Digging into Sunderland’s past

AN investigation is to be launched into a possible Roman dam in Sunderland.

The origins of an ancient stone structure which once spanned the River Wear between North and South Hylton have long been debated by historians.

Now experts from North East Archaeological Research Ltd are to spend the summer studying old maps, records and documents relating to the crossing.

“We will be carrying out a desk-based assessment initially,” said spokesman Phil Abramson.

“As an archaeologist I naturally like to dig, but we need more details first.”

Details of the investigation – funded by cash from Castle Ward’s Community Chest – were revealed at a public meeting in South Hylton on Monday night.

Castle ward councillor and local historian Denny Wilson said: “I really believe we have something here; we just don’t know what it is yet.

“This investigation, I hope, is the start of something big. If we could prove beyond doubt that the crossing dates from Roman times it would put Sunderland on the map.”

A flurry of ancient finds in the North and South Hylton areas, including a figurine, pottery shard and several coins, have re-ignited the Roman debate.

But, although generations of local historians have argued that the Romans built a dam to transport goods upriver, very few hard facts have been documented to support the theory.

Dr Gill Cookson, of the Victoria County History of Durham, is to review evidence as part of the North East Archaeological Research Ltd investigation and said: “There is a charter which shows a ferry crossing existed at Hylton in the 1320s but, as yet, I have not seen any evidence to confirm the Romans constructed anything in the neighbourhood.

“That is not, however, to say they did not. We approach this with open minds.”

Old maps of the River Wear reveal the mystery structure was known as the Brig Stones in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that it was used as a causeway by Wearsiders at low tide.

During Victorian times, the crossing was torn down by the River Wear Commissioners.

Hundreds of tons of stones were removed. Some were used in the foundations of Penshaw Monument and the North Pier, others were dumped on Roker beach.

“Archaeologists have looked at them, and they are clearly Roman in origin,” said Alan Richardson, of the Northern Archaeology Group. “I am in no doubt that there was a sizeable Roman structure at Hylton.”

Other Roman finds have also been documented across Wearside, including a Roman road at Low Ford, Roman cobbles in Grangetown and a Roman mosaic near the Magistrates’ Court.

“Despite the abundance of evidence, however, there has been an apparent refusal to accept that the Romans had ever been in the River Wear,” added Alan.

Also convinced of the Roman origins of the dam is local historian Ian Stuart.

“The Romans had bases at Biddick and Chester-le-Street and, to get up there by boat, they needed a dam at Hylton. Possibly they built a canal system as well,” he said.

“I’ve found old tools near to what I believe is an old Roman slipway, which could have been used by for splitting timbers or stone, as well as a piece of wall which is very similar to Hadrian’s Wall.”

Pam Tate, founder of Southwick History and Preservation Society, added: “The meeting showed there are various pieces of knowledge, stories and possible myths to be explored.”

Local historian and former police inspector Norman Kirtlan said: “I believe that Sunderland, and the Wear in particular, was important in Roman Britain.

“Evidence suggests that the mouth of the river was very likely to be defended by two forts, one north, one south. Why defend a river unless you actually have something to defend?”

Romney clinches nomination with Texas win

Mitt Romney has clinched the Republican presidential nomination with a win in the Texas primary, a triumph of endurance for a candidate who came up short four years ago and had to fight hard this year as voters flirted with a carousel of GOP rivals.

According to the Associated Press count, Romney surpassed the 1144 delegates needed to win the nomination by winning at least 88 delegates in the Texas primary.

The former Massachusetts governor has reached the nomination milestone with a steady message of concern about the US economy, a campaign organiation that dwarfed those of his GOP foes and a fundraising operation second only to that of his Democratic opponent in the general election, President Barack Obama.

"I am honoured that Americans across the country have given their support to my candidacy and I am humbled to have won enough delegates to become the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nominee," Romney said in a statement.

"Our party has come together with the goal of putting the failures of the last three and a half years behind us," Romney said. "I have no illusions about the difficulties of the task before us. But whatever challenges lie ahead, we will settle for nothing less than getting America back on the path to full employment and prosperity."

Romney must now fire up conservatives who still doubt him while persuading swing voters that he can do a better job fixing the nation's struggling economy than Obama. In Obama, he faces a well-funded candidate with a proven campaign team in an election that will be heavily influenced by the economy.

"It's these economic indicators that will more or less trump any good or bad that Romney potentially got out of primary season," said Josh Putnam, an assistant political science professor at Davidson College who writes the political blog Frontloading HQ.

Romney spent the evening at a Las Vegas fundraiser with Donald Trump, who has been renewing discredited suggestions that Obama wasn't born in the United States. Romney says he believes Obama was born in America but has yet to condemn Trump's repeated insinuations to the contrary.

"If Mitt Romney lacks the backbone to stand up to a charlatan like Donald Trump because he's so concerned about lining his campaign's pockets, what does that say about the kind of president he would be?" Obama's deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, said in a statement.

Asked Monday about Trump's contentions, Romney said: "I don't agree with all the people who support me. And my guess is they don't all agree with everything I believe in." He added: "But I need to get 50.1 percent or more. And I'm appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people."

Trump told CNN in an interview Tuesday that he and Romney talk about other issues — jobs, China, oil and more — and not about the place of Obama's birth or the validity of his birth certificate. Asked how he viewed Romney's position that the president was indeed born in the US, Trump said: "He's entitled to his opinion, and I think that's wonderful. I don't happen to share that opinion and that's wonderful also."

'Lean Thinking' Seminar at GSE Dispensing's drupa Stand

Two senior academics and specialists in lean management workflows, Prof. Malcolm Keif  and Prof. Kevin Cooper provided advice for packaging printers on how to drive waste from the workflow and adopt lean production methods during a seminar held at the drupa stand of GSE Dispensing.

Prof. Keif and Prof. Cooper, from the Graphic Communication Department of the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, USA , have researched and published extensively on lean management.

Professor Cooper, a professor of graphic communication, said: "We think lean management is portable and applicable to every industry. Printers too are driven to look for leaner production methods because of the increasingly competitive conditions facing their industry right now."

"Lean management is principled on two foundational items: continuous improvement and respect for people,” Cooper added. “Both of these are focused on finding ways to create value and to drive waste out of the business. To make printers more competitive at a time when printing runs are getting shorter, we think it is critical to adopt lean principles, reduce setup times and be focused on customer value, to remain competitive in printing."

Malcolm Keif, who specialises in flexography, quality management, lean thinking and printed electronics, explained that good colour management has an important role to play in the lean manufacturing environment: "So much of the preparation time is dedicated to colour-matching on press. We know of job changeovers taking over an hour because of the efforts needed for ink toning and getting the right match for a spot colour. It is impossible to maintain a lean environment unless one takes the colour-matching process off-line. The printer must aim to get the perfect colour-match on the first attempt after starting up the press. A robust process is needed to ensure colour perfection. GSE Dispensing brings that to the table with its dispensing systems, ink management software and proofing systems."

Prof. Cooper added: “The first stage in the adoption of a lean process is education because one has to understand the concept first, build teams, and empower and manage the workforce.”

Keif and Cooper, who have both worked in the graphics industry for over 20 years, have co-authored a book focused on lean management issues entitled ’Setup Reduction for Printers’.

Maarten Hummelen, marketing director at GSE Dispensing, comments: “The high level of competition, volatile raw materials prices and shorter production runs make the search for added value more acute than ever. Packaging print converters must adopt a lean management philosophy to combat these challenges. We share Prof. Keif and Prof. Cooper’s vision of a lean value chain. Everything we do is aimed at empowering printers to apply that vision in an ink logistics context as well.”

GSE Dispensing helps packaging printers reduce ink waste from the workflow with gravimetric ink dispensing systems that mix spot colours in less than three minutes, table-top flexo proofing systems and software that provides per-job ink costings, real-time stock analysis, tracking of all inks to original batches and various management reports.

It’s hard to put a price on a lifetime of memories

Hidden in the deep recesses of our hearts is the desire to hang onto everything we acquire in our lives. Perhaps it is an evolutionary trait that we inherited from our remote biological past.

We keep stuff we have no use for, because someday we might need it. More often than not, that day never comes and we keep adding to the clutter around us.

When my late wife, Dottie, and I dropped anchor in Toledo in the 1970s, we had moved nine times in the previous eight years and had tried to get rid of nonessential stuff before each move. Living in one place for 37 years is a different story.

Dottie and I traveled often to different corners of the world. We seldom bought antiques or expensive artwork, but we would buy mementos of our visits to those faraway places, to trigger the pleasant memories of the people we met and the sites we saw.

