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7 Facebook Ads Growth Strategies for Scaling Ecommerce (Including A $26M Case Study)
June 3, 2021 by Depesh Mandalia
This post was originally written by Depesh Mandalia for growthmarketingpro.com
Scaling Facebook ads like Casper, Everlane, Nurx, Roman/Hims and other ecommerce companies is the million dollar question on every marketer's lips.
The revenue growth Facebook has seen over the past few years continues to increase, with the clear majority of dollars coming from ads.
Up until around 2012, Facebook wasn't quite a force when it came to revenue generation. It just wasn't Mark Zuckerberg's calling to create a billion dollar revenue company.
But he had no choice – in order to continue toward his vision of connecting the world through meaningful, digital connection he needed to fund it. And boy did they ever.
Facebook is the colossus of social networks, finalizing 2016 with a cool $27.64 billion in earnings, leaving the likes of Twitter and LinkedIn in the dust.
Although still 3 times smaller than Google in terms of revenue, Facebook has yet to diversify income away from ads, something which Google has done over the years — in addition to Adwords, they added mobile phones, the Android operating system, YouTube and more..
Around the end of 2016 there were around 4 million advertisers on the platform. Now it has surpassed 5 million. But what does this mean for you as an advertiser? Is there still room for growth?
Right now, if I was to target everyone in the world 18+, I'd have around ONE BILLION monthly active people I can serve an ad to, across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.
The US alone caters for between 100-200 billion users and the largest by size is India with around 400 million monthly active users, with Brazil also in the top 3 with 100-150 million active users.
For those interested in commercial gain, the US and other western economic powerhouses still represent rich pickings. However, there is a big limiting factor at play here, and it has to do with the number of available placements and the number of ads competing for those slots.
CPM (cost per thousand impressions) has been on the rise in particular over the last 2 years as Facebook has been on a drive to get more advertisers onto the platform.
At the same time, a surge of people have flocked into online business models given the low barrier to entry. Facebook ads for ecommerce, drop-shipping, online courses, multi-level marketing programs and affiliate marketing have all been feeding those online businesses.
Fast growth countries like India, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico might be adding hundreds of millions more users onto the platform, but their economies are not yet fully developed enough for advertisers to take advantage. For example selling into countries like Brazil and India come with custom and local delivery challenges. For local businesses however it is a huge opportunity.
So how do you win with Facebook ads in countries with rising competition and rising cost on the Facebook ad platform?
The following tips are based on helping a small ecommerce company scale to over $26 million recently in worldwide sales via Facebook ads. I'll share some of the key areas which helped us the most.
How I scaled an ecommerce company to over $26 million using Facebook Ads
When they first started out, this business I worked with spent around $3k per month (around $100 per day) on Facebook ads. Not a huge sum, but they burned through a few months of testing at this level, at best breaking even (making $3K back in sales on $3K ad spend).
Now considering the cost of goods and advertising, some may have decided to quit after taking a fair loss as a small company. But the founders were keen in ensuring they gained as many learnings as possible and to continually try to crack Facebook ads.
By the time I joined the team, we were spending around $7K and made about $13K back – it was a big stepping stone. But it wouldn't have been possible to achieve that within a month without having the learnings and data to do so. They had collected numerous email addresses and had a good amount of visitors to the site for us to be able to determine where the opportunities were.
One way we did this was by creating more focused lookalikes of their buyers (e.g. buyers in the last 3 months as opposed to all buyers ever), which made a big difference.
If you're looking to scale up, know that it comes with the risk of losses. The amount you scale up will align with your appetite for controlled risk (as far as being able to switch off poor performing ads for example).
How fast you scale often comes down to your tolerance for taking risk, but there are some controls you can put in place to make sure its not too too risky. I line out some of these controls below.
1. Place Facebook ad testing at the heart of your growth
It goes without saying that as with any growth initiative, testing as much as you can on the Facebook ads platform is essential to growth. At the early stages you want to focus primarily on audiences and creative.
Audiences in Facebook are a vast array of innumerable possibilities combining demographic, interest and behavior based targeting to allow you to be broad or deep with your targeting. Use Facebook's Audience Insights tool (soon to be removed) to play around with targeting options and see what's available (as per the screen above).
There are a few schools of thought here: the first is, if you're targeting something like a hobby, to drill down to the nth degree to pinpoint your ideal target.
For example, rather than chasing people interested in a specific sport, within which your niche hobby falls into, drill down to a specific team or even a specific person associated with that sport that those die-hard hobbyists will likely know. Whilst Facebook's complex algorithms generally work better with huge audiences into the millions, there are cases when you're targeting a specific niche, that a smaller audience can pay bigger dividends.
On Facebook, there are a variety of things you can test:
-Video
-Static
-Carousel
-Dynamic product ads
-Lead ads
-Slideshow collections
Ad placements:
-Messenger
-Audience network
Intra-platform ad variants:
-Desktop newsfeed
-Right hand side ads
Ad copy:
-Body copy
-Copy below the creative itself
-Text overlay on videos (which I recommend as most will view your video with sound off)
-CTA (call to action) button at the bottom right
For every ad format and Ad placement, there are mobile and desktop variants as well.
Facebook has a built-in test feature, available when creating new campaigns, called the Split-Test tool.
This is a more scientific way of testing within the platform, however not many use it as it doesn't allow you to attach a test to an existing campaign. The advantage is that Facebook will slice your audience and ensure that a certain portion of your audience only ever gets to see one version of your ad, much like an AB testing tool might do.
Read more about Facebook's Split Test feature here.
How to set up Facebook ad testing
The most common way to test Facebook ads is to create multiple ad sets and ads and let them play against each other in a campaign. One potential issue with this is that users may see more than one version of your ad – the only way to be prevent that from happening is by using the split test tool that Facebook offers.
However, a commonly missed part of testing is actually once the person clicks off of Facebook and into your funnel, whether that's onto your website or an app. I'd go as far as arguing that targeting and getting the user to click your ad is easier than landing them on a page or app store and getting them to convert. In ecommerce it's common practice to test landing pages and track the experience through checkout to see how a specific audience is reacting to an offer or creative.
We placed CRO (conversion rate optimization) at the heart of our growth strategy.
Both within the ads platform and on the website, we tried to tweak and improve our CRO at every opportunity.
The key to high converting landing pages
One of the key tests was placing social proof on our landing pages – as an unknown ecommerce retailer with a global footprint, we had to convince people to put their trust in us. We gathered social proof such as the volume of our sales, testimonials and media mentions. They played a big part in improving conversion rates.
2. Know your customer
It may sound simple, but how well do you actually know your ideal customer?
Selling a product aimed at children of reading age we knew that parents, in particular mums were a key market for us. And we did pretty ok selling to them too.
But what really lit a fire under our rocket was a survey sent to customers asking them who they were actually buying the product for. Surprisingly to us, the majority were buying it as a gift for other people's children.
We then realized that by talking to what we thought was our ideal customer was only part of the equation – knowing what they were buying this product for was the other part; gifting! We began changing our copy, still predominantly targeted towards mums but with a focus on gift giving, and saw a big uplift in sales.
But what was even more interesting was that as we studied the additional data we were getting back, we saw the age of the children dramatically changed. Where we were selling a product aimed at kids 3 to 8 we were actually now selling it to gifters buying the product for newborns – it had become far more appealing as a keepsake product for newborns than an educational product for kids at a reading age as it was a personalized product.
Despite starting with what we believed, on the face of it, being quite a clear customer persona, we soon realized our customer persona was the thing holding us back.
This highlights one of the crucial aspects of our product marketing development which was focusing on customer feedback.
Why did they buy?
Was it as they expected it?
Would they recommend us to friends and family?
Would they buy again?
Is there anything missing that they'd have liked to have seen?
The list could go on and needs to be tailored for your business but uncovering the customer needs, wants and desires is a crucial part of making any marketing campaign work for you. This includes going through pre-purchase enquiries.
This will help you with retargeting messaging and improve your landing page experience by answering the most common issues.
3. Keep your creative fresh
As you start to scale up spend significantly, it's important to keep your creatives fresh. Having advertised on the platform since 2012 with spends over $15M in that time, it's far more common for the creative to have 'fatigued' (that is, having been served too many times) than it is for an audience to burn out.
This isn't a hard and fast rule, but the creative refresh is often the first port of call for a waning ad set.
Keeping an eye on your main goal: usually ROAS (return on ad spend) and CPA (cost per acquisition for ecommerce) to ensure you're tracking ad performance.
When you're running lets say 3 to 4 ads per ad set, if one them drops in performance it's more than likely ad fatigue.
Another common reason for a sudden drop is also if you've had a negative, detrimental comment on an ad, which is why it's important for someone (eg a customer services representative or your social media manager) to keep a regular check on comments.
We ran fortnight 'design sprints' – meaning every 2 weeks our designers would come up with new versions of ads for us to test.
In return we'd feedback performance from the last 2 weeks of testing, creating a revolving feedback loop where the designers would get to see and learn from the creatives we were testing and in return they'd either iterate or innovate from the previous designs.
As best practice, depending on audience size we'd aim for 3 ads running in a given ad set, but we'd also ensure we had ads lined ready and waiting if we needed to switch them on, for example if previous ads began to drop in performance. The worst thing is to lose momentum on an ad set waiting for new ads to be delivered.
Why 3 ads? Because you want to give enough options for Facebook to be testing with an ad set and because 3 gives the algorithm to run the majority of traffic toward one and test 2 others. In practice you might find the 2 ads that have fewer impressions are just not getting a fair run – however if your main ad drops in performance you have one of 2 backups to pull in and then replace the low performing ad with another.
