ImaginativePRO Blog

CERN CONFIRMS THAT THEIR LARGE HADRON COLLIDER TRAPPED HYDROGEN ANTIMATTER ATOMS FOR 1000 SECONDS

In a paper published online by the journal Nature Physics today, the ALPHA experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research or CERN¹ reports that it has succeeded in trapping antimatter atoms for over 16 minutes: long enough to begin to study their properties in detail. ALPHA is part of a broad programme at CERN's antiproton decelerator (AD)²investigating the mysteries of one of nature's most elusive substances.

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Today, we live in a universe apparently made entirely of matter, yet at the big bang matter and antimatter would have existed in equal quantities. Nature seems to have a slight preference for matter, which allows our universe and everything in it to exist. One way of investigating nature's preference for matter is to compare hydrogen atoms with their antimatter counterparts, and that's what makes today's result important.

"We can keep the antihydrogen atoms trapped for 1000 seconds," explained ALPHA spokesperson Jeffrey Hangst of Aarhus University. "This is long enough to begin to study them -- even with the small number that we can catch so far."

In the paper published today, some 300 trapped antiatoms are reported to have been studied. The trapping of antiatoms will allow antihydrogen to be mapped precisely using laser or microwave spectroscopy so that it can be compared to the hydrogen atom, which is among the best-known systems in physics. Any difference should become apparent under careful scrutiny. Trapping antiatoms could also provide a complementary approach to measuring the influence of gravity on antimatter, which will soon be investigated with antihydrogen by the AEgIS experiment.

What is anti-matter?

  

Dr. Jeffrey Hangst from CERN describes how they trapped anti-matter.

 

 

Another important consequence of trapping antihydrogen for long periods is that the antiatoms have time to relax into their ground state, which will allow ALPHA to conduct the precision measurements necessary to investigate a symmetry known as CPT. Symmetries in physics describe how processes look under certain transformations. C, for example, involves swapping the electric charges of the particles involved in the process. P is like looking in the mirror, while T involves reversing the arrow of time.

Individually, each of these symmetries is broken -- processes do not always look the same. CPT, however, says that a particle moving forward through time in our universe should be indistinguishable from an antiparticle moving backwards through time in a mirror universe, and it is thought to be perfectly respected by nature. CPT symmetry requires that hydrogen and antihydrogen have identical spectra.

Says Hangst,  

"Any hint of CPT symmetry breaking would require a serious rethink of our understanding of nature. But half of the universe has gone missing, so some kind of rethink is apparently on the agenda."

The next step for ALPHA is to start performing measurements on trapped antihydrogen, and this is due to get underway later this year. The first step is to illuminate the trapped anti-atoms with microwaves, to determine if they absorb exactly the same frequencies (or energies) as their matter cousins.

Explained Hangst,

"If you hit the trapped antihydrogen atoms with just the right microwave frequency, they will escape from the trap, and we can detect the annihilation -- even for just a single atom. This would provide the first ever look inside the structure of antihydrogen -- element number 1 on the anti-periodic table."

Notes:

1. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. One candidate for accession: Romania. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status.

A lot of my fans don't know what CERN really is.  These YouTube videos should help explain this $10 billion project. 

A 3-minute tour of CERN

 

Theoretical physics professor Michio Kaku talks about CERN's test run after CERN was shutdown for a year and one-half to fix mechanical problems.

 

An excellent documentary of CERN explaining what it hopes to accomplish (sorry about the poor quality).   This is when they thought CERN was going to cost only $6 billion.  HA, HA.   

 

Click here to view parts 2, 3, 4 and 5

2. ALPHA is one of several AD experiments investigating antimatter at CERN. ATRAP has pioneered trapping techniques, and is also investigating antihydrogen. ASACUSA has made measurements of unprecedented precision of the antiproton's mass, so far not revealing any divergence from that of the proton. ASACUSA is also developing complementary techniques for studying antihydrogen. AEgIS studies how antiprotons fall under gravity, and ACE investigates the potential use of antiprotons for cancer therapy.

COMMENTARY:    For physicists, antimatter is probably the most valuable substance ever; the slightest bit of it could provide extremely valuable information that can help clear out some of the most stressing issues in modern physics. However, the thing is these little gifts are pretty hard to wrap. However, the ALPHA project at CERN achieved this remarkable feat and took a huge leap towards understanding one of the questions about the Universe: what’s the actual difference between matter and antimatter.

The team had 38 successful attempts to capture single antihydrogen atoms in a magnetic field for about 170 miliseconds.  Says Jeffrey Hangs, spokesman for ALPHA collaboration at CERN,

“We’re ecstatic. This is five years of hard work."

And they should be.  Since it restarted working, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN had quite a few good moments, but this is the best one so far. Antimatter (or the lakc of it) still poses one of the biggest mysteries ever; according to the theories up to date, at the Big Bang, matter and antimatter were produced in equal amounts, but somehow all the antimatter dissappeared, so now researchers are forced to turn to more and more advanced and delicate methods in order to find it and study it.

As you can guess by its name, antimatter is just like matter, only in reverse. So the antiprotons are just like normal protons, but they are negatively charged, while electrons have a positive charge. The main objective of this stage of the ALPHA project was to compare the relative energy of hydrogen and antihydrogen in order to confirm that antimatter and matter have the same electromagnetic properties, which is a key feature of the standard model.

This is not the first time antimatter was captured, the first time it was in 2002, with the ATHENA project; however, it lasted just several miliseconds, which made it impossible to analyze. What happens is that when you combine matter with antimatter, they vanish with a big boom, releasing high energy photons (gamma rays).  In the ATHENA project, antihydrogen combined with hydrogen from the walls of the contained and annihilated each other.

To prevent this from happening, the ALPHA team used a totally different technique, which was way more difficult: capturing the antimatter in a magnetic trap. To capture the 38 atoms, they had to repeat the experiment no less than 335 times.

Of course, achieving these atoms was very costly, but the effort was definitely worth it. However, physicists are looking into other methods that could prove to be more effective in times to come.

I have been poking fun at CERN ever since they built the multi-billion dollar monstrosity and it experienced one problem after another, after another.  They cranked it up in 2007, but it didn't work.  Finally in 2009 they were able to get the damn thing to finally work.  

At the end of 2010, they have accomplished something significant--capturing anti-matter in a vacuum chamber--but what exactly have they started?  Have we taken the Genie out of the bottle?

We are venturing into the unknown area where there are a lot of 'ifs'.   What will happen when we start working with heavier elements?  Let's hope nobody gets hurt and we don't open a time warp or create a black hole in the universe.

Courtesy of an article dated June 5, 2011 appearing in Science Daily and an article dated November 18, 2011 appearing in ZME Science

HOW FACECAKE'S 'SWIVEL' USES AUGMENTED REALITY TECHNOLOGY TO CREATE VIRTUAL "FITTING ROOMS" THAT COULD CHANGE HOW WE SHOP

FaceCake Marketing Technologies CEO Linda Smith walked on stage at the Spring 2011 Demo Conference in Palm Desert, Calif., on Feb. 28 and tried on clothes. Looking at herself in an interactive mirror, she tested out virtual dresses, handbags, and jewelry. The interactive "fitting room," called Swivel, is a mix of software created by her company, FaceCake of Calabasas, Calif., and a hacked 3D camera from Microsoft's Kinect gaming console.

Kinect started out as a controller-free gaming system, but developers such as FaceCake are writing new applications for the system's 3D camera. Kinect cameras essentially transform computers into two-way mirrors whose system can see users. One potential use of Kinect is making accurate 3D models of people to help them purchase everything from swimsuits to jeans online.

 

In 2011, 148.1 million shoppers, or about 83 percent of U.S. Internet users ages 14 and older, will make a purchase online, according to eMarketer. In the first quarter of 2011, retail e-commerce sales totaled $46 billion, according to the Census Bureau of the U.S. Commerce Dept. Yet almost 38 percent of women don't buy online, according to Forrester Research (FORR), because they want to be able to see and touch items before they hand over a credit card. Retailers have tried to help shoppers overcome reservations with new visualization tools such as augmented reality, which lets customers try on clothes virtually, according to eMarketer.  Says Noah Elkin, principal analyst at eMarketer,

"The more lifelike you can make your e-commerce experience, the better that experience will be.  If you're a retailer, it will make your site a more persuasive place to go to make that purchase."

