We are witnessing either an epic financial meltdown or a long overdue resetting of existing business practices and the hollow markets they create. Or, perhaps we’re experiencing both of these phenomena. Either way, it has the nation gripped with fear, uncertainty, and an unsettling eruption of questionable advice confusing everyone, everywhere.

While the floor is crumbling for many industries much in the same way it did for Silicon Valley during the dotbomb years, the sky isn’t necessarily falling on the startup industry – at least not for those with marketable technology or products, dedicated and capable teams, an executable business plan, and access to the resources necessary to help it reach users and customers.

For those startups that are building and marketing something of value for consumers or businesses, there is much work to do. While there is always a need to attract mainstream users, this isn’t the time to stretch or over-commit resources to hit everyone all at once. Branding is an expensive proposition, one that requires time, capital, diligence, dedicated teams, enthusiastic customers, and patience. As counter intuitive as it may seem, this is exactly the right time to market into the echo chamber to earn the support of influentials who will create significant, concentrated brand visibility and momentum to carry you forward.

Your business can grow with the groundswell and doesn’t necessarily require the instant adoption by the masses in order to succeed in the short term.

Usually, when the economy slides, the first natural reaction is to cut expenses, conserve cash, and hunker-down to weather the storm.  All good advice.  But don’t forget also that this could be your time to shine, albeit, in a strategic and intelligent way.

Great entrepreneurs build value and market-share in down markets. They go to work seven days a week and the(y) breakout when other folks check out. — Jason Calacanis

Now’s the time to get your head in the game and focus on what it is you do, and go do it better than anyone else. You’re either on the field or you’re on the sidelines.

Any company that intentionally pulls itself from the radar screen of their customers will be absent from customer decisions and referrals. In the process, you create a frictionless opportunity for your competitors to swoop in and fill the void.

There are always customers making decisions, so make sure that you’re part of the equation and process, wherever they go for information and insight.

Influence and adoption historically have migrated from the edge to the center. Or using a more common example, customers and word-of-mouth referrals travel from left to right along a bell curve that starts with Innovators and Early Adopters, peaks with the Early Majority and the Late Majority, and finally permeates with reaction from Laggards.

If you dissect the art and science of technology marketing using a car as a simple metaphor, your product serves as the chassis, your cash as the fuel, Social Media, Interactive/Web, Sales, SEO, and PR as the accelerator, marketing strategy and execution as the gears, RPMs as a market indicator for listening and responding, the speedometer to convey inertia, and you, as founding executive, sitting in the driver’s seat, steering and controlling the entire operation.

Marketing to the echo chamber, believe it or not, is how you get that car rolling, starting everything in first gear. Appealing to those who can help spark word of mouth is how you can accelerate, gain enough speed to shift into second, and subsequent higher gears, and attract new users and evangelists along the way, growing in distance and reach at every turn. It is the echo chamber that can help you efficiently gain velocity in order to progressively reach greater audiences and command additional financing and also revenue in the process. With its support and assistance, it is almost like starting with a colossal push.

You have to start by engaging those who’ll get it, and in turn, share it with their peers. It’s an ongoing process that strengthens with each cycle.

Hopefully you are building your business in a way that is independent of the stock market.
— Kevin Ryan

The world doesn’t flock to new things en masse. It takes a focused and progressive strategy that evolves and matures over time. In a down economy, this is non-negotiable.

Digg and Twitter are among some of the best examples of how alpha users can help promote a company or service by embracing these new solutions and religiously demonstrating why they are pervasive and useful. And, emphatic users also contribute to the community building process, assisting in the translation of the value proposition for different markets as well as enticing and compelling their peers to join them, which offsets and relieves the company from carrying the bulk of the responsibility for promotion and guerilla marketing.

But, where are Digg and Twitter in respect to the adoption cycle? They’re not as far along as you think judging by the buzz and permeation of your social graph. These companies still have oceans to swim until they become household brands. But, that’s OK. They’re building a business, cultivating legions of dedicated user communities, evolving and improving their product, and still conserving cash. Remember, it took brands such as eBay, Youtube, Google, and Amazon hundreds of millions of dollars and armies of enthusiasts and partners to achieve saturation – and many would argue that there’s still much work to be done.

I would bet on any company that earned the support of innovators and early adopters and took the time to listen to feedback in order to iterate based on real world needs, preferences, pains, and new ideas.

