What the heck is she wearing now?! From her wacky wigs to her mile-high shoes, the Mother Monster is always dressed to impress! Check out her edgiest ensembles.
Source: http://www.ivillage.com/lady-gagas-kooky-couture/1-b-52400?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Alady-gagas-kooky-couture-52400
Google is launching a free tier of Google Maps Engine today, in conjunction with its announcement of Maps Engine Pro, a small business tool. The free tier offers all of the same features but has smaller quotas for data access, in the ‘tens of megabytes’ vs. the terabytes available in the full version.
Google is also launching a new Public Data Program that allows organizations to sign up for a free GME account to create maps and publish them on the web. This could let an organization like, say, the government of Latvia, surface maps of data that it would normally have to have a team build custom tools to present.
The idea is to offer up a public map of new voting districts, transport routes, public works or any other kind of data in a way that can be easily searched via Google or other tools, and that can be distributed widely in a stable fashion. Google happens to be very good at that, and many organizations and government simply aren’t.
Any organization will be able to take advantage of the new program, which does not face the same quota limitations as the free-tier Google Maps Engine product. The only stipulation is that these maps be posted publicly. This serves their needs to have those maps easily searchable, and Google needs to have its mapping products be the most complete picture of the world. There are only so many layers of data that Google can collect itself, and this program taps another whole group of organizations with unique, valuable data to add to the overall product.
Today, Google is also announcing that it will have integration with some very popular GIS software like ESRI and QGIS. It’s also firing up a partnership with Safe Software, one of the biggest spatial visualization companies around. Their data transformation tool FME will get full Google Maps Engine integration.
Maps Engine is used by companies like FedEx, Amtrak and NOAA. Google recently launched a Maps Engine API that was designed to allow companies to import data and layer it on top of Google’s own mapping layers. The Google Maps Engine product has been around for about two years and available commercially for over a year.
The benefits of a free tier are obvious: It offers a taste of the full-on product to attract new enterprise customers. The benefits of a public data tool to help governments and others ship public maps are a bit more subtle. Yes, these organizations get a stable and powerful platform based off of Google’s mapping efforts, but they’re also potentially contributing hundreds of thousands of individual data sets back to Google’s overall mapping platform, making it even more dominant.
Recalculating ...
When I make a wrong turn, the woman's voice in my GPS says, "Route recalculation." Then she tells me how to get back on track.
How I wish this electronic tool could be adapted for men whose wives have breast cancer.
Imagine a device that would help us correct course when we try our best to support the women we love — and inevitably mess up. As a breast cancer husband who did just about everything wrong when my wife was diagnosed, I would have been very grateful for a little back-seat driving.
Let's consider some examples.
My wife, Marsha, has just had a mammogram. A radiologist rather callously informs her, "Sure looks like cancer to me." A three-day weekend looms before she can see a surgeon and get more information. My wrongheaded instinct is to cheer her up. Marsha loves books, so surely she'll be happy if I take her to a book festival. That'll get her mind off the cancer bombshell.
But as we walk around, she looks sadder than I've ever seen her. Route recalculation: "Honey, I can see this isn't what you want to do right now. Tell me what would be helpful: We can go home, we can sit and cuddle, we can watch some mindless TV, we can, gulp, talk about how you're feeling." Then, shut up and listen.
Another time, we're running from doctor to doctor, listening to treatment plans. I figure it's my job to pick the best plan — a husband is supposed to take care of his wife, right? Route recalculation: Be her sounding board, not her boss.
Your wife might ask you, "What did you think of that doctor? What do you think about that chemo regimen?" Tell her what you think. Ask her questions. But then step back and remember that it's her decision, not yours.
One surgeon says to Marsha, "I can see you'd always worry about recurrence, so I'd recommend a double mastectomy." Marsha had always thought she would say, "Off with my breasts," if it meant saving her life.
Now she is mourning this possibility. I try to make things better, saying, "Honey, I'll love you with or without your breasts."
Marsha responds: "How'd you feel if they wanted to cut off your penis?"
Me (thinking to myself): "What the ... ?"
Spousal Route Recalculation: Don't take her cutting remark personally. Admit it, you can't possibly imagine how she feels. Medical route recalculation: Marsha sees another doctor who says that lumpectomy plus radiation offers comparable survival odds for Marsha, and that's the route she chooses.
My wife tells me I don't have to come to the doctor's office with her. So I'm going to listen, right? Route recalculation: She may be trying to spare me because she feels guilty imposing on my time.
Tell her: "What the heck, I'm coming anyway. I'll remind you of the questions you want to ask. I'll write down or tape-record what the doctor says."
Detour: One breast cancer survivor told me, "My husband isn't very good with doctors, he has a demanding job as a truck driver, and I could bring my sister to the appointments." She and her husband agreed on this arrangement, and it worked out fine for them.
I'm exhausted. My job is as demanding as ever, I'm doing more household chores because my wife is dealing with cancer, and then there are all the doctors' visits. Dare I take any time to unwind? No sirree. That would be ... selfish!
Route recalculation: Caregivers need a break, too. "Honey, is it OK if I go for a bike ride, shoot some hoops, hang out with my pals?" I ask. Marsha is very understanding. For a little while, I can run away from cancer. And when I get back home, I feel a little calmer, a little more myself. And I'm a better caregiver.
I'm in the mood for love. But my wife is in the middle of cancer treatments. Do I dare come on to her? Maybe I should just hold back. Route recalculation: There's nothing wrong with propositioning your wife. Maybe she's in the mood, too. Or maybe she just wants you to hold her, massage her back, whisper "I love you" in her ear.
And if she's not in the mood, well, as my wife teases, "Too bad for you!" But at least she knows I haven't lost that loving feeling. And who knows, maybe one day soon she'll be ready for an intimacy route recalculation.
Silver is the author of Breast Cancer Husband: How to Help Your Wife (and Yourself) Through Diagnosis, Treatment and Beyond.
By Lisa Maria Garza
(Reuters) - A Michigan man rejected an offer from Wal-Mart Stores Inc to rehire him after he was fired for helping a woman who was being attacked in the store parking lot during his meal break.
Kristopher Oswald, 30, who worked nights stocking shelves at a Wal-Mart store in Hartland Township, located northwest of Detroit, said on Friday that he does not feel safe going back to work.
"I believe my job was only offered to me because of the negative publicity they received," Oswald said. "There is no way I can expect to walk in as if I was a new hire and everything would be OK."
A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart said the company has a strict policy against retaliation and offered to accommodate Oswald with safety measures such as an escort to and from his vehicle into the store.
"His position is still open to him now if he wants to come back to the store. We'd welcome him back," company spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said.
She also said the company offered to reimburse Oswald for lost wages.
Wal-Mart said Oswald's initial firing resulted from his violation of company policy that requires employees to alert store management and call police instead of intervening in dangerous situations.
