Check out this episode of The Gay Guy’s Guide To Life for a few tips for coming out like a pro!
Rob Smith is an author, journalist, and openly gay Iraq war veteran. Closets, Combat and Coming Out is available now on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com and wherever LGBT and progressive books are sold. For more on Rob, visit him on his YouTube channel and on Twitter @robsmithonline.
FORT LAUDERDALE — The New York Times wants to make a bigger deal out of getting its stories out to users of social networks.
Last year’s leaked NYT Innovation Report flagged challenges with building audience using social, including insufficient use of Twitter by reporters and a Facebook account being run by commercial, not editorial, staff.
“Social strategy is totally in the forefront right now,” NYT product management director Sara Poorsattar tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
“(We are) starting to think about social distribution as Facebook and Twitter and now Snapchat continue to start to explore what that means to go and bring premium content in to their platforms.
“We’re figuring out, starting to create partnerships with different networks to understand how we can really present our content to our users in the best way where they are.”
One challenge to this strategy is the existence of the Times’ digital payment requirement – but, viewed vice versa, social distribution can be considered a sales conversion opportunity, too.
Moving to FreeWheel Ad Server
She says that the Times has migrated to the FreeWheel ad server and explains its impact.
Poorsattar was interviewed at Beet.TV’s Beet Retreat annual get-together in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The Beet Retreat ’15 was sponsored by AOL and Videology. Please find additional videos from the event here.
You can find this post on Beet.TV.
Here is a multi-part riddle about the islands: What’s worse than housing prices so high that most of the middle class can’t afford to buy a home?
What’s more troubling than hard-working renters who mortgage their retirement or who cram into crowded apartments and homes because the rent is too damn high?
What’s more problematic than people living in cars, and more disturbing than the colonies of desperate people sleeping on sidewalks next to parks and beaches?
The answer, apparently, is mobile homes.
When Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro made their recent historic announcement about reestablishing diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba, people assumed that because I’m a Cuban exile whose family suffered under the Castro revolution, I would naturally be against the “thaw” in relations. That’s not the case.
Given what we’ve been through, normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations is not easy for my family and me to accept. But it’s time for a new approach to Cuba.
My parents, my younger sister and I were part of the early wave of Cuban refugees coming to America following the revolution. We arrived in Miami in February 1962 aboard one of the Pan-Am flights that brought thousands of Cuban exiles from Havana to the United Stated between the 1959 Castro takeover and the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Like all Cubans fleeing the revolution, we had to leave everything behind.
We arrived in this country with the clothes we wore, five dollars and, believe it or not, two bottles of rum. My father promptly sold the rum to get a little extra cash. America welcomed us with open arms; we were given asylum, government assistance to get on our feet, access to education and, importantly, the opportunity to live in freedom.
Almost exactly 50 years after leaving Cuba, in 2012 I was invited to lead a group of alumni from Indiana University, where I currently serve as Dean of Education, on a people-to-people, cultural tour of the island. I was apprehensive, not knowing how I would be received by people brought up under a Communist government that called those leaving Cuba 50 years earlier “gusanos,” meaning worms.
But to the person, Cubans made me feel welcome; people wanted to know about my life in America and how I felt coming back to my birthplace for the first time. They shared their fears and their desire to either leave Cuba themselves or see social and economic change.
The Americans in our alumni group were equally interested in the experience of the common people we met. Some went out of their way to establish friendships and stay in touch. All left with a better appreciation for the failings of the revolution, as well as those of U.S. policy toward Cuba.
For me, the visit underscored that even more than 50 years of hostility between the Castro revolutionary government and successive Democratic and Republican administrations in the U.S. have not broken the personal and cultural bonds Cubans and Americans share. These bonds run deep.
Starting when the Spanish traded the Florida territories to the British to regain control of Havana, and continuing through the Cuban Wars of Independence, the Spanish-American War, the founding of the tobacco industry in Tampa, Florida, the appearance of Afro-Cuban rhythms on the American music scene, the arrival of waves of Cuban exiles in the United States following the Castro revolution, the founding of Little Havana in Miami and more, the people and culture of the two countries have been inextricably intertwined.
Let’s build a future based on these cultural bonds and the centuries-long warmth and affection that exist between the Cuban and American people. Renewed diplomatic relations will increase people-to-people contacts that will bring more political, social and economic changes on both sides of the Florida Straits than decades of frozen relations have done.
Much has changed in the world since the Cuban revolution, including the end of the Cold War, the opening of China, and the dawn of peaceful bilateral relations between the U.S. and Vietnam. Clearly, Cold War tactics have not worked in Cuba. Let’s give the thaw a chance.
This post is part of a Huffington Post blog series called “90 Miles: Rethinking the Future of U.S.-Cuba Relations.” The series puts the spotlight on the emerging relations between two long-standing Western Hemisphere foes and will feature pre-eminent thought leaders from the public and private sectors, academia, the NGO community, and prominent observers from both countries. Read all the other posts in the series here.
If you’d like to contribute your own blog on this topic, send a 500-850-word post to impactblogs@huffingtonpost.com (subject line: “90 Miles”).
FORT LAUDERDALE — Two decades in to the era of the TV set-top box, ad agencies are still not finding it easy to get access to good audience targeting data from viewers’ homes, says a marketing veteran.
“There’s a lack of data,” says Tracey Scheppach, EVP, who leads innovation at Starcom MediaVest Group and who leads VivaKi’s The Pool initiative. “I (only) have some small pieces.
“(Getting it from electronics manufacturers) would alleviate a pain point. Whether it’s ACR (automated content recognition), a mobile device or through the TV itself … there’s a lot of ways you can actually get ay the data.
“But what is disheartening to me is, there is 100m boxes right now we know how to clean (the data from) and how to process – it just needs to start to flow.”
