The lingo
To protect yourself, you first need to understand the terms used in the Mobile App industry.
• Mobile App – Although the term Mobile App is being used to relate to any software that is made to run on a smartphone, we are referring to the mobile apps that users usually download and access by an icon. When you are making a decision to acquire one for your business, and you want a fully functional app, it becomes much more technical. Make sure you are discussing Native apps, or hybrid apps, not mobile web apps. Native and hybrid apps are written specifically for each client and compiled for the specific platforms they want to be seen on (i.e. Android, Apple iOS, Blackberry, etc.).
• Mobile Web App – Mobile web apps are a cheaper and easier way to acquire a Mobile application for your business, but at this stage of evolving technology, they have their limitations. Generally, mobile web apps on link to pages on your website and attempt, most of the time successfully, to render that page to a mobile phone sized display. A mobile web app lacks the ability at this stage to provide interaction –  push technology and independent upgrades separate from the website.
• RSS feed – RSS feeds allow businesses to stream content and data to their mobile application. A typical use for this technology would be to allow clients to keep up with news releases, or to stream data such as menu items, products and videos. For instance a bar or restaurant may have their menu databased on their website and streamed to their mobile app. That way, and changes to the menu would instantly show up on the mobile app.
• Push Technology – Push Technology, or server push, as used in mobile app technology, is the ability for a website operator to “push” new information instantly to a mobile app. An example of this would be (again using a bar, lounge or nightclub) sending an instant message to their app users alerting them to tonight’s entertainment or a onetime food special. This message could appear on the app as a popup.
• App Store – Here is a biggie – native and hybrid applications can be compiled and submitted to the various app stores, thus making them available to everyone. Mobile web apps cannot. Apps downloaded from an app store automatically install an icon so that access is easy. Again, Mobile web applications cannot. They can be installed on the smart phone by users who are savvy about these things, although it is a process.
That brings us to the scam part of this article. There are a lot of unscrupulous entrepreneurs who are “leasing” or “renting” mobile apps that are actually mobile web apps.
The scam works like this. You pay a setup fee, usually several hundred dollars, and then a monthly rental fee. You are told you will have an instant mobile app when actually they are simply linking to pages on your website using a wrapper, a mobile website app. On many Smartphones, the web pages are not rendered properly and appear on the mobile app much larger than the screen. You will not be given any ability to use RSS feed, Push Technology or have your app available on the app stores. Basically, your clients could accomplish almost the same thing by just accessing your website on their mobile phone. You just wasted your money!
Protect yourself and your business. When you are in the market for a Mobile App, make sure you ask all the questions, and make a decision that best fits your needs. Sometimes, relying strictly on budget will land you without anything usable.

First, let’s address her statement that homeless are more susceptible to food born illnesses. On the surface, it seems like a wonderful idea to protect the homeless and downtrodden for sickness. The reality is that people have to eat to survive (and have the strength to stay as healthy as possible. When someone doesn’t feed them, they scrounge in garbage cans and pick discarded food off the sidewalk. Health hazard? Without a doubt! But there is another side to it. If you have ever visited Mexico border towns or in –country, you know the warnings about eating the food from vendors or in non-tourist eateries. So, why do Mexican citizens not get sick and we do? Simply because they have developed an immunity to the food-born buggies that we, as sterilized Americans, get sick on. Experience Montezuma’s Revenge just once and you’ll head the warnings.
Now, take that same theory to the homeless. They have been eating rotting filth out of restaurant garbage cans so long that they can tolerate a great deal of the germs there. So, to get somewhere with this – are they really in danger by eating food prepared by a well-to-do family who eats it themselves? Give me a break. And, since I am still (I should emphasize still) allowed to entertain friend in my home, what if I invited the homeless to my home as a friend and served then there? My point is, same food, same kitchen, just a different delivery method – see my point?
My frustration reaches a peak when it becomes obvious that bureaucracy being what is, mindless and programmed, their mentality is that these homeless are much safer to continue to eat out of garbage cans then to be delivered a home-cooked meal.
Comments are welcome!

