Windows multi-point server, lower your public access PC lab costs. So I'm happy to be here with you today, and we have some wonderful presenters with us. We have Jim Lynch who is the Director of Green Tech here at TechSoup Global. And we also have some folks from the Lacaner Regional Library. So Joy Neal and Lane Fernando will be sharing with us how they used Windows multi-point server at their library. We do have quite a few librarians on the call today, so that's great to share. And then we're also lucky to have Charles with us from Interconnection.org who will be sharing his knowledge as well about Windows multi-point server. And he runs a really successful refurbishing company. I guess that's my theory. This is Jim Lynch from TechSoup here in San Francisco. And I'd like to welcome everybody. Essentially this webinar is going to describe what this thing is, Windows multi-point server. The advantages for mainly public access computing where people can come to a place and just do whatever they need to do on the Internet. It's also a great thing for training. It's also a green technology because it saves a lot of money and it saves a lot of energy and also hardware. And then of course I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the case studies we did over the fall. And Lacaner Library was one of those in which we essentially sent Joy and Lane a box full of stuff and asked them to struggle through it all by themselves to see how it worked. And then we're going to have a final page of resources we're going to have on the slide. And by the way, you'll get all these slides so you don't have to try to copy down everything. All right, so without further ado I'd like to introduce Mr. Charles Brennick who runs a place called InterConnection. That's a nonprofit refurbishment place in Seattle. InterConnection is a very interesting place in that it places lots and lots of PCs, good refurbished computers all over the world and especially in developing countries and especially in Latin America. Multi-Point Server was actually developed in India about several years ago for the purposes of that education. What they needed to do was to have a very lightweight kind of software system that would create a very easy to develop and easy to configure computer lab for schools. And so it's a fearful symmetry that we have Charles with us today who is quite expert in this. So Charles, why don't you take it away on the next slide? All right, thanks. So yeah, my name is Charles Brennick, Director of InterConnection. And we've been working with TechSoup on this Multi-Point project for almost a year now. So we've done several pilot projects basically figuring out how hard it is to set it up, who can benefit from this product, and what kind of support requirements will be needed for it. But basically Multi-Point is a software, it's a server-based software operating system that allows multiple people to use one computer. So essentially from 2 up to 20 people can use just one computer. And so it's a way of virtualizing the desktop on monitors or clients attached to the server. So I'll talk about this, but it's a way for libraries, nonprofits to really reduce their hardware costs as well as energy and other resources costs. So people who can benefit primarily from this product are schools and education environments. As Jim mentioned, the product was developed primarily for schools, especially those in developing countries or places where there's a lot of limited access to technology, as well as libraries. Libraries are great because obviously it's an environment where there's a need for multiple people to use computers, a lot of shared computing needs. Telecenters, internet cafes, the same sort of scenario where multiple people are using workstations and computers, and as well as NGOs and charities. Other environments like small businesses or call centers are also places where this product is very useful. Some advantages of Multi-Point, first it's a relatively easy product to set up and maintain. Essentially it's just like any other computer. You know, you start it up, you plug in the different devices and away it goes. We'll talk about in the pilot cases how long it took to set up, usually no more than an hour. It saves energy. As I mentioned, it's one device. It's one computer that multiple people can share. So instead of each individual person using their own computer, they're sharing one computer so that obviously means less energy consumption. It also is a way to repurpose old computers. You can use old laptops, for example, as devices that connect to the Multi-Point server. You can also use old monitor screens, old CRT type screens, or old hardware can be used as the workstations that connect to the server. Last night we tested out an old Pentium 4 laptop as the client devices. It was installed with Windows XP, Service Pack 3, and we launched a program that's already in Service Pack called MSTSC, and then it connected to Windows Multi-Point without any problems. So the software, all that stuff to connect to Multi-Point is already on Windows XP, or Windows 7, or even Windows 8, and it just works. Probably the most cool feature of Multi-Point is this thing called desktop orchestration. Here's an example, but basically it allows the administrator to essentially see and control what the other people are doing on their computers. Say for example, you're in a classroom environment. The teacher would obviously be the administrator. Each student would have a workstation connected to the Multi-Point server. The teacher can see what the students are doing on their computers, so obviously if they're playing with Facebook or whatever, she can see that. She can also launch programs for the students from her admin station. She can close programs. She can block certain websites. So for example, they can only go to the school website or whatever. She can launch websites, and there's just a whole host of things that the teacher can do remotely. And like I said, that makes it a fantastic tool for schools as well as libraries. So for the library scenario, the admin could set it up so that the person using the device can only go to one website, or it can only go to the website that has the catalog system for the library. And you can set it up in this kiosk mode where essentially the users can access nothing but the browser so they can't get into any control settings or anything like that. So a lot of admin features to it. Other advantages, like I said, it's fairly easy to set up. It just takes an hour or two. It runs any software that has been developed for Windows Server 2011 will run on it, and a lot of other software. So like Office will run on it. 32-bit applications as well as 64-bit. It prefers 64-bit. And to see is electricity and hardware costs. So generally the figure is it will save 60% on your hardware costs as well as 80% less environmental impact. And here's a little graph that shows sort of the environmental benefits. So if there's five people using five individual computers compared to a five-seat multi-point setup, you'll see that there's a huge savings. I mean this is just comparing how much electricity five computers will use compared to a five-seat multi-point system, how much resources it will take to build five computers compared to one multi-point system, and just kind of down the list. So you can see the advantages. Not only is it great for saving energy, it has that desktop orchestration feature, but it's also good for the environment. And so there's different ways that people can connect to a multi-point server. So essentially, like I said, each workstation has a virtualized Windows 7 environment, but you have to obviously connect to the server to do that. And so one way is you can use these USB stations. I have pictures that show you what they look like. You can connect directly to the video cards. So you can set up a desktop that has a two-port video card, or use two video cards, and you can have four-port video cards. So each one of those ports would go to a monitor, and each one of those monitors would be its own workstation. So if you have a four-port video card, you could have four workstations. And those are ways that you can essentially directly connect to the server. Now you can also use what's called Thin Clients, and those can connect via a network. You'll need a switch to make that work. But you can use, like I mentioned, old computers, old laptops if you're using that scenario, which is like the Thin Clients scenario, and also use what are Thin Clients. And I'll show you what those look like. So here's the various devices that — Kami Charles, we did have a question in the chat that was asking about how multi-point server is different from Thin Clients. It is Thin Clients. So essentially you do use Thin Clients to connect to multi-point servers. So there's other software out there that's really similar to multi-point. So like I'm showing the different devices, there's a product called End Computing. They too develop a product that virtualizes the desktop. There's an open source product called UserFull that product too virtualizes the desktop so you can use Thin Clients. But it is Thin Clients. You need a software to be able to run Thin Clients. So here's the various Thin Clients that can be used for it. There's loads of them out there. WICE is made by Dell. End Computing is its own company. And there's also the multiple-ported video cards, old laptops, all those sorts of products. For our Thin Clients, we prefer End Computing just because they're a little more ahead of the game. So what they do is just End Computing. There is this virtual computing stuff. Multi-point 2012 has got a neat feature where essentially you could bring your own device. We call it BYOD. So that allows the system to work on essentially any device. So you can use iPads, Android tablets, old laptops, all that stuff. They install a client software which then connects to the server. So pretty much any device will connect to the multiple-point server. This is sort of an overview of the kind of minimum hardware requirements. So for those who are looking at providing this product, or selling multiple-point servers, it needs a minimum of a Core 2 Duo hard desktop and 2 gigs of RAM. Because multiple people are sharing one computer, generally it needs a faster computer. So like an i5 or iSim a processor is ideal with lots of RAM. So TechSoup offers the product. There's a standard edition. I think you're going to add a little bit about this. Oh yeah, sounds like I'm up. This is what we offer in TechSoup. This is the donation on this. It's important for you to know that we have the latest version of multiple-point server. It's 2012. It just actually just came out just over the holidays. So it's very, very current. There's only a single difference I think between a premium version and the standard version, and that's the number of users. And the admin fee for the premium one is about double the admin fee for the small one, or the standard one. And it has a relatively few number of languages that it's available in. However, it really works well because we have one lab that actually had it running in both English and Chinese. One student could be running Chinese and one person on the lab could be running English. So it's a pretty great thing in that regard. I was surprised how easy that was. To add different languages, it's just a matter of downloading the language packs which are free. So for example, with that Chinese installation, the user, they just downloaded the Chinese language server pack. It was a pretty easy setup. One additional thing here is the admin fee from TechSoup Global and which are most nonprofits and libraries are eligible for. Refurbishers for whatever reason aren't eligible to get it from TechSoup, but there is another program