Paraparaumu. 21 May 2008 - Political Stock Markets are a virtual stock market, where participants express their expectations about future events through the buying and selling of virtual shares. Several prediction markets relating to different issues about economic and political developments are offered together. The new service starts under http://esm.forecast4u.co.nz/ with topics like the National Elections in New Zealand or the Estimation of Property Growth for June 2008.

The "Wisdom of Crowds" is considered to outperform expert knowledge in areas like topicality as well as width, depth and references of knowledge. A principle of prediction markets, as of any electronic exchange, is that those who buy cheap and sell at a higher price benefit.

Practical evidence suggests that prediction markets are at least as accurate in forecasting events as other instruments used by polling institutes on similar demographic groups. This concept, part of a field of study called collective intelligence, is the ideal tool for market and event forecasts. The closer a participant's forecast matches the real event, the more the value of the virtual account rises. This stimulates forward strategies and therefore using quality information and experience in these virtual investments is paramount. The Political Stock Markets also rewards closely matching expectations when dealing with rate fluctuation and diligence.

Electronic Stock Markets (ESM)
The prediction market is based on the "Electronic Stock Market Technology" (ESM) developed by ECCE TERRAM. It is based on theses by Friedrich von Hayek, who in 1974 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. From Professor von Hayek's findings it derives that more accurate prediction of future events can be made if people trade shares about them with the opportunity to obtain a profit. Frank Simon, Managing Director of ECCE TERRAM: "ESMs in the form of prediction markets provide surprisingly accurate results for opinion research and serve as a prognostics instrument to generate forecasts". The user's interest in trading shares and the chance for personal gain as well as the opportunity to create accurate forecasts bind the user into the online service and increase traffic to the website. The technology starts from a base different to traditional opinion research. Interviews, polls and e-votes use questions like "how would you vote?" The Electronic Stock Markets ask "what do you expect the outcome to be?"� Traders therefore buy and sell based on their expectation of the outcome. These reflect in the prices at which shares trade. The system can then, based on the share price, calculate forecasts.

ECCE TERRAM has used prediction markets already in the run up to the German federal elections of 1998 with great success, achieving the second best forecast after Allensbach, one of Germany's leading public opinion poll institutes. In recent years ECCE TERRAM has organised more than two dozen prediction markets on a great variety of events. ECCE TERRAM Ltd, located in Paraparaumu, has started since May 2008 to offer Electronic Stock Markets to the New Zealand and Australian Market based on the 12-year-experience with this tool.

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Specialist developer ECCE TERRAM is showing at this year’s PMA how setting up a digital photo processing service in store or online is becoming easier with open software modules. ECCE TERRAM is also celebrating a new mile stone with 132 million photo prints being ordered through its middleware software components. These solutions help to improve photo services' independence and negotiation power and provide access to a range of components to cover varying requirements.

Oldenburg Germany and Las Vegas, NV. January 22nd, 2008 – Online photo services converting digital images into traditional photographic paper prints are reaching the volumes of traditional photo labs in the 1990’s. Digital photo processing is a growth industry, but only a few developers have the experience and depth to create complete 'end user to photo lab' software solutions. The specialist Internet software developer ECCE TERRAM will be presenting the latest 'off the shelf', modular software solutions for online photo services, web portals, photo labs and purchasing associations at the international PMA exhibition in Las Vegas in January 2008, including client software and middleware releases currently in preparation.
 
Photo Lab Software Solutions
Together the Photo Lab Software processing components build flexible, state-of-the-art solutions. These range from order processing using online stores, point-of-sale terminals and offline software clients for Windows, Macintosh and Linux using an open protocol connecting to any photo lab or printer. The PTS middleware processes the orders using a central user database, which allows splitting orders to cover production requirements (e.g. mixed orders for standard prints, posters and gift items). Lab plug-ins built the third layer in ECCE TERRAM’s ‘Photo2Lab’ solution. The lab plug-ins currently support for example DPL, Allcop, ORWO, CeWeColor, DWM and Frontline. Increasingly specialists from the growing sector of photo book, calendar and gift item printing, like Ifuse, Snapmania are being supported by ECCE TERRAM.

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The ECCE TERRAM Internet Services company will go to Las Vegas to present its Photo2lab Software Suite on the main photo trade fair PMA, which will take place from 31 January to 2 February 2008. Integrated into the Photo2lab Software Suite is the HDX4 Photo Manager of HDX4 GmbH. This is a HDX4 Photo SDK for professional picture optimisation.

Dortmund. Jan 21st, 2008. - HDX4 GmbH has specialised in the development of software all about the topics of burning and multimedia. A suitable tool for digital photography is the SDK HDX4 Photo Manager, which other companies can license to upgrade their own software with new functions. SDK includes the two modules HDX4 Natural Enhancement and HDX4 Upscaling, both proprietary developments from the technology laboratories of HDX4 GmbH.

