first time ever. Happened after I forgot and left a seed on for days. I dont get the point though, Ive bought every season of house md on dvd, retail, from best buy. Anyways, I usually just download direct, no bittorrent, but this time i decided to go that way after seeing the seeds, never again.

Quote: Dear removed:

We recently received the attached notice from NBC Universal claiming that your Internet account may have been used for copyright infringement. Specifically, NBC Universal claims that your account was used to reproduce and/or distribute copyrighted content without authorization to other users of an Internet-based file-sharing network. We are forwarding this notice at the request of NBC Universal -- please see the enclosed document.

Content providers such as NBC Universal routinely monitor file-sharing networks to determine if their copyrighted movies and music are being distributed illegally over the Internet. NBC Universal identified your AT&T account by its numeric IP address, a string of numbers identifiable by any site from which you upload or download files. When an Internet user connects to file-sharing networks, the IP address assigned to the computer connected to the Internet becomes publicly available to other members of the network. Consistent with our Customer Privacy Policy, AT&T has not released your name or any other personal information to NBC Universal, but is forwarding this notice to you so that this issue may be resolved without any further action.

You should be aware that copyright infringement is a violation of U.S. law, and potentially punishable by fines and other criminal penalties. It also is a violation of the AT&T Acceptable Use Policy, which governs your use of AT&T Internet services. If infringing activity persists, NBC Universal may choose to seek a court order requiring AT&T to provide it with your name and address so it can pursue legal action against you.

By forwarding this complaint, AT&T is not making any accusation of wrongdoing. Rather, we are bringing NBC Universal's notice to your attention so that you can take prompt and appropriate steps to prevent any further activity of this nature from occurring over your Internet account. Steps you may consider taking include:

1. Ceasing any sharing of copyrighted content that might be occurring via file sharing software, services or networks;
2. Securing your home Wi-Fi network to ensure others are not accessing the Internet through your connection to download or distribute illegal content;
3. Talking with family members or guests who may have used your Internet connection in ways you are not aware of;
4. Using virus and spyware protection software to protect against security threats and ensure your Internet connection is not being used in ways that you have not authorized;
5. Learning how federal copyright law applies to online activities by visiting the U.S. Copyright Office's website at http://www.copyright.gov/.

Violations of the Acceptable Use Policy can result in termination of your AT&T service. We encourage you to review the AT&T Acceptable Use Policy online at http://www.corp.att.com/aup/ and the AT&T Customer Privacy Policy at http://www.att.com/privacy.

AT&T is committed to protecting your personal information and ensuring the best possible online experience for all customers. Please review the attached letter for information regarding the alleged copyright infringement. If you have any questions regarding your AT&T Internet account or AT&T policies, please call us at 1-866-618-7991 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting**************1-866-618-7991******end_of_the_skype_highlighting or email us at complaintresponse@abuse-att.net.

Notice of Copyright Infringement

Re: Infringement of NBC Universal Properties
Notice ID: removed
removed

Dear Sir/Madam:

I am contacting you on behalf of NBC Universal, Inc. and its affiliated companies ("NBC Universal") regarding certain activity on your Internet account. NBC Universal owns intellectual property rights, including exclusive rights protected under copyright law, in many motion pictures, television programs and other audiovisual works ("NBC Universal Properties"). Based on our data, we believe that your Internet account was recently used to reproduce and/or distribute unauthorized copies of one or more NBC Universal Properties in violation of NBC Universal's rights. We have set forth below the details concerning this infringement, including the title(s) in question, the IP address of the account at the time of the infringement, and the date and time of the infringement.

Your Internet service provider (ISP) has agreed to forward this notice to you in order to provide you an opportunity to remedy this situation. Your ISP has not provided your personal information to us, but NBC Universal reserves the right to obtain that information through legal process in appropriate circumstances.

Unauthorized copying or distribution of copyrighted works may give rise to significant liability for copyright infringement, including statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work for willful infringement. Such action may also constitute a violation of your Internet provider's Terms of Use and may result in suspension or termination of your Internet service account. Accordingly, we request that you immediately: (1) cease from any further unlawful copying or distribution of NBC Universal Properties; and (2) delete any unauthorized copies of NBC Universal from your computer.

We encourage you to learn the facts about Internet piracy, including the economic harm that piracy causes to creative industries in the United States and the danger of exposure to viruses, worms, hacking and identity theft as a result of using peer-to-peer file sharing networks. Information regarding Internet piracy may be found on the web site http://www.mpaa.org/piracy.asp, which is maintained by the Motion Picture Association of America for the purpose of educating consumers.

A true and correct list of the titles of the NBC Universal Properties which NBC Universal believes in good faith have been illegally offered for downloading using your Internet account is noted below.

We would be pleased to respond to any questions or concerns you may have concerning this notice. You may direct any such questions or concerns to us through the following Internet site: http://webreply.baytsp.com/webreply/...0dcb845e6bf764. Please include the Notice ID in the subject line of any correspondence.

The undersigned has a good faith belief that use of the NBC Universal Property or Properties in the manner described herein is not authorized by NBC Universal, its agent(s) or the law. The information contained in this notification is accurate. Under penalty of perjury, the undersigned is authorized to act on behalf of NBC Universal with respect to this matter.

This letter is not intended to be a complete statement of the facts or law as they may pertain to this matter, or of NBC Universal's positions, rights or remedies, legal or equitable, all of which are specifically reserved.

Very truly yours,

Mark Ishikawa
CEO, BayTSP inc.
c/o NBC Universal Anti-Piracy Technical Operations
100 Universal City Plaza
Universal City, CA 91608

tel. (818) 777-4876
fax (818) 866-2026
antipiracy@nbcuni.com


*pgp public key is available on the key server at http://pgp.mit.edu

** For any correspondence regarding this case, please send your emails to antipiracy@nbcuni.com and refer to Notice ID: remove. If you need immediate assistance or if you have general questions please call the number listed above.



