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Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Value Investing Congress Day One - Business Insider
The event starts at 8:30 AM ET.
The conference speaker line-up features hedge fund heavyweights including, David Einhorn (Greenlight Capital), Bill Ackman (Pershing Square Capital Management), Glenn Tongue and Barry Rosentein (JANA Partners) among many others. ?
Ackman is scheduled to speak at 5 p.m. today. ?Einhorn, who presented his Green Mountain Coffee short in the past, will speak tomorrow.?
We're live blogging throughout this event, so refresh this page and check Clusterstock for all the latest news and investment picks coming from the VIC.
8:34 AM | We're up and running.
The Value Investing Congress should start any minute now. ?Stay tuned for all the latest updates.?
8:36 AM | We spoke with Whitney Tilson earlier
Tilson, co-founder of the Value Investing Congress, told us he thinks Bill Ackman's presentation after the closing bell today and David Einhorn's presention tomorrow could be market moving. ?
8:41 AM | Guy Gottfried, the founder and manager of Rational Investment Group, is up first.
He's presenting two investing ideas today.?
1. ?ClubLink Enterprises, which trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange, is his first investment idea. ?
The company operates 51 golf clubs in Canada and the U.S. ?However, it also operates a tourism business in Alaska, including a railway and a port. ?
He says that ClubLink offers two high quality businesses trading at 5.5x free cash flow (FCF). ?
Gottfried thinks the stock is overlooked because it has no sell-side coverage or conference calls. ?It's also illiquid as the CEO own a majority of the owndership. ?
He says that it's a fairly high quality business. ?First, it's the largest golf club operator in Canada and a bunch of those clubs are highly ranked. ?What's more is it's a highly cash flow generative business with annual dues and entry fees being paid up front. ?It also has a competitive advantage given that club members have access to the other clubs, he says. ?As for the tourism business, most Alaska cruise ship passengers dock at ClubLink's docks in the Port of Skagway, Gottfried explains. ?
Some other reasons for why Gottfried is picking ClubLink is despite the recession, he says that earnings have been "resilient". ?He also says that CEO Rai Sahi is a "terrific owner-operator." ?
He says that ClubLink has a massive opportunity in the Florida golf market.?
9:03 AM | Gottfried's second investment pick is Canam Group
Canam Group, a steel joint maker, trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange (CAM).?
He says that it's undervalued and that the company is well-run.?
9:28 AM | Kian Ghazi of Hawkshaw Capital says they're shutting down the hedge fund.
He made the decision to wind down the business and close Hawkshaw after nine years of business. ?
"We endured our workst year in 2011," he says, adding that they lost 11% in 2011.
So far, Hawkshaw Capital has liquidated its portfolio and they're in the final stages of closing down.?
9:33 AM | Ghazi's investment pick is Layne Christensen (LAYN)
Layne Christensen is a water-well driller and mineral exploration company.
For the company's valuation, Ghazi says he sees limited downside and that the stock rarely trades below tangible book. He says there's limited downside because the mineral exploration business offers a "firm floor." ?
He also sees a very attractive upside. ?
There are two ways to play this investment.
1. ?He says you can play this investment by hedging the mineral exploration business. ?He says there is a risk that the business fundamentals diverge between Major Drilling and Mineral Exploration, causing the hedge to fail.?
2. ?If one doesn't hedge, one could face the situation where the mining cycle rolls and MinEx profits dry up. ?Without any earnings support how firm of a support will TBV provide. Gazhi?says he personally owns it unhedged in this manner.
In summary,?Ghazi says...?
* ?The MinEx value alone at $19/share supports the entire market cap.?
* ?The problems in the water segment are isolated to one unit generating heavy losses?
* There have been key steps taken by the new CEO for a significant ?margin recovery in the water division.?
* ?The concerns about municipal exposure are misguided.?
Finally, he says LAYN is trading at tangible book value and the downside is limited. ?He also personally owns the stock.?
10:17 AM | It's break time. The conference will resume at 10:50 a.m. ET with Whitney Tilson presenting some of his favorite ideas. Stay tuned.
10:52 AM | We're back. Whitney Tilson is up next to present his favorite ideas.
10:53 AM | Whitney Tilson is going to talk about three stocks today.
First, he's giving an overview of the U.S. economy going over GDP, consumer confidence, jobs reports, etc.?He notes that the U.S. economy's recovery has been "quite strong." ?
There's a lot of mythology about the causes of the economic weakness, Tilson explains. He says there's tremendous weakness in housing market, government spending and layoffs that are the real headwinds in the economic recovery. ?
He is cautiously optimistic that a tepid recovery will continue in the U.S. with the S&P 500 up more than 16% YTD. ?He says the markets have already had a good year and he doesn't see much upside unless the economy really takes off.?
11:03 AM | Tilson: 'What would you rather own over the next 10 years?'
1. A 10 Year U.S. Treasury currently at 1.65%?
OR
2. The following four stocks, all of which are rated AAA?
* Exxon Mobil
* Microsoft
* ADP
*Johnson& Johnson?
He thinks it's absolute madness to favor the Treasuries over those stocks. ?He says that investors with a 10 year horizion should diversify their portfolio of dividend paying blue-chips stocks purchased at moderate multiples.?
11:09 AM | His three stock picks
1.?Netflix?-- Tilson has experience on both the short and long side. ?
On the long side, his investment thesis is that it's a market leader in a rapidly growing global business in streaming video. ?Tilson says there's a lot of talk about competition, but very little is currently detectable, he explains. ?The company is difficult to value, he says, because it has chosen to forego current profitability to drive growth by investing in a.) more, better streaming content and b.) international expansion. ?
He's also comparing Amazon to Netflix. ?He says they both use technology and the internet to deliver an old product "in a new way." ?He says they both have "visionary, entrepreneurial CEOs." He says Amazon is a great, convenient service at a low price. ?He says that both of the companies have extremely large, global growth opportunities. ?
