Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 181
March 16, 2017
How to Motivate Yourself to Succeed!
Another key concept with success is commitment. Commitment is absolutely necessary in order to achieve goals. You can say you will do something, but until you actually make a decision to commit to it and follow through with the relevant steps, you will most likely not see progress and achievement towards that desired outcome.
So here are some Strategies to Motivate Yourself to Succeed!
1- Visualize the short-term and long-term benefits of achieving that goal/dream
– What does it look like? How are you feeling and experiencing that moment? Bring those feelings into the visualization.
– Who is there celebrating with you and enjoying your experience?
– What are the benefits/rewards to achieving this goal?
Sometimes rather than visualization, it’s just an intuitive feeling and thought that comes to you that moves you closer to your goal or dream. Trust this intuition and believe you will achieve this goal. Then follow through with action steps to get you there.
This is seriously a very effective approach that literally has created amazing opportunities and results for me! Time and time again, while I’m on practice runs, I visualize myself crossing the finish line in a race and who is there cheering me on. It’s such a confidence booster and allows you to move pass your doubts and fears.
2- Create “healthy” competition with yourself!
One of my favorite approaches! If someone doesn’t believe you can do it, then prove that person wrong. How? By showing them that you can achieve that goal, and even exceed that goal. Go after exceeding your expectations and the expectations of those who don’t support you. Show yourself and them otherwise!
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Tell yourself this when you or someone doesn’t believe you can do it. Repeat in your mind this self mantra: “I’m going to step up and prove everyone wrong. I am or I will be ______ (fill in the blank of what or who you want to become – can be a trait, occupation, and the outcome desired).”
Ex: “I’m going to step up and prove everyone wrong. I am going to college and I will achieve my bachelor’s degree.”
3- Build in rewards for yourself along the way.
– You want to provide yourself with rewards/recognition for each step of the goal achieved.
– Celebrate the big accomplishment/goal in a bigger way, if you can.
– Reward should match goal type — accomplishing small steps compared to achieving the entire goal.
– We may need to create these recognition opportunities for ourselves.
Sometimes we are lucky enough to have this already built into the goal we are working towards like receiving a medal just for crossing the finish line at a half marathon regardless of your time. That’s right — you don’t have to be the fastest runner to receive a medal. You better believe I wanted something to show for that journey of all that hard training and finishing the race itself! I plan to run a few more half marathons and have a collection of medals.
4- Have a theme song or a collection of theme songs to get you psyched about the opportunity and the process towards the goal.
– Any song(s) that gets you feeling positive and energized.
– Enhance your visualization of the goal outcome by playing theme songs while visualizing.
– It really takes you to that moment of success and makes you feel that it has already happened. It’s an amazing and powerful technique!
Right now, I’m really feeling “The Good Life” by One Republic, “Raise Your Glass” by Pink, “Good Feeling” by Flo Rida, “We Found a Love” by Rihanna as my theme songs. With adventures, travel, making an impact with the teens/college students, celebrations, and love all in sight for me!
Again, it’s not enough to make the decision, commitment, visualize the outcome with theme songs, and repeat the mantra over and over again, as you will need to follow through with the necessary actions to achieve your goal. To further support you with achieving your goals, I’m including in this blog a goal-setting worksheet based on the concept of SMART goals that you can start using today.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll review a few more motivation strategies to move you closer to the desired outcome you seek. So check back and see you then! In the mean time, tell me what strategies you have implemented to motivate you to succeed, whether these or other ones.
Source:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarina-tomel/how-to-motivate-yourself_b_3608373.html
Here’s What Tron 3 Was Going To Be (and May Still Be) About
You may think a third Tron movie isn’t going to happen, but all hope is not completely lost. The potential director, Joseph Kosinski, spoke at a Tron: Legacyscreening this week and explained that the film is currently in “cryogenic freeze,” but it was going to be a real world invasion movie.
Kosinski, who directed Tron: Legacy, spoke with Collider about the sequel. He said the film, called Tron: Ascension, was about eight months away from production with a script that was 80 percent ready to go. But then Disney took over Marvel. Then it bought Lucasfilm. And suddenly, the company had way more genre films than it could handle. So Tron took a back seat.
“It’s not dead,” Kosinski said. “It’s alive, but it’s sitting there, waiting for the right time to move forward.”
