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US senators urge democratic end to Haiti crisis

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US senators called Wednesday for a democratic solution to Haiti's political crisis in a symbolic resolution urging that a legitimate new government take office on February 7 or soon after.

The measure -- crafted by both senators from the state of Florida -- Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Marco Rubio -- reaffirms US support for the "long-term reconstruction of Haiti," one year after a devastating earthquake.

"Political leadership is required to ensure that a democratically elected government, which is respected by the people of Haiti and recognized by the international community, is prepared to assume office on February 7, 2011, or shortly thereafter," the lawmakers said in the resolution.

The measure also urges the international community "to call on the leaders of Haiti to immediately reach a democratic resolution to the current electoral crisis" with an eye on setting up a new government by February 7.

And it pleads for attention to the impoverished and disaster-battered nation's "acute need" to bolster its health care and education, as well as revive its economy, clear debris, build lasting housing and roads.

It also urges the world work to ensure "safety and security and fundamental human rights in Haiti, especially in temporary camps and shelters."

The resolution enjoyed broad bipartisan support and was expected to clear the US Senate as early as Wednesday.

The measure emerged one day after Haiti officials said the ruling party's candidate in tainted elections was poised to quit the race to be president, bowing to international pressure after weeks of political limbo.

President Rene Preval's handpicked protege Jude Celestin would quit the second round of voting, a senator from the ruling INITE party told AFP, in a move that follows the recommendations of international experts.

If Celestin quits, the delayed second round would most likely go ahead between popular singer Michel Martelly and former first lady Mirlande Manigat.

The United States has led warnings that Haiti -- still emerging from decades of political upheaval, dictatorship and bloodshed -- must install a credible government or risk losing international support.

Royal wedding, A to Z

Want a quick overview of the royal wedding hoopla? Here are the basics, from A to Z.

Anglesey: Remote island location of thein North Wales where Prince William is stationed and where Kate and William have been living together.

Bachelor party: To be planned by brother Prince Harry, the wilder one; location is unknown.

Carriage: Conveyance Kate will not use to travel to Westminster Abbey, but will use to travel with her new husband to Buckingham Palace.

Duke and duchess:on the couple on the occasion of their marriage.

Engagement ring: The oval sapphire-encircled-by-diamonds ring that was made famous by Princess Diana, recycled for a new generation.

Fascinator: Fluffy feathery headpieces worn by British ladies, including Kate Middleton, when she is not wearing a full-fledged hat with a brim.

Goring Hotel:where Kate, her family, and many of William and Kate's friends will stay and socialize prior to the wedding.

Harry: Prince and younger brother, who will undoubtedly serve as chief "supporter" for Prince William at his wedding.

Issa London: The middle brow andof the gorgeous deep blue dress Kate wore for the engagement announcement.

Klosters: Swiss ski resort whereand family, resulting in a much-photographed on-slopes kiss.

Lingerie: Garments being modeled at aat St. Andrews, where Kate definitely caught Prince William's eye.

Marlborough College: Exclusive co-educational prep school attended by Kate, where she excelled in academics and at field hockey and tennis.

Oldfield, Bruce:and couturier beloved by Princess Diana and one of the leading possibilities for the designer of Kate's wedding gown, which she is keeping secret until April 29.

Party Pieces: Mail order company owned by Michael and Carole Middleton, Kate's parents, and Kate's sometimes place of employment.

Queen Elizabeth II: Proud grandmother, hosting a post-wedding luncheon for William and his bride at Buckingham Palace.

Royal Knight of the Garter: Honor conferred on Prince William in a , with Kate attending her first official royal occasion in public.

St. Andrews: A small town in Scotland, and the universityas undergraduate students and fell in love -- not to mention the birthplace of golf.

Time: The wedding will begin at 11a.m. on April 29, which is 6 a.m. on the East Coast of the U.S. and even earlier across the country.

Vanity Fair: The magazine that named Kate Middleton to its .

Westminster Abbey: The historic Anglican church in central London, for 1,000 years the site of coronations, weddings, and funerals of royalty and notables, including the upcoming royal wedding, seats 2,000.

