Goats. Part of the Team « AU Interns. Hi all, my apologies for the delay since my last post! What with the blizzards ravaging the city, schoolwork consuming my life, and a couple slow days in the office, I just didn’t have a whole lot to say! As of last Friday though, things are really picking up at my internship. As I said before I’m interning with MS&L PR Worldwide, a major international public relations firm.
As of last Wednesday and Friday, my work is starting to pile up–and it feels great! I’ll be honest, for the first weeks of my internship I fell into a bit of the part-time intern slump. At MS&L there are three of us interning, two of which have already graduated and are interning full-time. Thanks to my course schedule, I’m only available to work on Tuesday/Friday afternoons and all day on Wednesdays. Clearly, that’s changed! Although I can’t give too many details here, I’ll just say that I’ve been put on my first real project team now and I’m thrilled about the opportunity.
That’s not to say I’m not learning. Mobile Location-Based Services Could Rake In $12.7 Billion By 2014: Report. The rapid evolution of mobile phones, both on a hardware and a software level, combined with a surge in application storefront releases, deployments of higher-capacity network infrastructure and recent developments in positioning technologies could drive revenues from mobile location-based services to more than $12.7 billion by 2014, according to a new report published by Juniper Research.
The report found that while MLBS had experienced a number of false dawns from 2000 to 2007, improvements in handset UIs together with easier consumer access to an range of app distribution channels had led to greater interest from service providers in providing mobile location-based applications. While service usage will be highest in Far East China over the next few years, greatest revenues will come from Western Europe, Juniper forecasts. Revenues will come from sales of apps through application stores and other channels, but also from mobile advertising tied to those apps. Free IHOP Pancakes on National Pancake Day.
Claim: IHOP restaurants are offering free pancakes on National Pancake Day. Origins: Whenever someone inquires what my favorite kind of food is, the answer is always the same: "Free! " So, on 2013, IHOP restaurants (formerly known as the International House of Pancakes) will be dispensing my favorite kind of food. While IHOP normally ties its National Pancake Day celebration to (or Fat Tuesday), also known as International (or National) in 2011 it has chosen to hold its event one week before Shrove Tuesday: Known also as Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras, National Pancake Day dates back several centuries to when the English prepped for fasting during Lent. In celebration of the occasion, participating IHOP restaurants will be offering their guests one free short stack of pancakes: Since beginning its National Pancake Day celebration in 2006, IHOP has raised more than $10 million to support charities in the communities in which it operates.
See you there — and don't forget the syrup! Twitter Perceptions of Google Buzz Over Time [INFOGRAPHIC] Analyst: Microsoft’s Natal to outsell Sony’s Arc 5 to 1. He’s already predicted that the Xbox 360′s motion-sensing ‘Natal’ controller will outsell the PlayStation 3 equivalent, the ‘Arc’. Now, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter has produced numbers - and his vision of the future will not please Sony. Pachter thinks Natal will shift 10 million units within a year of going on sale, while the PlayStation Arc will be limited to “1 to 2 million” sales. In other words, according to Pachter, Natal will outsell Arc by 5 to 1 units.
Why? Is it because Arc looks like a sex toy? “I think that the Sony motion controller will have some problems gaining traction, since it is not an “in the box” solution. So there you go, Pachter isn’t just betting small change on Natal, but pretty much every last one of his earthly possessions. [Via VG247] Stabenow 22nd Senator To Join Public Option Push. Jobs Bill Passes Major Hurdle After 5 GOPers Join Dems. Five Republicans joined Democrats in a key cloture vote moments ago, allowing debate on a jobs package to move forward. After overcoming this hurdle, debate on the bill can begin. Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) broke with his party and voted with the Democrats. So did Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Susan Collins (R-ME), Kit Bond (R-MO) and George Voinovich (R-OH). Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) was the only Democrat to break with his party. The final vote tally was 62-30. It had been uncertain earlier in the day whether Republicans would help Democrats reach 60 votes and overcome the threat of a GOP filibuster.
