VAIL, CO--(Marketwire -07/16/12)- Respect Network Corporation, a San Francisco based technology company, today announced it is forming a global network for the trusted exchange of personal data and has secured Neustar (NSR) and Swisscom (SCMN.VX) as founding partners. The announcement was made during the Open Identity Exchange Meeting taking place here during the 2012 Cloud Identity Summit this week.

"As personal data continues to be recognized as a source of macro-economic growth, it is vitally important to explore innovations which can both protect privacy and unlock value," said William Hoffman, head of the Rethinking Personal Data Initiative of the World Economic Forum. "This announcement moves the dialogue from concept to reality and demonstrates an approach for achieving a balanced ecosystem that can be locally based and globally scaled."

Specifically, the Respect Network is the first network being built from the ground up to give people control of their personal data and the ability to realize that data's value. Unlike centralized social networks, the Respect Network is a decentralized, multi-provider network much like today's email or banking networks. Additional partners in the network include Kynetx, Gluu, The OpenXDI Project, Project Danube, The Customer's Voice, Planetwork, and Bitworld. Ctrl-Shift and the Searls Group have also joined as lead consulting partners.

"Behavioral tracking, aggregation of personal data and the steady erosion of privacy have become pervasive concerns on the Internet today," offered Drummond Reed, Managing Director and former executive director of the Information Card Foundation as well as the Open Identity Exchange. "It is time we finally had an open standard network where individuals have direct control over where, when and how their personal data is being shared."

Founding partner Neustar is a trusted, neutral provider of real-time information and analysis to the Internet, telecom, entertainment and marketing industries throughout the world. "We are excited to work with a consortium of companies and personal data experts in the development of key infrastructure for the personal data ecosystem," said Mark Bregman, Neustar CTO.

Swisscom, the second founding partner, is Switzerland's leading telecom provider and one of the most trusted brands in Europe. "Individuals want to be able to share their personal data because it improves and enhances their life, but they want to do so in a secure manner where they are in control of their personal identity," suggested Daniel Gerber, VP of Business Development at Swisscom's Outpost in San Francisco. "We embrace the Respect Network vision of individuals exercising full control over their digital life."

Respect Network will be inviting select global brands to participate in this new consortium, enabling them to directly connect with customers in a way that has never been possible. For more information and details about participating, visit http://www.respectnetwork.com.

About Respect Network Corporation Respect Network is the world's first trusted personal data network. All members subscribe to the Respect Trust Framework, the new model for personal data sharing that is listed with the Open Identity Exchange and won the Privacy Award at the 2011 European Identity Conference. Individuals can join the Respect Network today through the Connect.Me personal recommendation service available at http://connect.me/.

About NeustarNeustar, Inc. is a trusted, neutral provider of real-time information and analysis to the Internet, telecommunications, entertainment and marketing industries throughout the world. Neustar applies its advanced, secure technologies in routing, addressing and authentication to its customers' data to help them identify new revenue opportunities and network efficiencies, and institute cyber security and fraud protection measures. More information is available at http://www.neustar.biz.

About SwisscomSwisscom is Switzerland's leading telecoms provider, with 6.1 million mobile customers and around 1.7 million broadband connections, and is one of the most trusted brands in Europe. For more information visit swisscom.ch.

Continued here:
Respect Network Brings Together Neustar and Swisscom as Founding Partners of World's First Trusted Data Network

By Tony Daltorio - July 16, 2012 | Tickers: ASML, INTC, NINOY.PK, TSM | 0 Comments

Tony is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinions of our bloggers and are not formally edited.

One of the companies that is often pointed to in the technology sector as a bellwether and as the world's top chip equipment maker is the Dutch company, ASML Holding NV ADR (NASDAQ: ASML). It not long ago gave a rather upbeat forward assessment of its business (thanks to smartphones and tablets), and now more good news is flowing for ASML shareholders.

