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16-02-2012 11:12 Amateur footage showing a collapsing building, purported shelling and firing and heavy security presence in the Syrian cities of Homs and Daraa emerged on an activist social network site on Thursday. (Feb 16)
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House Collapses, Heavy Shelling in Syria - Video
KNOXVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Gina L. Bianchini, a social networking pioneer and entrepreneur, has been elected to serve on the board of directors of Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. (NYSE: SNI - News).
Bianchini, 39, is the founder of Mighty Software Inc., a company based in Palo Alto, Calif., that creates social software solutions. Bianchini and her team at Mighty Software are currently beta testing a social network website called Mightybell (www.mightybell.com) where users share experiences as they engage in a wide range of special interests, hobbies or activities.
“Gina Bianchini’s expertise, vision and creativity in the rapidly evolving world of social networking make her uniquely qualified to serve on the Scripps Networks Interactive board,” said Kenneth W. Lowe, the company’s chairman, president and chief executive officer. “The company and its shareholders are certain to benefit from her valuable insight and guidance as we develop new interactive businesses and explore opportunities to create and deliver our brand of lifestyle content on innovative digital platforms.”
Prior to founding Mighty Software, Bianchini was chief executive officer of Ning, a social platform she co-founded in 2004 that enables users to create unique social experiences online. Bianchini guided Ning through March 2010 to its status as one of the fastest growing early social platforms and top 100 global websites.
Bianchini created Ning after co-founding and serving as president of Harmonic Communications, an advertising tracking, measurement and optimization company that was acquired by Dentsu. Earlier in her career, she oversaw acquisitions, equity investments and new business development for CKS Group, a marketing software company. She began her career at Goldman Sachs & Co. as a financial analyst in its high technology group.
“The marketing power of Scripps Networks Interactive brands and the remarkably high level of engagement the company’s networks and websites achieve with media consumers create a multitude of intriguing opportunities in a world that becomes more interactive every day,” Bianchini said. “I’m looking forward to working with the management team as a member of the company’s board as they guide the business into a very promising and exciting future.”
Bianchini graduated with honors from Stanford University and earned her master’s degree in business administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2000.
About Scripps Networks Interactive
Scripps Networks Interactive is one of the leading developers of lifestyle-oriented content for television and the Internet, where on-air programming is complemented with online video, social media areas and e-commerce components on companion websites and broadband vertical channels. The company’s media portfolio includes popular lifestyle television and Internet brands HGTV, Food Network, Travel Channel, DIY Network, Cooking Channel and country music network Great American Country.
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Bianchini Elected to Scripps Networks Interactive Board of Directors
Censorship rises
I watch as our valley strives to embrace political correctness. Is it a form of censorship and we are not wise enough to realize that is what is occurring.
I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, created so the world replenishes. People similar to Dr. Dale Peterson (Jan. 24) or myself try to speak but are personally attacked because of a different viewpoint. Why do they resort to slinging mud rather than sticking to the issue? There was a time that a discussion was just that — discussing an issue. A few loud voices want to tell anyone who disagrees how their personality is flawed and they refer to them as a bad person.
I come from a time when the very idea of putting two men on the front page and declaring they are a married couple would have caused uproar. I come from a time when an editorial would not lead the way in trying to convince the valley that the new law our representative government is attempting to make into law would have been applauded. Notice I said representative government. This state government does not represent this grandmother and this paper does not represent my thoughts.
If people desire to have sex outside of marriage, our culture allows that freedom by their free will. It is not necessary to change the law and make marriage illegal. If men desire to have sexual relations with each other (I always thought it was defined as sodomy), they are allowed to do just that. The law of the land for marriage does not need to be changed in one more attempt to destroy the family.
We are, indeed, on a slippery slope. Censorship is already in full swing and we do not even recognize it. It is called political correctness.
Wilma Morrell
Wenatchee
Unjust prejudice
Mr. Tracy Warner, thank you for your brave, thoughtful and insightful editorial on gay marriage (Jan. 27). Louise Moffatt’s letter (Feb. 5) and Alice Goodwin’s letter (Feb. 7) are more St. Paul-like than Christ-like because they take teachings from the repressed soul of Paul instead of the inclusive life-lessons of Jesus. It was Paul, not Jesus, who made human sexuality (including homosexuality) evil. It was Paul, not Jesus, who thought celibacy was better or more holy than marriage. It was Paul, not Jesus, who instituted a “male” headship.
