April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

General

Google buys FeedBurner

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googleEver feel like google is pacman and all other companies are just dots waiting to be devoured?

Google has acquired another medium for its advertising engine by purchasing FeedBurner, a company that distributes syndicated content for blogs and other media Web sites, the companies said Friday.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although the figure of $100 million had been reported by TechCrunch, which broke the story last week.

“This is an area where we saw a lot of opportunity and that was growing quickly,” Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google, said in a conference call with reporters.

Google is the titan of paid search advertising and has a large network of Web sites that host ads Google sells through its AdWords online marketing system. The company has been expanding aggressively into enabling offline forms of advertising, such as in print and on radio and television. Now it can put ads in the more than 430,000 RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds that FeedBurner has and it can expand its AdSense Web site publisher network with the FeedBurner publishers, Wojcicki said.

Men, children and paedophilia

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I noticed this article in Spiked about men being put off volunteering to be coaches because of the intrusive nature of the child protection measures.

The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill, which passed through the Houses of Parliament in London at the end of last year, requires that all those who work with children must submit to a background check first. As one Home Office official responsible for CRB checks recently assured me, it is only those who have something to hide who are put off.

Now this bugs me it is only those who have something to hide who are put off.
 Bullshit! you don’t have to have anything to hide to be concerned about police types going through your background. Most especially in this political climate.

A survey found

that 17 per cent of men wouldn’t volunteer to work with children because they would face a criminal records check. Moreover, 13 per cent wouldn’t volunteer because they fear that they could be perceived as a paedophile.

It is unfortunate that men who are truly interested in being coaches and mentors many of whom would be excellent role models for children, are being tarred with the paedophile tag. [Read more…] about Men, children and paedophilia

Male blaming blogs

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Male Blaming BlogApril Reign is a male blaming blog according to this very disjointed post

In honour of this I’d like to invite you to join the all new [how could we possibly be improved?] Male Blaming Blogs and no group is complete without an official logo…see right—->

Wear it proudly on your blog!

*Male bloggers welcome to join. As long as you’re willing to take the blame. 😉

But we have no class!

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I’ve often heard my brothers and sisters of the Great White North patting themselves on the back for our lack of class system. Unlike other countries where class divides are marked.

I always did wonder if we had no class system why we had so many classes. Working class, middle class, lower middle class, upper middle class, blue collar, white collar–I used to ask what very poor was, dirty collar?

There is without a doubt a very strong class system here and the idea that class lines are easily crossed is naive.

A child from a poor or working class home is unlikely to have the same opportunities for post secondary education as a child from a middle class home. This starts right from public school.

A child who speaks out, grabs toys, and is bossy with playmates receives very different attention depending on the income of the parents concerned. One child will be seen as a leader, confident, assertive, the other as aggressive, lacking self discipline and a future behaviour problem.

Interviews will be scheduled and the parents advised to seek help now while s/he is young enough to “retrain” and parenting classes will be suggested.

Even if s/he is gifted s/he will be treated differently. There will be no extra supports or encouragement merely a derisive attitude that you would even consider that your child could somehow be smarter than his/her monied counterparts.

This attitude pounded grade after grade into a childs mind ensures they will have little belief in their abilities. The cycle of poverty is not created by the poor it is forced upon them.

Are there examples of people having lifted out regardless? Of course there are. That doesn’t disprove the reality of most. [Read more…] about But we have no class!

Define choice

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Scrolling through Facebook groups I came across one called End Abortion Now!!! Your Mom Made A Choice!

What an interesting thought. My birth mother didn’t in fact make a choice. I am sure at fifteen years of age in a time when “unwed mothers” were sent “away” she may well have made the choice to abort.

Does that make me weep and moan and gnash my teeth? No! I do regret for her sake that there were people who made the choice to deny her the right to choose motherhood or not. [Read more…] about Define choice