AUGMENTED-REALITY APPLICATIONS

In the retail sector, companies have been experimenting with two-dimensional augmented-reality applications that let customers try on clothes virtually. Last Sept. 10, Macy's (M) installed a Magic Fitting Room in its Herald Square Store in New York. Within minutes, shoppers were trying on the most popular tops, dresses, and jackets, creating as many as 16 outfits that could be stored in a digital closet and then shared on Facebook and by e-mail. Over the next six weeks, more than 16,000 fitting sessions were completed, according to the maker of the Magic Fitting Room, digital marketing and technology agency LBI International.

 

Similarly in April, Swiss watchmaker Tissot ran an interactive display in a Harrods window, inviting passersby to try on watches. Mobile apps also let EBay shoppers try on sunglasses or outfits superimposed on photos of themselves. Still, these efforts lack the depth of 3D images.

The 3D camera technology is just now becoming sufficiently affordable to be included in these marketing efforts.  Tom Chamberlain, V.P. of business development at FaceCake says,  

"Before we were looking at cameras that were $1,000 to $2,000 and didn't do what we need. It's crazy that the Kinect camera is $150 and I can get one at Best Buy."

At the Demo Conference, FaceCake's CEO Linda Smith took the stage, wearing a sleeveless black dress. Looking at herself in the mirror, Smith reached out and scrolled through virtual handbags with a wave of her hand. She tried on a tan one from Marc Jacobs and then decided to check out a Burberry plaid bag to see how it looked with a double-strand pearl necklace from Nordstrom. She wasn't actually holding the bags, but the mirror indicated that she was. Smith switched the bag from hand to hand. When she rotated, the bag stayed on her arm.

AUGMENTED FITTINGS IN MOSCOW

FaceCake isn't the only company to try hacking the Kinect for retail applications. In Moscow, a company called AR Door created an augmented fitting room for retailer Topshop and then displayed it in the company's Moscow store for three days, starting on May 5.

 

Recently, FaceCake has begun targeting the bridal industry. Swivel can, for example, do weight-loss visualization to enable a bride to see how she might look if she were 15 pounds lighter in the dress of her dreams, Smith says. The company recently figured out how to get two people into Swivel at the same time, so a bride and a bridesmaid could virtually try on coordinated dresses.

FaceCake is starting with a few boutiques in Los Angeles and is talking to a mall company about installing Swivel in September. It's pushing for a fourth-quarter release in stores and homes.

Perhaps the biggest surprise for FaceCake came shortly after the Demo Conference, when Microsoft called to express interest in the app. Smith and Chamberlin were invited to visit Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., Retail Experience Center, a 20,000-square-foot facility where the company experiments with retail innovations. "They had interesting ideas about how to move forward," she says. "They've been incredibly helpful and supportive."

COMMENTARY:    Augmented reality technology has come a long way since I started writing about it a couple of years ago when a little known Japanese company demonstrated AR at the 2009 International CES show in Las Vegas.

Augmented reality can be taken to extremes and Japanese architecture student Keiichi Matsuda took it upon himself to imagine the future of augmented reality in a post I made back on July 10, 2010.

Want to know more about augmented reality? Check out Augmented Views.

Courtesy of an article dated June 6, 2011 appearing in BusinessWeek

 

MEET BADOO: THE WORLD'S LARGEST DATING SOCIAL NETWORK AND ITS RECLUSIVE FOUNDER ANDREY ADREEVE

 

It's a 120-million-member social network that's adding over 300,000 users a day, with more than 4.3 million daily photo and video uploads, and seven billion monthly page views. It has Facebook's fastest-growing app, with 570,000 new daily users, making it the third-biggest app of all after FarmVille and CityVille. Hugely profitable, it's forecast to generate hundreds of millions of dollars this year, and is being aggressively courted by venture-capital firms valuing it in the billions. And it's run from London by a secretive Russian serial entrepreneur who has steadfastly refused to be interviewed or photographed. Until now.

Badoo is the world's largest social network that you probably haven't yet heard of. Run from 800-square-metre loft-style offices in Soho, it is brilliantly effective at providing one simple and universally compelling service: hooking up members according to their profile pictures and location. "Chat, flirt, socialise and have fun!," implores the home page, alongside photos of prospective friends such as Terri, 21 ("Wants a candlelit dinner"), and Christopher, 25 ("Wants wake up with a girl" [sic]). Sign in, and a message declares that "204,516 girls [or guys] near you are looking to meet a guy your age!". Explain your intentions (the pull-down menu's suggestions include "to talk about sex", "to get a massage", "to flirt") and Tatyana, Oshrit or Gary might just give you access to their stash of private photos.

Still barely registering in Britain or the US, the free-to-use network -- on the web and via smartphones -- is a mass phenomenon with members in:

• Brazil - 14.1 million members 
• Mexico - 9 million members 
• France - 8.2 million members 
• Spain - 6.5 million members
• Italy - 6 million members 

Relying on word-of-mouth rather than any marketing spend, it has cracked the internet's eternal conundrum: how to persuade users to pay hard cash in a world drowning in free digital services and content, by charging members each time they want to boost their visibility to others searching for a date.

A year after Badoo's 2006 launch, when it had 12 million members, Russia's Finam Technology Fund bought a ten per cent stake for $30 million, valuing it at $300 million (this year Finam will realise an option for a further ten per cent at a higher valuation). Today, A-list investors such as Sequoia and Accel are courting the business and there is talk of an initial public share offering.  

Bart Swanson, hired as the new CEO in September 2010, expanded Amazon in Europe and run EMI in France. Says Swanson:  

"Cracking the Anglo-Saxon market will probably give us double to triple today's reach. The opportunity for people discovery [through Badoo] is a horrendously large market -- it's a confluence of social, proximity, mobile, and it's extremely local. The basic mechanism of what Andrey has developed is genius -- just like Google with its AdWords, it's people paying for self-promotion. And it works."

Andrey is Andrey Andreev, originally from Moscow but based in London for the past six years, who founded Badoo on a string of other highly profitable Russian internet businesses: Mamba, SpyLog, Begun. Andreev, a youthful 37 with a cherubic smile below a floppy fringe, has so far eluded media attention:  Russian Forbes last year called him "one of the most mysterious businessmen in the West" (it also reported his original name as Andrey Ogandzhanyants, under which the SpyLog.net domain was registered).

We were introduced in January by Israeli investor Yossi Vardi at Burda's DLD conference in Munich, which Vardi co-chairs, and later met in London. (Vardi has no stake in Badoo.) And then in mid-February, alone in an office belonging to Freud Communications, Andreev agreed to share his story. It has been a busy few days. Andreev explains that Michael Moritz, the legendary Sequoia investor who took early stakes in Google and Apple, has just flown in from Palo Alto to meet him; he has also been meeting Kevin Comolli of Accel's London office. Moritz declined to speak to Wired, but Comolli -- whose investments include Playfish, Kayak and Getjar -- calls Andreev a "genius" with whom he would like to work.  Says Comolli,

"Badoo is a social phenomenon.  It's explosive growth, viral, it's playful, it seems consistent with offline social interaction but in this hypervirality mode that only the internet has enabled. The secret sauces in companies like this are so nuanced, and the difference between getting it wrong and right lies only with these special people like Andrey. He's created something very powerful."

The 5' 8" Andreev explains quietly and precisely, the reasons why he has remained so silent?

"I love to focus on making things rather than exploring myself.  I don't feel that it helps to make money or make business.  I feel Badoo is ready for me to identify with. Because it works, it grows like crazy. And people love it."

There is another unspoken reason: with an IPO being considered, the company needs to raise awareness to maximise the valuation being floated by investors and bankers (currently being discussed at "around $2 billion", according to Andreev). The business is printing money: revenues and profit are growing by "double-digit percentages" each month, he says. "We see bankers everywhere. We are like celebrities."

Badoo launched in late 2006 in Spain, where Andreev was then living, as a conventional photo-sharing website.  Says Andreev,

"We assumed that the 'meet new people' idea wouldn't work there -- Spanish girls are like princesses, you couldn't touch them, you had to meet their parents first before inviting them to the cinema."

The site wasn't generating revenue, but numbers were growing sharply:  the 2007 Google Zeitgeist list of fastest-rising search terms listed "Badoo" second, just below "iPhone".  In 2008, Andreev decided to test his assumptions of Spanish women and as an experiment refocused the site on meeting new people. "And the girls didn't leave. At that time, France was growing fast, Italy was. Then one day we discovered we had 30,000 registrations in Turkey [that day]. What happened? Was it a hacker attack or scammers? No, someone wrote an article about us. It's as if all the users jumped on the bus and went there. Bang -- in two months, suddenly we have a Turkish market with a million members." Today the overall gender ratio is 45 percent female, 55 per cent male (in Brazil and Poland women outnumber men); 86 percent of users are aged 18 to 34.

