How Obama's data-crunching prowess may get him re-elected
Story highlightsIn the mechanics of identifying voters, President Obama's team is ahead of GOP rivalsObama's re-election campaign is the only one doing cutting-edge work with data President's operation uses a powerful social-networking tool called NationalFieldExpert: GOP presidential campaigns don't fully understand power of data crunchingIn July, KDNuggets.com, an online newsite focused on data mining and analytics software, ran an unusual listing in its jobs section.
"We are looking for Predictive Modeling/Data Mining Scientists and Analysts, at both the senior and junior level, to join our department through November 2012 at our Chicago Headquarters," read the ad. "We are a multi-disciplinary team of statisticians, predictive modelers, data mining experts, mathematicians, software developers, general analysts and organizers - all striving for a single goal: re-electing President Obama."
The job listing caught the attention of Alex Lundry, a Republican data-mining expert at TargetPoint Consulting. He tweeted a link to the ad, commenting, "The Obama campaign is taking #bigdata seriously; what about the GOP candidates?"
The question almost answers itself. So far in the presidential election of 2012, there is only one campaign that is doing cutting-edge work with data.
Obama may be struggling in the polls and even losing support among his core boosters, but when it comes to the modern mechanics of identifying, connecting with and mobilizing voters, as well as the challenge of integrating voter information with the complex internal workings of a national campaign, his team is way ahead of the Republican pack.
Facebook apps and other tools
Alone among the major candidates running for president, the Obama campaign not only has a Facebook page with 23 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42298 million "likes" (roughly 10 times the total of all the Republicans running), it has a Facebook app that is scooping up all kinds of juicy facts about his supporters.
Users of the Obama 2012 - Are You In? app are not only giving the campaign personal data like their name, gender, birthday, current city, religion and political views, they are sharing their list of friends and information those friends share, like their birthday, current city, religion and political views. As Facebook is now offering the geo-targeting of ads down to ZIP code, this kind of fine-grained information is invaluable.
Inside the Obama operation, his staff members are using a powerful social networking tool called NationalField, which enables everyone to share what they are working on. Modeled on Facebook, the tool connects all levels of staff to the information they are gathering as they work on tasks like signing up volunteers, knocking on doors, identifying likely voters and dealing with problems. Managers can set goals for field organizers -- number of calls made, number of doors knocked -- and see, in real time, how people are doing against all kinds of metrics.
In additional to all the hard data, users can share qualitative information: what points or themes worked for them in a one-on-one conversation with voters, for example. "Ups," "Downs" and "Solutions" are color-coded, so people can see where successes are happening or challenges brewing.
And unlike an open social network, where everyone is equal, NationalField runs on a hierarchical social graph: Higher-level staff get a broader view of the state and local work below them.
For a campaign that tapped the volunteer energies of millions of people in 2008 and appears to need all the help it can get in 2012, these kinds of fine-grained technologies could make a key difference. While the Republican field (and bloggers and the press) has been focused on how their candidates are doing with social networking, Obama's campaign operatives are devising a new kind of social intelligence that will help drive campaign resources where they are most needed.
'Data harmonization'
It all sounds like common sense, but actually, connecting and synchronizing the data a campaign collects from its field operation, fundraising operation and Web operation isn't a trivial task.
"The holy grail of data analysis is data harmonization, or master data management," Lundry said. "To have political talking to finance and finance talking to field, and data is flowing back and forth and informing the actions of each other -- it sounds easy, but it's incredibly hard to implement."
Most political campaigns tend to rely on consultants to carry out part or all of these functions, resulting in even greater obstacles to sharing information.
Like Lundry, Republican technology consultant Martin Avila is worried. His firm, Terra Eclipse, built Ron Paul's 2008 Web operation and works closely with the tea party movement. This year, it did some work on Tim Pawlenty's website until that campaign folded.
Avila's flagship project is a conservative social-networking hub called Freedom Connector, which has grown to 150,000 members in a matter of months by giving right-wing activists tools to organize local meetings and discussions. Avila doesn't think any of the Republican presidential campaigns fully understand the power of data today.
"They have to stop seeing a website as a piece of direct mail that people will receive," he said. "They have to see a website as the equivalent of a campaign office in Iowa, one that is open 24/7." And campaigns need to know how to take quick and well-targeted action to respond to every expression of interest they may get online, he argues, because voter interest in politicians is fickle. Simply sending a generic e-mail reply isn't enough.
"If you can make that initial response a phone call from someone in their town or a neighbor, asking them to come to a county fair tomorrow, that's much more powerful."
Power of personal connections
Without good data management, the different legs of a national campaign can trip over each other.
"One hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing quite often in campaigns," Lundry said. "With master data management across a campaign, you can see how often you're talking to a person" and thus not bombard them with untimely or poorly targeted requests.
But, according to Avila, "Not many on the Republican side know how to technically accomplish that." Their approach to the Web, he adds, is still too much shaped by pre-Internet politicking using broadcast advertising. "The ability to connect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH03Rj4O0PU&index=1&list=PL6b-Dl60taJxI8rnHuGaa88Bw7teMYMIn to people on a one-to-one basis, and encourage them to connect with one another, is way more powerful than that."
How powerful? The 2008 Obama campaign offered an early glimpse of the potential of data-driven politics. By the end of the election, it had amassed 13 million supporter e-mail addresses, collected nearly 4 million individual donations and tallied about 2 million registered users on my.BarackObama.com, the campaign's social networking platform. Seventy thousand myBO members had used the site to conduct their own personalized fundraising campaigns.
Since 2008, enthusiasm for Obama has waned, but his online presence hasn't. His base on Facebook has soared nearly six times from the 4 million he had on Election Day, and his following on Twitter now stands at 10 million, dwarfing the Republican field.
So even if Obama isn't drawing millions of people off their sofas to rally to his side on their own in 2012, his team has a huge amount of raw data to work with as they build his re-election machine.
If the 2012 election comes down to a battle of inches, where a few percentage points change in turnout in a few key states making all the difference, we may come to see Obama's investment in predictive modelers and data scientists as the key to victory.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/09/tech/innovation/obama-data-crunching-election/index.html
Google to launch music search service
(WIRED) -- Google plans to launch a music service, Wired.com has confirmed with sources familiar with the situation. Next to nothing is known about the service at this point, rumored to be called "Google Music," "Google Audio," or "One Box," although we have confirmed that it will be announced next Wednesday, and that it will link out to two music services: Lala and iLike.
Sources confirm Google will announce next Wednesday that it's launching a music search service.
Google will not become a music retailer itself, but will offer enhanced music search with a streaming function -- the first of possibly several vertical search offerings.
Searching for an artist or song will apparently bring up a box (thus Google's working title: "One Box") with a streaming link randomly assigned to stream songs from either Lala or iLike, the latter of which was acquired by MySpace in August.
Lala, iLike, "and others" will announce the service next Wednesday at Capital Records Music in Hollywood, California, with musical guests OneRepublic plus members of Linkin Park and Dead by Sunrise.
The RSVP on the invitation links to an e-mail address at secure online event registration company Paragon New Media, which lists Google as a Enterprise Search client. After spotting that, we confirmed with a source close to the situation that Google's upcoming music service will be announced at the event.
Google's music search service, whatever it ends up being called, will include music from all four major labels and, most likely, all of the indie content on iLike and Lala (as one insider put it, it would be harder to remove a subset of songs from those services than to let Google simply index all of it).
iLike currently streams some songs as 30-second samples and others as full-length songs, and sells MP3s for the usual prices. Lala allows registered users to stream complete songs and albums once, for free, after which point they can buy streaming songs 10 cents that can be credited to the purchase of the full download.
At this point, it's not clear how these services will behave when presented through Google's search interface.
Google has yet to respond to our requests for comment. The company is https://www.google.com/work/search/ also building the back-end for the majors' upcoming Vevo music video service, and operates a free download service in China that TechCrunch says will not resemble whatever Google launches here in the U.S. and possibly elsewhere as well.
After this music search product launches next Wednesday, we understand that Google plans to release other search verticals, possibly including a travel booking service.
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Copyright 2009 Wired.com.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/22/google.music/index.html
List of Internet Search Engines
An Internet search engine is an information retrieval system that helps us find information on the World Wide Web. WWW is an unstructured database, which is growing exponentially. An Internet search engine indexes the information over the web to make it retrievable for the users.
List of Internet Search Engines
A9.com: It is a search engine from Amazon.com. Its search results are derived from Live Search and Amazon.com. Apart from having the features that many popular search engines have, A9.com includes results from the books on Amazon.com and has a unique ability of including searches inside books.
Accoona: This is an Internet company that is based in New Jersey whose main product is a search engine. The unique feature of their search engine is its capability of using artificial intelligence for refining its searches. The search engine also offers business profile searches.
Alleba: Designed in 2001 by Andrew dela Serna, a Filipino web designer, Alleba is a Philippine search engine that has helped many of the Philippine websites to gain an exposure on the Internet.
AltaVista: This is the name of a search engine company and also their search engine product. In December 1995, the company launched the search engine, AltaVista that offers excellent search facilities as well as free translation services.
Amatomu: It is a blog search engine that mainly retrieves blogs generated in South Africa.
Ansearch.com.au: This search engine is the main product of Ansearch, an Internet company in Australia. It was previously known by the name, Mysearch.com.au. It focuses on the quality of content, profiles websites and not merely the listing of web pages and adheres to popularity-driven ranking.
Araby.com: It is an Arabic search engine that is owned by Maktoob Inc, an Arab Internet services company.
Ask.com: The original idea behind this search engine was to provide the users with answers to their day-to-day questions. This search engine includes the searches from sites like Ask for Kids, Excite and MyWay.com. Formerly known by the name Ask Jeeves, this search engine is one of the very popular search engines today.
AskMeNow: It is an American public corporation that offers mobile search and mobile advertising facilities to its users. Its efficient mobile search facilities provide relevant answers to user queries posted in natural language.
Baidu: It is one of the popular Chinese search engines offering searches on websites, audio files and images. It is packaged with an encyclopedia and a discussion-based forum. It attracts millions of visitors every year.
Blinkx: Blinkx is an Internet search engine that is used for searching audio and video content. It uses the speech recognition techniques to enable the users to listen to the audio and video media over the Internet.
Bloglines: It is a web-based news aggregator founded by Mark Fletcher, former CEO of ONElist. It was sold to Ask.com in 2005.
BlogScope: It is a search engine meant for searching blogs and has been able to index about 120 million articles till 2007.
Bioinformatic Harvester: It is a bioinformatic metasearch engine that employs page-ranking strategies similar to Google.
Bixee.com: It is a job search engine in India that was started in 2005.
Brainboost: It is a metasearch engine that uses the techniques of machine language and natural language processing and offers answers to questions put in natural language.
BTJunkie: It is a BitTorrent search engine that searches torrent files.
Business.com: It is an Internet search engine and web directory that targets the executive and corporate management audiences. It focuses on the business-to-business market and employs pay-per-click advertising.
CareerBuilder.com: This is the largest online job site in the United States that offers career search options.
ChaCha: It is a mobile answers service that uses human guidance in answering questions. It is based in Indiana and was created by Scott A. Jones, an inventor and entrepreneur and Brad Bostic, the chairman of Bostech Corporation.
ChunkIt!: It is a personal search engine that is available in the form of a downloadable add-on for browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox.
Clusty: It is a metasearch engine that was developed by Vivisimo.
Cuil: This search engines organizes the search results by the content of the pages and displays long entries with images for every result. This search engine, which was developed by some of the former employees of Google, claims to implement a privacy policy wherein the users' search activities are not stored.
DataparkSearch: This search engine organizes searches within a website, in groups of websites or a network. It is a free software written in the C language.
Daylife: It is a news aggregator. In simpler terms, it can be called news-browsing engine that provides access to the articles and images from a wide range of resources.
Dogpile: It is Infospace's flagship metasearch site that serves as a metasearch engine fetching results from a number of search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com and others.
EBI's Search Engine: It searches over the biological databases and aims at providing free bioinformatics services and training.
Egothor: It is an open source search engine that recognizes many of the common file formats and has a high capacity crawler. Being written in Java, it enables cross-platform compatibility.
Eluta.ca: It is a job search engine for the job opportunities in Canada. It was established with an intent to make job announcements that can be searched by every jobseeker in the country.
Entrez: It is a federated search engine that searches over a wide range of databases on topics such as health, genetic inheritance, biomedicine and population study.
Eurekster: This company based in New Zealand builds social search engines, which are called 'swickis'.
Exalead: It provides thumbnail previews of the target pages and facilitates the refinement of search results. It is a French search engine.
Ex.plode.us: It was initially designed as a social network and was re-launched in 2007 as a people search engine.
FindSounds: It is a website offering searches of more than 1,000,000 sounds and caters to a very large number of users around the world.
FlixFlux: It is a torrent search site that can be used to search for films and has the unique features like the marking of sites that are non-relevant to a particular search and providing the users with downloadable trailers of films.
Funnelback: It is an enterprise search engine that is popularly used by the universities and government organizations in Australia.
GenieKnows: It is a privately owned vertical search engine company that operates on online advertising and business-to-business transactions.
Geoportal: It is a popular web mapping service that is available in the French language.
goo: Looked after by NTT, a telecom company in Japan, goo is an Internet search engine and a web portal that indexes websites, which are in the Japanese language.
Google: Owned by Google, Inc, it is the most popular search engine of the present times. It receives several hundred million search queries everyday. Google Code Search is a free beta product from Google that enables the users to search open source code over the Internet. Google Maps is an extremely popular web mapping service provided by Google. It offers a business locater and a route planner for several nations of the world. Google News is a news aggregator that Google provides. Today, Google News is available in 19 languages and the development continues.
Gonzui: It is a source code search engine software that helps in searching source code written in different languages like C, C++, Java, Python and others.
GoPubMed: It is a knowledge-based search engine based on searching biomedical texts and proves helpful for biologists and medical professionals.
Grokker: It is a visual search engine that was developed by Groxis, a company based in San Francisco that deals with technology.
Grub: It is an open source distributed search crawler platform.
Guruji.com: Founded by two graduates from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Guruji.com is an Indian Internet search engine. It provides search results in the context of Indians.
Hakia: Riza Berkan, a nuclear scientist and Pentti Kouri, a venture capitalist from New York, developed this Internet search engine.
Healia: It is a vertical search engine as also an online health community.
Home.co.uk: It operates in the United Kingdom and allows the users to search for properties and analyze house prices.
HotBot: Previously, a search engine that offered free web page hosting for a short while is now a front-end for third party search engines.
HotPads: It is a rental housing and real estate search engine. It offers graphical maps to the users to ease their process of searching for property.
IceRocket: This Internet search engine is specialized in searching blogs.
IFACnet: It is an enterprise search engine that was launched in 2006 with an intent to provide the accountants all around the world an access to articles, practice guidance and management tools. It was created by IFAC, the International Federation of Accountants as a global and multilingual search engine for the accountants' domain of users.
Indeed.com: It is a job search engine that offers vertical job search, thus giving a new approach to the searching for job opportunities.
Info.com: It is one of the leading Internet search engines as also one of the pay-per-click directories.
IsoHunt: Founded in 2003 by Gary Fung, a Canadian, IsoHunt is an extensive BitTorrent index and a very popular BitTorrent search engine.
Ixquick: It is a metasearch engine that has provided more than 120 million searches since 2004. David Bodnick founded it in 1998. An interesting feature of this Internet search engine is that it uses a 'star system' to rank its results, wherein it assigns a star to each result retrieved by it.
Jexamples: It is a source code engine for Java language indexing source codes from several Java open source projects.
Kartoo: It is a metasearch engine with an excellent graphical user interface. It has the unique ability of refining searches through a single mouse click.
Kayak.com: It is a travel search engine website of the USA that helps the users search for hotels, airlines and cruises.
Koders: Koders is a search engine for open source code that indexes numerous open source code repositories.
Krugle: It helps programmers and software developers to search for open source code repositories and facilitates quick sharing of code.
Leit.is: It is an Icelandic Internet search engine that can search terms on specific websites, titles of websites and for websites linking to a particular website. This Internet search engine is available in both Icelandic and English languages.
LexisNexis: It is actually an archive that can be searched for newspapers, magazines and legal documents. It is the largest collection of public records, unpublished opinions and business information. Lawyers, students and journalists form a major sector of the LexisNexis users.
Lexxe: This Internet search engine uses natural language processing to answer user queries. It was established by Dr. Hong Liang Qiao, an Australian technology expert.
Live Search: It allows the viewing of additional search results on the same web page and adjusting the amount of information accompanying each search result. It facilitates the saving of searches. Live Search is the fourth most popular search engine. In 2009, Microsoft redefined 'Live Search' with the launch of Bing, an all new web search engine that came live in June 2009. It gives you a listing of suggested searches as you type in your search queries in it. Bing is a popular search engine today.
Live Search Maps: It is a web mapping service that comes packaged with the application services suite of Microsoft Windows Live.
Live Search QnA: It is a question and answer service operating on lines similar to Google Answers.
Lucene: It is an open source information retrieval library that is widely known for its use as a search engine.
Lycos iQ: It is a human search site and is driven by a community. Functionally it is similar to Google Answers.
Magellan: It is a search engine that was brought out by Excite, a popular Internet portal and a recognized brand on the Internet.
MagPortal.com: It is a search engine and directory that can be used to find online articles.
Mahalo.com: It is a web directory and can be called human search engine as it involves human effort in the form of editors writing search result pages.
Mamma.com: Herman Turnurcuoglu launched Mamma.com in 1996. In 2007, it was named as Copernic Inc. Mamma.com is the first metasearch engine.
MapQuest: It is a map publisher and an online web mapping service.
MetaCrawler: It is a metasearch engine that combines results from most of the top search engines of the world. It also offers searches on images, videos and What is enterprise search? news.
MetaLib: It is a federated search system that can simultaneously search a wide range of resources.
Miner.hu: It is a vertical search engine that searches for blogs and videos. It mainly handles the Hungarian content on the Internet.
Mininova: It is a very large torrent listing site that serves as a directory as well as a search engine for torrent files.
mnoGoSearch: It is an open source search engine with the capacity of searching multilingual websites and its results can be sorted by relevance. It is written in the C language.
Myriad Search: This metasearch engine founded by Aaron Wall combines search results from popular search engines like Yahoo and Google.
Nadji.si: Interseek created this search engine and web portal. It is the most visited website in Slovenia.
Namazu: It is a free full-text search engine software written in Pearl that can work as a web search engine.
Naver: Naver is a search portal popular in South Korea. It was launched in 1999 and was the first portal to have its own search engine. Reportedly, it ranks fifth in the list of the popular search engines in the world.
Newslookup.com: It is a news search engine, which is the first one allowing the users to search for news on the basis of the source region of the news organization. It includes the news from most of the prominent media sites and offers unbiased results to user queries.
NextBio: It is an interactive search engine that enables searches related to bioscience. It helps the researchers retrieve information related to their inventions and discoveries.
Nicado: Nicado Limited developed this search engine that is based on searching old email and old telephone numbers. Registered users are allowed to search the Nicado database by means of a telephone number or an email address.
Northern Light Group: It specializes in research portals, text analysis and enterprise search.
