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After reportedly lacklustre advertising efforts in the French market, Microsoft (in concert with Orange) has launched not one, but two new online advertising campaigns for Windows Phone 7: the first playing up WP7′s Xbox Live integration and “Must Have” games, the second aimed at business users.

The page linked to by the “Must Have” campaign opens with an advert for WP7 devices on Orange for a mere 19/month, and talks up the gaming features (translated:)

Keep the game beyond your living room with the Xbox LIVE Windows Phone!

Find your Gamertag on your mobile and follow the progress of your Gamerscore and your success at any time. You can also compare your performance with your contacts Xbox LIVE.

Changing your avatar on your phone like on your console. Personalize it, dress him and make him live in the palm of your hand.

Discover the best mobile games with stunning graphics and animations: Hydro Thunder Go – May 25, Doodle Jump – June 1, geoDefense – June 8, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode I – June 15, Plants vs. Zombies – Jun. 22, Angry Birds – June 29

It’s time to upgrade to Windows Phone!

Meanwhile, the more soberly presented Windows Phone for Professionals sells WP7′s enterprise features (also translated):

Why settle for a smartphone designed for business use/> when you can do so much more with Windows Phone?

Thanks to Outlook, go to your mail wherever you are./> View, edit and send attachments of your emails with Office.

With Windows Live Messenger on Windows Phone, please/> and chat with all your friends at home or on their mobile.

With Internet Explorer, surf the web like on your PC to view/> your accounts, book your travel or do your shopping online.

Discover the world of Xbox LIVE for Windows Phone: graphics and animations/> worthy of handheld and an exceptional choice.

It’s time to upgrade to Windows Phone!

Via monsmartphone.net.

About Olly Levett

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class="first">   Blog
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T. and F. They don’t stand for ‘true’ or ‘false’ anymore. They stand for Twitter and Facebook. They’re in the corner of every webpage we visit, alongside ‘in’ for LinkedIn, ‘su’ for StumbleUpon, and the universally recognized envelope, which represents the archaic sharing system we call ‘email’ – which still accounts for 17% of all Internet sharing.

When we’re surfing the web, we see something we like and click one or all of these sharing buttons without thinking twice. But if you’re a marketer, or a webmaster, or a blogger – anyone that has a vested interest in how many hits are coming in; sharing isn’t just the new American pastime – there are dollars at stake. And one company is attempting to help publishers better understand how encouraging sharing can increase profits.

This is the goal of ShareThis, the largest platform for sharing and influence across the web, which aims to help publishers strengthen their advertising by understanding the people who are receiving their content via shares. Sharing accounts for 31% of site referral traffic, nearly half of what search engines account for. Analyzing not who is sharing, but who they’re sharing it with gives publishers the ammo they need to secure advertisers that will profit from partnering with them.

ShareThis CEO Tim Schigel explains it as such: If I send a link about DIY furniture restoration to my cousin Susie, it says more about her than it does about me. As Susie’s cousin and ‘search agent’, I’m targeting her better than any advertiser could. If publishers understand the people who are receiving their links from sharing, they can secure more effective advertising. By tracking the path of clicks, ShareThis can aggregate pertinent information about the publisher’s audience, thus enabling them to broker more meaningful relationships between publishers and relevant advertisers. Eventually, ShareThis will be able to assign a dollar value to every share.

One website has already nailed down their share-to-dollar algorithm – Eventbrite. As Marketing Director Tamara Mendelsohn puts it, ecommerce isn’t something you’d inherently share with your network – you don’t post the $300 shoes you just purchased on your Facebook wall (or you do, if you’re gaudy). Enter social commerce. The nature of events is that they’re social – you want your friends to come along, you want to hear feedback from people who’ve attended a similar event, you want to know who’s already purchased tickets.

Add to that an interface that encourages both event organizers and ticket purchasers to post events to their social networks, and you have one of the most successful social commerce campaigns on the Internet. Facebook is now Eventbrite’s #1 referral site, surpassing Google and netting Eventbrite 11 clicks and $2.53 per share. How they got the number: “We track the total ticket volume that is driven by each sharing mechanism and divide by the total number of shares that are initiated through that mechanism on our platform. In reality the numbers are probably higher, as some people will just directly cut and paste links to share. We can’t track that, so we know our numbers are conservative.”