For large accounts, spending upwards of $10k per day I've run 4 and maybe even 5 ads in an ad set. In other accounts I've only run one ad but then duplicated the ad set. They're different ways of pushing your ads to your audience and is something to test as the right approach is dependent on your setup.
4. Quality lookalike audiences
Facebook's lookalike audience (LLA) tool is a ground-breaking form of targeting; taking a 'seed' audience, which could be as low as 100 people, but ideally thousands if not tens of thousands, you ask Facebook to create a larger audience similar in attributes to this smaller audience.
Let's take the example of this ecommerce store: we were selling to gifters who were generally mums with kids up to 8 years old.
Extracting a list of emails from our sales database we could target every person on our list.
We also pulled out high value customers; those that had bought more than 5 items over a period of time (12 months in our case). Now this could have been 5 in one order or 5 over a period of time, we didn't differentiate.
This seed list proved to be far more profitable than simply putting all purchasers in. This is because those customers had attributes about them which made them spend more with us; Facebook's amazing ability to find more people like that meant this new lookalike audience was of really high value.
To share another example, we used another seed audience based on Promoters from our Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey. NPS is a form of customer experience feedback, with a simple, single question of 'would you recommend this company to friends or family'. The rating, between 1 and 10 decides whether they were promoters or detractors and anyone over an 8 is a promoter. This was one of our most profitable lookalikes we ever run and continues to be a high value audience for all ecommerce companies I've run NPS lookalikes on.
You can create lookalikes from people that have visited your website, viewed you cart, viewed certain categories, engaged with your Facebook fan page or Instagram page, of the most engaged people on your website and many more. The key here is to test with as many data points as you can to find the best seed audience for your campaigns.
5. Analysis without the paralysis
The Facebook Ads Manager tool is a useful way of reporting on data, by selecting columns of data, such as spend, clicks, and purchases. However, to really get deep into analysis, you also need to split by the various segments Facebook offers you.
The reason this is important is that you may find your CTR (click through rate) is far worse for example for a particular demographic, or placement, than other ads. There are many reasons why ads work or don't work, and some of them could simply be that they're more effective on Facebook than Instagram.
However for ecommerce, its important to track both the key Facebook metrics as well as the funnel metrics; that is, of those that clicked, how many added to cart and how many converted once they got to the cart.
It's in particular important for ecommerce as there are factors involved in site conversion and average basket value that are driven by the store itself in the form of stock availability (or the lack of) and on-site promotions. For example if there's an on-site promotion running, the discounted rate may turn into a lower ROAS, impacting your advertising effectiveness.
The table below is my preferred format for quick analysis before deep diving into optimization opportunities within ecommerce.
What we're looking for here are the trends denoted by the color gradients and relative performance. Here for example we can see % ATC (percentage of people that add to cart) has declined in the week however the Cart CR% (how many have converted from the cart page to sale) has increased. However looking at ROAS, which for this ecommerce store is our main objective you can see that the ROAS peaked on Thursday at 181% driven by Sales CR% (click to purchase conversion rate), high funnel conversion and importantly a decent AOV (average order value).
The other hidden factor here is that since this ecommerce store has a maturing performance over 7-10 days, the ROAS will tick over to 200%+ courtesy of the way Facebook reports conversion data by default, which is attributing sales to a given day when the conversion may have happened days later.
However the Sunday is a clear anomaly here with low Cart CR%, lower ROAS and low AOV which might be an area of investigation.
The important part of analysis like this is spotting trends and reacting. The inner workings of what to look for and how to deep dive are too deep for this post to go into, but needless to say for ecommerce you're generally tracking ROAS and CPA at the end of your funnel, and looking at the metrics in between as above, and also on CTR and CPC at the top of your funnel to identify where the opportunities to improve are, within your ad and/or within your website.
6. Focus on funnels
When it comes to Facebook advertising, each ad and interaction should nudge that user towards you. Where many fail at Facebook advertising is trying to convert someone that's seen your ad for the first time, to buying from you.
It's like going on a first-date and asking the other person for their hand in marriage! You might get away with it if you're already rich and famous plus perhaps a smooth talker, but for most of us we need to do the whole courting thing.
The same goes for your Facebook ads: court your audience. Below is a typical funnel I use when creating ads for ecommerce.
There are 4 levels of campaigns that I run, each aimed at serving a specific type of audience.
Cold Audiences
At the top you have cold audiences, meaning that they've not seen your ads before and are not customers. You generally want to attract them into your product using a range of targeting options to entice them in.
For ecommerce, category specific videos work best. For example if you're selling children's clothing, then running a video ad to a cold audience focused on winter jackets, during the winter season is going to resonate and perform better than a general clothing store ad with no consideration to the season.
There are some stores that will do better at converting cold traffic straight away than others and these are mainly those that have lower ticket prices, lets say $20 and below where the consideration of parting with that amount of money isn't too stressful. Where your item's pushing $30-50 and upwards, then you need to play the courting game harder.
Warm Audiences
With this campaign structure above, we have a 'warm' audience targeting pot where we're targeting those that have interacted in some way – whether by liking our fan page, engaging with ads or viewing a video. We know they know about the brand/product so we can communicate differently at this stage to hook them in with customer benefits and testimonials.
Hot Audience
The next level down is our hot prospecting list of people that have visited the site, and ideally those that have added to cart. The types of ads you offer here are more product focused, more sales focused and simpler in messaging, often using DPA ads (dynamic product ads) – you know the ones, that seem to follow you around showing the exact product you just browsed.
Now, most ecommerce stores stop at this point, once the sale has been made. However, whilst many stores will employ email campaigns to get customers to repurchase after their first purchase;
Using Facebook ads after they've purchased is an important way of increasing the customer's lifetime value at a lower cost per acquisition resulting in a higher ROAS over time.
Using the full funnel approach, which is something to be tested and adapted for each store is a good approach at combining the business objectives of strong ROAS from your customers with taking those customers on a journey with you, priming them, enticing them and then closing the sale.
7. Scaling with manual bidding
One of the power tools within Facebook is manual bidding. Those from a paid search world might consider it strange that Facebook marketers find manual bidding so fascinatingly difficult to use and yet it's amazing how powerful automatic bidding can be.
When entering an auction to have your ad displayed, Facebook is calculating the best way to use your budget based on:
-how it is allocated (eg daily or lifetime)
-how much there is
-your optimization goals (eg to get people to purchase)
-your audience
-your ad set history
Amongst many other factors.
Autobidding allows Facebook to flex your bid to try and get you the best results for your budget. For the most part, and for those at the beginner to intermediate stage of learning this, more often than not it delivers compelling results.
However to scale faster and harder, pushing more and more spend often requires you to take control through manual bidding. Whilst Facebook is good at generally getting you into the right auctions at the right price, there comes a time when you cannot increase reach without hitting better quality members of your audience.
Using an ocean analogy, manual bid is like pushing your rod deeper than the surface level and grabbing the juicier fish that are harder to get. Or in reality, bidding higher to reach users that are likely more expensive than your auto bid is prepared to go to.
It comes down to risk and reward and much of scaling Facebook ads falls into mindset. What level of risk are you willing to take in order to generate growth? Let's say your ecom website has a $20 CPA (cost per acquisition). If you want to scale more aggressively, you might increase budget and leave the bidding to auto, or duplicate the ad set and add new budget there as mentioned earlier. Or you might actually put a manual 'cap' in place, lets say $20 to ensure your CPA doesn't go higher than that. However the reality is that you don't really know what auto bids Facebook are putting in – that's because the bid you place, doesn't accurately reflect the CPA that churns out at the bottom of your funnel.
The bidding system Facebook uses is based on the following graphic in its simplest sense. The important elements are Estimated Action Rates and User Value. Both of which you cannot see but will have an idea about.
The lowdown is this – Facebook will use the conversion rate of your desired outcome, such as purchases and the likelihood of a given user to take that action and also add an additional score based on the relevance of your ad (calculated from the ad relevance score) and other things like: Do users go beyond your landing page? Do they browse the website in general? Are they engaged with your website? etc.
The benefits of manual bidding
For ads that have a poor relevance score, manual bidding ups your chance of winning the auction and will often result in a higher CPM and CPC. However, the offshoot could be that your CTR and your website conversion rate also increase because you're now reaching a customer that's far more relevant to you. Conversely a high relevance score gives you by default a higher chance of winning an auction and in either case, manual bidding will bump you higher in the auction.
When scaling hard in the US for example, we were chasing a broad "mother" audience, we placed a manual bid in the region of $40 for a target CPA of around $15. How does this make sense? Because although the CPA did increase marginally to around $18, so did both the website conversion rate and average order value for these users because they were higher quality. I'd only advocate manual bidding higher when you have a proven audience and good creative already in place.
Conclusion on Facebook Ads & Ecommerce
Ultimately with ecommerce the challenge with Facebook ads is in maintaining a positive customer lifetime value. While there are many ecommerce stores that are able to generate ROAS of 250-500%, as you start to scale your spend,the auctions become more expensive. It becomes even more important to make more money on back-end, once you have the customer, to justify the rising costs on Facebook.
Key takeaway: Facebook ads are a great way to drive targeted traffic to your site. As the cost of Facebook ads rise, focus on the entire funnel to increase customer LTV, not just the Facebook ads platform.
Categories Case Study, Ecommerce, Facebook Post navigation
Using Discounting Without Ruining Your Ecommerce Business
1 thought on "7 Facebook Ads Growth Strategies for Scaling Ecommerce (Including A $26M Case Study)"
MUHAMMAD MEHMOOD HARIS
Great Piece to read.