Title: House MD (TV)
Infringement Source: BitTorrent
Initial Infringement Timestamp: removed
Recent Infringement Timestamp: removed
Infringing Filename: House.S06E13.HDTV.XviD-XII.avi
Infringing File size: 366464038
Infringers IP Address: -removed-
Infringers DNS Name: -removed-
Infringing URL: removed
Bay ID: removed
Port ID: removed




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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>

<Infringement xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://mpto.unistudios.com/xml/Infringement_schema.xsd">
<Case>
<ID>20891161</ID>
<Status>Open</Status>
</Case>
<Complainant>
<Entity>NBC Universal</Entity>
<Contact>Mark M. Ishikawa, c/o NBC Universal Anti-Piracy Technical Operations</Contact>
<Address>100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, California 91608 United States of America</Address>
<Phone>removed</Phone>
<Email>antipiracy@nbcuni.com</Email>
</Complainant>
<Service_Provider>
<Entity>AT&amp;T</Entity>
<Address></Address>
<Email>acns@att.com;</Email>
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<IP_Address>removed</IP_Address>
<Port>removed</Port>
<DNS_Name>removed</DNS_Name>
<Type>BitTorrent</Type>
<UserName></UserName>
<Number_Files>1</Number_Files>
<Deja_Vu>No</Deja_Vu>
</Source>
<Content>
<Item>
<Title>House MD (TV)</Title>
<FileName>House.S06E13.HDTV.XviD-XII.avi</FileName>
<FileSize>366464038</FileSize>
<URL>removed</URL>
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Earlier this week, reader Jorvay sent over the news of how food giant Nestle had massively overreacted to an (admittedly disgusting) anti-Nestle video put together by Greenpeace and posted to YouTube. The thing was, this video was getting no attention. It had less than 1,000 views... but someone who should have known better at Nestle filed a bogus copyright claim to take down the video. There is no copyright issue in the video at all, so it was a bogus takedown. Even if there had been a legit reason for the takedown, doing so only drew much more attention to the issue, and the video quickly went back up on Vimeo, where it started getting even more views, a lot of which came because of the takedown.

Okay, bad enough, right? I was going to post that story, but before I had the chance, Nestle decided to make things worse.

Because of all this new attention, a bunch of anti-Nestle people went to Nestle's Facebook group, and started posting messages that were certainly anti-Nestle. Now, there are lots of ways to respond to such things. The one thing you don't want to do is respond the way Nestle's "moderator" did. First, they threatened to delete comments from anyone using a modified Nestle's logo, claiming that this infringed on trademarks (which is an interesting claim, but unlikely to hold up in court, where countless times the use of a logo in protest has been upheld). This resulted in some pointed responses from group members, such as "It's not OK for people to use altered versions of your logos, but it's OK for you to alter the face of Indonesian rainforests? Wow!"

Nestle then didn't do itself any favors by having its moderator respond sarcastically ("Oh please...it's like we're censoring everything to allow only positive comments") and then go with the foot stomping response as well ("it's our page, we set the rules, it was ever thus.")

Eventually, Nestle admitted that it was wrong and apologized, promising that the moderator would be a lot friendlier. However, by then the damage had been done. An issue that very, very few people would have noticed turned into a huge ordeal thanks to repeated mistakes in handling them. The company attempted to stifle speech with both bogus copyright and trademark claims, and then when called on it failed to realize that it was only making things worse.

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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (3 February 2010)

10.1098/rspb.2009.2148 The hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis is a neuroendocrine system that regulates the circulating levels of vital glucocorticoid hormones. The activity of the HPA axis is characterized not only by a classic circadian rhythm, but also by an ultradian pattern of discrete pulsatile release of glucocorticoids. A number of psychiatric and metabolic diseases are associated with changes in glucocorticoid pulsatility, and it is now clear that glucocorticoid responsive genes respond to these rapid fluctuations in a biologically meaningful way. Theoretical modelling has enabled us to identify and explore potential mechanisms underlying the ultradian activity in this axis, which to date have not been identified successfully. We demonstrate that the combination of delay with feed-forward and feedback loops in the pituitary–adrenal system is sufficient to give rise to ultradian pulsatility in the absence of an ultradian source from a supra-pituitary site. Moreover, our model enables us to predict the different patterns of glucocorticoid release mediated by changes in hypophysial-portal corticotrophin-releasing hormone levels, with results that parallel our experimental data.
Jamie Walker, John Terry, Stafford Lightman

You know those special amps used by Spinal Tap that go to 11, in order to provide "that extra push over the cliff"? It appears Fox News has gotten a hold of some and hooked them up to its coverage of health care reform.

As the reform bill moved closer to a vote in the House, the Fox News noise machine went into overdrive, hurling every false and misleading claim it could muster.

The week in Fox News health care hysteria began with an oldie-but-goodie -- Steve Doocy, Bill Hemmer, and Bill O'Reilly all claimed or suggested that the bill will, in O'Reilly's words, "require American taxpayers to fund abortion." But it doesn't, at least not beyond what is currently permitted under current law. Fox News, unfortunately, is not alone in repeating this falsehood.

Then, Doocy and Hemmer, joined by Neil Cavuto and several other hosts, jumped on the idea that a legislative procedure the House is reportedly considering to pass the Senate's version of health care reform would allow them to do so without a vote. Wrong again -- the House would need to vote to implement that procedure.

Carl Cameron, however, broke through the noise on this issue, pointing out that the process would simply pass the bill "in one vote instead of two" and that the process "has been used, literally, for centuries" -- indeed, Republicans made copious use of the "self-executing rule" when they controlled Congress. Even Charles Krauthammer conceded that it's constitutional. Still, that didn't keep Alisyn Camerota from scoffing that the rule "might as well be a self-immolating rule."

Fox News then pounced on a survey claiming to have found that 46 percent of primary care physicians would consider leaving their profession if health care reform passes. O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and contributor Dr. Marc Siegel all portrayed the survey as having been published by the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

Except it wasn't. The article was written by the physician-recruiting firm that conducted the survey, and it actually appeared in an employment newsletter produced by the publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine, not the Journal itself. Further, the survey itself was not all that scientific -- done via email contacts taken from the recruiting firm's database -- so any claim that the survey's results accurately reflect the view of the American medical community is dubious at best.

Fox News' Megyn Kelly did eventually note that the survey was "not a scientific poll." But that didn't keep Glenn Beck from insisting -- hours after Kelly corrected the record -- that "The New England Journal of Medicine says that if this bill is passed nearly one-third of doctors will quit practice medicine."

(Beck, meanwhile, is keeping up the long tradition of Fox News hosts pushing partisan political agendas by joining with Republican Rep. Steve King to promote an anti-reform rally in Washington.)

Fox News contributor and serial misleader Dana Perino made her own non-contribution to the health care debate, asserting that the reform bill's Medicare investment tax on those making over $200,000 a year is "so disturbing ... because the people who make that money are the small business owners." In fact, fewer than 1.3 percent of small business owners would be affected by the tax.

