC.The African Union has called for the Kenyatta and Ruto cases to be referred back to the Kenyan judicial system. A special African Union summit meeting is convening in Addis Ababa to discuss the Union's relationship with the ICC. Some hope that the AU member states will withdraw as a block from the Treaty of Rome, though few expect that will actually happen.
Officers were dispatched to the scene, where they found the store's front door had been pried open, and three generators had gone missing.Witnesses said that a man had fled the scene in a 1999 Dodge Van, and were able to provide police with a license plate, according to Ehrenberg.That information was broadcast to area law enforcement agencies, and Paramus officers Laki Pothos and Jay Makroulakis quickly stopped the van as it traveled east on Route 4.Portalatin-Boique was taken into custody and charged with burglary, theft and possession of burglary tools. He was taken to the Bergen County Jail, where he was held on $15,000 bail. Significant African opinion appears hostile to the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
In Kenya, President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto, both under ICC indictment for crimes committed during post-election violence in 2007-2009, included in their campaign rhetoric that the ICC was a tool of Western imperialism. This view is shared by many.Others argue that the ICC is somehow "unfair" because its current cases all involve Africa. In Kenya, the parliament has called for the withdrawal from the Treaty of Rome that established the ICC.The African Union has called for the Kenyatta and Ruto cases to be referred back to the Kenyan judicial system. A special African Union summit meeting is convening in Addis Ababa to discuss the Union's relationship with the ICC. Some hope that the AU member states will withdraw as a block from the Treaty of Rome, though few expect that will actually happen.
2013年10月17日星期四
While the species of the crow family
While the species of the crow family – including jackdaw, magpie, crow, rook and raven – are renowned in myth and legend for their intelligence, a scientific basis for this has been hard to establish. Until, that is, researchers discovered a crow species living on the South Pacific islands of New Caledonia that manufactured tools more complex even than those used by humans' closest relatives, the chimpanzee.The original report from the 1990s described how the crows' tool making displayed three characteristics not seen before outside of humans: a high degree of tool standardisation, distinct tool designs that involve obvious imposition of form onto raw material, and the use of hooks. Sharing some traits with those of stone age humans' tools, this led to a surge of interest in the species.
Research over the past ten years has found a great deal of interesting behaviour in New Caledonian crows. They have been shown to make tools out of novel materials, use tools in novel ways to solve physical problems at which our close primate relatives fail, and to solve problems in a way that suggests abstract reasoning. Their impressive problem solving skills appear to be backed up by a relatively large brain, but more important than relative brain size is the neurological hardware inside it.There is some evidence that the crows, like primates, have a relatively large forebrain where most decision making occurs. The crows and certain other birds have distinct cell clusters in the forebrain, consisting of a neuron surrounded by supporting glial cells.
The density and distribution of these clusters in the forebrain varies between species, but the New Caledonian crow has a high density of them. If these clusters, as is believed to be the case in humans, play an important role in underpinning cognitive skills, they may help explain the crows' sophistication.In a new volume on tool use as adaptation from the Royal Society, the New Caledonian crow figures prominently. One study questions whether the birds know that the hooked end of a hooked stick is the functional end.A similar question has been asked in a previous study about the hooks they fashion from screw pine leaves.
Research over the past ten years has found a great deal of interesting behaviour in New Caledonian crows. They have been shown to make tools out of novel materials, use tools in novel ways to solve physical problems at which our close primate relatives fail, and to solve problems in a way that suggests abstract reasoning. Their impressive problem solving skills appear to be backed up by a relatively large brain, but more important than relative brain size is the neurological hardware inside it.There is some evidence that the crows, like primates, have a relatively large forebrain where most decision making occurs. The crows and certain other birds have distinct cell clusters in the forebrain, consisting of a neuron surrounded by supporting glial cells.
The density and distribution of these clusters in the forebrain varies between species, but the New Caledonian crow has a high density of them. If these clusters, as is believed to be the case in humans, play an important role in underpinning cognitive skills, they may help explain the crows' sophistication.In a new volume on tool use as adaptation from the Royal Society, the New Caledonian crow figures prominently. One study questions whether the birds know that the hooked end of a hooked stick is the functional end.A similar question has been asked in a previous study about the hooks they fashion from screw pine leaves.
2013年10月14日星期一
"App Mention Alerts" Is A Google Alerts-Like Tool For Mobile App Developers
Developers wanting to keep an eye on their app's download growth, chart position, revenues, user engagement patterns, and more have a number of tools at their disposal, like those from App Annie, Distimo, AppFigures, Flurry, and other analytics providers. But when it comes to keeping track of press mentions and blogger reviews, many still turn to plain ol' Google Alerts. Today,Forget the Intensive Screening Tool a new service called "App Mention Alerts" is launching as an alternative, offering both alerts and a tracking dashboard designed specifically for mobile app developers.