Nutch: It is an open source Internet search engine based on Lucene Java.
Omgili: It is a vertical search engine that bases its results on user-generated content like forums and discussion groups. It crawls over millions of online discussions.
Onkosh: It is a web portal for the Arabic web and facilitates web search, image search, file search as well as the search of blogs and forums. Onkosh also offers directory searches and displays Arabic news.
OpenFTS: It is a free software database search engine that is based on the PostgreSQL database.
Open Text 4: In 1994, the Open Text Corporation started hosting Open Text 4, a search engine, which competes with AltaVista.
PeekYou: Founded by Michael Hussey in April 2006, PeekYou is one of the very popular people search engines that has indexed over 150 million people from the United States and Canada.
Pharos: This is a European multimedia search engine that is being developed by Fast Search and Transfer, a Norwegian company that was founded in 1997.
Picsearch: This is actually a Swedish company that provides image, audio and video search over large websites. It also develops a video-sharing platform.
Pixsta: It is an image search engine designed by Dr. Daniel Heesch. It is not based merely on tags. It analyzes images to identify their attributes like shape, color and texture.
Podscope: It was the first consumer search engine, which created an index of spoken words.
Properazzi.com: It is an online real estate search engine that displays the properties to be rented and those for sale. It crawls the property listings from about 58 countries from Europe.
PubGene: It is a public search engine that provides information related to health and medicine.
Rambler: It is one of the biggest web portals of Russia and a Russian search engine. Apart from web search it also offers email facilities, media and e-commerce applications.
Recruit.net: It is a job search engine that is available in English, Japanese and Chinese versions, making it an international search engine.
Rediff.com: It is a web portal offering news, information, and entertainment and shopping. It appears fifth in the list of popular Indian portals.
Rollyo: It is a Yahoo-powered search engine that was founded by Dave Pell and designed by Angus Durocher and Dan Cederholm. It allows its registered users to create search engines that retrieve results from a set of websites defined by the user.
SAPO: Its full name is Servidor de Apontadores Portugueses and is a brand and subsidiary company of the Portugal Telecom group. It is an Internet service provider that is a search engine since 1995.
Sciencenet: It is an experimental search engine that is based on peer-to-peer technology. It was developed by Michael Christian at Karlsruhe Institute.
Search.ch: Rudolf Raber and Bernhard Seefeld established search.ch as a regional search engine. Today, it is the second most popular search engine in Switzerland. In addition to search options, it also provides the users with phonebook facilities.
Searchmedica: It is a series of medical search engines that is built by doctors for their own community.
SeeqPod: It indexes audio and video media that are playable over the Internet.
Sesam: It is a Scandinavian Internet search engine that is available in Norwegian as well as Swedish versions. In 2007, it was among the largest websites of Norway.
SimplyHired.com: It is one of the major job search engines of the USA.
ShopWiki: Kevin P. Ryan, the former CEO of DoubleClick founded this Internet shopping search engine in 2005. It was launched in 2006.
SideStep: It is a metasearch engine that combines the results from over 200 travel websites. It also searches hotels and airlines worldwide.
Sogou: Launched in 2004, this Chinese search engine can search text, images and maps. It competes with Baidu.
Sohu: It is a China-based search engine company that offers a search engine along with other services like online gaming.
Sphere: It is a blog search engine that organizes bloggers by topic and uses semantic matching to retrieve relevant information.
Sphinx: It is a free software search engine that mainly indexes databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL. It has high searching and indexing speeds and supports distributed searching.
Spock: It is a website search engine that indexes people. 30% of its searches are people-related.
Spokeo: It is a social-network-based people search service. It is capable of searching a group of people at a time. It should not be mistaken as being a social networking site.
SWISH-E: The name stands for Simple Web Indexing System for Humans - Enhanced. It indexes document collections.
Technocrati: This Internet search engine is used for searching blogs. It indexes as many as 112.8 million blogs and about 250 million tagged writings.
TEK: The name is short for 'Time Equals Knowledge'. It is an email-based search engine that requires the user to send a query via an email to their server, which then performs the search on the user query. It was developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
TheFind.com: It is known as http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/14382.sharepoint-2013-sharepoint-and-enterprise-search-survival-guide.aspx a discovery shopping search engine and was launched in 2006. It uses an algorithm based on relevance and popularity and focuses on lifestyle products.
Topix: The Founders of the Open Directory Project created this news aggregator. It also has a community news-editing platform and a forum allowing users to comment on news articles.
Torrentz: It is a metasearch engine that combines the searches from several different torrent sites.
Trexy: It is a metasearch engine that allows the users to trace back their search activities by implementing the concept of searchable search trails.
Turbo10.com: It is an Internet metasearch engine that can search 10 databases simultaneously and accesses information from about 800 online databases.
Uclue: It is a research service that allows the users to post queries in the form of questions. Most of the members that form the Uclue team are former researchers of Google Answers.
Velocity: This is a part of the search suite developed by Vivisimo, an enterprise search software company in Pittsburgh, USA.
Vtap.com: This is a metasearch engine that has been developed by Veveo, Inc, a startup company in Massachusetts.
Walla!: It is an Israeli Internet news portal as also a search engine and an mail service provider. It provides news from Israel and from the rest of the world and is one of the most popular websites in Israel.
Wazap!: It is a vertical search engine that indexes gaming sites. It uses an internal algorithm to rank the indexed pages according to their relevance. Apart from being a search engine, it is also a social networking site and a video game database.
WebCrawler: It is a metasearch engine that combines the search results of some of the very popular Internet search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask.com and others. It was the first search engine that could provide a full text search.
WebMD: It is a medical information service that provides health information and offers medical newsletter and answers to medicine and disease related questions.
Wikia Search: The striking feature of this web search engine is that it is an open source search engine facilitating the users with abilities to rate, modify and enhance the search results.
Wink: Wink is a community-based social search engine that offers the means to search people over different social networks. It is different from other search engines in terms of its algorithms for retrieval of search results. It bases the search results on user inputs.
YaCy: YaCy is a free and distributed search engine that is based on peer-to-peer technology.
Yahoo! Search: Starting as a web directory, it has evolved into a fully formed search interface. Standing in competition with Google, Live Search and Ask.com, Yahoo has emerged as the second most popular search engine. Yahoo! News is an Internet-based news aggregator that offers news of all the sectors including business, entertainment, science, health and popular news. Yahoo! Maps is one of the very popular web mapping portals by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Answers is a community-driven website that allows the users to post questions and find answers to them. Yahoo! HotJobs is an online search engine providing tools and advice for job seekers and employers.
Yandex: It is a Russian search engine and the largest web portal of Russia. In terms of its number of users and the breadth and depth of its search domain, it is the largest Russian search engine. Rambler is in close competition with Yandex.
YouTube: It is a video sharing website that allows uploading and downloading of video files. As such, it attracts millions of users in search of videos and is looked upon as a treasure of videos of the old and the new times. YouTube search facilities return millions of videos and user channels.
YouTorrent: It is a BitTorrent search engine that can combine the searches from different torrent search engines.
Zabasearch.com: It searches for information related to the residents of the United States such as their names, addresses and phone numbers.
Zettair: It is a compact search engine that mainly aims at searching text and indexes HTML collections.
Zoominfo: It is a vertical search engine that can create summaries of people and organizations it happens to crawl. It offers results for people related searches.
This was a list of the Internet search engines which are currently in use.
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/list-of-internet-search-engines.html
How to Do Big Data on a Budget?
To really make the most of big data, most businesses need to invest in some tools or services - software, hardware, maybe even new staff - and there's no doubt that the costs can add up. The good news is that big data doesn't have to cost the Earth and a small budget needn't prevent companies from stepping into the world of big data. Here are some tips and ideas to help keep costs down:
Think about your business objectives
Too many businesses focus on collecting as much data as possible which, in my view, misses the whole point of big data. The objective should be to focus on the data that helps you achieve your strategic objectives. The whole point of big data should be to learn something from your data, take action based on what you've learned and grow your business as a result. Limiting the scope of your data projects so they tightly match your business goals should help keep costs down, as you can focus only on the data you really need.
Make use of the resources you already have
Before you splash out on any new technology, it's worth looking at what you're already using in your business. Some of your existing infrastructure could have a role to play. Go through each of the four key infrastructure elements (data sources, data storage, data analysis and data output) and note what related technology or skills you already have in-house that could prove useful. For example, you may already be collecting useful customer data through your website or customer service department. Or you very likely have a wealth of financial and sales data that could provide insights. Just be aware that you may already have some very useful data that could help you achieve your business objectives, saving you time and money.
Look for savings on software
Open source (free) software, like Hadoop, exists for most of the essential big data tasks. And distributed storage systems are designed to run on cheap, off-the-shelf hardware. The popularity of Hadoop has really opened big data up to the masses - it allows anyone to use cheap off-the-shelf hardware and open source software to analyse data, providing they invest time in learning how. That's the trade-off: it will take some time and technical skill to get free software set up and working the way you want. So unless you have the expertise (or are willing to spend time developing it) it might be worth paying for professional technical help, or 'enterprise' versions of the software. These are generally customised versions of the free packages, designed to be easier to use, or specifically targeted at various industries.
Take advantage of big data as a service (BDaaS)
In the last few years many businesses have sprung up offering cloud-based big data services to help other companies and organisations solve their data dilemmas. This makes big data a possibility for even the smallest company, allowing them to harness external resources and skills very easily. At the moment, BDaaS is a somewhat vague term often used to describe a wide variety of outsourcing of various big data functions to the cloud. This can range from the supply of data, to the supply of analytical tools which interrogate the data (often through a web dashboard or control panel) to carrying out the actual analysis and providing reports. Some BDaaS providers also include consulting and advisory services within their BDaaS packages.
BDaaS removes many of the hurdles associated with implementing a big data strategy and vastly lowers the barrier of entry. When you use BDaaS, all of the techy 'nuts and bolts' are, in theory, out of sight and out of mind, leaving you free to concentrate on business issues. BDaaS providers generally take this on for the customer - they have everything set up and ready to go - and you simply rent the use of their cloud-based storage and analytics engines and pay either for the time you use them or the amount of data crunched. Another great advantage is that BDaaS providers often take on the cost of compliance and data protection - something which can be a real burden for small businesses. When the data is stored on the BDaaS provider's servers, they are (generally) responsible for it.
It's not just new BDaaS companies which are getting in on the act; some of the big corporations like IBM and HP are also offering their own versions of BDaaS. HP have made their big data analytics platform, Haven, available entirely through the cloud. This means that everything from storage to analytics and reporting is handled on HP systems which are leased to the customer via a monthly subscription - entirely eliminating infrastructure costs. And IBM's Analytics for Twitter service provides businesses with access to data and analytics on Twitter's 500 million tweets per day and 280 million monthly active users. The service provides analytical tools and applications for making sense of that messy, unstructured data and has trained 4,000 consultants to help businesses put plans into action to profit from them.
As more and more companies realise the value of big data, more services will emerge to support them. And competition between suppliers should http://www.aiim.org/What-is-Enterprise-Search help keep subscription prices low, which is another advantage for those on a tight budget. I've already seen that BDaaS is making big data projects viable for many businesses that previously would have considered them out of reach - and I think it's something we'll see and hear a lot more about in the near future.
Businesses of all shapes and sizes, and on almost any budget, can still make use of big data. My new book Big Data for Small Business For Dummies is packed with ideas and information on how to get started What is enterprise search? with big data, along with real-life examples from a wide range of sectors.
This Blogger's Books and Other Items from...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernard-marr/how-to-do-big-data-on-a-b_b_9200944.html
Management Concepts - The Four Functions of Management
Before the actual process of planning can begin, one must know what its purpose is, where is all this discussion and debate going to lead?
~ An objective marker, as a desirable and rational outcome of planning should be first outlined.
~ This objective must be precise before it is anything else. Saying that we plan to achieve a certain figure of sales and make a certain amount of profit is nonsensical, when the means to achieve them have not been decided upon.
~ Planning objectives must be realistic, enthusiasm about a particular sector of the economy, or a new launch having performed well in the initial months, can lead to unrealistic and often unachievable goals being set by the managers.
~ How can objectives be realistic? The best way is to https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlR9tI1v-4WSOFr7reAEpGQK4eMbzWSQ8 state them in numbers, with clear language and a frame of reference which all employees can understand. For example, "an objective of producing 20,000 units by March 30, with a reduction in operating expenses by 3% and launching" X" product in 3 (names) markets simultaneously on (date)", is much more to the point than saying "we will increase production, lower costs and make a huge profit selling our new product this year."
~ However, not all goals and their objectives can be set down in quantitative terms, some are subjective and can only be described or formulated according to precedent. An example is the effect of motivational programs on the efficiency of the employees.
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/management-concepts-the-four-functions-of-management.html
Brother Of The Bride Speech Examples
What better way is there to spend your wedding day than to share it with the people you love and care about - family, relatives, and friends alike. During a wedding, the people that the newly wed couple loves the most are gathered together to celebrate the same occasion. This is when speeches are delivered and toasts are made master data management ppt href="http://scn.sap.com/community/mdm">http://scn.sap.com/community/mdm for their everlasting love. On that note, here are brother of the bride speech examples.
For the first part of your speech, you may deliver the following lines: "Ladies and gentlemen - I wish you all a wonderful evening! For those of you who have only just seen this handsome face today, please allow me to introduce myself to you. I am the bride's brother, and I stand here today to welcome you all in this celebration. Also, I would like to thank each and every one of you on behalf of the bride and the groom for sharing your time with us."
As you will notice, the first part of your speech should include a sincere greeting, a warm welcome, and a brief introduction about yourself and how you are related to either the bride or the groom. As for the thank you's, proceed with "Thank you to all of you who have always supported and encouraged this lovely couple here. Thank you to all of you who generously assisted them with the wedding preparations. Thank you to all of you who are gathered here today to help us celebrate this joyous occasion."
"And now to the bride and the groom, this I say to you - congratulations! I am truly happy for you both, seeing those smiles and those looks of extreme joy on your faces. I know that this day that marks the start of a new chapter in your lives can be a bit scary and anxiety-provoking. But this I know - you can make it. I have seen how much you really love each other and I believe that you will be able to surpass any trial that comes your way."
"My wish for you is that your marriage remains a happy and stable one. May it last until death inevitably separates you from each other. May you have plenty of kids to love and take care of, and may you have a great future with a family of your own."
These, now, are brother of the bride speech examples.
http://bride.ezinemark.com/brother-of-the-bride-speech-examples-18d4ec13b1e.html
Who created bitcoin? The long search may not be over
Click photo to enlarge
Ken Lo, CEO of ANXBTC Bitcoin Exchange points to the screen of his Bitcoin ATM during a demonstration in Hong Kong Thursday, March 13, 2014. The Bitcoin Exchange unveils the first Hong Kong Bitcoin ATM which is accessible to public. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? For many in the tech world, the identity of bitcoin's elusive creator has been a long-running parlor game. And the speculation might not be over.
Australian entrepreneur Craig Steven Wright, who announced Monday that he founded the digital currency , convinced at least one longtime bitcoin contributor that he's the real deal. He managed that feat via a technical demonstration involving Nakamoto's secret bitcoin keys. But Wright's public documentation, which he posted online Monday , underwhelmed others and left the question of Nakamoto's true identity far from settled.
"There's no way you can conclusively prove that you are the creator of bitcoin," said Jerry Brito, executive director of Coin Center, a Washington, D.C.-based crypto-currency think tank, who is skeptical of Wright's claims.
Tracking a pseudonymous cryptographic genius would be challenging under the best circumstances. And here we're talking someone who invented a way for people to send money around the world anonymously, without banks or national currencies. Someone who apparently disappeared five years ago for unknown reasons.
None of that has stopped people from trying. Journalists, researchers and amateur detectives have scoured Nakamoto's emails and online posts, plus the original bitcoin code, for unusual phrases, cultural references and other potential clues to their author.
One of the most celebrated candidates to his own dismay was an unassuming Japanese-American engineer who found himself in the cross-hairs of Newsweek magazine in 2014.
A Newsweek cover story fingered Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, a retired resident of suburban Los Angeles County, after citing circumstantial clues and a vague comment that Nakamoto made when confronted briefly on his front doorstep. The article sparked a media frenzy and a car chase with reporters that ended at the Los Angeles offices of The Associated Press where Dorian Nakamoto emphatically denied any involvement with bitcoin.
An earlier contender named in a 2011 New Yorker magazine piece was Michael Clear, then a graduate student in cryptography at Trinity College in Dublin. The New Yorker cited some of Nakamoto's writings, which used British slang such as "maths" for mathematics and "flat" for an apartment. It also noted that Clear had worked on currency-trading software for an Irish bank and co-authored a paper on "peer-to-peer" technology similar to that used in bitcoin.
At first, according to the New Yorker, Clear was evasive when asked at a cryptography conference if he had created bitcoin. But he later denied it repeatedly. He also suggested another candidate to the New Yorker reporter, naming Finnish researcher Vili Lehdonvirta, who studied virtual currencies and created video games.
"I would love to say that I'm Satoshi, because bitcoin is very clever," Lehdonvirta told the New Yorker, after laughing for several seconds. "But it's not me."
Speculation has also focused on a Hungarian-American computer scientist named Nick Szabo, who was called a likely candidate by linguistic experts who conducted their own "reverse textual analysis" essentially, looking for distinctive phrases or word patterns on an early white paper by the bitcoin creator.
The only problem? Szabo, who has worked on other digital currencies, has repeatedly denied creating bitcoin.
Other scientists' names have surfaced over the years; some theories pose the notion of two or three working together. But denials have usually followed each new mention.
At one point, two Israeli mathematicians floated, and later retracted, the notion that bitcoin was created by the founder of Silk Road, an online bazaar known for trade in various illicit goods.
Conspiracy theorists have even speculated it could have been the work of some shadowy government agency no one's saying which government to undermine established currencies or somehow monitor online transactions. (That theory depends on the unproved notion that the creator retained the ability to decode bitcoin's encryption.)
Vice magazine once suggested Nakamoto might be Gavin Andresen, an American software expert and early bitcoin enthusiast who has helped push bitcoin forward in Nakamoto's absence. Andresen has denied it and on Monday declared that he believes Wright is Nakamoto.
But other cryptocurrency enthusiasts aren't convinced it's Wright. The truth, they say, is still out there.
You can follow Brandon Bailey at https://Twitter.com/BrandonBailey or find his reporting at http://www.bigstory.ap.org/journalist/brandon-bailey
http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/ci_29841489/who-created-bitcoin-long-search-may-not-be
World's Most-Used Passwords Are Still Awful, According To 2015 Data
You already know this: passwords are the first line of defense against cyber criminals, who are only getting smarter and more devious with each passing day.
So why do people still insist on using easy-to-crack passwords? According to SplashDatas annual 2015 Worst Passwords list, it seems some folks just never learn.
The list, which ranks the most commonly used passwords by Internet users, reveals just how terrible many peoples password choices are.
123456 and password once again reign supreme as the most commonly used passwords, as they have since SplashDatas first list in 2011, demonstrating how peoples choices for passwords remain consistently risky, wrote the password management applications company on its website.