When the Congressional Budget Office released new numbers detailing how the reform bill would reduce the deficit by $130 billion over 10 years, Fox News didn't want to talk about that -- it spent far more time highlighting how much the bill would cost instead of how much it would save. And when that didn't seem to work, it tried to discredit the CBO as untrustworthy and unreliable. Never mind that when the CBO issued "favorable" numbers last fall on a Republican health care reform plan, Fox News praised the CBO as "nonpartisan."

The Fox News spin is even confusing its own hosts. Brian Kilmeade can't quite comprehend how a bill can cost money yet reduce the deficit, and Kelly admitted, "I don't understand anything they're talking about when it comes to this potential law."

Fox News' inept war against health care reform, while in keeping with its function as the communications arm of the Republican Party in exile, is making itself look like the Spinal Tap of news. It doesn't really need that "extra push over the cliff" -- after all, that's what it's been speeding toward for years.

At this rate, it probably won't be too long before a Fox anchor spontaneously combusts.

Other stories this week

A whole lot of shaky earthquake claims goin' on at Fox

How much does Fox News oppose health care reform? It's pretending natural disasters didn't happen if they're inconvenient to the anti-reform agenda.

On March 18, Doocy took exception to President Obama's statement that a provision in the health care reform that would help Louisiana cope with Medicaid shortfalls resulting from Hurricane Katrina might also help Hawaii because it "went through an earthquake. "Hold it. What Hawaiian earthquake?" Doocy asked. "There was an earthquake in 1868 that killed 77. There was an earthquake in 1975 that killed two." After noting that the provision applies to states that have suffered a natural disaster "within the last seven fiscal years," Doocy added: "Essentially it boils down to just one state, and that is Louisiana."

Doocy seems to have forgotten that there was an earthquake in Hawaii in 2006. Not only did it cause tens of millions of dollars in damage, the Bush administration "declared a major disaster exists in the State of Hawaii and ordered Federal aid to supplement State and local recovery efforts" as a result of the quake.

But Doocy didn't need to rely on federal agencies for information on the quake -- Fox News reported on it at the time. (Investor's Business Daily similarly ignored its own reporting to suggest there was no recent Hawaii quake.)

It seems that rather than trust the federal government or his own news organization, Doocy chose instead to trust right-wing bloggers, who were spreading the misinformation. That runs counter to a 2007 memo -- issued after Doocy and other Fox hosts falsely claimed that Obama was educated in a madrassa -- in which Fox News vice president John Moody reportedly wrote, "For the record: seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC."

Media Matters has written Fox News requesting that Doocy correct the record. We shouldn't have to, since Fox News is supposed to have a "zero tolerance" policy toward on-air mistakes, but then, these are the same folks that ludicrously insisted that a Fox & Friends graphic in which poll numbers added up to 120 percent contained no errors.

The latest right-wing witch-hunt target: Jim Wallis

Fox News has long been a leader in witch hunts against Obama and his administration (or, really, anyone who can be remotely tagged as liberal). Now Glenn Beck, as an extension of his repeated challenged Beck to a debate over social justice, Beck demurred, his vaguely threatening statements making it clear his witch hunt was more important than reasoned debate: "In my time, I will respond. ... Just know the hammer's coming. ... And when the hammer comes, it's going to be hammering hard and all through the night, over and over."

Right-wing website WorldNetDaily, meanwhile, blundered into the breach with a poorly written article that attempted to put words in Wallis' mouth. WND claimed that Wallis was a "champion of communism," even though Wallis has declared communism to be a "failed" system; asserted that Sojourners has published "a slew of radicals" while ignoring that it has also published a slew of conservatives; and alleged that "Sojourners' official 'statement of faith' urges readers to 'refuse to accept [capitalist] structures and assumptions that normalize poverty and segregate the world by class,' " even though the word "capitalist" -- inserted by WND -- actually appears nowhere in the statement. WND even falsely claimed that Wallis "labeled the U.S. 'the great captor and destroyer of human life.' "

Somehow, we suspect that Beck's upcoming assault on Wallis will be just as divorced from reality as WorldNetDaily's.

Erick Erickson joins the "scumbags" at CNN

Should a blogger who once called a retiring Supreme Court justice a "goat f---ing child molester" be rewarded with a regular commentary gig on CNN? Doesn't matter -- the deal's been done.

CNN announced this week that RedState editor Erick Erickson has joined the network as a political contributor, mainly appearing on John King's new show. The network claimed that Erickson is "a perfect fit" for King's show, adding that "Erick is in touch with the very people John hopes to reach."

Media Matters has detailed Erickson's history of outrageous statements, of which the aforementioned is but one.

Predictably, conservatives defended Erickson's new job, his fellow RedStaters among them. One of Erickson's RedState defenders, however, went a tad off-message: "From Non-Conservatives, to Academics and Liberal Elitists, to self-soiling and unprincipled Professional Politicians and firmly-entrenched good ole boys inside the M(ostly) S(cumbags) M(edia), each of these clowns has a tale of doom about the hell we're headed for compliments of CNN's hand basket."

We have to wonder: Does Erickson consider his new CNN colleagues to be "scumbags"?

This week's media columns

This week's media columns from the Media Matters senior fellows: Eric Boehlert examines the media myth of Obama's "falling poll numbers," and Karl Frisch tells you how to annoy Glenn Beck in five minutes or less.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, and Digg

Media Matters maintains active online communities on the nation's leading social networking sites. Be sure to join us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, and Digg and join in on the discussion.

Media Matters Minute now on YouTube

For some time now, radio shows and stations throughout the country have been carrying the Media Matters Minute, a daily, minute-long recap of our work topped off with the "most outrageous comment" of the day. We encourage you to subscribe (YouTube / iTunes /RSS) to the Minute's daily podcast, hosted by Media Matters' Ben Fishel.

This weekly wrap-up was compiled and edited by Terry Krepel, a senior web editor at Media Matters for America.

Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology - Part A: Molecular &#38; Integrative Physiology, Vol. 153, No. 2. (June 2009), pp. S196-S197.

