text:
Privatising hospitals. It's gonna work wonders, isn't it?
November 12th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
Circle Health took over a hospital recently. Basically a privatised NHS hospital. Everything is cool though, we're told. It'll be more efficient, nobody will lose out they said.
Well, predictably, guess what…
[Circle Holdings] had been in negotiations with the government for two years over the takeover of Hinchingbrooke hospital; as the preferred bidder, it expected to be successful. In its document [share prospectus], the company reveals its aspiration to take over further hospitals but also spells out the risks to patients. It says: "As well as the establishment of further independent hospitals, Circle intends to significantly expand its NHS business.
"Circle's growth has placed, and its anticipated growth will continue to place, a strain on its managerial, administrative, operational, financial, information technology and other resources and could affect its ability to provide a consistent level of service to its patients."
That second paragraph is just wonderful, isn't it?
h/t @DickMandrake
It's not a privatisation because the NHS are still the landlords
A private company, listed on the stock market, has been given the right to deliver a full range of hospital services for the first time in the history of the NHS, reigniting a debate about the use of business in the health sector.
Circle Healthcare, a John Lewis-style partnership valued at around £120m, will manage the debt-laden Hinchingbrooke hospital in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, from February after the government signed off on a decade-long contract on Wednesday.
For fucks sake, people. Calm down. It's not a privatisation. Can't you people see that?
The takeover is not considered a full privatisation as the buildings will remain in public hands and the employees retain their pay and pension on existing terms.
It's not a privatisation because the NHS will still own the building. *rolls eyes*.
Seriously though, how can anyone claim this is not a privatisation? The building remains in the hands of the NHS, so the NHS becomes the landlord. *Everything* else is down to Circle.
The current staff stay on their existing pay and pension terms, but what about new staff taken on? Will they be on contracts the same as NHS staff? What about when Circle decide they don't want existing staff on NHS terms? They'll find a way of getting people to re-apply for their existing jobs on different contracts.
Having said all that, as long as there are no links between Circle and the Tories… what? oh…
As Labour MP Jamie Reed tweeted last night:
Former Tory Health team member Mark Simmonds MP is also a paid strategic advisor with Circle. Coincidence?
And then added:
Two of Circle's major shareholders are Tory Party donors. Coincidence?
In fact, emails released to the Guardian (by SpinWatch) in July this year showed Circle was part of a lobby group that took the NHS regulator to expensive gala dinners.
Privaatisation started quietly with a little contract here and a little outsourcing there, this though, is the real deal.
Getting fleeced
April 7th, 2011 § 1 comment § permalink
Immigration detention centres. Not the nicest of places. The people in there are generally pennyless and have a big need to talk to solicitors and stuff.
So what does the ever so intelligent people who run the private companies think up for their detention centres? A new telephone system…
The trial at Tinsley House detention centre, near Gatwick airport, is run by Global Comms & Consulting Ltd (GCC), which specialises in secure telecommunications services to major government agencies and multinational companies. As a result, detainees will not be able to call free numbers and will pay significantly higher rates to call their family and solicitors. All calls will also be recorded, monitored and disrupted when necessary by the immigration authorities and/or the immigration prison's management.
When a detainee arrives at the centre, they have their own phone taken from them and issued with one from the centre. These phones are described as 'crap' and cut out 'after a few seconds'.
Along with the phone the detainee is also given a phone card…
Detainees will be given a Call4Five card when they are admitted in to detention. Call4Five, owned and operated by GCC, allows users to dial any UK or international number from any phone for "five precious minutes," using a special code provided on a scratch voucher.
GCC claims its Call4Five cards are "a good deal." However, a voucher of five minutes for international calls (10 for UK calls) costs £2.50 plus VAT. This works out at 60p and 30p per minute respectively, which is significantly more expensive than using pre-paid phone cards or even normal mobile phones.
The new system also means that detainees will be charged higher rates for dialling 0845 numbers and will not be able to call free 0800 numbers without buying credit, for example to use pre-paid phone cards provided by visitors groups or to call their solicitors and other support organisations that provide a free phone service for those who do not have credit on their phones.
What a lovely bunch of people run these services, eh?
How to destroy the NHS: A step by step guide
February 15th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
From Stephen Law…
Suppose I am very very rich, and very very selfish. The NHS annoys me intensely. It costs lots in tax revenue to run, and being very rich, I pay proportionately more of my income on it, and of course far more in terms of hard cash, then almost anyone else. I also resent the fact that my business empire is unable to cash in on providing the services that people would buy from my private businesses if the NHS was not there.
BUT, the public loves the NHS, even many Tories are fond of it, and to propose scrapping it would provoke howls of outrage. Plus there's no evidence I can marshal that the public would get a better service if it were provided by the private sector – rather the opposite in fact.
What would I do? Here's what I would do.
First, I'd ensure a team of expert PR run the Tory party – people adept at twisting facts, spinning, and indeed telling bare face lies and getting away with it. And I'd have my private health companies etc. fund them generously.
Next, once elected, I'd get them to introduce phase one: the introduction of a market system in which GP's buy services from NHS hospitals, or anyone else, based on variable price, etc. This can still be called "NHS" because it's still free at the point of use. This would all be justified by lies about how the evidence shows it's more efficient, etc.
Read the rest.
Self serving to customer serving
February 4th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
Following on from a previous post today on the subject of nationalisation/privatisation, 21st Century Fix…
[L]et's change the focus please from public versus private to that of identifying and changing the cultures of the self-serving to customer-serving – wherever they may find themselves.
private good, public bad
Stephen Law on the dirty word 'nationalisation'…
…for some industries, that "competition" [that privatisation brings] looks largely notional. In the case of the railways and power companies, for example. And we all know that the government puts much more into running the railways now than it did when it was nationalized. And it had to step in when Railtrack went bust. The service remains an expensive disaster for consumers. So much for efficiency. etc.
When this ongoing disaster is pointed out, private ownership is defended on the grounds that the privatizations was mishandled, or done in the wrong sort of way, or the companies run badly, whatever. When publicly run industries don't fare well, on the other hand, well that's just because they are publicly, run, isn't it, rather than run in the wrong sort of way? That must be true, mustn't it? Because as we all know, "private good, public bad".
My question is, why has it become the case that even to raise the suggestion that, say, the railways should renationalized is now unthinkable for most people? Why, when people consider how the problems might be fixed, does that option never even get considered? Is it really because the arguments and evidence for private ownership are so very good? (if so, why are so many other successful railways either state run or primarily state owned?)
On the privatised rail network
January 12th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink
Alex Gabriel at Political Promise has a sort-of-rant about the trains. I'm not sure how accurate the figures are Alex uses but they sound about right…
If Arriva run the train you need and you'd rather travel with Virgin, tough. Unlike buying most other things, we don't get to choose the superior brand. The companies aren't really competing, either, because we have to travel with whichever one has trains at the right time. They might as well have the monopoly that the Conservatives promised they'd take from British Rail, because there's no real choice of service involved: we board the train irrespective of how good or bad it is, or else we can't make our journey.
The same applies to public transport in general. Fields, lakes and mountains surround my hometown, and when last I checked it cost £10 for the twenty minute journey to the next town. Long distance bus companies which compete for better prices will take you from Manchester to London for half that, but local companies – like rail firms – can be as exploitative as they like because people who use them have no choice.
They're not accountable, efficient or cheap, but don't the train companies at least strengthen the economy with their profits? Well, no. Salford University published a paper which found that in 2002-3, taxpayers paid subsidies of £1.34bn to prop up the rail industry. That's right – we're actually paying them to rip us off, and they wouldn't be profitable if we didn't.
When British Rail existed, it received £1.07bn of the same subsidies, so ironically train travel is more tax-funded now than then. National Rail even gets £20bn a year from general taxation to keep it going. The Thatcherites said not to fund unprofitable industries with public money, but that's exactly the situation we're in – except with all privatisation's downsides and none of its benefits.
Sometimes there is no market and trying to create one just doesn't work.
Tory cuts & privatisation: Just like the good old days
July 17th, 2010 § 1 comment § permalink
A government efficiency drive aimed at slashing spending in town halls and boosting productivity in the health service is likely to deliver billions of pounds of new business for private companies, the Guardian has learned.
Outsourcing firms are preparing for a bonanza of local authority contracts to provide everything from bin men to back office bureaucrats and have reported a doubling in the number of deals on offer this year. Private health companies are also expecting to earn billions of pounds from the planned overhaul of the NHS in which GPs would take over responsibility for spending £70bn.
Executives at Capita, the UK's largest outsourcing firm, said the number of opportunities for local authority contracts has already doubled this year and they see the healthcare market as "vast and potentially lucrative".
Richard Marchant, head of local government strategic partnerships at Capita, an FTSE-100 company which already works for councils in Harrow, Swindon, Southampton and Sheffield, said: "A major problem for the public sector is, we feel, a significant opportunity for us. Opportunities are at their highest level in two to three years. This year we have probably seen a 100% increase in opportunities [compared with 2009] and I suspect we will see another 50% increase in the following year."
The private companies are rubbing their hands together, then. The money to pay for these services still has to come from somewhere, and at the end of the day it's us. Me and you. The taxpayer. We either pay it as a tax or direct to the supplying company. Or more likely, in taxes that then get paid to a private company that'll provide an inferior service that'll seem cheaper to begin with but will sooner or later cost a fuck load more than expected. PFI anyone? (New Labour may have enjoyed all the off the balance sheet perks of the scam, but they were a Tory idea.)
First off, and I've probably said it before, why can't a local government provide services as cheaply as a private contractor seemingly can? I understand economies of scale and all that jazz, which local governments and councils should able to achieve if they get their shit together work together as some sort of buying union. But just as local governments don't generally have the buying power of these big companies that take on the contract, they also don't have the shareholders to look after either.
A lot of these companies that provide public services after privatisation or are contracted out are foreign, too*. This means not only are profits being given out that could instead have meant the service could be provided cheaper or more of it even, but the profits are going abroad and helping to keep another nations economy in the black.
What is needed is for councils to get together and sort their shit out rather than at the first sign of trouble start flogging stuff off and handing out the contracts.
*I am prepared to be shot down in flames at this statement, but even if 'a lot of' is a little er, generous, the point remains.
You are currently browsing entries tagged with privatisation at Sim-O.