Without influence, you’re going to spend precious resources, more than you can afford, convincing people that they should pay attention. Peer-to-peer marketing is priceless and still your best bet for having a shot, and more importantly, making a long-term impact.

But you first need a spark, something to start that avalanche that grows as it races downhill.

The echo chamber is bigger than we think or give it credit for. In fact, think of the echo chamber as its own bell curve. Most of the blogs and users that naturally come to mind, may reside on the left side, leaving a wide array of technology enthusiasts to uncover and pursue.

Innovators and early adopters are global citizens and do not solely reside in Silicon Valley. Figure out who your market is today, tomorrow, next month, and set goals for user acquisition so that you can tweak your product and tailor your messages to those very people, as they’ll uniquely connect to your story, and also share it differently among their peers, as it traverses across the bell curve.

Remember, reporters, bloggers and online tastemakers (aka trendsetters) who spotlight innovation can send tens of thousands of new and loyal users to you almost instantly. I’m not just referring to unique visits of those who sign up, test things out, and then leave to try the next shiny service. When done right, the echo chamber can generate real world interest and support. It is these very users who tell you everything about what works, what doesn’t, and how to improve. These same individuals and networks also augment and complement your marketing efforts by legitimizing you’re products, associating credibility and providing pseudo endorsements, and in turn, giving you unprecedented access to their invaluable and highly connected networks of early adopter friends.

This is the time to focus on user acquisition. This is edgework. Everything starts with an intimate understanding of the markets you’re trying to reach and an even deeper connection to the peers, voices, and other channels that influence them. Most of you are not marketing iPhones, gaming consoles, premium spirits, or new music artists. At the very least, you are redefining how people communicate, collaborate, connect, and ultimately work.

There’s a prevailing necessity to educate your markets and introduce not just new products and services, but also change the daily routines of everyday people.

Therefore the goal to race from zero to 60 and hit mass penetration immediately is not necessarily the primary goal. If we look at business development and communications as a series of strategic stages, we realize that there are focused activities that we must pursue and smaller, reachable voices we must reach and convince to help us carry and adapt our story from stage to stage – each time, addressing the needs and pain points of the individual, respective groups.

Of course, as you learn, internalize feedback, change, adapt, and engage with your markets, the foundation for your business solidifies and begins to afford and beget expansion. It is at this point in time, when you can continue to expand your focus and reach to attract and inspire users residing outside of the echo chamber.

Nothing beats a killer product idea and an impressive, objective, and focused team to carry it forward. Expectations count and will determine how you channel information and progress. Think too big and you’ll miss your target and burn through resources before you can ever earn any significant market traction. Aim too low and the market will pass you by.

In this volatile economic climate, the echo chamber can be your direct connection to success, or at the very least, help to kickstart market adoption of your products. It is a global incubator designed to help you grow, gain momentum, and ultimately propel your business across the bell curve to appeal to and attract a wider, active base of customers.

We live in interesting times and it’s up to us, and only us, to define our future.

(Photo by Wetwebworks).

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Developed countries should do more to help Africa in the turbulent economic climate and not just look after themselves, Germany's executive director at the World Bank said Saturday.