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Whether or not it happens, this marks the first time Kosinski has explained the plot of the potential film:
What I’m excited about is the concept, which is an invasion movie from inside the machine coming out as opposed to one we’ve usually seen. So we hinted at that at the end of Legacy with Quorra coming out, but the idea for Ascension was a movie that was, the first act was in the real world, the second act was in the world of TRON, or multiple worlds of TRON, and the third act was totally in the real world. And I think that really opens up, blows open the concept of TRON in a way that would be thrilling to see on screen. But there’s also a really interesting character study in Quorra and a “Stranger in a Strange Land,” trying to figure out where she belongs having lived in the real world for a few years, and where does she fit in.
Without a doubt, that sounds cool. And a blend of the real world and the Grid feels like a fertile place to explore. However, with no end to the Marvel or Star Wars train in sight, it feels like Disney isn’t really too worried about making this likely expensive and risky sequel. I don’t think it’s going to happen—but you never know.
Kosinksi went on to talk about the potential for the story to be on TV (unlikely, but never say never) and also how characters from the Grid would act in the real world (not as superheroes). Head to the below link to read all that. It may be as close as you ever get to a Tron 3.
Source:
http://io9.gizmodo.com/heres-what-tron-3-was-going-to-be-and-may-still-be-ab-1792863604
Social Media Marketing Evolves
As social media platforms evolve, adding new tools, mobile offerings, and enhanced personalization, indie authors are evolving with them. Facebook, Twitter, and the other major platforms are more crowded than ever, requiring authors to find more creative ways to be heard above the noise. Compounding this challenge is that these platforms have been adjusting their algorithms to filter posts for perceived relevance. (For example, this summer Instagram introduced a new way of ordering posts “so you’ll see the moments you care about first,” as the company described it in a statement.) This results in promotional messages being pushed lower on users’ feeds or filtered out altogether, putting added pressure on authors who are seeking ways to attract followers and gain attention.
One way around this is for authors to put greater effort into tailoring their social media messaging. “It’s important for authors to interact in an organic way—don’t set up your Facebook page and just say, ‘buy my book,’ ” says Carol Palomba, social media manager for the author submission service Writer’s Relief and its Self-Publishing Relief and Web Design Relief divisions. She has taken to advising the indie authors she consults with to avoid promotional language in their posts and, instead, to “talk about yourself, where you’re getting inspiration from, and share what would be of interest to readers and followers.”
Another way to stand out in a crowded social media landscape is to pay for ads outright. That has been the experience of Mark Dawson, an author of 25 self-published novels who has found significant success promoting his books through paid Facebook ads. He currently spends almost a quarter of a million dollars a year on Facebook ads alone, and has expanded from using them to sell his own books to teaching other self-published authors how to do it for themselves through his Self Publishing Formula service.
Since 2013, Dawson has experimented with a variety of online and social media platforms. He has found that Twitter offers “cheap, targeted clicks” that work well when he is going after a preexisting audience. For example, his spy/action novels share elements with the books of James Patterson, so he has created ads that explicitly say: “Do you like this book? Then you’ll like my book.”
“By looking at the whole thing holistically, you can put together an ad that is compelling,” Dawson says. “Then users click over to the store or sign on to my mailing list.”
Dawson has set up Lead Generation Cards on his Twitter account so that people who follow him receive a mention tweet back (not seen by others) that encourages them to sign up for his mailing list in order to receive a pair of free books. He emphasizes that building a mailing list is one of the most important ways to use social media, calling it “one of the most valuable assets authors can have these days. I can launch a new book into the top 100 on Amazon with the right email campaign.” And, thanks to the evolution of ad technology, it is getting easier for authors to use their promotions to directly sell books. The expanding availability and use of buy buttons on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere allows for direct calls to action to be embedded into ads or profiles, decreasing the number of steps a potential customer must go through from seeing a promotion to making a purchase.
Dawson says that, though Google Ads have worked for him, their high cost makes them less appealing. He has been doing some experimenting on Pinterest and LinkedIn as well. But it’s Facebook that has proved by far the most valuable for Dawson.
That’s not to say that it’s simple to succeed on Facebook, especially as its popularity has grown. When Dawson began using Facebook ads two years ago, “there was no one doing it,” and he was getting a substantial return on investment for his advertising dollars. This has tapered off as more authors and other marketers have embraced the service, and clicks have gotten more expensive and the audience less receptive.