Andreev introduced some simple premium services into his revenue model:

• Rank Higher During Searches - You could pay a dollar or a euro to "rise up" the search results, and so attract greater attention. 
• Increase Profile Photo Visibility - You could pay again to have your profile photo more widely visible across the site. 
• Virtual Gifts - He introduced virtual gifts to buy for your prospective date. "No one's pushing you to spend money, but if you want to attract more users, you have to pay," he explains. 

Says Andreev,

"You pay to advertise yourself.  If you want something to go faster, you pay. And some people pay tens of times every day to rise up.  But people love advertising themselves. Lots of people use this function several times a day. They become addicted."

By the end of 2009, the site had 48 million registered users -- a fifth of whom, then CEO Neil Bryant said at the time, were paying to boost their profile.

Andreev explains his idea for a mobile location-based Badoo:

"Then we had the idea of mobile -- how to meet people nearby. We understood that people could meet each other in a big town, but how much more exciting to see who's sitting next to you in a café? Or you can just walk past a nightclub and see who you can pick up before you get in. It's another opportunity to hook up random people for adventure. We're talking about real life, real time. We know this girl is 500 metres from here now."

Badoo Mobile launched last summer on the iPhone, and in March on Android phones. Within weeks, with barely any marketing, the iPhone app was the number-one social-networking app in France; after eight months, it had been downloaded 1.5 million times. Andreev sees proximity as key to the business's future. Even desktop computer users can share their location by downloading an app that accesses Wi-Fi networks, IP addresses and other data points. "If you're sitting at home and someone's walking with an iPhone nearby, we know the distance between you. We can also show the iPhone user that you're nearby. So it works for everyone."

 

Badoo Today

• 115,480,530 members
• in 180 countries
• 134,628 new users per day
• 506,336 users online now
• 1,517,000 photos and videos uploaded daily
• 200+ employees
• who speak 25 languages

According to Pikimal, Badoo's demographics are as follows:

Total Membership	123.5 Mil
Age Ranges Of Members
Members Between 13-17 Years	9.9 Mil
Members Between 18-34 Years	45.7 Mil
Members Over 35 Years	63.0 Mil
Gender Of Members
Number Of Female Users	43.2 Mil
Number Of Male Users	80.3 Mil
Ethnicity Of Members
Asian Members	2.5 Mil
Black Members	4.9 Mil
Hispanic Members	86.5 Mil
Caucasian Members	24.7 Mil
Location Of Members
United States	2.2 Mil
United Kingdom	1.0 Mil
Canada	0.8 Mil
Mexico	4.8 Mil
France	11.1 Mil
Germany	1.8 Mil
Italy	16.7 Mil
Spain	16.3 Mil
India
Other	14.4 Mil

So where does Badoo rank by visitors per day in comparison with other social networks?  

According to Quantcast, Badoo's global web traffic is not available, but here are their estimates for the U.S.

 

If the above estimates for Badoo's U.S. traffic are correct, then Badoo is definitely making tremendous headway against social network sites like Facebook and other dating sites in a relatively short period of time (6 months). 

According to Inside Facebook, Badoo has been around for years, mostly as a slickly-designed dating social network site, but it introduced a Facebook app version in October, and it’s recently been challenging many larger dating competitors.

The app has had a huge December, growing from 3.19 million monthly active users and 365,000 daily active users a month ago to 10.8 million MAU and 1.34 million DAU today — making it the second-largest dating title by MAU and the largest by DAU on Facebook, according to our AppData tracking service.

The company’s site claims upwards of 115 million members total, and also utilizes a Facebook Connect integration that works with its Facebook app. Using Connect or the app, a user automatically is fitted with a profile that includes their name, age, location, sex and profile photos.

Since hiring Bart Swanson, Andreev has stepped back from day-to-day management to focus on product development. And, yes, he is thinking about his next project.   Says Andrey,

"Always -- I have a black box of things to do, but it's not easy to jump from one to another." What type of business? "Look at my experience -- it won't necessarily be a dating or hook-up service. But it will be internet. The mobile internet is the biggest opportunity in the world. Smartphones outsold PCs last quarter. The opportunities will include meeting new people. Hook-up on mobile is a multibillion business. And on tablets.  If today 90-95 percent [of engagement] is via the web, in a year 50 percent will be mobile,"

Does Andreev have Facebook in his sights? He says,

"Badoo is more of a social network than Facebook, as on Facebook you interact with your existing friends in an absolutely virtual life.  Badoo is more social:  it provokes you to go down on the street and meet these people."

As for Andreev's next move, in Swanson's words, "he's built up the mousetrap, he's involved in the strategic issues, but he's not that involved on the details and he's phasing himself out. My challenge is to keep him here as long as possible."

Does he fear becoming more public? "For now, it's not a big problem," Andreev replies, "as now we have a company that's successful." He pauses. "It's a human thing. You have something cool. This is mine -- I made it. It's like a kid. Before you have this, what's there to talk about? That I'm cool?"

NOTE:   TO READ THE REMAINDER OF THIS ARTICLE CLICK THE LINK BELOW 

COMMENTARY:   There are several things that I like about Badoo.  

• It differentiates itself because it is a dating social network and its slick look is specifically designed for the dating scene.  The combination works well because it combines the social networking element and the dating.  Dating service members usually leave the site once they find a mate, but the social network element keeps you locked in--brilliant.  
• Unlike Facebook, which is very drab by comparison, Badoo has more color, and is full of life, fun and enjoyment. 
• Badoo leans heavily towards Millennials (18-34 yrs of age), which is the sweet spot for dating, and also represents some of the heaviest users of social networks.
• It's unique premium pricing model allows users to "advertise themselves" in order to move up in profile and photo searches and users can give virtual gifts (virtual box of chocolates, bouquet of flowers, and so forth).  
• Uses a location-based mobile dating app.

Although Badoo's membership leans heavily toward males, this is not that unusual for a site that emphasizes developing dating relationships.

I tend to agree with Andreev that Badoo is "more social" than Facebook.  It's much more one-on-on, designed to build closer and more intimate relationships between members of the opposite sex, not just close friends and business associates.

I like this guy Andrey Andreev because like many very successful entrepreneurs he left college at an early age then he caught the entrepreneurial bug.  Andrey has a lot of street smarts, not afraid to experiment, uses his gut feelings.  If it doesn't work, he tries something else, until it sticks. 

Check out the Official Badoo Blog to learn more about this incredible social dating site.

Courtesy of an article dated April 25, 2011 appearing in  Wired Magazine UK, an article dated December 24, 2010 appearing in Inside Facebook and Pikimal and the Official Badoo Blog 

THE BUSINESS OF COUNTER-TERRORISM AND THE ELITE SEAL TEAM SIX, THE SECRET FIGHTING GROUP THAT GOT OSAMA BIN LADEN

 

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration has been secretly building up its ranks of hunter-killer commandos, such as the Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden.

Since 2009, the U.S. has boosted the number of strike teams in Afghanistan from four to 20, each with 10 to 100 men. These and other special-operations forces have carried out thousands of raids in the past year, officials said, killing about 3,200 insurgents and capturing approximately 8,000 more.

A senior U.S. official said stepped-up raids in Afghanistan honed the teams' skills, increased intelligence about militants in Pakistan and gave President Barack Obama confidence that a SEAL assault on bin Laden's compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad could succeed.

The raid on the bin Laden compound has raised the curtain on this and a host of other secret military capabilities, including the possible existence of new stealth helicopter technology and commando teams' use of trained dogs. Although the military jealously guards such details, the chance to take out the al Qaeda leader appeared worth the trade-off of revealing some of the commando teams' tradecraft.

Few have publicly criticized the use of hunter-killer commandos in the wake of the SEAL team's successful strike. But in the past, some critics have expressed worry that use of the teams amounts to targeted killings and that inserting commandos in countries where the U.S. isn't at war can threaten to enmesh the U.S. in bigger, more costly conflicts.

Hunting al Qaeda fighters and gathering intelligence on bin Laden was a prime justification for the buildup of commando units in Afghanistan. But their mission isn't likely to end with bin Laden's death. Officials say the Pentagon intends to further bolster the teams and increase the number of missions they are assigned to carry out.

