iBooks Author, as this video demo suggests, is like a WYSIWYG editor for eBooks. It is nowhere as complex as some of other book authoring programs (for example, Adobe Indesign) and yet you get nice professional-looking eBooks that may also have an element of interactivity.

The downside is that Apple has developed iBooks Author exclusively for the Mac platform and second, eBooks created using this authoring tool can only be sold through the iBookstore. You are allowed your give away your eBook as free PDFs but you cannot sell them outside the iTunes store.

If you are fine with the various restrictions of Apple and are looking for some help to get started with iBooks Author, here’s brand new title from O’Reilly Media – Publishing with iBooks Author – that should definitely interest you.

This 94-page eBook, authored by Adam Witwer and Nellie McKesson of O’Reilly, discusses every single feature of the iBook Author app but my favorite parts are the little tips and common pitfalls that you are less likely to find in the official help manual. For instance:

1. You can ditch the Media Widget and just drag and drop an audio or video file right from Finder or the Media Browser onto a blank spot in your book, but the end result is the same.

2. If you managed to get Author working on Mac OS X Snow Leopard or earlier, you don’t get to play with the 3D chart options. These depend on the Scene Kit framework, available in OS X Lion. It may seem like you can add one, but Author slows to a crawl and your chart just looks like a garbled mess.

The eBook is available as a free download on the O’Reilly website and you can have it in either PDF, ePUB or MOBI formats depending on where you want to read that book.

Publishing eBooks with iBooks Author – Apple Demo

This story, Learn How to Create eBooks for the iPad with this O’Reilly eBook, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 15/02/2012 under Ebook, Ibooks, Mac, Software.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3ao7QXMhC4

The search team at Google has created a short video that puts all the useful stuff you can do on Google.com, plus some related search tips and tricks, in one place.

If you are a “power” Google user, you may not find anything new in this video but for the rest of us, this is a good recap of the kind of searches you can perform at Google.com.

And I just learned that you can drag images from the desktop and drop them on to the Google Images website and it will find  similar images on the Internet – that’s much faster than using the “Browse” button.

This story, All the Google Search Tips in one Video, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 15/02/2012 under Google, Internet.

Techmeme recently added an events section to their website – see techmeme.com/#events  – that lists upcoming (and newsworthy) events focused on the tech industry. It’s a pretty useful list, curated by Techmeme editors, and includes tech events around new product launches, upcoming conferences, earnings calls of tech companies, webcasts, and related events.

The Techmeme blog has more details on how event organizers can get their own event listed on Techmeme. If you are organizing a Tedx or a BarCamp in your city, Techmeme may not find that very interesting but if you are doing a WordCamp that people like Matt {Cutts|Mullenweg} are attending, your event will probably make it to the Techmeme events page.

Subscribe to Techmeme Events in your Calendar

The Techmeme Events page currently doesn’t offer an ICAL / ICS feed so it is difficult to keep track of upcoming tech events in your Microsoft Outlook, Apple iCal or Google Calendar. There’s however a little workaround.

You can use either of the above links to add Techmeme events directly to your web / desktop calendar. These are standard ICS files that should be compatible with most calendar application across all platforms.

Thus, if Apple is scheduling an event during the first week of March, it should automatically pop-up in your calendar courtesy Techmeme. [Picture Credits: Wired]

The Source Code

The above ICAL/ICS files for Techmeme are generated with the help of some PHP and web scraping. The script basically downloads the Techmeme events page, extracts all the event related DIVs and formats everything in the iCalendar format. Should you be interested in enhancing / modifying the script, here’s the full source code:

<?php
$url  = "http://www.techmeme.com/events";
$day  = date("Ymd");
$file = 'techmeme.' . $day;
$feed = 'calendar.ics';

//Grab the Techmeme Events page once per day
if (!file_exists($file) || !file_exists($feed)) {
 $html = file_get_contents($url);
 $fp   = fopen($file, 'w');
 fwrite($fp, $html);
 fclose($fp);

//Declare header for Google Calendar
$header = "BEGIN:VCALENDAR
 VERSION:2.0
 PRODID:-//Techmeme//Events v1.0//EN
 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
 METHOD:PUBLISH
 X-WR-CALNAME:Techmeme Events
 X-WR-TIMEZONE:UTC
 X-WR-CALDESC:Upcoming Tech Events curated by Techmeme";

$events = "";
$next   = false;
$year   = date("Y");
$html   = file($file);

//XPath for Event DIVs
foreach ($html as $line) {
 if(preg_match('/<div class="rhov">
       <a href="\/goto\/(.*?)"><div>
       (.*?)<\/div><div>(.*?)<\/div><div>
       (.*?)<\/div><\/a><\/div>/',$line, $match)) {
  $eventURL   = "http://" . $match[1];
  $eventDt  = $match[2];
  if(preg_match('/(.*)?-(.*)/', $eventDt, $date)) {
    $eventDt = $date[1];
  }

  $eventTitle = $match[3];
  $eventVenue = $match[4];
  $month = substr($eventDt, 0, 3);

  //Advance the year after December
  if ($month == "Dec")
   $next = true;

  if ($next && $month != "Dec")
   $eventDt .= " " . (date("Y") + 1);

 //Write an All-Day event to the Calendar
  $events .= "\n" . "BEGIN:VEVENT";
  $events .= "\n" . "DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:"
           . gmdate("Ymd", strtotime($eventDt));
  $events .= "\n" . "DTEND;VALUE=DATE:"
           . gmdate("Ymd", strtotime($eventDt . " +1 day"));
  $events .= "\n" . "SUMMARY:" . $eventTitle;
  $events .= "\n" . "DESCRIPTION:" . $eventTitle
           . " " .  $eventURL;
  $events .= "\n" . "UID:" . strtolower(ereg_replace
             ("[^A-Za-z0-9]", "",
             $eventTitle . $eventVenue . $eventDt)) .
             "@calendar.techmeme.com";

  if ($eventVenue != "")
   $events .= "\n" . "LOCATION:" . $eventVenue;

  $events .= "\n" . "END:VEVENT";
  }
 }

$header .= $events . "\nEND:VCALENDAR";
$fmeme   = fopen($feed, "w");

//Save the Parsed Events to a physical file
fwrite($fmeme, $header);
fclose($fmeme);
}

//Echo the Calendar .ICS file
header("Content-type: text/calendar; charset=utf-8");
header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=$feed");
echo file_get_contents("$feed");
?>

This story, Subscribe to Techmeme Tech Events in your Calendar, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 14/02/2012 under Techmeme, Internet.

1. When you want to convert a file, you have to upload it to the file conversion service. This is not an issue when you are converting files from the desktop but how do you upload files from iPhone, Android or any other mobile browser.
2. Sometimes clients will send you files in obscure formats as email attachments. In order to convert those files in a format that your apps can understand, you will download the attachments to your desktop and then upload them to the file conversion service. That’s work.

Zamzar, a popular tool for converting files online, has added a new option that lets you convert files by email itself. You can forward your email attachments directly to Zamzar, without downloading them to the desktop, and they’ll be converted in no time.

Convert Email attachment into Different File Formats

To get started, you need to forward the input (source) files to a specific email address like format@zamzar.com where format represents the file type of the desired output format.

For instance, if you have a Word document that you want to convert to PDF, you can send the file as an email attachment to pdf@zamzar.com. If you have a PDF file that you want to convert into an ebook, the corresponding conversion address would be epub@zamzar.com or mobi@zamzar.com depending on your ebook reader.

Here’s a complete list of input-output file formats that are currently supported by Zamzar. You can convert documents, presentations, ebooks, videos, audio files, archives and more.

In my test, the converted files were delivered quickly and the quality of the converted files was impressive. There’s no need to create any account at Zamzar and you can convert files up to 1 MB in a single batch. You may go for a pro account to convert bigger files that starts from $7 per month.

One more thing. You can only upload files by email and initiate the conversion process but you’ll still have to visit the Zamzar website to download the converted file. It stays on Zamzar servers for about a day and their download page is actually very confusing when accessed on a mobile phone.

This story, Use Email to Convert Files into Different Formats, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 10/02/2012 under Convert, Email, Internet.

The team behind Shape Collage, a popular photo collage software, have launched Loupe, an online tool that will help you create collages using Facebook photos.

You can either use your own photo albums and turn them into collages or the app can also pull photos from the albums of your Facebook friends that are visible to you.

It takes just a few steps to build your first collage. Authorize the app to access your Facebook account, then select any of your photo albums (or that of your friends), choose a shape and your collage is ready. Hit the Share button to save that collage to your Facebook account or grab the permalink to share it by email.

The collages look impressive and if you don’t like the default layout, you can always move or delete any of the pictures on the pile. Here’s a quick video that shows how you can turn Facebook albums into collages.

The drawback though is the resolution. Loupe generates a relatively small image of your collage that will probably look good only on a mobile screen. Shape Collage says that will be introducing higher resolution images in the future.

