"Satyrs at Play" - aediculaantinoi.wordpress.com: HADRIAN and ANTINOUS finally release their embrace, and notice DIONYSOS

Thursday, July 26, 2012

2:14 PM 7/26/2012 - Mike Nova's starred items

 


LINKS

Mike Nova shared a link.
 



Jazz In Paris: Chet Baker Quartet Plays Standards
www.youtube.com
Chet Baker Quartet - Plays Standards Chet Baker-trumpet Gérard Gustin-piano Jimmy Bond-bass Bert Dahlander-drums. Recorded October 24,1955
Mike Nova shared a link.


Gurdjieff-Song of the Aisors
www.youtube.com
http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/steventsitsos An arrangement of the George I. Gurdjieff piece "Song of the Aisors' for Violin and Guitar. Performed by Violinist...


Ukraine activist bares breasts to Russian patriarch

via Uploads by AFP by AFP on 7/26/12
An activist from Ukraine's prominent feminist rights group FEMEN on Thursday bared her breasts in front of the Russian Orthodox Patriarch just minutes after he flew in to the country. Duration: 00:24
From:AFP
Views:0
0ratings
Time:00:25More inNews & Politics

via Voice of America by Jeff Seldin on 7/26/12
WASHINGTON, D.C. — One key to stopping the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is making sure workers in the global sex industry take appropriate precautions. But there are growing concerns medical breakthroughs in the fight against AIDS will soon make that more difficult. Excitement about turning the tide in the fight against HIV is being tempered by researchers who worry some of the most vulnerable populations will miss out on medical advances. "The risk to sex ...

via Top Stories - Google News on 7/26/12

Telegraph.co.uk





Euro Bankers Signal New Action
Wall Street Journal
By BRIAN BLACKSTONE And WILLIAM HOROBIN Global markets rose following ECB president Mario Draghi's comments that the ECB would do "whatever it takes to preserve the euro." Charles Forelle reports on Markets Hub. Photo: Reuters.
Draghi: ECB to do "whatever it takes" to save euroBusinessweek
European shares rally as Draghi hints at ECB actionReuters
European Central Bank vows to protect the euro, sending stocks sharply higher ...Washington Post
MarketWatch
all 1,845 news articles »

via NYT > World by By NICHOLAS WADE on 7/26/12
Geneticists’ new finding that a previously unknown archaic species of human mingled with early modern humans in Africa has been met with skepticism because no fossil evidence exists.


via Reuters Video: Top News on 7/26/12
July 26 - Prime Minister David Cameron insists the British people are behind the Olympics, after U.S. presidential hopeful Mitt Romney voiced concerns over preparations for the London Games. Rough Cut (no reporter narration).

via Reuters Video: Top News on 7/26/12
July 26 - U.S. Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney will hope his glamorous London fundraisers are more successful than his attempts at diplomacy after he offends British Prime Minister David Cameron.

via Yahoo! News - Top Stories on 7/26/12
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said on Thursday it appeared that forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were "lining up" for a massacre in the city of Aleppo, but again ruled out military intervention in the conflict. The U.S. State Department said that credible reports of tank columns moving on Aleppo along with air strikes by helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft represented a "serious escalation" of the government's efforts to crush an armed rebellion. ...

via Yahoo! News - Top Stories on 7/26/12
President Barack Obama addresses the National Urban League convention at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Wednesday, July 25, 2012. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)Even as the issue of guns shifts to the forefront of the presidential campaign, the White House and the Senate's top Democrat made it clear Thursday that new gun legislation will not be on the political agenda this year. Instead, President Barack Obama intends to focus on other ways to combat gun violence — a position not unlike that of his rival, Mitt Romney.

via WSJ.com Video - World on 7/26/12
The Olympics may have been just another event in London in 1908 and 1948, but 64 years later London will become the first city to host the modern games three times. WSJ's Dipti Kapadia takes a look back at London's past Olympics.


via BBC News - World on 7/26/12
Eight high-ranking employees of the US justice department improperly promoted hiring of relatives, an investigation finds.

