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.

Ghana's main opposition leader John Dramani Mahama looks set to win December's presidential election, an opinion poll showed on Monday.

Mauritians are set to find out who will govern their Indian Ocean island nation for the next five years after a hotly disputed election race.

Mauritius' incumbent Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth said on Monday his political alliance was headed for a major defeat to a rival coalition led by a three-time former premier following Sunday's parliamentary election.

Mozambican opposition presidential candidate Venancio Mondlane has called for gatherings at ports and borders, and in major cities from Wednesday for what he describes as a fourth round of demonstrations against a stolen election.

Côte d'Ivoire is sub Sahara Africa's biggest importer of wine, says the US department of agriculture, and it is time American companies take advantage of the market.

Mauritius opposition leader Navin Ramgoolam was confirmed as prime minister on Tuesday following a thumping election victory for his coalition that took every parliamentary seat on the main island.

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.

Children from backgrounds of poverty often lag behind more advantaged peers in early language skills, including breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge. We report the results of a pilot study of an explicit and elaborated vocabulary intervention in preschool classrooms serving children from lower-income backgrounds. The intervention used multimodal instruction, including segments from public television children's programs and interactive games, to build children's knowledge of and semantic connections for 128 words across 18 weeks of daily lessons.

Teacher question: I understand your claims that teaching students with grade-level texts instead of instructional level texts increases children’s opportunities to learn. However, what about children’s emotional needs, self-esteem, motivation, and self-starting skills when text is challenging. Children who struggle with sight words or sounding out words who are given a hard piece of text will shut down and refuse to try or will act out in the classroom.

When we’re asked to switch to explicit, systematic instruction, many teachers worry that we’ll no longer be able to tailor our teaching to the students in front of us. Calls for whole-class phonics instruction lasting 30-45 minutes, for example, summon fears that our  students will be bored by concepts they already know or aren’t yet ready for.

Teacher question: One of my colleagues told us that we should not be teaching guided reading lessons or comprehension skills or strategies. We’re using a core reading program that includes those kinds of things. He says that the science of reading proves that we would get higher reading achievement by teaching more social studies and science (he’s our science teacher) and dropping the comprehension instruction that we are providing. He’s really vocal about this. Can you help us shut him up? Shanahan’s response

A recent article on Chow.com identifies a trend in American aviation catering: The surprisingly high demand for ginger ale on America’s planes. Why ginger ale, and not Coke, 7UP, or Bloody Mary mix? The most popular theory among flight attendants is that it relieves nausea. “If [passengers] have motion sickness, it settles their stomach,” says Elizabeth […]

2FA, the common abbreviation for two-factor authentication is a word often spoken about when one is setting up a website or account where security is vital. With more and more confidential information being uploaded on the net, it makes sense to add additional measures to prevent hackers from gaining access to an account. In terms […]

The post Enabling Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for a PayPal Account 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.

If you run an eCommerce website, you may prefer to use a graphic as the call-to-action button for your subscription-style products or services. Below you can find a number of different subscription buttons suitable for use on a website’s landing page or the product page. Want some Buy Now button or Add to Cart button […]

The post Subscription Button Graphics for eCommerce Websites 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.

I have a close circle of clued-on/tech savvy friends whose views I take seriously. For the last few weeks, one of these friends has been sending me emails extolling the merits of something called IOTA – which calls itself as the next generation Blockchain.  At first, I thought of IOTA as yet another cryptocurrency. A [...]

    New workshop in London / remote Link - Enterprise AI workshop – Sep 2018 – in London or remote     AI / Deep Learning applications course/ mentoring program – hands-on experience with limited spaces I am pleased to announce a new course on AI Applications The course combines elements of teaching, coaching and [...]

Nintendo has offered an early look at the Donkey Kong expansion to Super Nintendo World in Japan’s Universal Studios. Following… Continue reading Sneak peek at Super Nintendo World expansion

The post Sneak peek at Super Nintendo World expansion appeared first on ReadWrite.

