Lulu Delacre’s recent book, Cool Green (Candlewick) takes readers on a trip around the world, led by a grandfather with his granddaughter, introducing readers to a range of trees in lyrical text punctuated by fascinating information accompanied by informative and varied illustration. It’s a gorgeous book and Lulu has answered questions that I posed to her.

Taylor Swift has made a habit of cheering for the Kansas City Chiefs since she began dating NFL star Travis Kelce.

Paleontologist Dave Hone rates the realism of the dinosaur attacks in the "Jurassic Park" and "Jurassic World" movies.

If Trump's proposed 60% tariff against China is enacted and the country responds aggressively, it could pressure some of America's largest companies.

I tested more than 30 bidets, from basic to luxe, to determine the most hygienic, comfortable, easy-to-install, and cost-effective models in 2024.

Apple's smart home device, featuring AI and FaceTime, could enter the market by March, Bloomberg reported, and could compete with Google and Amazon.

Paramount Plus, Peacock, and the Paramount Network all have a hand in the Yellowstone franchise, but it can be tricky to stream episodes.

Olivia Nuzzi has withdrawn her protective order request against her ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza months after her relationship with RFK Jr. was made public.

"This is really weird, maybe, but I had really heavy breasts. They were like 10 pounds when they removed them," Kathy Bates said on a podcast.

The collaboration comes amid skyrocketing demand for Nvidia chips, as companies scramble to secure supplies.

The European Commission's president said the European Union could boost US liquified natural gas purchases in a deal with Trump.

Szuhi Attila of ITE.HU placed third in our recent Avangate Network Affiliate Wars Contest despite being relatively new to the world of affiliate marketing. We interviewed him about his affiliate marketing techniques and overall approach to creating online content.

Today’s buyers are getting more demanding and selling online is getting more and more complex. Both B2B and B2C customers expect a seamless purchase experience and easy access to all the information, products and services they want, on any device and in any country.

We’ve recently had the pleasure to chat with Andrei Nastasie, the affiliate program manager at Mondly Languages, an innovative language learning app that incorporates native language recordings, augmented reality and virtual reality to help people learn new languages. In this interview, he shares how Mondly started out, what it has been up to and what’s next for this creative company.

South Africa has closed the Lebombo port of entry to and from Mozambique after 15 officials from the Ressano Garcia border fled to SA on Thursday morning for protection.

Young Mozambicans from opposition parties have given Frelimo until midday to relinquish power or face more unrest, after days of violence and looting in the country.

Mozambique is on a knife's edge as young people continue to protest against the outcome of the October elections that extended 49 years of Frelimo rule.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Friday that at least 30 people have been killed in Mozambique in almost three weeks of crackdowns on protests over a disputed presidential election.

PORT LOUIS, Nov 10 - Mauritius was holding a parliamentary election on Sunday with Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth and his main rivals all promising to tackle a cost of living crisis in the Indian Ocean archipelago.

Informational text — resources whose purpose is to inform — is essential to daily life and fundamental to literacy. Unfortunately, young children typically have limited exposure to informational text. Two 9-week randomized controlled trials with 263 first-grade children from low-income communities examined whether free educational videos and digital games from the PBS KIDS show “Molly of Denali” supported children’s ability to use informational text to answer real-world questions. Study 1 found significant positive intervention impacts on child outcomes; Study 2 replicated these findings.

Over the past decade, parent advocacy groups led a grassroots movement resulting in most states adopting dyslexia-specific legislation, with many states mandating the use of the Orton-Gillingham (OG) approach to reading instruction. Orton-Gillingham is a direct, explicit, multisensory, structured, sequential, diagnostic, and prescriptive approach to reading for students with or at risk for word-level reading disabilities (WLRD). Evidence from a prior synthesis and What Works Clearinghouse reports yielded findings lacking support for the effectiveness of OG interventions.

Thanks to a change in the laws regulating gambling, land casinos are becoming popular in New Zealand. Today, the country has six casinos in total. Due to the relatively small number of casinos in the country, the industry focuses on offering superior quality as opposed to quantity. Of course, online gambling has grown too, providing […]

As a tourist destination, India has a lot to offer. From stunning nature, over unique culture, to interesting architecture, the country is a dream for any free-spirited traveler out there. Whatever it is that you’re after, from bustling cities to relaxing natural landscapes, you’ll find it here. But what about those who also enjoy trying […]

Sometimes our WordPress plugin users need to create an Admin user account for their sites. In this tutorial I will share a small PHP code with you that can be used to create a WordPress Administrator user to your site. Alternatively, you can also create a WordPress admin user via MySQL. You will need to […]

The post Add a WordPress Admin User Account via PHP appeared first on Tips and Tricks HQ.