Of course, not every social site can be expected to provide a ROI like Facebook (an Eventbrite share on Twitter only nets 0.43). In the case of Eventbrite, this is because Facebook (and Facebook friends) are a lot more localized – your Twitter followers are likely to have a greater geographic spread than your Facebook friends. There’s also that whole “Facebook having 500 million users” part of the equation.

There’s been an undercurrent of dissent toward Facebook in the past few months; stemming from early adopters who claim it’s ‘jumped the shark’. The unfortunate truth is that it’s the most effective social network if you’re trying to garner clicks on your shares – whether you’re trying to share the cutest kitten video ever or an article you’ve mandated ‘required reading‘ for anyone who wants to associate with you.

Of 70 billion shares examined in the ShareThis study, 38% of clicks on shared content came from Facebook (Twitter was only responsible for 11%). If you don’t use social networks to promote your projects or your personal interests, feel free to deactivate that Facebook profile. But if you have even the tiniest incentive to reach an audience, it may be a while before Facebook becomes as irrelevant as some of us wish it were.

Where and how do you share content on the Internet?

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Participating artists:

Beth Barron explores memory and the present in her altered and then further embellished pieces.

Charlene Burningham, one of the mainstays of quilting in the area, not only shows how piecing and quilting can be used to obtain surface pattern, but that weaving – often in unusual materials – can provide the same visual interest.

Nancy Eha, with her complex and time-consuming beadwork, focuses gently on social issues that the viewer will immediately recognize.

Bernadette Mahfood is an expressive artist in several mediums, and is able to be decorative at the same time she is making serious social points.

Barbara Otto combines ancient sewing stitches with the latest in digital imagery to produce intriguing collages in textile.

Christine Pradel-Lien creates tapestries that tell stories, both familiar and enigmatic, and is a master in her craft.

Karen Searle works in three-dimensional textile creation, and is unafraid to tackle difficult materials, and also questions about society and gender roles.

“Skimming the Surface: Pattern and Narrative” is offered in conjunction with the Surface Design Association Conference, Confluence, held in the Twin Cities June 4-17. St. Thomas will be one of the stops on SDA Gallery Day, Thursday, June 9, from noon to 5 p.m. For a schedule of conference workshops, participants and gallery tour stops visit  the SDA website.

All events are free, open to the public and handicap accessible. For more information contact Sue Focke, (651) 962-5560, or visit the Art History website.

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Alt Attribute & Seo

SEO Optimization images has become increasingly more essential in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for websites. The ALT attribute is a critical step that is sometimes forgotten. This can be a lost chance of better rankings.

In Google's webmaster guidelines, they advise the use of alternative text for the images on your web site:

Images:. Make use of the alt attribute to provide descriptive text. In addition, we recommend utilizing a human-readable caption and descriptive text around the image.

Why would they ask us to do that? The answer is simple, really; search engines have the same problem as blind users. They cannot see the images.

Many webmasters and inexperienced or unethical SEOs abuse the use of this attribute, attempting to stuff it with keywords, hoping to achieve a certain keyword density, which isn't as relevant for rankings now since it once was.

On the contrary, high keyword density can, on some search engines, trigger spam filters, which might create a penalty for the site's ranking. Even without such a penalty, your site's rankings will not benefit from this tactic.
This method also puts persons who use screen readers in a greater disadvantage. Screen readers are software-based tools that really read aloud the items in what is shown on the screen. In browsing the web, the alt features of images are read aloud too.

Imagine listening to a paragraph of text which is followed by repetitions of many keywords. The page would be far from accessible, and, to put it bluntly, will be found quite annoying.
What is an Alt attribute?

An ALT attribute shouldn't be used as a description or perhaps a label to have an image, though many people use it for the reason that fashion. Though it may appear natural to assume that alternate text is a label or a description, it is not!

What used within an image's alt attribute should be its text equivalent and convey exactly the same information or serve the same purpose the image would.

The thing would be to supply the same functional information that the visual user would see. The alt attribute text should be the "stand in" when the image itself is unavailable. Ask yourself this: If you were to replace the look with the text, would most users receive the same basic information, and wouldn't it generate the same response?
Some examples:

 

Some SEO Optimization Tips

If your search button is a magnifier or binoculars its alt text should be 'search' or 'find' not 'magnifying glass' or 'binoculars'.

If an image is meant to convey the literal items in the image, then a description is suitable.

If it's designed to convey data, then that information is what's appropriate.

