Social networks: Business boon or waste of time?

Not sure if your organization needs to use social networks to connect with customers and clients? There?s some new research on the topic that can help you.

A?new study from InSites consulting?has some interesting findings:

• Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn remain very popular, they provide a stable base in the social media landscape.
• Rapid adoption of mobile Internet provides a further increase in the use of social media: mobile devices are clearly an accelerating factor.
• The rising stars are Pinterest and Instagram. Consumers would prefer not to start a new social network, but there is always room for platforms with a unique function.
• Half of consumers follow at least one brand through social media. On average, U.S. consumers interact with 6 brands actively and follow 15 passively through social media. The opportunity lies however in collaboration: 8 out of 10 consumers want to help companies offer better products and services. U.S. consumers want to participate in co-creation and companies are still insufficiently seizing the opportunity for the development of a profound ?consumer connection?.

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the most popular
The use of social media continues to increase around the world. In the United States, 8 out of 10 Internet users currently make use of social media. Facebook remains by far the most popular site (7 in 10 are active on Facebook), followed by Twitter (25%) and LinkedIn (24%). The study by InSites Consulting shows that the use of social media is stimulated by the increasing use of the number of smartphones in the world. Consumers with a smartphone make more intensive use of social networking sites than those without a mobile Internet connection. People with a smartphone are also more open to conversing with brands.

Smartphones lead to further growth of social media
44% of U.S. Internet users have a smartphone with an internet subscription, 17% have a tablet. The increase in the number of smartphones and tablets causes an increase in the use of social media. 73% of people with mobile Internet use social media every day, this is 63% for people without a mobile connection. Social media applications are also quite popular.

Pinterest and Instagram are the stars of the future
The InSites Consulting study confirms the popularity of the big three social networking sites. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are still the biggest in the U.S.A. and around most of the world as well. It is moreover difficult for new social networking sites to quickly match the success of these three. The study shows that the average consumer is a member of two social networking sites. Usually this is Facebook and another site. Moreover, 95% of these users do not plan to leave and 60% do not want to create a new account. However, the study found two exceptions: Pinterest and Instagram. 10% of U.S. Internet users use Pinterest and 7% use Instagram. Both sites have the greatest growth potential. A large group of people are considering using these sites in the future.

?Consumers are clearly satisfied with the current offer of social networking sites. Only a small group of consumers keeps wanting something new. The vast majority prefer a status quo. Only sites that add something new arouse interest. This explains the success and potential of Instagram and Pinterest. Both sites offer something neither Facebook, Twitter nor LinkedIn have, hence the interest of consumers,? explains Schillewaert.

Consumers want to help companies on social media
A striking finding in this study is to what a great extent consumers are willing to help businesses. Half (53%) of U.S. social network users follow at least one brand. On average, users follow 15 brands passively and 6 brands interactively. Consumers expect these brands to primarily provide information about their products, launch attractive promotions and involve consumers to improve products. 81% of U.S. Internet users want to help brands and give them advice. They prefer doing so through a form of structural collaboration, ?consumer consulting boards? (or communities) ? more than 65% want to do so through a form of online communities. Consumers would prefer to help existing products (73%) and services (64%) improve, but also want to help think about the products of the future (65%).

?Most companies think only about the number of fans and likes, but not about active collaboration with customers. This is a missed opportunity! Consumers generate more and faster information than ever before, but also better and more complete information due to the fact that they integrate different media. By using mobile devices and electronics consumers also generate contextual consumption information that is illustrative and generated in the heat of the moment. Research communities or ?consumer consulting boards? offer a unique platform to engage consumers in the strategy of a company. Consumers want and can provide value for new product development, but also for the development of advertising and content marketing. Unfortunately, most companies do not yet see this opportunity,? concludes Niels Schillewaert, PhD, Managing Partner of InSites Consulting New York.

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Source: http://www.businessbrief.com/your-customers-want-to-like-you-on-social-networks/

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Employees at Health Care Authority in Olympia felt sick after ...

CHELSEA KROTZER | Staff writer ? Published November 20, 2012 Modified November 20, 2012

No harmful chemicals were found Tuesday afternoon at the Health Care Authority facility in downtown Olympia, hours after it was evacuated because several employees became ill after opening mail.

The incident was reported at 12:30 p.m. after four employees in the fifth-floor mail room reported smelling an odor after opening mail, said Washington State Patrol spokesman Paul Erdahl.

?They began to gag on an odor,? he said.

Fifteen people reported having headaches, scratchy eyes and scratchy throats, said Olympia Deputy Fire Chief Greg Wright.

The State Patrol, Olympia Fire Department and ambulance crews were called to the scene. The downtown Olympia building's fifth floor was evacuated, followed by the entire building.

The mail was placed in a barrel and secured while employees left the building.

The mail was addressed only to the Health Care Authority, Erdahl said.

Employees affected by the odor were checked out by medics and allowed to go home about 3 p.m. while members of the State Patrol?s SWAT team arrived to identify the substance. The building had been declared safe by 5 p.m., Erdahl said.

Detectives with the State Patrol Criminal Investigation Division were investigating, he said.

Chelsea Krotzer: 360-754-5476
ckrotzer@theolympian.com
theolympian.com/thisjustin
@chelseakrotzer

Source: http://www.theolympian.com/2012/11/20/2326925/employees-at-health-care-authority.html

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Girls, guns and yoga: John McAfee's odd life

SAN PEDRO, Belize (Reuters) - To the many people who crossed his path on a tropical island in Belize, it was apparent John McAfee's life had taken some bizarre turns in the past few years.

The anti-virus software guru, who started McAfee Associates in 1989, has been in hiding since police said they wanted to question him about the weekend murder of his neighbor, fellow American Gregory Faull, with whom McAfee had quarreled.

Despite his disappearance, McAfee, 67, has remained in contact with the media, providing a stream of colorful bulletins over his predicament, state of mind and his claim that Belize's authorities want to kill him.

Residents of the Caribbean island of Ambergris Caye and others who know him paint the picture of an eccentric, impulsive man who gave up a career as a successful entrepreneur in the United States for a life of semi-seclusion in the former pirate haven of Belize, surrounded by bodyguards and young women.

"Never mind the dog, beware of owner," counsels a small sign, embellished with a sketched hand gripping a large pistol, tacked to the fence separating McAfee's beachfront swimming pool from the pier that cuts into the azure sea.

McAfee, a yoga fan who has lived on the island for about four years, often moves around with bodyguards, wearing pistols in his belt. Since going into hiding, he has compared his lot to that of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is battling extradition from Britain from inside the Ecuadorean Embassy.

Officials suspect McAfee used designer drugs, and neighbors say he tried to chase them off the public beach in front of his house. Inside his home, a blue-roofed cottage complex, he kept a small arsenal of shotguns and scope-fitted rifles.

There were also complaints about the millionaire's numerous and noisy dogs. Officials say the poisoning of four of the dogs may be linked to the murder of Faull, a 52-year-old Florida building contractor who was shot dead at his salmon-hued two-story villa about 100 yards (meters) down the beach from McAfee.

Faull was one of the locals who had complained about McAfee's attitude and his dogs.

McAfee told Wired magazine, with whom he first kept up a running conversation, that he was disguised and holed up in what he describes as a lice-infested refuge. In comments to the magazine, McAfee denied he shot Faull and said he fears that the police will kill or torture him. Police, who believe he is still in Belize, say they just want to talk to him about the killing.

McAfee, who has not responded to requests for comment by Reuters, blamed Belize's "pirate culture" for his troubles in an essay Wired said he had sent to the magazine.

"Belize is still a pirate haven and is run more or less along the lines established centuries ago by the likes of Captain Morgan, Blackbeard and Captain Barrow," McAfee said.

Belize Prime Minister Dean Barrow has urged McAfee to help police with their inquiries, calling him "bonkers."

In an interview with CNBC television by phone on Friday, McAfee said he would not seek refuge in the U.S. Embassy.

"What would happen? They will offer me either sanctuary where I will spend my days living in the embassy like poor Julian Assange or when I leave ... I will be nabbed by the police. My ultimate goal is they'll figure out who killed the man, it will have nothing to do with me and they will leave me alone. Or if enough international pressure is applied," he said.

'PARANOID'

Many locals in San Pedro describe the tattooed McAfee, who made a fortune developing the Internet anti-virus software that bears his name, as a generous but unstable man.

