Online vets vs. Brick and Mortar Vets
April 29, 2011
Online vets vs. Brick and Mortar Vets
Recently a number of veterinarians are speaking out against the internet being a source of information for pet owners. They are claiming the obvious reason that pet owners are getting inaccurate information and substituting it for their veterinary expertise.
While this is a valid concern, I believe there are countless ways that the internet helps pet owners. There aren’t many checks and balances in veterinary medicine, at least until pet owners started using the internet to educate themselves. Pet owners would sit held captive in their vet’s exam room, clueless as to what is going on. Shockingly, a surprising number of vets don’t present clients with estimates or review costs before performing treatments. Now if this a emergency where seconds count, I certainly side with the vet that that is an inappropriate time to focus on client education and communication. Certainly a staff member from the nursing team or even reception can give the client a basic idea, as the vet needs to focus fully on the pet in a crisis.
Most of the time however, the client deserves to be educated before they are forced to buy something. And when a client comes in that had researched why her dog was scratching it’s ears and shaking it’s head, I was relieved that they suspected and ear infection because the research they had done had prepped them that medications and a test were in order. It makes things easier, the majority of the time.
Of course, there are those pet owners that don’t use the vet at all. We usually just see them when their pet is on it’s death bed. They’ve probably used some “home remedies” that failed to help, and they are likely to have found some of that info on the web. I don’t think those people were going to the vet before the internet found it’s way into their homes. They are simply some of those people that don’t think of their pets as family, at least when it comes to not being financially responsible to properly take care of a living animal.
As for me, I am biased. I am a veterinarian and definitely a “current one.” I blog, I write for magazines, and participate in pet-related podcasts. My husband is a vet too, and we founded the world’s first online veterinary clinic. Yes, we are virtual vets. But we are real vets indeed. At VetLIVE we provide pet owners 24/7 access to real and unbiased vets. We don’t care if your vet bill is $400 or if you don’t even need to go and spend money at all. So for $15.95, yes there is a small fee-nothing of high quality if free and we have business costs just like every business, but for a small fee you can wake us up in the middle of the night, ask a vet, and get a reliable and honest answer.
We certainly aren’t trying to replace the brick and mortar vets, but we feel this is an addition to the pet health care arena. Like I mentioned, before the internet, there really was no checks and balances or a way for pet owners to easily educate themselves and see if their vet was on key. This is another service that we provide pet owners.
I recently read in a veterinarian only forum about how upset vets were that more and more people were learning that $4 generic drugs were available for pets. The vets were largely upset by this as medications are a revenue stream for veterinarians (I don’t know why, your pediatrician isn’t getting rich off your prescriptions.) There were some vets in this discussion thread that were okay with it, but the general tone was this was a looming threat in the air. Not noble at all in my opinion.
Yes, veterinary medicine is a business. But the truth is that some vets are more ethical than others. And no, I am not anti-vet by any means. I am a vet. But if your dog eats some chocolate and you don’t know if it was enough to warrant a vet visit, your vet will always tell you to come right in. We’ll calculate it out for you and let you know the exact amount that becomes dangerous based upon your dog’s weight and the type and amount of chocolate. If your cat has a funny walk, we’ll watch the video and give you our opinion. If you don’t know if your vet is doing everything possible, we’ll let you know. There are countless things that the internet allows us to access. I love the ability to ask an online vet. And so do our customers.
Dr. Laci Schaible, DVM is a veterinarian and writer. She practices with her husband, also a vet, in Pennsylvania.
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McJob Stats - 1.2 million applied for 50,000 burger flipper jobs.
April 29, 2011
McDonald’s and its franchisees received more than 1,200,000 applications for a total of 50,000 published jobs. The application to position ratio was placed at 24:1 . Meaning 24 people applied to flip hamburgers for 1 hamburger flipper position open.
The company reacted by hiring 62,000 people, moving the ratio to just under 20 applying for each hamburger position open.