via Yahoo! News - Top Stories on 7/26/12
This an an image of a screen displaying the the micro-blogging site Twitter in London Thursday July 26, 2012. Twitter says that people may have trouble accessing its site. Users across the United States, Europe and Africa are reporting outages or sluggishness on the day before the London 2012 Games are expected to cause a spike in activity on the site. (AP Photo/Cassandra Vinograd)People across much of the planet were having problems accessing Twitter on Thursday, a day before the 2012 Olympic Games are expected to cause a spike in use of the micro-blogging site.

via Reuters: Politics on 7/26/12
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Gun control advocates are looking ahead to this year's first presidential debate, set to be held in Denver, Colorado, as a chance to keep pressing President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney on U.S. gun policy.

via Reuters: Politics on 7/26/12
LONDON (Reuters) - Presidential candidate Mitt Romney's trip to London is intended to enhance his credibility as a world figure in the run-up to the November 6 election but it also could turn a spotlight on some of his political vulnerabilities.

via Reuters Video: Top News on 7/25/12
StockTwits' Phil Pearlman says the wide dispersion in estimates for Facebook's first earnings report means no one knows what to expect and that investors will learn a lot from the release.

via Reuters: Health News on 7/26/12
(Reuters) - The U.S. government said on Thursday it would collaborate with some of the country's biggest health insurers to try to combat healthcare fraud.

via The New York Times's Facebook Wall by The New York Times on 7/26/12
The 41-year-old Briton, whose body was found in November in a hotel in Chongqing, was allegedly poisoned by a woman trying to protect her son.


Bo Xilai’s Wife Is Charged in Killing of British Businessman
www.nytimes.com
Gu Kailai, the wife of the disgraced political leader Bo Xilai, has been indicted for intentional homicide, in a crime that has triggered China’s most serious political crisis in decades.

via NYT > N.Y. / Region by By MATT FLEGENHEIMER on 7/26/12
Over nearly five years, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's fleet of tunnel-boring machines, all of them named, have been plowing beneath the city in service of the agency's megaprojects.


via NYT > Dining & Wine by By KIM SEVERSON on 7/25/12
An executive’s statements have reignited opposition to, as well as support for, a chain that gives millions of dollars to groups fighting same-sex marriage.



Mike Nova's starred items

via NYT > Europe by By ANDREW E. KRAMER on 7/26/12
The allegation touched on the personal dealings of Aleksandr I. Bastrykin, head of the Russian agency that coordinates criminal investigations and Aleksei A. Navalny, a figure loathed by anticorruption activists.


via The New York Times's Facebook Wall by The New York Times on 7/26/12
Op-ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof writes, “We shield youngsters in cinemas from violence — but only if it’s on the screen. Almost a week after the cinema shooting, we can also be sure what won’t happen: serious gun control.”


Safe From Fire, but Not Guns
www.nytimes.com
If we have safety regulations even for toy guns, how about some for real ones?

via Christian Science Monitor | World on 7/26/12
Haiti's 2010 earthquake sent some 1.5 million Haitians to live in tent cities. A new radio series follows a family living in a camp, educating listeners on everything from health to housing services.


via NYT > N.Y. / Region by By DAVID W. CHEN on 7/26/12
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has chosen to endorse Senator Scott Brown, a Republican, because of the senator’s “tough stand” on gun control, a spokesman says.


via NYT > World by By MORT ROSENBLUM on 7/26/12
Vietnam made it clear that ideological wars are not won from the air, yet Americans -- pretty much alone in the world -- don't seem to understand this.


via The Guardian World News by Alan Travis on 7/26/12
Cannabis is the most popular drug among all age groups, official figures show, but use has fallen by more than a third since 1996
Illicit drug use among young people aged 16 to 24 has been stable over the past year at about 1.3 million, or 19% of the age group, and remains at its lowest level since records began in 1996, according to official figures published on Thursday.
The 2011-12 annual survey of drug use, measured by the Crime Survey for England and Wales, shows that cannabis remains the most commonly used illicit drug among young adults, followed by powder cocaine, which appears to have passed a peak of popularity.
The annual drug data from what used to be the British Crime Survey shows that the government's ban on the "legal high" mephedrone, a synthetic stimulant, appears to have had some impact: there has been a slight decline in the level of use reported in the past year, from 1.4% to 1.1%.