There were trips to China, Germany, Austria, Italy, the Caribbean, and score of other places. And there were annual visits to Pakistan, where friends and family would bring gifts for us, which we dutifully carried back to Toledo.

For a while, these curios were displayed in the house. But with each succeeding visit, older items made their way to the attic to make room for new arrivals.

Occasionally, I would go to the attic to look for something. Sidetracked by the scattered artifacts of our past, I would pick up a piece and bring it down with me, forgetting the reason for going to the attic in the first place.

In due course, we ran out of walls on which to hang pictures and artwork. They are not the kind that hang in a museum. But they all tell a story, not only of what they depict, but also of the market or souk where they were bought.

Attics also have limited capacity. My daughter Tasha told me that I needed to unclutter my home. After years of resistance, I relented. She decided to have a garage sale.

Garage sales evoke an image of a front yard where a few rows of tables display unwanted or redundant items flanked by a few racks of clothes. Passing cars stop, their drivers walk around the merchandise, and then they drive away. Add a bunch of kids and a dog running around, and you have a picture that Norman Rockwell could have painted.

Going through the accumulated clutter of 37 years was not easy. What to keep and what to part with? And how to determine the selling price?

How much should I ask for a pair of miniature paintings — old but not antiques — that I bought after the customary haggling in India 30 years ago and had framed? Or the intricate village scene done in a mosaic of colored wood chips given to me by an old friend? Even if you set aside the sentimental value, how do you determine a fair price?

What is the value of a Chinese abacus made from animal bone or brass plates with decorative designs? What price should I put on a faceless ceramic doll that I bought in Puerto Rico or a vividly colored parrot from Costa Rica that reminded me of the peaceful forests of that country?

We put much of the so-called clutter, along with a part of our history, up for sale. It would have been a challenging job for a cultural archaeologist to piece together our lives through the prisms of these disparate items.

My eternally optimistic son-in-law, Kevin Black, thought we would sell most of the stuff. We did not. People came looking for bargains. We had plenty, but they apparently were of the wrong kind.

We made a few hundred dollars, and that was good enough. We had the opportunity to talk with some interesting people.

The leftover stuff is boxed up in a corner of my garage. At some future date, I am sure, we will have another garage sale, because the main floor of my house will again be cluttered and my attic will be overflowing.

Cicero model home is Energy Star certified

Model homes appeal to our fantasies. They show us how we could be living and help us imagine what empty rooms and bare walls can become.

Marty Moore, sales and marketing manager of Ryan Homes Syracuse, recently led a tour of the company's freshly completed model home at 8681 Lavender Lane in Cicero's Wallington Meadows development. The four-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath model, called the Ravenna, is Energy Star certified, and the exterior has what they call a "cottage elevation," evocative of a bungalow or Arts and Crafts-style home but with vinyl siding and cultured stone.

The home is $264,990, which Moore said is a discounted price, considering the upgrades and extra features. The price includes all Energy Star-certified appliances, even a front-load washer and dryer in the second-floor laundry room with a sewer-connected safety pan beneath the washer.

The 2,688-square-foot home has upgraded wood molding and trim, and rubbed oil bronze hardware and fixtures throughout. There is a built-in sound system as well as a security system and hardwired smoke and carbon monoxide detectors with battery backup.

The property has an asphalt driveway, lawn irrigation system, landscaping and sump pump. The price includes all the shower curtains, window dressings, decorative pillows and comforters. If the buyer wants the home with all the furniture, art, accessories, area rugs, mattresses and box springs, the price would be $335,934.

Since Ryan Homes needs to use the model to market homes for the next two to three years, the buyer will be the company's landlord.

"We become renters here. They purchase the home, close on it, and then we'll pay them rent until we're done selling homes in this community," Moore said. "It's a good investment for them. We cover the mortgage, taxes and insurance, and they get a discounted price as well as tax write-offs each year."

The two-car garage has been temporarily converted to Ryan Homes' office space, but will be restored at no charge.

The open concept first floor includes a Berber-carpeted family room and the kitchen and morning room, which have oak floors. The family room has a stone front natural gas fireplace. The kitchen has cherry cabinets with crown molding, a stainless steel sink, a built-in microwave and electric range with convection oven. The island, the counters and the breakfast bar are all topped with an upgraded beveled-edge laminate.

The space, which has nine-foot-high ceilings, is flooded with natural light, and the windows all have low-E, argon gas-filled glass panes. A double French door in the morning room opens to the composite deck and backyard.

Between the kitchen and the garage is a powder room as well as a small room that could be a home office.

Flanking the main entrance is a formal living room with oak floors and a carpeted formal dining room with a chair rail. Both rooms have two windows overlooking the front yard.

To maximize usable space, designers eliminated the two-story foyer, so ubiquitous in home construction of late, freeing up more square footage for second-floor bedrooms and a significant buffer between the master suite and the rest of the rooms.

The bedrooms and second-floor hallways have textured wall-to-wall Berber carpet. There is a full bath, a bonus storage closet and a large linen closet in the hall near three of the bedrooms. One bedroom is decorated in a Cicero Falcons Pop Warner Football & Cheer motif.

The master bath has his and hers sinks set in granite atop a maple vanity, and the commode is hidden in its own room. The deep soaking tub and walk-in shower are surrounded by ceramic tile, accented with decorative strips of tiny stone and glass mosaic tiles.

There's More to Glass Art Than Dale Chihuly

Glass as fine art is now so commonly seen in museums, galleries, and private collections that it's easy to forget how, a century or so ago, most glass was mass-produced and utilitarian in nature. You didn't display a piece of glass as a work of art so much as drink from it, or serve from it, or use it as a container to hold other things.

All that changed 50 years ago, as this marvelously succinct retrospective at the Boca Museum demonstrates. Using a little more than 60 individual pieces, guest curator Linda Boone traces the history of the Contemporary Glass Movement, originally known as Studio Glass, from its humble beginnings to the present. The exhibition is one of 130 museum shows nationwide that observe this landmark anniversary, in this case by bringing together works from the museum's own collection, from private collectors, and from Habatat Galleries, the first leading commercial gallery to specialize in glass art.

In 1962 a ceramics teacher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison named Harvey Littleton pioneered the Contemporary Glass Movement by launching a series of workshops, sponsored by the Toledo Museum of Art, to explore the possibilities of glass as an art form. Glass was already in his blood, so to speak — Littleton had traveled to Europe in the late '50s to research traditions of glassmaking, and his father worked at the legendary Corning Glass Works in New York.

Less than a decade later, in 1971, the Glass Art Society was formed to promote glass art. That same year, a Littleton student by the name of Dale Chihuly cofounded the Pilchuck Glass School on the site of a former tree farm in Stanwood, Washington.

Today, for better or for worse, Chihuly is the face of glass art in America. His style is so instantly recognizable that I know people who cringe whenever they see one of his trademark wavy forms — his name, for them, has become synonymous with glass art that verges on parodying itself. Still, there's no denying Chihuly's influence in making glass the respectable form of art that it has become.

Chihuly by no means dominates "Glass Act," which includes only three of his works. Instead, the show presents a quick survey of other artists exploring the potential of the medium. There are artists whose work seems to draw primarily on the traditions of ceramics, and artists whose work is more sculptural. Some of the artists start with familiar forms such as vessels and vases and even paperweights and then subvert them, sometimes radically.

I was heartened to see works by artists even a glass novice such as myself would recognize. Dan Dailey, Howard Ben Tré, Paul Stankard, and the irresistibly named Toots Zynsky are all represented here by excellent examples of their output. William Morris, who worked with Chihuly in the late 1970s and early '80s before striking out on his own, has a trio of remarkable pieces that challenge our ideas of what glass art should look like.

But the artist who walks off with the show, for me, is Jon Kuhn, who along the way has moved away from blowing glass to creating constructions involving thousands of fragments of colored glass that are layered, laminated, cut, ground, and polished. Kuhn proves, again and again, that glass art, like so much art, is all about the interplay of the medium with light. He's the best of the best in this uniformly fine exhibition.

10 Chances To Win An iTunes Gift Card Just By Giving Antengo A Try

AppAdvice has teamed up with Antengo, our latest AppAdvice Daily podcast sponsor, in order to offer you a chance to win a $10 iTunes Gift Card just by giving their mobile classifieds app a try.

Antengo is a real-time classifieds app that differentiates itself from similar services like Craigslist by being remarkably simple and completely mobile.

Upon launch you’ll be given the opportunity to sign up for an Antengo account to start connecting with local buyers or sellers. You can sign up using your Facebook or Twitter account, or you can create a brand new Antengo account. You’ll then be able to post listings for your community to see, browse listings, and get in touch with your buyers and sellers.