But the number of potential readers on Facebook and the service’s tools to target them appeal to Dawson. “I can say, ‘Find more people like the people on my mailing list,’ and if you have enough points of accurate comparison, you can get a lookalike audience to send your ads to,” he says. While his mailing list is approaching 70,000 addresses, by delivering ads to a lookalike audience, the potential audience rises to millions, rather than tens of thousands.
Value in Video
An increasingly popular social media tool is livestreaming, which allows authors to directly interact with viewers, fans, and prospective customers, whether answering questions during a q&a or tracking their live reactions during a cover reveal. The recently launched Facebook Live has seen steady growth in number of livestreaming accounts and views. For authors struggling to stand out in a crowded newsfeed, the platform is ideal, as Facebook has been working to promote the service and those who stream on it. At least at the moment, if an author goes live, his or her friends receive a notification.
“You will get attention from folks who haven’t been watching what you’re doing,” says Julie Broad, speaker, indie author, and founder of Rev N You Training Inc., which specializes in tips for investing in real estate. Broad has used video to promote her books and events for years, but she believes that now is a particularly good time to get into livestreaming. “Next time you’re in a cool spot that will make for a great background or you have something really exciting to share around your book, go live,” she says.
YouTube Live is also a tool that she has found useful. Using that, Broad livestreamed a fund-raising event she held to promote her 2016 personal-improvement book The New Brand You. She did three burpees (a full-body strength-training exercise) for every person who bought three books at the event, called Burpees for Books. Proceeds from the sales went to the Canadian Red Cross and Believe in Youth.
In addition to offering real estate tips, Broad advises people on how to build their personal brands. She has found some of her greatest success with YouTube videos, which allow for longer messages and tips, and which she has used since releasing her first book, in 2013. While she continues to use YouTube, she has updated her approach to the service in intervening years. “YouTube now favors videos with higher quality when they show recommended videos—for example, HD- and 4K-shot videos are more likely to show above lesser-quality videos with similar content,” Broad says. She adds that she also has found that “good content is not enough to get attention.” As with so much in indie publishing, even if it’s self-produced, it doesn’t have to look it: good lighting, professional editing, and sleek use of sound effects and titles are all important.
Beyond the Big Guys
While Facebook and Twitter are the biggest platforms for authors seeking to interact with their readers, more-niche services appeal to authors who are especially looking to stand out. “There are more platforms than ever before, so that means there is more opportunity than ever before to connect with readers through social media,” says Keith Ogorek, senior v-p of marketing at Author Solutions. “The key is to really understand where your potential readers are gathered and use that platform to reach them.”
Ogorek says authors have found success with BookGrabbr. The service allows authors to share extended previews of their books with readers who post about the books on social media sites, with BookGrabbr then tracking analytics and impacts on sales. Though it’s a paid service, Ogorek has found that “it can really help a book get discovered and shared through your social network.”
The key, Ogorek says, is to focus on the particular platforms or services where readers are most likely to be. Romance authors will find a ready audience with highly visual posts on Instagram and Tumblr. Offering quick tips in Facebook Live or YouTube videos works well for self-help. Authors will find success by zeroing in on certain platforms, and on specific services within those platforms, and learning the nuances of what works and what doesn’t.
To help make sense of all of this, analytics have gotten better for authors. Rather than just looking at how many followers they have, authors can assess how engaged they are, how influential they may be, or how to reach others who are similar.
Ogorek urges indie authors to use these questions to guide their investments in social media and go beyond simply working to increase their numbers of friends or followers. “You are better off having 100 people follow you who have 1,000 followers who they can reach than having 1,000 who have 10 followers,” he says.
It is also key for authors to commit to platforms for long enough to see results. Those expecting instant success will likely be disappointed. But authors who embrace the process, gathering data from the analytics and using that to shape their decisions, are far more likely to learn from each step of their social media marketing efforts.
“There’s time involved,” stresses Palomba, of Writer’s Relief. “I’ve had people who run a Facebook ad and feel disappointed because it didn’t result in a lot of sales.”
Self Publishing Formula’s Dawson expresses a similar sentiment. “I’ve heard people say, ‘I spent $50 on Facebook ads and they aren’t working,’ but this takes time,” he emphasizes. “Some hit on the right combination early; others have to test a bit to get there. You need the data, need to test it and continually figure it out before you start to see a return.”
Source:
Amazon Kindle’s terms ‘unreasonable’ and would take nine hours to read, Choice says
The first book-length work you may read on your Amazon Kindle is its terms and conditions.
