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FYI: Apple Education Seminars Invitation - Academic Series: Aperture and Digital Story Telling
by Doug Hamilton 15 May '10

15 May '10

Academic Series: Aperture and Digital Story Telling Monday, May 31 2010 1:00PM to 4:00PMAdd to iCal You've been invited to an event Apple presents the Academic Series: Managing Your Digital Photographs. Designed for educators, this free half-day session will focus on the new Aperture 3 and how to best use it to tell your stories. Please use the address in this e-mail to register for the event. The Park Theatre & Movie Café 698 Osborne St. Winnipeg, MB R3L 2B9 Get Directions Copyright © 2010 Apple Inc. 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014. All Rights Reserved / Keep Informed / Privacy Policy

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FYI: Snow Leopard 101 Apple Certification
by Doug Hamilton 12 May '10

12 May '10

Good morning [firstame], just letting you know that our Apple Certification Snow Leopard Training Session is being held May 28th - 30th, 2010. The last time we offered this event it was sold out in just under a week. We will also be holding an EXAM DAY on May 31st if you wish to challenge any Apple certification exam. You can register here, for Snow 101 Training or the Exam Day. Mac OS X Support Essentials is a three-day, hands-on course that provides an in-depth exploration of troubleshooting on Mac OS X. This course is designed to give you a tour of the breadth of functionality of Mac OS X and the best methods for effectively supporting users of Mac OS X systems. The course is a combination of lectures and hands-on case study exercises that provide practical real-world experience. Who Should Attend: • Help desk specialists, technical coordinators, service technicians, and others who support Mac users • Technical support personnel in businesses that use Macs for general productivity or creative design • Technical coordinators or power users who manage networks of computers running Mac OS X — such as teachers and technology specialists who manage classroom networks or computer labs What you will learn: • The troubleshooting process and how to become more efficient with available tools and resources • Mac OS X 10.6 features in depth, including how to find additional information • How to prepare for Apple Certified Support Professional certification Prerequisites: Students should have the following prerequisite knowledge prior to attending this course: • Knowledge of Mac OS X • Troubleshooting experience Time & Place: From May 28 -30, you can find parking either in the back of the building or in Visitor spots at: • 1000 Waverley Street (link to map) • 9:30 am - 5 pm The three-day course is $895 for Manitoba residents ($1295 for out of province residents), which is the lowest price in Canada (and the World) for Snow 101 Apple Certification Training. For more information on what the course offers, please browse the Snow Leopard Course outline here: http://training.apple.com/itpro/snow101 If you believe that you already have the necessary knowledge to challenge the Snow 101 exam or any other Apple Certification exam, we will be holding an Exam Day on May 31st. The cost to challenge an exam is $250. If you have any questions or want more information regarding the Snow 101 course, or challenging an exam, please email Kert Gartner, our Certification Co-ordinator at kert(a)newmediamanitoba.com Register Now! P.S. There are just 4 SPOTS LEFT for our Introduction to Photoshop hands on training next week. If you are interested you'll want to register soon. Home | About Us | Meetings | Event Registration | Mailing List | Contact Us ------------------------------------------------------------------- This e-mail was sent to doug_hamilton(a)umanitoba.ca because you are subscribed to at least one of our mailing lists. If at any time you would like to remove yourself from our mailing list, please feel free to do so by visiting: http://www.newmediamanitoba.com/index.php?option=com_lm&task=unsubscribe&g=…

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FYI: S. Jobs: "Thoughts on Flash"
by billing 01 May '10

01 May '10

Yesterday the following appeared on the Apple website addressing Apple's position on Flash: “... so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads..." The posting also addresses the current relationship between Apple and Adobe. ...from: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests. I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain. First, there’s “Open”. Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system. Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member. Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers. Second, there’s the “full web”. Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video. Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world. Third, there’s reliability, security and performance. Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash. In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform? Fourth, there’s battery life. To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies. Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained. When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Fifth, there’s Touch. Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript? Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. Sixth, the most important reason. Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices. We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers. This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms. Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X. Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform. Conclusions. Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short. The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games. New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind. Steve Jobs April, 2010

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INTEREST: "R" free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.
by Doug Hamilton 27 Apr '10