He says Netflix reminds him of Amazon circa 2001. ?However, Tilson thinks that Netflix is a better business than Amazon.?
11:46 AM | Tilson's stock picks...
2.??Berkshire Hathaway?-- He says Berkshire (BRK.A) is 24% below intrinsic value of $175,500, close to a multi-decade low. ?He says it's "extremely safe" and very attractive. ?He says that it's likely Buffett is going to be running Berkshire for five more years and 50% likely he'll be running it for 10 more years. ?
3. ?Howard Hughes Corp.?-- Tilson says he's increased his position. ?
For HHC's valuation, Tilson has a range of $67 to $125 per share. ?He says that HHC makes a good inflation hedge. ??
11:46 AM | Tilson says that his hedge fund is 'about flat' year-to-date.
He says that it's been a rough couple of years. ?
11:52 AM | Up next is Zack Buckley's presentation 'Is It 1999 Again?'
Buckley runs Buckley Capital Partners, a Miami-based hedge fund. ?
He says the shorting China trade has already played out. ?
11:56 AM | Buckley's investment idea is shorting Splunk
Splunk (SPLK) is a software platform that helps analyze all sorts of data.
He says that it's easy to short. ?
Buckley says that Splunk is in a "very tough competitive position". ?It's squeezed into a niche between quality and price, he explains. Its competitors include HP, Intel, Oracle, Microsoft, among many others. ?
In conclusion, Splunk has a weak business model with low recurring revenue. ?It's an undifferentiated prodcut in a rapidly changing, fiercely competitive industry, he says.?
12:19 PM | Woah! Look at this chart of Splunk after Zach Buckley's presentation about shorting the stock. It was weak before, but he definitely moved it.
12:34 PM | It's lunch time. The conference will resume at 2:00 p.m.
Stay tuned for Barry Rosentein of JANA Partners and Bill Ackman later this afternoon.
2:09 PM | JANA Partners Barry Rosenstein's investment pick is Canadian fertilizer company Agrium.
Rosenstein says that Agrium (AGU) is a new position. ?He's giving a bullish case for the stock.
He says that Agrium is cheaper than its peers. ?JANA thinks that Agrium can unlock shareholder value by separating retail and wholesale. ?
From JANA...?
"JANA belives that for years Agrium's full value creation potential has been buried by the company's conglomerate structure and burdened by operational missteps in its retail distriubtion business. ?As a result, Agrium trades at a significant discount to its true value and as consistently underperfromed the weighted average of its peers in total shareholder return over the long term. ?Agrium has also underperformed its true earnings potential due to factors including a failure to manage costs, poor capital allocation and poor disclsoure..."
2:51 PM | Mick McGuire of Mercato Capital Management is talking mid-cap American stocks
His focus, here, is land.
2:54 PM | 3 companies, first up Alexander and Baldwin
Own commercial real estate in Hawaii and continental U.S., landholdings around Hawaiian islands.
They own: 8 million sq ft in retail office and commercial real estate, Hawaiian resort and residential properties, and millions of acres of land on Hawaii?
They own 20% of the island of Maui alone.
He sees value here as tourism to Hawaii is increasing and the first direct flight from China to Hawaii just started flying.
3:04 PM | Next stock from McGuire, GenCorp GY
More real estate holdings highlighted here.
Own 6,000 acres of?land near a mjor highway and good school districts in Sacramento. They've secured permits to develop this land.
Valuing this land at $50,000 and acre...?
His favorite aspect is that the reported net income understates the value of the company for a number of reasons.?
3:12 PM | Last idea from McGuire ? Brookfield Residential Properties BRP
It's a homebuilder but most of its assets are in landholdings.
Only 12% of property on balance sheet are homes, over 60% raw land.
They focus on acquiring, titling, developing land for homebuilders... they rarely build.
Why he likes 1. Housing is going to recover. 2. Good homebuilders will be replenishing their land supply was housing improves.
3:28 PM | Great nugget of wisdom on real estate companies from McGuire
The trick is to find companies with a good operating biz and good real estate holdings to match.
4:21 PM | John Mauldlin is talking uncertainty and risk.... don't worry there'll be stock picks along the way.
Most models are "worthless when reality hits them" uncertainty is the surprise, that's what moves our portfolios. They don't have to be bad necessarily, they're "the steam engines of our portfolios."?
4:32 PM | Mauldin... Europe is a disaster there is no way they can get out of their current malaise.
"The solution was to not form the EuroZone in the beginning, their problem was a policy mistake 14 years ago."
The U.S.'s biggest problem is defecite, we know how to solve it ? raise taxes and cut spending. This election is about finding a compromise. Neither the Republicans or Democrats have a solution that works... and he's confident we'll do that after the first of the year.
4:39 PM | I look for companies that have an edge in what's going to be around in the next decade.
Monsanto is one, says Mauldin.
"There's value to be found out there in looking OVER the current problems..."
4:43 PM | Mauldin: I don't get China
I don't get a country that has 50% of its money savings compounded at 8% per year.?
It's not like any business model I've seen, he says.
On the other hand:
"You gotta have nerves of steel to short something like that, Jim does, God bless him."
4:54 PM | Mauldin: This is the trade of the decade.
Short the yen, go long Japanese tech companies.
The Japanese are printing money which boosts their stock market. Think about it. He's seeing this as a 200-300% trade.
5:02 PM | Bill Ackman is up...
Ackman says the best part is at the end... here we go.
He's back on GGP... that means mall real estate. He calls it one of the "great stable businesses," but it's super hard to get into.
5:14 PM | Right now, he's telling to story of how Brookfield tried to sneak its way into controlling GGP
Brookfield had bought a stake from Fairholme. They also bought shares without filling out the necessary mpaperwork (form 4s).