The world's biggest semiconductor manufacturerand one of ASML's largest customers,Intel (NASDAQ: INTC)agreed to invest $4.1 billion into the company. Intel is putting $1 billion towards ASML's research and development costs as well as buying a 15 percent stake in the company for $3.1 billion.

Intel's major investment into ASML may soon be followed up by other sizable investments from other major customers. These customers include Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing ADR (NYSE: TSM) and Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (OTC: SSNLF). It has been reported that ASML has asked its three biggest customers, accounting for 41 percent of its revenues, to help fund its R&D in exchange for up to 25 percent of the company.

Why would these three semiconductor companies be so anxious to help out ASML? Because they are very concerned about maintaining the progress in chip miniaturization over the coming years.

In particular, the money from Intel, Samsung and TSM will help ASML accelerate the development of the next step beyond laser technology, extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. This is a new process that is seen as key to producing smaller chips; it involves bouncing a laser beam off molten tin to produce a light ray just 13.5 nanometers in thickness. It also requires a vacuum inside the machine and mirrors instead of lenses to focus the light on the silicon. Current production techniques have a 193 nanometer width.

ASML is seen as the leader in the field, and it believes that the new technology will be able to be used for mass production of chips below 20 nanometers beginning in early 2013. The research money should allow it to break the 10 nanometer barrier later this decade.Transistors in today's chips are separated by a channel of 22 to 28 nanometers.

In addition, the money injections will be used to help with the development of equipment that can handle larger-sized, circular wafers from which chips are cut. The next generation 450 millimeter diameter wafers will contain roughly double the amount of chips as existing 300 millimeter wafers. Development of this technology should result in cost savings for chip makers of 30-40 percent.

From ASML's viewpoint, these investments will be key to it remaining number one in semiconductor equipment and ahead of its Japanese rival Nikon Corporation ADR (NASDAQOTH: NINOY.PK). That company is also working on EUV lithography technology and has ASML a bit worried. But the good news here is that it is believed Nikon is at least two years behind ASML in developing EUV technology, with its version of EUV technology not coming out until at least 2015. And the cash injection from Intel and the other major chip makers into ASML is sure to put Nikon even more behind the proverbial eight ball.

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ASML Strengthens Its Leadership in EUV Technology

Photo by Karen Quincy Loberg, Ventura County Star

KAREN QUINCY LOBERG/THE STAR Bert Beltran, video production artist, creates a template in an editing bay at Flow Motion Inc., a multimedia production company in Camarillo.

While most companies downsized when the economy took a dive four years ago, Christopher Mattock and his team at Flow Motion Inc. in Camarillo took a different route.

During that time, the company operated in Oxnard and worked on postproduction audio for personal development and other informational media.

While similar companies were slashing their prices for postproduction services, Mattock said, he decided to attract specific clientele based on a fair price point, quality work and first-class service.

"We were not looking to be the cheapest guy on the block," Mattock said. "We wanted to be about value and the first-class experience. That's what was most important to us."

During the past decade, Flow Motion Inc. has grown into a multimillion-dollar company. The company provides services including audio and film editing. Clients can send material to Flow Motion for editing or can record or film at the Camarillo facility, where the team edits the material.

Flow Motion also offers graphic design and Web development and manufactures CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray.

Founded by Mattock, 37, and his wife Jaime, 35, the company has grown into an international business at its 8,500-foot facility at 20 N. Aviator St., which also has a filming studio.

The couple moved their business from Boston in 2002 not only to escape the East Coast winters but also to seek new opportunities. Starting off in a new area with a business had its challenges, especially when the Mattocks decided to run their company from their 1,500-square-foot home.

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Camarillo film, audio company Flow Motion continues to grow

Western Digital has added Dropbox support to its WD 2go mobile app, allowing customers to shuffle batches of files between their 'personal cloud', mobile devices and the popular cloud storage service.

The development is another sign of how previously-isolated hardware backup drives with simple backup routines becoming Internet appliances ruled by software.