Plants undergo a series of qualitative transitions during their life- cycle in response to both environmental and internal factors. One of the most distinguishable is the transition from a vegetative to reproductive phase of development. This stage is preceded by the juvenile to adult transition within the vegetative phase. During the juvenile phase (JP) plants are incompetent to initiate reproductive development and are effectively insensitive to photoperiod. With the change to adult phase, plants attain competence to respond to floral inducers, which is required for the transition to the reproductive phase. Here we exploit Antirrhinum, a facultative long day plant that has a defined JP that is sensitive to light, to understand the genetic and environmental factors that regulate juvenility. A physiological assay has been developed in Antirrhinum that exploits photoperiod sensitivity to allow the length of the JP to be estimated. Environmental factors such as irradiance and CO2 concentrations have been found as key modifiers of the length of the JP. A correlation between limiting photosynthetic assimilates and vegetative phase transition has been revealed by HPLC analysis of total soluble carbohydrates in plants at defined develop- mental stages. Studies are being carried out to determine whether plants are florally incompetent during the JP due to inactivity of the photoperiodic floral induction pathway. This work is supported by the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), grant HH3728SX to B.T. IG.M wishes to acknowledge the Hellenic State Scholarships Foundation (I.K.Y.) for financial support. Email Address for correspondence: I.Matsoukas@warwick.ac.uk
Ioannis Matsoukas, Brian Thomas, Veronica Valdes Ruiz, Stephen Jackson, Alison Jackson, Steven Adams, Andrea Massiah

Fox News reportedly draws a distinction between its "news hours," which it claims are objective, and its "editorial" programming. But on May 19, purported "news hour" anchor Megyn Kelly constructed an entire segment around "editorial" host Glenn Beck's criticism of New York's proposed restaurant salt ban, airing clips from his show and asking her guest to respond to Beck's arguments.

Fox's "news" anchor uses Beck criticism as basis for segment

Kelly introduces segment by airing Beck clip. Kelly began her segment by airing a clip of Beck on the March 10 edition of his Fox News program in which he stated:

BECK: The government cannot make people healthy. If I want to stuff my face, I'm going to stuff my face. If I'm going to have a heart attack in 15 minutes because I stuff my face, it's my fault. If the firemen have to come to my house and cut a huge hole in the side of my wall because I'm stuck to my couch because I'm a big fat fatty just eating marshmallows all day and the firemen have to come in with a crane and pull me out and put me on a flatbed truck to take me to the hospital, you know what? I should have to pay the bill!

Kelly then said of the proposed ban, "It's got Glenn Beck all fired up."

Kelly repeatedly demands NY Assemblyman Ortiz respond to Beck's criticism. Kelly's first question to her guest, New York State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz -- who has introduced legislation banning salt in New York restaurants -- was: "Glenn Beck is all upset with you, Assemblyman. What do you have to say to him?" She later asked, "Ok, salt's not great for you, certainly not in large amounts in any event, but why isn't it up to us? As Glenn said, if I want to become a fatty fat fat, what business is it of yours?"

Kelly to Ortiz: "You wanted Glenn Beck to start talking about you." After Ortiz stated that he introduced his legislation in part because doing so focuses media attention on the issue of the health risks of excessive salt, Kelly stated: "So it's a media stunt. I'm on to you, Assemblyman. Ok. So you just wanted to get on America Live, you wanted Glenn Beck to start talking about you."

Fox has drawn distinction between supposedly objective "news hours" and "editorial" hours

In response to criticism, Fox News claims its news hours are objective. The New York Times reported on October 11 that in response to White House criticism, Fox News claimed that its news hours -- which it reportedly defined as "9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays" are objective:

In an interview, Mr. [senior vice president for news Michael] Clemente suggested that there was an element of "shoot the messenger" in the back and forth. "Sometimes it's actually helpful to have an organization or a person that you can go up against for whatever reason," he said.

Fox argues that its news hours -- 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays -- are objective. The channel has taken pains recently to highlight its news programs, including the two hours led by Shepard Smith, its chief news anchor. And its daytime newscasts draw more viewers than CNN or MSNBC's prime-time programs.

"The average consumer certainly knows the difference between the A section of the newspaper and the editorial page," Mr. Clemente said.

America Live replaced Live Desk in early 2010.

In a written statement provided to media outlets, Clemente compared Fox News' purportedly separate "news" and "opinion" programming to "the A-section of the newspaper and the editorial page":

An increasing number of viewers are relying on FOX News for both news and opinion. And the average news consumer can certainly distinguish between the A-section of the newspaper and the editorial page, which is what our programming represents. So, with all due respect to anyone who might still be confused about the difference between news reporting and vibrant opinion, my suggestion would be to talk about the stories and the facts, rather than attack the messenger...which over time, has never worked.

"News" hours nonetheless takes cues from Beck, features same smears and GOP talking points as "opinion" programs

Fox's "news" division routinely promotes and echoes Beck. Fox News' reporters and "news" programs have routinely promoted and echoed Beck on stories such as the 9-12 Project, tea party protests, ACORN and former White House officials Van Jones and Anita Dunn.

Fox's news programs echo its "opinion" shows. Fox News' purportedly straight news programs echo its "editorial" programs, featuring smears, falsehoods, doctored and deceptive editing, and GOP talking points.

Journal of Plant Growth Regulation, Vol. 26, No. 2. (1 June 2007), pp. 106-117.

Abstract  The gaseous phytohormone ethylene is a key regulator in plant growth and developmental process as well as biotic and abiotic stress response. This review focuses on the recent advances in the ethylene-signaling pathway in Arabidopsis, with particular emphasis on the latest information about the downstream events of the ethylene-response pathway. Notable new findings include identification of a specific regulator of the ethylene receptor ETR1, discovery of protein degradation and RNA turnover processes in modulating EIN3-dependent transcriptional regulation, demonstration of the involvement of auxin biosynthesis in ethylene-mediated inhibition of root growth, and determination of possible integration points between ethylene and other hormonal and environmental signals (gibberellin, jasmonic acid, light, and sugar) in various plant processes. The elucidation of the molecular mechanisms of the ethylene-signaling and ethylene- response pathway in Arabidopsis might provide a framework for understanding how other plant species sense and respond to ethylene.
Hongjiang Li, Hongwei Guo

As the climate continues to change, some studies suggest that warmer temperatures may help plants bloom earlier and longer. However, that may not be the whole story. An article published in Science details how different plants respond to different indicators of changing seasons, and why that might ultimately shift the balance of some ecosystems.

Phenology, the study of how nature responds to cyclical changes, indicates that non-tropical plants need their environment to fulfill three criteria before they'll start blooming: the degree of winter chilling, photoperiod (the length of the day relative to the night), and temperature. Plant typically handles these cues hierarchically, first registering that the winter chilling period has ended, then taking into account the photoperiod, and then the ambient temperature.