When I started this list of strange and wonderful words, I did so with fissilingual ("split-tongued") and proceeded from then on in alphabetical order all the way to epeolatry ("the worship of words"). Then I skipped around, mostly because the best words didn't necessarily come to me in alphabetical order and some letters seemed to lack worthwhile words. Like the letter "I," for example. I had itaiitai (a bone disease) and ignovomous ("fire-spewing") and that's it. I even added to the list isabelline ("yellowish-white," from the belief that Archduchess Isabella of Austria didn't change her underwear often enough) despite that I'd blogged it before I'd begun the actual list, solely on grounds that the "I" section seemed skimpy and neglected. (Yes, I am one of those people who makes sure to rotate dishes that I use so ones at the bottom of the stack don't get jealous.) Today, I can finally present a new "I" word. This makes me happy. Be happy for me, jerks.
See? Betty Draper, ever iracund.
Now, anyone got a good, strange "U" word?


Open to all musicians of all skill levels, ages 12+. Students are grouped by age and skill level.
Erin Workman | LACM Music Business and Songwriting Department Chair. Has performed or recorded with Miley Cyrus, Zac Efron, Selena Gomez and more.
Jerry Watts | LACM Bass Department Chair. Has performed or recorded with Sheryl Crow, Billy Idol, Dave Stewart, Herbie Hancock and more.
Bill Fowler | LACM Faculty: Previously Performed: Ray Charles, The Pointer Sisters, Ben Vereen and more.
Lisa Harriton | LACM Faculty: GRAMMY Nominated Songwriter. Previously Performed or recorded : Smashing Pumpkins, Ke$ha and more.


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KCKCC students and faculty talk about military service during Veterans Day event
KANSAS CITY, KAN. ----- Students, staff and faculty members who have or are currently serving in the U.S. military shared what being a veteran means to them during "Veterans Speak IV" Nov. 11 at Kansas City Kansas Community College.
Among the guest speakers were David Fuqua, United State Marine Corp., retired; Michelle "Leo" D'Entremont, United States Army; Renea Williams, U.S. Army; Emzley Donnell, U.S. Army; Kevin Beashore, United States Marine Corp. Reserves; Eric Shepherd, U.S. Navy and Dr. Ed Kremer, U.S. Army Reserves. The event served as a way for the KCKCC community to honor those who have served in the military.
"There is no greater love than the love a soldier has for his country," said Ewa Unoke, associate professor of political science at KCKCC, who started the event four years ago. "There is no love that can compare to a citizen making the declaration 'I pledge my blood to defend my country.'"
Each of the panelists took a few moments to share their experiences in the military. Introductions were followed by questions from Unoke, who served as moderator, as well as some questions from the audience. Among those who attended were several classes from KCKCC as well as faculty and staff members.
D'Entremont, a student at KCKCC studying for a paramedic certificate, said if community members want to thank a veteran, the best option is to simply do something.
"Do something to give back to your country. Be involved," she said. "Pay attention to what is going on around you. Don't say it in words. Say it in your actions."
Cutline: Students, staff and faculty members were among the panelists at "Veterans Speak IV" Nov. 11. From left to right, front row: Renea Williams, Michelle "Leo" D'Entremont and David Fuqua. Back row: Kevin Beashore, Dr. Ed Kremer, Emzley Donnell and Eric Shepherd.
Labels: Education, KCKCC, Veterans Day

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


A short mediation on how human uniqueness might have come about, by a world class student of human fossil evolution. Different researchers have quite different takes on what really makes us different from other primates, on what is quintessentially and uniquely human. Here we get Ian Tattersall's view. The creative spark sets us apart, he argues. Language and creativity, and the mental states behind them, appeared suddenly and not gradually — humans literally sprang into existence. Prehaps the sudden appearance of these creative behaviors reflected the evolution for the first time of the neural pathways in the brain responsible for the syntax of language, that most particularly human of activities. Whatever your own personal views on this subject, you will not be able to resist being interested in Tattersall's. He's a good writer, knows a lot about human evolution, and his opinion is well worth listening to.


Starts the GeoLocation listening service.
onChanged events will be generated as the location changes.
Use stopListening to stop the service.
The parameters here are desired values; the actual interval and accuracy are dependent on the device.
See the GeoLocation module for an example.


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UK house prices jump by 13.4% in 12 months to June -Nationwide
Updated / Tuesday, 29 Jun 2021 07:52
UK house prices saw their biggest annual increase since November 2004 in June
British house prices saw the biggest jump in more than 16 years this month when they rose by 13.4% compared to June last year.
Demand is also expected to remain strong in the coming months, mortgage lender Nationwide said today.
In monthly terms, house prices were 0.7% higher than in May as buyers rushed to take advantage of a tax break offered by finance minister Rishi Sunak.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected prices to rise by 13.7% in annual terms and by 0.7% from May.
"While the strength is partly due to base effects, with June last year unusually weak due to the first lockdown, the market continues to show significant momentum," Nationwide's chief economist Robert Gardner said.
The tax break, introduced last year as part of Sunak's emergency support for the economy during the pandemic, had originally been due to expire at the end of March.
But the first £500,000 of any property purchase in England or Northern Ireland are now due to remain exempt until the end of June, and a £250,000 tax-free allowance will run until the end of September.
"Underlying demand is likely to remain solid in the near term as the economy unlocks," Gardner said.
"Consumer confidence has rebounded while borrowing costs remain low. This, combined with a lack of supply on the market, suggests further upward pressure on prices.
"But as we look toward the end of the year, the outlook is harder to foresee," he added.
Uk House Prices
Accreditation: Reuters


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/**
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package com.google.api.ads.adwords.axis.v201409.cm;

/**
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    /**
     * Get Custom Deserializer
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           java.lang.String mechType,
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Enjoy the magnificent landscapes of the Zillertal Alps Nature Park along 532 km of well-developed hiking trails in the Upper Zillertal Valley.
Individual hiking suggestions are available to explore and experience the charm of this unique Tyrolean mountain world. Ranging from walks to easy hikes, hut to hut hikes or alpine tours, we have everything the hiker's heart could possibly wish for!
The top terminals of the Penken & Ahorn cable cars are also great starting points for a plethora of mountain tours and high altitude hikes.


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Q: Encoding issue using XZIP I wrote a c++ program that needs to zip files in it's work. For creating these zip files I used the XZip library. While developing this program ran on a Win7 machine and it works fine.
Now the program should be used on a WindowsXP machine. The issue I run into is:
If I let XZip create the zip archive "ü.zip" and add the file "ü.txt" to it on Win7 it is working as intended. On WindowsXP however I end up having the "ü.zip" file with "³.txt" as file in it.
The "³" => "ü" thing is of course an encoding issue between UTF8 and Ascii (ü = 252 in UTF8 and 252 = ³ in Ascii) BUT I can't really imagine how this could affect the creating of the internal zip structure in different ways depending on the OS.
//EDIT to clear it up:
the problem is that I run a test with XZip on Win7 and get the archive "ü.zip" containing the file with name "ü.txt".
When I run that test on an XP machine I get the archive "ü.zip" containing the file "³.txt".
//Edit2:
The thing that makes me wonder about that is, what exactly causes the zip to change between XP and Win7. The fact that it does change means that either a windows function behaves differently or XZip has specific behavior for different OS built in.
When having a quick look at XZip I can't see that it changes the encoding flag on the zip archives. The question of course only can be answered by people who did have a closer look into this exact problem before.

A: As a general rule, if you want any sort of portability between locales, OS's (including different versions) and what have you, you should limit your filenames to the usual 26 letters, the 10 digits, and perhaps '_' and '-' (and I'm not even sure about the latter), and one '.', no more than three characters from the end.  Once you start using letters beyond the original ASCII character set, you're at the merci of the various programs which interpret the character set.
Also, 252 isn't anything in ASCII, since ASCII only uses character codes in the range 0...127.  And in UTF-8, 252 would be the first byte of a six byte character.  Something that doesn't exist in Unicode: in UTF-8, LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS would be the two byte sequence 0xC3, 0xBC.  256 is the encoding of LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS in ISO 8859-1, otherwise known as Latin-1; it's also the encoding in UTF-16 and UTF-32.
None of this, of course, should affect what is in the file.