Google Alerts, which is continually rumored to be on the chopping block these days as the product falls apart, does a decent-enough job in tracking new, relevant Google search results across Google's verticals, like web, news, or blogs, for example. But App Mention Alerts' results are better for developers, because the service weeds out most of the websites that simply reprint press releases or App Store descriptions, explains founder Tomasz Kolinko, whose other product, AppCodes, is focused on App Store Optimization.
Today, AppCodes has 700 paying customers, and that number has been stable for several months. For a bootstrapped team of two, he says they're happy with its progress. With App Mention Alerts, the original idea was to incorporate the app tracking into AppCodes, but they decided to spin it off into their own product because it's easier to market and monetize it this way. However, AppCodes will also now present these "mentions" to its users, but without the "alerting" function, or dedicated window for the previews of the links it finds.
The way App Mention Alerts works is that, after sign-up, developers type their app's name into the search box (a checkbox lets you designate the app as being for the iPad) and hit search. In the results section, matching apps – including competitors who may have similar words in their app's title – will appear. You can then click the provided "Follow" button for the apps you want to track."It's similar to Mention.com, or MuckRack.com, but focuses on the iPhone and iPad apps," explains Kolinko. "The tracking is based on App Store links compared to more generic tools which track phrases, so the results are much cleaner…Before our tool, it was quite hard to add all the app competitor names to Google Alerts et al., and weed out all the false positives. We bring this down to just a couple of clicks."
Google Alerts, which is continually rumored to be on the chopping block these days as the product falls apart, does a decent-enough job in tracking new, relevant Google search results across Google's verticals, like web, news, or blogs, for example. But App Mention Alerts' results are better for developers, because the service weeds out most of the websites that simply reprint press releases or App Store descriptions, explains founder Tomasz Kolinko, whose other product, AppCodes, is focused on App Store Optimization.
Today, AppCodes has 700 paying customers, and that number has been stable for several months. For a bootstrapped team of two, he says they're happy with its progress. With App Mention Alerts, the original idea was to incorporate the app tracking into AppCodes, but they decided to spin it off into their own product because it's easier to market and monetize it this way. However, AppCodes will also now present these "mentions" to its users, but without the "alerting" function, or dedicated window for the previews of the links it finds.
The way App Mention Alerts works is that, after sign-up, developers type their app's name into the search box (a checkbox lets you designate the app as being for the iPad) and hit search. In the results section, matching apps – including competitors who may have similar words in their app's title – will appear. You can then click the provided "Follow" button for the apps you want to track."It's similar to Mention.com, or MuckRack.com, but focuses on the iPhone and iPad apps," explains Kolinko. "The tracking is based on App Store links compared to more generic tools which track phrases, so the results are much cleaner…Before our tool, it was quite hard to add all the app competitor names to Google Alerts et al., and weed out all the false positives. We bring this down to just a couple of clicks."
2013年10月11日星期五
Forget the Intensive Screening Tool
Three weeks before the freak accident that left me visually impaired I ended a relationship with a person I loved. I got hurt, before I got blinded. Unfortunately I fell in love with someone who was closed off and was never capable of loving me. A story that now, as I look back, sounded familiar and was part of my pattern: the pattern of dating unavailable men.
For almost two years he played the role of the ambivalent male, vacillating from being in and out of the relationship. And for maybe the first, or second time, I walked away finally knowing that somehow I deserved better. It was a conversation that started when I decided to divorce. The conversation that you have when you know you can be happier elsewhere and deserve more, even if it hurts right now. Prior to the accident I had made a decision to wholly be open to love. I wanted that to remain true after love kicked me in the ass and the accident whacked out my central vision.
So, at the time I was grieving the loss of my sight, I was grieving the loss of a person I loved. And all that love and all that loss became tied up together in a knot that could not be untied. It somewhat magnified the grieving, amplified the pain, turned up the volume on the "your life has changed drastically" message so loud I had to deal with it, continually.During the eight months after the accident when I was single and not dating I decided to read a little about love. I was not really sure I understood it, how to get it or now, disabled, if it was even a possibility for me. One book I read was Elizabeth Gilbert's book Committed:
A Love Story. In the book she talks about the need for companionship as a way to share your experiences and to weave a shared history with another person. That idea, that dream, of having someone beside you to share in your story and to witness you and your life is compelling. It is the question of if a tree falls in the woods when no one is around, does it make a sound? Similarly, do the experiences and stories in our life have meaning if they are not witnessed or shared? What I knew after reading the book was that private intimacy and companionship was something I would like to have in my life. But that meant finding someone who can listen to your story, tell theirs openly and be willing to lose a part of their independence to commit to the interwoven nature of creating a shared journey.