Almost all major religions are guilty of “selective sin” from the Holy Bible. Some examples of what use to be considered sinful or possessed by Satan are being left handed, sleeping with a menstruating woman, having epilepsy, touching a dead animal or a boil or birthmark on the face. Today we would be embarrassed to label any one of those a sin. However, we continue to latch on to “a man lying with a man is abomination.” That is selective sin and it is simply wrong and should not be tolerated. One must remember that in all four gospels Jesus never once mentioned homosexuality as a sin and God’s new covenant began with a woman not a man.
Both political and religious conservative spokespersons have become the prosecuting attorneys of the souls of our gay children. They have been clear and unmistakable in their unjust prejudice against our gay and lesbian sons and daughters. Traditional family values is their battle cry. Where do these people think gay and lesbian people come from?
Ave Maria Dover
Chelan
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Safety Valve: Letters from readers
A new consumer electronics remote control technology gives smartphone users the fastest possible way to pair their smartphone with a media device.
Clik makes smart TVs dumb
I have seen the future of the remote control.
Actually, I've seen several futures of the remote control, from the ultimate expression of the traditional infrared remote (the Logitech Harmony products), to strong "second screen" apps (like Dijit) that use a smartphone's smarts and interface to build a better guide or remote, to the latest iPhone apps that you can download for nearly every new home entertainment product (most are awful).
One company, though, has gone off in a different direction: Clik. I think it has a new, powerful idea and a platform technology to go with it. There are several issues with it, but the high-level thinking is really interesting.
Clik is simple to use: You direct your media-playing device, say a TV or computer, to the Web address http://www.clickthis.com, which initially displays a unique QR code. Then you point your smartphone's camera, while running the Clik app, at that QR code. This quickly pairs the mobile device to the media playing product. Now you can use the app on your mobile to control what the browser is displaying on the media player.
That's the simple version, which the proof-of-concept demo, available today for iOS or Android, illustrates. With the app, you can put any YouTube video on a browser that's showing the Clik page, and control playback options.
With Clik, other users can "scan in" to take control of a screen one user is already managing.
(Credit: Clik)
It's not hard to imagine Clik offering a much more robust catalog of content: Hulu, Netflix or Amazon streams. Or videos users have saved in their Dropbox accounts. Or pictures from Flickr or Facebook.
What's technologically cool about this is that you're not relying on Wi-Fi on your mobile to stream the media. The Clik app only sends media control info, and it sends it to your browser or display by way of the Clik servers. The Clik servers then blast whatever media you have selected down to the display device. Clik assumes a broadband connection on the display, but the remote smartphone app works over any data connection. You can experience how this works more quickly than you can read it. Setup is wicked fast.
I tried the product on a few computers as well as on a Boxee Box I have connected to my television at home, since the Boxee has a browser app. It worked flawlessly. My TV itself, however, while it has a browser, does not support Flash, which Clik currently requires, so that's a strike against it.
And while cool, the current demo app is slightly irrelevant. YouTube? Who cares? Furthermore, if you really want to display a YouTube video, you go to YouTube.com or a YouTube app.
There's more here
What's exciting to me about Clik is what's beyond the demo. It's a fundamental technology, and a new way to think about remote control of entertainment devices. Clik could be used for games; it's easy to attach multiple smartphones to one game experience that unfurls on a shared TV. Clik also lets a new user quickly take control of a media device if he or she is in the room (in the demo app, you can see this: you press a button to have the display pop up another QR code so a new user can "scan in" to take control of the screen). For shared displays (conference rooms, lecture halls), it's also a powerful idea.
Clik beats any competing technology for connecting, or pairing, a remote with a device. And since it appears that we're moving to using our smartphones or tablets as remotes, this represents a big opportunity.
Clik is also able to put the content selection function and the "smarts" of smart TV into the cloud. A big part of the technology is its focus on speed and responsiveness. Using the YouTube demo, you can control playback and volume with barely perceptible lag, even when you're using cellular instead of Wi-Fi on your phone. There's no reason to use a plasticky, button-strewn remote designed by eight-fingered aliens if you can replace it with a content-aware, Web-connected, personal smart device that's always with you. People are watching TVs with smartphones in hand anyway; this technology closes the loop. (If you don't want to use a smartphone for a remote, a cheap Android tablet could also do the job.)
However, I'm not so keen on the business, due to some major challenges and competitors.
Other companies (like Flingo) are building platform technologies to meld the mobile screen with the TV experience. I believe I may already have Flingo remote technology in my new LG TV, in fact, as one of the set's three redundant user interfaces. Which indicates one of the big problems for the electronics companies: they really don't get interfaces. Give them something great like Clik, and I bet they'd screw it up.