A: May be you are building your Win32 program (or the library) as ASCII (not as UNICODE). It may help if you build your Win32 applications with UNICODE configuration setting (you may change it in your Visual Studio project settings).
It is impossible to say what happened in your program without seeing your code. May be your library or the archive format is not UNICODE-aware, may be your program's code is not UNICODE-aware, may be you don't handle strings careful enough, or may be you just have to change your project setting to UNICODE. Also your "8-bit encoding for non-Unicode programs" Windows OS setting matters if you don't use UNICODE strings.
As for 252, UTF8 and ASCII read post by James Kanze. It is more or less safe to use ASCII file names with no ':', '?', '*', '/', '\' characters. Using non-ASCII characters may lead to encoding problems if you are not using UNICODE-based programs and file-systems.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


How to book cheap flight tickets from Miami to New York City?
1. On the home page itself you will see Buy and the Flight.
2. Here you can choose between 'Roundtrip', 'One Way' and 'multicity' as per your travel plan.
3. After that in the From field choose 'Miami' from the list of cities in pop up window.
4. In the To filed you can choose 'New York' from the pop up window.
5. Then select your departure date and return date (if you are making round trip).
6. Then enter number of adults, kinds and lap infants.
7. After that click on 'FIND IT' button below.
9. After that you will see a new window which displays list of flights with details like departure time, arrival time, stops, duration.
10. Now you can select your flight here and then follow further instruction to book your flight from Miami to New York City.
So, cheapest flight booking is your objective when planning your journey from Miami to New York City. On daily basis several airlines have flights from Miami to New York City like JetBlue Airways you just saw. You can go to these airlines websites individually and then look for cheap flights. After that you can compare prices and deals on all these airlines and then find cheapest flight from Miami to New York City. Alternatively you can also go to one of the leading flight booking portals where at one place you will get the list of all the airlines flights from Miami to New York and now you can easily find cheapest flight from Miami to New York City.
Looking for last minute and direct flight to New York City? If yes, then look to visit some leading third party flight booking portals where you can get the last minute and direct flight to New York City easily. This will save your time and save you from frustration as well.
When you plan to go to anywhere you want to book cheap flights. So if you are you looking to fly to New York City then also you will look to book cheap flights. If this is the case then you should go to either one of the leading flight booking portals or web sites of some of the cheap flights which go to New York City which are JetBlue Airways, United Airlines, American Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Allegiant Airlines and American Airlines.


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Home » Viewpoint » Obaseki, man on rescue mission
Obaseki, man on rescue mission
On June 30, 2019 9:07 amIn News, Viewpointby Bankole
By Monday Nosakhare
Prior to his introduction as the likely successor to the former labour leader, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, Mr Godwin Obaseki had worked behind the scene in Oshiomhole's administration as the Chairman of the State Economic team.
Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki
Only a few of those in Oshiomhole's cabinet knew that Obaseki was the engine room of the Oshiomhole administration. He worked tirelessly to ensure that funds needed to drive the programmes and policies of the administration were never short in coming, especially against the background of the dwindling monthly allocation from Abuja.
It was this reason that Oshiomhole, at many events, described Obaseki as the "brain box" of his administration, and declared that he needed a successor with financial expertise.
Even in the face of stiff opposition from other political figures, including his Deputy, Dr Pius Odubu, Oshiomhole insisted that with the economic woes being witnessed in the country, Obaseki remained his choice of successor.
Having emerged the candidate of his party, All Progressives Congress (APC) for the governorship poll, Obaseki and the former labour leader, went around the nooks and crannies of the state to canvass for votes for the elections which the APC later emerged victoriously.
Obaseki told the people, on the day of his inauguration, that he was in a hurry to deliver on all his campaign promises.
To start with, he embarked upon an aggressive revenue generation drive through the deployment of technology to enhance revenue collection and minimise leakages.
This move incidentally proved to be the first and major criticism of the Obaseki led government by some individuals, who had cashed in on loopholes to corruptly enrich themselves.
The effectiveness of the system which did not take long to be noticed saw to the increment of most council's Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). For instance, IGR of the 18 council areas rose from 30 million to 150 million as at November 2017.
As expected of him by his predecessor, having taken care of the issue of raising the state IGR, the governor, who has now won his way into the hearts of Edolites , embarked on institutional reforms that have seen the state taken a pole-position in educational sector, sports, judiciary, commerce, and most importantly, civil service.
On the other aspect, the ''wake and see governor'' has ensured that training programmes that have eluded the civil servants for years were restored.
The man on the rescue mission has placed the use of Information Technology in the front burner in order to enhance efficiency in the system.
The sectorial reform also belted on the state sporting activities where complete renovation and reconstruction work of the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium is nearing completion.
On completion, the stadium that was last renovated in 2002 for the National Sports Festival, would have a brand new tartan tracks, seats, swimming pool, boxing, lawn tennis courts, and above all, an all covered stand, as well as extended VIP and Press Gallery.
To make good his promise of ensuring that the state regains its pride of place in the sporting arena in the country, the government is also in the process of awarding contracts for the construction of 20 mini stadia across the 18 local government areas of the state.
All over the world, education is a key driver of national development and societal growth, education will determine the livelihoods of the people and drive growth and developments in generations to come.
It is in recognition of this fact that Obaseki came with his flagship project in the sector, code-named, "EdoBEST" Edo Basic Education Sector Transformation. The project aimed to transform the public education system and learning outcomes in Edo.
Within just six months of the official launch, it has unveiled 7, 000 government-trained teachers and is set to radically impact the lives of 150 000 Edo children. Ultimately, it would reach 15, 000 across 1, 500 public schools, impacting 300, 000 children.
Obaseki recognises the fact that to drive commerce, the roads must be motorable. As such, so many roads are receiving priority attention from the governor. In fact, it is in recognition of his commitment that he was nicknamed 'Wake and see Governor'
The projects embarked upon by his administration are enormous across all sectors of the state economy.
Unfortunately, while the majority of the people appreciates this, a few, however, are not appreciative of this fact.
A chieftain of the APC in Edo State, Mr Martins Osakue, who said well-meaning politicians in the state chapter of the party are solidly behind Obaseki, admonished the governor to ignore the tantrums of a handful of self-serving politicians, who are hell-bent on cornering the state's funds for themselves.
Osakue, who is the proprietor of Paragon Demonstration Group of Schools, insisted that only enemies of Edo State will deny Governor Godwin Obaseki a second term in office.
Osakue said only a handful of greedy politicians are against another term of office over his refusal to settle them with monies meant for the development of the state.
According to him, "Only an enemy of Edo State will say Obaseki doesn't deserve a second term. Governor Godwin Obaseki is perhaps the best we have had.
"This state has more than 4 million people and those of us in politics are not more than 5 per cent. The governor was elected to serve everybody and that is what he is doing. God wants him to serve the majority. The opposition would even vote for the governor with his performance."
* Nosakhare, a social commentator sent this from Abuja
Bankole
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What are the top Nursing Schools in Scottsbluff, NE?
Scottsbluff has a total population of 14,732 and a student population of 2,353. Of these students, 2,304 are enrolled in schools that offer nursing programs.
The largest nursing school in Scottsbluff, by student population, is Western Nebraska Community College. In 2010, Western Nebraska Community College graduated approximately 37 students from its nursing program.
A total of 63 students graduated with credentials in nursing from nursing schools in Scottsbluff in 2010. Tuition in 2009 at Scottsbluff's nursing schools was $12,051 per year for instate students and $12,339 per year for out of state students.
In addition to tuition costs, plan on spending an average of $1,080 for nursing related books and supplies each year. And if you live on campus, you will face an additional expense of $5,228 per year, on average, for room and board at Scottsbluff-based nursing schools. Students who live at home can cut this cost down to approximately $6,390.
Many nursing graduates choose to work as nurses after graduation. If you choose to follow that path and remain in Scottsbluff, your job prospects are good. There were 14,900 nurses working in Nebraska and 1,640 working in the greater Scottsbluff area in 2010. The government projects that the number of nurses in Scottsbluff will increase by 17% by the year 2018. This projected change is slower than the projected nationwide trend for nurses.
As a nurse in Scottsbluff, you can expect to make an average salary of $22,300 per year. This is lower than the average salary for nurses in the state.


Personalize your wine bottles and other spirits with Bella Vita's colorful silicone scroll bottle tags. Each bottle marker set includes a lime and burgundy tag with an adjustable fastener. As a bonus, we also include a dry erase marker so you can label your bottles. The perfect party accessory or unique gift for the wine lovers in your life!


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Vet accused of implanting heroin in puppies for Colombia drug ring
A vet has pleaded not guilty to US charges that he turned puppies into drug couriers for a Colombian trafficking ring by stitching packets of liquid heroin into their bodies.
Wednesday, 2nd May 2018, 3:30 pm
Updated Wednesday, 2nd May 2018, 3:36 pm
Andres Lopez Elorza appeared in federal court in Brooklyn after being extradited from Spain, where he was arrested in 2015 on a US warrant. He was ordered held without bail.
Lopez Elorza, 38, who also goes by Lopez Elorez, became a fugitive in 2005 when authorities arrested about two dozen suspected traffickers in Colombia.
Before he fled, the defendant had "gained some notoriety" from accusations that he was part of a barbaric scheme that turned an undetermined number of puppies and dogs into "animal couriers" by stitching packets into their bodies, prosecutor Nathan Reilly told a magistrate.
It is believed the dogs were sent on commercial flights to New York City, where the drugs were cut out, authorities said.
Investigators believe the puppies would have died in the process, but it was unknown how many were involved.
"Over time, drug organisations' unquenchable thirst for profit leads them to do unthinkable crimes like using innocent puppies for drug concealment," said James J Hunt, head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration's New York office.
Prosecutor Richard Donoghue said: "Dogs are man's best friend and, as the defendant is about to learn, we are drug dealers' worst enemy."
Ten puppies were found during a 2005 raid on a farm in Colombia, Drug Enforcement Administration officials said.
Five ended up running away, three died from infection and two were adopted, including one that became a drug-sniffing dog for Colombian police, officials said.
Lopez Elorza was born in Colombia but claims Venezuelan citizenship, authorities said.