Photo Collages and Facebook Privacy

Any photo collage that you create with Loupe is public and currently there’s no option to change the visibility to private. Thus, if you have any private photos on Facebook that you don’t want the world to see, it may not be a good idea to turn them into collages because others may then find them through search engines.

Also see: Create Picture Collage in Picasa

This story, Create Collages with your Facebook Photos, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 10/02/2012 under Facebook, Internet, Photo Sharing.

When you delete a file on your Mac, it goes to the trash. You empty the trash thinking that all traces of your private files are now completely erased from the Mac’s hard disk but that may not be the case.

Files deleted from the trash in this manner can still be recovered unless the sectors are overwritten by other files. There’s an easy way though. If you would like to permanently remove your deleted files, just remember to use the “secure” option while emptying the trash.

Here’s how. Click and hold the trash icon on your Mac desktop and it will display the “Empty Trash” option. Now press the Command button and the Empty Trash option will change to Secure Empty Trash. Select it and the trashed files will be gone forever.

The concept is similar in Windows though there’s no built-in option in Windows to permanently delete “deleted” files. You can however make use of the free SDelete utility to ensure that deleted files cannot be recovered again.

Emptying the trash, or the recycle bin in Windows, is not enough.

This story, How to Permanently Delete your Mac Files, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 10/02/2012 under Mac, Software.

Amazon has released a new video commercial for the $79 Kindle that targets the one flaw (or limitation) of the iPad – it is nearly impossible to read books on your iPad while you are out in the sun because of the reflective glass screen.

The other point that Amazon is trying to highlight in the video is that Kindle is more value for money – you can get a bundle of two Kindle Fire units and one Kindle 5 unit for less than the price of an iPad.

Here’s the original Kindle ad that Amazon released about an year ago. It uses the same setting – a girl sunbathing near the pool and reading on her Kindle – and they have even hired the same actress – Anna Zielinski – to do the sequel.

On a related note, I have an iPad 2 and the new Kindle 5 (see setup) and I almost always prefer reading long form content on the Kindle. The iPad is good for flipping through PDFs or for watching multimedia content but Kindle is much better for reading text whether you are indoors or outside in direct sunlight.

The Kindle “Pool” Ad [Original]

This story, The New Amazon Kindle Ad Targets the iPad, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 10/02/2012 under Amazon Kindle, IPad, Internet.

This Valentine’s day, try sending your geeky loved one a Google search query instead of an e-greeting and they may like the little surprise that’s in store for them.

The Heart Equation for Google

When you put any Math equation in Google, it will try to plot of a graph of that equation just like your scientific calculation. And one such equation, listed below, renders a heart curve that you can pass on to your Valentine.

To give it a try, just copy-paste the following query in Google. Thanks Suhel.

sqrt(cos(x))*cos(300x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.7)*(4-x*x)^0.01,
  sqrt(6-x^2), -sqrt(6-x^2) from -4.5 to 4.5

This story, This Valentine, Send your Loved One a Google Search Query, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 10/02/2012 under Google, Internet.

These are all free and open-source plugins and you can find them in the WordPress plugin repository.

The Best WordPress Plugins for your Website

1. Search Regex – This adds extremely powerful search and replace capabilities to your blog. You can find and replace almost any kind of data stored on your WordPress site including post titles, excerpts, comments, and meta data. It even supports regular expressions.

2. Redirection – If the URL of an existing post has changed or if an external site is linking to a non-existent page on my site, I can create redirection rules and automatically forward all the incoming traffic to the right pages.

3. Bing 404 – If someone lands on a 404 page for which redirection is not yet enabled, this plug-in will display links to relevant article on the error page. For example, a 404 page like labnol.org/googledocs will have links to my Google Docs articles.

4. WordPress SEO – This is probably the only SEO plugin you need for your WordPress blog. It helps you create better titles, you can block duplicate pages (like archive pages) from search bots, and it also adds the necessary meta tags required for more search-friendly Google snippets.

5. Hyper Cache – This is a caching plug-in for WordPress that will help reduce the load on your web server by saving pages as static HTML files. WP Total Cache is another popular caching plugin though I prefer Hyper Cache for its simplicity.

6. FB Open Graph – This plugin will insert the necessary Open Graph meta tags to your blog’s header so that you blog posts look good and have the right snippets when they are shared on Facebook or Google Plus.

7. 404 Email Notifier – This sends you an email notification as soon as a visitor lands on a 404 page on your WordPress website. The email messages have details about the visitor’s IP address, what browser they are using and the referral URL that led him to that broken link.

8. SlideShare – This helps you easily embed SlideShare presentations in blog posts with the help of short codes – see samples.

9. Smart YouTube – This lets you embed YouTube videos in blog posts using standing video URLs and the embedded player can be customized. It adds a thumbnail of the embedded video in the RSS feed and the same plug-in can also be used to embed videos from Facebook and Vimeo.

10. YARRP – The related posts plug-in adds links to old stories that may be contextually related to the content of the current story. It also helps expose your archived content to search bots.

11. WP Optimize – Use the WP Optimize plugin to clean-up your WordPress database tables. It can remove post revisions, trash spam comments and also optimize your MySQL tables so that it works more efficiently and also consumes less space.

12. WP-DBManager – This plugin will help you backup your WordPress database manually or you can set up a scheduled job for automatic backup and the database files will be sent to your email address at set intervals. Advanced users can use WP-DBManager to run SQL queries against their WordPress database without the phpMyAdmin tool. There are other plugins that can save backups to Amazon S3 and Dropbox.

13. Debug Queries – Is your blog slow? Use the Debug Queries plugin plugin to determine which MySQL queries are taking more time to execute and thus slowing down the blog. Debug Bar is another related plugin org that shows PHP warnings, queries and other helpful debugging information in the WordPress admin bar.

14. Auto Post Thumbnail – WordPress added support for Post Thumbnail Images in WordPress 2.9 but if you have been using WordPress for long, thumbnails may not be associated with your old posts. Use the Auto Post thumbnail plugin to automatically generate thumbnails for such posts using the first image found in the post content.

15. Regenerate Thumbnails – When you change the default size (height and width) of post thumbnails (or featured images) on your blog, you can use this plugin to regenerate thumbnails with the new dimensions.

16. Google XML Sitemaps – Since you want Google and other search engines to know about each and every page of your WordPress website, you need an XML sitemap and this plug-in lets you generate one in a click.

17. XML Video Sitemap – The plugin generates an XML Sitemap for your WordPress blog with all the YouTube videos that are embedded in your blog posts. I am also using XML Sitemap for Images and XML Sitemap for Mobile.

18. Date in a Nice Tone – This plugin offers an alternate way to display dates in your blog posts. It displays the amount of time – like “a few days ago,” or “in the last month,” or “over a year ago” – that has passed since a post or page was published.

19. SyntaxHighlighter Evolved – If you regularly embed code snippets in your WordPress blog posts, this plugin will help you highlight the syntax of the source code in different colors for more comfortable reading. Supports all popular programming languages.

20. Pubsubhubbub – This will help you beat content scrapers using Fat Pings. When you publish a blog post, it will instantly ping Google and that is a strong signal to the search engine that you are the original author.

21. WP-Associatizer – This plug-in will automatically rewrite any Amazon URLs in your posts to use your Amazon Associates ID.

22. Template Tag SC – WordPress offers numerous template tags – like wp_list_pages() or wp_tag_cloud() – that you can use in your theme files. The plugin will help you insert the sam template tags directly in your blog posts or pages using Short Codes.

23. Login Logger – This plugin logs the IP address and the exact date & time when a user logs into your WordPress dashboard. It also keeps track of any unsuccessful login attempts. Use this plugin in combination with Limit Login Attempts to automatically lock out users after they have made ‘n’ unsuccessful login attempts.

24. CF Shortcode – This helps you insert custom fields inside your WordPress posts using the visual editor. This comes extremely handy when you want to add custom JavaScript inside your WordPress posts.

25. Advanced Excerpt – The post excerpts in WordPress are fixed at 55 words and often displayed with [...] ellipsis at the end. This plugin lets you to specify a custom length of excerpts, you can get rid of the ellipsis and the excerpts can be configured to have full sentences so that there are no weird cuts.

WordPress Plugins – Retired but Useful

The first version of this list was published in 2010 and since then, I have removed or deactivated a few WordPress plugins. Here’s why:

1. WordPress.com Stats – I am using Google Analytics to track site stats and therefore it doesn’t make sense to have another tracking program for the same goal.

2. Akismet – The comments on this site are powered by Disqus and they seem to offer decent spam protection on their own.

3. WordPress PDA – This plugin helped serve the mobile version of this site based on their browser’s user agent. Digital Inspiration now uses a responsive design and thus the same site is served to both desktop and mobile users.