that Charles will talk about that has it for refurbishers. And as I mentioned, the standard version is $20 and the multi-point server premium version is $49. This is the usual 5% or 4% of market value is the admin fee for that. One of the more complex things about multi-point server is that it is the same kind of licensing as Windows Server itself so that each client, in order to make it work, each client needs its own license as well. And the client licenses are $8 each. So if you had 10 client licenses that you needed, that would be an additional $80 on top of the say $20 for the multi-point server standard. So very affordable. And one thing that I found that was kind of amazing about it is that non-technical people can actually set it up pretty easily. So that's a very useful thing. We do have some questions coming in. One person asked about adding more users. Can you tell us a little bit about how you would do that? Charles, you want to take that? Well, it's pretty simple. So with multi-point there is a really basic control panel. And that launches when you start up the computer. And there's just a feature and it says add users. So you just click on that and you don't add the person's name or the user name and you can enter a password or not. So that's pretty simple. Okay, great. Another question, can all of this be connected wirelessly? And if so, what equipment is needed for that? So you can. There are wireless thin clients. You know, Weiss makes them, I think End Computing makes them too. But essentially it's just a wireless thin client. And that would connect to a wireless, what do you call it, a bridge? And a person could be anywhere to use that device. Also this, if your library has an existing network, so the library is already networked and this is what we did for the Burlington Library. Essentially you would just put the multi-point server in your server room and then any thin client that then is attached to your, or connects to the existing server or network would work. So it could be anywhere within the library or building. Okay, great. And another question, can you give an idea of a recommended as opposed to a minimum hardware platform for renting multi-point server premium with 20 workstations? I7, so if you need like 20 users, I would get like an I7 processor with, I don't know, as much memory as you can put in it. Like I said, everybody is sharing that computer and it can get very, it could stretch it. You could put a lot of requirements on it if it's a lot of users. One thing, multi-point is not extremely good at is like the flash websites or like flash video. That flash uses a lot of memory. And so it's like multiple people are looking at videos at the same time. And they are all using flash, it will really bog down the system. It will make the videos choppy. So that's something to think about. We have a great number of questions in and I wanted to address one that came in which was about deep freeze. It actually works with deep freeze. We have one library actually running deep freeze. It took a little bit of fiddling to figure out how to make it work. And then the PC reservation system. Now that's one area that we're still looking into and we're basically in touch with the people at Microsoft about that particular app or that class of applications for libraries. Those applications basically meet your time for each station and also they do printing to a specific printer which is usually coin operated. So we're working on finding out the fix for that. It looks like there is one but we're still working on finding out what that is. Okay, great. Thank you. That's helpful. And one question about are these one-time licenses? Going back to the licensing, I'm not sure. What do you mean one-time? Yeah, I'm not quite sure. You can use them forever. I mean it's just a software license. So once you buy it, it's forever. Do you mean transferring them? Yeah, I'm not quite sure. Can I be transferred to somebody else or something? Maybe. Roger, if you can clarify that in the chat, let us know if that answered your question or not. And let's see. And someone was going back to the question about adding more users. So can you go beyond 20 people if you obtain the premium package? I think you have to set up, Charles, correct me. I think you have to set up another multi-point system set up if you're going beyond 20. I think that's the limit. If you're going over 20, you'd have to set up another server. So these servers can be joined. So you could have four or five servers but still have one admin who would be able to see all of the users from her admin panel. So that's what I'll talk about with the refurbishing licensing. That's limited. Well, it's not limited, but you only get five cows with it. But you could buy five systems. So Microsoft has a program called the Registered Refurbisher Program where organizations like mine and others who do a lot of computer refurbishing can get discounted licensing for used equipment. And they just came out, or they just started offering multi-point licensing through this program. It's multi-point 2011, not 2012, but it's still a really good deal. You can see here's the cost breakdown where if you just go to the Microsoft Store you've got to pay a lot of money for this product, $769 for premium. And then there's academic licensing, and then there's charitable licensing which Jim talked about. But through the Registered Refurbisher Program I can buy premium license with five cows for $30. And so that's like $6 a station. And so it makes it really, really economical. If you go beyond those five seats you can do it, but you have to pay kind of the standard price per seat. Or what you could do is you could just go ahead and get another five-seat license pack and then just join those two systems. And if you're using like a Core 2 or older machine, that's probably the way to go rather than adding more than five users to an older machine because like I said, it will just bog things down a bit. Charles, the next slide is yours as well. Okay. And this is getting back to 2012. So it has this new function that allows users to see what other users are doing. So in 2011 only the administrator could essentially have control or see what the users are doing. But in 2012 users, so students however can essentially look at each other's work, or share work, or share files between each other. It has this protection software. So beforehand there was questions about deep freeze. I understand deep freeze does work on multiple point, but it's not the greatest product for it. There's another product called Rollback. I think it's Rollback RX. And that actually has software built specifically for multi-point. So Rollback software is software where you install it and let's say people are using multi-point and then somebody comes along and installs a virus or messes up the settings or something like that. With this Rollback software what it will do is at the end of the day is it will roll things back. It will basically take the operating system or delete everything that's on the operating system and bring it back to the starting point of where it started when you first did the install. So in shared environments, in libraries, in schools you really need that sort of software. Otherwise, especially a lot of people are sharing computers, you need this sort of software to keep people from messing up the settings or getting viruses on the system. And 2012 comes with that built-in so you don't need to buy third-party software. And the third-party software can get pretty expensive, so this is a really good deal. And then also has that better device compatibility which I mentioned where other devices like tablets and that sort of thing can be used as your clients to connect to a multi-point server. And it's case studies. Should we field some questions here because this is such a lively bunch. We have wonderful questions coming in. Yeah, I think that would be great. So we have one question, will multi-point server run in a virtual Windows server? I don't know, virtual Windows server. Yeah, I don't know. We'd have to get back. I don't know how the interaction is with virtual Windows server. Okay, we'll definitely mark that as a follow-up question then. Yeah, if someone can speak to that, that would be terrific on the chat. Okay. Someone asked about, is there a maintenance renewal cost? No. Okay. And how about tech support? What tech support is provided? Well, the Microsoft product, so I mean there would just be whatever tech support or whatever comes with them. The plan is to offer this product through TechSoup. And TechSoup, you'll be able to buy essentially complete packages through TechSoup and interconnection will be offering tech support as well as TechSoup. So if you're buying it off the shelf, you can only turn to Microsoft for your tech support. But in the future, there will be ways to get tech support. Let me say a little bit more about that. This product as a donation from TechSoup comes with software assurance. And so that actually does come with free phone tech support from Microsoft. At the end of the deck, I've also included an online forum where people can ask questions. Anybody can actually go on there, and it's a TechNet forum from Microsoft where you can ask questions and get answers the same day. So there is a bit of tech support on that. We'll include links to that in our follow-up email too so people can find out more about that. Another question about recommended minimum requirements for servers and clients. Minimum hardware requirement for the server? Yeah, for the servers and clients, they said. So the minimum hardware requirement for the server, the server would be a Core 2 or above, and that's sort of the bare bones, right? The clients, there's really no minimum hardware requirements. I mean, clients themselves are pretty basic. There's no hard drive in them. There's not a lot to them. And so if it's a network client, you pretty much select anything. Let me answer that. One thing that we're doing is we're going to put up, in a day or two, we're going to put up a resource page for Windows multi-point server. And on there we're going to have a full article that talks about the different client devices you can use on this, and there are many, as Charles mentioned. Charles actually had to go through some different ones to find out which worked best. So that is an area of, I think, concern for this. And I think what he found was a thing called a Plug-Able. And the end computing clients worked very well for us in the installation, but he had to kind of suss that out a little bit. So we're going to make that easier for people by putting up an article on our resource page. Unfortunately, I don't have a web address for that just yet. It's just coming in tomorrow, I think. Sorry about that. We can't have a question about how the monitors and how the mice plug in to Windows multi-point. Charles, you want to say a little about that? So it depends on your connecting to the server box. So if you're connecting via a thin client, the thin clients have USB ports. So that's pretty easy. You just plug it into USB ports. If you're doing a direct connect, which means plugging the monitor in. So direct connect is like when you have that dual port video card. So say you have a box and it has two video ports. Each video port would go to a monitor, and then what you would need would be a USB hub. And so you would need a USB hub for each station. So let's say you're building a two-person station because you have two monitors. You need two USB hubs. Each one of those hubs would be connected to a USB port in the computer. And in each one of those hubs you would connect your keyboard and mouse to. And a lot of the hubs will have speaker jacks and that sort of a thing. But you don't connect the keyboard in a