In a typical scenario, user might capture images on their mobile device which could then be sent back to their personal cloud; a home-based Western Digital hard drive such as the My BookLive, My Book Live Duo (a larger version) or My Net N900 router with integrated storage.

With the upgrade to the free WD 2go mobile app for the iPhone, iPad or Android devices, the same files could now also be copied to Dropbox as well as to the home cloud drive.

Because of Dropbox's size limits for free account holders (from 2GB), the WD 2go app also allowed files physically located on the personal cloud to be sent to contacts via a secure link.

Files can also be shared straight from Dropbox but what will interest users is the way that they can manage this and other file housekeeping processes (for both personal and Dropbox domains) from the mobile device without the need to access a PC. When at home, the same personal cloud can be accessed directly by Wi-Fi.

WD is committed to providing consumers with secure storage of digital content and access to it on any screen, on-the-go or at home, said Western Digital vice president, Jim Welsh.

By combining access to Dropbox and personal cloud storage into a single intuitive mobile app, WD is empowering consumers with the flexibility and control of anytime, any-device management of their growing libraries of digital content. What it also neatly offers is a way for storage vendors to reinvent commodity devices such as home hard drives into more interesting hubs full of content. Consumers do have a problem with multiple devices, not only how to back up these files but to manage file bloat across several devices.

A variation on this theme is another recently-announced drive from Seagate, the Basckup Plus range. These ship with software that not only automates conventional file back but also backs up a user's Flickr and Facebook images.

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Dropbox support added to Western Digital mobile backup app

(PRWEB UK) 16 July 2012

Up to 70 people are chasing each job vacancy in Britain today*, while the CIPDs Learning and Talent Development Survey 2012 shows that employees receive an average of just 24 hours of training per year. This high level of competition, and increased onus on the individual to enhance their skills, is the reason Home Learning College has produced a free guide for ambitious professionals. Boosting Your Career: What Employers Want to See on Your CV contains advice on personal development and outlines the positive impact of gaining professional qualifications.

Home Learning Colleges own research reveals that three quarters of adults in employment say it is harder to move jobs nowadays without the right study credentials. A further survey of 500 recent Home Learning College students shows almost half (43per cent) have more confidence when applying for jobs thanks to their new qualification.

Topics covered in the guide include:

Boosting Your Career: What Employers Want to See on Your CV is free to download here: http://www.homelearningcollege.co.uk/Boosting-Your-Career.

With competition for jobs so fierce, professional qualifications can make a real difference to someones employment prospects and career progression, says Academic Director Dave Snow. Professional accreditations exist for most industries and can often be gained in a relatively short period of time when compared against academic courses such as GCSEs, A Levels or degrees. Modern distance learning techniques also mean that study can be fitted around even the busiest lifestyles.

Lynda Smith gained her CIM Certificate in Marketing with Home Learning College. She comments: Prior to this course I had gained many years of practical marketing experience, but no professional qualifications. Achieving CIM Certification has added tangibility to the mix, enhancing my role and job satisfaction. As well as enhancing my CV, it has provided grounding for future studies.

*Association of Graduate Recruiters 2012

About Home Learning College Home Learning College is the largest provider of professional distance learning courses in the UK, with 50,000 current students.

All Home Learning College courses lead to CV-enhancing, employer recognised qualifications, including AAT, CIM, Sage, CompTIA, Microsoft, ICB and CIW. Subjects covered include book-keeping, accounting, IT and computing, web design and many more.

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Getting noticed by employers: free guide from Home Learning College reveals all

The University of Wisconsin System was a bit late to the digital education party, but at least it's not a no-show.

While the UW is a relative latecomer to granting flexible online degrees, it already offers 4,600 online courses. It also has a huge advantage not possessed by most of its competitors a quality brand that can be marketed well beyond the state's borders.