In other related economic news spot silver has briefly crossed $50 dollars an ounce due to US dollar devaluation according to ounce.me the mobile spot price app for gold and silver. There is a small article regarding the threshold cross at inflation.me
“It’s coming down hard” noted a currency trader in reference to the US dollar. If this turns into an disorderly devaluation we could be watching 1997 Asia happen in the United States. In reference to the Asian currency crisis of the late 1990′s.
Story is developing….
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See the Obama long form birth certificate - Photo
April 27, 2011
The White House / Obama has released the long form birth certificate in response to the birther claims that he was not born in the United States. The long form certificate has been long demanded by birthers claiming he was not born in the country.
The certificate was released and has been proven to to be valid and real. This has immediately put into disarray the entire birther movement, and to a lesser extent the tea party movement.
In one fell swoop the president has disproved all the conspiracy theories and hopefully the country can now focus on things that actually matter, such as jobs, economy and 3 wars running at the same time (Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya).
Why the president choose to release this today is unclear. Perhaps it was in response to Donald Trump’s claims that Obama was not born in Hawaii. Perhaps it was for kicks, unsure at this time, However what is sure is that the entire birther movement died on April 27, 2011.
Enjoy the new reality.
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Paul Ceglia - leaked e-mails - Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg
April 14, 2011
We discussed the story back in August, and at the time were dismissed as “not plausible” but low and behold, it appears we were right.
Mr Ceglia has released a dozen emails which he claims were sent between July 2003 and July 2004.
November 22, 2003 - Mr Zuckerberg to Mr Ceglia
‘I have recently met with a couple of upperclassmen here at Harvard that are planning to launch a site very similar to ours. If we don’t make a move soon, I think we will lose the advantage we would have if we release before them.
‘I’ve stalled them for the time being and with a break if you could send another $1000 for the facebook (sic) project it would allow me to pay my roommate or Jeff to help integrate the search code and get the site live before them. Please give me a call so that we can talk more about this.’
January 1, 2004 - Mr Zuckerberg to Mr Ceglia
I think it is unnecessary at this point, with all of the extra work I have done for you, to be held to the original completion date. I should not be penalized for delays that were out of my control, namely that there have been so many unspecified requests from the Streetfax project that you wanted to be placed as a priority, thereby delaying my start on our second project.
‘Thus, I am requesting a written waiver on your part exempting me from the obligation to give you additional ownership in the project that is outlined in our original contract.’
January 5 - Mr Ceglia to Mr Zuckerberg
‘It is well past January 1 and to my knowledge you don’t have a single thing done for the site… You know perfectly well that you can’t just take a person’s investment and then spend it on women and beer or whatever you do up there in Harvard.
‘I’ve been stalled long enough on this thing and if I don’t see something soon I’ll no choice but to contact the school and perhaps your parents in Dobbs Ferry and let them know what’s going on.’
February 2, 2004 - Mr Zuckerberg to Mr Ceglia
‘Paul, I have a rather serious issue to discuss with you, according to our contract I owe you over 30% more of the business in late penalties which would give you over 80% of the company.
‘First I want to say that I think that is completely unfair because I did so much extra work for you on your site that caused those delays in the first place and second I don’t even think it is legal to charge such a huge penalty.
Mostly though I just won’t even bother putting the site live if you are going to insist on such a large percentage. I’d like to suggest that you drop the penalty completely and that we officially return to 50/50 ownership.’
February 6, 2004 - Mr Zuckerberg to Mr Ceglia
Sorry it’s taken me a few days to respond, (sic) Now that the sites (sic) live I feel I must take creative control and I just can not risk injuring my sites (sic) reputation by cheapening it with your idea of selling college junk, nor do I wish to spend my time shipping out coffee mugs to rich alumni. The site is cool as it is and I don’t care about making any money on it right now, I just want to see if people will use it.
February 7, 2004 - Mr Ceglia to Mr Zuckerberg
Mark, all I can think is your parents have handed you everything your entire life and after all this time and energy and MONEY that you think in your head that an ok way to act is to just say - oh I’ve changed my mind I don’t think it’s cool to make money and that that should be that.
