veradis face: March 2013

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Atlanta Sales Excellence Director - GSD Job - GA, 30301

Job Category: Sales
Location: Atlanta, GA, US
Job ID: 829395-107528
Division: Sales

The Sales Excellence Manager role is responsible for processes, systems, tools, business planning, management frameworks, initiatives and programs that will optimize sales and provide the discipline for increases in sales force productivity.

The Sales Excellence Manager role drives towards these results by providing:
Sales productivity expertise in Relationship Management, Opportunity Management, and Business Management.
Process readiness and coaching.
Systems and tools requirements.
Planning and Business management frameworks such as Rhythm of the Business (ROB), three-year planning, pipeline management and forecasting support, budgeting management, commitments and quotas.
Ensuring sales model implementation through segment strategy, customer segmentation and role taxonomy.
Development of initiatives for annuities, customer/partner experience, and Cost of Sale (CoS).

The Sales Excellence Manager role affects Microsoft at the EPG sales organization level within a specified region or subsidiary. The Sales Excellence Manager role focuses on processes, systems, tools, organizational issues, financial, and communication processes that affect effective operations within the entire organization.
The Sales Excellence teams are considered to be the change leaders, providing business management expertise and driving sales productivity. This team functions as the execution engine in the field, which means they touch all levels of people and groups throughout the business. This role has significant importance in how we drive the vision for successful change management, business strategy, and sales optimization.

The key decisions made by the Sales Excellence Manager role are:
Strategic annual and three-year planning decisions
Key metrics to drive plan achievement
Rhythm of the Business (ROB) frameworks, processes and metrics
Budget investments and resource management

The Sales Excellence Manager role also makes recommendations and decisions with worldwide EPG and field Sales Excellence leadership on vision, direction and plans to roll out efforts to increase sales productivity, drive sales optimization efforts and lead Rhythm of the Business (ROB). The Sales Excellence Manager role is a strategic leader to a community that needs guiding principles to implement and execute against fiscal year Sales Priorities. The Sales Excellence Manager role partners with its manager (the EPG Lead) to develop the priorities and set the strategy accordingly.

The Sales Excellence Manager role works with the following internal resources:
EPG Lead (the Sales Excellence Manager functions as the COO for the EPG Lead).
ATU, STU, PTU, IU Leads (for driving adoption of sales processes, systems and tools discipline).
Finance (for all processes and data related to budgeting, Cost of Sales (CoS), and forecasting).
Human Resources (for all interactions related to resource requirements, resource planning, and compensation management).
M&O (for determining fiscal year Sales Priorities and investment requirements).

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

1) Essential Experience - Excellent verbal and written communication skills with equally good listening, team leadership and excellence in execution skills. 10+ years of proven solution sales and sales management experience in Enterprise accounts and a track record of working with a wide range of business partners. Extensive experience leading sales teams who had to rely on a range of internal individuals - account managers, partner account managers, services, marketing - to achieve their goals. Preference will be given to candidates who can demonstrate knowledge of the business drivers within the lines of business of enterprise customer organizations.

2) Personal Attributes - Highly motivated leader with a mature and positive attitude, a passion for leading efforts for sales teams (both sales managers and sales professionals) and working with internal partners on driving the sales of Microsoft technologies.

4) Qualifications - Bachelor?s degree required, Master?s/MBA preferred), 10 or more years of related experience, management experience is required, experience with sales management being highly desirable.

Relocation is not available.

SMSG
SALES:EPG
MSUSJOB

Nearest Major Market: Atlanta
Job Segments: Sales Management, Sales, Manager, Field Sales, Business Manager, Management

Source: http://www.microsoft-careers.com/job/Atlanta-Sales-Excellence-Director-GSD-Job-GA-30301/2520411/

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Multi-toxin biotech crops not silver bullets, scientists warn

Mar. 29, 2013 ? The popular new strategy of planting genetically engineered crops that make two or more toxins to fend off insect pests rests on assumptions that don't always apply, UA researchers have discovered. Their study helps explain why one major pest is evolving resistance much faster than predicted and offers ideas for more sustainable pest control.

A strategy widely used to prevent pests from quickly adapting to crop-protecting toxins may fail in some cases unless better preventive actions are taken, suggests new research by University of Arizona entomologists published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Corn and cotton have been genetically modified to produce pest-killing proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt for short. Compared with typical insecticide sprays, the Bt toxins produced by genetically engineered crops are much safer for people and the environment, explained Yves Carri?re, a professor of entomology in the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences who led the study.

Although Bt crops have helped to reduce insecticide sprays, boost crop yields and increase farmer profits, their benefits will be short-lived if pests adapt rapidly, said Bruce Tabashnik, a co-author of the study and head of the UA department of entomology. "Our goal is to understand how insects evolve resistance so we can develop and implement more sustainable, environmentally friendly pest management," he said. Tabashnik and Carri?re are both members of the UA's BIO5 Institute.

Bt crops were first grown widely in 1996, and several pests have already become resistant to plants that produce a single Bt toxin. To thwart further evolution of pest resistance to Bt crops, farmers have recently shifted to the "pyramid" strategy: each plant produces two or more toxins that kill the same pest. As reported in the study, the pyramid strategy has been adopted extensively, with two-toxin Bt cotton completely replacing one-toxin Bt cotton since 2011 in the U.S.

Most scientists agree that two-toxin plants will be more durable than one-toxin plants. The extent of the advantage of the pyramid strategy, however, rests on assumptions that are not always met, the study reports. Using lab experiments, computer simulations and analysis of published experimental data, the new results help explain why one major pest has started to become resistant faster than anticipated.

"The pyramid strategy has been touted mostly on the basis of simulation models," said Carri?re. "We tested the underlying assumptions of the models in lab experiments with a major pest of corn and cotton. The results provide empirical data that can help to improve the models and make the crops more durable."

One critical assumption of the pyramid strategy is that the crops provide redundant killing, Carri?re explained. "Redundant killing can be achieved by plants producing two toxins that act in different ways to kill the same pest," he said, "so, if an individual pest has resistance to one toxin, the other toxin will kill it."

In the real world, things are a bit more complicated, Carri?re's team found out. Thierry Br?vault, a visiting scientist from France, led the lab experiments at the UA. His home institution, the Center for Agricultural Research for Development, or CIRAD, is keenly interested in factors that could affect pest resistance to Bt crops in Africa.

"We obviously can't release resistant insects into the field, so we breed them in the lab and bring in the crop plants to do feeding experiments," Carri?re said. For their experiments, the group collected cotton bollworm -- also known as corn earworm or Helicoverpa zea -, a species of moth that is a major agricultural pest, and selected it for resistance against one of the Bt toxins, Cry1Ac.

As expected, the resistant caterpillars survived after munching on cotton plants producing only that toxin. The surprise came when Carri?re's team put them on pyramided Bt cotton containing Cry2Ab in addition to Cry1Ac.