UW System President Kevin Reilly and UW-Extension Chancellor Ray Cross were joined by Gov. Scott Walker last month in announcing the flexible degree program, which will be rolled out over the next year or so. Skeptics quickly asked if the program will undercut the UW's traditional campuses, how the tuition structure will work, whether quality can be upheld and how to guard against academic cyber-cheaters.

Legitimate questions, but here is why the flexible degree program will become an asset to the UW and the state:

It will create more degree-holders. Because the state has 13 four-year UW campuses and 21 private colleges and universities, one might think Wisconsin has an above-average share of adults with college degrees. Not so. Wisconsin ranks below the U.S. average of adults with four-year degrees, which has a direct effect on workforce diversity and income. At least 700,000 adults in Wisconsin have some college credits. If even one-third of them wrapped up a degree online, the percentage of adults with a degree would quickly climb to the U.S. average.

It's well-suited to older students. Few adults in their 30s and 40s want to be the Rodney Dangerfield character in Back to School, rubbing elbows with much younger students on campus. Jobs, kids and life get in the way. Signing up for online classes that produce a degree is another matter, however. It's a movie with a happy ending for returning students.

It could give promising high-school students a head start. Given that gifted and talented programs in Wisconsin schools are under-funded and under-appreciated, how about giving some of the state's college-bound kids a head start online? They could earn credits before they ever set foot on campus.

It will help businesses train workers faster for key jobs. The online program will initially focus on some of Wisconsin's largest skills gaps information technology, health care and business and management. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, those are three sectors with a growing demand for workers. Maybe the UW can even produce a few virtual welders, if that's what it takes.

It will help the UW confront its budget problems. The program is less about creating new courses than repackaging and reformatting current offerings. It will also tap into courses outside the UW itself, when needed. If it is modeled after successful programs such as Western Governors University, it will begin with public and private pledges and become self-sustaining over time. Students who take courses through WGU are eligible for state financial aid in their home states. Budgets are forcing colleges and universities into larger classes, anyway. Why not use online classes to teach well in larger settings?

It will become an export industry. Nearly 10 years ago, the Wisconsin Technology Council identified workforce education as a cluster poised for growth. In its report, Vision 2020: A Model Wisconsin Economy, the Tech Council urged making Wisconsin a center for workforce education and retraining, including content development, delivery and credentialing. One recommendation called for shared plans and strategies to increase the export of high-technology workforce education products to foreign markets and the import of foreign customers for high-technology workforce education services.

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UW's online degree plan has a promising niche

(PRWEB) July 16, 2012

FindOnlineEducation.com, an online education portal for students around the world seeking the latest in free and affordable online education course information, tools and in-depth research, today released its list of 16 People Changing the Landscape of Online Education Forever.

These visionaries are helping to disrupt - for the better - the online higher education model around the world. This allows millions of people to revolutionize and transform the way they see and access online material, and ultimately interact with the course. Right now, more than six million Americans are enrolled in online degree programs across the U.S., and their numbers are growing daily.

Anant Agarwal, President of edX, the not-for-profit joint venture between Harvard and M.I.T, recently described the potential of the online education model this way: For students around the world...this is the single biggest change in education since the printing press... and, ...Our (edX) goal is to educate a billion people around the world.

Read more about these 16 People Changing the Landscape of Online Education Forever and youll know why the revolution is on:

1. Sal Khan 2. Charles Thornburgh 3. Sebastian Thrun 4. Eren Bali 5. Gagan Biyani 6. Daphne Koller 7. Andrew Ng 8. John Hennessy 9. Walter Lewin 10. Richard DMillo 11. Clayton Christensen 12. George Siemens 13. Anant Agarwal 14. Jan Philipp Schmidt 15. Shai Reshef 16. Richard Braniuk

These outstanding leaders are driving the innovative efforts to bring online education to millions of people around the world at a low cost - sometimes even free of charge! Some experts believe that with the help of leaders like these, online education could eventually put substantial pressure on traditional, campus-based degree programs. This could lead to lower costs for everyone, and more of an emphasis on certificate-based job training, rather than traditional degrees.