But who knew they were the key to a long and happy marriage? We teach our children these three sentences, but sometimes we, as married adults, don't make sure to keep them at the forefront of marriage. Stan and I do. It's the one thing we do often and with abandon. It's one of the things we do well.
I've even had them say to me, "Mom, I'm not ready to forgive you, yet," on those occasions where I really hurt their feelings, their pride and their souls.
PS. Pope Francis really does have a handle on the whole forgiveness thing since he has declared this year to be the year of Mercy.


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One-stop array packs 'em in; Modest fix-ups or full rehabs -- a home fair covers all
By George D. Bushnell Special to The Christian Science Monitor
The third annual home-improvement fair at McCormick Place West lured more than 50,000 old-house buffs and exhibitors, not only from the Midwest but from points as far off as New York State and California.
In fact, "City House 1981" played to a packed house in late March.
As one fairgoer said to his companion, "You find out about products and services here you'd never hear about any other way."
What the fair does is point up the vast interest in home-improvement projects , many of them by do-it-yourselfers.
Other similar events around the United States help the home handyman, and even the amateur, find his way in restoring his home, adding a room, putting in wall paneling, and even how to paint and wallpaper the right way. If you plan to turn to a contractor or hire the professional workmen yourself, the house-repair fairs tell you how to go about it.
Bob Vila, Boston-area host to the popular "This Old house" public television series, set the tone in his keynote interview. Mr. Vila told John Wilson of WTTW-TV that the would-be rehabber "should look at the house first at arm's length, develop a working plan and objectives, and only then contact the trades."
After getting estimates, Vila advised: "Then go to your local bank to see how much you can borrow."
His parting advice: "Good communcation from the start with the contractor and trades pays off where little misunderstandings make costs skyrocket."
Clem Labine, an old-house superstar and editor of The Old House Journal, led a panel entitled "Homeowners' Lament -- or, If I Had Only Known." The witty restorer of his own 1880s brownstone warned, "If you let areas look like the city dump during renovation and don't clean up daily, your workmen will treatm the house like the city dump."
One panelist, Mrs. Duncan Henderson, urged the audience to assign separate corners to each trade to keep tools, saving high-cost hourly time.
"Remember," she added, "if someone can come over immediately when you call, he's probably no good."
Panelists agreed that major renovation was best tackled by hiring a contractor and consulting a restoration architect so as to find out any hidden structural problems before getting estimates.
City House exhibits drew lookers from young singles in apartments who are saving for their first house to older couples renovating a second or even third home. Displays ran the gamut from gleaming brass antiques and reproduction gas lighting fixtures, chimney sweeping, and design consulting to architectural artifacts, building materials, and neighborhood improvement organizations.
The Stanley Galleries showed an 1879 fourarm lighting fixture, converted from gas to electricity, which was made by Thackera & Sons of Philadelphia. The price: $2,100.
For the more modest purse, there was a rare 1890s single gas and electric transition lighting fixture priced at $295.
The gallery owner, Ken Stanley, explained that buyers were turning away from elaborate fixtures with filigree brasswork to "simpler lines which lend themselves better to an electric decor."
Near the fair entrance was the theme exhibit, a prototype frame cottage built by Washburne Trade School students. The cutaway house showed how a sound residence should be built, from lath and plaster to pipes, adequate electrical system, and floor joists.
Service exhibits included an enterprising architecture student group from the Illinois Institute of Technology which established a rehab consulting service before graduation. Another institute architecture team of four women displayed its innovative, and surprisingly professional, solutions for developing Chicago's old Bridgeport area by adding small parks and upgrading the business area.
An eye-catching exhibit was the Chimney Sweep Cooperative. The owner, Jim Duffy, decked out in black top hat and frock coat, said the energy crunch causes people to use their fireplaces more often. "But because of the soot buildup, chimneys should be cleaned more often to prevent chimney fires," he explained. Chimney cleaning charges vary according to accessibility and house height, ranging from $55 to $75.
Prospective mail-order customers of Round Barn Books of Skokie, Ill., could use the firm's free research service, giving book titles, authors, and publishers by subject.
Landscape architects, it turns out, have a real image problem. Mark Finger of the American Society of Landscape Architects explained that the service was once for the estates of the wealthy. "Today," he reported, "many people don't realize they can consult a landscape architect for $20 to $40 an hour and get ideas about improving their house surroundings over a period of time," he said.
Mr. Vila of TV's "This Old House told attendants that before hiring a restoration architect, be sure the architect believes in renovation himself. How much work can the homeowner do himself? It depends on his skill and energy, Vila says. If you plan to have some of the work done by professionals, be sure you agree clearly on who does what.
To a would-be rehabber who asked what an architect would do for him, Vila replied: "Whatever you pay him to do, from initial consultation to detailed finished plans."
Energy conservation in heating and cooling was covered by the moderator, John Porterfield, of the energy resource center of the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle campus, and an architect, Brian Robertson, of Nagle, Hartray & Associates.
Homeowners are encouraged to lower the temperature in winter; insulate roofs, walls, windows, and hot-air ducts; and replace 100-watt bulbs with 50-watt bulbs where practical.
There were also sessions on landscaping, developing a good house interior plan, wood and plaster repairing, selecting interior ornaments from glass and light fixtures to decorative hardware, fireplace tips, and ideas for windows and skylights.
A Chicago contractor summed it all up. "City House's greatest value is to encourage and educate ordinary people so they can tackle house face- liftings themselves."
Aging seniors will receive home fix-ups, nurse visits as part of new project
Vanuatu death toll from Cyclone Pam rises as aid workers arrive
Octomom in rehab after years under intense media spotlight


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Walking With the American Heart Association: Valerie Bertinelli and Chester Cheetah
Larry Husten Contributor
I'm a medical journalist covering cardiology news.
A few weeks ago Chester Cheetah, the official mascot for Frito Lay's Cheetos, played an official part in the American Heart Association's Dallas Heart Walk. Yoni Freedhoff, on his Weighty Matters blog, pretty much says what needs to be said about this disgraceful association between Frito Lay and the AHA.
This weekend I received a press kit from Jenny Craig. The diet company was publicizing the participation of tabloid celebrity Valerie Bertinelli, a Jenny Craig "brand ambassador," in the AHA's Los Angeles Heart Walk on Saturday. At first glance, Jenny Craig's relationship with the AHA does not appear to be as awful as Frito Lay's. After all, whatever else you may think about the company and its methods, obesity is a major problem, and if some people can defy the odds and lose weight with Jenny Craig then all the better for them.
But the Jenny Craig relationship brings up another, more subtle harm caused by these sort of increasingly popular arrangements in which nonprofit organizations accept money from for-profit corporations. I was astonished to read the second paragraph of the Jenny Craig press release:
Bertinelli, who has lost weight on the Jenny Craig program, recognizes the importance of being in good heart health, and owes her mother's life to Jenny Craig. Bertinelli's mother, Nancy, lost 54 pounds* on Jenny Craig after witnessing her daughter's success on the program. In October of 2008, Bertinelli's mother required emergency heart valve replacement surgery. After the successful surgery, the cardiologist pulled Bertinelli and her brother aside and told them that if their mother hadn't previously lost weight, she would not have survived the surgery.
Scientifically and medically, this is an entirely irresponsible statement, if in fact a cardiologist did make this statement. My source for this assertion? The AHA itself. Here's what an AHA science advisory had to say about this exact topic:
Severe obesity has not been associated with increased mortality in patients undergoing cardiac surgery but has been associated with an increased length of hospital stay and with a greater likelihood of renal failure and prolonged assisted ventilation.
One of the most important roles of the AHA is to encourage, develop, and support the use of evidence-based medicine. Why then does the AHA agree to partner with companies that flagrantly (Frito Lay) or more subtly (Jenny Craig) undermine that effort?
Fun facts: Jenny Craig is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nestlé. Frito Lay is owned by Pepsi.
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Here's the Jenny Craig press release:
Valerie Bertinelli and Jenny Craig Walk in Support of the American Heart Association's Los Angeles Heart Walk
Bertinelli will walk with "Team Jenny" on September 29th and will share her story of why heart health is a personal matter for her
Carlsbad, Calif. (September 29, 2012) — Jenny Craig Brand Ambassador Valerie Bertinelli is proud to participate in the American Heart Association's Heart Walk on behalf of "Team Jenny," at the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles, California on Saturday, September 29th. The Heart Walk is the American Heart Association's premiere event that brings communities together to raise funds and celebrate progress in the fight against heart diseases and stroke. As a national sponsor of the American Heart Association's Heart Walk, Jenny Craig is supporting more than 300 walks across the United States in 2012.
"This is such a special event, and I'm honored to be here today at the Los Angeles Heart Walk on behalf of Jenny Craig," said Bertinelli. "It's essential for people to know that losing weight isn't just about fitting into your favorite pair of jeans. It's about being healthy and lowering your risk for weight-related diseases, so you can be around for your family," said Bertinelli. There is evidence that shows losing 5-10% of your body weight reduces your risk for cardiovascular diseases through improvements in blood cholesterol levels. [1]
In support of the American Heart Association's healthy living initiative, My Heart. My Life™, Jenny Craig launched My Heart. My Life.™ My Jenny, which focuses on educating the public regarding the significant health risks associated with weight-related diseases, including heart disease and stroke. Through marketing campaigns, PSAs, community programs, education and online activations, the brand is encouraging the public to eat better, move more and live a healthier life.
"Recent studies show that 42 percent of the country will be obese by 2030[2]," said Dana Fiser, Global CEO of Jenny Craig. "This statistic is shocking and underscores the need for a more proactive approach to weight loss and weight management, and that's why Jenny Craig is more committed than ever to helping people lose weight and get healthy so that we can turn those numbers around. As a proud National Sponsor of the American Heart Association's Heart Walk, we're leading the charge to show people that just 30 minutes of activity a day can make a huge difference."
Most people don't realize that weight impacts their heart health and maintaining a healthy weight can positively impact risk factors including blood pressure and cholesterol management, blood sugar levels and BMI. Current research surveys show that less than 1 percent of Americans are in "ideal heart health," as defined by the AHA and that's why Jenny is proud to be supporting the American Heart Association's mission to improve the cardiovascular health of all Americans by 20 percent by 2020[3].
Through engagement with its centres, Jenny will bring its clinically-proven approach to weight loss and motivate the public to participate in the Heart Walks throughout the country with free training plans at www.jennycraig.com.
*Clients following our program, on average, lose 1-2 pounds per week.
About Jenny Craig
Jenny Craig's program is designed to help you manage your weight by creating a healthy relationship with food, building a fun, active lifestyle and developing a balanced approach to living. Our mantra is: Eat Well. Move More. Live Life.
Our model is like no other weight loss company out there. Jenny provides a weekly personal consultation that is tailored to you. We teach portion control, provide motivational techniques for stressful situations like social gatherings and dining out, and provide fun ways to incorporate activity in a daily basis and frankly, having that person in your corner to champion your successes each week. Jenny's nutritionists work with food scientists to create more than 80 delicious Jenny's Cuisine™ menu items. Jenny's program is available in-centre and our at-home program, Jenny At Home for easy access, whenever, wherever!
Jenny Craig, based in Carlsbad, CA, is one of the world's largest weight management companies, with more than 700 company-owned and franchised centres in the United States, France, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Puerto Rico. Jenny Craig has more than 3,500 employees and will celebrate their 30th Anniversary in 2013!
About the American Heart Association
The American Heart Association is devoted to saving people from heart disease and stroke – America's No. 1 and No. 4 killers. We team with millions of volunteers to fund innovative research, fight for stronger public health policies, and provide lifesaving tools and information to prevent and treat these diseases. The Dallas-based association is the nation's oldest and largest voluntary organization dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke. To learn more or to get involved, call 1-800-AHA-USA1, visit heart.org or call any of our offices around the country.
Larry Husten
I am a veteran journalist covering cardiology news. In addition to writing the CardioBrief blog I covered cardiology news for CardioExchange, a social media website for ...