An Australian consumer advocacy group has found that the e-reader’s terms and conditions are 73,198 words long, which would take the average person nine hours to read in full.
Consumer advocates Choice hired an actor to read aloud the entire agreement in nine hour-long installments posted on YouTube – from episode one, “No hope”, to the series finale, “Darkest before the dawn”.
The group is using the example of Kindle to call on the federal government to legislate to stop companies from forcing people to agree to contracts that they cannot reasonably be expected to have read.
Guardian Australia has contacted Amazon and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for comment.
Tom Godfrey, Choice’s head of media, said many terms and conditions agreements, not just Amazon Kindle’s, were “completely unreasonable” in their length and complexity. Kobo, another e-reader brand, had 9,844 words in its terms and conditions.
“They’re everywhere; it’s ubiquitous,” he said. “Pretty much any producer or digital service that you sign up to, you are agreeing to this very weighty, quite complex legalese that you have very little chance of understanding.
“We would like to see the federal government make sure that companies don’t compel consumers to enter into these contracts. Even if you do take the eight hours and 59 minutes to read a document like this, for the average person it’s very hard to understand.
“You don’t really know what rights you’re giving up and what issues you may face.”
In its review of the Kindle agreement, Choice said it found several clauses that would likely be deemed unfair under Australian consumer law. For example, agreeing to the Amazon contract compelled consumers to follow an arbitration process in the US and “expressively waive any other jurisdiction for a dispute”.
Australian consumer law grants consumers the right to a remedy direct from the retailer or manufacturer.
Though Amazon could be precluded from enforcing that clause by unfair contract legislation in Australia, Godfrey said it was still unreasonable and muddied the waters for consumers.
“You shouldn’t be forced to sign a contract with these terms,” Godfrey said. “You’ve got to remember, you’re just an individual and you’re up against an incredibly large, powerful, well-resourced organisation. The least they could do is provide you with this information in a simple-to-understand form.
“[But] the reason they bury you in this fine print is because it’s in their interests to do so.”
Asked whether Choice had had any indication of the federal government’s willingness to act on its campaign, Godfrey said it was “early days”.
Source:
Netflix will explore mobile-specific cuts of its original series
Netflix chief product officer Neil Hunt said in a briefing today with journalists in San Francisco that the company plans to explore streaming mobile-specific cuts of its original movies and TV shows, to satisfy what he said was a growing audience of mobile Netflix watchers.
“It’s not inconceivable that you could take a master [copy] and make a different cut for mobile,” Hunt said. To date, Netflix hasn’t been delivering different cuts for different viewing platforms, Hunt said, but “it’s something we will explore over the next few years.”
The idea to be would be to create a version of the content with scenes or shots that are more easily visible or immersive on a mobile phone, since certain shots can be hard to see or can appear diminished on a relatively small phone screen.
Hunt, who has been with Netflix since 1999 and is one of the company’s top executives, made the remarks as part of a two-day event at Dolby Laboratories and Netflix’s own headquarters, as the two companies gear up for the launch of Iron Fist. Much of the conversation so far has centered around the series being shot natively in HDR, a method that offers a more dynamic range of colors on the TV or movie screen in front of you. But Hunt, along with Dolby executives, emphasized that HDR isn’t just for big-screen viewing.
It’s been about a year since Netflix became available globally — with the exception of a few markets, including China, and since then it has seen mobile usage soar. In established markets like the US and Canada, most Netflix watching still happens on TVs, Hunt said; but in some Asian countries, especially India, “mobile screens are the majority consumption device.”
Source:
http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/15/14940278/netflix-mobile-specific-versions-original-series-tv-shows
March 15, 2017
Virtual Reality Is Revolutionizing Health Care
It has already changed. Moreover, healthcare is one of the “hottest” industries, where virtual reality is rapidly hitting its stride.
Let’s see a few examples:
Relief of the sensation of pain
Here, our “doctor” prescribes picking up the app, where you can hide in the huts made of snow or other materials. The environment places the patients in a condition where one simply gets pleasure from sightseeing. This method effectively helps to calm down and distract the patients from quite unpleasant burning sensations throughout the body. Currently, specialized healthcare applications are in development and widely used to distract from painful procedures effectively, owing to which it is possible to do them without anesthesia.