27 Apr '10

Some of you may not know of the GNU Open-Source project (free) statistic software suite simply called "R". Unlike SPSS which runs in a slow JavaVM environment, and SAS which does run on Mac OS at all, R exists exists for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows. If you're up for it, even the source code is also available for download and compilation or modification. To download the software, here is a link to a Canadian "mirror" site hosted at Dalhousie University: http://mirror.its.dal.ca/cran/ What is "R": R is an integrated suite of software facilities for data manipulation, calculation and graphical display. It includes • an effective data handling and storage facility, • a suite of operators for calculations on arrays, in particular matrices, • a large, coherent, integrated collection of intermediate tools for data analysis, • graphical facilities for data analysis and display either on-screen or on hardcopy, and • a well-developed, simple and effective programming language which includes conditionals, loops, user-defined recursive functions and input and output facilities. Here is the main page for the R-project: http://www.r-project.org/ I also found this journal article of interest, which some in this group may find of interest "Transitioning to R: Replicating SAS, Stata, and SUDAAN Analysis Techniques in Health Policy Data" http://journal.R-project.org/archive/2009-2/RJournal_2009-2_Damico.pdf The "R" FAQ can be found here, http://mirror.its.dal.ca/cran/

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INTEREST: SAS-OnDemand (online)
by billing 27 Apr '10

27 Apr '10

[NOTE System Requirements for this product: Available for use on: Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Microsoft Windows Vista Home - Basic or Microsoft Windows Vista Home - Premium. MacIntosh operating systems are not supported.] [NOTE: data being analyzed may reside at SAS web site.] ...from: http://www.sas.com/news/preleases/ondemandforacademics-nocostSGF10.html SAS® resources to be available to higher education students worldwide at no cost SAS® OnDemand for Academics develops valuable skills in high demand by employers SAS GLOBAL FORUM, SEATTLE (Apr. 12, 2010) – SAS is removing a potential barrier to students seeking experience using advanced data analysis to solve classroom and real-world problems. SAS OnDemand for Academics, already used at no cost by professors at some 200 colleges and universities, will be available at no cost to all students worldwide in fall 2010. SAS OnDemand for Academics quickly and easily delivers the power of SAS software to higher education. Modern society is awash in data. SAS coursework provides students the skills to analyze massive amounts of data and then use this knowledge to make sound decisions. Whether it is uncovering fraud in banking and government, improving health care or predicting which customers will respond to a marketing campaign, the applications of data analytics cross all industries, placing analytic skills in high demand. "When interviewers see SAS and data mining, it’s a very big plus on the résumé,” said Alan Olinsky, Professor of Applied Math at Bryant University. “There is so much data out there; we just don’t have enough people to analyze it. Statistics is becoming very popular, and SAS is an integral part of that." SAS OnDemand for Academics is an online service for teaching and learning data management and analytics. Users register and access SAS software via the Web and perform processing by connecting to a hosted server at SAS. Through SAS OnDemand for Academics, users have access to multiple SAS applications such as SAS® Enterprise Guide® (which includes access to Base SAS) and SAS® Enterprise Miner™ (which includes SAS Text Miner). Additional SAS software applications will be added over time. "While students can access SAS at no cost, professors remain the gatekeepers. We want to ensure that SAS is integrated into coursework in a thoughtful and effective manner, providing students the most engaging experience," said Ron Statt, Product Development Manager for the SAS Education Practice. "Students should ask their professors to consider using SAS OnDemand for Academics. We're happy to consult on the best ways to make that happen." To make adoption easier and more effective, SAS will continue developing supporting materials to use with SAS OnDemand for Academics, and encourages professors and students to submit ideas. With more than 2,000 college, university and business-school customers in 109 countries and education specialists on every continent, SAS serves the education industry by delivering software solutions, strategic services and academic programs that spark innovation and expand educational opportunities. Today's announcement was made at SAS Global Forum, the world’s largest gathering of SAS users, attended by more than 3,000 business and IT users of SAS software and solutions. ...more info at: http://support.sas.com/learn/ap/ http://www.sas.com/offices/NA/canada/9-services_support/320-academic_progra…

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INTEREST: Java founder quits Oracle
by billing 26 Apr '10

