Lest we forget the Minister of the Substandard

Listening to Geoff Hoon on the Today programme this morning, having been sacked from his advisory position in NATO and thrown out of the Labour Party for being caught seeking a 3000 GBP a day job with a lobbying form, he insisted he was "trying to demonstrate my knowledge and experience, background in a...

The court said authorities cannot demolish property of people just because they are accused of crimes.

The topic of emotional intelligence (EQ) continues to dominate leadership conversations. Rightly so. However, in a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article that highlighted research by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis (experts on the topic), EQ is only the beginning.

Whereas EQ has an emphasis on individual psychology, there is a more relationship-based version called social intelligence. Social Intelligence, as defined by Goleman and Boyatizis, is a set of interpersonal competencies built on specific neural circuits and responses that inspire others to be effective. In other words, based on neuroscience and biology, there are certain leadership behaviors that elicit positive emotional responses in your team members.

complete article

The standards for small business success have unquestionably gone up. Todays small businesses must do a lot more to stay competitive than their predecessors. Myriad businesses, however, take this notion a bit too far. Once they discover yet another resource or strategy with the potential to elevate their success, they jump all over it. This is partially due to the many online articles urging business leaders to devote more effort to virtually every element of their businesses.

complete article

Here are three popular things that are actually not mandatory for all small businesses:

1. Aggressive Marketing

It is easy to go overboard with marketing. With so many tools available, your gut instinct is to try anything with the slightest potential. Even if you stand to lose money, you want the assurance of knowing you are doing everything you can to gain the interest of your target audience. And it is difficult to ignore a marketing tool that has worked marvelously for other small businesses. If they had to do it all over again, these businesses would likely spend 10% of their time developing their products or services and 90% marketing them.

complete article

One thing brands should never do.

But it leads to something no brand should ever do: You should never assume that your customers feel the same way about your brand that you do. Your brand is how other people feel about your company, not how you feel about it.

complete article

For some of the smallest businesses that applied for forgivable loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, waiting just a few days or weeks would’ve gotten them thousands of dollars more.

But they had no way of knowing what was coming.

The Biden administration in late February announced a slew of changes to the loan program, which offered forgivable loans in return for keeping employees on a company’s payroll, after it reopened in January with $284 billion in funding. Those amendments included an adjusted loan formula that would mean larger amounts for sole proprietors as well as expanded eligibility for small business owners with certain criminal records, were delinquent on student loan debt or were non-citizens.

Just a note to say that this blog has become rather dusty and abandoned over the last two or three years. But I think it's time for me to use it a lot more. At least until Google notices that they still own Blogger, and close the whole thing down.

Hullo. Welcome back.

This is a good place, on the whole, this blog. I started it in February 2001, for American Gods. This was the first entry.)

Here is an Edward Gorey drawing called The Happy Ending, to celebrate the New Beginning.

Rick and Morty: Dan Harmon’s Next Experiment After stunning the world (or at least the portion of the world that pays attention to what showrunners do) by reclaiming his series Community, after being removed for season four, Dan Harmon has...

from Instagram https://instagr.am/p/DCIneGJpq6Z/ via IFTTT

“Young man, in mathematics you don’t understand things, you just get used to them.” —John von Neumann¹

This, in a sense, is at the heart of why mathematics is so hard. Math is all about abstraction, about generalizing the stuff you can get a sense of to apply to crazy situations about which you otherwise have no insight whatsoever. Take, for example, one way of understanding the manifold structure on SO(3), the special orthogonal group on 3-space. In order to explain what I’m talking about, I’ll have to give several definitions and explanations and each, to a greater or lesser extent, illustrates both my point about abstraction and von Neumann’s point about getting used to things.

First off, SO(3) has a purely algebraic definition as the set of all real (that is to say, the entries are real numbers) 3 × 3 matrices A with the property A^TA = I and the determinant of A is 1. That is, if you take A and flip rows and columns, you get the transpose of A, denoted A^T; if you then multiply this transpose by A, you get the identity matrix I. The determinant has its own complicated algebraic definition (the unique alternating, multilinear functional…), but it’s easy to compute for small matrices and can be intuitively understood as a measure of how much the matrix “stretches” vectors. Now, as with all algebraic definitions, this is a bit abstruse; also, as is unfortunately all too common in mathematics, I’ve presented all the material slightly backwards.

