Weber Shandwick today announced the promotions of seven employees in the consumer, technology and health care practices.

Jonathan Mason has been promoted to account group manager in the consumer marketing practice. During his tenure, Mason has contributed to helping a broad range of clients increase brand awareness among key consumer groups through media relations and strategic planning initiatives. For the past two years, Mason has managed the FedEx Racing program and has brought his considerable NASCAR experience to many clients, including ExxonMobil, Sharpie, Unilever and Polaroid. Prior to joining Weber Shandwick in 2003, Mason worked on the communications staff of former City of Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton. The University of Minnesota graduate holds a bachelors degree in political science.

Brianna Gallett has been promoted to senior account executive in the consumer marketing practice. Gallett has helped with brand-building, national media relations, product launches, event planning and contest management for her clients, including Verizon, Cargill, The Allstate Foundation and the U.S. Army. She graduated magna cum laude from Winona State University with a bachelor's degree in public relations and a minor in marketing. Gallett joined Weber Shandwick as an account executive in March of 2008 after working at a St. Paul-based communications firm.

Jennifer Kramer has been promoted to senior account executive in the consumer marketing practice. Since joining the agency in 2006, Kramer has brought her experience in media and client relations, writing, new product launches and event planning to several consumer clients. Kramer currently leads the Alpine Lace program for Land OLakes and serves as project manager for the 2010 Census team. She joined Weber Shandwick as an intern in February of 2006 after working as a project manager at Cardozo Fine Art and interning with the American Heart Association. A 2005 graduate of Gustavus Adolphus College, Kramer holds bachelors degrees in international management and Spanish.

Anne Torkelson has been promoted to account executive in the technology practice. Torkelson joined Weber Shandwick in October of 2007, and has supported a variety of clients, including Honeywell, Microsoft and Personnel Decisions International. Prior to joining the agency, Torkelson held internships at Wells Fargo Business Credit, Minneapolis Downtown Journal and Southwest Journal, Milkweed Editions, City Pages and Fairview Press. A 2007 cum laude graduate of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., Torkelson holds a bachelors degree in English and religion with a media studies concentration.

Sarah Stakston, APR, has been promoted to account supervisor in the health care practice. Since joining Weber Shandwick, she has developed campaign plans, conducted national and trade media outreach and developed Web content for a range of health care clients, including the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Intervention and Beckman Coulter. Prior to joining Weber Shandwick, Sarah worked in the health care and media relations practices of a Twin Cities-based public relations agency. Sarah graduated summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota with a bachelors degree in public relations and business management. She is currently pursuing her MBA at the Carlson School of Management.

Lisa Shepherd has been promoted to account supervisor in the health care practice. Her public relations experience includes health care and financial services media relations for a broad range of clients, including the American College of Surgeons (ACS), Childrens Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, the IRS and the U.S. Mint. Prior to joining Weber Shandwick in 2005, Lisa was a senior associate at a global real estate services and money management firm in Chicago. Shepherd received a bachelors degree from Miami University of Ohio in Speech Communications and Spanish and is an active member of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).

Rachel Lonsdale has been promoted to senior account executive in the health care practice. Since joining the agency in 2006, Lonsdale has helped plan and execute media relations and strategic activities for several health care clients including Boston Scientific and the National Brain Aneurysm Center, located at St. Josephs Hospital in St. Paul, Minn. She also serves on the communications task force at Portico Healthnet. Prior to joining Weber Shandwick, Lonsdale was an intern at WKOW-TV and a legislative intern in Madison, Wisconsin. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a bachelors degree in Communication Arts and Political Science.

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By lilybee This time of year there's always a glut of 'round up's', 'best of's' and retrospectives, AND we're gearing up for award season. So exciting! The design world is no different. The Brit Insurance awards call themselves 'The Most Comprehensive Deign Awards In The World'. They cover the whole gamut with categories in architecture, fashion, furniture, graphic design, interactive, product and (phew!) transport.

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For those of you with access to North American cable channel Spike TV, remember that tonight is the night of their annual Video Game Awards. No doubt a few of your favorites are up for awards, but I really wouldn't recommend watching it for them, or the celebrities, or Jack Black's adorable/nauseating buffoonery. That way lies madness. Instead, watch it for the sneak peeks and premieres of next year's big games and game content, as well as a few secret reveals.
Already promised are trailers for GTA4: The Lost and the Damned, Uncharted 2, God of War 3, some sort of content for Gears of War 2, Brutal Legend, Fight Night Round 4, Terminator Salvation (the game version, I assume), Watchmen: The End is Nigh, Mafia II, as well as a few unannounced titles. Of course, if you wait a few hours, all of those will show up on Gametrailers, and shortly after that your favorite blogs, so really it's up to you if you want to watch the show or not. It airs tonight on Spike at 9 pm eastern.
As an aside, can I ask who's idea it was to have Mountain Dew sponsor the Independent Game of the Year category? For the most part, the creators of those games -- Braid, World of Goo, Audiosurf, and Pixeljunk Eden -- went out of their way to avoid overt corporate interference and now whichever game wins the category will essentially be promoting a Pepsi product. All of the titles deserve wider recognition, but I'd like to think that we don't need a soda company to convince people how awesome they are. But maybe I'm just being too sensitive.