"Work with us on this," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said moments before the vote. Reid also warned Republicans: Fail to support this bill, and the minority would "confirm their reputation as the 'Party of No.'" And after the vote? Brown issued the following statement about his vote: The 5 Best Fields for Paid Internships - (via @kathyoreilly) /via @brett. Twitter Strikes Deal To Bring Free SMS Tweets To Haiti. Following the disastrous earthquake in Haiti earlier this year, a number of web companies have been setting up special programs to try and do their part to help.
Twitter has been one of the most active, as the company has made great use of its social graph to get the word out on how to help through donations and other means. Now they’ve done something else. Twitter was able to strike a deal with Digicel to bring free SMS tweets to Haitian citizens (who use that carrier). Previously, people in the country would be charged a messaging fee each time they tweeted, so obviously this will help them communicate with the outside world a little easier. And it’s very simple to set use even if you don’t have a Twitter account yet. As co-founder Biz Stone writes today on the company blog: To activate the service, mobile phone users in Haiti can text follow @oxfam to 40404.
Stone credits Twitter mobile lead Kevin Thau with striking the deal. CPAC reveals Republican identity crisis. This past weekend the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held their annual conference in Washington, D.C. Many of the party stalwarts and presidential hopefuls such as Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck, and former Vice President Dick Cheney were in attendance. After watching the videos and reading the speeches one can clearly see a party that is at war with itself in terms of ideology and imagery. Are they the party of the “tea-baggers” with Dick Armey and Sarah Palin or the party of Mitt Romney who has now moved to the right on abortion and gay rights (when he once supported them) and against health care reform that he championed as governor of Massachusetts?
What do the Republicans stand for and which face will they turn to as they articulate their message in upcoming elections? A straw poll was conducted during the CPAC conference. The problem with ideologies is that by themselves they are not rational. Boehner: Obama Has 'Crippled The Credibility' Of Health Summit. President Obama's latest appeal for bipartisanship appears to be eliciting the usual response. Obama on Monday morning put forth his own health care reform plan, intending it to serve as an "opening bid" for Thursday's bipartisan summit meeting.
But House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) quickly released a statement charging that the new proposal seriously jeopardizes the entire bipartisan meeting because it is built off the bills already passed by Democrats in the Senate and the House. "The President has crippled the credibility of this week's summit by proposing the same massive government takeover of health care based on a partisan bill the American people have already rejected. This new Democrats-only backroom deal doubles down on the same failed approach that will drive up premiums, destroy jobs, raise taxes, and slash Medicare benefits," Boehner said.
Nevertheless, the GOP appears particularly desperate to delegitimize this week's summit. Wonk Room » GOP Senators To Vote Against Jobs Bill That Has Policies They Call ‘Imperative,’ ‘Effective,’ ‘Very Smart’ By Pat Garofalo on February 22, 2010 at 12:13 pm "GOP Senators To Vote Against Jobs Bill That Has Policies They Call ‘Imperative,’ ‘Effective,’ ‘Very Smart’" Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) spent the last week looking to drum up some Republican votes for a $15 billion jobs bill that is scheduled to face a cloture vote today (which would begin debate). Republican leaders have been pressuring members to simply block the legislation, but on Fox News Sunday yesterday, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that the GOP “may well” support the bill. However, two Senators have definitively said that they are going to vote against the bill. And both are doing so despite the inclusion of provisions that they have been extremely supportive of: – Sen.
In fact, Republicans aren’t even pretending to oppose the jobs bill on substance, but instead are complaining about the process, after Reid threw out an $85 billion “compromise” bill negotiated by Sens. I think this Honest Tea bottle is an excellent way to make a packaging change and still maintain brand values-- Big City - Beyond Twitter - An App That Lets You Truly See City.
The 50 Top American Philanthropists. DSCC Chair Menendez Signs Public Option Letter. Bit.ly, a simple url shortener. Are GOPers Deliberately Lying About the Stimulus? -- Politics Daily. Columnist At the White House this week, the main narrative in the press room was this: Has President Barack Obama lost the message war over the $862 billion stimulus? Noting the one-year anniversary of the enactment of that legislation, reporters again and again asked press secretary Robert Gibbs some version of this question. What could the guy say? Especially when the answer is yes. Still, Gibbs couldn't escape the journos who were fixated on this political story and who wanted to squeeze an admission of defeat out of the White House. For days, Republicans derided the stimulus, which they had voted against, as a flop that has achieved nothing. Beyond this rank hypocrisy -- which is par for the course in Washington -- the issue is whether the Republican Party is knowingly pushing a lie.
