The Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio motorists are paying slightly more for gas for the second week in a row.
Monday's survey from auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service
and Wright Express puts the average price for regular gas at $3.45 a
gallon. That's up 6 cents from a week ago.
Drivers were paying an average of about $3.15 at this time last year, before prices climbed to record highs.
Prices have remained high for this time of year, partly because of concerns overseas.
Some analysts have been worried about tensions in Iran and
potentially weak demand for crude oil in Europe, which is dealing with
hefty economic concerns.
Your accountant can email a specialist for advice about a specific issue in your tax return. Your doctor, however, doesn’t necessarily have the same access to easy collaboration. There may, however, be a Facebook-like solution in the wings.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPPA) prevents doctors from sharing patient information without “reasonable safeguards.” For the most part, this shuts down the instantaneous email exchanges through which other professionals collaborate. Physicians can consult with each other about a patient’s condition via email, but they can’t involve medical test results or a patient’s medical records in the discussion.
While it’s good that patient privacy is protected, these restrictions have contributed to the fax machine’s mainstay as a major form of communication between doctors. The rest of us are bouncing messages between us instantaneously while doctors are receiving faxes. One medical center estimates it receives roughly 50,000 and sends another 10,000 fax pages each month.
A new doctors-only network called Doximity wants to free doctors from the fax machine and bring social media into the field. The company started as a LinkedIn for doctors, and it quickly grew to 30,000 members. Recently it added a Newsfeed feature that, like Facebook, allows doctors to post messages to colleagues with whom they are connected on the platform.
Doximity Founder and CEO Jeff Tangney says the idea of the feature is to give doctors a safe place to collaborate.
“You can get fired for being a physician on Facebook,” he says. “It becomes really difficult to collaborate all of these things when you can’t send a patient photo or any discussion of a patient legally over email.”
A doctor in California, for instance, has a teenage patient who recently came down with an uncommon infection, so he contacted another doctor in Texas who had led studies on a treatment for that infection. Another specialist from Boston chimed in, and together the three came up with a new way to treat the patient.
In the digital age, this kind of collaboration makes a completely underwhelming story. But in the medical field, it’s something of a difficult task to pull off. On Doximity, Tangney says these doctors could freely exchange details because the communication is HIPPA-compliant.
While there’s no official HIPPA-compliant certification, the company says it has worked with independent consultants to ensure it isn’t violating the law. There’s a three-step verification process for doctors to establish a profile on the site that involves a credit check and a verification of credentials against the American Medical Association database. There is also a multiple-step sign-in process similar to one you may have encountered at your bank’s website.
Tangney didn’t say how many doctors were currently enrolled in the program, but he did say that it was more than 7% of physicians in the U.S. That should put it at about 40,000 doctors.
That participation fuels Doximity’s business model — locating health specialists for non-medical advisory roles and billing for their time — but it also opens up the possibility of social media shaping medicine as it has other professions.
Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, pixdeluxe
Host Don Cornelius on the set of 'Soul Train' in Los Angeles.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Don Cornelius, who created the long-running R&B and dance-music showcase Soul Train, was found dead
in his home in Sherman Oaks, Clifornia, early this morning. He was 75.
Law enforcement officials suspected suicide; the body was found with a
gunshot wound to the head.
Trained as a journalist on WVON, an African-American talk radio station in his native Chicago, Cornelius conceived of Soul Train during the Civil Rights movement, noting there was no showcase for black music on national television. Soul Train debuted in 1971 and quickly became a popular stop for major acts such as James Brown, the O'Jays and Michael Jackson. Cornelius hosted the show from its inception until 1993; Soul Train ended its long run in its original form in 2006.
The show had a huge influence on popular culture and the pop charts.
One of its themes, "TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)," became a hit
record, and references to Cornelius and Soul Train have
appeared in dozens of songs over the years. Cornelius famously closed
each episode with the parting words, "We wish you love, peace and soul."
President Obama held the first all-digital interview from the White House on Monday night. Like a modern day reincarnation of FDR’s fireside chats, the video chat brought the president directly into the homes of thousands of Americans via a Google+ hangout.
Over 227,000 people submitted questions, while the president spoke with five Americans from across the country. Google and YouTube selected questions for Obama from the videos that got the most votes from YouTube users.
Queries about the legalization of marijuana dominated the top-voted questions, but none were asked. President Obama previously addressed his drug policy in a 2011 YouTube interview.
At the beginning of the hangout, when the President delivered seemingly prepared remarks about unemployment and a living wage, some watchers took to Twitter to express disappointment that the President had received the questions ahead of time, though this wasn’t the case. (The hangout had no official Twitter hashtag, though #obamahangout gained some traction.)
