Okay, we're back. We're live. We're global connections today with Carlos Juarez. We always enjoyed talking to Carlos. He's a university of America in Puebla, Mexico, not too far from Mexico City, and he runs the International Relations Department there, and we get to ask him so many questions about how the world works in general. It's a flat world, isn't it, Carlos? Absolutely, Jay. Saludos. I'm actually in Mexico City right now, sort of camping out here, keeping low-key and staying at home, if you will. But it's an interesting time, of course. We continue to see this unravel, lots of information, lots of misinformation, but also important, as I'm a college professor here, and like all universities too, we've had to suddenly close the classroom and bring it into the virtual online field. I've been an online instructor for many, many years, but now my regular class has had to quickly, like so many others, switch to online. So we'll talk a little bit about that as well. How do we make these adjustments and as well for other people having to work from home now, easy to do in some areas, not so easy in others, but even beyond that, just understanding all the ins and outs of this crisis as it unfolds, particularly things about borders, because diseases don't have passports, they don't stop, and we have a world, however, where we see increasingly many world leaders are basically trying to control and limit, well, essentially lock down some of those borders, and so how do they do that? What are the challenges and issues involved with that? Well, we'll address some of those things here today, but it's good to see you. Good to see you. Thank you for coming on, as always. So let's talk about the school, let's talk about every college, in fact, every educational institution in the world is faced with this because there's something over 170 countries are involved in the corona crisis, and so they've got to adapt things and you're adapting like everyone else. But how are you adapting specifically? What changes have you made? What software, what equipment, and how have you communicated all this to your students? Yeah, well, it came rather suddenly, although we began to see it maybe about two, three weeks ago now, some of the elite schools, I think Harvard was one of the first in Georgetown and a handful of others quickly announcing that with the spring breaks that occurred in most American universities a few weeks ago, that they would not be returning and that, you know, quickly the faculty would have to move to put their courses online. Now, online education, it will vary. Some places do a lot of it, some places do very little of it. But in general, in the universities, we do have a, you know, a broad experience. We have a, you know, a learning management system, one of the common ones that I use, for example, Blackboard, where you basically have tools that allow you to put lectures, you know, materials, even, you know, global connection shows that we take here, I often share those with my classes. And but other than that, it's also a forum that allows us to, you know, to keep a conversation, a dialogue going. So we have interaction going, the students are able to continually dialogue and, and, and, you know, carry out a discussion.  So, you know, my courses, they still have six, seven weeks left to go. And I've quickly had to switch them online. They were not originally online. But because I have that experience, relatively easy for me, more challenging for professors who do not normally teach online, suddenly the learning curve and the quick technical challenges. But, you know, we do have a, and I think just like you talk about the health profession, dealing with the, you know, the infectious disease of what this involves at the universities, we've got suddenly the technical support staff that are frantically trying to help faculty make this switch. And even for students who, you know, again, they didn't sign up or plan to take an online course suddenly now they have to because there's no alternative. So there's a bit of anxiety, learning curve that goes along with that. But more importantly, I think it's an opportunity. And I certainly am using it for my current classes to continue a discussion more in depth about these, you know, the issue of Coronavirus and, you know, how it plays out. Now it lends itself because I'm a professor international relations. I have a course, for example, on U.S. foreign policy where we will look at maybe the U.S. role or how it's addressing the crisis. Another course I teach is global political economy right now. And of course, you know, this is having a profound impact on the on the world economy. So we use it as an opportunity to, you know, continue in the discussion.  But of course, a wealth of information out there that we have to sift through and give our students a chance to I think I think it gives them a chance to reflect and to, you know, use this time that maybe they're at home now where they would otherwise be, you know, dusting the room or, you know, cleaning the toilets. Rather, they can now engage and use it as an opportunity to take a break from, you know, what the, you know, home stay or, you know, staying at home entails and using it as a learning opportunity as well. So how does it work? I'm afraid I've never, you know, been involved in a course online like this. I understand that Zoom gives you the ability to break your students up into groups, little groups that can only talk to the groups. And I wonder if I start out with the conventional model, professor talking to class, class asking professor questions, professor answering questions, showing stuff on the blackboard, whatnot. How much different is this from that? Well, you know, in a fundamental level, not much. We're simply taking those same, you know, techniques into suddenly this new online virtual reality. But here, I would say this, you know, even I've been teaching now for about 30 years, I'm getting a little up there in my middle age. But today, the way we teach is obviously changed from we might have been doing 20, 30, 40 years ago, more and more emphasis on group projects, group dynamics. You know, we know that that's what students, students to prepare them for the real world.  So typically, like I have a foreign policy class, for example, the team that my class might have, I don't know, 35, 40 students. So we break them up into small groups of three or four students where they'll be focusing on a particular issue. In my case, they might study a US president, you know, Kennedy or Nixon or Reagan or somebody or Clinton, and look at their foreign policy as a small group. And then they present their materials, and they have to deliver a presentation. The challenge is that, of course, well, let me just say a few more things about the online format, it takes various forms, but I can take lectures that they could hear like a video, I could share with them, maybe a PowerPoint presentation, I could connect them to, you know, YouTube videos, again, the global connection shows and others like that, as well, today of all the major media and news outlets have, you know, podcasts, or they have, you know, good, maybe just a good article that we can read. And it's very easy to connect all these. Again, I would say, because I've been doing it for some years, it's pretty straightforward. But if you're somebody who hasn't been doing that, just learning the technical issues of how you're posted to do this, that can be daunting. It's not ideal to suddenly, you know, on week 12, be told, now it's online, you know, overnight. So that's a challenge. But again, there are various tools, you know, the discussion is another one where you've got, maybe the whole class will be looking at the same materials, and they have to post a little, you know, comment, and then they will see what others have read, and they have to respond to it, extend it. Now, for some, it can be what we would call synchronous, where they actually go live at a certain time during class. That I haven't been doing that much myself, because especially as I do some online teaching, sometimes students may be all over the world, particularly the a lot of the teaching I've been doing with with HPU there. So it's much easier for me to set up a scheme where the students come in on their time, asynchronous. So you've got a set of instructions, things they will look at and have to comment on, but they do it at their own time within a certain deadline.  And the other thing it changes, though, especially in this format is that you kind of do it at your leisure at your, well, not leisure, but at your, at a time that works for you, it could be late at night, it could be early in the morning, that gives a little more flexibility. But it is a new dynamic for many, both and the students too. And again, some institutions will have a higher percentage of that, places that have maybe a lot of non traditional learners, adult learners, often have online courses that reach out to people who can't do the traditional classroom setting. But other places where you have the, you know, the classic traditional classroom, suddenly going online is maybe a little bit out of that comfort zone. It's something you're not used to. So there are many challenges. But again, I want to say today in 2020, I mean, all the major universities have these learning management systems, a platform, and zoom that you described is a good example where, you know, we integrate that as well, you can set up separate groups, the students can connect that way. And so it said, really, it's designed to give us that, I think that that flexibility that you could be anywhere, anytime, and you overcome the challenge of commuting or going somewhere to meet.  Yes, exactly.  But in the end, it's not a complete substitute for actual people to people dialogue, just like negotiations, you can do a lot of it by phone or email or even even a Skype interview. But in the end, you know, you really need to meet people. And right now that's on hold as we're all basically trying to stay away and minimize our contact. But, you know, we have to work with what we have. You know, it's interesting that the number of schools, not in the first tier, but like Phoenix, for example, University of Phoenix has been, you know, using and developing online teaching material for decades and decades. They already have it in the bag. They have it already working. It's interesting that they have an advantage. Anyway, I wanted to ask you about tests. You know, in the conventional sense, you got a blue book. Do they still use that term? I think a blue book is one of those trivia questions that students would go, a what? A blue book? A what? And you're referring to these, you know, these little booklets where you would hand write and maybe you do an exam in them. They're not quite as widespread. And even, you know, again, different norms, as you well know, I teach in different parts of the world. I mean, mostly I've been based in the US for most of my career. But now in Mexico, many years, I also teach regularly in Europe. And there are different norms in terms of what, you know, what kind of materials here in Mexico, for example, it's less common for students to buy all the books that we use. In the US, it's pretty straightforward. Here's my class. These are the three or four or five books you must buy. You can get them on Amazon or you can go to the bookstore here. And I would say, and especially a lot of developing countries, there's a greater tendency to just, you know, scan the books or to get copies of, you know, PDF files of it, a less stringent intellectual property control. And that's a problem for, you know, in the first world, we have stricter, I guess, norms about, you know, using materials for educational purposes and not just, you know, giving away free materials. But I want to say there's no shortage of information.  