Background to Music to no longer be used as torture

The end of Guantanamo Bay may be near.

US president-elect vowed to shut down the detention center during his campaign.

“We´re going to close Guantanamo…We´re going to lead by example-by not just word but deed. That´s our vision for the future.” Barack Obama has reportedly said on the campaign trail.

He plans to shut down the dentention center as soon as he takes office in January.

Many still in the Bush administration see the difficulties in fulfilling this promise.

The U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff  does not believe the camp should shut down right away according to AP.

“The problem is what do you do with the people in Guantanamo? Regrettably, some who have been released turn up on the battlefield again,” Chertoff told the BBC.

“We had a suicide bomber who was released and then blew himself up in Iraq.”

“My advice would be to take a deep breath and try to put together a plan that would sort between the various categories of detainee,” he said.

Obama has not yet specified the fate of the detainees.

The next step

There has been vast speculation on what Obama will do with the remaining detainees.

The matter has become a sensitive subject in the US because of the accused 9/11 conspirator who is held at the camp.

Due to be on trial many newspapers like The Star hope to see the trial moved to the US civil courts.

Others hope to see the prisoners shifted to other areas.

UN torture investigator, Manfred Nowak, recommends European countries take in Guantanamo inmates, according to the Guardian.

He worries that the newly freed detainees will be tortured if they are returned to their native countries.

One country has made an offer.

Portugal has recently offered to take in the reported 250 detainees according to the Belfast Telegraph.

“As a matter of principle and coherence, we should send a clear signal of our willingness to help the US government closing Guantanamo, namely through the resettlement of the detainees.” said Luis Amado the Portuguese foreign minister to reporters.

He also encouraged other European countries to step up to the challenge.

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Web Critique of The Casper Star Tribune

The Star Tribune is the most widely circulated paper in Casper, Wyoming.

The websites layout has begun to implement Jakobs Nielsen’s guidelines but, misses the mark in essential areas like writing and navigation.

When the website first opens it has a nice clean layout.

The white background makes the readability fairly easy and they have set into place an effective color scheme.

Using red, white, blue and gray has proven to be a successful.

NPR won a website design award based on a website with a similar presentation.

However, there are problems with the overall usability of the page.

The navigation is one element that was sacrificed in order to maintain a “clean” appearance on the main page.

The main navigation separates the news into three categories, horizontally across the top page.

Then to further divide those categories a drop down menu is used.

This would have been a great solution had it not been overdone because there are too many options in the drop down menu.

For example, NEWS alone has 16 categories alone. Other examples of the menu can be seen in the picture posted above.

A viable solution to this would be to create a sub menu underneath the main navigation, like the Guardian has done.

This would not be detrimental to the overall aesthetics of the page and if a drop down menu is still needed it would have smaller categories.

This simple change can help improve the page views by allowing the user to access more specific news categories at first glance.

Layout and font

The main page follows the standard three-column news layout that can be see in award winning sites like to New York Times.

The font used is sans serif, making the words easy to read online.

The site makes use of a great amount of white space, almost excessively.

A larger font size could be applied to the main page, which would help improve the ease of readability, but at the same time it would not clutter the page.

Star Tribune has also effectively incorporated media into its layout.

On the left the flash box displays news and other media that may interest the reader.

This box is an important feature that utilizes movement to catch the reader’s eye.

One is drawn to the box as soon as it flashes another story.

Overall the front page makes the online newspaper look promising.

Writing

Example of writing in the Star Tribune

The writing structure does not follow Jakobs Nielsen’s rules of writing for the web.

The way stories are presented actual deters the reader.

The writing fails to create an ‘F’ pattern when one clicks on a news article to read. Unlike the major news site the front page tries to imitate, this section looks rough.

The text takes over half of the page and does not have any consistency.

The first paragraph is not bold.

If there is an ad places on the page the text will stop at the ad, but then continue horizontally after it passes the ad.

This inconsistency makes it difficult to scan the text.

The lone paragraphs also tire out the eye. The text is taken from the news and splattered online without any formatting to make it web friendly.

After the first obvious error it has plenty more mistake.

Poor structure

The articles are not divided by sub headings.

The news just runs down the page without any story indication to the reader. This is a crucial mistake.

In Nielsen’s writings he discusses the importance of scannable text for web writing. A reader will spend around 4.4 seconds at the page for each extra hundred words he finds.

Using this logic, the Star Tribune is losing readers by not sectioning off the web writing into scannable sub headings.

The news articles also barely make any use of graphics.