Want to be notified of new releases in intel/ikgt-manifest?
(1) Added fix for CoreOS.
The target machine is where iKGT is to be installed.
Note: For target machines with less than 2GB RAM, xmon launching may fail.
Please refer to "Customization" section for more details.
below and start from step (2).
manifest file to down load UEFI preloader and UEFI xmon loader.
Please refer to Running IKGT on UEFI Platforms section for details.
configuration file for xmon boot.
during boot to select boot entry.
Modify the timeout value if necessary.
Save the changes and quit.
entry on the GRUB menu during the boot.
Check cpuid and verify Intel VT-x is being used.
feature is being used and this is expected when xmon is running.
If xmon is running, the utility will print out "iKGT is running".
Xmon runs silently under the existing OS de-privileging it.
This command will delete "ikgt_pkg.bin" in /boot and "20_linux_xmon"
in /etc/grub.d, restore the changes to grub configuration files.
- Intel Core i processors.
Note: the above command is for Ubuntu system. For Cent OS, use yum.
log_warning_msg "device driver not loaded, skipping."
latest sinit bin file to get the right one.
Follow the steps "Installing/running iKGT" to install iKGT.
Reboot the system. In GRUB menu, choose the boot entry with tboot and iKGT.
be specified by creating directories and files in this space.
Use python script to parse policy file and create configfs directories.
The python script is under ikgt/example-usage/integrity/policy/parse_policy.py.
resources will be controlled as per the actions specified against them.
be logged and the violating instruction will be skipped.
output of each event log entry.
log entries, please refer to iKGT-user-guide.
Currently the loading address for xmon loader is located at 0x10000000.
verify if this address is available or not on your system as following.
address that within any of the "available RAM" regions from lsmmap command.
it is required to rebuild loader by rebuilding ikgt_pkg.bin.
adjusted downwards. Target system launch can fail due to lack of memory.
(1) Dependency on *.h may not always be checked.
with tboot and iKGT. The issue will be fixed in future release.
EFI app and UEFI version of xmon loader from a different repo.
You need ability to start EFI shell. Boot-manager rEFInd is one option.
- Get the rEFInd from soureforge. We need a USB flash drive image file0.
NOTE: First find out where your USB is mounted using mount command.
manager, which has EFI shell.
- Boot from rEFInd USB device USB2. You should see rEFInd menu.
You can now launch Linux from EFI shell as usual.
is mounted at /boot/efi and grubx64.efi can be accessed from /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu.
You can manually launch this application from the EFI shell to get to grub menu.
choose Linux only option. IKGT is already running.
including HP Elite Desk, Lenovo Thinkcentre, and Sony ultrabooks.


text:
A collaborative approach to expanding oilfield automation
Home Blog A collaborative approach to expanding oilfield automation
An increasing number of projects in process automation are now aiming to achieve best-in-class solutions, in which the most suitable components from a range of vendors are utilized. This is being driven by a reluctance on the part of facility operators to rely on one-stop solutions from a single provider that may not meet requirements in all applicable circumstances. If parts from multiple companies are deployed, however, facility operators must ensure they can be integrated and work together as a combined solution.
A number of years ago, French automation specialist Schneider Electric launched a Technology Partner program with the aim of ensuring this kind of effective integration. This program—which has created an "ecosystem" of providers whose products complement each other perfectly—also counts Softing Industrial Automation among its members. The Softing and Schneider Electric partnership focuses on data communications, with a key emphasis on fieldbus technology. Together, the two companies won a major contract in the oil and gas sector.
Oilfield expansion with FOUNDATION Fieldbus expertise and optimized IT security
The customer was an operator of oil wells in the Middle East. The project aimed to achieve a major expansion of these facilities as well as the pumping capacity for the seawater used to force the oil to the surface. The tender documents published by the oil company specified FOUNDATION Fieldbus (FF) as the automation technology to be used in the expansion project for this oilfield. Improving IT security was another key specification for the project. To date, the client had worked with Yokogawa, and the plan was to maintain deployment of the latter's SCADA system. To optimize the client's cybersecurity operations, however, best-in-class products were to be used from several manufacturers.
For the initial expansion phase in 2015/2016, SE supplied 70 Foxboro SCD2200 controllers (RTUs), which were to communicate with the existing master automation system, Yokogawa PRM. The success of this initial phase was also due to Schneider using its partner program to make Softing's gateway products part of the solution. The name Softing has long been synonymous with FF solutions, especially since most of the FF field devices on the market have Softing FF stacks. The Softing gateways were essential for their deployment to enable communication with the Foxboro controllers' Modbus/TCP and FF. With Softing's FG-200 FF Gateways, the OT systems were integrated via FOUNDATION Fieldbus inexpensively and with minimal effort.
The FG-110 FF gateway was deployed in the first project phase. This gateway connects the new facility components via an FF-H1 interface to ensure fault-free data exchange, while also supporting the FF-specific communication options used for device configuration, monitoring and diagnostics, for example. As a result, controllers utilizing the Modbus protocol can also be used in an FF environment.
In the second phase of the project, the successor model FG-200 FF was brought in. It offers up to four FF-H1 links in controllers with Modbus support while also supporting device redundancy and deployment in explosion hazard areas. FG-200 FF also enables fast access to process data and exploits FF benefits such as reduced cabling effort, centralized field device parameterization, comprehensive diagnostic options, or links with intrinsically safe devices. Communications between the Yokogawa SCADA, the Schneider controllers, and the Softing gateways are working without a hitch. As a last step, the operator opted for MTL power conditioners, as a finishing touch to this best-in-class solution.
Simple parameter setting and monitoring with FF During the project, Softing also provided training to Schneider Electric employees as well as the client's operator/maintenance team. The deployment of an additional local technical support team during project commissioning ensured the successful acceptance of this proof of concept involving several different manufacturers.
The remote maintenance options offered for field devices by FF technology is an especial benefit for maintenance technicians, whose assignments would otherwise involve driving hundreds of kilometers around the extensive oil field to fix a problem. Facility operators also benefit from the user-friendly solution, which includes browser-based parameter setting. Since the gateways can process commands sent using Modbus/TCP and FF protocols, control engineers can complete monitoring and diagnostic work from the comfort of the control room.
"Both of the teams at Schneider Electric and the oilfield operating company were very happy with the gateway technology and the support provided by Softing," comments George Melico, Lead Engineer at Schneider Electric. "So when the next expansion stage was due in 2018, we once again chose Softing gateways—this time picking the new FG 200 FF version." This lets the facility operator continue to deploy its preferred Foxboro controller solution from Schneider while also exploiting the low-cost, operator-friendly FOUNDATION Fieldbus technology in the field.
About Softing Industrial Softing connects disparate automation components to feed data from the shop floor to the cloud for control and analytics. The company's products enable the monitoring and diagnosis of communication networks and thus ensure a reliable data flow. In this way, they create the basis for the optimization of production processes.
For more information, please speak to our team at Ti2.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


This subseries contains 11 volumes of diaries/journals written by the earliest CAS Agents in the course of their work, and a transcription of a portion of another journal. The diaries are arranged chronologically. See also the diary of Charles Loring Brace in Series IV.1A for another diary from this period.
This subseries contains 8 folders of short histories and chronologies of CAS events. They may have been composed either to provide internal reference and institutional memory, or as drafts for eventual inclusion in annual reports, appeals, or other public relations documents, although the intended purpose of each document is not clear. Most folders contain several histories. In contrast to the previous subseries of personal memoirs, the authors of the historical sketches are unknown.