To read detailed profiles of these great 16 innovators and what they are doing to change online education, please see the list at: FindOnlineEducation.com and see their latest Infographic titled, Infographic: The Online Education Revolution.

About FindOnlineEducation.com

FindOnlineEducation.com (FOE.com) is a portal for students around the world seeking the latest in free and affordable online education course information, tools and in-depth research. At FOE, you can learn about courses, schools, rankings, and read countless articles that focus on the latest topics of interest in online education. More at http://findonlineeducation.com/

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FindOnlineEducation.com Releases List of Top 16 People Changing Online Education Forever

OCEAN SPRINGS -- A growing movement to offer free yoga classes to those who serve in the military has come to the Coast.

On Tuesday afternoons at River Rock Yoga, both men and women who have been in battle and those who have trained extensively for it come together for a yoga class.

The program is called Connected Warrior.

Like all yoga, it's designed to relax the mind as well as stretch the body.

Sometimes the class has 10, sometimes five. But Moira Anderson, who owns River Rock, said the class is geared for the needs of those who show up.

A friend of hers in Florida told her about the movement, and it is catching on in Ocean Springs as well as other places around the country.

Part of the yoga discipline is to reach out to the community without expecting a return, she said.

"We have a large military population in the area," she said. "We want to reach out."

River Rock has a lot to offer. It is a sanctuary for people, a sacred space where participants can take time to be still and be in the present moment.

All this becomes particularly important to people who have trained extensively to be hyper-vigilant in their work -- warriors.

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Free yoga classes offered to military and veterans in Ocean Springs are part of Connected Warrior movement

Another study, by the National Centre for Geriatrics and Gerontology in Japan found that language ability of a group of 47 older people with mild cognitive impairment improved when they took part in a mixture of aerobic, strength and balance exercises over a 12 month period.

A third study by a team at University of Pittsburgh on 120 older adults reported moderate intensity walking can grow the region of the brain related to memory.

Dr Anne Corbett, Research Manager at Alzheimers Society, said: While weightlifting and workouts may not be everyones cup of tea, this research shows once again how important exercise is for the brain.

We know regular exercise can reduce the risk of developing dementia by up to 45 per cent but these studies show it can also have real benefits for people with cognitive impairment.

There are 800,000 people living with dementia in the UK. Research like this is crucial to help us provide the best treatment and care for people with mild cognitive impairment and dementia.

The Prime Minister promised to double investment into research, now we need to make sure its spent in the most effective way.

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Weightlifting 'slows down memory loss'

Ever since he can remember, baseball has been a very important part of the life of Mike Bennett.

The former Lompoc High School athlete, who played under legendary Braves coach Dan Bodary, could not remember when he wasnt playing baseball.

I started when I could walk and put a glove on, Bennett said recently during a visit at Elks Field in Santa Maria last week, where he was assisting in the coaching of the Lompoc 13-year-old Babe Ruth team in the District 6 tournament. I was playing in the living room and in the yard with my dad very early.

I was five years old when I saw the Detroit Tigers win the World Series in 1984 after that it was nothing but baseball year-round.

Bennett didnt even let shoulder problems keep him away from the game. He simply went from playing to umpiring, something he has done for more than 15 years.

In addition, his shoulder injury cleared up, allowing him to play in a Lompoc mens baseball league on Sundays, while he also plays two nights a week in a mens softball league.

Oh yeah, he also has found time to add coaching to his resume.

When I started umpiring high school varsity, I stopped umpiring youth leagues, Bennett said. Then one day, I went by the Babe Ruth field and ran into Bill Rule and George Meyer who asked if I was going to umpire their games.

When I told them no, they asked if I wanted to coach, so then I coached for about 10 years then took a couple years off.

But the lure pulled him back this season.

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Baseball’s in his blood