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Digital Daya's Social Media Command Center Buzzes in the UAE

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Jan. 27, 2011 – Middle East's first center for social intelligence tracks an upbeat resurgence in public sentiment for Dubai

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Jan. 27, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Digital Daya ('digital influence'), a strategic consultancy that empowers world leaders to leverage the new media of the Internet, has released a new report "Brand Dubai: A Snapshot of Dubai's Image on the Social Web" that explores the state of Dubai's online reputation since the financial crisis in November 2009.

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According to Digital Daya's most up-to-date research, during the peak of the financial crisis almost 95% of all media postings online were negative reflecting prevailing fear and doubt about Dubai's debt burdens and its ability to recover. This persisted through the beginning of 2010 where the ratio of positive to negative sentiment was running 1:3, however over the last 6 month the ratio has nearly flipped to 5:2 signifying a net positive view of Dubai. This reflects a strong comeback for Dubai's prevailing reputation in the global community and a refocus on its traditional image as an entertainment and logistics hub.

On an interesting note, the volume of postings and favorable views about Dubai on the "social web" far exceeds that of mainstream news media indicative of a strong supportive following by the general public that could be earnestly leveraged.

"The conversations found in millions of social networking sites offer tremendous insights into what people are thinking and tremendous opportunities to influence that thinking," said Omar Hijazi, Managing Partner at Digital Daya. " There is a stark realization growing amongst public sector leaders that a new generational shift is required to successfully reach out to people and ensure a favorable reputation in today's increasingly digital society."

The Advent of "Social Intelligence"

This ascendance of social media brings about several questions, especially for government. In an age where news travels, is shared, re-tweeted, posted on Facebook quicker than most public officials can react keeping a pulse on public sentiment is now more pressing than even.

In the region today, much sovereign investment is being directed towards creating world-class metropolitan destinations to attract the global investment and business community; as competition heats up, governments have to ponder how best to ensure a favorable reputation and set their cities apart.

Governments are equally challenged by the rise of online activism over social networking web sites like Twitter and Facebook used by opposition movements to organize protests and escalate dissent such as that in Tunisia which toppled the government and sent reverberations across the Arab world.

However you look at it, proactively or reactively, public authorities are going to require new competencies to gather data and insights on millions of online conversations happening on the Internet - new capabilities to accumulate social intelligence to understand and ultimately influence public opinion.

Middle East's First Social Intelligence Command Center

The Brand Dubai report was produced through Digital Daya's social media command center sited in the UAE by analyzing nearly 3/4 million postings on the Internet. The command center was specifically designed as a social media listening grid acting as a fully functional real-time system to monitor Internet-based social media locally and around the globe. The center collects, analyzes and manages reputation information concerning sovereign and corporate brands for their clients in the public and private sectors around the region.

Digital Daya's platform brings into play advanced social media technologies that provide governments and corporates the means to effectively track and manage their reputation online. The social media command center will monitor millions of conversations stirring on social networks, blogs, forums, Twitter, wiki, news and video sites -- this social intelligence can then used to tune policy making, influence opinions and better foretell public sentiment.

For more information download the report at .

About Digital Daya

Digital Daya is an international strategic consultancy helping world leader leverage the power of digital platforms to influence and engage the World in the 21st Century. The Digital Policy Council (DPC), the research and policy arm of the Digital Daya, is an international, non-partisan 'think tank' that promotes good governance and policy-making.

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Experts Say Four Loko Worse than Mixed Drinks

Alcoholic energy drink maker Phusion Projects, which produces the controversial malt beverage Four Loko, announced late Tuesday (Nov. 16) that it will be removing caffeine, guarana and taurine from its drinks nationwide.

The news follows an announcement yesterday by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) that, after a year of review, the Food and Drug Administration will ban manufactured beverages containing caffeine and alcohol, making drinks such as Four Loko and Joose illegal to sell.

The FDA has not yet announced a ban on alcoholic beverages with caffeine added, but Phusion Projects is scrapping the caffeine ahead of the expected announcement. The FDA will hold a news conference today at 1 p.m.

The drinks had already prompted a spate of state and university bans around the country. Four Loko was banned in Utah, Michigan and Oklahoma, and next month distributors in New York would have been prohibited from selling it.

The state of Washington banned all manufactured alcoholic energy drinks after nine underage students at Central Washington University who drank Four Loko were hospitalized with alcohol poisoning earlier this year.

Brewing controversy

Phusion Projects says its drinks are not harmful, but health experts disagree.

