Drawbridge, a cross-device ad targeting startup backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital, officially expands into Europe today with the appointment of Kate Burns, one of Europe’s most experienced ‘scaling up’ executives. Burns is the ex-Director of Google UK and the ex-CEO of AOL EU and will be based in London to lead Drawbridge’s entry into Europe, Middle East, and Africa markets.
Burns is a rare beast on the European tech scene: a highly experienced operator with over 16 years of sales, business development and digital expansion experience on an international level for major technology brands. In particular, London, where she will build out the office, is widely acknowledged as the platform for the international advertising industry.
Drawbridge is clearly looking to capitalise on the growth in the global market for cross device advertising. The company is located in Silicon Valley and is backed by Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Northgate Capital.
Its ‘big idea’ is trying to improve mobile ad targeting by collecting data about user activity on the desktop web, mobile web, and mobile apps, then using “probabilistic and statistical inference models” to suggest which PC and mobile users are actually the same person using different devices.
This is extremely important when it comes to so-called “two screen media” – where people watch TV and interact with the mobile or tablet device.
Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, CEO of Drawbridge notes that “Kate was instrumental in driving Google’s early growth in Europe and her effort building AOL’s advertisers and publishers networks, made her a perfect choice to lead our international expansion.”
Burns was Google’s first international hire in 2001, has held key sales positions at Altavista, Doubleclick, Ziff Davis, and News International and also created KT3, a commercial development firm helping technology businesses expand into Europe.
Drawbridge recently expanded with a new feature allowing mobile advertisers to reach consumers with retargeted ads, regardless of whether they’re using an app or on the mobile web.
WUSTL researchers developing hospital patient early warning system
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
24-Oct-2013
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Contact: Neil Schoenherr nschoenherr@wustl.edu 314-935-5235 Washington University in St. Louis
A team of Washington University in St. Louis engineers and physicians is combining areas of expertise to prevent hospitalized patients from deteriorating while in the hospital and from being readmitted soon after discharge.
Nearly 20 percent of hospital patients are readmitted within 30 days of discharge, a $15 billion problem for both patients and the health-care system. Under the Affordable Care Act, Medicare is reducing its payments to hospitals with excessive readmission rates.
Yixin Chen, PhD, associate professor of computer science & engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, has received a $718,042 grant from the National Science Foundation to mine data from hospital records to improve an early warning system that has been tested at Barnes-Jewish Hospital for several years. He is collaborating with Chenyang Lu, PhD, professor of computer science & engineering; Thomas Bailey, MD, and Marin Kollef, MD, both professors of medicine at the School of Medicine.
With the funding, Chen and his colleagues will develop a large database gathering data from various sources, including 34 vital signs, from routine clinical processes, real-time bedside monitoring and existing electronic data sources from patients in general wards at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Then they will develop algorithms that will mine and analyze the data looking for any signs of potential deterioration or life-threatening event in a patient, such as a heart attack, stroke or septic shock.
First, they will apply their algorithms to the patient data, such as blood pressure, heart rate and oxygen saturation, to identify patients at high-risk for their condition to worsen. Those identified as being at risk will then be attached to a commercial sensor that provides data on vital signs every minute, then transmits the data wirelessly to a server, where a second algorithm will analyze it to predict deterioration. The system will also provide an alert to physicians on the patients' deteriorating condition with an explanation of the cause and suggest possible interventions.
"Our algorithms can detect potential deterioration by finding hidden patterns in large amounts of data," Chen says. "These hidden patterns are hard to be detected manually."
Although early warning systems exist, Chen says they are inadequate because they require monitoring by overburdened clinical staff. But the team's early warning system would not require any additional work by patient-care staff because it uses existing data, Kollef says.
Kollef and Bailey have been working on such a system for about eight years in response to a mandate by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement that hospitals reduce cardiac arrests and other sudden, life-threatening events in patients on general medical floors by implementing a system of Rapid Response Teams. Because they wanted to expand the early warning system and make improvements, they brought in Chen and Lu for their engineering expertise.
