The BoGo Light is a scientific, eco-friendly breakthrough that is making an impact worldwide. From Cairo to Cape Town, from the Caribbean to the Amazon, it is improving the lives of individuals, families, and entire villages by replacing costly kerosene, candles, and disposable battery flashlights with an affordable, long lasting, solar flashlight.

BoGo means Buy one, Give one. We want our lights to benefit the less fortunate; therefore, with each light purchased in the developed world, a second identical light will be donated to an organization that will distribute it in the developing world with our direct financial support. Give the Gift of Light, and Help Us Change the World!

BoGo Light - Help Light the World!

Is productivity sagging at your firm because employees are too busy playing games?

Well, then, why not make work more like a game?

Seriosity's mission is to change the way people work together in functions requiring a high level of collaboration, communication and feedback in today's information-intensive business environment.

Attent™ with Serios™ is an enterprise productivity application inspired by multiplayer online games. It tackles the problem of information overload in corporate email using psychological and economic principles from successful games. Attent creates a synthetic economy with a currency (Serios) that enables users to attach value to an outgoing email to signal importance. It gives recipients the ability to prioritize messages and a reserve of currency that they can use to signal importance of their messages to others. Attent also provides a variety of tools that enable everyone to track and analyze communication patterns and information exchanges in the enterprise.

The lively marketplace of ideas and communication patterns that emerges from this economy offers new insights into collaboration, teamwork and goal alignment. The Seriosity solution to information overload will give your information workers more time, more thoughtful input and more insight so that they can be more productive.

It's for real! Seriousity!

Seriosity: The Enterprise Solution for Information Overload

"To be honest, I don’t know much about Tennessee Tech but we’ve heard nothing but good things."

But it's also been a divisive distraction in the city, and one that is ---- if we're to be completely honest ---- unlikely to change a darn thing.

It’s time to be honest with Tennesseans and admit that we can fund education this year AND cut the sales tax on groceries.

"We've heard nothing but good things about the Mellow Mushroom, and we're glad they're coming to town."

Attorney General Gonzales, who is the person who should be resigning, had nothing but good things to say about McNulty.

Lindsay Lohan is getting rave reviews for her acting in ‘Georgia Rule’ and the producers of the film have nothing but good things to say about the actress.

An 11-year-old female should hear nothing but good things about her appearance, even if it is not 100 percent accurate.

People lucky enough to have seen test screenings earlier this year have nothing but good things to say about the film. Expect this movie to jump the shark.

Try your hand at running teams and building companies. If you’re good at it, the money will come. Making big money is not much of a life goal. "I typically find rich people boring, to be honest," he said.

Holly, conceding something in her answer, said, "I'm not going to be honest with you, so I'll say myself."

He blamed his behaviour on the death of his beloved mother, Lesley, in 1997, saying: "I know I have a very self-destructive tendency since my mother died, I have got to be honest."

To be honest, Greg, I’m still not sure I understand why Pam left with Roy that night. But I digress.

From time to time Suzanne comes up with ideas. She's a master at tracking down weird and important stuff on the internet. She passes tips on to me and (if they are good) I use them and take full cre... [ Read More (2.2k in body) ]

“Paul Richman is widely recognized as an authority in patent licensing and his reputation as an innovator is well-known. His experience and knowledge will be invaluable in guiding the Company’s strategic direction and monitoring Wi-LAN’s progress as we move forward. ”

Purdy's has earned a reputation as an innovator in the chocolate business -- developing a line of award-winning truffles; the ice cream bar dipped in chocolate and nuts; and Purdy's layer mints, for which Charles himself developed the technology.

Mr. Stringer has been counting on PlayStation 3 to become a global hit to help restore the company’s reputation as an innovator and keep ahead of inexpensive Chinese rivals.

A leapfrog may seem unlikely, given Google’s reputation as an innovator, but its diversification into so many fields beyond web-searching might yet cause it to stumble.

“I want the commission and the town to stay in the game as we move forward.”

As long as you stay in the game and don't get wiped out, you'll always have the chance to make huge profits.

The longer Bangladesh deny them and stay in the game, the more likely India are to get frustrated and Bangladesh's chances of causing a big upset will only get stronger.

And we've seen a tremendous degree of coherence and a tremendous degree of support for these efforts, as we move forward in the Security Council and as we move forward with the broader international community and the IAEA.

"I am very pleased with what the government plans to do as we move forward to ensuring that we can live up to our mandate which is to prevent illegal immigration, poachers and all these things from happening down there in the south."