The Central American nation of El Salvador currently holds nearly 5,932 Bitcoin (BTC), and sits on over $93 million of… Continue reading El Salvador’s Bitcoin adoption is paying off: $93M unrealized profit

The post El Salvador’s Bitcoin adoption is paying off: $93M unrealized profit appeared first on ReadWrite.

Elon Musk could have a role in Donald Trump’s White House, and this could mean stricter AI standards. It’s no… Continue reading Musk and Trump’s relationship could lead to tougher AI standards

The post Musk and Trump’s relationship could lead to tougher AI standards appeared first on ReadWrite.

Continuing to set records, Pepe Unchained recently achieved a new milestone after reaching $26 million. The project’s presale has now… Continue reading As Pepe Unchained Launch Date Nears, Analyst Makes ‘Massive’ Prediction For PEPU

The post As Pepe Unchained Launch Date Nears, Analyst Makes ‘Massive’ Prediction For PEPU appeared first on ReadWrite.

November has turned into a remarkable month for cryptocurrency, with Bitcoin and meme coins like Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and Pepe… Continue reading Meme Coins Are Soaring as Pepe Unchained Layer 2 ICO Raises $27.5 Million

The post Meme Coins Are Soaring as Pepe Unchained Layer 2 ICO Raises $27.5 Million appeared first on ReadWrite.

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.

ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming is China's richest person, with personal wealth of $49.3 billion (R872 billion), an annual rich list showed on Tuesday, although counterparts in real estate and renewables have fared less well.

The PlayStation 5 Pro hits shops on Thursday with a price tag that has raised eyebrows among gamers, but growing sticker shocks in the tech industry have yet to deter consumers.

Patients lie on the floor at Uitenhage Provincial Hospital in Kariega, some with drips in their veins.

The Gauteng education department has postponed the appointment of new office-based staff as well as teachers who applied to be promoted as heads of department, deputy principals and principals until April because of budget constraints.

A formal disciplinary process, or lack thereof, around the suspensions of two high-ranking officials at the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has pitted Higher Education and Training Minister Nobuhle Pamela Nkabane against NSFAS administrator Freeman Nomvalo.

The first AI image generation model I got to play around with was Midjourney v2 in summer 2022. A month earlier, OpenAI had launched DALL-E 2 in beta, and the results looked unbelievably magical. You could generate images in any art style simply by prompting an AI with the name of an artist. I didn’t […]

Platform engineering is the latest buzzword in IT operations. And like all other buzzwords, it’s in danger of becoming meaningless—in danger of meaning whatever some company with a “platform engineering” product wants to sell. We’ve seen that happen to too many useful concepts: Edge computing meant everything from caches at a cloud provider’s data center […]

I’m worried about AI. I’m not worried about it taking my job. I believe AI is a genuine productivity tool. By which I mean it can make developers produce more. The question is whether those developers are producing something good or not. The difference between an experienced developer and a junior is that an experienced […]

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.

Nintendo is cracking down on emulators of its hardware and media depicting their use. First Yuzu was taken down with a lawsuit, and now departs Ryujinx, a similar project that had sought to avoid the legal landmines Yuzu stepped on. — Read the rest

The post Another emulation project disappears amid Nintendo crackdown appeared first on Boing Boing.

Jason M. Allen's "Theatre D'Opera Spatial" won an art competition at the 2022 Colorado State Fair, but the work was subsequently denied copyright protection due to his use of AI software to generate it and his unwillingness to disclaim that contribution to the whole. — Read the rest

The post AI artist appeals denial of copyright protection appeared first on Boing Boing.

October 1 was officially "International Raccoon Appreciation Day," for those of you who love to love the adorable trash panda. Around here, honestly, every day is raccoon appreciation day, so it's an "International Day" I can genuinely get behind.

National Day Calendar explains the origins of the day:

In 2002, a young girl in California wanted to highlight the good points about the raccoon instead of the bad ones.

— Read the rest

The post Every day should be raccoon appreciation day 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.

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.

Here is a link to a recent post by Roger Courville on his "The Virtual Presenter" blog. It reads

A VFAQ (VERY frequently asked question) I get is “what’s the difference between web conferencing, webinars, and webcasts?”