Says a U.S. official,

"They are building their target lists and stacking them up.  These guys have never been as busy as they are now."

Mr. Obama planned to travel Friday to Fort Campbell, Ky., to meet with members of the team involved in the strike on bin Laden's compound. The commandos belong to Joint Special Operations Command, the Fort Bragg, N.C.-based headquarters, usually called JSOC, which oversees the U.S. military counterterrorism missions around the world.

Since the beginning of last year, the Obama administration has embraced the hunter-killer mission with vigor.

The military distinguishes between counterinsurgency—which focuses on protecting the locals and winning their trust with government services and economic development—and what the Pentagon calls counterterrorism, which in Afghanistan is a campaign to hunt down top insurgent leaders and foreign fighters.

Some in the White House view the military's counterinsurgency mission with skepticism, worried about the huge expense of having large numbers of U.S. troops deployed overseas. By contrast, the JSOC counterterrorism teams are small, travel light and require little in the way of the heavy logistics needed to sustain conventional forces.

In Afghanistan, JSOC units are credited with weakening the Taliban over the past year with constant attacks. Those insurgents reported killed or captured in the past year by JSOC and other special-operations forces, such as Army Green Berets and Marine commandos, include some 1,500 insurgent leaders, officials say.

Although foot soldiers are easily replaced, military commanders say, eliminating midlevel commanders has helped to erode the Taliban's ability to control territory and fighters.

Still, violence levels in Afghanistan remain high, with the number of weekly attacks hitting an all-time peak last September.

Such teams have generally not ventured into Pakistan. During the George W. Bush administration, military officials proposed sending a team there to capture al Qaeda's then-No. 3, Faraj al-Libbi. Senior administration officials vetoed the plan, saying he wasn't a valuable enough target to risk angering the Pakistanis. In 2005, he was captured by Pakistani special forces working with the Central Intelligence Agency.

But in 2008, the Bush administration did approve a raid into Pakistan. In an operation code-named "Cottonmouth," a SEAL team crossed into Pakistan and grabbed a militant who later provided detailed information about al Qaeda safe houses in Pakistan's North Waziristan region, a tribal area where many militants take refuge. Officials say the Central Intelligence Agency used the information to develop targets for drone strikes.

The incursion caused a furor in Pakistan, where the government publicized and condemned the strike. Within the Bush administration, State Department officials argued that further raids could permanently damage the relationship with Pakistan. The White House ruled out future strikes.

"It got to the point that bin Laden would be the only reason to go in," the senior official said.

In the 2008 presidential campaign, then-Sen. Obama repeatedly stressed his willingness to enter Pakistan to pursue al Qaeda targets. Soon after he became president, the number of CIA missile strikes in the tribal areas of Pakistan increased.

Before this week's attack on bin Laden's compound, as far as is known publicly, Mr. Obama hadn't authorized any commando raids into Pakistan. But senior U.S. officials said the administration used the expanded number of hunter-killer teams in Afghanistan to try to pressure the Pakistanis themselves to move against militants.

In October 2010, amid new intelligence reports that militants in the tribal areas were planning an attack on America or Europe, senior U.S. officials told their Pakistani counterparts that if an attack on the U.S. or its allies were traced to Pakistan, the military would act unilaterally and send commandos to attack plotters or training camps there.

JSOC controls the Pentagon's three classified special-mission units:

• Army's 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, known as Delta Force. 
• Navy's Naval Special Warfare Development Group, commonly called SEAL Team Six. 
• Air Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron. Units from the Army's secretive Ranger battalions are routinely assigned to JSOC, as well.

Marine Maj Gen. Richard Mills, who just finished a tour as the commander in southwest Afghanistan, told reporters on Thursday, 

"SEAL Team Six is unique.  Those are big boys.  That particular team is your top-shelf stuff."

In public, military officials will not discuss in any detail the activities of JSOC. Its budget remains classified. Still, its commanders have risen to the most senior posts. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who led JSOC at the height of the Iraq war, became the top commander in Afghanistan. Vice Adm. William McRaven, the current commander, has been tapped to lead Special Operations Command, which oversees all such troops.

CBS' video, "The Iron Will of Seal Team 6", provides a brief history of the U.S. Navy's SEAL Team 6 and the infamous Michael Marcinko, the founder of SEAL Team 6.  Here's another excellent video about Seal Team 6.

 

The video of President Barack Obama national TV announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been killed:

 

Osama Bin Laden's compound located in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Click the above image to view the original Wall Street article, "U.S. boosts Ranks of Elite Fighting Forces", a video (see below) about America's growing special operations units and slide show of pictures taken by the Pakistani authorities of the inside of Osama Bin Laden's compound. WARNING:  The slideshow shows some very graphic and distrubing images.

  

Prior to 2009, Army's Delta Force primarily worked in Iraq, while SEAL Team Six was assigned to Afghanistan. But as the Iraq war wound down, and the Obama administration shifted the military's focus, Delta Force units and additional Army Green Berets were reassigned to Afghanistan.

Says a senior White House official,

"The Obama administration made Pakistan and Afghanistan its primary mission, not Iraq.  By doing that, we resourced that part of the world to go after bin Laden. Obama said we are in this because of bin Laden, we are going to go after bin Laden. And we did."

COMMENTARY:   The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), formed in 1980 in response to Operation Eagle Claw, the failed mission to free the U.S. Embassy employees held hostage in Iran, is charged with overseeing the various Special Operations Commands (SOC or SOCOM) of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corp. 

The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) commands and controls the Special Mission Units (SMU) of  USSOCOM.

These units perform highly classified activities. So far, only three SMUs have been publicly disclosed:

• 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment - Delta Force (U.S. Army). 
• Naval Special Warfare Development Group (U.S. Navy). 
• 24th Special Tactics Squadron (U.S. Air Force).

The Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) is also under JSOC. The ISA collects specific target intelligence prior to SMU missions, and provides signals support, etc. during those missions. The ISA often operates under various cover names, the most recent one being Gray Fox.  The Army once maintained the ISA, but after the September 11 attacks, shifted direct control to Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, NC. If needed, the Army Rangers and Night Stalkers can be transferred under the JSOC command. JSOC’s primary mission is believed to be identifying and destroying terrorists and terror cells worldwide.

The Navy SEALs team that conducted this operation was the legendary Team Six, aka DevGru, or the Naval Special Warfare Development Group flown into Pakistan by helicopter teams from the 160th Special Operations Air Regiment, part of the Joint Special Operations Command.

SEAL Team 6 History

Auburn graduate Richard Marcinko is the founder of the elite special forces unit ‘SEAL Team 6′ which is today widely credited with engaging and killing the world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Team Six operations are highly classified and information about the unit or its current members is typically not available to the public.  Acknowledging the unit’s existence, much less crediting it with the execution of a successful mission is an unusual step by the U.S. government.

Marcinko served two tours in Vietnam where he served with SEAL Team 2 as the officer in command of the Eighth Platoon. During the Tet offensive, Marcinko and his platoon helped rescue American nurses who were trapped in churches and hospitals at Chau Doc.  While serving in Vietnam, Marcinko won the Silver Star, four bronze stars with combat V, two Navy Commendation Medals, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Silver Star.

 

Marcinko was promoted to Commanding Officer of SEAL Team Two after serving as Naval Attache to Cambodia in 1973.

During the Iran hostage crisis in 1979, Marckino was a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff task force known as the Terrorist Action Team, which was charged with developing a plan to rescue American hostages.

When the plan failed the Navy decided to develop a full-time dedicated Counter-Terrorism Team.  Marcinko was given the task of designing and developing the unit.  He became the first commanding officer of the new unit which he named SEAL Team Six.  He served as its commander for three years, 1980-1983.

Marcinko has written a number of best selling novels and his autobiography.  He has written books and given lectures on management and leadership techniques.  He provides hands-on training for hostage rescue teams.  He also has served as a corporate advisor to numerous multi-national businesses.

He received a Masters in Political Science from Auburn University.

I don't think you would want to be messing with Mr. Marcinko anytime soon.

The Mission To Get Osama Bin Laden

The original plan was for the Navy's SEAL Team 6 to rappel down into Osama Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and that’s how they practiced it in April on a replica of the compound the military constructed in the U.S. on which SEALs Team Six conducted two practice runs.

But on Sunday, May 1, one of the two ultra-secret stealth helicopters (see below) used for the raid, had an issue – they’re not sure what as of now – and conducted a soft crash landing. The chopper hit the deck – “it was a real white-knuckle moment,” a US official tells ABC News.