"Being physicians, this is something for which we need a lot of support from the Engineering school," Kollef says. "It's a nice example of taking the clinical side and the engineering side and bringing them together to come up with a solution for a problem that hasn't had a good solution in the past."
Together, they plan to conduct a clinical study to evaluate the proposed system with the goal of using the technology in clinical practice to reduce patient mortality rates and hospital readmissions as well as to improve administration of the U.S. health-care system.
Chen says the data will be kept secure through the hospital's security standards and through a secure VPN connection with state-of-the-art encryption. No personal information will be included with the data.
###
For more information, visit http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~wenlinchen/project/clinical/
The School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis focuses intellectual efforts through a new convergence paradigm and builds on strengths, particularly as applied to medicine and health, energy and environment, entrepreneurship and security. With 82 tenured/tenure-track and 40 additional full-time faculty, 1,300 undergraduate students, 700 graduate students and more than 23,000 alumni, we are working to leverage our partnerships with academic and industry partners across disciplines and across the world to contribute to solving the greatest global challenges of the 21st century.
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WUSTL researchers developing hospital patient early warning system
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
24-Oct-2013
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Contact: Neil Schoenherr nschoenherr@wustl.edu 314-935-5235 Washington University in St. Louis
A team of Washington University in St. Louis engineers and physicians is combining areas of expertise to prevent hospitalized patients from deteriorating while in the hospital and from being readmitted soon after discharge.
Nearly 20 percent of hospital patients are readmitted within 30 days of discharge, a $15 billion problem for both patients and the health-care system. Under the Affordable Care Act, Medicare is reducing its payments to hospitals with excessive readmission rates.
Yixin Chen, PhD, associate professor of computer science & engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, has received a $718,042 grant from the National Science Foundation to mine data from hospital records to improve an early warning system that has been tested at Barnes-Jewish Hospital for several years. He is collaborating with Chenyang Lu, PhD, professor of computer science & engineering; Thomas Bailey, MD, and Marin Kollef, MD, both professors of medicine at the School of Medicine.
With the funding, Chen and his colleagues will develop a large database gathering data from various sources, including 34 vital signs, from routine clinical processes, real-time bedside monitoring and existing electronic data sources from patients in general wards at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Then they will develop algorithms that will mine and analyze the data looking for any signs of potential deterioration or life-threatening event in a patient, such as a heart attack, stroke or septic shock.
First, they will apply their algorithms to the patient data, such as blood pressure, heart rate and oxygen saturation, to identify patients at high-risk for their condition to worsen. Those identified as being at risk will then be attached to a commercial sensor that provides data on vital signs every minute, then transmits the data wirelessly to a server, where a second algorithm will analyze it to predict deterioration. The system will also provide an alert to physicians on the patients' deteriorating condition with an explanation of the cause and suggest possible interventions.
"Our algorithms can detect potential deterioration by finding hidden patterns in large amounts of data," Chen says. "These hidden patterns are hard to be detected manually."
Although early warning systems exist, Chen says they are inadequate because they require monitoring by overburdened clinical staff. But the team's early warning system would not require any additional work by patient-care staff because it uses existing data, Kollef says.
Kollef and Bailey have been working on such a system for about eight years in response to a mandate by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement that hospitals reduce cardiac arrests and other sudden, life-threatening events in patients on general medical floors by implementing a system of Rapid Response Teams. Because they wanted to expand the early warning system and make improvements, they brought in Chen and Lu for their engineering expertise.
"Being physicians, this is something for which we need a lot of support from the Engineering school," Kollef says. "It's a nice example of taking the clinical side and the engineering side and bringing them together to come up with a solution for a problem that hasn't had a good solution in the past."
Together, they plan to conduct a clinical study to evaluate the proposed system with the goal of using the technology in clinical practice to reduce patient mortality rates and hospital readmissions as well as to improve administration of the U.S. health-care system.
