Formspring Thursday, Apr 29 2010

Twitter is abuzz today with a story attributed to popular news wire service The Associated Press. The new trending topic spotlights Formspring.me, a social network that lets users create profiles to post and answer questions anonymously, and its CEO, who was supposedly arrested two days ago for an elaborate scheme to release private customer information to the public on April 1.

But the story was just dubbed a hoax by news site. The Inquisitor, which points out numerous “mistakes” in the supposed AP story: there’s no record of the story existing on the AP’s web site, there’s no set date for the story and it doesn’t fit AP style guidelines. Additional clues that the story is a hoax include that Formspring.me’s CEO isn’t named Mark Baxter at all, but rather Ade Olonoh. This article claims that Formspring.me was conceived as a phishing site, and is planning on releasing users’ data on April 1.

We allow users to sign up for an account and ask questions anonymously, but we still store their data next to the question. Like Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Digg, Tumbler, and many others, another joins on Formspring.

Formspring.me is a Free, simple, service created by Formspring that allows you to create anonymous question boxes for all of your social networks. Like the Honesty Box of MySpace or Facebook in a sense, but it stands alone with the feature to post the question and answer to Twitter or Facebook.

If you haven’t yet heard of it, Formspring.me is a fast-growing forum for people to ask and answer personal questions. Users register an account on the site, link it to their Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler or other accounts, then ask and answer questions and can publish those answers to the major social networks.

At first glance, Formspring.me appears to sit alongside Aardvark, ChaCha and Yahoo Answers in the expanding realm of online question-and-answer sites. “With Formspring.me, the intent is to be a communication platform that enables conversations with friends,” Mr. Olonoh wrote, responding to the question I had left on his Formspring page.

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Medical Alarm Systems Thursday, Apr 22 2010

A medical alarm is an alarm system designed to signal the presence of a hazard requiring urgent attention and to summon emergency medical personnel. Other terms for a medical alarm are PERS, Personal Emergency Response System or medical alert.

Typical systems have a wireless pendant or transmitter that can be activated in an emergency. When the medical alarm is activated, the signal is transmitted to an alarm monitoring company’s central station, other emergency agency or other programmed phone numbers. Elderly people and disabled people who live alone commonly use/require medical alarms.

A medical alarm system consists of an emergency transmitter, which is worn like a wristwatch or a pendant and a base station, which is connected to the telephone and contains a very sensitive microphone/speaker unit.

Some monitoring services also provide the client with a USB medical alert device so that arriving emergency personnel can have immediate access to vital medical information.

With some systems, an alert arrives in the offices of the alert system operator (which may be a public rescue service or a private security company) and the data of the affected person (address, medical condition, family contacts) are displayed. With others, there is no system operator, and the user simply programs the numbers of family members, neighbors, or local emergency responders.

Finding an assisted living device that can also function as a personal alert system can be a bit tricky. The developers behind MediPendant™ took disabled individuals into consideration when they developed the clever and very functional MediPendant™. Any individual who is wearing the MediPendant medical alert system can activate the system with a simple push of a button. Once the system is activated, the MediPendant™ immediately and instantly connects the user with a live operator. Moreover, this live operator is an EMT-certified operator who can instantly send medical help or other assistance like calling emergency contacts if medical help isn’t necessary.

Clearly, the MediPendant’s™ unprecedented level of functionality is a most welcome development for anyone in need of a medical alarm or personal emergency response system. There is no doubt that what MediPendant™ can offer makes it a breakthrough product in the field of emergency alert systems. You can compare having a medical help system to having car insurance. Senior emergency alert systems are very popular and becoming more so all the time. Finding an assisted living device that can also function as a personal alert system can be a bit tricky.

Any individual who is wearing the MediPendant medical alert system can activate the system with a simple push of a button. Once the system is activated, the MediPendant immediately and instantly connects the user with a live operator. Moreover, this live operator is an EMT-certified operator who can instantly send medical help or other assistance like calling emergency contacts if medical help isn’t necessary.

