Fr. Pat focuses his attention on that which Saint Paul calls “of primary importance” for us to learn both from the saint’s words and from his life experience.

Guest: Joel Miller, author of the recently published Lifted by Angels: The Presence and Power of Our Heavenly Guides and Guardians discusses with Kevin Allen and the callers the reality and role of angels within the Christian salvation context.

Effective copywriting is your secret weapon for driving conversions. With strategic word choice (based on voice of customer data) and a clear understanding of your target audience, you can craft copy that not only grabs attention but actively encourages action. Here's how...

The post Copywriting for Startups: 7 Lessons To Drive Conversions appeared first on Coaching and training to scale your copywriting business, plus programs for new copywriters, startups, and marketers.

Conversion copywriters follow a simple 3-step process to get the ‘yes’ in email campaigns: First, they dive deep into understanding their audience, figuring out exactly what makes them tick. Then, they craft emails that are not just engaging but hit right at the heart of the reader's needs and desires. Every word is fine-tuned for clarity and impact. Finally, they test and tweak, ensuring the message not only resonates but also drives real action.

The post How To Write Emails: The Conversion Copywriter’s Approach appeared first on Coaching and training to scale your copywriting business, plus programs for new copywriters, startups, and marketers.

(Google blog post)

Appoints "President of Sales and Business Development".

Sergey Brin is telling employees to stop making old products and start improving new ones. "For example, said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, Google plans to combine its spreadsheet, calendar and word-processing programs into one suite of Web-based applications."

Watch highlights as Connacht secure a convincing victory over Dragons in the United Rugby Championship.

Watch highlights as Ospreys earn a much-needed United Rugby Championship victory over Edinburgh in Bridgend.

For most business owners, the main reason why they would outsource their call center services is that it’s usually the least expensive option. Be that as it may, there are several factors that go into the final cost of doing so—including the type of call center, its location, and the […]

The post Call Center Outsourcing Costs: How Much Is It REALLY? appeared first on .

Longtime tour pro Ian Burns on how competing in his first ironman competition helped improve his fitness.

Shabnam Younus-Jewell chats to Mark Davis about his 30 plus years as a professional.

Wigan Warriors become the first side in the Super League era to win all four trophies in a single season, beating Hull KR in a tight Grand Final at Old Trafford.

Paddy McGuinness is taking on a nearly 300-mile cycling challenge for BBC Children in Need.

A review of the front page stories from the daily newspapers in Scotland.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd tells MPs David Anderson QC will oversee a review of the way recent attacks were handled. in a statement on the terror attacks in Manchester and London.

The deal to save the chain will see more than 30 of its restaurants close.

A review of the front page stories from the daily and weekly newspapers in Wales.

Gig Buddies partnered Lee up with Steve as they share similar musical tastes.

People across the south of England pay their respects to fallen service men and women.

A peek behind the famous concrete walls.

Not an artisan sourdough loaf in sight.

Illuminations to be dotted among the skyscrapers again.

Pop-up cinemas screening Christmas classics.

This morning I awoke to find a claim published in the Mail that I was not a sex worker. 


It is a direct attack on my integrity as a writer, to claim that I lied. And I have been prepared.

When the case goes to trial, I will have to present evidence that I was a sex worker. Starting with this - an Archive.org snap of my first escorting ad from October 2003 (link NSFW).

(Readers of the first book may recall this was the session with the grumpy photographer I wrote about. As I have often said, it was that experience - being made to wear terrible lingerie, awkward poses, all the rest - that first made me think, 'hey, I should be blogging this.'

And if you read the third book, I made a reference to a restaurant on Old Compton Street that has the same name as my working name - that is, of course, Taro.)

I will also be presenting my bank records from 2003-04, showing the cash deposits from the money I earned as an escort, and tax records from the same years showing that this income was declared to HMRC and tax paid. Here is a sample:

 
I also have the notebook in which I recorded details of appointments, etc. In several instances I have been able to piece together entries from the notebook, deposits to my accounts, and the corresponding entries in the book. If pressed, I will name a client, but only as a last resort.