Chen says the data will be kept secure through the hospital's security standards and through a secure VPN connection with state-of-the-art encryption. No personal information will be included with the data.
###
For more information, visit http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~wenlinchen/project/clinical/
The School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis focuses intellectual efforts through a new convergence paradigm and builds on strengths, particularly as applied to medicine and health, energy and environment, entrepreneurship and security. With 82 tenured/tenure-track and 40 additional full-time faculty, 1,300 undergraduate students, 700 graduate students and more than 23,000 alumni, we are working to leverage our partnerships with academic and industry partners across disciplines and across the world to contribute to solving the greatest global challenges of the 21st century.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
A worker from Doctors Without Borders speaks with a sick child in Gao, in the north of Mali, on Feb. 4.
Sia Kambou/AFP/Getty Images
A worker from Doctors Without Borders speaks with a sick child in Gao, in the north of Mali, on Feb. 4.
Sia Kambou/AFP/Getty Images
There's one area of the economy that's growing faster than business or government.
According to the Urban Institute, in the 10 years between 2001 and 2011, the number of nonprofits increased 25 percent. But most of them aren't very good at measuring their effectiveness — at least, that's the conclusion of the nonprofit watchdog Charity Navigator, which rates thousands of nonprofits to help donors make decisions on their giving.
Now, Charity Navigator is planning to change its ratings system. President and CEO Ken Berger says donors deserve to know if the money they're giving is going to programs that work.
"Think about the fact that [in] the largest nonprofit sector in the history of the world, we do not know whether or not we're having meaningful results and to what extent," Berger says. "It's not to say that they're not having results, but they often just don't know what the heck they are."
So Berger is shaking up Charity Navigator's ratings system. At the moment, Charity Navigator compares how much money a nonprofit spends on its programs with how much it spends on overhead. But beginning in 2016, the rating will also factor in results.
"How clearly do you identify the problem that you're trying to solve and how well do you have measures to know that you're on the road to solving that problem?" Berger says.
Give People A New Outlook, Then Measure It
But what if the problem you're trying to solve is in the middle of a war zone? Doctors Without Borders Executive Director Sophie Delaunay says she's leery about a system that would grade a nonprofit based on its results.
"I mean, it really depends on how they're going to use their results and what is their own understanding of what they're trying to analyze," she says.
Dennis Chestnut stands next to a stretch of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 2. Chestnut, who has been working to clean up the Anacostia for decades, says it can take a long time for a nonprofit to see an end result.
Abbey Oldham/NPR
Dennis Chestnut stands next to a stretch of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 2. Chestnut, who has been working to clean up the Anacostia for decades, says it can take a long time for a nonprofit to see an end result.
Abbey Oldham/NPR
Charity Navigator has suggested that one way nonprofits can evaluate their effectiveness is to ask the people they serve how they're doing. But Delaunay says that's "totally unrealistic" for doctors performing surgery in a war zone: "There is no way we're going to send a questionnaire to our patients, who are displaced and in a dramatic state, about whether they are satisfied with our care."
For other nonprofits, surveys are no big deal. Surale Phillips, a consultant to arts groups around the country, says many theaters and dance companies already ask their audiences for feedback.
"You probably get a questionnaire about what you thought of the show and the questions will be about the artistic process," she says.
Still, lots of nonprofit arts groups say their goal is to use theater or music to bring people together, or to make people think differently about the world. Those results are hard for arts organizations to measure, Phillips says.
"In the medical industry or environmental industry, or things that are not the arts, there are often standards that are across the board," she says. "We don't have those kinds of standards [in] the arts. We don't have, you know, CO2 levels to measure change."
But Dennis Chestnut does. He's executive director of the environmental nonprofit Groundwork Anacostia River DC, which measures change in the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. Their mission is both restoration and education: Chestnut says they're trying to get people to care more about the environmental health of their community, learn how to improve it and then make it part of their daily lives.