Publicity about the firing prompted Wal-Mart's corporate office to review the parking lot security footage and police report, Buchanan said. Oswald, a temporary employee who had worked seven weeks for the company prior to the incident, was offered his job back.
"Everyone makes mistakes and so do companies," Buchanan said.
Oswald was sitting in his car around 2:30 a.m. on October 13, eating a sandwich, when he heard a woman scream, he said. A man was sprawled on the hood of the woman's car. When she tried to pry him off her vehicle, he attacked her.
Oswald said he confronted the man, who then began punching him in the head and threatening to kill him. He was able to subdue the man, but then two other men jumped him from behind.
Local authorities arrived on the scene and quickly broke up the fight.
Oswald said he is seeking therapy to work through the trauma of the attack.
"I'm being haunted by this incident because I'm not a violent person," Oswald said. "All I did was what anyone should have done in that situation."
(Reporting by Lisa Maria Garza; Editing by Greg McCune and Bob Burgdorfer)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/man-fired-aiding-woman-rejects-234535334.htmlEating right and exercise are key to controlling blood sugar. So maybe you should skip that doughnut.
Eating right and exercise are key to controlling blood sugar. So maybe you should skip that doughnut.
There's a growing body of evidence linking elevated blood sugar to memory problems.
For instance, earlier this year, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that higher glucose may be a risk factor for dementia, even among people without type 2 diabetes.
So the question is, at what point does the risk of cognitive decline set in?
Or in other words, should we be aware of creeping blood sugar, even before it gets to levels that doctors call pre-diabetes?
Well, researchers, writing this week in the journal Neurology, have some new data that suggest that even modest increases in blood sugar among people in their 50s, 60s and 70s can have a negative influence on memory.
The study included 141 healthy older people, all of whom had blood sugar in the normal range. All of the participants were given recall tests where they were read a list of 15 words and then asked to repeat back as many as they could remember.
The researchers found that if a person's hemoglobin A1C (the AIC test is a common blood test that reflects a person's average blood sugar level over a two-to-three month period) went from 5 percent, which is in the normal range, up to 5.6 percent, which is edging closer to what doctors classify as pre-diabetes, this was associated with recalling fewer words.
This association suggests the effect isn't huge. But researchers says it's significant.
So, what's actually happening in the brain when blood sugar levels are chronically elevated?
Study author Agnes Floel of Charite University Medicine in Berlin says there may be a couple of things at play. It's possible that blood vessel effects can damage memory. "Elevated blood sugar levels damage small and large vessels in the brain, leading to decreased blood and nutrient flow to brain cells," explains Floel.
Another explanation: Elevated blood sugar "may impair the functioning of brain areas like the hippocampus, a structure particularly relevant for memory," Floel says.
"When you're making a decision or trying to retrieve [information from your memory], the hippocampus requires a lot of glucose," explains Gail Musen of the Joslin Diabetes Center.
But when glucose levels rise in the body, it may lead to a disruption in the transport of glucose through the blood-brain barrier to the hippocampus. And this may impact the integrity of the hippocampus, according to the findings of the new study.
So it seems that when blood sugar in the body rises, it may be "more difficult to get that glucose to the hippocampus," Musen explains.
We should point out that it's possible for blood sugar to go dangerously low, a condition known as hypoglycemia. This is most commonly an issue for people being treated for diabetes with insulin.
So, what can we do to help control blood sugar and keep it in the healthy range?
What we eat is important. "Consuming a diet rich in fiber, vegetables, fruit, fish, and whole-grain products" is recommended, Floel wrote to us in an email.
And there's exercise too: "Exercising regularly is absolutely associated with lower blood sugars, on average, and it's also associated with brain health," says Paul Crane of the University of Washington.
The Sony SmartWatch 2 SW2 app is getting what looks to be a sizeable update from Sony, and it promises a decent boost in performance — especially scrolling — on the watch itself. A component of the Smart Connect for LiveWear suite, the SW2 app is the control center for other apps you install on your SmartWatch 2. It sounds a little complicated if you've never used it, but the Live Wear suite is a front door to all the smart Sony accessories and their companion applications for Android. You open it, and (in this case) choose the SmartWatch 2 section, and you can control all the other applications from Google Play that install on the watch itself.
The new update should install like any Android application — including a timed release by market or carrier. Don't worry if you don't see it right at the moment. After installation, your SmartWatch 2 will reboot, and all the perks afforded by the new software will be in place.
     |
Photo courtesy Netherlands National Archive via Wikimedia Commons
Among the various totems of cool, from dark shades to dance moves, none are as essential to the whole concept as popular songs. More often than not, though, when people describe a song as cool—which, of course, they continue to do every day—they mean that the musicians who play it seem cool to them or that you would be a lot cooler if you liked it. Pop songs themselves are rarely cool. They’re hot—lustful, angry, sad, boastful, celebratory. Passionate, in one way or another. A huge proportion of pop songs are love songs, which insist on the singer’s need or desire for another person. But coolness is not about need and desire. It’s even-keeled. Unflappable.
As Carl Wilson pointed out in the piece that kicked off this series, the term cool itself, in its contemporary usage, is often credited, correctly or otherwise, to Lester Young, a sax player, and its arrival in the mainstream was signaled by the Miles Davis album Birth of the Cool and the West Side Story number simply titled “Cool.” But before Davis’ dad gave his son a trumpet and before Sondheim and Bernstein got near Romeo and Juliet, George Gershwin wrote a pop aria that captured “cool” better than any song that has come since. It’s called “Summertime,” and you’ve heard it a thousand times.
You’ve also heard it by a thousand people: Last year the New York Times said that there were more than 25,000 different recordings of the tune. That would mean a new one had been made nearly every day since the song was first performed in 1935. I’m not sure I totally believe that. But rest assured that many, many people have recorded this song, and some of them were cooler than others.
None of them were cooler than Sarah Vaughan. And her imperfect, more-than-once interrupted performance of the tune at the Cascais Jazz Festival in 1973 demonstrates the song’s underlying coolness as well as any rendition I’ve seen or heard.
“Summertime” is ostensibly a lullaby; it’s sung to a baby, after all, whom the singer tells to “hush,” in the traditional fashion. Among the songs that seem to have shaped it are “All My Trials,” itself based on a lullaby from the Bahamas and an inspiration for the lyrics, and “Pipi-pipipee,” a Yiddish lullaby. (A Ukrainian lullaby, “Oi Khodyt Son Kolo Vikon,” has also been suggested as a possible source.) Some slower versions of the song emphasize its sleepiness: Ella Fitzgerald was wont to perform it this way, for instance, and so was R.E.M., though not as often. Others elicit its melancholy undertow: Mahalia Jackson, who recorded it as a medley with another of its musical sources, “Motherless Child,” did a sad “Summertime” that cannot be outdone.