The short answer, these days, is “not very much and a whole bunch.”

Seriously, the lines have blurred from the days that “webcasting” was akin to broadcasting (using streaming media) with virtually no interactivity, whereas web conferencing was (and remains) live, totally realtime (you don’t want any delay when you’re talking on a phone conference, right? In many use cases, you don’t on the web either).

Webinar is simply a portmanteau of web seminar – arguably a use case rather than a technology. That is brief, but it’s as deep as I’m going as I introduce IVT and their enterprise video communications.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Mitch, Hugh, Jim, and Ryan, all at the same time. In addition to the knowledge and passion and history (Hugh’s a fellow ex-Microsoftie with some common connections), what I’m most enthused by is their clarity of mission.

Hello software

First, IVT’s a software company. You can host the software, but for reasons I’ll not get into, you want to take advantage of the fact that they host the software for you. What’s interesting here isn’t a “right or wrong,” it’s a commitment to a business model. Many (if not most) companies who have solutions for webcasting also provide professional production/event management services. IVT is committed to their robust partner community who deliver value-added services atop the IVT platform. Again, this isn’t a right or wrong, but you have to appreciate focus.

Hello production tools

It’s hard to tell you how important the backend of a product is. It’s what economists call an “experience good” …you have to have been there to get it and appreciate it. As it just so happens I spent many years running organizations in the production business, let me say the two words that will bring any accountants to their needs and get the producers all excited: labor and labor. Labor is expensive. Technology, especially over time, often gets less expensive. If you’ve ever produced an event, let alone a bunch of them, you know that the project management time can create a big sucking sound in your budget. This is where producers get excited… not only will they find the flexibility on the back end of IVT’s platform a joy when meeting numerous and disparate client/stakeholder needs, but it’ll save them time.

Hello customization

Okay, so many different solutions offer degrees of customization, but far fewer have down-to-the-pixel capabilities. When clients demand that, you’ve got to deliver. Further, there’s customization of user experiences, such as different tools you might make available to a presenter versus what the marketing department sees when they need to pull down a report. And then there are web services for the data integration geeks (I say that with love, mind you).

Hello remote presenters – but wait, there’s more

A point of differentiation here is multiple presenters, each with different camera types. One can have a webcam in Sydney, one can be standing in front of a hi-def broadcast camera at a conference in a New York hotel…you get the idea. Need to switch back and forth like a television newscast? Can do.

As is my style, my goal isn’t a vendor-by-vendor shootout, to talk about price, or make a recommendation. I’m excited and privileged to be independent, talk to great people with their own angle on the market, and share with you my own spin on it. It sounds like IVT has a solution if you need to reasonably reach 100 people and the horsepower to reach 20K if you need. If you need flexibility and reach and a commitment to knowing their core biz, IVT (or one of their partners) might be someone to add to your must-investigate list.

As the article appeared in TechCrunch...

IVT, a company that produces enterprise-friendly webcasting software, has raised $5.5 million in Series B funding from Syncom Venture Partners with Barshop Ventures, Monitor Ventures and Tudor Ventures participating in the investment round. IVT raised $3 million in Series A funding in 2006.
IVT’s SaaS offering not only helps power webcasts, but also converts multimedia files, such as slideshows, into viewable videos for the web. IVT also offers a YouTube-like hosting and social media site for companies to disseminate videos and webcasts. And the startup has a number of prominent companies that use its webcasting software including Oracle, Dow Chemical, IBM and NEC.

Here is a link to the case study Amazon prepared about MediaPlatform's use of the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Solution (S3).


http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/mediaplatform/

MediaPlatform is the only streaming software solution that allows clients to access the obvious benefits of cloud computing while retaining the ability to maintain security, achieve integrations with Active Directory/LDAP, control remote encoders, etc.

Combined with its groundbreaking approaches to multicasting Flash and leveraging the native caching abilities of WAN acceleration devices to stream HTTP, MediaPlatform's cloud offering represents the most innovative approach to enterprise webcasting available on the market today.

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.

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