The May Report: 8/29/2011: This is a very short report since the much longer one including SMCC, Kevin Willer and much much more will have to wait until the morning when more emails are added to the system; One reader writes about Chris Tomes: “if it were not for your reporting, that we finally discovered, of his past, myself nor my partners would have never started suspecting irregularities without knowledge from your articles of what to look for as a far as his activities mirroring some of your reports”

Editor and publisher: Ron May, ron@themayreport.com, ronaldmay@aol.com, www.themayreport.com , 773-525-3944.

If you missed an article, go here: www.tmronline.com/A55951/tmrarticles.nsf/vwFullNewsletter

Louis Brandeis: “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”
_____________________________
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______________________________
TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Scoop section:

– Facebook Kills Off Deals, Its Groupon Competitor
– Groupon’s Mason courts SEC’s ire | Crain’s
– OF NOTE: Facebook had 1 trillion page views in June
– Richard Cross: How Bank of America handled preparation for hurricane Irene
– Christopher Tomes
– Layton Olson: Facing Tempests in Today’s World: Preparing for Disasters Large and Small – Broadband Illinois
– Anonymous: GroupOn’s Plastic Surgery “offer”
– Cards Ron collected at the Tech Cocktail on 7/21/11 and I have about 35 more names and addresses that were hand-written and are being typed up
____________________________
******************************
If I understand him correctly, Gian Fulgoni is right. Clicks don’t mean didly. At this stage of the game, I don’t want TMR to do what is called “affiliate” marketing which is just another word for free advertising. A recent situation involving “affiliate” marketing resulted in this comment from the advertiser: “We received about 342 clicks with about 300 clicks within the first 30 minutes of your email. We’ve not received any registrations yet …”

Gian, you were right. Clicks don’t translate into sales. And as TMR, all I can do is help to get clicks. The sale has to be made on the other end.

Therefore, as I have told the guys at Funding Feeding Frenzy, if their tracking system is valid, we got plenty of clicks for their May 4th event and very few sign-ups.

I believe that it is a lot of work to run the ads even if they don’t get the sales. I have to check and double check the links and make sure that the formatting is right but without the sign-ups, there is no revenue to TMR.

What if a person clicks on the link in TMR and then signs up later through his own efforts or through another link? And vice versa? That is a problem with 20-25 affiliates all in the Chicago area, as Bob Bock told me they have at FFF.
*******************************
_____________________________
The Scoop section:
___________________
Facebook Kills Off Deals, Its Groupon Competitor
Subject: Facebook Kills Off Deals, Its Groupon Competitor
Date: 8/29/2011 11:38:56 A.M. Central Daylight Time
From: bconnolly@furthermore.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com

mashable.com/2011/08/26/facebook-deals-is-dead/

_________________________________
Groupon’s Mason courts SEC’s ire | Crain’s

Subject: Groupon’s Mason courts SEC’s ire | Crain’s
Date: 8/26/2011 2:35:28 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: bconnolly@furthermore.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com

www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20110826/NEWS07/110829899/groupons-mason-courts-secs-ire

____________________________
OF NOTE: Facebook had 1 trillion page views in June

Subject: OF NOTE: Facebook had 1 trillion page views in June
Date: 8/26/2011 12:29:15 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: bconnolly@furthermore.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com

www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-facebook-had-1-trillion-page-views-in-june-according-to-google-20110826,0,1064190.story

_______________________
Richard Cross: How Bank of America handled preparation for hurricane Irene

Subject: RE: Richard, lower Manhattan, Staten Island, Richmond VA, PA, diesel, etc.?
Date: 8/28/2011 9:16:02 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: richard.n.cross@bankofamerica.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com

Ron,

In advance of Irene hitting Charlotte, Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York, we switched several of our datacenters to diesel generators. One of the exercises that my team went through was making sure that we had at least 3 days of diesel hoarded at each site in case of an outage. We reviewed all of our plans for failover to contingency environments, which unfortunately are application specific, rather than site specific. We also had a call all day today to report issues (it was incredibly boring because Irene hit the Northeast with less force than anticipated) and a status call with several lines of business at 3 PM CT.

We had some business groups that had code releases planned for this weekend. Everyone who was scheduled for Friday night was OK, but Saturday work got cancelled. There was a little bit of a mess in New York because the city asked everyone on Manhattan island to leave by 5 PM, but they shut down public transportation at noon.