Vaughan’s version is cooler, sexier. And when she sang it in Portugal in 1973, at that now-defunct jazz festival founded by the fado singer João Braga and inaugurated by Miles Davis (among others) two years before, the song’s coolness saved her performance from a bevy of frustrations.
Vaughan opens by nodding to the conditions she’s dealing with. “It’s summertime, and the livin’ ain’t easy,” she sings. (Somewhere, Big Daddy Kane sympathizes.) But then she casually rubs the head of a cameraman trying to sneak by her—the filming of the concert appears to be causing many of her problems—and blows a kiss at someone in the crowd after laughing off a bad bit of feedback. She then has to stop and do something that is, in theory, decidedly uncool: “Watch me,” she tells the crowd, “Look at me.” She gets four more words out before having to stop again and explain to everyone how hard it is for everyone on stage that night.
Throughout all this she’s able to slip in and out of the song like it’s the world’s most comfortable nightgown, each time revealing for anyone with working eyes and ears that not only is she unimpeachably cool—utterly confident and composed under pressure—but that the song itself can sail through any sort of annoyance. A more passionate piece of music, a sadder or happier or angrier song, would need build-up, stage-setting, uninterrupted concentration—it would be nearly impossible for even a performer as masterful as Sarah Vaughan to drop into it again and again the way she does with this song. Each time she rejoins the song, “Summertime” is steady, assured, adaptable.
“Summertime” was originally composed for two (fictional) black women, but it was written by two white men: the Jewish George Gershwin and the South Carolinian Edwin Dubose Heyward, who created the characters, Clara and Bess, who sing it, and composed the lyrics. When the opera it’s a part of, Porgy and Bess, was first performed, Duke Ellington denounced it for “Gershwin’s lampblack Negroisms.”
But he came around. And “Summertime,” which mixed folk and blues and jazz and old Jewish lullabies, and originally aimed to bring peace and quiet to Catfish Row, has been masterfully done for decades by black as well as white performers, by Africans and Americans and by people from every other inhabited continent as well, so far as I can tell. Ellington recorded it, too, more than once. (His bouncy, fragmented instrumental take on Piano in the Foreground is not the coolest recording ever, but it’s one of the more interesting. Give that one a listen, too.) If, as seems likely, the idea of cool as it’s come down to us originated among black Americans and involves dealing with impossible difficulty, then “Summertime” is it, as much as any song could probably be. And Vaughan, who never cared for musical boundaries, and who could make her way through the song despite anything that might befall or bedevil her, is the coolest.
McLaren's base of operations for both car development and production lies a few minutes outside of Woking, an unassuming mid-sized town in the middle of the UK. The low-rise, stylish facilities appear from nowhere, and as I sit inside a company car, waiting to get waved through one of many security checkpoints, it dawns on me that the entire complex looks like a work of science fiction. The combination of keycards, white anonymous corridors and multiple lifts that follow add to the top-secret atmosphere. Imagine somewhere between Portal and Men In Black and you're about there. There's a "no cameras inside" rule, as development for future cars, not to mention continuous improvements to its F1 race cars, are progressing in rooms nearby.
Following a protracted series of teasers, leaks and its eventual official reveal last year, it's the company's P1 that I'm here to take a closer look at (with or without a camera). McLaren is pitching its "hypercar" as a step above your typical supercar, with an unprecedented focus on engineering, design, materials and black carbon-fiber paneling so tight you could see the car's veins, if it had any. When you see the vehicle in real life, those black accents on the doors and bumper are made even more eye-catching by the signature McLaren yellow that surrounds them.
That muscular body also encases the company's new petrol-electric V8 engine, one that's capable of running on charge alone. The P1 is one of several high-end, high-performance supercars that are going hybrid, and its electric motor is integrated to the primary motor to augment the overall driving performance. It should drive better because it's a hybrid, not despite it. If you factor in the tech drip-down from McLaren's Formula One arm, encompassing the car's structure, design, brakes and engine, you start to see exactly what McLaren's offering for that $1.3 million price tag.
Before my tour officially began, I had some time to walk around the Technology Center, which has Grand Prix-winning cars in every direction. A rare (and prohibitively expensive) chrome-decked 12C caught my eye almost immediately. Here, as on the P1, the looks of this special edition are the result of hundreds of hours of research and development. McLaren teamed up with paint and coating experts AkzoNobel to craft this chrome finish, which weighs a third of the original paint prototype. It's now used on both the nose and body of McLaren's Formula One cars, where such weight reductions truly count.
Weight was also a hugely important consideration during the genesis of the McLaren P1. Its combined V8 engine and electric motor is capable of up to 903 horsepower, which is plenty more oomph than the 12C at 616 bhp. But combining electric and petrol engines comes at a (literally) weighty cost. That electric engine has to be accompanied by an 86kg battery to power it, meaning that McLaren had to shed pounds elsewhere within the vehicle in order to offer what it believes is a premium driving experience. As Chief Design Engineer Dan Parry-Williams put it, the aim was to make "the world's best driver's car." So it may not be the fastest supercar, but it's a vehicle that McLaren wagers will offer the very best driving experience to its 375 lucky owners. The P1 will have a very limited run.
Combining electric and petrol engines comes at a cost, though.
Amusingly, the material that helped to solve the weight issue is carb-heavy. A carbon fiber "monocoque" (which includes the safety cage) encompasses the roof structure and sides, while the car's panels are crafted from yet more carbon fiber, this time woven. Both inside and out, these panels are an integral part of the car's design, running along ledges built into the car's sculpted doors. The dihedral doors of the McLaren P1, which swing upwards and outwards, pack a pair of hinges each, because, perhaps counterintuitively, two smaller hinges delivered the same utility as a single one, but with less weight. The doors are also shaped to channel air through to the side-mounted radiators.
Discussing the P1's development, McLaren Design Director Frank Stephenson explained how its carbon paneling came to look almost vacuum-sealed. Imagine the car lowering its body fat, leaving a taut, lean shell, one where the doors are sculpted for airflow. Stephenson called it "shrink-wrapped."
The concept started off as a three-dimensional surface model, which had its roots in Le Mans design principles. From there, the team refined it, while attempting to balance aerodynamics, cooling and manufacturing constraints. Yes, that final proviso still exists for $1 million-plus cars. It was during this phase that McLaren added a roof snorkel (seriously) that drew air toward the engine from the apex of the car. While engineering focused on aerodynamics, it was up to Stephenson to make it look "as beautiful as it was a pleasure to drive."
A good example of McLaren's approach to how the P1 looks is found, oddly, on the inside of the car. The dash is understated, covered in (once more) black carbon fiber. The aim was to reduce reflections within the car that might detract from those outer curves.
About those outer curves and reflections: "It's less about the surface color, [than] how it communicates through light," Stephenson said later, as I stared at a P1 inside McLaren's hidden showroom -- behind a revolving door, of course. Before that, we had toured the paint shop. I could immediately see the shimmering color selection that McLaren offers on its road cars. Samples were hung right next to the door, facing several see-through paint rooms. The P1 will arrive in even more hues than its 12C predecessor.
