According to a new study by AppDynamics and the Institute of Management Studies (IMS), the majority of people will delete an application if it operates too slowly.

The study findings are key for understanding just how much speed and efficiency matters when it comes to consumers engaging with apps on a routine basis. The researchers found that 86% respondents had already deleted an app because of slow or inefficient performance, and 33% said that, if their bank’s mobile app performed poorly, they would switch banks rather than deal with an alternate way of doing their banking.

The study was conducted out of both the U.K. and the U.S., and involved about 2,000 participants. The study is large enough that its findings can be extrapolated as representative of typical user interactions with smartphones.

Although these findings might seem worrisome for companies that tend to struggle with app speeds, there were indications that organizations with great mobile apps tended to benefit from it. About 30% of people surveyed said they would spend more money on a company that provided a great app.

This sends a fairly clear message to companies looking to make a profit through mobile conversion: investing in a great app can help ensure the sale. Considering that already, 28% of mobile users access the internet with a mobile device more frequently than they do with a desktop, this factor will only become more important as a shift to increasingly mobile-based internet usage continues. Mary Meeker’s 2014 announcement of annual internet trends echoes this — Meeker and her team have shown that, while the total number of internet users worldwide is growing at a rate of less than 10% annually, the number of smartphone users is still growing by about 20% annually.

“With Forrester analysts projecting U.S. mobile commerce sales alone to top $100 billion in 2014, our study underlines the importance of well performing apps,” said Tom Levey of AppDynamics.

Everyone’s heard of bookworms — but what about book bugs? The City of Warren in Michigan had to temporarily close the Miller Branch public library after a bedbug infestation was uncovered there.

According to Detroit Free Press, a patron had originally reported that a man sitting next to her in the library had bugs crawling all over his body. A librarian escorted the man out, and asked him not to come back. She reported the incident to Mayor Jim Fouts, explaining that the man had previously been a frequent visitor.

Fouts hired Griffin Pest Control to inspect the branch, and the inspection confirmed that there was a bedbug infestation. Bug-sniffing dogs brought in revealed additional hiding bedbugs located throughout the library. Both chemical and heat treatments have since been scheduled in order to eradicate the pest.

“Libraries are supposed to be clean and safe,” said Fouts about the infestation, adding that librarians are now trained to recognize bedbugs, and they will inspect any items being returned to the library for potential insects. “Everyone has the right to use the library, but no one has the right to infect the library and cause it to be shut down because of personal hygiene or whatever the case may be,” added Fouts in an interview with the Detroit Free Press.

While books are an unlikely vector for the pest, the libraries are most concerned about couch cushions located in area libraries where patrons are likely to sit for long periods of time. Bed bugs are a parasitic insect that feed on blood. While they are not dangerous, they can cause skin rashes, allergic symptoms, and welts to form. They can survive up to 300 days without eating. The library was smart to take care of eradication right away, because bed bugs can multiple quickly — within a short lifetime, each female can lay up to 500 eggs.

When it comes to taking care of sick children, many parents find that options are limited if the children are prohibited from attending daycare or school. As such, working parents have to resort to taking time off, something that can cost the whole family in major resources.

But parents who need care for their children outside of normal working hours are in luck: an increasing number of urgent care facilities are popping up around the nation, and they can take the frustration out of waiting days or weeks for a doctor’s appointment and spending time and money in an emergency room.

And although these centers are new, one study has already concluded that they are growing in popularity as an option for parents of sick kids.

The study, published by the University of Michigan on June 23, found that more parents are choosing urgent care over emergency room visits when their children get sick and cannot attend school or daycare. Among parents who are single, divorced, African American, have job concerns, or need a doctor’s note for the child to return to school or care, emergency room and urgent care visits are significantly higher.

Children who have frequent mild illnesses are often unnecessarily excluded from child care at high rates. For parents whose children lack a readily available primary care physician, the emergency room and urgent care are more likely options.

According to the UM study, 80 percent of parents took their children to a primary care doctor when their children couldn’t attend child care or school. Twenty-six percent took their children to urgent care, beating the ER by one percent as only 25 percent of parents took their kids to an emergency room.

The UM study was based on a survey of 630 parents with children ages 0 to 5 in child care.

For many parents, availability isn’t the only issue when it comes to raising children. Out of pocket costs for healthcare are rising for everyone in the U.S. at alarming rates, and the cost of raising a child until the age of 18, for any born around 2012, is approximately $217,000 — not including college costs.

Iowa state officials are expecting a presidential disaster declaration for parts of the state that have been hit by severe weather damage, including extensive flooding. So far, the weather and flooding has damaged crops, 150 homes, and public infrastructure such as roads, bridges and public buildings. The damage to publish infrastructure alone is estimated to be a future cost of $15.5 million.

Gov. Terry Branstad has issued state disaster declarations for 18 counties so far, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will decide on whether to create a federal designation after they review damage assessments through the rest of the month. Mark Schouten, the director of the Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management Department, says that there are still secondary roads underwater, and “we don’t know how much damaged they’ve sustained.”

