Apr. 30, 2013 ? Researchers from the German Leibniz Institute of Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) demonstrate for the first time in a free-ranging mammal that hunger and conflict for access to resources can be "stressful" for subordinate siblings and socially challenged dominant siblings, and hence increase their cost of maintaining homeostasis.
These findings were published in the science journal Biology Letters.
The researchers measured the concentration of metabolites of the 'stress' hormone cortisol in the faeces of young sibling and singleton spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, which depended on their mothers for milk. "It was not known whether sibling conflict over access to milk increased concentrations of cortisol metabolites in twin littermates -- we were now able to demonstrate that it significantly does," states Dr Sarah Benhaiem from the IZW, lead author of the study.
Surprisingly, hunger had little effect on the cortisol metabolite concentration of singletons, whether male or female. The picture was different for twin siblings -- both littermates had an elevated level when hungry. Interestingly, an even more important factor than hunger was the rivalry between twin littermates. In general, the less assertive (subordinate) cubs had higher cortisol metabolite levels than the more assertive (dominant) cubs.
More interestingly still, when hungry, subordinates competing against a sister were more assertive than subordinates competing against a brother. As a result, in such situations dominant sisters had higher cortisol metabolite levels than dominant brothers.
For the first time in a free-ranging wild mammal, the study shows how rivalry between twin siblings affects the cost of maintaining internal stability.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V. (FVB), via AlphaGalileo.
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Journal Reference:
S. Benhaiem, H. Hofer, M. Dehnhard, J. Helms, M. L. East. Sibling competition and hunger increase allostatic load in spotted hyaenas. Biology Letters, 2013; 9 (3): 20130040 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2013.0040
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Apr. 30, 2013 ? The Herschel observatory, a European space telescope for which NASA helped build instruments and process data, has stopped making observations after running out of liquid coolant as expected.
The European Space Agency mission, launched almost four years ago, revealed the universe's "coolest" secrets by observing the frigid side of planet, star and galaxy formation.
"Herschel gave us the opportunity to peer into the dark and cold regions of the universe that are invisible to other telescopes," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington. "This successful mission demonstrates how NASA and ESA can work together to tackle unsolved mysteries in astronomy."
Confirmation the helium is exhausted came today, at the beginning of the spacecraft's daily communication session with its ground station in Western Australia. A clear rise in temperatures was measured in all of Herschel's instruments.
Herschel launched aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana in May 2009. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., built components for two of Herschel's three science instruments. NASA also supports the U.S. astronomical community through the agency's Herschel Science Center, located at the California Institute of Technology's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center in Pasadena.
Herschel's detectors were designed to pick up the glow from celestial objects with infrared wavelengths as long as 625 micrometers, which is 1,000 times longer than what we can see with our eyes. Because heat interferes with these devices, they were chilled to temperatures as low as 2 kelvins (minus 271 degrees Celsius, or 456 Fahrenheit) using liquid helium. The detectors also were kept cold by the spacecraft's orbit, which is around a stable point called the second Lagrange point about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. This location gave Herschel a better view of the universe.
"Herschel has improved our understanding of how new stars and planets form, but has also raised many new questions," said Paul Goldsmith, NASA Herschel project scientist at JPL. "Astronomers will be following up on Herschel's discoveries with ground-based and future space-based observatories for years to come."
The mission will not be making any more observations, but discoveries will continue. Astronomers still are looking over the data, much of which already is public and available through NASA's Herschel Science Center. The final batch of data will be public in about six months.
"Our goal is to help the U.S. community exploit the nuggets of gold that lie in that data archive," said Phil Appleton, project scientist at the science center.
Highlights of the mission include:
Discovering long, filamentary structures in space, dotted with dense star-making knots of material.
Detecting definitively, for the first time, oxygen molecules in space, in addition to other never-before-seen molecules. By mapping the molecules in different regions, researchers are learning more about the life cycles of stars and planets and the origins of life.
Discovering high-speed outflows around central black holes in active galaxies, which may be clearing out surrounding regions and suppressing future star formation.
Opening new views on extremely distant galaxies that could be seen only with Herschel, and providing new information about their high rates of star formation.
Following the trail of water molecules from distant galaxies to the clouds of gas between stars to planet-forming solar systems.
Examining a comet in our own solar system and finding evidence comets could have brought a substantial fraction of water to Earth.
Together with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, discovering a large asteroid belt around the bright star Vega.
Other findings from the mission include the discovery of some of the youngest stars ever seen in the nearby Orion "cradle," and a peculiar planet-forming disk of material surrounding the star TW Hydra, indicating planet formation may happen over longer periods of time than expected. Herschel also has shown stars interact with their environment in many surprising ways, including leaving trails as they move through clouds of gas and dust. More information is online at http://www.herschel.caltech.edu , http://www.nasa.gov/herschel and http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel .
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Smartphone owners have no shortage of cloud-based safety nets, whether it's Google's services, iCloud or any number of file syncproviders. Few of these come from the carrier, however, and Verizon is gambling that its now-deploying Verizon Cloud service will serve as a crutch for anyone replacing a phone on its network. The currently Android- and web-only release offers daily backups of the usual media libraries as well as call logs, contacts and messages. While that isn't special in itself, Verizon is also promising cross-platform safeguards: both an iOS app (available "soon") and future OS support should let customers fetch some of their data if they switch platforms. Just don't count on Verizon Cloud as an alternative to established rivals unless you're both loyal to Verizon and willing to spend. Users get a thin 500MB of space for free, and meaningful storage ranges from $3 per month for 25GB through to $10 for 125GB. Should there be little danger of leaving Big Red, though, Verizon's service and a matching Android app update are available today.
If you're a movie buff and enjoy going to movies often, you can of course use services like Siri to look up movie times and even buy tickets but what if you want more information or to keep track of movies you've already seen? TodoMovies offers just that straight on your iPhone. Not only can you view trailers, ratings, and more on movies, but you can choose to save movies to your watch list and be notified when they come out in theaters.
I've always had a hard time finding an app that manages movies well. Services like Fandango and some others allow you to track movies, like them, and watch trailers but it requires another account login for me to remember. TodoMovies doesn't require me to do any of that or log in with a social service. I can just start adding movies the minute I launch the app. Not only that, native iCloud sync keeps your movies backed up and synced across all your iOS devices.