Other awful passwords in the top 25 include qwerty, welcome, letmein and monkey; starwars, princess and solo also made this years list:
123456password12345678qwerty12345123456789football12341234567baseballwelcome1234567890abc1231111111qaz2wsxdragonmastermonkeyletmeinloginprincessqwertyuiopsolopassw0rdstarwars
The list, compiled from more than 2 million leaked master data management sap passwords last year, indicates that many people continue to put themselves at risk for hacking and identity theft, SplashData wrote.
The company said it hopes its list will be a wake-up call for people to start using more secure passwords.
We hope that with more publicity about how risky it is to use weak passwords, more people will take steps to strengthen their passwords and, most importantly, use different passwords for different websites, said SplashData CEO Morgan Slain in a statement.
Most experts agree that strong passwords are random (no obvious words and combinations); long (more than 12 characters); and use a mix of numbers, letters and symbols. Also be sure to change your passwords periodically.
Using random password generators and password managers can also be useful. Click here to find out more about creating better passwords.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/most-common-passwords-2015_us_569f368ce4b0a7026bf99e0e
What is making enterprise innovation possible
By Aaron Levie, contributor
FORTUNE Grabbing market share through muscle, not innovation, has served Microsoft and other leading enterprise behemoths well: they play in a $250 billion-plus industry that asymmetrically favors a few vendors. But not surprisingly, this model has not been particularly effective in producing technology breakthroughs rather, it has stifled innovation within incumbents organizations, as well as the broader industry by making the barrier to entry impossibly high. And it has certainly hasnt served customers well. For decades, theyve dealt with complicated integrations, infrastructure thats too hard to maintain, overwhelmingly expensive technology, and services and support that overpower the price of the original system by a factor of five to ten.
Fortunately for customers and emerging vendors, this reign of the enterprise oligarchy is coming to an end. In 1995, a pre-comeback Steve Jobs claimed that the Internet was exciting because Microsoft MSFT doesnt own it and I dont think they can. While this level of democratization came to consumer landscape first with Google GOOG, Facebook, Amazon AMZN, and other leaders emerging in the past decade because of the webs openness its now made its way into the enterprise.
The democratic, un-ownable nature of the Internet is playing out in full force as organizations transition to the cloud, and the legacy players very strengths are fast becoming their weaknesses. The needs of corporations have finally outstripped the power and capabilities of most of the technology they have, and traditional vendors have been too slow to respond. Were moving into a new world, one where markets arent won by customer lock-in, but rather through speed, relentless innovation, and above all, openness.
Mo Money, Mo Problems
Fifteen years ago, Notorious B.I.G. summed up the technology problems of todays enterprises quite succinctly. Using Biggies wisdom as a guide, the more budget you have, and the longer you let projects run on, the more likely you are to face utter failure more problems in the future. This has long been the unfair and un-virtuous cycle of the software industry.
For years, organizations large and small have been promised that the sum of their systems would produce some magical rainbow of enterprise value. But instead of a pot of gold at the other end, nearly every corporation has found itself with a stack of technology that must be wrangled together, customized, and painstakingly integrated. Take, for instance, the process of putting together a traditional enterprise collaboration experience: the IT department is charged with connecting storage and web servers, software from Microsoft, and a search engine appliance, all of which must then be placed behind a network from yet another vendor. Then, when any of these pieces require an upgrade, the whole stack falls apart the customizations become obsolete or precludes the refresh altogether. This prevents vendors from moving or innovating too quickly, and it means that IT organizations are so bogged down by maintaining and integrating existing systems, that experimenting with new technologies only gets a fraction of their time and energy.
Larger enterprises have long been told that they could spend their way to success, but Biggies lyrics continue to ring true, as this will just produce more problems. And smaller organizations have always found the proposition too costly to even chase the rainbow.
Traditional vendors solution to this complexity, of course, is to offer a consolidated technology stack. Oracle is scooping up hardware and software companies to build more vertically integrated technology offering. Microsoft bundles its entire suite of collaboration, communication and customer relationship services together, and makes these applications first-class citizens on Windows Mobile (which, with 2% market share, isnt all that helpful for customers). And while consolidation may mean fewer vendors for IT departments to manage, the customer lock-in and competitive lock-out of these offerings ensure innovation starvation for the businesses they serve.
So should enterprises stop pursuing that elusive rainbow altogether, or can we do things differently?
Why New Entrants Can Now Compete
Microsoft, Oracle ORCL and others won in a world defined by barriers: limited and tightly controlled distribution channels, users blocked from choosing their own tools, and technology platforms so complex they required a swat team of consultants. With the cloud, these barriers have fast eroded. On nearly every dimension that can be disrupted speed, cost, performance, design, delivery and openness new technologies are emerging at an ever-increasing rate to capitalize on the newly democratic nature of the enterprise software landscape.
The viral nature of these new tools completely turns the competitive dynamics of the enterprise software market on its head. Finally, upstarts can compete around the giants instead of taking them head-on, infiltrating organizations through individuals and teams and then expanding, or fulfilling a narrow use case at first and then chipping away at a larger vendors poorly-executed sweet spot. Not surprisingly, after years of stagnation in enterprise software, new technologies are coming to market in droves. Software investments are at a 10-year high, beating out growth in all other investment categories, and Accel just announced a $100M fund to invest exclusively in big data startups. SAP purchased SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion, making it the second largest software-as-a-service company of all time, just behind Salesforce. The enterprise floodgates have opened.
Further amplifying this trend, the enterprise pie is growing. Some estimates suggest there are nearly 500 million knowledge workers worldwide, creating a considerably large market for new tools. With billions of connected devices, there are entirely new challenges that need be addressed by todays software. And its not just device demographics that have evolved its the people, too. 76 million Millennials effectively raised on the internet have already entered the workforce, or will soon, fundamentally changing the DNA of the archetypal office employee. Every new cycle of worker brings a new set of expectations into the workplace, and those belonging to the Napster and Facebook generation will find the complexity of todays legacy systems unbearably jarring.
Openness Will Drive Innovation
Most large vendors agree that the cloud is the future, but they havent truly capitalized on its most disruptive component: openness. The true power of the cloud isnt that it helps brings services to market faster, more cheaply (although those are huge drivers of adoption). Rather, its the underlying open nature of the cloud that will really shake up the enterprise software landscape. Instead of an entire technology stack delivered by a single vendor, requiring homogeny of solutions, cloud services can offer enterprises the ability to solve problems in a way thats optimal for their business. And developers no longer have to stay within the confines of Microsofts innovation-stifling playground.
Want Asana or Do.com for tasks; Workday or Netsuite for ERP; Heroku or CloudFoundry for your app platform; or GoodData, Domo or Tidemark for business intelligence? Businesses can now make these calls, as opposed to relying on a single point of failure, and vendor, for all of their IT value. And this is advantageous, not unwieldy, because next generation applications connect to one another through open APIs and services like Okta or Snaplogic, enabling a completely new kind of enterprise value proposition. Yammer recently made an announcement that it would publish activity events from leading software apps into its feed, allowing for activity in one application say your expense report from Expensify or customer request from Zendesk to propagate instantly to the appropriate people in your enterprise social network. Jive and Chatter similarly allowed for enterprises to connect its apps as well this year.
And its not just about creating seamless integrations between apps. Its also about creating powerful, customized experiences built on top of them. Once the barrier to introducing new applications into an organization drops to zero, and infrastructure is fully elastic and abstracted, enterprises can focus on building the most strategic technology for their companies. IT departments can spend their time on building value in the connections between applications, or customized solutions for specific use cases or verticals, rather than the maintenance of infrastructure and systems. At Box, we recently spoke with a major airline that is building applications to help them deliver critical data to pilots using iPads. This is coming from the airline industry. One of the worlds largest engineering firms is doing the same in Healthcare. This customization, mobilization, and social-ization of technology is happening in every industry, from finance to construction.
Were entering the most innovative period the enterprise has ever seen. Closed systems, tightly controlled distribution channels and customer lock-in are no longer the path to market dominance for vendors, and theyre certainly not the path to customer success. Instead, markets will be won by companies who deliver amazing user experiences, innovate constantly, and play nicely with other applications to deliver unprecedented value for businesses.
Aaron Levie is the CEO and co-founder ofBox.net.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/12/14/what-is-making-enterprise-innovation-possible/
what other search engines are there besides yahoo and google?
General:
Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves)
Baidu (Chinese,Japanese)
Bing (formerly MSN Search and Live Search)
Cuil
Duck Duck Go
Kosmix
Sogou (Chinese)
Yodao (Chinese)
Yahoo! Search
Yandex (Russian)
Yebol
Geographical limited scope:
Accoona, China/US
Alleba, Philippines
Ansearch, Australia/US/UK/NZ
Daum, Korea
Goo, Japan
Guruji.com, India
Leit.is, Iceland
Maktoob, Arab World
Onkosh, Arab World
Miner.hu, Hungary
Najdi.si, Slovenia
Naver, Korea
Rambler, Russia
Rediff, India
SAPO, Portugal/Angola/Cabo Verde/Mozambique
Search.ch, Switzerland
Sesam, Norway, Sweden
Seznam, Czech Republic
Walla!, Israel
Yandex, Russia
ZipLocal, Canada/US
Accountancy:
IFACnet
Business:
Business.com
GlobalSpec
Nexis (Lexis Nexis)
Thomasnet (United States)
GenieKnows (United States and Canada)
Education:
GetEducated.com (Online degree programs from the US)
Enterprise
See also: Enterprise search
AskMeNow: S3 - Semantic Search Solution
Concept Searching Limited: concept search products
Dieselpoint: Search & Navigation
dtSearch: dtSearch Engine(SDK), dtSearch Web
Endeca: Information Access Platform
Exalead: exalead one:enterprise
Expert System S.p.A.: Cogito
Fast Search & Transfer: Enterprise Search Platform (ESP), RetrievalWare (formerly Convera)
Funnelback: Funnelback Search
IBM: OmniFind Enterprise Edition
ISYS Search Software: ISYS:web, ISYS:sdk
Jumper 2.0: Universal search powered by Enterprise bookmarking
Microsoft: SharePoint Search Services
Northern Light
Open Text: Hummingbird Search Server, Livelink Search
Oracle Corporation: Secure Enterprise Search 10g
SAP: TREX
TeraText: TeraText Suite
Vivisimo: Vivisimo Clustering Engine
X1 Technologies : X1 Enterprise Search
ZyLAB Technologies: ZyIMAGE Information Access Platform
Mobile/Handheld:
Taptu: taptu mobile/social search
JobBixee.com (India)
CareerBuilder.com (USA)
Craigslist (by city)
Dice.com (USA)
Eluta.ca (Canada)
Hotjobs.com (USA)
Incruit (Korea)
Indeed.com (USA)
LinkUp.com (USA)
Monster.com (USA), (India)
SimplyHired.com (USA)
Naukri.com (India)
Legal:
WestLaw
Lexis (Lexis Nexis)
Quicklaw
Manupatra
Medical:
Bioinformatic Harvester
Entrez (includes Pubmed)
EB-eye EMBL-EBI's Search engine
GenieKnows
GoPubMed (knowledge-based: GO - GeneOntology and MeSH - Medical Subject Headings)
Healia
Searchmedica
WebMD
PubGene
Nextbio (Life Science Search Engine)
VADLO (Life Sciences Search Engine)
News:
Google News
Daylife
MagPortal
Newslookup
Nexis (Lexis Nexis)
Topix.net
Yahoo! News
People:
PeekYou
Ex.plode.us
InfoSpace
Spock
Spokeo
Wink
Zabasearch.com
ZoomInfo
Real property:
Fizber.com
Home.co.uk
HotPads.com
Rightmove
Zillow.com
Television:
TV Genius
Video Games:
Wazap (Japan)
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100403112007AAshMIJ
Types of Database Management Systems and their Benefits
A database organizes related data such that it can be accessed by users. A DBMS is designed to manage this data, which includes managing user access rights for viewing, adding, deleting, and modifying records. IBM's Information Management System (IMS) was one of the first database management systems to be used.
A database handles user requests and maintains data integrity. It means that the data is protected, though always open for access.
Based on the number of users supported, database management systems can be classified as single-user and multi-user. A single-user database supports only one user at a time, which means that other users have to wait till the first one has finished accessing it. A multi-user database, as master data management ppt its name implies, lets multiple users access the data simultaneously, but with limited rights given to each user.
Database systems can also be classified as centralized and distributed. A centralized database system consists of a CPU which handles multiple storage devices together. While the data is accessed from multiple sites, the database is maintained at a central location. A distributed database has the data distributed over multiple computers or networks. The database may or may not be at a central location. Security is achieved by maintaining a master database with copies of the data on other locations. The data is periodically synchronized so that changes made on one location are reflected on the others.
This Buzzle article tells you about the different types of database management systems and their benefits.
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/types-of-database-management-systems-and-their-benefits.html
Google Slams Autonomy Over Search Claims
Google is firing back at enterprise search vendor Autonomy, saying the company recently distributed a white paper that contains "significant inaccuracies" about Google's Search Appliance.
The white paper, according to Google, states that Search Appliance "does not index all your critical content."
"On the contrary, the Google Search Appliance was designed to search all critical content in the enterprise, including file shares, intranets, databases, and real-time business data - all from one simple search box," wrote Nitin Mangtani, lead product manager, enterprise search, on an official blog. Mangtani added that Google has also supplied connectors to products like SharePoint and Documentum, and an open-source content connector framework.
The white paper does not appear to be available on Autonomy's Web site, nor is it provided through Google's blog post. Autonomy could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.
Autonomy's document also claimed Search Appliance lacks enterprise-level security, according to Mangtani. It in fact supports a number of security access control systems and also allows security settings at the document level, he said. The latter "ensures that end-users see only those documents in the results list to which they have access," according to Mangtani.
In addition, the white paper noted that the search appliance's "capabilities are still being honed," Mangtani wrote.
"This is certainly true: We are constantly working to improve the appliance, to make sure it offers ever increasing relevancy out of the box," he acknowledged.
However, he added, "The fact is that we employ thousands of engineers focused on search relevancy and quality. In the last three months alone, seven new Google Enterprise Labs experiments have been launched (by Google, not third parties as Autonomy claimed) to enhance the enterprise search experience."
Meanwhile, a report released in December by the analyst firm CMS Watch also said the company's technology has certain shortcomings, among them a lack of "advanced tuning controls found in most other enterprise search products."
This is the second time Google's search team has responded to an Autonomy white paper, and overall the exchange is reflective of the tightening market for enterprise search.
Microsoft's bid this month to buy Fast Search and Transfer (FAST), a key competitor of Autonomy, was seen by some observers as a validation of the market.
Autonomy, based in England and San Francisco, is one of the larger independent players in enterprise search. Fourth-quarter revenue released this week stood at $115 million, up 57 percent over the same period in 2006, it said. Adjusted net profits in the fourth quarter were $28.5 million, up from $18.4 million in 2006.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/PCWorld/story?id=4222222
"Star Trek - The Animated Series" - review: Good scripts, limited animation
"Star Trek" (1973-1975)
Photo by Martin McNeil/Getty Images
Also known as: "Star Trek: The Animated Series"
Directed by: Hal Sutherland, Bill Reed
Written by: Margaret Armen, David Gerrold, Walter Koenig, and others
Bates: There is no Vulcan named Spock serving with the Star Fleet in any capacity.
Mr. Spock: [after further discussion] What of Sarek's family: his wife and son?
Bates: [as Amanda's picture appears] Amanda, wife of Sarek. Born on Earth as Amanda Grayson. The couple separated after the death of their son. The wife was killed in a shuttle accident at Lunaport on her way home to Earth. Ambassador Sarek has not remarried.
Mr. Spock: My mother. The son... what was his name and age when he died?
Bates: Spock, age seven.
Although the "Star Trek Renaissance" that heralded the iconic sci-fi series' rebirth is said to have started with 1979's "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," it actually began six years earlier.
On Sept. 8, 1973, NBC premiered Beyond the Farthest Star, the first episode of Filmations "Star Trek."
Though it only ran for two seasons, this Emmy-winning Saturday-morning show was the first spin-off of Gene Roddenberrys classic live action TV series, which aired on NBC from 1966 to 1969.
Produced by Filmations Norm Prescott and Lou Scheimer, the series is considered by many "Star Trek" fans to be the lost fourth season of "Star Trek: The Original Series."
Most of the cast from the original live-action show provided their voice talents, and "Star Trek" insiders such as Roddenberry, Matt Jeffries, D.C. Fontana, David Gerrold, and Marc Daniels were directly involved behind the scenes as consultants, writers or producers.
The show almost failed to launch when Prescott and Scheimer first pitched it to NBC and Roddenberry. Their concept was to pair each of the main characters with a preteen Starfleet Academy cadet. Mr. Spock, for instance, would be the mentor of a young Vulcan boy.
Paramount liked the idea and tried to convince Roddenberry to sell off his rights as the series creator. However, Roddenberry didnt go along with the cadets in space idea and refused Paramounts offers. Filmation backed off and adapted "Star Trek" in a way which was consistent with the live action show.
Initially, Filmation and Paramount only wanted to hire William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, and James Doohan to provide voices for the animated series. Hiring the supporting cast of Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Majel Barrett, and Walter Koenig was too expensive for the studio. Nimoy thought this was unfair and lobbied hard to add "Star Treks" other actors.
Knowing the show wouldnt work well if Nimoy left, Filmation hired Nichols, Takei, and Barrett. Walter Koenig couldnt be hired due to the series' limited budget. However, Koenig, who had played Ens. Pavel Chekov on the live action show, wrote the first season episode The Infinite Vulcan.
Though Filmation used its trademark limited animation techniques, it treated "Star Trek" as a serious continuation of "Star Trek: The Original Series." It used a Writers Guide based closely on the 1966-1969 live action series bible. The producers also hired many writers who had contributed scripts during The Original Series three-season run. Not only did this make "The Animated Series" consistent with its classic forerunner, but it also allowed fans to see follow-ups to The Trouble With Tribbles, Shore Leave, and I. Mudd.
Animation also freed Roddenberry and his creative staff from the limitations of 1960s-era live action TV production. "Star Treks" cartoon version was the first to add a second turbolift exit to the Main Bridge, which Roddenberry had wanted to show on The Original Series but couldnt afford to do.
The Animated Series also featured the franchises first holodeck in Season Twos The Practical Joker. It was called the Rec Deck and only shown once, but it inspired the producers of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" when they designed the Enterprise-D in the mid-1980s.
The Animated Series format gave Trekkers a more expansive view of Roddenberrys established universe beyond the confines of the Enterprise. Writers were now able to create truly strange new worlds, life forms, and civilizations.
For instance, in Season Ones The Eye of the Beholder, the Enterprises search for a missing science team on Lactra VII places Kirk, Spock, and McCoy in an unusual predicament. Theyre captured by the Lactrans, a species of 20-foot-long slugs with incredibly high levels of intelligence levels that are far higher than that of humans or Vulcans.
In the episodes text commentary, Star Trek Encyclopedia authors Mike and Denise Okuda explain that Filmations super-smart slugs would have been impossible to depict in the live action "Star Trek: The Original Series."