And look at a statement House Minority Leader Eric Cantor zapped out this week. Obama has indeed lost the message war, and he and his crew can be slammed for that. Session 1: lessons from rick Warren starting now... America: More Wind Power Potential than We Thought - GOOD Blog - GOOD. Hollrr: Foursquare for Product Reviews. This post is part of Mashable's Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. Name: Hollrr Quick Pitch: Hollrr is Foursquare for product discovery. It turns finding great new stuff into a game.
Genius Idea: Hollrr is a service that plugs into Facebook and Twitter and lets you share products and services that you love with your friends. You can find other people to follow on Holllrr, and you can "Hollrr" — or give a shout-out to — items as you see them come through the stream in real time. We like that Hollrr easily integrates with other services and that you can easily re-Hollrr stuff. The only real problem we have with Hollrr is that all activity takes place inside the website. How do you let people know about stuff you really like? Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark. The filibuster's conservative tilt. Megan Carpentier's argument in favor of the filibuster sells itself as a filibuster defense that even liberals can love, but actually shows why liberals should want to rid the Senate of the practice as quickly as possible, and why it's important for people to be really clear on what the filibuster does, and doesn't, apply to.
Commentators like Ezra Klein of the Washington Post have argued that getting rid of the filibuster is the "right" thing to do, because rolling back gay rights, repealing taxes willy-nilly and installing ideological demagogues in lifetime judicial appointments is more democratic-minded than allowing the minority party any right to determine their country's policy agenda. I'd rather let a healthcare reform bill that lacks too much in the way of reform (and a great deal of popular support) fall by the wayside than a Senate rule that meant my friends in same-sex relationships might someday be able to enjoy the federal benefits of marriage.
As for George W. Bc.com Video Player. Washington, DC | Tiger Talks: Woods Breaks Silence At 11am. (Pool photo) PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Tiger Woods apologized for cheating on his wife and says he is unsure when he will return to competitive golf. "I was unfaithful. I had affairs. As for coming back to the PGA Tour, the planet's best golfer said: "I do plan to return to golf one day. Woods talked for more than 13 minutes Friday from the clubhouse at the TPC Sawgrass, home of the PGA Tour.
"I said 'I'm so proud of you. Admitting he felt he "deserved to enjoy the temptations" that came with his fabulous success, Woods said he is solely responsible for his actions. Woods said he was in treatment for 45 days and will return for more therapy, adding he has more work to do to resolve his personal problems. TIMELINE: Tiger Woods' Relationship with Elin Nordegren Woods had not talked in public since his traffic accident Nov. 27 triggered shocking revelations about Woods' serial infidelity. Friday's event was tightly controlled, with only a few journalists allowed to watch Woods live.
Had no idea ppl waited in line for the library... Nice to know ppl still appreciate them. Communication and Congress 101. Congress is in trouble. And it’s not just Democrats, either. In fact, the 2010 midterms are the least of Congress’ problems. They’re in trouble as an institution of democracy. As the largest and arguably most important elected body of the U.S. government, they’re suffering a communications crisis of epic proportions. Really, it’s even more than a crisis. The cause is simply public perception. Let’s see, they kicked off the year by granting equal pay for equal work. Oh, and they rescued the U.S. economy by passing one of the most comprehensive and successful spending bills in history. So, why does everyone still hate them? Their polling numbers are literally at rock bottom. Dear Congress, This isn’t going to be some minor fix. I think you need to do three things. First, make President Barack Obama’s “question time” with Republicans a regular event.
See, question time didn’t just allow Obama to score points (although he certainly schooled House Republicans). Transparency builds trust. Terrorism? Plane Crashes into Austin Office Building. Lovely iPhone Rumor of the Day: Multitasking in OS 4.0 [iPhone Rumors] — Just Another iPhone Blog. Please Rob Me: The Dangers of Online Oversharing. The Left's Top 25 Journalists. Obama Nominates New National-Service Inspector General - Government & Politics Watch. Sarah Palin Disses Twitter, Calls It “Little Twittering Thing”