Leave a Comment“Normally those signs appear twice a week – on Mondays and on the nights between Thursdays and Fridays,” the mother said.
“Ali always feels bad when it is happening. He cries and his temperature goes up.
Asylum Seekers
KEVIN Rudd is doing a “bad job” on managing asylum-seekers, according to a majority of voters, while almost half think he is “too soft” on the issue.
A Newspoll, conducted exclusively for The Australian reveals 53 per cent think the Government is doing a bad job of handling the large influx of asylum-seeker boats this year, while only 31 per cent of voters are happy with the Prime Minister’s performance on the issue.
Labor voters are increasingly concerned about Mr Rudd’s stance, with the number of supporters who believe he is doing a good job on asylum-seekers falling from 53 per cent in April to 44 per cent.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith is due to arrive in Colombo today for emergency talks on the large number of Sri Lankans seeking asylum in Australia.
Ads Created Based On What You Watch
SOMETIME today, footage of a US college football game played on sports broadcaster ESPN’s website will trigger an ad directly related to what is happening on-screen.
This futuristic new form of TV and online advertising is driven directly by what is happening on the screen in real time, not booked weeks in advance by a media buyer.
The world-first technology driving the system was developed in Australia by a group of visionary sports fans.
Emotional moments
Demand Sport launches its Ad+Demand service with the ESPN ad. It will do so using the immense amount of statistical data that is gathered by sports around the globe to trigger ads during key moments of games and highlights.
And Perth-based Duane Varan, who 18 months ago set up an interactive TV laboratory in the US funded by ESPN’s parent company Disney, has provided the research that has supported Demand Sport’s push to have ads linked to the emotional moments that are crucial to the popularity of sport.
Demand Sport co-founder and chief executive, Luke Reinehr, told the model was a simple one – people have greater recall of advertising when it is closely tied to an emotionally fulfilling moment – and sports provide such moments on an almost minute-by-minute basis.
The project could swiftly be extended to live TV and other genres ranging from entertainment to news.
And the group has had preliminary discussions with a number of Australian media companies about applying the model locally.
“The whole concept is synchronising brand messages with a special moment in a game,” Mr Reinehr said.
“And our technology allows an advertiser to show different ads to different supporters at the same moment.
“For example, a brewery may show an upbeat ad to supporters when their teams scores and a ‘commiseration’ ad to opposition supporters at the same time.”
Backed by stats
The concept has been under development for the past three years, undergoing extensive trials in China before its official launch in the US this week.
Advisers to the project include former International Olympic Commission broadcast rights director Michael Payne, Neal Pilson, former president of CBS Sports in the US, and John Feenie, former head of Walt Disney China affairs and consumer products.
“There is an enormous amount of statistical information that is wrapped around these sports,” Mr Reinehr said.
“It might be goals or home runs, but the thing about sport is it’s very emotional and those statistics are actually recording emotional times in sport.
“We figured out if we could synchronise the metadata that surround sports and align it with a brand moment, it would be very positive.”
The privately held company will not disclose how much it has cost to bring the Ad+Demand project to the point of launch, other than to say “many millions”.
Mr Reinehr predicted the concept would potentially grow to replace pre-roll advertising that precedes many online video highlight products.
“We are not selling advertising – we are providing the tools for publishers to sell advertising in a more meaningful way,” he said.
When the system is released for live TV, he said, stock market reports could trigger ads that reflected the state of the market, while news programming could trigger ads related to news items.
However, Mr Reinehr said the company wanted to pursue the biggest market first because of the scale of the project.
- with Simon Canning
My Opinion:
I think this form of technology is amazing, to think that things like this are becoming available is almost hard to believe. It is great that it is also being developed in Australia, showing that we can also be at the fore front of technology and design. Hopefully this kind of technology will be appearing soon.
Retreat
On Thursday the 4th of November the year 10′s of this year, the year 11′s, of next year will be going on our retreat. The retreat will be held in the conference center and we will be focusing on reconnecting with God and finding our inner Christian. Im am really looking forward to this retreat, and it should be a good experience. It will be a good oppourtunity to come to school in casuals and really relax and take a break in these final weeks of school. I cant wait to see what activities we will do.
An Easy Mistake
QANTAS has stood down two pilots after a Boeing 767 landing in Sydney came within 700ft of the ground before the flight crew realised they had not lowered the plane’s undercarriage.
The airline and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau have launched investigations into the October 26 incident. The pilots are due to be interviewed by authorities on Friday.
The crew on the Melbourne-Sydney CityFlyer service apparently recognised the problem and had started go-around procedures when they received a “gear too low” aural warning from the aircraft’s enhanced ground proximity warning system.
It is understood investigators are looking at possible human error and a communication breakdown between the first officer and captain about who was lowering the landing gear.
According to a former Boeing 767 pilot, a crew on an instrument approach would normally start lowering the undercarriage when the plane was between 2000ft and 1500ft in order to ensure that it met requirements that the aircraft was stable and configured to land at 1000ft.
In visual conditions, the aircraft needed to be stable by 500ft, but lowering the gear at 700ft or even at 1000ft was still far too late, the pilot said.
Landing gear problems or gear-up situations were involved in 15 per cent of airline hull-loss accidents last year, according to an analysis by the International Air Transport Association.
But Qantas said yesterday that a crew failing to lower the undercarriage was extremely rare and it was taking the incident seriously. “The flight crew knew all required procedures but there was a brief communications breakdown,” a spokeswoman said.
“They responded quickly to the situation and instigated a go-around. The cockpit alert coincided with their actions. There was no flight safety issue.
“The incident was reported to the ATSB and the pilots were stood down. We are supporting the ATSB’s investigation and our own investigations will determine what further action might be warranted.”