26 Apr '10

...from: http://www.itworldcanada.com/news/java-founder-james-gosling-quits-oracle/1… Java founder James Gosling quits Oracle By: Joab Jackson On: 10 Apr 2010 Father of Java James Gosling is the latest ex-Sun employee to leave Oracle following the merger of Sun Microsystems James Gosling, the creator of the Java programming language, has resigned from Oracle, he announced in a blog entry on Friday Gosling resigned on April 2 and has not yet taken a job elsewhere, he reported. "As to why I left, it's difficult to answer: just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good," he wrote. Gosling was the chief technology officer for Oracle's client software group and, before that, the chief technology officer of Sun's developer products group. In 1991, he led a small group of engineers in a project, then called Oak, to build an object-oriented programming language that would run on a virtual machine, which would allow programs to run on multiple platforms, such as television set-top boxes. This work evolved into Java, which took off in conjunction with the growing use of the Internet, thanks in part to its inclusion into the Netscape browser. Gosling follows a number of other noted ex-Sun employees out the door since Oracle's purchase of the company was finalized in January, including CEO Jonathan Schwartz, and XML co-inventor Tim Bray. Less than a month ago, Gosling had stressed the importance of Java to Oracle. "Oracle has certainly been incredibly committed to keeping Java and the whole ecosystem as strong and as healthy as can be," he said, during a talk at a Java symposium in Las Vegas. But around the same time he also expressed dismay over the growing politicization of the Java Community Process. Fellow ex-Sun alumni Bray tweeted that he was "astounded that Gosling held on so long."

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FYI: Apple Education Seminars Invitation - Apple Tech Series - Platform Virtualization on Mac OS X
by Doug Hamilton 23 Apr '10

23 Apr '10

Apple Tech Series - Platform Virtualization on Mac OS X Monday, May 10 2010 10:00AM to 3:00PMAdd to iCal You've been invited to an event Please join us for a workshop on virtualization solutions for your Macs on campus. The objective is to help your organization better understand these important tools as a way to efficiently use Macs for multiple operating systems. Please use the address in this e-mail to register for the event. Holiday Inn - Winnipeg South 1330 Pembina Highway Conference Theatre Room Winnipeg, MB R3T 2B4 Get Directions Copyright © 2010 Apple Inc. 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014. All Rights Reserved / Keep Informed / Privacy Policy

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FYI: Apple Headphones with Remote Replacement Program
by billing 22 Apr '10

22 Apr '10

...from: http://www.apple.com/support/headphones/replacementprogram/ Apple Headphones with Remote Replacement Program Apple has determined that the Apple Headphones with Remote included with the iPod shuffle (3rd gen) may fail under certain conditions. A very small percentage of iPod shuffle owners have experienced this issue. These headphones were included with the iPod shuffle (3rd generation) made between approximately February 2009 and February 2010. If your headphones stop working or work intermittently as described below, Apple will replace them, free of charge, for two years from date of purchase. Symptoms Controls are non-responsive or work intermittently Unexpected volume increase or decrease Unexpected playing of voice feedback Product Description Apple Headphones with Remote - included with iPod shuffle (3rd generation). Serial number ranges of the iPod shuffle with the covered headphones: xx909xxxxxx to xx952xxxxxx xx001xxxxxx to xx004xxxxxx How to find the serial number on an iPod shuffle. Note: Apple In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic and Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic which exhibit the symptoms noted above are also covered under this program. All of these headphones have an in-line remote on the right earbud cable like the one illustrated here: Next Steps If your headphones are experiencing any of the symptoms noted above, please use the Online Service Assistant on the Apple Support site to begin the replacement process. You will need to provide the following information: Serial number of your iPod or iPhone Shipping and Billing addresses Credit card information Please choose "Replace part or accessory" as the service needed. Then choose "Headphones" to complete the request. Upon completion of your online service request, Apple will send you a replacement along with a pre-paid return envelope so that you can ship back the original headphones. It's important that you return the original headphones so that they can be examined and recycled responsibly. If Apple does not receive your original headphones within 10 business days, your credit card will be charged a non-return fee. You may also visit an Apple Retail Store to obtain a replacement. We recommend you set up an appointment with aGenius. Outside the U.S., please visit an Apple Authorized Service Provider to obtain a replacement. If you have any issues placing the replacement order, please contact Apple. Additional Information This worldwide Apple program does not extend the standard warranty coverage of the covered headphones. Apple will continue to evaluate the repair data and will provide further updates to the program if needed. Information as of 2010-04-16

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INTEREST: Web Coupons Know Lots About You, and They Tell
by billing 19 Apr '10