The technology of rendering the Lactrans with puppetry or animation effects either didnt exist or would have been too expensive. Even the TV and feature film spinoffs would have been hard-pressed to render a few of the aliens seen in The Eye of the Beholder, not to mention their decidedly alien city.
.
"Star Trek: The Animated Series" was broadcast on NBC for two seasons from 1973 to 1975. Filmation only produced 22 episodes (16, directed by Hal Sutherland, for Season One and six, directed by Bill Reed, for Season Two), but NBC rotated first-run and rerun episodes to fill the Saturday morning schedule during the series run.
During the shows brief existence, it earned positive reviews from TV critics. In 1975, The Animated Series won an Emmy for Outstanding Childrens Series, the first show in the franchise to be so honored. .
My Take: "Star Trek" (it was renamed "Star Trek: The Animated Series" in the 1990s to differentiate from other TV shows in the franchise) had its original run when I was between 10 and 12 years old.
I wasnt a "Star Trek" fan at the time, so if I watched it then it didnt impress me much. I did watch it sporadically when the Sci Fi Channel aired it on reruns back in the 1990s and liked it a little more because I liked the other TV shows and the feature films.
"Star Trek: The Animated Series" has a lot going for it, especially in the quality of its writing.
Before agreeing to sign on as the shows executive consultant, "Star Trek" creator Roddenberry insisted that Filmation's version would feature stories that would have been fit for "Star Trek: The Original Series." Roddenberry, Dorothy (D.C.) Fontana, David Gerrold, Margaret Armen, and other writers from The Original Series contributed teleplays that were captivating and thought-provoking as any of the live action episodes.
David Gerrold, the writer of the classic episode The Trouble With Tribbles, contributed two scripts for The Animated Series, More Tribbles, More Troubles and Bem. More Tribbles, More Troubles was based on a script Gerrold had pitched to Star Trek: The Original Series producer Fred Freiberger for that shows third season.
Freiberger rejected it because he didnt like The Trouble With Tribbles, but Gerrold was able to tweak his teleplay for The Animated Series. Though the episode has a shorter running time than its 1967 live action predecessor, it features the voice talent of The Trouble With Tribbles memorable guest star Stanley Adams (Cyrano Jones).
Bem, Gerrolds contribution to the shows abbreviated second season, is noteworthy because it revealed that Captain Kirks middle name is Tiberius. Though many Star Trek novelists picked up on this and incorporated it into their works, this fact did not become canon until "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Countrys" release in 1991.
Canon Issues: There is, unfortunately, a question as to whether or not "Star Trek: The Animated Series" is part of the "Star Trek" franchise.
In 1973, "Star Treks" Saturday morning show was canon Though Gene Roddenberry wasnt the show-runner, he did serve as the series executive consultant. He oversaw many aspects of the show, especially the scripts and stories. Roddenberry also asked that D.C. Fontana be hired as associate producer to ensure continuity between "The Original Series" and its animated spinoff. Some of the scripts were follow-up stories to episodes from the live action "Star Trek," and major guest stars, including Mark Lenard and Roger C. Carmel, reprised their original roles.
Furthermore, the show featured the voices of most of "Star Treks" original cast, including William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, George Takei. James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, and Majel Barrett. (Doohan, Nichols, and Barrett not only performed as Scotty, Uhura, and Nurse Chapel, but they also voiced other characters. Jimmy Doohan reportedly played over 50 roles in The Animated Series.)
Later, though, Roddenberry asked Paramount to consider "Star Trek: The Animated Series'"to be non-canon. He admitted that he had agreed to partner with Filmation because he needed the money. Roddenberry also did not anticipate "Star Treks "rebirth as a franchise after the 1979 release of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture."
When Paramount and Roddenberry renegotiated their licensing agreements in 1990, the series creator declared that only a few story points from The Animated Series were official Trek lore. Plot points from D.C. Fontanas Yesteryear, for instance, are present in Vulcan-episodes of various spinoffs. More recently, 2009s "Star Trek" reboot reused a scene from Yesteryear in which young Spock faces off against a group of Vulcan bullies.
Yesteryear: The best episode in "The Animated Series" is D.C. Fontanas Yesteryear, a story which blends elements from classic episodes such as The City on the Edge of Forever and Journey to Babel.
In Yesteryear, something goes wrong when a landing party uses the Guardian of Forever to study Federation history. Spock returns with the others to the 23rd Century, but only Capt. Kirk recognizes him. Aboard the Enterprise, an Andorian commander is Kirks first officer, and no Vulcan named Spock has served in Starfleet. Eventually, the Enterprise crews investigation reveals that Ambassador Sarek did have a son named Spock who had died as a child. Spock must return to Vulcans past and repair the damaged timeline.
Yesteryear is a story which works on many levels. Not only is it a classic science fiction story that involves time travel, but its a touching and balanced family drama. Yesteryear also gave 1970s era viewers their first look at a Vulcan city, Spocks difficult childhood and his pet sehlat, I-Chaya.
Limited Animation: Though "Star Trek: The Animated Series" was produced by using Filmations relatively inexpensive limited animation technique, it is just as good as any of the live action "Star Trek" series and feature films. The animation isnt the best: the show relies on such cheats as the use of long shots of the background elements and reuse of stock character footage.
One trick Filmation uses often in "Star Trek" is to show exterior shots of the Enterprise with voice-overs to tell part of a story without showing the characters.
There are even some really strange color issues, such as the Klingons wearing uniforms partly colored pink. (Hal Sutherland, the series principal director, was color blind and couldnt tell the difference between light gray and pink.)
Nevertheless, Roddenberrys insistence that "Star Trek: The Animated Series" retain the same creative level as the 1966-1969 classic paid off. The quality of the writing and voice acting compensated for the shows low-cost animation, and many TV critics of the time gave it positive reviews.
In a 1973 review of the series, the Los Angeles Times reviewer said:
NBCs new animated Star Trek is as out of place in the Saturday morning kiddie ghetto as a Mercedes in a soapbox derby.
Dont be put off by the fact that its now a cartoon.It is fascinating fare, written, produced and executed with all the imaginative skill, the intellectual flare and the literary level that made Gene Roddenberrys famous old science fiction epic the most avidly followed program in TV history, particularly in high IQ circles.
The Box Set: "Star Trek: The Animated Series" was released as a four-DVD box set in 2006 by CBS DVD, a year before the release of the remastered edition of "Star Trek: The Original Series Season One" box set. Though the outer clamshell has a different color scheme and the multi-disc jewel case is smaller than the Remastered Editions DVD holder, there is a resemblance in the packaging design and functionality.
Each of the four DVDs features label art that depicts a senior officer of the Starship Enterprise (Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and Bones McCoy). The DVDs hold an average of five episodes each. At least one episode in each DVD comes with a cool extra feature. David Gerrold provides audio commentaries for two episodes he wrote. Additionally, Star Trek Encyclopedia authors Mike and Denise Okuda give viewers trivia and production details about the show in text commentary tracks in selected episodes.
Disc 4 also contains Drawn to the Final Frontier: The Making of Star Trek: The Animated Series, a short documentary featuring interviews with some of the shows production staff (but none of the cast members). Other extras on this disc include a brief text-only rundown of the shows history and a series of canon-related clips titled Whats the Star Trek Connection?
http://www.examiner.com/review/star-trek-the-animated-series-review-good-scripts-limited-animation
DAMA Georgia Chapter brings MDM to State Farm
DAMA Georgia, the local premiere organization for data management professionals, held its February Chapter meeting at State Farm, 400 Perimeter Center Terrace NW in Dunwoody, Georgia. The meeting was attended by thirty plus local data management professionals. Incidentally, data management folks get pretty excited about things like Master Data Management (MDM) and Data Governance (DG). Some of the best minds in the industry were present to expound on MDM and its relationship to DG, as well as trends and principles in the industry. This made for a full afternoon of presentations, Q&A, delicious food and endless discussion.
Francine Adams
Applying Knowledge Management Principles to Master Data Standards Repository Design
Richard King, Managing Partner of DataIntent, presented key knowledge concepts poised from the perspectives of academia, industrial research and practical experience. King referenced various sources for the MDM standard, such as, the DAMA DMBOK and industry leaders, Peter Aiken,PhD Larry English, and various SAP authors. Outside of the agnostic world of DAMA International, Richard King is on the leading edge of Orchestrating Knowledge Management for SAP Master Data with the product RulesBase, a Knowledge Management product which enables Data Governance. The primary focus for DataIntent is building and populating systems to manage standards and controls for large, global enterprises.
Whats New in MDM
Conrad Chung, Director of Product Marketing for Orchestra Networks, piloted the event on to a sprightly journey through the changing trends in the MDM market. He addressed market sizing, analysts views, and the MDM purchase process. In his world, Chung directs marketing for MDMs EBX5 a multi-domain, master data management software that allows to model, manage, govern and integrate any domain of master and reference data.
Mastering Master Data
Mary Levins, PMP, Principal and DG Leader of Sierra Creek Consulting along with Bill Wise, teamed up on a smoothly orchestrated delivery of MDM. The two seasoned, credentialed industry leaders were a perfect pair to compliment one anothers expertise in MDM. Mary Levins experience traverses MDM, DG, Data Quality, Metadata Management, Data Integration, Change Management and Business Process Re-engineering. Her industries include, but are not limited to healthcare, manufacturing finance and energy.
Bill Wise, Enterprise Data Architect at NCR brought his 40 years of experience in banking, real estate, electrical and telephone utilities, training, consulting, software development and manufacturing to elicit admiration from the engaged audience. Wise holds multiple Masters degrees and leads the Customer Master Data Management at NCR.
The networking and camaraderie continued long after the meeting closed while the sparkled master data management strategy and enthusiastic conversation continued; anticipating future goals and future guests.
About DAMA Georgia
DAMA Georgia is the local chapter of DAMA International. It is the premiere organization for data management professionals in Atlanta, and the surrounding communities.
DAMA International is a not-for-profit, vendor-independent, professional organization dedicated to advancing the concepts and practices of enterprise information and data resource management (IRM/DRM) to promote the understanding, development and practice of managing information and data as a key enterprise asset (www.dama.org)
DAMA Georgias distinguished Executive Board hosted the event, courtesy of sponsors, State Farm and Orchestra Networks. The Board members are Peter Vennel PMP, SCEA, CDMP, CBIP- President, Charles Gilbreath-VP Finance, Nidhi Sinha- VP Communications, Eddie Sayer VP Programs, Erik Lauffer-VP OnLine Services, Omar Kitosi-VP Logistics, Damu Venkatesan-VP Marketing, Santosh Kudva-VP Member Services, Mary Levins-VP Social Media, and Francine Adams VP Education.
http://www.examiner.com/article/dama-georgia-chapter-brings-mdm-to-state-farm
Maybe the cloud has won, after all: Google end of life's its search appliance
Having watched the cloud space for almost a decade, I've been interested to see the change in how enterprises react to the emergence of cloud. In the early days, enterprises were generally happy to ignore cloud, regarding it as a generally experimental trend that may or may not continue to be important. Thereafter, as cloud gained a toe hold, enterprises looked to get cloud-like solutions, but within the context of their existing on-premises focus. Many of us waited for the day when enterprises (and not just the early adopters) put aside their objections and dived right into cloud as the default position.
So news recently that Google is dropping its search appliance is a small, but important data point on this journey. Googles search appliance was a somewhat counter-intuitive product (at least from the cloudy Google). It was intended for companies that had a desire to use Google technology to search their internal documents. Customers could buy a Google box, a hermetically sealed piece of kit that delivered a Google-like solution in an on-premises model. Google had previously phased out one model of the so-called GSA a few years ago. But this blanket sunsetting was something bigger.
It is easy to suggest that this move is a directive from Diane Greene, the VMware co-founder who recently became Google's tsar of all things cloud through Google's acquisition of her startup, bebop. Greene is internally pushing a cloud-first approach and, frankly, the GSA never quite gelled with that.
But, more broadly, does this indicate the lessening demand by enterprises for the seemingly oxymoronic on-premises cloud products? Coveo, another vendor offering intelligent search, told me via email that this move shows that Google has potentially forgotten the rest of the enterprise beyond the cloud early adopters. In the email, Coveo's CTO Laurent Simoneau wrote that:
"We agree that the future of enterprise search is all about cloud for many reasons (scalability, security, efficiency, innovation), and for Google its obviously the entire strategy. For Coveo, while we announced last year the first end-to-end search as a service platform along with machine-learning capabilities, and weve been offering search as a cloud service for several years, we also believe that companies will continue to leverage on-premise information alongside cloud content for a long while. Thats why we unify on-premise and cloud data (via cloud-based indexing), and present it in any system, cloud or on-premise. Because people just want the best information, every time and everywhere, regardless of where it exists."
It would be easy to take this at face value and assume that Google is being short-sighted in dropping the GSA. But increasingly it seems that an enterprise search product that is based on-premises is missing the boat somewhat. Google is gunning for the big prize and must, naturally, chase the biggest opportunities. While on-premises search is arguably an area that will be needed for the ongoing future, I'd suggest it is an opportunity with a rapidly reducing market size. The number of organizations thinking of this as a need is falling quickly.
Maybe this is just an example of Greene cutting off support for products that have marginal opportunity for growth. But part of me thinks (and would like to believe) that this is more a function of an increasing move to a cloud-first approach across enterprises big and small.
This article is published as part of the IDG Contributor Network. Want to Join?
http://www.networkworld.com/article/3033214/cloud-computing/maybe-the-cloud-has-won-after-all-google-end-of-lifes-its-search-appliance.html
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Business Sales / ServiceMedical Billing Service Agreement By Wendy BurgersIts normal to be concerned when it comes to entrusting your medical billing to a medical billing company. Often times, if you have a medical practice .... but master data management architecture it may serve as a way to ease your mind about allowing an outside company to help manage part of the company that youre worked so hard to build.
Vend: The Point Of Sale Software Solution Retailers Rely On By Mark Wadsen
Meeting customer demand, reducing transaction times and increasing customer loyalty, are among the most significant goals of every retail business. All .... will help businesses create a loyal customer base as well as reducing costs that will eventually lead to increase in profits and a successful business.
Why Everyone Is In Sales By Angela Roberts
You may not initially agree with this statement, but we believe everyone is in sales. Even if your job description doesnt include selling products or .... Ask the clinical trial staffing team here and we will be happy to help. Investing in a Lifetime of Success, Angela Roberts www.craresources.com
How Vends POS Software System Helps Retailers By Mark Wadsen
Vend is the future of retail. If you are a small business in the retail space, figuring out just how you are going track all the ins and outs of your business .... your locations, making it clear to all employees what is available, and what the price is, greatly reducing the room for human error in your business.
Vend: The Only POS System Retail Stores Need to Use By Mark Wadsen
Vend is a simple, yet comprehensive point of sale system that helps retailers attract and keep customers. It works on iPad, Mac and PC online and offline .... and improve your business. Vend offers 24-hour customer support, meaning you can rely on it to provide you with everything you need to stay in control.
How to Make a Cold Call: The Script that REALLY Works By Fran Briggs
Do you dread calling prospects? Are you sick and tired of rejection? Prospecting for customers is a necessary part of doing business, but you don& .... Greatest, 15-second Sales Script includes the voice mail version, and a free consultation for just $56. Kick-start your goals and objectives, today.
Vend POS Inventory Management Software: Why Retailers Need to Consider it By Mark Wadsen
Inventory management is one of the most critical aspects of any retail business. If there is too much inventory, the cost of storage escalates. If there .... the market. All of this is made possible only through an inventory management system as sophisticated as Vend, which is also equally easy to adapt to.
Why Vends Cash Register Software is the Ultimate Retail POS Solution By Mark Wadsen
How businesses process transactions at the point of sale can have a huge impact on their profits. Using a suitable POS cash register can not only increase .... interface, multiple features and flexibility of the Vend POS cash register software. The reviews for the same are freely available online for all to read.
The Vend iPad POS System: How it Helps Retail Business Grow By Mark Wadsen
Retail businesses with different sizes have very different needs. However, one thing that runs common across retail businesses, in particular, is the need .... to better sales and higher profits. Businesses grow when proprietors make smart decisions, resulting in the better management of the day-to-day affairs.
Stranded at the airport? Get compensation By Stephen Godden
No one wants to spend extra hours at the airport. The need to arrive up to two or three hours early already makes the experience of travel time consuming .... calculate the amount of compensation owed, using flight delay refund makes it easy even for those who travel routinely to follow through with making a claim.
Russell and Partners Chartered Accountant By Russell Rahman
Russell and Partners is one of the finest emerging chartered accounting firms in the CBD and Canterbury district area that offer accounting, tax, audit .... professional service to clients, resulting in the team achieving career satisfaction, security and sustainable financial rewards in an amusing atmosphere.
How To Start A Rental Business Related To Inflatable Buildings? By Dragan Milijic
Inflatable buildings are in high demand all over the world, and this is a great opportunity to start a rental business related to this structures. First .... various weather conditions. At the end, just to mention that this rental business is "in full swing" today, so grab this great opportunity to profit!
The Peterson Group to hold Regional Showcase By Mark Peterson
As a part of its anniversary celebration of 16 years in the industry, The Peterson Group knows it is high time to get back to the clients and partners .... This years event marks the expansion of the company to over 20 countries across Asia and positive reviews gathered by the company for the last 5 years.
Axis Capital Group Insurance Update: Asian Bi-Annual Report By Inah Goethem
With the great rise in business development and industrial growth in Asia, asset values are generally enabling insurers to pay higher premium for increased .... regulations 5. Develop capital and Merger and Acquisition (M&A) opportunities 6. Reposition investment strategies 7. Enhance data controls and metrics
3D Printing and its Contribution to Prototyping Process By Sigal Barnea
Producing any product can be a long, complex and expensive process involving lots of trials and errors. The process includes designing, drawing, testing .... recycled is involved. In fact, the future of product development and manufacturing now lies in the hands of those revolutionized high-technology printers.
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Jeff Bezos Success Factors by Evan Carmichael
Famous Quote
"Our vision is to be the world's most consumer-centric company, where customers can come to find anything they want to buy online."
Starting the Business
In 1994, Jeff Bezos at 30 was the youngest senior vice-president at D. E. Shaw and Co., the Wall Street Investment Firm, earning a six-figure salary. However, despite an assured future with expectations to rise further within the company, Bezos chose to walk away from it all and pursue what he envisioned to be a more promising venture. Upon first discovering the thundering growth of usage of the Internet (2,300% per month), he decided to start his own business on the, then, largely unmapped territory of the World Wide Web. The choice was a risky one to make since such companies were at that time largely untried, but Bezos recognized the possibilities that it offered.
He began by writing a list of products - from software to CDs to books - he could see selling well over the Internet. Books was settled on simply because of the vast number of titles available; booksellers are only able to sell a fraction of what could be purchased while an Internet based bookstore would not be limited by shelving space.
He stepped down from his position at D. E. Shaw and Co., and, with one million dollars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_enterprise_search_vendors raised from friends and family as capital, moved his family to Seattle. Seattle was the perfect choice because Bezos would have a wide range of choice in picking technologically savvy employees, and additionally, he would be close to Ingram Book Group's warehouse in Oregon. Work began in the garage of his rented house.