So we have a lot of foreign policy think tanks, even as you all know there in Hawaii, places like Pacific Forum that put out, you know, good, timely information. Those are easy links. You can say, here, here's a, you know, here's a quick piece on, you know, US, North Korea, whatever it might be. So there's, you know, but here again, this is the new style of teaching. You know, when I began teaching years ago, you had a book and the students took notes and they took a test. Now it's like, here's all the information that's out there. And I, you know, what I generally would do, they have to get familiar with, you know, websites for organizations, think tanks, government agencies, and, and there's just an information overload, but you have to, hopefully the skills that we're helping them teach, critical big skills are. That's good. That's a real world. That's the real world. What about the testing itself, you know, do you, do you have the ability with this, with this online training system to give them a pop quiz and get their answers and have their answers graded? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So you can do it anytime. The tools, the tools are in there and they can do testing and, you know, and there's lots of, in fact, there's just a whole range of possibilities there that they can do online, you know, exams. I tend to, I'm not one that leads towards a lot of rote memorization. I've always just shied away from that. I prefer essay writing, research, you know, reports and, you know, I teach courses that are a little more, maybe advanced level, and, and the students instead need to do more of the critical thinking, writing and researching. So less of these little quizzes. Sometimes that just becomes like busy work just to make sure they did the reading. What I will do with mine, for example, we have a weekly discussion forum where they have to look at a common set of readings or maybe some video or a podcast and then answer questions in a more informal style. And this is what I call more of a, you know, classroom dialogue question and answer. So they will post their little, you know, brief paragraph and then they will see what another student posted and reply to that and it creates this threaded discussion. That's a common feature. But there again, the online format, it's been around now for some time, really the last 20 years, the last 10 in particular, it's been fine tuned quite a bit. Are you in this in the difficult times, these threatening, dangerous times? Are you giving them a break on grades?  Are you somehow giving them a more easy course than they had before? Well, I mean, this current week, for example, is our first week where we've gone online. And, and for example, no grades right now. Let's just work out the kings, get comfortable with it. So no grades. The other, as you all know here in Mexico, the home of the famous Corona beer, I've got my little coronita here. And this is the little The virus never came, the virus never came from Mexico. I want to be clear about that. However, the Corona beer company has had to handle their own crisis management because there are, of course, as you can imagine, conspiracy theories, misinformation, that it all starts with Corona beer. And my understanding is that their sales have plummeted in some places. You know, it's quite sad. But here I am keeping, you know, the national economy going. So let me make sure and keep things going. Yeah, we're getting this on tape. So let's move to international relations for a moment, Carlos. You know, borders. It's like, I used to say in the early days of think tech, the borders are dissolving. You know, if you could go from Germany to France, just drive down the road, it was, you couldn't even tell where the border was. And I thought that was, you know, an indicator of enlightenment in Europe anyway. And I thought that was the trend, didn't you? Now all of a sudden, borders are much harder. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And what we see is, you know, around the world, many leaders have been restricting nonessential travel. More and more, we're hearing these pronouncements coming out. Some of them are sealing off the borders entirely to help, you know, contain and curb the spread of this coronavirus. And, you know, at its core, I mean, there are certain, and actually here's an interesting thing to look back. We have a long history centuries ago where we began to see this use of border controls as a way of basically limiting the spread of disease. In other words, this is not the first time this has happened. Even looking back at the 14th century, the Black Death that went through much of Europe became a justification for some of the very earliest border controls. Now in the 14th, 15th century, we didn't have clearly defined borders. So maybe it was certain places where you knew, well, that side of the mountain or that side of the river, it wasn't until about the 16th century that we had atlases that began to deliberately, you know, show us or delineate the borders. But one of the lessons that we draw from that early experience is that border control and lockdowns as they've been going on for a long time, they tend to outlast whatever crisis they're supposed to prevent. So yes, you have a disease and the border comes up to, you know, control that. This took place, particularly the Italians were quite big on this, whether the Venetians or the, you know, the Genoans. And they host a lot of different examples. Italy used to have patrol ships and observation posts and horseballs. And this went on for quite a long time, at least until the mid 19th century. But my point here is that you start this process of putting up borders and controls. And sometimes, you know, once the issue has gone away, you continue to maintain that. I kind of think of it sometimes like when we create bureaucracies or institutions, it's very hard, almost impossible to make it go away, you know, it has a way of like redefining its reality. But at the end of the day, much of this is often, especially even today, a more of an expression of a xenophobic policy than any other enduring solution. Because again, while yes, it may sound good to say, oh, we're going to close that border. Interestingly, I just read some reports today up in the border of Mexico with Arizona and Sonora, the state of Sonora is the bordering state of Arizona. There's a group of Mexicans that have begun basically protesting at the border, not allowing Americans to come in. Because right now the US has a much higher incident rate of infection than Mexico. Mexico has been relatively low. So again, these things bring out, I think, a lot of fear and sensationalism. But at the same time, it's a, you know, governments are trying to show that they're doing something controlling that. Now, of course, when it comes to like airplanes, yeah, you can see because these are these are like a little, you know, petri dish of bringing people very closely together and a lot of concern about that. So, you know, we see it, China perhaps took the lead on this. And I can remember some 10 years ago, a trip I took there before you even got off the plane, they would come on board dressed in these white outfits and put a little temperature gauge on your forehead. And if you had a fever, you had to go this way. And that, of course, China has done a lot of that in their early stages of this crisis. But again, the borders, I mean, at the end of the day, these diseases because of the flow of people and movement of goods and transport of everything, it is very, very near impossible to contain it.  And so there's a reason why there's a desire for that. But I would maintain at the end that it's driven probably more by, I don't know, you know, gaining some some points with your with your popular, you know, with the masses that you take. You have a confluence of things here. Number one is trade war that Trump created. Number two is, you know, we have we have a decline in the economy because of coronavirus. Number three is the borders related to that is also sealed, in many ways, seal. And each country has its own, you know, border issues. And the global economy is going down. The trade war is still on. People don't know what to do about the virus. You got political xenophobic maneuvers happening. And the and the victim of all of this is not only the national economies involved, but the global economy. And I wonder if you could talk about that. I mean, how are all these factors, particularly the hardening of the borders, affecting the decline of the global economy? Well, we're getting just the early indications now, I'm sure over the next few weeks, we're going to see more about the really massive decline in trade and even China with its massive, you know, clampdown. Perhaps, you know, we've seen pictures from satellite of how massive, you know, the on one hand, the bright side is that the pollution has been brought down dramatically, but the flow of merchandise and goods. And because of the interconnection, again, the interdependence of the global economy, you have these supply chain networks where a product, maybe an iPhone that's assembled in China, it has parts from Malaysia from, you know, South Korea from, you know, California. And when you begin to put a, you know, a slowdown on any of those pieces of the supply chain, it just it creates a havoc on everything. So the world economy is certainly going into a pretty deep, deep crisis, probably the worst we've seen my guess would be since the Great Depression, by all measures. And so it's going to take some time to overcome that. And it won't quite be the same. You talked earlier, for example, about Europe and this idea, we've seen it in the last 30 years, the globalization of the world economy and borders, they have eroded. And, you know, and today, maybe not today, really, because we've got, again, more border controls. But in general, in Europe, you've got borders that have been eliminated and the free flow of goods and people. But now, suddenly a retrenchment and going back to creating more, look at the crisis, how it flared in Northern Italy, initially, and that border with France on one hand, with maybe Austria to the north, suddenly, they've had to impose restrictions that they didn't have for many years. The impact is, again, it's profound and it's psychological as well, because again, borders suddenly became almost just like, I mean, again, I travel quite a bit in Europe on a regular basis, and you didn't think about it. It's like driving in the US and going through, you know, Oklahoma to Texas, you know, you just see a sign, but there's no checkpoint. And that is now suddenly, now you've got borders all over the world. And even, I think, in the last day, we've seen reports that the US and Canada had been negotiating a potential border issues and the US trying to argue for pulling American troops along that US border to help with surveillance. The Canadians have been upset saying, no, you know, we've got this long border that for years has been pretty much open and massive, massive flow of trade. But basically, the US has a government, the Trump government has apparently been requesting US troops to be placed within 20 miles of the Canadian border. Again, this is a different world we're living in.   