The Mail also claims I didn't own nice enough clothes so couldn't have been an escort!


That's from December 2003, and is the same red silk top I wore to meet the manager for the first time (as written about in the first book). The next is at Henley Regatta in July 2004, suit is from Austin Reed, the bracelet was a gift from a client.



The Mail claims I was in Sheffield when writing the blog, but I moved to London in September 2003 and started escorting in October, starting blogging a few weeks later. All of which is easy - trivial, even - to prove.

Oh, and the "former landlady in Sheffield, who did not wish to be named", where I supposedly lived for three years? Who apparently saw me in 'Oxfam jumpers'? Hmm... I lived one year in university accommodation (St George's Flats),  one year in a shared flat with an absentee landlord I never met (Hawthorne Road), and one year on my own in a house let through an agency (Loxley New Road). All well before moving to London. So either the landlady is lying about the timing of my tenancy and having met me, or (shock, horror) they made it up.

There's much more but it would be boring to put it all here. It's amazing to me the MoS made no effort at all to match anything they printed against things that are easy to find and in the public domain. But that's by the by, and will come out in due course.

It matters because this is a concerted and direct attack on my work as a writer. When I was anonymous, being real was my main - my only - advantage. The Mail on Sunday have made some frankly nonsense claims, and I will be going to town on this.

Because I know people do not trust the word of a sex worker, that is why I saved everything.

I look forward to the opportunity to rebut all claims in court. (The MoS claim the trial is expected "within weeks." In fact it is scheduled for June 2015.)

(no podcast this week - Boo! Check back next week) Chrome for Android Google has just released a beta of Chrome for Android, which is available for those running Android Ice Cream Sandwich (aka "the 1%"). This isn't JavaScript-specific news per se, but it is HUGE news for web devs ...

Economic freedom is positively associated with job creation

La posible y cada vez más anunciada salida de Reino Unido de la Unión Europea, el llamado brexit, tiene consecuencias en todos los ámbitos. Para algunos es una catástrofe. Para otros, la liberación. Independientemente...

The post El brexit para los traductores jurados: ¿Qué consecuencias tiene? appeared first on El Blog del Traductor Jurado.

This post looks at the main public registers (registros) in Spain. It outlines what they are for and lists common translations and similar entities in English-speaking countries. Whether each registro is more a list or a place (or both) is also covered. This key distinction (described in this post) can affect the translation or at […]

An OCR free word spotting method is developed and evaluated under a strong experimental protocol. Different feature sets are evaluated under the same experimental conditions. In addition, a tuning process in the document segmentation step is proposed which provides a significant reduction in terms of processing time. For this purpose, a complete OCR-free method for word spotting in printed documents was implemented, and a document database containing document images and their corresponding ground truth text files was created. A strong experimental protocol based on 800 document images allows us to compare the results of the three feature sets used to represent the word image.

This work presents a first approach to the synthesis of Spanish Sign Language's (LSE) Classifier Constructions (CCs). All current attempts at the automatic synthesis of LSE simply create the animations corresponding to sequences of signs. This work, however, includes the synthesis of the LSE classification phenomena, defining more complex elements than simple signs, such as Classifier Predicates, Inflective CCs and Affixal classifiers. The intelligibility of our synthetic messages was evaluated by LSE natives, who reported a recognition rate of 93% correct answers.

Project monitoring plays a crucial role in project management, which is a part of every stage of a project's life-cycle. Nevertheless, along with the increasing ratio of outsourcing in many companies' strategic plans, project monitoring has been challenged by geographically dispersed project teams and culturally diverse team members. Furthermore, because of the lack of a uniform standard, data exchange between various project monitoring software becomes an impossible mission. These factors together lead to the issue of ambiguity in project monitoring processes. Ontology is a form of knowledge representation with the purpose of disambiguation. Consequently, in this paper, we propose the framework of an ontology-based real-time project monitoring system (ORPSM), in order to, by means of ontologies, solve the ambiguity issue in project monitoring processes caused by multiple factors. The framework incorporates a series of ontologies for knowledge capture, storage, sharing and term disambiguation in project monitoring processes, and a series of metrics for assisting management of project organizations to better monitor projects. We propose to configure the ORPMS framework in a cloud environment, aiming at providing the project monitoring service to geographically distributed and dynamic project members with great flexibility, scalability and security. A case study is conducted on a prototype of the ORPMS in order to evaluate the framework.