When looking for movies to add to your watch list, you can view movie trailers, gallery photos, ratings, and even App Store recommendations. This is one thing that really intrigued me since I typically do like to take a look at movie soundtracks or iBooks occasionally. While viewing any particular movie, just tap on the shop bag and you'll be shown any relevant iTunes or App Store items that TodoMovies can find based on that movie. I have found some quirks and things that may not necessarily belong but overall, it does a pretty good job at filtering in relevant soundtracks and books.
TodoMovies can notify you when a movie releases in a theater if you add it to your watch list. By default you'll be asked if you'd like to receive notifications for each and every movie that isn't out yet but you can easily remedy this by hopping into settings and disabling the notification prompt. You can either tell it to remind you each time or you can turn notifications off completely for TodoMovies in settings.
Once you've watched a movie, tap on it from your watch list and tap the check mark which will move it from your watch list to the already watched section of TodoMovies. This is a great place to keep track of all the movies you've seen.
The good
Ratings from both Rotten Tomatoes and Movie Database
High quality trailers built right in
App Store recommendations including albums, books, and apps that may be relevant to that particular movie
Notifications for movie release date reminders
iCloud sync
The bad
No ability to rate movies within TodoMovies
Sometimes App Store and iTunes recommendations can be a bit flaky and produce irrelevant results in some situations
No showtime support with local theaters
The bottom line
If you're looking for a movie tracking app that allows you to keep track of your personal watching experiences, TodoMovies is it. There aren't any pesky signups to complete or social network requirements. Your movies are just that, your movies.
With the added benefits of being able to view ratings, photos, trailers, and extras, TodoMovies is one of the best options available, especially if you don't fancy creating new accounts or sharing with your social networks. The only thing I'd really like to see in an update is the ability to view showtimes at local theaters without having to open a separate app.
In this March 20, 2013 photo, a North Korean flag hangs inside the interior of Pyongyang?s Supreme Court. North Korea says it will soon deliver a verdict in the case of detained American Kenneth Bae it accuses of trying to overthrow the government, further complicating already fraught relations between Pyongyang and Washington. The announcement about Bae comes in the middle of a lull after weeks of war threats and other provocative acts by North Korea against the U.S. and South Korea. Bae, identified in North Korean state media by his Korean name, Pae Jun Ho, is a tour operator of Korean descent who was arrested after arriving with a tour on Nov. 3 in Rason, a special economic zone bordering China and Russia. (AP Photo)
In this March 20, 2013 photo, a North Korean flag hangs inside the interior of Pyongyang?s Supreme Court. North Korea says it will soon deliver a verdict in the case of detained American Kenneth Bae it accuses of trying to overthrow the government, further complicating already fraught relations between Pyongyang and Washington. The announcement about Bae comes in the middle of a lull after weeks of war threats and other provocative acts by North Korea against the U.S. and South Korea. Bae, identified in North Korean state media by his Korean name, Pae Jun Ho, is a tour operator of Korean descent who was arrested after arriving with a tour on Nov. 3 in Rason, a special economic zone bordering China and Russia. (AP Photo)
In this March 20, 2013 photo, a North Korean flag hangs inside the interior of Pyongyang?s Supreme Court. North Korea says it will soon deliver a verdict in the case of detained American Kenneth Bae it accuses of trying to overthrow the government, further complicating already fraught relations between Pyongyang and Washington. The announcement about Bae comes in the middle of a lull after weeks of war threats and other provocative acts by North Korea against the U.S. and South Korea. Bae, identified in North Korean state media by his Korean name, Pae Jun Ho, is a tour operator of Korean descent who was arrested after arriving with a tour on Nov. 3 in Rason, a special economic zone bordering China and Russia. (AP Photo)
PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) ? North Korea announced Saturday that an American detained for nearly six months is being tried in the Supreme Court on charges of plotting to overthrow the government, a crime that could draw the death penalty if he is convicted.
The case involving Kenneth Bae, who has been in North Korean custody since early November, further complicates already fraught relations between Pyongyang and Washington following weeks of heightened rhetoric and tensions.
The trial mirrors a similar situation in 2009, when the U.S. and North Korea were locked in a standoff over Pyongyang's decision to launch a long-range rocket and conduct an underground nuclear test. At the time, North Korea had custody of two American journalists, whose eventual release after being sentenced to 12 years of hard labor paved the way for diplomacy following months of tensions.
Bae was arrested in early November in Rason, a special economic zone in North Korea's far northeastern region bordering China and Russia, according to official state media. In North Korean dispatches, Bae, a Korean American, is called Pae Jun Ho, the North Korean spelling of his Korean name.
The exact nature of his alleged crimes has not been revealed, but North Korea accuses Bae, described as a tour operator, of seeking to overthrow North Korea's leadership.
"In the process of investigation he admitted that he committed crimes aimed to topple the DPRK with hostility toward it," the state-run Korean Central News Agency said Saturday. "His crimes were proved by evidence. He will soon be taken to the Supreme Court of the DPRK to face judgment."
DPRK is the acronym for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. No timing for the verdict issued at the austere Supreme Court in Pyongyang was given.
Friends and colleagues described Bae as a devout Christian from Washington state but based in the Chinese border city of Dalian who traveled frequently to North Korea to feed the country's orphans.
At least three other Americans detained in recent years also have been devout Christians. While North Korea's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, in practice only sanctioned services are tolerated by the regime.
Under North Korea's criminal code, crimes against the state can draw life imprisonment or the death sentence.
In 2009, American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were sentenced to hard labor for trespassing and unspecified hostile acts after being arrested near the border with China and held for four months.
They were freed later that year to former President Bill Clinton, who flew to Pyongyang to negotiate their release in a visit that then-leader Kim Jong Il treated as a diplomatic coup.
Including Ling and Lee, Bae is at least the sixth American detained in North Korea since 2009. The others eventually were deported or released.
"For North Korea, Bae is a bargaining chip in dealing with the U.S.," said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean Studies at Dongguk University in Seoul, South Korea. "The North will use him in a way that helps bring the U.S. to talks when the mood slowly turns toward dialogue."