Posted by at No comments:

World News | Twitter appears down across much of planet

World News

World News



Twitter appears down across much of planet

from Yahoo! News: Top Stories
This an an image of a screen displaying the the micro-blogging site Twitter in London Thursday July 26, 2012. Twitter says that people may have trouble accessing its site. Users across the United States, Europe and Africa are reporting outages or sluggishness on the day before the London 2012 Games are expected to cause a spike in activity on the site. (AP Photo/Cassandra Vinograd)People across much of the planet were having problems accessing Twitter on Thursday, a day before the 2012 Olympic Games are expected to cause a spike in use of the micro-blogging site.
AP News

Jul 26, 1:04 PM EDT




Twitter appears down across much of planet
By RAPHAEL SATTER and CASSANDRA VINOGRAD
The Associated Press
AP Photo
AP Photo/Cassandra Vinograd
Technology Video
Advertisement


Buy AP Photo Reprints



LONDON (AP) -- People across much of the planet were having problems accessing Twitter on Thursday, a day before the 2012 Olympic Games are expected to cause a spike in use of the micro-blogging site.
The San Francisco-based company acknowledged the problem, saying in a statement that its engineers are "currently working to resolve the issue," although it didn't go into any further detail.
Visitors to the site were greeted with a half-formed message partially in code saying that "Twitter is currently down."
The fields where a reason for the outage and a deadline for restoring service were apparently meant to go were filled with computer code.
Sluggishness or outages were reported from countries in North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.
Some users were apparently able to post updates - known as "tweets" - through their phones or third-party applications. Updates about the Olympic torch - which is currently wending its way through central London - were still pouring in, albeit far more slowly than earlier in the day.
About an hour after issues were first spotted, service appeared to be restored in parts of the U.S. and Asia, but users elsewhere continued to report problems.
The Olympics are expected to bring an unprecedented surge of activity by sports fans on social networking sites such as Twitter.
At the recent European Championship final, users fired off more than 15,000 tweets per second, setting a sports-related record for the site.
Social media users were already complaining about an earlier outage that affected Google's chatting services. The Mountainview, Calif.-based company said Thursday morning that the majority of users were seeing error messages and unable to use its Google Talk service. The issues were resolved five hours later.

© 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.


Posted by at No comments:

NYT: Is Twitter a Media or Technology Company? | Small Retailers Open Up Storefronts on Facebook Pages

July 25, 2012, 10:02 am7 Comments

Is Twitter a Media or Technology Company?

By NICK BILTON
illustration by Nick Bilton/The New York Times
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • E-mail
  • Share
  • Print
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, then it’s a duck — right?
One question many seem to be wondering about Twitter: is this duck a media or technology company?
In a meeting at The New York Times offices in New York, Dick Costolo, the chief executive officer of Twitter, said that Twitter is some variation of both. “I think of the company as a technology company that is in the media business,” Mr. Costolo told a room full of editors and reporters. “Our business is an advertising business, we don’t sell technology.”
Mr. Costolo said the company does not have any reporters or a newsroom, and almost half of its 1,300 employees are engineers, focused on building the technology that runs Twitter and inventing new features for the service.
It is certain that the Twitter bird is evolving into something different than it once was. Lately, the company has been experimenting with media-like products.
Last month Twitter announced a one-stop shop for Nascar fans that corralled Twitter messages from drivers and teams at the Pocono 400 race. The Nascar-branded page that Twitter highlighted in television ads was incredibly visceral, with pictures from inside driver’s cars. Fans could practically smell the fuel from the pit.
Earlier this week Twitter continued this media experiment, announcing a Twitter-branded destination page for the Olympics.
The company’s metamorphosis can also be seen in the way it is restructuring how it works with developers who build products and tools on the Twitter platform using the company’s application programming interface, or A.P.I.
Mr. Costolo said he wanted to migrate away from developers building more external Twitter apps, to a world where developers and companies are building products inside the Twitter platform — a move, he argued, that would create a better experience for users.
“I think of us as a technology company because I think the future of the company is in building on an extensible platform that allows third-party developers and companies to add value to Twitter in a way that is accretive to Twitter and is accretive to our users,” Mr. Costolo said. “I don’t need to be or want to be in the content business.”
Instead of competing in the content business, Twitter is trying to train influential creators to use the service more effectively. For example, Mr. Costolo said, there are Twitter employees who work with celebrities, politicians, athletes and media outlets to hone the best use of the service. “We call them V.I.T.’s internally, Very Important Tweeters. It’s cute; we’re all about being adorable and cute,” he said.
With all of this content from V.I.T.’s and media companies, Twitter has grown as a burgeoning destination for advertisers.
Mr. Costolo noted that, over all, “the engagement rates on ads are great.” Promoted Tweets are seeing greater “percentage points of engagement” compared with traditional Web advertisements that are often only clicked at a rate of a fraction of a percent. Mobile ads are a perfect betrothal as people engage with Twitter more on mobile phones than the desktop, he said.
Yet even with the introduction of ads and content-branded Twitter destinations, Mr. Costolo still sees the company as a communication platform above all else.
“Our vision for the company is simple: Twitter brings you closer,” Mr. Costolo said in conclusion. ”You can say something now and broadcast and everyone around the world sees it immediately.”
Which sure sounds just like a media company to me.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/is-twitter-a-media-or-technology-company/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Small-Business Guide