"He's a good guy, he helped a lot of people. The problem was when he wanted something he wanted it right now. And when he didn't get it, he'd get paranoid," said one islander, a former McAfee employee, who like many people here spoke on condition their name not be used for fear of retribution.

"He's a complex man, very impulsive," the islander added.

Doug Singh, Belize's former police minister, told Reuters he was at a loss to explain McAfee's recent comments.

"Mr. McAfee seems to have a bit of a divorce from reality and it seems to be consistent in his behavior and some of the things he has said recently. He's way out of line and out of proportion. Nobody has anything against Mr. McAfee," Singh said.

After making millions with his anti-virus product, McAfee decided to abandon the United States for Belize, a languid coastal paradise. It is a path that has been taken by a number of rich Americans over the years.

He took a beachfront compound on the island's isolated and exclusive north side, 6 miles from the town of San Pedro by boat or by driving over badly cratered asphalt and dirt track. It is a world away from California's Silicon Valley, which he once called home.

He took the company public in 1992 and left two years later following accusations that he had hyped the arrival of a virus known as Michelangelo, which turned out to be a dud, to scare computer users into buying his company's products.

Officials at the company he created and its parent, Intel, have declined to comment on the controversy.

But one long-time McAfee manager who recently left said company executives were likely monitoring the news closely. He said they have tracked reports of John McAfee's activities over the years out of concern they might need to do damage control.

A case is already pending in Belize against McAfee for possession of illegal firearms, and police previously suspected him of running a lab to make illicit synthetic drugs.

But McAfee said this week he was opposed to drugs.

"My life is f----d up enough without drugs, and always has been," McAfee told Wired magazine.

BENEFACTOR

For all his trouble with authorities, McAfee has worked hard to be the island's benefactor. Upon arriving in Belize he bought a $1 million boat for the country's new coast guard, and donated equipment to the local police force, according to local reports.

He tipped generously everywhere he went, and hired a steady stream of taxis for frequent female guests on the $150 round trip from the small airstrip in San Pedro out to his house.

"Not two or three, a lot of women," said Artemio Awayo, 24, a local waiter. "Every time I saw him it was a different woman."

Those who knew him said he didn't drink and never hung out at the island's many bars. But employees at a restaurant near the pier where McAfee's water taxi company is based said his actions grew more bizarre following a police raid last April on his mainland hacienda outside the town of Orange Walk.

Even for casual lunches, McAfee began regularly coming to town with at least two bodyguards, clad in camouflage and each packing pistols, they said.

"Generally, you don't need a bodyguard in Belize," said Jorge Alana, a San Pedro Sun reporter who interviewed McAfee several times, noting top elected officials don't have them. "It does call attention when you move with so many guards."

McAfee's home is in a stretch of Ambergris where the wealthiest foreigners hole up. Raw lots of land 100 feet by 200 feet can cost up to $500,000 here. Even modest-looking houses reflect multimillion-dollar investments.

On Thursday afternoon, a 23-year-old calling herself Tiffany used a key to enter McAfee's home with another young woman and said he had spent Saturday night with them - around the time police said Faull's murder took place.

They had not spoken to McAfee since Sunday, she said.

On Friday, an outside light was still on at his beachfront complex, and a dog roamed freely around the grounds.

Like McAfee, many of his north shore neighbors tend to favor being left alone, rarely coming to town and loath to mix with tourists.

"That's why they come to San Pedro," said Daniel Guerrero, the tour guide and real estate broker now serving as the town's mayor. "They like the quietness. They like the isolation."

But even fishing, scuba diving and sunset daiquiris can get tiresome. Accustomed to hard work and achievement, newcomers established and kept up the island's charities, locals say. Quite a few foreigners, like McAfee, started local businesses. And some fall out of synch with local culture.

"It's one thing to vacation here and another thing living here," said Wyoming native Tamara Sniffin, owner and editor of the San Pedro Sun, the local newspaper.

Immortalized in song by Madonna as La Isla Bonita, Ambergris Caye stretches 27 miles along the blue Caribbean below the Mexican border, flanking the world's second-largest barrier reef and some of its finest sport fishing waters.

Those attributes have attracted well-heeled foreign retirees and celebrities such as actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who owns a small island nearby.

"Here it's just party, party, work, party," said Iris Mavel, 27, a waitress at a restaurant favored by McAfee. "A lot of couples who come here leave divorced. That's why they call it Temptation Island."

The island also has a darker side. Dumped at sea and carried ashore by the tides, bundles of Colombian cocaine flow through the island not far from McAfee's house and on, many say, toward the Mexican border. Cocaine not recovered by the smugglers is collected by islanders, supplying a thriving local drug market that has sparked low-level gang feuds and occasional killings.

International fugitives have taken refuge here. In the summer, a Slovak man accused of murdering a woman, her 10-year-old son and a gangster in his home country was arrested on an international warrant, processed for extradition but then released by a Belizean judge.

Some townsfolk suspect McAfee is hiding on a yacht off of San Pedro. Others note that Mexico is only an hour away by the sort of fast boat McAfee owns and that passports are never checked for people landing in the oceanfront villages there.

San Pedro's mayor believes he will surface.

"I have the feeling that this guy will turn up," Guerrero said. "But he'll turn up with his attorneys. He's a big guy."

(Additional reporting by Jose Sanchez in Belize, Jim Finkle in Boston, Noel Randewich in San Francisco and Mike McDonald in Guatemala; Editing by Dave Graham, Kieran Murray and Bill Trott)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/girls-guns-yoga-john-mcafees-odd-life-pirate-060641670--finance.html

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Wall Street Week Ahead: "Fiscal cliff" blues may lead to correction

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street's post-election sell-off may gather steam in the coming weeks as worries mount about the looming "fiscal cliff" and technical weakness suggests a possible correction ahead.

The benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 <.spx> closed below its 200-day moving average - a measure of the market's long-term trend - on Thursday for the first time in five months, and ended below it again on Friday. More than half of the Dow components are trading below key technical levels.

"I don't think you have to panic here, but I think you really want to be looking for the market to move lower for the next couple of months," said Frank Gretz, market analyst and technician for Wellington Shields & Co., a brokerage in New York. "I think the next rally is the rally you want to sell."

At the heart of the market's worry is whether U.S. leaders can come to agreement on some $600 billion in spending cuts and tax increases that are due to kick in early next year. Some fear dramatic cutbacks could send the U.S. economy into another recession.

The prospect of higher tax rates in 2013 is driving investors to sell shares as they seek to decrease the tax impact from their positions this year and next.

"You would have thought the fiscal cliff scenarios would have been already mulled over and priced in, but they weren't. It's almost like the market has ADD and can only focus on one thing at a time," said Natalie Trunow, chief investment officer of equities at Calvert Investment Management in Bethesda, Maryland, whose firm manages about $13 billion in assets.

The S&P 500 fell 2.4 percent for the week, its worst weekly percentage drop since June. The index is now down 6.4 percent from its intraday high for the year of 1,474.51 reached on September 14. That drop puts the benchmark index below its 50-day moving average, but not yet into correction territory, defined as a 10 percent drop from a peak.

READING THE TECHNICAL SIGNS

The S&P 500 has been trading in a range between the 50-day moving average of 1,433.50 and the 200-day moving average of 1,380.98 for about two weeks. A significant break below that lower level could be a precursor to further weakness, analysts said.

"There's a technical breakdown in the market that indicates further losses," said Adam Sarhan, chief executive of Sarhan Capital in New York. "A 10 percent drop is the next big line in the sand."

The primary driver of stock prices in coming weeks looks likely to be investor concern about the U.S. fiscal situation.

In a sign of the risks involved, comments by President Barack Obama on Friday about the upcoming negotiations caused stocks to sharply cut their gains.

The president, who defeated Republican candidate Mitt Romney in Tuesday's U.S. election, outlined a position for the fiscal issues on Friday that is far apart from that of his political opponents, suggesting a long battle is to come.

"If the market anticipates a resolution to the fiscal cliff or Europe or any of the other bricks in the wall of worry, we could easily take off," Sarhan said.

Seventeen of the Dow's 30 components are trading below both their 50-day and 200-day moving averages, while another eight are under their 50-day levels, but not their 200. Only five components - Bank of America , JPMorgan Chase & Co , Home Depot Inc , Johnson & Johnson and Travelers Cos - are above both support levels.