The application itself is done by the production workers, not machines, as humans are apparently far more capable of painting the panels and negotiating around the frame of the car.
Stephenson added that the new chrome-based paint is a major part of the P1's design. The company goes for impact when it reveals new cars, forgoing black (which "shrinks car design and makes surfaces harder to discriminate") and white ("which looks like an appliance ... boring.") and choosing deep oranges, McLaren's traditional team racing color, and yellows whenever it has a new road car to show off.
On closer inspection of the P1's painted surface, within the "volcano yellow" paint, you can discern minuscule flecks of green: a nod to legendary racer Ayrton Senna's helmet. Stephenson told the crowd huddling around the car that this is what adds depth to the color, a shade that is measured in numbers so it can be recreated again precisely. He added that this is really only the start. "The 12C was the first part of our new design language," and the P1 is the extremely polished next chapter.
As the tour headed back through the facility to reach the production line that puts together McLaren's road vehicles, the focus shifted to what goes on underneath the glimmering surface and back to Parry-Williams, McLaren's chief design engineer. He credited that petrol-electric powertrain engine for both those high power levels and instant torque. The addition of an electric motor "allows [for] larger turbos and an all-new pressure-charging system [for] more top-end power." I asked, given its status beyond that of a normal supercar, whether McLaren was happy with the top speeds it was getting (currently electronically limited to around 217MPH/350KPH). Parry-Williams reiterated what I'd heard already: "It may not be the fastest car in the world in absolute top speed, but that was never our goal."
"We wanted to create the fastest-ever production car on a racing circuit."
"We wanted to create the fastest-ever production car on a racing circuit," Parry-Williams said. He added that this focus is a more important technical statement that's "far more relevant for on-road driving." In short, numbers aren't everything. It's a stance that reflects the calm confidence of every McLaren employee I met. Between the Technology Center and Production Center, the corridor leading to the giant staff canteen ensures that everyone walks past row upon row of McLaren's racing awards, its history. It'd be pretty difficult not to be proud, right?
Reading up on the stats offered by McLaren about the new engine inside the P1, I had to wonder how the car balanced that power with stability and traction. Fortunately, the P1 endeavors to keep the power in control with seven different throttle calibrations.
Yes, it has a boost button.
Engineers have honed the feel of the accelerator pedal to behave consistently across the gears, whether in IPAS (Instant Power Assist System) mode, which uses the petrol and electric engines at the same time, or when you press the Boost button. Yes, it has a boost button. Parry-Williams added: "When the button is pressed, the power from the electric motor becomes available through the steering wheel-mounted IPAS button. This feature gives a consistent, instantaneous throttle response, no matter which mode the car is running in."
Development of McLaren's hybrid engine system didn't stop with the P1 either. Parry-Williams believes that similar engine designs will continue to spread across the car industry, from entry-level vehicles to the dizzying performance heights of the P1, Ferrari's LaFerrari and Porsche's 918 Spyder, offering the environmental savings of an electric mode alongside the instant gratification of petrol-based driving.
McLaren's first road car, the F1.
In 1992, years before building this relatively new Production Center, McLaren launched its first-ever road car, the appropriately named F1. It even established a new company (McLaren Cars) two years prior to the launch. In March 1990, the team held a 10-hour design meeting for the car, demanding the highest power-to-weight ratio in any production car at the time and a vehicle that was "practical and usable on an everyday basis." The resulting F1 could seat three people, with the driver upfront and alone. The supercar was also the first road car to include carbon composite within its structural base.
McLaren's website describes how the first prototype took 6,000 man-hours to complete. The company estimated it would only craft two vehicles a month. The end result, in May 1992, was a 1,140kg vehicle that went from 0 to 60 in 3.2 seconds and an engine that required around 20 square meters of gold foil for peak thermal insulation. The supercar cost £634,500 at launch -- roughly £1.1 million in 2013 prices. At 1,500 revs per minute, the F1 was also capable of producing 280 pound-feet of torque, to ensure that the driver remained firmly in control of the car, and the car featured a new, patented suspension system to smooth out any in-transit bumps.
Predecessors aside, McLaren's racing years have also contributed plenty to its latest road car.
However, despite critical acclaim, 72 road F1s and 28 GTR race editions, things went quiet at McLaren Cars. It was almost a 20-year gap before it announced its next supercar, the MP4-12C, and a coupe version, the Spider, soon after that. Predecessors aside, McLaren's racing years have also contributed plenty to its latest road car. The P1's adjustable rear wing is a direct nod to its race heritage (specifically the 2008 championship-winning MP4-23) and can extend from its original position by around 300mm (11.8 inches), increasing downforce when needed. Outlawed for competitive reasons in Formula One, these active aerodynamics include both wing and underbody devices to give extra pull to the track, while in addition, adjustable suspension softens any roll and pitch.
The P1's race mode apparently stiffens the suspension springs by 300 percent, which means the car will be able to take corners with incoming forces of more than 2g. The suspension engineering also forgoes any need for anti-roll bars within the design and reduces the overall weight even further. Another banned Formula One addition, brake steer, also improves cornering speed by pressing on the inside wheel harder than the outside. The aforementioned IPAS is an evolution of the KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) from F1 cars, while the drag-reduction system (another button-based feature) also makes the transition.
These high-level features and systems require a similarly high standard of quality testing and McLaren dedicates lengths of its production facilities to ensuring everything works how it should. Buyers can even watch as their cars are assembled, and if they think something feels a little off, it's returned here until it's resolved. About 30 percent of the floor (most of the left side) is occupied with "anomaly confirmation." Other companies might call it "quality assurance" or "quality control," and from what we were told, the process encompasses both. Perhaps the wording delivers more confidence. If there's a problem, McLaren's team will find it.
Both McLaren's racing and consumer cars are made within this same facility. I'd normally say it was a production line, but this was unlike any car production line I'd seen before. Photos of the facility might look like renders, but it really is that clean, that... white. The floor measures 200,000 square feet and is so very quiet. Admittedly, my first visit was during a lunch break, but it didn't get much louder when the employees returned. A lack of noisy assembly tools and robots makes for some very quiet vehicle production. Close your eyes, and it'd be very hard to tell people were making cars.
Constructing the 12C's frame takes 45 minutes. However, that doesn't include the battery of quality tests that it passes on its way. As I stood on the open-plan floor, I could see almost the entire production process. Operations Director Alan Foster said that he made it that way because it offers him both flexibility on how production progresses and the ability to survey everything that happens from anywhere on the floor. In the center, however, there was one big, empty space.