But of course, at least in the major urban areas, you know, the borders in the Northwest and maybe other parts of the East, we're now seeing more tension about this and a desire to want to, you know, militarize the border. That's quite dramatic. Canada are, you know, our closest ally to the North. Really, this is terrible with unophobia. But going back to Europe for a minute, so you have the EU and you have, you know, the migrant problem into the EU, you have the UK, you know, shoving off from the EU, you have Trump refusing to pay the US share of the EU defense expense, you have Russia trying to dissolve whatever it can in Ukraine and make pipelines that bypass member countries of the EU, other ones that just trying to divide. And so the EU, it seems to me that by virtue of all these processes, including the fall out on the coronavirus, the EU is in great jeopardy as a trade group and as a sort of collective economy, don't you think? Yeah. And I think what it's showing also is even, you know, the variation within the different countries, the member states, how they're responding to it. And, you know, and maybe, whereas we had seen over these last almost 30 years now, well, since 1993, 1994, when the EU was formalized, we've seen a gradual but steady process of, you know, eliminating borders and, you know, maybe in some level a growing sense of a European identity, less of the national identity. This crisis is helping to, I think, bring back a resurgence of some of this nationalism. And you have some governments, maybe those that are more xenophobic, like the leader in Hungary, Viktor Orban, the Polish leadership right now, very anti-immigrant. And so there, this is just an additional beyond the migrant problem that's been there for the last five years. This is just one more, I guess, little wedge that's going to allow, you know, particularly, you know, populist and anti-immigrant leaders to use it as a pretext to continue to close the border. Even here in the US, again, we've seen recent tweets by President Trump that, you know, we need that border wall as if that's going to stop the virus. But it is an opportunity that it is an opportunity to push, you know, policies. And for the president, Trump, you know, that border wall has been one of his signature, I guess, promises to continue it and clearly using this crisis as an argument for further need for it. But the other thing we're talking about is Carlos, is that diplomatic relations, borders and diplomatic relations are inextricably intertwined. If you go, I wish I had one too, if you go to the four to five, we go forward. If you have a diplomatic, rather a border issue, you have a diplomatic issue too. And in the case of China, somehow our relationship with them, although, you know, in many ways it was superficial, our relationship now, the gloves are coming off. Trump is attacking them, they're attacking the United States. Their, you know, trade is under the influence of the tariffs. Everybody's calling each other names now. So the border is hardening conceptually and really in terms of trade and immigration. And at the same time, diplomatic relationships are weakening. And we see it clearly in the case of China, but I'm wondering if that's happening elsewhere. If the coronavirus on top of other issues that have hardened borders, hardened relationships, you know, doesn't that mean we are having a global decline in the, what do you want to call it, the courtesies and the friendship, otherwise involved diplomatic relationships? Absolutely. No, this has heightened tensions in so many ways. And, you know, on one hand, you mentioned China and actually just today the Chinese are now announcing that they will close their border to most foreigners starting this Saturday. They have a desire to want to, again, they've seen an increase in somehow the imported cases. And even though it appears that they have now managed to overcome maybe the bigger challenge there in this Wuhan city, but now they fear that, you know, imported cases will continue to unravel. But it doesn't help, of course, that we have here from the US, you know, a president who calls it the China virus or the Wuhan virus. So there's this growing, again, xenophobia, anti Chinese sentiment. But let me give you an anecdote here just in the region here, Mexico with one of its neighbors to the south from El Salvador, a recent incident a few days ago where there was an airplane coming. Basically, I believe it was coming into El Salvador, and they were refusing to allow it to land coming from Mexico, because curiously, even in this region of Latin America, there's been an interesting variation in the response of different leaders. Many of the countries, particularly in South America, have begun to take, you know, more aggressive steps to lock down and, you know, promote social distancing and the like, you know, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Argentina. The two outliers to most of this happen to be the two largest country, Mexico and Brazil. The leaders, both of them populists, one in Mexico, López Orelor is a populist leader from the left, the leader in Brazil, Bob Boltonado is a right wing populist, but both been criticized for taking a much more lax or lackadaisical attitude. Meanwhile, there are other, you know, brothers and cousins here in South America and Central America have been rather critical of that because they feel that, you know, they're not doing the right thing, let's say. But you have, again, heightened tensions about a lot of this, even, you know, tensions that have been there for the past few years with Venezuela and Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil, and a fear that if a country is not being responsible for taking care of what they need to, it's going to spill over and affect others. Again, that's the nature of these kind of global issues like this. And here again, I would just tell you, you know, we have a lot of debates about, oh, what could we have done more? Did we know it was going to happen? The reality is that we, you know, we have known for many, many years that this is one of the type of global challenges we will continue to face. Even as we get over this, hopefully in a few months by next year, we will continue to be struggling with pandemic diseases. It is inevitable. And just the movement of people of goods. And so how we handle this is going to have implications for how we can handle future ones. At the end of the day, like so many things in global politics, you need cooperation and coordination. Interestingly, the Europeans, who have a long history of that, in general, they're, you know, they're coordinating more carefully. But even there, we're seeing heightened tensions and maybe a certain nativism, you know, countries kind of perking down to take care of themselves first. And so it is, it is a time of breaking down, it's breaking down. And our foreign policy is declining and getting some fragmented. I mean, I read this morning that the United States that the Department of Justice had indicted Maduro in absentia, which is, I mean, that's that's not really the greatest, you know, foreign policy you could have. He is running the country de facto. So inditing him doesn't sound like it's a positive move at all. But I want to ask you one last question. We haven't talked about this. And then it's this, you know, early on, we heard a lot from the World Health Organization. They were dragging their heels on declaring a pandemic. But we did, you know, everybody was asking them, what do you think, what do you think? And they were dragging their heels. And I'm not sure what they're doing now. I think it's almost like they're off the stage. So we talked about the decline, the hardening of the borders. We talked about the decline of foreign, foreign relations. And in the question that comes to mind is, what about the United Nations? The United Nations was, you know, created to be a facilitator, to connect people up, connect countries up, and to avoid this kind of decline. Is the United Nations up to the job? Is it doing the job? What else can the United Nations do in a time where relationships between countries, international relationships for all these factors we've talked about are declining? Well, where is the United Nations these days? Well, here, just to clarify, the World Health Organization is an entity, part of the umbrella of the UN. It's an autonomous independent agency based in Geneva, Switzerland. But it is part of the UN family. And they are, of course, the lead agency for this. They bring together. And something we have to understand, I think often there's a misperception of the UN is if it was somehow world government or as if it had like even a rapid reaction force or military force, the UN is really a collection of countries, 190 some that come together. But in the end, it does more equation and maybe it only is as good as the members who are going to contribute to it. So here again, the World Health Organization is a group of experts in medicine and disease and whatnot. But ultimately, what they're doing is they're simply coordinating with the respective public health ministries of countries. And there is a role it is happening. And I think it's probably more relevant for smaller and medium sized countries. For the United States, we have a long history of skepticism and even disdain. And of course, under President Trump today, very strong anti UN sentiment anti multilateralism. But again, I want to just say that the UN doesn't have it's often criticized. It just doesn't have enough teeth or capacity to enforce things. So if nations don't want to cooperate, and sometimes the US chooses not to, it's not going to have a capacity to do anything about it. But I would tell you on something like what we see now this pandemic crisis that we're experiencing, the World Health Organization does have considerable credibility and legitimacy, and it is playing a role. It is not managing the crisis because that has to be done at the individual state level. And even there, states countries manage their own affairs, but you have a variation like the United States. Our federal system, even in Germany, would be a good example. The Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, she doesn't have the power to enforce, you know, nationwide policies. Germany has a lot of in its federal system, a lot of power given to the individual states themselves. So she can only do so much as well. In the US is the same situation. What you have in the absence, maybe or the weakness of the leadership of President Trump, you have the governors of California and New York and other places stepping up to fill some of that void. And I think same with the UN, the UN doesn't have a capacity to force a solution. States have to step up and do it. However, I think for small states, for those that are maybe with less capacity, the UN becomes maybe a very powerful, you know, support network. But I would just say again, their main role is coordinating, you know, providing information expertise. But ultimately, we have a world today where these virtual communities, again, doctors and scientists who understand this, they have these networks all around the world that are connected and plugged in and using Zoom and these, you know, information technologies like we have here to stay informed. And they share information and they provide expertise. But we all, you know, we have to, I think, understand the UN is not world government, it doesn't have the capacity or the authority of governments to do what any government might be able to do. But things are changing so fast, Carlos. You know, next time we meet, hopefully a couple of weeks, I think we'll have a whole different conversation about a lot of these issues. It's worth watching in a time of transformation. I used to say transition, but it's really transformation, because when we come out the other side, you know, the study of international relations will be different. The study of foreign policy and diplomatic relations will be different. And I want to follow that with you. Carlos Warren. This is going to change you. Yeah. Thank you, Jay. And Aloha.