Another big negative for the market has been heavy selling of Apple shares. The stock of the world's biggest company, ranked by market capitalization, lost 5.2 percent this week, weighing heavily on both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq <.ixic>. The stock is down 22.4 percent from its September 21 all-time intraday high of $705.07.

BIG RETAILERS' REPORT CARDS

The election and fiscal cliff concerns, which came on the heels of Superstorm Sandy and its devastating effects on many parts of the U.S. Northeast, have captured so much attention that they've overshadowed weakness coming from third-quarter earnings.

With results in from 449 of the S&P 500 companies, third-quarter earnings now are estimated to have declined 0.3 percent from a year ago, which is slightly better than the forecast at the start of the reporting period. Results have been especially weak on the revenue side, however, with just 38 percent of companies beating on sales, Thomson Reuters data showed.

But recent stronger economic data, including a report on Friday showing consumer sentiment at more than a five-year high in early November, suggests that retailers, many of which have yet to report, could be among the stronger performers this earnings period.

Next week, results are expected from such big names as Target , Wal-Mart and Home Depot.

Consumer discretionary companies have outperformed the broader S&P 500 in earnings, with 72 percent of the companies in that sector beating analysts' expectations, compared with 63 percent for the S&P 500 as a whole.

Investors will be paying close attention to those results with the holiday shopping period around the corner, said Rick Meckler, president of LibertyView Capital Management in Jersey City, New Jersey, which oversees about $1 billion in assets.

"It's really the beginning of the Christmas sell season, and I think there's going to be a lot of interest with the outlook for that season and how promotional companies are going to be," Meckler said.

(Wall St Week Ahead runs every Friday. Questions or comments on this column can be emailed to: caroline.valetkevitch(at)thomsonreuters.com )

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch and Ryan Vlastelica; Editing by Jan Paschal)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wall-street-week-ahead-fiscal-cliff-blues-may-002515861--finance.html

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VMultra bundles USB hub, DVD drive, SD slot and 500GB HDD to form ultimate laptop peripheral

While Velocity Micro announced the VMultra earlier this year at CES, it's only now ready for primetime. The VMultra combines a USB hub, an SD card slot, a DVD±RW drive and 500GB of storage into a surprisingly slim package that connects to any computer via USB 3.0. If you like, you can even fit your own 2.5-inch hard drive in the SATA III bay. You'll have to take out the included 500GB HDD first of course. The company intends this to be a "perfect all-in-one peripheral," especially for notebook travelers looking to lighten their luggage; perhaps to make room for things like "clothes." Each VMultra will cost you $199.99 and will ship starting November 12th.

For those who prefer desktops, Velocity Micro also announced a $599 holiday edition of its Vector PC that runs on a dual-core AMD A6-5400k processor and 8GB of DDR3 RAM in the same press release, which you can peek at after the break.

Continue reading VMultra bundles USB hub, DVD drive, SD slot and 500GB HDD to form ultimate laptop peripheral

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/09/vmultra-all-in-one-peripheral/

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Claire Langhams EDM310 Blog: Special Blog Assignment - Allison ...

A World Where Grades Will Be Left Behind In celebration of its 30th anniversary, USA TODAY interviewed some of the USA's greatest visionaries to talk about the world of tomorrow. Mary Beth Marklein published the article "A World Where Grades Will Be Left Behind" to discuss just what the title implies: what would the world be like if there were no grades? In the article, USA TODAY interviewed Sebastian Thrun, a Google Vice President and Stanford research professor best known for his role in building Google's driverless car. Thrun's idea of an educational reform is described in his version of learning, which he says can be made free and available to anyone who wants it. Thrun is the owner of Udacity, which is an education company based in California that provides a higher education for free. Udacity's goal is to offer a university-level education of high quality and low cost. Using the economics of the Internet, they claim to have connected some of the greatest teachers to hundreds of thousands of students all over the world. In Thrun's version of education, he explains a few key concepts: no one will be late for class, failure is not an option, and lessons are made to look like games, such as the popular physics-based puzzle game "Angry Birds." The whole vision of Udacity came to Thrun after he had the opportunity to teach a free online artificial-intelligence course that drew more than 160,000 students. This experience was so profound to him that he announced he no longer could teach in a traditional Stanford classroom. Thus, Udacity was born, and Thrun began his mission to revolutionize education. He made reference to the concept of "flipping the classroom," which occurs when students watch a video at home and come to class ready with questions to be answered by the teacher. Thrun explains how both online learning and flipping the classroom are made possible through technology, and because of these two concepts, classes will involve a sequence of increasingly more challenging exercises and quizzes aimed at helping students master a particular concept or skill. Thrun calls grades "the failure of the education system," so therefore, he intends to eliminate them completely. Instead, students will take as much or as little time as they need to demonstrate mastery of a particular skill or concept. This type of online education will be free, but related services may involve a fee. All in all, Thrun hopes to democratize education through technology. As I was reading this article, the message Mr. Thrun described seemed really cool and much more innovative than the education we see in many classrooms today. As I thought about it and looked at it more closely though, this type of educational reform raises a sense of skepticism. Yes, a free education where you get to play games on the Internet and learn at your own pace sounds great, but in reality, is this concept of education truly possible to the magnitude in which Mr. Thrun described? I have my doubts. The first item on his list that seems out of reach is the free part. If the top, most sought-out professors from all around the world are being called upon to teach these online classes, how does the Udacity team plan on paying them a salary? As a future teacher, I'm all about teaching my students because I truly want them to learn and grow, but in reality, I will be seeking a paycheck as well. I'm sure many of the professors Udacity has confronted feel the same way. I understand the students would be charged fees every once and a while, but simple fees would not be enough to pay for the numerous things this operation would call for: the high-tech computers and software that would be needed, the team working on these computers and programs, and as I mentioned earlier, the professors teaching the courses. "Free" sounds great (especially to myself, a poor college kid), but when it comes down to crunching the numbers, money speaks rather loudly. The next item on the list that raises concerns for me is the fact that "a single class might enroll tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of students." I guess this sounds so bizarre to me because I personally like one-on-one contact and time with my teacher. If there are this many people in a single class, how is an instructor suppose to keep up with everything the students are doing? I understand Mr. Thrun's goal is to create an education that will respond to each individual student, but with that many students, I have my doubts. The third item I'd like to talk about is the "no more grades" idea. As a college student myself, this sounds wonderful. As long as I'm understanding the material and learning at my own pace, what do grades matter anyway? Well, as much as I hate to admit it, I think grades, or rather some kind of assessment, is needed. I'm all for students being able to take the time necessary to master concepts and skills, but without some form of assessment, I think students lose some of the responsibility needed to become successful. I don't necessarily think the "A, B, C, D, F" system is the only or best solution for assessment out there, but I do believe teachers should provide students with feedback on how they are progressing in a given class. Normally, that feedback comes through assessment.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading Mary Beth Marklein's article in USA TODAY because it brought up some really neat ideas for the future of education. Though I don't totally agree with everything Mr. Sebastian Thrun is advocating with the online learning society created by Udacity, I still think he offered up interesting and innovative ideas. I just believe a few things need to be tweaked to make them more realistic and doable. One thing Mr. Thrun and I most certainly agree on is how important technology is for the future and progression of education and for the way we teach our students.

Source: http://langhamclaireedm310.blogspot.com/2012/11/special-blog-assignment.html

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Source: http://ezequiel29.typepad.com/blog/2012/11/claire-langhams-edm310-blog-special-blog-assignment.html

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Dog Jaunt : Packing your dog&#39;s gear for travel: An update, and a ...

I?ve written several posts about the dog gear we bring with us on trips, and how we pack it for car and airplane travel, but when Gigi Griffis (who writes The Ramble, and whose posts about her current trip across Europe with Luna, her Schauzer-Yorkie mix, have frequently been featured in past Chloe?s Clicks) asked if I?d like to contribute to a collection of posts about packing for dog travel, I happily agreed.?Things change over time, after all ? new products come out, and new habits arise, and this is a fine opportunity to let you know about them. I?m looking forward to hearing Gigi?s packing tips, as well as those of Sonja and Stefan, the human team behind?Montecristo Travels (Monte?s a remarkable dog, but the packing is surely done by his bipeds!). Links to their posts, which I haven?t yet read, are in the last paragraph.