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A fond farewell, and happy trails, to reporter Dara Kerr
Kara Platoni on June 22, 2011
It's June, so I hope you have room for one more commencement speech.
This is a special one for reporter Dara Kerr, who is wrapping up her tenure here as Oakland North's fellow, a position that combines reporting with advising beginning students here at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism and helping us dream up better ways to serve the Oakland community.
Some of you might know that Oakland North (and our sister sites Richmond Confidential and Mission Local) are nonprofit websites run by the J-School. They are the core component of several classes here in the journalism masters degree program—ever-evolving news labs where we teach reporting basics, try to push the boundaries of online storytelling and hope to give back to our nearby communities some of the local news coverage that has been lost in this era of media cutbacks. The sites were launched in the fall of 2008, and since then have grown enormously. Those of you who have been reading Oakland North since the beginning know that we couldn't have gotten this far without Dara.
Dara took the Oakland North course the first time it was offered as an elective and she never really left. Over the last three years, she served two turns as a student reporter, plus stints as a summer intern and bike blogger. After graduating from the J-School she became the site's first fellow. Her byline has been on hundreds of stories. She was in court every day for the city's gang injunction hearings, and she led our coverage of Proposition 8 and the Johannes Mehserle trial verdict. She reported on how Oakland became California's ground zero in the marijuana legalization debate. She covered the day when Mayor Jean Quan was sworn in, and the day when we found out that the Super Long's was leaving, and the day the world didn't end.
But you might not know exactly how much work she's done behind the scenes to make Oakland North a better community news site. She came up with some our most popular features, like our ongoing profiles of food truck operators and the summer "treat" series, and was part of the brain trust behind the launch of our audio podcast, ON Radio. She's the person who makes sure that every week there's an adoptable animal and a community photo. For several years she wrote Oakland North's bike blog, which she discontinued when she became the fellow in 2010, since she was able to fold bike news into her regular reporting beat. I think we all knew, back in when she first joined that reporting crew, that we were in the presence of greatness when Dara named her bike blog Keeping It Wheel.
Today, we'll publish Dara's last official piece for Oakland North, as her fellowship ends and she moves on to other reporting gigs. It is an investigative inquiry into the existence of monsters in Lake Merritt. (I think you'll agree that we are still in the presence of greatness.)
But before we wish Dara good luck in the reporting adventures before her, I thought you might want to know a little more about the adventures that brought her to Oakland.
Dara moved to Oakland from New York City, where she'd already spent her early career doing international human rights work. After serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in El Salvador, she earned a masters degree in international affairs from Columbia University, and then spent several years working for human rights groups, including writing documentation for the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, which uncovers mass gravesites worldwide, working with the women's rights group Equality Now on investigating the murder of girls in Ciudad Juarez, and serving as a as a human rights researcher for the Central American Legal Assistance. In this role, she helped refugees seek asylum in the United States by documenting atrocities that had occurred in their home countries. It was through this work that in 2005 she met a survivor of the 1974 massacre at La Cayetana, a small Salvadoran plantation town, and began the work that was to bring her to UC Berkeley and to journalism.
The massacre, she says, occurred "six years before the civil war began, but tensions were already running high in the country between the Army and oppressed farm workers. Revolution was simmering. There was a war next door in Nicaragua and above in Guatemala. So what happened was the workers started to stand up for themselves and organize." Some of the workers of La Cayetana joined the farm workers' union and the guerilla Popular Liberation Force, staged strikes demanding better pay and circulated a revolutionary magazine.
In response, she says, "The National Guard came into the town and kind of terrorized it. Six people were killed and 28 kidnapped—they weren't 'disappeared,' they all came back." Survivors described a gruesome military operation, in which the bodies of the dead were hacked up with machetes, and the kidnapped were maced and then taken away, barefoot and naked.
In the run-up to El Salvador's civil war, Dara said, there had been skirmishes between individuals and the military, but—as far as anyone has been able to document—La Cayetana was the first time when the Salvadoran National Guard had conducted an operation targeting an entire town. As she later wrote, "La Cayetana was a harbinger of the decade-long war—the turning point when standard army procedure first became mass murder."
In the following years, she says, the massacres in El Salvador became bigger and more frequent, leading up to the most infamous, the 1981 massacre at El Mozote, when approximately 1,000 people were killed. In that year, a second military sweep was conducted at La Cayetana, in effect destroying the town.
For years, Dara struggled to find a way to return to El Salvador to learn more about this largely undocumented massacre and to speak with the survivors and their relatives. "I'd tried to get funding to write about it with a human rights grant and it just wasn't working out," she recalls. "Then I met [UC Berkeley journalism professor] Lydia Chavez and she said, 'You should do it as a journalist and become a journalist.' It was an 'A-ha!' moment for me, and that changed everything."
At UC Berkeley, Dara's research about La Cayetana became her masters thesis; it was published this summer in the online magazine Guernica as the story "Under the Volcano."
The switch from human rights work to reporting meant learning a new kind of writing. With the academic writing she had done before, she says, "You're not focusing on making it good for readers, you're trying to document information. So it's different—it's not storytelling, it's story gathering."
But Dara says it also drew on the same strengths: listening, and knowing how to talk to everyone in a community. "What I found was coming to the J-school—I always thought I loved to do these big investigative pieces, but I found I love stuff that's not about human rights," she says. "I loved hyperlocal reporting and finding out about one community. Oakland North has been great because I can write about anything that interests me, like food and bicycles. I see myself kind of trying to do both still—because I'm still interested in these big international or local horror stories, these investigative pieces. But I really do like doing the local stuff. And that's what I learned in J-School about myself—that not everything has to be so serious."
"This is the fun of reporting here in Oakland—I get to meet more people than I normally would as a citizen and do cool things," she continues. Some of her favorite stories, she says, came out of "being able to profile people I normally wouldn't meet, like the shepherd in the Oakland hills and the graveyard tombstone engravers and Dan Fontes the muralist." (If you want to meet a few of the other people who have crossed her path, try her profiles of the skaters of Bordertown or the tofu masters of Hodo Soy Beanery.)
Coming from another state, Dara wasn't sure what to expect when she started reporting in Oakland. "Oakland has that—in Spanish they call it mala fama—it's like bad fame," she says. "I was shocked to find that it is such a diverse city—not just the people but the industry and its leadership on a lot of issues, a lot on environmentalism." Some of her favorite stories, she says, came out of covering Oakland's environmental innovations. "Definitely the EBMUD digester," which turns food waste into energy, is one of her favorite topics, she says. "That is the second one in the world and the only one in the U.S. that is using food scraps. There are digesters everywhere but the idea of using food scraps is really innovative. Also the [Alameda County] green purchasing program and the fact that they're working on making county buildings LEED-certified, like the juvenile justice center."
If you have seen Dara around town, you know that she reports on two wheels; this, she says, was an important part of getting to know the area. "I used to be a bike racer in New York—and in New York that's how I got around the city at all times," she says. "Being on a bike and doing the [Keeping It Wheel] blog I had to ride all around the city, which helped me learn the city and what's going on, because there's a way you see things via bike that you don't walking or driving. Walking is too slow—most people won't walk where you'd ride a bike. Last weekend I rode a bike from West to East Oakland—you'd never walk through most of those areas, over highways and under underpasses. And in a car you wouldn't go on those routes either, and you go a lot faster so you don't have the opportunity to observe. In fact, whenever I feel like I need a story I'd hop on my bike and I start riding around and inevitably I find one."
And although three years seems short, a city can change a lot in that time. A few notable differences in Oakland, she says, are the city government's increasing interest in bikes ("When I was covering the mayoral campaign every candidate talked about bicycles!" she says), the proliferation of food trucks and the City Hall battle over where and when they should be permitted to park, and North Oakland's post-recession retail surge as new businesses set up shop. "Some of the first stories I wrote about were [about] the closing of stores during the height of the recession," Dara says. "A lot of that has bounced back. One of the first stories I did was about stores closing on Piedmont Avenue, and most of those storefronts are full now."
Oakland North has changed, too, she says. When she started out, she says, finding people to interview was tough. "I'd have to really bug people and call them a lot. Nobody wanted to talk to me very much because they had no idea who we were. The idea of hyperlocal reporting and blogs weren't very big yet."
Now, she says, hyperlocal sites like this one have a place in the local media ecosystem. "When people ask me to describe Oakland North I usually call it a 'news magazine.' We're not too much about breaking news—some stories maybe—it's more about analysis and people, which I think the community appreciates," she says. "I don't think it's best to do what newspapers are doing because that's getting done and people will always go to their local paper for those quick news bites. I think a successful hyperlocal would be more in-depth. We also cover a lot of things that local newspapers wouldn't."
As Dara's fellowship ends, a new one begins—this week we're welcoming Ryan Phillips back to the Oakland North team. Ryan is an East Bay native, and served a stint on the sports desk at the Santa Cruz Sentinel before coming to the J-School. He was a part of the spring 2010 Oakland North reporting crew, and has worked as an advisor for Oakland Tech's student paper and helped teach an undergraduate journalism course here at UC Berkeley. Ryan brings with him a deep background in investigative and public-records based reporting, as well as an interest in improving Oakland North's high school and local recreational sports coverage. You'll be seeing his byline appearing here soon.
In the meantime, Dara, please throw your hat into the air and let us give you a round of applause. Congratulations on all that you've achieved at Oakland North, and thank you for taking us all along for the ride.
Community | People
Oakland City Council delays budget talk
IS THERE A MONSTER IN LAKE MERRITT? SCIENTIST SAYS YES!
Steve on June 22, 2011 at 3:59 pm
Yay Dara! I always think of her when I'm riding my 70's Falcon bike around L.A. Oakland North will miss her!
jethro on June 22, 2011 at 4:24 pm
i crashed into her on my bike once and she wasn't even mad. endo. UUUNNNNGGGHHHHH!
oakland north is bumming to lose this little dynamo.
mSealy on June 22, 2011 at 8:09 pm
Dara is Amazing! Her stories make me proud to call Oakland my home. It's thru her work that I first discovered and will continue to read Oakland North. Her food stories were always a pleasure and luckily there is a long list of her recommendations that I've yet to taste. Her perspective will be greatly missed. I join you in wishing her continued success!
Sean Diaz on June 22, 2011 at 11:08 pm
Just my luck to discover such a wonderful writer on her last day! Nice knowing you, and good luck!
Alex on June 24, 2011 at 10:23 am
Dara, thanks for your smart, interesting and really exceptional coverage of Oakland. If you're not reporting here, it will be a loss for the city.
Communications Director, Oakland City Attorney's Office
Lydia Chavez on June 25, 2011 at 6:31 pm
Lovely, lc
Tasneem Raja on June 29, 2011 at 8:23 am
I teared up while reading this. What a beautiful tribute to an incredible reporter and one of my favorite people (who I have not seen in way too long, mama–let's remedy that asap). Dara's background is totally fascinating and her work at Oakland North has helped this site shine from the start. Can't wait to see what's next for both Ms. Kerr and ON–I'm sure they will both be rad forever.


