P.P.S. While it is probably completely illogical for me to think like this but I can’t help it. I am a bit worry of friends and loved ones living in the greater Vancouver area because earthquake isn’t predictable.
The Bank of Canada today (March 11, 2011) announced that it will begin circulating new polymer (plastic) banknotes starting with $100 in Nov 2011 ($50 in Mar 2012, $20, $10, and $5 notes to be issued by end of 2013). Publicly, BoC has NOT disclosed what security features will be deployed in these polymer banknotes. But basing on research using publicly available information, I will try to give you an advance look of 12 **possible** security features in the new Canadian polymer money.
Clues that lead to the “secret”/unannounced 12 possible security features
“Different polymer substrates are available for manufacturing purposes, but the one used in printing banknotes is unique and is not commercially available. Hong Kong is using the polymer type called Guardian®, and they are made from polymer biaxially-oriented polypropylene (BOPP).”
I want to be clear that the following are 12 security features of Securency International‘s Guardian substrate. Since I don’t think Securency make any other polymer substrate, therefore logically BoC must be using Guardian so these 12 security features are all possible/available to BoC.
Here are the 12 possible security features with emphasis added. Since I don’t have the costs associated with these features and I don’t have any inside knowledge whatsoever, I am only taking some wild guesses and base my comments on what I see in the HK$10 note (about less than C$2).
“LATITUDE™ is an optically variable device (OVD) that is integrated into the transparent window area of the substrate and allows for design freedom, which enhances the security of the banknote. Through tilting the banknote, multiple images and optical effects are observed. “
“The ability to create transparent areas (or clear and complete windows) is a prime security feature within Guardian® substrate. Including a clear area in a banknote has proven to virtually eliminate the problem of the ‘casual counterfeiter’, who tries to copy or scan banknotes on readily available reprographic equipment (like colour copiers and scanners) [... more ...]“
“The WinDOE® (Diffractive Optical Element) is a holographic structure applied to the surface of the clear window. When collimated light such as a distant point light source passes through the WinDOE®, it is transformed by the WinDOE® structure into a recognisable pattern (image) by the process of diffraction. The user can view the image in two ways. By holding the WinDOE® up to the eye and looking directly at a distant point source the user will see the image appear in space between the note and the light source. The appearance of the image will depend on the light source used. [... more ...]“
Sometimes we have to fight for our democracy and this is one of those cases. We have ourselves to blame if we don’t hold Stephen Harper accountable for his government’s contempt of Parliament. And lets not forget his abrupt suspension of Parliament two years ago to prevent a confidence vote! We, as Canadians, need to hold Harper accountable for his contempt of our democracy. If we keep letting him get away with it, one day it will be too late.
“There’s a case against the government for breach of privilege after it refused to hand over detailed cost estimates of its anti-crime agenda, and a minister may have misled MPs, House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken said Wednesday in a ruling reasserting Parliament’s authority.
Milliken ruled there was a “prima facie breach of privilege” — in other words, enough evidence to send two separate motions back to MPs to decide the next step.”
* Globe and Mail Editorial,
“Contempt in its ordinary meaning is not terribly far off the legal one, and it is that ordinary meaning – lack of respect, intense dislike, scorn – that offers a useful guide to understanding Wednesday’s ruling by Speaker Peter Milliken. The government has scorned Parliament, and shown a lack of respect to the people entrusted by Canadians to represent their interests, in refusing a committee’s request for detailed information on the costs of federal law-and-order legislation. Mr. Milliken’s ruling that the government “on its face” breached parliamentary privilege will now give rise to a vote on contempt. Read the rest of this entry »
“JR, a French street artist, uses his camera to show the world its true face. He makes his audacious TED Prize wish: to use art to turn the world inside out. A funny, moving talk about art and who we are. Learn more at insideoutproject.net [Kempton: JR talks and shows more about the project on the site.]“
“CTV National Fellowships, made possible through the CTV-CHUM benefits, are intended to encourage professional development in the television industry by enabling emerging creative talent – including producers, writers and directors (i.e., program makers) – to attend the Banff World Media Festival. Fellowships are not intended for established professionals, nor are they intended for entry-level candidates. Applicants must have a minimum of one significant production credit in writing, producing, or directing.”