This is natural, because it seems obvious that the first thing to do in any explication is to define what you’re talking about, but, in reality, the best thing to do in almost every case is to first explain what the things you’re talking about (in this case, special orthogonal matrices) really are and why we should care about them, and only then give the technical definition. In this case, special orthogonal matrices are “really” the set of all rotations of plain ol’ 3 dimensional space that leave the origin fixed (another way to think of this is as the set of linear transformations that preserve length and orientation; if I apply a special orthogonal transformation to you, you’ll still be the same height and width and you won’t have been flipped into a “mirror image”). Obviously, this is a handy thing to have a grasp on and this is why we care about special orthogonal matrices. In order to deal with such things rigorously it’s important to have the algebraic definition, but as far as understanding goes, you need to have the picture of rotations of 3 space in your head.

Okay, so I’ve explained part of the sentence in the first paragraph where I started throwing around arcane terminology, but there’s a bit more to clear up; specifically, what the hell is a “manifold”, anyway? Well, in this case I’m talking about differentiable (as opposed to topological) manifolds, but I don’t imagine that explanation helps. In order to understand what a manifold is, it’s very important to have the right picture in your head, because the technical definition is about ten times worse than the special orthogonal definition, but the basic idea is probably even simpler. The intuitive picture is that of a smooth surface. For example, the surface of a sphere is a nice 2-dimensional manifold. So is the surface of a donut, or a saddle, or an idealized version of the rolling hills of your favorite pastoral scene. Slightly more abstractly, think of a rubber sheet stretched and twisted into any configuration you like so long as there are no holes, tears, creases, black holes or sharp corners.

In order to rigorize this idea, the important thing to notice about all these surfaces is that, if you’re a small enough ant living on one of these surfaces, it looks indistinguishable from a flat plane. This is something we can all immediately understand, given that we live on an oblate spheroid that, because it’s so much bigger than we are, looks flat to us. In fact, this is very nearly the precise definition of a manifold, which basically says that a manifold is a topological space (read: set of points with some important, but largely technical, properties) where, at any point in the space, there is some neighborhood that looks identical to “flat” euclidean space; a 2-dimensional manifold is one that looks locally like a plane, a 3-dimensional manifold is one that looks locally like normal 3-dimensional space, a 4-dimensional manifold is one that looks locally like normal 4-dimensional space, and so on.

In fact, these spaces look so much like normal space that we can do calculus on them, which is why the subject concerned with manifolds is called “differential geometry”. Again, the reason why we would want to do calculus on spaces that look a lot like normal space but aren’t is obvious: if we live on a sphere (as we basically do), we’d like to be able to figure out how to, e.g., minimize our distance travelled (and, thereby, fuel consumed and time spent in transit) when flying from Denver to London, which is the sort of thing for which calculus is an excellent tool that gives good answers; unfortunately, since the Earth isn’t flat, we can’t use regular old freshman calculus.² As it turns out, there are all kinds of applications of this stuff, from relatively simple engineering to theoretical physics.

So, anyway, the point is that manifolds look, at least locally, like plain vanilla euclidean space. Of course, even the notion of “plain vanilla euclidean space” is an abstraction beyond what we can really visualize for dimensions higher than three, but this is exactly the sort of thing von Neumann was talking about: you can’t really visualize 10 dimensional space, but you “know” that it looks pretty much like regular 3 dimensional space with 7 more axes thrown in at, to quote Douglas Adams, “right angles to reality”.

Okay, so the claim is that SO(3), our set of special orthogonal matrices, is a 3-dimensional manifold. On the face of it, it might be surprising that the set of rotations of three space should itself look anything like three space. On the other hand, this sort of makes sense: consider a single vector (say of unit length, though it doesn’t really matter) based at the origin and then apply every possible rotation to it. This will give us a set of vectors based at the origin, all of length 1 and pointing any which way you please. In fact, if you look just at the heads of all the vectors, you’re just talking about a sphere of radius 1 centered at the origin. So, in a sense, the special orthognal matrices look like a sphere. This is both right and wrong; the special orthogonal matrices do look a lot like a sphere, but like a 3-sphere (that is, a sphere living in four dimensions), not a 2-sphere (i.e., what we usually call a “sphere”).

In fact, locally SO(3) looks almost exactly like a 3-sphere; globally, however, it’s a different story. In fact, SO(3) looks globally like , which requires one more excursion into the realm of abstraction. , or real projective 3-space, is an abstract space where we’ve taken regular 3-space and added a “plane at infinity”. This sounds slightly wacky, but it’s a generalization of what’s called the projective plane, which is basically the same thing but in a lower dimension. To get the projective plane, we add a “line at infinity” rather than a plane, and the space has this funny property that if you walk through the line at infinity, you get flipped into your mirror image; if you were right-handed, you come out the other side left-handed (and on the “other end” of the plane). But not to worry, if you walk across the infinity line again, you get flipped back to normal.