This is where the P1 production line now lies. At the moment, the center currently rolls out 2,800 cars a year, but will expand to 4,800 in the near future. When plans were drawn up for the facility, it was designed with the capacity for McLaren's "next seven cars." The incoming P1 (and the cars that come after that) get the same attention to detail I saw on the 12Cs, with iterative improvements to the design and construction beamed directly to individual stations. Production has now begun, and McLaren will continue to produce both the 12C and 12C Spider alongside the new hypercar. Each P1 will take 17 days to craft, from start to finish and given the limited production run (and that price), it's going to be a very rare day when you spot the P1 in the wild. That is, unless you happen to be driving through Woking. That McLaren yellow is pretty hard to miss, especially when it's not going at 218MPH.
(CNN) -- You know what's relatively easy? Fixing a website. You know what's really hard? Ensuring access to affordable, quality health insurance for every single American and improving our broken health care system in the process. In the back-and-forth about the Obamacare exchange websites, let's not lose sight of the ultimate goal of health care reform -- a goal that, even with the exchanges problems, we are steadily achieving.
Less than 17 days into the signup period, the State of Oregon had already enrolled 56,000 people under the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare -- and reduced the state's percentage of uninsured by 10%. In New York, over 150,000 people have signed up for a private insurance plan through the state's exchange website -- including, by the way, me. In Kentucky, a state that has more than 640,000 residents without health insurance, the state insurance exchange is signing up 1,000 people per day, "a great rate and a great success so far" says Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear.
NEW YORK (AP) — About a year ago, Lindsey Gort's name came up for a part but the casting director said she wasn't right for it because she was more of a young Kim Cattrall-type.
Now Gort is playing a young Samantha Jones — Cattrall's character in "Sex and the City" — on The CW's "The Carrie Diaries" (Friday, 8 p.m. EDT).
"When the part came up, my manager was like, 'Hey, remember when you said she was a young Kim Cattrall-type? Well, you're looking for that right now so you should come see her,'" Gort said in a recent interview.
"It's such an iconic character, and I'm such a huge fan of the show," she said.
Set in the 1980s, "The Carrie Diaries" stars AnnaSophia Robb as teen Carrie Bradshaw, who lives in Connecticut with her widowed father and younger sister. The show is based on novels by Candace Bushnell, as was "Sex and the City."
Gort's version of Samantha Jones is a lot like the one in the '90s HBO series and the two movies that followed.
The big difference, Gort says, is that Samantha is "in her early 20s and is not a career woman yet, so she doesn't have her Birkin bags and her Manolos yet. She's figuring herself out, trying to figure out where she belongs in this world and having a good time while doing that."
___
Alicia Rancilio covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow her online at http://www.twitter.com/aliciar
___
Online:
http://www.cwtv.com/shows/the-carrie-diaries/
By Chuck Mikolajczak
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks climbed on Tuesday, pushing the S&P 500 to yet another record high, after weaker-than-expected job creation last month reinforced expectations the Federal Reserve will hold the course on its economic stimulus into next year.
U.S. employers added 148,000 workers last month, well below the 180,000 economists had expected. The data was seen as supporting the Fed's decision to maintain its $85 billion in monthly bond purchases, which has been a major factor in the S&P 500's 2013 rally of 23 percent.
Many economists now think the Fed will refrain from scaling back its easy money policy, which has kept borrowing costs low, until next year. The central bank surprised market participants in September when it held off on any plans to trim its stimulus.
"Another soft report on the employment numbers just continues to lead us to believe the Fed will be with us at the holiday table this year with their full $85 billion and ringing in the New Year probably at that rate as well, which the markets like," said Darrell Cronk, regional chief investment officer at Wells Fargo Private Bank in New York.
But gains were limited on the Nasdaq after some of the year's biggest winners, including Netflix Inc
"This is a horrible one-day reversal, taking out yesterday's action. We saw both higher highs and lower lows today, which is proof the stock is exhausted," said Frank Gretz, market analyst and technician for brokerage Shields & Co in New York.
Netflix shares fell 9 percent to $323.12, giving back gains that followed the release of the company's earnings report on Monday. With more than 17 million shares traded, volume was nearly eight times the average over the last 50 days.
Apple edged down 0.3 percent to $519.87, though losses ebbed after the company unveiled a new line of iPads.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 75.46 points or 0.49 percent, to 15,467.66, the S&P 500 <.spx> gained 10.01 points or 0.57 percent, to 1,754.67 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 9.517 points or 0.24 percent, to 3,929.566.
The gains marked the fourth straight record close for the benchmark S&P index.
Consumer staples <.splrcs>, up 1.4 percent, was among the best performing S&P sectors, boosted by a 4.2 gain in Kimberly-Clark Corp
Transocean
Shares of cloud software maker VMware Inc
According to Thomson Reuters data through Tuesday morning, of the 128 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings, 63.3 percent have topped analysts' expectations, roughly in line with the beat rate since 1994 but below the 66 percent rate over the past four quarters.
On a revenue basis, 52.3 percent of companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results have beaten Wall Street expectations, short of the 61 percent beat rate since 2002 but slightly above the 49 percent rate over the past four quarters.
Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 2,210 to 805, while on the Nasdaq, advancers beat decliners 1,397 to 1,148.
(Additional reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
By Emma Thomasson
BERLIN (Reuters) - The online retailer Jumia, a would-be African Amazon, is betting that it can propel the continent's rising middle class consumers out of the street markets and straight onto its websites, missing out the department stores and shopping malls in between.
The key, it says, is the smartphone, already helping much of Africa's economy brush aside the continent's lack of reliable transport or fixed phone and Internet connections.
Take Lagos, Nigeria's teeming commercial hub.
"Most of the people have phones, but there are only three malls for 20 million inhabitants," Jumia's French co-founder, Jeremy Hodara, told Reuters from in a telephone interview from the city.
"It is a unique time. People are hungry for consumption. It is the right time to leapfrog over 'offline'."
For now, e-commerce is still in its infancy in most of Africa.
Even in South Africa, the continent's most technologically advanced country, the research firm World Wide Worx estimates e-commerce sales were just 4 billion rand last year, or about $80 per internet user.
Even Spain, which has a similar population size but is an e-commerce laggard by European standards, had online sales of 6.7 billion euros last year - albeit with a per capita GDP almost four times that of South Africa.
Amazon, the world's biggest Internet retailer, has no local operations in Africa and only ships to South Africa, although delivery charges make it a pricey option.
But the phenomenon seems set to take off. One market research firm suggests that Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, will have almost tripled its online purchases in just three years to more than $1 billion by 2014.
LOOKING FOR A HEAD-START
Jumia is one of the firms trying to get a head-start in that market, not yet profitable but spending heavily, following Amazon's model, to grab market share and establish its brand.
The web information company Alexa, which is owned by Amazon, says Jumia is the 22nd most visited site in Nigeria, slightly behind its local e-commerce rival Konga at rank 20.
Launched only 16 months ago by Rocket Internet, the German venture capital group behind the booming European online fashion retailer Zalando and South African e-seller Zando, it now claims more than 150,000 page visits per day.