From Paul Krugman to Freakonomics to the Consumerist, we compiled a list of the most influential (and useful) finance blogs out there and then asked some of the best-known bloggers to review one another’s work”
Errol Morris, Oscar winning documentarian, writes for the NYT once in a blue moon. Check out his 5 parts NYT series “The Ashtray” to find out why did Thomas Kuhn, the author of “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” and the father of the paradigm shift, threw an ashtray at Morris’ head in 1972? (Two articles have been published so far.)
I have been using the machine translator Google Translate for English <==> Chinese translation for the last few years. While many of the translated text are still laughably bad and cannot/should not be trusted blindly, some of the results have improved significantly. Some of the results are “useable” now if you just need a “quick and rough” translation and don’t have time nor money for more professional help.
One thing I am impressed with is Google Translate‘s ability to pronounce almost fluent Chinese (Mandarin dialect) (the “Listen” tool). Trust me, I don’t get impressed easily but I think the Google Translate development team has done a professional job with the pronunciation. How good is it? I think its pronunciation is good enough to help some beginners to improve their Mandarin speaking skills. It is free and worth giving it a try.
Jibbigo is a “speech-to-speech translation app for your mobile device. You talk in one language, it talks back in the other. [...] No data charges required–just your voice. Jibbigo is available in eight different language pairs on iTunes and the Android Market.“
Machine translation is a very difficult problem even for desktop/large computers. I see translation in three levels of difficulties, beginning with the hard problem of text-to-text translation, then speech-to-text translation, and the toughest one is speech-to-speech translation (the one Jibbigo tries to do). Why? Because speech-to-speech translation requires,
1) the original (e.g. English/Chinese) human voice be recognized and converted correctly into (English/Chinese) text;
2) the translation of recognized text into target language text (Chinese/English) be performed correctly (very hard in itself); and
3) the translated target text being read out in the target language correctly (should be easier but not always as you will see here).
I’ve spent days and many hours testing and exploring the Jibbigo iPad app (feeling like testing software in one of my previous jobs). The following is my review plus an edited video highlighting some of the tests I’ve conducted.
*** The Good/OK ***
* Translation of simple greetings (“Good morning.”, “Good Afternoon.” etc) were done correctly most of the time.
* Some simple English sentences were picked up and translated to Chinese correctly.
(e.g. “How much?” ==> “多少钱？”; “How about two million five hundred thousand dollars?” was translated to “2500000美元怎样？” (note: ; 2500000 was read as 2 million, 500 thousands); “Do you have orange juice?” ==> “有橙汁吗？”; “I live in Canada.” ==> “我住在加拿大。”)
* Jibbigo allows user to enter names and their Chinese translations. For example, I entered my name Kempton and my name in Chinese. Jibbigo was able to recognize my name “Kempton” in English and translated it to Chinese. Unfortunately, Jibbigo failed to pronounce my Chinese name correctly. More on this in the next section.
* Some simple sentences were translated somewhat correctly.
(e.g. “What time do I need to get up in the morning?” was translated to “我想要什么时候起床？” The translation missed the word “morning” “早晨/早上” and confused “need to” with “想要” (the word for “wish to”).
“Where can I rent a car?” was translated to “我在哪能租车吗？” . This Chinese translation is understandable but a better one may be “我在哪里可以租到车？” since the “吗” at the end is not really necessary. And being the picky me, I think “哪里可以” is stylistically better than “哪能”.
* To “protect” the user :), Jibbigo won’t display or translate profanities. So if you said “F*ck off!”, the Jibbigo will show it detected/picked up “<beep> off.” and actually create a beep and display “<beep>.” instead of doing any Chinese translation!
*** The Bad/Not-so-good ***
* The simple sentence of “Do you have steak?” was translated to the non-sensical “你有排怎么做？” instead of the correct one of “你有牛排吗？”.
* “I am having steak for dinner.” was incorrectly translated to “我的牛排吗。”, missing the word/idea of “dinner” and adding the question word “吗” for no good reason. A better translation may be “我的晚餐是牛排。” or ”我吃牛排晚餐。”
* “The machine part number is 123456789.” was translated to “这个机器号码是123456789分。” The last word “分” is not needed and indeed confusing and misleading.
* “How much is your machine?” was badly translated to “你是多少钱？” meaning “How much are YOU?” Jibbigo missed the important word of “machine”. A better translation is “你的机器是多少钱？”
* “I need it next month.” was incorrectly translated to “我需要它。” missing the translation for “next month”. A better translation may be “我下个月需要它。”
* I think this one may be tough but important to crack. Jibbigo has problems with proper nouns. e.g. “China Airlines.” was translated to “中国航空公司。” when the proper Chinese name for this Taiwan-based airline is “中華航空公司”. Imagine, someone at the airport trying to fly “中国航空公司” and being told there is no such airline!