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=48dbba31796c7af7000a03b8ctxt=wwwr1.2.0.0maxX=297maxY=237" border="0" alt="capitol.jpg" title="capitol.jpg" width="297" height="237" /We never thought we'd say this either. But some of the best and most innovative new media experiments going on right now on the Internet are coming from the U.S. federal government./p pFor, example: Twitter. Turns out the messaging service's 140 character limit and easy following/unfollowing is a really effective way to check up on our public servants. And it's certainly easier to read than most .gov websites./p pCompare some of the below government twitter feeds with the a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/what_the_corporate_twitters_are_up_to"the mixed bag/a that have been corporate Twitter experiements, or a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/things-better-left-off-twitter-the-funeral-of-a-3-year-old-boy"the disaster/a when emsome/em journalistic enterprises (other than a href="http://twitter.com/alleyinsider"@alleyinsider/a) have tried to get in on the microblogging game. Here are a few of our favorites:/p pa href="http://twitter.com/CSIState"@CSIState/a - Country specific information and travel alerts from the US Department of State/p pa href="http://twitter.com/foodrecalls"@foodrecalls/a - The Food and Drug Adminsitration tweets when food products have been deemed unsafe, about once a day./p pa href="http://twitter.com/jetlab"@jetlab/a - Rocket science from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory/p pa href="http://twitter.com/NIHforHealth"@NIHforHealth/a - Research reports of the National Institutes of Health/p pa href="http://twitter.com/peacecorps"@PeaceCorps/a - Press releases from the Peace Corps/p pa href="http://twitter.com/TSABlogTeam"@TSABlogTeam/a - The Transportation Security Administration, which operates the widely-hated system of airport security checkpoints, links to a series of surprisingly thoughtful articles about its mission./p pa href="http://twitter.com/usgs"@USGS/a - The US Geological Survey. Not just rocks, also tweets about climate change, natural disasters, and alternative energy./p pOf course, not every government twitter feed works well. A few that need to be rethought or dropped:/p pa href="http://twitter.com/HomelandSecurit"@HomelandSecurit/a - Department of Homeland Security. Tweets the national threat level ("yellow.") Both the color codes and this twitter should be abandoned./p pa href="http://twitter.com/SenateFloor"@SenateFloor/a (and a href="http://twitter.com/HouseFloor"@HouseFloor/a) - US Senate/House actions. Actual a href="http://twitter.com/SenateFloor/statuses/941419145"tweet/a: "span class="entry-content"Vote: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Concur in the House Amdt. to the Senate Amdt. to." Well-intentioned but not useful.br //span/p pa href="http://twitter.com/USAgov"@USAgov/a - "span class="bio"Official web portal of the U.S. federal government." Infrequently updated, tinyurl links go to the wrong pages.br //span/p pa href="http://twitter.com/USCIS"@USCIS/a - span class="bio"U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Tweets which CIS offices are closed -- of value solely to CIS employees, not to its customers.br //span/p pGot other favorites and turkeys? Let your fellow SAI readers know in the comments!/p pstrongSee also:/strongbr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/the-cops-are-on-twitter-but-that-s-it-s-a-good-thing"The Cops Are On Twitter. But That's A Good Thing/abr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/things-better-left-off-twitter-the-funeral-of-a-3-year-old-boy"Things Better Left Off Twitter: The Funeral Of A 3-Year-Old Boy/abr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/twitter-s-corporate-users-get-a-new-marketing-tool"Twitter's Corporate Users Get A New Marketing Tool/abr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/what_the_corporate_twitters_are_up_to"Corporate Twitters Worth Following - And Some You Should Avoid/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/zFul9AmooX0321nFU6snbzoU0s0/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/zFul9AmooX0321nFU6snbzoU0s0/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=qh7HIifU"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=qh7HIifU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=OSPNrfer"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=OylFOHYA"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=U2uXVmnl"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=U2uXVmnl" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Y3rLRYnt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=hJjgR8vV"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=kO1P6OR1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=PwCQlihL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/yiwhdGU0jvE" height="1" width="1"/

Artist CORY TREPANIER'S INTO THE ARCTIC Video Journal Series... While traveling across the country in their RV,Cory stops to give an update and shares some insight about their journey.

Auteur : CoryTrepanier
Tags : arctic art environment painting nature wilderness travel exploration climate polar north canada landscape painter cory trepanier adventure camping explore hiking canoeing outdoors family god artist
Envoyé : 11 octobre 2008
Note :0.0
Votes :0