One such healthcare application is a video game, SnowWorld, from the University of Washington. Despite the fact that all this is still in the process of development, the many clinical trials have shown very encouraging results.
Virtual reality and exposure therapy
Professor Albert Rizzo, who is the director of VR in the medical field and who works at the Institute for Creative Technologies, uses virtual reality exposure therapy, particularly with soldiers who are experiencing post-traumatic stress syndrome. The essence of the therapy lies in patient’s immersion in simulation, where he controls a hammer, and suddenly a homemade device explodes in a particular place.
The method is an exceptional opportunity for the soldiers, especially those who survived war, to talk about it. This therapy is a peculiar stimulation of the imagination, where the patient is trying to work on the trauma or any other problems by a particular provocative method.
Virtual reality as a tool to conquer phobias
The above-mentioned exposure therapy is very useful for the standard treatment for phobias. The patient, under the supervision of a psychologist, meets something that causes fear. For example, a man has a fear of public speaking. Virtual reality technologies help cope with them by “acting” in the front of a virtual audience.
Frequently observed spider phobia is also worth paying attention to. One of the first prominent healthcare applications to treat spider phobia is Spider World.
Virtual robotic surgery
Robotic surgery has become a popular virtual technology. The semantics of the term seems to be a bit intricate, yet the process of fulfilling the operation is the following: A robotic device performs the operation but is controlled by a human surgeon. It is a simple, sublime interaction, which decreases time, and reduces the risk of complications.
Virtual reality has also found its application in educational purposes and in the area of Remote Telesurgery, where the operation is carried out in a separate place for the patient. The main idea of this particular system becomes revealed in a force feedback, where a surgeon can evaluate the amount of pressure to use when performing delicate action procedures.
Source:
Camming Together: The Virtues of the Virtual Girlfriend
Nikki Night shimmies a pair of tattered blue jeans up the leg of a tripod and belts them tight. Once steady, she pushes a honking rubber dildo through the opening until it’s flopping out the zipper. Voila, now her students needn’t a penis on hand to simulate oral sex for their devoted fans. Night, who touts herself as the world’s first and foremost adult webcamming coach, today instructs a private room full of nearly two-dozen aspiring male and female cam performers on the online mega-network Cam4. During the primer—entitled, “New Cam Show Ideas”—she touches on other nuts and bolts of her craft: how to direct the viewers’ eyes to your “tip” button, the sexual power of the color red (“It makes you more desirable to males by tapping their primal instinct,” she suggests) and strategies to foster brand loyalty. However, she repeatedly pounds home one point: Have fun. If you’re not enjoying yourself, nobody’s going to enjoy watching you.
Given that philosophy, Night counsels her charges to set up a comfortable space reflective of their personality; she adorns her bedroom soundstage with pink and white wallpaper, a lava lamp and a hula-hoop. A vintage movie poster for the 1958 film Attack of the 50 Foot Woman hangs on the wall. The poster fits, functioning almost as a commentary on the character Night has created—a buxom sage with long, dark hair slicked up into a pompadour and a commanding yet warm presence. The poster is relevant for another, more distressing reason. Ever since the film’s starlet Yvette Vickers was found dead at age 82 in her Los Angeles apartment in 2011, her body having languished there “in a mummified state,” according to People magazine. Vickers, and the film, have become symbolic of the internet age’s epidemic of loneliness.
At the end, the aging actress had withdrawn from real-world relationships, communicating only with die-hard fans via online forums and message boards. Incidentally, the film is also the inspiration for the go-to fantasy of one of Night’s regulars from her days and nights as an in-demand camgirl (she now only teaches). Her customer would pay a premium to watch Night stomp on a carefully orchestrated miniature city constructed of figurines and tiny machines. “The giantess fetish” is just one of the many fantasies Night regularly encounters that seemingly have little to do with sex. She believes in the medium’s ability to enrich lives and combat isolation. Conventional wisdom argues that each new digital trend intended to better connect us proves to ultimately drive us further apart, but some people are finding a digital salve for their solitude in porn.
After spending more than a decade as a professional makeup artist, Night struggled for the money to start a new life after ending her marriage in 2010. “After my divorce I couldn’t tell you what my favorite color was,” she recalls. “Camming absolutely saved my life.”
She previously considered a lot of “dark things” to earn a living, including, in her opinion, bartending and waitressing: “When I have to put up with a guy cupping my ass or having to flirt with some jerk to sell him a beer, that feels more like sex work to me than camming.”