1. The Stanchies: Canucks stomp out Flames in 3-1 victory  Canucks Army
2. Pettersson, Canucks having fun again with bounce-back win over Flames  Sportsnet.ca
3. Three takeaways as Flames cap gruelling stretch with loss to Canucks  Calgary Herald
4. Pettersson has goal, assist to lift Canucks past Flames  NHL.com
5. I Watched This Game: Brännström gets first goal as a Canuck in comfy win over Flames  Vancouver Is Awesome

Through the unparalleled espousal of theory of planned behaviour, this study intends to significantly add to the current knowledge on social networking sites (SNS) in <i>eWOM</i> information and its role in defining intentions to buy green products. In specie, this study seeks to first investigate the part played by <i>attitude towards SNS information</i> in influencing the <i>acceptance of SNS information</i> and then by <i>acceptance of SNS information</i> in effecting the <i>green purchase intention</i>. Besides this, it also aims to analyse the influence exerted by first <i>credibility of SNS information</i> on <i>acceptance of SNS information</i> and then by <i>acceptance of SNS information</i> on <i>green purchase intention</i>. In doing so, it also examines how well the age of the SNS users moderates all these four associations.

Smart cities research is growing all over the world seeking to understand the effect of smart cities from different angles, domains and countries. The aim of this study is to analyse how the smart city ICTs (e.g., big data analytics, AI, IoT, cloud computing, smart grids, wireless communication, intelligent transportation system, smart building, e-governance, smart health, smart education and cyber security) are related to government. services and society welfare from the perspective of China. This research confirmed a positive correlation of smart city ICTs to e-Govt. Services (e-GS). On the other hand, the research showed a positive influence of smart city ICTs on society's welfare. These findings about smart cities and ICTs inform us how the thought paradigm to smart technologies can cause the improvement of e-GS through economic development, job creation and social welfare. The study offers different applications of the theoretical perspectives and the management perspective which are significant to building a society during recent technologised era.

The confluence of the internet of things (IoT) with smart grids has ushered in a paradigm shift in energy management, promising unparalleled efficiency, economic robustness and unwavering reliability. However, this integrative evolution has concurrently amplified the grid's susceptibility to cyber intrusions, casting shadows on its foundational security and structural integrity. Machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) emerge as beacons in this landscape, offering robust methodologies to navigate the intricate cybersecurity labyrinth of IoT-infused smart grids. While ML excels at sifting through voluminous data to identify and classify looming threats, DL delves deeper, crafting sophisticated models equipped to counteract avant-garde cyber offensives. Both of these techniques are united in their objective of leveraging intricate data patterns to provide real-time, actionable security intelligence. Yet, despite the revolutionary potential of ML and DL, the battle against the ceaselessly morphing cyber threat landscape is relentless. The pursuit of an impervious smart grid continues to be a collective odyssey. In this review, we embark on a scholarly exploration of ML and DL's indispensable contributions to enhancing cybersecurity in IoT-centric smart grids. We meticulously dissect predominant cyber threats, critically assess extant security paradigms, and spotlight research frontiers yearning for deeper inquiry and innovation.

This systematic literature study employed bibliometric analysis to identify workplace mindfulness-related methods and practices in literature published from 2000 to 2020 by leading nations, institutions, journals, authors, and keywords. We also assessed the impact of workplace mindfulness research papers. Scopus analysis tools provided a literature report for 638 Scopus articles used in the study. Using VOSviewer, leading nations, institutions, articles, authors, journals, and keyword co-occurrence network maps were constructed. PRISMA was used to identify 56 publications to recognise workplace mindfulness literature's significant achievements. The research's main contribution is a deep review of neurological mindfulness and psychological measuring tools as workplace mindfulness tool categories. The study is the first to use the PRISMA technique to capture the essential contributions of workplace mindfulness papers from 2000 to 2020.