"We have repeatedly contended - and still believe, as do many people throughout the country - that the combination of alcohol and caffeine is safe," the company said. "If it were unsafe, popular drinks like rum and colas or Irish coffees that have been consumed safely and responsibly for years would face the same scrutiny that our products have recently faced."

But what makes drinks such as Four Loko so much worse than the mixed drinks served in bars that preceded them is the combined effects of their higher levels of alcohol and caffeine on the brain, said Dr. Mary Claire O'Brien, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina.

"Caffeine in the beverage is at high-enough levels that it interferes with [people's] ability to tell that they're drunk, so they keep drinking," O'Brien told MyHealthNewsDaily.

Drinks with lessmake it easier for people to tell when they've had too much alcohol, she said.

The Food and Drug Administration has been investigating the legality of manufacturing alcoholic energy drinks for the past year and had required companies selling the products to provide evidence that caffeine added to alcohol is safe.

Elements of the drink

Irish coffee - a hot cocktail of coffee, Irish whiskey, sugar and cream - is too warm to chug, O'Brien said, so one drink isn't likely to get you immediately drunk. And a Red Bull and vodka, rum and Coke or any similar mixed drink ordered at a bar isn't likely to have as much caffeine as a 23.5-ounce can of caffeinated malt liquor, she said.

Four Loko contains 156 milligrams of caffeine, compared with 76 in a can of Red Bull.

Phusion Projects says the drink has the same amount of alcohol as wine and some craft beers, and as much caffeine as a tall Starbucks coffee. (According to Starbucks, a tall coffee has 260 milligrams of caffeine.)

But health experts have likened drinking Four Loko toand up to two cups of coffee.

The effects many people claim to experience from the drinks make sense scientifically, O'Brien said. Most people mistakenly think alcohol and caffeine work in opposition to each other, because caffeine is a stimulant while alcohol is a depressant and can make you sleepy.

But alcohol creates sleepiness by promoting the release of the hormone adenosine in the brain, and caffeine binds to receptors for adenosine in the brain. So when both are present in the bloodstream, caffeine binds to these receptors and blocks adenosine, creating a state of wide-awake drunkenness, she said.

"It's not the same as having coffee after a meal and then a couple glasses of wine," O'Brien said. Alcohol and caffeine are "competing for similar sets of neurotransmitter receptors, so caffeine temporarily blocks the effect of alcohol."

And caffeine and alcohol are broken down by the body at different rates, she said. The rate at which the body breaks down caffeine depends on the amount in the blood - the more there is, the faster it metabolizes - but alcohol is metabolized at a steady rate regardless of whether you've had one beer or 15.

" because you think you're awake," and you are really are, she said. "But when the caffeine has worn off and your alcohol level is super-high, now you're really in trouble. And I think that's where the blackouts come from."

'You're an energized drunk'

While health experts have warned of the , some argue it's all a matter of drinking responsibly.

Chris Hack, owner of the Spinning Room bar in Tannersville, N.Y., which sells Red Bull and Monster mixed drinks in addition to Four Loko, said he doesn't see a problem with people 21 and older partaking, as long as they are aware of their alcohol intake.

Bartenders are responsible for the people drinking in a bar, he said, "so whether it's alcohol, mixed drinks, beer, energy drinks, whatever, we have to be vigilant in making sure they don't take it too far here, because we're responsible for when they leave."

Some consumers say the drinks have their purpose.

The reason for the existence of cheap, convenience-store alcoholic energy drinks is to get people drunk quickly and inexpensively, said Paul Anderson, who directsa marketing and higher education research firm in Lincoln, Neb. Cans of Four Loko and Joose cost $2 to $3 a pop.

Anderson, 23, said he has tried his share of alcoholic energy drinks but generally drinks them only before he goes out dancing or if he knows he'll be at a party for a while.

"You're hyper, you're bouncing off the walls," said Anderson. "You're an energized drunk. It creates a sense of restlessness."

Anderson said he has never had an adverse reaction to an alcoholic energy drink, nor has he seen anyone get into a dangerous situation because of one. But he said that even his friends who are very good at holding their alcohol become stumbling drunks after a few.

"They're blacked out, but they're still running around and babbling, shouting, and I think that's where they're more likely to make poor decisions," he said. Then "people are more , because they're not the drooling drunk that they would be without the caffeine."

This article was provided by , a sister site to LiveScience.

Original Story: chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style. Check out our science ,and .to debate hot-button issues like stem cells, climate change and evolution. You can also sign up for free , register forand get cool gadgets at the .