Okay, sounds interesting, but how do we visualize such a thing? Well, the “line at infinity” thing is good, but infinity is pretty hard to visualize, too. Instead we think about twisting the sphere in a funny way:

You can construct the projective plane as follows: take a sphere. Imagine taking a point on the sphere, and its antipodal point, and pulling them together to meet somewhere inside the sphere. Now do it with another pair of points, but make sure they meet somewhere else. Do this with every single point on the sphere, each point and its antipodal point meeting each other but meeting no other points. It’s a weird, collapsed sphere that can’t properly live in three dimensions, but I imagine it as looking a bit like a seashell, all curled up on itself. And pink.

This gives you the real projective plane, . If you do the same thing, but with a 3-sphere (again, remember that this is the sphere living in four dimensions), you get . Of course, you can’t even really visualize or, for that matter, a 3-sphere, so really visualizing is going to be out of the question, but we have a pretty good idea, at least by analogy, of what it is. This is, as von Neumann indicates, one of those things you “just get used to”.

Now, as it turns out, if you do the math, SO(3) and look the same in a very precise sense (specifically, they’re diffeomorphic). On the face of it, of course, this is patently absurd, but if you have the right picture in mind, this is the sort of thing you might have guessed. The basic idea behind the proof linked above is that we can visualize 3-space as living inside 4-space (where it makes sense to talk about multiplication); here, a rotation (remember, that’s all the special orthogonal matrices/transformations really are) is just like conjugating by a point on the sphere. And certainly conjugating by a point is the same as conjugating by its antipodal point, since the minus signs will cancel eachother in the latter case. But this is exactly how we visualized , as the points on the sphere with antipodal points identified!

I’m guessing that most of the above doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I would urge you to heed von Neumann’s advice: don’t necessarily try to “understand” it so much as just to “get used to it”; the understanding can only come after you’ve gotten used to the concepts and, most importantly, the pictures. Which was really, I suspect, von Neumann’s point, anyway: of course we can understand things in mathematics, but we can only understand them after we suspend our disbelief and allow ourselves to get used to them. And, of course, make good pictures.

---

¹ This, by the way, is my second-favorite math quote of the year, behind my complex analysis professor’s imprecation, right before discussing poles vs. essential singularities, to “distinguish problems that are real but not serious from those that are really serious.”

² As a side note, calculus itself is a prime example of mathematical abstraction. The problem with the world is that most of the stuff in it isn’t straight. If it were, we could have basically stopped after the Greeks figured out a fair amount of geometry. And, even worse, not only is non-straight stuff (like, for example, a graph of the position of a falling rock plotted against time) all over the place, but it’s hard to get a handle on. So, instead of just giving up and going home, we approximate the curvy stuff in the world with straight lines, which we have a good grasp of. As long as we’re dealing with stuff that’s curvy (rather than, say, broken into pieces) this actually works out pretty well and, once you get used to it all, it’s easy to forget what the whole point was, anyway (this, I suspect, is the main reason calculus instruction is so uniformly bad; approximating curvy stuff with straight lines works so well that those who who are supposed to teach the process lose sight of what’s really going on).

In part 4 of 'Confident In The Chaos', 'The Judged And The Just', we discover part of the answer to Habakkuk's questioning of God and His ways - 'The just shall live by his faith' (2:4). The way we remain confident in the chaos is to believe God. This is also the way to be 'right with God', be saved from judgement and to stay in close fellowship with God - by faith. In this episode we go to the very heart of the Gospel - how Jesus took our sin and we receive God's righteousness through faith in Him. Why not share this message of Good News with someone you know who needs Jesus? This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format and in HD video on our YouTube Channel (https://youtube.com/PreachTheWord)...

I may regret this. My mom always told me to stay out of other people's fights. But I was always too headstrong for my own good so here goes.

Over at Copyblogger Brian tells us:

" Steve used a clever little PR gimmick (that would never work for an unknown blogger today, mind you) to literally propel himself to the enviable point he is now. Nothing wrong with that, unless of course, two years later, you look down from your A-List perch and proclaim that traffic is now bad."

Frankly I'm a little weary of the term "A-List". But I have to agree with that thought. It's easy to mock the tail that wags the blog when you're at the top.

A commentor said:

"Anyone who says traffic doesn't matter, relative to having a web presence, is either disingenuous or has a ton of traffic already. In Steve's case, likely both."

P.S.: It's called HYPOCRISY! Steve Rubel has redefined the art of tagging wrapping all his posts around ever popular keyword themes. "Blog", "Technorati, "Google", "Top Ten", "Best", "Success", "Killer", "Sex", "Porn"... whatever works. Slog that Technorati gravy train Steve and keep those numbers up.