* “How about two million Canadian dollars?” was badly translated to “加2500000美元吗？”, misplacing the word “加” (for Canada?) and missing the fact that it is “Canadian dollars” and not US dollars “美元”. The correct translation should be ”2500000加元怎样？”
* When the Chinese tester said hello and her Chinese name (which was entered into Jibbigo), the app picked up, “你好。我交换怀孕。” and translated the words to, “Hello. I am exchange.” Jibbigo goofed badly because “交换” and “怀孕” are the words for “exchange” and “pregnant”, very far off from her name!
* “Bee” was translated as “啤酒”, the words for “beer”! The correct Chinese words for bee are “蜜蜂”.
* And for some strange reason, Jibbigo failed to translate the following list of words when they were said individually. “Talk, Speak, Speaking, Love, Month,
*** Software stability problems and errors ***
* When iPad went into sleep/auto-lock mode (I set my iPad to go to sleep in 5 minutes) while Jibbigo is running, it will crash and will fail to record voice/function properly when the iPad is woken up.
*** Concluding comments ***
As a computer geek and someone who wants to see Jibbigo‘s technology working, I am disappointed to find Jibbigo failed to work as advertised. Based on my extensive testing, I cannot recommend Jibbigo. And as one Jibbigo user commented in his review, “I wouldn’t dare use this on a trip for fear of getting laughed at or smacked!“. To be truthful, I don’t think he was being excessively harsh.
I think the Jibbigo English to Chinese translation app development team needs to spend some time in resolving the various translation and stability problems in the current version of the software (Jan 21, 2011, Version 1.12226). I wish the Jibbigo team the best of luck.
P.S. The user can choose one of two language pairs, “English International <==> Chinese” or “English USA/Canada <==> Chinese”, I picked Canadian English.
“Beijing has mobilized 739,000 police officers, officials, security guards and residents recruited into local patrols to guard against mishaps during the parliament, reported the official China News Service.
Police have rounded up dozens of dissidents since online messages from abroad urged pro-democracy gatherings inspired by the “Jasmine Revolution” in Tunisia. Internet censorship also means that few Chinese residents are aware of the protest calls.”
Nolfi and Mackie joke that dance, plus sci-fi, plus a love story make The Adjustment Bureau the perfect date movie. The film is essentially a sweet story about two people who are meant to be together — but it’s also action-packed.”
See reports from: Toronto Star, CBC News, MTV, UK The Sun. For people who weren’t convince of the power of social media before Maria’s story, they should be 110% convinced now. A seemingly innocent YouTube video of a cover song has changed the life of a little girl forever. It is safe to say many Canadians are in love with little Maria now. And may be strangely, for non-fans of Lady Gala (I am one of those) are liking her a little bit now.
“It isn’t just that she has a singing voice far more mature than her 10 years. It isn’t just that she’s the perfect poster-child for the age of social media, made famous by a single tweet from Lady Gaga. It isn’t just that she went from the everyday life of a Winnipeg elementary school student to appearances on national television in a matter of days.
What’s most remarkable about Maria Aragon is that she’s handled her instant stardom with the poise and polish of an old pro.
And that professionalism was on full display Thursday as she deftly handled radio appearances and several interviews in Toronto during the morning, then joined her hero onstage at the Air Canada Centre for a gig that night.
About halfway through the concert, Aragon ran onto the stage into a big hug from Gaga, sporting a pink hoodie, black jacket, white flower-adorned hat and an orange monkey around her neck.”
“You could say that little Maria Aragon stole this show, except that Lady Gaga handed it to her on a plate. What could have been a mere publicity stunt – pop star invites Winnipeg 10-year-old with a video cam to sing on the Monster Ball tour – became the most emotionally charged episode in a forceful, lurid and often bizarre concert.
Aragon, in a pink and black outfit and white porkpie hat, came on stage with a furry monkey Velcroed round her neck, sat on Gaga’s lap at the piano, and performed a three-handed duet version of Born This Way. The tearful star called her “the future,” but Aragon was more than that: She was the unscarred second draft of the come-from-nowhere success story at the centre of Gaga’s personal mythology.“
Here is Maria’s YouTube video which started all this all. Currently viewed 17,781,115 times! Enjoy.