As in 2009, Pyongyang is locked in a standoff with the Obama administration over North Korea's drive to build nuclear weapons.
Washington has led the campaign to punish Pyongyang for launching a long-range rocket in December and carrying out a nuclear test, its third, in February.
North Korea claims the need to build atomic weapons to defend itself against the United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea and over the past two months has been holding joint military drills with South Korea that have included nuclear-capable stealth bombers and fighter jets.
Diplomats from China, South Korea, the U.S., Japan and Russia have been conferring in recent weeks to try to bring down the rhetoric and find a way to rein in Pyongyang before a miscalculation in the region sparks real warfare.
South Korean defense officials said earlier in the month that North Korea had moved a medium-range missile designed to strike U.S. territory to its east coast.
The Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war because the three-year Korean conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, in 1953. Because Washington and Pyongyang do not have diplomatic relations, the Swedish Embassy in North Korea represents the United States in legal proceedings.
___
Associated Press writers Jean H. Lee in Pyongyang, and Sam Kim and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report. Follow Lee, AP's Korea bureau chief, at www.twitter.com/newsjean and Sam Kim at www.twitter.com/SamKim_AP.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc's first-quarter revenue jumped 22 percent to $16.1 billion, propelled by growing sales of digital content, cloud-computing services and gains in retail. But it forecast weak sales this quarter, raising concerns about a slowing international business.
Commentary:
TOM FORTE, ANALYST, TELSEY ADVISORY GROUP
"This quarter is a bit of a 'tweener' so to speak: the company gave you a favorable margin, which is evident in both gross-margin performance and the upside in earnings, and then sales while not spectacular were good.
"Increase in third-party unit sales has been funding their gross margins.
"When I read the guidance for Q2 for operating margins, it suggests to me they're telegraphing that the company is going to continue a heightened rate of investment.
"Looking at the international performance, I think the message there is North America was better than expected but international was softer. The questions is: is this a reflection of macro trends in Europe, or is there something else going on there?"
VICTOR ANTHONY, ANALYST, TOPEKA CAPITAL MARKETS
"The fundamentals of the business improved significantly. So you saw a material improvement in gross margins, as well as a significant upside to estimates for their pro-forma operating margins. The trends are moving in the right direction fundamentally for the company.
"The high end of the guidance for revenue was above the Street. The pro-forma operating margins were slightly below the Street on the high end but they typically guide conservatively on that. Net, net it was a good print.
"The margins in international declined and that was a weak post.
"What we're seeing is that Amazon is really getting leverage from shipping costs. AWS is becoming a big part of their mix. They are also benefiting from a greater mix of advertising revenues. We'll continue to see that improve."
KEN SENA, ANALYST, EVERCORE
"The numbers came in relatively in-line.
"Guidance was maybe slightly disappointing. But when you look at the gross profit for the quarter, it beat expectations. They grew gross profit at 35 percent year-over-year.
"At the end of the day, at least on that basis, they are showing some very good progress. You are seeing benefit from the higher-margin Amazon Web Services business, and also higher-margin third-party marketplace business."
KERRY RICE, ANALYST, NEEDHAM & CO
"Gross margin is definitely better than expected. That is something that investors are certainly keen on.
"Guidance was light, both top- and bottom-line. That certainly won't help the stock perform, although they have over the last several quarters exceeded expectations on the operating income side. So for the guidance, people are more concerned about revenue than operating income."
LONDON (Reuters) - Health groups said on Thursday they could rid the world of polio by 2018 with a $5.5 billion vaccination and monitoring plan to stop the disease taking hold once more now there are only a handful of cases worldwide.
Experts say the plan offers the best chance yet to eradicate a disease that until the 1950s crippled many thousands of people every year but has been brought almost to extinction though effective vaccine campaigns.
In 1988, more than 350,000 children were paralysed by polio and the disease was endemic in more than 125 countries. Last year, worldwide polio cases plunged from 650 in 2011 to 223, the largest drop in a decade.
So far in 2013, 19 cases have been reported and polio remains endemic in just three countries - Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria - after India celebrated its second polio-free year.
"Today we have the fewest cases in the fewest places ever, making it critical to use the best opportunity the world has ever had to put an end to this terrible, preventable disease," Anne Schuchat, a global health specialist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in a statement.
The virus attacks the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis within hours of infection. It often spreads in areas with poor sanitation and children under five are the most vulnerable, but it can be halted, as it was in many developed countries, with comprehensive vaccination programmes.
The polio plan's $5.5 billion budget includes the costs of reaching and vaccinating more than 250 million children multiple times every year, monitoring and surveillance in more than 70 countries, and securing the infrastructure that health campaigners hope will go on to help other health programs.
CASH BACKING
In a statement issued by the World Health Organisation, world leaders and individual philanthropists backed the plan by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) by pledging almost three-quarters of the funds up front.
"After millennia battling polio, this plan puts us within sight of the endgame," said the WHO's director-general Margaret Chan. "We have new knowledge about the polio viruses, new technologies and new tactics to reach the most vulnerable communities."
The GPEI, launched in 1988, is a grouping of governments, the WHO, Rotary International, the CDC and the United Nations children's fund UNICEF, supported by philanthropic groups such as the Gates Foundation.
Speaking at a summit on vaccines in Abu Dhabi, Bill Gates said his foundation would stump up $1.8 billion - a third of the total cost of the GPEI's six-year budget.
Another $335 million was promised by a seven-strong group of other philanthropists, including the Tahir Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Carlos Slim Foundation.
Multiple government donors - among them Britain, Germany, Norway, Pakistan and Nigeria - also made pledges, bringing the total promised so far for the plan to just over $4 billion.
Public health experts say if the polio eradication campaign succeeds, the world would not only declare its second eradicated disease - smallpox was wiped out in 1979 - it would also be billions of dollars richer.
A 2010 analysis found that if polio transmission were to be stopped by 2015 the net benefit from reduced treatment costs and productivity gains would be $40 billion to $50 billion by 2035.
NEW YORK (AP) ? AT&T Inc. is launching its home security and automation service in 15 cities Friday, with an eye toward getting customers hooked on security cameras, thermostats and locks they can control from phones and tablets.
AT&T's "Digital Life" packages will be sold in cellphone stores in markets including Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Miami. The company plans to roll the offering out to 50 markets by the end of the year.