If it is designed to convey using a function, then the function itself is what should be used.

Some Alt Attribute Guidelines:

Always add alt attributes to images. Alt is mandatory for accessibility as well as for valid XHTML.

For images that play merely a decorative role within the page, make use of an empty alt (i.e. alt="") or perhaps a CSS background image to ensure that reading browsers do not bother users by uttering things like "spacer image".

Keep in mind that it is the function of the image we're trying to convey. For example; any button images shouldn't range from the word "button" in the alt text. They should emphasize the action performed through the button.

Alt text ought to be determined by context. Exactly the same image inside a different context may need drastically different alt text.

Try to flow alt text with the remainder from the text because that is how it is going to be read with adaptive technologies like screen readers. Someone hearing your page should hardly remember that a graphic image can there be.
Please remember that using an alt attribute for each image is required to meet the minimum WAI requirements, that are used as the benchmark for accessibility laws in UK and also the remainder of Europe. They are also required to meet "Section 508" accessibility requirements in the US.

It is useful to categorize non-text content into three levels:

Eye-Candy
Mood-Setting
Content and Function

I. Eye-Candy

Eye-Candy are things that serve no purpose other than to create a site visually appealing/attractive and (oftentimes) fulfill the marketing departments. There isn't any content value (though there may be value to some sighted user).

Never alt-ify eye-candy unless there is something there that will enhance the usability of the site for someone utilizing a non-visual user agent. Make use of a null alt attribute or background images in CSS for eye-candy.

II. Mood-Setting

This is actually the middle layer of graphics which might serve to set the mood or set happens as it were. These graphics are not direct content and may not be considered essential, but they're essential in that they help frame what's going on.

Try to alt-ify the 2nd group as is sensible and it is relevant. There may be instances when doing this may be annoying or detrimental with other users. Then try to avoid it.

For instance; Alt text that's identical to adjacent text is unnecessary, as well as an irritant to screen reader users. I suggest alt="" or background CSS images in such instances. But sometimes, it's important to understand this content inside for all users.

Usually it depends on context. Exactly the same image inside a different context may require drastically different alt text. Obviously, content should always be fully available. The way you go in this case is a judgment call.

III. Content and Function

This is where the image may be the actual content. Always alt-ify content and functional images. Title and long description attributes can also be in order.
The main reason many authors can't understand why their alt text isn't working is that they don't know why the pictures are there. You have to determined precisely what function an image serves. Consider what it's about the image that's important to the page's intended audience.

Every graphic has a reason behind standing on that page: since it either improves the theme/ mood/ atmosphere or it is advisable to what the page is attempting to explain. Knowing what the look is perfect for makes alt text easier to write. And exercise writing them definitely helps.
A method to check the usefulness of alternative text is to imagine reading the page over the telephone to someone. An amount you say when encountering a specific image to make the page understandable towards the listener?

Besides the alt attribute you've got a couple more tools at your disposal for images.
First, in degree of descriptiveness title is in between alt and longdesc. It adds useful information and may add flavor. The title attribute is optionally rendered through the user agent. Remember they are invisible and never shown like a "tooltip" when focus is received through the keyboard. (So much for device independence). So use the title attribute just for advisory information.
Second, the longdesc attribute points towards the URL of a complete description of the image. If the information contained in a picture is essential towards the meaning of the page (i.e. some important content will be lost when the image was removed), an extended description compared to "alt" attribute can reasonably display should be used. It can provide for rich, expressive documentation of a visual image.

It ought to be used when alt and title are insufficient to embody the visual qualities of an image. As Clark [1] states, "A longdesc is a long description of the image...The goal is by using any period of description essential to impart the details of the graphic.

It would not be remiss to hope that a long description conjures an image - the image - within the mind's eye, an analogy that holds true even for that totally blind."

Although the alt attribute is mandatory for web accessibility and for valid (X)HTML, not all images need alternative text, long descriptions, or titles.

Oftentimes, you are better off just choosing your gut instinct -- if it's not essential to incorporate it, and if you don't possess a strong urge to do it, don't include that longdesc.

However, if it's essential for the whole page to work, then you have to include the alt text (or title or longdesc).

What's necessary and what's not depends a lot about the function of the image and it is context on the page.

The same image may need alt text (or title or longdesc) in a single spot, but not in another. If an image provides absolutely no content or functional information alt="" or background CSS images might be appropriate to use. However, if the image provides content or adds functional information an alt will be required and perhaps even a long description will be in order. Oftentimes this kind of thing is really a judgement call.