As far as the risk infrastructure that I support, we moved a major memory upgrade forward to Friday night to avoid the hurricane. We’ve been worried for the past two weeks that the increased market volume might cause some performance issues when we do our market risk calculations, so we were glad we got everything in before New York went into lockdown.

We learned a lot going through Irene preparedness, but in the end I’m glad that this felt more like a drill than an actual emergency.

Richard

From: RONALDMAY@aol.com [mailto:RONALDMAY@aol.com]
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2011 5:36 PM
To: Cross, Richard N
Cc: ronaldmay@aol.com
Subject: Richard, lower Manhattan, Staten Island, Richmond VA, PA, diesel, etc.?

August 28, 2011

Richard,

Fascinating conversation this morning and I am sorry it did not work out that you could go to SocDevCamp to represent TMR. But you have to be on a special secure computer at 3pm for your conference call.

Could you give us a general outline of the issues that BofA faces relating to the hurricane, the data centers, the diesel fuel problem, the reporting to work issue, etc.?

Thanks in advance and I know that TMR readers would be very interested.

Ron

773-525-3944
________________________________
Christopher Tomes

Christopher Tomes

X

Inbox
X

ReplyReply
More|
[Name and address withheld although not requested] to me

show details 1:45 PM (1 hour ago)

from [Name and address withheld although not requested] to ron@themayreport.com
date Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 1:45 PM
subject Christopher Tomes
mailed-by comcast.net
Important mainly because of the words in the message.

hide details 1:45 PM (1 hour ago)

Hello Ron,

I received your email and note that you printed my letter. Thank you, any word I can get out to potential targets of his are appreciated. Sorry for delay in responding back but just got back into town from travels. I understand you would like to discuss more and I would be happy in giving you more details as they may seem important to you. It is an interesting story of how a charming individual can pull wool over some fairly sophisticated business people and never giving a thought that the group of us would sooner or later start comparing notes and the cards would start falling around him.

I reached out to you for a couple of reasons. One, if it were not for your reporting, that we finally discovered, of his past, myself nor my partners would have never started suspecting irregularities without knowledge from your articles of what to look for as a far as his activities mirroring some of your reports. Also, when I first confronted him of his past activities in Chicago and with Verital and DNA I read about on your post he must of spent twenty minutes trying to discredit you and your posts and all the people (by name) that he told me to call to discredit you. Never seen anything or one get into his skin like that so I was fairly certain your posts were accurate. So with that said, besides legal issues we are preparing to throw at him that we will never see a penny on, besides money he will do anything to acquire, his Achilles is vanity and what rich and influential people think of him. You called him for what he is years ago, you obviously get to him and I was pretty sure you would like to get a follow up to where he had popped up if you had not already known.

Please feel free to call me at xxx-yyy-zzzz or drop me a line if you want to arrange a call. I will not be available Tue or Wed of this week though.

Let me know,

[Name withheld although not requested]
_______________________________
Layton Olson: Facing Tempests in Today’s World: Preparing for Disasters Large and Small – Broadband Illinois

Subject: Facing Tempests in Today’s World: Preparing for Disasters Large and Small – Broadband Illinois
Date: 8/24/2011 11:49:02 A.M. Central Daylight Time
From: leo@howehutton.com
To: leo@howehutton.com

Colleagues with interests in public safety and “safe and healthy” community communication in Illinois,

I wanted to send you a copy of my Partnership for a Connected Illinois blog on Public Safety communication.

broadbandillinois.org/news/48

Some of you have provided information for this 3rd of 7 planned blogs on FCC National Broadband Plan “National Need” Areas (the first 2 being on Telehealth, and Economic Opportunity in June and July). Note that public safety communication planning was an important topic (second only to local construction/financing cooperation)in August 2 meeting of Illinois Broadband Deployment Council. Others of you have participated in community response or coverage of disaster response mapping for understanding and planning in a number of settings.

The readability of the blog (as well as the reference to Wikipedia’s tornado graphic) benefitted from the excellent editing of PCI consultant Debby Strauss. If you would be interested in the “long form” of notes and thoughts collected on this topic since the tornados and high water which hit much of the south and Mississippi Valley since April, I would be glad to send it to you.