The home monitoring and automation field is dominated by security firms such as ADT Corp. Other phone and cable companies sell security packages, but AT&T is going further than competitors by developing its own technology and selling it nationwide, not just where it provides local phone service. It has set up monitoring centers, in Dallas and Atlanta.
The entire U.S. home security market is worth about $18 billion per year, said Glenn Lurie, who is in charge of expanding the reach of AT&T's network to new types of devices. That's small compared to AT&T's $127 billion in annual revenue. But only 20 percent of homes have security systems, so there's an opportunity to expand the market, Lurie said.
The initiative comes as the wireless industry has slowed after a decade of heady growth. Now that nearly everyone has a cellphone, wireless companies are looking for other sources of growth.
"We see huge opportunity here. This is a significant, billion-dollar opportunity for AT&T," Lurie said.
AT&T is also hoping to get customers to pay more than the typical $40 per month for home security alone, by providing connections to wireless cameras and other sensors.
AT&T will charge $250 for the equipment and installation of a home security package, plus $40 per month. Options include a camera package for $10 per month plus equipment and installation, climate control for $5 per month, and a remote water main shutoff control for $10 per month.
The equipment ties into a central control panel which can be programmed through the app or Web interface to, for instance, shut off the water main if the water sensor detects a leak.
A basic, security-only package will cost $150, plus $30 per month.
Ralph De La Vega, head of AT&T's wireless division, said employees who tested Digital Life in Atlanta and Dallas last year bought a lot more cameras than the company had been expecting. One of them set a camera to be triggered by motion sensor on the front porch, and nabbed a thief who had been stealing packages.
Only about 1 percent of homes have automation systems, and De La Vega said this could be a big opportunity as well. He's happy he can now check whether his garage doors are open and close them from his phone.
"It's just getting people used to living a different way ... We haven't even begun to tap into the available marketplace. I think the idea is huge," De La Vega said.
The central panel connects to AT&T's wireless network, but should also be connected to a wired Internet modem for redundancy, AT&T said. Any Internet connection will work ? it doesn't have to be AT&T's.
Two years ago, AT&T bought Xanboo, a smart-home technology startup. Last year, AT&T announced its plans to launch Digital Life nationwide, and ran trials with employees in Dallas and Atlanta.
If you?re just starting out in app development and trying to choose between the Android or the iOS SDK, this basic guide might be useful.
In tech years, the iOS vs. Android argument seems like it is half a century old and has stretched the limits of human tolerance for passive-aggressive retorts. Since 2008 the ongoing comparisons between these operating systems have been in the spotlight because of the growing Android market and the possible iOS expectation that everything be done through Apple and with Apple products.
To learn more and to read the entire article at its source, please refer to the following page, Android v. iOS guide for newbies- TechRepublic Blogs
ROME (AP) ? A corner of a big Rome piazza, known for hosting free rock concerts and political rallies, will be renamed after late pontiff John Paul II, with Pope Francis coming to the unveiling ceremony Sunday.
While Francis instantly proved to be a crowd pleaser ? about 100,000 people turned out in St. Peter's Square Sunday and a nearby street for his noon blessing ? the mention of the widely beloved John Paul still prompts affectionate cheers. When Francis noted that John Paul "closed his eyes to this world" exactly eight years ago this month, in 2005, the new pope drew so much applause, he couldn't finish his sentence as he spoke from the papal studio window overlooking St. Peter's Square.
Francis invited people to join him later in Rome's main church, St. John in Lateran Basilica. Pontiffs are also the bishop of Rome, and a traditional installation ceremony at the basilica formally recognizes that Francis is Rome's bishop as well as the leader of the worldwide Roman Catholic church.
Before entering the basilica, Francis was scheduled to attend the unveiling of a plaque on a corner of the square near the church, naming that part of the piazza after John Paul. The late pontiff enthusiastically embraced his role as Rome's bishop, visiting hundreds of city parishes on Sunday mornings.
Francis might be the pope who decides whether another miracle has been attributed to John Paul's intercession, which would enable the late, Polish-born pontiff to enjoy the church's highest honor, sainthood. The church process to certify a first miracle needed for John Paul's beatification went exceptionally fast. The six years it took from his death until Pope Benedict XVI beatified him in 2011 was the shortest time in modern history. Beatification is the last formal step before sainthood.
The vast St. John in Lateran piazza, which can hold hundreds of thousands of people, is a popular venue for free rock concerts on Labor Day, May 1, and a frequent rallying point for union leaders and politicians. Rome's city hall said the square was picked as an apt place to honor John Paul after consulting with an Italian cardinal who serves as the pope's vicar general for the Rome diocese.
Pope Francis seemed to be adding a new twist to the role of public squares in everyday life. At his Vatican appearance Sunday, he encouraged faithful to "go into the piazzas and announce Christ our savior" to the people. "Bring the Good News with sweetness and respect," he added. The "Good News" refers to the Gospels.
John Paul, then Benedict, and now Francis have all made shoring up flagging faith on the traditionally Christian European continent as well as in other affluent areas of the world a priority of their leadership. The Vatican is also keen on preserving Catholic loyalty in places like South America, where dynamic evangelical sects have been attracting baptized Catholics away from their faith, as well as encourage growing communities of Catholics in Africa and Asia.
The new pope is expected to lead Catholic youth in pep rallies this summer in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, during a pilgrimage that would take the world's first pope to be born in South America back to his home continent.
When Francis spoke of the installation ceremony Sunday evening, he urged the crowd to pray with him so that together, "bishop and people, walk in faith and charity."
?Only what you take with you.? The little boy replied. I walked across the boat, slowly, feeling the sunlight on my shoulders. Burning into me.?What?s at the end? What?s at the end??I felt it in me, the carnal want, that plagues all humanity, and it was waiting. It needed answers.
I shook the thoughts off my mind.
?You must learn,? the boy said, ?to accept yourself for yourself.? He cast his stick out over the boat?s side. The line of string holding the hook, plopped in the water, the little worm on the hook squirmed and squeezed, trying to remove itself from its predicament.
?Shut up, you.? Was all I could say as I cast my rod out over the rails. ?I meant what sort of fish are we going to catch today.?