two-person or a two-station environment. You would not connect a keyboard, two keyboards directly to the computer box. You need to connect those keyboards to a USB hub that is then connected to the USB port. If you connect the keyboards directly to the computer box, it won't work. It won't know what to do. So you have to get these USB hubs and those things are cheap. Those are like $5. You can get them from Plugable or anywhere. They're really easy stuff. There's a lot of them out there. So this is Jim again. I just wanted to say that we actually will post on that resource page kind of in-depth descriptions of all the different places where these things were installed. And actually one place had a Direct Connect kind of setup and they did it themselves. It's a place called, I forgot to say why it's tech. It's a place where you can connect to. Because we use USB, what's called USB VGA hubs. So you can also buy devices that are not really thin clients because they're not network based. But it's a USB client that has a VGA port and it has like two USB ports. And you can connect those. So a lot of computers now will have like four or six USB ports on them. And each one of those ports you can connect to one of these USB hubs. Then each one of those will be a workstation. So it's actually pretty easy. Let me just segue away from the questions for a minute and tell you that we did 5K studies and then we also included the experience of another place called Reliotech in setting Windows multi-point server up. In the case studies we, as I mentioned, we basically just sent all the stuff with some directions to each location. And that's two libraries and three nonprofits. And mostly they were in Washington State. And then we just go to sat by and watch everybody struggle. Because we wanted to see what kind of package solution would be appropriate for this. And I think there's one question that says what kind of hardware will be in a lab in a box that we're thinking about developing or probably will develop. And essentially we're thinking it's going to be the kind of configuration that has like a pluggable or an end computing set of hubs. And then it's going to have a big heavy server computer with probably refurbished monitors, LCD monitors, and the server computer will be also refurbished. The mice and keyboard will be new, and all the wiring of course will be new. So it's a fairly simple thing. Charles has become quite adept at pre-configuring this so that it took almost all of these places under an hour to go ahead and plug it in. It actually took more time for them to plug in the hardware pieces than to get on the server computer and then set that all up. It took only a few minutes to set up the server computer in the cases that we looked at. So we believe that this is highly successful and the experience was pretty terrific. And so I'd like to introduce now finally Joy Neal and Lane Fernando who are with the Lacaner Library in Lacaner, Washington. And Joy and Lane can tell you more about their library and of course what their experience has been in trying to set this thing up and how it works. There we go. Hi, this is Joy. And I'll tell you a little bit about Lacaner and what we are. We're very small. We have a building that's under 2,000 square feet, 2,200 if you stretch it. We had five public computers. The town is only about 800 people, but we have a service area of about 5,000 so we're really small. I'm the only full-time person on staff as the director. We have four clerical staff and no IT people on staff until I hire Lane who kind of knows more than I do. We have two servers that use Windows 2008. And like I said, we outsource our tech services to network solutions out of Bellingham which costs us every time we have to go out for service. We've been using Thin Clients since 2008. At that time I was looking for a bunch of different options and one of the tech people recommended to me that we look at Thin Clients which we did. Our problems were that we had a lot of desktops. Each one was operating totally differently. They were all over five years old and they were crashing on a frequent basis. And since I didn't have a tech person on staff, very often they were incapacitated for quite a while until somebody could come along and fix them. And then each time we had a software change or a patch, each one had to be loaded individually. So very often I'd have a tech person that I was paying who was here for a half a day loading things. So in 2008 we were looking at a budget of $4,000 to replace some computers. That probably would have been only two computers. So we started looking at Thin Clients. And what we ended up doing was our first Thin Client installation. We did not use MultiPoint at that point. It was just a virtual environment on our server. We spent right around $5,000 to replace all of the desktops with Thin Clients. That included new monitors, new keyboards, the whole work. And the nice thing is that of course the software is loaded one time. All the patches are done on the server. So we had fewer times that the tech people were called out and we had to pay for. And the client licenses, just like was mentioned earlier, that's much cheaper than buying a product that you have to load on every single machine. Thin Clients have tended to last longer and been a lot more durable than our desktops ever were. And the really nice thing is we don't have tech people on staff. And so the staff has been able to troubleshoot them. Sometimes it's just a matter of restarting them. And then they are back up and running and nice and clean again. So when we were offered the opportunity to try out the MultiPoint, we set it up. We took all of our Thin Clients down. We set up the MultiPoint.  And like they said, they gave us a piece of paper with instructions and basically put it together by ourselves and figured out how it worked. And it was up and running in a very short period of time. We were really pleased with it. It's faster than having individual desktops running. And we really thought it was a very good product and it worked very well for us. And we still use Thin Clients and we're very happy with them. Do you want to add something, Lane? I'll just talk about it a little bit. Hi, this is Lane. I just want to talk a little bit about the general day-to-day use of the MultiPoint server. It was every day I ran pretty smooth. I know Charles brushed on the topic of the Flash and multiple videos running at the same time. But a lot of our patrons, they come in and general patrons, they use Facebook, check emails, do resumes, and sort of all of that. However, you get into the YouTube, the higher HD video. We didn't have any choppiness in the video when we installed the MultiPoint, which we were having with our others Thin Clients. And we're still having an issue with it right now, something possibly with the bottleneck. But with the MultiPoint, it was pretty smooth all around. Sometimes all five of them would be filled up. And we had people doing some 3D gaming on it, watching videos, and then other patrons doing resumes and such as well. But they're a very reliable setup to turn them on. They run pretty effortlessly for the patrons to figure out. And the control from like a workplace setting was pretty nice too. We talked a little bit about deep freeze. We had it set up so it would delete the cookies in the history. So that was nice. So if people were doing online banking or some sort, they didn't have to worry about anything like that, being left for the next patron coming through. But yeah, easy to set up. And I'm a big supporter of it so far. Thank you. And Lane, we did get one question that just came in about whether your patrons had their own logins, or how did you just use a general login? No, at the beginning of the day, it was a general login. So what we did was start the server up, and boom, they all plug in. And then you just hit once you enter your administrative password, and then they're all on pretty much. You just hit enter and they go right in to the profiles. And nothing too, the desktop orchestration was pretty cool too. So you can actually say if we were talking about the PC reservation issue, if they could find a way for that to look, you could send private messages to the individual patrons on each. So if you had it from like a workstation computer that the staff were using, you could say five minutes or ten minutes, we're closing up shop. So if you're working on something important, feel free to hurry up. That's nice. Good. And what speed of Internet access do you all have there in La Conor? We have a T1 line, which I'm not sure, but it's through the K20 system. Great. And so we have it. Yeah, go ahead, Jim. Another very interesting question came in is what's the replacement cost between the multi-point system and the old system that you had, the thin client system. Maybe Charles and I can feel that because we essentially provided the multi-point system at no cost. So that was a pretty great deal for La Conor because we wanted to see how it worked. We had a grant to basically do that. But Charles, I'm thinking that with the $100 software costs, what would you guess for a 10-station lab would be the hardware cost? Sounds to me like it would be somewhere under $2,000 for a 10-station lab. Is that right? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, especially if you're using used computers as well as potentially used monitors, you could really get the cost down. We're looking at offering the five-seat multi-point systems for less than $1,000, and it makes it really affordable. So the cost difference in this and the conventional system, it looks like joy was, I think it was $5,000 for the original one, a thin client that you installed and that worked pretty well. And this one would be under $2,000 for a 10-station lab or $1,000 for a five-station lab. That's that right? That sounds about right, yes. Much less expensive, and even less expensive than desktops. Yeah, and the other thing to keep in mind is not just the fact that it's a lot less expensive. You also have the admin features to be able to control how people are using it and also the energy savings as well. Someone just shared in the chat that they already have six computers and two laptops, so they would just need the software. So what would the cost be for just the software? From TechSoup, it's $20 with a Windows multi-point server. And then for each license for your six computers, it would be $8 each. So what is that? That's $70, so that's from TechSoup. Sounds good to me. Great. And we do have a couple more questions. Do you want to do those now or move on to the resources? This is a great time for questions. I think resources I'll just explain just briefly what they are. These are such good questions. Let's keep rolling on that. One more for the library related. Is it possible to lock this down so that it can only be used for Internet access? Yeah, it has a really cool feature called kiosk mode. All it will do is bring up the Internet browser. That's it. You can't bypass that. You can't get into settings, nothing. So that's the kiosk mode. You can also block websites. And also you can set up different user accounts so that the type of user account that a person is using will have different privileges and also a different ability to look at different sites that do certain functions. We have one case study where that was the case. They used it as kind of a kiosk in kiosk mode for just using the library catalog. It was at the Burlington Library. So that will be up on TechSoup very soon. And staff, and there's a question of whether the staff could use their computer for their own purposes. Yeah, I mean the computer that essentially is the multipoint server. I mean it will be running multipoint server software. So there are certain programs that will run on the server and certain programs that won't, but you can still use it for your own purposes. Good. And we did have a question about printing. And I know that that's a big issue in libraries. Joy, I think people can print in your libraries, is that right? Yes, we can. And we didn't have a problem printing with them at all. We did have to run out and get a USB hub for each one of them because we didn't have a free USB for people who were bringing in their sticks to download and print like resumes and storage of their documents and stuff. So we did have to add to the set, but they were like 4 bucks apiece. They were really inexpensive. Good. And another question about kiosk mode. So can a patron access office or other software and also have Internet access? Can you specify? No, in kiosk mode it just brings up the browser. That's all it does. You can't bring up anything else. But if you're not in kiosk mode, yeah, you can pull up office. You can pull up anything. But kiosk is just a really limited kind of a lockdown environment. But in the regular mode they could lock down other things, right? So they could have one that was just on.  