It's Saturday when I link up with Amy of Signs, Miracles and Wonders for Then Sings My Soul Saturday. The Lord placed this particular song on my heart while I was praying Romans 12:1.
I have to admit I couldn't honestly pray that for so many years as I struggled for control. I won't have complete consecration this side of eternity but I'm growing and learning as ...I trust and obey.
As I open my hands and relinquish control of my life to His loving care, He works in me and throuh for my good and ...His glory.
May this song speak to your heart as it did mine.
Thank you for visiting Heart Choices.
I'm right there with you this morning Debbie- Take My Life Lord! All of it is Yours and Yours alone!
I too took many notes during the study of Haggai. What a powerful little book!
Trust is huge! Some seem to come by it with willing surrender; others (like me) from having tried & tested God's grace, from seeing (in oh so many ways) how good is He.
Turning it all over to Him is such a relief and is huge!!
What a patient and loving God He is, as these same lessons are learned over and over..
Thanks so much for this magnificent post!
And BTW... a heartfelt DITTO to everything you just said in your comments today!
My life has already been blessed and enriched just to 'know' you through these visits. I'm telling you... you are my SISTER! There are a few bloggers who are immediate kindred spirits... I'm so thankful that Debbie is one of mine!
This is such a beautiful song, and I love this version of it. We sing this at church.
How I needed this today.
My son so ill of breathing treatmens every 4 hours.
here am I all of me take my life all of me.
Lay it down all of me.
here i am all of me.
It is all things that He makes me able through His strength.
kindness be the rule of my heart and where I fail amend it with love.
Thank you for stopping in and leaving such a wonderful comment. Many prayers are needed for our family.
I wanted to stop in and formally say hello and have become a follower of yours today. I look forward in getting to know you better.
This is a wonderful post. I've laid my life before the Lord and it's all His. His will is where I always want to be...in His will not mine. He is an awesome God and my life is led by Him. That is where my strength comes from, otherwise I don't think I could get through one day.
Again, I'm joyful getting to know you more.
What a powerful song! It has been a real blessing to watch you and your dedication to the Lord inspite of what is going on in your life. You're a real inspiration to so many of us. I will be praying for you as you go through the weeks ahead. The Lord is going to use you in a powerful way.
Oh my word - what a powerful song, Debbie.
I think that Chris Tomlin is one of the best worship leaders (if not the best :)). I just purchased his album "Hello Love" for my MP3 player - a great worship album.
Thank you for sharing this marvelous song this morning.
AMEN and sweet blessings Debbie!
May He take our lives and consecrate them. May He take each moment of each day and fill us with praise! May He take our hands and our feet using them & directing them for His glory! May He take all of us & change what He desires OUT & replace it with His fruit! May we release control of doing it on our own and allow His Spirit to control us.
I have/had a struggle all my life trying to be in control & afraid if I let go, what will happen... not so much if I give control to God and surrender but if I allow anyone else to control my life, decisions or choices. Yes, heart choices!
Yes, I love Chris Tomlin and this is a life song of complete surrender. Many of us need prayer for this...bless you for sharing!
It's so hard to let go of that control. But, what a blessing it is when we do!
For some reason, the song wouldn't come up, but I love that verse in Romans! Happy Sunday!
Love, Love, Love Chris Tomlin.
One of the first artist I was able to listen to after we lost Joshua.
Oh praise the LORD dear sister. My life, my heart is all the LORD's and I'm so grateful. I remember the early years when it was not that way. Thank you for sharing your heart for the LORD with us.
I love this song too. We were singing this song when we were still small.
Hi friend! Please stop by to pick up an award from me!
"Create in me a clean heart oh God" is a favorite prayer of mine"......it really is all about control isn't it.....DAILY giving it all to God. I want nothing more.
I enjoy your honesty about control issues and trusting God and I'm smiling as I read the comments as well. God is working big in us women!
I love singing this song at church. It would be wonderful to have playing all the time! Ah! filled with great reminders of what our purpose should be...to be His witness to those around us.


Twelve-year-old Will Parry is on the run. His father, a retired soldier and explorer, vanished in the Arctic soon after he was born, and now mysterious men (government? military?) are after the letters that he sent to Will's mother during his last expedition. Determined to find his father or at least what happened to him, Will leaves his emotionally fragile mother with a friend. He returns to his home to find the men there, and one of them is killed. Fleeing from the house, cat lover Will follows a strange cat through a "hole" in the air, and finds himself in another world.
This is the opening to The Subtle Knife, the second book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. In Cittagazze, a city in the spectre-haunted world where Will ends up, he meets Lyra Silvertongue, the protagonist of The Golden Compass, and they form an uneasy alliance that matures over the course of the book into a deep and abiding friendship. Will's natural gentleness, as well as the cautiousness and sense of responsibility he has been forced to develop in "parenting" his childlike mother, provide a counterweight to Lyra's weaknesses of impulsivity and recklessness, while she prods and sometimes bullies him into action, as well as giving him some of the nurturing he has lacked in his life.
Not only do many of the wonderful characters from the first book (Serafina Pekkala, Lee Scoresby, Mrs. Coulter) make an appearance, but several new ones who will play vital parts in the denouement of the story are also brought in, most notably Mary Malone, a physicist in our world who has lost her Catholic faith. She is enlisted by Lyra to explain the mysteries of Dust, but ends up being far more important in the scheme of things.
This is a book that is filled with adventure and heroic sacrifice, as well as friendship, loyalty, and abiding questions about good and evil.


Every adventurer carries a backpack. Sometimes adventurers lose their packs—either they dump them to increase their mobility—during battle or retreat—or the packs are torn from their limp, bloody corpses.
The PCs might come across such discarded equipment in the course of their adventures—particularly if they are exploring a well-known or oft-visited dungeon.
The backpack is in good condition.
A bloodstain mars the back of the pack.
One of the straps is frayed and torn.
The bottom of the pack is ripped open; its contents lie nearby in a pile.
The backpack is in good condition but it has clearly already been looted—unwanted equipment lies scattered all about.
The backpack is old and well-worn but in good condition.
1d4 days' worth of trail rations. This food may—at the GM's discretion—be spoiled.
A 50 ft. long hemp rope attached to a grappling hook.
A set of thieves' tools contained in a well-worn leather pouch.
1d4 flasks of lamp oil.
A hooded lantern with broken shutters.
Three keys, a half-burnt candle and a pouch holding a broken ink pen and a vial of black ink.
A half-full wineskin containing a fairly decent red.
Three pitons tied together with a short length of rope and a small hammer.
A vial of holy water tucked away in a small compartment in the backpack. A hurried search will likely miss the vial.
A bunch of four torches.
A tightly rolled bedroll along with a spare hooded fur-lined cloak.
A spare set of well-worn boots along with a pair of socks. Five gold coins are hidden in one of the socks. A hurried search will likely miss this hidden treasure.
A half-burnt torch, a tinderbox and some old shredded clothes.
Neatly coiled knotted hemp rope about 40 ft. long.
Three wooden holy symbols for well-known local faiths along with the silver unholy symbol of an evil religion.
Three empty potion vials wrapped in a strip of clean cloth and a small steel mirror.
A complete change of sturdy traveller's clothes.
An empty sack and a set of steel manacles (and their key).


text:
Q: Attempting to Submit HTML Form to Database Has Blank Output I am new to PHP and web development, and trying to create an HTML form that will submit data into MYSQL.
Upon checking phpmyadmin after submission of the form, it shows that there has been a row submitted,
however the row is completely blank. I had a problem before this one, that instead of a blank row, it would be "1" submitting instead of the data inserted into the HTML form. Now, no data submits into the database.
Here is the PHP:
<?php
Include("connection.php");

// HTML Identification
$lname = isset($_POST['lastname']);
$fname = isset($_POST['firstname']);
$email = isset($_POST['email']);
$phone = isset($_POST['phonenum']);
$addr = isset($_POST['address']);
$city = isset($_POST['city']);
$state = isset($_POST['state']);
$zip = isset($_POST['zipcode']);

//Database Insertion

$sql= "INSERT INTO CustomerInfo (LastName, FirstName, Email, PhoneNum, Address, City, State, ZipCode)
VALUES ('$lname', '$fname', '$email', '$phone', '$addr', '$city', '$state', '$zip')";

// Insertion
$ds= mysqli_query($conn, $sql);

// - Insertion Confirmation

if($ds)
{
print 'Row Inserted!';
print ' Response Recorded!';
}

?>

The HTML Form:
!DOCTYPE html>

        <title> GS Entry Form </title>
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/water.css@2/out/water.css" </link>

Customer Entry Form

Please Input Contact Information

        <form action="database.php" method="POST">
                First Name:

                <input type="text" name="firstname" />

                Last Name:

                <input type="text" name="lastname" />

                Email:

                <input type="text" name="email" />

                Phone Number:

                <input type="text" name="phonenum"/>

                Address:

                <input type="text" name="address"/>

                City:

                <input type="text" name="city"/>

                State:

                <input type="text" name="state"/>

                Zip Code:

                <input type="text" name="zipcode"/>

                <button type="button" name= "submit" value= "submit" />

        </form>

Here, also, is the connection.php referenced:
<?php
$servername = "xxx";
$username = "xxx";
$password = "xxx";
$dbname = "xxx";

// Create Connection
$conn= mysqli_connect("$servername:3306","$username","$password","$dbname");

// Check Connection
if ($conn->connect_error)
{
        die("Connection failed: " .$conn->connect_error);
}

        else echo "Connection successful! "
?>

I don't think it has anything to do with the connection, but I figured I would post it to cover all the bases. The attached imgur picture is what my database has been looking like after submissions have been made.
I truly am not sure what to do now, any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you! -G
EDIT:
This is what my PHP code looks like after the changes suggested from @EinLinuus:
<?php
Include("connection.php");

// HTML Identification POST
if(isset($_POST['firstname'])) {
        $fname = $_POST['firstname'];
}else{

        die("Firstname is missing");
}
if(isset($_POST['lastname'])) {
        $lname = $_POST['lastname'];
}else{
        die("Lastname is missing");
}

if(isset($_POST['email'])) {
        $email = $_POST['email'];
}else{
        die("Email is missing");
}

if(isset($_POST['phone'])) {
        $phone = $_POST['phone'];
}else{
        die("Phone Number is missing");
}

if(isset($_POST['addr'])) {
        $addr = $_POST['addr'];
}else{
        die("Address is missing");
}

if(isset($_POST['city'])) {
        $city = $_POST['city'];
}else{
        die("City is missing");
}

if(isset($_POST['state'])) {
        $state = $_POST['state'];
}else{
        die("State is missing");
}

if(isset($_POST['zip'])) {
        $zip = $_POST['zip'];
}else{
        die("Zip Code is missing");
}

//Database Insertion
mysqli_report(MYSQLI_REPORT_ERROR | MYSQLI_REPORT_STRICT);

$stmt= $conn->prepare("INSERT INTO CustomerInfo(FirstName, LastName, Email, PhoneNum, Address, City, State, ZipCode) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)");
$stmt->bind_param('ssssssss', $fname, $lname, $email, $phone, $addr, $city, $state, $zip);
$stmt->execute();
// Insertion
$sql= mysqli_query($conn, $stmt);

// - Insertion Confirmation

if($ds)
{
print 'Row Inserted!';
print ' Response Recorded!';
}

$stmt->close();
$conn->close();
?>

My HTML remains the same, besides adding ID attributes to each variable to no effect. I appreciate the help!