While most plants and trees, including those that typically dominate mature forests, use all three variables, others do not take the photoperiod into account. The other two blooming criteria, chilling and temperature, can happen earlier in the year as the climate warms up. This would allow photoperiod-insensitive plants to bloom sooner, possibly getting the drop on the other flora that have to wait around for days to get sufficiently long before they can start their reproductive cycles and restart their growth cycles. The two classes of plants may end up with different access to resources, including pollinators.

While this may shift the dynamics of photoperiod sensitive and insensitive trees, there are a number of other factors that contribute to plant prosperity that climate doesn't affect, such as mineralization of the soil. Still, it's important to note that, when it comes to plants, there won't be a single, consistent response to climate change.

Science, 2010. DOI: 10.1126/science.1186473  (About DOIs).

Read the comments on this post

Everyone’s been talking about the “real-time web” for quite some time, but it’s easy to focus on speed while forgetting real-time is dependent on trust. 

When things move faster, trust matters more. If you’re in the heat of battle, you don’t have time to question your commander the way you might second guess your boss during peace time — you just need to trust him. Before the web went real-time, you had time to research and analyze. Is this eBay seller reliable? Spend 10 minutes reading the 100s of ratings he’s received to find out. Is this breaking news tweet about an impending disaster in your area reliable? You’d better already trust the source. 

In their quest to increase users, existing social networks haven’t done a great job building trust networks. How many of your Facebook friends and LinkedIn contacts would you trust on an important matter? How many of them have you even talked to more than once in the last year?

Read the rest of this story »

See Also:

• Clever: Facebook Funds A Privacy Watchdog Group
• Google Responds To Privacy Concerns With Unsettlingly Specific Apology
• Google Explains How It Blew Buzz Privacy

While one of ACTA's biggest supporters, Rep. Howard Berman, is now pushing for laws to stop companies aiding in China's censorship, he might want to consider that a better plan would be to back down on ACTA. If ACTA passes, it seems quite likely that China would then use it as justification for its own "great firewall" censorship program. Already, we're seeing that China is looking to use plans for internet filters in Australia to its own advantage by comparing that system to its own -- and you can bet China would be thrilled to be able to use a US-backed concept to support its continued censorship.

In the past, China has justified its internet censorship by saying things along the lines of, "well, you in the US have laws against obscenity online, and what we're doing is passing laws against the type of content we feel does not belong online either." But something like ACTA could make the case much stronger for the Chinese. That's because ACTA and China's censorship have a lot in common, in that they're both plans that involve vague secondary liability aspects applied to ISPs. That is, China's Great Firewall works by the government telling ISPs that they might get in trouble if anyone says anything "bad" online, and are given just vague rules about how to stop the bad. Thus, the ISPs respond by being overly aggressive in their enforcement. Similarly, ACTA hints at vague secondary liability safe harbors needed for an ISP not to get blamed for copyright infringement -- and, as we've seen, when such vague rules were implemented in South Korea, service providers start getting overly aggressive in banning things as well.

So if Howard Berman really wants to crack down on Chinese censorship online, perhaps he shouldn't be working so hard towards giving them more justification for China's actions.

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This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Google Apps for business has a number of benefits over traditional business IT and desktop software. Using the full suite essentially places all of your data and entire workflow in the cloud, meaning you can access it all anywhere, any time, from any Internet connection.

At $50 per year per user, the fully integrated apps system is certainly cost-effective, and even adding the free versions of Gmail, Calendar, and Google Docs into your workflow can keep your employees coordinated.

For more casual users, or even those who might not be acquainted with Google Apps, here’s a guide to how the software can benefit your small business.

Gmail

The many advanced features of Gmail really make it a leap forward in the web-based e-mail space, and a lot of these are ideal for business.

If you’re not ready to take the full plunge into the paid Google Apps suite, you can still configure Gmail to function as your business e-mail client through your existing domain name by following the steps outlined in my post, “How to Set Up Gmail as Your Business E-mail Client.”

The first big advantage of Gmail, like all the apps discussed here, is that it functions in the cloud. You don’t have to worry about downloading messages to multiple locations or syncing various devices. Your inbox will look the same from any web or mobile connection. And with 25 gigs of e-mail storage per user (with a paid apps account), it’s unlikely you’ll ever have to clean your inbox or delete old messages.

Gmail works a bit differently than traditional desktop clients and webmail services in that conversations are “threaded.” This means that e-mails with the same or related subject lines are grouped together in a thread so you can see all the messages sent and received on a topic in one place. When a new message is received, the entire thread is bumped to the top of your inbox, making tracking complex and multi-party conversations easy.

Gmail also has a chat feature built right into the interface that lets you send a quick update or discuss a project with an employee if you’re not in the same office. Chats are also stored in Gmail so that you can search and refer to them later.

Google search, the asset that started it all for the company, is of course built right into Gmail, which makes finding information from e-mail conversations (even very old ones) extremely efficient.

Additionally, Gmail Labs offers some extra settings for your inbox that can be extremely valuable for business use:

• Signature Tweaks puts your e-mail signature before the quoted text in a reply the way that Outlook would.
• Default ‘Reply to All’ allows you to reply to group e-mails with one click, instead of from a drop-down menu.
• Forgotten Attachment Detector will notify you if you’ve mentioned an attachment in an e-mail, but forgotten to add one.
• Undo Send gives you a few seconds after sending a message to click “undo” in case you forgot something, or sent it to the wrong party by mistake.
• Title Tweaks is a great feature that puts your unread message count first in the title of the inbox web page. If you have many windows open while you’re working, you’ll still be able to see when new messages arrive.

Google Docs

Google Docs is a web-based suite for word processing, presentation building (similar to PowerPoint), spreadsheets, and web forms. All the work is done in a web browser, and all the data is saved in the cloud.

The software can be a bit quirky at times, which may frustrate users of more stable products like Microsoft Office, but the payoff in online storage, shareability, and collaboration options may be worth the adjustment for many small businesses.

Because the data is online, streamlined document sharing and collaboration are big perks with Google Docs. Any file you’re working on can be shared with individual team members, or the entire group within the apps system. You can also set permissions for specific users to view and edit documents. And, multiple users can simultaneously view and edit documents, which can be useful for real-time collaborative projects or presentations during conference calls. You can also grant permission for those outside your office network to view and edit documents, which can be especially useful for sharing information and presentations with clients or colleagues.

As you create and share documents, your Google Docs dashboard may start to get a little messy. Be sure to create folders to keep your work organized just as you would on your desktop. You can also share entire folders if you need to collaborate on multiple documents related to the same project.