nted to have that discussion also I don't know what the most productive format is for that but I think it would probably serve everybody if we got that a little better defined and well I have no problem having conversations with them I've had some here in the past so that's the direction we want to go in I'm more happy to sit on a committee to do that there's been some change in their board of directors too who knows what the direction is but I'm interested in sitting and talking about that if anybody wants to join me I'm more happy to do that they have invited town to either visit one of their board meetings to talk about the relationship I think one of the challenges is if more than three board members or more attend a meeting it has to be warned and that whole thing happens I think it's one of the challenges is how do we get their board and their director to speak with the board and our directors without the formality of a meeting and it's almost impossible to do that so we should do it it could just be a special meeting and I'll select board and town manager and RACDC executive board director the meeting could just be that I think that would be a good place to start could we do a little I'm sorry I doubt we would conclude all possible business in one meeting normally if we want to but it could certainly give us a framework an outline which then we could work on either two of us or something else but it seems like getting something in place where we can form a framework of how we're going to work together it seems like really I was just going to say that because in one meeting maybe a board member in Adolfo does some of the legwork ahead of time to kind of see their goals and objectives and mission statements and things like that so we can have a better idea ahead of time sort of come up with an agenda ahead of time working with them in the background data that makes a lot of sense do some more work I could do that Mike he said Perry I'm more than happy to do it I don't have the history that some of you have I'm starting at a different point so whether or not that's valuable or not I don't know whether it's good to not have the history or have history but I'm more than happy to have a conversation I think I know enough about what we want or what I think what we want to see certainly if things start someplace and they have been there have been conversations with them in relation to the R3 process so I've already been involved in some of that so and I've been part of that R3 process which has been coming to those meetings maybe I could join you guys on the other side Larry's got a little bit of the history so I'll set it together what else do folks have for $40,000 that's probably all they can do that's a different position this isn't still on that point persons well, I was hoping Heidi was going to stick around so I'll share with you some thoughts that I've got the part of the goal process but I'll give you a little overview of what I'm thinking with this ski-tow project so this ski-tow project is an opportunity that I saw that it's not about me making any money it has nothing to do with that as a matter of fact I personally would just as soon see an entity take it under their wing there's been discussion that we've had about creating some form of partnership with the town recreation facilities it's not much different than the skating ring or the soccer field or the tennis court but I know that had something not happened fairly quickly that property could have gone into a development situation and there would be houses sitting there instead of what I've got envisioning so my hope is that we can do a number of things here one is form either a profit or a co-op with this that I can actually turn it over to and get it to that point where it can be sustainable there's been a tremendous amount of people who have been willing to contribute a lot of stuff to make this happen I've got people who said they'll step up to the plate with dollars I've got people who are willing to do in kind services to get it running Bill McGrath recently offered to provide all the lighting for the hill who would pay to put it in place so I've got right now a company out of Sonopee New Hampshire called Star Lifts who came yesterday looked at the hill they've got a used handle tow that they could install in an approximate the same location where the old lift used to be my intention is to leave what's there because I think there's a tremendous amount of historical value to that and so they also suggested we put in a little small child's rope tow on a certain portion of the hill which they were more than willing to kind of lease to us at a relatively inexpensive cost to get the thing up and running about a thousand bucks just to have it was just like we'll set it up and you can have it for a thousand bucks and if you decide you want to own it we'll sell it to you relatively cheap so anyways we're going to move forward with this we do have to get an Act 250 permit which we've started the process on that and we have a Development Review Board hearing next Tuesday night to talk about what we're going to do up there I've had no opposition from anybody up there on the hill a couple little quick letters only concerned about the lighting issue but we assured them this wasn't going to be seven days a week and every day so it may be something along the lines of what other areas have done but my hope is that this could become a joint venture between the town and a non-profit to actually run it so this provides kids near the opportunity to learn how to ski or to do whatever they so desire because that is something that I know for a fact is out of the reach of a lot of families here so I think this is a perfect opportunity to bring back some history and create something here that could certainly, I believe benefit the community no different than the skating rink or the tennis courts or the pool which we need to fix but anyways that's the goal there so that's where I'm at with that so if I could find a swimming pool we'd buy a swimming pool but right now we've got a lift opportunity here so I don't know if any of you are familiar with the history of the hill a little bit maybe so it was an operation from 1936 to 1966 and then was taken out of service and Pinnacle was created and Pinnacle went belly up in 76 and so at that point in time there was no opportunities but anyways there is now yes you used to be able to jeep up Pinnacle you did yep you used to be able to jeep up Pinnacle long as you didn't get caught but anyways this piece of property does border the Ellis town forest one of the things that we're chatting about doing is having the parking lot available for summer use so that the parking lot could become the trail head for that part of the recreation area and also in the winter time the parking area could certainly be used to access the Ellis town forest for snowshoeing and cross country skiing or whatever Pat Tiger biking keeps on popping to the surface that's popped up a number of times and I've been talking to Zach about that and we think that's a possibility that that could be launched from there because that would be a great spot to take it off to so maybe that Ellis town forest property becomes a Pat Tiger biking trail which is turning to be a big deal right? I don't do it but everybody tells me this is huge I don't know how big it is it's big hopefully it will be I'd love to get it out there it's not going to happen with the other people do it too well so anyways so that is something that I would love to see the town become involved in so how we get there I'm not sure yet but I think it's a really good opportunity for not just for us but for the other two communities Braintree and Brookfield kids do so that's the goal here any other goals things you want to see done focus on moving on to managers report okay try to be brief I've got a large list here but I'll keep it short the first is I attended last or this week's meeting of the fire advisory committee spoke with the members about a potential tabletop exercise for emergency management the committee was open to having this tabletop exercise so now we're working with Vermont emergency management to see what their next steps are for planning this exercise we would include fire, police Gifford school district to plan something out with the next step of having a live exercise in the spring so we mobilize firefighters mobilize police mobilize everyone to run through the motions a railroad participates in those type of exercises sometimes too you're just putting here this is from my note I can check in with the railroad now it's going to come in sometimes if you wanted it to involve okay I need to speak with them anyways about railroad street so it is a good excuse yeah you're right so that's one approach that we have an update on the swimming pool repairs we know what the issues are we know that are going to cost some money we are working I've asked Bill to work with Marty to build an RFP for everything that we need to repair the swimming pool we have roughly about $50,000 identified that would be available to repair the swimming pool as soon as we complete the RFP we'll bring it to the board for review but the work that needs to be done includes new refinishing of the inside of the swimming pool we've knocked that down because the full glazing of the inside would roughly be about $100,000 so now what we're doing is just certain we're going to do some spot painting which is not a full glaze of the inside but just waterproof swimming pool paint that will seal whatever micro cracks are available within there within the pool itself actually not the biggest problem we didn't feel that the leaks were actually within the actual structure as opposed to the pipes so the project also includes full replacement of the pressure pipes that go all the way around or a section of it in the I believe it would be the east, southeast portion of the swimming pool just replacing that section and then also pipes for the skimmers that actually clean the water as it sucks it out and the pipes circulate the water back in and replacing four major heads that are on the deep end of the pool that were initially put in for potential expansion for water features things of that nature we're hoping that the bids come back within our budgeted amount if it doesn't then we'll try to find money elsewhere but the plan is that we are going to have the swimming pool completed and opened by next summer on the date when we normally open the swimming pool so that's the update with the swimming pool I have recently met with Casella a representative came in to speak to me about change in the state law that now allows waste disposal companies to charge for recycling one of the issues that they are facing is that China is no longer purchasing some of the items that they were collecting in order to make it easier for these trash collectors to continue to collect the recycling the state allowed these facilities to charge to accept certain types of recycling as a way to compensate that the companies are saying well we were charging a lot for trash and nothing for recycling but now with this change in the law we're allowed to actually charge for recycling so we're going to decrease the cost of trash disposal and it's apparently a way to keep them from going under so I've asked Casella to come in and present to the board of what their plan is for our transfer station the agreement that we have with Casella says that they are allowed to make changes to the fee structure if they give the town a 30-day notice I said don't make any changes until you talk to the board and they agreed to come to the next board meeting to brief the board on their challenges and what their proposed pay rate would be so that should happen if the board approves for the next like board meeting we had the first meeting of the ad hoc police evaluation committee we have the second meeting coming up first meeting I felt was productive Matt, Larry, we're both there we had some members volunteer to bring back some information including ways, alternative ways to fund the police department crime data that is collected by state attorney's office and to continue evaluating data as opposed to evaluating options so we want to see what the data is for the town and see where the data leads the committee and what decision would then best work for the data that's available I believe the Sheriff's department