"It might take ... a period of years to measure the impact," he says, "for us to, you know, actually see that end result, that outcome."
The Price Of Surveying Results
Another obstacle many nonprofits could face is how to pay for evaluations. Charity Navigator is asking for a fairly sophisticated process. With nonprofit jargon like "causal logic" and "pre-defined outputs," you need a glossary to get through the description. Phillips, the arts consultant, says it takes training to do the kind of evaluation they're asking for.
"It's not necessarily about sending one staff person to a workshop," she says. "It's a really intense process."
But Charity Navigator's Berger says nonprofits complained about the ratings formula way back when they first started doing them, 11 years ago.
"The outcry from the sector was: 'You're not measuring what matters most,' 'You need to evaluate us on our results.' That's what we were told until 2011," he says. "Now that we've got this, now we're being told, 'No, wait. It's too hard; it's too complicated; it's too expensive.' It's this, that and the other thing."
If nonprofits are going to ask people for money, Berger says, they should be able to show them their results.
You got your first look at it Wednesday during the iPad & Mac Event in San Francisco, but Apple has now posted to YouTube a video it calls "Making the all-new Mac Pro."
The 2:03 video shows the creation of the Mac Pro from the initial molding of the aluminum outer body to its final assembly. Jeff Williams, Apple's senior vice president of Operations, talks about how design and manufacturing are "inextricably linked" at Apple and how the company had to create new processes to make the all-new machine, which goes on sale next month.
The creation of the Mac Pro chassis is a fine exercise in machine porn, with plenty of thrusting, lubrication and polishing to thrill paraphiliacs. The first minute of the video is largely free of humans besides Mr. Williams - it's all robotics and automation.
The video includes plenty of footage of American workers doing final assembly on the device, underscoring the point by closing with the Mac Pro's logo being laser-etched on its base, with "Assembled in the USA" capping it off.
The recent dustup over the NSA maybe monitoring German chancellor Angela Merkel's phone looks like peanuts compared to the latest Snowden-fueled revelation. It turns out, the agency has actually been spying on 35 world leaders—three five!—and encouraging other departments to shovel more contact information their way.
Microsoft has just posted first quarter earnings that suggest it's faring well despite a tough PC market. Although the company's revenue was down from the previous quarter to $18.5 billion, its net profit climbed to $5.2 billion; both figures were double-digit improvements over the same quarter a ...
A woman drives a car in Saudi Arabia on Sunday. Saudi Arabia is the only country where women are barred from driving, but activists have launched a renewed protest and are urging women to drive on Saturday.
Faisal Al Nasser/Reuters/Landov
A woman drives a car in Saudi Arabia on Sunday. Saudi Arabia is the only country where women are barred from driving, but activists have launched a renewed protest and are urging women to drive on Saturday.
Faisal Al Nasser/Reuters/Landov
Activists in Saudi Arabia tried once, they tried again and now they're making a third challenge to the kingdom's long-standing ban on female drivers.
Some women have recently made short drives, posting videos on social media sites, and many more are planning to get behind the wheel on Saturday.
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that effectively prohibits women from driving, a ban supported by conservative clerics. While there is no law formally banning female drivers, the government does not give them licenses.
Government authorities seem to be more lenient these days, however.
Sara Hussein, 32, says it's time to claim the right to drive.
"Think back in history — Rosa Parks was the only person who sat down on the bus, wasn't she? And then it started to happen gradually," Hussein says. "It does have to start with the few brave people who are willing to risk whatever there is to risk."
Hussein's mother, Aziza al-Yousef, who is in her 50s and teaches computer science at King Saud University, is a key organizer of the drive-in. Activists set Saturday as a date for a national road rally, but also encouraged women to just get behind the wheel any time.
"We are saying, 'Just go ahead and drive now,' " says al-Yousef. "I know women started driving. The messages are in the hundreds. We are counting the videotapes."