With more and more online marketplaces popping up, many individuals prefer to pay for items, whether they be new or second hand using the PayPal Goods and Services option. The PayPal ‘Goods and Services’ option gives buyers further peace of mind with the PayPal guarantee. If the seller does not provide what they have described, […]

The post Factoring In PayPal Fees When Sending Money Using the Goods and Services Option appeared first on Tips and Tricks HQ.

Do you run a charitable website? Or do you offer content free to the public? Perhaps it is time that you add a donation button to start monetizing your website. In this tutorial, we will walk you through the process of adding a PayPal donation button to your WordPress website, and even those without developer […]

The post Accept Donations via PayPal from Your WordPress Site Easily appeared first on Tips and Tricks HQ.

We are launching an AI lab. The goal is to learn unsupervised learning through Robotics (Cobots) Long seen as a poor cousin to supervised learning -  with Variational autoencoders, Reinforcement learning and  Generative-Adversarial networks , unsupervised learning techniques have moved beyond the limitations of autoencoders. From Oct 2018 to March 2019 , we are running a [...]

Nvidia might have some serious competition in the AI chip space coming. Amazon is now seeking to bring its own… Continue reading Amazon readies new AI chip to compete with Nvidia

The post Amazon readies new AI chip to compete with Nvidia appeared first on ReadWrite.

Uber Safari is launching this week, offering riders in Cape Town the opportunity to go on a one-day game drive to a private reserve for $200.

Microsoft on Tuesday doubled down on deploying artificial intelligence to consumers, releasing an updated version of its Copilot chatbot that can hold voice conversations and interpret images.

The South African Artificial Intelligence Association wants LinkedIn to be investigated, as it claims the social networking platforms new data use practice violates local personal information protection law.

A family in Brackenfell, Cape Town, is looking for their missing teenage son, whom they last saw on Saturday morning heading to visit a friend in the area.

President Cyril Ramaphosa's lawyers say former spy boss Arthur Fraser's claims about the Phala Phala break-in are like something from a movie - but are founded on nothing more than baseless speculation.

Gauteng legislature secretary Linda Mwale has signed a sweetheart agreement with Nehawu to let 32 employees accused of defrauding the institution off the hook.

KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi has ordered an "immediate investigation" after a video went viral on social media of a police officer slapping and pulling around a man.

Adjudicated rapist and convicted felon Donald Trump chose to politicize the Federal response to Hurricane Helene, demonstrating little concern about the actual devastation.

Responsible leaders who care about the people they govern do not leap into every photo opportunity they can find. — Read the rest

The post Trump lies, sows division, and wastes recovery resources as Americans suffer appeared first on Boing Boing.

While on a walk, a woman saw a tuxedo cat in a window and greeted it with a wave. But she never imagined the cat would return the greeting, lifting its paw to say "hey."

"How many aura points did I gain when I waved to a cat and it waved back," says the caption of her TikTok video, accompanied by footage of the surreal exchange. — Read the rest

The post Woah! Woman waves at a stranger's cat — and much to her surprise, it waves back (video) appeared first on Boing Boing.

An underwater rover deployed by the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre captured remarkable footage 3,300-meters down at the bottom of the Tonga Trench. It shows a rarely-seen bigfin squid (Magnapinna) "taking a walk" on its 13-foot tentacles. Watch below.

There have only been around 20 documented sightings of this beautifully bizarre creature in two decades. — Read the rest

The post Deep sea video of weird sea creature walking around on its 13-foot "legs" appeared first on Boing Boing.

Time's arrow may not be as unidirectional as we were led to believe. According to Scientific American, a group of quantum physical researchers at the University of Toronto had observed evidence of what they're calling "negative time"—specifically, of photons exiting a material before they ever entered it, to begin with. — Read the rest

The post Physicists find evidence of "negative time" in photons appeared first on Boing Boing.

I recently switched over to using a vinegar-based spray cleaner (just vinegar, water, and rubbing alcohol), to clean my kitchen. It works wonderfully for me, and I love that by using it I'm saving money and reducing my exposure to harsh chemicals. — Read the rest

The post The science of vinegar: what happens to bacteria under a microscope appeared first on Boing Boing.