DIA show focuses on collection’s frauds and mysteries

Michael H. Hodges, Detroit News Arts Writer

The girl in the Renaissance garb is so beautiful, it feels downright ungentlemanly to call her a fraud.

But that's just what she is. And that's why "Portrait of a Young Woman" is one of the stars in "Fakes, Forgeries and Mysteries," opening Sunday at the Detroit Institute of Arts -- an intriguing show from the DIA's own collection about the serious detective work used to verify artworks.

Divided into four rooms, the first gallery considers works "in the style of" -- pieces that resemble the handiwork of the great and famous, but don't claim to be by the master.

The second contains out-and-out forgeries, often passed off with impressive documentation and fake signatures to seal the deal.

The curtain is pulled back in the next room on the scientific methods DIA researchers use to uncover the truth -- whether X-rays, chemical analysis or, in one surprising case, examination of tree rings. The last gallery looks at ongoing mysteries, and includes works the museum is still trying to authenticate, like an unsigned still-life alleged to be by Vincent van Gogh.

In almost all cases, the counterfeit is paired with a bonafide piece by the artist in question. Explanatory panels guide visitors through the authentication process, equipping them with the observational tools they need to spot clues in the fakes -- from the use of color to seeing whether noses and eyes are rendered with the same delicacy as in the real thing.

Most works the museum acquires come with a paper trail establishing their authenticity beyond question, says DIA director Graham Beal. That's not true, however, with bequests and other gifts that arrive out of the blue.

In those cases, he says, "We don't present anything until we've done due diligence."

But back to that beautiful young woman from Renaissance Italy, whom associate curator of European painting Salvador Salort-Pons calls "the queen of the exhibition."

She entered the DIA's collection in the 1930s, thought to be by Leonardo da Vinci or Andrea del Verrocchio, both working in the late 1400s. But there were always doubts, says Salort-Pons, and try as they might, for years the DIA couldn't quite pinpoint her story.

She had a way of fooling people. At one point, "Young Woman" had been included in a Leonardo exhibition in Milan, Italy. So as Salort-Pons notes with a little satisfaction, even the Italians were fooled.

The X-ray proved her undoing. Pictures revealed that wormholes -- no surprise in wood 500 years old -- had been filled beneath the paint surface with a sort of plaster-of-Paris called gesso.

But gesso didn't exist back then.

"So the forger," says Salort-Pons, "had picked wood to look old," filled the holes and painted over them. This gorgeous fake, which Salort-Pons says he'd be thrilled to have on his wall, was probably created some 300 years after Leonardo or Verrocchio. Chemical analysis of paint pigments showed the presence of zinc -- not used until the 1800s.

All the same, it's hard not to admire the forger's handiwork. It is, as Salort-Pons puts it, "a refined, almost exquisite forgery."

In other cases, sloppiness unmasked fakes, illustrated here by two landscapes said to be by the 19th-century American painter Ralph Blakelock.

The DIA had doubts from the start about "Indian Encampment," says Salort-Pons, not least because of what he calls its "lurid" color palette, quite different from the actual Blakelock with which it's paired.

Again, the X-ray rode to the rescue. "Indian Encampment," it turns out, had been painted atop an earlier work -- a portrait of a woman in a distinctly 20th-century outfit.

One fraud involved the simplest and cheekiest of ploys -- replacing one artist's signature with another, a deception that Salort-Pons lays out in concise detail in a short video.

"Three Figures Resting Under a Tree," bearing the signature of French Impressionist Claude Monet, came to the DIA in 2004 from a bequest.

A label on the back noted that the work had been exhibited in 1910 at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art. But no painting in that show bore that name.

The next clue was a sticker reading "A 3707" --љ the identification code for a specific New York City art dealer who sold the work in 1947 as a Monet, but under a different name -- "Tewkesbury Road."

Another call was placed to Pittsburgh: Had they ever shown a work by that name? This time the answer was yes --љ but it wasn't a Monet. It was by a minor British painter named Sir Alfred East. Indeed, zooming in on a photo of the piece taken during that exhibit, researchers could clearly read East's signature.

Case closed.

'Fakes, Forgeries and Mysteries'

Sunday through April 10

Detroit Institute of Arts

5200 Woodward Ave., Detroit

10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday & Thursday; 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday

General admission: $8, adults, $6, seniors, $4, kids ages 6-17 (313) 833-7900 or

Ohio sheriff: Missing mom, 2 others may be dead

MOUNT VERNON, Ohio – An Ohio man accused of kidnapping a 13-year-old girl found bound and gagged in a basement may have been watching her family beforehand, authorities said.