If the assumption of redundant killing is correct, caterpillars resistant to the first toxin should survive on one-toxin plants, but not on two-toxin plants, because the second toxin should kill them, Carri?re explained.

"But on the two-toxin plants, the caterpillars selected for resistance to one toxin survived significantly better than caterpillars from a susceptible strain."

These findings show that the crucial assumption of redundant killing does not apply in this case and may also explain the reports indicating some field populations of cotton bollworm rapidly evolved resistance to both toxins.

Moreover, the team's analysis of published data from eight species of pests reveals that some degree of cross-resistance between Cry1 and Cry2 toxins occurred in 19 of 21 experiments. Contradicting the concept of redundant killing, cross-resistance means that selection with one toxin increases resistance to the other toxin.

According to the study's authors, even low levels of cross-resistance can reduce redundant killing and undermine the pyramid strategy. Carri?re explained that this is especially problematic with cotton bollworm and some other pests that are not highly susceptible to Bt toxins to begin with.

The team found violations of other assumptions required for optimal success of the pyramid strategy. In particular, inheritance of resistance to plants producing only Bt toxin Cry1Ac was dominant, which is expected to reduce the ability of refuges to delay resistance.

Refuges consist of standard plants that do not make Bt toxins and thus allow survival of susceptible pests. Under ideal conditions, inheritance of resistance is not dominant and the susceptible pests emerging from refuges greatly outnumber the resistant pests. If so, the matings between two resistant pests needed to produce resistant offspring are unlikely. But if inheritance of resistance is dominant, as seen with cotton bollworm, matings between a resistant moth and a susceptible moth can produce resistant offspring, which hastens resistance.

According to Tabashnik, overly optimistic assumptions have led the EPA to greatly reduce requirements for planting refuges to slow evolution of pest resistance to two-toxin Bt crops.

The new results should come as a wakeup call to consider larger refuges to push resistance further into the future, Carri?re pointed out. "Our simulations tell us that with 10 percent of acreage set aside for refuges, resistance evolves quite fast, but if you put 30 or 40 percent aside, you can substantially delay it."

"Our main message is to be more cautious, especially with a pest like the cotton bollworm," Carri?re said. "We need more empirical data to refine our simulation models, optimize our strategies and really know how much refuge area is required. Meanwhile, let's not assume that the pyramid strategy is a silver bullet."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Arizona. The original article was written by Daniel Stolte.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

T. Brevault, S. Heuberger, M. Zhang, C. Ellers-Kirk, X. Ni, L. Masson, X. Li, B. E. Tabashnik, Y. Carriere. Potential shortfall of pyramided transgenic cotton for insect resistance management. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1216719110

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/wYWT6YRzi0Y/130330130838.htm

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Saturday, March 30, 2013

Make Better Eye Contact and Remember People's Names with One Simple Trick

Make Better Eye Contact and Remember People's Names with One Simple Trick If you find yourself stumbling over conversations with other people, reader whyalways shares a tip for making better eye contact and remembering people's names all at once.

Remembering names and making eye contact are important. I had trouble with both. After reading this series at the Art of Manliness, I realized I needed to get better at them. What I've started to do is: as soon as I meet someone new I pair their name with their eye color. How do I find out their eye color? By making good eye contact. To learn someone's eye color you have to look them in the eye. Its a specific thing to do instead of something more general like "make good eye contact."

How does this help me remember their name? Because their eye color/eyes act as a tethering image in my memory so that their name is attached to something very specific instead of just floating around to get lost/misplaced. Simple and immediate, but has helped me enough that I felt I should share it.

It may not be foolproof for everyone, but it's just one more thing to add to your bag of tricks for remembering people's names and making good eye contact.

Every week, we receive tons of reader tips, often in response to tips we've posted. Our Tip of the Week showcases our favorite tip from you that improves upon something else we've shared, shows us another way to do something, or otherwise deserves more attention than our regular tips roundups. Got a tip to share? Post it over at our tips forum or send it to us at tips@lifehacker.com.

Photo by Chris McClanahan.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/DX99xvVLP2M/make-better-eye-contact-and-remember-peoples-names-with-one-simple-trick

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Swing-state Democrats swing to equality - Seattle Gay News

Six senators embrace same-sex marriage as Supreme Court hearings begin

by Mike Andrew - SGN Staff Writer

Six Democratic U.S. senators from swing states announced their support for marriage equality this week, in the hours before U.S. Supreme Court hearings began on Prop 8 and DOMA.

Claire McCaskill of Missouri led off the parade on March 25, posting a statement on her Tumblr page.

'I have come to the conclusion that our government should not limit the right to marry based on who you love,' McCaskill wrote.

'While churches should never be required to conduct marriages outside of their religious beliefs, neither should the government tell people who they have a right to marry. My views on this subject have changed over time, but as many of my Gay and Lesbian friends, colleagues, and staff embrace long-term committed relationships, I find myself unable to look them in the eye without honestly confronting this uncomfortable inequality. Supporting marriage equality for Gay and Lesbian couples is simply the right thing to do for our country, a country founded on the principles of liberty and equality.

'Good people disagree with me. On the other hand, my children have a hard time understanding why this is even controversial. I think history will agree with my children.'

'EVOLVING' VIEWS
McCaskill was followed in short order by Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia and Mark Begich of Alaska.

'I support marriage equality because it is the fair and right thing to do,' Warner wrote on his Facebook page.

'Like many Virginians and Americans, my views on Gay marriage have evolved, and this is the inevitable extension of my efforts to promote equality and opportunity for everyone. I was proud to be the first Virginia governor to extend anti-discrimination protections to LGBT state workers. In 2010, I supported an end to the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy, and earlier this month I signed an amicus brief urging the repeal of DOMA. I believe we should continue working to expand equal rights and opportunities for all Americans.'

'I believe that same-sex couples should be able to marry and should have the same rights, privileges, and responsibilities as any other married couple,' Begich said in a statement also issued March 25.

'Government should keep out of individuals' personal lives - if someone wants to marry someone they love, they should be able to. Alaskans are fed up with government intrusion into our private lives, our daily business, and in the way we manage our resources and economy.'

In a statement to ABC News, West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller also endorsed equality. Rockefeller was the only one of the six who was in Congress when DOMA passed in 1996, and at the time he voted for it.

GENERATIONAL SHIFT
'Like so many of my generation, my views on allowing Gay couples to marry have been challenged in recent years by a new, more open generation,' Rockefeller said.

'Churches and ministers should never have to perform marriages that violate their religious beliefs, but the government shouldn't discriminate against people who want to marry just because of their gender. Younger people in West Virginia and even my own children have grown up in a much more equal society, and they rightly push us to question old assumptions - to think deeply about what it means for all Americans to be created equal. This has been a process for me, but at this point I think it's clear that DOMA is discriminatory. I'm against discrimination in all its forms, and I think we can move forward in our progress toward true equality by repealing DOMA.'