Another white-knuckle moment – at the end of the operation, Pakistan’s military scrambled fighter jets looking for the US helicopters. Who knows what could have happened if the Pakistani planes had reached the US helicopters -- but they didn’t.

The US team got back to Afghanistan by around 5:45 pm ET.

This operation happened, an official said, because of dogged, relentless intelligence work. For years, from detainees at Gitmo, the CIA had the nom de guerre of the courier, but they didn’t have his true name until 2007.

Intel spotted him in early 2009 – it took a while to follow him . Last August when intel found the compound the reaction was along the lines of “Oh my God who are they hiding here?” a official said, recalling definite recognition this was a significant find. Congressional leaders were briefed about the compound in December.

One possible complication: While CIA contractor Ray Davis was in the Pakistani prison there were concerns about his safety were this mission to be conducted.

Davis’s March 16 release cleared that possible obstacle to the operation -- a kill mission, with the clear objective to kill bin Laden.

From Ghazi Air Base in Pakistan, the modified MH-60 helicopters made their way to the garrison suburb of Abbottabad, about 30 miles from the center of Islamabad. Aboard were Navy SEALs, flown across the border from Afghanistan, along with tactical signals, intelligence collectors, and navigators using highly classified hyperspectral imagers.

After bursts of fire over 40 minutes, 22 people were killed or captured. One of the dead was Osama bin Laden, done in by a double tap -- boom, boom -- to the left side of his face. His body was aboard the choppers that made the trip back. One had experienced mechanical failure and was destroyed by U.S. forces, military and White House officials tell National Journal.

Were it not for this high-value target (HVT), it might have been a routine mission for the specially trained and highly mythologized SEAL Team Six, officially called the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, but known even to the locals at their home base Dam Neck in Virginia as just DevGru.

This HVT was special, and the raids required practice, so they replicated the one-acre compound at Camp Alpha, a segregated section of Bagram Air Base. Trial runs were held in early April.

On April 29, President Barack Obama approved an operation to kill bin Laden. It was a mission that required surgical accuracy, even more precision than could be delivered by the government's sophisticated Predator drones. To execute it, Obama tapped a small contingent of the Navy's elite SEAL Team Six and put them under the command of CIA Director Leon Panetta, whose analysts monitored the compound from afar.

Panetta was directly in charge of the team, a U.S. official said, and his conference room was transformed into a command center.

Details of exactly how the raid unfolded remain murky. But the al-Qaida courier, his brother and one of bin Laden's sons were killed. No Americans were injured. Senior administration officials will only say that bin Laden "resisted." And then the man behind the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil died from an American bullet to his head.

THE U.S. COUNTER-TERRORIST NETWORK

We have all heard about Delta Force, the Navy SEALS, Black Beret's and Army Rangers, but I thought I had not heard about the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM),  the counter-terrorist organization and its chain of command.  What I discovered is quite impressive and daunting, to say the least.  This is what the entire organization and its various branches and arms looks like:

It's a wonder that USSOCOM gets anything done.  Let's not forget that the CIA is also a silent, but very active partner of USSOCOM.  CIA Director Leon Panetta was specifically put in charge of SEAL Team 6 and the mission to get Osama Bin Laden.

President Obama's decision was probably one of the gutiest calls by any U.S. President in modern times since John F. Kennedy ordered a naval embargo against Cuba back in October 1964, that nearly plunged America into the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

Courtesy of an article dated May 6, 2011 appearing in The Wall Street Journal, an article dated May 2, 2011 appearing in the Never To Yield Foundation, and the NeoGAF forum appreciation thread dated May 2, 2011

CEO OF BLURB, THE ONLINE DO-IT-YOURSELF BOOK PUBLISHING SERVICE, TALKS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF BOOK PUBLISHING

On-demand paper book self-publishing service Blurb isn’t scared of the current boom in e-books. The company has announced record growth in its 2009 results and has expanded into e-book publishing.

Based in San Francisco and London, Blurb offers downloadable book-making software from which users can order as many, or as few, copies of their creation as they wish.

Blurb says it has created and shipped more than 1.2 million books in 2009 – more volume than the company had shipped in total since its launch in 2006.  In 2009, Blurb reported 50% year-over-year revenue growth in sales of more than $45 million.  Figures for the UK were particularly strong, with year-on-year growth of 152% meaning that 40% of the business is now outside of the US.

The record growth came in a year that saw the company expand beyond the consumer market by appealing to creative professionals with its PDF to Book workflow, aimed at photographers, graphic designers and advertising/marketing agencies.

According to Blurb CEO Eileen Gittins, the company will continue its grow in 2010 through innovation, partnerships with “Brands that matter” and an expansion into more markets around the world.

 

 

Blurb CEO Eileen Gittins talks about the Genesis behind the idea for her company:

 

A short tutorial demonstrating Blurb's BookSmart applications software:

 

Eileen Gittins, the CEO of Blurb , talks e-books, new publishing models and the iPad with StrategyEye.  

>What will the book industry look like in 10 years?

It will be a lot smaller. There are two varieties of books: books you want to keep and books you want to consume. For consuming, people will go digital. Within five years, 50% of books will be digital. Then there are other books that you want to keep. They are objects of beauty. They might be reference pieces like a cookbook, or gifts, and you can't give digital. Because of the economy, there will be fewer books in bookstores and fewer bookstores themselves. They won't go away, but they will become more social places. They'll become more like a coffee house, a social place where you meet up with other people for book signings and events.

>How are you doing well when traditional publishing is struggling?

Traditional publishers are suffering from a legacy business model. This is often the case when there is a big disruption in the industry. We are a very direct model where there aren't any of those people on the food chain. We are an internet company. We didn't have all those legacy relationships. We don't pay agents, we don't pay advances and we don't take the risk like big publishers.

The point of this company is not that we're selling 20 books, each of which sell 30,000 copies, but we're doing 30,000 books each of which sells 20 copies. Penguin or Knopf or HarperCollins can't put in a lot of money these days. What they have to do now is put some marketing behind a well-known author that has a big audience. It's really becoming a blockbuster business. The big publishers can't afford to take on the rest of us that may be delighted to sell 20 copies or 2,000 copies. They just don't have the finances to do it. So Blurb becomes a really great outlet for those people who are trying to either break in to build an audience or are publishing because of personal passion and if they sell 50 copies they are thrilled.

>How does your business work?

Our market is split into three segments.

• First, personal book makers: people making family books, holiday books, etc, with no intention of selling them for profit. That's about 40% of our business. 
• Then 30% of our books are promotional marketing tools. Lexus does books with us, Ducati, Honda, Google and Microsoft. Each run will be a few hundred copies. Recently we've seen a spate of company books celebrating some kind of product launch or event. They're not for sale.
• The final 30% are absolutely for-profit books. One of the beauties of our online bookstore is that because we make our money on the printing side, you can retain 100% of whatever mark-up you've put on the book over and above your cost.

>Are the big publishers right to keep e-book prices high?

Information wants to be free on the internet so this arbitrary notion that ‘I'm not going to make that same content available from the start in digital form as hardback' is ridiculous and consumers will not stand for that. Publishers need to figure out how to right-size their organisations to fit today's model and how to jettison the things that aren't working. They need to learn to be more efficient in terms of physical distribution and how to do a better job at spotting the big talent that they can put big money behind.

>How are you approaching e-publishing?

We are making investments in e-publishing and outputting to the various e-readers: Nook, Kindle, etc, as well as HTML5 for the iPad. We have one of every e-reader at Blurb and we've hacked books on to everything. This will move forward for two reasons. Firstly, our platform supports it. Secondly, all we do is business online. We have such an investment in communities, online marketing, this is what we know, this is what we do, this is where we live.

Very soon you will see output to e-book standards so that you can make your book available on Google or wherever and will be able to read your book on an e-reader as well as an iPad. The reason why this isn't already available from Blurb is up until pretty recently it was all e-readers. Now it's on the iPad as well, it is 10% of our business. Now that colour is in the world it makes things way more interesting. In addition to printing copies of their book, many of our authors have iPad versions.

I think the iPad has changed people's relationship to technology in a very intimate way. Your access to technology is not about producing, it is now about consuming media. Before, if your laptop or mobile phone was your consumption device, you had limitations. But on the iPad, if you want to consume video games, a book, or look at television, it's brilliant. I think it's going to change the distribution of print media and it's going to change people's fundamental relationship to technology.

