Google+ says it has fumbled business pages; blogs unhappy

After pulling the plug on Google+ pages set up for businesses on Thursday, Google laid out some details (and a bit of regret) on what it has done so far and hopes to do next to get companies, nonprofits, bands and other entities into the social network as soon as possible.
Almost two weeks ago, Google asked businesses eager to get started on Google+ to stay out of the fledgling social network. The reason? Google said current Google+ pages were designed for people to network, not companies or other groups.
The tech giant promised that it would roll out pages for businesses and other entities later in the year and began taking applications from groups interested in trying out test versions of such pages.
But the response to Google's call for business-page testing partners was more enthusiastic then even the Mountain View, Calif., company expected, and now Google is working to speed up the process and get its act together faster.
Christian Oestlien, the advertising lead on Google+, said in a post on the network that Google has received tens of thousands of applications:

With so many qualified candidates expressing intense interest in business profiles, we've been thinking hard about how to handle this process. Your enthusiasm obligates us to do more to get businesses involved in Google+ in the right way, and we have to do it faster. As a result, we have refocused a few priorities and we expect to have an initial version of businesses profiles up and running for EVERYONE in the next few months. There may be a tiny handful business profiles that will remain in the meantime solely for the purpose of testing how businesses interact with consumers.

Oestlien also reiterated his call to businesses to stay out of Google+ until Google has a proper offering.

Doing it right is worth the wait. We will continue to disable business profiles using regular profiles. We recommend you find a real person who is willing to represent your organization on Google+ using a real profile as him-or-herself.

In an interview with the website TechCrunch, Vic Gundotra, who is leading the Google+ project, said that the company has dropped the ball on this aspect of building a social network so far.
"We underestimated the rate at which we were going to grow," Gundotra told Alexis Tsotis of TechCrunch in an interview. "So if we had known that we were going to be this attractive to people who want audiences, we would have probably prioritized some of the brand work earlier. So, in that sense, looking back in hindsight, uh, it was probably a mistake. And if anyone is to take blame for that, it's me. And we're working to correct that."
Tsotis took Gundotra, and Google+ Product Manager Bradley Horowitz, to task in the interview for what many at TechCrunch and other blogs believe has been unfair treatment of certain brands that broke Google's rules on Google+.
For example, after Google directed all business pages to be switched over to a person from a company or they'd be deleted, TechCrunch created a profile for a fake person it called Techathew Cruncheri. Google removed Tecathew's page. The blog Search Engine Land, as well as Ford and Sesame Street, each had Google+ pages (not named after fake people) and those were deleted too.
The blog Mashable also had a page with more than 109,000 followers, but that page remains in action because it was transferred in name to the site's CEO, Pete Cashmore. But Cashmore already had a personal profile page of his own, with 40,000 followers, which he's now ditching to run the new personal page.
The moves have left some in the tech blogging community feeling burned, so much so that Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land, wrote an open letter to Google about the ordeal. He argued that all business pages should be restored or all should be wiped out, writing:

I know you have great plans to have super wonderful business profiles eventually. But if you're going to only let a "tiny" number of businesses operate before that, then you taint them and yourselves with favoritism.

At least when you announced applications for business profiles, there was a sense that anyone interested would have some type of a fair shot. Now that's gone.

Don't try to put the genie back in the bottle. Restore the business profiles you have closed. Drop the rule you silently added that blocks business profiles. Let businesses use profiles here just as regular people do. Works just fine on Twitter. Then upgrade those accounts when you're ready.

If you're really into doing things right, that's what you should do. Otherwise, you're just further doing it wrong.

Google didn't follow Sullivan's suggestion, so he wrote a follow-up statement on Google+:

The experience has led me to think that ironically, Google+ is perhaps the worse place to talk about issues with Google. The posts people seem to like are "Hey, check out today's cool logo" or nice pictures or cheerleading for Google+.

I think that's kind of sad, especially when there are so many people who actually work for Google who read what's on Google+. Today's experience has just given me a personal chilling effect that I have never, ever felt with Twitter or Facebook. And I'd have never, ever expected that to be the case with a Google social network.

Somali militants block foreign aid from famine-hit south

Islamist guerrillas who control swaths of Somalia are banning food aid from foreigners – a posture that observers predict might cost millions of lives.

“This is yet another heinous crime – starving people to death in the name of religion,” Omar Jamal, a New York-based official with Somalia’s vestigial government, said in an interview.

 Federal Government, the largely powerless local authority whose ministers face widespread intimidation and possible death if they remain in the country.

This week, al-Shabab militants kidnapped a newly appointed female cabinet minister who they let go only after extracting promises she no longer work for the TFG. Last month, the country’s interior minister was killed in a suicide bombing by a female who was reportedly his niece.

In a country beset by two decades of anarchy and warlordism, these al-Qaeda-linked fighters continue to make gains as a relatively cohesive fighting force.

A spokesman for al-Shabab, which controls the bulk of Somalia’s south, recently told reporters its territories remained off-limits to groups such as the United Nations. This statement reversed a pledge to open the lands up for famine relief, a promise that had made the international aid organizations cautiously optimistic that widespread famine might be averted.

“We are not guaranteeing safety for any agency that was previously banned from working in areas under our control,” Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage of al-Shabab told the Daily Telegraph. “We shall also expel any agency that causes problems for Muslim society.”

He said al-Shabab leaders were “mistranslated” when they were quoted saying that they would let in foreign agencies.

Somali has 3.7 million people who are starving because of the drought, according to the UN. Because most live in the south, the UN says its food aid is reaching only about a third of those who need it. The UN World Food Program hasn’t been present in south Somalia since January, 2010.