Hail and flooding plagued different parts of the state, including Northwest Iowa, which has typically been one of the driest areas, and consequently was ill-prepared to handle extensive flooding. “We will have substantial crop damage separate and above what we’ve discussed here today,” said Branstad in a recent news conference.

According to Sioux City Journal, Eastern Iowa is preparing for the Cedar River to flood after Sunday delivered an additional bout of rain on the area — the river has already risen six feet since then. City officials are setting up pumps, sandbagging the sewage plant, and closing levee gates. One of the most important preventative measures a home can have is a sump pump; property too close to the flooding river, though, would stand little chance. Luckily, earlier extreme floods in 1999 and 2008 have meant that few properties lay beyond the city’s levee protection.

So far, residents have had to be evacuated from about 150 homes that have been damaged or destroyed by the floodwater.

Forbes is reporting that internet radio is more popular than ever. Perhaps most surprising is the fact that the vast majority of radio is consumed live. In the United Kingdom, for example, 97.3% of all radio is listened to through the web while it’s happening. In this age of podcasts and prerecorded web series on Youtube, this is truly a fascinating finding. 

Despite Early Predictions, Radio is Thriving in the Internet Age
When Napster, Limewire, and all those other peer-to-peer applications lawmakers and music industry professionals love so much started gaining traction during the early 2000’s, many industry insiders believed that the internet would spell the end of radio as we know it. In other words, internet would kill the radio star. More than two-billion people now use the internet, so those early estimations are, at least in a way, accurate. SEO business is booming, as are SEO reseller organizations.

However, ostensibly, the internet hasn’t harmed the world of radio. In fact, it could be argued that the transformative nature of the worldwide web has taken radio and music to a whole new level. According to the most recently available statistics from IFPI, an international body for protecting artists’ music and their income, 39% of all global music sales came from digital sources in 2013, whether from popular music stores, like iTunes, or from digital radio services, like Spotify.

While the Forbes piece focused on online radio consumption in the United Kingdom, the Brits aren’t alone in their voracious appetite. Current estimations have 54.7% of Americans filling their need for radio online, with that number expected to climb to nearly 68% by 2016. While it can and, indeed, should be said that radio has had to change to fit the different flavor that Millennials are looking for, much as they look for online blogs, it should equally be argued that the web propped up and bettered an otherwise failing industry.

Traverse City, Colo. has entered the debate on whether tap water should be fluoridated.


According to a June 13 UpNorthLive.com article, local dentists, doctors and health officials are speaking publicly on the importance of keeping fluoride in Traverse City’s water, something the city has done since 1951. Traverse City’s dental and health community are stressing that scientific evidence has “overwhelmingly found fluoridated water is safe and prevents tooth decay” among both children and adults, the article reports.

Health officials are making statements on the benefits of water fluoridation after a small group asked the city to remove its funding for the water fluoridation program from its budget.

Opponents of water fluoridation say that fluoride is a toxic substance that should not be in public water supplies. Wendy Trute, a health officer for Grand Traverse County, told UpNorthLive.com that many items and substances we use every day can be considered toxic if used in high enough concentrations.

“Medicines, or even vitamins, are good examples,” Trute said. “These items enhance our lives when used appropriately, but can pose a health risk if they are consumed in too high of a quantity. The same applies to fluoride in the drinking water. When added to a community water supply at the proper level, fluoride has been scientifically proven to be a safe and effective means of preventing tooth decay in all populations, especially the poor and underserved.”

Fluoride is one of the top ways to prevent tooth decay and dental cavities, and can even reverse decay that has taken place, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Along with accidents and athletic injuries, tooth decay is one of the leading causes of tooth loss in people younger than 35.

According to Traverse City Mayor Michael Estes, the city’s water fluoridation program costs its users less than a dollar each year.

“Water fluoridation is one of the hallmarks of a modern, desirable community that values and helps protect public health,” Estes said. “Medical, dental and public health experts are in near unanimous agreement that water fluoridation is safe and effective, and we simply must continue our water fluoridation program for the public health of our citizens.”

New York State Andrew Cuomo will fund researchers’ initiatives to develop clean energy alternatives. Nine groups of scientists are competing in the New Energy Xcelerator to bring clean energy technologies to the general public. “Participants in the program receive roughly $55,000 in funding, mentoring and support to develop a clean-tech innovation,” The Rochester Business Journal writes. “Additionally, regional seed fund Excell Partners Inc. has committed to investing $150,000 to one or more teams that emerge from the program, which is managed by High Tech Rochester Inc. and partially funded by New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.”



Scientists are developing a wide range of clean energy innovations, from water-based technologies to efficient LED lighting and even mass-produced fuel cells. The SUNY College of Environmental Forestry in Syracuse, NY is, for example, “developing a proprietary process that converts organic waste into high-value biomaterials,” The Rochester Business Journal continues. “David Wetter Consulting and Kelson Solutions,” on the other hand, “are working on a method to mass-produce fuel cells to provide low-cost, efficient electricity,” according to The Democrat and Chronicle. Ultimately, the groups are working to improve any and all energy expenditures — on both residential and commercial levels. Air conditioning, for example, is widely used in U.S. housing — with at least 87% of American households using some kind of air conditioning, according to The Atlantic. Reducing these costs and improving AC energy efficiency would make an incredible difference. 