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/economy/" rel="tag"Economy/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/euro/" rel="tag"Euro/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/green/" rel="tag"Green/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/hatchbacks/" rel="tag"Hatchbacks/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/toyota/" rel="tag"Toyota/a/pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/production-toyota-iq/1020057/"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/10/toyota-iq-european-0_450op.jpg" //abr / div align="center"emstrongsmallClick above for a high-res gallery of the production Toyota iQ/small/strong/embr //div br /IF you're in Europe and hoping to get your name on a list for a a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/09/05/pics-aplenty-the-production-toyota-iq/"Toyota iQ/a, now's the time. Toyota has opened up the order banks for the cleverly packaged microcar prior to its January availability date, while also giving up the goods on available specs, options, and pricing. The iQ comes in only two trim levels, iQ and iQ2, and pricing starts at pound;9,495 for the manual, and pound;10,495 for the multidrive CVT transmission. All iQ models come with 15-inch alloys, heated and electrically adjustable door mirrors, air conditioning and six speaker audio system with auxiliary socket. Checking the box for the iQ2 adds another pound;1,000, but for the money you receive high-gloss wheels, fog lamps, auto headlights and rain sensing wipers, smart entry and start system and climate control.br /br /The iQ is pretty damn small, but Toyota is stuffing the tiny coupe with plenty of standard safety features, including ABS, Vehicle Stability Control, Traction Control and nine airbags, including the world's first a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/09/30/toyota-develops-new-rear-window-airbag/"rear window airbag/a. Toyota also offers five different option packages including leather seats, navigation, and iSport, iUrban and iStyle packages. The iQ may be small, but after looking at the specs, it looks like Toyota went out of its way to give you just about any option you can dream up for a bargain basement price. You just can't get one if you live in the US, at least not yet. emHit the jump to view Toyota's detailed press release./embr /br /div class="postgallery"pstrongGallery: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/production-toyota-iq/"Production Toyota iQ/a/strong/pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/production-toyota-iq/1020057/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/09/toyota-iq-european-0_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/production-toyota-iq/1020058/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/09/toyota-iq-european-1_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/production-toyota-iq/1020059/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/09/toyota-iq-european-2_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/production-toyota-iq/1020065/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/09/toyota-iq-european-3_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/production-toyota-iq/1020060/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/09/toyota-iq-european-4_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //a/divbr /[Source: Toyota]pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/10/10/toyota-releases-pricing-and-spec-info-for-european-iq/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emToyota releases pricing and spec info for European iQ/em/a/ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/10/10/toyota-releases-pricing-and-spec-info-for-european-iq/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1338893/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/10/10/toyota-releases-pricing-and-spec-info-for-european-iq/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~a/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=Dus5R8"img src="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~a/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=Dus5R8" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=fvKBm"img src="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=fvKBm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=FsyKm"img src="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=FsyKm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.autoblog.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/417223188" height="1" width="1"/

