Политика в България

Всеки се оплаква от политиците.
Всеки казва че са боклуци.
Добре де, от къде хора мислите че идват тези политици.
Те не падат от небето. Нито от друга виртуална реалност.
Те идват от български родители и български семейства,
български домове, български училища, български черкви,
български бизнес, български университети, и са избрани от
български граждани.
Това е всичко, което можем да направим.
Това е всичко което можем да предложим.
Това е което нашата система произвежда: боклук влязъл,
боклук излязъл.
Ако сме саможиви безпардонни граждани, получаваме саможиви
и безпардонни лидери.
Изтича мандата и това не води до нещо по-добро:
на мястото на старите идва нова партида от същите…
Може би, може би, може би,
политиците не са виновни…
Може би боклуците сме ние и тези около нас – цялото общество.
Точно така – обществото ни е боклук.
Хубав слоган за следващата партида управленци:
Общество от боклуци. Деееба и надеждата.”

*Превод от Фейсбук

Australia Added New Colors to the Weather Map

Australia’s “dome of heat” has become so intense that the temperatures are rising off the charts – literally.

The air mass over the inland is still heating up – it hasn’t peaked

The Bureau of Meteorology’s interactive weather forecasting chart has added new colours – deep purple and pink – to extend its previous temperature range that had been capped at 50 degrees.

The range now extends to 54 degrees – well above the all-time record temperature of 50.7 degrees reached on January 2, 1960 at Oodnadatta Airport in South Australia – and, perhaps worringly, the forecast outlook is starting to deploy the new colours. Advertisement “The scale has just been increased today and I would anticipate it is because the forecast coming from the bureau’s model is showing temperatures in excess of 50 degrees,” David Jones, head of the bureau’s climate monitoring and prediction unit, said. While recent days have seen Australian temperature maps displaying maximums ranging from 40 degrees to 48 degrees – depicted in the colour scheme as burnt orange to black – both Sunday and Monday are now showing regions likely to hit 50 degrees or more, coloured purple. Clicking on the prediction for 5pm AEDT next Monday, a Tasmania-sized deep purple opens up over South Australia – implying 50 degrees or above. Aaron Coutts-Smith, the bureau’s NSW head of climate monitoring, though, cautioned that the 50-degree reading is the result of just one of the bureau’s models. “The indications are, from the South Australian office, that we are not looking at getting any where near that (50 degree level).” Still, large parts of central Australia have limited monitoring, so the 50.7 degree record may be broken. “The air mass over the inland is still heating up – it hasn’t peaked,” Dr Jones said. Australia’s first six days of 2013 were all among the hottest 20 days on record in terms of average maximums, with January 7 and today likely to add to the list of peaks. That would make it four of the top 10 in a little over a week. National record smashed And the country has set a new national average maximum of 40.33 degrees on Monday, beating the previous record – set on December 21, 1972 – by a “sizeable margin” of 0.16 degrees, Dr Jones said, adding that the figures are preliminary. “Today is actually shaping up to be hotter – and it could be a record by a similar margin,” he said. Another record to be smashed on Monday was Australia’s mean temperature. The country averaged 32.23, easily eclipsing the previous record – set on December 21, 1972 – of 31.86 degrees. Just 0.13 degrees separated the previous four highest mean temperatures, underscoring how far above average the day was. The scorching temperatures could last into the weekend and beyond, Dr Jones said, potentially breaking the country’s all-time high of 50.7 degrees. “The heat over central Australia is not going to go anywhere,” he said, noting that the northern monsoon and southern cold fronts have all been weak recently. “We know the air mass is hot enough to challenge the Oodnadatta record.” While the national data goes all the way back to 1910, the bureau views the figures are most reliable from about 1950. Before today, six of the 20 hottest days in Australian records have been in 2013 – with that tally likely to rise to seven out of 20 by the day’s end. Here are the rankings:

Hottest national averages on record (before today).

1 January 7, 2013: 40.33 degrees
2 December 21, 1972: 40.17
3 December 20, 1972: 40.01
4 December 22, 1972: 39.82
5 January 1, 1973: 39.79
6 January 6, 2013: 39.71
7 December 17, 2002: 39.7
8 January 2, 1973: 39.65
9 January 3, 2013: 39.55
10 December 16, 2002: 39.54
11 December 30, 1972: 39.48
12 December 31, 1972: 39.43
13 January 27, 1936: 39.4
14 January 1, 1990: 39.39
15 January 4, 2013: 39.32
16 January 5, 2013: 39.26
17 January 2, 1990: 39.22
18 January 2, 2013: 39.21
19 December 18, 2002: 39.2
20 January 13, 1985: 38.98

Source: Bureau of Meteorology

Google+ Local

 

Last week’s announcement of Google+ Local was underwhelming. The review upgrade was impressive but the rest was tepid at best. Essentially the URL for your Place page has changed and the page now shows in the index although it seems to have broken more than it fixed. The announcement last week of Google+ Local was more important for what was left out than what was in it.

We know that Google has been gradually diassembling the Dashboard (pulling out AdWords Express and revamping Offer Coupons) and that its functionality has not been updated in eons (think analytics that only report out pack results NOT blended).

The current move of the business listing from Places to Google+ Local essentially broke the ability of the Dashboard to view the listing and the listings no longer indicates that the business has claimed them or that it is verified.

We also know for sure that the Google +Local page will merge into the G+ Business page in the near future. Clearly Google is focusing its energies on integrating as much as possible into the social backbone of G+.

Over the past year Google bought Zagat but they also bought local online services Punchd (a digital loyalty program) and Talkbin (an SMS based) CRM program. Both programs that have a strong potential appeal in the local market. In the recent rollout we see a glimmering of using the business listing as a local transaction engine with the inclusion of OpenTable.

When you add all of that up you come to the inescapable conclusion that the backend Dashboard is undergoing a massive rework and will likely become a central point for the SMB to interact with all of Google’s products with a special emphasis on Google Plus.

David Mihm has written about a vision of what the Dashboard could and should become. Bing has implemented a blueprint for an integrated marketing portal that might also provide a guide to Google. Whatever it is it will need to be more engaging, more valuable and more integral to local businesses ongoing marketing needs: better analytics, simple integration with G+, CRM, easy opt-in to Google’s paid products, the ability for the business to easily understand and interact with a full range of Google’s local offerings and the ability for Google to plug in more functionality down the road.

Today the Wall Street Journal today essentially confirmed this direction. They note that by early July Google will be rolling out such a product:

The project combines several products and services aimed at small businesses under a single banner. It is based on a mix of internally developed software and recently acquired technologies that the company hopes eventually will bring in billions of dollars a year in new revenue.

Central to the effort is Google+, the company’s social network, which it hopes consumers will use to interact with local businesses that now have special Web pages on the network. Those Google+ pages will draw traffic from the company’s Web-search engine. When shoppers visit these businesses, Google wants them to use their Internet-connected phones like a digital wallet, earning loyalty points and making payments at stores that sign up for Google’s new services.

When this occurs the real Google+ Local will be rolling out, not just a new location for a landing page, but a substantial improvement to the static and marginally functional Dashboard. Let’s hope that it is an integrated marketing solution that is elegant, provides significant on-going value and works properly right out of the gate (oh and is multiuser).