Luckily, Ackman had a decent amount of voting power for directors on the board.
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/value-investing-congress-day-one-2012-10
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Watching crystals 'heal' themselves: Novel way to remove defects in materials
ScienceDaily (Oct. 1, 2012) ? In a paper just published in Nature Materials, a team of researchers that includes William T.M. Irvine, assistant professor in physics at the University of Chicago, has succeeded in creating a defect in the structure of a single-layer crystal by simply inserting an extra particle, and then watching as the crystal "heals" itself. The trick to this self-healing property is that the crystal, an array of microscopic particles, must be curved.
This effect, which carries important implications for improving the conductivity of electronics and other realms of materials science, was predicted six years ago by physicist Mark Bowick of Syracuse University, along with David Nelson, Homin Shin and Alex Travesset, in research supported by the National Science Foundation. NSF also funded the new study.
In order to prove their prediction experimentally, Bowick sought out Paul M. Chaikin of the Center for Soft Matter Research at New York University. Chaikin enlisted the help of Irvine while he was a postdoctoral scientist working in Chaikin's laboratory.
All three researchers specialize in the branch of materials science called "soft matter," which studies a wide range of semi-solid substances such as gels, foams and liquid crystals.
Of soft matter and salad dressing
Bowick described the soft matter microemulsions he works with as being similar to a mayonnaise-based ranch dressing.
"Mayonnaise is made from a mixture of olive oil and vinegar (which is essentially water)," he explained. "You have to beat the ingredients for a long time to disperse tiny droplets of the vinegar in the oil to make an emulsion." But keeping so many droplets mixed evenly throughout the oil requires the presence of a surfactant, a stabilizer that is equally happy in both the oil and the water.
"In ranch dressing, the surfactant used is ground-up mustard seed particles, which arrange themselves at the interface between the water and the oil," Bowick said. "The mustard seed particles collect on the surface of the water droplets."
To study curved crystals, the researchers emulated ranch dressing by adding microscopic acrylic glass particles to an emulsion of glycerol droplets mixed in a base of oil.
Like the mustard seed, the glass particles naturally collect on the surface of individual glycerol droplets. Depending on the experiment, somewhere between 100 and 10,000 particles coat each droplet.
The particles' positive electric charges repel each other, causing them to arrange themselves naturally in a honeycomb pattern, with each particle equally distant from six others.
Scarred crystals
The regular six-sided pattern doesn't fit perfectly around the spherical droplet any more than gift-wrapping a soccer ball results in a perfectly flat paper covering. Just as the paper wrinkles when molding it to the surface of the ball, the curved crystal pattern generates 12 defects, or scars, evenly spaced around the sphere.
The number and location of these scars is a fundamental structural property prescribed by the geometry of the sphere. A similar pattern can be seen on the leather cover of the soccer ball, which requires 12 five-sided pentagons (defects) evenly spaced within an overall six-sided pattern.
Bowick was a member of the team that originally discovered this 12-scar property of curved crystals in 2003. After that, he wondered what would happen if they added an extra particle, called an interstitial, right in the middle of the crystal.
"Even though the particles have self-organized into a crystal pattern, they are still free to wiggle about within that structure," Bowick said. "You'd expect that an additional particle would just push the other ones apart slightly and settle in place, as it would on a flat surface."
The result would be a defective pattern containing an area of seven- and five-sided shapes, rather than the regular six-sided hexagons. But what Bowick and colleagues predicted using computer models is that on a curved surface, an extra particle added halfway between two scars would create a defect in the pattern that splits into two parts.
They calculated that the strain on the crystalline structure caused by these two defects would "flow" away from site, like ripples on a pond, as the particles readjust their distances from one another. Eventually the defects would migrate to opposite scars, where they would disappear.
Amazingly, the scientists predicted that the original particle's mass would remain close to where it was placed, and large areas of the hexagonal pattern would have rotated slightly ? -- about 30 degrees. But the original defect would be gone.
To prove this remarkable result experimentally, however, required a special instrument.
Making it work
"William Irvine had already begun his beautiful experiments in my lab on colloidal crystals on curved surfaces," recalled NYU's Chaikin. "The present study came from a conversation that Mark Bowick and I had on a plane coming back from a meeting several years ago. Mark's experiment was a natural extension of William's work."
"For this project, we had to figure out how to add a particle to the curved crystal, while imaging the particles as they shift around in three-dimensional space," explained Irvine, who is now at UChicago's James Franck Institute. "This makes the experiment considerably more complicated."
Irvine planned to use optical tweezers to grab a microscopic particle from the surrounding emulsion and place it on the surface of a droplet using radiation pressure from a focused laser beam.
"In most experiments, you come in with the laser 'tweezers' using the same lens as you use for imaging the particle, and that's great, because you want to focus the beam on the same plane where you're looking," Irvine said.
But for this experiment, the laser tweezers and the microscope had to be separated.
"A confocal microscope selects a very thin slice of the object to be imaged, so that one slice is in focus and the rest of the image (before and after) is out of focus, like a photo of a person with their face in focus and the background blurred," he explained. "In order to create a full three-dimensional image, you move the objective up and down and bring the different slices into focus one at a time."
But moving the lens also moves the laser beam holding the particle.
"In order to hold onto a particle and watch what happens as you gradually bring it to the surface of the droplet, you have to essentially build a second microscope on top of the first one," Irvine said. "Technically, that's not trivial -- you have to get a lot of things to work at the same time."
But once Irvine had designed and built the instrument, the team tested Bowick's predictions and actually created video images showing the defects moving across the crystal surface and disappearing into the scars.
Self-healing graphene
"The study of crystals on curved surfaces is interesting and important for systems that range from geodesic domes to viruses to Buckyballs," said Chaikin, referring to symmetric molecules of carbon. "The defect structure and the 'healing' of defects are particularly important in the conductivity, heat and mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes, graphene and similar materials."