>How does the rest of the publishing industry see your business?

Two years ago, they'd probably wish we'd go away. That's not true now. We're being approached now, with publishers for partnerships because there are some book titles that are not economical for them, but they would still like to maintain the relationship with the author. People who go into publishing have a great love for books and it pains them when they're just not set up to get something out. It may be skewed, but those are the ones we are seeing.

COMMENTARY:    Blurb makes it very easy for anybody to publish their own books.   The process is very simple:  

1. Select the desired type of book: photobooks, text and photo books, and PDF books.
2. Select the desired book size.
3. Select desired book page layout.
4. Add content, namely photos and text.
5. Publish.

Blurb offers three options for publishing a book:

• Bookify Online - A user-friendly online application for publishing photobooks.
• Blurb BookSmart - An online application for publishing books containing both photos and text.  First you must register online in order to download a free copy of Blurb's BookSmart software for your PC or Mac, then install the software on your PC, and you're off and running.
• PDF-to-Book - PDF to Book gives professional users full creative reign over the bookmaking process. Blurb offers blank Adobe® InDesign® templates tailored for use with all of their book sizes, papers, and cover types.  Or use their detailed specifications to create PDFs using your favorite layout tool. Once your page and cover PDFs are ready, simply upload and order your book.

Blurb pricing is based on the following factors:

• Size of the book.
• Type of cover (soft or hard cover)
• Quality of the paper (lustre or matte finish)
• Custom logo.
• Page count.
• Quantity of books ordered.

A soft cover book can cost as little as $12.95.  A hardcover as little as $24.95.   The more books you order the lower the price per unit.   The pricing is quite reasonable when compared to hiring a traditional book publisher.   

Blurb also operates an online bookstore to assist authors in selling their books.    

This is one cool idea and something I am definitely interested in using for my Entrepreneurship Series for New Technology Ventures.  

Courtesy of an article dated July 12, 2010 appearing in StrategyEye

FINALLY A DESK FOR WORKAHOLICS: HERMAN MILLER'S ERGONOMIC 'ENVELOP DESK', PERFECT FOR THOSE 60-HOUR WORK WEEKS

Americans work too much. Herman Miller’s new Envelop Desk doesn’t pretend otherwise and is designed to make it comfortable to park in front of a computer for hours on end.

 

Watch the Envelop Desk video

The Envelop Desk worksurface angel extends out and down slightly to provide greater comfort.  

Envelop Desk work surface in upright normal flat position

Envelop Desk work surface in fully extended out and with a slight down angel

Americans work longer hours than people in most other developed countries. More than 10 million employees log 60-hour workweeks. Thirty-four percent of the workforce doesn’t take vacations. Barring dramatic shifts in the cultural and political landscape, Americans will continue to work themselves into the ground. SoHerman Miller has unveiled a desk that -- while no month-long holiday in the French Riviera -- promises to make life a touch more tolerable for workaholics everywhere.

Envelop Desk in a workstation configuration

Envelop Desk shown with work surface fully extended with a slight downward angel

Envelop Desk has a flexible table top ergonomically designed to make it comfortable for people to park in front of a computer for hours on end (or as comfortable as that can be). Typically, when workers sit at a computer, they contort their bodies to ensure that their eyes stay focused on the monitor. Cricks, ungodly back pains, and the like inevitably result.

Envelop Desk in a clustered multi-workstation configuration

Envelop Desk in a back-to-back workstation configuration

Envelop is meant to help your body adjust naturally with your eyes. The soft, molded urethane surface slides toward and away from you with a simple tug or push and tilts 7 degrees so that your laptop or computer always rests comfortably in your sightline. “When people slouch over their laptop, we call this the ‘turtle’ position and it’s very bad for your back,” says Herman Miller’s Wayne Baxter. “You want to get that laptop in a semi-reclined position so your reach and eyesight are the right distance from it, regardless of whether you're sitting or in a forward recline.”

Envelop Desk in a shared workstation cubicle configuration

In short, Envelop lets you move around in your chair, as you’re wont to do in the course of a grueling work day, without having to twist yourself into all kinds of awkward positions to keep your eyeballs on the screen.

Sounds great, but we worry about our papers (yes, we still have papers) slipping off the desk. Tables are parallel to the floor for a reason. “It's a slight 7 degree downward slope, so you can maintain a cup of coffee and papers on it as long as you're cautious,” Baxter assures. “Works fine with a wireless mouse. There is also a flat surface [behind the slope] to keep things horizontal.”

Envelop Desk in a small office environment

Envelop was conceived of to complement Herman Miller’s Embody Chair (Bill Stumpf and Jeff Weber designed the two together), though you can buy the desk as a standalone item for $960 here.

COMMENTARY:    I have always loved Herman Miller's office furniture.  It's expensive, but it is the best.   Here's what the Envelop Desk that sets it apart from other desks.

I love the Envelop Desk, but Herman Miller should've provided a desk drawer to go along with the desk.

Courtesy of an article dated August 10, 2011 appearing in Fast Company Design and Herman Miller

 

CUPIDTINO: AN ONLINE DATING SERVICE FOR APPLE EVANGELISTS TRIES TO CRACK THE HIGHLY COMPETITIVE DATING MARKET

Mel Sampat's girlfriend was getting jealous of his iPhone. Once a Microsoft program manager loyal to his company's wares, Sampat left his job last February and became an Apple convert, buying a veritable catalogue of products—iPhone, MacBook, Nano.  By early April, his new fetish had become contentious. At their dinner table in San Francisco, Sampat's girlfriend would complain he was too busy playing with his gadgets to pay attention to her. "Can't we talk about us?" Sampat recalls her saying. "Can't we talk about Desperate Housewives?"

As their bickering escalated, Sampat, 31, reached a breaking point. "I said, 'Maybe I'll date someone who will talk to me about Apple stuff.' " As he left the room to cool off, Sampat had an epiphany: Was there a woman out there with whom he could share his love of Apple products? Someone to make iTunes playlists for, someone to watch him play Angry Birds on his iPhone? In that moment, Sampat conceived a matchmaking site specifically for amorous fans of the company headquartered in Cupertino, Calif. "I didn't wait around for market research or some consultant to tell me if it was going to work or not," he says. And so Cupidtino was born.

Sampat launched the site later that month, a few days after Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad. With Mac lust spreading all over the digital grid, Sampat e-mailed the link to a few tech blogs. One recipient was Michael Arrington, the influential Silicon Valley blogger, who was immediately moved to post an alarmed note on his site TechCrunch. "The thought of them breeding and creating little Apple fans, a whole family of hard core hipster Apple lovers, is just not a good thing," Arrington wrote. "On the other hand, making sure that Apple fans only date other Apple fans is a good way of stopping them from spreading their Apple fan genes to the general population, I guess. So maybe this site isn't all bad." A day after the launch, more than 5,000 users had signed up. Sampat's girlfriend learned of the site's existence by watching him discuss it on the local news.

In less than a year, Cupidtino has grown to more than 27,000 registered "Machearts"—all of whom must sign up through the Apple-created browser Safari. The site's simple interface resembles a Mac desktop, with icons for favorites, gadgets, and messages hovering over a toolbar at the bottom of the screen. Users can name their favorite iTunes songs and display their favorite iPhone apps. They are prompted to fill out a form that asks both typical dating-site background questions such as "What do you do for a living?" and more specific ones like "When did you become 'a Mac'?" The site doesn't hide its premise. "Diehard Mac & Apple fans often have a lot in common," it declares on its home page, "personalities, creative professions, a similar sense of style and aesthetics, taste, and a love for technology. We believe these are enough fundamental reasons for two people to meet and fall in love."

While Cupidtino keeps its demographics private, a perusal of the site reveals that users tend to be male and largely West Coast-based—some of whom gamely pose with their favorite gadgets. While users can send initial messages for free, they will be prompted to pay $4.79 per month if they get a reply. The price is pegged to the cost of a Starbucks (SBUX) venti latte. "When Starbucks raises their prices, we'll raise ours," says Sampat. "That's how we adjust for inflation."

According to Alexa.com (see below), an online web analytics service, Cupidtino's members lean towards those 18-34 years of age, predominantly male, not college educated, childless, and browse from school or work.

He won't reveal how many Machearts have paid for the service but claims the site, which Sampat runs with the help of two interns, makes a small profit. Cupidtino rents shared office space in San Francisco's Dogpatch neighborhood, but Sampat prefers to work from a café or even his bedroom. Cupidtino does not yet accept advertising, and Sampat and a partner—who remains anonymous to maintain his programming job at a major e-commerce company—are paying themselves modest salaries.