Image Search Engine Optimization Tips

Listed below are key stages in optimizing images:

Select a logical file name that reinforces the keywords. You can use hyphens in the file name to isolate the keyword, but avoid to exceeding two hyphens. Avoid using underscores like a word separator, like for example "brilliant-diamonds.jpg";

Label the file extension. For instance, when the image internet search engine sees a ".jpg" (JPEG) file extension, it's going to assume the file is really a photo, and if it sees a ".gif" (GIF) file extension, it's going to assume that it is a graphic;

Make sure that the written text at the image that's relevant to that image.
Again, don't lose an excellent chance to help your website with your images in search engines. Use these steps to rank better on all of the engines and drive more traffic for your site TODAY.

Website Optimization

Note the Client companies are based in either the US or Canada and the “percentage of traffic outside key service areas” are based on each client’s target market.

For instance, if a client only services the US only, any traffic outside the US would be traffic outside their service area.

Evaluating Your Own Traffic For Relevance

To use our own web design and Internet marketing business as an example, we service both Canada and the US, but were getting 24% of our traffic from other international countries. Big portions of that traffic were companies looking to sell their services to us.

These international visitors would fill in our web forms and call us to inquire, untimely skewing our website analytics data by not giving us a real understanding of how our website was performing to quality prospects.

A solution had to be implemented to significantly reduce the amount of resources we were dedicating to people outside our service areas.

Ultimately, we didn’t want to be contacted from people we couldn’t help. The four possible solutions we considered were:

1. Create a custom report in Google Analytics to filter out the unwanted data (reporting related)


2. Adjust the content of our website (website related)


3. Block the traffic from specific Countries from viewing our website (server related)


4. Don’t change anything.

Option #1

When evaluating the first solution, creating a custom report to filter out this data in Google Analytics, this would clear up our analytics data. Implementing a filter would provide a more realistic picture of quality prospects we could service in our geographic area instead of those prospects or solicitors in other counties we don’t service.

This option didn’t run the risk of blocking any traffic or robots that we do want. It’s also a simple filter to add in Google Analytics. We set up another Profile with the country exclusions filters. A new Profile was the preferred approach, rather than going through the extra steps of creating Custom Reports.

However, setting up analytical filters doesn’t fully resolve the issue, since these visitors could still access our site, fill in web forms, and contact us, ultimately wasting resources that we could dedicate elsewhere.

It wouldn’t give us a true picture of what was going on. It also wouldn’t resolve the problem – we didn’t want to be contacted by companies from some outside countries.

Option #2

Updating the website content to say you only service a specific area is another solution that we considered.  This would inject more geo-targeted keywords into your site, which would help in local SEO. Adding a graphical map, drop-down options and/or links that allow the visitor to select their country would help qualify visitors.

Some of the downfalls of this option include spending a much higher amount of time to implement versus the other options. The success of this would also be dependent on how honest the visitor is.

Assuming visitors are reading your website content, adding geo-targeted keywords into your site would set a clearer expectation of service area delivery. However, this option still doesn’t resolve the issue of sharing contact information that allows unsolicited visitors to contact us and invalid web form data.

Option #3

How about blocking or filtering visitors automatically based on their IP address? When considering to block website visitors by IP it’s important to first evaluate the reliability of the IP address(es). The accuracy of an IP list is over 99.5% on a country level and 80% on a city level. The smaller the location, the less reliable the IP address.

Internet Service Providers change IP addresses they designate to customers. Some change them more frequently than others, which is why you want to keep the database of IPs updated. Scheduling a monthly update is typically a good routine if city level IP authentication is required. Country level is much more static.

The benefit of blocking the country via IP address would not only clean up analytical data, but also ensure our sales funnel was more efficient and provide a more accurate picture of real prospects in all systems. We needed to consider other issues in this approach.

One concern was the potential for a search crawler coming from an IP in the location we were planning on blocking. For example, there was a possibility that Google’s search crawler would also be blocked if it came from the same country. The implementation of this option is more technical. One would need to obtain a list of IP addresses for the desired locations and update the websites htaccess file.

In our example, the inquiries from some countries became so frequent that we couldn’t ignore it any longer. After much debate, we decided to ban the countries; however, we would only ban one at a time to evaluate the effects.