Because it was designed with mobile users in mind, posting a listing with Antengo directly from your iPhone is a piece of cake. First you must choose whether you’re offering a product or service, or if you’re on the hunt for something specific. Then you need to give your listing a title and a short (140 characters or less) description. The next step is to take a picture with your iPhone, because people need to know what they’re going to get or what you’re looking for, after all. Fill in some additional details like price, category, and sub category, and then add your location. You’ll have an opportunity to preview your listing before posting it for the world to see. The whole process probably takes less than an one minute to complete.

Not surprisingly, browsing through Antengo’s listings is even easier than posting. You can search for something specific by keyword, or you can just browse through all of the listings in your general location in list, photo, or map form. Listings can also be filtered by type, location, category, or whether or not they include a photo.

Once you have found something you’re interested in, tap on it to bring up additional details and the option to get in touch with the person who posted it. You can monitor all of your communications from within Antengo via a convenient built-in messenger service.

Sounds easy, right? So why not give it a try? By doing so, you’ll have a chance to win one of the 10 $10 iTunes Gift Cards Antengo is giving away!

To be entered into the drawing, just click here to download Antengo. After you have the app installed, sign in with your Facebook account and start browsing listings. That’s seriously all it takes to be entered. The team at Antengo will pick 10 lucky winners at random and will get in touch early next week. Good luck!

48 hours in Hatay

With thousands of refugees now taking shelter in Hatay after fleeing violence just across the border in their Syrian homeland, Turkey's panhandle province has been in the news over the past year for all the wrong reasons.

But spend a couple of days exploring this fascinating subculture of Turkey and you will discover an area steeped in ancient history, hospitality and tolerance - Jews; Orthodox, Protestant and Roman Catholic Christians; Sunni, Shi'ite and Alevi Muslims all worship here in virtual harmony.

Home to the ancient cities of Alexandretta or modern-day Iskenderun, the Mediterranean port where the whale is said to have spat out the prophet Jonah; and Antioch or modern-day Antakya, once the Roman Empire's third-most important city where St. Paul preached his first sermons and where Christians were first called Christians, Hatay is a lesson in Biblical history.

But most modern Turks come here for another reason: to eat. Once a part of Syria, Hatay has been blessed with its own rich cuisine that draws inspiration from northern Africa to the Middle East to Central Asia.

So with several airlines now operating daily flights to Hatay from Istanbul and Ankara, it's time to dust off the history books and put those diets on hold and discover one of Turkey's most well-kept secrets far off the beaten track.

Check in to The Liwan, a 1920s French colonial-style mansion typical of Hatay's main city Antakya that has now been beautifully restored into a boutique hotel. Built for the first president of the French Mandate of Syria, The Liwan boasts crystal chandeliers, carved wooden bed frames and velvet chairs that give a glimpse of what Antakya life was like in the 1920s.

An alternative is Savon Hotel, a former soap and olive oil factory built in the 1860s around a large inner courtyard complete with fountain and arcades.

Both hotels are walking distance to Antakya's main sights.

After settling in, stroll out for some dinner at Sveyka restaurant along nearby Kurtulus (Liberation) Street, which now sits on top of one of ancient Antioch's central colonnaded avenues said to be the world's first road to have street lighting dating back to the 4th century.

Sveyka serves some of Hatay's finest food in elegant surroundings on the first floor of another converted mansion. There are too many dishes to list so ask the attentive waiters for their recommendation but make sure you try the sour cherry meatballs.

After a substantial breakfast in the hotel courtyard that could pass as a dinner anywhere else, take a slow walk down to the Hatay Archaeology Museum in the city centre just across the Orontes river that divides the city in two. The museum houses some of the world's greatest Roman and Byzantine mosaics. Climb the spiral staircase in one of the rooms to get a birds-eye view of the museum's largest piece, a pavement mosaic featuring hunting scenes with ancient Greek heroes.

Cross back over the river and spend an hour getting lost in Antakya's Uzun Carsi or Long Bazaar, a series of winding covered lanes and alleyways where shopkeepers sell anything from plastic Chinese goods to gold jewelery. Spot the elderly craftsman still hammering out copper sugar bowls by hand or watch young men skillfully cook long thin strands of batter on rotating hotplates to use in kunefe, Hatay's signature dessert.

Fight your way through the bustling crowds along the banks of the river for some lunch at Sultan Sofrasi or Sultan's Feast but make sure you spot the old parliament building across the river, a reminder of Hatay's brief period as its own republic just before World War Two.

Sultan Sofrasi offers some of Antakya's best lunch specials that change from day to day so forget the menu and walk straight up to the kitchen to see what's on offer. Try the yoghurt-based soup with bulgur covered meatballs, and for dessert how about some preserved walnut jam or crunchy stewed and sweetened pumpkin, drizzled with tahini and crushed walnuts.

After all that food, it's time to take a walk around Antakya's winding cobblestone backstreets, taking in some of the city's religious sites. Make sure you see the Orthodox church which contains some striking icons as well as the Roman Catholic church whose Italian priest has been leading his small congregation for more than two decades. Several beautiful mosques are dotted around the old town too. Don't miss the Habib Neccar mosque which dates back to the 7th century and the Sermaye mosque with its lavish balcony around the minaret. Back on Kurtulus Street you'll also find a synagogue.

Coffee descendants among those opposing new Walmart location

For a man who’s been dead nearly 180 years, Gen. John Coffee has been in the news quite a bit lately.

What’s made him newsworthy again is where he’s buried and the proximity of a proposed Walmart. If the city grants final approval to build, the Walmart parking lot will be within 50 feet of the general’s family cemetery, and an access road to the store will be even closer.

That has some people upset, including his descendants.

“As the country approaches the bicentennial of the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, a victory obtained in large part through the efforts of the Tennessee volunteers Coffee led, the city of Florence should consider creative ways to honor this man instead of diminishing his importance by rezoning land next to his final resting spot,” said John Coffee O’Neal, of Clinton, N.Y., the general’s great-great-great-great-grandson.

“That Coffee chose to live and remain in Florence attests to his close attachment to the area, one that the city should recognize and pay tribute to in some fitting way.”

The City Council last week granted a zoning change that would allow the store to be built.

The developer will be required to conduct further testing for burials immediately north of the walled cemetery where the parking lot will be located, and get final subdivision approval from the Planning Commission.

A citizens’ group opposed to the Walmart development has cited the historical significance of Coffee and the members of his family buried there.

John Coffee was born in Virginia in 1772, and after his father died, he inherited five slaves whom he sold to buy land in Tennessee in 1798. He befriended future president, Andrew Jackson, and they started several businesses together in 1804. He married a niece of Jackson’s wife, Rachel, and fought a pistol duel with a man to defend Jackson’s honor, suffering a wound.

When the War of 1812 broke out, Coffee organized the 2nd Regiment of Volunteer Mounted Riflemen, which included a company from Madison County, Ala., according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama. His regiment joined Gen. Jackson’s army in Natchez, Miss., expecting to move on to New Orleans. But Jackson refused to turn over his command to another general and they returned to Tennessee.

In August 1813, news of the massacre at Fort Mims in south Alabama reached Nashville, and Jackson and Coffee reorganized their troops and set out to fight the Creek Indians. Coffee was given command of 1,300 cavalry, and was promoted from colonel to brigadier general.

Coffee was Jackson’s most trusted subordinate officer during the Creek War of 1813-14, most of which was fought in Alabama, culminating in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Among the soldiers he commanded during the war was Davy Crockett.

After the Creek War concluded, Coffee returned to Nashville to recruit and then rejoined Jackson in Mobile to prepare for an expected invasion by the British, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama. Coffee’s troops conducted a raid on the British in Pensacola, Fla., then marched to Louisiana and attacked British forces at Villere’s Plantation on Dec. 23, 1814. Coffee’s attack stopped the British advance long enough to give Jackson time to prepare breastworks defending New Orleans. Coffee’s cavalry and mounted riflemen then moved back and covered Jackson’s left flank during the Jan. 8, 1815, Battle of New Orleans. It was a decisive victory for the United States in a war that saw few successes on land, although the war was officially over when the battle was fought.

After the war, Coffee was appointed by President James Madison to survey boundaries created by treaties with Native Americans in 1815. He settled in north Alabama in 1817 and received an appointment from President James Monroe as surveyor general of public lands.

Lee Freeman, of the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library’s history department, said Coffee moved to what is now Florence in 1818 to form the Cypress Land Co. with Andrew Jackson and others. It was that year that he bought land north of town and started Hickory Hill plantation.

