Mediaboss Marketing

Irans government should legalize access to social-networking websites including Twitter and Facebook, Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister Ali Jannati said.

Not only Facebook, but other social networks should be accessible and the illegal qualification should be removed, Jannati said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Iran currently blocks access to websites it considers politically sensitive and to social-networking sites, which activists used in 2009 to organize street protests after a disputed presidential vote. President Hassan Rouhani, who was elected in June and has a Twitter account with more than 122,000 followers, has pledged to allow more social and press freedom and reduce state policing of Iranians private lives.

Several Iranian officials including Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham have Facebook (FB) or Twitter accounts, or both.

The existing ban has spurred some Iranians to use virtual private networks to circumvent the controls through computers located abroad. About 2 million Iranians have Facebook accounts, half of them in the capital, Tehran, deputy parliamentary speaker Mohammad Hassan Aboutorabi-Fard said in January.

Jannati said he doesnt control Internet bans, which are overseen by a screening committee thats not under his ministrys direct supervision. The Culture Ministry has one representative on that committee, he added, without elaborating.

The presidents conservative rivals say young people can be corrupted by Western-style TV shows, which Iranians also access illegally through satellite channels, or Western websites such as Facebook.

Facebook is a calamity in the life of married couples and may result in their divorce, Irans Khabaronline news website said in an Oct. 21 editorial. Time spent on social networks, where one can interact with people outside the family, can weaken relations and lead to alienation, it said.

Since Rouhanis term began in August, journalists have taken advantage of new freedoms he has backed. Articles appearing in local media in recent weeks have debated subjects once taboo, ranging from the impact of sanctions to the usefulness of the decades-old revolutionary slogan, Death to America.

Newspapers have also published a string of prominent stories about opinion makers from the U.S., long dubbed the Great Satan in Irans official discourse. Interviewees have included Brookings Institute analyst Suzanne Maloney, former White House adviser Gary Sick and Alan Eyre, the Persian-speaking spokesman at the State Department.

View post:
Iran Culture Minister Wants Social Media Ban Lifted

For a year, in this column, growing evidence has been presented about the possibility of a new deadly virus being transmitted from human to human, a virus with a mortality rate of 42.6%. Questions have been raised as to what the world health authorities have been doing to protect us, and now the chilling truth: it is transmitted from human to human

The new virus is called Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). It appeared in 2012 and its incidence has been focused principally around the Gulf States.

In January (1), I raised the alarm, presenting my first fears about how the WHO would handle what was then a new and deadly virus with an unknown transmission mechanism.

In February (2), I warned: "The scientific community is facing its worst nightmare: a pathogenic virus with the capacity to make a species jump and then become transmissible from human to human. It is called NCoV, or Novel coronavirus", in an article which posed the question as to whether all cases were being reported, and whether or not human to human transmission had occurred.

The World Health Organization, the same organism that stood back and watched as Influenza A H1N1 became a pandemic, informing us of the different phases the disease was passing through, without imposing any restrictive measures on movement of people or goods, yet again reduced its activities to saying "be vigilant" and not advising any travel restrictions.

In May (3), I asked about the "confirmed cases in Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), France, Germany, Tunisia and the United Kingdom" and again questioned how the statistics were drawn up and whether or not there were cases outside the loop that were not being considered.

In September (4), I referred to "the latest four laboratory-confirmed cases were reported by the World Health Organization on August 30, a 55-year-old man from Medina, Saudi Arabia who is hospitalized and another man, 38, from Hafar-al-Batin, Saudi Arabia, who died nine days after contracting the disease", raising the issue that "Two of his family members are also infected (a 16-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl)".

And now, the latest bulletin from the World Health Organization, dated November 4, states that the latest patient to die of the disease, a 56-year-old woman who became ill on October 26 and died on October 30, "had no contact with animals, but had contact with a previously laboratory confirmed case".

The report continues: "Globally, from September 2012 to date, WHO has been informed of a total of 150 laboratory-confirmed cases of infection with MERS-CoV, including 64 deaths". That is a death rate of 42.6%, making it one of the most deadly viruses ever to have appeared. Spanish Influenza (1918-1920), which killed between 3 and 5 per cent of the world's population, had a mortality rate of 20 per cent at worst.