Sen. Jon Tester of Montana joined the crowd on March 26.

'Montanans believe in the right to make a good life for their families,' Tester said on Facebook. 'How they define a family should be their business and their business alone. I'm proud to support marriage equality because no one should be able to tell a Montanan or any American who they can love and who they can marry.'

'A COMPLEX ISSUE'
North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan checked in the next day.

'Marriage equality is a complex issue with strong feelings on both sides, and I have a great deal of respect for varying opinions on the issue,' she posted on Facebook.

'After much thought and prayer, I have come to my own personal conclusion that we shouldn't tell people who they can love or who they can marry. This wasn't a decision I came to overnight, like my Republican colleague Rob Portman expressed recently on his own viewpoint. Last year, I opposed [anti-Gay] Amendment One because I was concerned about the negative consequences it could have on North Carolina families and our economy. The fabric of North Carolina and what makes our state so special is our families and our common desire for a brighter future for our children. No matter what your family looks like, we all want the same thing for our families - happiness, health, prosperity, a bright future for our children and grandchildren.'

While the senators added to the political momentum building up for a reversal of DOMA by abandoning their previous skepticism about marriage rights for Gay and Lesbian couples, not all of them will have to deal with immediate political consequences. McCaskill and Tester won re-election last year and will not face voters again until 2018, and Rockefeller has already announced that his current term will be his last. But Warner, Begich, and Hagan, who were elected in 2008, will be up for re-election next year.

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Source: http://www.sgn.org/sgnnews41_13/page11.cfm

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Zumba instructor pleads guilty to Maine prostitution charges

(Reuters) - A Zumba fitness instructor who doubled as a prostitute and secretly videotaped her encounters with dozens of men in a small Maine beach community pleaded guilty on Friday to 20 counts.

The instructor, Alexis Wright, 30, pleaded guilty in state court in Portland, Maine, to prostitution and conspiracy charges. She also pleaded guilty to theft for accepting state welfare assistance and tax evasion for failing to report her prostitution income.

The quiet seaside town of Kennebunk, Maine, known for its maritime heritage and proximity to former President George H.W. Bush's home in nearby Kennebunkport, was rocked by the case after police in October began releasing the names of dozens of local men who were Wright's clients.

"I think the unfortunate thing about this case and the attention that it's received and the length of time that it's gone on is that it will never be over for her," Wright's attorney Sarah Churchill told Maine's WCSH television.

Prosecutors had initially charged Wright with more than 100 violations. She faces 10 months in jail and will be sentenced in May.

Wright's business partner, businessman Mark Strong, was convicted this month of running the prostitution business with her. He was sentenced to 20 days in jail.

The plea agreement forestalls a trial in which jurors would have viewed footage of Wright engaged in sex acts with men that she surreptitiously recorded.

(Reporting by Jason McLure in Littleton, New Hampshire; Editing by Ian Simpson and Eric Beech)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/zumba-instructor-pleads-guilty-maine-prostitution-charges-013443262.html

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Friday, March 29, 2013

New fossil species from a fish-eat-fish world when limbed animals evolved

Thursday, March 28, 2013

"We call it a 'fish-eat-fish world,' an ecosystem where you really needed to escape predation," said Dr. Ted Daeschler, describing life in the Devonian period in what is now far-northern Canada.

This was the environment where the famous fossil fish species Tiktaalik roseae lived 375 million years ago. This lobe-finned fish, co-discovered by Daeschler, an associate professor at Drexel University in the Department of Biodiversity, Earth and Environmental Science, and associate curator and vice president of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, and his colleagues Dr. Neil Shubin and Dr. Farish A. Jenkins, Jr., was first described in Nature in 2006.This species received scientific and popular acclaim for providing some of the clearest evidence of the evolutionary transition from lobe-finned fish to limbed animals, or tetrapods.

Daeschler and his colleagues from the Tiktaalik research, including Academy research associate Dr. Jason Downs, have now described another new lobe-finned fish species from the same time and place in the Canadian Arctic. They describe the new species, Holoptychius bergmanni, in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.

"We're fleshing out our knowledge of the community of vertebrates that lived at this important location," said Downs, who was lead author of the paper. He said describing species from this important time and place will help the scientific community understand the transition from finned vertebrates to limbed vertebrates that occurred in this ecosystem.

"It was a tough world back there in the Devonian. There were a lot of big predatory fish with big teeth and heavy armor of interlocking scales on their bodies," said Daeschler.

Daeschler said Holoptychius and Tiktaalik were both large predatory fishes adapted to life in stream environments. The two species may have competed with one another for similar prey, although it is possible they specialized in slightly different niches; Tiktaalik's tetrapod-like skeletal features made it especially well suited to living in the shallowest waters.

The fossil specimens of Holoptychis bergmanni that researchers used to characterize this new species come from multiple individuals and include lower jaws with teeth, skull pieces including the skull roof and braincase, and parts of the shoulder girdles. The complete fish would have been 2 to 3 feet long when it was alive.

"The three-dimensional preservation of this material is spectacular," Daeschler said. "For something as old as this, we'll really be able to collect some good information about the anatomy of these animals."

The research on Holoptychius bergmanni was led by Downs, a former post-doctoral fellow working with Daeschler who also teaches at Swarthmore College. Other co-authors of the paper with Downs and Daeschler are Dr. Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago, and the late Dr. Farish Jenkins, Jr. of Harvard University, who passed away in 2012.

Honoring a Modern Arctic Explorer and Supporter of Science

The researchers named the new fossil fish species Holoptychius bergmanni in honor of the late Martin Bergmann, former director of the Polar Continental Shelf Program (PCSP), Natural Resources Canada, the organization that provided logistical support during the team's Arctic research expeditions spanning more than a decade. Bergmann was killed in a plane crash in 2011 shortly after the team's most recent field season in Nunavut.

"We decided to choose Martin Bergmann to honor him, not ever having met him, but with the understanding that his work with PCSP made great strides in opening the Arctic to researchers," said Downs. "It's an invaluable project happening in the Canadian Arctic that's enabling this type of work to happen."

Bergmann's organization assisted the research team with many aspects of expedition logistics including difficult flight operations to carry supplies and research personnel to remote research sites on Ellesemere Island. Daeschler described the pilots as capable of landing a Twin Otter aircraft almost anywhere, as long as the ground was solid ? a condition they tested by briefly touching down the airplane and circling back to see if the tires left a deep mark in the mud.

Daeschler and colleagues intend to return to Ellesemere Island for another field expedition in the summer of 2013 to search for fossils in older rocks at a more northerly field site than the one where they discovered T. roseae and H. bergmanni.

A Deeper Look at the Devonian

Daeschler and a different co-author described another new species of Devonian fish in addition to H. bergmanni, in the same issue of the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences. More information about this new placoderm from Pennsylvania is available at http://newsblog.drexel.edu/2013/03/27/dusting-for-prints-from-a-fossil-fish-to-understand-evolutionary-change/.