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uva.nl
Institute for Logic, Language and Computation
About the ILLC
Support and Info
Imagine we could detect fake news – what then?
Researchers at the ILLC are developing algorithms to detect fake news and those who spread it. But the technical solution is only half the story. Unless applied carefully, automatic fake news detection is problematic.
15 December 2020, Iris Proff
© Marianne de Heer Kloots
This year, attacks and threats against journalists have increased world-wide, often linked to their reporting on the Corona crisis. The Dutch news broadcaster NOS recently decided to remove its logos from vans to prevent further assaults on reporters. On November 7, Donald Trump declared on Twitter he had won the US presidential election against official reports and millions of US Americans went along with it.
It seems that many people are losing trust in the free press. An important part of the problem is the dangerous spread of conspiracy theories and fake news on social media. Researchers at the ILLC are working on algorithms that can detect fake news and help us understand what characterizes communities vulnerable to misinformation. However, the technical approach to the problem does not come without the danger of unwanted side effects.
What is fake news?
"Fake news" is a fuzzy term. It can refer to anything from accidental false reports by legitimate journalists to political propaganda crafted to manipulate opinion. Click-baiting websites create fake news to maximize advertising revenues. Right wing politicians like to use the term as a generic attack against established media. In all its forms and flavours, fake news has a common effect: it became hard to know who to trust.
Recently, Facebook and Twitter started to take up the responsibility to fight misinformation spread through their platforms. Facebook has introduced a system to slow down the propagation of low-quality content. Twitter started to add warnings to disputed posts by manually selected individuals in the context of the Corona crisis and the US presidential election. The platform does however not make transparent what this selection is based on.
This approach does not scale up. Manually monitoring all Twitter activity for misinformation is not feasible. Why not do it with artificial intelligence instead?
Detecting fake news with AI
Detecting fake news comes down to a typical binary classification problem: you start off with a big database of news items which are labeled as real or as fake. Typically, these datasets do not specify what type of fake news they contain. Then you train a neural network to distinguish between the two types of news. After training, you can input a news item your model has not yet seen and out comes the model's classification: real or fake. There have been many attempts in recent years to detect fake news that follow this approach.
With few exceptions, these models do not fact-check. A neural network does not know who won the US election or how a Corona vaccine works. Instead, it learns general properties of fake news items, such as their structure, writing style and topics covered.
Some approaches to fake news detection additionally consider the social media users that tend to spread them. What jobs do they have? Political orientation? Where do they live? Using such information is effective but problematic. It allows the model to build explicit user profiles and to determine which political affiliation, religion, age, or jobs are associated with spreading fake news. This opens the door to bias and discrimination.
Two recent research projects by scientists at the ILLC focused on overcoming this problem.
Integrating information about the social context fake news spread in can improve the models' performance. Marco Del Tredici considered previous tweets and profile descriptions of users that shared a news item (A). Shantanu Chandra used information about how users are connected on Twitter and which articles they previously shared (B).
Social networks reveal fake news spreaders
Shantanu Chandra recently graduated from his Master in AI at the UvA. He currently works as AI Research Scientist at the management consulting company ZS.
"We believe that user communities on social media hold more valuable information than individual users", says Shantanu Chandra, who completed a research project on fake news detection for his master's thesis in Artificial Intelligence. On social media, people with similar interests form implicit communities – so called echo chambers – and share similar content. An individual's view is thus echoed and reinforced by their social network.
Shantanu built a model that makes use of the echo-chamber effect. One side of the model considers the text and title of a news item. The other side is a graph neural network handling information about the users that shared the article: what type of content do they usually share? And how are they connected with each other?
Incorporating social network information, the model can identify fake news more accurately. On a dataset containing news about celebrities, Shantanu's model performs better than any other on this data thus far. Along the way, he made an interesting observation: most users share both fake and real news, but some exclusively spread fake news. The more 'fake-news-only' users there are, it seems, the easier it is for the model to pick out fake news items. Those users were unlikely to be social bots, as these were identified and excluded during the creation of the dataset.
The language of fake news spreaders
Marco Del Tredici completed his PhD at the ILLC in the group of Raquel Fernández. He now is a Machine Learning Scientist at Amazon.
Marco Del Tredici developed another approach to detect fake news by looking at the language users produce themselves. "No language is produced out of a social context", the researcher states. "If you add extra information about the speaker and context, you have a better chance to understand what they mean."
Marco's research rests on two assumptions drawn from sociolinguistic research: first, people who are more prone to spread fake news share a specific set of thoughts and ideas. Second, these thoughts and ideas are reflected in language.
If the language of 'fake news spreaders' really has specific features, what are those? To find out, Marco used two convolutional neural networks, which he trained on the text of the news items and on the language that users generated themselves on Twitter. Convolutional neural networks are not commonly used in the field of natural language processing, as they do not capture the order of words. But they have an advantage: they seem to make it easier than other network architectures to look behind the scenes and find out what the model bases its decision on.
Marco found that using users' previous tweets improves how well the model can detect fake news. "Fake news spreaders have a language that is very consistent across datasets, reflected both in the topic and style", he concludes from his analyses. People who spread fake news tend to talk about specific topics such as war, crime and violence, but also about family, emotions and religion – no matter if they share articles about celebrities or politics. They also tend to use specific emojis and punctuation, all caps words and first-person language. Users who share real news, on the other hand, mostly talk about topics associated with the articles they share.
Results of topic modeling analysis on language generated by users classified as fake and real news spreaders, divided by the topic of shared articles (politics or celebrities).
In a nutshell: state-of-the-art neural networks can detect fake news with fairly high accuracy, especially when they consider the social context in which news items spread. They can also reveal what characterizes communities vulnerable to fake news. But how to use these models in the wild?
Fake news detection in the wild
Let's assume Twitter had an algorithm at hand that almost perfectly picks out fake news items. The most radical strategy would be to delete all posts containing news items that the algorithm classifies as fake. However, this would lead to the removal of some items that are not actually fake news, as no algorithm will work at 100 % accuracy. With the ability to censor social media posts comes an enormous power that could easily be questioned and misused. Freedom of speech – a value Twitter strongly identifies with – would be at stake.
A more reasonable option might be to flag news items with a warning, similar to the strategy Twitter is pursuing already manually. However, Twitter currently provides an explanation for why a tweet is disputed. This is well beyond what today's fake news detection algorithms can do. The effectiveness of flagging social media posts with generic warnings remains unclear. It might increase trust in social networks but could also achieve the opposite and antagonize online communities even more.
A solution could be to keep humans in the loop: an algorithm picks out posts that likely contain fake news, which are then checked by a human can add explanations. Manpower is a bottleneck here, but it might be a good strategy to pick out misinformation about specific events or topics, such as elections.
Another challenge is the algorithms' ignorance of the intentions behind fake news items. Should we treat malicious political manipulation the same as false but harmless click-baiting news? A one-fits-all solution to deal with everything that falls under the ill-defined term "fake news" probably does not exist.
When algorithms discriminate
Finally, there remains the threat of discrimination that lurks behind many AI applications. For instance, many hiring algorithms show implicit gender biases. Ads for supermarket cashier positions are mostly shown to women, while men are more likely to see ads for higher-paying jobs – even if the underlying algorithm had no explicit knowledge of gender.
Similarly, even if you do not feed users' political affiliation into your fake news detector, it might still pick up on it by looking at the language users produce and the content they share. Your model might classify an item someone shared as fake, just because this user fits the profile of the classical 'fake news spreader'. In other words, the errors your model makes will affect certain communities more than others – an effect known as disparate impact.
"We need to avoid stigmatizing people", emphasizes Raquel Fernández, researcher in natural language processing at the ILLC. Given that neural networks run on statistical generalizations, this is not a trivial task. In the end, the technical solution to the threat of fake news is only half a solution.
Tags artificial intelligence, fake news, social media
← What happens if you grow up without language? → The madness of the crowds
Probing by Priming: What do Large Language Models know about Grammar?
The wisdom of the crowds
Who is Anonymous?
Meet our new director: Robert van Rooij
Inside a reasoner's head
Five years with Sonja Smets
When residents design their city
The science and mystery of listening
Machines that gaze at landscapes
The madness of the crowds
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I enjoy the spontaneity and experimentation of the creative arts. I love helping students find their own undiscovered talents. I believe the best things in life require hard work.
Super fun activities for kids and adults alike!
Working with Michelle from Outta Our Minds is a blast! She does a great job connecting with her students while making Visual Art both fun and meaningful. While tying in approaches from many learning disciplines to her lessons, the projects Michelle has the students work on are diverse, paced to their abilities, and help each student grow steadily with constant interest. Highly Recommended!
I like to meet and discuss their goals. What areas do they want to work on? After getting a sense of what they want to do, we dig in and start creating. I believe in skill building, acquiring the technical overview of each media. Emmersing fully into their media of choice and having fun.
I have been a Visual Arts teacher for over 26 years. Mostly, working with middle school age students, but have mentored some students in high school as they pull their art portfolios together for graduation. I have also worked with elementary and pre-school age children. I currently work for an organization that focuses on directive drawing in still-life and cartooning.
My pricing is $60.00 to $75.00 per hour. It depends on location and if I am supplying the materials.
I began as a teenager, working at a day camp near my house. They decided to add an arts and crafts workshop and needed a teacher. I volunteered.
I would like to have anyone interested in improving their artistic skills. Drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics, etc... I have worked with elementary, middle and high school age students. I have also taught some college and adult students in some workshops.
Maybe you need help with a school project? Or do you need help starting a bedroom mural?
I participate in local craft shows. I enjoy meeting new people and sharing my creations.
Think about your goals? Is there a specific media you are interested in? I have experience with most media and love to experiment with pastel, pencil, painting, sculpture and puppet making. Ask lots of questions of your instructor. Make sure they are willing to work at your speed and help you mentor your craft.
What do I want? Which skills need further instruction? Can my teacher advance my talents and keep me interested? Do I feel challenged?