Florence was chartered in 1818, and incorporated in 1826. Coffee drew the original map depicting the city’s layout, and did the same for Tuscumbia on the south side of the Tennessee River.

“He was trying to attract other planters and business people, so it made sense that he live here,” Freeman said.

Coffee wasn’t just a farmer. His plantation was what University of North Alabama history professor George Makowski described as an agricultural-industrial enterprise.

“It was a very different plantation from what we see in ‘Gone With the Wind,’ ” he said. “They were wealthy before they set up the plantation, but it was set up as a real money-making enterprise that was unique for this area.”

Makowski said Hickory Hill had a saw mill powered by a nearby creek, and a grist mill that was used by the community. Coffee also grew nursery stock — fruit and nut trees and shrubs — that was truly unique at that time for a frontier area.

“His plantation was the road less taken in this part of the South at that time,” he said. “It was industrial, value-added production instead of straight commodities.”

Coffee was employed by the federal government to negotiate treaties with the Native Americans that yielded vast new tracts of land for the expanding nation, Freeman said.

Coffee died in 1833 at the age of 61. He is buried in the cemetery that was next to his home off present-day Cloverdale Road.

Castle on the river

With equal parts of inspiration, envy and generosity, people flock to see the May Court's Homes of Distinction each year.

The six houses on the 2012 tour offer plenty to kick-start your imagination or turn you green with envy, at the same time you help feed hungry students.

"People get a lot of ideas on the tour," said Margaret Vetter, publicity chair for May Court. "Every house is different. Every house is unique. We just want them to come out and enjoy the tour."

The homes were suggested by Marcus Plowright of Anden Construction and Sue-Ann Richardson-Siarto, publisher of Our Homes magazine.

"I like them all for different reasons," said Cathy Egerton, co-chair of the tour. "The Waterloo Street house is a commercial property renovation. There are two complete makeovers, a heritage home and a custom-built. Each has its own character. People will like them for different reasons."

The custom-built house at 2955 Catherine St., west of Dorchester, is certainly a showcase. Picture a French fairy-tale castle, set on the river. Exposed stonework, an archway reminiscent of ruins, muntin windows with arched lintels and a turret create the look of a castle. The 2.4-hectare property was professionally landscaped. Gardens, tennis court, golf course, pool, patio and terraces are edged by a ravine and conservation area.

You enter a half-round walnut door in the turret. The second floor of the turret houses a baby grand piano. A bas relief carving of a prince and princess was built into the stone hood over the range in the kitchen by a Serbian plaster artist who lives in Stratford. Rich wood cabinets echo the arched windows in glass-fronted doors.

The open stairway divides the entry and living room as it frames the view to the river. The decor is inviting, and carries through the living room, den and kitchen. An arched doorway separates the formal dining room from the hall. A glass-topped table reflects light from the French doors leading to a walled terrace.

The house was designed as a gathering place for family and friends. The concept started with the squash court and grew. The lower level is a walk-out to the pool and patio. As well as a guest suite, it houses a spectacular bar with mosaic tile backsplash, a large table for games or dining and a cozy television room. A shower, sauna, locker room and two-story squash court complete the sports offerings.

Upstairs, the master suite is a luxurious escape overlooking the pool and golf green.

The limestone-lined ensuite is better than a spa retreat, and the walk-in closet has a place for everything, even the washer and dryer.

The fairy tale continues in the daughter's room with its hand-painted mural walls and chandelier. A large playroom offers a great place for a child's imagination to soar. Another guest room and bathroom are beautifully appointed with soft, earthy colours and rich textures.

Throughout the second storey, the angled ceiling lines create drama and interest. They follow the rooflines of that side of the house that is stick, hand-framed construction. The house took a year to build.

The homeowners had lived in London's Old North and wanted to incorporate the trim, the warmth of wood and a wood-burning fireplace they'd enjoyed in those houses. Personality is reflected in objects collected on travels and from the work of local artists. Craftsmanship is a theme throughout.

The idea for the exposed stone, done by an Italian mason, on the exterior came during a walk by St. Peter's Seminary.

Another house on this year's tour is across the road from the seminary. It is a classic, symmetrical Georgian Revival, built for Harry Sifton. The style was named after three English kings, during whose reign the architecture evolved as a variation of Palladian, with a balanced facade, simple ornamentation and few details. This sturdy Georgian also contains a dollhouse, a miniature version of itself. The original garage has been converted into a den.

Still in the Old North neighbourhood, a Craftsman cottage on Victoria St. has been remodelled to reflect today's tastes. Many of the houses on the street were built in the 1920s and influenced by styles popular in California.

A side-hall cottage on Sydenham St. also features renovation ideas. This cottage plan was popular in the late 19th century, but remodelling shows how it can function well more than 100 years later.

One of London's prominent architectural firms of the turn of the 20th century, Moore, Henry and Munro, designed the house on Waterloo St. for a wealthy cigar manufacturer.

It's an example of Queen Anne style at its finest: tower, dormer, fluted columns and Palladian window. A law firm owns the house and has retained many of the impressive details, including a vault in the basement, stained glass (reputedly Tiffany) and mahogany wainscotting.

The new house on the tour echoes the Georgian style of the Huron St. home. Located in Old South, it features a custom approach to blending old and new. Even the garage features a traditional exterior with new technology inside.

Passport holders are served tea at the Carolinian Winery & Eatery during the tour. It is newly renovated and reopened.

The tour is the main fundraiser for the group's school nutrition program. This year 96 schools received $45,000 in food certificates. More than 200 volunteers provide thousands of hours for the May Court's program to supply snacks, breakfasts and lunches.

"We give the schools certificates and the teachers manage the flow of food," Egerton said. "They know best who needs something - from the kid who forgot lunch one day to those who need it regularly."

Barnes Foundation opening in new Philly location

After years of bitter court fights, The Barnes Foundation opened its doors Wednesday for a sneak peek at its new location on the museum-studded Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

The $150 million modernist art palace, now home to the multibillion-dollar art collection of the late pharmaceutical magnate Dr. Albert Barnes, opens Saturday. Admission is free for the first 10 days, though all tickets are sold out. The $18 admission fee ($15 for seniors, $10 for students and children) kicks in starting May 26.

Stephen Harmelin, a Barnes trustee and its treasurer, described efforts that began a decade earlier to secure what was "an embattled institution."

"There were financial challenges to be faced ... questions about how the foundation as it existed could go on with its mission, worries about the safety and integrity of the collection in the long run," he said. "We were convinced that the only change that could save the Barnes was to redouble our commitment to its mission, to reach out more widely than ever before, to build, to expand and to move the collection to a more accessible location."

It was a difficult decision "but it brought us to where we are today," Harmelin told several hundred media and donors attending the reception.

Barnes, a pharmaceutical magnate who died in 1951, stipulated in a trust that his legendary trove of 800 impressionist and post-impressionist paintings forever "remain in exactly the places they are."

Foundation officials asked a judge's permission in 2002 to break Barnes' trust, allowing the collection to relocate near Philadelphia's museums and cultural attractions. The foundation said its endowment was exhausted and it would go bankrupt if required to keep the 181 Renoirs, 69 Cezannes, 59 Matisses, 46 Picassos and thousands of other objects in their suburban Merion home, which was subject to township zoning regulations restricting the number of visitors.

Three charitable organizations promised to help the Barnes raise $150 million for a new gallery and an endowment when the relocation was approved in 2004. Opponents called the move a power play by Philadelphia's elites to bring the renowned collection to the city against its late owner's wishes.

The Barnes is officially not a museum but an educational institution keeping with its mission when Albert Barnes established it in 1922 to teach populist methods of appreciating and evaluating art. Its new home does have museum-like amenities like a cafeteria and gift shop, however, as well as discreet classroom and lecture space.

The art galleries replicate Barnes' own eccentric arrangement in Merion, with paintings grouped closely together and accompanied by furniture and ironwork, but hidden state-of-the-art lighting reveals "the true colors and vibrancy" of many paintings for the first time, Barnes president and executive director Derek Gillman said.

Ellsworth Kelly, who created a sculpture for the Barnes grounds, mistakenly thought one painting had been cleaned because it looked remarkably more vivid, Gillman said.

A handful of members from Friends of the Barnes Foundation, a citizens organization that unsuccessfully waged a legal fight for years to halt the move, protested near the entrance as visitors made their way inside.

"We had the real thing — it was successful, it was financially sustainable," said Evelyn Yaari, a group member who lives near the Barnes building in Merion. "This is a fake. The public is not getting the real thing."