is also working on collecting data to present to the board for the time for the next meeting we have worked with our partners in V-Trans that our partners V-Trans declined a grant that we applied for that would provide us with sufficient funding to repair the culvert on Beanville Road it is not an imminent danger of collapse but it's a culvert that we should address relatively soon V-Trans is aware of the financial pressures they've allowed us to extend the existing grant that we have now an additional year that we had already extended an additional year beyond the life of the grant they've also allowed us to work with some value engineering to make it to make it structurally sufficient but also not as grand as was initially proposed so the way it was described to us is that we were being given the catalogue of culvert replacements where we really just need afford so we're being allowed to work on recapturing some of the engineering money that was available before to re-engineer the project and then work forward finding more money for the culvert replacement so we're working with them we're keeping them well aware of what our pressures are and they're working with us so we've got a good relationship with them East Randall Hall we had the community group show up today we're meeting with them on a regular basis they're aware that $400,000 for repairs to the hall is not easy to come by so they also are aware that they are not going to get in the hall this year potentially not next year and they're okay with it now so long as the town continues to work with them and help them through the process so we're going to continue to work with them I have a meeting scheduled with the Vermont State Police regarding our policing issue with the town I don't know what their offer is but I've heard that they could potentially be interested in some kind of partnership with the town I have spoken with Chef Baniak so he is aware that I'm having this meeting I didn't want to make him feel like we're blindsighting him even though he's helping us out at the moment so he's fully aware of what's happening but once I have more information from State Troopers I will share it with the board it could potentially be that they could offer a similar offer that water barrier received which is two officers there's 80 hours per week at $365,000 but I don't really know what they're going to offer or if they're even going to offer anything so we're still working on that and I'll share what I get from them with the board the Vermont Council on Rural Development has asked the board to recommend someone from the town to participate in the Vermont Community Leadership Summit so if there's anyone that the board feels would participate in working with Council on Rural Development on this particular committee they're open to accepting anyone that the board feels can work with them or would benefit from being a part of this summit I could just tell them that the board is considering it they say what the summit's on leadership doesn't get a local leader to participate in the Vermont Community Leadership Summit making it happen local leadership for the future of Vermont communities this would be held on October 1st at Castleton University I could bring it back up again for the next select board meeting if the board wants to have some time to think about potential options are they looking for a certain age group that we're targeting or are they looking for clear? just someone that they feel the board would be yeah no specific range I want to recommend I have been following up with the on-home roads initiative that I think started well before I arrived we do know that there is roughly just under 3 miles of the road that if we were to go through this process would be taken off of the town's Class 3 road system we would receive less reimbursement from the state it wouldn't be very much I don't have the exact amount but it would roughly be two, three, four hundred dollars and we would receive less but the benefit to that is that our highway department finds it very difficult from time to time to plow these one-home roads because some of them are very long and they do lead into areas that would be difficult to actually turn around and then come right back out to the main highway are they having a back out on a lot of these which makes it dangerous back right back out into the regular traveled streets with their equipment and they can't see they're basically driveways that the town has and for whatever reason we have them as Class 3s they should be Class 4s in my opinion because they're not travel planes for anybody and if you pull in you feel like you've drove into somebody's house yard because that's how they use it so it's our options are two we can change them to Class 4 which then we don't maintain them and whatnot or we can throw them up which means we just give them up all together they don't even become Class 4s how come we're still dealing with this what was the we never started the process to change them this has been going on for quite a long time a year this has been talked about for 20 years no but we but you guys started this before we get them all identified and that's about as far as we made it so what is the process do we want to try and get this done before winter so that I would think we would yes there's a goal there's a goal right there you're right short term it's a real tangible goal it's big because some of these we have to either send a truck over a pickup over because the trucks can't get in these yards or in a few cases it's a loader that we send over so they drive from the Randolph center garage over to the Chelsea mountain road with a loader to do some of these and they wouldn't fit our current road standards we wouldn't take them on if they were right does it require at least three properties and some other stuff right yeah I'll certainly follow up with and I know the process is in the orange book for V-Trans I'll follow up with the process I could certainly work this year to get the ball rolling and I think it's going to be the quickest for us to just change them from a 3 to a 4 a 4 because throwing them off we got to go back and do the land record research with them to begin with whatever a lot of them were through that were abandoned there's no really good reason like to not take the easy route you can go to class 4 and maintenance responsibilities and while we go through the rest of it even if we wanted to just give them off okay all I said is one of the things and that is all I have for this meeting next on the agenda is executive session second motion in the second all those in favor aye opposed stand motion carries


of the week emotionally is trust it's learning um to trust learning to trust your own energy learning to um trust your own intuition it's like I know what I need I know what is best for me okay you've done a lot of weighing up already um the beginning of the week so okay so it's all about trust okay so by the middle of the week um the middle of the week you've got a brilliant idea okay that is going to be um coming up okay the brilliant idea the ace of swords okay is here I love this card um so this is like going down into the depths of you and the depths of your kind of psychic ability your pineal gland kind of going whoosh you know I'm having this um brilliant information this brilliant idea I need the strength to see this through okay but it's like um a primal instinct of yours um to and this is all about money I feel as if this whole thing is about money um for Libra's um so your intuition listen to your intuition because it's telling you something this week it's telling you what you're needing to do where you're needing to go um what direction to trust okay so all of these things is pushing on um it's pushing you into the right direction okay um so watch out for that um have the strength and courage to do something about it as well um have that strength you know um that you are capable of so much okay so um you know follow that strength strength card okay so emotionally you've got the letting go okay um the letting go energy is sometimes we have to say do you know what I have to let go of anything that is negative anything that isn't in my best interest okay um and that just means that you've got to shift you've got to shift your energy from stagnant into positivity okay wherever you are going um with your thoughts okay needs to be of the higher interest so if you take anything from this reading um on all of the signs this week is the week to be the most positive about the financial side of things the financial system um you know what's coming up around the finances is going to um be quite an eye opener for so many okay so um letting go it's like you know what's the worst that can happen you're excited you're you're um you're feeling everything's going to change and maybe it doesn't what's the worst that can happen you're a little bit disappointed big deal um move on but what could happen when everybody is a collective energy who's um pushing forward to some essence of seeing um everybody getting a financial gain or you know the the whole system changing um you know that that is a game changer okay if we all do it together okay so by the end of the week um the end of the week you've poured a lot of your energy into this financial situation so you can see all of this money is here okay all of these are all projects these are all things that you know um could could come good financially could come good okay so it's like any one of these um could be the breakthrough that you have been looking for okay so look at this all of these you are concentrating on it look at the guy he's concentrating on that and he knows that that tree is going to grow and all of the the things that he has been doing is going to benefit him and the harvest is on its way okay so um like I said there is one last obstacle before that happens okay that obstacle isn't a time for you to go oh that's not going to happen or oh you know my energy drops okay or my doubt creeps in or we throw our toys out of our pram because it hasn't happened when we want it to okay so if you can detach yourself from that kind of um energy of disappointment um and just keep going a little bit further then that it's all kind um you know here we go here we go all right so yeah you just you just have to hang on in there okay hang on in there don't give up um that's the message there so emotionally um getting together with people um of like minds you know and creating a lot of positive energy together is the key okay um connecting with lots of people okay lots of people um so vibrations frequencies all of that is all going to start um to pay off for us all okay that's how I see things okay so what's my love been saying if that prediction is correct which it is um it would only take around four fifth four four hundred and fifty dollars of baby doge coin at today's price to bring back one million in 2025 have that yes um we've been through a lot yeah one more obstacle won't kill us it's true we have been through so much um everything's been chucked at us and um our relationship is so strong it cannot nothing can can do anything like a like I said if um if me and Greg could never ever fly to each other wouldn't change anything because you cannot you cannot be with anybody else other than that person because you've been um nothing else nothing else matters nothing else compares does that make sense to that sort of love okay and I'm only talking I mean you get love for family and things like I'm talking about kind of divine love uh twin flame love it's yeah so that's quite for me a new love um the lovers card so um for other people it's all about um reaching out to others reaching out to loved ones reaching out to um people that vibrate at the same energy as you okay and you know sending love out to anybody who who hasn't got there who um is stuck you know watching the mainstream media but I think less and less people are watching that now there's more people that get their news from oh here we go there's more people that get their news from um let me just block that um from youtube now the never before is more people that do that so um yeah it's happening okay so let's do one final rebel cards okay so oh that card just flew out okay um I have to read it to check it out before I do it okay so um bleep shit is about to get real okay you need people good people around you what does it say you need your people around you okay so um it's about to get real and you need your people around you so what did I say it's like vibrational um vibrating towards the people that you need around you and that give you the highest energy and sending love out to anybody else um that they find their tribe okay so you found your tribe let them find theirs and hopefully somebody from their tribe has got the seeds that can be planted that helps them to see what else is going on okay it takes one conversation it took one conversation with me for me to see oh I'll look into that because that doesn't sound right um I'm going to prove you wrong how dare you say that um nine and then that one and and that one um was a setup how dare you say that one person said that to me and I went okay and it was like well go and do your research and come back to me and I did and I had to say you're right so so there you go this is what's happening the awakening cannot be stopped and um I'm enjoying it really I wouldn't want to be um I wouldn't want to be closed off and not not seeing this journey I don't know about anybody else I love you too my darling okay so I'm definitely need to go have a tinkle now and um I send in lots and lots of love to everybody thank you for joining me today and um you know have a good week um yeah it's um lives for living try and do something really childish uh this week um something that really makes you laugh um until your cheeks hurt um whichever cheeks that is that's fine um Tina hi good to see you um all right then so um bye and um take care I'll see you um soon or Monday um psychic development tomorrow um 7 30 p.m um UK time 2 30 p.m eastern 11 30 a.m pacific