This can become boring and the overwhelming amount of text turns off the viewer.

The news stories are also void of any links.

They do not link back to any story that makes it harder for the articles to appear on search engines.

This in another simple area that if improved would skyrocket the number of page views they receive.

The only positive side to the news section is the websites utilization of comments.

In order to improve this section the designer need to take a look at the way other news site present the articles.

Great examples to follow would be the BBC and CNN.

It is always a safe bet to follow the way they present writing online because they have web experts on their design team.

If the writing does not improve readers will begin to look elsewhere for the news.

Content

Elements on the website help make it part of the web 2.0 world. This includes reader participation.

After every story the reader is allowed to leave comments and provide the site feedback. Users are also allowed to rate the article.

The rating and article system help the site understand what its readers are interested in reading.

The information can then be used to make improvements on the website by making the most viewed content easily accessible.

Each news story also has navigation that makes it possible to share. On the left hand corner there is a bar that list popular social networking sites.

Ways to increase traffic

These thumbnails include Facebook, digg and del.ico.us. When the reader is allowed to share the story by a click of the mouse, the traffic is bound to increase.

There is also a section on the site where it is possible to RSS the headlines. This option can place it on various blogger list and help get news article linked.

The problems however, arise with its appeal to bloggers. The option to find the RSS feed is not easy to find.

There is also a section for bloggers on the page, but the link to the bloggers does not work.

If done correctly the site could benefit from having bloggers online to expand the coverage of some articles.

Link  failure

Although it appears web friendly there are many bad links. It is easy to click on pages that do not load or exist.

If the website wants to improve the content they must first clean up all bad links.

Then they must examine how accessible some of their features are to the user.

How fast can one access the RSS feed? Where are the blogs? These are important questions that must be looked into with further detail.

Navigation

On the main page the ‘Most popular stories’ sub navigation bar appears on the right side. Then it shifts to the left hand side when the user clicks to read an article.

The navigation follows a nice color scheme, but does not have any consistency.

For example, click on the ‘Sign up for email-alerts’ will change the main navigation bar.

New main navigation

Old options like ‘Exclusives’ are replaced with ‘My City’ for no apparent reason.

If one clicks on ‘announcement and forms’ under the main navigation the area it take the user does not even have the main bar anymore.

It is a shell of where the navigation bar once was and the user has to go back to the main page if they want to navigate.

Drastic changes in the main navigation make it difficult for a user to effectively access the site.

The only consistent navigation happens within the drop down menu.

When the main navigation is working the drop down menu categories never shift order.

The website has also lost some users due to this poor navigation set up. It tries to pack too much information into a small horizontal bar.

The Telegraph has implemented a similar navigation bar, but have a more successful formula.

It is better to have main pages and sub-categories after the user has click on to different news areas.

This way the main navigation would stay the same while the sub navigation adjusted.

Final thoughts

The website has a promising design but many flaws.

A major overhaul in the writing and navigation areas would substantially increase traffic.

Music to no longer be used as torture

‘Please don’t stop the music’ sings Rihanna in her 2007 hit, but if musicians have it their way it soon will.

Artists have joined forces to get songs banned from being used as passive torture devices at Guantanamo Bay.

Together with the organization Reprieve project ZerodB has been launched in order to end the practice, reports the Telegraph.

The campaign was introduced on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights according to Reprieve.

In protest some artists will have a minute of silence during concerts.

“I had no blanket or sheet. If I had, I would probably have tried suicide,” one former prisoner told AP.

He was subjected to around the clock rock music during his stay.

Loud music was first introduced in order “to create fear and disorient detainee(s) and prolong capture shock.”

Its use was authorized by Iraq Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez in a memo from 2003.

The practice has now been used in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

Many of the detainees are not accustom to rock music and therefore crack, said military spokesman to the press.

Musical meltdown

Bands like Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against the Machine, Eminem, Aerosmith,  Limp Bizkit, Drowning Pool, Tupac Shakur and AC/DC have all been used during interrogation say reports.

The practice has upset many of these artists.

“It’s difficult for me to imagine anything more profoundly insulting, demeaning and enraging” wrote Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails in his blog.

His songs are frequently blasted at the prisons.

Others musicians are proud to have their songs used by the US military.

Bands like Drowning Pool encourage using their music to break detainees.

“I take it as an honor to think that perhaps our song could be used to quell another 9/11 attack or something like that.” bassist Stevie Benton told Spin magazine.

Rock music is not the only genre used.