This is Chloe's idea of packing, not mine

Some things have not changed: This is still Chloe?s comprehensive packing list, and I always run an eye over it before I call myself ready to go. I add new things to it, as they arise, but I don?t take things off (we no longer really need Bitter Apple, for example, and after Chloe frightened herself by snagging a claw in her Poochie Bells, we no longer use them, but those items are still listed).

Packing for car travel in your own car

If we are leaving on a road trip in our own car, we pack Chloe?s gear in totes. Her 24? long metal Midwest travel crate, and three crate pads, fit in an extra-large Land?s End tote bag, and the many-pocketed tote that sits on top of her home crate gets heaved in next to it (in addition to the usual stuff it contains, including her grooming supplies, a few choice toys, an extra leash and harness, and her Pawz booties, we add any jackets she might need, a stocked food kit and a couple of different bags of treats, for variety).

Please note that the L.L. Bean tote we use for Chloe?s everyday organization was discontinued a couple of years ago ? every so often, I search for good alternatives (they have to have a zipped top, and lots of capacious side pockets), and the one I like best right now is actually a diaper bag.

Chloe?s car-safety solution (these days, the Pet Tube from Pet Ego, with the optional Pet Ego ?comfort pillow? and an extra, soft pad) is already in place, and she?ll be traveling in it, so no need to pack that. We do toss in her Pet Ego messenger bag, in case a stealth solution is needed. As you know, I keep the sneaking to a minimum, but on a road trip ? especially a solo one ? there are times when I must sneak. I will not leave Chloe in the car, under any circumstances, so when I stop at a convenience store for a bathroom break, for example, she comes in with me.

Packing for car travel in a rental car

Packing for this is the same as packing for air travel, which I?ll turn to next ? with one difference. If I know that we?ll be driving a rental car at our destination, I pack Chloe?s Pet Tube (it zips into a pancake that?s 18? in diameter, and about 3? thick) and its comfort pillow in her Big Red Suitcase (both will fit if I eliminate one of her three big crate pads). When we arrive, I install the Pet Tube in the right rear seat of the rental car, add the extra, soft pad from her in-cabin carrier (the extra-small Plush Sleepeez pad from Pet Dreams fits well both in Chloe?s large SturdiBag carrier and on top of the Pet Ego comfort pillow), insert Chloe, and off we go.

If it?ll be a long road trip at our destination, I pull out Chloe?s many-pocketed tote and put that on the seat next to her ? easily accessible from the front seats and from the driver?s side passenger door. The Big Red Suitcase goes in the trunk, to be dealt with when we stop for the night. It?s a messy scene in the car rental area while all of this is happening, since I have to open Chloe?s suitcase completely, on the ground, to access all the stuff I need, but it only takes a couple of minutes before everything is zipped back up again.

Packing for air travel (checked bag)

Over the years I?ve offered a handful of suggestions for air travel packing, and more than one reader has added to the list. The trickiest part of the process is packing a hard-sided crate for your pup. A crate is an excellent idea for travelers with dogs because many hotels require that your dog be crated while you?re absent; in addition, a crate gives your dog a familiar haven as you change environments, and keeps her from bolting out of the room when house cleaning (and the house cleaning cart and vacuum) enters.

If you (unlike me) have a pup that won?t shred a soft-sided crate, you?re lucky, because they?re compact and lighter than the metal crate I pack for Chloe. I recommend the Creature Leisure soft-sided crate; the medium size that works well for Chloe also fits in a large suitcase (which can itself be soft-sided, in this case).

If you prefer a hard-sided but plastic Vari-Kennel/Sky Kennel kind of crate, you can either leave it assembled and check it like a suitcase (you can pack light, bulky things in it ? nothing too heavy, or your handle will pull off), or (and this was a reader?s suggestion), you can unscrew its sides and pack the top and bottom, nested together, in a suitcase.

We use a metal Midwest crate for Chloe, and the one she has at home is 30? long. I initially thought I?d be packing it up each time we traveled, so I bought a 32? suitcase to hold it. I chose a hard-sided suitcase, because the edges of the metal crate would wreak havoc on a soft-sided suitcase (which, in turn, wouldn?t protect the crate from airline baggage handling). Because I wanted the hard-sided suitcase to be as light as possible ? you?ve seen Chloe?s packing list, and you know how long it is ? I ended up buying the phenomenally expensive Samsonite Cosmolite 32? Spinner suitcase, in red. I?ve never regretted it: It?s light, it?s sturdy, it?s easy to wheel around, and it?s impossible to miss coming off the baggage claim belt.

I did change my mind about the crate, however. We pack the next smaller size instead (24? long), which keeps the weight down and leaves room around its edges for Chloe?s soft furnishings. Here?s what Chloe?s suitcase contains, on a typical trip:

Open side, from bottom to surface

• Sham-wow towels/camping towels (filling in the indents between the channels for the suitcase?s handle)
• Nylon-twill-over-foam crate pad, about 1.5? thick
• 24? Midwest single-door crate
• Two (one, if I?m packing Chloe?s Pet Tube) soft crate pads
• Two bedsheets and a fitted crate cover, rolled up and inserted around the three outer edges of the crate

Zipped side

• Chloe?s many-pocketed tote, the entire thing inserted into an extra-large Ziploc bag to corral the small bits and protect against liquid (shampoo, enzymatic cleaner, etc.) leakage
• Chloe?s food kit
• Pet Ego messenger bag
• Pet Tube and comfort pillow (if car travel at the destination is planned)

Even fully loaded, the Big Red Suitcase has always squeaked in at just under 50 lbs. You could, conceivably, divide your pet?s gear between your suitcase and that of a companion, obviating the need for a separate pet suitcase, but I?ve never managed to be that efficient.

The more you travel, the more routine this packing job will become. Between trips, I leave most of this gear in the Big Red Suitcase, so that when the time to pack arrives, all I have to do is grab the tote that rests on her home crate (keeping her everyday gear organized), put it into the XL Ziploc bag, fill the food kit with the appropriate amount of food and treats, and place both ? along with Chloe?s messenger bag and her Pet Tube ? in the zipped side of the suitcase.

Please note that if your everyday, many-pocketed organizational tote is bursting at the seams, you can purchase a second, smaller tote with just the gear your pet needs for travel (rather than all of her toys, and both of the fanny packs you use for dog-walking, and all three of her water bottles, etc.). That makes packing even easier, because that fully-stocked travel tote can live in your pet?s suitcase between trips. In this post about?our typical hotel room set-up, you?ll see Chloe?s pink-and-orange travel tote on top of her crate, not her cream-and-green home tote.

Packing for air travel (in-cabin)

Although some airlines may allow you to board with a carry-on as well as your pet?s carrier, most don?t. What if your pet?s suitcase doesn?t end up at your destination at the same time you do? You?ll see, in Dog Jaunt?s packing list, a section listing the gear I carry into the cabin with me, either in my ?small personal item? (in my case, a robustly-sized purse), in the pocket of Chloe?s in-cabin carrier, or tucked into one of the many pockets in my travel vest. I strongly recommend a many-pocketed vest for travelers with dogs, since your small personal item has to go in the overhead bin, and on bumpy flights you may never be allowed to access it.

The links in this post will lead you to other Dog Jaunt posts about packing, but here are two fresh, new links. Gigi Griffis is simultaneously posting about packing for dog travel on her blog, The Ramble, and I?m looking forward to reading about her process, especially now that she and Luna have been traveling for so long around Europe. Montecristo, living life eight inches off the ground, is simultaneously posting about packing for dog travel on Montecristo Travels ? he and his bipeds always have good (and often delightfully swanky) ideas, and I?m looking forward to hearing them. I?d love, too, to hear your packing tips! Please leave them in a comment, so we can all benefit!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2012 at 3:30 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Related posts:

1. Packing your dog?s gear for plane travel While our dog travels in-cabin with us, all of her gear has to be packed for transport in the cargo...
2. Small dog, big suitcase: Packing Chloe?s stuff for airplane travel Chloe?s a small dog, but her suitcase is the biggest one we own. When we?re dealing with travel logistics, my...
3. Tips from Dog Jaunt readers: Packing a crate, improving chances for in-cabin carrier I have a stack of great stuff in my in-box from Dog Jaunt readers, and I?m making progress on sharing...
4. Essential dog gear to keep in your car Here is a list of the dog gear I keep in the car for everyday use ? some of these...
5. Traveling by car with a small dog: How it works Last weekend, Chloe and I flew to Chicago to meet my oldest niece, just finishing her first year at college....