For almost two years he played the role of the ambivalent male, vacillating from being in and out of the relationship. And for maybe the first, or second time, I walked away finally knowing that somehow I deserved better. It was a conversation that started when I decided to divorce. The conversation that you have when you know you can be happier elsewhere and deserve more, even if it hurts right now. Prior to the accident I had made a decision to wholly be open to love. I wanted that to remain true after love kicked me in the ass and the accident whacked out my central vision.
So, at the time I was grieving the loss of my sight, I was grieving the loss of a person I loved. And all that love and all that loss became tied up together in a knot that could not be untied. It somewhat magnified the grieving, amplified the pain, turned up the volume on the "your life has changed drastically" message so loud I had to deal with it, continually.During the eight months after the accident when I was single and not dating I decided to read a little about love. I was not really sure I understood it, how to get it or now, disabled, if it was even a possibility for me. One book I read was Elizabeth Gilbert's book Committed:
A Love Story. In the book she talks about the need for companionship as a way to share your experiences and to weave a shared history with another person. That idea, that dream, of having someone beside you to share in your story and to witness you and your life is compelling. It is the question of if a tree falls in the woods when no one is around, does it make a sound? Similarly, do the experiences and stories in our life have meaning if they are not witnessed or shared? What I knew after reading the book was that private intimacy and companionship was something I would like to have in my life. But that meant finding someone who can listen to your story, tell theirs openly and be willing to lose a part of their independence to commit to the interwoven nature of creating a shared journey.
2013年10月10日星期四
Cheers for peers
"What we're interested in isn't who's saying it, but rather what's being said. By being anonymous, it encourages much more truthful, forthcoming feedback than I'd ever get by asking someone in person, 'How are we doing?' 'How's the culture?' Sometimes people will disguise themselves using broken English to ensure their candid remarks are never traced back to them. But we get unvarnished truth from this."Anonymous feedback also ensures every employee is given an equal vote on every question that's asked. No one person's feedback is given greater weight; the loudest voice can never drown out the others.When leaders first launch TinyPulse, they have a common fear that employees will use the technology to throw rocks at them. While some comments can be raw,Tool Rental Depot opens on South Main Street leaders are often surprised by the constructive and even praising feedback they receive.
It's a gutsy move to ask employees "How valued do you feel at work" and to then disclose that several people aren't currently feeling the love. But Niu insists the constant polling would be disingenuous were the results never released."Our philosophy is that it's incumbent upon the leader to share it," he told me. "The choice by companies to use TinyPulse inherently signals an organization's inclination toward transparency and sharing more information versus less." While managers always have the discretion to withhold some data, "we tell CEOs it's better to put it out there and acknowledge that some people aren't happy. These are great opportunities to remind employees that you're always reviewing strategy and culture; the whole reason you ask these questions is to give them a voice."
We can all recall times when managerial decisions affected us personally--and negatively--yet felt uncomfortable voicing concern. According to the TinyPulse methodology, leaders respond to all feedback they receive without knowing to whom they're responding."When managers reply this way," says Niu, "people know immediately that they've been heard and their feedback is taken seriously. And having an influential voice like this is a basic human need that's really important to people. Very often, employees get a better understanding of intended solutions or even why the business decision will go unchanged." Clarity is also the antidote to ambiguity--a known cause of employee discontent.
It's a gutsy move to ask employees "How valued do you feel at work" and to then disclose that several people aren't currently feeling the love. But Niu insists the constant polling would be disingenuous were the results never released."Our philosophy is that it's incumbent upon the leader to share it," he told me. "The choice by companies to use TinyPulse inherently signals an organization's inclination toward transparency and sharing more information versus less." While managers always have the discretion to withhold some data, "we tell CEOs it's better to put it out there and acknowledge that some people aren't happy. These are great opportunities to remind employees that you're always reviewing strategy and culture; the whole reason you ask these questions is to give them a voice."
We can all recall times when managerial decisions affected us personally--and negatively--yet felt uncomfortable voicing concern. According to the TinyPulse methodology, leaders respond to all feedback they receive without knowing to whom they're responding."When managers reply this way," says Niu, "people know immediately that they've been heard and their feedback is taken seriously. And having an influential voice like this is a basic human need that's really important to people. Very often, employees get a better understanding of intended solutions or even why the business decision will go unchanged." Clarity is also the antidote to ambiguity--a known cause of employee discontent.
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