Building an Empire
Bezos, along with five employees, spent almost a year designing Amazon's easily navigable and user-friendly layout and working on the best ways to source books. With the idea that Amazon should not only be a place to buy books but could become a community of book-buyers, programs were developed to foster this atmosphere; one in particular allowed customers to write their own reviews of books and rate them. Another program was designed to suggest other books based what the customer has purchased previously.
Amazon.com, the self-proclaimed "Earth's Biggest Bookstore", was launched in July 1995 and rocketed forward with incredible success. By September 1996, more than 100 employees worked for Amazon and over $15.7 million in merchandise had been sold. In 1999, there were more than 3000 employees working for the company generating more than $610 million in sales for over 13 million customers globally. In 1999, Amazon.com accounted for 85% of the Internet's book sales. Despite this, Amazon did not make any profit over these first four years. Choosing to pour everything back into promotion and building Amazon's reputation as a recognizable brand name, Bezos was covetous of the number one spot before turning to his own personal profits.
Barnes & Noble felt threatened by this new presence on the Internet and set up its own e-store. Through a fiery marketing campaign, Barnes & Noble claimed that it could provide twice as many titles as Amazon. However, Barnes & Noble was behind the times as Bezos had by then already branched out into selling CDs through Amazon. No longer just "Earth's Biggest Bookstore", Amazon now boasted "Books, Music, and more". Just before the 1998 Christmas season, Bezos took Amazon yet another step further by expanding into toys and games. And he also instigated the "Shop the Web" program giving Amazon a commission when customers link to other (non-competing) retailer's sites. In 1999, Amazon bought a share of Drugstore.com and now became a pharmacy as well. Following the success of eBay and uBID, Amazon joined with Sotheby's Holdings Inc. and introduced sothebys.amazon.com, another online auction site.
As Amazon expands into the Web's first superstore and continues to change in order to accommodate new products, Bezos ever innovating e-commerce insists on putting the customer before everything else. And it has paid off. Amazon.com has become the template for the way in which an e-commerce business should be operated.
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/business_and_finance/article_6325.shtml
Alliance Data - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alliance Data Systems Corporation is a publicly traded provider of loyalty and marketing solutions, such as private label credit cards, coalition loyalty programs, and direct marketing services, derived from the capture and analysis of transaction-rich data.
History[edit]
Alliance Data was formed from the December 1996 merger of two entities: J.C. Penney's credit card processing unit and The Limited's credit card bank operation, named World Financial Network National Bank.[3]
In August 1998, Alliance Data acquired LoyaltyOne, then-branded The Loyalty Group Canada, for $250 million.[4] The deal gave Alliance Data two valuable business enhancements, Canada's Air Miles Rewards Program and the company behind the popular Air Miles program, LoyaltyOne.[5]
But, it wasn't until June 1999, that the real substance of the company was truly in place.
In May 2007, Alliance Data and The Blackstone Group, a private equity firm, announced plans for Alliance Data to be acquired by The Blackstone Group.[6][7] In April 2008, Alliance Data terminated the merger agreement with Blackstone Affiliates.[8][9]
Ed Heffernan was promoted to president and CEO of Alliance Data in February 2009, after being with the company since 1998.[10][11][12]
Businesses[edit]Alliance Data Card Services[edit]
Card Services is a provider of integrated credit and marketing services including private label, co-branded and commercial credit card Master Data Management programs. Alliance Data Card Services manages over 135[13] card programs for retail brands such as Victorias Secret, J.Crew, Eddie Bauer, Buckle, HSN, Pottery Barn and Pier 1 Imports.[14]
In 2011, Alliance Data, in partnership with NICE Systems, was honored with the Operational Leadership Award for its customer care centers by Ventana Research.[15]
Alliance Data Card Services maintains two banks to manage the funding and receivables for its clients' credit programs. In September 2012, the banks rebranded their names from WFNNB (World Financial Network [National] Bank) and WFCB (World Financial Capital Bank) to both operate under the Comenity name, as Comenity Bank and Comenity Capital Bank, respectively.[16]
LoyaltyOne[edit]
LoyaltyOne, located in Canada, provides loyalty marketing programs for North American brands in the retail, financial services, grocery, petroleum, travel, and hospitality industries.
Five businesses make up the LoyaltyOne: Air Miles national reward program, in which approximately two-thirds of Canadian households participate;[17]Colloquy; LoyaltyOne Consulting; Precima; and Squareknot.
Hewitt Associates named LoyaltyOne in their "2014 List of the 50 Best Employers in Canada."[18]
Epsilon[edit]
Epsilon provides a broad range of loyalty marketing services spanning database marketing, direct mail, email marketing, web development, loyalty programs, analytics, data services, strategic consulting and creative services, among others.
Ad Age has ranked Epsilon among the top marketing services firms and direct marketing agencies for several years, and Epsilon has the distinction as being the Top US Agency From All Disciplines and Top US CRM/Direct Marketing Agencies for 2012.[19][20][21][22] It sends billions of permission-based emails every year.[23] Acquired by Epsilon in 2011,[24] Aspen Marketing Services is a marketing services agency headquartered in Chicago, Illinois[25] with locations in the United States and Canada. In 2012, Epsilon reached an agreement to acquire the Hyper Marketing (HMI) group of companies, the largest privately held digital marketing services agencies in the United States, for about $460 million.
In March 2011, Epsilon detected unauthorized access to its email database, resulting in the theft of email addresses of its clients' customers.[26][27][28]
In late February 2013, Facebook announced partnerships with four companies, including Epsilon, to help reshape its targeted advertising strategy.[29]
Because of Epsilons growth over the past several years, the company relocated its headquarters to the former Nokia regional headquarters space in Las Colinas, Texas, near Dallas.[30][31]
In March 2014, 60 Minutes interviewed Bryan Kennedy, chairman and CEO of Epsilon, as part of its segment, The Data Brokers: Selling your personal information.[32]
Controversy[edit]
In 2010 Epsilon failed to heed warnings to secure data.[33] In March 2011 it was discovered that email addresses from customers of 50 client companies were stolen.[33] The company quickly notified people of the breach.[34] In June 2011 company executives were called before congress.[35]
Company acquisitions and divestitures[edit]1998: Air Miles was acquired by Alliance Data.2002: Colloquy was acquired by Alliance Data.2004: Epsilon was acquired by Alliance Data.[36]2005: Bigfoot Interactive was acquired by Alliance Data.[37]2006: DoubleClick Email Solutions, Inc. was acquired by Alliance Data.2007: Abacus was acquired by Alliance Data.[38]2008: Heartland Payment Systems acquired Alliance Data's Network Services business.[39]2008: Vertex acquired Alliance Datas Utility Services business.[40]2011: Aspen Marketing Services was acquired by Alliance Data (to be a part of Epsilon).[41]2012: Alliance Data acquired the $475 million private label credit card portfolio of The Bon-Ton Stores, Inc.[42]2012: Epsilon acquires Hyper Marketing [43] and agencies Ryan Partnership & Catapult2014: Alliance Data acquires BrandLoyalty [44]2014: Epsilon acquires Conversant [45]References[edit]^ a b "ADS Key Statistics - Alliance Data Systems Corporati Stock - Yahoo! Finance". yahoo.com.^ "ADS Profile - Alliance Data Systems Corporati Stock - Yahoo! Finance". yahoo.com.^ "The InfoTech 100 Companies: Alliance Data Systems Profile". Businessweek.com. 2006-05-31. Archived from the original on 27 June 2010. Retrieved 2010-07-01.^ "The Value of Loyalty". 2008.^ "U.S. database https://www.informatica.com/services-and-training/certification/master-data-management-certification.html specialist buys The Loyalty Group". 1998-08-03.^ Michael Flaherty and Caroline Humer (2007-05-17). "Blackstone to buy Alliance Data for $6.76 billion". Reuters. Retrieved 2010-07-01.^ "Alliance Data To Be Acquired by The Blackstone Group". Paymentsnews.com. Retrieved 2010-07-01.^ "Alliance Data Drops Suit to Force Deal". The New York Times. 2008-02-09.^ "Alliance Data Terminates Merger Agreement with Blackstone Affiliates". Paymentsnews.com. Retrieved 2010-07-01.^ "Forbes Profile on Ed Heffernan". Forbes.com. Retrieved 2010-11-22.^ Pearson-Hormillosa, Shashana (2010-01-10). "Alliance Data CEO Ed Heffernan taps into his M&A expertise to take big risks in a tough economy". www.bizjournals.com/dallas/. Retrieved 2010-11-22.^ "Alliance Data promotes CFO Edward Heffernan to president, CEO; Michael Parks to continue as chairman - update". tradingmarkets.com. 2009-02-18. Retrieved 2010-11-22.^ ADS. "Client News Release".^ Pimlott, Daniel (18 May 2007). "Blackstone seals $8bn deal for credit card group ADS". Financial Times. Retrieved 6 November 2012.^ "Announcing the Ventana Research 2011 Leadership Awards". 2011. Retrieved 2012.^ "Comenity Bank: Private Company Information - Businessweek". Investing.businessweek.com. Retrieved 2014-03-13.^ "AIR MILES Corporate Incentives | Fast Facts". Aeis.com. Retrieved 2010-07-01.^ "Hewitt 50 Best Employers" (PDF). hewittassociates.com. Retrieved 2010.^ "Awards & Accolades". Epsilon. Retrieved 2014-03-13.^ http://www.directagency.com/news/may052008.pdf^ [1] Archived July 17, 2011 at the Wayback Machine^ "Advertising Age - April 26, 2010". Adage.coverleaf.com. 2010-04-26. Retrieved 2010-07-01.^ "More customers exposed as big data breach grows". Reuters. 2011-04-03.^ Elliott, Stuart (25 April 2011). "Epsilon to Acquire Aspen Marketing Services". nytimes.com. Retrieved 8 September 2012.^ "Aspen Marketing Services Acquires Newgen Results Corp.". destinationcrm.com. 1 October 2007. Retrieved 8 September 2012.^ "Massive Breach at Epsilon Compromises Customer Lists of Major Brands". Security Week. 2 April 2011. Retrieved 3 March 2012.^ "Epsilon Data Breach: Expect a Surge in Spear Phishing Attacks". PC World. 5 April 2011. Retrieved 3 March 2012.^ "Epsilon email security breach widens". 7 April 2011. Retrieved 3 March 2012.^ What You Didnt Post, Facebook May Still Know 26-03-2013^ Brown, Steve (2013-08-13). "Nokia leaving high-profile Las Colinas tower; Epsilon moving in | Dallas Morning News". Dallasnews.com. Retrieved 2014-03-13.^ "Epsilon moves into newly finished Irving headquarters". Dallas Business Journal. 5 August 2014.^ Kroft, Steve (2014-03-09). "The Data Brokers: Selling your personal information". 60 Minutes. Graham Messick and Maria Gavrilovic, producers (New York, NY: CBS Productions). Retrieved 2014-03-14.^ a b "Epsilon Fell To Spear-Phishing Attack". Dark Reading.^ http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303499204576389773023983518^ Sue Reisinger. "Epsilon Data Management GC on How to Handle Data Breaches". Corporate Counsel.^ "Alliance Data Systems to Acquire Epsilon Data Management, Inc". Crm2day.com. Retrieved 2010-07-01.^ "Epsilon to Snap Up Bigfoot Interactive". ClickZ. Retrieved 2014-03-13.^ Worldwide Databases - Feb 1, 2007 (2007-02-01). "Alliance Data'S Epsilon To Acquire Abacus.". Entrepreneur.com. Retrieved 2010-07-01.^ "Convenience Store News". Csnews.com. Retrieved 2010-07-01.^ "Energy Risk - Vertex Acquires Alliance Data Utilities, an Interview with John Hall @ RiskCenter: A Financial Risk Management Media Company". Riskcenter.com. Retrieved 2010-07-01.^ "Alliance Data's Epsilon Business to Acquire Aspen Marketing Services". prnewswire.com. Retrieved 2012-07-18.^ "Alliance Data to buy Bon-Ton's credit card portfolio". Reuters. 2012-06-19. Retrieved 2012-06-19.^ "Epsilon goes omnichannel with its acquisition of Hyper Marketing". DMNews. 2012-11-09.^ "Alliance Data Acquires 60 Percent of BrandLoyalty". BrandLoyalty. November 6, 2013.^ "Alliance Data to Acquire Conversant, Formerly ValueClick, for $2.3 Billion". AdvertisingAge. September 16, 2014.External links[edit]
http://zw4ud2lraxblzglhlm9yzw0000.d3d3lmdvb2dszs5jb2000.dhjhbnnsyxrllmdvb2dszs5jb2000.d3d3lmdvb2dszs5jb2000.cgx1cy5nb29nbguuy29t.d3d3lmzveg5ld3muy29t.yml0lmx5.www.www.foxnews.com/g00/TU9SRVBIRVVTdW5kZWZpbmVkJGh0dHBzOi8vZW4ud2lraXBlZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpL0FsbGlhbmNlX0RhdGE%3D/$/$
answerbag.com - This website is for sale! - answerbag Resources and Information.
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Difficult kitchen tasks you can master with one simple tip
Sometimes, you just can't look away.
No, seriouslyyou can't look away while you've got that cheesy toast in the broiler. Or when those nuts are in the oven. Because if you do, you're just setting yourself up for an epic fail.
So open your eyes, sweetheartthese are the cooking tasks you can't set-and-forget.
1. Cooking garlic.
The http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/B/D/DBDE7972-1EB9-470A-BA18-58849DB3EB3B/MasterDataManagementfromaBusinessPerspective.pdf pop, the sizzle, and then...the burn. Its way too easy to overcook garlic, which gets aromatic in just a few seconds and turns bitter in just a few more. The real secrets to cooking great garlic are to watch it closely and start with a cold pan.
2. Bringing milk to a boil.
It seems like the milk youre cooking for pudding is never going to boil, so you turn up the heat and walk away for a while. When you come back, the pot has boiled over, your stove is covered in hot milk, and your pudding needs to be started again. The lesson here: use low heat, stir constantly, and never walk away.
3. Toasting nuts.
It seemed like a great idea to toast some nuts for a salad topper, an oatmeal mix-in, or just a salty snack. That is, until one side got charred while the other is practically raw. Nuts are temperamental little things, so watch them carefully, shake the pan constantly during cooking, and remove them as soon as they start getting aromaticcarry-over cooking will finish them off.
4. Frying calamari.
Unless you're slow-cooking squid for an hour or marinating it ceviche-style, it has to be cooked in the flash of an eye. (In some cases, 40 seconds is all you get.) Walk away, and your squid will be like rubber.
5. Making a roux.
All good gumbo starts with a great base. And a great base comes from a great roux. And a great roux? Well, it's a tricky task. Cooking butter in flour takes time and constant attention, otherwise it might burn. So stand by the pot and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH03Rj4O0PU&index=1&list=PL6b-Dl60taJxI8rnHuGaa88Bw7teMYMIn keep stirringyou're going to be here a while (or for at least 20 minutes).
Don't look away. More kitchen tasks you need to keep an eye on.
More from Epicurious
The Epic Hack to Peeling a Dozen Eggs in 104 Seconds
The Crazy Secret Ingredient That Makes Steak More Tender
11 Ingredients You Shouldn't Refrigerate
14 No-Stress Ways to Cook Salmon
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2015/09/17/difficult-kitchen-tasks-can-master-with-one-simple-tip/
Love - InfoBarrel
Love can bring people together, and tear others apart. There's no emotion more powerful than love. Everyone obtains the ability to be loved, and to love. Love is an emotion that can carry variety of meanings and feelings. One might love to play basketball, or one might experience in romantic love. One might love family, friends, or animals. The powerful emotion of love can bring clarity and meaning to one's life. The feeling of love can be the meaning of happiness for humans.
Of all material things in the world, and emotional feelings a human being might desire, love overshadows all those things combined. Love has been craved and needed by mankind since the beginning of time. Without love, humans are all alone in the world. Alone and lost without meaning to life. Love might be the sole purpose of living life. Think about it, do we live life to make money, go to school, or work at a job? These are just ways to survive in the world. Our meaning in life isn't revolved around things, but feelings.
The secret of life might be a mystery to us, but if there's a answer, then the powerful feeling of "love" might be somewhere in the middle. As powerful and wonderful of a feeling love can be, it also can be a destructive and toxic as well. Love can cause wars, violence, crime, and other problems we face in the world today. Love can cause fear, anger, bitterness, sadness, and depression. If you think about your life carefully, and your actions, you'll find that most of your motives revolve around love. Even if one isn't in love, they still quench and desire the need of love.
Fear, pain, happiness, sadness, anger, and love are emotions all humans experience. For whatever mysterious reason, human nature is desired by this powerful feeling of love more than anything else. That feeling can end up defining who we are in our lives. Everyone has felt the need, experience, or thirst for love in some way. Without love, we don't seize to exist in this world.
Unconditional love
Unconditional love is the ability to love indefinitely, and eternally. To love a person without judgment in appearances, thoughts, or beliefs. To love someone even when they hurt you, make you angry, disappoint you, and even betray you. Parents for example tend to have unconditional love for their children. Those who are religious, believe that God has unconditional love for them. Unconditional love cannot be broken. The ability to love this way shows character traits of loyalty, obedience, self-giving, faithfulness, fearless, strength, desire, trust, and belief. An unconditional love doesn't seek personal satisfaction first, but rather satisfaction for the love they desire. Unconditional love is stronger than the human being itself.
How to find real love
There's no map, or direction to find love. You can't just go to your local department store and buy real love. You can order love like you're ordering pizza. Real love can't be forced, tricked, or manipulated. If you manipulate someone into a feeling, then its not real. The feelings they feel is for something that's not real. Real love is reality despite feeling like a dream. Real love is not a trick. Real love is not a lie.
Love can't be bargain with, or a feeling that can be forced. Love is a natural feeling, its an impulse. One either does, or doesn't feel love. It can't always be explained why someone loves another person. Some believe in fate, or soul mates. I guess the best way to let love find you, is to be true to who you are. If you're not real, then the love someone has for you isn't real either. Real love isn't an illusion. Real love seeks truth only.
Learn to love yourself first
Learning to love yourself first will allow you to be more receptive to love. Loving yourself is one way to be enticed with love in all ways. It's really hard to not love yourself, and love someone in a healthy manner. The great thing about love its forgiving. Mistakes, or regrets you've made can be put in the past. When you begin to forgive yourself, accept yourself, and believe in yourself again, then you'll be able to love yourself again. Forgiving yourself, loving yourself, will allow you to love and forgive others as well. It's hard to love someone entirely when you don't love yourself.
The easy way to love yourself is not dwell on the things you're not, and embrace the things that you are. Originality can't be replaced. Mistakes made are meant to be learning experiences, not something to dwell on. The past can't be fixed, the future can't be control, but the present is what you choose.
Does love revolve around one thing?
No. Love isn't defined by one feeling, person, or thing. Falling in love with a boyfriend is not the definition of what love is. Love can have different meanings and purposes in life. Someone can find love in a hobby, nature, outdoors, animals, or science. Something that gives you a strong passion and desire for can be described as love. Someone can just show love in small or big ways. A person can show love from a generous act, like donating money to a charity. Caring about someone, or something can be defined as love. There's not one meaning that defines love. Love isn't defined into just one feeling or action. It's a mystery why we love, and how we love. It's a bigger mystery on why we need love.