Graphene, a two-dimensional sheet of carbon molecules, is a very strong material and a good conductor of electricity.
"There are always going to be defects that will decrease the conductivity of graphene," said Bowick. "Ultimately, for electronic devices, you want graphene with high conductivity and as pure as possible."
And that's where the researchers' discovery could prove an ideal solution. "You might be able to simply flex a piece of graphene, remove the defects, and improve the conductivity," Bowick said.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Chicago.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- William T. M. Irvine, Mark J. Bowick, Paul M. Chaikin. Fractionalization of interstitials in curved colloidal crystals. Nature Materials, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nmat3429
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/FdN1QiMeSWM/121002092841.htm
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Can the World Save Lives and Combat Climate Change?
Environmental, humanitarian and economic challenges do not exist in isolation, but that is how the world most often deals with them. To take just one example: one of the key challenges facing cities around the globe in the 21st century is flooding. Flooding is determined by environmental factors, from climate change to overcrowding of floodplains with habitation. Flooding is also often a humanitarian disaster when it strikes and can be an aftereffect of big development projects, like hydroelectric dams.
Or take the metals in a cell phone. As Judith Rodin, president of the philanthropic Rockefeller Foundation, noted at her organization's event about "resilient livelihoods" on September 25, tungsten is the "metal that puts the buzz in your cell phone." Mining that tungsten is an economic development opportunity but also too often creates a humanitarian crisis when such economically valuable minerals become a source of conflict?as has been the case in the eastern Congo. At the same time, the mining practices used to extract such metals can be more or less bad for the environment and human health.
The U.N. buzz phrase of the last decade?"sustainable development"?is slowly morphing into a new sustainable buzzword for the development and humanitarian communities: resilience. Resilience means, at its core, an ability to bounce back from stress in a healthy way, Rodin said. But, as development expert Edward Carr of the University of South Carolina rightly notes, resilience of what, to what? Enabling the poor to be resilient in the face of challenges like climate change may require a fundamental rethinking of the methods used to address both poverty and global warming.
After all, poverty and climate change are inextricably linked: The developed world has progressed, thanks to fossil fuels, and burning them has resulted in the elevated levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trapping heat, raising global temperatures and spawning weird weather. To resolve the energy poverty of billions will likely require burning more fossil fuels, but preventing catastrophic climate change definitely requires reducing concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gas. "You cannot tackle one without the other," Rodin noted.
Thus far, despite some recent success in reducing poverty thanks to rising living standards in China, the world has mostly failed to truly tackle either. Although drought in the Horn of Africa is predictable and cyclical even under the present climate, famine still stalks the region. "To have drought at the level of 2011 and no deaths in Ethiopia? That was progress," argued Ertharin Cousin, executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme at the Rockefeller event. Yet, thousands perished of starvation throughout the region and populations in Somalia, Kenya and elsewhere remain reliant on aid?a decades-long failure that also encompasses civil war and political instability. "How do you eventually graduate from aid?" asks Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, CEO of Vestergaard Frandsen, a Denmark-based company that makes disease-control products.
Plus, "we are not winning the war on hunger. We are losing it," argued European Union Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva at the Rockefeller event. One of the big reasons that levels of hunger have started to grow again is the impact of climate change?variable weather means variable harvests whereas programs to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of cars have ended up taking away food to make biofuels like ethanol. The lack of investment in agricultural innovation and the devastating impact of food aid on local farmers hasn't helped either. "Yes, we feed the hungry but we kill the farmers," Georgieva noted. Or, as food security specialist Amadou Diallo of the government of Niger said: "The basis of peace is food security." When people lack food, they turn to rebellion or terrorism.
Switching from food to cash grants except in those cases where food cannot be provided locally may be the key, argued Degan Ali of Adeso, an advocacy group for development in Africa, at the Rockefeller event. Such "flexible interventions" give the poor the ability to invest in their homes and villages rather than abandon everything and become permanent refugees.
In fact, one of the goals of humanitarian assistance now is preventative: keep people home rather than trekking to refugee camps, argued Rajiv Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, at the event. Interventions that have been proved to work in that regard are as simple as selling off livestock or providing fodder for lactating goats. These ideas "solve the problem in a far more fundamental manner than rushing in with food aid," Shah argued?a fact that has been born out in academic research for the past several decades.
At the same time, the world will continue to urbanize, as one-time villagers abandon everything and move to the city for a better life. That may improve economic circumstances but it also tends to increase the impact of natural disasters. Floods are more devastating, thanks to migrant villagers building in neglected floodplains or other undesirable areas.
So finding new ways to fund environmental improvement and economic development at the same time will be crucial. And a new project in western Kenya may provide an all too unique example of how the two might be linked.
Life saver?
The LifeStraw is a plastic tube with a hollow-fiber membrane tucked inside. The membrane filters out bacteria, particles, viruses and other nasty stuff from freshwater, making it safe for drinking according to both U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organization standards. That is no small thing in the all too many parts of the world where there is no guarantee that drinking water will not induce illness. All told, nearly one billion people worldwide lack access to such safe drinking water?a long-standing humanitarian crisis.
More than 870,000 households in western Kenya now have family-size capacity versions of these straws, part of a program to deliver, maintain and make sure such potentially life-saving technology is used. And this humanitarian program is funded by selling carbon dioxide emission reductions.
What's the connection between CO2 and humanitarian aid? One word: firewood. In the absence of the LifeStraw, these Kenyan families must boil their water to ensure its safety. To do so, they must gather extra firewood (more than that they would need just for cooking), which spurs both bigger the cutting down of trees as well as times when such critical safety practices have to be skipped due to a lack of resources. Skipping even one day of safe drinking water can mean a health disaster. "It's not a vaccine. You can't relax and stop using it," Vestergaard Frandsen says. As it stands, more than 1.5 million children die of diarrheal disease annually around the world, mostly due to bad drinking water.