Preikestolen, Pulpit Rock, is one of Norway's most famous natural landmarks. It's located in Rogaland county, near the town of Forsand. It overlooks the stunning Lysefjorden, a narrow fjord surrounded by steep cliffs.

In this video of the 604m Rock, both the stunning beauty and dizzying height of the rock are shown. — Read the rest

The post The stunning view from Preikestolen, 604m over Norway's Lysefjorden appeared first on Boing Boing.

If you have ever thought, "I wish I could play as an 8-bit version of Janet Weiss or Brad Majors," you are in luck. You can "Jump to the left and dodge to the right" in the upcoming video game adaptation of everyone's favorite midnight movie. — Read the rest

The post The Rocky Horror Picture Show is now a video game appeared first on Boing Boing.

IVT released its latest upgrades to its MediaPlatform software.

Click to view the announcement.

Steve Vonder Haar recently released an outstanding research report about the online webcasting event services business.

He states that consumers of webcasting services have been motivated by two priorities: 1) the desire to keep costs low; and 2) the desire to keep involvement of their own IT departments to a minimum. For this reason, major webcasting event service providers, like ON24, have enjoyed their greatest success at the ends of the market spectrum: low cost self-provisioning services and high touch premium webcasting services.

The premium end of the market has been bolstered by the complexity of the client's needs, which has kept fees high and competition at bay. The low end of the market had become increasingly commoditized.

He concludes that service providers are going to have to push more to the middle of that spectrum and identify more companies that require well-produced webcasts for the market to continue growing.

He also mentions that the complexity of webcast events that has traditionally protected the major service providers is no longer a significant barrier to entry. Sophisticated webcasting software offered on a Software as a Service (SaaS) basis allows any number of production companies, agencies, and event companies to compete on an equal footing with the ON24s and the OnStreams.

According to Hoovers, the US marketing and services industry includes about 35,000 companies with combined annual revenue of about $80 billion. The industry is fragmented because the top 50 companies generate less than 40 percent of that revenue. In other words, there are a large number of potential buyers of enterprise webcasting software that want to compete for online event services business at a time when traditional advertising revenues are falling and internet advertising revenues are growing. Internet communications are definitely going to become a greater point of emphasis for these companies.

I am unable to attached the report, but you can request a copy at the Interactive Media Strategies website.

Video is beginning to fulfill its promise as a transformational technology. Beyond merely cutting communications costs, video is starting to change the way companies do business, and is rapidly being accepted as a "need to have" rather than a "nice to have."

Cisco CEO John Chambers predicts video traffic on the internet will increase six fold by 2012. Here is a link to Cisco's August 5 earnings call where he makes that prediction.

A classic example of the power of video is that of electronics manufacturer NEC. They have a network of nearly 500 dealers across the United States that sell their products. They saved more than $250,000 annually in training costs by delivering product training with video webcasting rather than sending trainers to the dealers or bringing the dealers to the trainers.

They also dramatically reduced the time it takes to train the entire network on new products. Click here to watch a video case study.

A newer example shows how video can literally transform the way a company does business. A major sneaker company manufacturers its products in China. Each time they re-tooled to manufacture a new sneaker, executives would have to fly to China to ensure the tooling was correct and the sneakers were meeting specifications before they began mass production.

They began to use high definition cameras at the plant in China to webcast video of the sneakers to allow executives to make their inspection virtually. Sure, they save money on travel to China. But more importantly, there was a practical limit to the amount of people who could go to China to see the actual design come off the assembly line. The video process allows them to solicit input from a much broader segment of the company, and even get input from retailers while there is still time to respond to suggestions.

The end result is that they can bring their products to market faster than their competition, which creates a significant competitive advantage. Click here to see the video discussion.

I am particularly pleased to see clear evidence of unmistakable, game-changing ROI.

IDC released its Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker on September 2, 2009, which reports that "factory revenue in the worldwide server market declined 30.1% year over year to $9.8 billion in the second quarter of 2009 (2Q09)."

According to IDC, this is the lowest quarterly server revenue since they began tracking this market in 1996.

The obvious implication is that the economy has been awful and companies have been avoiding / deferring IT spend. But beyond that it seems that virtualization has both benefited from and contributed to this decline.