Patriot Prime Reviews is a channel for adult collectors and may not be suitable for children under 13 years of age. Viewer discretion is advised. Hey, what's going on guys? Patriot Prime here once again with another ToyHacks.com sponsored video. But before I get started, I need you guys to do me a favor. If you're watching this video right here and are not a subscriber of Patriot Prime Reviews, please consider hitting that subscribe button right now. It won't cause you a thing will help me and my channel out tremendously. Now, on to the decals. And the set we're looking at in this video is for Kingdom Core Class or Legacy Core Class Hot Rod. And this decal set includes one decal sheet on foil backing. So now without further ado, let's take a look at Hot Rod both before and after ToyHacks decals. And welcome to Patriot Prime Reviews. In robot mode, straight out of the packaging, Hot Rod looks really good and actually has some pretty decent paint applications. He's got the yellow wings there on the back that Hot Rod is known for.  He's got the fire emblem right there on the chest along with the Autobot logo. The chest here is all painted orange moving on down. The thighs are painted orange. And the side of the figure, he's got the exhaust painted orange on the arms and the legs. And there's more paint applications that we'll see in vehicle mode. So all in all, not a bad looking Core Class Hot Rod. But I'm really looking forward to seeing what ToyHacks can do for him. So there you go guys, Hot Rod in robot mode before. And after. Hot Rod gets a few new decals to help enhance his robot mode. The first one you're probably noticing is the new chest decal. He now gets gold flames and I love how that catches the light. So you've got the gold flames, orange around the flame and the Autobot logo dead center. He also gets new decals there on the shoulders which are a throwback to the Generation 1 toys decals. Moving on down to the waist, he gets a new belt buckle and new blue decals for the kneecaps. Side of the arms, he gets some flame decals right there below the exhaust. So there you go guys, Hot Rod in robot mode after. In vehicle mode, straight out of the packaging, Hot Rod still looks really good except for one glaring problem. Right there on the hood, he has no Autobot logo. And I know myself along with a bunch of other reviewers were quite upset about that. But I'm pretty sure ToyHacks is going to fix that. But he does have really good paint applications there on the hood along with the silver engine block. He's got grayish windows there for the windshield and the side windows. You see the chrome exhaust all the way along the side of the vehicle. And really that's it for paint applications unless you count the number right there. I hate how they put those on the figures now. But all in all, I mean he's not bad. So there's one final look at Hot Rod in vehicle mode before and after. And this is where this decal set really shines. As you can see, Hot Rod now has his Autobot logo on the hood. Along with a brand new gold flame decal. Actually two decals on either side of the split. And like I said in robot mode, I love how that catches the light. He gets new headlights there on the front, new flame decals on the side, and new blue windows that I think look great. I just love the foil decals and how it catches the light. And on the back of the figure, he gets new decals there for taillights. And it covers up that stamp and more light decals there. I guess those are brake lights, taillights, brake lights, however a Cybertronian car is. So there you go guys. There's Hot Rod in vehicle mode after. Once again, thanks to toyhacks.com, a retail figure is spared from mediocrity. Toyhacks greatly improved the details on Core Class Hot Rod, which I already thought was a pretty cool looking figure. But now, thanks to these decals, he really pops. And like I said earlier, it doesn't matter which Hot Rod you have, whether it be Legacy or Kingdom, they're both the exact same figure. And yeah, this is really cool. For once, I can actually do a before and after at the same time. So if you have a Core Class Hot Rod, I highly recommend this set. Now guys, if you enjoyed the video, don't forget to like, don't forget to subscribe, and don't forget to click that bell icon to get notified when I upload new videos. Also, if you're in any position to help out the channel, I now have a super thanks button, and I also offer channel memberships. And I want to give a huge shout out to all my current channel members because it's support like yours that helps keep this channel going. Once again guys, this is Patriot Prime, signing out. Hula!


Okay, so thanks for the great introduction. What I forgot to tell you was that this is going to be the best talk of TriCon So there's been a lot of speculation about phone gap and a lot of talk going on about what is phone gap and why we use it Or why we don't use it. There are the people who used it and who loved it There are people who have tried it a bit and want to know more about it And there are yet another class of people who have used it and they hate it so much that they're going and Phone books, phone gaps, this talk is meant to show you what exactly phone gap is and how you use it And then you can actually make a judgment of how you feel about phone gap after this So for all the people who hate phone gap, when Android came up All the Apple enthusiasts said that it's work-rap, it's us. And we all know what happened to Apple after that Don't we? Okay So what I'm just saying is as we heard in the morning, there's nothing white and then there's nothing black There's something great between now and it's good to know about that thing because it motivates innovation So why are we here? So we're basically here to see what phone gap is, what phone gap does and how we use phone gap So I'll try to keep the talking less and try to show you more things I'll basically start with explaining what is phone gap and show you a few demos I was going to show you a demo of some tools that you can use to develop cross-platform hybrid applications using phone gap and At the end you have to be convinced that phone gap works So there's only one agenda in my mind to convince you that phone gap works Okay, so to start with to give a little bit of background about the different kinds of mobile applications There are the usual web applications that have always been there, which are the desktop web applications I don't really have any mobile specific content in them But you can always access them using the mobile browsers, but they're not really guaranteed to work well with mobile So you might have a Facebook application Like if you launch Facebook from your mobile browser You have to go to the left to go to photos and then start to the right to go to the logout page So it doesn't really work that well mobile applications mobile devices So we have what is called a mobile application, which is more tailored to the UI of the mobile device and more Constrained to that small screen It does not also have any mobile specific capabilities as such But you can build these applications using some mobile specific widgets Which give them a better look and feel than the traditional web applications But they cannot access any device specific functionality and they are basically act as using that just the mobile browser So these are mobile browser based applications Coming to the native side of the applications are the old native mobile applications that all of you have been seeing We have native applications for Android, native applications for iPhone and of course They are the best in richness of mobile presentation and also the maintenance cost is really high Because you have to make sure that these applications work properly on each configuration of the mobile device And you have to support them through the lifetime That means that whenever a new version of a mobile platform comes out You'll have to make sure that you update your app to support that word On the same Spectrum it's low on portability because if you develop an application for Android you can't really use it on iPhone So in order to solve all these problems that come around with just web applications or just native applications People have started using what are we what we call as hybrid mobile application now So hybrid mobile application can combine the best of both worlds You can use you can code everything in web technologies in HTML5 in JavaScript And still be able to get native applications using that code Okay, so you can wrap your web application inside a native application and put it into the Insorted into a device and you can put it into the application store Okay, so this is one thing that is not possible with the traditional mobile applications And a lot of people have been trying around to build applications the mobile way the native way But then they flash their heads and come back and they think that you know none of the solution is really Serving their purpose. So then they start with the hybrid approach Okay, so it doesn't really mean that the hybrid approach is the holy grail, which Which just guarantees that all the future problems are going to be solved But it tries to solve at least the problems that come with the traditional web applications and the lack of Portability in the native mobile applications So it boils down to a few couple of points our native applications take too much time to take too much money and effort You have to know after specific stuff to do iPhone applications You have to do the you have to know the Android specific API to do the Android specific stuff On the other hand web applications do not have any access to native functionality So what if you want to access your contact from your web application? You only will do that What if you want to access access the camera or features like that? so if you build a phone book application a Facebook application and you want people to be able to take photos on the camera and upload upload it straight away to the Facebook photo Gallery, then you won't be able to use a web application because it won't give you access to the camera so going hybrid is the best solution in that sense in those kind of use cases and We want to see how hybrid Android applications are built using phone. Yeah Let's start an example So suppose you want to build a web-based movie ticket booking application In which you want to book a ticket and then you want to invite your friends to see the movie with you And you want to invite those friends from your contact book in your phone Okay, so if you just go with the traditional mobile application You won't be able to refer your contact book to get the To get the contacts and show it to the users so that you can select them and invite these friends