Zara Phillips: Blonde, horsey daughter of Princess Anne and first cousin of William, whoto her rugby player boyfriend just after William -- in a copy-cat vein.

Crowdbooster Brings Twitter Analytics with a Twist [INVITES]

Crowdbooster, a brand newcompany, is about to give its consumer users free access to all theanalytics they can handle and then some.

, the brainchild of three Stanford guys, gives its users "tweet-level analysis" to understand the exact performance metrics of individual tweets -- all within a user-friendly, color-coded UI that quickly and simply highlights your best tweets and areas for improvement.

The product does some serious number-crunching to calculate the total reach of a given tweet, which includes all the followers of the people who retweeted them, and displays it on a scatter plot. It'll also show you replies and retweets for each tweet you sent out.

The scatter plots become an at-a-glance visual tool for exploring your highest-performing tweets this week, this month or for a custom period of time.

But Crowdbooster isn't just navel-gazing and narcissism; it will also give you the tools to optimize your tweeting so your updates are most effective.

The platform will also be able to calculate the best time for you to send out a new tweet. This calculation is based on how well your tweets have performed historically at different times of day, as well as when your Twitter followers are most likely to be online.

In addition to reach and timing, Crowdbooster can also show you the types of content your audience will be most likely to respond to.

The best news for most of our readers is that Crowdbooster is free for consumers. For businesses, the company charges $200 per month for their reports.

Another feature that's likely to be more interesting to businesses is FollowBuilder, which allows the user to "discover and connect with potential customers and advocates" through engagement rather than spamming.

Current business users include Vayner Media (Gary Vaynerchuk's social media consultancy), Eventbrite and Stanford University.

Twitter analytics has been an area of great interest to those who would profit from the social web, including third-party services such as Crowdbooster and Twitter itself. At Chirp this past spring,was identified as one of the surest bets for making money in the Twitter ecosystem. In fact, Twitter's product VP Jason Goldman said that Twitter wanted to build some analytics tools for companies as well as an API that included analytics information.

Twitter made an interestingover the summer, andlately that the social service might roll out its own analytics dashboard before the end of 2010.

Still, this is a space that's ripe for innovation, and there's plenty of room for plenty of interesting products. We've enjoyed playing around with Crowdbooster so far; if you'd like to get into the site and use the tools yourself, just go to the Crowdbooster homepage and sign up for an account. When filling out the web form for your account signup, mention that you heard about the service from Mashable, and your application will be one of the first ones processed.

Give Crowdbooster a shot, and let us know what you think in the comments.

Online ad business is booming

It’s high times in the world of Internet advertising. The industry reported revenues of $6.4 billion for the third quarter of 2010, according to a report . That is a new quarterly record for online ad revenues and represents a 17 percent increase over the same period last year. The rate of revenue growth is the highest since the first quarter of 2008 when online ad revenue grew by 18 percent over a year prior. (If you want to find the Mad Men-esque boom period for Internet advertising you’ll have to go back to 2005 when the industry was reporting growth rates upwards of 30 percent – high enough to make even a digital Don Draper smile.)

"The Internet has transformed consumers' lives and how they experience entertainment, information and brands," said Randall Rothenberg, President & CEO, IAB. "Marketers have embraced digital media because that's where they can engage with their consumers. This vibrant, innovative industry is creating jobs and contributing to the growth of the U.S. economy."

So where does all that money spent on Internet ads wind up? If you’ve noticed ads appearing more often in video form, then you won’t be surprised to hear that digital video ads performed particularly well in with a 31 revenue increase from 2009. Display banner ads as a whole – including banner ads and pop-up ads – pulled in more than $4.4 billion over this year’s first month, up nearly 16 percent from the same time period in 2009. Despite the increasing innovations in online advertising, text-based search ads (the kind Google displays along search results) remain the most profitable, accounting for $5.7 billion and 47 percent of all online ad revenues.

The news is a further indicator that companies who are looking to spend advertising dollars are looking more towards the Internet and away from traditional outlets like TV or print. Concerns about lost ad revenues have been cited as a likely reason that broadcast companies have beenhybrid devices like Google TV. But with the Internet going increasingly mobile and effectively becoming available everywhere at anytime, companies looking to spend their ad dollars will have a clear choice on where to go to get the most bang for their buck.