div class="rxbodyfield"p page="1" class="ArticleBody"Not all of this week#39;s news involved global financial turmoil: while IT budgets are being cut and AMD is breaking itself up, a security tool was released for Firefox that prevents quot;clickjackingquot; and Microsoft said that Windows 7 will fix issues in Vista#39;s user account control feature./pp align="right"a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" target="_blank" /img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" width="336" height="280" border="0" alt="" align="right"//a/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"1. a target="_blank" href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/100908-it-industry-economy.html?hpg1=bn"Economic malaise hits IT industry/a : Disappointing earnings from some IT companies, fewer initial public offerings, lowered earnings forecasts -- all are part of the grim global economic outlook. On the bright side, though, IBM reported this week that its net income rose 20 percent in its third quarter and maintained its profits will be strong for the full fiscal year./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"strong[ Video:#160;a href="http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1388789577/bclid1443717127/bctid1847316758?src=rss"Catch up on the latest tech news with the World Tech Update/a#160;]/strong/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"2. a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/10/07/AMD_to_split_into_two_companies_1.html"AMD to spin off chip fabs to raise funds/a : Advanced Micro Devices is splitting into two companies, with one designing chips and the other making them. The company also said that two investment funds owned by the Abu Dhabi government will provide capital to AMD and help it compete better with Intel. The news was hailed by analysts, investors, customers and employees as a way to strengthen AMD, particularly in the harsh economic climate./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"strong[#160;Related:#160;a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/10/08/Intel_launches_probe_into_AMDs_spinoff_plans_1.html"Rival Intel has launched an investigation into AMD#39;s spinoff plans/a#160;| Intel may be worried because#160;a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/10/07/AMDs_foundry_spinoff_may_save_company_1.html?source=fssr"analysts think the split#160;could help AMD make up market share quickly/a#160;]/strong/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"3. a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/10/08/Firefox_extension_blocks_dangerous_Web_attack_1.html"Firefox extension blocks dangerous Web attack/a : An update of a free security tool for Firefox blocks quot;clickjacking,quot; one of the most dangerous and vexing problems on the Internet. Clickjacking happens when a Web user clicks on an invisible, malicious link without knowing it. The tool, called NoScript, now includes ClearClick, which can tell if a Web page contains a hidden, embedded element. Users of NoScript who click on such links will be asked if they really want to do that./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"4. a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/10/09/Microsoft_to_improve_Vistas_problematic_UAC_in_Windows_7_1.html"Microsoft to improve Vista#39;s problematic UAC in Windows 7/a : Microsoft is tweaking the user account control feature in its Windows client OS and admits that what was meant to be a security feature in Vista has been a hassle for users. The idea behind UAC in Vista is to give primary PC users more control of applications and settings, but it hasn#39;t quite worked out that way. quot;What we#39;ve learned is that we only got part of the way there in Vista and some folks think we accomplished the opposite,quot; said a blog post attributed to Ben Fathi, Microsoft corporate vice president of development in the Windows Core Operating System Division./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"5.#160;a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/10/10/Microsoft_elaborates_on_Oslo_1.html"Microsoft elaborates on Oslo/a : Microsoft shed some more light on its Oslo vision for model-based software development this week, detailing the quot;Mquot; declarative modeling language and the Domain Specific Languages concept that are integral to the overall Oslo package. The company also offered reassurances to developers thattheir role is not being minimized by this raising of the level of abstraction./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"6. a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/10/09/Apple_slates_laptop_event_for_next_Tuesday_1.html"Apple to hold special notebook event on Oct. 14/a : Apple sent out an invitation to reporters to attend an event next Tuesday, saying that quot;the spotlight turns to notebooks.quot; We assume this means that new Macbooks will be out in time for the all-important holiday shopping season./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"7. a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/10/08/41FE-tech-jobs-overseas_1.html"For a promising IT career, go east, young techie/a : The IT job market had tightened up even before global financial turmoil gave us all a whack, but opportunities are more plentiful in China, India and Russia, according to analysis of growth trends. Working in such countries also can be good for the old resume. quot;IT is going global. The IT profession is going global. Developing product for markets all over the world is something you have to learn how to do. Overseas work is a huge enhancer for IT professionals,quot; said Rob McGovern, CEO of JobFox, an international IT employment agency./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"8.#160;a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/10/06/Mono_2_lets_Net_apps_run_on_Linux_1.html"Mono 2.0 lets .Net apps run on Linux/a: Considered a major upgrade, the open-source Mono 2.0 runtime leverages Microsoft#39;s .Net Framework 2.0 programming model, letting developers build desktop and server applications using Microsoft-based environments and deploy them across multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX. By bringing apps beyond Windows, Mono will help developers reach a larger audience./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"9. a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/10/09/11_Microsoft_security_updates_due_next_week_1.html"11 Microsoft security updates due next week/a : There will be no rest for weary systems administrators next week -- Microsoft expects to roll out 11 security updates, with four of them rated critical. The monthly patchathon will apply to bugs in Windows Active Directory, Internet Explorer, Excel and the Microsoft Host Integration Server. Besides the critical patches, six others will be rated important and one will be moderate./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"10. a target="_blank" href="http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasicamp;articleId=9116481amp;intsrc=news_list"NASA: Messenger sends back never-before-seen Mercury images/a : NASA#39;s Messenger spacecraft transmitted images of Mercury to scientist this week, proving them with data about parts of that planet that have never been seen before. The Mariner 10 mission in the 1970s identified the Kuiper crater on Mercury, the planet nearest the sun, and an image of the crater was among the first to be relayed to NASA. Messenger took hundreds of photos of Mercury as it got within 125 miles (201 kilometers) of the planet#39;s surface./p/div