I appreciate any thoughts or additional resources on how Illinois, and other Great Plaines/Great Lakes/Mississippi Valley states, might strenthen our public-private response capacities. Feel free to forward to parties or websites you believe would be interested.

Layton Olson
Consultant to Partnership for a Connected Illinois
www.broadbandillinois.org
312-263-3001
___________________________
Anonymous: GroupOn’s Plastic Surgery “offer”
Subject: GroupOn’s Plastic Surgery “offer”
Date: 8/25/2011 8:47:33 A.M. Central Daylight Time
From: Name withheld upon request
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com

Ron :

Please withhold name and e-mail address. Thank you

[Initials withheld upon request]

1. ORIGINAL Text

www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2011/08/25/97001-20110825FILWWW00484-polemique-chirurgie-esthetique-en-promo.php

2. [Unedited - except for notes in italics] TRANSLATION by “Google translate”

Cosmetic Surgery: promo controversy

AFP Last updated 25/08/2011 at 14:38 | posted on 25/08/2011 at 14:38 React

Finally, treat yourself to the chest of your dreams for 2499 euros instead of private cosmetic clinic in 5430, 54% discount “offer” unprecedented “Groupon.fr launched the site, raised criticism of the Order physicians. (*)

The offer, “forbidden to minors” may be used until January 9th (a good maximum per person), indicated Wednesday that the site showed “six buyers already” in the day, before closing this “deal” flash.

The intervention must be preceded by a compulsory medical examination in case of negative medical opinion, “you will be reimbursed in full by Groupon,” we read there.
It also stated that “the statutory period between the appointment and the procedure is at least 14 days.” A link for more information led to a specialized site Belgium (totalbeautyclinic.be). Further details: “post-operative care by your surgeon (included in price).”

Advertisement for surgery

The site is best known for Groupon promotions on items (appliances, wines …) and services (restaurants, wellness, travel …).
His “partner is a clinical Belgian border with a major French customers who wanted information on its services on the French site tab Paris”, according to press officer groupon.fr Paul Choppin de Janvry.

In France, this type of advertising is banned, told AFP Vorhauer Dr. Walter, Secretary General of the National Council of the College of Physicians. “A clinic is not entitled to this type of price promotion, trade and financial purely on medical procedures. This is a decision of the Court of Cassation on July 5, 2006,” said he, confessing to ignore, for against, what is the Belgian law on the subject. For practitioners, this advertising is prohibited as well.

Direct contract

In France, “in plastic surgery, the estimate is required”, established by the surgeon direct contract with his patient, accompanied by a cooling-off period.
“The intervention must take place in accredited institutions,” said Dr. Vorhauer.

He recalled that “in France, cosmetic surgeons have also an obligation of results. They assume their responsibilities.” Therefore, the contributions of civil liability insurance of these practitioners are particularly high, he noted.

“If a patient complains of a surgeon (operating in France) that have participated in this device there (Groupon.fr), make sure that we will not hesitate to initiate disciplinary proceedings,” he quips.

The principle of this type of offer requires rebates paid back to the site bringing together applications, which is also prohibited.

“There can be a package including the fees of doctors,” adds Dr. Piernick Cressard, president of the ethics and ethics of the college.
“Medicine is not a trade” he said indicating to look further into certain practices of “chain operation in ophthalmology.” The Order will in any case study, with his lawyer, the location of the site Groupon.

(*) “Ordre des Medecins” [translated as 'Order physicians'] : it is the official regulatory body for physicians somewhat similar to AMA in the US
_______________________________________
Cards Ron collected at the Tech Cocktail on 7/21/11 and I have about 35 more names and addresses that were hand-written and are being typed up

Jeff Scheur
President & Co-Founder
NoRedInk
www.noredink.com
jeff@noredink.com

Nigel Caine
Product Analyst
Metromix
www.metromix.com
nigel@metromix.com

Maria Katris
Built In Chicago
maria.c.katris@gmail.com

Garrett Galayda
Designer
Doejo
garrett@doejo.com

Nirav Shah
CEO
Discover Veggie
www.discoverveggie.com
nirav.shah@discoverveggie.com

Wilfried Schobeiri
CTO
Tap Me

tap.me

ws@tap.me

Grisel Gamboa
Project Manager
Eight Bit Studios
www.eightbitstudios.com
grisel@eightbitstudios.com