It just looks like any other computer. Let me join on this. Another question came up about whether third-party software works on Windows Multi-Point Server. That's kind of a general question and how the licensing works for that, and especially regarding Microsoft Office. So yes, many, many third-party software packages work on Multi-Point. You just install it on the server computer and it basically appears on all the clients. However, to be perfectly legal you have to have a license, say, for each office version. So I forget what that is on TechSoup exactly, but it's about $20 per client on TechSoup.org. And also the registered refurbisher program also carries Office, I think. That's a problem. Charles mentioned that an important consideration here is that Office 2007 on Up and including 2013 only work on this. If it's a previous version than that then it won't work on either Multi-Point 2011 or 2012. So once again, only Office 2007 on Up for either standard or pro version works on Multi-Point. And then there's a Microsoft website that has a huge list of all the different software they've tested that works on Multi-Point. There are many, many, many things, like most Adobe products, for instance, work on that. And my sense is that each client needs essentially its own license for all of those, for all of those classic package software. Of course it's all different. If it's a cloud service, someone mentioned Office 365 and all of that in SkyDrive. So it works really well for cloud services like that and the people would have to have their own accounts for those things. We did have one question, a printer that's available through wireless. Would that work okay? Yeah, it's part of your network. If it's on the network, it's just, I mean, Multi-Point is a server. And so if your printer is already connected to your server it works just the same. Okay. And Jim, you talked some about the end-user software. Is anything already installed on the server? No. So you're, in Multi-Point, essentially all it is is that it's similar to installing Windows on a computer. That's all pretty much all you get. Charles, are there little kind of useful applications like a calculator and all the different things that come with things? You said it's just the same as any other Windows software. It's an operating system. So you're installing an operating system. The only difference is it has that administration panel and beyond that it's exactly the same. So it has all the helper applications that a version of Windows has. And by the way, it's essentially a Windows 7 kind of environment. So if you know Windows 7, it's pretty much like that. It's exactly like that in fact. Great. We have about four minutes left. I have a couple more questions if we can go through a couple really quickly. One person asked when that lab in the box might be ready that you've mentioned. Is there anything on that? Yeah, I don't have a good date on that, but I'm thinking in the next 4-6 months because we're hoping that we will have that ready, ready to go. You could get a very similar kind of thing that Joy and Lane got, just a box full of everything with instructions and then you can just set it up. So we're hoping that we don't have a library in the box. Oh, a library in the box. Including a catalog, I know that. We also had a question about a replacement cycle. Any recommendations? A replacement for the hardware? Maybe the server? I would think the server. It's just like any other hardware. I know it should last. If you get a good i7 server or an i5 server, it should last five years. It would be my guess. Good. We did have a question going back with reservation software. Any experience with using LibOnline reservation software? Yeah, that's an area that we have to research a lot more. No, we don't have an experience with that. And that's an area that we have to get into quite a bit more. So I'm thinking that down the road we're going to basically find the way that this reservation software will work on this because we know that that's an essential application for most libraries. Sorry about that, but we're working on that to get you the information on that. And if a patron were to bring in their own tablet, I don't know. They could bring in their own tablets, yeah. But they need their own license, so yeah. You don't need to install a license on the device. The license is licensing as to how many devices can be connected to the server is managed by the server software. So if you have five licenses, or if you can allow for five devices, then that's what it'll serve. But there's no additional software you have to. If somebody were to bring in a tablet, there's no additional software they would have to install. They have to run that remote desktop application which is already installed. It's already in the device. I think it's Windows. All right, I think we got through most of our questions. Time to wrap up here. Okay, let me just say a few things here. So this article at the top which is the overview has links to where you can get multipoint from TechSoup and also where you can get multipoint server from the register refurbisher program both. So just know that. It explains all the stuff that we were talking about today. Another thing I wanted to talk about is that we're going to have a landing page with descriptions of all of the installations that they test installations like at the LaConner library. You'll have all those listed on the landing page. I think that URL, the web address there is wrong. I'm pretty sure it is. And then the one at the very bottom, TechNet Support Community, is a place where anybody can actually go there and look at what issues people are having and what the solutions or fixes are for them. So that's a pretty interesting, pretty lively site to go look at if you want to find out more about what people are talking about in terms of setting this thing up. Wonderful, great. So if anybody has any specific questions, then that's me, Jim Lynch. And that's my full contact information if you want to contact me about any of this. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Jim. Thank you, Charles. Thank you, Joy. Thank you, Lane, all for sharing your expertise and helping us all learn a little bit more about this software donation product. And we do want to thank our webinar sponsor, ReadyTalk, which is another product donation. And we're very great for them for donating their software so that we can offer these types of learning events to you all. And we will have a survey that will pop up if you could take that for us. Let us know what you thought of this event. Let us know how we can help support you in the future as well. So thank you everyone for joining us today. And we will send you a follow-up email with links to all of these resources so that you can investigate more on your own. Thank you.


Your work on animals, we have a little time to talk about this. You've studied chimpanzees. They're termite fishing, they're ant dipping, they're nut cracking. How conservative are chimpanzees? How much is their chimpanzee culture in addition to their instincts? Right. So chimps definitely have some culture. They do some social learning. They learn a few tools. The key difference between other animals and humans is that human culture is cumulative. So we're able to learn stuff from the previous generation, add a little bit to it, pass it down to the next generation, add a little bit to it. And in chimps, because of their social structure and part maybe because of their cognition, they're not able to generate this cumulative cultural evolution. So nothing that a chimp does, nothing that he does, he couldn't figure out by himself. So he might get it more easily by learning it from another chimp, but nothing is so complex that he couldn't figure out by himself. And in humans, even in the simplest human societies, hunter-gatherers, there's tons of things that no single individual could figure out in their lifetime. And you're completely dependent on this body of knowledge, know-how, norms that's bequeathed to you from prior generations just to survive. There's some breakthrough in the past that's quite remarkable, what are now human beings start doing something that the other great apes don't. And this is all speculative, of course, but what in your opinion is that confluence of events that leads to this great filter, what are now human beings pass through it, but the other great apes basically do not? Yeah, so that's the startup problem. And so the key thing to understand the startup problem is how humans went up down this special trajectory. So the way I think about it is you want to think about natural selection as investing either in bigger brains that make you better at figuring out stuff out by yourself, better at individual learning, or better at cultural learning, at learning from others. And when there's not very much interesting things, interesting tools, techniques, ideas in the minds and behaviors of other members of your social group, individual learning is better because learning from others doesn't get you anything because nobody else in the group has anything. So what you need is a situation where you're able to have useful ideas in the minds of other members of your social group. So in the book I make the case that when humans are on the savannah as bipedal apes, the predator guild was probably much larger. So humans have a chimpanzee like brain except they lived in larger groups and they would have had to be more social with each other, so there's a chance they could have crossed this threshold and started down this road. There's a few other factors like the climate was changing in a way that would have favored cultural evolution. So a few other things play into it, but that's the basic idea. But it's odd in a way there are not intermediate species, or maybe there were and we killed them off, but like Neanderthals, denisovans, might they have been smarter than humans? Yeah, so in the book I make the case that Neanderthals were probably smarter than us, because in primates, basically its overall brain size predicts how good you are on various cognitive tests. And Neanderthals are our cousins, so they're around say from 200,000 to 25,000, and they have larger brains than us. We're about 1350 cc's, Neanderthals are 1500, so we should expect them to be smarter than us. The difference is the African variant, we're the African variant. We had larger groups because we were living in a climate that allowed us to have a larger collective brain, so we were able to generate probably bows and arrows, other fancy technologies, and then we move into Europe and exterminate the Neanderthals.