G-20 refuses to back US push on China's currency

SEOUL, South Korea – Leaders of 20 major economies on Friday refused to back a U.S. push to make China boost its currency's value, keeping alive a dispute that raises fears of a global trade war amid criticism that cheap Chinese exports are costing American jobs.

A joint statement issued by the leaders including President Barack Obama and China's Hu Jintao tried to recreate the unity that was evident when the Group of 20 rich and developing nations held its first summit two years ago during the global financial meltdown.

But deep divisions, especially over the U.S.-China currency dispute, left G-20 officials negotiating all night to draft a watered-down statement for the leaders to endorse.

"Instead of hitting home runs sometimes we're gonna hit singles. But they're really important singles," Obama told a news conference after the summit.

Other leaders also tried to portray the summit as a success, pointing to their pledges to fight protectionism and develop guidelines next year that will measure the imbalances between trade surplus and trade deficit countries.

The G-20's failure to adopt the U.S. stand has underlined Washington's reduced influence on the international stage, especially on economic matters. In another setback, Obama also failed to conclude a free trade agreement this week with South Korea.

The biggest disappointment for the United States was the pledge by the leaders to refrain from "competitive devaluation" of currencies. Such a statement is of little consequence since countries usually only devalue their currencies — making it less worth against the dollar — in extreme situations like a severe financial crisis.

The statement decided against using a slightly different wording favored by the U.S. — "competitive undervaluation," which would have shown the G-20 taking a stronger stance on China's currency policy.

The crux of the dispute is Washington's allegations that Beijing is artificially keeping its currency, the yuan, weak to gain a trade advantage.

U.S. business lobbies say that a cheaper yuan costs American jobs because production moves to China to take advantage of low labor costs and undervalued currency.

A stronger yuan would shrink the U.S. trade deficit with China, which is on track this year to match its 2008 record of $268 billion, and encourage Chinese companies to sell more to their own consumers rather than rely so much on the U.S. and others to buy low-priced Chinese goods.

But the U.S. position has been undermined by its own central bank's decision to print $600 billion to boost a sluggish economy, which is weakening the dollar.

Also, developing countries like Thailand and Indonesia fear that much of the "hot" money will flood their markets, where returns are higher. Such emerging markets could be left vulnerable to a crash if investors later decide to pull out and move their money elsewhere.

Obama said China's currency policy is an "irritant" not just for the United States but for many of its other trading partners. The G-20 countries — ranging from industrialized nations such as U.S. and Germany to developing ones like China, Brazil and India — account for 85 percent of the world's economic activity.

"China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep it undervalued so what we have said is it is important for China in a gradual fashion to transition to a market based system," Obama said.

The dispute is threatening to resurrect destructive protectionist policies like those that worsened the Great Depression in the 1930s. The biggest fear is that trade barriers will send the global economy back into recession.

The possibility of a currency war "absolutely" remains, said Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega.

Friday's statement is also unlikely to resolve the most vexing problem facing the G-20 members: how to fix a global economy that's long been marked by huge U.S. trade deficits with exporters like China, Germany and Japan.

Americans consume far more in foreign goods and services from these countries than they sell abroad.

The G-20 leaders said they will try to reduce the gaps between nations running large trade surpluses and those running deficits.

The "persistently large imbalances" in current accounts — a broad measure of a nation's trade and investment with the rest of the world — would be measured by what they called "indicative guidelines" to be determined later.

The leaders called for the guidelines to be developed by the G-20, along with help from the International Monetary Fund and other global organizations, and for finance ministers and central bank governors to meet in the first half of next year to discuss progress.

Analysts were not convinced.

"Leaders are putting the best face on matters by suggesting that it is the process that matters rather than results," said Stephen Lewis, chief economist for London-based Monument Securities.

"The only concrete agreement seems to be that they should go on measuring the size of the problem rather than doing something about it."

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Associated Press writers Erica Werner, Kelly Olsen, Jean H. Lee, Greg Keller, Luis Alonso and Kim Hyung-jin in Seoul contributed to this report.