4. WP-Paginate – The paginate plugin provide better navigation and also helps search engines find and crawl deep content on your site. The new design of this site has pagination built-in and therefore this plugin is no longer necessary.

Also see: Essential Linux Commands for WordPress Users

This story, WordPress Plugins that Power Digital Inspiration, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 08/02/2012 under WordPress, Software.

Facebook has rolled out a Google+ style photo viewer that displays user comments and ads next to the picture in an overlay window. Thus, you don’t have to scroll the page to read the comments and the photo viewer adjusts itself as you re-size the browser window.

Switch to the Old Layout of Facebook Photos

If you are viewing any photo in Facebook and would like to use the classic layout – where photos are displayed on a separate page and not inside a pop-up – you can do that in a couple of ways:

• While the photo viewer is active, press F5 on your keyboard (or hit the “reload” button in the browser) to refresh the Facebook photo page. This should open the photo without the overlay.
• Or go to address bar of your browser, remove the string “&theater” from the photo URL and hit Enter.
• Or the easiest option is that you hold the CTRL key while clicking the thumbnail of any photo on Facebook and this should open the corresponding photo in a new tab but without the lightbox effect.

Please see the following screencast for details.

This story, How to Get the Classic Photo Viewer in Facebook, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 08/02/2012 under Facebook, Internet.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at SponsorPay, GREE International, Inc., Social Point, King.com, Atari, TinyCo, Addmired, PlayMesh, Spooky Cool Labs, Identified, XMG Studio, FashionPlaytes, Inc., Stealth Mobile Startup, Plumbee, Mobile Deluxe and Game Show Network.

• Director of Developer Relations

• Director of Business Development
• Senior Manager, Corporate Development

• Product Manager (Video Games)
• iOS Developer
• Senior Systems Administrator

• 3D Artist
• IT Support Engineer
• Game Developer – Social and Mobile Games
• Ad Operations Traffic
• Senior Producer, Social Games – King.com
• Product Manager Network

• Monetization Analyst – Mobile/Social Games
• Acquisition Marketing Manager – Mobile Games
• Mobile Producer
• Mobile Advertising Sales Manager
• Business Development Director – Mobile Games

• Data Analyst
• Product Manager
• C++ Game Engineer
• Game Designer
• UI Artist

• UX Artist
• Erlang Infrastructure Developer
• C/C++ Game Developer
• Tools Engineer
• Scalability Engineer
• Build/Release Engineer
• Senior Producer/Project Manager
• QA/CS Director
• Senior Operations Engineer
• Acquisition Manager/Mobile Ad Buyer

• Backend Game Developer

• Marketing Director
• Software Engineer – Games Front End/Unity

• Core Software Engineer

• Data Jockey

• Social Game Designer

Stealth Mobile Startup

• Senior Android Engineer

• Head of Mobile/Senior Mobile Producer

• Art Director
• Senior Programmer

• Senior QA Engineer-Mobile Games

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

Fellows have specialties including mobile computing, computer networking and cloud computing, machine learning, storage systems, search, distributed systems, programming language technology, computer security, programming languages, computer security, distributed data storage and programming languages and computer security.

Mobile coverage in Africa could mean growth for Facebook – French mobile carrier Orange announced a new service for low-end mobile phones in Africa, meaning that about 70 million subscribers may now be able to access Facebook.

ISS criticizes Facebook’s shareholder rights – Institutional Shareholder Services analysts wrote this week that Facebook’s dual-class share structure may cause problems if the structure ever changes. Analysts wrote that this dual structure potentially divides owners into opposing groups, creating potential for future conflict.

Microsoft’s Windows phone Facebook app upgraded - A new version the Facebook app for Microsoft’s Windows Phone, was introduced this week and includes a new profile design, banner images, access to pages, groups, the ability to view Likes and more.

Australian film simultaneously released in theaters, Facebook - “Tomorrow, When the War Began” is an Australian film that is set to be released into U.S. theaters, Facebook and VOD at the same time, on Feb. 24. The film is being distributed by Milyoni’s Social Cinema technology. [Image via Facebook]

Paul Ceglia owes Facebook $76K – The man who claims to own part of Facebook, Paul Ceglia, owes the company a hefty sum of legal fees, according to U.S. Magistrate Judges Leslie Foschio. The judge ordered Ceglia to pay about $76,000 in legal fees to the company.

Vitrue’s SRM livestreams Coldplay across 240 pages – iHeartRadio used Vitrue’s SRM technology to livestream a Coldplay concert across 240 Clear Channel-affiliated pages last week.

Page post ads are a relatively new offering from Facebook. Instead of developing creative with a headline, body copy and image, businesses can promote posts they already made on their Facebook pages. Brighter Option now shows posts’ engagement metrics within the ad creation section, which gives advertisers more context than Facebook’s self-serve dashboard and other ad tools provide.

Brighter Option CEO Peter Goodman says part of the goal with this feature is to solve some of the problems that result when companies have different agencies doing advertising and page management. Bringing page insights to the ad builder increases efficiency and we imagine it will encourage advertisers to rethink what type of content works best in Facebook ads.

The Social Ad Manager has come a long way since we profiled the tool in 2010. The London-based company has introduced several features that make Facebook ad planning and campaign management less onerous. We liked the easy navigation between analytics and scheduling, the find-and-replace feature for making copy changes across multiples ads, the ZIP code area map and shortcuts in the creative builder. For advertisers seeking a software solution rather than managed services for Facebook advertising, Brighter Option is worth testing. The company offers a free trial of its tool.

Santorum also has a very high ratio of People Talking About This to total Likes — about 48 percent compared to Newt Gingrich’s 18 percent, Ron Paul’s 9 percent and Mitt Romney’s 6 percent. Part of this is attributable to the influx of new fans after Santorum swept the Super Tuesday elections. The other factor is how active his team has been making between 9 and 17 posts each day.

Gingrich has had the slowest fan page growth of all the candidates this month. He is the only candidate, however, to create a Timeline profile and enable subscribers. He has fewer than 2,800 subscribers as of this post, but if he can work with Facebook to get a verified account, Gingrich could start to see more subscribers. So far his team is making more posts to the fan page than Timeline, but we will watch how the use of each space evolves over the course of the campaign.

The next primaries are in Arizona and Michigan on Feb. 28.

Page tab and other page applications were popular on our list of emerging apps by monthly active users, there were a group of games led by Jewels of the Amazon, an app from Walmart and Angry Birds, too.

The apps grew from between 130,000 and 310,000 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook. We define emerging applications as those that ended with between 100,000 and 1 million MAU in the past week.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Static IFRAME Tab	940,000	+310,000	+ 49%
2.	Jewels of the Amazon	730,000	+260,000	+ 55%
3.	Static IFRAME Tab : Page Icon	770,000	+240,000	+ 45%
4.	Static HTML… [Ninth Tab]	780,000	+220,000	+ 39%
5.	Woobox Custom Tab | Arrow #2	790,000	+220,000	+ 39%
6.	Sweepstakes	1,000,000	+210,000	+ 27%
7.	我的王國(My Kingdom)	880,000	+200,000	+ 29%
8.	My Local Walmart	270,000	+190,000	+ 238%
9.	Hoop De Loop Saga	650,000	+160,000	+ 33%
10.	FBML Tab Maker	470,000	+150,000	+ 47%
11.	Tab Builder: Basic Blue (3)	650,000	+150,000	+ 30%
12.	Tower Blocks	820,000	+150,000	+ 22%
13.	Woobox Custom Tab | Arrow #3	550,000	+150,000	+ 38%
14.	Woobox Custom Tab | Arrow #4	490,000	+150,000	+ 44%
15.	Angry Birds Seasons	630,000	+140,000	+ 29%
16.	Lucky Cruise	690,000	+140,000	+ 25%
17.	Static IFRAME Tab	800,000	+140,000	+ 21%
18.	Tab Builder: Badge	810,000	+140,000	+ 21%
19.	What’s Hot	140,000	+133,000	+ 1,900%
20.	21 Preguntas	620,000	+130,000	+ 27%

Tab apps, ranging from sweepstakes, iFrame, HTML, FBML and badges on our list grew from between 310,000 MAU to 140,000 MAU. The My Local Walmart app helps users locate their local stores via zip codes. Angry Birds Seasons is an app that allows users to send cards to their friends. Quiz app 21 Preguntas asks users to invite all their friends to the app before using it.

Games were also popular on the list, as we mentioned, ranging from Jewels of the Amazon which grew by 260,000 to Lucky Cruise with 140,000 MAU.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned next week for our look at the top weekly gainers by monthly active users on Monday, the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

Suggested guests are listed on the right side of the event page along with an invite button. Facebook seems to serve suggestions based on interests relevant to the event and mutual friends attending. This test feature could increase awareness and attendees for public events.

For instance, an event page for a concert might suggest friends who listen to the artist on Spotify and could lead people to decide to go together. This is more likely to occur if users can see why a person is listed as a suggested guest. Currently the module displays friends without any context.