Now that we've taken a look at the ways that you can get credit for an RBI, let's take a look at the situations where an RBI can actually be withheld from a batter. And so there's actually, there's only two situations in which that would happen. These are not RBI's. The first one is, and there's only two both, they're pretty closely related. So the first one is if the batter grounds into a double play, or what we would call a reverse force double play. So the situation here would be basically that we have our runners on, so we have a runner on first and third. So we have runners on the corners, and then our batter's up, and so we would have our fielders here. And so our batter, he grounds the ball to say the second baseman, second baseman flips it over to the shortstop who would be covering here. And then the shortstop throws the ball. That would be the first out, that would be the out for this runner here. Then the shortstop throws it over to first base, gets the batter out, and on this play the runner scores. In this case we would be starting the play with no outs. Because obviously if there was already an out and we got the double play, that would be the end of the inning. But in this case, there's nobody out. He gets the double play, the run scores. So you might be thinking, that's kind of the definition of an RBI there. The run scored because the ball was put in play, or through the actions of the batter. But in this case the rule book says two outs on the play to kind of trade that for the run is a little too much. So we are not going to credit the batter with an RBI in that situation. The second way that a... First let's clear this off here. The second way an RBI can be withheld is if the first baseman drops the ball on a play that should have been a double play. So if the first baseman... And really it's not just drops the ball, it's commits an error on a throw that should have been a double play, or resulted in a double play. And so you may have heard that you can't assume the double play. And that's something that generally is the case, but in this situation it actually isn't. So basically what we're saying here is that that same kind of play takes place. We have a ground ball to maybe the shortstop this time, and he flips it over to the second baseman who would run over and cover. That would be one out, that would be this guy out. And then the ball was thrown by the second baseman to first base. And rather than catching the ball and completing the double play like you just did in the last example. The first baseman drops the ball. And so the runner here, this runner would be scoring the batter at first. He would be safe because of the error. And so this is the... And the key thing to remember is that it has to be an error. And so that means the runner, the official scorer kind of has to make the judgment rather than the umpire in this case. If he would have been safer out as far as recording whether the batter gets credit for the RBI. So if he's back here and the first baseman drops the ball, we would consider that an error. And in that case it would be kind of the same thing where the batter would be withheld. We would withhold the RBI from the batter. So these are the two ways that the batter would not receive. So we kind of have five criteria here. These are the three ways that you can receive credit. And then these are the two exceptions to the top three there.


Man, sometimes packaging and tape, oh my, here we go everyone. Alright, kicking the vlog off with a little mail time. Every maybe two or three months I do an update blog where we talk about a lot of different aspects of what's happening on this YouTube channel and there's a lot of exciting things happening and I'm just trying to wrap my brain around it a little bit and listen to you. So the question of the day today is going to be absolutely critical so we will get to that in one second. Alright, so I actually, I don't know what's in these three boxes but I do know what's in here. Hold on, you know what that is, hold on, hold on, it's that time of the day you better believe it. Okay, so I actually, I do know what is in here, oh and so just so you know I will give this to my mom and I will film it but I can't resist, look at this, oh yeah and there it is, oh my goodness, that looks so good, oh so the gentleman he combined the logo with the New York City skyline, hopefully you can see that New York City marathon 2019 but then look at the back, oh yeah, go Seth, butter my bread, that is amazing, thank you so much. Okay, moving on let's see what is in these boxes, packaging and tape, oh my, I almost broke it, it's okay, holy smokes, I don't even know who this is from, this is from Contrast Coffee Mug, so this is a World Major Marathon Mug and then it has the New York City Marathon Root on the other side, you all know how much I love coffee and tea, World Major Marathon New York, one down, five to go out of the five major marathons but that is amazing, again thank you for sending this, oh alright, alright, this up here, okay, alright we got it, this is from Jason in Iowa, he says, hey Seth I bought these last February, they're in Denver at Boulder Running Company, they just haven't worked for me, only 12 and a half miles on these bad boys, hopefully you can find them a good home, Jason I will, running shoe giveaways are not, haven't happened in a long time and it's been a busy fall, they will continue, I'm not gonna say dates at this point and just stay tuned, stay tuned, so original zoom flies in size eight and a half, so somebody who needs eight and a half zoom flies will get these at the next running shoe giveaway, thank you Jason for sending those, oh here we go, here we go, thank you, Karen feels like running shoes, he says, hi Seth, big congrats on two awesome races in Amsterdam and New York City, happy to see you are on the roads, keep it up, it's a longer note and she just says thank you Karen and Shane, thank you so much, see you in Boston 2021, I think that might be the Boston year, I think it might be a little too late for 2020 unless somebody has a connection out there, but 2021 sounds real good, so let's see what she sent, boom, oh nice, okay Adidas, the Adizero Boston, oh that is epic, so this is a lady shoe, we do have some lady shoes to give away size eight and a half for ladies, the Boston solid, I've never actually worn the Boston, but I have heard good reviews about the Boston, thank you Karen and Shane for sending these, you all rock, all right, let's, actually I'm going to roll out New York, but this is from a fan, oh my goodness, isn't that cool, right, he crushed it, there it is, isn't that great, so it's for my mom and she's gonna love it, she's gonna love it, it looks so good, it looks so good, oh my my oh my my and I found out the name of the gentleman Russell, thank you Russell from Runhinged is his company, thank you Russell for sending that hoodie for my mom, I will get it to her once I'm back from Argentina, okay and speaking of Argentina, thank you for your patience, I posted this on the gram and Facebook today, I'm way behind on email and answering your messages all over the social media sites, but tomorrow when you're watching this actually I'll be on an airplane for a long time down to Argentina, so I'll have a lot of time to reply to many of your messages, so again thank you for your patience there, I'm just striving to keep up and speaking of that, I don't know what's happening, I don't know, but I'm grateful, someone out there is sharing or a group of people is sharing these vlogs because we are heading toward 50,000 subscribers very very quickly and thank you, I don't know what is, I don't know what's going on, but as a runner I have goals, I think many of us runners have goals in life and our careers, you know chasing down PRs, well I must say you know I do have some goals here on YouTube and I shared one with true love before going to the New York City Marathon, I said hey hon maybe it'd be maybe we could maybe we could get to 50,000 subscribers before January 1st 2020, well we might get to 50,000 by the end of this week, it's insane, I don't know what's happening and it connects to the topic of updates for this vlog in the future of where we're headed, first of all a shout out to and if you could let me know down in the comments to the first have you been subscribed, this is not the question of the day, but have you been, if you've been subscribed since a thousand subscribers or less let us know down in the comments you know who you are, I'm thinking of Carol, I'm thinking of Damian, I'm thinking of Fred, oh my goodness there's a couple people out there who have been watching for a long long time and thank you for sticking with me for this long but then the channel started to grow, started to talk about running shoes and so if you've been subscribed for under 10,000 subscribers let us know and because remember the sign it's right there and it's, that was on March 7th 2019 when we reached 10,000, well now we're almost to 50 and I don't know what to do, meaning I want to make sure as a global running family that we strive to maintain the personal side of this YouTube channel, now as the numbers continue to grow I realize that's gonna become more difficult, there's no way to get around that but that familial feeling I'll just say an emotion that I have with all of you is inspiring me to become a better person and to become a better runner and to become a better YouTuber frankly when I arrived in Central Park last week for that group run I really was taking a back and I told true love and a couple other people like that was the first time in my life where I felt like I was really taken aback and I didn't know I was shocked but it's an affirmation that you all are committed to this channel and I hope, I hope through the daily filming the late night editing and hopefully publishing every single morning at 5 a.m. Mountain Time which I will come back to in a second, I hope that I'm showing that I'm committed to all of you as we ascend very very rapidly to 50,000 and it's not about the numbers but you know what it is about it's about the human beings the people on the other side of this camera who are behind every single number every single subscriber there's real people out there and that's what blows me away that's what I love about YouTube and so I just want to put that out there that we are growing quickly and I thank you for watching regularly and just so you know you probably this is no shocker probably to most of you I do make some money off of the vlog and the money allows me to buy running gear to review for all of you it allows me to buy to fix broken camera equipment it allows me to travel to some of these races to meet many of you to do group runs together and yes I'll just be very open it allows me to buy diapers for my children that's right it's like so I appreciate you believing in the cause and you're probably like well what is the cause the cause for from my perspective is to help you I know in a very simple way to say it to help you get out the door meaning to go run to go breathe fresh air to go strive for your goals which I know we talk a lot about it to go become a better person and not just health-wise but I think by running and by becoming a runner you are creating natural virtue in your life like you're and I know I'm going to get a little off track here but like you are