Theme songs to popular TV shows like ‘Barney and Friends’ and ‘Sesame Street’ have been played non-stop.

By 2009 the debate may soon end. President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to close Guantanamo Bay, ending the music once and for all.

Musicians like Reznor hope to see this promise fulfilled.

“Thank GOD this country has appeared to side with reason and we can put the Bush administration’s reign of power, greed, lawlessness and madness behind us.” he says at the end of his blog.

Torture mix-tape

According to various news sources here are the most commonly used songs by the US military.

Enter Sandman - Metallica

Born in the USA - Bruce Springsteen

Bodies - Drowning Pool

Shoot to Thrill - AC/DC

White America - Eminem

I Love You – “Barney and Friends” TV theme song

Sesame Street - TV theme song

CLICK HERE FOR BACKGROUND ON MUSIC TO NO LONGER BE USED AS TORTURE

Background to Professionals and students on the jobhunt

Unemployment numbers rose to a new high in the US.

Claims for unemployment benefits surged to their highest levels in 26 years according to the Chicago Tribune.

The data suggests new jobs are harder to find or that the jobless may have stopped looking for work.

The outcome does not look hopeful for the next year say reports.

“Another possible loss of 1 million jobs is just something our economy cannot sustain at the moment,” said Dana Perino, White House spokeswoman, according to the Financial Times.

Economists had originally thought that falling oil prices would narrow the trade gap, but this does not appear to be the case.

Oil prices are at their lowest since January 2005 according to the Daily Record.

In 2008 the US economy has lost 1.9 million jobs reports CNN.

With the US economy now is recession it is difficult to predict if the job market will rise.

Main Damage

Service jobs on the decline do not help the situation.

“Big rises in joblessness in transport and trade, retail, business, temp help and leisure coupled with much smaller rises in government employment did the main damage” Rob Carnell from ING told the Guardian.

“If there is any glimmer of optimism in these figures, it is the unemployment rate, which rose only 0.2 percentage points to 6.7%, lower than the 6.9% we thought likely.”

New unemployment claims have averaged 540,000 a week fro the past month, an almost 60%  increase from a year ago according to reports.

“There is no way to sugarcoat it,” said Mark Vitner, senior economist with the Wachovia Economics Group to the Atlanta Journal.

“This is really rough.”

The market continues to affect those with and without qualifications

The Atlanta Journal also reports the case of Anthony Esposito,

He has a law degree from the University of Virginia and is still searching for work.

A year ago was offered a job with a pay that would have been up to $145,000.

However, the firm withdrew the offer and Esposito has been looking for work ever since.

“I used to volunteer at the food bank and homeless shelters. To think of reaching out to those agencies now is something new.” he told to the newspaper.

He continues to look for a job.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ON PROFESSIONAL AND STUDENTS ON THE JOBHUNT

Background to Children encouraged to use ‘Facebook’

Millions of students use Facebook to connect with family and friends making the site an easy victim for abuse.

Everyday a new dangers appear.

In December hundreds of thousands of Facebook users were attacked by the “koobface” virus according to the Evening Standard.

The virus claims to show users a video of themselves and is sent through wall posts and messages.

If the user clicks on the link malicious software is automatically installed on their computer.

“Anyone falling for this trick is risking turning their computer into a spam-spewing bot, and opening themselves up to the danger of identity theft,” Graham Cluley of Sophos told the Evening Standard.

In addition to computer virus, a users entire identity is at risk.

Privacy is an illusion when it come to dealing with the online world.

Identity theft has a new face

Hackers have now starting stealing entire accounts.

Con artists are logging into social networking sites.

Facebook reportedly has over 8 million members in the UK according to the Telegraph.

Posing as an online friend make it easier to gain a victims trust. The first report incident happened in Australia to Karina Wells.

She received a message from a friend who said they were trapped in Nigeria.

Desperately in need of cash the her “so called friend” needed 500 dollars wired to him for a flight home.

The message was written in clear English but there were clues it was a fake. The scammer used word like “cell phone” instead of “mobile phone.”

Ms. Wells went along with the fraudster. She got all their information and turned it over to the authorities.

Friend or foe

The new cases concern Facebook users.

“I would believe it was my friend writing me” says Honey Kohan, a student at the University of Westminster.

She has had an account for almost two years now.

“I mean why wouldn’t you believe it’s your friend?”

If a scam is well written, it is hard to spot the hacker from the real deal.

Internet security experts say people should be careful about who they add as friends to reduce the risk of identity theft.