###

Drexel University: http://www.Drexel.edu/

Thanks to Drexel University for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127495/New_fossil_species_from_a_fish_eat_fish_world_when_limbed_animals_evolved

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iCloud gets kicked in the Core Data sync -- totally had it coming

iCloud, specifically the part of it that covers the frameworks Apple has provided to developers to sync Core Data databases, has been getting kicked around lately, and by almost all accounts, deservedly so.Back in November, developers like Instacast's Vemedio and Steve Streza of Informal Protocol posted about its opacity and Paul Haddad expressed on similar concerns during the second episode of Debug. More even than ensuring the reliability of Siri and Game Center, it felt like proof positive that Apple faced significant challenge in a future where services were table-stakes.

As much as I think iOS 7 and iCloud are more important for Apple than next-generation hardware at this point, I think iCloud is more important than iOS 7 because, for Apple, it'll be an even bigger challenge. iCloud, more so even that Dropbox, is the future, it just doesn't work yet.

Since those initial developer posts, more have have come forward to share their experiences with iCloud Core Data sync, or in some cases document sync, and they share the same frustrations.

In a post intended to reassure users of NetNewsWire about the app's future in a post-Google Reader world, iCloud issues again reared their ugly head. Daniel Pasco of BlackPixel wrote:

As far as sync is concerned, we knew we would likely need an alternative to Google Reader as early as last year. At the time, the option that seemed to make the most sense was to embrace iCloud and Core Data as the new sync solution of choice. We spent a considerable amount of time on this effort, but iCloud and Core Data syncing had issues that we simply could not resolve.

What seems to make the ongoing issues so vexing for developers is that iCloud was introduced with iOS 5 back in 2011, and while iOS 6 in 2012 was an improvement, it wasn't anywhere nearly improvement enough.

Ellis Hamburger of The Verge did a brilliant job summing up much of the reaction and reasoning up, calling iCloud Core Data sync a broken promise:

Many veteran developers have learned their lesson and given up on iCloud?s Core Data syncing entirely. "Ultimately, when we looked at iCloud + Core Data for [our app], it was a total no-go as nothing would have worked," said one best-selling iPhone and Mac developer. "Some issues with iCloud Core Data are theoretically unsolvable (stemming from the fact that you?ve put an object model on top of a distributed data store) and others are just plain bugs in the implementation," he said.

One of the reasons for this is that, just like with Game Center APIs, Apple has very little skin in the Core Data sync game. They're not making massive use of it, so they're not the first ones hitting pain points and problems. Their developers are, and that's a terrible, terrible thing for everyone.

Matthew Panzarino of The Next Web also pointed out that Apple conflating several distinct services all under the iCloud banner further compounds the problem developers face:

Recent criticism of Apple?s iCloud has exposed just how fractured the brand actually is behind the scenes. Developers are having problems with some of the technologies bundled together under the name and it?s causing some confusion. The truth of the matter is that there are really two iClouds, which couldn?t be more different.

Users who get their mail, contacts, or calendars synched without issue just don't understand what developers are complaining about because, for them, iCloud works, it just doesn't work in that developer's app. Some users think the developers are actually incompetent or lying.

Glassboard developer Brent Simmons, on Inessential, pointed out that that's the risk of depending on systems you can't control:

How comfortable are you with outsourcing half your app to another company? The answer should be: not at all comfortable.

Just like services are the future for Apple, they're the future for a lot of developers. More important than hardware, arguably more important than software when that is already a core competency, iCloud is what Apple has to nail. Rather than getting kicked around, iCloud has to kick ass.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/VXIwsj-NWeU/story01.htm

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Business Owners in Ottawa Soon to Benefit from ... - Franchising.com

OTTAWA, Ontario - March 27, 2013 // PRNewswire // - The Alternative Board (TAB) will open a new office in Ottawa for the benefit of private business owners in Canada's capitol city to provide them with their very own board of directors. The Alternative Board (TAB) is the world's largest franchise system providing peer advisory boards and coaching services for business owners. TAB seeks interested and qualified individuals to operate the Ottawa office which brings TAB's proprietary tools and methods to help business owners there. Interested applicants may complete the contact form at http://www.thealternativeboard.com/franchise-opportunity/apply.

Operating a current TAB office in the North York region near Toronto, Phil Spensieri looks forward to the new Ottawa TAB office and its addition to the business economy there. "As the capitol city of Canada, Ottawa is a perfect site for TAB's next franchise office and hub for private business owners there," Phil said. "TAB provides a medium for these owners to get together in a safe environment to really work on solving each other's challenges, not to mention celebrating and learning from successes."

Allen Fishman , Founder and Executive Chairman of The Alternative Board, shared his excitement relating to TAB's expansion in Ontario: "We view Ottawa as an area where we will continue The Alternative Board's mission of helping small and midsize business owners achieve work-life balance while leading their companies to their maximum potential." Mr. Fishman has authored two books appearing on the Wall Street Journal's best-sellers list and knows firsthand the best practices for small business coaching and peer boards.

About The Alternative Board

The Alternative Board currently operates in seven countries, including the United States, bringing together owners of non-competing businesses in half-day monthly board groups of up to 10 members. Each meeting, under the guidance of a TAB Certified facilitator, is conducted in a confidential "think-tank" atmosphere, and additional one-on-one business coaching is provided as well. TAB delivers real world advice to help business owners stay focused on what matters most. Since its inception in 1990, more than 15,000 businesses have benefited from The Alternative Board services. For more information visit www.TheAlternativeBoard.com.

Contact:

Philip Spensieri
TAB York Region
The Alternative Board
(905) 475-4119
Philip@TABYorkRegion.com

SOURCE The Alternative Board

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Source: http://www.franchising.com/news/20130328_business_owners_in_ottawa_soon_to_benefit_from_tab.html

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Thursday, March 28, 2013

Outsourcing Up, But Also Hiring in U.S. - IT Business Edge

Expect a surge in outsourcing this year, according to a new study from accounting and consulting firm BDO USA.

It found 63 percent of tech companies plan to outsource or manufacture products offshore this year, up from 35 percent in 2011 ? but manufacturing makes up a big chunk of that. Still, that?s the highest rate since it began the surveys in 2008.

Its findings are based on a poll of 100 U.S. technology chief financial officers, Fox Business notes.

At the same time, 43 percent plan to boost hiring in the United States. Thirty percent said they will be hiring in research and development this year, up from 23 percent last year and 22 percent in 2011.

According to Aftab Jamil, partner and director of the technology and life sciences practice at BDO USA:

?While the drive to remain competitive has led technology companies to maintain outsourcing contracts, many are working in tandem to grow their U.S. work force to develop new and innovative products and solutions in the U.S. while outsourcing traditional 'back office' operations.?

