Hong Kong Asks Students to Stay in America Due to Swine Flu

By Heda Bayron 
Hong Kong
25 May 2009

 

Hong Kong has asked students in the United States to defer travel back home if they have symptoms of the flu. Several cases in Asia of A-H1N1 influenza, the swine-flu virus responsible for outbreaks in scores of countries worldwide, have been traced back to the United States. Authorities have asked the United States to screen passengers taking international flights to prevent the flu from further spreading.

The Cathay Pacific flight 831 from New York to Hong Kong on May 17th carried 300 passengers. Two of them came down with A-H1N1 influenza virus - an Australian doctor who headed to Taiwan where he was diagnosed as the island's first swine-flu case and a 19-year-old student who became the third case in Hong Kong. 

The same flight, arriving on May 22nd, carried a 20-year-old student sick with swine flu. On Sunday, a girl who had traveled to the United States became Hong Kong's seventh case.

Authorities here are worried about the way the virus is spreading. Several new cases of swine flu in Asia are people who arrived from the United States - where more than 65-hundred people have fallen ill. 

A woman in the Philippines who had traveled to Chicago and 19-year-old student who arrived in Shanghai from New York were among the latest cases in Asia Monday. 

Hong Kong's health secretary York Chow wrote to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, requesting exit screening measures at U.S. airports for travelers with flu-like symptoms who may spread the virus to other countries.

Dr. Gabriel Matthew Leung, undersecretary for health, says Hong Kong representative offices in the United States have contacted Hong Kong student organizations and appealed for students to defer travel during the summer break if they are sick.

"I would reiterate and re-emphasize my appeal to all those who are thinking of and planning to travel back from their studies especially from North America to make sure that they do not show any symptoms of influenza and that they do not have a fever before they board the flight. And of course, they should go to the doctor immediately if they do, and seek care locally where they are currently, in North America and make sure that they are fully recovered before they take the flight," Leung said.

In mainland China, students returning from overseas were told to avoid meeting relatives and friends days after arrival.

Dr. Thomas Tsang, head of Hong Kong's Center for Health Protection, says temperature scanning at the airport, where some 13-thousand passengers pass through daily, is still the city's first line of defense. 

"I think we cannot exclude from any country, or any place that is affected. That is why our port measures, we are targeting at every affected area," he said.

Since the first cases of the flu emerged in Asia, health authorities have tracked down and quarantined scores of people who flew on the same flight or stayed in the same hotel as those who had contracted the virus.  

Source: http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-05-25-voa20.cfm

 

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Scribd: ITunes for Books

Web Site Has a Read on Digital Book Sales

By Alex Pham - Los Angeles Times

Posted: 05/24/2009

 

Scribd is proposing to do for books what iTunes did for music — let readers buy only what they want to read.

 

Eight years ago, Apple turned the music industry upside-down when it launched iTunes, an online music store that let listeners cherry-pick one or two songs instead of having to buy an entire album.

 

Now Scribd is giving readers the option of buying content, including paying a few dollars for a chapter or two from a travel guide or a how-to book.

 

That's just one example of the flexibility that digital book purveyors are experimenting with as printed content migrates to the digital format. Another is the pricing model.

 

Paperbacks largely have been priced about $10 to $15, while hardcovers are $25 to $30. With digital books, that price could be any amount.

 

Scribd takes 20 percent of whatever price publishers and authors set for their works; the rest goes to the writer or publisher. Some authors, for example, are releasing their books on Scribd for $2.

 

One of them is Kemble Scott, a 46-year-old San Francisco writer whose first book, "SoMa," was published as a trade paperback in 2007. For his second book, "The Sower," Scott eschewed print and decided to debut his novel on Scribd as a $2 digital book.

 

Scott chose the digital route for its immediacy. His thriller includes a number of contemporary references such as swine flu and Susan Boyle, a Scottish singer who rose to media stardom on the wings of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

 

"Publishing a book the traditional way can take a year to 18 months from the time you find a publisher to the time it ends up on store shelves," Scott said.