April 6, 2004 - Mr Zuckerberg to Mr Ceglia
Paul, I have become too busy to deal with the site and no one wants to pay for it, so I am thinking of just taking the server down. My parents have a fund that I can tap into for my college expenses and I would just like to give you your two thousand dollars back and call it even on the rest of the money you owe me for the extra work. At this point I won’t even really be able to work on the facebook until Summer.April 6, 2004 - Mr Ceglia to Mr Zuckerberg
‘Grow up, take a f***ing ethics class, choke yourself with that silver spoon of yours’.
July 22, 2004 - Mr Zuckerberg to Mr Ceglia (A week before the company was incorporated)
‘Paul, I am guessing that you don’t want to talk to me but I wanted to say happy birthday and that I hope to resolve our differences. I see that what I did was wrong and I am really sorry that I behaved as I did. Please give me your address and I will mail you back the $2000 for your trouble, more if it will repair our business relationship.
‘Another summer is here and I still don’t have any time to build our site, I understand that I promised I would, but other things have come up and I am out in California working during break. I just don’t want the obligation of having to answer to you for not following through and I won’t be able to. Best, Mark’
A ton of leaked e-mails proves that Paul Ceglia does in fact own half if NOT MORE of Facebook.
The purported contract (we analyzed it here) gave Ceglia a 50% ownership in “the face book” project in exchange for funding its initial development, as well as an additional 1% ownership of the project per day for every day that the project remained uncompleted past a certain launch date
Business Insiderhas just published what we already thought was true.
This might be the story of the century, as it does appear that in fact Mark Zuckerberg did steal facebook, not from one set of people, but rather from two.
The story is of course developing, but this will be fascinating to see how the court rules in light of the new evidence.
So what do you think? Did in Fact Mark Zuckerberg steal Facebook from Paul Ceglia and the twins?
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Apple iPad 2 - Going Cheap! Only $2,400
April 13, 2011
With all the madness going on in the world, we wanted to expose perhaps one of the worst. The screenshot on this article is directly from Ebay, within minutes after we took the screenshot it already went up from that point. It made taking a new screenshot of the increased price pointless as it as well will go up.
This raises the question, is Apple a computer company? A gadget company or what many say a cult.
Many tend to believe the latter as the level of bidding an aftermarket sales are dramatic for a “big iphone” as many dub it.
When left to the open market you’re looking at at least $1,500-$2,000 for an open auction, but for buy it now, they start off at about $2,400 or more on ebay if you want it NOW and don’t want to wait for the 3-4 day auction.
<--- Click to see screenshot of the madness.
This is amazing stuff, overall people are lining up for iPad 2's as if they were hotcakes. The funny thing? They are already talking about iPad 3's... reminds us of this Best Buy commercial.
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Ask a Vet about Feeding Trials for Possible Food Allergy
April 12, 2011
Ask a Vet about Feeding Trials for Possible Food Allergy
When a dog suffers from a food allergy it is a reaction to the food by the dog’s immune system. Food allergies are not food intolerances (such as lactose intolerance) despite popular misunderstanding. Food allergies are among the top three most common cause of allergies in dogs, at least allergic itching that is. The others are flea allergy dermatitis and canine atopy, both which are far more prevalent than food allergies, which compromise approximately 10% of all dog allergies. Unlike canine atopy, food allergies are not seasonal, when they present with GI symptoms they may wax and wane.
Most often, a protein in the food causes the immune system to react. Often the protein source is animal based, such as meats eggs, or dairy, but sometimes a carbohydrate source can be involved too. The most common ingredients that dogs have allergies to include beef, chicken, eggs, milk, fish, horse meat, potatoes, soy, corn, wheat gluten, or additives.
The most common clinical sign is severe itching, scratching, and chewing. Sometimes it may be accompanied by the small red bumps, pustules, and infection. In dogs, the paws, flank, groin, neck, and ears are commonly affected. Dogs with food allergies often have recurrent ear infections. Cats more often scratch their faces and ears. These signs are usually year round unlike canine atopy.
Other times, food allergies present with gastrointestinal components instead of the skin component. GI signs include chronic vomiting, diarrhea or loose stools, belching, and frequent bowel movements and/or flatulence. GI signs do fluctuate a bit more than skin problems, but a long history of “troubled GI system” is not uncommon. Pets may suffer from both skin and GI symptoms.
