The State of the Franchise Food Service Industry | Franchwire

With all of the doom and gloom about the economy even more so in the forefront now that we?re approaching election time, it?s sometimes tough to find any good news out there when it comes to unemployment, gas prices, or small business growth.? It may not be bad news on all fronts though, particularly if you look toward the restaurant business.?? The recent Jobs Report issued by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that in August 96,000 jobs were added across the nation and more than 28,000 of those jobs were in the restaurant industry.?

So what does this mean?? For one thing it?s proof that Americans aren?t willing to give up certain luxuries ? namely eating out ? even during tough economic times.? With a great deal of these restaurants also franchises, it?s no surprise that franchising is seeing some positivity as well.? According to a report by the Franchise Business Review recently, based on a survey of more than 4,000 franchisees from 84 different brands, profitability among food?service franchisees is up 5.8 percent year-over-year (15 percent higher than other industries).?

The Franchise Business Review did report one fact that could prove arresting for food service growth, though ? restaurants are still finding it difficult to access capital.? With added jobs and growth comes the need for remodels and expansion, something that is undoubtedly difficult to complete without access to funding.?

On the heels on this report, it seems there?s no better time for franchisees and members of the restaurant industry to explore alternative avenues for financing and specialty lenders.? The Restaurant Finance & Development Conference (RFDC) in November 12-14 at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas could be a great place to start.? FranchWire will be in attendance, joining sessions and live blogging during the duration of the event.? So keep checking back!

How has your franchise fared over the last several months?

Source: http://www.franchwire.com/food-service-industry/

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CSIRO Recommendations for Termite Control at Home

Home Termite Control professionals are always on the lookout for information to help Australians keep termites at bay.

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Tweet This Home Termite Control professionals are always on the lookout for information to help Australians keep termites at bay. The latest tips for termite control come via CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. CSIRO is the official national science agency of Australia and considered one of the most diverse research agencies in the world. These tips for termite control are based upon studies performed by CSIRO.

CSIRO is a scientific organization devoted to improving lives, through partnerships focused on Australia's most significant challenges and opportunities. Their studies and findings are varied including animal, food and health sciences as well as best practices for safeguarding Australian resources. This includes the use of pesticides for termite control and extermination. Their studies indicate that the best termite control practice is not related so much to the materials used to build a structure, but influenced more by temperature, rainfall and age of the building. They offer a simple method for termite control that anyone can do.

No matter where a homeowner lives in Australia, there is a high likelihood that parts of their home will become a source of food for termites. The homeowner can discourage termites by remembering that termites are attracted to wood and water.

CSIRO advises best practices for termite control include removing potential termite food sources such timber stacks, old stumps, building refuse, and garden naturalization such as logs away from the foundation of buildings. Never store waste lumber or firewood under a building or in the crawl space. Fix leaky pipes and prevent water pooling caused by rainwater not properly draining away from the building. Termites need moisture to live so the more moisture pooling near the foundation of a home, the greater the attraction for termites.

These steps will help with overall termite control, but the best practice to employ to safeguard your home and buildings from termites is a frequent inspection for signs of termites. CSIRO recommends homeowners arrange for regular inspections -- at least once a year in cooler areas and twice a year in warmer areas.

Of course, homeowners can perform their own inspections of their foundations, outbuildings and wooden structures more frequently. However, termites usually are an "invisible" threat lurking in walls, underneath floors and within the wood frames. This means the best practice is to invite a professional termite control company to inspect home and buildings minimally once a year and preferably twice.

Home Termite Control is a forward thinking termite inspection and extermination service provider. They offer a termite control that is environmentally friendly to beneficial organisms yet deadly to termites. Schedule a termite inspection and treatment today by contacting HomeTermiteControl.com.au in Sydney, Australia.

Home Termite Control 107 Browns Road Wahroonga, NSW, 2076 Australia 02 9454 7774

About the Submitter
For more information about termite control Sydney and termite treatment prices visit http://www.hometermitecontrol.com.au/

Contact:
Brad Anderson
info@hometermitecontrol.come.au

CSIRO Recommendations for Termite Control at Home

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The Bookshelf Muse: Reviews, Thanks & A NEW Thesaurus is ...