YouTube
Activists have been challenging Saudi Arabia's ban on female drivers by taking to the road and posting videos. Here is one of what organizers say are 100 videos posted so far.
The mother and daughter say the videos are coming from across the kingdom and even show one man teaching his wife and sister to drive.
Relying On Male Drivers
Saudi Arabia was made for driving, with wide open spaces and cheap gas. The sprawling capital, Riyadh, is as big as Los Angeles, with no dependable public transportation.
Women must rely on men to drive them around. They may be male relatives or drivers who are part of the country's imported labor. But this is expensive and an intrusion into their lives, many women say.
As the country changes bit by bit, the prohibition on female drivers can contradict other efforts by the government. For example, the government is urging private companies to hire more women. It is hard to see how that can happen unless women can drive to work, Hussein says.
"No one has been given orders from higher up" to arrest female drivers, she adds.
Al-Yousef says this campaign, the third challenge to the driving ban, has learned from past mistakes.
In 1990, 47 women made the first attempt to challenge the ban. They all lost their jobs, were prohibited from traveling for years, and were shunned for their defiance.
The next challenge came in 2011, when activists Maha al-Qatani was the first Saudi woman to get a traffic ticket. The campaign fizzled after some women were jailed for driving. But soon after, King Abdullah said women could vote in local elections, and 30 women were appointed to the 150-member Shura Council, an advisory body to the king.
Going For A Spin
Al-Yousef — who has an international driver's license — says she and other drivers don't want to break laws aside from the one banning driving.
She now takes a short drive every day and invites me to join her for a cruise around the capital. We get in the front, her male driver climbs in the back, and we take to the road.
"I need people to see that it is normal; we have to let people accept it," al-Yousef says. "It doesn't mean anything if you drive only one day."
The afternoon traffic is so heavy that nobody notices two women in the front seat of a car.
Then we approach a police station.
"Let's see what their reaction is," she says. "You watch it; it's going to be on your right."
She says the head of the national police stated publicly that his officers would not arrest women for driving. But they will ticket those without a license, which is impossible for a woman to get here.
Al-Yousef drives like a pro. She learned while attending a university in the U.S. The only time she shows excitement is when another activist calls her.
"I am driving!" she announces with a distinct rise in her voice.
We end our drive at her front door, where her husband is waiting to meet her.
"Hello, I'm a coward. How do you do," her husband, Moisen al-Haydar, says with a laugh.
Al-Haydar says he's given up driving. He's proud of his wife for braving Riyadh's hectic traffic. He supports her driving campaign, but he's worried, too.
Threats Against Activists
There have been online threats and insults against activists. Al-Yousef filed a case this week against the attackers in court. Also this week, conservative clerics urged King Abdullah to stop Saturday's drive-in, but the king did not meet with the complaining clerics.
Al-Yousef sweeps away her husband's concerns and sits down to check the latest driving videos.
"We've had four today and we are now up to 100 videos," she says as she turns up the volume on the latest driving demonstration.
Al-Yousef translates the Arabic in the video: "She says this is a very positive movement; Saudi ladies should have the choice to drive her own car. And she named the tape, 'Yes, we can.' "
The final decision is up to the king, who has said he believes women have the right to drive, but hasn't said when.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Global equity markets edged higher on Thursday, boosted by signs of growth in China's manufacturing sector, while rising expectations that the Federal Reserve will keep its stimulus efforts in place for months kept U.S. Treasuries yields near three-month lows.
Wall Street opened higher a day after the S&P 500 index broke a four-session winning streak as investors grappled with a host of corporate earnings and muddled economic data.
The low Treasuries yields kept the dollar pressured while helping the euro as the Fed's easy monetary policy outweighed weaker euro zone data. The euro was up 0.3 percent at $1.3816, having earlier hit $1.3824, its strongest level since November 2011, while the dollar fell broadly, hitting a near nine-month low of 79.081 against a basket of currencies.