My Opinion:
In my opinion these pilots must of been distracted in some way to forget to engage the landing gears. To me a mistake like this seems hard to make because it is one of the big things you need to land. I will be interested to see what the pilots reason was for engaging the landing gears so late.
Amy’s Ride
A couple of weeks ago Jack, Zac and I registered to ride in Amy’s ride, the charity bike ride that works to prevent cyclists being hit on roads. The foundation was started after Amy Gillett, a professional cyclist, was killed in Germany after being hit by a vehicle in 2005.
We decided to the ride for some extra training before the rowing season starts. Every Sunday for the past few weeks we have been riding along the linear park bike trail into the city and back towards the plaza. We do around 55km when we take this track. Training for this ride has been pretty enjoyable and it should be interesting to see how we go in the race on the 1st of November
Octobers Ergos
Every 4 weeks at rowing training we test ourselves by doing a 2km session on the rowing machine or ergo. The goal is to better yourself to beat you previous best, just like any other sport. Out of the seniors who do rowing Jack is really my main competion, and for all the ergoes we had done before he had always beaten me by a small margin. However over the last couple of ergoes this season my score has become increasing close to Jack’s without ever beating him.
This training all of that changed after me improving on my previous score by 4 seconds and my personal best by 3 seconds, but more importantly beating Jacks score by a second exactly. Great success.
Arabic Script from the Koran Appear on Boy’s Skin
A boy has become a walking monument to Muslim faith after passages from the Koran started appearing on his skin.
Text in Arabic from the religious book started showing on the boy’s back, arms, legs and stomach, leaving doctors baffled.
They first started appearing shortly after the baby was born, with “Allah” appearing on his chin, The Sun reports.
Doctors say the markings are a medical mystery, but deny the condition is a result of someone writing on the child’s skin.
The parents of the child initially hid the mysterious writings, but eventually took the boy to the doctor.
They say the old passages fade before new words appear roughly twice a week.
“It’s impossible to hold him when it’s happening, his body is actively moving, so we put him into his cradle. It’s so hard to watch him suffering”, his Mother said.
Since the holy markings were revealed, the boy became the focus of Muslim homage in his hometown province of Dagestan, in the south of Russia. [NEWS.com.au]
My Opinion
My first reaction to this story was complete surprise, I found it hard to believe that a boy could having writing on his body appearing and disappearing. And when I think about what some followers of Islam will believe im sure it will cause a massive amount of interest. Im not quite sure what could have caused the markings but im a little suspicious of the markings coming and going, it will be interesting to see whether the parents had anything to do with it.
Tyler O’Brien
Facebook Out-Growing MySpace
“Social networking is definitely seeing a reshuffling of its top players.
Facebook and Twitter are in, MySpace is out, according to Experian Hitwise.
The Internet monitoring company reported last week that Facebook, the No. 1 social network in the U.S., grew its share of all the visits to social-networking sites from 19 percent in September 2008 year to 58.6 a year later. That’s a more than 190 percent increase.
Over the same period, Twitter’s share jumped from 0.15 percent to 1.84 percent, and the service now ranks as the fourth largest social network.
Ailing MySpace, which is scurrying to remake itself into an entertainment portal, is still in second place behind Facebook, but scores of users have begun walking away.
According to Hitwise, MySpace can still boast 30 percent of the social-networking market, but the site is in free fall. Last year at this time, MySpace captured 66.8 percent of the market.
MySpace is hunkering down to develop more compelling music and video services, but it needs to emerge quickly from its chrysalis with something attractive to offer.
Once the traffic goes, then content owners–such as the musical acts that promote themselves on the site–may be the next to flee.
Overall, U.S. visits to social networking Web sites rose 62 percent from September 2008 to September 2009, according to Hitwise, which tracks 155 such sites. ” (News CNET)
This information doesnt come as big news to me, MySpace always seemed cluttered and unfinished looking. Facebook on the other hand seemed more professional looking with simple backgrounds and colour schemes. I think more people are wanting, especially older people, something that looks a little more cleaner and usable. Though in saying this I think that Facebook will both be taken over by Twitter which is growing by something like 1000% percent in the last months. Twitter will be the new leader in the social networking race.
Holiday Reflection
In my holidays I spent the first 4 days in Murray Bridge. I was there on a school rowing trip with 15 or so other people. We spent at least 4-6 hours on the water throughout the week, with a couple of gym sessions to vary up the training.
On Monday, we arrived at Murray Bridge around 10:00. We de-rigged the boats, quickly got our bags into our cabin and got ready to be on the water at 11:30, (no messing about). Our first session was spent in small boats with Jack, Zac and myself in singles. All sessions on this day were spent in singles.
On Tuesday we spent two of the four sessions in a quad, and the other two in doubles and singles. In these sessions we did 6x 10min pieces next to another crew.
On Wednesday we spent 3 sessions in the gym doin weights and ergos, the 20 or so of us formed a circuit around the gym sets and rotated in pairs around each machine. We also did some core focused activities aswell. We only had three sessions on Wednesday, giving us a slight break.
On Thursday we had three sessions aswell, spending most of the time in the eight. For most of us it was our first sweep row, and was good to be in such a big boat. Even though it was our first row in a sweep boat we picked up the technique quite quickly and were rowing as a full eight by the end of the day. At the end of the day our coaches took us out to dinner which was good.
And finally on Friday we went for a small row in the morning, then de-rigged the boats, put them on the trailer, packed up our stuff and headed back to Adelaide. We arrived back home around 2:30 and we were all massivly tired, I ended up staying in bed all Saturday and Sunday.