Meanwhile, HfS Research reports that IT outsourcing, while able to cut costs and standardize processes, is failing to deliver on the goals of providing innovation and access to analytics as well as transforming organizations.

Phil Fersht, founder and CEO, writes in his Horses for Sources blog that IT outsourcing isn?t expected to get much better, though some companies are bringing some IT work back to the United States. Low-end work is outsourced, high-end work is retained. And Ferscht told me that companies might be totally happy with that -- that they don?t want to spend more on functions such as help desk and systems maintenance and may accept less-than-stellar service in those areas.

Writes Fersht:

?Ambitious CIOs these days like to focus their time on ecommerce,?mobility, ?Big Data? and?cloud strategies, and will engage IT?consultants with projects?when they need some high-end help, but most aren?t expecting their outsourcer to do that kind of work for them. ??

The only way for service providers to move up the value chain, he says, is to provide services to meet defined business goals.

?Simply put, IT provides a supporting utility to help achieve these business outcomes that clients want to buy, which would ideally be accessible in the cloud where business users can access their services wherever they want. The focus then shifts from providing widgets, to the actual provision of value, where providers start working with their clients to achieve business results, as opposed to creating simply?a low-cost environment.?

Source: http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/charting-your-it-career/outsourcing-up-but-also-hiring-in-u.s..html

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However court rules, gay marriage debate won't end

NEW YORK (AP) ? However the Supreme Court rules after its landmark hearings on same-sex marriage, the issue seems certain to divide Americans and states for many years to come.

In oral arguments Tuesday and Wednesday on two cases involving gay couples' rights, the justices left open multiple options for rulings that are expected in June. But they signaled there was no prospect of imposing a 50-state solution at this stage. With nine states now allowing same-sex marriages and other states banning them via statutes or constitutional amendments, that means a longer spell with a patchwork marriage-rights map ? and no early end to bruising state-by-state battles in the courts, in the legislatures and at the ballot box.

A decade ago, opponents of same-sex marriage were lobbying for a nationwide ban on gay nuptials. They now seem resigned to the reality of a divided nation in which the debate will continue to splinter families, church congregations and communities.

"It's a lot more healthy than shutting off an intense debate at the very moment of its greatest intensity," said John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage and a law professor at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.

By contrast, supporters of same-sex marriage believe a nationwide victory is inevitable, though perhaps not imminent. Many of them see merit in continuing an incremental hearts-and-minds campaign, given that many opinion polls now show a majority of Americans supporting their cause.

"No matter what the Supreme Court decides, we are going to be in a stronger place in July than where we before," said Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to Marry.

"We have the momentum and we have the winning strategy," Wolfson said. "We are going to win the freedom to marry, whether in June or in the next round, when we go back to the court with more states, more public support and perhaps new justices."

Even if the Supreme Court shies away for now from any broad ruling in favor of marriage rights for gay couples, its decisions in June could produce major gains for gay-rights activists.

In one case, the justices could strike down a section of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that denies legally married same-sex couples a host of federal benefits available to straight married couples. In the other, concerning California's Proposition 8 ballot measure banning same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court could leave in place a lower court ruling striking down the ban. That would add the most populous state to the ranks of those already recognizing gay marriages: Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and Washington, plus the District of Columbia.

With California included, that group would account for about 28 percent of the U.S. population.

Meanwhile, legislative efforts to legalize same-sex marriage are under way in Illinois, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Delaware, and lawsuits by gay couples seeking marriage rights have been filed in several other states. In Oregon, gay-rights activists hope to place a measure on next year's ballot that would overturn a ban on gay marriage approved by voters in 2004. Legislators in Nevada are debating a bill that could lead to repeal of a similar ban there.

In advance of the Supreme Court hearings, gay-marriage backers mustered support from a broad array of interest groups, including labor and religious leaders, major corporations, even dozens of prominent Republicans who co-signed a brief filed with the high court. In the past few weeks, a parade of politicians have publicly endorsed same-sex marriage for the first time, including Republican Sen. Rob. Portman of Ohio and Democratic Sens. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana and Mark Warner of Virginia.

Former President Bill Clinton chimed in, too, writing that he now regretted his decision to sign the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 and urging that it be struck down. President Barack Obama's administration also asked that DOMA be declared unconstitutional and that Proposition 8 be struck down.

For gay-marriage opponents, it's been an occasionally daunting period as they watch a steady stream of prominent politicians and institutions join the rival side.

The conservative American Family Association's website, for example, listed some of the many well-known corporations that are now supporting same-sex marriage ? including Google, Microsoft, Citigroup, Apple, Nike, Facebook and Starbucks. The website suggests that Americans opposed to gay marriage should boycott these companies, but the president of the Mississippi-based association, Tim Wildmon, acknowledges that would be impractical.

"There's too many of them to effectively boycott," he said in a telephone interview.

Wildmon expects the U.S. to remain divided over gay marriage for a long time and hopes neither Congress nor the courts try to interfere with the right of states to set their own policies.

"That's just the way it's going to be," he said. "If you want to be a homosexual married couple, move to a state that accepts it."

Such interstate moves could indeed occur, but with a potential cost for the states being forsaken, said gay rights lawyer Jon Davidson of Lambda Legal. "Maybe that's what some states want, but the outpouring of business support for us indicates a lot of businesses don't want that to happen," he said. "It creates all sorts of problems."

Among some conservatives, there's been frustration at the frequent exhortation from gay-rights activists that the Supreme Court should be "on the right side of history" by endorsing same-sex marriage.

"It requires no courage, at this point in history, to side with gay marriage advocates," Maggie Gallagher, a co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage, wrote in a commentary. "Respecting the rights of the millions of Americans who disagree, and respecting the boundaries of our Constitution, is staying on the right side of history."

Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, on his show Wednesday, suggested the spread of same-sex marriage was indeed inevitable. He cited signs of increasing divisions among Republicans on the issue.

"Whether it happens now at the Supreme Court or somehow later, it is going to happen," Limbaugh said. "It's just the direction the culture is heading. ... The opposition that you would suspect exists is in the process of crumbling on it."

In any case, it's unlikely that some of the most conservative states ? those that adopted gay-marriage bans by overwhelming margins ? will recognize same-sex marriages unless forced to by the courts.

A likely result is a steady stream of state-level lawsuits by gay couples, according to Boston-based lawyer Mary Bonauto, whose work with Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders helped legalize same-sex marriage in several New England states.

"There are committed gay couples in every state who want to stand up and make that legal commitment to marriage," Bonauto said. "They're not going to go away. ... They believe our national promise of equal protection under the law applies to them, too, not just to the East and West coasts and Iowa."

Depending on how such lawsuits fare, Bonauto said, "I think this issue could be back at the Supreme Court in a number of years."