Real, common and kills

World Health Organisation’s new report indicated that around the world, 15 million babies are born prematurely each year, and one million of them die. Experts, warning that the numbers of preterm births had increased globally in the last 20 years stated that many of the deaths could have been prevented, reports Sade Oguntola.

The birth of a child, which ordinarily should be a joyous experience, too often ends in death if such a child is born prematurely. Premature birth is the second greatest killer of babies worldwide — after pneumonia. A new report about premature delivery called “Born Too Soon” shows that globally, one in 10 babies is born prematurely.

Unfortunately, 1.1 million of such babies born prematurely die every year, the majority occuring shortly after their birth. Others survive, but suffer disabilities for the rest of their lives, affecting their health, nervous system or ability to access education.

The report stating that the cost of babies being born too soon to families and society was huge, said that still yet many of the preterm babies who die could survive if they had access to existing, relatively inexpensive treatments.

More than 100 experts from 40 United Nations agencies, universities and other organisations contributed to the report, which was published by the March of Dimes. These are World Health Organisation, Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health and Save the Children. It stated what exactly is known about preterm birth, its causes, and the kinds of care that are needed.

According to the report, all but two of the 11 countries with the highest levels of premature birth of over 15 per cent are in sub-Saharan Africa. While 12 per cent of babies in low-income countries are born too soon, only nine per cent are in richer countries. But the United States and Brazil have similar levels of premature birth to many poorer countries.

More than one in nine of births in the United States are preterm, a rate of around 12 per cent. And that is even after preterm birth rates in the U.S. have declined for four consecutive years.

India has the highest number of premature births, at more than 3.5 million, while China recorded nearly 1.2 million, followed by Nigeria, Pakistan and Indonesia, with figures around 700,000. But calculating the rate of preterm births per 100 births instead of per country, the list was dominated by sub-Saharan African countries. It was topped by Malawi, Comoros and Congo and Zimbabwe. Malawi recorded 18.1 premature births per 100 live births. Kenya had 12 preterm births out of every 100 births, whereas Uganda recorded a rate of 13 preterm births out of every 100 births.

For the purpose of the report, preterm birth was considered as occurring before 37 weeks. But research continues to show that a healthy baby requires 39 weeks of gestation to ensure that the brain, liver and lungs are fully developed.

Although European countries featured on the list of countries with the lowest rates of preterm births, with some of the lowest rates recorded in Belarus, Latvia, and Lithuania and Estonia, experts alerted that in all but three countries, preterm birth rates increased in the last 20 years, an indication that the numbers of preterm births are increasing globally.

The report, which highlighted the dramatic survival gap between low-income and high-income countries for babies born before 28 weeks, indicated that in low-income countries, more than 90 per cent of extremely preterm babies die within the first few days of life, while less than 10 per cent die in high-income countries.

But preterm births in lower income countries are linked to health problems like malaria, HIV and high adolescent pregnancy rates. Those in richer countries are linked to higher number of older mothers, and the use of fertility treatments.

The United States, for example, had a unique combination of teenage pregnancies and women over 35 giving birth to twins, triplets or more after in-vitro fertilisation, with these babies deliberately delivered early by caesarean section according to the study. Added to the number are premature births due to complications from obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, smoking and lack of early prenatal care.

Unfortunately, prematurity is not accorded much importance as other diseases such as breast cancer and AIDS. Yet more than 40 per cent of deaths of children less than five years of age are associated with preterm birth and why it happens remains a mystery in many cases.

Conversely, research has it that being born prematurely may carry some risk on cognitive abilities such as memory and attention. Researchers found that when tested in early adulthood, people who were born extremely premature — with a birth weight of less than 3.3 lbs. — generally scored lower on tests of executive function than babies born full-term. On IQ tests, adults who were born premature scored 8.4 points lower on average than those who were born full-term.

No doubt, preterm infants have a higher risk of dying in the first few years of life. But their risk of dying does not wane over time. A research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which looked at 674,000 Swedish babies born between 1973 and 1979 and tracked them until they were between 29 and 36 years old, indicated that preterm infants had a 59 per cent increased risk of death in early childhood (between ages one and five), compared with babies born later. They succumbed to congenital anomalies, mostly heart defects as well as respiratory and endocrine problems.

Nonetheless, medical experts suggested that women can reduce their risk of complications associated with pregnancy, including premature delivery by starting her prenatal care early and attend all of her prenatal care visits. This allows close monitoring of the progress of her pregnancy, and any problem that may arise can be addressed timely.

Google Search retains lead with 97% share

With a whopping 97 per cent market share in India according to StatCounter data, Google Search looms ahead of others like Yahoo Search (one per cent share) and Microsoft’s Bing (less than one per cent share) by a huge margin. So, how Google’s search engine manages to stay at the top of its game? Last year, Google introduced 500 changes to its search engine technology and tested over 50,000 changes in real time while billions of users were searching for their queries. Ben Gomes, engineer at Google who leads the company's engineering efforts on search features says, “It’s always a work in progress.”

Gomes has been with Google for more than 11 years and has worked in the development of nearly all aspects of the Google search service ranging from crawling and indexing to ranking and and new feature design, including features such as Google Instant and Instant Previews. “When I was a new employee at Google (a decade back), we took about a month to index about 50 million pages. Today, the same amount happens in less than a minute. That’s how evolved the systems are and it continues to get better each day,” says Gomes.

Google estimates there have been 450 billion unique queries searched on Google since 2003. While Google betters its online search engine, Gomes has his focus on the mobile platform, which he believes is critical to the company’s success in markets like India where users are logging on to the internet for the first time on their mobile devices.

“I believe both voice search and image search along with other search innovations rooted in the mobile experience, will emerge steadily in 2012. We are making sure that mobile search experience is as relevant as Google desktop search is,” he points.

With mobile handsets, Google Search gets a legs up because it can serve most relevant results using user’s location information.

“Location is an important signal we use to surface content from the web. Most common searches from mobile today are for tickets, places to eat etc. When we have the location, we can serve user not only the data he searched but relevant stuff like directions to the place or reviews of the restaurant etc,” explains Gomes. Also bullish about mobile voice search, where users speak their query instead of typing, Google is making sure that its search engine can understand Indian dictions.

“It’s not an easy task to break down the accents and pronunciations symantically into searchable queries but we are slowly working towards getting this feature right as we believe mobile users will begin to demand this feature on their smartphones,” underlines Gomes. Voice Search is already a feature of Google Search app for iPhone, BlackBerry, and Nokia S60 V3 phones.

Where other search engines have failed, social networks like Facebook and Twitter have emerged to pose a threat to Google because they don’t allow Google’s search engine to log most of the photos, links and observations cascading through their pages. Although Twitter did give Google access to the tweets as part of a 2009 licensing agreement, but that deal has long expired.

That preempted Google to launch, ‘Search, plus your World’ which in its search results includes information culled from the user’s Google Plus network.

For instance, a query about the Indian premier League matches might include links and comments made about teams by other people in one of the social circles on the user’s Plus account. And although Google Plus has grown to nearly 100 million users, analysts are still trying to determine how active and engaged they actually are. Google’s social search, believes Gomes, continues to evolve.

“Today our search technology is pretty amazing at finding that one needle in a haystack of billions of webpages, images, videos, news and much more. When you search about a movie or a restaurant, social search will highlight names of places, images, reviews of restaurants visited, which is relevant to user.”

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Bing search engine has recently been updated to include the user comments, likes and activities posted on popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Bing's new interface, which is expected to move from a private to a public beta test period soon, offers users a sidebar that focuses on people in the user's social networks and their opinions and search queries.

Drone rules scheduled to be released Monday; Regs to determine how police can use them

On Monday the Federal Aviation Administration is supposed to release new guidelines on how law enforcement and emergency management agencies can use lightweight drones, also known as unmanned aircraft systems.

It's expected that the proposed rules will clear up how high and far police and first-responders such as fire departments can fly drones, and what kind of training pilots controlling the drones must receive. The rules will apply to drones weighing less than 4.4 pounds and flown at altitudes below 400 feet. President Barack Obama signed a FAA reauthorization bill in February that fast-tracked the process for first-responders to get permission to use drones, but the the FAA has delayed releasing the guidelines in the past.

Right now only hobbyists who fly drones at low altitudes and within eyesight are allowed to use them. But in January, the LAPD warned real estate agencies not to use them after one agency was caught flying drones to take pictures and video of homes for sale.

Some agencies got special clearance from the FAA for testing or research purposes fly drones now. Cal FIRE was given temporary permission to test scanner technology with NASA to provide real-time wildfire imaging data.