The cool little Tubemote app (review) also allows a pretty quick way to push video plays to any browser from a smartphone. It's been around awhile and is actually a very good app for anyone who has a large screen in their entertainment system that can run a browser. Clik has a much faster setup, but Tubemote currently does more.
And then there's Airplay. If you've got an Apple TV box and an iPhone or iPad, you're already golden. You can push content--video, music, pictures--to your big screen from your mobile device or from your network. It's pretty slick.
Based on what I've seen so far, Clik is not about to become a direct consumer product, although CEO Ted Livingston (also of Kik) as well as one of his VCs, Fred Wilson, told me that the goal here is in fact to build a consumer company. Livingston plans to target the college market first: every student has a computer, and for lazily controlling the MacBook on the desk while you're sprawled on the couch, this is a very workable solution. Doesn't seem like a fundamental product, but it's a nice thing.
Clik could be more important, a more open platform than its competitors: a real contender in the electronics and apps industry, if only the electronics companies would embrace it. Which is a bad bet. The content-pushing service will also need to do deals with the companies running the content-streaming services, which is another maze to navigate. On the one hand you have companies eager to put the streaming content everywhere (like Netflix), but with content that's already everywhere, how can you sell the consumer yet another way to access it, even if it's free? And on the other, you have products that people want, but that are so tightly controlled due to license restrictions that they're unlikely to show up on something like Clik at all. Hulu, for one.
Clik could make things somewhat easier for consumers, and for the college students when they go home, by making its own cheap set-top box, running just a browser that the Clik app controls. But then it'd be selling against the $50 Roku LT that everybody seems to love, not to mention Apple TV, and again Boxee.
Somewhere in that maze of electronics companies, over-lawyered rights owners, and confused consumers, there's a nice hunk of cheese. I really like what Clik is doing, but I'm not sure Clik will find that cheese.
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Clik: The future of remotes, in an alternate reality
The recent revelation that the head of Media Matters walked the streets of Washington with a Glock-toting personal assistant acting as a bodyguard may make it a little awkward for the group the next time it seeks a donation from a gun control advocacy group.
Media Matters reportedly took more than $400,000 from the Joyce Foundation specifically earmarked to promote a $600,000 initiative on "gun and public safety issues." At the same time, Media Matters' gun-guarded boss David Brock reportedly obsessed over his own security.
"It doesn't look good," said Fraser Seitel, president of Emerald Partners Communications and a public relations expert who authored the book "Rethinking Reputation."
"But it is a gray area in terms of public relations. Since (Media Matters) is so anti-NRA, to have their members packing heat leaves them open to criticism," he said.
Brock reportedly told confidantes that he feared for his safety and needed hired guns to keep him safe. The District's gun laws are among the strictest in the nation, which raises the question of whether Brock's assistant at times was in violation of its ban on carrying a concealed weapon.
"He had more security than a Third World dictator," one Media Matters employee told The Daily Caller. Brock's guards rarely left Brock's side and even accompanied him to his home in a tony Washington neighborhood where they "stood post" nightly, the source told the DC.
Media Matters proudly claims to be engaged in an information war to bring down Fox News, and has been exposed as a distributor of liberal talking points that regularly find their way into the reporting of mainstream media outlets, according to The Daily Caller.
Officials at the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation did not return repeated calls for comment. The nonprofit doles out donations to a variety of groups to address such issues as urban public education, job training, the environment, and gun violence.
A July 2010 grant of $400,000 to Media Matters was specifically targeted to support a gun and public safety issue initiative. As part of the initiative, Media Matters sent a representative, David Holthouse, undercover to a shooting sports trade show and had him write about the experience.
In a Media Matters article entitled, SHOT Show 2011: "The Second Amendment Ain't About Duck Hunting," Holthouse wrote that "increased lethality has become the nicotine of the firearms industry."
"Every year gun makers roll out new lines of assault rifles, tactical shotguns and handguns that hold even more bullets, or fire even faster, or boast new gadgetry that supposedly enables their user to kill other human beings more efficiently than ever before," reads a line from the January 2011 article.
Holthouse previously wrote an article for a Denver publication claiming he once planned a murder in such detail that he traveled to a neighboring state to buy a gun with a scratched-off serial number so it could not be traced back to him. His intended target was someone who attacked him as a child, forcibly raping him as a 7 year old, according to the article.
The latest revelations about Media Matters has raised questions in Washington, with some lawmakers in Congress considering opening a investigation into the group's tax-exempt status, according to reports in The Daily Caller.