Fed policy is seen as very data dependant, though economic indicators over the coming month are likely to be skewed by the effects of the government shutdown. That could limit insight on the actual state of the economy and to what degree the shutdown and the fight over raising the debt ceiling harmed growth.
"What we've been seeing since the government shutdown and debt ceiling was resolved is a desire to jump back into Treasuries," said Jason Rogan, managing director in Treasuries trading at Guggenheim Partners in New York.
"Most market participants are of the mind that the Fed is on hold for the foreseeable future."
Treasuries have rallied since data on Tuesday showed employers added fewer jobs than expected in September, stroking fears the economy was slowing, even before the government's 16-day shutdown.
However, on Thursday the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note was down 6/32, its yield at 2.5052 percent.
Data showed activity in China's vast factory sector reached a seven-month high this month, easing concerns about a slowdown in Chinese exports, which would point to weakening global demand.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 87.50 points, or 0.57 percent, at 15,500.83. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 4.83 points, or 0.28 percent, at 1,751.21. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 20.37 points, or 0.52 percent, at 3,927.44.
European shares recovered their poise, climbing back toward five-year highs thanks to strong corporate results and the encouraging manufacturing data from top metals consumer China.
The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index was up 0.4 percent at 1,284.89, recovering from the previous session's fall and climbing back toward Tuesday's five-year highs of 1,291.93.
MSCI's world equity index added 0.2 percent, slightly retracing losses of 0.6 percent on Wednesday, when markets were rocked by fears that a spike in Chinese short-term rates could hurt growth.
The U.S. manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index rose at its slowest pace in a year this month and factory output contracted for the first time since late 2009. The survey was conducted partly during the 16-day U.S. government shutdown, which economists expect will slow overall U.S. growth slightly in the last three months of 2013.
Markit's PMI index for the 17-nation euro area showed business activity eased slightly in October after a pick-up in September, though it confirmed that the region's economic recovery was taking root.
MIXED EARNINGS
U.S. corporate earnings continue to pour in, with 47 S&P 500 components expected to report on Thursday, including Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc after the close of trading.
"The earnings picture was not supposed to be that great this quarter and in fact we are seeing that. The thing that is disappointing is top-line revenue, and those are not good signs," said Keith Bliss, senior vice-president at Cuttone & Co in New York.
"So what is going to drive the market from that point is going to be Washington policy and Fed policy."
In commodities trading, gold was the biggest mover, up 0.4 percent to $1,336.50 an ounce, nearing a four-week high as the outlook for an unchanged Fed policy heightened concerns about inflation risk.
"Postponement of tapering means higher liquidity in the market, probably higher inflation risks in the longer term," Commerzbank analyst Eugen Weinberg said. "That's likely to lead to higher interest in gold."
Brent crude futures slipped 0.5 percent to near $107 a barrel as rising supplies of crude oil in the United States drove prices toward a two-month low, while U.S. crude fell for a fourth straight session to its lowest since June. But the selling was not as heavy as in the previous session.
Brent crude oil was down 49 cents to $107.31 a barrel while the U.S. crude oil benchmark, also known as West Texas Intermediate or WTI, shed 47 cents to $96.49 a barrel.
Copper edged down to its lowest in more than a week as concerns about the current tight credit conditions in China and its impact on demand offset the brighter growth outlook.
(Additional reporting by Jan Harvey and Jessica Mortimer in London; Editing by Dan Grebler)
Most fans are likely expecting an entertaining stand-up battle Saturday when Melvin Guillard throws down with Ross Pearson at UFC FN 30, as both men have showcased impressive striking skills throughout their careers. While most people certainly won’t be heading out to grab more beer when Guillard and Pearson step into the Octagon, don’t expect the same type of crazy slugfest that happened at UFC 166. Yes, meaning the Gilbert Melendez-Diego Sanchez fight.