This is another of several recent improvements to the events product. About two months ago, the social network introduced “Suggested Events“ to give users recommendations about events based on Open Graph activity, pages they Like and events that friends are attending. In November 2011, Facebook updated the event page UI. We’ve also seen Facebook testing a “Make Plans” option above News Feed.

Users with verified accounts will appear more often in “People To Subscribe To” recommendations on the site, but unlike on Twitter and Google+, there will be no visual indication that a profile is official. These users will also have the option to display their more well-known pseudonyms, if applicable. For example, Curtis Jackson could choose to go by his stage name 50 Cent across the site, instead of displaying it as an alternate name as he does now. (See image below.)

Facebook says users with a large number of subscribers will see a notification to verify their accounts. Not everyone who allows subscribers will see this option, and for now, users cannot request to be verified.

What this does

For Facebook, verifying accounts seems to be about improving its recommendations systems. Recommendation modules around the site have been key to the growth of the social network’s new subscribe feature. This will ensure that Facebook is presenting users with the real profiles of people they’re in which interested.

Serving quality recommendations and being flexible about names helps Facebook compete with Twitter as a platform for asymmetrical relationships. Public figures who are known by pseudonyms will appreciate the option to display that name more prominently. A verified user’s birth name will still be shown in the About section of Timeline.

What this doesn’t do

Currently, there isn’t a way for users to definitively tell whether an account is the official profile of someone to whom they want to subscribe. There are already plenty of fake celebrity profiles on the site, and as more public figures begin to use Facebook, the number of impostors will likely increase. The company will need to do something to distinguish its verified accounts or work harder to eliminate the fakes.

Facebook didn’t offer details on how verification might affect search. Subscriber numbers do not currently seem to influence how a user is ranked in search. This is frustrating for users and could lead some people to connect with fake pages.

New hires per LinkedIn:

• Joshua Smith, Lead Privacy Counsel – former senior legal director of privacy at Yahoo Inc.
• Peter Cottle, Software Engineer - former autopilot software development intern at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.
• Brian Thomas, Software Engineer - former software engineering intern at Willow Garage.
• Faith Haddad, Ad Review, Risk – former marketing intern at A Glimmer of Hope Foundation.
• Neasa Costin Bannon, Client Partner UK – former sales manager at 98FM.

Posts added this week on Facebook’s Careers Page:

• Software Engineer, Mail
• Data Warehouse Operations Manager
• Network Operations Engineers 120102
• Manager, Production Engineering
• Strategic Partner Development, Gaming
• Strategic Partner Development, Prepaid Card Partnerships
• Software Engineer 120201
• Software Engineer, Ads and Pages (New York)
• Software Engineer, Mail
• Software Engineer, Search Infrastructure
• Software Engineer, Search Product
• Software Engineer, Search Ranking
• Multimedia Designer
• Associate, Business Operations, Mid-Market Sales (Austin)HR Specialist EMEA – Contract (Dublin)
• Data Warehouse Operations Manager
• Lead, EMEA People Services (Dublin)
• Technical Sourcer – Contract (Dublin)
• Salesforce Administrator
• Business Intelligence Engineer
• Data Analyst
• Physical Security Manager, Data Centers (Forest City, NC)
• Physical Security Systems Designer, Data Centers
• Physical Security Systems Designer, Offices
• eCrime Analyst
• Analyst, Measurement Solutions (New York)
• Lead, Measurement Solutions (New York)
• Senior Analyst, Custom Market Insights (Sydney)
• Ad Regulation Specialist
• Communications Specialist
• Privacy Specialist
• Safety Specialist
• Payroll Specialist
• Senior Reporting Analyst
• Administrative Assistant (Madrid)
• Administrative Assistant (Milan)
• Associate General Counsel, Labor & Employment
• Compliance Associate
• Account Manager, Toronto
• DSO Account Manager (Tokyo)
• DSO Account Manager, Japan (Tokyo)
• Associate, Ad Operations
• Associate, Business Operations, Mid-Market Sales (Austin)
• Team Lead 120202
• Head of Policy (Russia)
• Partner Manager, Marketing API (Dublin)
• Client Partner (Melbourne)
• Client Partner, Commercial Development (Sydney)
• Client Partner, Korea (Singapore)
• Associate, User Operations, Intellectual Property (Austin)
• Associate, User Operations, Pages (Austin)
• Associate, User Operations, Site Integrity
• Marketing Manager, LATAM (Sao Paulo)
• Partner Engineer, Platform
• Global Customer Marketing Pod Lead (New York)
• Industry Relations Manager (New York)
• Strategic Partner Development, Gaming
• Strategic Partner Development, Prepaid Card Partnerships

Jobs posted by Facebook on LinkedIn:

• Client Partner, Australia (Singapore), Facebook
• Account Manager, Online Sales Operations, Australia (Singapore), Facebook
• Senior Analyst, Custom Market Insights (Sydney), Facebook
• Manager, Custom Market Insights (Singapore), Facebook
• Client Partner, Korea (Singapore), Facebook
• Associate General Counsel, Labor & Employment, Facebook\
• Manager, National Sales, Global Marketing Solutions (Austin), Facebook
• Client Partner (Austin), Facebook
• Manager, Risk Management (Austin), Facebook
• Operations Engineer, Facebook
• Custom Market Insights, Senior Analyst : Nordics
• Custom Market Insights Senior Analyst :France and Southern Europe
• Custom Market Insights, Senior Analyst : DACH, Benelux
• Analyst, SMB Growth – German (Dublin)
• Analyst, SMB Growth – UK and Ireland (Dublin)
• Analyst, SMB Growth – Italian (Dublin)
• Custom Market Insights Senior Analyst, London
• International Fixed Assets General Ledger Accountant (EMEA)
• Partner Manager, Marketing API (Dublin)
• Client Partner, Commercial Development (Sydney)
• Compliance Associate
• Business Operations Manager (Singapore)
• Learning and Development Consultant (Hyderabad)
• Legal Counsel (Hyderabad)
• Public Policy Manager (Sao Paulo)

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Marketers have been dreaming up ways to use Timeline for businesses since the new profile debuted at f8, but Timeline hasn’t been an option for brands because the social network requires companies use pages instead of profiles.

Timeline could be a significant improvement for pages, which users typically visit once to Like but they rarely return or spend much time on them. Giving brands more control over their presence on the social network is important for Facebook to maintain an advantage over Twitter and Google+. The change, however, could affect page tab apps, in which some companies have heavily invested over the past few years.

Page owners can look forward to a new design that allows for more branding with a cover photo and the option to resize posts. On the current pages, posts get easily lost, but with the Timeline algorithm, more important posts are surfaced when a user scrolls. Users can more easily find content that was shared weeks or even years ago. With an update to Facebook pages, businesses might also gain the ability to make posts to the past, as users now can with Timeline to share their history. A car company, for instance, might share photos of old models or a drink company might post vintage commercials.

A big question remains: what will happen to tab applications? Many pages — from top global brands to small local businesses — have invested in iFrame apps to welcome users to their pages or provide additional experiences. The company has frequently changed the size of tabs, forcing developers to redesign their apps, and it could do so again.

We also wonder whether Facebook’s mobile product will begin to support page apps, particularly if the company plans to bring Sponsored Story ads to mobile devices soon. Most advertisers will want a custom landing page if they are running a campaign, but perhaps a unique cover photo will satisfy that need.

The last time Facebook redesigned profile pages in December 2010, business pages got a matching update in February. “We hope to make pages more consistent with Timeline in the future, but we have nothing further to share at this time,” a Facebook spokesperson says.

O’Neill rhetorically asked in this New York Times op-ed piece:

• Which of the reform proposals will eliminate the millions of infections acquired at hospitals every year?

• Which of the proposals will eliminate the annual toll of 300 million medication errors? 

• Which of the proposals will eliminate pneumonia caused by ventilators?

• Which of the proposals will eliminate falls that injure hospital patients?

• Which of the proposals will capture even a fraction of the roughly $1 trillion of annual “waste” that is associated with the kinds of process failures that these questions imply?

“So far,” O’Neill wrote, “The answer to each question is ‘none.’”

O’Neill calls it waste – that is, the unnecessary harms done to patients on a daily basis and, he estimates, a trillion dollars in annual costs to address those harms. He said that hospitals themselves can adopt simple processes, such as hand-washing and proper preparation of surgical sites, to cut down on costly injuries and deaths. He also suggested that members of Congress seek more information on the dire problem of hospital-acquired infections, provider errors and other similar “waste indictors.”  To sum up, he said: “(A)ny health care reform that does not address the pervasive waste and the associated burden of needless suffering for patients and staff alike will give us little to celebrate.”

Congress should heed O’Neill’s call. 

