Hilary Duff - Hair Salon Day. Hilary's Before And After Hair Do!

Former Disney star Hilary Duff is spotted in West Hollywood, California on March 13, 2010. The newly-engaged actress ducks out her car and rushes into a hair salon. I love her very very stylish off-shoulders dress, and the bag! Oh come on, she looked fabulous! Check out her 'do after visiting the salon: Photos by: Fame Pictures Meanwhile, news sources are reporting that Hilary Duff was left red-faced by paparazzi pictures which captured the moments after her fiance's proposal - and she insists the snaps are "awful." Miss Duff also said that she and her future hubby wants to 'keep it small'. She said: "We want to keep it small. Mike's like, 'Whatever you want!'."

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RV Office Requirements If You Want To Take Your Job On The Road

An RV office will take you one step farther than your home office does. Sure, the home office has eliminated the commute to work, but why not make your office portable and just stay on vacation all the time? Do you already have an home business that could easily be taken on the road? Good. Then you're ready to load up the RV and hit the road. If not, then consider these options: There are lots of online job opportunities that don't require you to be in one place all the time. There are always jobs that you can find on-site at the various locations where you'll be traveling. (Here's how to find them.) Depending on your particular skills and talents, chances are pretty good that you could put your skills to use anywhere! Here are lots of fun ways to make money while you're RVing. The most important thing for your mobile RV office is being able to maintain access to some basic office electronics and services like a computer, Internet & faxing services, a digital camera, and a cell phone. Here's exactly what you need to know before you take your RV office on the road... Continue reading...

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What you need to know BEFORE BUYING A HOUSE!

Looking to Buy? We’ve lived in Coral Gables and Pinecrest for nearly two decades, and know the South Florida neighborhoods you want to live in. Though our website, you have the opportunity to explore on your own - at your leisure. We are here to answer your questions as they arise. It’s all about lifestyle, timing, and choices. Whether you’ve outgrown your current home … are ready [...]

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How the New York Times and CNN try to keep up with the tech companies