COMMENTARY:  Cupidtino, which was initially available in a free "beta" version but starting Wednesday, January 26, 2011, will begin charging users about $5 a month to read messages they've been sent, has snagged 27,000 Apple fanboys and fangirls since it launched in early June. It's usable only on a Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, naturally. Your browser lets Cupidtino know what operating system your computer uses, so if you try to access it on a PC it will lead you to a page that apes Apple's popular "I'm a Mac" ads and lets you know Cupidtino is off-limits from Windows.  And you can only sign up on a Mac or iPad; Cupidtino quickly disabled iPhone signups because users can't upload photos from the device.

I love the exclusivity to Apple fans, but I believe that this young man Sampat will quickly learn than there are people out there that own PC's plus Apple devices like an iPhone or an iPad.  So why not open membership to everybody?  Zuck started by making Facebook exclusive only to college students, but within a year or so, opened membership to everybody.   How else are you going to grow?  Sampat, talk to me youngman.   

With the small number of active members,  it may be difficult to find anyone near you.  The site only lets you filter users by country and, in the U.S., by state. Sampat said he and two unpaid stakeholders are working on more features, as well as Cupidtino iPhone and iPad applications.

I know that Sampat would not want to hear my advice, but he needs to determine the potential size of the Apple universe, how many are single, and so forth.  Cupidtino's membership is peanuts compared to other dating options available today (see below chart) and you can log into them with an PC or Apple.   I am also concerned that Cupidtino leans heavily towards high school students and males. Where are the gals.   He has his work cut out for him, but in the end if he wants to grow, he will open the gates to us PC users.     

For now I will give Sampat the benefit of the doubt.  I predicted, as well as numerous other technology experts, that the iPad would not make it in the marketplace, and even predicted that apple would sell 6 to 7 million units, not the 1o million that Steve Jobs forecasted for 2010.   That was a bad call, Apple sold 14 million in 2010, and could end up doing 25 million in 2011.

Courtesy of an article January 20, 2011 appearing in Bloomberg Businessweek

AMERICA: THE 'LAND OF THE PART-TIME JOB', PEOPLE WITH FULL-TIME JOBS AND BENEFITS IS A DYING BREED

 

Do you need a good job?  If so, there are millions of other Americans that are just like you.  Unfortunately, most of the jobs that are available in America today are either part-time jobs, temp jobs or are "independent contractor" jobs.  The "full-time job with benefits" is a dying breed. 

There are so many desperate unemployed workers in America today that companies don't have to roll out the red carpet anymore.  Instead, they can just hire a horde of inexpensive part-timers and temps that they don't have to give any benefits to.  But isn't the employment situation supposed to be getting better?  No, it really is not.  Yes, the U.S. economy added 216,000 jobs in March.  However, the truth is that approximately 290,000 part-time jobs were created and about 80,000 full-time jobs were actually lost.  This is all part of a long-term trend in America.  Good jobs are rapidly disappearing and they are being replaced by low paying service jobs that do not pay a living wage.  In many American households today, both parents have multiple jobs.  Yet a large percentage of those same households can't even pay the mortgage and are drowning in debt.

Whenever a new government jobs report comes out from now on, try to find out how many of the jobs that were created were actually part-time jobs.  Most Americans that only have part-time jobs are living around or below the poverty line.  The truth is that it is really hard to get by if you are only making a couple hundred bucks a week.

As mentioned above, the U.S. economy added 216,000 jobs last month.  The Obama administration and the mainstream media heralded that figure as evidence that the U.S. economy is recovering nicely.

But is that really accurate?

Rebel Cole, a professor at DePaul University's Kellstadt Graduate School of Business, says that when you take the time to do a closer examination of the employment numbers they don't look so good....

"If you look deeper in the report, there were 290,000 new part-time workers, which means that there were 80,000 fewer full-time workers, that's not a good sign. Things are getting worse, not getting better."

Unless you are a teen or a college student or a retired person, most likely you would prefer to be working a full-time job.  Most people do not actually have the goal of working part-time.  Most part-time jobs pay very poorly and offer very few benefits.

Unfortunately, that is why so many big companies like part-time workers and temp workers.  There are so many more rules, regulations and laws that pertain to full-time workers.

Hiring a bunch of part-time workers is so much easier and so much cheaper.  Without a doubt it is definitely more profitable in most situations.

Today, there are millions of Americans that have part-time jobs that would love to have full-time jobs.  In fact, at the end of January 2011, the U.S. government says that there are 26.3 million Americans that are currently working part-time jobs for "economic reasons" (See infographic below).

One such worker named "John" recently left a comment on another article I did entitled "How To Find A Job: Just Be Willing To Flip Burgers And Work For Minimum Wage".  John says that the restaurant chain that he works for has implemented a "part-time only policy"....

“Could your family survive on $505 a week?”

If only I could make HALF that much! The dirty secret is McDonalds needs to add 50,000 workers to increase the headcount in every store. The goal is to have no full-time employees who qualify for health benefits. So these 50,000 jobs will pay $174 a week BEFORE taxes, and have no benefits, no vacation days, no holidays off, call in sick and get fired, but they will have 52 mandatory weekends each year.

And how do I know this? I work for a national restaurant chain that already has gone to a part-time only policy. I am scheduled for 23 hours next week. The threshold for benefits is 26 hrs.

Of course I would assume that there are perhaps a couple of full-time workers at the restaurant that John works at (such as the manager).  But the reality is that we are seeing this kind of thing more and more around the nation.  Companies are being careful to keep hours low enough so that the majority of their employees do not qualify for expensive "full-time benefits".

Another commenter on that same article said that it is possible to get by on a low wage but that doesn't mean that it is easy....

I make about $400 a week; my wife nothing. Rent is $500 a month. Credit card bills (run up back when I made about $1200/week) run about $200 a month. Other expenses run us another few hundred dollars. We quit tv. We’re a litte cold. We eat ok. Try to fill the gas tank just once a month. We’re getting by, but able to save nothing, nor do we go out and have fun. Well, fun has become walks on Saturday morning. Those are free. And, as we’ve learned, rather nice.

$10 an hour stinks, but it is livable if you don’t mind admitting that you are poor. I know I’m poor now. It’s just the way it is. If I tried to keep living as i did when I was a middle class manager, I’d be extremely unhappy. I cant say I’m happy about being poor, but my wife and i are finding that happiness isn’t about having “stuff.”

This is the new "American Dream" for millions of American families.  They are learning to scratch and claw to get by on what they have.

As I have written about previously, the standard of living of the middle class is being pushed down to third world levels.  We have been merged into a "global labor pool", and what that means is that the standard of living of all workers all over the world is going to be slowly equalized over time.

Translation: your standard of living and the standard of living of virtually everyone that you know is slated to go way down.

Right now America is rapidly losing high paying jobs and they are being replaced by low paying jobs.  According to a recent report from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries accounted for 40 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months but only 14 percent of the job growth.  Lower wage industries accounted for just 23 percent of the job losses over the past 12 months and a whopping 49 percent of the job growth.

So yes, jobs are being created, but most of them are jobs that none of us would really want under normal circumstances.

Unfortunately, times are not normal and millions of desperate people are having to take whatever they can get.

What makes things even worse is that really bad inflation is coming.  There are less good jobs for American families and at the same time the cost of basic necessities is going up.

Have you been to the gas pump lately?

As I wrote about yesterday, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States is now $3.70.

A year ago it was just $2.83.

For average American families on a tight budget that is a huge difference.

Food inflation is already here as well.

During the month of February, the price of food in the U.S. increased at the fastest rate in 36 years.

Are you starting to understand why so many American families are feeling squeezed right now?

Times are tough and they are going to get tougher.  If you still have a good full-time job you should be very thankful, because there are millions and millions of people that would love to trade places with you.

So do the rest of you believe that America is turning into "the land of the part-time job"?  Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below....

COMMENTARY:  It should also be noted that the Bureau of Labor Statistics counts part-time workers are fully-employed.  If you drop out of the labor force because you cannot find a job at all. You are no longer counted as unemployed.  Can you believe that shit?