Kayne Grau
Vice President
Cars.com
www.cars.com
kgrau@cars.com

Sarah Mooney
Deal Umpire
www.deal-umpire.com
sarah@deal-umpire.com

Tom Nesbitt
Deal Umpire
www.deal-umpire.com
tom@deal-umpire.com

Chris Heuer
Deloitte
www.deloitte.com
cheuer@deloitte.com

Scott Greene
Deal Umpire
www.deal-umpire.com
scott@deal-umpire.com

Venson Kuchipudi
CEO
Deal Umpire
www.deal-umpire.com
venson@deal-umpire.com

Don Bora
Partner
Eight Bit Studios
www.eightbitstudios.com
don@eightbitstudios.com

Anne-Catherine Dargis
Director of Sales
PvPower
anne-catherine.dargis@pvpower.com

Desiree Vargas Wrigley
President & Co-Founder
Give Forward
www.giveforward.com
desiree@giveforward.com

Nathan Artz
Founder
Robot Recruit
www.robotrecruit.com
nartzpod@gmail.com

Sanjay Patel
President
Discover Veggie
www.discoverveggie.com
sanjay.patel@discoverveggie.com

Nate Williams
President
Gold Prairie
www.goldprairie.com
nwilliams@goldprairie.com

Paul Caswell
Founder & CEO
www.weavethepeople.com
paul@weavethepeople.com

Julio Cesar Yumpe
Co-Founder
Media Booze
www.mediabooze.com
juliocesar@mediabooze.com

Stan Bogdashin
SEO Director
Comrade Web Studios
www.comradeweb.com
stan@comradeweb.com

Lisa Russell
Senior Account Executive
Fippex
www.fippex.com
lisa@fippex.com

Eoin McMillan
Photographer in Residence
www.picture.ly
eoin@picture.ly

Sara Altier
Eventbrite
sara@eventbrite.com

Darren Marshall
Creative Director
Doejo
darren@doejo.com

Chad Johnson
Creative Director
Tech Week
chad@techweek.com

Robert Fine
Editor
CoolBlue Press

coolbluepress.com

bob@coolbluecompany.com

Jeremy Smith
Co-Founder
SpotHero
www.spothero.com
jeremy@spothero.com

Jeannie Walters
Connext
jeannie@360connext.com

Erik Severinghaus
Koala Deal
www.koaladeal.com
erik@koaladeal.com

Steve Ghareeb
sghareeb@kitchens.com

Eric J. Lannert
Vice President
i.c.stars
www.icstars.org
elannert@icstars.org

Muse Seymour
Content Strategist
HTMLGraphic
muse@htmlgraphic.com

MIchael D. Mayer
Little Green Duckling
www.littlegreenduckling.com
mike@littlegreenduckling.com

Jim Range
Heyalda
www.heyalda.com
j@heyalda.com

Elizabeth Gilmore
Design Ninja
Doejo
elizabeth@doejo.com

Coco Meers
PrettyQuick
www.prettyquickbeauty.com
coco@prettyquickbeauty.com

Mani Sylejmani
manidepaul@gmail.com

William D. Anthony
Attorney
anthonylawoffice@gmail.com

Alexis Derrow
Manager
Orbitz
alexis.derrow@orbitz.com

Jason Gegere
Owner
HTMLGraphics
www.htmlgraphic.com
jason@htmlgraphic.com

Christy M. Carter
iScout
christy@iscoutnow.com

MIchael P. Gilbert
Vice President Of Sales
Computers Nationwide
mpg@computersnationwide.com

Steven M. Sobotka
CEO
Sobotka Holdings
www.sobotkaholdings.com
steven.sobotka@sobotkaholdings.com

Paul Kinter
Chicago Booth
pkinter@chicagobooth.edu

Carl Hertz
IT Support Manager
CNT
www.cnt.org
chertz@cnt.org

Jim Skuros
Co-Founder
Soundoff
jim@soundoff.fm

Dan Arwady
Co-Founder
Soundoff
dan@soundoff.fm

Jeff Glazer
CEO
DealUmpire
www.deal-umpire.com
jeff@deal-umpire.com

Jeff O’Hara
Co-Founder
Edmodo
www.edmodo.com
jeff@edmodo.com

Jim Figliulo
(Fig1)
jim@fig1brandstudio.com

Nicole Yeary
nicole.yeary@gmail.com
____________________________________
END OF REPORT