Unfortunately, since food allergy is less common than canine atopy and flea allergy dermatitis, the vet often starts by treating the easiest of those, flea allergy dermatitis, by recommending topical flea meds-this is reasonable and a wise idea in my expert opinion. No single specific test can diagnose a food allergy. Allergen blood testing is available, but it is more appropriate for canine atopy and isn’t a reliable way to identify what food allergen your dog or cat may be allergic to. It is important to provide your vet with an accurate and comprehensive list of all foods, table scraps, flavored meds, chews, and treats that your pet eats.
The diagnosis is made by placing your pet on a “elimination diet” in which you are introducing a new, highly digestible protein source, and/or carbohydrate source, and no food additives. You can make this diet at home yourself if you prefer, if you consult with a veterinarian with expertise in nutrition. Usually it is advised to select a single novel protein (such as duck, rabbit, kangaroo, or other protein your pet has never eaten before, even once), a novel carbohydrate source (such as snow peas or potato), and a source of fat. During the first initial trial it is not as important that the diet be balanced. If your pet responds and the itching decreases, it will of crucial long-term (more than 2 months) to ensure the diet is adequately balanced.
Commercial diets with novel food sources are available, but in my opinion, if you want a commercially prepared diet, it is wiser to choose a hydryolyzed diet. Hydrolyzed protein diets contain proteins that are broken down into pieces to small to to fit into the receptors that stimulate the pet’s immune system. These diets are already complete and balanced for adult dogs. It is very rare for a kitten or puppy to develop true food allergies, as the pet has to be exposed to the allergen repeatedly.
A reduction in itching may be seen with a couple weeks, but in most cases it does take longer (usually around 6 weeks). The test diet should be fed for two to four months. For dogs and cats that respond positively, the diet should be continued provided it is balanced and complete. The pet parent must remember that table scraps, treats, chews, and flavored medications (such as heartworm meds) must not be given not only while the pet is on the trial diet, but no offending allergens can be given the rest of the pet’s life after the offending allergen is identified.
The prognosis for pets with food allergies is great as long as the pet is not re-exposed to the food ingredient(s) that triggered the immune response. Though it is indeed a very frustrating diagnosis to arrive upon, once it is made the pet parent can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that if the offensive allergens are avoided there pet will no suffer the skin or GI side effects associated with food allergies again.
If you have a question about your pet, you can ask a vet online and get an answer immediately.
Dr. Laci Schaible, DVM is a veterinarian in Pennsylvania. She works with her husband, also a veterinarian, and writes avidly in her spare time.
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Google Algo going global - and it’s flawed
April 11, 2011
Searchers are finding better results, and many great publishers are getting more traffic. — according to Google’s official Blog
The problem we have is not “everyone” that has unique, high quality content is being rewarded. In fact the update was dubbed “the ehow update” as it was assumed it would be going after that site as many complain of poor quality content from there… after the update they are ranking just as well as before. Whereas at the same time people that have unique quality topic sites saw their rankings plummet faster than you can imagine.
In fact Google addressed that in the same post:
“Based on our testing, we’ve found the algorithm is very accurate at detecting site quality. If you believe your site is high-quality and has been impacted by this change, we encourage you to evaluate the different aspects of your site extensively. Google’s quality guidelines provide helpful information about how to improve your site. As sites change, our algorithmic rankings will update to reflect that. In addition, you’re welcome to post in our Webmaster Help Forums. While we aren’t making any manual exceptions, we will consider this feedback as we continue to refine our algorithms.”
In other words “Our Algo Rocks, but … uhh.. just in case you got caught up in some crazy filter let us know..” indirectly admitting there are some serious flaws.
We have seen some unique, high quality content sites face some nasty penalties… I am going to be directing them to that post.. hopefully something can come from it.
Enjoy the new reality.
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Flash on your iPhone
April 7, 2011
Why would CBS publish flash content on their iPhone mobile site? Are they making a statement?
The screenshot makes a mockery of mobile website development.
Apple needs to either allow Flash or web developers need to stop using it.