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centerimg id="image1464" src="http://rhizome.org/imagebase/article/1959/_MG_9094websmall.jpg" alt="_MG_9094websmall.jpg" //centerbr / piThis week I spoke with Aaron Levy, Executive Director and a Senior Curator of the Philadelphia-based interdisciplinary non-profit art space a href="http://slought.org/"Slought Foundation/a, about his participation in the U.S. Pavilion at a href="http://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/"La Biennale di Venezia, 11th International Architecture Exhibition/a. Working in a team with William Menking and Andrew Strum, the exhibition, titled "a href="http://positioningpractice.us/"Into the Open: Positioning Practice/a," investigates contemporary socially-engaged architectural practice in the United States. Sixteen practitioners were selected for the exhibition, including The Center for Land Use Interpretation, the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), Design Corps, Detroit Collaborative Design Center, Gans Studio, The Heidelberg Project, International Center for Urban Ecology, Jonathan Kirschenfeld Associates,Project Row Houses, Rebar, Rural Studio, Spatial Information Design Lab/Laura Kurgan, Studio 804, Smith and Others, The Edible Schoolyard/Yale Sustainable Food Project, and Estudio Teddy Cruz. Levy, along with William Menking and Andrew Strum, a href="http://www.arch.columbia.edu/index.php?pageData=1/12/5/"will discuss the exhibition at Columbia University on October 13th/a and downtown at a href="http://www.arch.columbia.edu/studiox/calendar.html"Studio-X on October 14th/a. - Ceci Moss/i/p bpCeci Moss: The title for the U.S. Pavilion is "Into the Open: Positioning Practice." Considering the wide range of approaches represented in this exhibition, I'm wondering if you can discuss why you selected this title, and how it speaks to the premise of community involvement through architectural practice./p/b pAaron Levy: What should our place be in this world, and how should architects help shape our sense of place? These are two of the questions that our exhibition gestures towards, through a new American taxonomy of conflict and urgency that takes visitors through some of the richest and the poorest neighborhoods of North America. The sixteen practices we have selected embody an expanded definition of architectural responsibility, whereby architects and designers become activists, developers, facilitators of a more inclusive urban policy, and producers of unique urban research. The exhibition explores not just what these architects and activists have built, but how they have built. In this sense, it is very much in keeping with the contemporary focus on process./p pI recently read Karsten Harries' iThe Ethical Function of Architecture/i, which follows Sigfried Giedion in arguing that the main task for architecture today is the interpretation of a way of life valid for our time. Harries argues that architecture is more than just an aesthetic approach, and that for some time now, architecture has been profoundly uncertain of its way. Can the problem of where architecture is going ever be thought separately from the larger problem of community and public forms of solidarity? Why must the ethical and the aesthetic always be in opposition? These questions are not just for philosophers; these are some of the questions that the field of architecture needs to consider today./p centerimg id="image1467" src="http://rhizome.org/imagebase/article/1959/Exhibit-Edible1small.jpg" alt="Exhibit-Edible1small.jpg" //centerbr / centeriImage: The Edible Schoolyard/Yale Sustainable Food Project, Model Schoolyard Garden (Installation Photograph) (Photo credit: Ryan Reitbauer/Duggal Visual Solutions)/i/centerbr / pbHow did you become involved with this exhibition? /b/p pIt's a really great question--although it doesn't have all that interesting an answer...There were a fair share of procedural and logistical headaches that are incredibly mundane though perhaps interesting to curators! /p pOur team (William Menking of iThe Architect's Newspaper/i, Andrew Sturm from PARC Foundation, and myself, in dialogue with architects Teddy Cruz and Deborah Gans) submitted a preliminary conceptualization to the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), responding to a public call for proposals. Once our proposal was accepted, we only had about 90 days to actualize what was a fairly rough schematic and fundraise. The lack of easily available documentation for many of the community-oriented practices in our exhibition called into question a typical curatorial approach privileging the display of cultural artifact and encouraged us to highlight architectural process instead. We viewed limitations such as these productively, allowing them to organically determine our approach./p !--more-- pI can't even begin to describe how difficult it was to stage this exhibition in Venice! The biennale opens just days after Ferragosto, an Italian holiday which effectively shuts down Venice for the month of August. Additionally, everything in the exhibition -- from our shipping crates filled with cultural artifacts to the vegetables we planted in the courtyard of the pavilion for Alice Water's Edible Schoolyard -- arrived to the pavilion by barge (a rather curious process which you can view online on our blog). In hindsight, perhaps what was most difficult about curating the U.S. Pavilion was not the pressure to deliver, but rather the lack of time for extended deliberation -- an aspect that I think of as quite central to any curatorial process. The exhibition was ultimately installed on-site in less than two weeks, with the finishing touches made as the press conference began./p pIt is quite interesting that the different perspectives, tensions, and sensibilities that each member of our team brought to the table are still evident in the exhibition. What role should artifacts play? How should process be communicated without too heavily relying on text? What position should text and video occupy in the exhibition? In the end, we decided that visitors to the U.S. Pavilion should be able to interact and engage with the featured practices in a variety of ways, rather than through just one interface. There are models to interact with, video panoramas and slideshows to watch, but also books to read, blogs to contribute to, and even installations to walk through. The exhibition is less a site of formal instruction than one of participation and social critique. In this sense, the pavilion is decidedly unmonumental this year, intimate even, resisting spectacularity. /p pbHow did your work with Slought Foundation contribute to your position on the team? /b/p pAt Slought Foundation, we encourage sociability and activism through public programs that are purposely critical and provocative; we invite audiences to consider culture and critical exchange as a source of dynamism and enjoyment. As a young organization, we stand for a quintessentially American do-it-yourself culture that is intellectually entrepreneurial and newly resurgent. Our projects take place in Philadelphia against a backdrop of inequality, urban blight, and socioeconomic disparity, which is very much in keeping with the practices and sites of conflict represented in the U.S. Pavilion./p pIn Venice, we were specifically interested in exploring how architecture can go beyond building (director Aaron Betsky's overall theme for this year's biennale), but also how architecture can go beyond the biennale itself. We wanted to invite viewers to think of architecture not just as a physical infrastructure but also as a social practice. Is an exhibition more than the display of models or cultural artifact? What is possible, and what is placed at risk, when architects become developers, work as artists, curators, or even community activists, acting not just intellectually but also entrepreneurially? We hope that the exhibition catalyzes contemporary practice by prompting questions such as these. /p pMany of the artists, architects and theorists we work with in Philadelphia and in Venice consider research as a fundamental component of their work; they challenge us to reconsider the politics of exhibition display and prevailing curatorial approaches by evading clear distinctions between artist, architect, critic, and curator. In Venice we also departed from past convention by omitting celebrity practices from consideration, instead highlighting projects with a grassroots, community sensibility. These practices work primarily with communities through complex choreographies of collaboration that balance on the edge of the professional. The sixteen practices offer sixteen different models of community engagement--a diversity of approaches in place of one. /p bpWould you argue Slought's own place vis-a-vis the culture and community in Philadelphia provided you with a unique vantage point in which to think about civic engagement?