The New York Times and CNN have both built strong online presences – through strongly contrasting technology strategies. Senior players at both companies explain "The New York Times is now as much a technology company as a journalism company," its executive editor Bill Keller said recently. A glance at the top 10 breaking news sites online shows how seriously that statement must be taken, because in 2009 that list was often led by a tech company rather than a traditional news organisation. AOL News, Yahoo News or MSNBC News attract more US readers than CNN – or the New York Times. Being a big traditional news brand doesn't necessarily bring you success on the web. "What got you to where you are, is not necessarily where you have to go now," says Kenneth KC Estenson, senior vice-president and general manager of CNN.com, when we meet at the Courthouse Hotel to talk about CNN Worldwide Digital. The now renovated Courthouse displays the situation of news organisations perfectly: lots of nicely renovated rooms, but no windows to get what happens outside. Estenson's role is exaxtly to break down that wall. Today, to get the platform right is as important as the quality of the content. So news organisations have to keep up with technological developments around them to stay in the game. The two biggest US players for quality news, CNN and the New York Times, are dealing with this challenge in quite different ways. While CNN.com closely collaborates with technology companies like Facebook, Apple or Google, the New York Times anticipates technical change in-house with the help of its research and development department. R&D at the New York Times Calling the first research and development group in the industry their own, the New York Times takes its technological approach seriously. Already in January 2006, Michael Zimbalist had joined the Times Company as vice-president, research & development operations, and to envision the future of news. His 12-person team analyses data and test and builds products in order to safeguard the future of the 160-year-old brand. 2009 was the year when the New York Times executives understood the full impact of digitalisation. Being eager not to be disrupted but to play along with the disruptors, the executives made several efforts to understand what was going on – including reading the paper only on digital devices for a certain time. The future of news consumption is the core of the technological approach of the Times. Apart from analysing web data for building the metered model, their R&D team continuously envisions how news reading might change with new technology, as for example with RFID chips. As it is likely that RIFD chips will become quite common in the near future, the Times's R&D group invented ways a news organisation could make use of them. The project. called 'Shifd' – or in house, "Custom Times" – is a mobile application that provides users the capability to seamlessly shift content back and forth between their desktop computers and mobile devices. "We made an experiment and put an RFID chip into the phone, the computer and the television. The chip was there to track the user's reading. When a user stopped reading a story on the phone as he or she arrived at work, it opened it again on the desktop. When the user entered the living room, related videos to the story were presented on the television screen," explains the NYT's Nick Bilton. As news consumption changes massively with new media, the NYT puts a lot of effort in developing interfaces. "Touch makes interfaces a lot more compatible and easy to use, in addition to the fact that the web is moving into the living room and offers new connections," Bilton told me. He has just written a book called I Live in the Future: & Here's How It Works, which will illustrate the changing landscape taking place in storytelling industries. For the New York Times, this aspect is apparent as they experiment a lot with different ways of telling the news. Apart from their regular homepage, the New York Times offers four different interfaces: Times Wire, Times Reader 2.0, Times Extra and Skimmer ; all the interfaces deliver them background data – useful when developing an iPad app, for example. CNN.com translates technology back into journalism While the New York Times keeps track with today's technological disruption by turning partly into a technology company themselves, CNN tries a slightly different approach: close collaboration. Starting with CNN in September 2008, the general manager of CNN.com and senior vice-president KC Estenson overhauled the management team at CNN.com and set them on a new strategic direction driven by innovation and embracing new technologies and partnerships. Estenson believes that you have to have deep relationships with today's technology leaders when you want play along. "We don't wanna be slaves to trends but it is vital knowledge to us. I want us to be considered. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook: I made it a priority for us to be in first position with them," he says. Since Estenson took over, CNN has launched an iPhone application, redesigned its website and reached out more to social media. CNN was among the first TV broadcasters to understand the full impact of social media on television, and teamed up with Facebook for the presidential inauguration. As the live Facebook feed on CNN.com made it possible to watch the proceedings along with comments from your friends in the sidebar, the broadcaster was able to report 600,000 status updates and record breaking 21.3 million video stream views globally on that day, with a peak of 1.3 million streams just before Obama began his speech. But more interesting than just integrating the new technology within the site is CNN.com's translation of social media back into journalism. CNN took citizen journalism not only as an inevitable add-on, but as something that carries serious weight. iReport was initially launched August 2006 basically as a commission form, and has become more important after the Virginia Tech massacre. It is said that internally it was a big discussion with the executives, but in February 2008 it was accepted as a legitimate source of newsgathering within CNN. Estenson decided to professionalise iReport further. Apart from integrating iReport prominently at the center of CNN's website instead of hiding it away at the bottom, the iPhone application integrated iReport prominently. Today, CNN's iPhone app is as much a news-making as a news delivering application, and as the iReporters can add their telephone number, email and location to their report, CNN's editors can get back to them or even assign them to certain content CNN is looking for. Today, there are about 10,000 iReports per month which are available to CNN.com. For each bigger event, an iReport monitoring journalist familiar with the context of the event will be assigned to the breaking news team. iReport clearly enriched the coverage of the Haiti earthquake of CNN as CNN had seven reporters on the ground and significantly enhanced their work with social media. Conclusion CNN.com and New York Times are two good examples for news organisations which came to understand that today technology plays a serious part in their business. Today, getting the technology right is not more important than good journalism, but it is as important. In fact, technology is becoming more and more an integral part of doing good journalism. The different approach to technology at the New York Times and CNN makes it apparent that each has to fit a journalistic brand, though, as how technology is approached is part of a journalistic profile. Either way it looks like the news organisations that tear down the wall and build a bridge between editorial and technological thinking will be most likely to survive. Digital media CNN New York Times Newspapers Citizen media Mercedes Bunz guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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Fat Loss Diets – Learn the Mistakes of Even the Most Effective Fat Loss Diets Before You Waste Time

Many diets and eating plans can be extremely effective and healthy but even these three fat loss diets have their pros and cons. 1. Low Carb Diets. The theory is that if you stop taking...

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More hotels offer 'pay before you stay' discounts

An increasing number of hotels are slashing room rates if you ante up in full in advance and forego a refund if you don't show ...

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How Do You Collect Your Money? - Part I

In freight brokering, you usually invoice your customer AFTER the load has been delivered. You have to make certain that specific procedures are in place BEFORE you get to this point. And you have to make certain that you follow...

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Kneel Before The Hardcore Gamer’s IQ Test

It’s Saturday morning and you’re not sure what to do? Here, take this. It should keep you nice and occupied until Monday. As seen on DeviantArt.