"We are building Twitter in a new web application framework called Ruby on Rails, which means we are solving new puzzles as we move forward which we share with the developer community."

"The data from the survey will be extremely useful as we move forward to develop programs and services to end homelessness."

“This puts us on a sound financial foo... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

I was going to write about fashion and art and whimsy (and death and depression and cancer) inspired by the obit page, but then I read something really scary and important on The New York Times front page.

The really big question, an urgent avenue for investigation, is what exactly the National Security Agency was doing before that night, under Mr. Bush’s personal orders.

Is more what we really need?

In my opinion not.

But running spies is not the NSA's job. Listening is, and more listening is what the NSA knows how to organize, more is what Congress is ready to support and fund, more is what the President wants, and more is what we are going to get.

He first thanked Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia whose aide was arrested after trying to carry loaded weapons into the Russell Senate Building, for providing security at the Hilton. He then expressed whimsy over what life was like more than a year ago, when his approval ratings were in the 30’s, his Supreme Court nominee had been withdrawn, and his vice president had gone hunting and shot a friend.

Confronted with a blank surface, he will cover it with scenes of anti-authoritarian whimsy: Winston Churchill with a Mohawk, two policemen kissing, a military helicopter crowned by a pink bow.

While some adults may shake their heads and dismiss such an event as typical anti-establishment "kids stuff," the truth is Saturday's event was no fleeting flight of anti-authoritarian whimsy—the students have worked their butts off to earn their stripes as "peaceniks."

Entire scenes are sabotaged by whimsy.

As Linden Labs' Philip Rosedale, the confab's most mesmerizing speaker, assuringly put it, all media breakthroughs started not with a clear-cut business plan but with "whimsy."

When I entered the Chinoise Tea Pavilion, "I Feel Good" was playing, James Brown’s muscular funk an odd counterpoint to the busy Orientalist whimsy.

Kill Bill is no orientalist whimsy.

Coleridge's gaunt Mariner... [ Read More (1.2k in body) ]

The other day while watching the evening news, it crossed my mind that "the world is going to hell in a handbasket." I don't know what a handbasket is, other than the obvious possibility that it's a small basket that is easily carried. I'll bet they collected eggs in a handbasket on the farm way back when my father was a child. But I don't know the significance of going to hell in one.

Welcome to Heaven in a Handbasket. Our Gift Basket Business is for sale!!

" 'Hell in a handbasket' poses one of the most perplexing problems that has crossed our desk in years."

The woman ahead of me in a supermarket checkout line wrote a check for three bananas. I was appalled. "No wonder the country is going down the drain," I told the children that evening as they settled in front of the TV to watch "Miami Vice." "You mean to hell in a hand basket," said the oldest child as he rose to refresh his bourbon.

Neither side now cares a fig ... and would send them all to heaven in a hand-basket.

Hundreds of Lodi teens will gather tonight at this year's prom to carouse and dance, but they better not be drunk and they definitely shouldn't "back it up." ... "No wonder this whole town is going to hell in a hand basket."

"If I was being taken up to heaven in a hand-basket I would step out of it, for the delight of this."

"Everything has gone to hell in a hand basket, and we got stuck holding the basket."

"It's a little odd for Boivin, who will have both a child and a grandchild simultaneously, but people wrap their heads around these things." "... vague concerns that society is going to hell in a hand basket, I don't think are good enough [to block the transaction]."

I always value reader interaction, although some of you are more gracious than others. You all come from the same demographic; were I to hazard a guess, I’d say your average age was close to 75. There's a lot of talk about World War II and the world going to hell in a h... [ Read More (1.6k in body) ]

If you write software for a living, this might be of interest.

How can software and the systems that rely on it be made dependable in a cost-effective manner, and how can one obtain assurance that dependability has been achieved? Rather than focusing narrowly on the question of software or system certification per se, this report adopts a broader perspective.

The committee thus subscribes to the view that software is “guilty until proven innocent,” and that the burden of proof falls on the developer to convince the certifier or regulator that the software is dependable.

Software, according to a popular view, fails because of bugs; as is well known to software engineers, by far the largest class of problems arises from errors made in the eliciting, recording, and analysis of requirements. A second major class of problems arises from poor human factors design.

The culture of an organization in which software is produced can have a dramatic effect on its quality and dependability.

The focus of this report is a set of fundamental principles that underlie software system dependability and that suggest a different approach to the development and assessment of dependable software. The committee’s proposed approach can be summarized in “the three E’s” -- explicit claims, evidence, and expertise.