building up resolve to face challenges in this world so I could go on and on on this topic but that's why I publish every single day for all of you all right we're gonna leave that part of talking in the studio right there oh my goodness you get me going YouTube family you get me going okay on to Facebook real quick oh so speaking of that familial that familial pursuit as the channel grows as we go toward 50,000 beyond I know it's going to be harder to communicate but we're going to keep fighting for it because that's important to me so the D'Amour global running Facebook group we have like a little under 2,000 people who have joined here's some tips and tricks for that group and I realize not everyone is on Facebook I get it like I think it's healthy to get off of social media if you need that but at the same time we're having some really great discussions there at the D'Amour global running Facebook group so but I realize it's not for everyone I'm not pushing it on everyone just letting you know it's there some people have asked me why is my post not being so I am the only moderator just want you to be clear and I have to approve every single post okay so I read all of them and we are getting 20 to 30 submissions every single day meaning people who want to post in the group 20 to 30 that's a lot and I don't want to inundate all of you with too many posts that is why I have to do quality control and I cannot I'm basically picking the topics that connect and I have some points to get your post approved I have some pointers to give you basically number one ask yourself is this topic applicable to a large group of people some of the posts are applicable it's applicable to a small group I usually don't approve those because think about the kind of the globalness of this family and so anyway just putting that out there think when you're thinking of a topic make it big so that's point number one point number two I usually always approve inspiring stories from people so if you like I get quite a few about you know somebody that's lost a hundred pounds in the last year because they became a runner or someone who quit smoking and you know when they've been smoking for 20 years and now they're doing their first marathon or whatever the case may be inspiring stories and photos those are great I love that part keep those types of posts coming number three polls poll polls great great way in fact there was a poll recently on the group somebody created for how do people watch the vlog is it on their phone is it on their TV is it on their computer or laptop that was a cool poll for me to read just to hear how all of you are watching the vlog so that's number three poll polls and number four that I need to learn from brevity meaning keep your party keep your posts shorter concise if it's a you know huge you know paragraph or two most people won't read it on Facebook it's just people are moving too quick okay so brevity number five add a topic to your discussion point so so you can sort all of the discussions by topic so marathon New York City marathon injuries planer fasciitis running socks running shoe questions Solomon running shoes so if you can select a topic that that will increase your chances of getting the post approved okay so that's number five and then I guess maybe not a direct point but I can't I'm not gonna I don't want to approve all of the injury pose there's a lot of injury questions keep in mind it's the internet and you got to talk to your doctor but there are a lot of questions about injuries I don't mind those questions I think they're good like I'm I love talking about plantar fasciitis because I've dealt with it so many times but again I think it helps to sort by topic so that we're not repeating ourselves too many times okay all right there you go question of the day I have two questions what ideas do you have for maintaining the familial and the personal side of this YouTube channel as we continue to grow together it's happening so what ideas do you have for example I have one idea I'll just pitch it I'm thinking like down the road I'm not ready now I could basically work with someone in New York in Chicago in Paris in and this is down the road but a representative for the more global running to host a monthly group run in that respective city down the road all right this is not but that's like one way to I think we could work together to meet each other in the real world not just here on YouTube so that's my one idea what ideas do you have so that's number one number two question of the day how are we doing and this is more practical how are we doing on the publishing time for the vlog is 5 a.m. mountain time still good and the reason I ask it is because people continue to let me know that they're watching the vlog as they're drinking their coffee stretching before they go out for the run before they have to go to work I'm wondering should the publishing time be bumped up an hour or maybe two hours so it'd be 3 a.m. mountain time so that would be 5 a.m. east coast time and I realize there's so many time zones around the world but then everyone on the east coast might still have a chance to watch the vlog before their morning run and as they're drinking coffee and and everyone in Denver and in the west coast and I guess like Hawaii and oh my goodness would wake up and it would already be published that is my question of the day number 2 how are we doing on the publishing time I know that's a lot to digest let me know down below thank you so much for being here I love you we're striving we're going upward and I don't know who's sharing these vlogs but oh my goodness onward and upward as we say onward and upward all right that is it for today all right tossing it back now to vlog number when we when we passed the 10,000 subscriber mark about six or seven months ago so that'll be on the left and then on the right we'll toss it back to the New York City group run because there's it was just so inspiring so alright there you go everyone love ya see beauty work hard and love each other see you


You wanna make the best corn you've ever had but you don't wanna go outside? Let me show you what to do. We're gonna get our water boiling, add you a little bit of butter, and some dano spicy, that's the red top. Gonna add a bunch of it. All right, our corn's boiled for about 10 minutes. Now we're just gonna turn it off. We're gonna let it sit and soak up that flavor. All right, after 20 minutes of soaking in that juice, you could eat this by itself, but we're taking it to the next level.  Little bit of dano spicy, that's the red top. Little bit of dano chipotle, that's the maroon top. And last, you're gonna need the cream top. That's the cheesenean.  Now it's time to finish it off.  It's crumbly Mexican cheese. We'll crumble that right over the top. Some chopped up cilantro. Last step, you need a fresh squeeze of lime. And now it's time to get messy. Mm, wow.


Good morning to everyone. It is Wednesday 17th of July. I hope everyone is well. Just having a look around the charts then of what we've got for this morning. From a news perspective, a bit of an update on Boris Johnson and the Brexit situation. The pound obviously from the charts having broken through some quite interesting levels from a more medium term perspective. The market is sterling on a sterling dollar cable on a longer dated chart and we've broken a very important level yesterday which was kind of the third real assault on that. Theresa May no confidence love mid December of last year. The test retesting that same level at the beginning of this month and now we've broken that. As we were discussing in this time yesterday in the briefing, absolutely no reason now why the market shouldn't just drift south having broken through that in the futures around 24 79 and that seems to be the case so far this morning. 23 86 bringing in to play the low point of support back on the 10th 9th of April. Probably the next clear technical target here and absolutely would be expecting that to slowly materialize. I was looking at this and just talking to Sam about it this morning. I felt quite strongly about that level and if breached we would remain to the downside because I don't know from my objective point of view looking at the fundamentals on balance given the Fed now have communicated so dovishly. And given this idea now that it's pretty much factored into markets that they're going to cut into the month and multiple times this year for me I only really see risks that the dollar gets stronger. And if anything the pound I think will materially weaken over the course of the next two months given the fact that the economic situation is going to continue to deteriorate. That as well not only because the political scene I think will also be a headwind for the pound because Boris Johnson will want to be talking a pretty firm stance about the real credible risk of no deal and hard Brexit as he then goes in once he gets the seat of Prime Minister into the negotiations with Europe. So all things considered I do think fundamentally there's a pretty good mix here to promote a downside bias in the medium term for sterling for the moment. All things remaining equal as they are today. Where we would go any breach obviously of that twenty three eighty six then you know it starts to open up moves down further the one twenty three handle being challenged and moving down to what it really is more the lower bound towards the one twenty one fifty thirty four level as you can see further down But probably need a few more things to transpire for us to get down to that lower bound point but I think that technical breach of that level very important for sterling and if we did move back up in cable over the coming days I'd be looking at that previous strong area of support as strong now resistance to cap some of the recovery potentially in the pound should that be the case. Before we get into the news elsewhere the other chart really that's that sticks out this morning was a decline in crude oil and looks like that came really last night. I can see here at Sam had a trend line on a break of that looks like it came up to retest it before then the push lower technically as well breaking through the kind of Asia Pacific lows and the prior highs that we were seeing back on the ninth of July. And that in combination with some comments from the US couple of people looking on the fundamental side that easing tensions between the US and Iran as the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Tehran signaled a willingness to discuss its weapons program. However Iran did later say that's not true so certainly if people were looking for a news catalyst. You could argue that they had one here but probably overlaid with technical breaks just helping exacerbate that type of price movement pairing back the steep gains that we saw back on through the sessions of the ninth and the tenth. Equity wise obviously drifted a little south yesterday earnings reports have been I'd say relatively uninspiring for the banking sector. Things certainly change up gears though today because we get first of the kind of growth related stocks that being Netflix. Sure if you saw me tweet this morning but the Fang companies so Facebook Amazon Netflix and Google combined with Apple and Microsoft the other two notable related technology firms they account for about 17% of the S&P 500 $26 trillion market