Calendar

Google Calendar provides an efficient and intuitive way to keep appointments and events synced across your entire business. With calendar sharing and permissions (similar to those in Docs), you can add other employees’ calendars to your own, and vice versa, in order to see and manage the big picture of your team’s time.

For example, if an executive has an assistant, their calendars may be shared so that the assistant could manage his boss’s appointments remotely from his own account. It’s also a smart tool for coordinating meetings, calls, and shift staffing for multiple employees to avoid scheduling conflicts. Sharing multiple calendars with one “master calendar” creates a color-coded scheduling table for the coordinator that updates automatically when users make changes or additions.

The Calendar app can also be used to create events through Gmail. By adding your employees’ e-mail addresses to an event, they will receive an invitation to respond. Responding ‘yes’ automatically adds a shared event to your calendar that each invitee can view and add notes to. It’s a smart way to coordinate meetings and keep everyone in the loop.

Google Sites

Google Sites is a drag-and-drop web development tool that you can use within your business’s apps to create online information hubs for employees. The websites you create exist within your Google Apps domain, can be public or private, and permissions for employees to add, change, and contribute information can be set from the main account.

Beyond simply being a WYSIWYG web editor, Sites makes it easy to integrate data from other Google Apps into dynamic pages that team members can use to collaborate on projects. Integrating spreadsheets or data charts from Docs, a deadline schedule from Calendar, and team-specific messages from Gmail could essentially create a one-stop project dashboard full of dynamically updating information.

Sites here can be purely functional or informational, or with the aid of some built-in templates or a good designer, a full-fledged dynamic public website for your business that team members have easy access to.

Google Groups

Google Groups have long been public forums where users across the web gather to discuss specific interests or get technical support. Groups for business brings that same functionality into your private internal network.

E-mail can sometimes be cumbersome when coordinating a team. When you need a central space to collect ideas and share documents (but you’re not interested in building a web page in Sites), Groups offers a solution.

Employees can create discussion groups on their own and subscribe, either by e-mail or via a Groups dashboard, which lists new posts like a news reader.

Rather than e-mails going out to individual inboxes, a group thread remains visible to all of your subscribed team members, and users can go back to it for reference, to add more information, and even share docs and calendars.

Using Groups for business discussions and project management creates a communal and searchable database of information that employees can go back to whenever needed.

Google Apps Marketplace

Google’s recently launched Google Apps Marketplace allows developers of other business web apps to integrate their offerings with Google and sell software directly to Google Apps users. The marketplace currently has over 50 partners, including Intuit, Zoho, and Aviary. This additional space for third-party software means that Apps users will have even more options to tailor their suite for specific business purposes.

Smart Integration Across the Board

While each app has worthwhile features, perhaps one of the best advantages is the way that they all integrate with one another. Documents and appointments can be easily shared via e-mail, and your inbox can be used as a portal for productivity via embeddable widgets, chat, and other notifications.

If your small business is ready for a web-based, collaboration-minded IT solution, Google Apps is certainly a cost-effective way to go, and you can investigate the free versions simply by signing up for a Gmail account to determine if the suite is right for your workflow.

More business resources from Mashable:

- HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry
- 4 Elements of a Successful Business Web Presence
- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
- HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI
- HOW TO: Use Social Media to Connect with Other Entrepreneurs

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, CostinT

Tags: business, gmail, Google, google apps, Google Calendar, google docs, google labs, List, Lists, productivity, small business

Following the Congressional Budget Office's score of the health care reform reconciliation package, Fox News has attempted to portray the nonpartisan CBO as untrustworthy and unreliable. By contrast, after the CBO gave a "favorable" score to the GOP health care plan, Fox praised the office as "nonpartisan" and advanced false GOP claims about the CBO's findings.

Fox News does damage control, attempts to portray CBO as untrustworthy and unreliable

 Beck mocks CBO score of health care reform: "Well, that's a party in my pants." On the March 18 edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck, Beck asked, "How would the CBO numbers even make any difference? You know, 'Only 900 and' -- what is it -- '$954 billion.' Ooh. Well, that's a party in my pants. Thank you for sending that one by. How does that make a difference?"

 Doocy: "[C]an you really rely on the numbers that the Congressional Budget Office comes out with?" On the March 19 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy claimed, "Democrats say it will reduce the deficit by more than $100 billion over the first decade." After guest host Dana Perino responded by saying, "Well, but there are other members who say that it actually will cost $2.4 trillion over the 10 years once you add it all up," Doocy asked, "Because, can you really rely on the numbers that the Congressional Budget Office comes out with?"

 Perino: "[C]an we trust these numbers?" Introducing an interview with Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) on the same edition of Fox & Friends, Perino said, "Nine hundred and forty billion dollars over the next decade. That's the preliminary price tag for the Democrats' health care bill, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It also says the plan will cut the federal deficit by $130 billion in that time, but can we trust these numbers?" Weiner said the score "came out really better than we thought it would. It was a great savings number, and so the deficit hawks now have things that they can point at and say, 'You know what? This really does save money." Perino then asked him, "But do you think ... that those numbers can be trusted later on?"

 Johnson Jr.: "I don't expect or anticipate that their numbers are real." On the same edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade said that the "average person" would say, "[I]f a plan costs $940 billion, tell me how I'm saving 130 billion. So it doesn't make any sense." Fox News legal analyst Peter Johnson Jr. then noted that Perino had asked, "Do we really trust these numbers?" and claimed that "if you read carefully the latest CBO things, they say, 'Well, we don't usually project out another 10 years.' And there's so many variables and so many wiggle words that I don't expect or anticipate that their numbers are real." He later said, "I think we're being spun."

 Hannity calls CBO score "budgetary gimmicks and tricks." On the March 18 edition of Fox News' Hannity, host Sean Hannity called the CBO score of the health care bill reflected "budgetary gimmicks and tricks" and said that it is "[f]lat-out dishonest" that the score didn't contain separate legislation that cancels scheduled cuts in Medicare payments to doctors. After guest Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) claimed "the only way that [Democrats] pay for those additions is to reduce seniors' health care benefits on their Medicaid or raise taxes," Hannity responded, "[W]hy would the CBO not highlight this to give a truly educational, informational, you know, scoring of this to the American people?"