It operates in Nigeria, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Egypt and Kenya, offering up to 100,000 different items from sale from its local warehouses, and plans to expand to other African countries before the year is out, although it is not yet saying where.
Hodara, a 31-year-old French business graduate who cut his teeth at consultants McKinsey, said the fact that the World Retail Congress picked Jumia as "Best new retail launch" this month, rather than best in e-commerce, showed its potential.
"We are in a game to become the biggest retailer of Africa, not the biggest e-commerce player," he said. "If you look at the U.S., e-commerce is 15 percent of retail. We think that in Africa ... e-commerce is going to be 40, 50, 60 percent."
Developers are rushing to build more malls to serve Africa's rapidly expanding middle class, but are struggling to keep pace with the demand for more consumption. Often, they are hampered by hefty costs and the difficulty of securing land titles, not to mention the kind of security issues highlighted by the deadly attack on a high-end Nairobi mall last month.
AFRICANS NO LESS DEMANDING
Jumia, whose main investors are emerging markets telecoms group Millicom and Sweden's Kinnevik, promises to deliver products ranging from fashion to consumer electronics in one to five days, even to remote villages.
That pledge has proven a big draw, particularly in gridlocked megacities such as Lagos, where Jumia has recruited its own fleet of scooter drivers to beat the traffic. It now employs some 1,000 staff, 95 percent of them Africans.
"People are as demanding as in London or the U.S. If you say you will deliver tomorrow at 5, and it's 5.15, they call you like crazy. You cannot do less because it's Africa. It has to be as good as in New York," Hodara said.
"If doesn't work perfectly, they are afraid it is a scam."
Most customers pay cash on delivery at first, using credit cards only once they trust Jumia.
Kinnevik Chief Executive Mia Brunell said she was impressed with how the company was dealing with challenges such as the fact that some customers might not even have a formal address.
"When you find solutions to logistics and payment problems, you really create loyal and satisfied customers," she said.
Hodara predicted that Jumia would be profitable within 12-18 months.
But he said it was too early to say if the firm would then consider a stock market listing, saying it could also end up as a division of Millicom.
"It is hard to predict. Things are going so fast. At the moment, 200 percent of our brain is on building the business," he said.
BANGKOK (AP) — Oil dwelled near $97 a barrel Friday, consolidating after two weeks of losses sparked by high supplies and patchy global economic growth.
Benchmark U.S. crude for December delivery was up 20 cents at $97.31 a barrel at late afternoon Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract, which rose 25 cents to $97.11 on Thursday, is down nearly 5 percent over the past two weeks.
One factor weighing on the price was Wednesday's report from the Energy Information Administration that said U.S. oil inventories rose by 5.2 million barrels last week, a possible symptom of subdued demand and overproduction. The rise in stockpiles followed a 4 million barrel increase in the previous week.
"Demand isn't looking great and it's not anything to do with fuel efficiency in today's cars. It's the fact that there's high unemployment, weak job creation," said Carl Larry of Oil Outlooks and Opinions.
Asian stock markets were roiled Friday by doubts about the durability of recoveries in Japan and China.
Japan released inflation figures that gave a mixed signal about the effectiveness of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic revitalization strategy that aims to reverse two decades of stagnation and falling prices. In China, there are jitters that tighter central bank management of credit growth could crimp the recovery in the world's No. 2 economy.
Brent crude was down 17 cents at $106.82 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.
In other energy futures trading on the Nymex:
— Wholesale gasoline fell 1.9 cents to $2.553 a gallon.
— Natural gas fell 1.2 cents to $3.617 per 1,000 cubic feet.
— Heating oil shed 0.4 cent to $2.895 a gallon.
FILE - In this Feb. 19, 2013 file photo, hydrocodone bitartrate and acetaminophen pills, also known as Vicodin, are arranged for a photo at a pharmacy in Montpelier, Vt. The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013 recommended new restrictions on prescription medicines containing hydrocodone, the highly addictive painkiller that has grown into the most widely prescribed drug in the U.S. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot, File)
FILE - In this Feb. 19, 2013 file photo, hydrocodone bitartrate and acetaminophen pills, also known as Vicodin, are arranged for a photo at a pharmacy in Montpelier, Vt. The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013 recommended new restrictions on prescription medicines containing hydrocodone, the highly addictive painkiller that has grown into the most widely prescribed drug in the U.S. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration is recommending new restrictions on prescription medicines containing hydrocodone, the highly addictive painkiller that has grown into the most widely prescribed drug in the U.S.
In a major policy shift, the agency said in an online notice Thursday that hydrocodone-containing drugs should be subject to the same restrictions as other narcotic drugs like oxycodone and morphine.
The move comes more than a decade after the Drug Enforcement Administration first asked the FDA to reclassify hydrocodone so that it would be subject to the same restrictions as other addictive painkilling drugs. The FDA did not issue a formal announcement about its decision, which has long been sought by many patient advocates, doctors and state and federal lawmakers.
For decades, hydrocodone has been easier to prescribe, in part because it is only sold in combination pills and formulas with other non-addictive ingredients like aspirin and acetaminophen.
That ease of access has made it many health care professionals' top choice for treating chronic pain, everything from back pain to arthritis to toothaches.
In 2011, U.S. doctors wrote more than 131 million prescriptions for hydrocodone, making it the most prescribed drug in the country, according to government figures. The ingredient is found in blockbusters drugs like Vicodin as well as dozens of other generic formulations.
It also consistently ranks as the first or second most-abused medicine in the U.S. each year, according to the DEA, alongside oxycodone. Both belong to a family of drugs known as opioids, which also includes heroin, codeine and methadone.
Earlier this year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that prescription painkiller overdose deaths among women increased about fivefold between 1999 and 2010. Among men, such deaths rose about 3.5-fold. The rise in both death rates is closely tied to a boom in the overall use of prescribed painkillers.
The FDA has long supported the more lax prescribing classification for hydrocodone, which is also backed by professional societies like the American Medical Association.
But the agency's top drug regulator, Dr. Janet Woodcock, said in a statement Thursday: "The FDA has become increasingly concerned about the abuse and misuse of opioid products, which have sadly reached epidemic proportions in certain parts of the United States."
The FDA says it will formally request in early December that hydrocodone be rescheduled as a Schedule II drug, limiting which kinds of medical professionals can write a prescription and how many times it can be refilled.
The Controlled Substances Act, passed in 1970, put hydrocodone drugs in the Schedule III class, which is subject to fewer controls. Under that classification, a prescription for Vicodin can be refilled five times before the patient has to see a physician again. If the drug is reclassified to Schedule II, patients will only be able to receive one 90-day prescription, similar to drugs like OxyContin. The drug could also not be prescribed by nurses and physician assistants.
The FDA's request for reclassification must be approved by officials in other agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services.
News of the FDA decision was applauded by lawmakers from states that have been plagued by prescription drug abuse, many who have been prodding the agency to take action for months.