Small Retailers Open Up Storefronts on Facebook Pages


John W. Adkisson for The New York Times
Darren Gann of the Baby Grocery Store has a kiosk at a mall in Charlotte, N.C., as well as a presence on Facebook.

By EILENE ZIMMERMAN

Published: July 25, 2012
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • E-mail
  • Share
  • Print
  • Reprints

When Mandie Miller left her job as an on-air traffic reporter in Charlotte, N.C., to have her first child, she started baking cakes for friends, just for fun. The response was so positive that in April 2009 she started a business, Got What It Cakes.
You're the Boss Blog

Have You Tried Selling Goods on Facebook?

More small businesses are finding there are advantages to setting up shop mostly or even entirely on Facebook, but there are also risks.
    Quick Tips:
    Remember that you do not own your Facebook page; Facebook does.
    Facebook pages can look generic; find ways to differentiate yours.

    Look for creative ways to build relationships with your customers.
    Suggested Resources:
    Payvment calls itself the No. 1 social commerce platform.
    The N.F.I.B. has a guide for businesses using a Facebook timeline.
More Small Business Guides »
Ms. Miller put up a Web site, but about five months later her sister created a Got What It Cakes Facebook page. That’s when the business started to grow. Cake orders went from two or three a weekend to six to 10; now Ms. Miller is turning away another 10 each weekend. Annual revenue at the end of her second year in business was a little more than $40,000.
Got What It Cakes is part of a new wave of online commerce: F-commerce. Social media specialists say the term was coined in 2009 to describe the growing number of businesses that sell through a Facebook page. Payvment, a start-up that provides support for Facebook shopping transactions, says it has 170,000 clients and is signing on about 1,500 stores a week, most with fewer than five employees.
The rise of F-commerce has been largely haphazard, something Facebook did not instigate or promote. A spokesman declined to discuss the phenomenon, except to acknowledge, “Retailers are experimenting in a number of ways.”
Small businesses seem to be having more success on Facebook than large companies, said Sucharita Mulpuru, a retail analyst at Forrester. Those doing well, she said, generally have less than $100,000 in revenue and fewer than 10 employees. Gap, Nordstrom, J. C. Penney and GameStop, on the other hand, have all shut down Facebook stores in the last 12 months, mostly, Ms. Mulpuru said, because consumers are accustomed to the richer experience on retailing Web sites.
But Facebook can present challenges to businesses of all sizes. Some consumers do not feel safe buying directly from a Facebook storefront, said Krista Garcia, a social commerce analyst with a market research firm, eMarketer. And business owners should be aware that they do not own their Facebook pages — Facebook does, and it can change the appearance and rules whenever it wants.
GETTING STARTED It’s easy for a small business to open a Facebook storefront by creating a page in the business’s name, loading photos of the product and adding shopping functions. Because Facebook storefronts can look generic, small businesses have to find ways to differentiate themselves, said Jay Bean, chief executive of an online marketing firm, OrangeSoda.
Customizing a page is done by installing applications that enable customers to do things like shop, enter contests or see a menu. Apps are available from Facebook and outside vendors, or they can be custom-developed.
Payvment’s tools let businesses create a storefront with a shopping cart and promotions like discounts and coupons.
USE YOUR PERSONALITY Unlike larger businesses, small businesses can build on their personal relationships to end users, said Wendy Tan-White, chief executive of Moonfruit, which builds and supports e-commerce Web sites. She advises using a cover image for a business’s page that relates not only to the product or service but to customers, too.
On the Got What It Cakes storefront, for example, the cover photo shows the owner, Ms. Miller, in her home, with baby photos on the wall behind her and several cakes scattered about the sitting room; the smaller-profile photo is the company logo.
Many of Ms. Miller’s customers are busy mothers like her, and she communicates frequently with them on Facebook. “I am a local, one-person business but I have 5,000 fans,” she said.