So phone app shows the way it provides JavaScript APIs which have struck the platform set of services So there are essentially two problems that you want to address here How can you query the platforms contact book from within your application? And how can you do that in a platform agnostic way because you want to build this application Not just for Android or not just for iPhone you want to build this application and make sure that everybody can use it So you don't want to be really writing platform specific APIs in your application You just want to write it once and deploy it everywhere. Okay, so phone app provides JavaScript APIs It's a platform agnostic Solution and you can develop an app using HTML file, dojo, JavaScript once and package it for various platforms using phone app The thing to note here is that phone app does not give you any UI It's just a solution to wrap your application into a native application and gives you a bridge to access the native functionality But it does not give you any UI. So you can just use the HTML file UI toolkits, you can use a dojo, xmobile, you can use sencha, touch, titanium etc So I'll be talking about the dojo, mobile and sencha touch, but titanium we have right next to this talk So I think I'll skip that part There's also a new Facebook connect again in the new version of the phone app API So you can actually connect your application to Facebook using the single kind of mechanism using a phone app API So this is a very new thing Here's a list of supported features in phone app So you can see that Android and iOS For 3GS, the list is complete and every functionality is there in phone app I won't say that all these Things are exhaustive. They don't really cover the complete spectrum of what is available in a mobile phone But it's a modern technology. It's a very new technology. It's been there only since like about a year or so The version 1.0.2 just came out and I think as with time you'll find a lot more in phone gap than what you have right now There's also something called a phone gap build.  You upload your web application to phone gap and phone gap will package that Application for different platforms. So you can just push them into different app stores So this is a very new thing in phone gap and it's a charge service if you want to do it on a commercial scale But for a single application, you can still try it on phone gap.com So the next thing is what is dojo is mobile? So since we are using phone gap We need to know what all toolkits are relevant to develop mobile applications to develop the UI in the mobile application So that they can then package them and distribute them for pages that forms. So dojo is mobile is one such toolkit It it's a it it provides widgets for creating mobile applications And provides lightweight widgets So it's the subset of the dojo toolkit and it has only a few dependencies on dojo and widget And I think it has a subset of the dojo parser Which is sufficient to bootstrap the application so because it's lightweight you can actually deploy it on a mobile device and Make sure that the performance is not sluggish because a dojo library is very big So deploying it on mobile device will take a lot of memory and performance is very bad So it solves those problems It takes to provide lightweight UI widgets as I said And but cannot do any native device functionality. That is what's on the app interface It allows customization of the app looking fields. So it can be device-specific or device-neutral You can actually have you can actually use the dojo mobile widgets Which look very similar to the iPhone UI or the Android UI And it comes with the iOS, Android and library keys. It does not really support Windows, mobile or other phones right now So the next way of the other way of doing a UI on web would be Sencha Touch It is also an HTML5 mobile web app framework and You can again develop apps that you can feel native on Android, iPhone and Raspberry Again, it's not available for Windows, mobile But in this case it only supports touch-based device devices and In some cases, the Sencha Touch widgets are much more native looking than the dojo mobile widgets And there's also a Sencha app designer. So you can use drag-and-drop functionality to develop your UI So these are some examples of apps developed using Sencha framework Let me show you some examples of applications You can develop using our own app. So here's one application. It's called ITA Dominate It shows you a speed of all the friends who are playing games and what games they're playing and you can actually share your gaming activity with your friends So as you can see the UI is pretty good I don't have either an Android phone or an iPhone phone right now with me So I can't show you the real demonstration, but this is what screenshots look like. There's also another iPhone app Which helps you maintain a journey So again the UI looks very very close to the iPhone UI and again this application has been packaged into iPhone using phone gap Okay, so onto the demos So I'm going to show you how to develop a basic application using phone gap on Eclipse So all that you need on Eclipse is a phone gap plugin So here's a phone gap plugins command and you want to download the phone gap libraries That's all you need. Okay, so to start you can just click on the phone gap new project command And it will automatically let you use the built-in phone gap version 101 Which is the latest version of the start. You can also include Sencha touch libraries or jQuery mobile libraries jQuery is another HTML5 framework You can use phone gap example source as a template for your project. So let us do that So it has a project wizard which is very close to what the Android project wizard looks like You can select whatever APIs you want, whatever version of Android you want and you can even create a test product if you want So we'll just click finish and see how it looks like So this is what the basic application looks like the template and it's completely done using HTML and a style sheet So the HTML basically just takes a style sheet And It refers to the phone gap So the phone gap.js is the one where you have all the APIs that you will need to Call platform specific functionality. So it has like a get contacts API. It has a get camera API and stuff like that And you can see that There's simple HTML5 visits for rendering the UI So here we are not using dojo mobile not using Sencha touch just HTML5 The other thing to note would be that in the basic project in the manifest file You will have a whole lot of permissions set already So you need to be careful when you're deploying the application You need to remove the permissions that you don't want your application to have. Okay, so let's see how this application looks on the emulator Already have this installed This is how it looks. You click on the get phones contacts It returns you the phone's contacts. So currently in my phone's contact book there are four contacts and the third contact is set So the API has been modified to say to give you the third contact name Okay, then there are a bunch of other functionalities that you can see like check network So it gives me a server free connection and there are other kinds of services like location service and everything is exposed by JavaScript APIs So you just write a web application use those APIs and package it using phone. Yeah, and you're done So the next kind of use case which I find really interesting is the one in which you have a native application And inside the native application you want to have a couple of activities which are basically just web UI, web web widgets Okay, so one way of going That is that you create a web view inside a native activity and you do whatever you want to do inside that web view But then you don't have entire control over the platform specific stuff Okay, so in order to do that you can use phone gap again You can just create a native application as I'll show you the structure of the phone gap Project to help you understand how that is done So the product we created has a usual Structure of the Android project except for the assets folder over there So the assets folder is a place where it consists of all the web stuff It has the HTML it has the Phone gap just then there's also this folder which has a phone gap chart And there's a CSS here in the assets folder and in the source from the main activity All we are doing is they're extending droid gap instead of extending activity okay, right gap is taking from the phone gap chart and You're just loading a URL. You're not doing anything in that activity just loading a URL So right now, this is one activity in which you are loading that URL and just moving on to the web world But if you want to develop an application which has both native and web components You can have activities doing the native stuff and in one activity you can call the URL and move on to the web stuff So that is a kind of application Show You mean the UI So the UI widgets is completely different stuff from what phone gap does you can develop your UI widget in any way you want to You can just use HTML5 or the traditional UI widgets All you can use all these dojo mobile and censure widgets But then when you have that application ready, you have to push it to your mobile phone So how do you do that? You package that using phone gap So there are two things that phone gap does. Phone gap is packaging your web application into your native phone And the other thing is it is letting you call APIs to access platform-specific functionality in a platform-agnostic way You don't have to care writing your web application whether this application will be running on iPhone or on Android Just call the getContacts API and you are done with it I'll get it a very simple app It shows me four contacts Click on the contact, it gives me the details and phone number Then it has a button which says click here to send an email So what I want to really do is from this native application I want to move to a web-based application, a web-based email client Because my native application I don't want it to support an email I want to say I want to just move to Gmail Because that will prevent me the effort of creating a web client on my own So I will just click this button and move on to the web part of this application On the handle I have associated the activity which calls this URL So this is a completely web-based widget It is not a native widget in which a web view is put It is completely a web-based widget You can once again see how it lets you access the phone contact So once again the JavaScript was just getContacts And PhoneGap took care of querying Android for all the contacts Just to give you an idea of how this was done So it had the entry activity Which shows me the contacts and associates an all-item click handle with the button This all-item click handle gets me the contact details And launches, yeah here it is It launches another activity Which shows me the contacts And in this activity once again I had that button Which to which I have associated another activity Which is the main activity And from the main activity I just called the URL So the main activity is the only activity which is extending right here All the other activities were extending the normal activity So it is nothing but a native app But it has been extended to use an email functionality of the web using PhoneGap So this is a classic hybrid application So PhoneGap provides the API that JavaScript may be using Yeah I'll show you the PhoneGap not JavaScript Just a minute I got the JavaScript and this phone was The page that we had made for you made for this activity The page, the web page The page will work on the Blackberry phone itself as well Yeah so it also works by your desktop browser So what you do is to basically use any tool you want to create the URL You test it on your desktop web browser But only on Chrome or Safari because they are the webkit based browsers And it won't work well on Internet Explorer So once you've tested your web widget You can just push it into the assets folder And you can call that URL using your PhoneGap extended activity Same STL file and with the same set of CSS and PhoneGap JavaScript That same STL can work on Blackberry, iPhone and other browser supported applications Exactly What is the front end's flash? The front end is flash Change it So I have a web application Which has a front end flash And you are