As the hangout progressed, the questions got tougher and the dialogue more democratic. This wasn’t an “ask and mute” hangout where the rest of the room was barred from speaking while Obama responded to questions. The conversation was two-way: follow-up questions were generally welcomed, there was some crosstalk, and participants vied for the chance to speak.
A query from Jennifer Wedel, the wife of an unemployed semiconductor engineer, seemingly caught the president off-guard. She asked the President a specific question about the White House’s expanded issuance of H-1B visas, which allow skilled workers to come to the U.S. for employment. Obama’s respond ended with a request for Wedel to send her husband’s resume to the president’s desk.
“I meant what I said, if you send me your husband’s resume, I’d be interested in finding out exactly what’s happening right there,” said Obama.
Wedel later told Politico that she didn’t find the president’s initial answer satisfactory.
When the President took a question on his administration’s use of unmanned drones, he responded by downplaying a report in The New York Times that suggested the U.S. is flying a large number of drones over Iraq.
His defense of the global drone program also happened to be his first official acknowledgement that the program existed, a fact which made headlines Tuesday morning.
When Obama gave a response about college education to California high school student Adam Clark, Wedel, a Texas mother of three, jumped in with her not-quite-contented opinion of the president’s answer. Ramon Ray, a small business owner from New Jersey, also joined in with his own views on saving for his children’s education.
Towards the end of the event, Obama was asked a YouTube question about the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. President Obama pointed to the recent indictment against Megaupload CEO Kim Dotcom as an example of how his administration was tackling intellectual property theft. It was the first time the President himself directly addressed the issue.
“I think that it’s going to be possible for us to make sure that we’re protecting intellectual property that creates a lot of jobs in this country,” said Obama. “It’s one of the United States’ biggest exports, but also do it in a way that it doesn’t affect the fundamental integrity of the internet as an open, transparent system.”
The Obama administration made their anti-SOPA stance known in a blog post responding to a We The People petition about the bill.
The hangout, despite the lack of muting, avoided the torrential crosstalk which has plagued other Google+ hangouts. How? Two ways:
1. The hangout was moderated by Steve Grove of Google, a former broadcaster. Grove allowed intelligent follow-ups while managing crosstalk and providing an even mixture of live and YouTube questions. 2. There’s an level of respect commanded by the office of the President. To quote The West Wing, “when the president stands, nobody sits.”
Overall, the hangout was a successful way to use new technology to connect the president with a diverse group of Americans in an intimate, personal setting. The conversation wasn’t just for the benefit of the attendees, it was also a way for President Obama to better understand the worries and daily struggles of a wide swath of everyday Americans.
Obama has previously held virtual town halls over Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Two of his possible rivals, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, have also hosted Google+ hangouts.
(TOPLINES: Seattle Public Schools CANCELED FOR WEDNESDAY …Snow still expected to be widespread in early am …)
Pedestrians walk across a hill in Seattle during a snowstorm, Sunday. (Ted S. Warren/AP)
This blizzard is expected dump up to 14 inches of snow Wednesday which will make it the heaviest snowfall in this area in decades said the National Weather Service reports. Seattle was already hit by a snowstorm on Sunday.
A storm of possibly historic proportions is crashing into the Pacific Northwest. Seattle could see more than six inches of snow as reported on the weather channel as of 8:57 PM.
Play Video
Video: Snow in the Northwest causes wrecks, but makes kids happy
by Chris Dolce, weather.com Meteorologist
Since Sunday, snow showers have been falling off and on across the lower elevations of the Pacific Northwest. This wintry pattern will be capped off by a major, potentially historic, winter storm that will move across the region through Wednesday.
Major Winter Storm from Pacific Northwest to the Northern Rockies
Late Tuesday night through Wednesday, a strong low-pressure system with copious amounts of moisture will approach the Northwest coast. This will set the stage for a major winter storm across the lower elevations and mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Travel could become dangerous or impossible in the cities listed below, just to name a few.
As usual, the big question is always: How much snow am I going to see??? Below is our snow forecast map for the Northwest region the next 48 hours. You can find specific snow forecast total ranges plotted below some of the cities on the graphic. As you can see, we are forecasting some rather hefty amounts across western Washington (including Seattle).
One caveat to this forecast. There remains some uncertainty with how quickly the snow may eventually change to rain on Wednesday. This is particularly the case the farther south you go along the I-5 corridor (i.e. Portland/Vancouver). Snow should change to rain in Portland on Wednesday morning.
Keep in mind, average annual snowfall is only 2.4" in Portland and 5.9" in Seattle, so these amounts are very significant for these metro areas! According to the National Weather Service in Seattle, Wash., snow amounts from this storm could exceed anything seen since November 1985 at Sea-Tac airport.
Facebook offered advertisers a discount of as much as 45% on cost-per-click rates if they directed users to other Facebook destinations rather than to external websites during the fourth quarter of 2011, according to a report by marketing agency TBG Digital.