"Today was a tremendous step forward in fighting the prescription drug abuse epidemic that has ravaged West Virginia and our country," said Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, in a statement. "Rescheduling hydrocodone from a Schedule III to a Schedule II drug will help prevent these highly addictive drugs from getting into the wrong hands and devastating families and communities
Sen. Charles Schumer of New York noted that the FDA's own expert panel recommended the reclassification more than nine months ago.
"Each day that passes means rising abuse, and even death, at the hands of hydrocodone-based drugs," Schumer said in a statement.
Still, Thursday's action immediately sparked criticism from some professional groups that said that the tighter restrictions could have unintended consequences, such as burdening health care workers and patients.
"The FDA's reported decision will likely pose significant hardships for many patients and delay relief for vulnerable patients with legitimate chronic pain, especially those in nursing home and long-term care," said Kevin Schweers, a spokesman for the National Community Pharmacists Association.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2013-10-24-Painkillers-FDA/id-df94b28bf6e84b83ba3e00e3ce74044fmarwencol.com
A still from the documentary "Marwencol"
Robert Zemeckis is developing a new drama as as follow-up to his Oscar-nominated Flight.
Universal has optioned the 2010 documentary Marwencol, which tells the unique story of Mark Hogancamp and the way he coped with the severe memory loss he suffered after he was attacked and beaten by a group of teenagers. As part of the deal, Universal also picked up Hogancamp's life rights.
The project is coming to Universal with a script by Caroline Thompson, and Zemeckis is attached to direct.
PHOTOS: 25 of Fall's Most Anticipated Movies
The beating Hogancamp suffered at the hands of five teenagers was so severe that it left him in a coma that lasted nine days. When he emerged, he had no memory of his life, his friends or his family. As a form of therapy, he began building a one-sixth scale model of a World War II-era Belgian village in his backyard, replete with figures made in the image of him, his friends, and, shockingly to some, his attackers. While the process mends his mind to a certain extent, it also lets him escape into a fantasy world in which he creates various scenarios with the figurines.
The documentary, which ended up on many best-of lists, also showed how fragile Hogancamp's world was when the New York art scene became interested in his work and wanted to display it to the public.
The planned film aims to move between and blend fantasy and reality, something that Thompson has an affinity for, judging by her past credits. The scribe co-wrote Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas as well as an adaptation of the classic novel The Secret Garden. She last wrote the adaptation for City of Ember.
While no castings have been made, sources say Zemeckis is hoping to lure Leonardo DiCaprio for the lead.
PHOTOS: 'Flight' Premiere: Denzel Washington, Robert Zemeckis Touch Down on Red Carpet
ImageMovers will produce under their Universal-based banner. VP production Maradith Frenkel and creative executive Chloe Yellin will oversee the project. Jeff Malmberg, the director of the 2010 documentary, will executive produce.
Zemeckis is repped by Gang Tyre. Thompson is repped by ICM Partners and Hansen Jacobson.
Watch the trailer for the documentary below.
A wall of tasks at the offices of the U.K.'s Government Digital Service.
A wall of tasks at the offices of the U.K.'s Government Digital Service.
When he read about the technical failures plaguing HealthCare.gov, Mike Bracken said it felt like a real-life version of the movie Groundhog Day. During the past decade, the government in the United Kingdom faced a string of public, embarrassing and costly IT failures. Finally, a monster technical fiasco — a failed upgrade for the National Health Service — led to an overhaul of the way the British government approached technology.
Instead of writing behemoth, long-term contracts with a long list of specifications for outside contractors, Parliament greenlighted the creation of the Government Digital Service, a "go-team" of 300 technologists who began streamlining 90 percent of the most common transactions the British people have with government. It appointed Bracken, a tech industry veteran, as the first ever executive director of digital — a Cabinet-level position.
Mike Bracken is executive director of digital for the U.K. government.
Mike Bracken is executive director of digital for the U.K. government.
Two years later, gov.uk is a single, simple platform connecting the hundreds of British agencies and allowing people to pay taxes, register for student loans, renew passports and more. Doing technology this way is saving British taxpayers at least $20 million a year, according to government estimates.
Not everyone is onboard with the reforms. For one, becoming "digital by default" means those who prefer a more analog relationship with government services are forced to adapt. And one of Bracken's biggest critics is a man named Tim Gregory. He argues that putting technologists at the heart of government stifles business investment in the U.K. Gregory is the U.K. president of CGI, the global contractor whose American arm was the biggest contractor on HealthCare.gov. (Bracken calls Gregory's complaint "beyond parody.")
The energetic digital chief was in Washington, D.C., this week to speak with the Presidential Innovation Fellows, some of whom are part of the "tech surge" aimed at helping fix the system. He sat down with me for an extended chat about the "not sexy" heart of the HealthCare.gov failure, his hopes for what comes from this crisis and the lessons he learned abroad that could help the U.S. (The interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
What does being "director of digital in the U.K." mean?
Great question. That means I am responsible for making public services digital by default in the U.K.
How did you come to be in this role?
I'm the first person in this role, and the position has existed since mid-2011. It came about because of a report written between Martha Lane Fox, who is [a] digital champion [in] the U.K. and an entrepreneur, and Francis Maude of the Minister of the Cabinet's office. The report's called Digital by Default and it recommended four things: that government has a digital center as its heart, [as] it never had one of those before; digital capacity and new digital skills right at the heart of government ... and then [that] it fix publishing, fix all its transactions, make them both digital by default; and then finally, link them all up with open data.
Why was there a need for government to have a digital heart?
“ My fear is that governments continue to see technology as big white elephants, that you create a service and then you leave it. You have to take a different approach.
We have grown accustomed to too many technology failures in government, and also our digital services aren't keeping up with digital services outside of government. In the U.K. it's widely accepted that our public services are pretty good. We're a reasonably populous country at 70 million people. We have a long tradition of public services. We do an awful lot of different types of public services to a high standard. Yet it's also accepted that when it comes to transposing those to a digital world, our services lack a little bit in quality. It's not for want of spending money on technology, but in comparison to things like booking airline tickets or buying books or all the stuff we do in our daily lives that government services and public services are not keeping pace.
How did the U.K. arrive at this conclusion?
Well, it arrived at it over time, to be fair. Throughout the 2000s. But one of the critical events was in late 2008, 2009. We had yet another big ... IT program ... this one called NHS IT — the National Health Service. It's not actually under [me]. It's outside of central government. But there'd been a massive multibillion-pound IT program, [and it] hadn't yielded good results. And I think that was the moment when both politicians and civil servants felt, it's time to try another tack here. Because pouring money into these big IT programs just isn't yielding great results.
And when you say "isn't yielding great results," what was happening where we might be able to sort of see some parallels?