Wide support exists across party lines for Arbitration Fairness Act; consumers, employees from around U.S. lobby lawmakers today

Washington, DC – Americans widely oppose corporations using mandatory binding arbitration clauses in the fine print of consumer and employment contracts, according to national polling of likely voters conducted by Lake Research Partners.

Forced arbitration clauses are hidden in the fine print of everything from cell phone, home, credit card and retirement account terms of agreement to employment and nursing home contracts. Just by taking a job or buying a product or service, consumers and employees are forced to give up their right to take their case to court if they are harmed by a corporation.

The poll results bolster already heightened scrutiny by lawmakers of credit cards, mortgages, and other common consumer and employee contracts. The bipartisan Arbitration Fairness Act (H.R. 1020) was introduced by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) in the House of Representatives and will be introduced in the Senate by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) today. The measure will ensure that the decision to arbitrate is made voluntarily and after a dispute has arisen, so corporations cannot manipulate the arbitration system in their favor at the expense of consumers. The Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act (S. 512 / H.R. 1237), introduced by Sens. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) and Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) and Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), would eliminate forced arbitration clauses in nursing home contracts.

"The findings show clearly that Americans strongly oppose forced arbitration, and they see the Arbitration Fairness Act as a remedy. Not only is there real intensity to this view, but it traverses traditional partisan divides," said Lake Research Partners President Celinda Lake. "Forced arbitration clauses – which are buried in the fine print of employment and consumer contracts – are another example of corporations taking advantage of ordinary Americans. The public supports the Arbitration Fairness Act because equal justice under the law is a core American value."

The poll shows that:

• Six in 10 likely voters support the Arbitration Fairness Act – including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and Independents;
• 59 percent of likely voters oppose the use of mandatory binding arbitration clauses in employment and consumer contracts;
• Two-thirds of respondents cannot remember ever reading about a forced arbitration provision buried in the fine print of employment terms or agreement for goods and services; and,
• More than 70 percent of respondents believe they could take their employer or a corporation to court in the event of a dispute, unaware they could be subjected to mandatory binding arbitration.

The results were unveiled today at a press conference in Washington, D.C., organized by the Fair Arbitration Now Coalition, which represents consumers, employees, homeowners and franchise holders. The groups range from Public Citizen, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the National Employment Lawyers Association and the American Association for Justice to the National Consumer Voice for Long-Term Care, Home Owners for Better Building and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

“The Arbitration Fairness Act does not seek to eliminate arbitration and other forms of alternative dispute resolution agreed to voluntarily after a dispute arises,” the groups wrote last month in a letter to lawmakers. "Its sole aim is to end the unscrupulous business practice of forcing consumers and employees into biased arbitrations by binding them long before any disputes arise."

More than 50 consumers, employees and advocates lobbied lawmakers today to pass the Arbitration Fairness Act. They came from Alabama, California, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia to speak about how forced arbitration makes it nearly impossible to hold companies accountable for wrongdoing.

"One of our indelible rights is the right of a jury trial," Johnson said. "Guaranteed by the Constitution, this right has been gradually ceded by citizens every day as they purchase a new cell phone, buy a home, place a loved one in a nursing home, or accept a new job. Once used as a tool for businesses to solve their disputes, arbitration agreements have found their way into employment, consumer, franchise and medical contracts."

Added Feingold, "Americans are sick and tired of a system that so strongly favors big corporations over consumers and in this case robs them of their constitutional right to their day in court," Feingold said. "Americans are often given no choice but to give up their rights if they want to sign credit card agreements, cell phone contracts, job applications or other basic contracts. It's time for Congress to side with consumers and employees and end this practice of forced arbitration, which stacks the deck against the people Congress is supposed to represent."

Members of Congress will hear from people like David Kurth, of Burlington, Wis., whose father William died in 2005 due to severe neglect of care while in a nursing home facility. When the Kurth family tried to hold the nursing home corporation accountable in court, they were told that another family member had signed a forced arbitration clause. A judge agreed and said the case could not be heard in court.

"Nursing home corporations are using arbitration clauses as liability shields to insulate them from their own wrongful conduct," said Kurth at today’s press conference.

The survey reached 800 adults nationwide, 18 years or older, who are likely to vote in the 2010 elections. The overall margin of error is +/-3.5%. The poll was commissioned by The Employee Rights Advocacy Institute For Law & Policy and Public Citizen, and funded by The Public Welfare Foundation. Pollsters Celinda Lake and Daniel Gotoff of Lake Research Partners are also available to discuss the poll results. Please see media contacts above to arrange any interviews.

For more information, visit www.FairArbitrationNow.org.

CONTACT:

Ray De Lorenzi , American Association for Justice
202-965-3500 x749, ray.delorenzi@justice.org

Angela Bradbery, Public Citizen
202-588-7741, abradbery@citizen.org

Donna Lenhoff, The Employee Rights Advocacy Institute For Law & Policy
202-898-2880, dlenhoff@nelahq.org

The study – released Wednesday by the Searle Center, a conservative Northwestern University think tank – found that consumers received an award in 53 percent of the cases they initiated and received about 52 percent of the amount they sought in those cases. Businesses received an award in 84 percent of cases they brought and won 93 percent of what they ask for in those cases. This means that businesses got roughly 78 percent of what they sought compared to 28 percent for consumers.

Nonetheless, Lisa Rickard, the chief of the Chamber of Commerce’s legal policy arm, raced out a statement claiming the study showed arbitration to be "a fair, inexpensive and unbiased option" for consumers. (Her use of the word “option” was a bit ironic given that the Searle report examined only cases in which consumers were forced into arbitration by a contract clause; meanwhile, the Chamber is vigorously fighting the Arbitration Fairness Act, which would ensure that consumers have the option to go to court.)

While it is difficult to construe a finding of fairness from the study’s results (Businesses 78, Consumers 28), other data in the report undermined the proposition of arbitration’s fairness in a much more fundamental way – and the Chamber swallowed it whole.

The study found that AAA flagged nearly a quarter (23 percent) of the cases it received because businesses had included terms in their arbitration clauses that violated AAA’s due process rules. These violations included imposing excessive costs on consumers, limiting remedies, calling for arbitration hearings to be held in distant locations, and failing to provide for an impartial arbitrator. In most instances, the business agreed to modify its rules and the case went forward. But AAA refused to take nearly 10 percent of the cases.

Rickard cheered this finding: "AAA actively promotes consumer fairness by strictly enforcing their due process rules and refusing to administer arbitration in cases where businesses were repeat violators of the AAA’s protocol."

Oops. While this finding made AAA look good, it is devastating to the current legal regime surrounding arbitration, which is akin to the Wild West. Let’s say, purely hypothetically, that AAA is a paragon of fairness, and is entirely impervious to financial incentives to recruit and maintain customers. Maybe, in fact, AAA’s business clients so value their reputation that they will only use an arbitration firm of impeccable integrity. The Searle study touches on this proposition by suggesting that some businesses might actually want pro-consumer arbitrators just as some retailers instruct their return-desk employees "to give customers every benefit of the doubt."

This view sounds a bit Pollyannaish. But even if accurate in some cases, it still would do absolutely nothing for consumers who find themselves in disputes against companies that do not share that outlook – which are likely the vast majority. Does anybody really believe payday lenders are guided by a "customer is always right" philosophy? What about health insurers? Credit card and cell phone providers? Most businesses have every incentive to choose an arbitration firm that’s good for the business, not the consumer. Public Justice litigator Paul Bland pointed this out in response to a Wall Street Journal blog item. [Scroll to “Update” for Bland’s remarks]

It’s important to realize that businesses have complete control in designating who is eligible to conduct their arbitrations, that arbitration firms are entirely self-regulating, and that consumers’ recourse against even the most blatantly egregious arbitration rulings is next to nil.

None of this is to say that the report completely exonerates AAA. The study also revealed that while AAA polices contract terms in lower stakes cases, it does not do so for higher-stakes cases (those in which more than $75,000 is at stake). This is not a misprint. "Administrative review is limited to cases seeking $75,000 or less," the Searle study says. "The Protocol still applies in cases in which the claimant seeks more than $75,000, but in those cases decisions on application of the Protocol are for the arbitrator."

AAA’s fallibility and the lack of any assurances about other firms point to consumers enjoying almost no expectations of fairness in binding mandatory arbitration. Sure, arbitration might look fair in some instances. But those instances wouldn’t say much about the overall fairness of a system in which one side of a legal dispute can force the other into a hand-picked, private tribunal. Accepting that kind of system amounts to a public policy of crossing one’s fingers and hoping for a benevolent master. If our Founders had that philosophy, they would have commissioned a search committee for a better king and spared themselves from spending a hot summer in Philadelphia – indoors, with the windows closed – while they hammered out a system of checks and balances.