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Tristram Shandy Thursday, Apr 15 2010

A Cock and Bull Story, released in the United States and Australia as Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, is a 2006 British comedy film directed by Michael Winterbottom. It is a film-within-a-film, featuring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing themselves as egotistical actors during the making in a screen adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s 18th century novel Tristram Shandy. Gillian Anderson and Keeley Hawes also play themselves in addition to their Tristram Shandy  roles.

Coogan is playing the titular role in an adaptation of Tristram Shandy being filmed at a stately home. As Alexis Tadié has pointed out, Tristram Shandy is full of sounds that Sterne would like readers to hear quite literally, from a speaker’s vocal inflections to the tuning of Tristram’s fiddle (20-23). This scene is just one example of the key role that music plays in establishing Tristram Shandy as a catalyst of mid-eighteenth-century sentimentalism.

The functions that music performs in this novel all seem to reinforce the perception of Tristram Shandy as a work of sentiment. Music animates the speeches in Tristram Shandy, enabling them to communicate emotion to the auditors, subtly impressing listeners with emotions they would not have felt otherwise. Tristram says of these markings, “they impressed very distinct ideas of their several characters on his [Yorick's] fancy” (387). Yorick composes sermons with their performance in mind, recognizing a musical element in language and using it to make his sermons more emotive. Tristram Thomas received his first land patents in Alabama in 1834 for parcels of land in both Jefferson County and what is now Greene County.

There is a single parcel in Jefferson County of 40 acres in the same township and ranges of Etheldred W. and William Thomas, but not near the land of George Thomas or John or Benjamin Thomas who also received land patents in Jefferson County.  Tristram’s first land patents in the Greene/Pickens County area were issued in 1834 falling entirely in what is now Greene County (but then was Pickens County) as does one of the land patents of the three that he received in 1837.  Benjamin Thomas and Wilson Eatman had jointly patented this parcel of land in.  All of these land patents of Tristram Thomas totaled approximately 720 acres over a five-year period.

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Malvern College Fire Thursday, Apr 15 2010

Firefighters have been tackling a major blaze at a public school in Malvern. A girl’s boarding school building where the house mistress and her family lived at Malvern College on the Lees Road has been almost completely destroyed by the fire which broke out at around 4am today.

Thirteen engines were at the scene although students are on their Easter break. Engines that attended the incident included the Aerial Ladder Platform from Worcester Fire Station and the Environmental Protection Unit from Stourport Fire Station.

Firefighters have tackled a severe blaze at a public school in Worcestershire. Eight firefighters wearing Breathing Apparatus sets tackled the fire from inside the building and crews were also dealing with the fire externally. A fire investigation into the cause of the fire is now underway.

All ambulance resources have since been stood down, except for one ambulance crew which remains on standby while the fire service continues to deal with the fire. An administration building at Malvern College has been almost completely destroyed by the fire which broke out just before 0300 BST.

An administration building at Malvern College has been almost completely destroyed by the fire which broke out some time before 0400 BST. More than 70 firefighters battled the fire at the accommodation block at Malvern College, Worcestershire, yesterday.

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Dave Larry King Thursday, Apr 8 2010

Lawrence Harvey “Larry” King is an American television and radio host. He is recognized in the United States as one of the premier broadcast interviewers. King has conducted some 40,000 interviews with politicians athletes entertainers and other newsmakers. He has won an Emmy Award, two Peabody Awards, and ten Cable ACE Awards.

King began as a local Florida journalist and radio interviewer in the 1950s and ’60s. He became prominent as an all-night national radio broadcaster starting in 1978, and then began hosting the nightly interview TV program Larry King Live on CNN, which started in 1985.

King grew up in a religious and observant home. King rode a bus to Miami. After initial setbacks, King got his first job in radio through persistence. When one of their announcers quit, they put King on the air. Two days later, singer Bobby Darin, in Miami for a concert later that day, walked into Pumpernick’s as a result of coming across King’s show on his radio; Darin became King’s first celebrity interview guest.