/p/b pThe selection of Slought Foundation (in partnership with PARC Foundation) to represent the United States is an enormous honor for our small West Philadelphia non-profit, but also recognizes a new spirit of community activism and inclusiveness across the country. Our selection highlights how the local site and emergent practices are newly empowered today, despite the absence of major public and private support for grass-roots social and cultural organizations that challenge conventional wisdom. In preparing for Venice, we thought a great deal about how to scale intimacy and informality to the international level of a biennale. European audiences seem to have noticed and appreciated these gestures of curatorial humility in representing the United States./p bpThe curatorial statement describes how local initiatives, such as Project Row Houses and the Heidelberg Project, arose out of the lack of large-scale public infrastructure projects in the United States. While these organizations successfully and creatively navigated private, public, and non-profit sectors in order to support and stage their projects, their existence also speaks to the abandonment, in part, of the communities they serve by larger government. Given the potential overreaching effects of the economic downturn of the past few weeks, do you see local initiatives such as these becoming more central to the health and well being of our cities? Could you argue that this direction is potentially problematic?/p/b pI completely agree. In the absence of large-scale public infrastructure projects in the United States, local initiatives are necessarily becoming newly empowered and dynamic arenas for the exploration and generation of new forms of sociability and activism. Teddy Cruz has referred to this development as the "radicalization of the local;" by this he means that the unique complexity of the local urgently demands our attention today. Project Row Houses and the Heidelberg Project are two great examples of the way in which grassroots non-governmental organizations are reclaiming the ability to shape community and the built environment on the scale of the individual neighborhood. /p pbYou collaborated with architects Teddy Cruz and Deborah Gans for this exhibit. I wanted to touch on their work, because their individual projects take on issues of migration and national boundaries. Due to a continued growth of population displacement, movement, and migration, these in-between zones have become more prevalent. Can you tell us more about their practices? Within the nation-specific format of the biennial, how were their ideas in particular framed in the exhibition? /b/p pEstudio Teddy Cruz's contribution to the U.S. Pavilion is a photographic reproduction of the border fence that spans the U.S. border with Mexico at San Diego. It is at once a form of architectural research and a political practice of intervention. This visual representation of the border, together with its photographic montage illustrating the 30 miles north and south of the fence, take visitors through a landscape of conflict that courses through the affluence north of San Diego and the homelessness and neglect in Tijuana. Visitors to the pavilion literally and metaphorically pass through perforations in this porous border to enter the exhibition in the courtyard and inner galleries. These perforations, rather than taking the form of clear interruptions or breaks along the entire facade, instead take the form of small, vertical micro-incisions, thus encouraging on the part of the visitor a landscape of swerves and detours. With this small shift in perspective, the seemingly formal relationship between San Diego and its informal counterpart Tijuana, gives way to San Diego and Tijuana being understood as part of the same, larger urban system. /p centerimg id="image1465" src="http://rhizome.org/imagebase/article/1959/Exhibit-Border2small.jpg" alt="Exhibit-Border2small.jpg" //centerbr / centeriImage: Estudio Teddy Cruz (Installation Photograph), 60 linear mile section, San Diego/Tijuana, 2008 (Photo credit: Ryan Reitbauer/Duggal Visual Solutions)/i/centerbr / pGans Studio is devoted to rethinking how architecture can participate in the emergence of social forms. It focuses on extreme situations that also foretell the general. It has designed housing and infrastructure for populations displaced by environmental and political disaster in Kosovo, New Orleans, and New York City. The current universal solution to refugee housing is a tarp that cannot withstand extreme climate conditions; it does not provide for basic domestic needs such as bathing and cooking. Refugee camps lack many forms of urban infrastructure and also deplete natural resources, wreaking ecological havoc and disempowering the refugee population in their will to become self-sufficient./p pFor the biennale, Deborah Gans designed a "Roll Out House" prototype that responds to the extremely degraded conditions on Native American reservations, where a lack of infrastructure and endemic poverty calls for an urgent and easily deployable response. A house can be rebuilt around the deployed "roll out" house. One column holds a cistern, and the other a kitchen. Three hollow columns of various materials can support a roof or even a second floor. They also make possible a domestically-scaled infrastructure of waste, water, or heat. The "roll out" houses can also be assembled in larger formations to cultivate the structure of a town. A physical and social infrastructure emerges according to new principles of "roll out" housing./p centerimg id="image1466" src="http://rhizome.org/imagebase/article/1959/GANS-1small.jpg" alt="GANS-1small.jpg" //centerbr / centeriImage: Gans Studio, House with Roll Out Core, 2008/i/centerbr / pbThe theme for this year's biennial is "Out There: Beyond Architecture"- thus salient topics such as the implementation of emerging technologies with architectural practices, green design, and the intersection between contemporary art and architecture were elaborated in the exhibits. Clearly, there's an underlying progressive ethos at work here, and I'm wondering if there will be any effort to continue these dialogues and/or projects beyond the realm of the biennial./b/p pRight now our organization is working to realize a mixed-income, mixed-use community development near Lancaster Avenue here in Philadelphia. We are undertaking this project with People's Emergency Center, a social services and community development corporation, in partnership with PARC Foundation and Estudio Teddy Cruz./p pThe exhibition in Venice is therefore a sort of testing ground, a conceptual prelude to what we hope to actualize in the coming months in Philadelphia. Although we are still in the planning stages, we envision a series of social and cultural services being joined under one roof, including digital inclusion programs, employment offices, and a dedicated space for Slought Foundation. In so doing, we hope to mitigate the paucity of social and cultural organizations in neighborhoods of need. /pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rhizome-fp/~4/417108114" height="1" width="1"/