Why not? Well, when asked recently for his thoughts on last Saturday’s thrilling war, Pearson acknowledged he enjoyed the bout, before noting (comments via MMA Junkie.com):
“To me, that’s not what the sport is about,”
“The sport is about being able to set your moves up, being able to manipulate your opponent to make him do what you want to do – not just go out there and stand in the middle and go toe-to-toe,” he said. “Sometimes you need [to do that] when both fighters are the same size, and both the same skill level, and both the same strength. It comes down to who’s got the biggest balls.”
Of course, Pearson will be taking on one of the UFC’s most punishing strikers at 155, so as the Brit noted, his plan versus Guillard is “not to get hit.” That’s a good strategy.
“The Real Deal”, who made his MMA debut having only trained in boxing, also relayed he loves watching Anderson Silva fight and that he’s trying to “copy that.” We’ll see Saturday if he can.
Stay tuned to MMA Frenzy.com for all your UFC news and coverage.
Front-Page Photo Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
My phone rang. In heavy metal. "Hi Jim!" The laugh hit me like a Heineken-fueled right cross. "Hey, Rene. So I'm making a new version of The Loop Magazine app..." That was great news. Dalrymple's Loop Magazine - which, full disclosure, I've written for twice - is an ode to Apple, tech, and music nerdery, and I enjoy it dearly. But, app-wise, it was already struggling to keep up with Jim's vision. And that's just when the bearded uppercut landed. "So, do you know this guy, Chris Harris?"
I did. Chris Harris is Tigger on Red Bull. A madly clever Englishman who styles himself an app director so he can better woo old media into the bed of new. He's been working on a platform for years, called Glide, meant to be simple yet powerful on the backend for content creators, yet enthralling for readers and viewers on the front. Wonders of the Universe was one of his most high-profile joints. (You can hear him talk all about it, his process, and Glide in general in Iterate episode 47.)
Jim spent a short time telling me what he wanted to achieve with the new Loop Magazine. Imagine the reverse of one of his iPhone or Logic Pro reviews. Instead of weighing the relative success of how something fit into and improved day-to-day life, he laid out his plan for making the Loop Magazine experience do just that, and with every bit as much delight. Dropbox on his end, with a logical hierarchy of folders for text, images, and videos, and near-instant sync for content delivery. Movement through space and context, direct manipulations and gestures on the readers end, elevating the experience to, well, an experience.
Part of Glide's genius - and Chris' and his team's genius - is that through simplicity they can produce a remarkable amount of sophistication and diversity. Chris has spoken to me about it often over the years, and was kind enough to not only give me a tour of the Loop Magazine's specific implementation - grinning the whole time he did so, of course - but let me try using it as well. It's impressive.
What Jim's doing with it is equally impressive. Tools and instruments are only ever as good as their craftsmen and artists, and Jim is re-launching the Loop Magazine in style. Not only does the latest issue - offered as a free sample - contain his article about the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c, it contains an article from Matthew Modine about what he learned from working with Stanley Kubrick while working on Full Metal Jacket.
As you tap into the issue and the article, as you scroll through the words, as the images zoom in and out, as you swipe to the next article, and as you pinch back to the issue or the rack of issues, it's all fluid, it's immersive. It's an amazing confluence of technology and media, and one that very much sparks that same childlike sense of wonder Apple strives for in their products.
(There are subtle hints to teach you the gestures at first, and buttons as well, in case the gestures don't take.)
The new Loop Magazine and Glide achieve exactly what Jim and Chris set out to do. They not only raise the bar on Newsstand apps, but on content creation tools to power, and empower them.
"So, what do you think, Rene?" I think I have to figure out how the heavy metal ringtone got on my iPhone. I also think if you haven't tried the Loop Magazine yet, you should do so now. Jim's about to take you on one hell of a ride.
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Microsoft has just posted first quarter earnings that suggest it's faring well despite a tough PC market. Although the company's revenue was down from the previous quarter to $18.5 billion, its net profit climbed to $5.2 billion; both figures were double-digit improvements over the same quarter a ...