Love quotes
1 Corinthians 13:4-7,13: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails....And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these are love."
Frank Howard Clark: "A baby is born with a need to be loved and never outgrows it."
Boethius: "A man content to go Enterprise Search to heave alone will never go to heaven."
Plato: "At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet."
Og Mandino: "Do all things with love."
William Shakespeare: "As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words."
Julie Andrews: "All love shifts and changes. I don't know if you can be wholeheartedly in love all the time."
Albert Einstein: "Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."
Javan: "I don't wish to be everything to everyone, but I would like to be something to someone."
Godfather25: "Without love, we don't seize to exist in the world."
Godfather25: "Love might be the sole purpose of living."
http://www.infobarrel.com/Love
Real Housewives news: Ramona Singer to divorce, truth about Gorga's finances
If you have been dealing with heartbreak this summer, then you can now say that you have at least one thing in common with one of "The Real Housewives of New York City." ABC News reported yesterday that the latest marriage to take a hit after appearing on reality TV is the relationship between Ramona Singer and her husband Mario. The marriage has experienced more than a few cracks of late, and Ramona Singer recently made the split Twitter official yesterday. In other "Real Housewives" news, once again Melissa Gorga and her husband Joe Gorga from "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" are still trying to evict their tenant, and experiencing some financial troubles in the process. Radar Online has leaked some alleged "financial information" about the Gorga's this week as a result, which Melissa Gorga has been very quick to correct with the truth about her finances via social media.
It was only days after the filming of "The Real Housewives of New York City" reunion episode when the officially unofficial announcement came down. Viewers and fans of "The Real Housewives of New York City" however got a bit of a sense that the Singer marriage might be in trouble when Bravo TV host Andy Cohen quizzed Ramona Singer about her marriage, according to ABC News.
It was a question that Ramona did not like, and most viewers know how Ramona reacts when asked a question that makes her uncomfortable. Unless and until she is holding a glass of pinto grigio, best to leave the personal questions for another day.
Ramona's response to Andy Cohen was to answer the question with a personal question of her own,
"So, how's your love life? Who are you going to have sex with tonight? Tell me."
Andy Cohen, ever on his toes quipped back,
"I'll tell you when I go on a reality show with whomever I'm having sex with."
Although the jokes are high right now, when a marriage comes to an end, and a woman suffers heartbreak, it's nothing to make light of. Ramona Singer is saying goodbye to the partner in life she has had for the last 20 years. Sources say the real reason for the split was 25-year-old Kasey Dexter that Mario reportedly brought to the Hampton home that Ramona and Mario share.
That has to hurt, but Ramona is taking the situation, and the fact that she's living it in the public eye, all in stride. She took to Twitter yesterday to make the split Twitter official, tweeting,
"I have decided to move on with my life without Mario. I tried my best to make my marriage work."
And tried she did. Perez Hilton reports that Ramona's attempts to save her marriage included marriage therapy. But this counselling did not prevent Mario from being spotted with 25-year-old Kasey Dexter at brunch recently in New York City.
In response to her official Twitter announcement, Bravo TV was among the many that tweeted back support and love to "The Real Housewives of New York City" star. Bravo TV tweeted yesterday,
"Sending love and support to the lovely @RamonaSinger! Stay strong! #newchapter."
The Singers are not the only "Real Housewives" on the East Coast experiencing some stress this week. New Jersey News reported this week that the Gorgas are still having problems evicting tenant Kai Patterson from their Montville mansion. The Gorgas were scheduled to appear in court this week, for a date that was attended by their lawyer Frank Catania.
Both Melissa Gorga and her husband Joe Gorga were fully expecting some resolution to occur this week after dragging this eviction out for the past couple of months. Instead, they experienced another setback when Superior Court Judge Stephen Taylor declined to order the eviction according to New Jersey News.
While most evictions are pretty straightforward and the reasons are pretty clear, failure to pay rent, this particular eviction has a few details at the center that are the source of the constant delays. At the center of this case is a lease-purchase agreement, where the Gorgas allegedly offered a lease-purchase agreement to Kai Patterson when he moved in. Judge Stephen Taylor said this week that, when this contract loophole is in play, "a judgement for possession by default shall not be entered without proof in open court."
In ruling on this matter, Judge Stephen Taylor vacated his previous order finding Patterson in default on rent payments. This judgement for possession by default is the judgement Patterson was hoping to accomplish, though he has not submitted the proof the court requires to show that a lease-purchase agreement was indeed established at the outset of this contract.
What Kai Patterson did agree to at the outset of the contract was rent at $20,000 monthly, under a lease-purchase agreement for the value of $3.8 million.
This outcome was considered a win for the defendant facing eviction, with Patterson's attorney Richard Koppenaal citing it as an "excellent" turn of events for his client. Patterson alleges this dispute would never have made it into the courts if the Gorgas had just managed the repairs he had asked them to do.
Patterson alleges that he gave the Gorgas $25,000 for repairs on the mansion "in lieu of a security deposit." Repairs that Patterson refers to with these monies include beavers entering crawl spaces, leaky ceilings, and issues with heating and plumbing.
Lawyer for the Gorgas Frank Catania said all of these matters Patterson was bringing up were irrelevant details he was using to create a "smokescreen."
Catania said,
"I would have liked a different outcome. I would have liked it if (the judge) evicted him. Mr. Patterson is trying to create a smokescreen for the court to elude his personal obligations."
Catania is alleging that since Patterson came into the mansion, he has paid $35,000, and this includes August rent for $10,000. Catania alleges that Patterson still owes a total of $165,000 in back rent.
Patterson's lawyer is still arguing that the technicality over Contact Wayne Lippman the fact that Patterson's company was named on the lease, and not Patterson himself, renders the Gorga's complaint "defective." Additionally Koppenaal is arguing that because Joe Gorga did not include Melissa Gorga on the lease, she should not be named on the complaint either.
To this, Judge Stephen Taylor agreed, saying the complaints need to include "proper tenants" and also proper landlords. The Judge then permitted the Gorga's to amend their complaints with the correct details. The complaints now formally include Melissa Gorga as a landlord of the Montville mansion, and also formally list Patterson's company Bounty Alert on the complaint as well.
Bounty Alert is the name of Kai Patterson's company. It is a company that hunts down people that are in arrears of their own for child support. This could suggest that Kai Patterson is very familiar with every loophole in the system and will use those to drag this out as long as possible. Judge Stephen Taylor has set the trial date for this eviction to begin Aug. 15.
This entire situation may not sound very stressful to those that think this is just one of the costs of living the high life. Melissa Gorga has been very vocal on her Bravo TV blog about just how stressful this entire situation has been. And by the looks of it, she is not getting much help from Radar Online.
Radar Online reported this week that the financial situation of the Gorgas was misleading to the public watching "The Real Housewives of New Jersey." Radar said the couple had "been seen" driving a Bentley on the latest episodes of "The Real Housewives of New Jersey." Radar has also reported that the Bentley was just a smokescreen in itself.
An Assistant Managing Editor for Radar reported on Aug. 6 that not only may the couple have to give up their Montville home, but they also had to give up this same Bentley they were seen driving in the early episodes of the latest season of "The Real Housewives of New Jersey." Radar said,
"Radar has exclusively learned the couple recently was forced to give up the luxury automobile because they could no longer afford it."
Radar cites one of their "close sources" who said,
"The Bentley was leased by Joe and Melissa, and was strictly done for the show. They felt pressure to make their lifestyle appear to be something it definitely wasn't. The lease was just too expensive at $5,000 a month, and they had to turn it back in early."
The source also added that to soften the blow, the couple picked up a new Mercedes at a local dealer, and were even given the Mercedes for free, allegedly. Radar reports that the Mercedes dealer in question offered the Mercedes for free in exchange for having some filming occur at the car dealership to give the dealership some "free advertising."
The source also told Radar that,
"The scene in which Joe shows Melissa their new trash truck was filmed at the Mercedes dealership."
For those that are wondering if there is any truth to this Radar report, the Gorgas are taking it to Twitter to reveal it all. Melissa's response to her financial woes, in particular related to the Montville mansion issue has been chronicled on her Bravo TV blog where she writes about the financial stress that has caused her and Joe.
She does want to set one record straight though when it comes to the beloved Bentley, and did so via Twitter this week,
"@Radar_Online I own the car, it's in my garage, we don't have any Mercedestell your sources to go scratch!"
What do you think of the Ramona Singer divorce? Do you think it is fair what is happening to Melissa Gorga and Joe Gorga in New Jersey?
http://www.examiner.com/article/real-housewives-news-ramona-singer-to-divorce-truth-about-gorga-s-finances
Why People Pay Taxes While They're Able To Merely Create Money Out of Thin Air
I find extremely interesting post asking following question on my wall in facebook. That's,
"Why People Pay Taxes While they can Simply print money out of thin air?"
This is very great point...
Everyone, I am talking about everybody have to at the very least look at the reason why this is actually the case.
I've already my form of the answer to this particular question. In this blog, Let me reveal my opinion / reply to this extremely important question. In order for people to grasp my answer, we shall understand how government collect our money.
Government may collect our hard earned cash from us all to finance its debt in exactly two approaches: 1st: Tax and 2nd: Inflation. Huge majority of men and women usually misunderstand that basically way government may collect revenue is through 1st way: taxation. However, this is simply not accurate. The truth is, tax is simply not major source of how government funds its obligation. First source of this is option #2: via inflation.
And then, question becomes...
How come imposing taxes is not actually employed by our politicians?
Since taxes is apparent to the people, this is not government's favored method to get our hard earned money because even financially uneducated people can actually notice what they're doing to them. Powers that be knows that if they try to demand tax exceedingly to public, they're going to be thrown away from the office.
Hence, Powers that be really loves 2nd option: "Inflation = Money Printing" to fund their debt since simply few people comprehend inflation (Normal people can not see this) and powers that be will get away with many of us by deceiving with this particular method.
Although it looks that second choice is safe to people given that they don't have to pay more taxes, value of all kinds of things will eventually climb considering that there will be even more money in circulation after they print money. These two methods will eventually result in identical result: People won't be able to afford as much.
You are now comprehend there's two main methods for government to get (Steal??) all of our money and here's my answer to this very question. My reply to this is:
Tax is simply a camouflage. In case government doesn't ever tax individuals, public is going to suspect exactly where the heck all those money can come from. Very last thing government wants public comprehend is actually the truth that inflation is actually another form of tax. Government is scared that government can no longer deceive people easily should people of you and I are aware of the truth that inflation is another and most insidious form of taxation...
This is the reason why powers that be never ever shares this to the public considering the fact that continuity of the government http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoaGUgzoljs depends upon ignorance of public. As long as public of you and I don't understand such matters as economics, finance and money, government continues to get away with nearly all of its false doing simply by taking advantage of our lack of education. And, believe me...
You will not like outcome of the end game...
That is the reason why financial education is crucial for every single individual in the face of the world...
Informed yourself now...
Author's Bio:
Takeshi "Ken" Yashima is an investor as well as a wealth strategist. His financial education website shares his insight about the current global economic situation as well as the current investment strategies to investors and his subscribers. Download a free E-book and special report at http://www.takeshiyashima.com
http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/why-people-pay-taxes-while-theyre-able-to-merely-create-money-out-of-thin-air
Redefining Big Data | Steven Clough
If we're going to nominate a buzzword for 2015, big data is already a major contender for the title. It seems to be all the rage these days -- the promises are huge -- yet very few businesses are leveraging big data well. The challenge that most business leaders face with big data isn't the numbers or even the analysis -- at its core, the math is really not that complicated -- the failure exists in the underlying approach to big data. Perhaps the main reason "big data" has gotten so misconstrued is because of semantics.
When we think about big data, we think numbers, not words. We build data warehouses to collect these numbers Data Integration and then we buy tools. Oh, the tools! We need tools to "dissect the data." And then we use these tools to build charts and reports. On a good week, these reports get highlighted and circulated around the office. On a bad week, they get buried in a pile of emails. Either way, none of it ever seems to matter. We are great data aggregators and then professionals at ignoring it.
There are several definitions of the word big. With big data, we most often define it as large. Digital media was built on these large data metrics; "We can track it." We started tracking every parameter we could -- clicks, page views, time on site -- to "prove" what worked, but the problem was that we never proved anything, we were simply able to show what happened. So when social media emerged and business leaders wanted our metrics, our only rebuttal was, "you don't understand..." Today, we can put sensors on anything and are collecting data at an accelerating rate, yet the same problem remains: we're accumulating data, but we aren't gaining any knowledge.
In order for us to shift our thinking on big data, to make it truly useful, we must take another definition of big: significant. Large data produces charts and graphs, significant data tells a story that can transform how we do business. The best part is that finding significance in data does not require a large quantity of data, it just requires the right data. In order to collect significant data, we must start by knowing the question we want to answer with it. Specific questions. What are we trying to learn?
Now some will reject this notion. These are the individuals who tag everything with the mentality that they will go back and find a gem of insight in it someday: the data miners. At a recent conference, I asked an audience of business leaders how many of them had built expensive data warehouses filled with numbers that no one will ever look at; every hand in the room went up. Beyond the waste, this approach to data mining falls victim to semantics once again. As Mick McWilliams, SVP of LRW, puts it, "Data mining should really be called 'knowledge mining'. The analogy for data mining is more like dirt mining." He goes on to explain, "Most of big data is big noise," filled mostly with dirt and fools gold.
There are two major problems with this "tag everything" approach. First, with large quantities of data, savvy analysts can "create" any outcome they'd like, a problem when you're searching for unbiased answers. Second, while data mining (or knowledge mining) can be a fruitful method for analysis when done correctly, if you don't start with this end objective, you'll inevitably be making decisions based on data that is, at best, inconsistent. Bad information is cheap to acquire but expensive to use.
To get the most out of your big data, and to create a foundation of knowledge that can be leveraged to inform future work, start by identifying specific questions that you want http://ge.tt/3fofNIR2/v/0 to answer. Does including the month in our newsletter subject line increase conversion rate? Does the use of text buttons or icons improve time on site? These types of specific questions will help you establish what you need to measure, as well as how to track variables in a way that ensures you're actually measuring what you think you are. Start simple, document and socialize learnings, then build upon them.
Today, we can build smart sensors the size of human red blood cells, and near ubiquitous Internet connectivity makes data aggregation easier and faster than ever. We can truly measure anything we want. When we stop seeking data and start seeking knowledge, we can shift the question from "what happened" to "what do we want to know?" And that is big.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-clough/redefining-big-data_b_7889648.html
what are 10 search engines?
General
Baidu (Chinese, Japanese)
Bing
Blekko
DuckDuckGo
Sogou (Chinese)
Soso.com (Chinese)
Yahoo!
Yandex (Russian)
Yebol
Yodao (Chinese)
WireDoo
P2P search engines
FAROO
Seeks (Open Source)
YaCy (Free and fully decentralized)
Metasearch engines
Brainboost
ChunkIt!
Clusty
DeeperWeb
Dogpile
Excite
Harvester42
HotBot
Info.com
Ixquick
Kayak
LeapFish
Mamma
Metacrawler
MetaLib
Mobissimo
Myriad Search
SideStep
Turbo10
WebCrawler
Geographically limited scope
Accoona, China/United States
Alleba, Philippines
Ansearch, Australia/United States/United Kingdom/New Zealand
Biglobe, Japan
Daum, Korea
Goo, Japan
Guruji.com, India
Leit.is, Iceland
Maktoob, Arab World
Onkosh, Arab World
Miner.hu, Hungary
Najdi.si, Slovenia
Naver, Korea
Rambler, Russia
Rediff, India
SAPO, Portugal/Angola/Cabo Verde/Mozambique
Search.ch, Switzerland
Sesam, Norway, Sweden
Seznam, Czech Republic
Walla!, Israel
Yandex, Russia
Yehey!, Philippines
ZipLocal, Canada/United States
Accountancy
IFACnet
Business
Business.com
GlobalSpec
Nexis (Lexis Nexis)
Thomasnet (United States)
GenieKnows (United States and Canada)
Enterprise
AskMeNow: S3 - Semantic Search Solution
Concept Searching Limited: concept search products
Coveo: Coveo Enterprise Search platform, Coveo Expresso
Dieselpoint: Search & Navigation
dtSearch: dtSearch Engine (SDK), dtSearch Web
Endeca: Information Access Platform
Exalead: exalead one:enterprise
Expert System S.p.A.: Cogito
Fast Search & Transfer: Enterprise Search Platform (ESP), RetrievalWare (formerly Convera)
Funnelback: Funnelback Search
IBM: OmniFind Enterprise Edition
Inbenta: Inbenta Semantic Search Engine
ISYS Search Software: ISYS:web, ISYS:sdk
Jumper 2.0: Universal search powered by Enterprise bookmarking
Microsoft: SharePoint Search Services
Northern Light
Open Text: Hummingbird Search Server, Livelink Search
Oracle Corporation: Secure Enterprise Search https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pF2pAmEdEg 10g
SAP: TREX
TeraText: TeraText Suite
Vivisimo: Vivisimo Clustering Engine
X1 Technologies : X1 Enterprise Search
ZyLAB Technologies: ZyIMAGE Information Access Platform
Food/Recipes
Yummly: semantic recipe search
RecipeBridge: vertical search engine for recipes
Mobile/Handheld
Taganode Local Search Engine
Taptu: taptu mobile/social search
Job
Bixee.com (India)
CareerBuilder.com (USA)
Craigslist (by city)
Dice.com (USA)
Eluta.ca (Canada)
Hotjobs.com (USA)
Incruit (Korea)
Indeed.com (USA)
LinkUp.com (USA)
Monster.com (USA), (India)
Naukri.com (India)
Yahoo! HotJobs (Countrywise subdomains, International)
Legal
WestLaw
Lexis (Lexis Nexis)
Google Scholar
Quicklaw
Manupatra
Medical
Bing Health
Bioinformatic Harvester
EB-eye EMBL-EBI's Search engine
Entrez (includes Pubmed)
GenieKnows
GoPubMed (knowledge-based: GO - GeneOntology and MeSH - Medical Subject Headings)
Healia
Healthline
Nextbio (Life Science Search Engine)
PubGene
Quertle (Semantic search of the biomedical literature)
Searchmedica
VADLO (Life Sciences Search Engine)
WebMD
News
Bing News
Google News
Daylife
MagPortal
Newslookup
Nexis (Lexis Nexis)
Topix.net
Yahoo! News
People
Comfibook
Ex.plode.us
InfoSpace
PeekYou
Spock
Spokeo
Wink
Zabasearch.com
ZoomInfo
Real estate / property
Fizber.com
HotPads.com
Redfin
Rightmove
Zillow.com
Television
TV Genius
Video Games
Wazap (Japan)
https://sg.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111227151040AAtBGRn
Research Data Oxford
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The big data employment boom
FORTUNE Big data has been favorably cast as the new oil and held up as the economic counterweight to Americas sinking manufacturing sector. And while the data is the new oil analogy isnt perfect or even necessarily sound (data is both abundant and renewable, after all), theres some merit to the metaphor. As oil did at the beginning of the last century, big data is going to drive economies in the century ahead. But it may not do so in the way that many people think it will.