___

Follow David Crary on Twitter: http://twitter.com/CraryAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/however-court-rules-gay-marriage-debate-wont-end-065436742--politics.html

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Here's Everything Wrong with The Hobbit

Click here to read Here's Everything Wrong with <em>The Hobbit</em>

Our friends at Cinema Sins found 45 things wrong with The Hobbit and I'm just going to assume all 45 of those things are because of the 48FPS that Peter Jackson chose to use for reasons unknown. Or I guess it could also be because the movie just wasn't any good. [Cinema Sins] More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/8Y-IyqxYBzc/heres-everything-wrong-with-the-hobbit

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S.D. Sen. Johnson to retire, citing health and age

VERMILLION, S.D. (AP) ? Entering the auditorium on a motorized scooter and delivering remarks in halting speech, South Dakota Sen. Tim Johnson announced Tuesday that he would retire next year at the end of his term and acknowledged he remains limited by a 2006 health crisis that nearly killed him.

Smiling and joking at times as he made the announcement at a press conference in his hometown of Vermillion, the 66-year-old said the effects of his life-threatening brain hemorrhage had made speech and mobility increasingly difficult.

"I feel great, but I must be honest ... I appreciate my right arm and right leg aren't what they used to be, and my speech is not entirely there," Johnson said, his delivery slurred at times.

Johnson, who until recently relied on a cane to get around, has become dependent on the motorized scooter he used to enter the auditorium at the University of South Dakota where he made his remarks. He also said he hoped to spend more time with his five grandchildren and that "I think mostly it's time to go."

Johnson's departure helps solidify GOP prospects of claiming the state's first open Senate seat since 1978. Republican former Gov. Mike Rounds had announced plans last year to challenge Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and has rallied much of the state and national party establishment behind him.

In a sign Republicans are not yet lock-step behind Rounds, a Washington-based political action committee released a statement Tuesday criticizing Rounds' spending during two terms as governor, and calling for a more conservative candidate to run for Johnson's seat. The same fractures between tea party-aligned and more moderate Republicans cost the GOP seats that were seen as winnable in 2010 and 2012.

On the Democratic side, long-rumored possible successors including Johnson's son, South Dakota's U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson, and former U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin.

"I've talked to Brendan now and then, but I'm not leaning on him to run or not run," Johnson told The Associated Press after the event. "I gather he is undecided."

Brendan Johnson declined to comment on his political plans Tuesday. He has avoided public statements about the race, but has had conversations with party activists in the state, and advisers and potential donors outside South Dakota.

Herseth Sandlin, 42, is general counsel for Raven Industries, Corp., a position she began last year after returning to South Dakota from Washington, D.C. She had worked as a lawyer in Washington after losing re-election to a fourth U.S. House term in 2010.

"While I appreciate the encouragement I've received I haven't focused on the future political opportunities," she told The AP.

Although both prospects have political networks to tap, both also face potential liabilities.

The younger Johnson, 37, has never held political office and would face questions about his father's involvement in the confirmation process to his federal post. Herseth Sandlin has taken some positions at odds with some South Dakota Democratic activists, including opposing the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which could hurt in a potential Democratic primary.

Republicans too could face ideological tension. U.S. Rep. Kristi Noem, elected in 2010, has been courted to challenge Rounds by South Dakota conservatives. While Noem has shown little movement toward investigating a 2014 Senate campaign, aides said Tuesday: "She hasn't ruled anything in or out."

Nationally, Republicans said by stepping aside, the politically resilient Johnson, who also retains a $1.2 million campaign war chest, gives the GOP its best chance to gain a seat in its quest for the majority.

"I believe South Dakota moves into the top slot as the most likely Republican pickup," said Greg Strimple, a Republican pollster and past consultant to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Johnson, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, joins Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey as seasoned and influential Democrats departing the chamber, where Republicans need to gain six seats to take control. Two Republican senators have announced their retirements, both in Republican-performing states Georgia and Nebraska.

South Dakota was carried by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney last year, adding urgency for Democrats hoping to keep their majority. Republicans must gain six seats to retake the chamber in 2014.

With his wife Barbara at his side, Sen. Johnson remained standing, leaning on his stronger left hand at the podium, taking questions from reporters then posing for pictures and shaking hands with supporters ? reaching out with his left ? for an hour.

"I look forward to serving the remaining two years as the country is facing difficult times on many fronts and I will work every day to find a bipartisan solution to these challenges," he said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sd-sen-johnson-retire-cites-health-age-001827846--politics.html

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Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Supreme Court tackles federal Defense of Marriage Act

By Pete Williams, NBC News Justice Correspondent

An 83-year-old former IBM programmer is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a law that cost her more than a quarter of a million dollars and deprived her, and thousands of other gay couples, of federal marriage benefits.

At issue is the Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA, passed by overwhelming margins in both houses of Congress in 1996 and signed by President Bill Clinton.?It bars federal agencies from recognizing the validity of same-sex marriages in the states where they are legal.

The arguments are being heard just one day after a challenge to California?s Proposition 8, which put an end to same-sex marriage in that state, was brought to the high court. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court hinted that it might be hesitant to issue any kind of sweeping ruling declaring that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. The justices seemed wary of issuing a broad decision that would apply to any state outside of California.

Supreme Court hears arguments for and against California's same-sex marriage ban. NBC News' Danielle Leigh reports.

As a result of DOMA, same-sex couples in states where same-sex marriages are legal are accorded state and local marriage benefits, but not more than 1,100 federal ones. These range from spousal health coverage to Social Security and veterans' benefits.

For more than 40 years, Edie Windsor lived with another woman, Thea Spyer, and the two were eventually married in Canada in 2007.?But when Spyer died two years later, leaving Windsor the estate, the IRS sent a tax bill for $363,053, because DOMA barred the federal agency from recognizing their marriage.?The surviving spouse of a traditional marriage is not required to pay federal estate taxes.

"I couldn't believe that they were making a stranger of this person I lived with and loved for 43-something years," she said.

So she sued the U.S. government, and two lower federal courts found that DOMA amounted to unconstitutional discrimination.?As the case wound its way through the legal process, the Justice Department, originally her adversary, became her ally.

Two years ago, Attorney General Eric Holder notified Congress of President Barack Obama's conclusion that "classifications based on sexual orientation" were inconsistent with the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection under law. The Justice Department stopped defending DOMA in court.

House Republicans then hired a former solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration, Paul Clement, to take up DOMA's defense. In his written briefs filed with the Supreme Court, he argues that Congress must be able to decide on a definition of marriage for itself.

"The federal government has the same latitude as the states to adopt its own definition of marriage for federal law purposes and has a unique interest in treating citizens across the nation the same," Clement says.

The House Republicans say Congress sought to tie federal benefits to the traditional understanding of marriage and its origins as a way to address "the tendency of opposite-sex relationships to produce unintended and unplanned offspring."?In passing DOMA, they say, Congress sought to "foster relationships in which children are raised by both their biological parents."

The Supreme Court's ruling on Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act will have immediate meaning for real-life LGBT couples and families across the nation. Jon Summers and Kyle Murdoch, who were married in D.C. last year, join Andrea Mitchell Reports to discuss.