The significant incentive for advertisers to help keep Facebook users on-site appears to reflect a push by the social networking giant to solidify its status as a web within the web, with Facebook as the nexus for the majority of people’s online activity.
But, one TBG executive tells Mashable, the reduced rate also shows the potential success for brands advertising within the platform.
“Though one could suggest that Facebook is rewarding advertisers for keeping people in the Facebook environment, it also indicates that keeping ads within Facebook is more effective,” Patrick Toland, director of TBG’s North American operations, said in an interview.
Because only ads users click on make Facebook money in the cost-per-click market, it serves the network’s interest to facilitate advertisements with a higher success rate. And ads that integrate more smoothly with the Facebook experience have a set of built-in advantages, said Toland.
“If you’re there trying to catch up with old friends and suddenly an ad wants you to leave Facebook and change your path, that’s much less effective than an ad that just asks you to ‘Like’ Spotify, for example,” he said.
The overall cost-per-click ad rates rose by an average of only 1% between the third and fourth quarters in the major territories of the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France and Canada. In the cost-per-impression market, meanwhile, Facebook ad rates increased by 8% from the third to fourth quarter and 23% since the year’s first quarter in those same countries, according to TBG.
Toland said that the rate increase for cost-per-impression ads combined with the relative stability of Facebook’s cost-per-click market is another indicator of its apparent advertising success.
The TBG fourth-quarter report also showed an overall improvement in user engagement over the course of 2011. In the five major territories mentioned previously, the overall click-through rate increased by 18% from Q1 to Q4. The average increase from the third to fourth quarter was 7%.
Toland said that TBG’s findings show that advertising based around social connections and social sharing — key to the success of Facebook’s impending IPO, which could come as soon as May — appears to be catching on with consumers and advertisers alike.
“People seem willing to participate in that process of sharing what they’re doing, whether it’s watching movies, reading articles or liking major brands,” he said. “The willingness of advertisers to participate in social-by-design advertising will enable Facebook to continue to succeed on that platform, which is unique to Facebook.”
The TBG report studied more than 326 billion ad impressions by 266 clients in 205 countries. To see the entire report, click here.
What do you think? Will Facebook’s advertising platform ultimately be as successful as the company hopes? Let us know in the comments.
January 12, 2012
Gov. Barbour frees man convicted in death of local woman
By Jeremy Pittari, Item Staff Writer
The Picayune Item
PICAYUNE — A local official is outraged at former Gov. Haley Barbour’s last act as governor, which was to release a man who pleaded guilty to charges in the death of a local woman.
On Tuesday, a list of about 200 people who were released from prison at Barbour’s order was released. That list included the name of Azikiwe Kambule, who pleaded guilty to charges of armed carjacking and accessory after a murder in the 1996 kidnapping and murder of 31-year-old Pamela McGill.
Kambule’s release has sparked anger from Pearl River County Board of Supervisor’s member Anthony Hales who knew McGill and her family well. Hales said McGill was a Poplarville native. McGill graduated from Poplarville High School before attending Pearl River Community College and then graduating from William Carey College.
“When it hits close to home, it really hits home,” Hales said.
Hales said he can remember how McGill’s death affected and galvanized the entire Poplarville community, especially in the weeks between her disappearance and the discovery of her body. While Hales understands there are people in jail who may not have committed a crime, people who are a menace to society should not be released, even if they claim to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“What would have been the right place and right time for this not to happen to (McGill)?” Hales said. “She don’t have any more options.”
McGill’s father, the Rev. James McGill, declined to comment on Kambule’s pardon.
According to stories that ran in the Picayune Item following her death, McGill had been working in Jackson for almost ten years with the Department of Human Services before Kambule and an accomplice, Santonia Berry, followed her to her home on Jan. 25, 1996. McGill was kidnapped at gunpoint as she was checking her mail and forced back to her vehicle and later murdered along a wooded road. The motive in the crime was said to be to take the 1993 Dodge Stealth she was driving at the time.
Both Kambule and Berry were later arrested on kidnapping and vehicle theft charges. Two other suspects also were arrested on accessory after the fact charges.
McGill’s remains were not found until April 3, 1996, nine weeks after her murder, in a wooded area.
Berry, the admitted triggerman, pleaded guilty to the capital murder of McGill and received a life sentence, which was not reported to have been revoked in Barbour’s recent action. Kambule pleaded guilty to armed car jacking and accessory after a murder, and received 35 years for both charges. According to an Associated Press story, Kambule’s defense attorneys stated during the trial that Kambule, who was a teenager at the time of the crime, was never positively identified as the one who pulled the trigger, and knew little of the American justice system since he was originally from South Africa. Kambule had lived in Mississippi for only two years prior to the crime. Barbour granted Kambule a full pardon.