Happy Wednesday, Musers! I hope like me, everyone is getting back into the rhythm of work, school and writing again, carving bits of time to work on your latest and greatest projects. I am so proud of each and every one of you for your perseverance and dedication to this writer's road!

You Are Awesome

First, a big THANK YOU to everyone who has so kindly posted a book review on Amazon of The Emotion Thesaurus. Great things have happened as a result--the ET is #3 on Amazon's Highest Rated List for Writing Books and I am sure that the rating helped the book get picked up by the University of Illinois for their Creative Writing program. Seriously, thank you!

Have you fallen for a book lately?? If so, consider writing a review for it. :) Writers more than anyone know the work behind those breathtaking worlds and characters so intensely original they sweep us right into their stories. I'm sure most of you know about the recent black mark caused by a select few who paid in bulk for fake reviews, but this should not take away from all the honest reviews out there, am I right?

You Are Awesome, Pt. 2


I also want to piggy back on this to also give our sincerest appreciation to those of who have purchased the Emotion Thesaurus book and then recommended it to other writers on industry listservs, critique groups, teachers and more. You've posted on blogs, mentioned it on forums and even written about it in newsletters. Word of mouth is the most valuable currency and we are overwhelmed by the generosity of our readers. The ET is a success because of you and we are determined to continue to work hard and bring you helpful new content!?

And Speaking of New Book Content...


As Becca and I wind up what we've dubbed 'The Discoverability Tour' for the ET, we are turning our attention to the next Thesaurus Book. *cheers* I can't tell you how excited we are about this! However, in the interest of sharing what we learned from our first attempt at launching a book into the world, we're open to some future posts on Marketing if this would be helpful to readers. So, if you have specific questions you'd like us to answer/discuss about our choice to launch the book by sidelining it in favor of Random Acts Of Kindness For Writers, what we did to encourage discoverability, our marketing focus or anything in between, please leave them in the comments!

A New Thesaurus On The Blog? Yep!

It's time to tuck the Character Trait Thesaurus into our sidebar and move to a new Thesaurus! Becca and I have picked something that we believe will help writers in a vital area of description. We'll have the official introduction for it this Saturday, so check back. I will say this: it will help you build your characters!

Spam Must Die


One last thing...The Bookshelf Muse is becoming a huge target for spammers using the Anonymous function to leave comments to create back-links. Now while our spam filter catches these before they hit the blog, we still get emails for them. I'm talking 40 or more emails a day...so you can imagine how bloated our inboxes are getting. We've decided to shut off the ability to leave anonymous comments because of this. I know a few of you may not have Blogger, Twitter or Facebook accounts that allow you to comment otherwise, and I apologize. However you are always welcome to send us emails instead if you like. Just click on our blogger profiles!?

Oh, I am hanging out at two different places today, so I hope you'll stop in:


@ Seeing Creative: The Subtle Knife: Creating Characters Readers Trust But Shouldn't

@ The Writer's Dojo: Emotion-Charged Settings

Don't forget to comment if you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover in future posts regarding what we did to market our book! If something we did might help you, we're happy to talk about it!

Source: http://thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/2012/09/reviews-thanks-new-thesaurus-is-coming.html

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Daniel Radcliffe Flexes New Muscles With 'Horns'

'There's nothing really, I think, that can be so exciting to an actor as an original idea,' the actor tells MTV News about his upcoming dark fantasy.
By Josh Wigler, with reporting by Josh Horowitz


Daniel Radcliffe
Photo: Kevin Mazur/ WireImage

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1693998/daniel-radcliffe-horns.jhtml

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Chinese protesters: 'The Diaoyu islands belong to China!'

September 18, the anniversary of Japan's 1931 invasion of Manchuria, is seen as a day of national humiliation in China, marked by protests even when relations with Japan are stable. This year's anniversary came amidst a Sino-Japanese dispute over an island chain called the Senkaku islands in Japanese and known to Chinese as the Diaoyu islands. NBC's Angus Walker reports.

By Ed Flanagan, NBC News

BEIJING ? Following a weekend of anti-Japanese protests that engulfed China, demonstrations hit a crescendo Tuesday with the 81st anniversary of the start of Japan?s occupation of China.

The Mukden Incident, also known as the Manchurian Incident, was a staged bombing by the Japanese military that served as the pretext for the Japanese invasion of China in 1931.