For instance, one of the largest traffic sources, accounting for approximately 20% of this, was from India, a market we don’t service. These Indian visitors were companies looking to sell their services to us.

We executed the ban in the polite Canadian way. We also implemented the Google Analytics profile with the country filter to monitor future website statistics versus the past.

Those visitors that came from our blocked list would land on a different page that displayed a nice message. It read: “Thank you for visiting. However, we don’t provide services in your area.”

In sum, the tests have gone over very well. Banning the country from our website has significantly cut down the number of unsolicited calls, emails and web form requests. It also gave us a much more accurate picture of how our website was performing within our own target market and service area.

Considerations For Blocking Traffic By Location

If you’re considering this strategy, some factors to consider when filtering visitors include:

• Why do you want to filter website traffic?


• Which locations would you want to filter?


• How much traffic do you currently get from locations outside your service area?


• How important is this traffic?


• How to funnel visitors outside your service areas?


• The accuracy of the IP addresses locations in mind.


• Effects of non-human visitors.

A few months after we implemented this, we received a direct mail package that contained pens with our logo on them from a company that wished to sell us branded pens.

Guess what it said under our logo? “Thank you for visiting. However, we don’t provide services in your area.” We had a good laugh. Someone obviously didn’t read what they printed. It was evidence that our website block was working and a nice souvenir.

The key takeaway, as always, is monitor your traffic and conversions. Track where your quality traffic is coming from and decide for yourself if you should block the traffic of certain countries. Make sure to proceed with caution to ensure that you are not missing some opportunities.

Think outside of the box for other ideas of how you can use that traffic. Perhaps referring the traffic to a partner or creating a unique service for specific markets is another option to consider.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: 100% Organic - Search Engine Optimization Tips | SEO: General

OwnLocal is a Y-Combinator bred startup that helps local newspapers survive on the Internet. OwnLocal swoops into small towns sprinkled across America’s less tech savvy plains and puts on quite a clever show. In no way are they grifters; but with their guaranteed promises of success, small town publishers don’t stand a chance.

Lloyd W. Armbrust, II, OwnLocal’s Founder and CEO, puts its technology in the hands of local publications, newspapers or television stations, so that they can then sell successful modern digital strategies like owning a website, blogging, SEO optimization, design, group deals and more to local businesses. In other words, OwnLocal acts like a web development department for local newspapers providing them with simple, sellable products including a white label daily deal product and a white label Yelp-like product.

“In rural America, small businesses would rather the Internet didn’t exist, but it does. We sell a package through their local newspapers that creates a website for them, writes relevant blog posts for them and pushes out media to Twitter and Facebook. So, we manage all of that for them but we do it through their newspaper.”

-Lloyd W. Armbrust

OwnLocal trains local media employees and shows them how to put on a “Web a la carte” presentation for small businesses even though the local businesses may have never heard of Groupon, Yelp or LivingSocial. To date, OwnLocal has powered more than 1,000 small businesses and over 100 publications.

OwnLocal also sells its product, “AdForge” as “the best print-to-digital ad conversion software in the world.” AdForge is designed to take print ads and put them on the web, on mobile and on tablets. AdForge easily converts print ads into clickable, shareable, printable, mappable and sendable digital ads.

Say you’re a lawyer or a plumber, OwnLocal will create websites optimized for search engines and deal with social media elements like blogging, tweeting and Facebooking, saving these small service businesses a lot of time and effort. Businesses can choose from a variety of different websites from simple splash pages to editable, manageable sites. OwnLocal then taps into its network of college students and stay at home moms to write the company’s blog posts. But again, all of this is through the local newspaper.

Today, OwnLocal announces its “Arcade” partnership with HeyZap, another YC startup, to bring more than 50,000 social and casual games to newspapers and local media. Rather than just having a few puzzle games like crosswords and Sudoku, newspapers will have access to games that reflect what their audiences have come to expect from social networks and social game sites. Initial launch partners include A.H. Belo Corp.‘s The Press-Enterprise and Impre Media, the largest Spanish language newspaper group in America as well as 25 other newspapers. OwnLocal expects that newspapers will see financial benefits, increased time-on-site and more return visits.