Source: http://www.dogjaunt.com/2012/11/packing-your-dogs-gear-for-travel-an-update-and-a-collaboration/

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Jive Software Acquires Meetings.io and Producteev To Enhance ...

Jive Software is acquiring meetings.io, a real-time communications platform, and Producteev, a cloud-based task management provider in a combined deal worth $7.6 million and 460,000 in Jive stock.

Meetings.io is a platform that Jive CEO Tony Zingale says fits into the company?s social platform by allowing screen sharing, video conferencing and the loosely fit pieces that make up a unified communications platform. The company?s technology ?has deep similarities to Google Hangouts but in my view it also fits into the browser sharing market that you find with services such as GoInstant, the company Salesforce.com acquired earlier this year for $70 million. ?Salesforce.com also has aspirations to develop a unified platform as illustrated in its DimDim acquisition almost two years ago.

The company is a a Y-Combinator alum. It launched in April with just under $1 million in seed funding from (among others) Yuri Milner and SV Angel, and the promise of making a free group video call as easy as clicking on a link, with nothing else required.

Producteev is designed to talke tasks out of email and into a more collaborative environment ? again a play that fits with Jive?s social platform.

The Producteev acquisition shows how intensive the market has come for task management companies. Klint Finley wrote recently about Producteev and how it competes with Facebook Co-Founder Dustin Moskovitz?s startup Asana and Salesforce.com?s Do.com.

Producteev launched at Le Web in 2008. According to Ingrid Lunden, the company had raised $1.31 million in funding and recently passed the 2,000 paying-customers milestone. Finley writes that among those customers are Apple, Disney, and the Financial Times. It?s free for individuals, and group plans range from $20 to $500. In addition to the web version, there are clients for iOS, Android, OSX, and Windows.

Zingale said the deals are consistent with Jive?s overall strategy in acquiring innovative technologies and strong teams.

The Jive acquisitions point to the increasing competition between Jive and Salesforce.com with Box.com right in the middle. Jive is seeking to add more lightweight video collaboration and task management to its collaborative platform. It has a deep partnership with Box, which should be a simple fit for companies that want to integrate file management into the play. Salesforce.com on the other hand is building its own file management service to compete with Box. Both Jive and Salesforce.com will force deeper competition in the task management space. The question: Who is going to buy Asana?

February 7, 2001

March 2, 2012, NASDAQ:JIVE

Jive is the largest and fastest growing independent vendor in the Social Business Software market. Jive allows companies to engage employees, customers, and the social web. Just as social technologies have changed our personal lives, Social Business is changing how enterprises get work done. The company was founded in 2001, with its headquarters in Palo Alto, CA and offices in Portland, OR; Boulder, CO; Brentford, United Kingdom; and Frankfurt, Germany. Jive combines the power of community software, collaboration software,...

? Learn more

Producteev is one of the leading free Task Management applications for Individuals and Teams connected to : Mac (Mac App Store), Windows Desktop, Web, iPhone, Android, IM (Gtalk, AIM, Yahoo Messenger?), EMail (send tasks to task@producteev.com), Gmail, GCal?

? Learn more

With Meetings.io you can meet face to face with anyone from around the world within your web browser. Meet with a client, a customer, your project team or your co-workers in person without ever leaving your desk by simply creating a tiny meeting room link and sharing the link with anyone you want to meet with. You can re-use your meeting room as many times as you want and you can have people drop in and out of the your...

? Learn more

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/05/jive-software-acquires-meetings-io-and-producteev-to-enhance-social-platform-with-real-time-messaging-and-task-management/

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Have You Had Any Problems With Electronic Voting?

It's election day. Some of you have the fortune of being able to vote electronically, thus removing any confusion over whether or not that chad was hanging. Well it's supposed to remove confusion in theory. Have you voted yet? Was it some form of an electronic ballot? Did you notice anything sketchy? Let's talk about it. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/3YRgfEZKIho/have-you-had-any-problems-with-electronic-voting

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Family Meal Favorite: Italian Pot Roast Recipe

Entry #1786 November 4, 2012

If you are craving? an Italian delicacy, then try this Italian Pot Roast recipe for lunch or dinner. You don?t have to worry about the availability of the ingredient since everything is readily available in your nearest market place. The cooking process can be quite messy but it will be all worth it after you taste its delicious outcome.

Italian pot roast recipe

All images and recipe via

Ingredients

• 2 whole Beef Chuck Roasts
• 2 jars Roasted Red Peppers
• 2 jars Artichoke Hearts, Drained
• 6 whole Sundried Tomatoes (jarred)
• 2 whole Yellow Onions, Peeled And Quartered
• 28 ounces, fluid Beef Stock Or Beef Broth
• 2 Tablespoons Parsley Flakes
• 6 cloves Garlic, Peeled
• 1 cup Wine (red Or White)
• 2 Tablespoons Flour
• Salt And Pepper, to taste
• 12 ounces, weight Egg Noodles
• Fresh Parsley, Minced

Sun dried tomatoes on pot roast

Artichoke hearts added

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees.
2. Throw chuck roasts into a large, heavy pot. Pour on the roasted red peppers, the drained artichoke hearts, and the sun dried tomatoes. If the sun dried tomatoes are packed in oil, drizzle in about a tablespoon of the oil. Add onions, garlic cloves and beef broth, then place the lid on the pot and cook in the oven for four hours.
3. Remove the pot after four hours and use a fork to confirm that the meat is falling apart/fork tender. (If not, put back into the oven for 30 minute increments until totally tender.)
4. With a slotted spoon, remove the peppers, artichokes, onions, garlic, and sundried tomatoes and place them in a separate container. Remove the meat and place it in another separate container. Cover the containers holding the veggies and meat and refrigerate them several hours or overnight. Place the lid on the pot and refrigerate it for several hours or overnight.
5. When you?re ready to serve the roast, remove the meat and veggie bowls from the fridge and nuke them just to heat them up. Set aside.
6. Cook egg noodles according to package directions. Drain and set aside.
7. Remove the pot from the fridge and carefully skim off the solidified fat from the top of the liquid. Discard the fat. Mix flour with 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid and set aside.
8. Add wine to the cooking liquid then bring it to a boil over high heat. Boil the liquid for several minutes, until it reduces by at least half. When bubbles appear all over the surface of the liquid, drizzle in a tablespoon or so of the flour paste. Check thickness: if it?s too liquidy, continue to boil for another minute or two. If it?s too thick, add some more broth or water. You want to wind up with a rich, thick liquid/gravy.
9. Arrange cooked noodles on a large platter and arrange chunks of the meat and the intact artichoke hearts and peppers (and garlic cloves!) all around the meat. Spoon the thick gravy all over the top and sprinkle with minced fresh parsley.

?

Add pot roast on top of egg noodles

Time to enjoy a family dinner pot roast

It will be nice if you serve the Italian Pot Roast immediately to savor the aroma and taste of the combined ingredients. Invite your friends or family members with you to cook this recipe to make it more fun.

For more food recipes on Stagetecture, click here.

Source: http://stagetecture.com/2012/11/family-meal-favorite-italian-pot-roast-recipe/

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Hurricane Sandy business interruption losses likened to Japan, Thailand, 9/11

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Source: businessinsurance.com --- Sunday, November 04, 2012
Business interruption claims look to be a significant portion of insured losses that Superstorm Sandy inflicted on the East Coast last week and may lead to numerous coverage disputes. ...

Source: http://businessinsurance.com/article/20121104/NEWS06/311049977

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Therapy for stroke patients improved: More mobility due to deafferentation

ScienceDaily (Nov. 5, 2012) ? Painkilling drugs that make many therapies possible are a blessing for patients. Thanks to modern anesthetics, not only can surgical operations be conducted without causing pain, they are also used for various diagnostic procedures. Anesthetics can be very useful in therapies for stroke patients, as psychologists and physicians of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany) and the University Hospital Jena are now able to demonstrate.

In the Journal of Neuroscience the researchers present the results of their study, showing how a local anesthetic can distinctly improve the motor skills of patients after a stroke.