A spokesman for Facebook told reporters that they are working on improving their security measures.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ORIGINAL POST ON CHILDREN ENCOURAGED TO USE FACEBOOK

Professionals and college grads on the jobhunt

‘Almost Homeless’ reads the sign.

Former toy-industry executive Paul Nawrocki has been spotted in New York City wearing those words across his chest.

“Looking for employment. Very experienced operations and administration manager.”
The recession has taken its toll on even the most experienced in the job market.

CNN reported that the U.S. government estimated 533,000 jobs in the country were lost in November.

In total more than 1.9 million jobs have been lost in 2008.

Nawrocki worked at Sababa Group where he made a good salary “almost six figures,” he told the Canadian Press.

Now he has burned through his retirement savings since losing his job at the in February.

Qualified business men are not the only ones in trouble.

The problem is prominent at the entry level field for recent college graduates.

Over a 100 applications

The National Association of Colleges and Employers released a report that indicates new graduates will have a tough time finding work.

Employers have already begun to scale back on the number of fresh graduates they hire.

This is bad news for Katie Sears, who recently graduated from the University of Denver.

She has been looking for a job since the summer and has sent out almost a 100 resumes .

“One job that I really, really wanted had about 300 applicants.” she points out. Not even knowing people at the firm could help her land the position.

“I’ve have had some very cool jobs, did some volunteer work around the world even!” she says.

Her major was marketing with a minor in business ethics and legal studies. She also did volunteer work in India and Africa.

The market has become so competitive as more graduates compete for the same positions. A promising resume does not seem to be enough either.

The barren job market has more the idea of graduate school even more appealing. Sears plans to go back to school if she can not find employment

Entry level woes

Katie Hancock, who also graduated from the University of Denver has run into her own post graduation problems.

“Alot of entry jobs levels are scams.” she explains. Working as a waitress provided an income, but when an official sounding employer called back she left.

When Hancock arrived at her new marketing job, she quickly discovered it was nothing more than a glorified telemarketing position.

Unhappy with the company she quit.

“Applying for jobs is frustrating because I went to a good school but I don’t have enough real work experience. I want to go back to grad school but I want to make some money before I go back.”

Unable to return to waitressing she remains unemployed.

CLICK HERE FOR A BACKGROUND ON PROFESSIONALS AND COLLEGE GRADS ON THE JOBHUNT

Children encouraged to use ‘Facebook’

Screenshots of the new social networking next to the widely popular Facebook

A ‘Facebook’ site for children as young as five has sparked fears about safety and rung alarm bells among parents.

“I don’t want people to see my daughter,” says mother Bo Kyung Park.

The idea of strangers accessing her young child’s information is worrying.

“Personally, I am afraid of releasing her pictures and how other people could use them.”

The new site in question was created by a mother of three in order to keep in touch with other parents.

It also encourages children to “friend” each other so that they can play games and email.

Pupils are allowed to register without having a way to verify their identities, which leaves the site open to predators.

Ms. Park hopes her daughter will join a social networking site much later in life, but would be more open to this site if it were completely secure.

Esther Guy, who set up the site, has told reporters that the social network would be “self-policing”, with the parents who join supervising the entries.

The creator claims that security measures make it difficult for strangers to enter, but it may still be possible to access the site according to reports.

TOO YOUNG?

The first mass waves of users to join social networking sites were college-aged.

Older and more aware of the dangers, some people feel that joining at five is too young.

“They don’t know what can go wrong and they are just too innocent to everything.” says Facebook user Kriti Nandwani.

She opened her account when she was 18 even though she had known about the site a year before.

“I just didn’t really see the need for it till I was older.”

Doug Fodeman, co-founder of ChildrenOnline, an organisation that researches the behaviour of children on the web, recently told The Times that it is the worst way for children to socialise.

“Behind the anonymity of the screen, people say things they’d never say and do things they’d never do,” he says.

“One look at some of the humiliating, brutal posts on YouTube will confirm that. Children are even more susceptible.”

NO MORE PLAYTIME

University of Westminster student Sacha Fortune also has a similar view. Her niece has recently joined Facebook when she was six.

“I can’t imagine using Facebook that young. You’re going to be stuck inside even more.”

She thinks that going outside and playing with friends and toys will become history if the trend continues.

“It’s more important for college people but not for a little kid. You can see your friends at school when you are young.”

CLICK HERE FOR BACKGROUND ARTICLE ON CHILDREN ENCOURAGED TO USE FACEBOOK