In York, Nebraska– a town with a population of 10,000– OwnLocal made The York News Times $140,000 last year. OwnLocal takes 30% and the newspaper gets the remaining 70% of revenues from its tech products sold. $100,000-300,000 is an easy number to make for local papers, says Armbrust.  OwnLocal doesn’t work with media outlets that have circulations less than 1,000. And its sophisticated system tell them exactly how much money they can make just from circulation numbers. Guaranteed revenue reports based on circulation for dying newspapers? Maybe dreams do come true.

“The community newspaper I worked at was purchased and sold to Gatehouse Media. I started thinking, what can we do? Is there a situation where you can make this product that’s all-encompassing that could make these newspapers money? I felt for these guys. Print is declining.”

–Lloyd Armbrust

Armbrust has worked in the newspaper industry for 11 years, including two years working on OwnLocal. His Co-Founder Jason Novack is the hardcore hacker in the pair. Armbrust says their main competitor, ReachLocal charges 5 times as much as OwnLocal because they utilize a network of 1,000 local sales reps.

To date, OwnLocal has received just under a million seed funding from Y Combinator, Baseline Ventures, Lerer Media Ventures, Paul Buchheit, Joshua Schachter and Alex Moore.

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Maya Moore quickly signs deal with Minnesota Lynx

The Minnesota Lynx have signed Maya Moore, the first pick in this year's WNBA draft.

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Multiple Sources Confirm New Nintendo HD Console - <b>News</b> - www <b>...</b>

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Apple has reportedly become more aggressive in securing components from overseas suppliers, making moves such as upfront cash payments to both ensure supply and block out competitors.



Analyst Brian White with Ticonderoga Securities said in a note to investors on Thursday that Apple began "aggressively attacking" the component situation in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami that struck the country. The iPhone maker reportedly sent executives to suppliers immediately to ensure adequate supply of components, and also began offering upfront cash payments.



Separately, White's contacts in Taiwan also revealed that Apple is allegedly securing component capacity using what is known as a "three cover guarantee," referring to capacity, stock and price. Apple's move is seen as one that could potentially block out competitors and prevent them from building ample supply of devices.



The information comes as a separate report out of the Far East suggested that a one-month delay for Research in Motion's PlayBook tablet was as a result of Apple securing most of the available touch panel production capacity. The delay has forced the PlayBook to go on sale after Apple's in-demand iPad 2.



Last month, it was said that Apple could agree to price hikes in order to secure touch panel supply, particularly in the aftermath of the Japan earthquake. Apple was said to be in talks with component makers about touch panel pricing, and allegedly considered some price increases in negotiations.



In the company's last quarterly earnings call, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook revealed that Apple had invested $3.9 billion of its nearly $60 billion in cash reserves in long-term supply contracts. He declined to reveal what components Apple had put its money toward, citing competitive concerns, but said that it was a strategic move that would position the company well in the future.



Analysts largely believe that the secret investment was related to touch panel displays that are the centerpiece of devices like the iPhone and iPad. One cost breakdown estimated that such an investment could secure Apple 136 million iPhone displays, or 60 million iPad touch panels.



It's a move similar to 2005, when Apple inked a major deal with Samsung to secure longterm supply of flash memory. NAND flash would go on to become a major part of Apple's products, including the iPhone, iPad and new MacBook Air.

As rumors of a later-than-usual iPhone launch for 2011 persist, a new report reveals that the notoriously secretive Apple is being even more careful than usual when dealing with overseas suppliers.



"Apple is keeping its iPhone 5 cards extra close to the vest on this launch to avoid a falloff in iPhone 4 demand ahead of a refresh, especially given the February launch of the CDMA iPhone 4 with Verizon," Analyst Brian White with Ticonderoga Securities said in a note to investors on Friday. He believes that the iPhone 5 could still launch in June or July, as previous models have.



White noted that various rumors have pointed toward a launch later than June this year for the fifth-generation iPhone. One report from March alleged that Apple has not even begun ordering components for the anticipated "iPhone 5," and the device is slated to arrive in the company's 2012 fiscal year, which begins in late September.



And a third report alleged that Apple is working on a major revamp of iOS, its mobile operating system, for version 5.0. New features like cloud-based storage of music, photos and video are rumored to arrive in the update this fall, likely alongside new iPhone hardware.



But despite all of those reports, White isn't yet convinced that the iPhone 5 will be introduced later than its typical June or July timeframe.



"Although we do not have a smoking gun that definitively rules out a delayed autumn unveiling or one that supports a launch this summer, there is a pattern of activity in motion with the supply chain that makes us question a delayed launch," he said.