 Hemmer asks Juan Williams "do you believe" the CBO long-range forecast. On the March 18 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom, Fox News contributor Juan Williams called the CBO score a "deal-maker" because it will "reassure those independents and, by extension, those Democrats that have been on the fence because they are deficit hawks" because of the deficit reduction. Co-host Bill Hemmer then said to Williams, "That's 20 years out. You've lived in Washington a long time. Do you believe that?"

 Fox Nation headline: "CBO Score Called a 'Lie.' " On March 18, Fox Nation posted a National Review article under the headline "CBO Score Called a 'Lie.' " From Fox Nation:

By contrast, Fox News touted "favorable" CBO score of the GOP health care bill

 Fox's Shively touted "favorable" CBO report on GOP health care bill and advanced false GOP claim that GOP plan would lower premiums more than Democrats' plan. On the November 5, 2009, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, contributor Caroline Shively adopted the GOP spin by reporting, "Now, on the other side of the aisle, Republicans have gotten favorable reports from the Congressional Budget Office on the cost of their health care bill. GOP lawmakers say that means premiums for millions of families will be almost $5,000 lower under their plan, compared to the cheapest plan in the Democrats' exchange." In fact, the $5,000 difference Shively cited ignored premium caps in the House Democrats' plan. As Media Matters for America has noted, because the Democrats' health care bill provides premium caps on a sliding scale based on income, the lowest amount that a family would have to pay in premiums is significantly less than the GOP alternative.

America's Newsroom attributes Republican talking point to CBO. On the November 5 edition of America's Newsroom, host Martha McCallum claimed, "The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is saying that the Republican bill ... will carry lower costs for Americans. The CBO estimates that health insurance premiums would be nearly $5,000 cheaper under the Republican reforms than the Democratic ones." In fact, the CBO never made that claim. The comparison was based on calculations done by Republican members of the House Ways and Means Committee. From America's Newsroom:

Fox & Friends report obscures that GOP plan wouldn't cover uninsured, wouldn't significantly lower premiums, would reduce deficit less than Democrats' plan. Shively's Fox & Friends report ignored that the GOP plan would not cover most uninsured Americans. Shively also did not report that the CBO estimates indicate that House Democrats' bill lowers the deficit more than the GOP's proposal.

Publication Date: 2010 Mar 17 PMID: 20237273Authors: Snyder, A. C. - Foxe, J. J.Journal: J NeurosciRetinotopically specific increases in alpha-band ( approximately 10 Hz) oscillatory power have been strongly implicated in the suppression of processing for irrelevant parts of the visual field during the deployment of visuospatial attention. Here, we asked whether this alpha suppression mechanism also plays a role in the nonspatial anticipatory biasing of feature-based attention. Visual word cues informed subjects what the task-relevant feature of an upcoming visual stimulus (S2) was, while high-density electroencephalographic recordings were acquired. We examined anticipatory oscillatory activity in the Cue-to-S2 interval ( approximately 2 s). Subjects were cued on a trial-by-trial basis to attend to either the color or direction of motion of an upcoming dot field array, and to respond when they detected that a subset of the dots differed from the majority along the target feature dimension. We used the features of color and motion, expressly because they have well known, spatially separated cortical processing areas, to distinguish shifts in alpha power over areas processing each feature. Alpha power from dorsal regions increased when motion was the irrelevant feature (i.e., color was cued), and alpha power from ventral regions increased when color was irrelevant. Thus, alpha-suppression mechanisms appear to operate during feature-based selection in much the same manner as has been shown for space-based attention.post to: CiteULike

In experiments evaluating how the creatures react to moving images, the animals responded far more vigorously to HDTV than standard definition TV.     It appears that standard definition moving images are not sufficiently "convincing" for the sophisticated cephalopods, say the scientists.     Octopuses appear to be intelligent animals, that respond to their environment with brilliant colour changes.     "It was a case of the technology not being up to the relatively high standard of octopus eyesight."

The Palm Pre feels at times like the Jan Brady of the mobile world — lacking the Marsha-ish confidence and good looks of the iPhone, or the Cindy-like next-big-thing appeal of the Droid. Thus, no one pays it much attention or takes it terribly seriously. But that just means fans of the device gotta do for themselves, as in the case of Pre user Alexander Slansky, who created an app that turns your Palm OS device into a Boxee remote.

I was only able to use the Pre remote with my laptop, as I don’t currently have a TV hooked up to the software, but installing the app and getting it working didn’t take more than five minutes, and while some small beta-version bugs do exist, overall the app is pretty smooth.

The major catches seem to be that you have to have the WiFi on your phone enabled (which I find to be a big battery drain), and the UI design isn’t extremely intuitive — for example, the controls for play/pause/back/forward are hidden on the main screen in favor of the volume control, when both are essential pieces of functionality.

But now I have a remote for my computer without having to shell out twenty bucks for one of Apple’s flimsy-feeling clickers — and thus the important thing is this: I’ll be able to control my media remotely the next time I put my laptop on top of the toilet seat to watch TV while taking a bath (don’t judge if you haven’t tried it — because it’s awesome).

Boxee released a remote app for the iPhone/iPod Touch last year, and according to VP of Marketing Andrew Kippen via email, there is also a desktop control widget and a web-based remote that works on the Nokia N900. So far, there’s no remote yet for Android mobile devices, but “someone in the community” is working on it.

When asked if Boxee would be creating any new apps itself in the foreseeable future, Kippen replied, “While we may look at retooling our apps as we add new features, in the short-term we’ve seen the community respond (and respond well) to these needs, which allows us to focus on making great software to use the remote with.”

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Why Boxee Must Evolve or Die

Court filings in the three-year old copyright infringement suit between Viacom and YouTube have finally been made public, which should make some interesting reading and take over the rest of my afternoon. But in the meantime, YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine has written a pretty damning post on the YouTube blog, condemning Viacom for having its employees pose as normal users to upload promotional content to the video-sharing site.

Asking for a summary judgment in the case, YouTube argues that it should be protected by safe harbor provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which state that Internet hosts should not be found liable for content that is uploaded to their sites, so long as they respond to takedown notices issued by copyright owners within a reasonable period of time. In the blog post, Levine writes that the DMCA “recognizes that content owners, not service providers like YouTube, are in the best position to know whether a specific video is authorized to be on an Internet hosting service.”

Viacom might believe otherwise, arguing that YouTube should have done a better job of keeping copyrighted material off the site. But Levine argues that even if YouTube were tasked with doing so, Viacom’s actions would have made policing its content impossible. YouTube accuses Viacom of uploading its own content, and doing so in a way that made it difficult for YouTube to distinguish between its employees and common users. If true, the accusation is pretty damning. Levine writes:

“Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users.