Oh, I forgot to mention that during the George W. Bush's administration, 8 million jobs were lost. Not only that, but since 1990 American corporations have outsourced an estimated 20 million jobs to foreign countries where labor is cheaper, namely Asia-Pacific, Mexico and Latin America.   Yet the CEO's for a lot of those companies, with respected names like Apple, Google, Facebook, IBM, HP, GM, Ford, etc. drew huge bonuses for producing higher earnings.  It gets worse.  American Fortune 500 companies are sitting on nearly $2 trillion in cash, representing savings from layoffs and downsizing.  Isn't capitalism grand?   Many of the workers still lucky to have a job, are doing the work of 2 or 3 people. And, you know what?  The corporations kind of like it that way too.

Courtesy of an article dated April 7, 2011 appearing in Before It's News

By TwitterButtons.com  

TEN FASCINATING FACTS ABOUT THE WORLD'S RICHEST PEOPLE, U.S. NOW HAS 2.7 MILLIONAIRES AND THEY ARE GETTING RICHER

Where do millionaires live?

Where will the millionaires be in 2020?

What are they invested in?

All those questions are the focus of a fascinating study from Deloitte Center for Financial Services on the state of millionaires, and how things will change over the next decade.

If you're a banker looking for wealthy clients, it's a must read.

The total wealth of world millionaires will go from $92 trillion to $202 trillion in 10 years.

U.S. millionaires will be the wealthiest by 2020.

The U.S. will still have the most millionaires by 2020.

Among super-millionaires, China is already #2.

Switzerland and Singapore will have the highest number of millionaires.

And Swiss millionaires are the richest in the world.

Here's how millionaires invest.

U.S. millionaires are back to pre-crisis levels.

There are 496,000 U.S. households with over $30 million.

New Jersey is the most millionaire dense state in the U.S.

But what do millionaires buy?  Click HERE to find out.

COMMENTARY:   I am flabbergasted at the obscene amount of wealth concentrated in such few individuals and families.  With the amount of wealth that they have, these millionaires are able to effect political influence to benefit their financial interests.  And, if I may say so, they have done a great job. Just look athe Bush tax cuts. Extended by Obama in 2011, but there is now pressure to reverse them.  

Look, I am not against wealth, just extreme wealth, sitting in some bank account, in some country to avoid taxes, or invested in expensive cars, houses, superyachts, land and precious metals. These do very little to create jobs.  The 496,000 U.S. millionaires worth $30 million or more, are worth a combined $15 trillion.  If they just donated 10% of that wealth to charity, provide universal healthcare, improve our educational system, and help the poor, that would total $1.5 trillion.  

There are another 2.2 million U.S. households worth between $5 million and $30 million.  If we assume they average $10 million, then their total combined net worth is $22 trillion.  If they donated 10% of their wealth for needy causes, provide universal healthcare, improve our schools and help the poor, that would total $2.2 trillion.  

On a July 20, 2010 blog article, I commented about Forbes List of Billionaires for 2010, and where they live. You might find that blog post very interesting.   Forbes also published a list of the Top 10 Richest Billionaires for 2011 (se below).

There are six Facebook billionaires who made the Forbes list, including Zuck, Dustin Moskowitz, Sean Parker (founder of Napster), Peter Thiel (venture capitalist and original angel investor in Facebook), Yuri Milner (venture capitalist and founder of Blue Sky Technologies, a Russian venture capital firm), and Eduardo Savarin (Harvard classmate of Zuck and one of the original founders of Facebook).

Paul Ceglia, who says he invested $1,000 in Facebook, and the terms of that investment agreement entitle him to a 50% ownership interest in Facebook.  That could definitely change things.  DLA, a high-powered legal firm, is representing Mr. Ceglia, and think he has a valid claim.  I can hardly wait for the decision or out-of-court settlement.  

I don't want anyone to get the idea that I am against wealthy individuals, or that I am some kind of socialist, but the last time America had so much wealth concentrated in the hands of so few individuals, was during the period that led up to the 1929 stock market crash and Great Depression. Hell, I would like to be wealthy myself, that would solve a lot of financial problems, but my main reason would be to help others.  Just remember, when you come into this world you enter with nothing, and when you leave it, you leave everything behind. 

Courtesy of an article dated May 4, 2011 appearing by SAI Business Insider

WHAT BRANDS NEED TO KNOW BEFORE MARKETING TO MILLENNIALS, AND TEN VALUABLE TIPS FOR TARGETING THEM IN 2011,

Brands are built over time and, with past generations, a brand could invest in building its equity with the right audience and then adjust messaging as the audience progressed through their life stages. That's not the case if your brand is relying on Millennials for its future.

For Millennials, the coming-of-age process isn't as defined or linear as it has been with past generations. They are not as closely bound by expectations related to going to school, starting work, getting married, and raising families, which makes their lives a constant work in progress and much less predictable.

It also means that while past generations represented a fairly cohesive cohort, Millennials are much more fragmented. The result is that brands need to be extremely flexible to adapt to the changing paradigms of this generation.

Characterizing Millennials as one big group misses the opportunity to address the full spectrum of who they are. And, yet, many marketers and researchers alike ("The Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change") ascribe universal values and dimensions to this generation. Millennials are typically characterized as optimistic, altruistic people who are confident, connected, post-materialistic, and open to change. If only it were that easy.

A global monitor study by The Futures Company found that while Millennials have some consistency in the characteristics described above, they are a fragmented group refracted by technology and their expression of identity, the same social/technology factors that differentiate them from other generations. Both "expression of identity" and the "role of technology" in their lives stood out as good dimensions for a useful segmentation:

• "Expression of identity" was defined by how people self-express and their relationship to material "things." One extreme is "accumulation" in which Millennials feel it's important to have the latest and best things, and they find self-expression through brands. In contrast, the other extreme is "meaning" in which the study found Millennials who are defined by their beliefs, self-express through action and feel it's important to "be" things.
• The "role of technology" ranged from "performance tool" to "creative facilitator." As a "performance tool," technology is seen to enable someone to perform at his or her best. These Millennials like the functional use of technology and see it as helping them to get ahead. As a "creative facilitator," technology is seen as expressive and useful for creating, sharing, and opening connections.

Using these two dimensions, Futures identified four segments of Millennials and the corresponding marketing modes they would naturally gravitate toward:

• Satellites are optimistic about the future and tech mad. They know how to use technology to improve their performance, and for that reason, like having the latest and best. Marketing that emphasizes performance and the maximum functional end benefit would naturally appeal to this group.
• Spirits are the poster children for what we think of as Gen Y. They are open, connected and socially conscious, and they look for meaning in the things they purchase. This group naturally gravitates toward products and marketing that are conscientious¬¬ -- emphasizing creativity and collectiveness.
• Striders are also spoiled by technology, expecting it wherever it's relevant. They are defined by their possessions (despite the economic downturn), and they greet the next must-have item enthusiastically. Striders naturally gravitate toward identity marketing that is aspirational and leading edge. They love early releases and sneak peaks.
• Steppers have been treading carefully. They are price conscious and very considered in purchasing. They reject materialism and love when technology improves durability and saves them from wasting money on something that won't last. They respond well to supportive marketing that focuses on reducing risk and adding value to everyday life.

For a brand, the question becomes how to utilize these segmentations. A large brand would ideally find products and marketing approaches to address each. Consider brands like Toyota or Nike. Nike+ would be attractive to a Satellite because it utilizes the latest technology to connect devices and improve performance. In contrast, because it adds meaning to the shoe and raises awareness for a cancer charity, the Livestrong line would better appeal to a Spirit. Likewise, Toyota could align the efficiency and durability of the Corolla with Steppers and the performance technology of the Matrix with Striders.

Smaller brands may find it more efficient to target the segments that have the strongest connection with their brand values. For example, a brand like Method would appeal to both Striders and Spirits. Spirits would love the conscientious technology. They'd take great personal satisfaction in putting Method on their counter, knowing they'd bought something good for themselves and the planet. Whereas Striders could appreciate Method's aspirational qualities and design leadership, but they would still expect performance -- the impact the liquid has on their body and how the cool packaging enhances their experience with it.

Regardless of how you align your brand today, change is the only thing that's certain. You only have to watch the "Did You Know" YouTube video to recognize that the speed of change today is much more rapid than in previous generations. In the face of such change, Millennials will continue to be versatile in their approaches to life, with their identities always in a state of transition. And brands need to be responsive and malleable to adjust to the fluidity of a Millennial's world.

Want to get to know the Millennials?  Here's a great infographic to help you out.

I also recommend that you read my January 3, 2011 post titled "Top 10 Tips For Marketing To Millennials in 2011".

Courtesy of an article dated September 30, 2011 appearing in MediaPost Publications' Engage:Millennials