(http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=7898553

Having said that, we need to stay focused on the why. This tragedy was not tied to age, sex, race, political affiliation or personal views, this was a violent act by a mentally deranged individual. We need to keep that in focus in the days to come. No action is warranted, no reaction will change things.

My fear is the usual knee-jerk reaction. Everyone with an agenda is going to try to tie this unthinkable act to their cause. We live in a world where we attempt to legislate or litigate ourselves out of every unpleasant thing that happens to us. We seem to believe that with more and better laws we can eliminate violence, destruction and tragedy. Our mentality over the past decades has been more laws, tougher courts, more lawsuits, more prisons – never mind that we win the title of having the highest percentage of our citizens in prison that any other industrialized country.

So, here we are – only days after the Arizona tragedy and the push is already on for more and tougher laws – ones that ultimately chip away at our individual freedoms as well as limiting our exposure and interactions to the world around us. We have become a country that is obsessed with controlling or finding someone to blame for everything from natural disasters to explosions of violence, to just plain accidents. Somehow we got to a place where even unavoidable accidents can be punished by fines and jail time.
The mass murders at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ town hall meeting were not predictable or avoidable. To live, to go places and do things – to be a free human being – is a risk. We are at risk when we sleep in our house at night, when we drive a car anywhere, when we simply walk down a street or attend a gathering. Name me one sport or activity that doesn’t somehow carry the risk of death; some more that others, but still the risk.

The perpetrator in the Tucson Arizona tragedy was mentally ill; an undiagnosed psychopath. There are an hundreds of thousands¹ of individuals either there or on the brink. Knowing, much less predicting when one of those will snap is a shell game. To think that we can legislate our way out of the potential that creates is in itself insane.

Within a few days of the tragedy we have the anti-gun lobbyists coming out in force, legislators proposing tighter security at political events, restrictions on how our representatives can meet with their constituents, Laws for constituents to show up at meetings², a new law that would put legislators in glass (Plexiglas) rooms³ and on and on. The insanity isn’t just the deranged shooters, but lobbyists and politicals alike.

Along with all of the insane proposals of legislation to “fix” our society, we are now getting calls to “tone down the rhetoric”, or as Arianna Huffington says, “ratcheting down the tone of our political discourse”. Maybe we should all go back and read our history – this bad-mouthing of everyone from candidates to elected official (and the parties themselves) has been Ratcheted up since the constitution was signed, and in the beginning of the century it was a lot louder and more offensive – just the nature of the beast. I don’t believe a politically correct and always polite system will survive if it is ever perfected. I personally believe that “politically correct” is a game with unproductive consequences designed by those who would control us and our thinking.
In the history of the world, violence has reared it’s ugly head long before guns were invented, and will be here long after all of the laws fail to protect us. We just live in that kind of reality.

I am reminded of one of Paul Harvey’s (news commentator) take on gun control several decades ago. His thought was that according to national statistics, more people are killed by knives than by guns. He proposed that knives be licensed, and that since the most common knife used in these deaths was the kitchen knife, the housewives would need to be licensed to keep butcher knives in their kitchens. The absurdity of this proposal only serves to highlight my point – we can not legislate ourselves into a perfect world. Accidents are going to happen, Mother Nature is going to rule, and sick people are going to find ways to hurt other people. If not with guns, then with knives, vehicles, explosives or… use their imagination. Some things just aren’t avoidable, as much as we can wish they were. I just wonder if this country would exist if our pioneers had thought like that.

We live in a dangerous world, it always has been, it always will be. I don’t suggest that we quit searching for ways to make it less dangerous, only that we stop the knee jerk reaction every time something bad happens. Last, just a reminder that 9-11 wasn’t a gun – it was an airplane.

1. http://www.safe-nz.org.nz/Articles/conscience.htm
2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/11/peter-king-strict-gun-control_n_807323.html
3. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/11/dan-burton-congress-plexiglas_n_807532.html

I welcome your comments

When are we going to quit yelling at each other across the great political divide called the two party system and agree that most of us are unhappy no matter which party is in office?

History is history!