19 Apr '10

...from: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/17/business/media/17coupon.html?pagewanted=2… Web Coupons Know Lots About You, and They Tell By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD Published: April 16, 2010 For decades, shoppers have taken advantage of coupons. Now, the coupons are taking advantage of the shoppers. A new breed of coupon, printed from the Internet or sent to mobile phones, is packed with information about the customer who uses it. While the coupons look standard, their bar codes can be loaded with a startling amount of data, including identification about the customer, Internet address, Facebook page information and even the search terms the customer used to find the coupon in the first place. And all that information follows that customer into the mall. For example, if a man walks into a Filene’s Basement to buy a suit for his wedding and shows a coupon he retrieved online, the company’s marketing agency can figure out whether he used the search terms “Hugo Boss suit” or “discount wedding clothes” to research his purchase (just don’t tell his fiancée). Coupons from the Internet are the fastest-growing part of the coupon world — their redemption increased 263 percent to about 50 million coupons in 2009, according to the coupon-processing company Inmar. Using coupons to link Internet behavior with in-store shopping lets retailers figure out which ad slogans or online product promotions work best, how long someone waits between searching and shopping, even what offers a shopper will respond to or ignore. The coupons can, in some cases, be tracked not just to an anonymous shopper but to an identifiable person: a retailer could know that Amy Smith printed a 15 percent-off coupon after searching for appliance discounts at Ebates.com on Friday at 1:30 p.m. and redeemed it later that afternoon at the store. “You can really key into who they are,” said Don Batsford Jr., who works on online advertising for the tax preparation company Jackson Hewitt, whose coupons include search information. “It’s almost like being able to read their mind, because they’re confessing to the search engine what they’re looking for.” While companies once had a slim dossier on each consumer, they now have databases packed with information. And every time a person goes shopping, visits a Web site or buys something, the database gets another entry. “There is a feeling that anonymity in this space is kind of dead,” said Chris Jay Hoofnagle, director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology’s information privacy programs. None of the tracking is visible to consumers. The coupons, for companies as diverse asRuby Tuesday and Lord & Taylor, are handled by a company called RevTrax, which displays them on the retailers’ sites or on coupon Web sites, not its own site. Even if consumers could figure out that RevTrax was creating the coupons, it does not have a privacy policy on its site — RevTrax says that is because it handles data for the retailers and does not directly interact with consumers. RevTrax can also include retailers’ own client identification numbers (Amy Smith might be client No. 2458230), then the retailer can connect that with the actual person if it wants to, for example, to send a follow-up offer or a thank-you note. Using coupons also lets the retailers get around Google hurdles. Google allows its search advertisers to see reports on which keywords are working well as a whole but not on how each person is responding to each slogan. “We’ve built privacy protections into all Google services and report Web site trends only in aggregate, without identifying individual users,” Sandra Heikkinen, a spokeswoman for Google, said in an e-mail message. The retailers, however, can get to an individual level by sending different keyword searches to different Web addresses. The distinct Web addresses are invisible to the consumer, who usually sees just a Web page with a simple address at the top of it. So clicking on an ad for Jackson Hewitt after searching for “new 2010 deductions” would send someone to a different behind-the-scenes URL than after searching for “Jackson Hewitt 2010,” though the Web pages and addresses might look identical. This data could be coded onto a coupon. RevTrax works as closely with image-rich display ads, with coupons also signaling what ad a person saw and on what site. “Wherever we provide a link, whether it’s on search or banner, that thing you click can include actual keywords,” said Rob O’Neil, director of online marketing at Tag New Media, which works with Filene’s. “There’s some trickery.” The companies argue that the coupon strategy gives them direct feedback on how well their marketing is working. Once the shopper prints an online coupon or sends it to his cellphone and then goes to a store, the clerk scans it. The bar code information is sent to RevTrax, which, with the ad agency, analyzes it. “We break people up into teeny little cross sections of who we think they are, and we test that out against how they respond,” said Mr. Batsford, who is a partner at 31 Media, an online marketing company. RevTrax can identify online shoppers when they are signed in to a coupon site like Ebates or FatWallet or the retailer’s own site. It says it avoids connecting that number with real people to steer clear of privacy issues, but clients can make that match. The retailer can also make that connection when it is offering coupons to its Facebook fans, like Filene’s Basement is doing. “When someone joins a fan club, the user’s Facebook ID becomes visible to the merchandiser,” Jonathan Treiber, RevTrax’s co-founder, said. “We take that and embed it in a bar code or promotion code.” “When the consumer redeems the offer in store, we can track it back, in this case, not to the Google search term but to the actual Facebook user ID that was signing up,” he said. Although Facebook does not signal that Amy Smith responded to a given ad, Filene’s could look up the user ID connected to the coupon and “do some more manual-type research — you could easily see your sex, your location and what you’re interested in,” Mr. Treiber said. (Mr. O’Neil said Filene’s did not do this at the moment.) The coupon efforts are nascent, but coupon companies say that when they get more data about how people are responding, they can make different offers to different consumers. “Over time,” Mr. Treiber said, “we’ll be able to do much better profiling around certain I.P. addresses, to say, hey, this I.P. address is showing a proclivity for printing clothing apparel coupons and is really only responding to coupons greater than 20 percent off.” That alarms some privacy advocates. Companies can “offer you, perhaps, less desirable products than they offer me, or offer you the same product as they offer me but at a higher price,” said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director for the United States Public Interest Research Group, which has asked the Federal Trade Commission for tighter rules on online advertising. “There really have been no rules set up for this ecosystem.”