"Many stroke patients suffer from chronic impairment of the hand or of the complete arm," Professor Dr. Thomas Weiss explains. Together with expert colleagues the psychologist of the department of Biological and Clinical Psychology at Jena University has been working for a number of years on a specialized medical training therapy which clearly enhances the mobility of stroke patients. In the 'Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy' (CIMT) the healthy arm is being restrained in a cuff, while the stroke-affected arm and hand are intensely training fine motor skills. Patients are asked to carry out tasks such as stacking small toy blocks or putting tiny pins into a perforated board. Daily activities like washing one's hand are part of the training. "Nearly every affected person benefits from this training," Weiss's colleague Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Miltner says. The chair of Biological and Clinical Psychology developed the therapy together with American colleagues and refers to the comprehensive study results about the efficiency of the program. "We are happy to carry out this therapy on many patients -- together with our colleagues from the psychology department in the neurological day hospital," the director of the clinic for Neurology, Prof. Dr. Otto Witte, stresses.

In addition, the impact of the exercise therapy could be clearly enhanced when the sensitivity of the affected arm was lowered by an anesthetic, as the interdisciplinary Jena team was able to demonstrate. In their study, the scientists examined 36 patients. Half of the patients had a local anesthetic cream applied on their forearms. Meanwhile the other patient group only received a placebo. Afterwards, both patient groups went into their exercise therapy for a day.

"Unsurprisingly, the motor performance of all patients was strongly enhanced," Prof. Weiss commented on the result. "Beyond that, it became obvious that the patients who received the anesthetic benefited even more than the placebo group," Weiss says. The researchers could show the reason for this effect using magnetoencephalographic imaging (MEG) of the patients. The temporary interruption of nerve impulses from the forearm leads to a decreasing activity in the brain areas processing these impulses. "At the same time neighboring brain cells are activated more strongly," the Jena Psychologist explains. Thus the brain reacts to the missing impulses from the forearm with an increased sensitivity in the hand as the MEG images showed. Consequently the motor performance improves as well. "This process starts within minutes," Thomas Weiss says.

A subsequent study is going to show whether the combination of local anesthetics and therapeutic exercise will improve the mobility of stroke patients in the long term.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Friedrich Schiller University Jena.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. E. Sens, U. Teschner, W. Meissner, C. Preul, R. Huonker, O. W. Witte, W. H. R. Miltner, T. Weiss. Effects of Temporary Functional Deafferentation on the Brain, Sensation, and Behavior of Stroke Patients. Journal of Neuroscience, 2012; 32 (34): 11773 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5912-11.2012

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/e9KdeFqN_Pk/121105081627.htm

harrison barnes

Frontline Gamer: Top ten Zombie computer games and franchises

Well earlier on today I gave you my own personal list of top ten zombie flicks. That was hard enough as it was, but this task was significantly harder. Lets be honest here the computer games industry has a tendency to churn out sequel after sequel of a game that just so happens to perform well. Take Resident Evil for instance, which one of those would you pick? Well obviously it'd be Resident Evil 2, but wouldn't you feel even slightly bad you'd left out the Original and Resident Evil 4? I know I would. So this is my list of favourite zombie games and franchise... yeah that's a cop out, but it's my Blog and I make the rules... what you thought this was a democracy? Well it isn't, so here's your dictators list:

Zombies ate my Neighbours (or as I knew it Zombies)
The version we got in the UK was a horribly censored version of the game people got in the USA, which itself had been censored. However, years later I came back to this game via an emulator and I remembered the fun I used to have with it and my friends. Honestly I dread to think of the hours we wasted playing this game. It's camp and colourful 16-Bit graphics also add to the surreal nature of the game and what it depicts, it honestly seems bizarre now to think that this game was considered gruesome and worthy of censorship in its day. It get's on my list for pure nostalgia value, and the fact it is the first zombie computer game I can ever remember playing, it gets...

6.5 brains out of 10

House of the Dead

I'm totally cheating here, because I'm including the entire House of the Dead Franchise in here, not just the first lightgun game. Lightgun games are a genre of game that seem to have become increasingly rare, almost to the point of being extinct until the Nintendo Wii and Playstation Move and Xbox Kinnect came along. However, the House of the Dead games remain some of the best examples of this almost extinct genre there is. I love them all, but by far and away the most mental and utterly brilliant game in the franchise is the awesome Typing of the Dead. I know I wouldn't be as awesome wicked at typing my articles as fast as I am today without my obsession with this game.The franchise gets...

7 brains out of 10

Dead Nation

An exclusive for the PS3 and only available on the PSN Store, this game ate into a huge chunk of my social life when it was released. This top down shooter is a classic example of the genre and arguably the best top down shooter I have ever played. No seriously. It is insanely good, and the fact that it is an utterly brilliant zombie game to boot with a great upgrade mechanic and co-operative play for taking on the undead horde makes it a must own if you have a PS3. I also love the infection map, which shows how good each nation is doing at fighting off the zombie apocalypse by including the results of every player from that nation. Fighting off the zombie horde has never been this jingoistic! Sure it's an archaic game form, and yes in the age of hyper-realistic FPS's and 3D worlds the top down nature of the game might seem anachronistic in today's world of console gaming, but it is well worth a look, and well worth it's...

7.5 brains out of 10

Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare

Is this a proper full on rlease? Or was it just a DLC for a full game? I did agonize over whether I should include this, or not. Well you could actually pick the disk up on its own in game stores, so I'm saying it was a full release, even though it was a DLC for another game. The fact that as a DLC it contained more gameplay and was greater than many full releases is just a testament to how fracking awesome this game truly was. I mean I loved Red Dead Redemption as a game and Undead Nightmare was a totally new and brilliant way of playing the game, I think it must potentially go down as not only one of the best zombie games ever made, but also arguably the best DLC ever released. Fanbloodytastic! Its inclusion though has had me questioning why I didn't include the Borderlands DLC 'The Zombie Island of Dr Ned'. Truth is I felt that wasn't as big a departure as Undead Nightmare was from the core game... weak reasoning maybe, but it is what I genuinely think, even though it is utterly brilliant too. Totally deserving of getting...

8 brains out of 10

Dead Island

Lets be honest here, this is a fairly recent addition to the pantheon of zombie computer games, pushing out many far more established games and franchises. Truth is though it is totally deserving of its place on my list. Grand Theft Auto has a lot to answer for in the world of gaming. It has created the whole sandbox genre, where there are no real levels, and the ability to just play in a world that developers have created. Dead Island takes that idea and puts you on a tropical island overrun by zombies to brilliant effect. The game though caused a bit of controversy before it was even released because of its official launch trailer, nobody would deny it is an effective piece of marketing or indeed film making. However, it did not include any official gameplay footage and was nothing more than a pre-rendered advert. The tone it set though was far more serious and less comic than the other sandbox zombie franchise Dead Rising, and while the game itself is less comic than Dead Rising, the gameplay and storyline aren't exactly as gritty a harrowing as the trailer. Nevertheless this is an utterly absorbing game and one well worth getting if you haven't already got it. I give it...

8 brains out of 10

Siren: Blood Curse

This is arguably not a zombie game, yes it fits into the survival horror genre, but there are discussions about whether the zombies in the Siren Games are actually zombies at all. I say that they are, and that they are Japanese style zombies, in fact in the games they are called Shibito, or 'corpse people'... now if that's not the definition of what a zombie is, I don't know what zombies are at all!!! Not many people will have played these games in the West at all, and that's a crying shame, because the Japanese really know how to do survival horror, and hell they do a particularly twisted form of horror any way if you've seen many Japanese horror films you'll know what I'm taking about. I mean if I could've wangled a way to convince you all ghosts were zombies, I'd have totally included the Project Zero franchise as well! Instead I'll have to make do with Sony's little series. The first game in the series 'Siren' was released in 2003 on the PS2. It was part of a wave of Japanese survival horror games that included the original Project Zero and of course the exception Silent Hill 2, which again wasn't included because I wasn't sure the bad guys in it were truly zombies. As such the genius of Siren was actually missed by many as it was crowded out by bigger franchises being in its launch window.