The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department has been testing some drones in the field in concert with California drone manufacturers. Commander Bob Osborne with the Sheriff’s Office Homeland Security Division said they have not purchased any drones or equipment for one, but are awaiting the new rules. He said small drones could be helpful in barricaded suspect stand-offs or mountainous rescue missions.

“It would be really nice to fly a small unmanned air system down to take some pictures for us, to send some video back to up so that we would know what we are getting into before we rappel a thousand feet down a cliff,” Osborne said.

The Sheriff’s department already uses ground robotics in its special weapons and arson explosives teams to investigate bomb threats.

California drone developer AeroVironment first built small drones in the late 1980s for military reconnaissance teams. But the company has developed smaller drones, such as the Qube, a three-foot wide, approximately five pound remotely controlled unmanned aircraft system that carries a video camera, for law enforcement and rescue teams. AeroVironment has demonstrated its models for several local California public safety agencies said Steve Gitlin, vice president of Investor Relations.

Gitlin said small drones won’t replace helicopters but could be an extra tool for smaller police departments that don’t have the money to buy a helicopter and pay a team to run it.

“They’re going to put in the truck of a squad car the ability to get eyes over a situation right then and right there,” Giltin said. “It’s the immediacy of the information that these systems produce compared to having to call in and trying to get a helicopter to come in from a distant location.”

Gitlin said drones could also be used in agriculture for crop dusting, by news organizations and for real-time traffic information.

Control what makes it onto your network

The Web-based service, available at openDNS.com, offers users a free way to protect against certain types of network attacks by filtering out malicious content before it ever gets to the computer. The company also says the service can make browsing faster and more reliable.

The Domain Name System, or DNS, allows networks to interpret easy-to-remember Web addresses like newsobserver.com into their corresponding Internet Protocol addresses – the numerical location of the server containing the content you’re looking to browse. DNS services, which actually do the translating, are in most cases handled by your Internet service provider. But by handing the job over to OpenDNS, users can get more control over what their networks access from a service that specializes in the task.

“Because they only do DNS, they have one whale of a network,” Rosenberg said. “They’re just better at it.”

After signing up for a free account, OpenDNS provides step-by-step instructions for switching to the service using your router or your computer (from start to finish, it took me about five minutes to set up on my own system). You can then add your network, track statistics and choose security options – all without having to download any extra applications or run anything in the background.

“All the security, all the content filtering happens on the OpenDNS side before it gets to you,” Rosenberg said. “There’s zero impact on the network or computers.”

In addition to faster domain name resolution (which cuts down on page load times), OpenDNS allows users to filter the content coming into the network by choosing a filter level. Setting it to high, for example, blocks adult content as well as pages like social networking sites and “general time-wasters.” Custom options also allow filtering based on a number of broad categories like adult themes and academic fraud.

These options are what initially led Rosenberg to OpenDNS after clients asked him repeatedly for a quality content filtering service.

“The answer was always, ‘I’m not entirely sure.’ A lot of the products you see out there are geared not just to content filtering, but to content logging, keystroke logging and monitoring. A lot of my customers – and myself included – don’t want to know everything their kid types on the computer,” Rosenberg said. “I just want to know that he’s not going to be able to view pornography. That’s really what it boils down to.”

Because security is tied into the domain name resolution, OpenDNS can also help guard against phishing sites, which are designed to trick users into providing personal information by mimicking the look and feel of legitimate Web pages. By tapping into its database of known phishing sites, it blocks access to these pages altogether, and can redirect users to a custom page. OpenDNS even provides protection from malware that can exploit vulnerabilities in Web browsers.

Charles L. Madden, of Maple Glen

He won a prestigious P.S.F.S. scholarship award at the age of 16, presented by Eugene Ormandy at The Philadelphia Academy of Music.

He graduated from Mastbaum High School, delivering the valedictorian address, earning a full scholarship, and went on to earn his B.A. in Fine Arts from Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts) in 1956.

While in art school Charles served his country in the Naval Reserve during the early 1950's, after classes on nights and weekends, and went on active duty upon completing college.

He began his long career as a professional artist when he co-founded Madden Barron & Barron, a graphics design and advertising firm, garnering accounts with Ford Motor Co, producing early advertising for the Mustang, Atlantic Richfield, Honeywell, Rohm & Haas and creating religious iconography for the Medical Mission Sisters of Philadelphia.

His artistic reach quickly expanded and evolved across a diversity of media, including sketches, painting, stained glass, sculpture, tapestries and mosaics.

In the mid 1960's he founded Contemporary Stained Glass Corporation, producing religious designs and large stained glass windows for Gwynedd Mercy Chapel, The Sons of Israel Synagogue, Holy Redeemer Chapel, The Norbertine Monastery, St. Margaret's Catholic Church, The Passionist Nuns and many other religious sites throughout the country.

He later founded Urban Arts as an outlet for creating public and corporate art for such diverse installations as Sacred Heart Hospital, The Philadelphia Electric Company, Louis I. Kahn Memorial Park, Penn Mutual Insurance Company, Houston Natural Gas and many private collectors.

Madden's interest in new forms of art media extended into designs of custom-made stained glass hand-crafted in Darmstadt, Germany, tapestry designs woven in Aubusson, France and Barcelona, Spain, and sculptures crafted from marble he selected from the travertine quarries of Northern Italy. During this time period, he created numerous steel, bronze, marble and enamel sculptures.

He routinely traveled the world in search of the finest materials for his works of art. Projects included commissions for Sun Oil Corporate Headquarters, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, and The Gallery at Center City.

In 1972 he was chosen as the artist representing the United States at the Basilica of Nazareth, Israel, creating a monumental bronze, aluminum and glass enamel sculpture of Mary's Ascension to Heaven. During this period, he was commissioned to design the Papal Vestments worn by Pope Paul XXIII and bishops from around the world assembled for the Eucharistic Congress held at J.F.K. Stadium in Philadelphia. The chalice elevated by the Pope at this event was a Charles Madden creation.

In the 1990's he formed Architectural Features, LLC, creating large works commissioned by the U. S. Department of State for the embassies in Cairo, Egypt and Chengdu, China.

During this period he also created a large mosaic installation in the center atrium of the Harrisburg International Airport, and bronze, glass and mosaic works for The Carmelite Monastery and Saint Augustine Chapel at Villanova University.

For the Turn of the Millennium, he was commissioned by the Franciscan Order custodians of sacred sites of the Holy Land, to create a monumental 12 foot bronze sculpture of St. Peter at the site of Peter's home on the Sea of Galilee, Capharnaum, Israel which was blessed and dedicated by Pope John Paul II at a Papal visit in March, 2000.

His profession took him many places and situations throughout the world, during a visit to Australia, to meet with the new Archbishop of Victoria, the 9/11 attacks occurred and he was asked to speak on Australian radio to provide an American perspective on the tragedy.

He continued to work on major projects until the end of his life. At the time of his death, he was creating a monumental bronze sculpture of Moses for the Franciscan Order, to be installed at Mt. Nebo, Amman, Jordan, the burial site of Moses.

Enhancing Your Security With IP Surveillance

In today's world, an IP surveillance camera system may be the smart solution to security issues as terrorist becomes more sophisticated in devising new methods in carrying out there attack more people are turning to video surveillance to help identify threat and monitor events. In today article we will analyze the advantage of this equipments and how implementing it can proffer solutions. In a home, business, or other establishment. Compared to traditional security cameras, IP or Internet protocol has its advantages. As more and more people switch to IP surveillance system as against the old CCTV, ease of installation and higher resolution of video, CCTV (closed circuit television) and DVR methods are quickly becoming obsolete because IP allows business owner, law enforcement officers, etc to view video from anywhere with an Internet or network connection. With a wide market out there, some business owners may feel a little overwhelmed, but by configuring some key simple features one can relax and be rest assured that the desired solution will be achieved.

An IP camera captures and sends video footage over an IP network, allowing users to view, record, store, and manage their video surveillance images either locally or remotely over the network infrastructure. The camera can be placed wherever there's an IP network connection. It has its own IP address and unlike a webcam, doesn't require a connection to a PC in order to operate.

Along with streaming video footage, network cameras can include a number of additional functionalities, such as pan/tilt/zoom operation, motion detection, audio surveillance, integration with alarms and other security systems, automated alerts, intelligent video analytics, and much more. Many IP cameras can also send multiple streams of video, using different compression technologies for live viewing and archiving.

IP cameras offer flexible installation, ease of use, higher-quality images, stability, and scalability as new cameras can be added to the network at any time.