A distinctive feature of the HDX4-modules is that they can help to turn any snapshot into a really professional photograph – it only takes a mouse click. So far, photographers rather used trial and error to adjust brightness, contrast and colours; now the software can detect imperfections of pictures and corrects them without need for further user intervention. Frank Simon of ECCE TERRAM: "Thanks to the HDX4-functions, dark pictures with low contrast and matt colours are definitely a thing of the past. Suddenly, the sky prints perfectly blue and details, which were in the shade become visible again."

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The project, Ethanol & Orphans, is looking for celebrities who think it is a good idea and who will endorse the project.  The project sponsor is the not-for-profit charity, Our Family Orphan Communities, Inc. 

The Ethanol & Orphans project is currently underway in Vietnam where we will be building a cellulose ethanol refinery and using the profits to build:
 - a Self-sustaining, high-tech, green Community for street orphans where they will be raised in families with surrogate parents and grandparents, given care, skills (job, computer, familiy/life) and supplemental education.
 - a Medical clinic supported by the profits from the refinery so those who cannot afford it can still receive treatment.
 - more care for disabled children (who are still today being born with birth defects from Agent Orange which was used in the war in the 60's and 70's) so they can learn to be self-sufficient even with disabilities.

We are looking for people who care about:
 - improving the environment
 - using less petrochemical fuels
 - helping developing / third world countries to improve
 - street children living barely surviving
 - disabled children who need assistance
 - providing medical/dental care for those who cannot afford it
 - protecting food sources (we will use sugarcane for the refiery, NOT grains)
 - providing education for children, the future leaders of their country
 - and more humanitarian projects

The celebrities will be asked to speak about our project when they can, and to allow us to use thier comments/picture/name in our website and promotion materials.

For complete details about the project, see: http://www.orphancommunities.org
For questions, write to us at: info@orphancommunities.org
 
Please forward this to others who you know will be interested in supporting this project.

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The new version of the Printing-1 photo book software provides functional improvements and a new, larger book format for the demanding photographer or designer on Windows or Apple PCs.

London, 19 July 2007 – Photo book are the hottest innovation in the photo printing industry. Ever more often, when the shutter snaps at a wedding or a party no 6”x4”prints are made at all. Instead of prints for a photo album images will be laid out in a proper photo book. To give great moments the appropriate space Printing-1 is adding the new Maxi format (30 x 30 cm) to its photo book offer. That allows spreading for example landscapes over 40“ wide double pages, in poster size style.

“I like your photo books so much, that already when I am taking a picture I am thinking how best to use the shot in a photo book” wrote a Printing-1 User: “Portrait or landscape, with frame or full page or double page spread alone or among many pictures on a large page?” With the extra large MAXI-format Printing-1 is opening more creative freedom for the photobook design. Images can be positioned quickly and precisely using templates. Images can also be repositioned freely for a scrapbook design style. Frames can be defined individually for each image but also be spread frameless over single or double pages.

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RuleML-2007 is a new international meeting place for users, system providers, practitioners, developers, researchers and representatives of rule/event standardization efforts and open source rule communities to discuss the applicability and commercialization of rule technologies for enterprises and public organizations including event-handling rules. Co-located with the 10th International Business Rules Forum (http://www.businessrulesforum.com), the International Symposium on Rule Interchange and Applications (RuleML-2007) is the first symposium devoted to work on practical distributed rule/event technologies and rule/event-based applications which need language standards for rules operating in the context of, e.g., the Semantic Web, Intelligent Multi-Agent Systems, Event-Driven Architectures and Service-Oriented Computing.

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What do Ethanol and Orphans have in common? 
ANSWER: Vietnam and Liberia. 

This is where ethanol refineries will be built and the profits used to build medical clinics and self-sustaining communities where orphans and disabled children are raised in families.

Our Family Orphan Communities, Inc., is a tax-exempt, not-for-profit organization that has a mission statement “to design and create modern, self-sustaining, high-tech, family style communities in which orphans live with surrogate parents and grandparents in a family setting, receive quality education, learn practical family living and job skills, future oriented high-tech skills to prepare them for their future and for leadership roles in their country.” The funding for the initial construction of the Orphan Community and Medical Clinic will come from the earnings of an “economic engine” business – such as an Ethanol Refinery that will in itself provide many jobs and other benefits to the host country.

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Ceres Conference 2007

April 25-26, 2007 | Seaport Hotel | Boston, MA

Early registration ends Friday February 23rd!
The Ceres Conference 2007, Advancing Sustainable Prosperity, comes at a critical juncture. The world is struggling to meet energy and water needs, the planet is warming at an alarming pace, and many still live and work in poverty. While corporations are under increasing pressure to compete globally while maximizing returns, these environmental and social challenges are business issues that need serious attention. They pose both risks that must be managed proactively and opportunities that must be leveraged immediately.