No matter what aspect of history you look at there will be someone who is annoyed by it. There are several aspects of USA history that I am not proud of but it is our history. We must learn from our mistakes not hide them.

General Eisenhower Warned Us

It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.

He did this because he said in words to this effect:

‘Get it all on record now – get the films – get the witnesses -because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened’

Not long ago the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it ‘offends’ the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet.. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the,6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians, and 1,900 Catholic priests who were ‘murdered, raped, burned, starved, beat, experimented on and humiliated’ while the German people looked the other way!

Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the Holocaust to be ‘a myth,’ it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center ‘NEVER HAPPENED’ because it offends some Muslim in the U.S. ?

FREEDOM ISN’T FREE…SOMEONE HAD TO PAY FOR IT

Don’t exactly buy my analogy? How about this. I don’t believe there is one American who would vote to have billions given to countries and regimes that are openly and admittedly our enemy, but we do it to the tune of billions annually, not to mention the foreign aide that goes out to countries who like us because we are rich. How about to dictators that hold no value in human life? Still, our government does it constantly, day in and day out, without so much as a pass at letting the citizens decide. What about entitlements? Earmarks? Pork-barrel-spending? It amazes me that an average citizen can become so much smarter that everyone else as soon as they are elected. They know best for their constituents.

It’s not that I couldn’t say the same thing about poverty in our country, or medical care for the underprivileged, it’s just that my pet peeve this morning is the cutting back of Nasa. I’ll bet most of don’t stop to think about what all the Nasa program has given us. It’s not just that they may give us an arm up on this planet should the universe hurl some nasties at us, or that the exploration of space may be really necessary for our children or grandchildren.
The NASA journal “Spinoff” lists these products, which have included things like improved pacemakers, state of the art exercise machines and satellite radio. Each product was made possible thanks to a NASA and made available for private companies to market. Invisible Braces, scratch-resistant lenses for eyeglasses, Memory Foam, Ear Thermometer, Shoe Insoles, Long-distance Telecommunications, Adjustable Smoke Detector, Safety Grooving in pavements, Cordless Tools, Water Filters, and not least of all, pacemakers.
I’m not writing this to put a plug in for NASA, the main point of this rant is to point out the manipulation our government uses against us. Given a say in how our money is spent, there are billions of dollars we would strip from their “budget” (choke, choke) long before cutting projects such as NASA. I am willing to bet that if a group of intelligent citizens got their hands on the budget, most of the earmarks would go, as would a large portion of foreign aide. I regress – why are dictators that hate us getting billions of dollars when we have starving in this country.
If you pay attention, what you will notice is that every time there is a lot of noise about their spending, the go into a budget-cutting mode, cutting welfare, Medicaid, Social Security and disaster assistance – all the things that really are important. But the entitlements go on. Then they just wait for the uproar. “But I thought you wanted us to cut the budget?”

Please note before you attach my rant to the present administration, although I have no love for them, this is a problem with a long-term history with both parties. Neither party really has our best interest in mind. If only. If only we would all stop blindly attaching ourselves to a party and open our eyes to the rhetoric they are spewing, maybe we can band together and stop some of this insaneness.

Along came the Tea Party, and a spark ignited in my political soul. Maybe here was the chance for some moderate realism in our country. Maybe we could defeat the “good-ol’-boys” club and get some fresh-thinking non-political types in office! Maybe, finally, the apathetic, sleeping public would arise and participate, seeing a chance that their voice might make a difference.

Not so fast, Hoss. All good dreams fade when we awake in the morning light. After all of the hoopla of the presidential election and the failure of the activists to sway the momentum of the Democratic campaign, the Tea Party has openly married the Republican Party – Because they are (cough, choke) – Conservative? One again, what happened to MODERATE? Or, the new buzz word – centrist?

Once again, tricked by the hidden motives of what appeared to be a new public awakening, I slide back into my shell of apathy.

Unfortunately, I have had to restrict comments to registered users. The list is very private. Since I posted this forum I have had 2,600 spammers try to post drug and sex related posts that would make this site unfit for its purpose. Please take a moment to register.

Please don’t just be a bystander, join the discussion. Opposing views are welcome!