As with oil, companies know data is out there in large quantities and that its not enough to simply know where it is it has to be extracted, refined, and delivered in a usable format to be valuable. And like the energy economy before it, the data economy needs dedicated people 4.4 million of them by 2015 in the IT field alone, according to an oft-cited Gartner Research analysis.
But here the similarities end. The oil patch has never had much trouble finding and training enough roughnecks to get oil out of the ground, but training up skilled big data professionals is a different enterprise entirely. In the U.S. alone, a McKinsey & Company report projects a shortfall of between 140,000 and 190,000 deep analytical big data professionals by 2018 that is, people with highly technical skills in machine learning, statistics, and/or computer science, the actual hands-on big data people that know how to crunch huge data sets into meaningful information.
But whats often overlooked in this dim projection of the big data labor market is that the impact of big data on employment goes far deeper than the deep analytics and IT fields. Companies need professionals at all levels that are not necessarily schooled in deep analytics but are nonetheless big data-savvy. These professionals dont need degrees in computer science or statistics.
MORE:The myth of Americas missing software engineers
A VP at management consulting and technology advisory outfit Booz Allen Hamilton recently told InformationWeek that the company has had great success bringing physicists and music majors onto data science teams creative thinkers who know less about computer science and more about how to look at big data problems in a different way. Though companies and economies will certainly need data scientists to manage their massive databases and information technology teams to support them, to a far greater degree theyll need professionals knowledgeable and creative enough to leverage big data to the greatest possible advantage.
Advances in software, in interface design, and things like that will make it easier to analyze big data in the future, says Dr. Betsy Page Sigman, a professor at Georgetown Universitys McDonough School of Business and an expert on technology and information systems. So it wont be as big of a technological hurdle. The more important thing for companies will be to have a lot of people that understand not just how to produce statistics and analytics, but understand how to make better decisions because they have this information.
Any employment bump tied to the proliferation of big data analytics wont be confined to IT departments or even to dedicated data divisions that emerge within companies. And it isnt just big data specialists like data scientists and statisticians that stand to benefit from this boom. Big data opportunities are already being exploited in data-centered pursuits like risk management, marketing, and research science, but the applications are virtually limitless.
Academically, big data is playing a role in decidedly non-data disciplines, like some portions of the social sciences and humanities, says Jim Spohrer, computer scientist and director of IBMs Global University Relations Programs. It will increasingly become integral in medical research, various kinds of product development and modeling, and all types of research science. To remain competitive, companies will require professionals at all levels that fundamentally grasp big data concepts and and know how to use them to their advantage.
What were seeing now is the tip of the iceberg, Spohrer says. You think of all the different jobs that exist today. How is all the data associated with each persons job going to change the job and the skills they need?
MORE: Dont cry for Nokia, Finland
Part of this shift will simply require the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pF2pAmEdEg&list=PL6b-Dl60taJzj3iq59qixu8Q-Y9sH910m&index=1 retooling of existing jobs, but there is also a new class of positions and skills emerging as well, Spohrer says, positions like chief data officer that will become more common within existing companies large and small. These jobs wont necessarily be occupied by deep analytics-types either, but by non-data professionals educated and experienced in their chosen industry while also skilled in the use of big data tools (which, as Sigman noted above, will only become easier for non-data professionals to use).
Existing companies will expand as they deploy more big data resources both human and technological to leverage big data to their advantage. But the space to watch isnt necessarily existing companies reorganizing to embrace big data, but the emerging big data industry where deep analytical job growth is likely to make its biggest economic impacts.
As with so many other specialized endeavors that fall outside the purview of core business things like advertising and marketing, the latter of which is itself being completely transformed by big data analytics many big data applications will be farmed out to outside contractors who specialize in big data analysis and problem solving, Sigman says. Scores of big data startups are already emerging (largely with the help of venture capital) to meet this demand, including MapR, ParStream, ScaleArc, and Cloudant. The ones who are able to best meet their customers data analytics needs are poised to become home to many of those many millions jobs big data will generate over the next few years.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/09/04/big-data-employment-boom/
Dan Wheldon crash video: IndyCar champion dead after 15-car pile-up in Las Vegas
Father-of-two, 33, pushed himself to win as only competitor to take up a $5million challengeClive Wheldon, 59, says his son was 'born to be a racer' who 'left us doing what he loved'
'I could see within five laps people were starting to do crazy stuff,' says fellow racer Dario FranchittiDriver was 'frustrated' with car problems in the days before the race but promised 'pure entertainment'
Voiced concerns about the speeds cars were reaching and crowded 1.5-mile long track
Shocked Lewis Hamilton says Wheldon was an 'inspirational guy and talented driver'Former racing driver Mark Blundell brands Las Vegas track as a 'recipe for disaster'Coroner says Wheldon died of fatal head injuries
ByDaily Mail Reporter
Updated: 06:06 GMT, 18 October 2011
Family, friends and leading figures from the world of motorsport paid tribute today to Dan Wheldon, who suffered horrendous injuries after his car hit another vehicle at breakneck speeds in the Las Vegas Indy 300.
The father-of-two was catapulted helplessly into the air in a 225mph smash before landing on a barrier and suffering fatal head injuries.
Fighting back tears, Clive Wheldon, 59, came out of the family home in Buckinghamshire around 5pm and said his son died in a sport he was born to
do.
Scroll down for video
Tragedy: Dan Wheldon's number 77 car (left) launches into the air after clipping a competitor in front of it. Moments later Wheldon smashed into the fencing to his right
Devastated: Clive Wheldon, accompanied by sons Austin, 26, and Ashley, 30, makes a statement yesterday following the death of his sonHe said: 'The family would like to thank everybody for their overwhelming sympathy in such a difficult time. Daniel was born to be a racer and yesterday he left us doing what he loved, he was true gentleman and champion on and off the track.
'He was a devoted son to Sue and myself, loving husband to his wife Susie and a loving father to his children Oliver and Sebastian.
'Words cannot describe how much our family will miss him. He touched so many and the world is a better place for him having been in it. We want to thank everyone for allowing us time to grieve in private.'
Serious safety questions were being raised today after it emerged that the British IndyCar champion had been offered a $5million incentive to race from the back.
A Las Vegas coroner also tonight revealed that Wheldon died of blunt force trauma to the head.
As tributes poured in, it was also revealed that the 33-year-old was among of group of drivers who had voiced concerns about the speed of cars and the cramped conditions on the track.
Mr Wheldon's Dallara-Honda had weaved its way through the field of cars after starting at the back in a desperate bid to claim the lucrative prize.
Just days earlier Mr Wheldon had joined a number of other drivers in expressing the fears over the speed of cars and overcrowding on the oval-shaped track. But in a blog post, he had promised fans he would go out to win and put on a show of 'pure entertainment'.
The 1.5 mile-long Motor Speedway track in Las Vegas is 60 per cent shorter than the one used for Indy-33 races.This may have caused a deadly combination of 34 cars crowded on the track, lighting fast speeds and fierce competition.
The fiery pile-up, on the 11th lap of the 300-mile race, was caused by contact on Turn 2 and sucked in almost half of the races 34 participants.
Footage from Mr Wheldon's vehicle shows him steering to the left to avoid the pile-up. But he drives into the back of a car in front which acts like a ramp and fires Mr Wheldon into the air at more than 200mph. His car slips over before landing on the 'catch fence'.
Mr Wheldon, a former private school pupil originally from Buckinghamshire, was rushed to hospital in a helicopter but died as a result of his severe 'unsurvivable' injuries. Despite wearing a helmet and being strapped into the cockpit, his chances of escaping alive were slim.
As the racing world today came to terms with the death, leading figures from the sport paid tribute to the 'talented and inspirational driver'. But IndyCar chief executive Randy Bernard will now face tough questions on safety as analysis begins of the fatal crash.
The sport has always been regarded as more dangerous then Formula One with four IndyCar drivers having been killed since 1996. But the big-money prizes and lucrative sponsorship deals have attracted many drivers, including Nigel Mansell who competed in the CART Indy Car World Series in 1993.
Lewis Hamilton, who was the 2008 Formula One World Champion, said: 'This is an extremely sad day. Dan was a racer I'd followed throughout my career, as I often followed in his footsteps as we climbed the motorsport ladder in the UK.
Mr Wheldon's blue and white car takes off in the air. It appears to have hit the back of the green vehicle in front, which acted like a ramp and launched the British driver upwards
Out of control: A close up of the moment of impact shows the rear left wheel of the green car pushed up by Mr Wheldon's vehicle, which reaches a steep angle
Milliseconds after the initial impact, Mr Wheldon's car has spun upside down as it hurtles towards the fencing. Will Power's car, right, is just beginning to take off
Will Power's car is flung into the air as a large number of vehicles collide in the pile-up and sparks fly. Mr Wheldon's vehicle has gone ahead of them and can no longer be seen in this shot
Will Power's number 12 car is seen flying through the air. The vehicle was not crushed against the fencing in the same manner as Mr Wheldon's and he survived the accident
Will Power's car lands close to the barrier facing backwards without suffering the severe damage inflicted on Mr Wheldon's vehicle, which is further down the track
Smashed to pieces: Wheldon's car, only identifiable by the B & W logo, is shown in the Big Data Analytics far left of the picture. The car is upside down and the driver's head has clearly been in contact with the barrier
The severe extent of the damage to the number 77 car, left, can be seen. Wires and shards of metal are hanging loose from it as flames engulf the tale
Fire: Mr Wheldon's car is momentarily lost in a ball of flames as it hits the barrier. Wheels and parts of the body of the vehicle are flung onto the track
Flames: Mr Wheldon's car skids across the asphalt on its nose having lost both front wheels and the rear spoiler in the crash. Will Power's vehicle is seen behind him against the fence
'Unsurvivable injuries: Mr Wheldon's head is flung to the left as his 77 car, now without any wheels, spins away from the fence towards the centre of the track
Medics rush to Mr Wheldon's damaged car as it becomes clear that he is severely injured. Some workers are seen waving, frantically trying to get more assistance
The race to save his life: Dan Wheldon is loaded into a medical helicopter and airlifted to hospitalTHE QUESTIONS THAT NEED TO BE ANSWERED
Why was Wheldon offered $5m to win from the back of the grid?
The organisers of Las Vegas Indy 300 - together with sponsors GoDaddy (a website domain and hosting company) - had offered the $5m challenge to several drivers from another racing series to add drama to the end-of-season race.
However, they later changed the format to accommodate Wheldon, was has previous IndyCar experience but was without a full-time deal.
Forced to start from the back of the 34-strong grid, Wheldon would have 200 laps to get to the front. If hed won, the Briton would have split the $5m prize with a competition winner, whod been flown out to Las Vegas specifically for the race.
Why was it so dangerous?
Former F1 and IndyCar driver Mark Blundell has since described the Las Vegas track as a recipe for disaster and called the pile-up inevitable.
It is a short circuit at just 1.5 miles, with an average lap-time of only 20 seconds. It means there is virtually no spread in the field, ensuring one mistake inevitably triggers a domino effect as seen in Sundays tragic pile-up.
Was anything wrong with the track itself?
It was the first IndyCar race in Las Vegas since 2000. The track features progressive banking, which means the angle of the gradient increases towards the top. Its design is to encourage side-by-side racing.
An average lap at the Las Vegas track is done at over 220mph. In comparison, the average speed of a lap in Sundays Korean Grand Prix is around 127mph.
Sundays race had already attracted criticism for the size of the field. While only 33 drivers are allowed to compete at the world-famous Indianapolis 500, 34 drivers had started this race - even though the Las Vegas track is one mile shorter than that at Indianapolis.
Is IndyCar more dangerous than F1?
While there hasnt been a fatality in F1 since Ayrton Sennas crash in 1994, Wheldons death comes just five years after Paul Dana was killed in IndyCar. Four IndyCar drivers have died since 1996.
Although F1 has suggested some controversial ideas in its time - for example, the idea of creating rain to add excitement to races - it is highly unlikely such a plan as the $5m challenge would ever pass through the tight regulations set by the FIA.
'He was an extremely talented driver. As a British guy, who not only went over to the States but who twice won the Indy 500, he was an inspirational guy, and someone that every racing driver looked up to with respect and admiration.
'This is a tragic loss at such a young age. My heart goes out to his family and friends during this extremely difficult time.'
Jenson Button wrote on Twitter: 'Just woken up to the most horrific news. Dan Weldon RIP. I have so many good memories of racing with Dan in the early 90s, a true fighter. We've lost a legend in our sport but also a great guy.'
Former Formula One world champion Jody Scheckter wants his son to quit IndyCar racing following the death of Briton Dan Wheldon.
Scheckter was a spectator at Sundays Las Vegas Indy 300 and had an anxious wait before discovering son Tomas had escaped unharmed from the 15-car crash.
'Ive wanted him to give up for a while,' said Scheckter. 'Hopefully this will knock some sense into him and realise there is more to life. It really isnt worth it.'
Questions were also being asked about the safety of the course amid speculation that Mr Wheldon was pushing himself too hard after a difficult season. He had started in last position but with offer of a $5million bonus for drivers who win from the back of the gird, had already weaved his way through ten cars before going into the back of another vehicle.
Trails of sparks could be seen across the asphalt before Mr Wheldon's car was flung into the air and struck part of the 'catch fence' outside the bend.
Debris from the cars was strewn across the track as they spun into each other and careered into the fencing. Flames then engulfed Mr Wheldon's shattered vehicle which skidded on its nose across the tarmac.
Three other drivers, including championship contender Will Power, were hurt in the pile-up.
Rescue workers were at Mr Wheldon's car quickly, some furiously waving for more help to get to the scene. A helicopter descended onto the track moments later and airlifted Mr Wheldon's body to the University Hospital in Las Vegas.
The former champion's injuries were so bad that there was little that the medics could do to save him. He was pronounced dead a short while later and officials were informed two hours after the initial crash.
Mr Wheldon's wife Susie, and two sons, Sebastian, two, and six-month-old Oliver, are understood to have been at his bedside when he died, as well as his two brothers and a sister.
Outside the Wheldon family home in Emberton, Buckinghamshire, today, a family friend was seen coming to the door to receive flowers and condolences from neighbours.
The friend - who did not wish to be named - said Dan's mum and dad Susan and Clive were at the family home but were too upset to comment.
He said: 'They are in no fit state to speak to anyone at the moment, they are resting after a very difficult night. They will not be giving a statement right now.'
The Wheldon family - whose son Dan was privately educated at the nearby Bedford School - own a seven bedroom large sandstone cottage in the village.
Neighbour Jean Garrett, 49, said: 'I have known the Wheldon family for 27 years and I have known Daniel all his life. Our thoughts, my husband's, myself and my family, are with them.
'I can't get my head around it at the moment. When they first moved into the village I got to know Sue, his mother, and we became friends. It just feels like there is a big hole in my life now. I never went to America to see Daniel but I would always make sure that i would visit him when he came back home.
'He was a lovely person. I can't believe what has happened.' Rector Richard Caddell, from Emberton's All Saints Church, paid his respects to the family this morning.'
Speaking outside the home in the rain he said: 'I know the Wheldon's well but it is too soon to tell whether they will hold the funeral here or in America.'
Graham Smith, 63, from the Association of British Kart Clubs, said his Dan was a talent even at a young age.
Graham's son Malcolm raced alongside Dan when as a youngster he won the British Championship in karting in 1988, 89 and 90 - with another racing great Jensen Button winning the year after.
Graham, from Southam, Warwickshire, said: 'Even at an early age it was clear Dan had a great talent, he won everything he entered up until Jensen came in.
'It's a shame we never got to see Dan in Formula One, but I actually think he probably went on to have a better career in the United States. It is just so very sad that it has ended this way.'
Mr Wheldon had weaved his way through ten cars to place himself in a promising position close to the middle of the field in the early stages of the race. He was in a strong position to push for a victory and as a proud family man, the $5m would have been a big help to support his wife and children who had started a new life with him in the U.S
Organisers of the race had offered the massive bonus to any non-regular IndyCar driver, such as Wheldon, who had started at the back of the field. He was the only racer to accept the challenge.
Proud family man: Wheldon poses with wife Susie, who is holding baby son Oliver, and older son Sebastian on the day after he won Indianapolis 500 in May of this year. With them is the Borg-Warner trophyChampion: Mr Wheldon poses with a trophy and his young son Sebastian after winning the IZOD IndyCar Series Indianapolis 500 Mile Race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May this year. Right, celebrating on the track after the race
Proud father: Mr Wheldon holds his son Sebastian, when he was just eight weeks old, at his Snell Isle home in St. Petersburg in 2009
Teenagers: Mr Wheldon, left, and Jenson Button, right, chat during the Formula Ford Festival and World Cup, at Brands Hatch in 1998
Happy times: Dan Wheldon, middle of the second row, enjoying himself during his childhood
Early success: Mr Wheldon, who started racing aged four, is pictured third from the right, on the front row, during the Championship Cadet Series in Shenington near Banbury in 1988Despite his previous success, he had struggled with financial backing this season and had topped up his income with commentary work.
The race was abandoned after the tragedy and as news of Mr Wheldon's death spread there were emotional scenes track side.
Some of his colleagues and friends broke down in tears while others looked on in a stunned silence, still coming to terms with the news that the vibrant driver had gone.
IndyCar chief executive Randy Bernard confirmed Mr Wheldons death at a press conference.
Devastated: Team mates Jenson Button, left, and Lewis Hamilton, right, have both paid tribute to Wheldon who they have called 'inspirational'
Support: A neighbour delivers flowers to the home of racing driver Dan Wheldon's parents in Emberton, Buckinghamshire, todayTwo young fans look at the memorial, as right, Bob Herring and his wife Cindy embrace at the gate to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway
TRIBUTES FROM RACING WORLD
IndyCar driver Danica Patrick: 'There are no words for today. Myself and so many others are devastated. I pray for Suzi and the kids that God will give them strength.'
IndyCar driver James Hinchcliffe: 'It's a black day for the sport. We came in here hoping for a good season finale and ended up losing a close friend and a very good racing driver.'
Dario Franchitti, former teammate: 'Everybody in IndyCar considered Dan a friend. You saw what the reaction was. Dan was one of those special, special people.'
Chip Ganassi, owner of Wheldon's former team: 'We're all going to miss him. A little bit of everybody in IndyCar racing died today.'
Oriol Servia, IndyCar driver: 'Dan was always a very happy guy; he was always smiling. He was a funny, great person that touched a lot of people. He will be missed.'
Racer Tommy Kendall: Struggling for words. A very bright light was extinguished today. As alive as a person can be one minute and gone the next.'
Jamie Little, ESPN motorsport reporter: 'Great memories. Great friend. Amazing talent. Thank you for your constant smile and endearing spirit. We lost a great one today.'
Sam Schmidt, owner of Wheldon's No. 77 Indy-car: 'Dan was a tremendous competitor, a great racer and an even better person. It was an honour to have him be a part of our team.'
Kansas Speedway president Patrick Warren: 'Dan exemplified the definition of a champion, both on and off the track.'
He said: IndyCar is very sad to announce that Dan Wheldon has passed away from unsurvivable injuries. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family today.