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FYI: Microsoft Office 2008 updates
by billing 14 Apr '10

14 Apr '10

[NOTE: make sure you quite from all OFFICE applications as well as Microsoft's "Remote Desktop Connection" application to do this update.] ...from: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/980839 Before you install the Office 2008 12.2.4 Update, make sure that the computer is running Mac OS X 10.4.9 (Tiger) or a later version of the Mac OS X operating system. To verify that the computer meets this prerequisite, click About This Mac on the Apple menu. Additionally, you must install the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.2.3 Update or later versions before you install the Office 2008 for Mac 12.2.4 Update. To verify the update that is installed on your computer, follow these steps: • On the Go menu, click Applications. • Open the Microsoft Office 2008 folder, and then open any Office application. For example, open Microsoft Word. • On the Word menu, click About Word. • In the About Word dialog box, compare the version number next to Latest Installed Updateto the version number that is a prerequisite. For example, pre-update: ...post-update: Description of the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.2.4 Update View products that this article applies to. On This Page Expand all | Collapse all INTRODUCTION Microsoft has released security bulletin MS10-017. This security bulletin contains all the relevant information about the security updates for Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac. To view the complete security bulletin, visit the following Microsoft Web site: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms10-017.mspx Back to the top Update details This update improves security. It includes fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code. In addition, this update contains several improvements to enhance stability and performance. Back to the top Improvements that are included in the update The Office 2008 for Mac 12.2.4 Update includes the following improvements. Improvements for all Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac applications Helps improve security. This update fixes vulnerabilities in Office 2008 that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code. For more information, see the security bulletin that is listed earlier in this document. Improvements for Microsoft Excel 2008 for Mac Stability is improved. This update fixes an issue that could cause Excel to close unexpectedly in the following scenarios: Corrupted fonts are present. You insert a row or value into a calculated column. You drag the scroll bar when Excel is displaying trendlines. Performance is improved. This update fixes an issue that causes slow performance with certain printer drivers in Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Imported content from a text file is formatted correctly. This update fixes an issue in which multiple line values in a single cell appear in separate rows when you save the contents as a text file and then open the file in Excel. Back to the top Prerequisites Before you install the Office 2008 12.2.4 Update, make sure that the computer is running Mac OS X 10.4.9 (Tiger) or a later version of the Mac OS X operating system. To verify that the computer meets this prerequisite, click About This Mac on the Apple menu. Additionally, you must install the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.2.3 Update or later versions before you install the Office 2008 for Mac 12.2.4 Update. To verify the update that is installed on your computer, follow these steps: On the Go menu, click Applications. Open the Microsoft Office 2008 folder, and then open any Office application. For example, open Microsoft Word. On the Word menu, click About Word. In the About Word dialog box, compare the version number next to Latest Installed Updateto the version number that is a prerequisite. Back to the top How to obtain the update The following file is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center: Download the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.2.4 Update package now. Release Date: March 9, 2010 For more information about how to download Microsoft support files, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 119591 How to obtain Microsoft support files from online services Microsoft scanned this file for viruses. Microsoft used the most current virus-detection software that was available on the date that the file was posted. The file is stored on security-enhanced servers that help prevent any unauthorized changes to the file. Back to the top Updated files For a complete list of the files that this update adds or changes, double-click the update installer, and then on the File menu, click Show Files. Notes The Office 2008 12.2.4 Update is also available from Microsoft AutoUpdate. AutoUpdate is a program that automatically keeps Microsoft software up-to-date. To use AutoUpdate, start a Microsoft Office program. Then, on the Help menu, click Check for Updates. For more information about resources for Office 2008 for Mac, visit the following Microsoft Web site: http://www.microsoft.com/mac Back to the top APPLIES TO Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Business Edition Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home and Student Edition Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition Microsoft Entourage 2008 for Mac Microsoft Excel 2008 for Mac Microsoft PowerPoint 2008 for Mac Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac

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