The painful anniversary served to enflame a dispute that has been growing for months over ownership of East China Sea islands called the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

Emotional anniversary reignites anti-Japan protests in China

During recent protests in more than 80 cities across China, Chinese citizens have expressed themselves by taking to the streets and loudly demonstrating outside of Japanese consulates, businesses and online. However, unlike previous protests on the mainland in recent years, the collective anger has been well-documented and disseminated freely online, giving us a unique look at Chinese nationalism unleashed.

See images of some of the more unusual expressions of anti-Japanese anger below.

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Source: http://behindthewall.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/18/13943145-chinese-protesters-the-diaoyu-islands-belong-to-china?lite

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Danza: Incarcerated Tupac and I were pen pals

Noel Vasquez / Getty Images

By Access Hollywood

One of Hollywood?s most surprising friendships might be the one that Tony Danza had with the late Tupac Shakur.?

Tony stopped by Access Hollywood Live on Tuesday, where he chatted with Billy Bush and Kit Hoover about his book, ?I?d Like To Apologize For Every Teacher I Ever Had,? and also opened up about befriending the rapper while Tupac was in jail

Photos from THR: Stars we lost in 2012

?I was trying to make a point that since he had five bullets holes in him and he was in jail and he?s the same guy that wrote ?Dear Mama? and did all those great acting roles, I said, ?Maybe there is a better way to do this. Maybe, I know you can?t be a goodie two-shoes in your business, but maybe there is a way to inspire kids,? Tony said, recalling his exchange with Tupac while he was behind bars in 1995.

?I said, ?Because you have such a great influence, responsibility comes with that,? Tony continued. ?He wrote me back (and said), ?Thanks for understanding me.??

Photos from AH: Hollywood?s famous friends

Eventually the unlikely pair became pen pals and many more letters followed.

?Then we started having this writing thing,? Tony told Billy and Kit.

The actor-turned-teacher/author was able to meet Tupac before the rapper died in 1996.

Photos from AH: Hollywood dads and their adorable little ones!

?Then I ran into him to him at a premiere,? Tony added.?

More in TODAY Entertainment:

Source: http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2012/09/18/13944895-tony-danza-i-was-pen-pals-with-tupac-when-he-was-in-jail?lite

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University students put off-the-shelf helicopters to work

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2012) ? What amounts to serious scientific research could, at first glance, be mistaken for students at The University of Alabama in Huntsville letting off a little stress with radio-controlled helicopters.

On a recent sunny, humid day, the air near the university's Optics Building is filled with the buzz of small helicopters hovering over parking lots, their tiny video cameras sending back amazingly clear images of a wide expanse of ground below.

It's all part of work being done by UAHuntsville's Systems Management and Production Center at Von Braun Research Hall. Directed by Dr. Gary Maddux, SMAP is the largest of UAHuntsville's 15 research centers.

Under the program, several UAHuntsville students are working to develop micro-UAVs that could provide low-cost surveillance while enhancing the variety of uses for these UAVs. The U.S. Army's Aviation and Missile Research and Development Center (AMRDEC) on Redstone Arsenal provided the original program funding.

William Sabados and Norven Goddard direct a small cluster of students working to enhance the use of small, commercial, off-the-shelf helicopters to be more useful for both military and commercial purposes.

While the research is conducted at UAHuntsville and most student researchers are pursuing various UAHuntsville technical degrees, students from other north Alabama universities, and even a few from area high schools, have gravitated towards the program, said Sabados, who pairs students with research projects.

Those students span a wide range of technology curricula, from computer science and software engineering majors to aerospace, mechanical, and electrical engineering majors. Even graphics majors are getting involved, which Goddard said adds an important dimension to the work of the student teams.

"They have the ability to put it on paper and see how the design actually flows together. Visual is the way to go," Goddard said.

Terming the high level of technological capabilities of the student researchers "a state asset," Goddard said he hopes most of the graduates will find employment for their skills and talents right here in Alabama.

Goddard, of the Space and Missile Defense Command's Future Warfare Center, calls the program a resource that allows the military and first responders to tap the skills and abilities of students.