A: The isset function returns if the variable is declared or not -> the return type is a boolean.
$test = [
    "hello" => "world"
];
var_dump(isset($test["hello"])); // bool(true)
var_dump(isset($test["something"])); // bool(false)

You can use isset to check if the field exists in the $_POST variable, but don't save the result of the isset function to the database. If you do so, the boolean will be converted to a number (true => 1, false => 0) and this number gets stored in the database.
Example:
if(isset($_POST['lastname'])) {
    die("lastnameis missing");
}
$lname = $_POST['lastname'];

Security
This code is vulnerable to  SQL Injections. You should never trust user input. I'd recommend to use prepared statements here:
$stmt = $mysqli->prepare("INSERT INTO CustomerInfo (LastName, FirstName, ...) VALUES (?, ?, ...)");
$stmt->execute([$lname, $fname]);

In the SQL statement, replace the actual values with ?. Now you can execute the statement and pass the values to the execute function. In the example above, $lname will replace the first ?, $fname the second, ...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Agency of the Year Awards 2008
SINGAPORE - BBDO/Proximity has been named Creative Agency of the Year.
The award, presented by Media at a ceremony in Singapore last night, recognised its achievement in forging a cohesive network of agencies. The agency's highlights include scooping the regional Guinness account.
Media Agency of the Year went to OMD Asia-Pacific, which posted new business growth of 34 per cent and a client retention rate of 98 per cent, winning a clutch of awards in the process.
Network of the Year went to Ogilvy & Mather, which was awarded six other wins and runners-up in this year's awards. Digital Agency of the Year was awarded to OgilvyOne and Specialist Agency of the Year to McCann Healthcare Worldwide. Independent Agency of the Year went to BBH Asia.
Brand of the Year was awarded to HSBC, which held its own amidst a disintegrating financial world. Client Marketer of the Year went to Li Ning.
Agency Head of the Year (Regional) went to Miles Young of Ogilvy & Mather Asia-Pacific, while the award for National Head went to Marty O'Halloran of DDB Australia and New Zealand.
Creative of the Year was awarded jointly to Andy Blood of TBWA New Zealand and John Merrifield of TBWA/Asia-Pacific.
Visit the Agency of the Year Awards website for further details.
Copyright © Campaign Singapore
bbdo
mccann erickson
Asiya Bakht
JWT wins network agency of the year honour at 12th ...
40 Under 40 2022: Matt Chandler, DDB
Alyona Uvarova
DDB Worldwide taps Cannes Lions awards leader as ...
D&AD: DDB New Zealand awarded Black Pencil for ...


text:
A Place at the Table
by Jake Mulligan
Friday Mar 1, 2013
Jeff Bridges in "A Place At The Table"
"A Place at the Table" will break your heart. It's just that it may bore you in the process.
Taking up the mantle of films like "Bully," activists/directors Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush have made a documentary that's aimed directly at social change. They want action, they want it now, and they even say as much in the final title cards before the credits (there's no pussyfooting around here.) And with the strength of their argument, it's hard to disagree. They harp on the same points over and over, but with this evidence, it's hard to blame them: our country had nearly eradicated hunger - or, "food insecurity" - in the 1970s. Now 50 million citizens don't know where their next meal is coming from, and the number keeps jumping.
They spend the majority of the film drawing broad strokes that aim to educate; assuming the viewer to be completely ignorant of the situation. In fact, pretty much every section of the film (and there's more than a few disparate, barely connected stands - it's as if it were designed with commercial breaks in mind,) is explained three times. First, we see a woman explaining to us how she has to drive about 50 miles to get fruits and vegetables, because her "urban neighborhood" doesn't have any stores the agriculture business deems worth of sending their 18-wheelers to. Then a congressman explains the same thing in slightly more flowery terms. Then a graph literally draws a picture to explain it to you.
To Jacobson and Silverbush's credit, their film begins to become a portrait of wealth inequality as much as it is one of hunger, and they manage to keep that connection completely in the subtext (it shows they don't have to be heavy handed if they don't want to). The graphs, particularly, are used to illustrate wealth and subsidy distributions - the way the processed food business takes up insane majorities of agriculture subsidies, for example; which leads to potato chip prices dropping while the price of grapes soars beyond what the minimum wage can afford (there's also a lot here about food stamps, and even some on defense spending - there's a clear aim at being comprehensive.)
I admire the restraint in leaving the "bigger picture," the macro to the hunger problem's micro, below the surface. They don't come out and say "Wow, we don't mind putting liquor stores and gun shops in black neighborhoods, but we can't even ship them any bananas?" They don't have to. That's the part of the movie that trusts us to have a brain.
But the surface aesthetics don't trust us to have much of a brain. And few things leave film critics as conflicted as devastating social-issue documentaries. Here's the thing: we all know the formula, and it's becoming a bit transparent. A scattershot collection of stories that displays a major, solvable societal problem through depictions of a number of different people affected. Interspersed graphic interludes display the statistics we're up against. Sappy music tugs on your heartstrings. Shots of street signs ("Y'all Hungry?" above a restaurant,) rendered ironic by the subject at hand. And yes, we end with a link to a website you can visit, and a number you can text to receive more information.
So: is this a painful, heartbreaking depiction of a problem that need not exist? Yes. But is "A Place at the Table," on a stylistic level, any different from the average episode of "Teen Mom"? Not really. Ask yourself: do you go to the movies for essays, or for stories?
Runtime :: 84 mins
Release Date :: Mar 01, 2013
Language :: English
Country :: United States
Related Topics: movies


text:
Most Read: Contributor UK, November 2022
Australia: Insurance In Superannuation: AFCA Complaints Directly Against Life Insurers – A Thing Of The Past?
by Michael Vrisakis (London) , Hugh Paynter (Sydney), Maged Girgis (London), Andrew Bradley (London), Crystal Sanders (London) and Tamanna Islam (Sydney)
Yesterday's decision of the Full Federal Court in MetLife Insurance Limited v Australian Financial Complaints Authority Limited [2022] FCAFC 173 upheld MetLife's contention that AFCA does not have jurisdiction to hear complaints made directly against life companies relating to life insurance in superannuation.
The issue arose due to a specific complaint which was time barred under the AFCA Rules as a superannuation complaint, but in respect of which AFCA stated (to MetLife) that it "may be able to accept a complaint against the insurer under [its] general jurisdiction".
Under the AFCA Rules, AFCA has jurisdiction to deal with complaints other than a superannuation complaint if the complaints "arise from or relate to...a legal or beneficial interest of the complainant arising out of...a financial investment (such as life insurance, a security or an interest in a managed investment scheme or a superannuation fund)..." (Rule B.2.1(e)(i)).
The key findings in the judgment are as follows:
if a complaint relates to superannuation, it can only be brought in the AFCA jurisdiction if it falls within one of the categories of complaint set out in sections 1053(1)(a)-(j) of the Corporations Act. This means, in effect, that if a complaint relates to superannuation, it cannot be brought as a different category of complaint; for example, as one directly against an insurer; and
this above position flows from the words "only if" (viz "a person may, subject to section 1056, make a complaint relating to superannuation under the AFCA scheme only if the complaint is a complaint").
The principal argument from AFCA was that the relevant words in section 1053 of the Corporations Act do not limit what constitutes a superannuation complaint, but rather mean that a complaint can only be made as a complaint relating to superannuation (and not as any other type of complaint) if the complaint is within the sub-paragraphs of section 1053(1)).
Relevant extrinsic materials were also found to reinforce the key findings in the judgment in favour of MetLife. In particular, some of these materials indicated that:
superannuation complaints required different procedures to non-superannuation complaints; and
it was of concern that the same complaints could be made in two different ways, which could produce inconsistent outcomes.
It followed that "the contractual provisions in the AFCA Rules cannot consensually be expanded beyond statutorily defined limits" (at [178]), and "to the extent that the AFCA Rules purport to operate inconsistently with the statutory framework for the establishment and operation of the AFCA Scheme in the Corporations Act, they have no effect" (at [179]).
The Implications
It follows from the case that complainants will no longer be able to elect between making a complaint against the superannuation trustee on the one hand and the life insurer on the other, if the true nature of the complaint is one relating to superannuation.
In other words, where the complainant wishes to complain against a decision of the issuer of life insurance benefits under the superannuation fund of which they are a member, this complaint will not be able to be brought directly against the insurer but rather, the insurer would have to be joined pursuant to a complaint made against the trustee.
This result removes the prior ability of a complainant to go directly against the life insurer where a complaint is otherwise time barred under the AFCA Rules.
AFCA has a right to seek special leave to appeal the decision to the High Court.
Our team is happy to give you more information or a presentation in relation to the impacts of this landmark decision.
Michael Vrisakis
Hugh Paynter
Maged Girgis
Andrew Bradley
Crystal Sanders
Tamanna Islam
Australia Employment and HR Retirement, Superannuation & Pensions Insurance Insurance Laws and Products
A guide to CTP (Compulsory Third Party) claims in South Australia
If you have been injured in a motor vehicle accident in SA, you may be eligible for compensation under the CTP Scheme.
A guide to CTP (Compulsory Third Party) claims in South Australia Mellor Olsson Lawyers