But the Justice Department and lawyers for Edie Windsor each urge the court to find that DOMA amounts to unconstitutional discrimination because it lacks a legally sufficient government purpose.

"Denying federal protections to married gay couples will not affect whether straight couples marry or have children who are biologically related to both parents," argues Roberta Kaplan, a New York lawyer representing Edie Windsor.

"No straight couple would call off their wedding if Ms. Windsor receives a tax refund," she says.

The Obama administration urges the court to find that two of the other justifications cited by Congress in passing DOMA -- defending traditional notions of morality and of marriage -- cannot carry the law over the constitutional hurdle.

"Moral opposition to homosexuality, though it may reflect deeply-held personal views, is not a legitimate policy objective that can justify unequal treatment of gay and lesbian people," the Justice Department says.

As for tradition, the government says DOMA does nothing to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples, because the states decide for themselves whether to permit it. And no matter how long established, "tradition cannot by itself justify a discriminatory law under equal protection principles."

A decision striking down DOMA would not require states to allow same-sex marriages: they would remain free to decide for themselves. But the federal government would be required to recognize marriages in the states where they are legal.

Nine states now permit same-sex couples to get married -- Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and Washington. So does Washington, D.C.

The political landscape has shifted dramatically since the law was enacted 17 years ago.? Former President Clinton said earlier this month that he no longer supports the law he signed in 1996 and urged the Supreme Court to strike it down.

"Many supporters of the bill known as DOMA believed that its passage 'would defuse a movement to enact a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which would have ended the debate for a generation or more.' It was under these circumstances that DOMA came to my desk," he wrote in a column published in the Washington Post.

"Even worse than providing an excuse for discrimination, the law itself is discriminatory," he said.

In order to decide the issues at the heart of the case, however, the justices will have to consider whether procedural complications allow them to get there, due to the unusual way in which the case arrived on their doorstep.

The Justice Department, which asked the court to take the case, is in an odd posture, because it now sides with Edie Windsor, who won in the lower federal courts.? A party that prevails cannot normally appeal the decision.?

And while the defense of DOMA had been carried on by the House Republicans, there's a further question about whether they meet the legal rule requiring that a party to a case claim some specific injury.? It may not be enough for them to assert that they want to see DOMA enforced.

To help the court navigate these potential roadblocks, it appointed a Harvard Law School professor, Vicki Jackson, to argue the jurisdictional issues during Wednesday's courtroom session.

A ruling in the case will come sometime before the end of the court's term in late June.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2a0a8368/l/0Lnbcpolitics0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A30C260C174758460Esupreme0Ecourt0Etackles0Efederal0Edefense0Eof0Emarriage0Eact0Dlite/story01.htm

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Nanowire solar cells raise efficiency limit

Monday, March 25, 2013

Scientists from the Nano-Science Center at the Niels Bohr Institut, Denmark and the Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne, Switzerland, have shown that a single nanowire can concentrate the sunlight up to 15 times of the normal sun light intensity. The results are surprising and the potential for developing a new type of highly efficient solar cells is great.

Due to some unique physical light absorption properties of nanowires, the limit of how much energy we can utilize from the sun's rays is higher than previous believed. These results demonstrate the great potential of development of nanowire-based solar cells, says PhD Peter Krogstrup on the surprising discovery that is described in the journal Nature Photonics.

The research groups have during recent years studied how to develop and improve the quality of the nanowire crystals, which is a cylindrical structure with a diameter of about 10,000 part of a human hair. The nanowires are predicted to have great potential in the development not only of solar cells, but also of future quantum computers and other electronic products.

It turns out that the nanowires naturally concentrate the sun's rays into a very small area in the crystal by up to a factor 15. Because the diameter of a nanowire crystal is smaller than the wavelength of the light coming from the sun it can cause resonances in the intensity of light in and around nanowires. Thus, the resonances can give a concentrated sunlight, where the energy is converted, which can be used to give a higher conversion effeciency of the sun's energy, says Peter Krogstrup, who with this discovery contributes to that the research in solar cell technology based on nanowires get a real boost.

New efficiency limit

The typical efficiency limit - the so-called "Shockley-Queisser Limit" - is a limit, which for many years has been a landmark for solar cells efficiency among researchers, but now it seems that it may be increased.

It's exciting as a researcher to move the theoretical limits, as we know. Although it does not sound like much, that the limit is moved by only a few percent, it will have a major impact on the development of solar cells, exploitation of nanowire solar rays and perhaps the extraction of energy at international level. However, it will take some years years before production of solar cells consisting of nanowires becomes a reality, says Peter Krogstrup who just completed his PhD at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen.

The research is conducted in collaboration with the Laboratory des Mat?riaux Semiconducteurs, Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne, the Foundation and the company SunFlake A / S. Their scientific findings work support results published in the journal Science in January. Here, a group of researchers from Lund, showed that the sun's rays was sucked into the nanowires due to the high amount of power that their solar cell produced.

###

University of Copenhagen - Niels Bohr Institute: http://www.nbi.ku.dk/english/press_and_media/

Thanks to University of Copenhagen - Niels Bohr Institute for this article.

This press release has been viewed 22 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127427/Nanowire_solar_cells_raise_efficiency_limit

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Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Hugh Hefner slept with 'over a thousand' women

Gabriel Bouys / AFP - Getty Images file

Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner and Crystal Harris, his new wife.

By Allison Takeda, Us Weekly

Everyone comes with baggage from past relationships, but Hugh Hefner's romantic history is a little -- OK, a lot -- more crowded than others'. In a new interview with Esquire magazine, the 86-year-old Playboy founder confesses to sleeping with many, many women over the years. Too many to count, in fact.

PHOTOS: Hugh Hefner's girlfriends

"How could I possibly know? Over a thousand, I'm sure," the mogul says of the number of ladies he's taken to bed. "There were chunks of my life when I was married, and when I was married I never cheated. But I made up for it when I wasn't married. You have to keep your hand in."

Hefner's hand is out of the game now, thanks to the magazine publisher's relationship with wife Crystal Harris. Speaking about his 26-year-old bride, whom he wed in December, the multi-millionaire gushes that he's a happy, committed, one-woman man.

PHOTOS: Playboy's sexiest celeb models

"All our friends think it's made in heaven," he tells Esquire of his third marriage. (Hef was wed twice before, to Mildred Williams from 1949 to 1959, and to Kimberley Conrad from 1989 to 2010.) "It's only people who don't know us, who simply see us as stereotypes in terms of age and beauty."

PHOTOS: Stunning star weddings

"I just feel very, very fortunate to have found her at this stage in my life. I saved the best till last," he says of the model.

Later, musing about his plans for the future, he adds: "I want the rest of my life to be very much like it is now. I want it to be like this."