With a single server now able to run multiple workloads, it seems inevitable that the server footprint is destined to continue getting smaller within the corporate data center. But the benefits of virtualization do not stop with simply running more apps on one machine; the whole datacenter becomes more agile, more flexible to deal with unexpected changes in workload.

The ability to get more from fewer boxes is certainly a contributing factor to less boxes being bought. And tight budgets in the 2009 economy have certainly contributed to IT managers seeking out less costly options.

It will be interesting to see how the server market rebounds.

Andy Patrizio in his InternetNews.com blog quotes Rahul Agarwal, co-founder of Infiniti Research. Within the dismal sales figures, Agarwal notes that both Gartner and IDC report that unit costs are going up for server sales. Agarwal believes that this is due to sellers trying to widen margins by selling more feature-rich machines:

Our view is that to offset this volume pressure, hardware vendors will be
forced to improve unit margins by building in virtualization capability, memory
and I/O interfaces in the hardware.

The server market of tomorrow will be a value game and not a volume game.

When the Baby Boomers retire they are going to be taking their substantial knowledge with them. The younger generation to whom that knowledge should be transferred likes to consume video.  This has some very interesting implications for organizations that want to capture that knowledge, organize it, and make it easy for employees to find it and benefit from it.

Here is a link to a webcast on June 1 where Dan Rasmus, a technology strategist and author of Listening to the Future , will discuss the potential for video to serve as an all important medium for knowledge transfer and organizational learning.

Topics to be Covered:
• Knowledge Acquisition via Video
• Video as a Tool for Knowledge Management
• Use of Video or Operational Efficiency
• Practical Applications of Video for Learning in the Enterprise

Click here to register for the webcast

Interactive Media Strategies released data on July 14 showing that 62% of corporations that purchased video communications technology made the decision at the President/CEO level when there was no prior investment in this kind of technology.  That number dropped to 58% when the prior year's spend was as much as $10,000.

The same data shows that when an enterprise already spends $100,000 or more annually on video, the decision-making authority is almost evenly distributed between IT (35%), functional department heads (31%), and the President/CEO level (34%).

I think the clear implication of this data is that when corporations are already committing resources to video communications and the value of video has already been established, and this kind of technology is no longer considered exotic, then decision-making authority becomes more broadly distributed to IT and the business units.

This data is interesting when paired with data released in 2010 that shows 15% of executives surveyed that do not spend money on video and are thus not using video communications believe video communications are "very effective."  58% of executives surveyed that spend $100,000 or more annual on video technology indicated they believe video communications are "very effective."

I am sure this great difference is due to several factors, including: executives who are predisposed to see value in video are those most likely to invest in it, and those that have already made a six figure investment in video will likely not be motivated to feel as if the investment was wasted.  Nonetheless, video obviously wears well because executives who are heavily invested in video believe much more in its value than executives who do not employ the technology.

Interactive Media Strategies released a quite timely study conducted in Q1 2011 that measured corporate executives' financial outlook and how their relative positivity or negativity affected their plans for spending on video.  As one might imagine, only 6% of those with a negative outlook projected increased spending on video against 64% projecting less money spent on video.

39% of executives surveyed who were expecting their finances to improve projected increased spend on video, versus 29% who projected a decrease.  Unfortunately, the study did not provide the percentage of respondents who were expecting finances to decline versus the percentage of respondents expecting finances to improve.

The above results not all that unexpected, but they lay the foundation for this very interesting data: the study measured different types of executives and how their positions within the company influenced their outlook about whether macro-economic factors would impact spend on video.

46% of those in Accounting and Finance, 43% of those in Training, and 42% of Top Executives responded that macro-economic factors had "No Impact" in their decision to purchase video technology.  Overall, 40% of non-IT personnel responded that the economic climate would have no impact.

However, only 29% of IT executives responded that the economy would have no impact.

I attribute this disparity to senior executives and heavy video users (like training executives) being more focused on the ROI and cost reductions that video brings to the enterprise, while IT executives are more focused on the cost of maintaining video delivery infrastructure and the impact on their budgets.

I believe the path to bridging this gap is to leverage the cost savings of the cloud to free up IT resources and still deliver the benefits of video to the business users.

For example, MediaPlatform's PrimeTime application for video asset management leverages public or private clouds to host our application and store all of the video assets.  For example: for clients that have Riverbed, we use a cloud instance of the Riverbed Steelhead to reduce bandwidth usage between the cloud and the network by 80%.

Financial Realities for Single Female Home Buyers