Their research supports the ongoing evolution of military intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). ISR platforms are getting smaller and less costly, important in an era of increasing constraints on military R&D budgets. At altitudes of just a few hundred feet, they can peer down on enemy troops below while remaining practically invisible. Tighter budgets and the need to capture the benefits of emerging technologies also push the desire for what Goddard terms "the 80 percent solution."

"We want to take these emerging technologies and apply them where we can get a 70 to 80 percent solution that we can use right now." From a military standpoint, he said this eliminates some of the need for costly R&D programs that might develop a technology to a complete solution, only to have that technology become obsolete by the time that solution is achieved.

Sabados explained that "disruptive technologies" such as mini-UAVs have the potential to change the way surveillance is done, both for soldiers in theater and for first responders or law enforcement authorities.

Today's mini-UAVs, Sabados said, are the disruptive technology that larger UAVs used to be. "Ten years ago, UAVs were considered a disruptive technology, but now you see them on the news every night," he said.

Everything in aerial surveillance is getting smaller, lighter and less expensive. The mini-copters often carry tiny cameras that are marvels of miniaturization. Student researcher Aaron Laney holds out a camera currently being used that's about the size of a stack of three dominoes, and said the trend is for them to get ever smaller.

And while the military benefits are obvious, law enforcement and first responders are showing increasing interest in the tiny aerial platforms with their advanced cameras and other sensors. First responders could use them for low-cost surveying of post-tornado damage, or to survey the scene after a bad auto accident. Law enforcement sees uses ranging from looking for fugitives to find missing persons such as small children.

While military and civilian uses drive the research, Goddard also points to the influence of hobbyists, ranging from college students to retired engineers, who continue to push the envelope of new innovation. "The hobbyists have turned the game on the UAV community," he said. "They've pushed so hard on the designer and manufacturer community that they're producing components that are equal to those of large UAVs such as the Predator. The capabilities are becoming truly astronomical."

Student researcher and computer science major Aaron Laney comments on a video of a six-rotor mini-copter flying over a UAHuntsville parking lot. The team, he said, is now able to program a GPS chip that allows the mini-copters to fly a semi-autonomous flight pattern. "You just punch a few keys and tell them to fly the mission."

Goddard predicts a near future capability that will allow re-programming the GPS for totally autonomous flight of a swarm of several helicopters flying in close formation. "What you would do is program, launch, and walk away," he quipped.

That "swarm" of several helicopters are to fly in close formation. Each helicopter would carry a different sensor, allowing observers on the ground to get better overall situational awareness of what's on the ground that they could not otherwise see.

Another push is for low-cost production. The confluence of UAV miniaturization and low-cost, three-dimensional printing may allow for parts to be designed using computer-aided design programs, then instantly manufactured using 3D printers, according to Goddard. He said the original program, nearing completion, has been quite successful with ideas emerging that will give new students new programs to explore.

The experience from the research activities can look good on a resume, said Goddard. "It gives them the practical experience to go along with classroom theory," he said. "They'll have something to put on their resumes that will put them miles ahead of other graduating students."

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/8t3Oc0WvTac/120918075633.htm

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Qnap TS-469 Pro TurboNas

Qnap's network attached storage (NAS) drive occupies an essential niche situated between consumer and business NAS offerings.? Its integration with Windows Active Directory fit the latter, while a more user-friendly interface and lower price point align it with consumer NASes. The TS-469 Pro TurboNAS is a good fit for a business professional running a home office or small business network, because it provides easy management of shared data and USB devices on a small network and very good disk failure recovery. Even better, improvements have come to features that fell short the last time I reviewed? a similar QNAP NAS. But an issue with this NAS remains: compared with similar devices targeting SMBs, the TS-469's Read/Write performance is a bit sluggish.?

Specs
The TS-469 is an expandable NAS with four drive bays. The front panel features a USB port for performing quick copy jobs of data from the NAS to a USB drive with just a touch. There's also a toggle button to navigate the LCD menu on the front of the device. The LCD displays information such as the boot process during device startup, as well as TCP/IP information, hostname, and volume status.

Qnap has bumped up the processor from the Intel Atom dual-core 1.66 GHz model in its TS-459 NAS, which first shipped about two years ago, to Intel's Atom 2.13 GHz dual-core processor. While the newer processor provides better reads and writes in the TS-469 over the TS-459, it still doesn't match performance of some competing NAS devices for SMBs. More on that in the performance section, though.