Rosebery is committed to serving its community. It recognises the multi-cultural, multi faith and ever-changing nature of the United Kingdom. It also understands the vital role it has in ensuring that groups or individuals within the school are not subjected to intimidation or radicalisation by those wishing to unduly, or illegally, influence them.
Rosebery follows equal opportunities guidance which seeks to guarantee that there will be no discrimination against any individual or group, regardless of faith, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, political or financial status, or similar. It is also crucial that Rosebery prepares its students for adult life, beyond the formal examined curriculum, preparing them for the diverse and dynamic community in which they will live and work. An understanding of British values is a critical part of this education.
Rosebery uses strategies within the National Curriculum and beyond to secure such outcomes for pupils. The examples that follow show some of the ways in which Rosebery seeks to embed British values.
Elections are held for important decisions within the school community, for example for the Junior Leadership Team and for the Head Girl, Form Captain and Sports Captain positions. This fosters the concept of freedom of speech and group action to address need and concerns.
Students are able to vote to choose which charity their Year Group will support.
The principle of democracy is explored in History, Government and Politics, Law and Religious Studies curriculum as well as in assemblies where commemoration of events such as the ending of the First World War and presentations on the work of individuals such as Malala Yousafzai develop an understanding of the vital importance of democracy in securing a civilised and fair society for all.
Rights and responsibilities are emphasised through our Student Learning Charter and through work undertaken in PSHCE and tutor time.
In History students are taught the value, the derivation, and the reasons behind the laws that govern and protect us and by studying events such as the Holocaust demonstrate the potential appalling consequences of the absence of the rule of law.
Students are Rosebery are encouraged to exercise their right to free speech by representing their views to their Student Voice, Year Council and Junior Leadership Team representatives.
Tutor time and PDE sessions encourage students to know their rights, but also the responsibilities that come with those but staff also work hard to set clear boundaries so that students can make informed choices in a safe, secure and supportive environment. Rosebery has a clear Anti-bullying Policy and Behaviour for Learning Policy.
Mutual respect is at the heart of The Rosebery Way, our statement of our values and ethos. We expect all members of the Rosebery community to treat each other with respect, consideration and integrity. Students learn through their interactions with staff, in assemblies and in tutor time that their behaviour has an impact on others.
Students are encouraged to reach out to communities who are less fortunate than themselves and each year raise hundreds of pounds for projects around the world, demonstrating their respect for those who live in very different circumstances to ourselves.
Tolerance is emphasised through our Student Learning Charter and the Rosebery Way.
Students benefit from the opportunity to visit different communities around the country and the world and receive international visitors regularly, including those from other continents and cultures.
Our assembly themes, the KS3 RE curriculum and the KS4 enrichment programme provides a broad and balanced education on a range of faiths, religions and cultures.
We encourage students to understand their place within a culturally diverse society and above all to ensure that they leave Rosebery with a set of values which will ensure they continue to contribute positively to society as they enter adult life.


Today I've got one of the last drams from the whisky exchange show, in fact it was the very last whisky I tried.
I can't deny That Boutique-y Whisky Co. make some cool whisky, and have a pretty good selection but recently they really stepped the game up with age statements. Ones that I really wanted to try were the 27yo and 23yo Islay Blended Malt (with given components, which is great) and the 35yo Blended. I reviewed the 27yo Islay here already and have a bottle of the 23yo (review coming up, Spoiler alert: It's great).
So this is the 35yo Blend, which has won some great awards in the past and some high scores from various people.
Nose: Oooo it's lovely old whisky. Classy, really. Lots of Sherry, oak of course but not overbearing, nicely integrated, antique furniture, polished wood, black tea tannins, cinnamon swirls.
Taste: Full, classy and antique. Leather, black tea tannins, builds complex spice with nutmeg and cinnamon. Fruit all over too with black cherry and blackcurrant.
Finish: Long length. Finishes strong on Sherry and stewed tea, lots of oak too.
Great old whisky. Great integration of Sherry and oak, good complexity and power thanks to the abv. To me this didn't really taste like a blend at all, more like a 35yo single malt. This seem like pretty good value for £120 (still available from MoM), but would be great to compare to Lidl's 35yo Blended Sherry Finish at half the price.
Thanks for reading! Something even older up next!!


Rachel Moffoot - Extended Services Coordinator - rachel.moffoot@williamgladstone.notts.sch.uk Tel: 07960 121027 based at The William Gladstone Primary School.
Alternatively, please email us on enquiries@newarkfs.co.uk and we will respond to you as soon as we can. Thank you.