By the time Siren 2 came out in 2006 a few more people were taking notice of the franchise, but it still didn't really set the sales charts alive in the west. The Siren games are genuinely some of the scariest things I've ever played, with some genuinely ingenious gameplay mechanics. The games have deserved far more recognition than what they have actually received and I think it's a genuine shame that not many people in the West have played them. They are easily a match for the bigger and more recognised horror franchises of Silent Hill, Resident Evil and Project Zero.? In 2008 Sony trid giving the franchise another shot, this time on the PS3 with Siren: Blood Curse (or new translation in its native Japan). With improved graphics and a new take on the original game with a new set of protagonists I think Sony were hoping that by releasing the game as a series downloadable chapters they might be able to find new audiences for their often over looked franchise. Sadly, again it didn't set the charts aflame. If you own a PS3, and have a connection to the Internet you need to download this game and give it a shot. You will not be disappointed. As a series it gets a thoroughly deserved...

8 brains out of 10

Dead Rising 1 & 2

Wow, when the Xbox 360 first launched I think it's fair to say it launched with a pretty weak line up of games. I mean I had Kameo: Elements of Power, was an up-scaled Xbox project that had switched from being a Gamecube project, which actually started life as a sodding N64 game! Seriously!!! Didn't anyone think this might be a problem? I also had another Rare game, Perfect Dark Zero... yeah the less said about that the better. Only Call of Duty 2 and Project Gotham Racing really deserved any play time. But, none of them really explained why the leap from PS2, Xbox and Gamecube was actually necessary. They were prettier versions of games that could have all happily appeared on the current gen systems of the day. I was unimpressed with my Xbox 360. That is until Dead Rising was released! It always takes zombies to save the day doesn't it? Any who, here was a game that almost certainly couldn't have been done on the current gen system of the day. The huge amount of on screen zombies would have killed the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube put together!!!

The game had its critics though, no question. It was a very harsh game that treated the player like a wounded puppy that needed to be kicked to death. It was hard. You could only have one save per file. So if you went down the wrong path and saved, but wanted to go back to an earlier save... well that was tough! Also when you died you were given two options, either you went back to the last save point, or you could start the game again. Harsh. Except you kept your experience points from your play up until that point, known as prestige points or PP. You see, I loved it. I went around just mashing up zombies and ignoring the actual game for about 2 weeks straight. I found loads of nifty short cuts, all the cool weapons and loads of weapon combos, as well as working out the best route potentially through the game. All while turning Frank West (the lead protagonist) into a one man zombie slaughtering machine!!! When I felt I was up to the task of tackling the story I did. Honestly one of the best games on the Xbox 360 to this day.

It was like being in a George A Romero film. Insane amounts of zombies, bonkers bad guys known as psychopaths and lots of hopeless citizens to save. Splendid. It was so good they made an even better sequel set in Vegas, as opposed to some shopping mall. The development reigns were handed over to Blue Castle for the sequel and the protagonist was Chuck Greene... but there were even more zombies, better weapon combos and more outlandish ways to kill the living dead, like motorcycles with chainsaws on them. Genius. The game wasn't as cruel and unrelenting on its players as the original was either. Zombies seemed easier to push out of the way, and escape from. But, this seemed to please most people who had failed to fall in love with the original because it wanted their Braaaaiiiiinsssssss a bit too much. But, the best addition from my perspective was the two player online co-op mode. Being able to run around butchering zombies in tandem is one of the best online experiences you can get to this day on 360 or PS3. If you haven't tried it, you've missed out big time. So what does this franchise get? Well they get a combined score of...

8.5 brains out of 10!

Left 4 Dead 1 & 2

There's something undeniably playable about Valve games, yeah I know they are from subsidiary Turtle Rock, and it is they who produced the sodding game, but it was closely monitored by Valve and overseen very carefully. First and foremost Left 4 Dead is a great first person shooter (FPS) and would stand up pretty darn well in that category on its own rights. The fact that it is also one of the greatest zombie games of all time in my humble opinion is just quite frankly the icing on the cake! Both Left 4 Dead games would make it onto my Xbox 360 must own list of games. Graphically they aren't the best games on the marketplace, but they more than hold there own on that score. Where the game truly excels though is its co-operative experience. This was the first game that really made me sit up and take notice of what the next generation of consoles and the Xbox 360 in particular would produce, and what Xbox Live was all about. Sure I'd played online games before on my PC's, but to have a stereotypical 'console' type game designed specifically around online play was awesome.

The game is an online experience, its four players pitting their collective wits against the never ending horde of the living dead, as they pursue you relentlessly. You have to work together properly, it is not one of these co-op games where a really good player could haul you through the game either. You all needed to pull your weight. I have played the first game again and again, with friends and complete and utter random strangers, and I never got annoyed or frustrated at the experience, so good is the zombie head popping mayhem of it all. Even failure is enjoyable in this game, because ultimately don't we all just want to see schmucks eaten alive by zombies? Valve made a big fanfare about their 'AI Director' which is supposedly a clever bit of code that monitors the players abilities and adapts the challenge accordingly. I couldn't tell you whether is worked exactly as they wanted it to, but it did seem to keep you on your toes all the time and you had to be ready to adapt and help people out.

The sequel didn't quite live up to expectations for me, as I felt it was just more of the same, even though it did tweak some of the bugs from the first game and tidy the whole experience up. That's not necessarily a bad thing as I did want more of the same. It's just that I personally would have liked to have seen a bit more innovation in the game series. Plus for some reason I didn't find the online community of Left 4 Dead 2 as good and as welcoming as the original. Perhaps that's because by the time of its release the asshats were already taking over Xbox Live. Ultimately it remained a damn fine sequel, but because so much of its genius and beauty was centered around the co-operative play, the fact that the online community had degenerated into a bunch of whining teenage dicks, who couldn't understand what the game was about, it was ultimately harmed as a product by its USP. I only really played the game with my friends in closed sessions. There was none of the logging on and playing with randoms that there was with the original, which had really made that game for me. Despite this though the games remain two of my favourites on the Xbox 360, and for that reason Valves zombie franchise gets...

9 brains out of 10.

Dead Space

Like Forbidden Siren before it I've had a few internal arguments as to whether or not this actually constitutes a zombie game. You could look at it both ways, but just like I chose to call Forbidden Sirens zombies 'Japanese zombies' I'm calling the? Necromorphs 'sci-fi zombies', anyone who disagrees will be sent to the Church of Unitology for re-education!!! The first game and I actually had a bit of a troubled start. I'd read the previews, and I'd seen the footage online before it was released, and I thought it looked fabulous, the sort of game that was right up my alley. So when it came to downloading the demo I was was really excited. Then I played the damn thing. Whoever it was who decided that the section they included in the demo of the game was the right way to show it off needed their brains examining. It was ridiculously hard and they'd given you no indication of how to deal with the Necromorphs, or what to do. So I died in many a frustrating way, and the fact that the protagonist, Isaac, was such a clunky and slow lump of turd to move turned me right off the game as no real context was given to why.

Then the reviews came flooding in, 9 out of 10, 96%... "the best survival horror game in years"... the accolades kept rolling in. My friends told me it was ace, normally it's me telling them what to buy, but that demo had put me off so much I just couldn't face buying it. Eventually I borrowed the PS3 version off of a work colleague... it was bloody brilliant. The whole game makes sense only if played from the start, it slowly introduces you to the Necromorphs and how to dismember them to... erm... re-death?... yet again. The Necromorphs are arguably my all time favourite computer game zombies, they are utterly relentless, scary as hell and just all sorts of fun to blast to crap. EA and Visceral Games have an absolute stellar hit franchise on their hands.? Right from the first moments on the Ishimaru Space Ship I have been hooked, and have brought all things Dead Space that I can. I even came close to capitulating and buying a Nintendo Wii to play Dead Space: Extraction, but thankfully it came bundled with the PS3 version of Dead Space 2.

Dead Space 2 by the way ups the ante in every conceivable way over its forebear. Sometimes sequels suck, but generally speaking the second game in a franchise is normally the best in my experience. Getting to grips with Isaac all over again, this time on the Sprawl space station above Saturn's largest moon Titan, was a gruesome delight. The puzzles are better, the combat is smoother, the storyline more involved and quite frankly the Necromorphs are even more terrifying than they were the first time around. If you haven't played either Dead Space game I urge you to go out and buy both of them right now. I personally think it is one of the best franchises from this current generation of consoles, and you still have time to experience them both before the release of Dead Space 3 in early 2013. I for one can't want to play it. Even though the Franchise is only two games and spin-off old, it has to get...

9.5 brains out of 10.