As we've said over and over again, whistleblowers ensure real accountability, protect our tax dollars in the stimulus and other government spending, and are indispensable to a healthy, non-corrupt government. It's a disgrace that speaking out about government fraud, misconduct, waste and corruption is still such a risky endeavor, especially in these times, after countless studies have verified that whistleblowers are the most effective weapon against fraud.

If you can, please join us in D.C. and take a stand for government accountability and civil servant rights.  But if you can't make it to Washington, you can still help. You can join those making the rounds to members of Congress from home.

For more information about this event and whistleblower and taxpayer rights, visit us here.

The other hand promptly took away the common-sense gun control laws put into place by the locally-elected government of Washington, D.C.

Senator John Ensign (R-NV) offered an amendment to the D.C. House Voting Rights Act (61-37) that - if it should become law - could make D.C. one of the most free-wheeling-gun-toting places in the country.  It passed by 62-36.  That's right - more guns got one vote more than democracy.

First of all, what business does Congress have removing safeguards on selling and possessing firearms that meet the standards set by the highest court?  The D.C. City Council recently amended its local gun laws to comply with a Supreme Court ruling.  There is no sound reason for Congress to use extraordinary powers to preempt the democratic will of the people of D.C. - especially to make the city less safe. 

This gun measure is more than symbolism, or politics:  It's about public safety.  Specifically, the gun amendment would undermine federal anti-trafficking laws, repeal D.C.’s ban on military-style weapons, allow teenagers to possess semiautomatic assault rifles, and prohibit D.C. from passing laws that could “discourage” gun possession or use, by anyone - even children or felons.

And exactly what do gun laws have to do with the right to vote?  House leadership should not consider this or any other non-germane proposal with this civil and voting rights bill.  This is about righting a historic wrong and bringing more democracy to the so-called capital of the free world.  

It seems some in Congress think it is within their power to rule over the more than half a million people who live in the District of Columbia, even if those people have no democratic representation in Congress. This has got to change. It's time to tell members of the House that We the People are more powerful than the gun lobby who are pushing to have their interests imposed upon District residents. 

The House likely will vote on the bill on Wednesday, March 4.  Hopefully, they will walk our nation's democratic talk and do right by the people of D.C. by restoring their voting representation in the House AND rejecting any attempts to undermine their local democratic government.  If they succeed, members of the House will then need to negotiate with the Senate for the removal of the dangerous and unnecessary gun amendment.  President Obama should not have to consider whether to sign a divisive gun measure into law at the same time he acts to return voting rights to the citizens of the District.

If you live outside of Washington, D.C., please feel enfranchised to give your rep. a nudge to take a stand for more democracy now.  District residents can thank their non-voting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, for tirelessly fighting for their rights.

David W. Ogden, who has been nominated to be the next Deputy Attorney General, last week expressed strong support for government whistleblowers who help to expose corruption or malfeasance.

“I am a big believer in whistleblowers,” he said at his February 5 confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, “and in the need to make sure that people feel comfortable coming forward to make complaints.”

“I think what we need is a process that encourages whistleblowing in this administration and any other administration going forward. The business of making sure that we’re doing the right thing is an ongoing business,” Mr. Ogden said in response to a question from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

He said he would work with the Attorney General “to fashion an appropriate process that encourages whistleblowers to raise issues that need to be addressed.”

Mr. Ogden also indicated a willingness to consider public disclosure of certain legal opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Sen. Ron Wyden noted that “there are a lot of important rulings that go to the meaning of surveillance law, and I think that a lot of those kinds of judgments really could be redacted and declassified so that the country could be brought in in a more informed, a more complete way to these national-security debates.”

“I absolutely will commit to take a fresh look at this issue if I’m confirmed,” Mr. Ogden said.

FIS Court opinions that interpret surveillance law were one of several categories of “secret law” that were identified (pdf) in an April 30, 2008 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the subject.

Original post available here.

Below is an important letter from Bunnatine Greenhouse who spoke up regarding the approval of a highly improper muti-billion dollar no bid contract to Halliburton for the reconstruction of Iraq. In retaliation for her courage she was removed from her position as the highest-ranking civilian contracting official at the Army Corps of Engineers.

My name is Bunny Greenhouse. I am the former Procurement Executive and highest-ranking Army Corps of Engineers civilian procurement official.

Today I am asking you to contact your Senators and Representatives to demand, in the strongest possible terms, that employees who disclose fraud in federal contracting are fully and properly protected in the 800 billion dollar stimulus package that Congress is currently debating. Here's why.

Shortly before the Iraq War commenced, I blew the whistle on improper contracting concerning the award of a multi-billion dollar no-bid, cost plus contract to Halliburton/KBR for the reconstruction of Iraq.

I was concerned that improper contracting activity would cost the taxpayers billions – and it did. The contract should not have been awarded. From my inside prospective, it was clear that the “fix was in” – the contract was going to be awarded to Halliburton no matter what I said or did.

Those who should have protested the contract remained silent. And their silence is not surprising because, as federal employees, we have no meaningful whistleblower protection! We can be fired for reporting fraud. We can lose our careers simply for doing our job and trying to protect the taxpayer.
I know this is true. It happened to me. The top brass demanded that I drop my protests. I refused. The top brass – many of whom had longstanding relations with government contractors – retaliated. They removed me from the Senior Executive Service and from anything having to do with contract oversight. When I went to federal court to demand protection the judge dismissed my case because as a federal employee I had no protection.

The bottom line is that without access to independent courts, real judges and juries, whistleblowers don’t stand a chance, and fairness and transparency will not see the light day.

Only Congress can fix this. The House of Representatives has already acted decisively by adding H.R. 985 to the stimulus bill, by a unanimous voice vote (now called H.R. 1, Section IV). President Obama's presidential campaign is on record as supporting the same whistleblower protections now found in House version of the stimulus bill.

So, the buck stops with the Senate. I urge you to contact your Senators and let them know that whistleblower protection is a critical part of the stimulus package for protection of the public trust. I urge you to contact your Representatives and tell them to hold strong -- and refuse to cut whistleblower protections from the bill. Federal employees, like me, who risk their careers to protect taxpayer money need to be protected.

Please act now! Pass this letter to your friends! Pass this letter to your co-workers! Pass this letter to your family! Send a letter to your Senator Now!

Billions of taxpayer dollars are at stake and it is up to the Senate to do the right thing.

Very truly yours,

Bunnatine H. Greenhouse
Former Procurement Executive
Army Corps of Engineers

This is a true victory for taxpayers who will be well-served if the final stimulus bill empowers hard-working federal employees and contractors who are uniquely positioned to observe and report if funds are mishandled. Workplace retaliation for reporting wrongdoing is real and ruthless. That’s why we have long fought for these critical protections. 

The original Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 has become ineffective, worn down by obstructionist administrative policies and a monopoly court that repeatedly left whistleblowers vulnerable and without justice. The consequences of the gutting of this law have never been more apparent as we suffer an economic crisis brought on by a culture of secrecy in government and unregulated greed and corruption on Wall Street. 

The new whistleblower provisions should become law so that federal whistleblowers will no longer fear intimidation and retaliation for reporting wrongdoing. The whistleblower measures overturn a series of activist court decisions and include consideration for and protections of disclosures of possible wrongdoing made during regular job duties; codify protections against retaliatory investigations; allow for due process for security clearance revocation – a favorite reprisal technique; extend specific protections to federally funded scientists, as well as baggage screeners and other Transportation Security Administration personnel; and end the monopoly of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals of appellate review, restoring the right to an appeal in any appropriate U.S. court of appeals and access to jury trials.

The new whistleblower protection measure originally was championed by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and passed the House by a vote of 331-94 in 2007, but eventually was stymied by Senate inaction. Thanks largely to the support and leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as that of Reps. Platts, Van Hollen, Waxman, Bruce Braley (D-Iowa), Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and the other representatives who have spoken out in support of the measure, these effective protections now can become the law of the land.

With our allies from a broad coalition of groups representing millions of concerned individuals, Public Citizen will continue to advocate for strong protections for federal workers and contractors so they can effectively safeguard the public trust and taxpayer dollars. It should not take incredible acts of courage to become a government whistleblower, as it does now, when only the bravest civil servants come forward to report waste, fraud and abuse. It’s time to end the era of repression and ensure that all civil servants feel safe to do their jobs and make our government more open and accountable to the American people.

• CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen responded to an absurd proposal from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to President-elect Obama: the way to get the country back on track economically is to exempt companies from legal liability. Cohen analogized this selfish and short-sighted appeal to "child who kills his parents and then begs for mercy because he is an orphan." I like to think of it as a drunk driver who gets pulled over and then suggests to the police that the best way to resolve the situation would be to give him his keys back and look the other way while he drives himself home. Cohen recognizes this shameless argument for what it is: nonsense.
• Following the Fed 's recent enactment of new credit card rules, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) called on lenders to comply with the reforms ASAP, rather than by the July 2010, date required by the rules. Other lawmakers have pledged to act quickly for more timely and comprehensive reforms. Last weekend, the New York Times editorialized that "promptly passing a credit card reform package" should be a priority for the next Congress.
• Class action lawsuits have been useful to consumers challenging baseless early termination fees (ETFs) in cellular telephone contracts. A recent story in the Times reported on efforts by Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) to investigate rate setting for cell phone text messaging plans. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those rates appear to be as baseless as ETFs. In another similarity to ETFs, consumers have begun filing class actions over text messaging rates.
• New America Foundation's blog has been following an old but infuriating story about a shady student lending practice in which lenders, like Ohio-based Key Bank, partner with unlicensed and unaccredited trade schools, disburse student loan money to the schools, and then refuse to discharge students of their debts when the schools go out of business. There is an FTC rule designed to protect students in these situations. One way that Key Bank has been evading the rule and other charges of unfairness over its practices is by including Binding Mandatory Arbitration clauses in the promissory notes. Key Bank insists that these are old cases, and it has ceased student loan operations (for the time being), but Key also received $2.5 billion from U.S. taxpayers (via the U.S. Treasury) as part of the bailout package.

Meanwhile, we must wait until after the New Year for word on a potential economic stimulus bill. Until this week, all signs seemed to indicate that authority for judges to modify mortgages would be included as part of the package. Now that congressional Republicans have indicated a willingness to drag their feet, the question appears to be not only whether the provision will be included in the stimulus, but also when the stimulus will be enacted.  Stay tuned.

Happy new year to all!

As we described earlier this week, pharmaceutical giant Wyeth has asked the Court to throw out an award to a patient whose right arm had to be amputated because a Wyeth drug was administered in a way that caused it to enter her arterial bloodstream, which was a well-known hazard. The patient, Diana Levine, persuaded a jury in state court that Wyeth's label should have warned against the method of injection that caused the drug to enter her arterial bloodstream and necessitated the amputation. Wyeth argues that the FDA's approval of its label should immunize it from liability over any of the label's shortcomings, thereby preempting state laws.  

JAMA's editorial says:  

The Wyeth v. Levine ruling will have far-reaching and profound implications for patients and drug safety. If the court rules in favor of Wyeth, endorsing preemption, patients will lose an irreplaceable method for seeking remedies for injuries resulting from pharmaceutical agents that were approved by FDA.  

Medical Marketing & Media has written a summary of the editorial, the first portion of which is available for free on JAMA's Web site. [subscription required to view the entire article]  

Given JAMA's pursuit of limitations on patients' rights to seek redress in court for medical malpractice, its endorsement of the civil justice system's merit as an adjunct to the regulatory system in the context of pharmaceuticals is somewhat surprising and deserving of commendation. Although the publication operates at arm's length from the American Medical Association, its staff serves at the pleasure of its parent association, as longstanding JAMA editor Dr. George Lundberg learned in 1999 when he was fired for fast-tracking an article about definitions of sex to coincide with the Clinton impeachment hearings, which JAMA's management deemed inappropriate.  

This month's editorial may have been influenced by a Dutch study published elsewhere in JAMA's October issue which found that 70 percent of biologicals approved in the United States and Europe between 1995 and 2007 wound up being investigated after they went on the market because of newly discovered side effects. Complications involving 19 of the 136 drugs approved in the United States were so serious that bold, black box warnings – the strongest notices carried on U.S. prescriptions – had to be created for them. Med Headlines has a summary of the study; JAMA has posted the abstract.

An opinion issued earlier this month by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals shows how willing the courts can be to uphold binding mandatory arbitration clauses even if the courts find elements of them unfair.

The case involved Linda Guyden, who was hired by Aetna Inc. in January 2004 as the company's internal audit director. Guyden soon concluded that Aetna's internal audit department was ineffective, leaving the company susceptible to violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. After receiving unsatisfactory responses from various members of Aetna's senior management team, Guyden took her concerns to the firm's CEO in August 2004. A week later, the firm's chief financial officer gave Guyden a withering performance review that conflicted with a positive review he had given her only a month earlier. Along the way, Guyden won an intra-company battle to hire an outside auditor. In November, ten days before Guyden was slated to present the outside auditor's report to the firm's audit committee, she was fired.

Guyden's case was custom-made for a clause in Sarbanes-Oxley that provides whistleblower protections to employees who are fired for providing supervisors with information about potential violations of federal securities law. Guyden filed an administrative complaint with the Labor Department, as the statute requires. But Labor failed to take action, later explaining that it takes a hands-off approach to cases in which employees have signed an agreement to settle disputes in arbitration and the department is satisfied that the arbitration agreement will "adequately protect the employee's interests." Labor based this decision on a memo by former Solicitor of Labor Eugene Scalia (son of the Supreme Court justice) that was written in response to a Supreme Court decision expressly permitting government agencies to litigate on behalf of employees who had signed agreements to arbitrate. While purporting to "welcome" that authority, Scalia's memo called for balancing it with our "liberal federal policy favoring arbitration agreements," as the Supreme Court put it in 1983. Notably, the Court articulated that sentiment in the context of a business-versus-business dispute eight years before it even decided that the Federal Arbitration Act applied to employment disputes.

After Labor failed to take action, Guyden followed the statute's instructions to file a case in federal district court. Aetna, predictably, moved to force Guyden into arbitration. The district court granted the motion, and Guyden appealed.

Guyden's over-arching argument on appeal was that the arbitration clause should not apply to Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower claims because the statute was intended to serve the public purpose of protecting the financial markets. But the appeals court was not persuaded, noting that Congress had rejected amendments that would have forbidden mandatory arbitration of SOX whistleblower claims.

Aside from her sweeping claim against arbitration of SOX whistleblower claims, Guyden raised three complaints about Aetna's arbitration clause that she argued should have invalidated it.

First, Guyden attacked the clause's confidentiality provision, which said that "all proceedings, including the arbitration hearing and decision, are private and confidential, unless otherwise required by law."

The appeals court sympathized with Guyden, agreeing that "a lack of public disclosure may systematically favor companies over individuals." But the panel said it could not act on this concern because "confidentiality clauses are so common in the arbitration context" that attacking them would be "an attack on arbitration itself." That would constitute a "generalized attack" on arbitration, which the Supreme Court has prohibited in light of its "strong endorsement" of arbitration. Let's translate. The appeals panel found that confidentiality terms in arbitration clauses systemically favor businesses, but that such favoritism is so ubiquitous that it cannot be policed without impugning the very institution of arbitration, which the Supreme Court has deemed sacrosanct.

Next, Guyden argued that the arbitration clause's stipulation that the arbitrator would only be required to write a brief summary of his or her opinion could allow the arbitrator to issue a ruling at odds with the law and mask the flawed reasoning in a vague summary. That, Guyden said, would leave her without options for judicial review because "no one would be the wiser." Notably, Scalia's memo calls for arbitration clauses to require written awards "setting out not only the award but also the essential findings of fact and conclusions of law on which it is based" as a factor in determining whether arbitration would indeed protect the employee's interests and thereby justify Labor opting not to take up a case. But, just as these arbitration terms did not sway the Labor Department, they also failed to persuade the appeals court. Because Guyden could not show that the arbitrator would in fact ignore the law and mask that transgression in a vague opinion, the appeals court found this factor insufficient to strike down the clause. Of course, if the arbitrator did do as Guyden feared, that very act would likely deprive her of the evidence she would need to prove it.

Finally, Guyden argued that the arbitration clause's limitations on discovery, which permitted each party to depose only one person (aside from expert witnesses) without special permission from the arbitrator would prevent her from vindicating her claim. The appeals court again sympathized with Guyden, noting that deposing only one person was "unlikely to be adequate." Here too, Guyden might have expected support from the Labor Department, given that Scalia's memo calls for "access to the information reasonably relevant to the arbitration" and "reasonable mutual discovery" as factors in the department deferring to arbitration. But just as Guyden got no help from Labor, the appeals court also failed to step in. The panel said a claim about limited discovery in arbitration constituted "an attack on the character of arbitration itself," which, as previously discussed, it deemed off limits. Also, the court discounted Guyden's claim because the clause permitted the arbitrator to allow extra discovery. Because Guyden was unable to prove that the arbitrator would not exercise that discretion, the appeals court found Guyden's complaint insufficient "unless and until the record proves otherwise." It is unclear what record Guyden would be able to rely on later on.

Thus, Guyden struck out before the appeals court, and must decide whether to try her luck in arbitration. Meanwhile, the accounting problems that she raised and the outside auditor's report she commissioned remain secret.

The court of appeals agreed with some of Guyden's concerns but appeared to think its hands were tied by Supreme Court rulings that have interpreted the Arbitration Fairness Act as making arbitration agreements almost inviolable. The Court has based this interpretation on the faulty assumption that arbitration offers an equivalent form of justice to the courts. Such reasoning ignores the vital point that in nearly all business-versus-individual disputes, the business chooses the arbitration firm that handles the case. Obviously, allowing a business to hire a firm to choose the judges and juries who decide its disputes would be unthinkable in court.