capitalization. So the Fang companies are phenomenally large in the current context. Now Netflix is going to be the first of those to report they but they are by far the smallest but they fit that same kind of mold in terms of the way of which the market will use it as a perception for risk appetite. And so what are we expecting from Netflix they're due after the market close. Netflix in April forecast weaker than expected growth in new subscriptions. That's pretty much the defining factor when you look at Netflix's earnings. It's about new subscribers new additions and concerns have only increased following announcements that Netflix actually have lost two of their main shows. Which see the highest frequency of views that being if you can believe it people still watched friends and the office. Not sure where people have been and why they subscribed to Netflix to watch friends and the office but there you go. Apparently analysts are saying that that could have a negative impact on the company. Also probably one of the most pressing things for Netflix has been looming competition. I'm sure if you've got children you'll probably be aware that Walt Disney has now released video streaming which is impacting subscriber growth at Netflix. Because obviously your children are particularly into the Disney the various different stories so that's going to be quite key looking out for that. It will be interested to see that their general market reaction to earnings can be quite quite wild in Netflix. You know it can be up to the high double digit percentages more like 18 20 percent is not uncommon. We'll have to check the options market later to see what the implied volatility is later on this afternoon. Also then we have Microsoft they're reporting on Thursday they're expected to post a 9 percent increase in quarterly revenues to 32.8 billion. Strong growth in cloud computing actually is set to make it the business's largest unit other than its Windows business for the first time ever. So actually Microsoft who've done an excellent job about kind of reinventing themselves into this new cloud computing business that will now exceed Windows for the first time ever. I think that's an important milestone for that company and what's created it to become the biggest company in the world bigger than Apple bigger than Amazon at least at this point. So earnings definitely will be key but that Netflix one's not coming to aftermarket. The other companies that are reporting today just so you're aware are Bank of America IBM IBM will be another one of those names aftermarket which will kind of comprise of the larger names eBay also coming out as well. You have had in European equities for chip makers might have some read across into the US Open ASML Dutch firm they opened up with games of about 2 percent this morning in the Netherlands. Okay let's get straight into the news. I'll let Sam go over the charts and set ups in more detail. This is one I thought was quite interesting came out in the Times newspaper this morning. And it's basically claiming that Boris Johnson wants to hold an early general election while Jeremy Corbyn is still around. According to senior allies have said as his team plans to over hold the Conservative Party's campaign machine. The point being here what the article suggesting is that Jeremy Corbyn is such a weak leader as it's seen. And that is the perfect opportunity for Boris Johnson the strategy being that to encapsulate on the momentum behind the Brexit Party's performance in the European elections to strike while the iron is hot. Call a snap election probably just before the running to the October 31st Brexit deadline. He will be banging the drum about how we will have a no deal and threatening that and that really capture that that public sentiment that was obviously evident in those European elections. And he will be aiming for then a larger sized majority this time in Parliament in order then that it can't be so the problem of it being blocked by the lower house when it comes to then the government's plans being put forward to Brussels. Now that's the theory the only problem is this. This is the Westminster polls of comrades you got salvation BMG. So this basically maps all the different polls if there was going to be a general election as of tomorrow. And as you can see quite a distinctive pattern of the last five polls that have happened. Four have put Labour in the lead. I really can't believe how that happens but maybe because of the fact that you know whilst the Conservative Party is sorting out this mess of their leadership. Maybe that's just leading to frustration and therefore the obvious other opposition choice. Brexit Party has dropped significantly because I guess as far as Farage is concerned it's job done. He's got his seat and his representation in Brussels. Now that's over. He's not in the game of running on a national basis for actual to run government in the UK, not at least at this point. So that is shifted and Labour actually is in the lead and on an average of the last five polls you would say they have a lead of about three percentage points. So if Boris Johnson is going to call an election that is a incredibly high risk strategy of which at least at this point I still think the possibility of him calling election is a small one. Definitely not the base case scenario. If you remember back in April of 2017 Theresa May called the snap election because these numbers at the time showed the Conservatives had on average about a 22.5 percentage point lead. Now they're down three points. So find it hard to think that Boris and the Conservative Party would want to back this idea of going up that could result in the most leftist socialist government under Corbyn that we've seen since the mid 1970s. I just don't think that that's a risk that the Conservatives will be willing to take. So quite interesting though Boris obviously just playing this card at this point probably to show that his willingness to pursue this kind of more hard Brexit avenue. Okay other things to be aware of. Trump says he could impose more Chinese tariffs if he wants. Is this impacting the market? Well I think it's becoming a little bit like the boy who cried wolf now with the subject because he has flipped and flopped a couple times on this issue now. And again this is kind of where we're at. They apparently were having telephone conversations last week and this is the setup then for potentially more face-to-face meetings. So this is kind of regular tactic from Trump just keeping the foot on the pedal if you like and the pressure on the Chinese to make sure that they continue their US farm purchases in order to keep these conversations alive. So I don't really see this as anything particularly new at this point but just so you're aware. So the things are you had quite a big conference to commemorate Bretton Woods. What was this back in 1975 something like that. But this did involve much of the major central bank heads, Jerome Powell being one. He did speak and gave a speech but he maintained the Fed's pledge to act to sustain US expansion. His language as per the second bullet point here almost identical to that of which he delivered in the semi-annual testimony last week to the House and the Senate. So nothing really new there to be honest. The other thing that I thought was quite interesting was some comments late yesterday from Bank of England's deputy governor. So this is John Cunliffe and John Cunliffe certainly is one of the contenders to take over from Mark Carney when he does end up leaving his position towards the end of the year. But he made quite an interesting comment I thought. He said that there's no strong sense of contraction in the UK economy. And what he's saying is that the lackluster performance of the UK economy in Q2 is not to do with weak demand but more to do with playing down the inventories that were front run in Q1 in anticipation for what was the initial Brexit deadline of the end of March. So if you think about it, a lot of manufacturing production in the UK was front run to beat that deadline at the end of Q1. However, that deadline then has been moved to October. So therefore companies are oversupplied with inventory and they need to work that back down first before then placing new orders. So any type of things that we see data-wise that show weakness could be explained down to these factors if Cunliffe is logic is to be believed. So I know Sam will be particularly happy that I'm talking up the UK economy and that the recent weakness here is not to do with anything more sinister. But yeah, we'll see how that plays out. Big piece of data coming out this morning from the UK later on, 9.30. You're going to get the latest inflation reading. So this is typically one of the tier one readings that comes out for the UK. Now this isn't expected to be a particular shock in any ways. The reading is expected to remain unchanged. We do have a range of 1.8 to 2.1. But we are expecting 2% is the expectation on the street. Now the reason for this, kind of a little bit like the retail sales report yesterday, you'll remember in yesterday's briefing, we're talking about the facts that wages in comparison to what had been the inflation rate then calculating into the job creation in the US. We were leaning on the bias that we were going to get an upside surprise in retail sales in the US for those reasons and that did materialize. Similar kind of case I guess with the inflation situation in the UK, despite as we've seen with demand diminishing on the PMI data, on the consumer side things are a little bit different given the fact that our unemployment rate is the lowest since 1974 in Britain and wages still remain relatively robust at least for now. That means then that the appetite to spend to that degree of which inflation on the consumer price index basis will continue to remain fairly stable at Bank of England target of 2%. So I'm not actually expecting too much from this. I would anticipate that it will be within the range and so I'd say trading opportunity might be limited. I guess the thing that you're looking at if you now we've got that break of a key support level we're looking at earlier, a downside surprise would certainly help that direction and a further push down towards those lower bound, longer term technical levels of support that we were looking at. Otherwise, looking at the rest of the calendar, what else is there today? Aside from the UK inflation readings, you've got Eurozone CPI but this is final reading so I wouldn't be looking for any market movement on the back of that. Construction output really is a much lower second, third tier piece of economic information. It's not going to move any European assets. In the US afternoon, we've got housing starts, building permits, Canadian CPI is also coming out for anyone trading the loonie and then you've got the DOE or LiPentries that will come out. In terms of that, what was the APIs last night? Well, the best place to go actually I find is if you go on zero hedge in the morning, you scroll back to, they basically will release a nice graphic which has all the numbers. Let me see if I can quickly find it. You'll probably have to scroll back quite a bit to yesterday evening. Just bear with me. Should have had this prepped, I know. But there you go. Here's the numbers. So this was the API infantry from last night. We had a crude draw