Resident Evil Franchise (mainly 2 and 4)

I mean come on, it had to be the top spot didn't it? This franchise has spawned 23 individual game releases, oh yes it has!!! Over an 18 year period, every game that has included zombies in it has had to compare itself to this now venerable franchise. It is an absolute behemoth, having been responsible for 5 zombie films in its own right. There is no arguing that Resident Evil is THE zombie game franchise. Don't believe me? Check out this timeline:

• 1996 - Resident Evil (PS1)(Eventually released on Windows, Sega Saturn and Nintendo DS)
• 1997 - Resident Evil: Director's Cut (PS1)
• 1998 - Resident Evil 2 (PS1)(Eventually released on Windows, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast and Gamecube)
• 1999 - Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (PS1)(Eventually released on Windows, Dreamcast and Gamecube)
• 2000 - Resident Evil Survivor (PS1 and Windows)
• 2000 - Resident Evil Code: Veronica (Dreamcast)(Eventually released on PS2, PS3, Gamecube, Xbox 360)
• 2001 - Resident Evil Gaiden (GameboyColor)
• 2001 - Resident Evil Survivor 2 Code: Veronica (arcade and PS2)
• 2002 - Resident Evil (Gamecube Remake)(re-released on Wii)
• 2002 - Resident Evil Zero (Gamecube)(re-released on Wii)
• 2003 - Resident Evil: Dead Aim (PS2)
• 2003 - Resident Evil Outbreak (PS2) FIRST ONLINE****
• 2004 - Resident Evil Outbreak: File 2 (PS2)
• 2005 - Resident Evil 4 (Gamecube)(Eventually released on everything including your Casio calculator... OK maybe not on a calculator)
• 2006 - Resident Evil: Deadly Silence (Nintendo DS)
• 2007 - Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles (Wii)(Later released as part of a compilation with Darkside Chronicles for PS3 Move)
• 2009 - Resident Evil 5 (PS3, Xbox 360 and Windows)
• 2009 - Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles (Wii)(released as part of a compilation for PS3 Move)
• 2010 - Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition? (PS3 and Xbox 360)
• 2011 - Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D (Nintendo 3DS)
• 2012 - Resident Evil Revelations (Nintendo 3DS)
• 2012 - Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (PS3, Xbox 360 and Windows)
• 2012 - Resident Evil 6 (PS3, Xbox 360 and Windows)

So what are the stand out moments from this franchises long and distinguished career? Well the original that kicked it all off introduced the world to zombie attack dogs. Come on, any of you who have played the game all have memories of the first time they came crashing through the windows of that tight and twisty corridor. Blind panic and soiled undies I'm sure! The first game introduced so many staples of the series it's untrue, when the zombie apocalypse does eventually happen I'm telling you we'll all be looking for red, green and blue herbs, go on admit it! It was however the sequel Resident Evil 2 that truly blew the mind. It was better looking (yeah OK it's crap by today's standards), the camera angles weren't all wonky and actually added to the gameplay, there were more zombies on screen and more variety in the zombies. The game was just bigger in scope, and although the haunted mansion setting of the first game was cool, what with its mutant plants and all, the setting of Raccoon City just made it feel all just a little bit more cinematic, plus it was HUGE. Many argue that Resident Evil 2 is still to this day the best in the franchise, I'm torn, but if anything it is a close second.
Next up I guess we have to mention Nemesis. It wasn't the best Resident Evil and in fact I really disliked it. But, the introduction of Nemesis was utter genius. Here was a bad dude who quite frankly you couldn't stop, and you couldn't kill. Without Nemesis we wouldn't have had Silent Hills Pyramid Head and many other gaming bad guys I'm sure. Then there are the lightgun games, starting with Resident Evil Survivor, Resident Evil Survivor 2 Code: Veronica and then the Dead Aim versions. They might just have been cheap rip-offs originally of Sega's House of the Dead, but the addition of third person movement to the Lightgun genre and other neat little tweaks actually breathed new life into what was a dying art form, and ultimately many of the series lightgun innovations wound up back in the House of the Dead series of games. The other innovation of note for the franchise during want are known as the wilderness years between 2000 and 2005 were the co-operative online enabled Outbreak games for PS2. It's fair to say that they weren't the most technically gifted games, but they showed there was a demand for such co-op zombie bashing that others took note of.

But, despite the awesome Gamecube re-boots of the originals, and indeed the pretty spiffing Resident Evil Zero, the Resident Evil series had gone through a bit of a rough patch between 2000 and 2005. Capcom had always tied their franchise to platform exclusivity, in the early days its association with PlayStation had served it very well indeed. A brief dalliance with Sega and their Dreamcast for Code: Veronica proved pretty disastrous for the franchise, as that ill-fated system was doomed from the off sadly. A quick switch of allegiance to Nintendo also proved that Capcom's attempt at holding Sony to ransom were not wise. Sure the re-boots they released did well, but the Gamecube simply did not have the market penetration that the PS2 did, and the taking of Nintendo's coin to make the franchise Nintendo exclusive actually harmed Capcom so much that there were rumours they came close to bankruptcy before the release of what I believe is still the best game in the franchise... Resident Evil 4.

Resident Evil 4 had a tumultuous development, that went beyond the word protracted. Development on this game originally started in 1999 for the PS2, if rumours are to be believed from members of the team who have since left Capcom, it may have even started earlier, possibly as early as 1997. That would mean it had 8 years in development! There were many scrapped versions of the game along the way, there was a scrapped version in 2001 (it eventually became Devil May Cry), and then again another version was scrapped in 2002, known as the fog version. Then there was the hook man version revealed at E3 2003, which looked more like a ghost game than it did a zombies game. It did however feature the games now stock over the shoulder moving camera view. Yet again it was scrapped. When the game finally came out it was more akin to a third person action adventure, gone were the normal slow shambling zombies that were a staple of the franchise and in came the Ganado, or 'bonkers European psychopath zombies that could run' as I like to call them, although I'll concede Ganado is the snappier title. The game dropped the fixed cameras the franchise had become known for, in favour of a moving camera that was fixed behind the shoulder of the games protagonist Leon. It was undeniably a Resident Evil game, but felt fresh and different, and I still love playing it to this day.
Resident Evil 5 was the next main entrance into the franchise, with some weird Nintendo platform offshoots jammed in-between its release and that of Resident Evil 4. Resident Evil 5 wasn't a bad game, in many respects it improved on the formula set down in Resident Evil 4 massively. Yet strangely as it was now on the current generation of consoles it seemed to show its age just a little bit when compared to its contemporaries. Set in Africa (somewhere) the game now focused around Majini's, they were basically like the Ganados from Resident Evil 4. While I enjoyed the game it did feel a bit formulaic. True the addition of the online co-op mode was a welcome one and I enjoyed playing the game through multiple times with lots of mates... but I felt something was missing. That brings us to 2012, or the year of Resident Evil as Capcom's marketing team would have us call it. They've released Revelations on Nintendo 3DS to critical acclaim, they've released Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City to pretty much a critical panning and there's the next installment in the franchises main storyline, Resident Evil 6, which itself has had a bit of a critical panning. The franchise might now be starting to shows its age, and it might need another Resident Evil 4 type make over, but despite the franchises ups and downs it is the grand daddy of the zombie games, and as such it gets the full maximum...

10 brains out of 10.

Conclusion

Well there they are, yes it was long, yes I wrote a lot, but you should be used to that by now, so it's your fault really for reading it. I honestly love all of these games and I just wanted to share a bit of my love for them with you. Hopefully those of you who stuck with it will have enjoyed the read, and the trip down memory lane. Yeah I know I've missed off Wolfenstein 3D, Stubbs the Zombie and Call of Duty Zombies. Yeah I feel a bit bad about Wolfenstein 3D, but the re-boot sucked donkey balls so I'd rather not discuss it, and if you were a real geek you'd know that CoD Zombies is nothing but a jumped up rip-off of Timesplitters 2 zombie mode, which by the way fact fans, is still significantly better than CoD zombies even after all this time. In fact it was so good after digging it out again that I very nearly put it in my list. As to Stubbs the Zombie, yeah, that does suck a bit I guess, as it was a pretty cool game if you ask me, a new twist on the genre and certainly very funny, but hey life is harsh sometimes. Just ask the living dead! So what do you guys think? Have I missed any good games out? Things you'd like to add?? Let me know what you think of my choices. Peace out!

Source: http://thefrontlinegamer.blogspot.com/2012/11/top-ten-zombie-computer-games-and.html

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