?Oh. So you?re not flawless.?
?What??
?Sorry, philosophically speaking, I meant.? The boy pulled a crooked smile, reminiscing over our past conversation, the one at the train station.
I shook my head in dismay at his impudence.?That boy will have to learn to keep his big mouth shut sometime. Probably never at this rate.
Minutes past; they grew into one long, drawn out hour.
I lit up a cigarette.
?You shouldn?t smoke.? the boy said when I slouched in the fold-out chair, leaving the rod in its socket.
I waved a hand in his direction, to silence him. The sea seemed so quiet, so calm.?What fish would turn up here? There?s no commotion. I bet all the fish are further out, with the big waves.
?I got something! I got something!? the boy yanked on his line feverishly, trying to bring the stick up.
?That fishing rod?s so small,? I told him, ?you wouldn?t be able to catch squat.?
The sun caught the little string as it was pulled up, up into the air.?A wisp of silver.?Attached to the end was a huge Tuna-fish, its skin gleaming with the glint of a thousand summer suns. For a moment, it looked like a rainbow leaping out of the water and into the skies. The fish fell onto the boat with a dull thud, blood slowly trickling from where the hook had skewered the mouth.
?See? Got one!? the little boy cried with joy, running to where the big Tuna had fallen, putting his hands on the fish?s scales as it thrashed.
I couldn?t stop myself. ?How the?fuck?did you catch that??
The boy looked up, seeing right through my many guises, the masks I put on in society to get by. In that moment he saw through all that was personality, habit, and what I was raised to be. He saw ?it?, in me, in humanity, and understood it.
Forty years ago, Martin Cooper, a VP at Motorola, made history by placing the very first cellphone call. Appropriately enough, he called his rival at AT&T's Bell Labs.
Thirty-three years later, a slightly more theatrical Steve Jobs dialed a Starbucks cafe in San Francisco to order 4,000 lattes, making the first public phone call from the very first iPhone while a hushed auditorium filled with journalists watched.
In between those prank calls, the cellphone morphed from a chunky plastic giant to a slender glass slab that doubles up as a computer and camera.
SLIDESHOW: See the cellphone's evolution over the years.
The granddaddy of all cellphones was the DynaTac 8000X ? the phone Motorola's Cooper used to rib his rival. It went on sale in 1984 and cost almost $4,000. The DynaTak, short for Dynamic Total Area Coverage," had an LED display and took 10 hours to charge. You can still buy one on eBay.
The first flip phone was also Motorola's, called the MicroTac. When the company announced it in 1989, the AP described it as "about as thick as a fat wallet at the earpiece while tapering down to half the thickness of a deck of cards at the mouthpiece."
That famously annoying Nokia ringtone? The Nokia 2110 was the first to trill a digitized version of the Grand Vals tune, originally composed for a guitar in 1902.
Motorola's StarTac was the first clamshell phone and quickly became popular following it's 1996 launch. It was also the earliest camera phone, though it wasn't sold that way. Philippe Kahn hacked his StarTac, rigged it up to a Casio digital camera and his computer. When his daughter was born on June 11, 1997, he snapped a photo in the maternity ward, uploaded it to a website and emailed his friends the link.
The first commercial camera phones weren't sold until 2000, by J-phone (now SoftBank) in Japan. In the US, around 2002, Sony Ericsson's T68i with its clip-on camera and the Sanyo 5300 were among the earliest photo phones to go on sale.
Somewhere along the line, personal phones hit a weird patch. Nokia sold a "lipstick phone" that you had to pull apart to make calls. Motorola's early swivel phone, the V70, looked like a magnifying glass. The top slab rotated 180 degrees outward to show off a keyboard. And then there was Nokia's 7600, a square phone with tapered ends and buttons arranged around the edges of a central screen.
Which may have been why Motorola's slender, square Razr series, first launched in 2004, was such a runaway hit and sold 50 million phones in the first two years since its launch.
As personal smartphones grew through awkward adolescence, the chunkier but more powerful PDAs were being let loose into the wild. BlackBerry's 5810, which went on sale in 2002, was the very first BlackBerry device to get a cellular connection. The Palm TreoW, also a pocket assistant, was the first phone to run a Windows mobile operating system. Together with Nokia's brick-y 9000 series, these phones started to smudge the line between computer and phone.
And then in 2007, the iPhone took everyone by surprise. "...an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. Are you getting it?" a smug Steve Jobs asked the assembled crowd at Moscone Theater in San Francisco. "These are not three separate devices. This is one device. And we are calling it, iPhone. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone? and here it is."
Since then, flat, skinny smartphones from Nokia and Samsung and HTC (which launched the first 4G phone, along with Sprint) have reconfigured our expectations of a smartphone, and of tablets and phablets. Today's smartphones are barely the same species as the first cordless DynaTak. But even more exciting innovations, like phones that maybe wrap around our wrist and read our feelings from our voice are right around the corner.
SLIDESHOW: See the cellphone's evolution over the years.
Nidhi Subbaramanispart smartphone. Follow her on Twitter and Google+.
Contact: David Orenstein david_orenstein@brown.edu 401-863-1862 Brown University
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] Long vilified, invasive species can sometimes become an ecosystem asset. New Brown University research published online in the journal Ecology reports exactly such a situation in the distressed salt marshes of Cape Cod. There, the invasive green crab Carcinus maenas is helping to restore the marsh by driving away the Sesarma reticulatum crabs that have been depleting the marsh grasses.
The observations and experiments of the research show that the green crab has filled the void left by the decline of native predators of sesarma crabs, the authors said. In previous research they showed that predator decline has come about because of recreational fishing.
"Humans have had far-reaching impacts on ecosystems," said author Tyler Coverdale, a researcher in the lab of lead author Mark Bertness, chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. "Some of those impacts, like overfishing, cause species to decline in their native ranges. Others, like shipping and trade, cause species to become more common outside of their native ranges. Most of the time these opposing types of impacts have negative results. In this case, an invasive species is potentially restoring a lost ecological function."
Bertness and his group have been working on the marshes for years to trace the extent and cause of the damage, which includes grass die-offs and subsequent erosion. A few years ago, they started noticing that where there was still soil, grasses were sometimes growing back somewhat, although far short of full recovery.