Advancing sustainable prosperity is about understanding that capitalism and sustainability are deeply and increasingly interrelated. By uniting investor and environmental perspectives, business strategies can be aligned with sustainable solutions so that the planet can be protected at the same time that people can prosper.

Ceres, the world's largest network of investors, environmentalists and companies united for sustainable prosperity, challenges conventional short-term thinking, builds long-term value and produces measurable results.

Join us for the Ceres Conference 2007, which will bring together and mobilize CEOs, corporate directors, investors and national environmental leaders to take action on these vast challenges before us.

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This article picks up where the last one left off. It is the next conceptual excerpt from my research paper (still in progress).

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."-- Albert Einstein

It is this understanding that stands at the heart of the concepts being developed in my current work. The abstract concepts that are revealed in the Cultural Fusion series have very practical applications for businesses and communities.

On the B2B front, this period has been marked by increased costs for petroleum-based products, fuels, metals, and various building supplies, such as concrete, steel, copper, and zinc. These conditions are likely to persist, applying pressure on the economies of countries. With inflation on the upswing, continued growth spanning multiple sectors is vital to successfully riding out whatever storms the future may have in store. In the previously cited example of the steel and railroad industry, the impact transformed every sector touched by transportation, and what sector was not?

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Profit and social capital are made for each other. When they are united, it's as if they've fallen in love. Social capital is the value inherent in interpersonal networks. Its amalgamation with profit signals a radical redefinition of the customer as the key to unveiling new facets of business success. And as with a genuine romance, the result is a dynamic shift, a shedding of the old and a reaching out to the new — in this case, to inclusion of intangible economies and experience to address evolving needs.

© Yvette Dubel

Yvette Dubel is the founder of WebAntiphon Corporation and author of many articles that have been published both online and in print. She is known for delivering insights that cut to the chase with incisiveness and authentic creativity that comes from an intuitive understanding of relationships between people, products and concepts. Learn more at http://www.webantiphon.com

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New Gift Ideas from printing 1: Photo on Canvas

Printing on canvas has so far been dominated by small, specialist workshops, elaborating individual prints and who hand stretch them over a frame. An expensive process, but a new offering this Christmas gift season is about to bring change. printing-1, an online specialist that uses large, high-tech installations to improve quality and reduce costs on personalised photo gifts is launching a new photo on canvas print service this week.

London, UK. 21 November 2006. – Taking good photographs is easier and cheaper than ever before. Many digital images lingering on computer hard drives could stand out on an office wall, the reception or in the sitting room at home. Until recently photo canvas printing was done by small workshops at horrendous prices. Printing-1 claims to apply the latest technology and efficient production methods to offer what it calls big canvas prints at small prices.

printing 1, a specialist servicing amateur and professional photographers alike, prints photos onto canvas on frames starting at 30 cm per side and increasing in 10 cm steps to 80 cm per side, where any combination of size can be chosen in these 10 cm steps. The standardised formats, parts and processes allow for higher degree of automation and help to bring the price down. The print penetrates deep into the yarn and therefore does not crack on the edge of the frame. Images are delivered stretched and mounted onto a robust wooden frame which can be hung on the wall immediately and is expected to be extremely long lasting, due to optimised inks and fabrics.

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The photo album is dead, long live the photo book. Free photo book software offered by online photographic services makes it easy and economical to create photo books in different formats, sizes and types of binding. Online services offer a range of options for individual lay-outs with own photographs. Professional print on hi-gloss paper provides coffee table style photo books. The latest offering comes from printing-1 and promises an even greater choice of photo book styles for PC and Macintosh users alike.

London, GB. 31. October 2006. – During the past year personal photo books have become one of the most popular photographic products and are about to replace the traditional photo album. Rarely has a product evolved as quickly as the photo book. The different suppliers compete with ever more flexible software for the top spot with the consumer. With the launch of its new Windows and MacOS photo book software printing-1 is claiming to take the concept a step further. According to printing-1 a durable, quality binding process is becoming more important, as increasingly big photo books are being ordered, containing often hundreds of images. The binding process used by printing-1 takes an extra day to prepare, but allows for large photo books with up to 144 pages and space for hundreds of images.

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Greenstreet break with tradition by introducing a revolution in scrapbook creation – a mess free, time saving fade-proof record of precious memories for print, for the web and which can even be displayed on TV screens!

Cambridge. 30 October 2006. - In the age of the digital camera and camera phones we all snap away happily taking lots of pictures to remember events by. However generally these languish on computer hard drives and the personal memory fades as to who, why, where and what the pictures were about. Which is why in recent years scrapbooking has seen a revival. Greenstreet have combined the digital age with the rapidly growing interest in scrapbooking and taken this to the next step by creating Greenstreet’s Digital Scrapbook – bringing all kinds of new possibilities to the art - providing limitless supplies and making it easier and cheaper to capture moments in time and to share with friends and family.