In today's competitive job market, companies are looking for ways to stand out to candidates. New survey data reveals that a competitive salary and benefits are the key to capturing job seekers' attention.
Major brands such as Facebook, Volkswagen, Starbucks, and most recently Papa John's have endured controversies that called into question their ethical practices. Those companies are only the latest to be exposed for problems that consumers and those knowledgeable about corporate culture often link with a lack of ethical standards at the highest executive level. This can cause an erosion in the public's trust, which in turn eats away at a company's bottom line. Research by Mintel revealed 56 percent of U.S. consumers stop buying from companies they believe are unethical, and it also showed that more than 60 percent of consumers think ethical issues are becoming more important.
Small business lending is at an all time high, reports Forbes. The March approval rate was 27% according to a the Biz2Credit Small Business Lending Index.
Counterfeit products sold on the grey market can hurt the sales of authentic products and damage the brand through a poor customer experience. Major brands can now combat this threat through solutions that use Near Field Communications (NFC) tags connected to the cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) to authenticate products as they move through the supply chain and distribution process to the consumer point of sale. At the same time, these solutions can also be used to protect the integrity of digital marketing and create new ways to engage with loyal customers.
Instagram is the new word of mouth for many small businesses, reports The Verge. Savvy businesses can use the social media platform to grow their business.
According to Forbes, a new survey by Vistage finds that small to medium sized business are starting to incorporate artificial intelligence into their technology. The primary place AI is appearing is in "smart" CRM (customer relationship management) platforms.
Online reviews are important for a business, but it can be hard to get people to review your business, reports Entrepreneur. There are a few things you can do to encourage your customers to give you a review, such as using your existing email list and sending an email encouraging your customers to leave a review.
Depreciation is perhaps one of the most complex terms for small business owners to grasp. With many rules associated with it, it becomes even more complicated for anyone except for the professionals in the finance sector. The most important way you can ensure you understand this concept is to avoid being intimidated by big words employed. You can achieve this by focusing on how depreciation affects us in our daily lives.
Depreciation is the phenomenon where the value of items reduces over a given period of time. For example, assets such as furniture, computers, buildings, office equipment, machinery outdoor lighting cars, etc are assets which last for approximately three or four years. It is known that these assets will not last forever. As time goes by their value reduces. During each accounting period, -say monthly, quarterly, yearly etc, a given portion of these assets gets used up. This portion is normally shown on the income statement as depreciation expense. Primarily, this entails allocating the cost of the firm's tangible assets in its useful life to be used to account for declining value.
Usually, firms depreciate long-term assets for the purposes of taxation and accounting. For tax purposes, for example, businesses may view the cost of the tangible assets that they buy as business expenses and deduct them. However, IRS rules must be considered while depreciating these items as well as how and when the deductions can be taken by the company.
Cost principle: With this principle, Depreciation Expense needs to be reported on the income statement and the amount of asset based on its historical or original cost. The amount of the asset should not be based on the current market value.
Matching principle: With this principle, the cost of an asset should be allocated to the Depreciation expense of the asset's lifetime. The asset's expense is matched with the same period of accounting as the revenues that the asset helped to generate. Simply put, matching principle requires that revenues that are earned in a given accounting period be matched with the expenses related to that asset.
The methods of depreciation for achieving matching principle can be categorized into two: Accelerated depreciation and straight-line depreciation.
For example, assuming that the cost of purchasing a car is $10,000 and has an estimated value of 5,000 and a useful life of say 5 years, the depreciation expense for the first year is $1000. (10,000-5,000)/5.
Accelerated depreciation on the other hand is mainly used for income tax purposes or accounting which allows more deduction in the asset's early years. Contrary to the straight-line depreciation method which spreads the cost of assets evenly throughout its life, accelerated depreciation allows higher deductions to be made during the first years after the assets purchase and lower expenses as the asset ages.
Regardless of the difficulty you may encounter when calculating depreciation of your assets, the most important thing is that the IRS provides tables which simplify the calculation. Also, quite a majority of accounting software some of which you might be using in your business come with a program for calculating depreciation. It will therefore be easy for anyone to calculate depreciation if they know the basics.
As a start-up, you are pulled in many directions, and all seem equally important. From developing your customer base to fulfilling promises of goods / services, you must jump in fast and keep the momentum going. So, at first, you focus on generating business, but very soon, you must devote time to your finances.
1. Poor Bookkeeping Habits. Start-ups that experience financial struggles often lack a good system to track income or neglect to balance their accounts. Find the right software or spread sheet template to record transactions to accurately balance your books, or if feasible, hire a bookkeeper. It's important to find a method, stick with it, and continually review your books.
2. No Accounting Analysis. Entrepreneurs who fail to interpret their finances will ultimately fail to thrive. Bookkeeping alone won't monitor growth and success. Knowing what your balance sheet and income statement mean is the key to understanding the direction a business is headed. So, start-ups need input from an accountant or at least some online research into how to analyze the books.
3. Ignoring Cash Flow. A new business owner who doesn't understand that cash is king may get in trouble fast. Without a sense for cash flow, the numbers will be a confusing mess. For example, the books show income earned, but the account won't receive cash until 30 days later. Properly maintained financial statements should distinguish between money due versus paid, or you won't see an accurate picture of the business.
4. Too Much Debt. The adage, "It takes money to make money," is popular because it's true. New start-ups face steep expenses, and if entrepreneurs turn to credit cards, then it's easy to get underwater. The challenge is to incur the right amount of debt to support your business without the debt becoming an overbearing liability. So, be conservative, watch interest rates, and look for alternative sources of debt like small business loans or an investor.
5. Inappropriate Resource Allocation. When you're getting off the ground, it's hard to manage your resources. Whether it's time or materials, you have no base of comparison to guide you since everything is just starting up. How can you plan ahead? Instead of flailing in the dark, work with others who do have experience like a mentor or business coach. Get help to develop a solid strategy to follow so that you can allocate according to plan.
As an entrepreneur, if you stay mindful of the challenges you'll face when starting your own business, then you'll be better prepared to confront and overcome them. Much comes from finding the right resources and using proper tools. Also, many of the issues facing start-ups come as a surprise to the entrepreneur, but may be well-known to a seasoned small business owner, so learning before they arise might even mitigate those.
'Tis the season as we are all recovering from the excesses of the Holidays. After weeks of giving and receiving and with the start of a new year, now is a good time to engage your organization in philanthropic goals if you haven't done so already.
Companies that engage in philanthropic activities are more likely to see gains in their employee productivity and retention. For one reason, highly socially aware employees appreciate the chance to contribute to causes that matter, and another, most employees enjoy extra-curricular activities that elevate their work-days out of the ordinary. Overall, employees will experience greater work-place satisfaction that translates into higher rates of productivity and investment in their jobs.
A standard concern for management when it comes to activities outside the bounds of business is effects to the bottom line if employees aren't plugged into their work 100% of the time. For most managers, reducing distractions is the goal, not handing out a big distraction on a plate like a day of volunteering. However, though it may seem like a step back at first blush, volunteering or charity work is really two steps forward in the company's efforts to generate highly motivated employees.
Today's workforce highly regards companies that care about the community. Most workers will double-down on their efforts to keep up on their workloads in order to participate in an activity, and many find themselves feeling better after giving back, channeling into their performance as they attain a higher level of satisfaction at work. So really, what goes around comes around; when you give employees a chance to participate in charity work or volunteering, they will produce better work, allowing you to gain an advantage in the market.
When you partner with the community, you develop a reputation as a vital community resource that affords your organization a higher level of prestige. The more you do, the more your reputation grows, and the more impact you have in the market. People will want to join your organization and others will want to work with you. It's also a solid marketing strategy to develop name recognition because your name or logo really gets out there.
You control the parameters of the organization's focus on giving back. Limit or expand the scope of effort you want to put toward philanthropy. From simply donating proceeds after a lunch-hour bake sale to sponsoring a local 5K charity run, you have plenty of options that require either low-level or high amounts of effort. In addition, you can also decide the extent that you want to create engagement. It's up to you whether you offer an annual charity event, a quarterly activity, or a random opportunity throughout the year. Whichever and however you decide to participate, it's to your organization's benefit to get involved.
So, while you're revving up the crew for a great fiscal year or new quarter, don't forget to muster up volunteers for one or more charity events this year.
The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) has recommended more than 30 changes to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for the 2018 Form 990, Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax, and its related instructions.
· Update the Glossary to define the terms used in Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2016-14, Presentation of Financial Statements of Not-for-Profit Entities, issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) as defined in the FASB Accounting Standards Codification Master Glossary.
· Update the trigger question for Schedule D to reflect the changed classification of net assets under FASB ASC 958, while still recognizing that the focus of the question is on reporting for donor restricted and board designated or quasi-endowments.
· Align the trigger questions in Form 990, Part IV and Part X so that they agree with the definition of "interested parties" in the Schedule L instructions.
· Update the net assets or fund balances portion of the balance sheet to reflect ASU 2016-14.
· Update the question and instructions related to the Office of Management and Budget/Uniform Guidance rules, and update the instructions to reflect the new single audit threshold of $750,000.
· Update the instructions for Schedule I, Part II, Line 1 so they are consistent with the instructions for the trigger question in Form 990, Part IV, Line 21.
If you own a small business or your main source of income comes from freelancing you know that cutting costs is an essential part of your day. It could be as small as saving money by buying a slightly cheaper coffee for the office or buying office supplies in bulk. It could even mean cutting down on printing costs. In fact, you can save a lot of money on printing costs. Between the actual printer, paper stock, and toner; printing can get expensive. Before pressing Command + P on your Mac, make sure you're not throwing any unnecessary money away.
Lets start with printers themselves. The price of printers can vary from $40 to $400. Ensuring that you get the most for your dollar is critical. Before purchasing a printer – read the reviews. Once you decide on a printer in your budget, shop around and see where you can find the best deal. A quick search for the Epson XP-340 Color Ink-jet came up with prices ranging from $74 through Amazon to $99 at Walmart. That's a $15 savings and for a small business that can be a lot.
Next, let's look at ink cartridges. When I was a kid I didn't understand why we had a color printer when we weren't allowed to print in color. Of course now in my thirties I understand completely. Color cartridges may cost less than black ink but they don't last as long. When it comes to printing projects, make sure you only print in color when you absolutely have to- you're printing invitations, official flyers, and or graphic design projects. If you're just printing out this article to show your friends- black ink will do. Maybe just email them the link to the article and cut costs there. You can conserve a lot of money on ink by buying third-party brands that you can purchase for a discounted price. In a report by Consumer Reports, they found that 63% of surveyors found that third-party ink cartridges were just as good as their brand-name counterparts. That being said, the remaining 36% complained that discounted cartridges clogged their printer heads and set off warning messages. Whether you buy brand-named cartridges or knock-offs, it's important to do your research and pick the one that you're most comfortable with.
Next we come to paper. Paper stock isn't the same and can vary from a thick stock used for resumes and creative projects to flimsy paper that might blow away at any given moment. Figuring out which type of thickness meets your requirements is the first step. From there finding a paper that is inexpensive yet durable is critical.
· Do I really need to print this file? Can I email it instead?
· Does this article have to be printed in color or is black ink OK?
· Can this document be double-sided to conserve paper?
· Do I need all 40 pages of this essay or can I just print out the first 12?
· Have I proofread my document?
By asking yourself these five questions every time you press print, you can save a significant amount of money in the long run. So not only can you conserve money when it comes to printing technology itself, but you can continue to save money as time goes on.
Public relations is how businesses promote their brand to the public. Press attention from news outlets offers an opportunity for brands to share more details than what can be shared in advertising and gain exposure on a wider scale.
Landing an interview or article in a publication, however, is a highly-competitive undertaking.
In this article, we'll explain how to give your business an edge in attracting publicity for your brand in ways that don't require a major financial investment. Use it to create strategies for approaching public relations on a budget.
Social Media offers brands the opportunity to reach the public directly. Consider the following social media marketing tactics.
The social media platform you use for promotion can determine the level of visibility and engagement you earn.
Facebook, for example, makes it difficult for your content to earn visibility without running paid promotions.
To increase visibility, experiment with hashtags for your social media content.
Pinterest and Instagram include "hashtag feeds," a which are search feeds businesses can get listed in by including relevant hashtags in their posts.
User-generated content (UGC) can increase a business's exposure and sometimes help generate press.
UGC is any non-paid content that other people post about your brand, including reviews, videos, and images.
UGC is direct public relations when users share the content to their own feeds, exposing your brand to a wider audience.
For example, Country Walking created a UGC campaign called The Free Walking Challenge to encourage people to walk an hour a day using the campaign hashtag #walk1000miles.
To encourage people to walk, the campaign offered competitions, shared routes, and encouraged photo-sharing on social media.
The hashtag #walk1000miles accompanied all campaign promotions, and users were encouraged to share it with their images and stories across social media.
The results of the campaign were outstanding: it garnered 4+ million interactions across social media, national press coverage, and an award for the publication and its agency, Bauer Media.
There are many ways to encourage user-generated content that can contribute to your company's public relations.
Experiment with incentives such as prizes, recognition, or provide charitable donations in exchange for shares to encourage users to share content about their experiences with your company brand.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social good aren't only for big-name brands.
Small businesses also can build a strong connection to the public through CSR, which often results in positive press coverage.
Setting company standards that include sustainable, environmentally or pet-friendly policies.