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Easily Install Self Adhesive Vinyl Tile | The Home Makeover

Vinyl peel and stick tiles are popular because you don’t have to use adhesive to install them, you just peel off the back and stick them down. Here are a few tricks you should know before installing them yourself...

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What You Need To Know About The National Broadband Plan - A good first step, possibly made worthless without lobbying reform

Some 36 public workshops, 9 field hearings, and 31 public notices later, the FCC today finally unveiled their national broadband plan (pdf). There's 376 pages of dense policy to dig through, so it's going to take some time to completely digest the plan. Legal experts and policy wonks will be poring over this one for weeks, given the FCC recommends some fairly dense changes to telecom mainstays like the Universal Service Fund (USF). Also keep in mind that this plan is preliminary, and will heavily mutate as it runs the lobbyist and political gauntlet. That said, here's our high and low points: What's Promising About The Plan • At least it's a plan -- kind of: One good thing about our national broadband plan is that it is one. Almost. It's more like a pile of recommendations to Congress, or a plan for a plan. That may not sound like much, but for a country that has spent the last decade using bad data to proudly proclaim we didn't have any broadband issues to fix? It's a forward step. The plan punts to Congress on some of the tough issues, but it at least gives recommendations and establishes a framework. • The FCC wants 4 Mbps to be broadband's baseline: For years we've reported how the FCC used fairly paltry definitions of broadband (256 kbps downstream, recently updated to 768 kbps) so that our national success on this front looked good. The FCC's plan now calls for broadband to be defined as "4 Mbps of actual download speed and 1 Mbps of actual upload speed" (page 135). Page 19 tries to argue that 95% of us already have access to those speeds, which brings us to... • The agency makes collecting more hard data a priority: On page 38 of the plan, the FCC proclaims that "the dearth of consistent, comprehensive and detailed price data makes it difficult to evaluate price competition." While the FCC tries to do so anyway -- it's clear the agency's decade-long disdain for hard science has come home to roost, and impacted the agency's plan draft. The plan calls for a complete overhaul of FCC data collection and public presentation. This is the first of many FCC proposals where the devil will be in the details and the agency needs to stand up to major carriers to achieve the goal. • The plan pushes for broadband advertising improvements: While the plan's habit of citing transparency as a fix for competitive issues is disingenuous, the plan makes it clear the FCC would like to impose requirements that improve the accuracy of broadband advertising. The FCC is eager to eliminate the use of the dreaded "up to" speed descriptor, replacing it potentially with a "broadband nutritional label" (see FCC example, left and page 46 of the plan) that could potentially advertise both the maximum and average provisioned rate. • The plan finally begins revamping the Universal Service Fund: For years even the government's own General Accounting Office has complained that the Universal Service Fund was collecting billions in taxpayer dollars but the FCC wasn't doing a very good job managing the fund. While the plan's USF reform is a complicated tangle of policy revision, the primary goal is to refocus $16 billion in USF funds over the next ten years away from legacy voice service and toward broadband. By 2020, voice-only networks (assuming there are any) won't be eligible for USF funds. •The FCC wants wireless broadband to be a priority: The plan clearly pins a lot of hope on 4G wireless broadband services as a cornerstone of future competition, and Chapter 5 (starting on page 73) is entirely dedicated to spectrum. The plan's goal is to get 500 megahertz of spectrum into the hands of 4G providers, of which 300 megahertz (between 225 MHz and 3.7 GHz) is to be made newly available for mobile use within five years. There's an ocean of details involved in the FCC's agenda, and the devil will be in the end-game details and whether broadcasters want to give up some unused spectrum (hint: they don't). •The FCC wants more competition in the set top box market: The FCC is pretty clearly annoyed with the industry's (and their own) failure with CableCARDs and starting on page 49 explains how the agency is going to push hard to end proprietary conditional access systems "on or before" December 31, 2012. In other words: they want more consumer choice in broadband-powered set tops and home gateways that can access the Internet without carrier restrictions. Again, the devil will be in the details and whether TV operators want consumers to have access to their choice of completely open set tops (hint: they don't). What's Troubling About The Plan • USF reform could actually increase the cost of broadband and phone service: While the FCC repeatedly states their goal for the plan is to deliver "affordable" broadband to Americans by 2020, the proposals could actually raise your broadband costs. The plan imposes a new "Connections" fee as part of an overhaul of the USF that will be used for deploying broadband to under-served markets. While good for under-served markets, that means a higher bill for you. The plan annoyingly omits how much this fee could