Another commentor also mentioned performancing.com -- that self-absorbed group of omni poobahs forever beating their own drum. Until a couple of months ago nobody had ever heard of them. After spending a little advertising money at Technorati and a few smug posts later they have somehow transformed themselves into self-proclaimed blog experts.

Which only proves that if you toot your own horn loud and long enough you will begin to believe your own press. It also demonstrates how many gullible bloggers there are eager to jump on the blogging gold train.

Taking notes?

****************************************************************
This is a message from your upline Director John O’Driscoll. Team we are 310+ strong and growing fast!
****************************************************************

1. Welcome to New Team Members
   
   I would just like to personally welcome the following team members who have joined in the last couple of days.
   
   Millionaire Club
   Marvin frendo combo
   Michael Summers
   
   Make sure you go to our first steps guide Click here
   
   
2. Tony Michael Faculty Call
   
   This is one of the best calls I have listened to for a while, listen in and get fired up for August!
   
   Click Here
   
   
3. Message from your Vice President Ned Rae (20,000 members in under 3 years!)
   
   TEAM!
   Things are moving fast, MOMENTUM is just around the corner and NOW IS THE TIME FOR ACTION!
   You can be at the right place at the right time and still miss the boat, it is that ACTION that is required.
   
   IF ACTION IS WHAT YOU WANT, IT’S ACTION YOU’RE GOING TO GET!!
   
   Don’t miss the TEAM Training call SATURDAY August 4th at 1:00PM Central Time. pin code 67207#
   
   We have been looking for a SYSTEM that would help us integrate the Internet with our WORD OF MOUTH Network Marketing. Thanks to the efforts of Mike Ward, a TOP Money Earner with Success University a system is here.
   
   Mike will be our SPECAIL GUEST on the call tomorrow. Mike will be explaining his SU Builder Auto Responder system designed for Success University. You will not want to miss this call!
   There are also updates to be shared from our own Lou Bonaventura on our TEAM Training Website.
   
   Get on the call early, there are only 99 in coming lines, the call will fill up…Let SU Builder and this TEAM help you build that foundation before that great momentum push arrives!!
   
   
4. Following up your leads
   
   Members of the team coop I have posted some guidance on follow up in the coop blog. This can be used by anyone following up on your leads.
   ==> Click Here
   
   
5. August Bonuses
   
   Guys have you checked out this months bonuses – they are the best I have ever seen. I want you to take a look at the special Director bonus on offer this month.
   
   If you’re a student there is the real possibility of earning a lot of money this month. Lets break it down. To become a director you need to have 10 people you have personally sponsored and for 3 of those people to have become a counsellor (they have signed 5 people themselves)
   
   Now if you really go for it this month this is what you are going to earn in one month.
   
   10 personal sign ups = 10x$20 = $200
   15 sign ups by your team = 15*$5 = $75
   2x2 bonus =$1000 (You should be able to get two of these)
   Director Bonus =$1500
   Total =$2775
   
   You will actually earn more than this as there are other bonus payments but I just want to illustrate that this is really the month you want to pull out all of the stops. If your brand new to the business or have been in for a while you need to know that people have become a Director in days so with massive action one month is very achievable.
   
   

Speak with your upline sponsor and go for it.

I am truly excited about August as I believe this is going to be one of the fastest growing months this year. Lets grow big together!

John O’Driscoll
http://mlm-successsite.com

What parts do you think I would be wise to save and not sell since they will inevitably fail on my fit? keep in mind, the donor is automatic, the new one is manual, so the transmission won’t fit....

- Non ! dit vivement Conquette, j’y vais moi-même. Elle sortit, et, ayant rencontré Rosemauve qui redescendait, parce qu’elle n’avait pas trouvé un vieil oncle assez riche, dont elle recréait l’impotente lubricité, en lui chatouillant le croupion, le scrotum et les testicules ; ce qui le[...]

Hey, it's Marc David, and welcome to the very first episode of "Just Ask Marc Fitness and Bodybuilding." I'm back, and I'm here to share my passion for fitness, bodybuilding, and honest dialogue with you.

What to Expect:

• A Fresh Start: I'm not here to make friends or enemies; I'm here to share information, answer your questions, and have real discussions about fitness.
• Q&A Format: I love the question-and-answer approach, and I'm ready to answer your questions, find experts who can, or direct you to reliable resources.
• No Hucksters Allowed: I'm all about the truth, the basics, and the fundamentals. I'll disclose any vested interest and keep things transparent.
• A Focus on You: This podcast isn't about promoting products or programs; it's about helping you with your fitness journey.