Software for Dependable Systems: Sufficient Evidence?

A new paper by Ross Anderson. May be of interest.

Online fraudsters use a variety of nonbank payment services to launder the proceeds of crime. People had assumed that traceability was the key. However, investigation reveals that revocability is more important. Fraudulent payments within the banking system can be pursued and recovered with a reasonable probability of success; but once stolen funds are used to buy transferable financial assets such as eGold, recovery becomes much harder. This suggests that much of the benefit that could be obtained from regulating nonbanks more closely can be got by greater transparency about counterparty risks. I also look at broader issues; just as adequately regulated offshore financial centres can benefit the global financial system by providing competition, so also nonbank payment systems can play a useful competitive role. A further issue is the confusion between identity and traceability that has crept into compliance procedures since 9/11; I argue that there has been too much emphasis on the former at the expense of the latter. The current FATF rules impose unnecessary burdens, particularly on the poor, while not doing enough to facilitate rapid recovery of stolen assets. Future regulation of nonbank payment services must take account of this. Anonymous or unverified payment mechanisms can be tolerated, particularly for low value instruments, so long as stolen funds can be quickly traced and recovered. One must also be cautious about liability. Many nonbank payment systems use contracts that attempt to make them judge and jury in disputes with customers – risking a race to the bottom that would undermine consumer protection, and moral hazard which exacerbates operational risks. Only payment service providers can fight fraud effectively, as only they have access to all the data, and the ability to evolve their systems. Consumer protection thus cannot be ignored in payment system resilience.

Closing the Phishing Hole – Fraud, Risk and Nonbanks

Privacy is a growing concern in the United States and around the world. The spread of the Internet and the seemingly boundaryless options for collecting, saving, sharing, and comparing information trigger consumer worries. Online practices of business and government agencies may present new ways to compromise privacy, and e-commerce and technologies that make a wide range of personal information available to anyone with a Web browser only begin to hint at the possibilities for inappropriate or unwarranted intrusion into our personal lives.

Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age presents a comprehensive and multidisciplinary examination of privacy in the information age. It explores such important concepts as how the threats to privacy evolving, how can privacy be protected and how society can balance the interests of individuals, businesses and government in ways that promote privacy reasonably and effectively?

This book seeks to raise awareness of the web of connectedness among the actions one takes and the privacy policies that are enacted, and provides a variety of tools and concepts with which debates over privacy can be more fruitfully engaged. Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age focuses on three major components affecting notions, perceptions, and expectations of privacy: technological change, societal shifts, and circumstantial discontinuities.

This book will be of special interest to anyone interested in understanding why privacy issues are often so intractable.

Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age

It's true. Well, stories have to come from someplace, yes? Anyway, this blind man did pay a visit and even spent the night. But there all similarities end. The rest of the story was cobbled up from this and that, naturally."

I think of past nighttime souvenirs (memories): underground swing dancing; cooking cobbled-up meals like quesadillas; breaking into Sacré-Coeur's step-lawn ...

In the old days, parents cobbled up homemade costumes for their Little ones.

Clauser's offering was a bulbous-bowed design that is the least radical of a whole series of wonderful ideas he has cobbled up on his computer.

It looks like a stretch model of the space shuttle cobbled up out of junkyard parts.

On Thursday night, a New Jersey man named David L. Smith was arrested and charged with spreading the virus. New Jersey authorities said he was definitely not "VicodinES,'' but added that investigators think he cobbled up Melissa from a witches' brew of different viruses, one of which came from VicodinES. Hence, apparently, the telltale GUIDs said everything about the original document and less about its later permutations. New Jersey authorities said "Melissa" was apparently a reference to a topless dancer from Florida.

Bush has said he looked into Russian leader Vladimir Putin's soul and found a friend in the man he nicknamed "Pootie-poot." Apparently, if this conference is any guide, Bush found in Putin a model for authoritarianism. But even the old KGB chief couldn't have cobbled up such an absolutely meaningless discussion of the serious economic problems this country faces.

"I'm concerned about how they've cobbled up history."

Certainly it is the case that elsewhere in the world, as well as elsewhere in time, mankind has been content to fashion written languages in the form of pictographs, hieroglyphs and the like; the age-old use in Western Europe of words cobbled up out of alphabets -- words that are mere tokens, valueless unless they happen to retain some onomatopoeic ... [ Read More (1.3k in body) ]