There's been so much interesting news lately that it's hard to keep up with it all. These are the stories I've personally found most interesting: 7/28/2010 – from WIRED: Google, CIA Invest in “Future” of Web Monitoring “The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future. The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come.

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Recent news of interest

My colleague Shanthi Kalathil is working on a ” Toolkit for Independent Media Development ,” which we have mentioned several times on this blog. One of the points she makes right at the beginning is that donors need to distinguish between media development and communication for development. Communication for development means the use of communication tools – usually in the form of awareness raising campaigns – to achieve development goals.

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Media Development vs. Communication for Development: Structure vs. Process

iHealthBeat reports that West Virginia Medicaid along with five other states will receive federal matching funds from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS)to help implement electronic health record (EHR) incentive programs. West Virginia Medicaid will receive $945,000 in federal matching funds. The CMS press release indicates that West Virginia will use the funds for planning activities that include conducting a comprehensive analysis to determine the current status of HIT activities in the state.

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CMS Awards WV Medicaid $945K Federal Matching Funds for EHR Incentive Programs

Start Earning Online In The Next 30 min! If you are looking to work from home and would like to start earning anywhere from $200 – $1500+ everyday then you would want to check out this offer and learn how you could soon be quitting your day job to work from home! No Technical Skills Required, Anyone Can Join! Get The My Home Wealth System Today! You probably already know that Google now uses your page load time as a an algorithm for ranking your blog or website. Here is some information to read from Google Webmaster on Site Speed importance to keep you up to speed if you have not heard about this.  I knew that too but like most people, have been busy with other things to really set aside time to seriously do something about it

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The Quickest Way To Make Your Blog Load Faster

Mastering the pitch is the subject of many books, blogs, and only a few billion emails. Pitches are all around us, we’ve just become accustomed to them.

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Pitching Prospects – Part 1, Why Online?

I love crafting with office supplies and the fine folks over at 3m/post-it have some up with some amazing new post-it paper! This is stuff is so fun and can be crafted in hundred of ways. Click here to visit 3M.

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CHA – New Things From 3M & Post-it!

Just popping in, in between edits, to say hello, and let you know about a brilliant event London this month. In case you can’t quite read it, here’s the text – we’d love to see you: Brixton Chick Lit – Girl’s night in Brixton Library – 7pm Wednesday 18 August A Night with Chick Lit Novelists Brixton chick lit group is proud to present some of the top chick lit writers: Jojo Moyes, Matt Dunn, Rebecca Chance, Kate Harrison, Jenny Colgan and Lisa Jewell. Laughter, discussion, questions and books – Join us for a night of chick lit fun and great conversation.

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Brilliant chick lit event in London on August 18

That implicit consent thread has just broken a thousand comments, so I’m closing it and inviting everyone to move here. Just to keep it interesting, I found (via Jen) a couple of lists. The one on the left is from one of those liberal progressive sites, and clarifies the whole issue of male privilege, which many of the commenters still fail to comprehend

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Two checklists for feminists

Many of the Scienceblog expatriates plus a few others have formed a new collective, Scientopia. It looks like a good bunch of people and a new and maybe better bottom-up approach to organizing a blog network — I’ll be reading them and looking forward to their growth. Adventures in Ethics and Science Attack Polymerase Book of Trogool Candid Engineer in Academia Chemical BiLOLogy Child’s Play Christina’s LIS Rant Drugmonkey Galactic Interactions Good Math/Bad Math Neurotic Physiol…

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Say hello to Scientopia

Those who owe back taxes better pay up, or Pennsylvania’s department of revenue will hunt you down, Jack Bauer-style. That’s the scare tactic used in a recent series of Big Brother-like ads, which showed a satellite zeroing in on a tax cheat’s home. “Your name is Tom,” bleeps a robotic-voice, as the Google Earth-esque graphics zoom toward its target

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Tax Cheats Beware: The Government Will Find You

ProScript Medical Transcription Solutions hires medical transcriptionists to work from home offices all over the U.S.

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Work-at-Home: Medical Transcription Jobs at ProScript

It’s Sunday and so begins Discovery Network’s annual week-long programming of shark “documentaries” – Shark Week 2010. This event has been a ratings success (translating into advertising dollars) but exasperated shark advocates have reviled the network’s reliance on over-sensationalism and distortion of the facts.The programming usually consists of one large budget new program, several new smaller budget programs, and then the rest of the programming slate is filled out with selections from …

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Shark Week 2010: how to balance against one particular perspective

Thanks to Rachel Ray, extra virgin olive oil (or “EVOO” as she has playfully deemed it) has become a grocery staple in American grocery stores as well as American kitchens. Remember, it wasn’t so long ago that olive oil in the home meant that rancid bottle of Bertolli hanging out in the back of the pantry with the discarded bottles of molasses and rice wine vinegar. Now, EVOO is front and center in the kitchen and used for just about everything from salad dressings to cakes

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Virginity questioned: How extra virgin olive oil lost its purity

Hoboken’s Ian Sacs (right) and Juan Melli with a Corner Car. (Jim Motavalli photo) HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY — Fresh off the $1.75 PATH tubes from Manhattan, I am standing on a pleasant residential street lined with brownstones in downtown Hoboken, New Jersey with the boyish Ian Sacs, head of the city’s transportation and parking bureau. In front of me is a Toyota Prius, just like any other except for the fact that it is parked in a green-lined space …

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Innovative car sharing helps a walkable city clear its streets

From a Blog Post In June, we concluded a survey, linked on 10 of our highest traffic websites, with more than 5,000 responses from patrons around urban and rural America.

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Ebooks and audiobooks: stats about OverDrive users

This week I’ll be a guest on the Hot Seminar Series to discuss taking a blog to max profit potential – including my strategies for getting the most out of every post . Kelly McCausey is the host of the summer series, and she has been digging into my blog archives to check things out before the interview on Wednesday.

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Blogging With A Plan

It’s the sweetest treat on a hot summer afternoon- homemade peach ice cream. Grab a spoon and dig in! Supplies: Ice cream maker Blender Hand mixer 3 cups sliced peaches 1 ½ cup sugar juice from one lemon 1 ¼ cups whole milk 2 ¾ cup whipping cream 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla Steps: 1. Mix the peaches, ½ cup of the sugar, and lemon in a bowl

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Make This: homemade peach ice cream

Emerging group experiences have predictable dynamics, whether they are new project teams, training and development programs, wilderness experiences, or just people learning new jobs. People form relationships based on first impressions and sometimes-false hopes, find that things haven’t gone as imagined, and then struggle through confusion and misunderstanding to create their own positive norms that help them work effectively. The best leaders help people through these stages only to find some common issues popping up — things people seem to want that even the best leaders can’t provide.

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Four Things Groups Want that Leaders Can’t Give — and One They Can

If you’re a student, you’re probably using an online calendar to keep track of your homework assignments, projects and plenty of other things that are a part of your schedule in school. Tests also go hand in hand with other academic activities, and it’s more important to keep track of them because you can’t afford to miss them

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Track School Test Schedules using Google / Zoho Calendar + Zoho Challenge

From today’s NY Times on line, here.Money quote: The students apply in their sophomore or junior years in college and agree to major in humanities or social science, rather than the hard sciences. If they are admitted, they are required to take only basic biology and chemistry, at a level many students accomplish through Advanced Placement courses in high school.

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Mount Sinai admitting medical students without Organic Chemistry or the MCAT