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Q: PHP Inbox Function I received some great help on my last question. Here is where I'm at:
I'm on the very last step of building a threaded messaging system for a dating website project for school and want to highlight a  with a different bg color when a message is new. This is the table structure:
CREATE TABLE `messages`
(
    `id` bigint (20) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT ,
    `fromme` integer (11) NOT NULL,
    `tome` integer (11) NOT NULL,
    `subject` varchar (255) NOT NULL,
    `message` longtext NOT NULL,
    `mydate` datetime NOT NULL,
    `thread` varchar (255) NOT NULL,
    `receipt` varchar (50) NOT NULL,
    `INDELETE` varchar (5),
    `SENTDELETE` varchar (5),
    PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) TYPE=MyISAM CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_swedish_ci;

This query determines if there are new messages (works correctly):
select * from messages where tome = '$yes' && receipt = 'n' and INDELETE !='y';

It then displays for example "3 New Messages."
All this displays correctly. The only problem is the inbox. Ollie Jones and Bill Karwin supplied me with some great help and it does work as intended, however when you return to the inbox after replying, that message is now gone.
SELECT messages.id,
       messages.fromme,
       messages.subject,
       messages.message,
       messages.receipt,
       messages.mydate,
       messages.thread,
       users.firstname, users.lastname, users.image1
  FROM messages,
       users,
       (SELECT MAX(messages.id) id, messages.thread thread
          FROM messages
        GROUP BY messages.thread) latest,
 WHERE messages.tome = '$yes'
   AND messages.INDELETE !='y'
   AND messages.fromme = users.id
   AND messages.id=latest.id
ORDER BY messages.mydate desc

The goal is to keep all of the messages in the inbox, just highlighting the new ones as above and grouping them by thread. Any ideas? Thanks JC

A: Look at the code that is run when replying to a message. Now compare that to the where clause for the query to pull messages in the inbox.
Something you're doing when a reply is sent is causing the messages not to meet the criteria for the inbox query. Without seeing the reply code, that's the only help I can give.


text:
Home /Inkheart (CD-Audio)
Inkheart (CD-Audio)
By Cornelia Funke, Lynn Redgrave (Read by)
#1: Inkheart (Inkheart Trilogy, Book 1) (Paperback): $10.99
#2: Inkspell (Inkheart Trilogy, Book 2) (Paperback): $10.99
#3: Inkdeath (Inkheart Trilogy, Book 3) (Paperback): $12.99
From the author of the sensational New York Times bestseller The Thief Lord comes a thrilling new adventure about magic and self-discovery.
Meggie lives a quiet life alone with her father, a bookbinder. But her father has a deep secret--he possesses an extraordinary magical power. One day a mysterious stranger arrives who seems linked to her father's past. Who is this sinister character and what does he want? Suddenly Meggie is involved in a breathless game of escape and intrigue as her father's life is put in danger. Will she be able to save him in time?
Includes an excerpt from Inkspell, the sequel to Inkheart, read by Brendan Fraser.
CORNELIA FUNKE is Germany's bestselling children's author after J. K. Rowling and R. L. Stine. In the fall of 2002, she made her brilliant debut in the English-language market with the release of The Thief Lord, the fantastical New York Times bestseller which Kirkus called "One spellbinding story." Ms. Funke lives in Hamburg, Germany with her family.
Publisher: Listening Library (Audio)
Publication Date: August 23rd, 2005
Series: Inkheart Trilogy
Juvenile Fiction / Fairy Tales & Folklore
Paperback (May 1st, 2005): $10.99
Paperback (January 1st, 2009): $9.99
Paperback, Large Print, Large Print (March 1st, 2006): $11.95
Audio Cassette (September 12th, 2003): $39.95
Paperback (August 1st, 2011): $15.75
Hardcover (October 1st, 2003): $24.99