 

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_12442826?source=email

 

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Google TV: Google Hits Upfront Marketplace

May 21, 2009

Daisy Whitney, THR.com

 

Google TV Ads has begun booking upfront deals with major agencies and advertisers for the first time.

Marketers are committing upwards of seven figures to buy ads through the TV spot buying system in the year ahead, with agencies like Deutsch and Saatchi & Saatchi and advertisers like Coldwell Banker coming to the table, said Mike Steib, director of Google TV Ads. 

The company planned to host an event at its offices in New York on Thursday with more than 100 chief marketing officers of Fortune 500 companies and their agencies, who are in town for the network upfronts. 

Many of the commitments run for a year starting in September. At first blush, that sort of long-term buy appears contradictory to the premise of Google TV Ads, which allows for automated, same-day buying. Steib explained that marketers can still buy or tweak their campaigns daily; they're simply agreeing to use Google TV Ads throughout the year. 

“What our customers told us if the planner can put us into the upfront plan, then the buyers are free to utilize the platform in the way…[that] works best for them,” he said.

They can also buy ads on YouTube now using Google TV Ads.

Advertising agency Deutsch is spending more than seven figures with Google TV Ads for the year ahead, marking a significant jump over its previous spend, said Peter Gardiner, chief marketing officer with Deutsch. 

However, the system is not a replacement for the traditional upfront, he added. It works best for straight spot buys, but integrated deals will still be done via traditional means, he said.

There are fundamental differences though between traditional TV buying and Google TV Ads. With Google TV ads, marketers only commit to use the technology to buy spots; they don't agree to buy particular networks or shows. They also set the prices they want to pay. In addition, advertisers can back out at any time, an attractive proposition during a recession. 

Earlier this year, Google TV Ads built new tools into the system to let advertisers pick spots based on demographics, such as household income, number of kids at home and consumer habits. That's accomplished using information from data provider Equifax paired with anonymous set-top boxes data from Google TV Ads' customer Echostar. In addition to buying across Echostar's 14 million homes, marketers can buy national spots on Sci-Fi, MSNBC, Hallmark Channel and other networks using the system. 

 

Source: http://www.adweekmedia.com/aw/content_display/mediaupfront/news/specialreports/e3ia00f4b58276bb2e3037e7f8000617d66?ref=mediaweek

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Real Time: The Web's New Prime Time

One of the most intense challenges is the new speed with which messages need to be crafted.

Advertisers try to keep up as the flow of information on the Net gets more frantic

May 24, 2009 -By Brian Morrissey

 

NEW YORK The Internet was always fast. Google made a point during its rise to prominence to detail -- to the millisecond -- just how quickly it delivered a search result. And, as we all know, the Web has gotten even faster.
 
Real-time communications channels like Twitter are pushing the Internet into "real time," where communication and information flow nonstop. This presents advertisers with a dizzying array of opportunities -- and a daunting number of challenges.

Marketers "are built like battleships for long, sustained warfare, [but] this is guerrilla warfare," said Lisa Bradner, a senior analyst at Forrester Research.

One of the most intense challenges is the new speed with which messages need to be crafted. Think of display advertising, which is in the doldrums thanks to a nearly limitless supply of space outstripping ad demand. With a large chunk of the market transitioning to a marketplace-driven dynamic where advertisers, networks and agencies bid on ad placements based on people, not pages, a message -- and its permutations -- increasingly needs to be made on the fly. And this, in turn, means extra work up front.

HP, for instance, using tools from Yahoo and Tumri, recently ran a campaign with more than 20,000 ad permutations. To do this, said Catherine Paschkewitz, director of demand generation, HP Direct, "you need to take the time to think of your testing framework and the different things you want to test. It's having an up-front process as you're launching and refreshing campaigns."

Another way to make display ads more real time is to use live video. Visa, for instance, ran live video in banner ads earlier this year that showed scenes from cities worldwide. Last month, Intel embedded live chat in its banners. Earlier this month, GE CEO Jeff Immelt delivered a Webcast address on healthcare issues live in a banner ad on top sites. And Volvo and Intuit have piped Twitter into ad units.