Highlights:

• Relearning the Squat: I recently relearned the squat, and I want to share how the Q&A format helped me.
• 20 Years of Fitness Questions: With over two decades of experience, I have a wealth of knowledge to share.
• An Experiment in Fitness: I'm not a fan of the fitness industry's money-driven approach, but I'm here to share what I like, what works, and why.
• Financial Advice and Disclosure: I believe in being upfront and honest, especially when there's a vested interest involved.
• Your Internet Concierge: I want to be a resource you can trust, whether I'm answering your questions directly or pointing you to someone who can.

How to Contact Me:

• Website: justaskmarc.com
• Email: marc@justaskmarc.com (Put "podcast" in the subject line)

I invite you to join me on this journey. Whether you're a longtime listener or new to the show, I'm here to have fun, learn together, and see you on the other side.

Subscribe: Find subscriber links on my site, add to your podcast player, or listen on the web players on my site.

Listen to JustAskMarc Bodybuilding and Fitness

It's real! Yesterday, I thought it was big, but I didn't even know HOW big. Get yourself over here and see for yourself. What I saw, just 24 hours ago, was based on seeing a pre-launch, unfinished version of “Google's Dirty Little Secret.”

But just this morning... at 12:01 AM... I was lucky enough to get my hands on the final version.
I couldn't sleep. I stayed up all night, devouring the material. I learned stuff I never imagined.
I almost accidentally called what I learned, “tricks” but these aren't little gimmicks that will make you a few dimes for a little while. This is a brand new way to make money with AdSense.
After reading just half the book, all I can say is, “WOW!”

It's finally available, so you can read the secret page yourself here.

Let me tell you, this “Insider” is an interesting character. A dark and secret sort... but one with the kind of knowledge I've never seen before. And I guarantee you haven't either.
And you know how some guys out there write books that are supposed to reveal the secrets, but they keep the real secrets to themselves?

Not this guy... He's revealing so much, it's like he has a vendetta against someone at Google!
He shows step by step, exactly how he...

--Sucks $10,000 PER DAY out of Adsense.
--Plies his nasty practices while never being detected by the powers that be... or his competition!
--Follows a simple blueprint that can make him INSTANT money anytime he needs it.

And he shows you in simple language, exactly how you can do it too!
See for yourself.

If I were you, I'd go there right now, because depending on what time you're reading this, the floodgates may have already been opened.

And how would you feel if you missed out on what could be the single greatest money making opportunity you'll ever be offered?

You know, I just read back what I wrote above, and I think my theory of the “Insider” having a vendetta against Google, isn't right. It can't be. Because I'm pretty sure Google knows he's doing it. I'm convinced he's ripping off Adsense, and they're just sitting back and letting him steal THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS everyday!

Why?

Because his tactics make Google... HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS... maybe even MILLIONS daily.

Listen... I already know this package is probably going to be the single most important investment you make this year...
...and the thing about investments is, you have to strike while the iron is... cheap!

I spoke to Chris from DayJobKiller and even though “Google's Dirty Little Secret” has only been out less than an hour, he's already talking about raising the price.
So get in now, while the getting is good.

So stop checking your email already. Get over to this site and don't so much as blink your eyes before you make it to the bottom of that page.

I'm sitting here thinking of something else to say, when all that comes to me is something I said earlier... “Wow!”

To Your Success!

Dr. Justin Salehi joins Rancho Family Pediatrics in Temecula, CA, bringing top pediatric expertise to a newly renovated, child-friendly office designed to inspire young patients. [PR.com]

Recently I ran across a civilian gentleman that asked,"How can
military transitioning can be complicated for a person
leaving the military?" Basically, he wanted for me to
define the term military transition to where he could
relate and understand the process. "It's just changing jobs,
right?", he asked.

Before I began explaining the process, I made sure that
he realized that the transitioning process we were addressing
could apply to police officers, firemen, EMTs, and any other
job that has it's own lingo and culture.

In addition to the above occupations, a person who serves as
a teacher, a professor, a lawyer, an attorney, a public
official and every occupation you can think of goes through
some sort of transition once they no longer perform their
primary occupation.

We inevitably become like the people we work with and adopt
the thought process for that particular field. This thought
process then becomes a part of our lifestyle, identity,
vocabulary, and reasoning. The power of the thought process
and transformation of our identity in relation to our occupation
is underestimated. To put this theory to test, imagine taking a
30 day vacation and see how you feel by the 21st day. How
would your first day back to work feel? It takes 21 days
to acquire a habit.

Once we separate ourselves from that occupation, our identity
is tested. Once we leave or change occupations, we undergo a
self-discovery phase with our identities and experience an
identity transformation process. There are several events that
can kick off a self-discovery process within us (i.e. new job,
new location, new career field, marriage, divorce, etc).