Officials selected the nine teams from an original pool of 56 applicants. The ongoing event is managed by proof-of-concept center NEXUS-NY, which is, in turn, funded by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and High Tech Rochester.

(SOCIAL) Learning From TV Social Media
It has been noticed that most of the radio stations employ concentration on contesting. Do they really offer the Fm enjoyment to their listeners? What they are doing to attract the markets? What we need to learn from Televisions and their social media development for the promotion of our brands?

To improve branding, TV stations have expediently exploited the social media. They use different techniques to meet with their pre-set objectives. No doubt, most of the TV stations are using different products – in visual form – to maintain their ranking. Besides, they used to come up with different stories which do not only incite members of certain face book page but also give them enough feedback to understand the public opinion. But, most of the social media Gurus opine that “the crispy posts of TV stations on social media are posted under the pretext of keeping the members engaged in the discussion”.

It goes without saying that social media is really helping TV stations to discuss the local issues pertaining to local audience. Its visual and photographic compatibility is grossly supporting TV stations to convey their messages. This feature is used to engage audience in the process of giving the feedback. It is the reason that most of the posts of TV stations are in question form.

No doubt, radio is not less visual than the Televisions. It can attract more people compared to other mediums of media. Radio is a hot medium and supposed to be having bigger audience. But, the significant importance of social media is undeniable. It is the reason that most of the time I ask radio runners, do you have social media strategy to engage people? Do you use content strategy to improve your ranking? Today, there is no better way than the social media to market your product.

If you are looking for meaningful results through this latest form of media contact Loyd Ford the direct marketing, ratings and social media strategist for Americalist Direct Marketing. Learn more about Loyd here: http://about.me/loydford. Get his radio-social media content sent directly to your smart phone or email for free here: www.rainmakerpathway.wordpress.com. Visit his Facebook radio social media page HERE.

Audio Bloopers
Here is the list of audio bloopers with some details:
1. The Firestone Tyre Factory Blooper (50 seconds – 685)
This is the most famous blooper of Warwick Rankin who reports on fire at the Firestone Tyre Factory.

2. A History of Rings (4 minutes, 6 seconds – 3.3 MB)
This is very funny blooper indeed. Actually, Bob Moore is trying to read commercial for jeweler. It was recorded in 1978 at radio station 2CH in Sydney, Australia.
Note: This sound track contains inappropriate language.

3. Macquarie News, with laughter  (1 minute, 2 seonds – 859 kB)
Newsreader is laughing while reading the news.

4. Orson Welles Findus Recording Session (4 minutes, 13 seconds – 3.4 MB) Listen what happened with Orson Welles during the course of Findus recording session.

5. 2SM – KISS Concert Report (8 minutes – 6.4 MB)
This is the original recording of a Melbourne kiss concert celebrated in 1980.
Note: This recording contains inappropriate language.

6. 2SM 1980 Blooper Reel (25 minutes, 40 seconds – 11.9 MB)
This is the compilation of blooper Reel. It contains historic bloopers from 1980 of 2SM and many other radio stations.
Note: This soundtrack contains inappropriate language.

The following bloopers are the highlights of the above 2SM 1980 Blooper Reel.
Australasian Post – Yvonne and Yvette (4 minutes, 1 second – 3.2 MB)
Riding Roughshod (1 minute, 14 seconds – 1 MB)
Aluminium (11 seconds – 160 kB)
Shalamanov (2 minutes, 7 seconds – 1.7 MB)

Radio Bloopers, Outtakes and Embarrassments
Radio bloopers are supposed to be a source of embarrassment for many news readers. Actually, bloopers are the funny moments occurring during the time of recoding.  These bloopers show you how most of the DJs make mistakes during their recording sessions.  No doubt, outtakes and radio bloopers have been around since the commencement of transmitter and microphones.

The following list of bloopers contains the funny moments of radio broadcasting. Remember, most of the bloopers have inappropriate language not suitable for the families. Hence, play them at your own risk. But, it must not be forgotten that these bloopers are really funny. If you are looking to hear funny and uncut parts of the newsreaders recording then click on the audio bloopers tracks given below:

Listen to Part 1 1:07 – (RealAudio required.)
Listen to Part 2 1:19 – (RealAudio required.)
Listen to Part 3 1:04 – (RealAudio required.)
Listen to Part 4 1:04 – (RealAudio required.)
Listen to Part 1 1:07 – (RealAudio required.)
Listen to Part 2 1:19 – (RealAudio required.)
Listen to Part 3 1:04 – (RealAudio required.)
Listen to Part 4 1:04 – (RealAudio required.)

For more bloopers visit the following sites:
Radio Bloopers, Screwups, Outtakes and Embarassments
Radio Bloopers, Screwups, Outtakes and Embarassments – Series 2