be, but once the details are hashed out, it could raise your monthly broadband bill from anywhere from $1 to $5 a month. In addition, the FCC recommends to Congress that they allow increases in the FCC subscriber line charge, which is money that goes right back to carriers. The plan is vague when it comes to hard numbers per subscriber here as well, but industry analyst Dave Burstein tells us his his initial analysis suggests the plan could actually wind up with American families paying $5-$10 more a month when it's all said and done. Yes, maybe this money goes back to the public, but given the FCC history on this front, maybe this money goes into AT&T's pocket. Of course also tied directly to high consumer prices is the fact that... • Again, the plan fails to tackle a lack of competition: On page 30 of the plan, the FCC proudly proclaims that the plan "contains more than 40 recommendations that directly spur competition," which makes the fact that the plan doesn't really address competition all the more obnoxious. These recommendations include such things as child safety, digital education efforts, and identity theft countermeasures. While all noble, they don't address the problem that large swath of U.S. markets suffer from high prices and slower speeds created by monopoly or duopoly markets. The agency's own study suggested that open access policies could be one possible solution to the nation's duopoly logjam. However, the agency has made it very clear they have no intention of upsetting incumbent carriers -- many of which not only wield incredibly influence over Congress, but have also been fused into our national security infrastructure. With absolutely no hyperbole intended, many of these carriers now wield far more legislative and legal power than the FCC itself. "The dearth of consistent, comprehensive and detailed price data makes it difficult to evaluate price competition." -FCC's National Broadband Plan• The plan is heavy on the showmanship: Many of the recommendations look good and are politically easy to accomplish -- but lack substance. As we've already noted, the agency's goal of bringing "affordable" 100 Mbps to 100 million U.S. homes sounds good and is getting played up by the press. But when you consider that cable broadband alone already passes 125 million homes -- the majority of which will be upgraded to faster DOCSIS 3.0 service within 5 years without FCC intervention -- this supposed "cornerstone" of the plan rings hollow. Did we mention "affordable" is left undefined? The agency also proclaims that they want to see broadband adoption improve from 65% to 90% by 2020, something that could happen organically whether the FCC is involved or not. A few million thrown at digital literacy campaigns is the supposed answer -- though several of these efforts involve using taxpayer dollars to fund cable industry advertising campaigns. There simply is a vast mountain of policy in this plan that is, for lack of a more scientific term, empty, feel-good crap, while issues like unethical billing practices go completely unaddressed. • The plan fails to disrupt the status quo: We've been covering this sector for a decade, and there is absolutely no limit to the number of think tanks, fake consumer groups, policy wonks and PR flacks employed by major carriers to help shape (and distort) public opinion, press coverage, and DC policy. Both before and after the plan's announcement these chorus of voices for hire were collectively, notably, uncritical. Why is that a problem? Any plan worth the 376 pages it's printed on should address competition, which could hurt revenues, which would anger the carriers, who would then fire up this "sound wall" of opinion for hire. Granted, some carriers may not like the various rulemaking processes that emerge from this initial plan, but by and large the plan itself (after two full read throughs) does absolutely nothing to rattle the duopoly status quo in the broadband sector, and carrier silence proves it. That indicates a lack of conviction, courage and vision by plan architect Blair Levin. It also indicates that politics and carrier loyalty drove the national broadband plan's structure as much as science. That doesn't mean that things can't be accomplished as we head into the real rulemaking battles to come, but... •The plan completely fails to address money in politics as a primary reason for our failures: The primary problems the plan faces actually aren't technical, given we're a nation packed with oodles of fiber, bright network engineers and significant wealth. The plan's primary obstacle is the influence the nation's wealthiest carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast) have on the nation's political and legal infrastructure. We've seen an endless parade of well-intentioned sector reforms scuttled by carrier lobbyists. It remains unlikely that true change in the broadband (or any other sector, for that matter) can be implemented until the problem of undue corporate influence on policy has been addressed first. What Happens Now As we noted at the start, the FCC's new national broadband plan is more of a "plan of a plan," and implementation in the face of lobbyist pressure will be key. As plan architect Blair Levin stated this morning at the plan's introduction, the "plan is in beta, and always will be." The FCC has simply set the table for a significant number of policy discussions and rule making procedures, that may (or may not) end in substantive improvements in the sector. read comment(s)

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