Another challenge for brands is that consumers now expect instant gratification when it comes to customer service, which is why marketers like Apple, Bank of America and Overstock.com now provide live customer service on their sites. Kevin Kohn, evp of marketing at LivePerson, which worked with BoA and Overstock, said this is nearly a requirement in a real-time world.

To help rein in potential customers, Verizon uses data to inform it when a live chat is needed. For instance, it knows users typically drop off if they spend more than two minutes per step when signing up for DSL and can ping them an offer to chat live with a service rep after a minute expires. "If you can intercept them, not only can you save their problem in seconds, but you've kept them from disrupting how they're interacting with you," Kohn said.

Consumers also expect marketers to respond quickly no matter the issue. Take the now infamous Domino's saga. In April, Consumerist pointed to a video of two employees doing gross things to the food. Within a day, Twitter was alive with demands that Domino's address the matter.

This desire to have answers in real time, wherever consumers are, is unlikely to change, said Andy Jacobs, chief technology officer at MRM Worldwide. "Our clients find themselves in a very reactive world," he said. "They're forced to respond to things. They need methods by which they can confidently and quickly publish info through the right channels."

For corporations, this requires new strategies. It means, for instance, bypassing the normal layers of sign-off to get information out to quell customer revolts, Jacobs said.

As a result, several marketers have established presences on Twitter to stay on top of customer problems. This early-warning system can pay off. Back in December, buzz gathered on Twitter that Ford sent a legal notice demanding a Ford Ranger blogger surrender his URL. Scott Monty, a well-known Twitterer and Ford's social-media leader, quickly nipped it in the bud.

"There's the opportunity to enhance your brand relevance in real time and respond to problems before they're intractable," Bradner said. 

Source: http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3i15f4e2b3b4a487b34e22cc8c7af253c0

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Chill Wind Blows for Triple A Nations

By David Oakley, Capital Markets Correspondent

Published: May 24 2009

 

Rich countries face a threat to their status as the safest places to invest after the UK was warned last week that it could lose its top-notch credit rating.

The triple A club of countries with the highest quality credit ratings has shrunk this year after Spain in January and Ireland in March were downgraded by Standard & Poor’s because of worries over their economies.

Fears have grown that other big economies, such as the US and Germany, could be in danger of downgrades after S&P’s decision to lower the UK’s credit outlook to negative from stable.

 

John Wraith, head of sterling rates product development at RBC Capital Markets, said: “The world is a different place now. We have seen Spain and Ireland lose their triple A status this year, and the UK could be next if the government doesn’t fundamentally address the underlying situation with increased fiscal rigour.”

 

S&P’s decision on the UK was based on concerns that government debt could grow to unsustainable levels and have ramifications for the country’s economy. After Thursday’s announcement of the outlook downgrade, yields on the UK’s benchmark 10-year bond rose 7 basis points.

 

By Friday prices on 10-year gilts had fallen to their lowest in three months. However, analysts do not believe that the other triple A nations among the G7 – the US, Canada, Germany and France – are in as great a danger as the UK of losing their triple A status.

 

Even though the UK has a much lower debt burden than other economies, its public finances are more exposed because of the higher risks that international investors, who hold about 40 per cent of the gilts market, will be forced to sell since many are only allowed to hold triple A debt.

 

The OECD expects gross government debt in the US to reach 78 per cent of gross domestic product this year compared with 64 per cent in the UK. However, the US is able to run up much higher debts because it has the luxury of the dollar being a reserve currency.

 

Luo Ping, of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, has said: “We could happily reduce our gilt holdings, but not US Treasuries. They are the safe haven. For everyone, including China, it is the only option.”

 

France, expected to run a gross government debt of 76 per cent of GDP in 2009 – much higher than the UK – has the advantage of being in the eurozone.

 

The euro is a reserve currency, like the dollar, which means many central banks have little choice but to hold euro-denominated assets.

 

Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/12a74338-4884-11de-8870-00144feabdc0.html

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