Finding ways to give back to the local community is another way your business can practice social good.
For example, Geekdom co-working space in San Antonio gives back to its community by allowing its office area to be used for local blood drives.
There are many causes that people care about, and learning which ones are important to your target audience can help steer the direction of your company's social activities.
While your company can benefit from the public relations aspects of social good, the causes you support should align with your values and represent causes you genuinely want to support.
CSR is not a public relations strategy – it should be an authentic expression of social responsibility.
Working within a small budget is a reason to pursue public relations, not shy away from it. There are many things a brand can do to generate exposure to the public and in the press, including social media, social responsibility, and social good campaigns.
If you're still unsure of how PR can benefit your businesses, consider consulting a public relations agency in your area.
Bio: Grayson Kemper is a Senior Writer for Clutch, a B2B research, ratings, and reviews platform based in Washington, DC.
Running a business is similar to taking a family vacation. To be successful, both require meticulous planning, clearly defined roles for everyone involved, and a predetermined destination.
Collopy knows a thing or two about having a vision and then setting goals to make the vision a reality. He is the owner and broker of RE/MAX Results and its subsequent 38 offices across Minnesota and Wisconsin. Setting goals in his personal life helped him overcome his addiction to alcohol. Now he is dedicated to helping others find the right steps to achieve their dreams, but he says there can be many roadblocks.
In contrast, a vague, half-formed vision may leave you feeling lost and powerless, he says.
Be specific and realistic. Be specific about your goals, and the steps you need to take to reach them. "If you don't, be ready to deal with challenges now and in the future," Collopy says. Also make your goals attainable but not too easy. You want to have pride when it is accomplished. If you set the bar too high, you may get discouraged. And if you set it too low, you will not feel a great sense of accomplishment.
Make goals measurable. Any good goal that is worthy of your time should be measurable so even if you don't make it, you can measure your progress. It will be easier to measure your goals if they are clear goals that are attainable, relevant and time-based.
Write it down and tell someone. Write down your vision, make copies and leave those copies where you will routinely see them – on your refrigerator, in your car, on your dresser, in the bathroom. "This will remind you about your vision throughout the day and keep you on task," Collopy says. In addition, the more people you tell about your vision and your goals, the better. They will encourage you because the next time they see you, he says, they will probably ask you about your progress.
John Collopy, author of the book The Reward of Knowing, is the owner and broker of RE/MAX Results and its subsequent 38 offices across Minnesota and Wisconsin. With annual sales of more than $5.3 billion, RE/MAX Results is now one of the largest RE/MAX franchises in the world. Collopy lives in Minnesota with his wife and children.
Through posts and recently added stories, businesses account for 25 million profiles on Instagram. If that statistic doesn't make you want to immediately create a Instagram account, according to Instagram 60% of users discover products on Instagram.
While posts can bring awareness to numerous businesses, it's the Instagram stories that create loyalty amongst followers. "I chose to share more candid content there. It's easier for me to express my personality and humor," Elena Davies (@elenadavies), former Big Brother contestant explains. Davies who has over 278K followers, recently created her own podcast, "MiscELENAeous" and uses Instagram stories to connect with her audience. Talia Lifschutz (@talialifschutz), Instagram Personality agrees. She uses both stories and posts interchangeably to convey her brand to her 18.5K followers.
Today's younger generous want to feel a connection with the brands they purchase. They want to ensure that they hold the same beliefs and sentiments. In a way, stories are a way for entrepreneurs to promote their persona, something that they cannot do by merely posting pictures on their Instagram feed.
Another reason why shifting between posts and stories are important is that stories can reach more people who are interested in a certain lifestyle. "I think they [Instagram stories] hit more potential followers than just using posts/hash tags," Katrina Hartman states. The owner of Divine Feminine Birth Services (@divinefemininebirthservices) in Rhode Island, Katrina relies on the awareness of social media to gain new followers and potential clients. Hartman who is APPA Certified in Placenta Encapsulation and training to become a Doula, recently helped with her first live birth. She turned to Instagram stories to recount her experience- something that she couldn't have done through a post. "I saw an influx of visitors to my page, more than I have by posting alone." While some of her visitors may live in other states or countries – too far to take advantage of Hartman's services, they can still come to her account to find out more about placenta encapsulation.
Businesses can promote their brand in countless ways with the main goal of creating awareness, which will lead to eventual purchases. There are many different methods to promote their brand that is exclusive to their followers. Davies can post a sneak peak at her new podcast. Or she can post never-before-seen footage of her interviews. Lifschutz often times posts live Instagram stories attending various concerts, which helps to establish herself as an influencer in the music industry. Stories are also a way to connect with followers. Hartman couldn't hide her excitement when telling viewers how meaningful it was attending her first live birth. By showing her excitement, she was able to connect with viewers who have had similar experiences.
Facebook isn't the only social media platform that businesses can utilize when advertising and promoting their brand. Instagram, specifically Instagram stories have allowed entrepreneurs to organically grow their company by showing followers their everyday lives. Whether the brand is an influencer, podcast, or service, Instagram stories can help personalize a brand and get their message across to like-minded individuals and potentially followers.
If you've ever gone on vacation and returned feeling renewed, then you'll understand the popularity of a small business retreat. The concept of leaving the office behind and bringing the team to an off-site, special destination follows the same vein as a vacation. A retreat offers the chance for a team to refresh and return to work in a better state of mind.
Unlike a 1:1 in your office or a conference center townhall, informal retreat meetings break the mold and give the team a chance work outside the confines of roles and titles. The more relaxed atmosphere of a retreat promotes better communication and team bonding, allowing your employees to let go of office politics and embrace a shared experience. Even with nothing in common at the workplace, everyone on the retreat can find common ground through the experience of the get-away.
The benefits of a retreat appear in employees' increased productivity. Like the advantage of a vacation, retreats are a break that lets employees relax so that they can come back with more energy. Also, taking their work to a new environment brings fresh perspective to the job and can inspire more contributions back at the office. Finally, retreats improve communication by opening channels between management and employees and developing informal networking between teams in ways that just aren't possible at the office. The more relaxed retreat atmosphere fosters connections, even between those who may not normally interact, and improves communication overall.
Though beneficial, there is a cautionary tale from the 2000s to be told about using retreats as rewards without value. Tradition saw executives splurge on retreats while employees watched from the sidelines as these lavish paid vacations catered to the top tier management. Back then, a retreat was a sign of executive largesse, excessive and reserved only for the C-Suite & Friends.
Today, a retreat offers much more meaningful value to the business and pertains to all levels of employees. The ability to remove the team from distractions of the workplace is an opportunity to really focus on an initiative. If you do it right, you can use the time to focus on training, brainstorming, and team building in ways that the office just doesn't allow; you have the space and atmosphere to shake employees from the routine and explore new ground.
There are costs to a retreat, but more than just the price of doing business, this expense is an investment. Spending the money to develop your employees only comes back to you in droves when the work gets done better and more efficiently by employees who feel valued and more committed.
March is the perfect time of year to schedule a retreat since you can take advantage of the quarter's end and Spring Break season. Use the time to evaluate the years' progress thus far and set goals as well as minimize the bite from budget with seasonal travel discounts and packages available.
Can You Control Your Career Destiny?
No matter what industry you're in, there's always an unknown element when it comes to job security. The economy, who happens to be President, natural disasters, and a host of other life events could take a stable job and turn it on its head, or you may be one of the lucky few who enjoys a 30+ year run at the same organization. Yet with as much innovation as there is in today's job market, it's tough to say with certainty that we won't all end up getting replaced by robots at some point in the future.
On a more serious note, however, it can be difficult to plan ahead if the foundation of your career is uncertain. While there are steps that people can take to help secure their future, it seems that the roadmap to success is always changing. According to a recent article in USA Today, it is possible to create your own destiny in the career world, and it's as easy as taking two little steps.
All too often, we think about changing jobs because of our dissatisfaction with our own position. Perhaps we want more money, different responsibilities, or our coworkers are flat out terrible to be around. But how regularly do people take a hard look at who's running the show and try to predict where things are going? Probably not as often as is needed.
Whether you work for a small corporation or a multi-national group, try taking an objective look at the future. Are the people in charge innovative? Do they have the foresight to adapt to a changing marketplace? Will they survive and thrive, or will they fall by the wayside as other newer brands make them irrelevant? While you may not be able to control any of the factors that help to answer these questions, you can watch for red flags that may indicate it's time to look for other opportunities.
Time and time again we hear that making yourself valuable is incredibly important in the workplace, but many people don't really take this message to heart. No matter the industry, you should create a personal mission of always continuing your education. Being someone who is on the forefront of upcoming changes, new ways of doing things, and contributing to the vision of your organization puts you on the short list of getting a raise, promotion, and at the very least, not being the first one to get laid off.
Even more important is the time and energy you put into building your own reputation separate from your company. Online review platforms often associate you with the place you work, making it hard to create a name for yourself within your given industry. However, at Completed.com, you can put all of your networking skills to good use and develop a profile that demonstrates how valuable you really are.
If and when it comes time to make a change and you're looking for another job opportunity, you can consider your Completed.com profile as an extended resume, highlighting qualities that will help you to stand out from the rest of the crowd. At the very least, it's a tool that every career-minded individual can benefit from, even if their current corporation is on the path to success.
Young leaders typically go too far or not far enough. They are born to take chances but when the time comes, many retreat to what they have been told by elders or those with more experience.
There is something to be said for brash youth, its penchant for breaking the rules and coming at problems from an entirely different mindset. But sometimes those rules are there for a reason, and going completely against what has been done before leads to a road to nowhere.
Before young leaders head out to conquer the world, Phuong Uyen Tran, author of Competing with Giants(https://www.thp.com.vn/en/) and deputy CEO of THP Beverage Group, Vietnam's leading beverage company, says they should dig deeper into their beliefs, actions and goals in order to chart a successful path.
What are your core beliefs? To be successful, a young leader needs to be grounded in some fundamental beliefs. Understanding and writing down core beliefs will guide you through stormy times.
What is the mission statement of your product or service? - The mission statement reflects every facet of the business: the range and nature of the products offered, pricing, quality, service, marketplace position, growth potential, use of technology, and your relationships with customers, employees, suppliers, competitors, and the community.
Have you done your homework? - As a young leader, it is imperative that you do plenty of research. Older leaders can sometimes go by their gut feelings, but young leaders don't have that luxury. You need to be over-prepared before moving forward.
Do you really believe in you product or service? Great leaders truly believe that whatever their product or service is, that it is the best option among all the competition. If you don't believe in your product, it is hard to lead your troops into battle.
Are you ready to set sail or are you moored to the dock? - Sometimes you have to take chances. Are you ready to take risks and not be tied to what has always been done in the past?
How will you handle success or failure? One of two things usually happens - you will succeed or you will fail. How will you handle success - are you ready to pull all the levers you need to get to the next level? If you fail, how will you handle it? Will you go into a depression and blame others, or will you learn from your mistakes?
Tran says young leaders can overcome many obstacles by taking some extra time to ask themselves those questions.
Phuong Uyen Tran, author of Competing with Giants (https://www.thp.com.vn/en/), is deputy CEO of the THP Beverage Group, a leading beverage company in Vietnam that was founded by her father. She is responsible for the company's marketing, public relations, and CSR programs nationally and across Vietnam's 63 provinces. She also leads THP's international marketing programs across 16 countries where THP's products are distributed including Canada and China.
As a small business owner, only you set the tone or appoint direction for the enterprise. Therefore, the onus to stay abreast of relevant business practices falls to you. You must learn as much as you can to stay ahead of the game.
Though it isn't always possible to take a refresher course in business or to pursue your MBA, you can – and should—continue learning. Sometimes, it's a matter of shifting your perspective and other times, it's a matter of learning about a new method that will help your business.
There are some great books available that can motivate, inspire, and teach you. Reading one or all these titles just might make a hill of difference when it comes to walking an easy path to success versus a rough trail full of hard-knocks.
The Art Of War, by Sun Tzu. Not all business books are about business. In this ancient book written in the 6th Century B.C., you'll find a treatise on human nature and conflict that will guide you through any meeting. The Art of War gives you timeless knowledge about practicing strategy to win that still matters and applies to the world at large but much more specifically to the business world of today.
The Goal, by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. An influential and timeless tome for the business world, this book delves into The Theory of Constraint and will change your thinking about the goal of your organization.
The Goal: A Business Graphic Novel, by Dwight Jon Zimmerman. The ultimate comic for a professional, this graphic novel brings the concepts of The Goal to life in story-form, demonstrating the management paradigm in a fresh, captivating format.
Switch, by Chip & Dan Heath. The one constant in life is change, yet it's a struggle for most people to accept and react accordingly. What causes obstacles to change? How can you navigate change in your life but more importantly, in your business? Switch combines thought provoking tales with a step-by-step method for managing change in your organization and beyond.
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything, by Chris Hadfield. As inspirational texts go, this one certainly provides new perspective beyond the 30,000-foot view! Lessons of life and work from Hadfield's career translate to any situation, particularly for a small business owner who is attempting their own launch sequence to get a business off the ground.
Taking advantage of these resources will make the process of entrepreneurship easier. Gain wisdom from those who've gone before you, learned the ropes, and took notes so that you can follow suit.
The new Veterans Small Business Enhancement Act gives vet owned business access to surplus government goods such as laptops, generators and other equipment, reports Military Times. Veterans can purchase the equipment for their businesses at a greatly reduced rate.
Xperteks has announced that the company has finalized a partnership with ADT Cybersecurity, increasing Xperteks capacity to deliver cybersecurity and physical security solutions for small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprise businesses.