Matthew J. Hoffman even sat nearby last week as police recovered the missing family's truck in central Ohio, Knox County Sheriff David Barber said.

Now, investigators acknowledge hope is dimming that the girl's mother, brother and family friend will be found alive nearly a week after they were reported missing.

"You have to be realistic that there's a possibility that these folks are dead," Barber said Monday.

Police on Sunday rescued 13-year-old Sarah Maynard from the basement of Hoffman's home, then launched a search of a nearby lake for Maynard's mother, 32-year-old Tina Herrmann; the woman's 10-year-old son, Kody Maynard; and her 41-year-old friend, Stephanie Sprang.

All four vanished last Wednesday from a Howard, Ohio, home that police say was splattered with blood.

"I know that the time frame has been long between when they disappeared, but we have hope that we will see our loved ones soon," Sprang's father, Steve Thompson, told WBNS-TV in Columbus on Monday, his voice quavering.

Hoffman, who's been charged with one count of kidnapping, is to appear via video from jail for a bond hearing Tuesday. The sheriff said he does not yet have a lawyer.

It wasn't clear how well Hoffman knew the four missing people, but the sheriff suggested that the defendant had been watching them.

"They knew Hoffman or Hoffman made himself known to them; he acquainted himself with the family whether they knew he was acquainting himself with them or not," Barber said.

Authorities first questioned Hoffman on Thursday, the day after Herrmann failed to show up for work at Dairy Queen. Police found him sitting in his car near a bike trail opposite property owned by Kenyon College, near where Herrmann's pickup truck was found, Barber said.

The sheriff didn't say what later led investigators to Hoffman's two-story, tan-sided house in Mount Vernon, where authorities spent Monday scouring bike paths and riverbanks. A search team pulled a car and an SUV from a lake near Hoffman's home, but investigators say they're not likely related to the disappearances.

"Our hearts were dropping every time they pulled something out, but now that we know that they were not related to this case, we're happy," Thompson told WBNS, with a tear rolling down his left cheek.

Authorities were to continue the search on Tuesday.

Hoffman's mother and stepfather live less than a mile away from Herrmann's home in a lakeside community north of Columbus. Hoffman last lived there two years ago, his mother said, before declining to comment further.

Hoffman was sentenced to eight years in prison in Colorado in 2001 for arson and other charges. Authorities allowed him to move to Ohio in 2007 after he was released on parole, which ended about a month ago. He had paid about $4,800 toward $2.06 million in restitution, Colorado court system spokesman Jon Sarche said.

In Ohio, the sheriff declined to comment on whether Sarah was assaulted or the details of her capture. She was released from a hospital and was staying with relatives.

"She is a very brave little girl," Barber said. "Under the circumstances, a 13-year-old girl being held captive for four days by a total stranger ... I would call her the epitome of bravery."

Two blocks from Hoffman's home in Mount Vernon, about 200 community members prayed and lit candles at a church vigil for the missing people.

"I'm expecting the worst but hoping for the best," said Jacki Mace, a manager at Sunset Lane Tanning, where Herrmann and Sprang were regular customers.

Mace, 20, said Herrmann was last in the salon Wednesday morning. She called Herrmann "a sweetheart."

"If you were feeling down that day she'd do anything to make you smile, pick you up, tell you a funny story. She was a delight," Mace said. "And Stephanie was the same. She was just a sweetie. They were so nice. Never had any problems with them."

___

Associated Press writers Doug Whiteman and JoAnne Viviano in Columbus, John Seewer in Toledo and P. Solomon Banda in Denver contributed to this report.

LittleFin's Chronicle tracks monthly bills

Mac users of personal finance software tend to fall into two categories-those who use , and those who hate Quicken with the red-hot passion of a thousand suns. No finance management alternative has yet captured the mindshare of the Mac market, but LittleFin Software steps up to the plate with the release of . (Note:this Mac application is no relation to thejournal app.)

LittleFin's Chronicle has a stripped-down feature set compared to the kitchen sinks of many other applications, but it focuses on the essential-paying bills and tracking them. Enter your bills into the application's simple interface, then display those bills as a list in the overview screen. A helpful (or stress-inducing) sidebar tells you how much is due is the upcoming month and next seven days.

Chronicle looks like it was accidentally left out of Apple's iWork, with a default woodgrain background and, dare I say, friendly spacious windows displayed much more decoratively than in most finance software. Chronicle integrates with iCal to handle reminders, meaning that you don't have to check two calendars to know when the bells are tolling.

Chronicle costs $21 and requires Leopard or Snow Leopard. A 30-day free trial is available for download.