"When we started seeing the marshes recover, we were baffled," Bertness said. "To see very quickly the marshes start to come back, at least this veneer of cordgrass, it seemed pretty impressive. When we started seeing this recovery we started seeing loads of green crabs at the marshes that were recovering. We went out and quantified that."
Crab vs. Crab
The most elementary finding of the paper is that the green crabs are much more abundant (as many as 2.8 green crabs per square meter) in distressed-but-healing marsh areas where can they take over sesarma burrows. In healthy marsh areas with few sesarma burrows, the green crabs found no quarter (there were only 0.2 per square meter).
Bertness and Coverdale's measurements of cordgrass regrowth also showed that locations with high green crab density correlated positively with locations of grass regrowth.
The next steps were experiments to test whether all this was a mere coincidence of coexistence or whether there was a dynamic between the green crabs and the sesarma crabs that would plausibly defend the grass.
At select sites, Bertness and Coverdale enclosed the two crabs together within a wire cage at a burrow. After a set period of time they came back to observe the results and always found the same story. Green crabs won the struggle for the burrows. In fact sesarma crabs survived the tussle only 15 percent of the time. As a control they caged in other sesarma crabs without green crabs, and those sesarma crabs always survived.
Finally they tested whether green crabs had to eat the sesarma crabs to protect the grass or whether their mere presence had a deterrent effect. They did this by fencing in some sesarma crabs by themselves, some with a free roaming green crab (a clear and present danger) and some with a caged green crab (physically harmless but still plainly evident).
Sesarma left alone ate lots of grass in their fenced in area. Sesarma who faced a free-roaming or a caged green crab both ate far less grass. In other words, the presence of a green crab was as effective a deterrent to sesarma herbivory as actual attacks by green crabs.
Bertness likened the green crabs to scarecrows, which model what ecologists have recently begun to account for as "non-consumptive effects." Lay people already call that effect "scaring things away."
"Non-consumptive effects can be much more powerful because whereas a consumptive effect is one crab eats another crab, a non-consumptive effect is one crab scares dozens of crabs," Bertness said. "The ecological effect can be much greater much quicker."
In two ways, therefore, the new study provides evidence for two newer views in ecology, Bertness said. One is that invasive species can sometimes turn out to be helpful. The other is that ecologists should account for the power of a predator's threat, not just its actual attacks.
As for the marshes, however, Bertness said they need more help than the green crab alone can deliver.
"The marshes are slowly coming back but they were destroyed much faster than they are going to be able to rebuild," he said.
###
The National Science Foundation funded the research (grant OCE-0927090).
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: David Orenstein david_orenstein@brown.edu 401-863-1862 Brown University
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] Long vilified, invasive species can sometimes become an ecosystem asset. New Brown University research published online in the journal Ecology reports exactly such a situation in the distressed salt marshes of Cape Cod. There, the invasive green crab Carcinus maenas is helping to restore the marsh by driving away the Sesarma reticulatum crabs that have been depleting the marsh grasses.
The observations and experiments of the research show that the green crab has filled the void left by the decline of native predators of sesarma crabs, the authors said. In previous research they showed that predator decline has come about because of recreational fishing.
"Humans have had far-reaching impacts on ecosystems," said author Tyler Coverdale, a researcher in the lab of lead author Mark Bertness, chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. "Some of those impacts, like overfishing, cause species to decline in their native ranges. Others, like shipping and trade, cause species to become more common outside of their native ranges. Most of the time these opposing types of impacts have negative results. In this case, an invasive species is potentially restoring a lost ecological function."
Bertness and his group have been working on the marshes for years to trace the extent and cause of the damage, which includes grass die-offs and subsequent erosion. A few years ago, they started noticing that where there was still soil, grasses were sometimes growing back somewhat, although far short of full recovery.
"When we started seeing the marshes recover, we were baffled," Bertness said. "To see very quickly the marshes start to come back, at least this veneer of cordgrass, it seemed pretty impressive. When we started seeing this recovery we started seeing loads of green crabs at the marshes that were recovering. We went out and quantified that."
Crab vs. Crab
The most elementary finding of the paper is that the green crabs are much more abundant (as many as 2.8 green crabs per square meter) in distressed-but-healing marsh areas where can they take over sesarma burrows. In healthy marsh areas with few sesarma burrows, the green crabs found no quarter (there were only 0.2 per square meter).
Bertness and Coverdale's measurements of cordgrass regrowth also showed that locations with high green crab density correlated positively with locations of grass regrowth.
The next steps were experiments to test whether all this was a mere coincidence of coexistence or whether there was a dynamic between the green crabs and the sesarma crabs that would plausibly defend the grass.
At select sites, Bertness and Coverdale enclosed the two crabs together within a wire cage at a burrow. After a set period of time they came back to observe the results and always found the same story. Green crabs won the struggle for the burrows. In fact sesarma crabs survived the tussle only 15 percent of the time. As a control they caged in other sesarma crabs without green crabs, and those sesarma crabs always survived.
Finally they tested whether green crabs had to eat the sesarma crabs to protect the grass or whether their mere presence had a deterrent effect. They did this by fencing in some sesarma crabs by themselves, some with a free roaming green crab (a clear and present danger) and some with a caged green crab (physically harmless but still plainly evident).
Sesarma left alone ate lots of grass in their fenced in area. Sesarma who faced a free-roaming or a caged green crab both ate far less grass. In other words, the presence of a green crab was as effective a deterrent to sesarma herbivory as actual attacks by green crabs.
Bertness likened the green crabs to scarecrows, which model what ecologists have recently begun to account for as "non-consumptive effects." Lay people already call that effect "scaring things away."
"Non-consumptive effects can be much more powerful because whereas a consumptive effect is one crab eats another crab, a non-consumptive effect is one crab scares dozens of crabs," Bertness said. "The ecological effect can be much greater much quicker."
In two ways, therefore, the new study provides evidence for two newer views in ecology, Bertness said. One is that invasive species can sometimes turn out to be helpful. The other is that ecologists should account for the power of a predator's threat, not just its actual attacks.
As for the marshes, however, Bertness said they need more help than the green crab alone can deliver.
"The marshes are slowly coming back but they were destroyed much faster than they are going to be able to rebuild," he said.