In order to generate its 2.7 million metric tons worth of verified emission reductions to date, the LifeStraw effort sends field workers out every six months to ensure the technology is both working and being used?and have committed to keep doing so for a decade. Already, according to the company, they are "seeing a statistically significant reduction in the odds of a child under five presenting at a clinic with diarrhea," Vestergaard Frandsen says. Each LifeStraw can filter at least 18,000 liters?enough to supply a family of four for three years with their clean drinking water needs.
The carbon credits fetch between $11.50 and $14 per metric ton, generating at least $30 million for the project. But such a charismatic carbon project is all too rare these days, both because the carbon market is dominated by less robust emission reductions from heavy industry in China and India as well as development efforts that proceed with little thought of the environmental cost or co-benefits. At present, there is simply no way to scale up such innovative efforts because there is no larger market for such "premium" credits as well as no interest from aid agencies. "In development aid, we give upfront dollars and start hoping," Vestergaard Frandsen notes. In order to solve environmental and economic problems, that has to change.
Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
? 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/world-save-lives-combat-climate-change-113100145.html
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Monday, October 1, 2012
Syria siege on Aleppo alarms antiquities experts
CAIRO (AP) ? The pictures shown Monday at a gathering of Arab antiquities experts gave a glimpse into the damage Syria's civil war has wreaked on the heritage of one of the world's most ancient cities.
The wooden gates of Aleppo's medieval Citadel are gone, a stone engraving above it damaged. A bomb crater now marks the entrance, and its walls are pockmarked with bullet holes. A stump is all that remains of the minaret of the 14th century al-Kiltawiya school. A rocket has crashed into el-Mihmandar Mosque, also built some 700 years ago.
The images, taken from amateur video filmed inside Aleppo, were shown at a gathering of antiquities experts from across the Middle East, who warned that Syria's 18-month-old conflict is wiping out its archaeological treasures.
"Syria is a museum of Islamic history," said Walid al-Akhras, professor of Islamic History and Archaeology at Aleppo University. "That who fires a gun at history is as if he has fired a cannon at the future."
Aleppo, where there have been settlements for more than 10,000 years, has been the site of fierce battles for more than two months between regime troops and rebels fighters that have brought relentless shelling and gunbattles. Over the weekend, a fire sparked by fighting tore through the city's centuries-old covered market. At 12 kilometers (7.5 miles), it is the Middle East's longest souk. The fire burnt 500 shops, burning through wooden doors and scorching stalls and vaulted passageways.
The experts Monday, however, said the true extent of the damage in Aleppo and at historic sites around the country is still unknown because experts have not been able to get in to assess the damage.
The Syrian conflict has killed more than 30,000 people, according to activists. Hundreds of thousands are seeking refuge outside the country and entire towns have been destroyed by shelling.
"People haven't stopped crying over the lives lost and the bloodshed to begin crying over our lost heritage," said al-Akhras, who fled Aleppo.
Monday's emergency conference organized by the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) at Cairo University aimed to raise alarm bells over the destruction of antiquities around Syria. The Saudi-based ISESCO, comprises 50 Middle Eastern, African and Asian nations.
Participants said that ultimately the regime of President Bashar Assad is to blame for the destruction.
"The government is responsible first and last for the protection of antiquities," said al-Akhras.
Participants expressed concern over looting that has already taken place at museums and the continued shelling of ancient sites, including in Aleppo. Some of the country's most significant sites have been turned into bases for soldiers and rebels, including historic citadels and Turkish bath houses known as hamams.
Egypt's antiquities minister, Mohammed Ibrahim, said the world "wants to avoid an Iraq scenario" when looters made off with some of that country's finest treasures during the U.S.-led military invasion in 2003.
ISESCO representative Abdel-Aziz Salem said saving Aleppo amounts to protecting not just a city and its people, but "Islamic and Arab identity."
Aleppo, Syria's largest city, has been a crossroads of civilizations for millennia. It has been occupied by the Greeks, Byzantines and multiple Islamic dynasties. As one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities, Aleppo's old center was added in 1986 to UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites, and the city was named by ISESCO as the capital of Islamic culture in 2006.
Cairo University Antiquities Professor Mahmoud al-Banna said he is in disbelief at what the Syrians are doing to their own heritage.
"What Syrians are doing to their city is no different than what the Tatars or Mongols did," he said, referring to invasions in the 13th and 14th centuries that devastated the region.
"We are talking about the history of all people, of humankind and not just of Islam," he said. "The war has been going on for 18 months, but you ? the world? where have you been?"
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syria-siege-aleppo-alarms-antiquities-experts-185052065.html
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GOP cash infusion heats up House race
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The Trendrr Blog ? Blog Archive ? Trendrr Social TV Round-up 10/1
GENERAL NEWS
Metrics Are Easy; Insight Is Hard via HBR
In contrast to this abundant data, insights are relatively rare. Insights here are defined as actionable, data-driven findings that create business value. They are entirely different beasts from raw data. Delivering them requires different people, technology, and skills ? specifically including deep domain knowledge. And they?re hard to build?Consider that improving Netflix?s recommendation-engine accuracy by about 10% proved so challenging that only two teams ? of tens of thousands from over 180 countries competing for the $1 million prize ? were able to hit the goal. Or that, despite significant work to improve online display ad targeting, the average clickthrough rate (and, by implication, relevance) still remains so low that display ads on average receive only one click for every 1,000 views.
The Future of Storytelling: A Participatory Endeavor via Nieman Reports
V. Michael Bove, Jr., a principal research scientist, leads a number of initiatives at the lab including the Center for Future Storytelling? one of three codirectors of the center, talked about television viewers as directors and media consumers as collaborators? Connectivity is a given, just as are richer user interfaces and offering more context. The best way to deal with an onslaught of information is to have the system figure out what?s appropriate for you. No one really needs 1,000 television channels.