White also cited sources who indicated that iPad sales could reach up to 40 million units in calendar year 2011. And supply chain sources also indicated that disruption from the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan will actually end up benefitting Apple, as suppliers will "rush to support Apple at the expense of competitors."



The analyst already revealed earlier this week that Apple has been offering upfront cash payments to component suppliers in order to secure components in the wake of the disaster in Japan. Apple has apparently also been using a "three cover guarantee," referring to capacity, stock and price, to block out competitors and prevent them from building ample supply of devices.

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One important thing about cities is their sex appeal — their magnetism. Places flourish when they attract people, resources, opportunities, and ideas, and match them to one another. Cities are much more than the built environment of roads and real estate. Cities are about relationships, and whether people have access to opportunities. Cities are one big dating game.

When cities lose their magnetism, the whole population suffers. The deterioration of Detroit began well before recent auto industry woes; its population plunge was confirmed by the latest Census. Some attribute decline to bad urban redevelopment schemes or corrupt politics that failed to improve schools or reduce crime. "A once-great American city today repels people of talent and ambition," a Wall Street Journal columnist wrote recently. A local leader told him, "It's been class warfare on steroids, and ... so many Detroiters who had the means — black and white — have fled the city."

Cleveland is another shrunken city with significant poverty. In the 1980s, Cleveland Tomorrow, a coalition of major company CEOs, sponsored downtown projects, including a new baseball stadium and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This attracted luxury apartment developments, luring the affluent to the center city and revitalizing it. But inner city ghettoes were barely touched, and the region continued to lose high-wage manufacturing.

There's a tale of two cities within many city borders: one rich, the other very poor. Dubai, a gleaming new city of luxury high rises, is ringed by hidden slums for temporary service workers from the underclass of Asian nations. In New York, the middle class, including young families, cannot afford to live in the city. Baton Rouge has affluent areas with some of Louisiana's best quality-of-life indicators and extreme poverty areas with some of the worst. Other divides include racial and ethnic enclaves that vary in opportunities — for example, minority entrepreneurs with promising business ideas who can't access mainstream sources of capital and support.

Cities should be connectors but can have connection problems. Cities are where all parts of life come together: jobs, health, education, environmental quality. Yet, in most cities, businesses, schools, hospitals, and city services still operate in silos. And the political boundaries of cities don't encompass their true extent or the flow of people, as the Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Center points out. IBM's Smarter Cities Challenge supports efforts to use technology for connected regional solutions.

Interdependence among urban issues makes vicious cycles worse. If there is no action on high youth unemployment or poor educational quality and high school dropout rates, then too many African-American males end up in prison. High crime rates make sections of cities undesirable, and neighborhoods deteriorate. Aging buildings and toxic environments then cause health problems, such as lead poisoning or asthma, which disproportionately affect inner city children. Children in poor health have trouble learning, learning problems are associated with school dropouts, and vicious cycles continue.

Pivotal investments can start virtuous cycles. The transformation of Miami from sleepy southern city to international trade hub and informal capital of Latin America was propelled by investments in a world class airport and a flood of immigrants from Fidel Castro's Cuba. Mayors and civic leaders took advantage of this to attract new businesses and tout Latin connections, as my book World Class describes. But progress stalls if benefits don't reach the grass roots, racial divides persist, and major institutions fail to collaborate. The Miami Foundation's emerging leaders program is designed to deploy diverse younger professionals for major civic projects.

Revitalizing cities requires national urban policy investments and social innovations on the ground. Leadership might come from:

• Enlightened mayors who build public-private partnerships or join Cities of Service, which align the city and non-profits around high-impact goals.



• Business leaders, such as former Miami Herald publisher David Lawrence, who rallied Miami-Dade County to vote for a tax increase (Yes to new taxes!) to create the Children's Trust, a fund to improve life for all children.



• Faith communities, such as Rev. Raymond Jetson's community organizing toward a coalition for "A Better Baton Rouge."



• Financiers, such as Tim Ferguson and Ron Walker, who co-founded Next Street to invest in inner city businesses.



• Social entrepreneurs, such as Hubie Jones, who wants to replicate a birth-to-college educational model like the Harlem Children's Zone in Boston.



• Community foundations with a strategic perspective, seeking integrated solutions across issues such as youth employment, education, health, and green plans.