Video motion detection is a useful tool that allows you to program your network camera to begin recording, and perform other functions such as sending automated email alerts, when movement is detected within a scene. The functionality comes either built-in with your IP camera, or through video management software.

There are a number of advantages to using motion detection. Since you can limit recording to situations when activity is taking place, motion detection helps to conserve bandwidth, saves storage space, reduces CPU load on recording servers, and also allows for integration with other systems such as alarms and access control systems. The system can be set up so that unless movement is detected, no video is being recorded. It can also be programmed to send video at a low frame-rate until motion is perceived.

A number of actions can be triggered using motion detection. Examples include: saving images before or after an event, delivering video images to specific locations for recording or monitoring, sending email and phone alerts, activating door locks and lights, sounding alarms, and more.

Bathroom cabinet decorating ideas

You can use a sponging technique to stencil designs in your bathroom for a really creative and decorative look. Buy stencils at a craft store, or make your own by cutting shapes into paper or sheets of plastic. You can go with virtually any shapes or designs you can imagine, but some of the most popular stencils shapes are hearts, flowers, seashells, clovers, or animals. Keep in mind that you could have an array of shapes throughout the bathroom and on your cabinets – you don’t have to choose just one. If you want to have a tropical theme in your bathroom, you could have such shapes as fish, suns, sunglasses, and waves. Also, you can stencil the shapes all over the bathroom, or just around the border and on your cabinets, depending on your design preference.

This is a very simple craft that you could finish in an afternoon easily. Choose paints in the color or colors of your liking. Cut sponges into two-inch squares. You will use a new sponge square for each color and each stencil. Tape your stencils onto the walls and onto the cabinets where you want to paint on your shapes. Dip your sponge into the paint, and dab onto a scrap piece of paper a few times so that you will get the desired look. If you have too much paint on the sponge, you will not get a textured look with you stenciled designs. Lightly dab the paint-covered sponge over your stencil, and then remove the stencil from the surface gently, so as not to mess up the paint. If you are using the same stencil again, rinse it clean and dry it off before you use it again so that you don’t accidentally get any of the paint from the last stencil onto the wall where you don’t want it. That’s all it takes to sponge paint stencil designs in your bathroom… and of course, you can use the same idea in any rooms in your home.

Artificial vines and flowers can really work wonders in a boring bathroom. Take the stems off of artificial flowers and vines and glue them to the cabinets. You should also decorate the inside of the cabinets, once the outside is dry. Create a border around the mirror with vines, or take the stems of off flowers and make a floral and vine border. Attach the vines and flowers to the mirror with glue, or if you want to have the ability to diversify your décor at a moment’s notice, you can use Velcro to attach them. You can also decorate your toilet seat with artificial flowers. Buy a toilet seat cover in the color of your choice, and use a needle and thread to attach flowers (without stems) to the seat cover. You could also cut leaves off of artificial vines, and then use a needle and thread to sew them on as well, to fill in any gaps between flowers.

Buy one-inch squares of mirror at your local craft store. Use a waterproof glue to make a mosaic border of mini mirrors on your cabinets. Glue them together so that they are almost touching, but not quite. Once you have attached the mirror pieces and they have dried, use nail polish to paint some of the mirror squares. You could just randomly paint scattered pieces, or you could paint them to form a design. You can also use the mirror squares to decorate a border around your mirror, or even to make a border around the whole room.

Coat your cabinet with waterproof glue (except for the back that will be against the wall). Use pebbles to make random shapes and designs on the cabinet, or just line the shelves with pebbles – whatever your design preference. Next, cover the remaining space on your cabinet with sand. Keep in mind that you can buy sand in many colors at your local craft store, or you can dye sand yourself with some food coloring.

Tricks of the hacker

Lately I have received a couple of suspicious emails that seem innocent and from people I know, mostly consisting of quick get rich schemes. Coming from a trusted friend it can seem genuine. But then the same type of message would come from different people on my contact list. So when I confront these people about the emails, fortunately without opening the links, they would say they didn't send such emails. So who did?

There are geniuses who have too much time on their hands, they have decided to hack into people's privacy using the World Wide Web and unfortunately some of those on my mailing list are victims.

Through this, the hackers have managed to do a lot of damage both on a small and big scale.

On one occasion, the world's largest credit card payments processor recently got hacked. Over 1.5 million cards from Visa and MasterCard were digitally stolen through a cyber attack. This is just the latest in a series of brazen attacks on some of America's largest and most secure companies.

Or on a smaller scale, private pictures or videos have been displayed publicly without the owner of these pictures or videos ever knowing how.

Besides stealing and exposing individual privacy, some hackers have bigger plans in mind, Terrorist attacks! How? By hacking or hijacking computer networks of their enemies to steal secret information that could contribute to war, like weapon blueprints, operational plans and significant surveillance data.

They also at times, sabotage equipment used to control computer networks. This can be very destructive since the 21st century is so reliant on computer controlled facilities.

According to Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, one in three online computers is remotely controlled by a hacker and not the owner of the device or email address. An alarming find, making the emailing facility very unreliable.

One is using Virus; this is the most popular one in the 21st century. This form of hacking works by injecting a few specialised lines of code into an otherwise harmless executable file.

The infected file is then made available for download on the Internet, and the downloader's gadget subsequently become infected with the virus.

As web technology advanced, some hackers discovered an internet security flaw that allowed them to install the malicious program directly onto a user's computer when the user simply visited a certain website.

By exploiting security holes in web browsers such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, the program could be quietly downloaded and installed in the background. Once the program infects the machine, the hacker can easily access the machine, take over the machine, or use the infected computer to send bulk advertising (spam) without fear of punishment.

So if you have noticed the IT guys in your firm getting strict with internet or device access, it's because of safety.

Prevention is better than cure and to prevent a whole institute from crashing to the ground because money has been stolen by hackers or significant information is in the wrong hands, IT security has probably doubled its strength.

The reputation of a company could be tainted if it has just once been known to be hacked, no one would want to invest or share information with a company that's easily hacked, it would be a risky and an unwise move.

To counter this problem, according to Forbes, the world's largest search engine Google, has been offering up rewards to security researchers and friendly hackers to find flaws or bugs in its programming for a while.

There have been several people that have collected rewards for finding these bugs by notifying Google rather than trying to exploit the issues. Google has now announced that it has increased the available rewards for reporting bugs to as much as $20,000 per bug.

Restaurants get tech savvy

When hungry patrons visit The Market House at Jackson Square when it opens in Oak Ridge later this month, they'll be greeted by servers with iPhones not notepads.

Gone are designated point of sale systems where servers go to punch in food and drink orders. Instead, servers will check out an iPhone and take orders in real time tableside.

The twenty-something owners, Dan Tremaine and Bo Shipley, say using this type of technology will prevent staff from misreading their own handwriting or forgetting to ask essential follow-up questions, like how a person wants their steak cooked.

"It's all right there. You can even add pictures of everything," Shipley said. "It's just cool."

As new technologies are developed for smartphones and tablets, more restaurants are flirting with ways to take advantage of opportunities to streamline processes, market directly to customers and ultimately lower costs.

"As far as technology goes, it takes a leap of faith," Tremaine said.

For the owners of the new farm-to-table restaurant, in the former Jackson Square Bistro location, the decision to forego a traditional point of sale system wasn't automatic.

"We considered it and then backed off, looked at other POS systems and then came back to it. Honestly, it was a heck of a lot cheaper," Tremaine added.

Tennessee Hospitality Association CEO Greg Adkins said customers can expect to see more restaurants trying to capitalize on a broad range of new technologies that can be used for marketing, loyalty and operations.

"They say that's the next wave," Adkins said of the latter. "It's very cutting edge. But it depends on the type of restaurant it is and the type of experience they want their guests to have."

Dylan Roskop of National Restaurant Properties, which is providing consulting services to The Market House, said it comes down to accuracy and speed.

"With all the technology and software that's being created, it can be a better way to go," Roskop said. "With their system, they will save 3 minutes per table."

Six months ago, the Old City gastro pub Crown and Goose replaced its buzzing pagers with an iPad app that sends a text message to waiting patrons, letting them know when their table is ready.

The No Wait app works much the same way as an old-fashioned, write-your-name-on-a-piece of paper list, when it comes to taking a person's name and the number of people in the party.

But the cloud-based system also prompts the hostess to enter a phone number, giving customers the flexibility to wander nearby, said Gretchen Paxton, the restaurant's marketing and events coordinator.

"It just works wonderfully. They can do their own thing," Paxton said.