of 1.4 million. Actually, that's a bearish number because expectations were for a draw of 3 million, cushing a draw of 1.115 gasoline, a draw of just close to half a million distillates, a build of 6.226 million, the biggest build since Jan of 2019. So comparative to what we have seen with some of the infantry numbers, which have been quite large, this is much more smaller in that respect. And if you actually go to the chart and the price movement of crude, the actual movement in crude was way before the data came out. So this was more as European participants were leaving the market, the actual infantry data had very little sustained impact on price, nothing really too out of line I'd say in comparison to recent weeks. All right, that's it from me. I'm going to hand you over to Sam. He can talk over the charts more technically, but otherwise have yourself a great day. Thanks very much. Morning guys, hope we're all doing well. Let's have a quick look over. I guess the best place to start here is the pound and not looking great. Not looking great for the British currency here. Euro pound just touching up to a high as well, a high as it's been for a long time. So I'm going to look at the breakdown that we had this morning. Can we get back up towards that area coming in on the futures around 24, 45, 46 area? That could be a point as well as all the previous lows. I mean, this reminds me of the time of a time of when we do see previous lows of the day is breaking. I mean, I wouldn't usually recommend getting short on the very first level resistance back the way the pound has been moving. It's not looking too great at the moment, is it? I think we have to say that. So certainly medium term it does look like we've got a bit more room to go here, that low having broken 125 as well, psychologically yesterday. You can see the move already pushed to the downside. I think you've got to favour the downside rather than looking to get too smart and trying to call the bottom here. Certainly in today will be a tricky one to do so. Just a word of warning, whether you'd want to get too aggressive on the initial low from yesterday or not, rather than preferring higher up, I guess we'll have to remain to be seen. We do have, of course, that data at 9.30 so you've got an hour or so before that comes in. We'll do a quick run down beforehand, looking at the charts around there as well. Should at any moment this remain of the week we get back up towards that area of those previous lows, 24.80, 24.90, you could imagine there'd be some nice resistance around there that happening today unless the data was way out of line and beat all kind of expectations. You wouldn't imagine that's going to happen. But the pound just now is coming up to test that low. So you obviously do have some other levels to be aware of, just depends how aggressive you would want to be. The Euro push-low this morning, as we did see some dollar strength come in, the dollar is now flat for the day. The Euro having broken through a similar kind of trend line. You see here, actually, we're just getting a bit of a retest to that. The first level, the first time we came back, we had to have resistance. So it'd be interesting to see how that holds. If it was to get a pusher back above there, it would then like you to be rather choppy. You've got the higher of the day pivot looks like it could be a good area to get in, as we did have quite a bit of resistance around there. I suppose it's more than a zone, more of a zone than just the pivot level. You can see some nice lows and then highs in around the mix there. 112-80, as that's coming in. But for now, this is the key point here to retest of that trend line. And of course, we do have some decent data out as well, coming in at 10 a.m. for Europe. So decent morning, data-wise, whether you could get long lasting moves before that, just be a bit careful. Obviously, the lows that we've just made this morning, that little false break of the low from last week. Obviously quite a bullish signal short-term, but anyone long would definitely be a taking profit around here. However, if we do come back to that trend line in here, you can see it on that five minute. You could see maybe a quicker push higher and maybe preferring the pivot from then on. We talked about that trend line yesterday. It would be interesting to see where we close the day. And it was coming in around 74. You had a bit of support before that breakdown. And now that false break from yesterday, you can see the dollar starting to strengthen again. How long until the main man, Donald Trump, is tweeting about the strength of the dollar or how it is too strong will remain to be seen. I guess with just, you can see here, lovely test of this trend line that's come through. So keep an eye on that. We have this marks up from the fourth to then the low of Monday morning on the 15th and then today as well. And then below there you've also got quite a lot of support around the S2. Whether you want to get long there or not, I think against the other currencies we've gone through so far, this one would make a bit more sense to do so. And then to the upside as well, perhaps you can see we're just getting squeezed in from the top as well. So price, you know, in a small range, which it has been for the Aussie for the last couple of days. Patience, I would say, to wait for either this trend line here to hold or around the handle or on the S2 or this trend line to break. And of course, the top of that trend line now coming in around yesterday's low. So some quite interesting levels for Aussie, however it hasn't moved too much as of recent times. Quick look over at the end just to wrap it up for the currencies. Quite a good level, just almost traded today. Just above the pivot that double bottom or triple bottom, if you like, from the last couple of days of the week, Tuesday, Wednesday, no, Monday, Tuesday, getting my days right there. So we're still having a look at that to see how that holds. From the lows, you can see we are getting squeezed in as well, so potential for the afternoon maybe a break lower. I would say while the previous lows from yesterday do look like a good resistance, you know, actually lining the sand really if you want to get long, I would say you would want to see it break above that. But price getting squeezed in, key level pivot yesterday morning's low and then this trend line to the downside. If you're looking for an extra push lower, maybe this dollar strength to come in and equities to push higher, well that could be the option on a continuation kind of strategy. Speaking of equities, have a quick look over at the S&P which did drop down yesterday of some Trump comments and we actually did snap back to find resistance on the low or what would have been the lower of yesterday when saying it. And then you can see that did push lower and we just kept knocking on the door just above 3,000. So really key level to keep an eye on those lows from today and yesterday. And it's more now just pushing that back down to you can see the low from the beginning of the week just below that 3,002 and a quarter. Obviously very key. To the upside, really key level. You can see traded here. We had the highs from the beginning of Friday morning and the lows on Monday and the breakdown yesterday. So 30, 12 very important to just have a line in the sand.  Maybe looking at the backs this morning to get an idea what could happen around there if we reach it with currently two points away. A very key level for now. I'd say sellers in control for the moment if it was a breakthrough. A quicker move up towards R1 and 30, 16 which was yesterday morning's lows isn't out the question. Of course those are the all-time highs as well. So if we were to have a bullish day for stocks worth having on some of these trend lines as potential targets should we get up there. And of course not forgetting just above today's R2 is that trend channel high from the two previous all-time highs in February last year and October. I'm going to look at gold and oil to wrap it up. Gold had a decent push low. We had that trend line on yesterday broke through came back, retest went down really good opportunity to have got in and it took its time but it went down eventually to the S2. Obviously we had data out in the mix there as well so to hold that would have perhaps been a bit brave to have done so. Really key level on that S2 and I know people were looking actually at getting long there talking to them throughout the day and it would have been a fantastic trade. Would again have to be quite brave to get in but held really well and you can see that level from the 11th and then the highs from the 9th as well really nice technical point. To looking more intraday with range bound for now let's have a look if we can get any of these trend lines seems to be squeezed in from there from the downside key level support around 1404. Even if it was to come up to the pivot I mean pivot does look quite messy from yesterday well previous days of our good price action around 1409 to be honest I'm looking at this I'm not too interested as of yet unless maybe we were to to break those lows and even then S1 and the high that we had if I had to move this above the camera back in the morning of the 10th look at good level support so gold which has been pretty choppy other than that trend line break not looking too interesting I think if you're looking for the upside here and you know that isn't guaranteed over the last few days you know the break retest and push higher could of course be an option but again is the volume going to be there in the morning so looking for more afternoon on this one I would say. Oil as we had the APIs yesterday and said it was bearish makes a change from the last few APIs on those Tuesdays where we've seen decent push higher we have come lower we are have just trending or trying to push to the high so keep an eye on around $58 $57.97 before the API that level support obviously very small but that's really what had to break for this move lower we're about 20 ticks away from there price getting squeezed in from the lows you know a break of that before we could be half interesting pivot looks quite good as well you know more intraday as a key level of resistance for this move which really did push down from from yesterday having at the beginning the week pushed to the high that we had from the 11th as well big wave down from there $60.93 now trading at $50 well just below $58 as well. Quick look over the DAX you can see just trying to push higher so we're talking about the S&P level on the on 3012 well and the pivot as well but 3012 so if the DAX was to really break above you could argue anywhere above here really you know the high from the 15th good resistance there as well on the 16th and previously the 11th if we get above there you can imagine the S&P is going to want to have a guy pushing higher as well so keep an eye on the DAX early morning decent data around $9.30 10 o'clock as well just having a quick look over that before the afternoon as well looks pretty exciting before the DOEs at $3.30 only one speaker and that's come out nothing really said from that's going to move things about hope you all have a good trading day any questions as usual please do let us know


Whoa! You're never gonna believe what time it is, man! It's 4.20, man! It's 4.20, man! Hey mom, guess what? It's 4.20!