saying some phones don't support flash that way The PhoneGap supports it You have a PhoneGap suite that way So if I have a web application online Giving links has been put to the web Does it build the same set of things that it should have? It will just call the web page You will just give it the URL, right? It will just call the web page It doesn't care what the web page contains If it's a flash link, it will still call it And the phone has to support flash If the phone will not support flash, then the phone will be trash Yeah Yeah, that is it Because basically it's just an Android application Or an iPhone will just be an iPhone application It's just calling a web URL, that's it Just to say, I'll just complete and maybe then you can ask the questions Another thing I wanted to show you But I am not really able to show you is Maketa So Maketa is a visual offering tool Which helps you to author HTML5 and dojo mobile UI In a drag and drop fashion So as you can see, you have all the widgets there You can just drag and drop a widget into this form And you can edit all the properties So it not only lets you create a UI But also edit the theme You can change the phone, the color, everything in Maketa So this is a tool to help you build the UI And then once the UI is built, you can just export this whole project from here And put it in the assets folder in your phone app project So it's as simple as that As soon as you do that, you can just run that application and it will be able to run on Android So let me just show you a small demo of the video So this is how it looks like This shows Maketa integrated inside Eclipse And that happens with a rational application developer tool But you can download Maketa on the desktop and start using it So I've done the demos Now I've showed you Maketa So Maketa is just what you see is what you get A visual offering editor And you can easily modify the style sheet as well And you can test the app on the browser So this is one thing I can't show because Maketa is not working You can test the application on different phones on the browser itself So it has a scroll, it has an option select Whether you want to test this on Android or iPhone And then the browser itself will test the application So the whole idea is that your testing on the application has also become easy You don't have to deploy the application on the browser or the emulator and then test it Because the application, the web part of the application is independent of the platform And you can actually test it on the browser itself Another way to test the application is Ripple So it's an extension for Google Chrome And it's used for testing web components in mobile applications on the browser It's developed by TinyPost, which is a company recently bought by Ripple And it offers own-gap support So let's test the Sensha Touch app using Ripple So I have some Sensha Touch application examples here So this is a purely web application which is done using Sensha Touch widgets So it obviously works on Chrome like this But this is not how you want to see it on the phone You want to test it on the phone itself So what you'll do is there's a Ripple plug-in for Chrome Just click on that plug-in and select enable So the application has to be running on a web server Only then you can test it using Ripple You point your browser to the web address and then click enable Just test it on my phone So it's usually okay but in this resolution it's not rendering it properly So you can see basically the idea is that You can configure which device you want to look at Which device you want to test your web application in And you can also do some other controls like geolocation You can set your geolocation using Ripple So suppose you want to simulate an action where your geolocation changes And you want to see how your device reacts to that You can set the geolocation here And then you can just test the behavior of your application using that So another thing that recently came out is the IBM Mobile Technology Review It provides you sample code and documentation that demonstrate capabilities Such as notification and the ability to build hybrid applications And includes an application server, a notification framework And a lot of examples on hybrid app development using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and phone app So you can just download this, it's available for free And you can start playing around with the samples And deploy them on the server and test them using Ripple and do all the things So it's one good starting point if you want to build it Just search for IBM Mobile Technology Review There's a link at the end of this presentation as well If you search for IBM Mobile Technology Review you'll be able to go to the website So there's another tool, Rational Application Developer I've already showed you that it integrates with Maketa It also has drag and drop functionality So if you are already using this tool or if you want to use this tool you can It also gives you another browser based emulator Another tool is Rational Game Concert So if you are trying to construct your applications in the enterprise You want different things like source control management Team collaboration, work items, planning You can get it in one single tool So this is available for free for up to 10 developers So if you are in a small company or in a small team You can just start using it for your mobile development purposes It's all built on Eclipse so it supports Android out-of-the-box And I've shown you how PhoneGap also integrates with Eclipse So it will basically help you build PhoneGap applications if you want If you are a university student you can use it for free So you can there's an academic initiative called Jazz Hub How many of you are university students here? Oh a lot of you So you can start using the tool and you can start building PhoneGap in Android applications And you can just create a project on the cloud So it will help you collaborate with other colleges as well And you can use all the team and planning features of Rational Game Concert Along with the Android applications Okay, so the conclusion is that PhoneGap blocks Any doubts? Yeah I want to ask something That's the ultimate thing? Yeah, ultimate thing? Ultimately, PhoneGap is using WebView or WebRatting? PhoneGap is not really using anything PhoneGap is just a set of JavaScript APIs Nothing else So in your application you call a URL And in that URL you may have a JavaScript code Which would want to call something like a contact book in your code Okay, so JavaScript will have a single code to get contacts And that single JavaScript code will work on all platforms So this is the purpose of PhoneGap It does no rendering Can you open a particular application? Like suppose again I am getting people from my code Is it possible? From which code? Suppose you are using contact Because what the PhoneGap is doing is setting contact and display view Okay Now what about like gallery view? How will I interact with it? Yeah, once again it will have a different API for that So you just call that API and you can use PhoneGap to find out how to Call the platform specific stuff to return the photos to it Okay, thank you So in detail of this question In detail of this question The rendering of that Java REST table is handled by Android OS So the browser rendering is different than the rendering That rendering is just like if you are suppose you have a rescue inside a native application So the way it is rendered in the same way is also rendered There is no difference How we can use Dojo on Android? Dojo is not really an Android specific thing It's for every mobile platform So as I explained, you use Dojo by use Maketa You create a web application using Dojo widgets And then you just copy paste that code into the assets folder The HTML file So copy paste it explicitly Yeah, I mean you can do that on widgets as well Or you have to write the code So if you want that drag and drop in handy You use something like Maketa And then in your project you just insert that code In your assets folder And make sure that you have all the dependencies So in the case of Dojo There are some dependencies that you want to make sure your project will have So in the assets folder There's a lib folder which has the dojo and the dojox folders So you want to make sure that these are there in your project These are the dojo like really strong mobile delivery Yeah, because they won't be delivering Android phone So you have to explicitly shift them along with your application But since dojox is a very lightweight set of widgets It won't load your application as such If I'm using an Android SDK application I can't use the phone gap Come again? Yeah, I'm using Android SDK application In a thing? SDK Yeah No, why not? See, phone gap is nothing but a set of JavaScript API Whatever you are using in your application If it runs on Android There's nothing stopping it from using the phone gap JavaScript API Your code in your web-based application will have a call to the phone gap That's it How can it run on an iPhone? If I'm using a platform architecture and changes, I'm making it my new level See, in that case, the project has become very specific to Android Yeah, that's what I'm saying In that case, there is no chance So if there are some APIs which work only on some platform How do you know which APIs are available? Can you do a programmatic check? Even for phone gap, the APIs won't work So you just read the phone gap documentation The latest documentation when you download it And you will know what all APIs it has So like I showed you a table What are the functionalities that are written in the table Are all supported by web-based APIs Of course, to find out which APIs it has You can either read the documentation Or you can check out this phone gap JavaScript API So my question was, if something is available on one platform And not on another Is there a general flag which is not available? So the documentation will tell you What all is available on which one platforms? I think this point is that if you're making an application Can the application detect what it is running on So that it doesn't call those things Is that what you're trying to ask? Yeah So if it's a device which has an accelerometer Another way that does not have an accelerometer Yeah, it uses an accelerometer Can you do a device check Kind of a thing from your application And then you can do that yourself So if you want to know which platform you're running on Again, phone gap has an API called that So you call that API course And you determine which platform you're running on But it's up to you to decide That this platform does not support accelerometer So do not call the accelerometer there An application where I require some kind of checking Does phone gap help anywhere? Not anywhere Because there's a number of companies that are like No mobile Which gives you no sync Is there something that phone gap offers on that platform? Not yet It came as 5.5 Not yet So that is different What kind of storage is there? Not all the storage also There is the cache and framework and the local... But I have to write code to sync there I think you can take that offline So I'm not really afraid of that Okay fine And there are a lot of scrolling issues Like when you're using this phone gap Packaged application Scrolling does not work on iPhone properly Scrolling does not This is the list called scrolling properly In Android phones But how is that being resolved? As a library it is having some limitations So if you land on such a problem See what you're talking about There's mostly the UI stuff right? So phone gap as I said does not do UI It only makes sure that You can package your web application Indoor native application And you can call Platinum specific stuff from inside your JavaScript code So the UI problems arise because The UI toolkits right now are not that mature You have mobile, you have sensor touch They're all evolving technologies And the performance will definitely be Lower than the native performance So if you want really user critical kind of a UI Where the user has to Is expecting a really good responsiveness Then I would suggest you go to the native then But if you can compromise a bit On that responsiveness part Then I think it's the best way to go Any other questions? Okay so we'll end the session Thank you so much Ashma for coming over here I'll be right on the pause for the great talk