An ad for “internet modeling” led Night into the camming industry, which annually generates an estimated $1 billion. The barriers to entry were low compared to other sex work. There are no applications to fill out, no sleazy smut directors to deal with, no pimps. All it takes is Wi-Fi and a webcam. While Night’s network takes 40 percent of revenues off the top, performers, she says, work as much or as little as they want to and face no pressure to boost their earnings.
Night quickly realized that her new job bolstered her self-esteem. She suddenly felt sexy walking down the supermarket aisle in sweatpants. When she was stuck at home with a kidney infection, clients bought groceries for her. Night became proud of her full arms and broad shoulders, features she’d loathed before her divorce. She made dirtier jokes. Even her sexual fantasies changed. Suddenly, the idea of “being watched” became a tent pole for her naughtiest desires. Night had developed an empowered alter ego—a dominant yet goofy sexpot.
The extent to which sex played a small role in cammers’ interactions would shock the uninitiated.
She particularly enjoyed the bond with clients. It is said that escorts are part sex object, part therapist. The extent to which sex played a small role in cammers’ interactions would shock the uninitiated.
For many clients, it’s simply an opportunity to relinquish control, suggests Night and some of her colleagues. One former customer of Night’s requested she role-play his secretary. On cam, Night would pretend to take appointments and order office supplies. When he gave her the cue that he’d “left the office,” Night would start making personal calls and bragging to friends about how much she was stealing from her boss. She had another customer who asked her to watch him exercise.
For many men the appeal of cam sites lies in the opportunity to form a new type of relationship. MyGirlFund specializes in a service called “the digital girlfriend experience.” Co-founder Brian Cooper launched the company to converge the popularity of social networking with the allure of adult entertainment. Right around that time a major shift was occurring in the world of sex work—the old cliché of the co-ed stripping to pay her way through college had turned into the cam girl, and MGF served this titty bar exodus. In a recent survey of camgirls (who are independent contractors), MGF found nearly 40 percent of the girls working on the site were doing so, at least in part, to pay for college.
MGF functions like a social network—only users pay $1 per message to contact the talent, and after that, the options are varied. Most cammers offer some kind of adult content that can be purchased with in-site currency. Resourceful entrepreneurs function as their own directors, producers, marketers and retail stores (for products like premade adult videos).
MGF camgirl Alex Bishop built a following camming on MGF and other sites, but she’s gotten to the point where she no longer has the time to cam. “I went from struggling in poverty to making six-figures,” says Bishop, the beaming green-eyed brunette with mysterious sharp features that reminds one of a young Angelina Jolie. “I’ve erased my debt, gotten health insurance, a new car…a nanny for my kids while I’m at work. We get to travel and eat organic. We have the things we want.”
MGF business director Stefan Patrick acknowledges that the name of his site deliberately sounds like “my girlfriend.” Patrick said, “We’re really an online girlfriend site. The relationships formed on the site are deep and abiding. Of course,” he allows, “the girls are on the site to further their financial goals”
Source:
Camming Together: The Virtues of the Virtual Girlfriend
Smashwords is Distributing 300,000 eBook Titles to Bibliotheca CloudLibrary
Smashwords has just ironed out an e-book distribution agreement to Bibliotheca and the 3M CloudLibrary. Starting next week libraries will have the option to purchase 300,000 indie titles and have their patrons borrow them online.
Smashwords offers indie authors and small independent presses unparalleled distribution to approximately 30,000 public and academic libraries around the world. With the addition of bibliotheca, the Smashwords distribution network reaches most major library e-book platforms including OverDrive, Baker & Taylor Axis 360, Gardners UK (Askews & Holts and VLeBooks) and Odilo.
Once bibliotheca completes their ingestion of Smashwords titles, Smashwords will support bibliotheca’s merchandising efforts by providing regular “Smashwords Hotlists” of top performing preorders and other recommended bestsellers. The sales and merchandising teams at Bibliotheca can use these buylists to share purchase recommendations with collection development managers at libraries.
Source:
HarperCollins Unveils Two Book Recommendation AI Bots To Facebook
Book recommendation systems have been getting more advanced in recent years. In late 2014 the PenguinHotline was unveiled and gave users the ability to fill out some information about their potential book gift recipient and Penguin staff would agnostically give a list of titles and last year, the NPR created an online “Book Concierge” that aggregated the titles reviewed by the organization and had some useful filters. HarperCollins is now getting into the mix with a couple of book recommendation AI bots that are available on Facebook.