“We have conflicting messages. We thought we were being asked to come in and resume our operations,” Julie Marshall, spokeswoman for the World Food Program, said in an interview. “We are appealing to the people that hold the areas to allow us to come in.”

The famine occurs as Somalia’s TFG, which controls hardly any territory in Somalia, is besieged by al-Shabab fighters.

Mr. Jamal, the TFG’s first secretary to the United Nations, suggested the international community should consider air dropping food onto the ground and snatching up al-Shabab leaders on war-crimes charges. He further suggested that because of the famine the TFG, a largely discredited authority lately criticized for using child soldiers, should be better armed to fight al-Shabab militants.

Very few aid agencies can work throughout Somalia, meaning the bulk of the international aid is being routed to the north and to areas of the capital, Mogadishu. Some aid organizations are able to get to the south through local intermediaries. Others hope to exploit fissures that can exist within al-Shabab leadership to get food into the south.

Yet this is not nearly enough to meet the huge and growing need. Hundreds of thousands of starving Somalis have been trying to flee to adjacent countries on long marches. Some perish during these long journeys, others survive only to discover that borderland refugee camps are overflowing.

Somalis in the West fear the situation is growing more bleak daily.

“Considering the scale of the problem you might as well say nothing is going in. They took food into Mogadishu today that’s enough to feed 15,000 people. What’s that ? It’s a pittance considering the scale of the problem,” said Ahmed Hussen, president of the Canadian Somali Congress.

There are no quick fixes to the famine, he said. But he added that “the Americans have to get back into the game.”

Washington has cut aid programs to Somali in the past few years, Mr. Hussen pointed out, partly because of Treasury Department rules meant to block any possible diversion of greenbacks to al-Shabab. The rules ought to be relaxed for now given the scale of the ongoing famine, he said, adding there are legal precedents for doing so.

MORE RELATED TO THIS STORY

• Ante up for drought-stricken East Africa, Ottawa told
• Somalia: The horror of famine in a failed state
• Tens of thousands feared dead in south Somalia famine
• Photos of the Horn of Africa's food crisis
• Infographic: The world's worst famine in a decade

L&T Finance Holdings open to banking foray

HYDERABAD, JULY 22: 

L&T Finance Holdings Ltd today said the company has an open mind on foray into the banking business and awaiting regulatory guidelines on opening up of new banks.

Addressing newspersons here today ahead of the initial public offer next week, Mr Suneet Maheshwari, Chief Executive L&T Infra, said: “We look at growth opportunities wherever they come from. If it presents an opportunity to open a bank we will look at it. However, at the moment, it is too premature.”

“The investments we made into banks such as City Union Bank was in the form of portfolio investments and provide synergies for growth,” he explained.

Referring to their exposure to microfinance institutions (MFIs), he said: “L&T Finance has been lending to MFIs as we believe that this sector has immense potential to serve the unbanked section of population.”

“Notwithstanding recent developments and new laws and regulations in the MFI industry in the country, and in particular in Andhra Pradesh, we continue to believe in the medium and long term growth prospects of the MFI industry. However, in the short term, and owing to new laws and regulations and decline in collections from customers of microfinance in Andhra Pradesh, we have reduced disbursement of loans in general,” the L&T prospectus said.

However, Mr Maheshwari mentioned “the banks portfolio of MFI is generally doing well as the exposure is across eight States. However, we are cautious.”

“L&T Finance is also looking at infusion of funds into its arm India Infrastructure Developers Ltd to cater to new business segments. We may also consider infusing Tier II Capital in L&T Finance Holdings at a later date,” he said.

The Space Shuttle Era: A Review

(RTTNews) - The 30-year-old space shuttle program came to a final stop this month, following Atlantis' last touchdown on Earth. As curtains are drawn on this spaceflight program, it seems timely to take a look back at the manned program, its triumphs and its tragedies:

The plans for NASA's space shuttle program, officially called the Space Transportation System, or STS for short, were formally endorsed by President Richard Nixon in January 1972. It took nearly a decade before the first shuttle would blast off into space, beginning three decades of flights that included 133 successful missions. There were also two deadly accidents, leading to 14 deaths.
Apart from functioning as a space laboratory, the STS was engaged in launching numerous satellites and interplanetary probes, conducting space science experiments, and servicing and construction of space stations.
According to the NASA, over 2,000 experiments in the fields of Earth, astronomy, biological and materials sciences were conducted by the space shuttle program, whose cost has been pegged at $209 billion over the course of its history.
The space shuttle, a reusable orbital vehicle, consisted of three main components - a winged orbiter that carried crew and cargo; a large external fuel tank that held fuel for the main engines; and two solid rocket boosters which provided most of the shuttle's lift during the first two minutes of flight.

NASA's fleet of space shuttle orbiters in the STS program included Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour - all named after famous sailing ships.
Columbia, launched on April 12, 1981, was the first orbiter to fly into space with a crew aboard. It made 28 flights and flew 125 million miles. The space shuttle would complete 27 successful missions, but will be remembered for its fateful 28th trip into space. On February 1, 2003, Columbia broke up on re-entering Earth's atmosphere, killing all 7 crew members.
The second orbiter, Challenger, also will go down in history for its tragic end. The ship made its maiden voyage to space on April 4, 1983 and completed nine missions. On January 28, 1986, only 73 seconds after liftoff, the ship exploded, killing all 7 crew members. The Challenger disaster became one of the defining moments of the era and certainly provided one of the darkest chapters in NASA's history, as an investigation into the accident led many experts to believe that it could have been avoided by taking simple safety precautions.
Discovery was NASA's third orbiter to head to space. It undertook its first mission on August 30, 1984. This space shuttle, which made its last-ever landing on March 9, 2011, successfully completed 39 missions and logged 148 million miles in space - the most of any of the shuttles.