For the record, here is a version of the lyrics for “Born This Way”.
It doesn’t matter if you love him, or capital H-I-M
Just put your paws up
‘Cause you were born this way, baby
My mama told me when I was young
We’re all born superstars
She rolled my hair, put my lipstick on
In the glass of her boudoir
“There’s nothin’ wrong with lovin’ who you are”
She said, “‘Cause He made you perfect, babe”
“So hold your head up, girl and you you’ll go far,
Listen to me when I say”
I’m beautiful in my way,
‘Cause God makes no mistakes
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born this way Read the rest of this entry »
The following news articles explain why (for just 10-15 minutes) I was unable to edit or access my site kempton.wordpress.com yesterday (March 3rd, 2011). Looks like WordPress.com is under new attacks today (March 4th, 2011) even they have been quickly resolved. (See LIVE status update here.)
“You may have seen a number of headlines last week — primarily coming out of the UK — about advertisers going straight to celebrities to do paid endorsements in Twitter *without* clear disclosure.
Just a quick reminder that – as always – 100% of Ad.ly endorsements are fully disclosed in accordance with guidelines from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). [Kempton: I don't know how up-to-date is this, but here are links to the FTC 5th Oct, 2009 press release and the FTC 2009 endorsement guide (PDF).]
When we launched in 2009, we established 100% disclosure as a best practice using #Ad, (Ad), or #Spon at the end of each endorsement, or a clear contextual statement such as “I am working with brand XYZ to promote product ABC.””
Looks like Arnie and his team are doing some cool stuff here, I am definitely going to keep an eye on them as I think they have an interesting business going here.
Some stats/quotes by Arnie in the Bloomberg interview:
* Last 12 months, did about 24,000 endorsements for about 150 brands.
* “Very effective way to advertise scalably in social media.”
* “Celebrities are really the new brands in social media.” [Kempton: Hmmm, interesting. Interesting way to see celebrities and brands.]
P.S. May be I am too quick to call Ad.ly, a company I read this morning for the first time, a Lovemark? But I think it is fun to take a little bit of risk once in a while because I do see lots of potential for Ad.ly. Only time will tell if I am right.
An insightful and timely article from AdAge, reposted here for the record. (emphasis and links added, my comments are preceded by “[Kempton:" or "[K:")
Only 24 hours after Charlie Sheen got started on Twitter with @CharlieSheen, he had amassed more than 900,000 followers [Kempton: as of March 3rd, 2:35pm MST, Charlie has 1,352,677 followers), easily one of the fastest follower roll-ups the service has seen. Howard Stern, who signed up nearly a month ago, still only has 355,000.
But how did the all-over-the-news actor get his handle from whoever was squatting on @CharlieSheen before? And how did he get it verified so quickly?
Enter internet startup Ad.ly, which says it brokered his account with Twitter. Ad.ly, which runs celebrity endorsements through Facebook and Twitter, represents a range of bold-faced names on social media, including Kim Kardashian, Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton and -- though there isn't any deal in place yet -- most likely Charlie Sheen eventually. If advertisers will have him.
The U.K. edition of GQ first noted Ad.ly's involvement.
Arnie Gullov-Singh: Yesterday morning, Charlie’s team reached out to me. This is not unusual, we do a lot of this for Hollywood celebrities.
Ad Age: And what did they want?
Mr. Gullov-Singh: They told us he wanted to get on Twitter because he wants to have a direct conversation with his fans to tell his side of the story. [K: "direct conversation" is very important] So we got him the @charliesheen account, which was being squatted on.
Ad Age: It was already taken.
Mr. Gullov-Singh: Yeah, and then we got him verified through Twitter.
Ad Age: I thought Twitter doesn’t verify accounts any more. [K: This is exactly my thought. Officially, Twitter said it doesn't do verified account anymore!] How were you able to do that for Charlie Sheen?Read the rest of this entry »
”Unwanted Guest“ is great story and wonderfully designed app by the creative people at Moving Tales. The story about “a poor old man, down on his luck and living in a tumbledown house, is visited by an unwelcome house guest“ was very engaging that I ended up finishing the app/book in one reading! The animations are beautifully imagined, stunningly designed and rendered. The English, French, and Spanish voice-over all sounded very engaging and worked great with the story. I can imagine some parents using the foreign languages option to teach their children one or more of the languages. I highly recommend you check out ”Unwanted Guest“.
Posted by kempton 
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