BookGenie is a general purpose recommendation engine that is available on Facebook.com/HarperCollins and Epic Reads, which was developed specifically for YA titles and can be checked out on Facebook.com/EpicReads. Both services feature interactive artificial intelligence widgets that can find new HarperCollins titles based on their taste, general mood, and past favorite books.
Here is how it works in a nutshell. You simply visit the two Facebook Pages and click on Send Message and it will open up Facebook Messenger. You will be prompted to checkout a list of recent bestsellers or have the AI recommend you a book based on the last one you have read. Once you input the last title you enjoyed it will list the title and you click YES. It will then give you a series of titles and you can select YES or NO. If you liked the book you will be taken to the HarperCollins website with a full description of it and where to buy it in print or digital.
Margot Wood, Epic Reads senior community manager, said the most popular question her team receives is: “What book should I read next?” Wood said that now, with the bot, “we can scale conversations with our community and engage, share content, and deepen consumers’ connection with our brand.”
Source:
Virtual reality aids medical trauma training
Dr. Arishi Abdulaziz put on a headset, moved his hands slightly and immersed himself into a virtual world.
But this was no video game. Abdulaziz was “standing” in a trauma bay at OhioHealth Grant Medical Center, amid a medical team treating a car crash victim.
He watched the team cut off the patient’s black T-shirt and shorts. He heard a doctor ask the patient questions. Meanwhile, a medical technician scanned the man’s abdomen and chest with an ultrasound probe.
Abdulaziz turned to the right and left to assess staff members and watch monitors. He turned around to review an ultrasound screen.
Eventually, he removed the gear and got his bearings. He was back in a small office at Grant.
“It’s a great experience,” Abdulaziz said. “It is as if you are in trauma, really. Like 100 percent, you are in trauma.”
The virtual-reality experience is new for residents training in trauma care at the Downtown hospital. On Monday, Abdulaziz, a resident from the University of Toledo Medical Center, joined Dr. Jesse Nichols, a resident from the Adena Regional Medical Center in Chillicothe, in testing out the experience.
Nichols donned headgear and suddenly was among members of a trauma team helping out a woman injured in a fall.
“I felt like I needed to reach out and help the patient,” he said, upon removing the headgear. “You’re right there.”
The virtual-reality scenarios — there are three — were filmed in July by a team from Ohio University that hung or mounted three softball-size camera and microphone units in the emergency department to capture 360-degree experiences, said Eric Williams, co-creator of the new Immersive Media Initiative at the Athens school. Patients consented to be in the videos.
After filming, the OU team pieced together video, then added a sphere of sound before adapting it all to work with HTC virtual-reality headgear and software.
The footage will be used to help residents on their first day of trauma-surgery and critical-care training at Grant, said Dr. Thanh Nguyen, a trauma-services physician.
The goal is to familiarize residents with the sights and sounds of trauma bays and the different roles played by doctors, medics, nurses and technicians who attend to patients.
Nguyen foresees a vast library of scenarios.
“The goal eventually is to have hundreds of patients to teach different scenarios, like, ‘This is what a gunshot victim looks like.’ ‘This is what a stabbing looks like.’ ‘This is what a car accident looks like,'” Nguyen said.
Nguyen said he also hopes that future scenarios include patients who move from trauma bay to operating room to the intensive-care unit. Other goals include creating a smartphone app and to expand training programs to cater to nurses and more experienced doctors.
Williams said that the project is part of Ohio University’s Immersive Media Initiative, which started last year with a $1 million university innovation challenge grant. The school wants to expand virtual and augmented reality across various university disciplines and in the community.
“The main thrust of the Immersive Media Initiative is to use virtual reality as an educational platform for graduate and undergraduate students,” said Williams, also an associate professor in the School of Media Arts & Studies. “Students not only learn technology in the classroom, but they’re able to then go out and work on real-world projects.”
As Nichols and Abdulaziz experienced the virtual trauma bay, they saw things from the view of the physician doing an assessment at the patient’s bedside. The program’s software also allows for views from the foot of the gurney and from the side of the room.
“This is really the first step,” Williams said. “This technology is so new that the next steps are only limited by our imagination.”
Source:
http://www.dispatch.com/news/20170315/virtual-reality-aids-medical-trauma-training