Scheppach was interviewed at the Beet TV’s executive retreat.
The retreat was sponsored by by AOL and Videology. Please find additinal videos from the event here.
You can find this post on Beet.TV.
FORT LAUDERDALE – The digital ad industry may be starting to get to grips with the problems of fraud and viewability, but next up is the creeping threat from nefarious code.
“The big priority for us is switching everything over to Secure Sockets Layer (SSL),” Google’s head of media platform sales, Jay VanDerZee, tells Beet.TV in this video interview, referring to the protocol which secures internet transmissions.
“A nefarious actor who’s put a piece of spyware, malware etc that leads to bots and non-human traffic could come in through that door.
“The impressions on a publisher site, the actual ad calls in the world of RTB have to also be wrapped in this layer; and also the creative – the actual creative file has to be wrapped.
“This is all about protecting the user. It is a Herculean task because we’ve got to get the entire market to focus on this. We’re going to be talking about it at a lot of events this year.”
VanDerZee was interviewed at Beet.TV’s Beet Retreat annual get-together in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The Beet Retreat ’15 was sponsored by AOL and Videology. Please find additional videos from the event here.
You can find this post on Beet.TV.
Notorious B.I.G. said, “Mo Money Mo Problems.” Although the single topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in 1997, Biggy got it wrong. The truth is the more money you have, the fewer problems you will have.
Think about it logically for a minute: a lack of money actually causes the majority of problems. How many people are struggling to make their mortgage payment? What about their car payments? And credit card statements? And what happens when life’s unexpected events happen? People get sick. The car needs repairs. Your have to pay for your child’s after-school activities. The list goes on and on.
While most people are up at night because they are overloaded with so many problems, the rich are fast asleep knowing that everything is taken care of. The curious paradox is the sleep-deprived middle-class performer is worrying about all these problems and barely making enough money to survive, while the millionaire isn’t worried at all and makes a fortune. This has been happening for more than 200 years in America, yet the middle class continues to deny the significance of being rich.
It starts with one of the biggest myths among the masses, which is the idea that millionaires are workaholics overloaded with so many problems that they don’t have time to enjoy life. This is nothing more than an excuse that most people use for being broke. It’s as if they’re looking for a reason to avoid success by making it seem unattractive.
While it’s true many millionaires appear to be workaholics, for most it’s because they love what they do and are good at it so they don’t consider it work. There’s a fine line between work and play for the self-made rich, and they often struggle to make the distinction. These people truly enjoy solving problems because they’re enamored with their occupation and fascinated with its dynamics.
When you’re a millionaire and become tired of solving problems, you pay someone else to solve them for you. The masses don’t have that option, so in reality the average person is faced with the prospect of having to solve more problems in a day than most world-class performers do. The ability to pay other people to solve problems frees them up to focus on more important and profitable areas of their business. Money gives the rich control over every aspect of their business, and many areas of their lives. The more money they have, the fewer problems they have to personally address.
The takeaway
The average person would rather think about anything but money because of the negative feelings they associate with it. They see money as a never-ending necessary evil that must be endured as part of life. The wealthy, on the other hand, sees money as the great liberator, and with enough of it, they are able to purchase financial peace of mind.
Money can’t solve every problem or eliminate every worry, but it does have the power to reduce stress in tough times while providing opportunity in good times. The rich believe if you can write a check for a problem and make it go away, you don’t have a problem. Money makes most problems disappear.
As Johnny Cash said, “Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Congressional Budget Office says the federal budget deficit will shrink this year to its lowest level since President Barack Obama took office.
CBO says the deficit will be $468 billion for the budget year that ends in September. That’s slightly less than last year’s $483 billion deficit.
As a share of the economy, CBO says this year’s deficit will be slightly below the historical average of the past 50 years.
In a report released Monday, CBO projects solid economic growth for the next few years. The official scorekeeper of Congress also expects unemployment to drop slightly.
Beyond 2018, CBO projects deficits to start rising again as more baby boomers retire and enroll in Social Security and Medicare.
Ice cream is the sweet snack that fills in the cracks of your stomach after dinner. It is creamy, sweet, and comes in more flavors and varieties than you could think of. This is what makes it both wonderful and terribly dangerous. The only issue with this treat is that it is a frozen snack, and if you take too long to eat it you will quickly be spooning up sweet dairy soup rather than ice cream.
If you want to prevent yourself from eating too much too quickly, or just save yourself from having to eat a liquid, the ChillTHAT can help. This is a bowl that will act as a lunch box ice pack for your ice cream, keeping it colder for much longer than it would on its own. This is made of a durable scratch-resistant shell that can be tossed into the dishwasher as soon as you’re done.
This comes in raspberry, papaya, and mint colors, which one can only assume is actually pink, orange, and green. This will only cost you $14.99, and is perfect for those that use a scoop of ice cream as a regular evening snack at home. Holding a bowl of ice cream is going to be a far chillier experience with this in your hands, but having frozen ice cream for longer is a good enough trade that it will be worth it…probably.
Available for purchase on thatinventions, found via redferret
[ The ChillTHAT! Bowl keeps ice cream at the optimal temperature copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
This set of Bob’s Burgers Nesting Dolls gives you the whole Belcher family. These nesting dolls are hand painted to look just like your favorite burger flipping family.
These figures are going to look awesome in your collection. Hopefully you already own a hamburger restaurant diorama to display them in. Bob is about 4″ tall and they go down in size to Louise, who is about 1″ tall. Now make like Linda Belcher and put your hands in the air and say, “Alriggght! Oh they’re so cute! Can we get these Bobby? Bobby? Bob-o?”
This set will cost you $50(USD), but you can’t put a price on bringing your favorite cartoon family into your home.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