###
The National Science Foundation funded the research (grant OCE-0927090).
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
President Barack Obama walks to greet people after arriving at Buckley Air Force Base in Colo.,Wednesday, April 3, 2013. Obama is meeting with local law enforcement officials and community leaders to discuss the state's new measures to reduce gun violence. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
President Barack Obama walks to greet people after arriving at Buckley Air Force Base in Colo.,Wednesday, April 3, 2013. Obama is meeting with local law enforcement officials and community leaders to discuss the state's new measures to reduce gun violence. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Marines salute as President Barack Obama jogs off of the Marine One helicopter before boarding Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Wednesday April 3, 2013, en route to Colorado. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Sharing a bit of budget pain, President Barack Obama will return 5 percent of his salary each month to the Treasury in a show of solidarity with federal workers smarting from government-wide spending cuts.
Obama's decision grew out of a desire to share in the sacrifice that government employees are making, a White House official said Wednesday. Hundreds of thousands of workers could be forced to take unpaid leave ? known as furloughs ? if Congress does not reach an agreement soon to undo the cuts.
The president is demonstrating that he will be paying a price, too, as the White House warns of dire economic consequences from the $85 billion in cuts that started to hit federal programs last month after Congress failed to stop them. In the weeks since, the administration has faced repeated questions about how the White House itself will be affected. The cancellation of White House tours in particular has drawn mixed reactions.
A 5 percent cut from the president's salary of $400,000 per year amounts to $1,667 per month.
The move will be retroactive to March 1 ? the day the cuts started to kick in ? and will remain in effect for the rest of fiscal 2013, said the White House official, who was not authorized to discuss the decision publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The notice followed a similar move a day earlier by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who committed to taking a salary cut equal to 14 days' pay ? the same level of cut that other Defense Department civilians are being forced to take. As many as 700,000 civilians will have to take one unpaid day off each week for up to 14 weeks in the coming months.
Obama isn't the first president to give up part of his paycheck. Herbert Hoover put his salary in a separate account, then divvied it up, giving part to charity and part to employees he felt were underpaid, according to an interview he gave in 1937. John F. Kennedy donated his presidential salary to various charities, according to Stacey Chandler, an archivist at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
George Washington refused pay during the latter part of his military career, according to researchers at Mount Vernon. He tried to refuse a presidential salary, but Congress required that the position pay $25,000.
Among lawmakers, Sen. Mark Begich, an Alaska Democrat, said Wednesday that he, too, would return part of his income to the Treasury, although he did not specify how much of his $174,000 salary he would give up. Begich said his office started furloughing staffers in mid-March and more than half of his staff will have their pay cut this year.
"This won't solve our spending problem on its own, but I hope it is a reminder to Alaskans that I am willing to make the tough cuts, wherever they may be, to get our spending under control," Begich said.
A number of lawmakers have from time to time taken steps to show they're not immune as the federal government looks to tighten its belt. An aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said McConnell returns a substantial part of his salary to the Treasury every year. The Senate this month adopted by voice vote a symbolic amendment permitting ? but not requiring ? senators to give 20 percent of their salaries to the Treasury as part of the Democrats' budget resolution. Also in March, as the spending cuts started bearing down, the GOP-controlled House imposed an 8.2 percent reduction on lawmakers' personal office budgets.
The White House, after declining for weeks to provide specifics for how the president's own staff had been affected, said Monday that 480 workers on the budget staff had been notified they may have to take days off without pay.
Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, wouldn't say whether notices have gone out to Obama aides outside the Office of Management and Budget, including senior staff in the West Wing. But he said pay cuts remained a possibility for additional White House employees if a budget deal to undo the cuts isn't reached.
"Everybody at the White House and the broader (executive office) is dealing with the consequences ? both, in many cases, in their own personal lives, but in how we work here at the White House," Carney said. He added that the White House also has been trying to cut costs by slowing down hiring, scaling back supply purchases, curtailing staff travel, reducing the use of air cards for mobile Internet access and reviewing contracts to look for savings.
Like lawmakers' pay, Obama's salary is set by law, so he must accept the funds and then write a check to the Treasury for the portion he plans to relinquish. Obama's decision, first reported by The New York Times, won't affect the other perquisites afforded the president, from a mansion staffed with servants to the limousines, helicopters and Boeing 747 jumbo jet at every U.S. president's beck and call. The White House did not say whether Vice President Joe Biden would make a similar gesture.
The 5 percent that Obama will hand back mirrors the 5 percent cut that domestic agencies took when the reductions went into effect. The Pentagon's budget took an 8 percent hit. Every federal agency is grappling with spending cuts, which the White House has warned could affect everything from commercial airline flights to classrooms and meat inspections.
The cuts were written into a 2011 deficit-reduction measure as a trigger to force future action. The idea was that lawmakers, eager to avert the consequences of bluntly slashing $1 trillion over a decade, would have no choice but to come together to find smarter ways to reduce federal spending.
But the two parties were at odds over whether more tax revenues were needed as part of the solution, and an intense campaign by Obama and his Cabinet to illustrate how the cuts could affect critical programs failed to spur an agreement by the March 1 deadline. As the cuts started taking effect, lawmakers turned to other issues, including an increase in the national debt ceiling, and there are no signs that a deal to undo the cuts retroactively will come anytime soon.
___
Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Nancy Benac contributed to this report.
___
Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP
Tactus Technologies developed a first-of-its-kind virtual reality training program for forklift operators, a product expected to reduce work-related injuries and deaths. Improper forklift operations cause roughly 100 fatalities and more than 100,000 injuries annually in the United States, according to OSHA.
To remedy the high accident rate, the 3-D Forklift Trainer allows operators to practice with a video-game-like system that features a steering wheel, joystick, pedals, and simulated environments such as warehouses, elevators and railroad tracks.
?Until recently, such virtual reality technologies were only available to military and university laboratories,? said Thenkurussi ?Kesh? Kesavadas, Tactus co-founder and UB professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. ?By pioneering the use of gaming technology and computers in our software, we are able to offer the 3-D forklift simulator at a low and reasonable cost for industrial safety training.?
Current training typically involves a combination of classroom-based lectures, videos and observation before ?on-the-job training? propels operators into the driver?s seat.