Network refused to air an advert produced by Alliance for Climate Protection after presidential debate

Cowen Co. analyst Tom Watts cut his earnings estimates for ATT Inc. on Friday, saying strong iPhone sales were costing the company money through subsidies even as the dire economic climate is trimming overall wireless growth and speeding up landline losses.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=L3u8M"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=L3u8M" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=km3Hm"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=km3Hm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=gyPTm"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=gyPTm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ibtimes/tech/~4/416787302" height="1" width="1"/

If the U.S. focuses on curbing climate change as soon as a new president takes office -- or sooner -- could it help pull the world from the financial brink?

h4MessageLabs deal pilots security giant into cloud computing/h4 pstrongAnalysis/strong Symantec, traditionally one of the more conservative firms in the security market, is attempting to pull off a high-wire balancing act with its surprise $695m acquisition of security software-as-a-service pioneer MessageLabs. The firm is betting that increased revenues in the hottest segment of the security market will justify a high (especially for the current economic climate) acquisition price..../p

Miliband's meets counterparts at EU energy talks

Auteur : ITN
Tags : ed miliband energy and climate change secretary secretary of state government aviation eu meeting summit talks discussion lobbying greenhouse emissions carbon planes air airports industry travel renewable sources targets penguins exti
Envoyé : 10 octobre 2008
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Don't cut emissions targets, UK's new energy sec says

Publication Date: 2008 Oct 9 PMID: 18843350br/Authors: Houghton, J.br/Journal: Naturebr/br/br/br/post to: a href = http://www.citeulike.org/posturl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Fcmd%3DRetrieve%26db%3DPubMed%26dopt%3DAbstract%26list_uids%3D18843350title=Entrez+PubmedCiteULike/a