A transition is just that, a transition. Ask any retiree
(civilian or military). Amazingly so, a person leaving the
military not only goes through a transition with an occupation,
they go through a lifestyle transition as well. Then if the
person relocates, there's a host of transitions occurring
simultaneously. All of these changes can cause sensory overload
if the person isn't prepared for the transition. (Hopefully this
analogy helps someone who hasn't served in the military understand
that military transitioning is a combination of transitions).

Over the past year, I'm really glad to see more supporting
websites and businesses online for military transitioning.
There was a need and the need for military transitioning
services will increase with our brothers and sisters returning
from war. Some say there isn't a war going on. If there is
blood being shed, that spells war to me and many others.


Food For Thought:


The lifesyle transition a military person experiences is the
transition of living within the civilian society. Our military
communities are very close knit. Imagine a base or post being a
little city with a population of approximately 2000 or less. A world
within a world, a microcosm in a macrocosm.

Transitions to Ponder:

1. Going from elementary school to junior high.
2. Going from junior high school to high school.
3. Going from high school to college.
4. Graduating from college and entering the work force.
5. Leaving home.
6. Going from single to married.
7. Going from childless to having children.
8. Watching children grow up.
9. Watching children leave home.
10. Going from a full nest to an empty nest.
11. Retirement, etc...
12. Leaving the earth plane as a living being.

Transitions are inevitable. That's living life.

Stay tuned for more on transitioning and it's affects. If
there is a topic you'd like incorporated within this subject,
please write to vetsinmotion@aol.com.


Until Next Time,


Johnetta Matthews
Veterans In Motion

This article may be circulated as long as it includes:

This article was written by Johnetta Matthews, Military
Transition Coach,Veterans In Motion, www.veteransinmotion.com
and www.veteransinmotion.blogspot.com .



Technorati Tags: military transition military
military separation military retirement military transition life veterans va Iraq war PTSD milblog

Follow these tips for maintaining your chiropractic adjustments.

Over the last 18 months, Spotify has been pushing to expand its platform from a music-streaming service to all types of audio. Podcasting has been a major focus, and led CEO Daniel Ek to acquire companies like Gimlet, Anchor, Parcast, and The Ringer, as well as sign exclusive contracts with big names like the Obamas.

Spotifys latest deal could accelerate the growth of its podcast audience. The Joe Rogan Experience is coming to Spotify, and will be exclusive to the platform by the end of the year. That is a big blow to Apple, which sports the most popular podcast listening app.

For several years, employers have tried to develop "relevant" and creative ways to successfully train new employees. After all, employees are more likely to pay attention to training videos and seminars if they can actually relate to the content. While there have been some pretty outrageous attempts over the years—just take a look at the 1989 Wendy's training (music) video designed to instruct new hires how to properly pour coffee—some of the methods do work.

Although podcasting is new, it is well on its way to becoming a mainstream communication medium. Podcasting, simply put, is audio files that are delivered via RSS. Many people believe that podcasting is solely for the distribution of music files, but really, nothing could be further from the truth. This emerging method of audio file distribution has opened an array of marketing and communication opportunities to businesses. Currently, most who are familiar with podcasting are technically savvy, but it is clear that podcasting will be more than a passing fad as many businesses are adopting podcasting and employing it in unusual yet powerful ways. Podcasting can be used for talk shows, tutorials, music demos, educational training, stories, comedy clips, debates or even foreign language tutorials.


While RSS has had the capacity to include audio files for a few years, only recently have entrepreneurs made the conceptual leap, taking advantage of the new power held within this communication medium. In reality, podcasters cover the gamut; some are professional broadcasters, while others are obvious amateurs.

The core use for RSS is generally considered news headlines and blog syndication, but innovative businesses are learning to use RSS in different ways. Consider RSS as a communication channel that can provide current, targeted information as it appears within a very targeted audience.


  Monitoring Newsgroups/Usenet
Google Groups is a free online community and discussion group service that offers the Web's most comprehensive archive of Usenet postings. Google Groups can be monitored using RSS feeds. In order to monitor a specific newsgroup simply add "/feed/msgs.xml" to the end of the Google Group URL. Add the new URL to a newsgroup reader and receive updates each time a new post is added to the newsgroup.

Example Feed: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.comp.shareware.authors/feed/msgs.xml



   Calendars
Build a calendar for public or private use and receive calendar updates via an RSS feed. Calendars can be created for personal reminders to pay bills or attend social functions. Calendars can also be used for specific groups like schools, sporting events, or industry events. The calendar can be syndicated and shared using RSS feeds.