The clearest solution to this mess is for Congress to pass the Arbitration Fairness Act, which would ban pre-dispute binding mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer and employment contracts altogether. Congress also should resolve any ambiguity that real whistleblower protections require due process and access to a jury trial. The Private Sector Whistleblower Protection Streamlining Act would do so by explicitly banning mandatory arbitration in Sarbanes-Oxley and similar whistleblower cases. In the meantime, the new president could show leadership on corporate and government accountability by issuing an executive order instructing the Labor Department and other agencies to pursue employment cases solely on the merits, regardless of any contractual arbitration claims.

The FDA's tarnished report on bisphenol A (BPA) is only the most recent incident of corporatized science. In this case, the FDA subcommittee reporting that an "adequate margin of safety exists for BPA at current levels of exposure from food contact uses" was chaired by Martin Philbert, acting director of the University of Michigan's Risk Science Center. The problem is, the Risk Science Center recently received a $5 million grant from Charles Gelman, founder of Gelman Instrument Company (now Pall Life Sciences) and firm believer that BPA is "risk free."

Gelman, whose company was once labeled the second worst polluter in Michigan by the state’s Department of Natural Resources, may not have bad intentions. And indeed, the Risk Science Center expects a permanent director to replace Philbert by the time Gelman's grant kicks in next year. But the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that Gelman and Philbert "talk often," and the Washington Post reports that Philbert failed to put Gelman's donation on his financial disclosure form. It all adds up to a relationship that's too close for comfort. As the New York Times says, "Consumers need to know that any decision on BPA is completely unbiased – and that the FDA is, too."

Despite the dangers of a potential toxin being present in hundreds of thousands of containers (including countless baby bottles), the past few months have brought far worse consequences because of the corporatization of science. Three other recent examples of the manipulation of clinical studies by pharmaceutical companies have made press.

First, it came to light that a clinical trial for the former Merck blockbuster drug Vioxx had, in fact, been an elaborate marketing technique. The Annals of Internal Medicine called it "marketing in the guise of science." The practice, called a "seeding trial," had long been suspected but had not been proven until brought to light during Vioxx litigation. "The apparent purpose is to test a hypothesis," Annals wrote. "The true purpose is to get physicians in the habit of prescribing a new drug." Far from being just another type of trial, "seeding trials" constitute fraud on review boards, researchers, doctors and patients. The documents obtained in discovery show "that deception is the key to a successful seeding trial."

Second, it was revealed that Merck employees were writing papers on Vioxx and then recruiting physicians to take the credit (and lend credibility). The Journal of the American Medical Association concludes:

This case-study review of industry documents demonstrates that clinical trial manuscripts related to rofecoxib [Vioxx] were authored by sponsor employees but often attributed first authorship to academically affiliated investigators who did not always disclose industry financial support. Review manuscripts were often prepared by unacknowledged authors and subsequently attributed authorship to academically affiliated investigators who often did not disclose industry financial support.

The author of that report, Joseph Ross, told the New York Times, "it almost calls into question all legitimate research that’s been conducted by the pharmaceutical industry with the academic physician."

Finally, the New York Times reports that Pfizer "manipulated studies" on its epilepsy drug Neurontin.

Pfizer's tactics included delaying the publication of studies that had found no evidence the drug worked for some other disorders, "spinning" negative data to place it in a more positive light, and bundling negative findings with positive studies to neutralize the results, according to written reports by the experts, who analyzed the documents at the request of the plaintiffs’ lawyers.

The common thread connecting these cases is that the pharmaceutical companies' fraud was only revealed through litigation – which is one reason why Wyeth v. Levine (Tort Deform, New York Times) is such an important case. In 2000, Diana Levine was given Wyeth’s drug Phenergan to combat nausea associated with her painkillers. But the drug was administered incorrectly, caused gangrene, which cost the professional guitarist her right arm. Levine sued Wyeth because Phenergan's label did not mention that the method used to administer the drug would inevitably cause gangrene. Wyeth appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the FDA’s approval of Phenergan's label immunizes it from Levine's lawsuit.

If the Supreme Court sides with Wyeth, these lawsuits will be blocked – forever. Since the FDA approval is based, in large part, on the very sort of studies that have proven to be tainted, such a decision would pervert Big Pharma's incentives. If Big Pharma feeds the FDA misleading information, it would be rewarded both with approval of its drugs and immunity from accountability if those drugs injure consumers. Maybe that's why the New England Journal of Medicine filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to reject Wyeth’s argument.

First, Kia Franklin relayed the news that a recent Department of Health and Human Services study cited 94% of nursing homes for violations of federal health and safety laws.  This underscores the need for legislation banning forced arbitration, which nursing homes use to immunize themselves from the accountability when they violate the law or hurt their residents through negligent treatment or abuse.  (Follow up on the Times story from Tortdeform here.  Read more about the nursing home arbitration bill here.)

Next, Justinian Lane recaps a study by two law professors about the reluctance of companies to use arbitration when dealing with one another.  The professors cited in the story have been following this issue for some time now, and their results have consistently shown the hypocrisy of corporations that tout arbitration as a fair, efficient, less costly method of dispute resolution between companies and consumers, or employers and employees, but not between one another.

It’s no secret that the government officials you elect to serve the public’s best interests often abuse their power and cost you your hard-earned dollars. So, when the average government employee witnesses the acts of corruption that continue to plague our political system, shouldn’t they have the freedom to speak up and protect the public’s rights without facing the risk of retaliation?

Though strong bills were passed last year that would provide whistleblowers with greater protection of their rights to free speech, now is the time to demand that Congress finish the job by passing a final bill.

The truth is plain and simple. Millions of taxpayer dollars have been squandered. Documents regarding our own nation’s security have been falsified. Scientific research has often been altered, or worse yet, brought to a complete stand-still. Yet, the very same employees who can defend our rights by blowing the whistle on the government misconduct have less protection than corporate employees enjoy. As a result, too few employees are willing to take on the risks of speaking out against government wrongdoings.

Wouldn’t it be nice to ensure that these everyday eyewitnesses of government corruption can stand up for public rights without feeling intimidated or threatened?

You can help! Stand up for the everyday heroes who protect your rights by taking action now. So far, more than 200 public interest organizations have signed on to urge Congress to change the status quo - and now you can too. Sign the Citizens’ Whistleblower Petition today or read more about what the Make It SAFE Coalition is doing to protect those who help to overcome political corruption. There is no better time than now to make Congress aware of the grassroots support for honesty and accountability within our government.

Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee followed its counterpart in the House and approved an important arbitration bill to protect residents in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, the Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act, S. 2838. The legislation, which a House committee approved in July, will make it easier to hold these facilities accountable for negligent or reckless acts that harm their residents. It prevents nursing homes from forcing residents to agree to arbitration before a dispute arises, allowing residents to turn to the courts in the event their nursing homes cause them serious injuries or death. Without this protection, nursing homes can force residents to take disputes to private arbitrators chosen by the nursing home itself. Guess who wins cases there?

The Judiciary Committee approved the bill despite vigorous opposition from the U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of business and nursing home industry organizations. The Justice Department embarrassed itself by making wacky and self-contradicting arguments in a letter to the Committee. It said Congress lacks authority to pass this bill, even though nursing home contracts are clearly within Congress's Commerce Clause power. It also urged Congress to leave the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) in place - even though the FAA regulates the very nursing home contracts that Congress supposedly can't regulate. (We wrote a letter responding to DOJ; Paul Bland wrote a great post on the DOJ letter over at CL&P.)

The Committee also heard from a coalition of industry groups, which wrote a letter that misrepresented nearly everything it discussed: the identity and interests of the letter's signers, the facts about arbitration, the current law, and the effect of the Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act. The group pretended to be interested in consumer protection, claimed that forcing consumers into arbitration preserves "consumer choice" and benefits consumers, claimed that nursing homes currently can't require arbitration as a condition of admission, and said the bill in Congress would virtually eliminate arbitration - when the bill actually would ensure that consumers can choose whether to go to arbitration voluntarily.

When someone needs to lie so much to make their case, you know they're on the wrong side of the issue. If this industry group told the truth, it would sound something like, "We're corporate lobbyists fighting for the right to neglect or abuse elderly nursing home residents with impunity. Our corporate clients want to make millions in profits without worrying about being held accountable if they hurt people." That message probably wouldn't win much support.

Fortunately, the Hill heard plenty from our broad, genuine coalition of consumer groups, which worked hard to educate congressional members on the bill's importance. More than 100 organizations from 30 states signed a letter supporting passage of the bill to protect the rights of nursing home residents and their families.

Now that the legislation is out of committee, it could go to the floor for a full vote in either house. This is the perfect time to call your members and urge them to turn this bill into law.