The video game industry (VGI) has evolved considerably, transitioning from a niche market to a substantial sector. The VGI's magnitude and the societal implications tied to video game consumption have naturally piqued the interest of scholars in marketing and consumer behaviour. This research serves a dual purpose: firstly, it consolidates existing VG literature by evaluating articles, concepts, and methodologies, systematically tracing their evolution; secondly, it outlines potential directions and implications for forthcoming research. Within this literature, a predominant focus lies on articles investigating purchase decisions concerning VGs, followed by those exploring the integration of video game consumption into broader social contexts. Notably, a limited number of articles delve into player-game interactions and experiences within gaming worlds. This imbalance can be attributed to the fact that such inquiries are often suited to psychology and multidisciplinary journals, while the marketing discipline has predominantly addressed the VGI from a marketing management standpoint.

Drawing on the MOA framework, this study establishes a research model that explains the usage intention of robo-advisors. In the model, three predictors that consist of technology relative advantage, technology herding, and technology familiarity influence usage intention of robo-advisors directly and indirectly via the partial mediation of trust. At the same time, the effects of the three predictors on trust are hypothetically moderated by learning goal orientation and perceived performance risk respectively. Statistical analyses are provided using the data of working professionals from the insurance industry in Taiwan. Based on its empirical findings, this study discusses important theoretical and practical implications.

Along with amazing advancements in the field of digital payments, this article seeks to provide a summary of research undertaken over the last four decades and to suggest areas in need of additional study. This study employs a two-pronged technique for analysing its data. The first is concerned with performance analysis, and the second with science mapping. The study uses the apps VOS viewer and R-studio to do bibliometric data analysis. From 1982 until May 2022, the most trustworthy database, Scopus, is used to compile a database of 923 publications The findings of this study identify the scope of current research interest, which is explored with critical contributions from a variety of authors, journals, countries, affiliations, keyword analysis, citation analysis, co-citation analysis, and bibliometric coupling, as well as a potential research direction for further investigation in this emerging field.

The proliferation of technology and communication has resulted in increased digitalisation that includes digital payments. This study is aimed at unravelling the relationship between awareness of individuals about the digital payment system and customer satisfaction with digital payments. Two models were developed in this study. First model considers awareness → usage pattern → customer satisfaction. Second model considers usage pattern → customer satisfaction → perception of digital payments. These two alternative models were tested by collecting data from 507 respondents in southern India was analysed using the structural equation modelling. The results indicate that usage pattern acted as a mediator between awareness and satisfaction, and satisfaction acted as a mediator between usage pattern and consumers' perception of digital payments. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.

While digitalisation reforms aiming to enhance the quality of public services were put in place, most stakeholders in developing countries still use paper-based-tendering processes, which are associated with increased costs. To overcome these problems, calls to adopt e-bidding have recently emerged. This study aims to explore the readiness of Moroccan SMEs to adopt e-bidding. To achieve this goal, we proposed an integrated framework combining the TAM and UTAUT models to examine the predictors of SMEs' intention to adopt e-bidding. We empirically tested the conceptual model using a partial least squares (PLS) estimation based on data from 210 SMEs. Our results suggest that effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, and social influence as the key factors influencing SMEs intention to adopt e-bidding. We also suggest firm size as a significant moderator. This will help in improving SMEs' user experience and will also allow a better implementation of e-bidding in Morocco and similar contexts.