The device ships with 1GB RAM, expandable to 3GB. Qnap provides plenty of other expansion options, too: There are two USB 3.0 ports and four USB 2.0 ports on the rear panel, as well as an HDMI port, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, and a pair of eSATA ports.

The front panel has yet another USB port; this one is for attaching an external drive to send a quick copy job to the drive just by clicking the "Copy" button above the port. The copy job set up is configured through the NAS's interface. The other USB ports can support printers, pen drives, hubs, UPSs and more.

The drive trays are lockable and easy to work with when you're replacing drives. The four drive bays can support 3.5-inch SATA 6GBps, SATA 3GBps, 2.5-inch SATA, or SSD hard drives. While drives are hot-swappable (which worked well in testing), you do need to get hard drives on your own, as the NAS ships diskless.

Connecting to the Network
The NAS ships with a CD including a quick installation guide (a hard copy of this guide is also included in the packaging), the QNAP Finder (an app used to locate a QNAP NAS on a network), a few more applications for remote access and backup, and the user manual.

You can use the QNAP Finder app to detect the NAS once it's connected, and get into its interface for setup. Alternatively, once the NAS is on the network, you can just browse to its IP address to access the interface.

Once you have the drives installed, the rest of setup consists of nothing more than physically connecting the NAS to your network and browsing to the management software via its IP address to configure the device.

Management and Features
The interface design has not changed much since I last looked at the TS-459. The TS-469's, like the TS-459's, is detailed and well-designed. The software has improved, however. The most noticeable improvement is a big one involving firmware upgrading.

Upgrading firmware on the TS-459 proved problematic; after downloading the firmware, the system seemed to have a problem actually installing the new firmware automatically.
The firmware upgrade and install process happened automatically in the TS-469. As soon as I opened the management interface for the first time, a new firmware upgrade was detected, downloaded and applied without requiring any intervention on my part.

The TS-469 provides a mixture of consumer and small business features. From the interface, you can manage the NAS as well as set up a RAID?the device supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 5+hot spare, 6, single, and JBOD. Business features include encrypting disk volumes for security, support for iSCSI targeting, and integration with Windows Active Directory. Consumer features include support as a media or iTunes server, and apps for video and photo sharing. The TS-469 can also serve as an IP camera surveillance station for a home or small business office.

Qnap offers its MyCloudNAS service for remote management of and access to the TS-469. This is a feature I've tested in the TS-459 device, and while there is still an issue with auto-configuring a router to support remote access to the NAS, the overall process has been streamlined a bit to make setting up MyCloudNAS a little easier with the TS-469.

There are two options for deploying MyCloudNAS: express or manual setup. The express setup is the easiest option: give the NAS a name. The MyCloudNAS service is checked to ensure the name you give isn't in use. You can then check off the services you want to remotely access via the NAS. For example, you can enable remote access of the web server service (used if you are running a web site from the NAS) or the photo station service, which will allow photo sharing of images stored on the NAS from anywhere.

To establish remote access, connections from the Internet to the NAS have to be allowed. This is done by setting up port forwarding rules on the router that's part of the same network the NAS is connected to. QNAP's software is designed to automatically set up port forwarding rules on the router (as long as the router is supported).

Automatic port-forwarding did not work on my network when I tested the older TS-459. However, this time around, I saw in my router's software that the TS-469 did manage to successfully setup port forwarding rules on my router. The only rules it couldn't set up were those for ports I already had a port-forwarding rule configured for, which makes sense. It would be better if the QNAP software could see that you had a rule set up on a port it needed to configure and then prompt you for further actions, but at least it was able to create some of the rules needed.

Setting up the MyCloudNAS service and auto-configuring the router to allow remote access to the NAS is still not as streamlined a process as it should be, although it's better with QNAP's updated firmware. Between the setup wizard, and the diagnostics available in both the TS-469's auto router configuration screen and your router software, you have the tools available to determine what the issue is if the TS-469 auto configure wizard can't create all of the rules it needs to allow remote access. While most NASes require you to tweak any needed router settings yourself, another NAS that does auto-configure the router,
LG's?Super Multi N2A2?NAS , did a better job of router configuration in testing.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/e7Q8J7Lhv8M/0,2817,2409807,00.asp

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