www.theBulldogSolution.com

Google Public Alerts is a platform designed to bring you relevant emergency alerts when and where you’re searching for them. Relevant weather, public safety, and earthquake alerts from US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Weather Service, and the US Geological Survey (USGS) will be accessible when you search on Google Maps.

For more, go to
http://blog.google.org/2012/01/public-alerts-now-on-google-maps.html

You are invited to the UC Davis Chancellor’s Colloquium Distinguished Speaker Series featuring Michael Dukakis, former governor of Massachusetts and Democratic nominee for President in 1988. His talk, “Public Service: A Great Career” will include a question-and-answer session with audience members.

The event will take place on Monday, February 27, from 4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. followed by a reception at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts on the UC Davis campus. To register for this free event, visit the event website at: http://tinyurl.com/6rkgmju .

If you would prefer to RSVP by phone, contact the CRB Reception desk at (916) 653-6602.

For additional information regarding CRB services, contact CRB Acting Director, Brian R. Sala, Ph.D., at (916) 8793.

You are invited to a free seminar on federal aid and the equality of educational opportunity. Sarah Reber, an Assistant Professor of Public Policy in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Analysis, will present findings from a study of the introduction of Title I of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. She shows that Title I school spending increases were associated with declines in dropouts for white students but not for black students in southern states.

This briefing will be held on Thursday, February 9, 2012, from 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the UC Center of Sacramento at 1130 K Street, Room LL3. Lunch will be provided courtesy of the UC Center. To RSVP to this free event, please visit the UC Center event page at  http://tinyurl.com/7n7j2e4.

For additional information regarding CRB services contact CRB Acting Director, Brian R. Sala, Ph.D., at (916) 651-8793.

Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work,” Jennifer Egan once said. This intersection of reading and writing is both a necessary bi-directional life skill for us mere mortals and a secret of iconic writers’ success, as bespoken by their personal libraries. The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books asks 125 of modernity’s greatest British and American writers — including Norman Mailer, Ann Pratchett, Jonathan Franzen, Claire Messud, and Joyce Carol Oates — to provide a list, ranked, in order, of what [they] consider the ten greatest works of fiction of all time– novels, story collections, plays, or poems.

For more, go to
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/01/30/writers-top-ten-favorite-books/

Millions of Californians don’t know that they are eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) — a federal tax credit that could boost your federal tax refund by as much as $5,751. Find out today if you qualify for the EITC by trying the WEb Connector EZ — an easy-to-use online calculator.

Answer four questions and within minutes you will know if you are eligible. Once you finish the WEb Connector EZ, click over to the WE Connect Resource Map where you can locate free tax assistance programs available from the IRS and community agencies. At www.WEConnect.net, you can also find information about local health care enrollment and resource fairs in your area.

Answer the WEb Connector EZ’s 4 questions at www.WEConnect.net and be sure you get the biggest tax refund possible!

What do To Kill A Mockingbird, A Wrinkle in Time and Little House on the Prairie series have in common, besides being beloved? None of them are available legally as e-books. A new site aims to make these and other e-books available to the public (and in libraries), as DRM-free Creative Commons works, via crowdfunding.

The newly launched Unglue.it, now in alpha, is a place for individuals and institutions to join together to liberate specific e-books and other types of digital content by paying rights holders to relicense their works under Creative Commons licenses.

For more, go to
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-the-unglued-model-crowdfunding-to-make-e-books-free/

Since its launch in 2005 Google Analytics has become almost unassailable in the world of website analytics, with 57% of the world’s 10,000 most popular websites using the popular site statistics suite.

However there are growing concerns by many about the all-seeing and all-knowing nature of Google. For some the idea of one company controlling so many parts of their online operation is uncomfortable.

For more, go to
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/7-alternatives-to-google-analytics/

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore offers a modern tribute to an old world. Made with an animation style that blends stop motion with computer animation and traditional hand-drawing, the silent film pays homage to a bygone era when elegantly printed books inhabited our world. The 15-minute short is the first made by Moonbot Studios, a fledgling animation shop in Shreveport, Louisiana.

For more, go to
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/the_fantastic_flying_books_of_mr_morris_lessmore.html

If Green Bay, Wis., a town of 105,000 people, can raise $70 million to rehabilitate its football field by selling $250 stock shares, there’s a community in America that can raise $2 or $3 million for a broadband network.

For more, go to
http://gigaom.com/broadband/settles-green-bay-packers-broadband/

You are invited to an upcoming briefing sponsored by the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) on California’s Independent Medical Review (IMR) program. Through the IMR program, consumers in most private health plans have the right to obtain an independent external review of any health plan coverage denial. Speakers will discuss a new analysis of the program and highlight several potential improvements.

Presenters include:
Beth Capell, Health Access California
Tony Cignarale, California Department of Insurance
Lyn Gage and Andrew George, Department of Managed Health Care
Patrick Johnston, California Association of Health Plans
Deborah Kelch, Kelch Associates
Carol Lee, California Medical Association Foundation
Marian Mulkey and Sandra Shewry, CHCF
Jill Yegian, American Institutes for Research

This briefing will be held on Thursday, February 2, 2012, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:35 p.m. at the State Capitol, Room 4202, in downtown Sacramento. Go to the event page at http://tinyurl.com/02-02independentmedreview to register for this free event. If you would prefer to RSVP via phone, contact the CRB reception desk at (916) 653-6602.