Yet what does the WHO recommend? It encourages member states to continue surveillance (i.e. sit back and watch), test recent travelers who develop SARI (Severe Acute Respiratory Infections) for MERS-CoV (while allowing them to make the Hajj instead of prohibiting it). The WHO, in stating "Health care facilities that provide care for patients suspected or confirmed with MERS-CoV infection should take appropriate measures to decrease the risk of transmission of the virus to other patients, health care workers and visitors" is admitting that human to human transmission exists.

Read the original post:
Deadly disease: Worst fears confirmed

Diablo 3 In Depth Class Budget And Upgrade Guides Free Software Download

By: kostas jounis

More:
Diablo 3 In Depth Class Budget And Upgrade Guides Free Software Download - Video

By Jack M. Germain LinuxInsider 11/05/13 5:00 AM PT

The more mission-critical the open source software, the more necessary it is to acquire paid support, suggested SUSE's Gerald Pfeifer. "Individual users will often tough out solving problems through community help forums, but SMB owners and enterprise users more likely will opt for paid support rather than devoting internal resources to support open source software," he added.

One of the big attractions behind the growing popularity of open source software is the ability to get it and use it for free. In a world of ever-rising costs in pretty much every other aspect of business and life, "free" is an offer that's increasingly difficult to refuse.

Support is one area, however, where "free" may not be all it seems -- particularly for enterprises.

Users of free software typically rely on the generally sizable community of users and developers for help if questions arise. That support can be excellent, and many users swear by it. At the enterprise level, however, it's worth considering more closely -- particularly when many users are involved and the software is mission-critical.

In addition to offering their software for free, most of the big enterprise Linux operating systems and numerous popular applications give users a choice of paying for support from the developers themselves. In some cases, a software developer may even sell a more feature-rich commercial version.

So when does it make sense to spend the extra money? There's no one formula to provide an answer to that common question, but numerous key factors can help you decide.

One potential variable in relying on free community support is the character of the community. Just as open source version options are different, so are open source communities.

"Open source communities can be like a box of chocolates in that the flavors are not always what you expect them to be," Gerald Pfeifer, senior director for product management and operations at SUSE, told LinuxInsider.

An enterprise's own in-house staff, of course, will also play a key role.

Go here to read the rest:
FOSS in the Enterprise: To Pay or Not to Pay?

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

PointClear Solutions, a leading healthcare software development firm, today announced it has completed the acquisition of Worry Free Labs, a high-end mobile app UX design and development firm based in New York. PointClear will leverage Worry Free Labs deep consumer application expertise and capabilities to design and build patient engagement applications for the mHealth market.

As the industry shifts to value-based care, patients are becoming managers of their own healthcare. Providers and payers are placing greater emphasis on equipping their patients with the appropriate tools for taking this active role. Mobile technology helps healthcare organizations enhance their patient engagement efforts with applications that patients can use to monitor their health. In fact, according to a 2013 report by Research and Markets, the mobile health application market is expected to grow to $26 billion by 2017.

Given the rise of mHealth technology and the increasing importance of patient engagement, we wanted to broaden our design and development offering to include patient-facing applications, said David Karabinos, CEO of PointClear. With the acquisition of Worry Free Labs, we have strengthened our portfolio with consumer-focused solutions and positioned ourselves to drive greater value for our clients.

By joining forces, PointClear and Worry Free Labs now offer the most robust and in-depth set of user experience and user interface capabilities on the East coast. Additionally, both companies expand their geographic footprint to a broader national presence with a strong emphasis in the Southeast, Northeast and Western regions of the U.S.

Through this strategic combination, we are able to further enhance our capabilities and leverage PointClears backend software and technology development expertise to build more advanced enterprise solutions for our customers, said Paul Choi, CEO of Worry Free Labs. We look forward to working together to create superior products and technologies for our clients, including those in the attractive mHealth sector that foster patient engagement and improved care delivery.

Under terms of the acquisition, Worry Free Labs will operate as a subsidiary of PointClear Solutions. It will continue to be led by Paul Choi and will service and grow its client base across select industries.

To read what customers and industry influencers are saying about the acquisition and the future of the mHealth industry, please click here.

About Worry Free Labs

Worry Free Labs is a New York-based mobile user experience design and development firm. It partners with its clients to build innovative and compelling products, including mobile and web apps that delight and bring lasting value to users. Worry Free Labs focus points are Mobile Strategy, User Experience Strategy & Design, User Interface Design, Branding and iOS & Android Engineering. For more information, visit http://www.worryfreelabs.com or call 646.741.5006.

Read more from the original source:
PointClear Solutions Acquires Worry Free Labs to Meet Demands of Growing mHealth Market