The results were so effective, Levin writes, that Viacom couldn’t tell if a piece of content was uploaded by its employees or not, which resulted in Viacom demanding that some clips be taken down — and then later asking for them to be reinstated. “Given Viacom’s own actions,” Levine writes, “there is no way YouTube could ever have known which Viacom content was and was not authorized to be on the site.”

Related content on GigaOM Pro:

Will Automated Rights Management Take Down Fair Use? (subscription required)

http://www.htc.com/ca/press/htc-dis...ples-actions/10

"HTC Corporation today outlined its disagreement with Apple's legal actions and reiterated its commitment to creating a portfolio of innovative smartphones that gives consumers a variety of choices. Founded in 1997 with a passion for innovation and a vision for how smartphones would change people's lives, HTC has continually driven this vision by consistently introducing award-winning smartphones with U.S. mobile operators."

That has to be the most polite way to respond to a lawsuit I've ever read - who wrote this, a Canadian? Anyway, the press release outlines some of the interesting firsts that HTC has made in the market. I didn't realize they created the hardware for the first Windows PDA back in 1998. That would have been an HPC if memory serves - Palm-sized PCs weren't out yet, were they? I wonder which HPC HTC was an OEM for? Compaq? Philips? HP? NEC?

James White

   I have an ambitious schedule today as I want to play comments by William Lane Craig and Kevin Harris on the subject of Mormonism and the effort to help them become, well, "more orthodox." This is a classic example of abandoning a biblical paradigm, the apostolic example, and the use of a philosophically-oriented replacement, all the while painting those who would follow the biblical mandate as "anti-Mormons." Given that we were involved in this field of ministry years before these men, this is a must-do response.
   Hopefully that will not take more than 25 minutes or so, so that I will have time to address the comments of Joseph M. Holden, M.Div., president of Veritas Seminary, as he attempted to respond to the 1 John 5:1/ordo salutis discussion that has come up on the Pastor's Perspective program a few times over the past month. Should be a helpful program, Lord willing! So listen in live!
   Also, a quick word of correction (before we get the graphic fixed) about the upcoming Dividing Line episodes with Michael Brown. The dates are 3/25 and 4/1, as noted. However, 4/1 is a Thursday. Both will be an hour earlier than the normal Tuesday time so that Dr. Brown can do his own program at his regular time (we are much more flexible with webcasting than he can be with his network commitments), hence 10am PDT/1pm EDT. The program will run 90 minutes, no breaks, to get maximum presentation, discussion, and interaction. I have chosen three texts for us to discuss on one program (John 6:35-45, Romans 8:28-9:24, Eph. 1:1-14) and he gets to choose the texts for the other program (at the moment I only know the "all" passages will be included as a group). Our goal is to have a more textually oriented exchange, more focused than the programs we did before. I'm looking forward to them!

This post was written by Kasia Grabowska for last semester’s LIS 768: Library 2.0 & Networking Technologies class. Kasia has allowed me to repost it here.

After doing brand monitoring research for the past few weeks, looking closely at Skokie Public Library (and not so closely at several other libraries), I decided to put together a list of “do’s and don’ts” for librarians on successfully utilizing social media.

This is what I learned from doing brand monitoring and what I personally would recommend to libraries that are getting started with social media.

Tip #1: Learn how to monitor your brand

Join the RIGHT conversations at the RIGHT time. In other words, stay on top of what people are saying about you and make sure to respond, to let people know that you are listening and willing to join the conversation.

Tools to utilize for brand monitoring include RSS feeds, Google Alerts, Technorati, and staying on top of your Twitter, Facebook and other social media accounts. This is definitely the number 1 lesson I learned from this assignment.

Tip #2: Learn from your brand community

You’re already engaging in conversations, why not ask people for some feedback? There are plenty of quick and easy ways to get good information that will help you keep learning from what you’re doing and improving the process as you go along. Just make sure not to overdo it; remember to always engage in conversations as a person.

Tip #3: Have a game plan

Set goals, measure and iterate your social media efforts in order to continue to grow and improve your efforts. Make sure everyone who is involved in your social media strategy clearly understands the role and goals of this initiative. There’s nothing worse than joining a social network with no purpose, plan or a way to measure what you’re doing.

By using trackable links (like bit.ly or su.pr) to help track what your users are responding to, you will be able to measure your efforts and make improvements.

Tip #4: Promote, promote, promote

I noticed a lot of libraries who do wonderful things on Facebook, Twitter or Flickr yet they don’t include links to their social networks on their websites. Or libraries that use Twitter often but don’t follow anyone; that’s not a good way to start a conversation.

A library website should be an entry point to social media; you need to create awareness. People should not have to search for you on Facebook, or Twitter, you should reach out to every member of your community first.

Tip #5: Allow open, yet governed access for your employees

This is where a social media policy comes in. By making sure everyone who is involved in your efforts understands what to do (what they’re allowed to say, how they should respond in different situations, etc) you won’t have to monitor what each person does. Instead, you will be able to focus on making improvements.

One tip about your social media policy — make sure it’s succinct and to the point, otherwise no one will want to read it.

Tip #6: Stay relevant and be helpful

Use social media to build trust, credibility and awareness in your community. Instead of broadcasting information, try creating conversations. Remember, speaking doesn’t always result in being heard.

Be helpful, stay relevant and focus on your community’s needs. It’s also important to humanize your efforts; don’t hide behind your library’s logo, allow your users to get to know you as a person.

Tip #7: Give your community room to grow

Focus on small, consistent and ongoing change. Let your members decide how they want to use “their” online community. Listen to what they have to say and change your goals and objectives based on how your community wants to utilize social media.

Tip #8: Remember, you’re not alone

By building relationships with key people within your community who also utilize social media you can leverage your efforts and obtain better reach. People who are influencers, those who are natural communicators or leaders in your community can help your social media efforts immensely. Identify these people and ask for help. Word of mouth can be very powerful.

Tip #9: Go where your users are

Remember, you don’t have to be an early adopter. It is much better to wait for your community to start utilizing the technology before adding it to your social media arsenal. In short, go where your users are. It’s much easier for someone to join you on Facebook or Twitter if the person actually uses the technology.

Tip #10: Lead change

This is important, especially for libraries that can be very resistant to change at times: if you want to lead change, find one thing you said no to in the past and give it a try.

This is actually something I heard at a digital marketing conference I got a chance to attend last month, but I think it applies great to libraries and social media.