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I love this movie. I enjoyed almost all of Tim Burton movies Ive ever seen, and this is really more of the same, right? But ... It is so insipid. Maybe Im getting a boring, maybe Tim Burton is losing him, who knows. Fact of the matter is that this film made one thing painfully clear to me. Tim Burton is a director of films edgeless principal if I ever saw one. Anyway, theres blood, and people with black hair, and kind of twisted set designs, but is designed to adapt to a perfect formula, like any study of Blockbuster movies, and it does not seem to have the slightest intention of challenging each While the formula. No sign of something really disturbing, really rough, really weird, or really anything at all. Only one spot perfectly, formulas, safe film for an audience safe. I like to incorporate a lot of movies, all you have to do is pretend to have depth and edge, and Im willing to forgive many flaws. But I do not think that Burton never considered himself a challenge. I think that makes him an artist very boring. I am sure it is a very free spirit, filmmaker, makes his movies just the way they like, and how charming and authentic it is. I am sure that Michael Bay makes movies just the way we like them too. Does not do it interesting.

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Updated: Microsoft Small Basic has been added to the Free BASIC Compilers and Interpreters page. This is a simple language with only about 15 keywords meant for people who want to learn programming. It is supposed to be easy and fun to learn, and comes with an IDE that has context sensitive help and autocomplete facilities. If you're nostalgic for the days when programming languages were much simpler, or if you just want to learn how to write programs with an easier language, check this one out.

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lawmakers will likely not take up the matter of an auto bailout again until January, and who knows then what shape two of the Big 3 will be in. "It's over with," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the Wall Street Journal. The automakers, though, are still holding out hope that the White House will relent and hive off some of the $700 billion TARP fund to keep them afloat for the time being, the newspaper adds.

Why did the deal fail? It came down to pay cuts, Business Week says. United Auto Workers, headed by Ron Gettelfinger, would not budge on a deal to lower union wages and benefits to the level paid to workers at Toyota and Honda by next year. That was the deal-killer, the magazine writes. Amid the finger-pointing, Reid was looking ahead, reluctantly. "I dread looking at Wall Street tomorrow.

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Optimal Home Location is a Google Maps/Zillow mashup tool that helps you calculate the central location between all your commuting destinations.
After plugging in the six most frequent places you and your family commute to: work, school, other family members, etc., Optimal Home Location will crunch the numbers. The map it returns will show you the best place for you to live in order to minimize your commute times. The service is really handy, although not without its quirks. It cannot take into account anything beyond physical distances for instance, leaving you decide if the area is a safe neighborhood and whether or not its cost effective to live there. Perhaps it was just luck on the part of the search engine or on my part for picking the house I did but in my testing Optimal Home Location picked a handful of homes right in the neighborhood I currently live in. One of the things my wife and I both love about where we live is that we spend little time commuting thanks to a very strategically located home. Score one for the Optimal Home Location engine! On top of showing you the optimal location, it also allows you to compare commute times from various addresses you are already have in mind and show the location of local features like schools and libraries to help you pick an ideal locale. For more help with home hunting and moving, check out our top ten real estate tools.

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guitar chords with fingering, containing more then 5000 pages of different chords.For each chord you will find a detailed info on chord fingering (which finger to put on which string and which fret), easy to read guitar chord tablatures, and of course, chord diagrams. One thing you will certainly find helpfull is a picture of correct hand posture for each of the basic guitar chords. And of course, you can hit the play button and hear how the selected chord should sound like when strummed on a guitar.

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I just read about a lawsuit in Minn where a man and wife both presented to the emergency room with flu like symptoms. Days later, the man came back, complaining of pain, decreased appetite, etc. Blood work was done and revealed the man had sepsis. Sepsis is often referred to as a blood stream infection. It is caused by the presence of bacteria (bacteremia) or other infectious organisms or their toxins in the blood (septicemia) or in other tissue of the body.

So how or why would someone confuse the FLU and sepsis? Sepsis may be associated with clinical symptoms of systemic (bodywide) illness, such as fever, chills, malaise (generally feeling "rotten"), low blood pressure, and mental status changes.

Some of these are similar to the Flu, but the two are not similar. Labs should tell you what is the Flu, and what is more serious. Sadly, it seems the Minn. doctor ordered the right tests, but didn't respond when nurses asked for further direction and care.

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