I prefer the latter.
So what would be the solution? Seriously this garbage can’t go on forever… Comments?
- published by my white iPhone 4
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Exercise equipment for your dog? Clinical evidence indicates the TrimDog exercise weight belt can help your pooch shed some pounds
April 7, 2011
Exercise equipment for your dog? Clinical evidence indicates the TrimDog exercise weight belt can help your pooch shed some pounds.
Jack Lalanne first popularized the use of exercise equipment to help humans get in shape in the 1950s. Now, almost 60 years later, the invention of the TrimDog Exercise Belt is leading the way in canine wellness to make it easier for dogs to get fit and healthy. At first I was skeptical, but after interviewing TrimDog co-founder, Ike Kinlaw, the exercise system seems to have its place in canine weight management.
The TrimDog exercise weight belt was created by Ike and Anna Kinlaw in order to help their overweight Shih Tzu, Lily, shed some pounds. When their veterinarian, Michele Rohrer, DVM of Atlantic Animal Hospital in Wilmington, N.C., made them aware that Lily needed to lose weight, Ike used his knowledge of exercise physiology and Anna’s knowledge of nutrition, to develop an exercise program for dogs. The goal, Ike says, “is to allow dogs to burn more calories per walk by moderately increase the intensity of exercise.”
Ike Kinlaw used his expertise as a human exercise physiologist to invent the weight belt. Ike had been successfully training athletes by having them walk with weighted vests on treadmills, but it wasn’t until 2010 that he read a clinical study from the American College of Sports Medicine that proved the concept behind the invention. The Kinlaw’s began designing the belt for Lily and 50 prototypes later, the TrimDog exercise system is available to all pet parents.
Although Lily could act as a testimonial for the product, Michele Rohrer, DVM encouraged the Kinlaws to carry out a clinical study of the TrimDog’s effectiveness. 12 canines, aged 2-10 years, participated in a randomized clinical trial with the Atlantic Animal Hospital that concluded that dogs that walked with the TrimDog Weight Belt lost more weight than dogs that walked without the weight belt.
When speaking with my veterinary colleagues, concerns arose over whether a pet parent could unintentionally do harm using the TrimDog. For example, if a dog had severe arthritis, the additional weight could be harmful to their joints. In order to protect unhealthy pets from unintentional harm, the Kinlaws decided to distribute the product under the direction of veterinarians. Kinlaw states, “what we recommend you do is go to TrimDog.com, print out the brochure, and take it to your veterinarian and talk to your veterinarian about the program to make sure it is appropriate and so that other causes of weight gain can be ruled out.” The goal, Kinlaw says, “is to sell TrimDog under the supervision of veterinarians.”
The TrimDog system comes in four different sizes and retails for $37.99. More information can be found on TrimDog[dot]com. The package comes with the exercise weight belt, a walking regimen, a nutritional guide, and the opportunity for pet parents to send in their current feeding schedule for a nutritionist to review and make feeding recommendations that have been approved by Dr. Rohrer, TrimDog’s Senior Medical Advisor.
Dr. Jed Schaible is a veterinarian and a pet blogger. Together with his wife Laci, also a veterinarian, they founded VetLIVE, a website that provides pet parents the ability to ask a vet pet health questions 24/7, chat live with a vet, upload photos or medical documents, and more.
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Order the New Commodore 64
April 7, 2011
The new Commodore 64, which will begin shipping at the end of the month, has been souped-up for the modern age. It comes with 1.8 gigahertz dual processors, an optional Blu-ray player and built-in ethernet and HDMI ports. The prices will range from 250 to 900 per machine, depending on options.
That is perhaps the best advertising gimmick the world has ever seen. There might be a line for this model. Growing up I had a Commodore 64, in fact it was my first PC. The only thing I had prior to that was an Atari 2600.
I expect this to do modestly well with many enthusiasts purchasing the computer simply due to it’s look.. either it will make you feel like a 5 year old again, or it will baffle people when it boots up in a modern OS.
The bigger question however is if it will come shipped with Ubuntu rather than Windows :)
Enjoy the new reality.
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