French striker Olivier Giroud has signed a new £80,000-a-week contract at Arsenal that will keep him at the Emirates until 2018.
The deal is a two-year extension on Giroud's current contract and will be announced soon by the club.
Giroud is currently sidelined as he recovers from surgery after suffering a broken left tibia in the 2-2 draw at Everton in August.
The 28-year-old is into his third season with Arsenal after joining from Montpellier in a deal worth around £10million.
Arsene Wenger was quick to boost his attacking options in the summer, bringing in Alexis Sanchez from Barcelona for £30m and Danny Welbeck from Manchester United in a £16m deal.
Arsenal face Galatasaray in the Champions League at the Emirates Stadium this week looking to bounce back from their defeat by Borussia Dortmund on Match Day one.


Ivo Bronsveld is Hippo Lead Pre-Sales Engineer. Often the guy to come up with great solutions to challenging problems to help new customers and partners see how using the Hippo CMS technology stack can make their life easier.
Code for this lab can be found on GitHub.
Many of my conversations with clients and prospects deal with integrations, often about e-commerce. As the importance of valuable content in online commerce increases, the demand for a solution that can do both increases as well. In the last months, I have been working closely with the people at commercetools to build that combined solution that provides the best of both worlds.
As a part of this, I created this lab, where I will show you how to integrate the commercetools APIs in your Hippo site to create a full content driven e-commerce experience.
2. Add To Cart : Implement an Add to Cart feature to store the product in the cart.
Before we start, remember that there are many different approaches to integrating both Hippo and commercetools. In this post, I will show the most simple, straightforward way the integration can be done. Please note, that it does not necessarily reflect the best practice of doing this integration.
We could start from scratch, building a new Hippo CMS project, or use the 2nd zip file available on the Building a website tutorial and import this project in the IDE of your choice.
When it is finished building and the application is up and running, open the browser and visit the site on http://localhost:8080/site.
As you can see, it is a fully functioning site, complete with a product section.
Currently, the data is provided through Hippo documents. For some parts of the data this is fine, but for the price this definitely is not. So, let's change this.
In order to get the price from commercetools, we will need to connect to their API. Luckily, commercetools provides a JVM SDK for this.
This will enable our project to use the SDK of commercetools, making it easy to get and send data to the environment.
As you can see when you open one of the products in the CMS, the price is stored as a field in the document itself. For demo purposes this is fine, but in real life this is usually not the case.
Both Hippo CMS and commercetools are really flexible when it comes to 'data' and the structure of that data. For this example, we will separate between 'display' content, such as the description, stored in Hippo CMS and 'commerce' content, such as the price, stored in commercetools.
There are many scenarios where it makes sense to have one system or the other hold certain pieces of information. This depends, most of all, on the process the customer would like to use.
In order to get the price from commercetools, we will use the API provided by commercetools to get the details of the product. The documentation here shows us a very promising method we could use to get the data from the API.
As we can see, the method will return a nice JSON structure containing the price of the product. But, we need to provide it with a Product ID. Currently, our data model does not have this information at all, so we will need to expand the data model with an ID field.
To do this, we will open the Document Type Editor in the CMS. Open the product document type and click Edit. Add a string field, name it productID and add the correct name and hints if you will. Click Done and Type Actions, Commit to write the changes.
While we are still in the CMS, be sure to open the product documents and add a ID to the field. For now, just use any of the SKUs of the demo products in your store.
The next step is to recreate the beans. We will use the Bean Writer for this. Open the browser and go the Essentials Setup tool (http://localhost:8080/essentials/). Go to Tools, Beanwriter and use this to create our new field in our beans so we could use this from our code.
In order to get the price from commercetools, we will need to add the code to connect, authenticate and get the product info from commercetools. We will start by adding this to the detail page of the product. Currently, the component that handles the business logic of the product detail page is the EssentialsContentComponent (for more info, check out this page. In order to add our own business logic, we will create a custom component.
In your IDE, create a package for our component (something like org.example.components). In this package, create a new class called ProductDetailComponent. Extend this from the EssentialsContentComponent. Create an override for the doBeforeRender method, but make sure you have it call the parent class as well.
// Load the product from the request attribute "document"
We can now use the SDK to create a request to the actual store API.
Note: this way of creating the client is *NOT* recommended in production scenarios, as this will quickly result in issues. Normally, you would create the client once and not every request.
We have stored the product pricing details in a variable called commerceprice, which we will use in the template.
We have created a component, added the client logic and we updated the template and Hippo configuration. Let's see if this works by rebuilding the system.
The image shows the price, just as it is in the commercetools admin environment.
Right now we do this with just the price, but obviously more data could be provided in a similar fashion.
In order to add a product to the cart, we will have to respond to user interaction. With Hippo, this is easy to do. Just make the component respond a POST request as well.
Hippo will trigger this method when the form is posted. This is done using the PRG pattern. Read more about this here. After the doAction, Hippo will redirect the page again. This means that we will need to persist the form data (which includes our results) in order to display a result.
In this very straight forward example I hope to have shown the potential power of the commercetools - Hippo CMS combination.


Action Contre la Faim : les 3AI se mobilisent pour Haïti !
Le dernier tremblement de terre en 2010 a fait 230 000 morts.
A Haiti, 60% des habitants vivent en dessous du seuil de pauvreté.
Now Mathilde, she's working very hard on her job: she checks the importance of nutrition in Haiti. She finds the subject very interesting, and she would like to be nutritionist for the future. First, she thought that the blog wouldn't work at all; she was even surprised that it was a real blog on the net but now she's motivated and she's anticipating what she will learn. Haiti is a poor island and must fight to improve her conditions. She deserves to be help.
Last time, we spoke about to the fact to give food or, for, people who can, give money to association. And I gave you examples of different associations which you can ask, and I gave you "Action contre la faim". And today, we are going to speak more in details about what they concretely did to improve*1 the alimentation in Haiti and so to "save" the population.
-red: the person is in danger ! They can die.
If the people are in poor health condition*3, "Action contre la faim" will give food supplement. It's called "Plumpy'sup". It's a texture made from peanuts, vitamins and nutriments. With that, they treat*4 the child and help them to grow.
If you give money to "Action contre la Faim", you will contribute to the purchase*5 of the food supplement and so you will save the children life, and they couldn't thank you as much as they will be happy !