The best social innovations will connect people and institutions, producing an infrastructure for collaboration. That social infrastructure will increase the sex appeal of cities by going beyond initial attraction to build lasting relationships for lasting improvements.

Over the years, entrepreneurs and corporate executives have devised any number of clever ways for getting rich off the working poor, but you'd have to look long and hard to find one more diabolically inventive than the RAL. Say you have a $2,000 tax refund due and you don't want to wait a week or two for the IRS to deposit that money in your bank account. Your tax preparer would be delighted to act as the middleman for a very short-term bank loan—the RAL. You get your check that day or the next, minus various fees and interest charges, and in return sign your pending refund over to the bank. Within 15 days, the IRS wires your refund straight to the lender. It's a safe bet for the banks, but that hasn't stopped them from charging astronomical interest rates. Until this tax year, the IRS was even kind enough to let lenders know when potential borrowers were likely to have their refund garnished because they owed back taxes, say, or were behind on child support.

Hewitt didn't invent the refund anticipation loan. That distinction belongs to Ross Longfield, who dreamed up the idea in 1987 and took it to H&R Block CEO Thomas Bloch. "I'm explaining it," Longfield recalls, "but Tom is sitting there going, 'I don't know; I don't know if people are going to want to do that.'"

Tax-prep shops are as common as fast-food joints in many low-income neighborhoods—there are at least half a dozen on one three-block stretch of South Broadway in Yonkers, N.Y., where these photographs were taken. A few offer reasonably priced accounting, while others charge hundreds of dollars for 20 minutes of work. But Longfield knew. He worked for Beneficial Corp., a subprime lender specializing in small, high-interest loans for customers who needed to finance a new refrigerator or dining-room set. His instincts told him the RAL would be a big hit—as did the polling and focus groups he organized. "Everything we did suggested people would love it—love it to death," he says.

He also knew Beneficial would make a killing if he could convince tax preparers—in exchange for a cut of the proceeds—to peddle this new breed of loan on his employer's behalf. Ultimately, Longfield persuaded H&R Block to sign up. But no one was as smitten as John Hewitt—who understood that people earning $15,000 or $20,000 or $25,000 a year live in a perpetual state of financial turmoil. Hewitt began opening outposts in the inner cities, Rust Belt towns, depressed rural areas—anywhere the misery index was high. "That was the low-hanging fruit," he says. "Going into lower-income areas and delivering refunds quicker was where the opportunity was."

Customers wanting a RAL paid Jackson Hewitt a $24 application fee, a $25 processing fee, and a $2 electronic-filing fee, plus 4 percent of the loan amount. On a $2,000 refund, that meant $131 in charges—equivalent to an annual interest rate of about 170 percent—not to mention the few hundred bucks you might spend for tax preparation. "Essentially, they're charging people triple-digit interest rates to borrow their own money," says Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.

In 1988, the first year he began offering the loans, Hewitt owned 49 stores in three states. Five years later, he had 878 stores in 37 states. And five years after that, when Cendant Corp.—the conglomerate that owned Avis, Century 21, and Days Inn—bought Jackson Hewitt for $483 million, his earliest backers received a $2 million payout on every $5,000 they'd invested. Today, with 6,000 offices scattered across the country, Jackson Hewitt is more ubiquitous than KFC, and has about as many imitators.

 

THERE WOULD BE NO refund anticipation loans, of course, without tax refunds. And by extension there would be no RALs without the Earned Income Tax Credit, the federal anti-poverty initiative that served as the mother's milk nourishing the instant-refund boom. Welfare reform was the catalyst for the EITC, which was aimed at putting extra cash in the pockets of low-income parents who worked. What motive does a single mother have to get a job, conservative thinkers asked, if there was scant difference between her monthly take-home pay and a welfare check? It was Richard Nixon who first floated the idea that led to the Earned Income Tax Credit; Ronald Reagan dubbed it "the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress." In 2007, the US Treasury paid out $49 billion to 25 million taxpayers.

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ABC News' Jake Tapper reports: President Obama named retired General Stanley McChrystal to co-chair a White House commission on military families this week, but according to perhaps the most prominent military family of the last decade, ...

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ABC <b>News</b> Exclusive: Pat Tillman&#39;s Mom Wants General Stanley <b>...</b>

ABC News' Jake Tapper reports: President Obama named retired General Stanley McChrystal to co-chair a White House commission on military families this week, but according to perhaps the most prominent military family of the last decade, ...