Fellow driver Dario Franchitti, Wheldons former teammate and friend since the age of six, said: 'Im numb and speechless. One minute youre joking around in driver intros and the next Dans gone.'
Franchitti claimed there had been warning signs of potential danger due to the number of cars in close confinement at such high speeds.
He added: 'I could see within five laps people were starting to do crazy stuff.
'I love hard racing but that to me is not really what it's about. One small mistake from somebody...
'We put so much pressure on ourselves to win races and championships, and its what we love to do. Days like today it doesnt matter.
'I think everybody in the IndyCar series considered Dan a friend. He was one of those special, special people.
'He was six years old when I first met him. He was this little kid and the next thing you know he was my team-mate. '
Moments before the start of the race, popular Wheldon, a two-time winner of the famously tough Indy 500, sent his last Twitter message. It was just one word - 'Green!!!' - the colour on the lights that signals the start of the race.
Although officials had decided to end the race, after learning of his death, 19 of Mr Wheldons fellow drivers went on to perform a five-lap salute in his honour.
Many of them were visibly shaken and almost all of them covering their eyes with dark sunglasses after being told that their colleague's injuries were fatal.
When the drivers solemnly returned to the track, Wheldon's No. 77 was the only one on the towering scoreboard.
Franchitti sobbed uncontrollably as he got back into his car for the tribute laps.
Over speakers at the track, the song Danny Boy blared, followed by Amazing Grace as hundreds of crew workers from each team stood solemnly on the side of the course. Supporters in the stands stood up in silence for the tribute.
Television cameras captured Ashley Judd, the wife of Mr Franchitti, dabbing at her eyes shortly before the official word came.
Video replays showed Wheldon's car turning over as it was airborne and sailed into what's called the 'catch fence,' which sits over the safety barrier that's designed to give when cars make contact.
IndyCar officials also cancelled its season-ending banquet following the death. They had planned to hold a celebration for the 2011 season tonight at Mandalay Bay Resort on the Las Vegas Strip.
Today it emerged that Mr Wheldon had become 'frustrated' before the race with technical problems in the number 77 Bowers & Wilkins Magnolia/William Rast Dallara/Honda. He complained that the vehicle was 3mp off the pace but said adjustments were being carried out.
'If we start the race that far off the pace, it's going to be difficult to keep up,' he wrote on USA Today.
Tributes: The gate to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway where fans have been leaving touching tributes to two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dan Wheldon
Patriotic: Drew Boyd places a checkered flag as a tribute to Dan Wheldon underneath a British flag placed in honour of the driverIt's actually been a very difficult weekend for us so far. But I've been watching these guys work their tails off trying to fix this problem, and I believe they'll turn it around before Sunday's race.
'It is incredibly frustrating, both for me and them. All the boys are working as hard as possible, but so far we haven't pinpointed what it is.
'Honestly, if I can be fast enough early in the race to be able to get up there and latch onto those two, it will be pure entertainment. It's going to be a pack race, and you never know how that's going to turn out.'
Sheer disbelief: Brazilian driver Vitor Meira at a drivers meeting after the deadly crash and, right, crew members look at the remains of one of the crashed cars
Tangled mess: Members of driver Paul Tracy's team inspect the remains of his car
Shocking aftermath: Cars are scattered on the track after a 15 car crash during the Las Vegas Indy 300
Stunned and tearful: Drivers take five tribute laps in Las Vegas on Sunday in honour of Dan Wheldon
Dazed: IndyCar racer Danica Patrick walks away from pit road after the tribute laps
Choking back tears: Stunned fans weep as drivers pay their five-lap tribute
Touching tribute: Teams line up on pit row as drivers take five laps in honour of Wheldon1978 - 2011: A LIFETIME OF WINNING
1978: Born in Olney, Buckinghamshire on June 22.
1982: Starts Big Data karting.
1999: Wins U.S. F2000 championship and wins 'Rookie of the Year'.
2000: Becomes Toyota Atlantic 'Rookie of the Year'.
2001: Wins CART Dayton Indy Lights 'Rookie of the Year.'
2002: Makes IndyCar debut with Panther Racing.
2003: Wins IndyCar 'Rookie of the Year' for Andretti Green Racing.
2004: Finishes second in the points standings for the season.
2005: Wins the Indianapolis 500 race, becoming the first Englishman to do so since Graham Hill in 1966. Claims IndyCar drivers' championship in second full season.
2006: Finishes runner-up in the drivers' championship.
2009: Finishes second at Indianapolis 500 after starting from 18th.
2010: Comes second again at Indianapolis 500.
2011: Joins Bryan Herta Autosport after leaving Panther Racing. May - Wins Indianapolis 500. October 16 - Killed in final IndyCar race of the season at Las Vegas.
IndyCar said information on a public memorial for Wheldon will be released at a later date.
Mr Wheldon is the first IndyCar driver to die on the track since rookie Paul Dana was killed in practice on the morning of race day at Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2006.
There were suggestions that too many cars were crammed onto the course when Mr Wheldon crashed. Thirty four were competing in all, but the oval-shaped track in Las Vegas is just 60 per cent as long as races where 33 cars are used.
Former Formula One driver Mark Blundell said after the accident that the 1.5 mile long Motor Speedway track was a 'recipe for disaster'.
Martin Whitmarsh, the team principal of McLaren, said the death highlighted 'the bitter contrast that sometimes exists between the highs and lows of motorsport.' He added: 'The motorsport world is now in mourning following Dans passing.'
The tragedy comes just months after Mr Wheldon won the famous Indianapolis 500 in May for the second time.
Mr Wheldon, who lived in St Petersburg, Florida, won the entire IndyCar series championship back in 2005, when he also enjoyed his first triumph in the Indy500 race.
Born in Emberton, Buckinghamshire, Mr Wheldon attended the fee-paying Bedford School and started karting at the age of four.
After an early racing rivalry with contemporary and Formula One ace Jenson Button, he left the UK in 1999 for the more lucrative racing scene in the USA.
Wheldon's first Indianapolis 500 victory was in 2005 - he passed Danica Patrick with less than 10 laps to go that year - and his win at the sport's most famed race this year was one to particularly savour.
It came in perhaps the oddest of fashions, as he was the beneficiary of a huge gaffe by someone else.
Mr Wheldon was in second place, far back of rookie J.R. Hildebrand approaching the final turn - when Hildebrand lost control and clipped the wall.
He zipped past, and the only lap he led all day at Indianapolis was the last one.
He returned to the track the next morning for the traditional photo session with the winner, kissing the bricks as his two-year-old son Sebastian sat on the asphalt alongside him, and wife, Susie, held their then two-month-old, Oliver.
Mr Wheldon was almost resigned to finishing second at Indy for the third straight year, before misfortune struck Hildebrand.
'It's obviously unfortunate, but that's Indianapolis,' he said.
'That's why it's the greatest spectacle in racing. You never know what's going to happen.'
Such was the case again today.
Mr Wheldon was well behind the first wave of cars that got into trouble on the fateful lap, and had no way to avoid the wrecks in front of him.
With the incredible speeds reached by the cars, there was no time to brake or steer out of trouble.
Popular: With his love of racing and golden boy looks, Wheldon was loved among followers of the sportTHE INDYCAR DRIVERS WHO DIED FOR THEIR LOVE OF SPEED
IndyCar has not had a fatality since Paul Dana was killed at the Homestead-Miami track in 2006. Another driver had lost control and gone into a spin during a morning warm-up. Dana died when he hit the other car at 200mph.
American driver Tony Renna was killed in 2003 in Indianapolis. During tire testing his car spun and became airborne, smashing into the fence. Renna died instantly.
In 1996 Scott Brayton a veteran driver who had competed in 14 Indy 500s since 1981, was killed in practice after qualifying for the pole position for that years race.
Champion driver Greg Moore was fatally injured in a violent 1999 crash during the Marlboro 500, the CART season finale in Fontana, California.
Gonzalo Rodriguez, a Uraguayan driver, died during the practice session for only his second CART race, at Laguna Seca, California, in 1999. At the notorious Corkscrew corner, his car went off the track flipping over concrete the barrier and landing upside down on the other side of the wall.
American race car driver Jeff Krosnoff was killed in a race in Toronto in 1996. A wheel-to-wheel touch with another car sent his vehicle over the barrier striking a light post. The accident also left a track volunteer dead after he was struck by a wheel.
Filipino driver Jovy Marcelo who came from a racing family well known in Asia, was killed in practice for the 1992 Indy 500 race.
Two drivers were killed in 1982. Jim Hickman died in a qualifying accident in Milwaukee after a stuck throttle caused his car to slam into the wall. Earlier in 1982 he had been named Rookie of the Year.
Gordon Smiley died during qualification for the 1982 Indy 500 after his car slid off a Enterprise Search turn and hit the wall at nearly 200 mph. Smiley was also a promising Formula 1 driver.
'I saw two cars touch each other up in front of me and then I tried to slow down, couldn't slow down,' driver Paul Tracy said.
'Then Dan's car, from what I saw in the videos, came over my back wheel and over top of me. Just a horrendous accident.'
Even as a former series champion and one of the sport's top names, Wheldon did not have the financial backing to secure a full-time ride for himself this season.
He kept himself busy by working as a commentator for some races and testing prototype cars that the IndyCar series will be using in the future.
IndyCar will have new cars in 2012, much of the changes done with a nod for safety.
It had been a passion of Wheldon's in recent months, and he once quipped that he was a 'test dummy' for the new cars by working with engineers as often as he was.
Mr Wheldon moved to the United States in 1999, quickly trying to find sponsor money to fund his dream, and by 2002 - after stints in some lower-profile open-wheel series, such as the F2000 championship, Toyota Atlantic Series and IndyLights - he was on the IndyCar grid for the first time.
Wheldon got his first IndyCar Series ride, in 2002, for two races with Panther Racing, then replaced Michael Andretti when Andretti retired the next season and won Rookie of the Year.
His first victory came the next season, in Japan, and he finished second in the championship standings behind Andretti Green Racing teammate Tony Kanaan.
The next year, he was its champion. NASCAR teams talked to him about changing series. So did Formula One organizations.
In the end, he decided IndyCar was his calling.
'The biggest thing for me is the Indianapolis 500,' Wheldon said in 2005, not long after becoming the first Englishman since Graham Hill in 1966 to prevail at the Brickyard. 'It would be really difficult to leave this series because of that race.'
As evidenced by the difficulty in finding sponsorships this season, it was also difficult for him to stay in the series.
Even though he finished among the top 10 in IndyCar points annually from 2004 through 2010, Sunday was only Wheldon's third start of 2011.
Off the track, Wheldon had varied interests, some of which had almost nothing to do with his driving.
In 2010, he released a photo book he called Lionheart, a coffee table book that he described as 'almost like a photo biography from my career in IndyCars up until this point.'
He spent years editing the book, which included dozens of photos of his life away from the track, including images from his wedding.
'I wanted it to have a lot of my input,' Mr Wheldon said last year. 'Obviously, it's a reflection of me.'
He also wanted that book to provide his fans with a glimpse of his life that they would never have known otherwise.
'There's a lot of my wedding in there,' Wheldon said.
'I wanted there to be a lot of photos of my wife. She was the most beautiful bride on her wedding day the world had ever seen.'
Fellow
In a statement McLaren team principle Martin Whitmarsh, said: 'Dan Wheldons tragic death highlights the bitter contrast that sometimes exists between the highs and lows of motorsport.
'His rapid ascent to the very top ranks of US motorsport, capped by two fantastic Indy 500 victories and the 2005 Indy Car title, are the lasting legacy of a hugely talented driver and champion.
'The motorsport world is now in mourning following Dan's passing. On behalf of everyone at McLaren Mercedes, I pass on my condolences to his family and friends.'
Although great strides have been made in the safety of motor racing, Dan Wheldon's death is a reminder of the dangers inherent in the sport.
Hundreds of drivers, crew members, officials and spectators have lost their lives as a result of crashes over the years.
Ayrton Senna, a three-time Formula One world champion, famously died in 1994 while leading the San Marino Grand Prix.
He suffered fatal skull fractures when his car lost control and smashed into a wall at 135mph. The Brazilian was the last driver to die at the wheel of a Formula One car. His death came a day after fellow competitor Roland Ratzenberger was killed while qualifying for the event.
One of the biggest tragedies in motorsport was in 1955, when Frenchman Pierre Levegh, a Mercedes-Benz factory driver, was killed in a crash at Le Mans that also cost the lives of 83 spectators.
After he collided with another car and was sent flying in the air, parts of his vehicle flew into the crowd and the fuel tank exploded.
Canadian Gilles Villeneuve was killed while qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix in 1982.
The horrific accident saw him crash into a slower car before he was reportedly thrown more than 50 metres from the wreckage after his car flew into the air and somersaulted several times.
Shockwaves were sent around the world when Jim Clark, a Scotsman, died at the Formula Two Deutschland Trophae in 1968. During the event at the Hockenheimring in Germany, his Lotus car came off the track and ploughed into trees, leaving him with a broken neck and fractured skull.
Dan Wheldon was the first IndyCar series driver to die since Paul Dana's death in 2006. The 30-year-old American driver smashed into a stationary car during a practice session in Miami. The vehicle broke on impact and he was pronounced dead at hospital two hours later.
Another notable death was that of seven-time Nascar champion Dale Earnhardt, who was killed in 2001 at the Daytona 500. The tragedy led to sweeping safety improvements in Nascar, the world's largest governing body for stock car racing.
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Transcendental Meditation - My Experience
Easy to Fit into your Routine...
When you start practicing transcendental meditation, you'll meditatetwice a day for around 20 minutes. Because there's no concentrationinvolved, you don't have to be in a quiet place - so a lot of peoplemeditate on the bus or train on the way to work. While you'remeditating, you simply sit quietly with your eyes closed - so othercommuters will just assume you're asleep.
I learned TM when Maharishi was still regularly giving lectures. He always emphasized that TM was a "householder's meditation", designed to be fitted into a busy life. So don't let anyone tell you TM "won't work" if you meditate in a noisy environment, it's not true!
While I was practising "ordinary" TM, I was happy to recommend it to anyone. I was leading a more confident, stress-free, happy life because of it. Yes, learning was expensive - but in return, I had lifetime support and access to (free) weekly or monthly get-togethers and lectures.
But then, several years later, the Siddhis were introduced.
Siddhis are an advanced program and completely optional - but the average meditator is so impressed with their experience, the offer to "enhance" it is irresistible. Plus, of course, if everyone else at your local TM is going on courses and learning new things, you feel left out if you don't.
And that's where things started to get slightly weird...
The Siddhis
When I started TM, Maharishi was atgreat pains to stress that TM was a meditation to fit into your life, not take it over. Maharishi refused to tell meditators whatto eat, how to think or how to behave.
He used to say, "Different people needdifferent things at different levels of consciousness. You know, deep down, what isright for you. That will change as you evolve, and you should let that happen naturally."
He also emphasized that although it had its roots in Hinduism, TM was not religious in any way. He warned against "polluting" TM by mixing it with other practices.
When the Siddhi program was introduced several years later, it seemed to contradict those statements. The program promised to speed one's path to enlightenment and develop supernatural skills. It included readings from the Bhagavad Ghita. We were given guidelines on diet (vegetarian, but no mushrooms or onions), and offered Ayurvedic medicine and massages, special oils and supplements, horoscopes and more. We were told we must control our thinking and shun negative thoughts.
Instead of two 20-minute sessions on mydaily commute, the Siddhi program required total privacy and took two full hours every day. For me it was more like three hours, because the meditation would send me to sleep every time! By the time I'd done my program in the evening, there was barely enough time to eat before going to bed - and I had to get up at the crack of dawn to be sure of making it to work on time.
I was never quite comfortable with allowing TM to take over my life in this way - I kept thinking of Maharishi's original words. And it worried me that some of the most respected members of theTM community - the individuals who welcomed Maharishi when he firstarrived in the UK in the 1960s - refused to take part in the Siddhi program.
However, I was married to Yoga a man who enthusiastically embraced TM and so I swallowed my misgivings. But then the wheels started to fall off...
"Roughness"
Soon after starting the Siddhi program, I started to lose the serene happiness I'd got used to. I felt disconnected, tired and irritable. Then things started to go inexplicably, horribly wrong - where previously, I'd got used to having a charmed life.
I couldn't see any results from the Siddhi program and I blamed it for what was happening - but the TM teachers pushed me to keep going.
Their explanation was this: when you meditate normally, small amounts of old stresses and bad karma are released from the mind and body, and dissipate harmlessly. Because the Siddhi program is so powerful, negative energy is released in greater quantities - too much to dissipate easily, so you find yourself experiencing the original stresses again as they come out. Bad karma is also being released.
So you may feel anxious or afraid, cry or laugh a lot, feel aches and pains, or find bad things happening in your life. You may also have difficulty "resurfacing" fully from the meditative state, so you feel disoriented or irrational.
All this is called "roughness" and is a good thing - it means you're getting rid of a lot of accumulated negativity from your being. You're given extra practice to "smooth it out" - extra breathing and yoga exercises, Ayurvedic massages, residential courses with more meditation, not less.
I believed this explanation and persevered - until my mother took ill Power Yoga and I spent six weeks in Scotland while she recovered, away from my husband and my TM instructors.
There, I didn't have two hours a day to spare, so I missed several of my sessions - and guess what, I felt much more like my normal self. I started to question whether I wanted to go on enduring this awful "roughness" - after all, I didn't learn TM to reach enlightenment, I learned it to relieve stress.
So I stopped - and my life started to turn around.
Living in a Bubble
When I gave up TM, I made another discovery.
When TM was working well for me, it created a protective shell around me, shielding me from the world.
That sounds great, and in many ways it was. Stress and anxiety rolled off me like water off a duck's back. Grief and sadness were things of the past. I was contented, and life was smooth sailing.
But...
It wasn't until I stopped meditating that I discovered the shell worked for the ups of life as well as the downs. There's a big difference between contentment and pure joy. I spent 17 years living my life on one note - yes, I missed out on the lows, but I missed out on the highs, too.
The shell also meant I couldn't connect to people as well as I should have. Yes, I loved my husband and my family - but until I gave up TM, I didn't realise how muted that feeling had become.
I had always planned to start doing my basic TM practice again, but after that discovery, I decided not to. I'm not prepared to miss out on the high points of life any more, even if it means I end up in the Slough of Despond occasionally. That's what life is!
http://hubpages.com/health/meditation-transcendental
About
Fashion is in my blood. When I was a kid, my mom would drive me two hours through crazy LA traffic for photo shoots. I used to hang out with the stylists, try on clothes, get advice. It was a great way to grow up. Eventually, I started giving my friends fashion advice, and never looked back.
After 20 years as a stylist for photographers, I was ready to start a business that would let me evolve my own fashion and consulting style. More than anything, I wanted to share my passion for fashion, and watch as my clients discovered the transformative power of a knock-out look.
Today my clients are CEOs, celebrities, corporate and creative people -- men and women who want serious input on their clothing style, advice on what to wear to an event, or how to put together and pack the most versatile travel wardrobe. I also do styling for fashion shoots, including art direction, makeup, hair, clothing and accessorizing. I’ll make you look great. I promise.