The restaurant and pub at 123 S. Central St. doesn't have a large waiting area, so having a wait list management system tied to a person's mobile device provides flexibility. Guests can take a walk or hang out at the bar. It also syncs with its online reservation program, Open Table.

"It's so cutting edge, the patent is still pending," Paxton said.

At nearby Remedy Coffee, an iPad rests behind the counter, where orders are entered and customers pay. It sends them a receipt by text or email.

"If you could do a cash register the right way, this is the way it would look like," owner Sean Alsobrooks said.

Almost one year has passed since Alsobrooks made the decision to switch from a traditional processor to running his business off an iPad with Square, a payment system that allows businesses to accept credit cards on their mobile or tablet device. Nearly 1,500 people in Knoxville are using Square, according to the company.

"It came down to the fees. I got tired every time I got my bill of seeing a swipe fee, a batch processing fee, a card fee," he said.

The move has saved him almost $100 per month.

"It's a beautiful experience," Alsobrooks said. "Square was the first, but I think it's going to become more common."

True, we're 'not free' — but we're not Zimbabwe

The New York-based human rights watchdog Freedom House released its annual survey of press freedom in almost 200 countries today. At first blush it may not seem surprising that Russia, which will inaugurate Vladimir Putin for his third presidential term on May 7, remains firmly in the "Not Free" category of nations, holding down a dismal 172nd place, together with Zimbabwe and Azerbaijan, just one slot higher than last year's rating.

But this year, at least, many Russian media experts and journalists say that Freedom House makes some good points, but its judgement is too monochromatic and has failed to note sweeping changes — often happening below the West's radar screen — that are broadening out Russia's media spectrum, creating new and independent sources of information that the public can access.

The analytical reports issued by Freedom House, which is 80 percent funded by the US government, are typically received by Russian officialdom with an angry scoff and an occasional diatribe on Western double-standards. In his final interview as Russian president last week, Dmitry Medvedev flatly denied there is any state censorship of the media in Russia.

"There's a better mood among journalists today, and a new fighting spirit," says Yassen Zassoursky, who was dean of Moscow State University's journalism faculty from 1965 to 2007. "I talk to a lot of my former students, and keep close track. Things are changing in our society, and today's journalists are pushing harder, making incremental improvements, but they are trying to do their jobs. Yes, there's still self-censorship, and an attitude of caution, but I feel very optimistic about how things are going."

While major TV networks, which reach the bulk of the population, remain closely state-guided, there is a wide spectrum of newspapers and a growing number of independent radio stations that have consistently pushed the limits of what they can report. For example, a two-year-old cable and Internet TV station, Dozhd TV, successfully weathered official threats of shutdown early this year after it gave coverage to the wave of street protests against alleged electoral fraud in last December's Duma elections.

Russia's unfettered Internet has become host to thousands of critical blogs, uncensored online newspapers, and an expanding social media that proved the main organizational force behind the protest rallies of recent months.

Russia is one of the world's fastest-growing Internet markets, with penetration now estimated at 44 percent, and Europe's biggest, with over 60 million users.

One of the reforms proposed by outgoing President Medvedev was a pledge — still far from being realized — to establish a public TV channel that would be independent of state control. If that should happen, it might change Russia's media landscape fundamentally, experts say.

Freedom House defended its finding that Russia's media remains unfree, citing "the use of a pliant judiciary to prosecute independent journalists, impunity for the physical harassment and murder of journalists, and continued state control or influence over almost all traditional media outlets."

But, despite threats, there have been no shutdowns or takeovers of independent Russian media this year. While there is a list of almost 20 unsolved murders of journalists since Mr. Putin came to power, there have been fewer violent incidents recorded over the past year.

Some of Freedom House's arguments are valid points, says Yelena Zelinskaya, vice president of Media Soyuz, the more pro-Kremlin of Russia's two major associations of media workers.

"But the situation of our media is more complicated and problematic than Freedom House pictures it. What Freedom House describes seems to be a picture from a completely different life," she says. "I agree that the authorities do pressure the mass media, but the pressure comes in different forms and is not direct, while authorities themselves feel pressure from the mass media. Even inside the media itself there are lots of pressures and problems. The situation is more complicated but totally different" from Freedom House's portrayal, she says.

But critics argue that only inhabitants of big cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg have access to relatively independent radio stations, newspapers, and niche TV stations like Dozhd.

"There are really serious problems with press freedom in Russia," says Nadezhda Prusenkova, spokesperson for Novaya Gazeta, the combative opposition weekly that's seen several of its own journalists, including Anna Politkovskaya, murdered in the past decade.

"Big TV channels are all in the hands of structures that are close to the Kremlin, and even if journalists are not subject to direct censorship they are hemmed-in by self-censoring fears. I don't find Freedom House's ranking of Russia at 172nd place the least bit surprising," she says.

Drawn by Pushkin pull

Oligarchs have to eat, just like the rest of us. But it doesn’t mean we have to eat like them. Over-the-top Brasserie Pushkin lets you pig out amid billionaires without going broke. Just order cheaper dishes which tend to be the best — and forget about finding green vegetables at any price.

You want to laugh at this czarist-mansion fantasy a block east from the Russian Tea Room. At Pushkin, large-lipped women prowl the parquet floor in 6-inch heels. Some complain “the food’s not greasy enough,” an insider confided.

Yet the menu’s more refined than at any Russian place I’ve been in New York — about time in a city where it took Mr. Prokhorov to bring the Nets to Brooklyn. For all its giddy opulence and goofy pageantry (think coat-check numbers in golden lockets), Brasserie Pushkin is a very good restaurant that will be better if it rethinks its pricing and banishes certain old ways.

Owner Andrey Dellos can’t fill a 157-seat, West 57th Street satellite of his humongous Cafe Pushkin in Moscow just with vagabonding fertilizer and natural-gas moguls from the ex-USSR.

So it tries to be “New York” — but not Brighton Beach. The chef’s from Rockefeller Center, the floor staff from lots of local joints. The menu boasts a “contemporary interpretation of Russian haute cuisine through the cosmopolitan lens of New York City” and “French influence.” A Murano glass chandelier over the front lounge and pastry shop announces the rococo onslaught — pleated banquettes, French oak walls, ceilings “inspired” by the Hall of Hercules at Versailles and a mural of skybound nymphs.

The menu’s printed on a mock newspaper called the Pushkin Telegraph. Experts disagree on what czarist-era Russians really ate. But whatever it may have been, 74 years of Soviet privations turned it to lead and oil.

Executive chef Andrey Makhov and chef de cuisine Jawn Chasteen (recently at the Sea Grill ) pretend the revolution never happened, striking a precarious balance between expectations and innovation.

They can lose unreconstructed war horses — clay-like pelmeni (Russian meat dumplings), same-old beef stroganoff and “classic” beef and veal aspic terrine, an unfathomable mess I was born to hate.

The appalling side-dish list offers three forms of spuds, but only one “vegetable du jour” — one night, canned-tasting asparagus.

But pretty presentations and rare delicacy characterize many choices. Chicken Kiev appears only as caesar salad — chicken lollipops stuffed with oozy Emmentaler cheese and champignons amidst Romaine leaves.

“Are you from Moscow?” a lunching lady giggled to the Spanish-accented waiter. Scallop and ocean trout crudo seemed more attuned to tastes on the Hudson than on the Moskva. The mosaic tasted as striking as it looked — the raw scallops paper-thin, poker-chip rounds of trout vivid pink, their harmonious essences crystalline in vanilla-mustard dressing.

A flotilla of spicy short ribs navigates the surface of scarlet borscht ($18). Three-fish soup ukha ($18), ethereally light, brimmed with lush wedges of poached pike, sturgeon and salmon. Accompanied by a squirty fish dumpling and a shot of ginger vodka, it’s enough for an entree.

But pricing is all over the map. Cod ruined by cloying apple puree was a $36 rip-off. Rack of lamb was fabulous but felonious at $48.

On the other hand, there’s herbed Cornish hen for a mere $28, embraced in a winning marinade of the Georgian tomato-garlic paste Adjica. Pojarsky ($28) is a sublime breed of cutlet, a craggy-surfaced, garlic-crouton-breaded crescent stuffed with chicken and veal lightly bound as if by magic.

Fun desserts such as the sweet-filled, dome-shaped “Cafe Pushkin” are enough for two — as they should be at $16 each. They send you out merry at 11:30 p.m., when black limousines line the deserted sidewalk.

On a misty night, you imagine ZiL sedans waiting on dour commissars in Leonid Brezhnev’s day. Then the doors open and out pops a flock of laughing, blond giantesses. Moscow isn’t the same, and neither is New York. Welcome to the party, comrades.