?The problem is that this type of training is passive rather than interactive,? says Jim Mayrose, CEO and co-founder of Tactus, which is a spinoff company from the University at Buffalo. He says the simulator arose from a need to improve operator readiness.
Created with a grant from the National Institutes of Occupational Safety and Health, the simulator incorporates safety lessons aligned with OSHA standards. Lesson plans require reacting to safety challenges such as ramps, elevators and people that reinforce the use of correct techniques. Personal profiles track trainee progress and evaluate performance. On average, it takes three to four hours to complete the simulator program.
?Companies using our product will find that they have shorter training cycles with less supervision needed and, most importantly, a safer environment,? Mayrose said.
Customers will receive a full license for the 3D Forklift Trainer software, a customized computer, and a steering wheel and pedals. A 60-inch screen and specialized forklift-type seating is optional. A commercial version of the trainer, which features a standard warehouse environment,? also is available. The program also can be customized to match the company culture and is available to companies of all sizes, with the first installation site at the Cummins engine plant in Jamestown, N.Y.
For more information about Tactus and its services, visit: www.tactustech.com.
It?s been a very busy year for me in 2013 so far so I?ve been a little quite on the blogging front, but I thought it would be a good idea for me to update you all on what I?ve been up to and share some ideas that will hopefully help you make more money too.
As most of you will be well aware I?ve done a lot of affiliate marketing over the years, selling digital products, physical goods and also selling leads too. This has and continues to be very lucrative for me, however what I?ve been focusing on more over the past 6 months is selling physical products and in particular creating my own products. What I will share with you now is the benefits of creating your own products and the various ways you can go about doing this.
Isn?t Product Creation Really Hard Work?
Creating your own product is more work than affiliate marketing, there?s no doubt about it. You can set up an affiliate sites in a few days, however product creation does take more work, BUT the payoff is much larger so it?s worth it.
Some of the major benefits of creating your own product are:
You can make more money
You can get affiliates selling your product
You don?t have to rely on SEO only
You can build your customer base over time
There are more marketing avenues available
How to Start
There are a few different ways you can create your product, the two that I do are:
Digital products ? ebooks, video courses, software, apps Physical products ? private labeling from a supplier
Let?s look at digital products first as this is the easier way to go. You can package up knowledge and experience in a niche and create your own product out of this. This can come in the form of an ebook which you can sell on Clickbank or through Kindle.
If you?re not an expert on any particular topic you can outsource this to someone who is, or you could interview people who are experts and turn your interviews into a product, in the form of an ebook, audio or video product. I recently saw someone do this in the natural dental care industry, where they interviewed a bunch of well respected natural medicine experts on the topic of natural tooth care, and they turned this series of interviews into a product. You can have a look at this here ? Tooth Summit. I?m not an affiliate for that product nor do I necessarily endorse it as I don?t know much about it so can?t say whether its good or not, but either way its a good example.
Physical Product ? Private Labels
Most people think that creating your own physical product is only for giant companies with lots of money. However this is not the case, as you can buy products from suppliers who?ll allow you to put your own label on the product and call it your own, this is known as ?private labeling?, and something I started doing about 12 months ago.
A lot of huge supplement companies in the USA do this. They buy the supplement from a wholesaler and provide them with their label artwork and the supplier attaches the label and ships them the products as their own brand.
Private labeling is BIG business, and it means that small players can get their product inexpensively and focus on the marketing. To find companies that will allow you to do this, you can Google for things like ?Product Name Private Label?
Getting your own brand developed is not hard, all you really need is a logo designed which you can get done over at Elance pretty cheaply.
Once you have your own brand like this, you are free to market it anyway you want, which is great, as often when selling another companies brand you are restricted in the way you can market it. For example some companies don?t want their brand sold on Ebay or Craiglist etc? Whereas where you own the brand you call the shots!
Helpful Tools
When creating a digital product you might want to use video. Two tools that I have used for years in doing this are Camtasia Studio for screen recording and GotoWebinar for webinars.
Gotowebinar is expensive but I have heard that there are more affordable options these days for webinar software, so it pays to shop around. Webinars are great as they allow you to interview an expert, and it provides them the option to do a live presentation as well which makes the content more interesting than just plane audio.
Camtasia on the other hand allows you to record your screen, which is helpful if your product revolves around teaching people things that rely on visual aids to show people what you?re doing.
Once you have a digital product ready, the easiest way to make it available is to use Optimize Press in conjunction with Wishlist Member WordPress plugin. These two tools will allow you to set up a member?s area using WordPress, and they are not hard to use either. At the end of the day it?s not that hard to create your own quality digital product.
Why Sell Your Own Product?
There are a number of advantages of having your own product, of which I listed a few at the beginning of this post. One of the best things is that unlike a lot of affiliate marketing websites, you don?t have to rely on Google SEO to make money.
If you own your own product you can get affiliates to send traffic, you can use Adwords (as long as the site does not look like a long sales page), and if you?re doing physical goods via private labeling you can even get other retailers, such as ecommerce stores or even offline stores to stock your product and sell it for you, I do this myself and it works well.
When you?re selling your own product you can also rely on a lot less traffic, whereas affiliate sites, because they?re sending traffic away from their sites in order to make money, require a lot more traffic to make the sale.
Also when you own your own product there is much less risk involved. For example a subscriber of mine recently contacted me and explained that he had started to make $6000 a month from affiliate marketing and was very happy, and in fact left his day job. The unfortunate thing that happened to him was that the merchant he was affiliated with decided to stop their affiliate program one day, and overnight he lost all his income! This is obviously devastating and I really felt for this guy, however that is one of the risks you run when selling another companies product. Whereas if you own the product you call the shots.
The final thought I want to leave you with is this; it is more work to create your own product, but that?s a good things as the more barriers to entry the less people will do it, so you?ll have a lot less competition.
I hope this post has inspired you to consider creating your own product. It doesn?t have to be the only way you make money online, as I still do affiliate marketing, but it is a nice way to add an additional revenue stream to your business.
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Public release date: 3-Apr-2013
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How to Start
When creating a digital product you might want to use video. Two tools that I have used for years in doing this are Camtasia Studio for screen recording and GotoWebinar for webinars.