His Miami radio show launched him to local stardom. King credits his success on local TV to the assistance of another showbiz legend, comedian Jackie Gleason, whose national TV variety show was being filmed in Miami Beach during this period. “That show really took off because Gleason came to Miami,” King said in a 1996 interview he gave when inducted into the Broadcasters’ Hall of Fame. WIOD gave King further exposure as the color commentator for the Miami Dolphins broadcasts during the early part of the Miami Dolphins’ 1971 season. King also lost his weekly column at the Miami Beach Sun newspaper. For several years during the 1970s in South Florida, he hosted a sports talk-show called “Sports-a-la-King” that featured guests and callers.

King managed to get back into radio by becoming the color commentator for broadcasts of the Shreveport Steamer of the World Football League on KWKH. Eventually, King was rehired by WIOD in Miami. Little went on to become president of Mutual and was the one who hired King when Nebel died. King’s Mutual show developed a devoted audience.

King would interview a guest for the first 90 minutes, allowing callers to continue the interview for another 90. “Mr. Radio” had over 200 calls to King during Open Phone America. The afternoon show was eventually given to David Brenner and radio affiliates were given the option of carrying the audio of King’s CNN evening program. He started his CNN show in June 1985, and the Westwood One radio simulcast of the CNN show continues.

On the Larry King Live show, King hosts guests from a broad range of topics. Unlike many interviewers, King has a direct, non-confrontational approach. King, who is known for his general lack of pre-interview preparation, once bragged that he never pre-reads the books of authors who appear on his show. Throughout his career King has interviewed many of the leading figures of his time. David King, comedian, actor and singer: born Twickenham, Middlesex 23 June 1929; married (two daughters); died 15 April 2002.

King was born in Twickenham, Middlesex, in 1929, and left school when he was 12. In 1955, the good-looking King followed Norman Wisdom and Benny Hill as the compere of the BBC-TV variety series Showcase and this led to his own monthly series The Dave King Show, followed by a Royal Command Performance. King continued his success, however, with The Dave King Show for ITV in 1958/59 and was a major success at the London Palladium.

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Great White Buffalo Thursday, Apr 1 2010

Theodore Anthony “Ted” is an American hard rock guitarist and vocalist from Detroit, Michigan. He originally gained fame as the lead guitarist of The Amboy Dukes. He is also noted for his vocal conservative political views and his ardent defense of hunting, conservation, unrestricted gun-ownership and anti-drug/alcohol abuse activism.

To date, Nugent has released more than 34 albums, and he has sold a career total of 30 million records. On July 4, 2008 at the DTE Energy Music Theater in Clarkston, Michigan, Ted Nugent played his 6,000th concert. Derek St. Holmes (original singer for the Ted Nugent band), Johnny Bee Badanjek (drummer for Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels), and Ted’s guitar teacher from 1958 Joe Podorsek all jammed on stage with Ted for various tunes.

After settling down on a ranch in Michigan in 1973, Nugent signed a record deal with Frank Zappa’s DiscReet Records label and recorded Call of the Wild. Personnel changes nearly wrecked the band, which became known as Ted Nugent & the Amboy Dukes.

Ted Nugent reunited with the other members of the Amboy Dukes at the 2009 Detroit Music Awards, which took place April 17, 2009. Nugent dropped the Amboy Dukes band name for good in 1975, and signed to Epic Records. Derek St. Holmes (guitar, vocals), Rob Grange (bass) and Clifford Davies (drums) were the primary additional band members for his classic 1970s multi-platinum[3] albums: Ted Nugent (1975), Free-for-All (1976) and Cat Scratch Fever (1977). During the period of 1982-86, Nugent released a series of moderately successful solo albums. Returning to a solo career, Nugent released Spirit of the Wild in 1995, his best-reviewed album in quite some time. This album also marked the return of Derek St. Holmes to Nugent’s studio band. In 2006, Nugent was inducted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame.

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