For additional information regarding CRB services contact CRB Acting Director, Brian R. Sala, Ph.D., at (916) 651-8793.

You are invited to a free seminar on California’s pursuit to regulate land use and address sprawl in the state. Presenter Stephanie Pincetl, Ph.D., Director of the UCLA Center for Sustainable Urban Systems will discuss the effects of SB 375 on land-use planning, the historical context for difficulties in regulating land use in the state, and the impacts of landscapes, environment, quality of life and energy that result from the lack of integrated regulation.

The seminar will be held on Thursday, February 2, 2012, from 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the UC Center Sacramento at 1130 K Street, Room LL3. Lunch will be provided courtesy of the UC Center. To RSVP to this free event so that we can estimate the number of lunches needed, please visit the UC Center event page at http://tinyurl.com/78tu3bk . To RSVP by phone, contact the CRB reception desk at (916) 653-6602.

For additional information regarding CRB services contact CRB Acting Director, Brian R. Sala, Ph.D., at (916) 651-8793.

In the wake of Apple's announcement of iBooks 2, iBooks Author, and the latest version of iTunes U,  step back and look at the technology they all look to replace: paper. There's not much of a question that from a business and from an educational standpoint, the textbook industry is ripe for disruption. The high prices of books, the inordinately strong influence of large buyer blocks like the Texas Board of Education, and even simpler issues like how much a paper textbook weighs all speak to a need to rethink how we distribute and interact with academic texts.

 The mass use of ebooks is not only inevitable but will change the ways that we think and learn. But make no mistake, paper is a technology just as much as an LCD screen is, and as a technology it has several important advantages over e-readers.

For more, go to

http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/20/2720158/sorry-ibooks-paper-books-still-win-on-specs

While quite a bit of the U.S. has broadband, quite a bit of it does not, at least partially because --- to be honest -- the return on putting broadband infrastructure into sparsely populated rural America just isn't there. But a service that was hidden underneath all the higher profile announcements at CES could potentially remedy all that. The magic bullet may be Exede, a new satellite broadband service from ViaSat. Satellite broadband service has existed for some time, but it has never been able to match the speed of terrestrial broadband --- until now.

For more, go to
http://www.examiner.com/technology-in-national/12mbps-satellite-broadband-not-coming-it-s-here

The sudden popularity of tablet computers such as the Apple iPad® has not allowed for the development of guidelines to optimize users’ comfort and well-being. In a new study published in Work: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment, and Rehabilitation, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health, Microsoft Corporation, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital report that head and neck posture during tablet computer use can be improved by placing the tablet higher to avoid low gaze angles, and through the use of a case that provides optimal viewing angles.

“Compared to typical desktop computing scenarios, the use of media tablet computers is associated with high head and neck flexion postures, and there may be more of a concern for the development of neck and shoulder discomfort,” said lead investigator Jack T. Dennerlein, PhD, of the Department of Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

For more, go to
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1112462014/is-your-tablet-computer-a-pain-in-the-neck/

The share of adults in the United States who own tablet computers nearly doubled from 10% to 19% between mid-December and early January and the same surge in growth also applied to e-book readers, which also jumped from 10% to 19% over the same time period.

The number of Americans owning at least one of these digital reading devices jumped from 18% in December to 29% in January.

These findings are striking because they come after a period from mid-2011 into the autumn in which there was not much change in the ownership of tablets and e-book readers. However, as the holiday gift-giving season approached the marketplace for both devices dramatically shifted. In the tablet world, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet were introduced at considerably cheaper prices than other tablets. In the e-book reader world, some versions of the Kindle and Nook and other readers fell well below $100.

For more, go to
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/E-readers-and-tablets.aspx

At the Consumer Electronics Show, an Israel-based company called Snapkeys invited showgoers into a booth to test its new keyboard technology. Within a few minutes of using it, the company said, people were already getting the hang of Snapkeys, which consolidates the letters of the alphabet into just four keys.
The idea behind Snapkeys isn’t new; the company says it has been working on it for more than 10 years.

But the more recent emergence of touchscreen devices — and the complaints from even avid users about typing on them — means that Snapkeys’ research and development has been serendipitously well-timed.

For more, go to
http://allthingsd.com/20120120/how-touchscreens-are-forcing-the-reinvention-of-keyboards/

Read the daily edition of the Congressional Record on your iPad. The Congressional Record App is presented by the Library of Congress using data provided by the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, and the Government Printing Office.

The app is available at
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-congressional-record/id492077075

Spend five minutes on any busy street corner and you'll spot people using tablets and smartphones in dangerous ways, whether it's texting behind the wheel or strolling with their eyes on the screen.

But distracted driving and walking aren't the only perils lurking behind touchscreen devices such as iPads, iPhones, BlackBerrys, Windows Phones, and Androids. Although not quite as dramatic, other touchscreen-oriented health hazards are even more insidious because most people aren't even aware that they exist.

After decades of research on machine-human interactions, medical experts have pinpointed three categories of computer-related illnesses, both in traditional PC use and in the new class of touchscreen devices:

Repeated motion injuries
Diseases caused by unnatural postures and forces
Eyestrain

For more, go to
http://www.infoworld.com/t/laptops/the-hidden-danger-touchscreens-181774