Well, a bunch of things were happening. We were getting too bogged down in long-term multiyear procurements. We were trying to predict the future in a digital world that's changing rapidly. Because we were trying to buy things with five, eight, 10-year cycles, we just couldn't possibly keep pace with what was happening. Also we weren't getting good values as a result of that. We were trying to outsource the whole thing into a certain contract type and weren't really in control of that. And the final thing is, you weren't able to react to user need. Users' needs change. Because we were locked into these big timelines and because we were costing a lot of money, we couldn't react to users' needs and actually to changing policy needs.
So all those factors combined to really create an inertia at the center of government, and to unlock that inertia you need many different things. But the critical thing you need is delivery skills. You need a new younger generation. Not just a younger generation but younger skills. It's like the Internet generation. You can create stuff really quickly, that can get stuff out the door maybe in alphas and betas, try early projects, and iterate and change them depending on user need. ... And that's a fundamentally different model than trying to predict the future and buy your way out of it with big contracts. We've had to really unpick some learned behavior that government's had for the best part of 20 years.
In the U.S. we have a chief technology officer, Todd Park. And there's been smaller initiatives like the Presidential Innovation Fellows. How is what Todd Park does or the "power" that he's given different from what you've been given?
Todd Park is an amazing person and his enthusiasm and his skill show through and he's great. However, I think that one of the issues that you have here and other countries have is the absence of a delivery capacity — the absence of being able to put your hand on teams of highly skilled, multidisciplinary technical and digital and policy people and deploy them at points of real urgency means that Todd can only be as good as his influencing skills to the existing supplies and the existing contracts. They need rooting around and doing differently. And that's a fundamental problem.
Todd Park is the U.S. government's chief technology officer.
Todd Park is the U.S. government's chief technology officer.
Government only has a finite amount of delivery capacity. In a world of policy, in a world of political imperatives, the next big thing comes along and your best people have moved on to that. So unless people like Todd Park have an organization and a structure and skills like we have in [Government Digital Services], then I don't see how they're ever going to be able to really structurally change some of the problems you have. And I do think that will lead to more and more experiences like the one you're potentially having right now with HealthCare.gov.
There's good signs here. Jen Pahlka has come on from Code for America for a year. And if she's given the backing and the team to build the sort of mini GDS or macro GDS, that's great. There's the Presidential Innovation Fellows. There's plenty of places where you could put these skills in the center, but until you actually have them in substantial number — we have 300 in the U.K. — ... then I fear that you'll always be working through it through influence, however talented some of your technology leaders are.
I imagine one of the reasons your government arrived at this is cost?
Yes. So it saves us huge amounts of money. So when we have that team, the way we deploy them — there's still a finite resource; it's still not enough. Because government is quite a distributed thing as I'm sure it is here ... the first thing we did was create a common platform so everyone in government can use it. That's called gov.uk. So if you go to www.gov.uk now, it's one country, it's a domain for the entire country. There's still some agencies to come onboard, but most of the big departments are done. ... In the next year all of government will be on it.
Right now in the U.S., we have a bunch of agencies, hundreds of agencies, but they contract out for their own sites and their own dashboards and their own content management systems.
The problem that everyone in government as a user has is, you don't just get information from government. You transact. And we all know the big stuff — driver's licenses, passports. Governments are pretty much the same the world over. They do roughly the same stuff. So using that finite number of those 300, what we've done is gone after 25 of the top 50 transactions in U.K. government. The top 50 account for 97 percent of volume. And you can guess what they are. I've mentioned some: passports, driver's license, tax, health care, all this stuff.
What is your reaction to HealthCare.gov and what you're reading and seeing regarding failures of what was meant to be an Expedia shopping for health coverage?
Yeah ... I'll say this with no sense of enjoyment whatsoever, but it feels a bit like Groundhog Day to where we were three or four years ago. Hundreds of millions of dollars, large-scale IT enterprise technology, no real user testing, no real focus on end users, all done behind a black box, and not in an agile way but in a big waterfall way, which is a software methodology. And basically not proven good value, and I'm afraid to say I've got example after example in the U.K. in the past where we've had that experience. So it looks just like one of those.
My hope is that the current shockwaves of what you're going through here are strong enough to implement a new approach and actually to get political will behind having digital skills in the center. Because delivery is the only thing that will solve this problem. I've not been thrilled so far by the response in terms of the view of technology that you can send one or two or a whole fleet of people and then crack this problem. The real problem is systemic. You actually can't build technology like this. Technologies aren't things that are binary. You don't procure them. They're living systems and you have to have people who look after them and develop them iteratively and change and grow with them and you need those skills in the heart of government.
What is your fear? What does the shockwave reaction now portend for us?
You're destined to repeat the problem. This is something that governments have done all the time. Very few have them have this public [attention]. So often projects like this can be sort of quietly shelved and buried in hundreds of millions of pounds or quietly put through on the side. And because end users aren't touched by them there isn't, if you like, an outcry or so much of a view. This is different now. So, my fear is that governments continue to see technology as big white elephants, that you create a service and then you leave it. You have to take a different approach. Reform of procurement is the elephant in the room. If there aren't steps to take substantial procurement reform then that's a problem. Procurement reform is the killer for any dinner party conversation. I recognize that.
Not a sexy topic.
Not a sexy topic, but it's so important because we can't keep buying technology like we're buying bridges or we're buying motorways. It's not the same stuff. It's much more involved in its faces and users. We have to be much smarter about it and we must have in governments all over the world, I'd say, the skills at the heart of government ... skills to understand how to use technology. By the way, I don't mean do it all yourselves. ... You should use suppliers, use vendors, use the best that's out there. But not in this sort of one-size-fits-all kind of way.
You were here in Washington to speak with the Presidential Innovation Fellows, a group that I'm sure you're very supportive of. What was your message to those folks? What were you here to say to them?
I was giving them a bit of feedback from the three years we've had at this. The first was, go at the big stuff quickly. Do the stuff that matters. Solve the big problems around procurement. Make sure we get digital capacity into the heart of government. Start to look at end user services.
Get the data for your services and put them in the public domain ... how many people applied for benefits today? How many people were successful? Those people who weren't successful, why did they fail? Use that as a baseline and try to drive services. Too often, and this country's no different, I talk to CTOs and CIOs and they say, "I've got all that data." Great. Bully for you. Well, publish it. Let everyone have a look at it. Because actually it's not technology data. It's data about public services, and we all pay for them.
Finally, the president said Monday that the policy of health care reform is not the website. How would you characterize the relationship between what government services purport to do and how much they're dependent on the technological systems?
It is the prevalent distribution model of our time. I don't think you would hear politicians say, "Well, the government buildings, they're not the government," because you have to go to government buildings to transact with them. So websites, digital channels, mobile services, applications, APIs, they are the government. And that's a critical thing. Digital services are public services. The Web services are indivisible from public services. And that's a generational message that I think the Web generation understands. And potentially because we've thought of technology as procurement for so long, that message has been missed in political circles.