CalendarHub - http://www.calendarhub.com
Example Feed - http://www.calendarhub.com/rss/21882/month


Weather
Enter a zip code and obtain the weather information in a specific region. Click the orange RSS icon and add the feed to your reader. Each morning you will receive local and regional weather reports as they are made available. RSS feeds can be customized to include current local conditions, local Doppler radar, pollen trends, regional video forecasts with expert commentary, and extended forecast details.

Weather.com - http://www.weather.com or RSS Weather - http://www.rssweather.com


Classifieds (Homes/Jobs)
Curious about the availability of specific employment opportunities in a specific industry? Receive notification when positions are made available. RSS feeds can be created for regions, salary ranges, or positions.

RSSJobs - http://www.rssjobs.com or Craigslist Example Feed - http://www.craigslist.com/sof/index.rss



Ego Searches
Ego searches are free and simple searches designed to monitor blogs and news portals for mentions of your company, product, competitors, or other specific keywords. Conducting ego searches, not only allows you to stay informed, but also allows you to maintain a strategic advantage over competing companies. A number of new Internet services are freely available that make these 'ego searches' painless and easy.


Many of the services allow you to create a keyword based feed. Each time new information containing the keyword appears in the searched resources, the RSS feed updates.

More on Ego Searches: http://www.small-business-software.net/ego-searches.htm


Shipments
Receive notification via RSS feeds when packages are delivered. Custom RSS feeds can be created to monitor delivery progress. Track the status of packages shipped via US Postal Service, USP, DHL or Federal Express.

Simple Tracking - http://www.simpletracking.com/



   Site Checks
Initially used by search engines to indicate new websites with top ranking for specific keywords. Many webmasters provide RSS feeds to let visitors know when web content changes occur.



Coupons or Specials
Everyone loves a bargain, RSS feeds that promote time sensitive discounts or offers are becoming increasingly popular. Restaurants convey lunch specials while travel companies convey last minute deals to prospective travelers using RSS Feeds.

Sample Restaurants Feed - http://www.bestrestaurants.com.au/xml/feed/dining-specials-australia.xml or
Sample Travel Feed - http://www.orbitz.com/rss/flightdeals.rss.xml



  Auction Monitoring
Items on eBay are time sensitive, few individuals have time to make daily auction checks of new auctions for specific products. Create an RSS feed using keywords to monitor products as they become available for auction.

Bidding Tools - http://www.freebiddingtools.com
Example Feeds - http://www.freebiddingtools.com/rss/feeds/47459


RSS is still very young. Both publishers and consumers are actively seeking ways to exploit this communication medium. Additional uses of RSS feeds are popping up daily. Consider how your business might use this new communication medium to increase sales, increase productivity, and reach new customers.

About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software company.

Notepage, Inc. has just developed a social bookmarking tool that will help web designers create bookmarking chicklets with ease. This tool allows users to enter the title, description and URL of their website and it creates bookmark chicklets that can be inserted into their website.

Social bookmarking has quickly become a popular way for frequent internet users to share their favorite websites with the public. Having a website added to a bookmark directory can increase traffic significantly. Bookmark chicklets are a newer creation that help remind those viewing a website to add it to the social bookmarking directories. It makes the bookmarking process easier for those who have found a website that is a good source of information or services. Another advantage of the tool is that the website description that goes into the bookmark is written into the script, allowing creators of the chicklet to choose how their website will be described in the directory.

The tool is easy to use for even novice web designers. It can also be used to add chicklets to blogs. Creating the chicklets is instantaneous when using this tool. It is a free service available to anyone. For more information or to use the tool visit http://www.feedforall.com/social-bookmarks.htm.

For more information contact, NotePage, Inc. at PO Box 296, Hanover, MA 02339. Phone: 781-829-0500. Fax: 781-582-1869. E-mail: sales@feedforall.com . Internet: http://www.FeedForAll.com . Evaluation Copy Available on Request

Schools all over the country have flocked to podcasting as a new medium to assist the teaching profession. Professors are using podcasts to instruct students and get their messages out. Podcasting is not restricted to one educational sector, professors at prestigest colleges from Bentley to Purdue have flocked to this medium.

A growing number of professors are recording their lectures, the term coursecasting has been adopted in academia. Podcast lectures are used as study tools, and are available for students who might have missed class. Some podcasts are password restricted to students who are enrolled in that specific class. While other institution's publicly post their podcasts and offer non-enrolled students insight into the class material.

Podcasting Just Might be the Tool to Revolutionize Education

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[This Day] Remo Stars Manager, Daniel Ogunmodede, has weighed in on the main reason why Super Eagles Coach, Augustine Eguavoen, invited Real Sociedad's Sadiq Umar, AJ Auxerre's Gabriel Osho and Nasarawa United's Victor Collins to the

[Natural Justice] Baku, Azerbaijan -- The 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP29) has opened amid deep divisions over agenda items, fossil fuel lobbying by the host nation, and new carbon market rules that threaten to derail urgent climate action. Critical issues such as climate finance, just transitions, human rights, and the protection of Indigenous land and environmental defenders are already at risk.