Nielsen: There Is Room For Rivals? Data via MediaPost
Rentrak CEO Bill Livek has been saying for years the TV measurement market offers an opportunity for both its system and the entrenched Nielsen ratings to succeed. Now, apparently Nielsen agrees. Rentrak has signed many local stations to use its products, based on set-top-box (STB) data, which it says can complement the ?sample currency? Nielsen propagates.
Getting Social With Your Favorite TV Characters via Brittany Berger
I?m loving that characters are starting to join us on social media! So far, it seems like social accounts are usually created for the main character only. Hopefully, their friends and family will begin to join them.
Social TV Advertising And Monetization Elements via Never.no Blog
The bottom line is that when we talk about digital socialization around television, there is a gap of information as to how we can commercialize emerging TV formats?.Real time sharing of information often creates real world monetization?social media, greatly extends the reach of any form of communication?.This is one of the greatest powers of Social TV. Audience driving. With the wealth of potential programming for viewers to watch however, we need strategies to create the highest levels of socialization and separate from the rest of the pack.
How ad agencies are a bottleneck in the video?economy?via paidContent
YouTube?s director of product management,?Shiva Rajaraman, summed up the situation at this week?s Mobilize conference.?Rajaraman explained that many conventional?constrains?of video advertising ? especially the 15 or 30 second time limits ? are artificial and dictated by the strictures of traditional TV. But in the online digital environment, many of those conventions don?t apply and there is endless opportunity for new types of creative ads.
How TV and Film Industries Are Adapting Online via The Content Strategist
Before??Bachelorette,? a comedy starring Kirsten Dunst?was released in theaters, it came out on iTunes. The movie premiered Aug. 10 on the platform, nearly one month before appearing on the big screen?In August,?Hulu premiered Mindy Kaling?s new show,??The Mindy Project,? before FOX aired Sept. 25. ?Ben and Kate,? another FOX show,?was streamed on Facebook and Hulu?before its premiere. NBC showed the pilots for??The New Normal? and ?Revolution? on Hulu,?Amazon Video, and iTunes to pump up anticipation for the official debuts??By putting the pilot episodes online, they can gauge whether their investment is worthwhile,? he says. ?Networks can tell whether a show is doing well based on the unique visitors to the video and the activity that the comments page is attracting.? And producers of these shows can gauge ?whether a show is fully promising or needs some adjustment? based on YouTube comments.
Brands: How TV continues impacting digital via BizReport
According to new data out from Convertro television continues impacting not only traffic to branded and non-branded sites, but it is also pushing up clicks ? and thereby revenue.
More Are Watching Internet Video on Actual TVs, Research Shows via NYTimes
More people are now watching Internet video ? everything from cat videos to streaming prime-time shows ? on big-screen televisions than on computers, according to a new report from the NPD Group, a market research company?The report did not give details about mobile devices, only personal computers. But the firm found that the number of people who report that their home television is the primary screen for watching paid and free Internet video has increased to 45 percent, up from 33 percent a year earlier.
FOR THE SKEPTICS
Social TV Check-in?s: A Metric With Measly Market Merit via TDG Research
Though Nielsen-like TV viewership metrics are far from perfect, they are the industry-recognized standard by which programs are objectively valued and monetized. Social TV check-ins, on the other hand, have no such objective value (except in the mind of their purveyors). To some, sTV check-in metrics are interesting, but there is no way around the fact they represent but a minute number of viewers and even then it is uncertain what this ?metric? tells us about these consumers?When it comes to social TV applications, the hype is both deafening and dangerous, as it can prop up apps with little or no value while drowning out apps that may actually resonate with consumers and stand a chance of success.
AdAge Follows with Its Own Swipe at Social TV Metrics via TDG Research
TDG is set to publish two new reports on social TV users, the first offering a cursory segmentation of social TV users; separating them into Talkers (those that use social networks like Twitter or instant messaging to communicate with others about the programs they are actively viewing) and Engagers (those that use synch applications that encourage the viewer to interact directly with the content via a second screen).
SHOWS AND NETWORKS: WWE, HBO, CBS, FOX, SHOWTIME, SYFY, MTV, VIACOM
110 Trending Topics in 5 Hours: How WWE Wrestlemania Body-Slammed Social Media via Mashable
Behind strong pushes on Twitter and YouTube, WWE Wrestlemania XXVIII laid the smack down on social media last weekend, teaching a digital engagement lesson to the sports entertainment world.
The CW Embeds a Live Twitter Feed Inside Its ?EW? Print Ad via Ad Week
To promote its fall lineup, the CW is putting LCD screens running video clips and a live Twitter feed?tweets by and mentions of @CW_Network?in copies of Entertainment Weekly?s Oct. 5 issue.
CBS introduces ?Tweet Week? to launch fall shows via Digital Trends
It?s interesting to see CBS pushing social media promotion of its new shows so heavily, considering it has traditionally been seen as the oldest-skewing of all the broadcast networks with its steady diet of procedurals and ?safe? comedies. The combination of this network and Twitter can either be looked at as a case of CBS trying to get in touch with a younger demographic ? or, alternatively, a sign that Twitter and Facebook are now firmly mainstream enough that their own demographics are shifting upwards in age.
FOX & trueAnthem to Measure Social Sharing of Digital TV Content via Talk TV World
Fox Broadcasting Company (FOX) and trueAnthem announced today a research and technology partnership focused on tracking the social sharing of FOX?s digital television content and measuring its social influence??Social TV is a key priority for FOX, and in order to drive social conversation with our viewers, it?s critical that we understand the way they interact with our content,? said Melva Benoit, SVP Audience Intelligence and Research Strategy for FOX.
Fox Tracks Social Media-TV Interaction via Media Post
Fox says ?it marks the first time a broadcast network has invested significant resources in capturing the value of earned media.?