In order to further improve the public health assurance system and the infectious diseases early warning system to give play to their positive roles and enhance their collaborative capacity, this paper, based on the big and thick data analytics technology, designs a 'rolling-type' data synergy model. This model covers districts and counties, municipalities, provinces, and the country. It forms a data blockchain for the public health assurance system and enables high sharing of data from existing system platforms such as the infectious diseases early warning system, the hospital medical record management system, the public health data management system, and the health big and thick data management system. Additionally, it realises prevention, control and early warning by utilising data mining and synergy technologies, and ideally solves problems of traditional public health assurance system platforms such as excessive pressure on the 'central node', poor data tamper-proofing capacity, low transmission efficiency of big and thick data, bad timeliness of emergency response, and so on. The realisation of this technology can greatly improve the application and analytics of big and thick data and further enhance the public health assurance capacity.

Digital Transformation seeks to improve the processes of an organisation by integrating digital technology in all its areas, this is inevitable due to technological evolution that generates new demands, new habits and greater demands on customers and users, therefore Digital Transformation is important. In organisations to maintain competitiveness. In this context, universities are no strangers to this reality, but they find serious problems in their execution, it is not clear how to deal with an implementation of this type. The work seeks to identify tools that can be used in the implementation of Digital Transformation in universities, for this a systematic review of literature is carried out with a method based on three stages, 23 models, 13 frameworks and 8 roadmaps are identified. The elements found are analysed, obtaining eight main components with their relationships and dependencies, which can be used to generate more optimal models for universities.

This empirical study investigates the mediating role of two components of psychological capital (PsyCap), namely self-efficacy and optimism, in the context of the relationship between transformational leadership (TL), work engagement (WE), and innovative work behaviour (IWB). The study was conducted among IT professionals with a minimum of three years of experience employed in Chennai, India. Data collection was executed using a Google Form, and both measurement and structural models were examined using SPSS 25.0 and AMOS 23.0. The findings of this study reveal several significant relationships. Firstly, transformational leadership (TL) demonstrates a robust positive association with work engagement (WE). Furthermore, work engagement (WE) positively correlates substantially with innovative work behaviour (IWB). Notably, the study underscores that two crucial components of psychological capital, specifically self-efficacy and optimism, mediate the relationship between transformational leadership (TL) and work engagement (WE). These findings carry valuable implications for IT company managers. Recognising that transformational leadership positively influences both work engagement and employees' innovative work behaviour highlights the pivotal role of leaders in fostering a productive and innovative work environment within IT organisations.

Physical and social aspects each make up a separate part of servicescape. Together, these make up the servicescape. Although previous research has frequently investigated these aspects separately, the purpose of this study is to simultaneously find out the impact of both aspects within the casual dining restaurants' context. In total, 462 customers in Delhi were polled for this study, and structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data. According to the results, both the social and physical parts of the servicescape have the ability to affect how satisfied customers are, which in turn can affect how they behave in the future.

Drawn from technology acceptance model, this study establishes a theoretical framework for the analytical interpretation of factors affecting job-seekers intention to use e-recruitment websites. Using the data obtained from 379 respondents in India, ten hypotheses derived from the experimental model are evaluated using a structural equation modelling technique. Vividness, perceived usefulness (PU), and attitude have been shown to have a significant positive impact on the behavioural intentions (BIs) of job-seekers, although perceived ease of use (PEOU) did not. Furthermore, perceived internet stress (PIS) is observed to be a significant antecedent PEOU; and PEOU is of PU. Such findings broaden our knowledge of e-recruiting in various ways and offer qualitative insights into the potential impact of website functionality on the attractiveness of job-seekers.

Work-life balance (WLB) is a widely explored topic in the academic discourse. The researchers are trying to find strategies to effectively balance their work and home responsibilities for women in management. This study aims to analyse how gender roles and inequalities shape the strategies of female academics in higher education institutions. Eighteen faculty members participated in the semi-structured interviews. The trustworthiness of qualitative inquiry was ascertained by using triangulation, thick descriptions, and peer reviews. Three major themes emerged from the analysis: emotional, religious and social strategies. Despite available support, faculty noted challenges in managing work and family roles and fighting with gender stereotypes. This research adds to the emerging concept of WLB literature from the developed countries' viewpoint. It also shows how WLB discourse varies from Western sensibilities and collaborates with the previously established strategies that female academics formulate in WLB.