[Dabanga] This week, the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, hosts the main event commemorating the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists. This year's theme, "Journalists' Safety in Crises and Emergencies," resonates deeply in Sudan.

[Dabanga] Addis Ababa / Port Sudan -- The African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa is hosting a critical event today and tomorrow, November 6 and 7, commemorating the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists. This year's theme, "Safety of Journalists During Crises and Emergencies," resonates deeply in Sudan, where the ongoing conflict has created a perilous environment for those reporting on the war.

Schools all over the country have flocked to podcasting as a new medium to assist the teaching profession. Professors are using podcasts to instruct students and get their messages out. Podcasting is not restricted to one educational sector, professors at prestigious colleges from Bentley to Purdue have flocked to this medium.

Podcasting Just Might Be the Tool to Revolutionize Education

The core use for RSS is generally considered news headlines and blog syndication, but innovative businesses are learning to use RSS in different ways. Consider RSS as a communication channel that can provide current, targeted information as it appears within a very targeted audience.

Monitoring Newsgroups/Usenet
Google Groups is a free online community and discussion group service that offers the Web's most comprehensive archive of Usenet postings. Google Groups can be monitored using RSS feeds. In order to monitor a specific newsgroup simply add "/feed/msgs.xml" to the end of the Google Group URL. Add the new URL to a newsgroup reader and receive updates each time a new post is added to the newsgroup.

RSS More than Just News Headlines

Schools all over the country have flocked to podcasting as a new medium to assist the teaching profession. Professors are using podcasts to instruct students and get their messages out. Podcasting is not restricted to one educational sector, professors at prestigious colleges from Bentley to Purdue have flocked to this medium.

A growing number of professors are recording their lectures, the term coursecasting has been adopted in academia. Podcast lectures are used as study tools, and are available for students who might have missed class. Some podcasts are password restricted to students who are enrolled in that specific class. While other institution's publicly post their podcasts and offer non-enrolled students insight into the class material.

Podcasting Just Might Be the Tool to Revolutionize Education

The core use for RSS is generally considered news headlines and blog syndication, but innovative businesses are learning to use RSS in different ways. Consider RSS as a communication channel that can provide current, targeted information as it appears within a very targeted audience.

RSS Is More Than Just News

Schools all over the country have flocked to podcasting as a new medium to assist the teaching profession. Professors are using podcasts to instruct students and get their messages out. Podcasting is not restricted to one educational sector, professors at prestigious colleges from Bentley to Purdue have flocked to this medium.

A growing number of professors are recording their lectures, the term coursecasting has been adopted in academia. Podcast lectures are used as study tools, and are available for students who might have missed class. Some podcasts are password restricted to students who are enrolled in that specific class.

Podcasting Just Might Be the Tool to Revolutionize Education

The core use for RSS is generally considered news headlines and blog syndication, but innovative businesses are learning to use RSS in different ways. Consider RSS as a communication channel that can provide current, targeted information as it appears within a very targeted audience.

RSS More Than Just News Headlines

Schools all over the country have flocked to podcasting as a new medium to assist the teaching profession. Professors are using podcasts to instruct students and get their messages out. Podcasting is not restricted to one educational sector, professors at prestigious colleges from Bentley to Purdue have flocked to this medium.

A growing number of professors are recording their lectures, the term coursecasting has been adopted in academia. Podcast lectures are used as study tools, and are available for students who might have missed class. Some podcasts are password restricted to students who are enrolled in that specific class. While other institution's publicly post their podcasts and offer non-enrolled students insight into the class material.

Podcasting Just Might Be the Tool to Revolutionize Education

The core use for RSS is generally considered news headlines and blog syndication, but innovative businesses are learning to use RSS in different ways. Consider RSS as a communication channel that can provide current, targeted information as it appears within a very targeted audience.

RSS More Than Just News Headlines

Schools all over the country have flocked to podcasting as a new medium to assist the teaching profession. Professors are using podcasts to instruct students and get their messages out. Podcasting is not restricted to one educational sector, professors at prestigious colleges from Bentley to Purdue have flocked to this medium.

A growing number of professors are recording their lectures, the term coursecasting has been adopted in academia. Podcast lectures are used as study tools, and are available for students who might have missed class. Some podcasts are password restricted to students who are enrolled in that specific class. While other institution's publicly post their podcasts and offer non-enrolled students insight into the class material.

Podcasting Just Might Be the Tool to Revolutionize Education