More in TODAY Entertainment:

Source: http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2013/03/26/17472004-hugh-hefner-claims-hes-slept-with-over-a-thousand-women?lite

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Don't chase the money - Chase the passion. - ShoeMoney Internet ...

I get messages from people all the time who want to make money online. ?They read the blog/newsletter, ?see my phat AdSense Check and think I have the magic bullett.

Guess what I DO! ?Prepare yourself for it!

You have passion and expertise about something. ?Share that with people.

Let me give you some examples. ?I will start with myself.

In 2003, while working a full time job and also reselling computers online, ?I discovered a way to format ringtones and wallpapers for my Nextel phone. ?I loved doing it. ?It was a fun hobby. ?Long story short ? I ?took that knowledge and created a website that others could upload ringtones to. ?By 2005 the site was getting a ton of traffic. ?I got a call from Google that suggested I put AdSense code on the site. ?Overnight that site turned into a multimillion dollar website that I sold in 2010.
In 2007, ?after having success with contextual advertising and affiliate marketing I thought it would be fun to create AdSense looking ads that got high clickthroughs but instead of going through Google I would bypass them and use my affiliate link. ?Then I thought it would be fun to allow others to use this. ?Then one day at a conference a person from eBay said eBay affiliates were doing really well with my ShoeMoney Ads ad network and suggested I build it just around eBay. ?I created AuctionAds that did exactly that. ?I created this with a part time developer and within 4 months it was generating over 2 million a month and I sold the company literally 4 months to the day that it launched. ?Again this was a fun project that was almost like a hobby.
In 2003 I started a blog for fun sharing my life. ?Not a ?how to make money? blog but just shit I was doing. ?It evolved into what you are reading now. ?And its made millions of dollars.
In 2010 I shared my knowledge and experience on how I learned to make money online via a product called the ShoeMoney System. ?It?s sold over 2 million dollars worth to date and still continues to sell.
In 2011 for fun I created a website called freeseoreport.com. ?It was a free site where people could run a report on their site and a keyword they were trying to rank for then showed them what they were doing vs the top 10 people in every country and ever search engine. ?This was something I found of value myself in trying to figure out backlinks and onpage stuff that I was missing out on. ?I made money on the ?backend? by sending people value added emails educating them on a variety of subjects related to seo with affiliate links. ?There was also a viral component where for each person you?referred?to the website you got another free report. ?The site was getting about 600 new people a day running about 3,000 reports per day. ? The site was purchased 7 months later by an SEO firm.
Many years ago, ?really before I was well known, ?3 other marketers and myself started a high dollar conference called the elite retreat. ?Its 8k per person and limited to 30 people. ? We will be having our 10th event this fall.
In 2012 I created an automated email marketing system called the PAR Program. ?This is my total focus now. ?I stumbled into this because I took what I loved about email marketing and all the money we had made from it, ?did it for a large company and after seeing the results started offering it as a service. ?I have done ZERO marketing (I am bogged down with sales) and the company is growing like a rocket.

Ive done other stuff but those are the key ones. ?I have also had failures. ?Not because they were bad ideas but I just did not have the resources time wise to devote to making them work. ?All of them were fun projects but more importantly great experiences.

Lets look at others:

A friend of mine who is also passionate and educated about mixed martial arts started a site called ufcjunkie.wordpress.com (now mmajunkie.com due to trademark). ?He started the site as a hobby just putting his thoughts about the world of mixed martial arts online. ?He started the site on a wordpress free hosted platform. ?Within 5 years the site sold to USA TODAY for 8 figures.
2 kids from hawaii, who were passionate about cats, thought it would be funny to post a picture of a cat captioning it with what they think the cat would say in ?cat language?. ?They uploaded a picture regularly and people found them funny. ?Again this was on a free wordpress hosted blog. ?The site was called icanhazcheeseburger.wordpress.com. ?The fun site got massive traction so they allowed others to upload their funny cat photos. ?Then one day they stumbled on to a blog called ShoeMoney.com, ?saw some guy holding a 134k AdSense check and put the code on their site. ?It made a ton and they sold the site for millions.
A long time ago a kid who grew up with his parents owning a wine selling business decided to start blogging about wine. ? People started stumbling on to the site who were also interested in wine. ?Then he started recording himself and the video?s started to become very viral. ?So much so that he got invites to appear on Conan Obrien and Ellen. ?He is now a multimillionaire with a #1 best selling book bringing in residual income. ?His site is?winelibrary.com and his name is?Gary Vaynerchuk.
A?Chinese?immigrant with very broken english started a blog because he was interested in making money online. ?Then he decided to show how much he was making online monthly. ?Started with very little. ?Then the blog started getting traction. ?He did this all while having a computer business. ?But he kept on sharing how he was making money online from his blog and exactly how much he was making. ?People loved it and he started getting a following. ?The site literally is called ?I make money by telling people I make money online?. ?Thats it! ? And now his site literally is nothing but promoting affiliate products or doing paid reviews of people?s ?how to make money? products. ?It worked out for him? ?He now makes a high six figure income basically doing nothing?. ?He has someone doing his posts for him as he travels around the world making more money month after month. ?He recently released a product keeping the same theme of being transparent and walking you through how to make money with a blog. ?He crushed it. ?- ?John Chow of johnchow.com
A former collegate pitcher decided to make a website offering a product to teach people how to gain more MPH on their fast ball offered a dvd set doing just that. ?He now has a thriving business at topvelocity.net
A guy started a blog making fun of celebrities for fun. ?Years later it evolved into perezhilton.com

See a trend here?

Lets get back to the original question? ? ?I want to make money online. ?Where do I start? ?

I don?t know ANY successful internet millionaire who did not stumble onto their internet success. ?None of them had visions of being a internet millionaire. ?They had passions, interest, and education about a subject and?pursued?it. ?That is the key. ? None of them had to quit their day jobs. ?They all started because it was a hobby. ?It was fun?

The one thing I have learned is when someone starts something that they consider ?work? they will give up quickly.

I have handed over websites to people that were generating hundreds of dollars a month for them to take and run with. ?Guess what? ?They didn?t do anything they just sucked up the revenue and let it die.
I have given PPC keywords to people that I was making a lot of money with promoting affiliate offers. ?Guess what? ?They ran it until they died then came to me for more keywords. ?The didn?t research or even care how it was making money.

?But honestly thats just the top of the ice berg. ?

For everyone who is making money on line there is millions of people who ?want to?. ?Out of those very few will take action. ?There is no doubt anyone can do it and the best part about it is you can do it from anywhere in the world no matter what level of education or experience.

This?opportunity?will not be around forever. ?Mostly because big brands are just now starting to see the value of some of the marketing techniques and dumping in tons of money where guys like us just can?t compete. ?Fortunately they move at a snails pace and for now guys sitting at home can do much more cutting edge techniques that big businesses can?t keep up.

I got a little off topic but my point is that if you really want to make money online it costs you no money at all to take action right now. ?And I mean RIGHT NOW.

Chase the passion not the money.