Syfy Guy Craig Engler on the net?s devoted via Ad Week
A passionate fan base that does some of the heavy lifting for marketing is a godsend for any network, whether it skews male or female. To be sure, Engler and Syfy are looking for more ways to monetize that consumer desire for total immersion.
INTERVIEW: MTV UK?s digital media VP on the second screen via StrategyEye Digital Media
MTV UK?s digital media VP, Dan Patton, explains how the channel has put social TV at the heart of what it does? Social media in all its impacts and on every platform is probably the biggest trend, along with mobile and the mobile-first movement. Everyone from Google to Adobe to Facebook is putting mobile at the heart of their product strategies and there?s very much a synchronicity between mobile and social.
Meet the team that created HBO GO via Lost Remote
Sharing is still the biggest potential driver of viewing and ratings. Anytime we can build sharing tools directly into content, we see users immediately take advantage of that convenience to share more, which brings their friends into the show?Multitasking is basically the default context of use these days and there?s a real hunger for complementary content and tools.
Showtime?s second screen iPad app hits 2.0, goes from Social to Sync via Engadget
Now dubbed Showtime Sync, it follows other network branded apps (AMC, MTV, NBC and Syfy come to mind) by focusing on pushing relevant content, viewer polls and the like to the tablet while the show plays.
Viacom: ?We see OTT as an opportunity to significantly amplify conversations? via IP&TV News
Each of the Viacom brands engages in a constant dialogue with our audiences through multiple platforms, which informs our content and the way we extend viewing experiences across social media?we?re focused on providing the ?power to participate? and provide a seamless link between content on devices and content on the screen?We see OTT as an opportunity to significantly amplify conversations as well as audience connections around content?For a company like Viacom, our brands, shows and stars are living at the intersection of entertainment and social media. Developing new ways to boost engagement levels is a key element of our focus, and to do this effectively we are constantly in touch with how our audience?s tech habits are evolving.
Twitter CEO: You?ll Be Able To Download All Of Your Tweets By The End Of The Year via Media Bistro
The ability to download and archive tweets is something that a few third-party developers have been working on, which might mean a headache for them when Twitter rolls out their official version of this feature.
Fall TV: Must-See Tweets via Twitter
We?ve created a Discover page to help you find & follow your favorite TV stars from this week?s premieres
Using Twitter to Promote the Fall TV Season via NY Times
To showcase its new fall season, the CW network will use Twitter as a platform to preview the season premiere of the show ?Emily Owens, M.D.?? And if someone posts saying they don?t like the show or the network? ?To me that?s what starts the dialogue,? Mr. Haskins said. ?We will not editorialize that out. We no longer own our brand. The consumer owns the brand and the more people that embrace that and entertain it, the stronger the brand is going to be with their audience.?
The Primetime Emmys: Tweeting Along via Twitter Blog
Twitter TV?has curated all of the must-follow Emmy accounts ?that includes nominees, top shows, live-tweeters, and more. In addition to the complete list, viewers can follow our Live-Tweeting Cast to get an inside peek at their experiences from the Red Carpet, in the audience and in some cases, from their own home.
Twitter Airs Entire TV Episode A Week Before Its Broadcast Date via Fast Company
Fox TV has teamed up with Twitter to show the season premiere of one of its shows in its entirety a week before its broadcast date. The first episode of the third season of Raising Hope is available now until 11.59 p.m. on Thursday, and it will be shown on TV for the first time on October 2.
Twitter to debut Fox series before TV premiere via Variety
The integration is part of a broader Fox ad buy on Twitter, but more significantly, a furthering of Twitter?s already close alignment with the medium. Fred Graver, head of TV at Twitter, is looking to establish the company as more than just a second-screen companion while a show airs?Enhancing Twitter with exhibition features, however, could help drive advertising revenue beyond text-only features like ?Promoted Tweets.? That possibility blurs the line between partner and competitor for Twitter and media companies like Fox, which may not mind letting its content be shown outside of its own real estate as long as it helps drive consumers back to its own properties.
ZEEBOX
Sky integrates Zeebox?s second-screen platform in its Sky+ iPad app, makes TV more social via TNW
Sky+ iPad users now have the option to learn more about the shows in their TV guides, connecting to Zeebox?s platform to deliver that data?With Zeebox, Sky hopes that not only will users utilise the app to browse, select and record their favourite shows, they will also use it to interact with people across the UK via social networks and find more information and media content associated with them.
NBCU, Comcast buy in to Zeebox to take ?second screen? to prime time via paidContent
Zeebox app and website uses automated content recognition and publicly-available content to accompany all TV shows with social discussion, live hyperlinks to information about on-screen dialogue, a program guide, co-viewing with friends and an open, modular space for broadcasters to deliver interactive adjuncts to their own productions. It can also make tablets and smartphones act as remote controls?it is its OpenBox platform, with which producers can make HTML-based voting, competition or other modules to accompany their own shows, that most piques broadcasters? interest.
Comcast and NBC Put Money, Marketing Into a Social TV App: Zeebox Lands in the U.S. via All Things D
So all of that is a big deal if you?re in the second-screen industry, because it means a very big TV player is trying to king-make a service, and that will end up freezing out other contenders?But the problem with Zeebox, like every other social TV app, is that it seems designed around a business problem ? how can we get people to stay with our shows longer or hang out on our service? ? instead of consumer problems.
Comcast, NBC Invest In Zeebox App To Help Create A ?Second Screen? Experience via Huffington Post
Comcast is hoping that TV networks will converge around one app. That would make it easier to tap into large online audiences all at once and reduce viewer confusion about where to go if they want to engage with a show online. ?What the industry really needs is a nationwide platform,? said Sam Schwartz, president of Comcast?s converged products division.