Ms. Miller gives the kinds of tips her customers might get from a friend, like what to do with leftover chocolate cake batter: “Put some butter on your griddle and make pancakes with it.”
POST, PIN AND TAG To attract fans and friends, a storefront needs to be dynamic, with frequent posts — status updates and photos. Tagging people in a photo may cause the photo to show up on the tagged person’s page, where friends (and often friends’ friends) can see it.
Deann Kump, founder of TuTu Cute, which sells hair accessories and clothing for mothers, babies and toddlers, hosts a monthly photo contest on her page.
“If someone posts a photo of their daughter wearing one of my products and tags it, their friends will wonder, ‘What is TuTu Cute?’ and go to my page,” she said.
Mrs. Kump opened on Facebook last December and about half of her sales occur on the site.
Ms. Tan-White of Moonfruit suggested that a business give customers incentives to spread the word, offering a discount if they tag its product in a photo. Facebook’s “pin” feature allows users to pin a post, which might be a product of the week or a special discount and pushes the post to the top of a business’s page.
FOCUS ON COMMUNITY Magical Moments Modeling made TuTu Cute a “boutique of the month” on its Facebook page in April so friends of both pages could see it. And Mrs. Kump often promotes the work of children’s photographers she likes; they in turn promote her accessories.
Patrick Skoff, a painter who sells 90 percent of his paintings on Facebook, said some visitors to his page might have been hesitant about buying until they saw the comments and “likes” on new and sold paintings.
“They see all the likes and think, ‘Oh, I better buy that before someone else does,’ ” Mr. Skoff said.
In July he painted 10 paintings a day for 10 days and sold all of them through Facebook.
Darren Gann, co-owner of the Baby Grocery Store, started his Facebook storefront in February (he also has a kiosk in SouthPark Mall in Charlotte). Thirty-five percent of his sales come through Facebook, and Mr. Gann gives lots of help and advice to his customers. “They communicate with us there about everything, from asking about a shipment to what do we recommend for a gluten-free 9-month-old."
Heather Logrippo opened a Facebook storefront in 2009 for We’ve Labels, which sells clothing labels. She routinely goes to the Facebook pages where her customers spend time, like those for quilters or knitters.
“I log on as We’ve Labels and start interacting with people, writing things like: ‘That’s a beautiful scarf you’ve knitted,’ ” she said. Those knitters and quilters will often click on the We’ve Labels page out of curiosity.
OFFER OPTIONS While some small businesses sell only through Facebook, others maintain separate Web sites or have bricks-and-mortar outlets, because not all consumers feel comfortable using their credit card information on the site.
Ashley Gall, owner of Méli Jewelry, which sells jewelry she designs and makes, said buying on Facebook was still too new for many of her customers — 15 percent of her sales happen there — so she also sells on Etsy, Indie Fashion Marketplace and her own Web site.
Most of Mandie Miller’s customers order on Facebook and pay when she delivers the cake or when they pick it up. Yet she still maintains a Web site of her own.
“I do a lot of wedding cakes, and it’s the moms and dads of brides usually paying and they often want to go to a regular business Web site. I also have grandmothers in their 80s and 90s that come to my cake tastings,” she said. “They aren’t on Facebook.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: July 25, 2012

An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to recent changes that Facebook made to its site to allow more than one-time payments by letting customers store credit card information on the site. Those changes apply to virtual goods, not real products.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 26, 2012, on page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: Small Retailers Open Up Storefronts On Facebook Pages.
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • E-mail
  • Share
Get Free E-mail Alerts on These Topics

Facebook IncSocial Networking (Internet)
Small BusinessEntrepreneurship
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)