Why HBO, NBC, and Comcast Are Betting On A Startup To Power Their Second Screens?via Fast Company
Unlike Shazam, it will share revenue from enhanced commercials with all broadcasters?Zeebox has also invented television?s first form of keyword advertising by pulling important terms from shows? closed captioning data as they air. Users can click on each term within the app to see more information about it. Zeebox plans to sell sponsored versions of the terms the same way Google sells promoted links in your search results. For HBO, which relies on subscriptions rather than advertising, Zeebox could provide an incentive for watching programming on cable rather than through iTunes or your parent?s HBO Go account.
MORE APPS: MATCHA, GETGLUE, SPORTSSTREAM, STEVIE, SHAZAM
Discovery App Looks to Own TV Experience via Adweek
The war for control of the TV screen, specifically the battle over which company or companies will own the user interface?and by default, the relationship with the average viewer?has only just begun?Matcha has already partnered with Netflix, iTunes, Hulu and Comcast?s Xfinity to provide users with access to 200,000 movie and TV titles they can elect to watch on the big screen or in some cases within the app itself. And now the company is set to announce similar pacts with HBO Go, Max Go (Cinemax), as well as Turner (apps for TNT and TBS). The plan is to partner with every important network and cable player under the sun, said Guy Piekarz, Matcha?s founder and CEO, who is betting on a future where apps rule TV.
GetGlue Redesigns Site to Be a Personalized Viewing Guide via Mashable
Social entertainment platform GetGlue on Monday revealed its redesigned website, which transforms GetGlue.com from just a check-in service into a personalized viewing guide for TV, movies and sports. The makeover mirrors GetGlue HD, the company?s second-screen experience on iPad that launched in August.
A Win-Win for Paul Allen?s Seahawks and a Sports Start-Up via NYTimes
SportsStream?s game feeds are far easier to digest than simply searching on game-related hashtags, the tagging system Twitter users employ so that others can find thematically related Tweets. After a big play, vast numbers of fans can flood Twitter with the same hashtag, making it difficult to sift through all the posts to find the best commentators.
Stevie brings MTV-style social video curation to the iPad via GigaOM
Plenty of people are trying really hard to make online video more like TV. Israel-based web video curation startup Stevie is a little more specific about its goal: It wants online video to look like a hit show on MTV, back when MTV was still groundbreaking.
?We don?t think connected TV will prevail? predicts Shazam via The Drum
Doubts over the success of using social media through connected TVs have been expressed by Miles Lewis, the vice president of EU advertising for TV advertising app Shazam.
OTHER CO?s: TVGUIDE, WITSTREAM, MASS RELEVANCE, SOCIAL SAMBA, SYNACOR, NINTENDO TVii
TVGuide.com launches comedy partnership with WitStream for Emmys via Lost Remote
TVGuide.com has launched a partnership with WitStream, a social comedy platform, to provide extra compelling content for their red carpet coverage on their website only (for the time being).
TV Networks Looking To Curate A Social Experience For Viewers via Business 2 Community
The first Mass Relevance client to use Product Studio, Fox Sports, have their eyes set on enhancing and curating the social experience for viewers.
SocialSamba?s Aaron Williams on Hashtag Killer and why you might want to friend those guys on ?Psych? via Deep Medai
When we showed them how SocialSamba scripts a Saga, plays it back for each fan whenever the fan wants it, personalizes it with the characters treating the fan like a friend and calling them by name, and includes the interactive elements like a choose-your-own-adventure, I think they realized how much more could be done.
Synacor adds social login capabilities to TV Everywhere authentication via Lost Remote
This solution offers easy access to online pay-TV content through a subscriber?s favorite social accounts, offering an additional way to access content outside of traditional methods, while securely still authorizing a subscriber for the pay-TV content that they?re entitled to.
Here?s the company behind Nintendo TVii (spoilers: it?s not Nintendo) via Engadget
[Brad] Pelo is CEO of i.TV ? a ?social television and second screen technology company? that?s worked with everyone from Entertainment Weekly to Engadget parent company AOL ? and he?s the man responsible for Nintendo TVii.
INTERNATIONAL
YouTube Expands Translation Tools For Video Captions To 300+ Languages via TechCrunch
As 70 percent of YouTube viewers are now outside of the U.S., says Google, being able to more easily reach international audiences is becoming increasingly important for video creators (but also for YouTube itself) and these tools are meant to help YouTube?s videographers reach this audience.
Endemol: ?African broadcasters are in the early adoption phase of cross-platform broadcasting? via IP&TV News
Endemol ?has recently produced new shows for Cameroon, Ghana, Ruanda, Burundi,?Uganda, and Tanzania, in addition to Kenya Nigeria and South Africa.?Each of the shows features cross-platform opportunities on both mobile and television.
10 Ways to get the social and TV Chemistry right via Digital Edge
In the Indian social media chapter people want to get more involved with the shows and the characters. If you look back you will find almost every popular charcter has a exclusive facebook page and a twitter handle. Social Media brings the tv characters to life. It?s like parallely running a tv show after the show is aired. And the cherry on the cake, people always want to talk to their favourite characters.
Social TV Comes To China: Kaixin001.com Teams With Samsung, Haier, Hisense via China Tech News
Chinese social networking site Kaixin001.com recently published its software client for smart TV, which will be pre-installed on smart TV products manufactured by Samsung, Haier, and Hisense?Smart TV features clear screen, larger browsing interface, and better visual effects. Users can not only operate the smart TV interface with an interactive remote control, but also can realize the operations by connecting it with their mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
UPC launch TV Buzz ? First Social Television App in Ireland via Click Online
UPC, Ireland?s leading provider of entertainment, information and communications, has today unveiled Ireland?s first Social TV application, TV Buzz. TV Buzz is a free web based service, open to everyone, which allows people to talk about their favourite television programmes through a dedicated social channel.
Source: http://blog.trendrr.com/2012/10/01/trendrr-social-tv-round-up-101/
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