Jeremy Richardson heads up Business Development at Mixpanel, Inc. a real-time analytics service that helps companies understand how users behave with web applications.

For a while, a big limitation of online optimization tools was their lack of real-time reporting. Google Analytics, the most popular analytics service out there, can easily take a full day before displaying your data. This was acceptable back when the web was static, but as websites become more and more dynamic, the rate at which we analyze and iterate based on our collected data has dramatically increased.

There are many industries where optimizing in real-time can have a large impact on overall business performance. Unfortunately, not all companies are aware of the potential value in tracking information in real-time. Let’s take a look at a few areas where real-time data processing is already making a big impact.

One area where we are seeing real-time analytics improve content companies is in article headlines. For most of us, an article headline is all we use to decide whether or not to read on, so having a good one is definitely important. The Huffington Post is ahead of the game here. They use analytics to run A/B split tests on their important articles – in real-time. The Huffington Post initially shows 2 headlines for the same story, after 5 minutes of testing they discard the less popular one.

Aside from A/B testing article headlines, real-time analytics can play a large role in organizing and prioritizing entire stories as they break. If publishers know the popularity of an article based on the number of reads, comments, tweets, or Facebook “Likes” in real-time, then they can make informed decisions about how to optimize their pages with the best content. As media companies continue to concentrate more of their business online, real-time data analysis will likely play a large role in shaping how key decisions are made in every aspect of the company.

Social gaming is a huge industry that can, and does, benefit from analyzing their data in real-time. It’s a very cut-throat business: Whenever a new strategy is successful, it’s immediately copied by everyone else. Analytics are necessary to keep an edge on the competition. Specifically, real-time analytics are important because social games often have a short lifetime, and the makers want to get as much value out of a single customer as possible. If they can’t iterate on a game for a whole day, and the average user only plays for 7 days, then that’s a large opportunity that is lost due to a lack of data.

A large gaming company that I’ve spoken with sees well over 30 million MAU’s and they analyze and make changes to their games every hour, every day. Real-time analytics gives them the ability to maximize their iteration and get the most out of each game they make. It’s a large part of why they’re so successful.

In live streaming, a flash crowd is when a large group of people shows up and then disappears in a relatively short time span. Imagine how many people tuned in when Landon Donovan scored that epic goal to advance USA in the World Cup, for example. The amount of data here would have been huge if every network packet from every user was captured, and was likely too much information for most companies to capture, record and analyze in any timely and useful way. The huge amount of crowd behaviors would need to be observed in real-time.

An engineer at live streaming company Veetle told me they often need to reserve and allocate additional resources when a crowd is larger than they expect. For simple cases, like the season finale of Mad Men, there are simple allocation heuristics they use that automatically make up for a larger than expected audience. However, for extreme cases smart allocation is a difficult problem.

With something like the Donovan goal, they would have had to have a person observing the flux of people streaming the game, and manually decide what resources to properly allocate – something they would only be able to do with real-time analytics.

Having data available in real-time simply makes you happier: The ability to set up and start tracking immediately gives you the peace of mind in knowing that everything is working smoothly. And, if something does end up being wrong, no time will have been wasted waiting and hoping that the data will eventually show up in a report somewhere. The joy that real-time brings to customers is evident: Analytics company Woopra flat out asked their customers why real-time mattered.

The responses Woopra received focused on the niche information that real-time data provided them. For example, one user wrote: “Just had a potential new customer on the phone, Woopra instantly shows me the 38 pages on our website they read before calling.” Another user found real-time data helped better filter the content he was producing, while for others the benefit was in identifying trends. “Real-time stats are great to understand upcoming trends. Helps to track user interest during different hours etc,” said one user in response.

[Full Disclosure: Woopra is a competitor to the author's company.]

Being able to analyze your data in real-time has the potential to add a lot of value to your business, whether you run a hugely popular website like The Huffington Post or a small business. However, taking advantage of real-time analytics requires commitment – you have to be ready to act on the data as fast as you receive it. It’s possible to automate some of the work, but you usually need a human decision maker. This can be difficult to get correct but it can make your advantage even bigger once you succeed.

- How Social Media Has Prepared Us for Collaborative Business - HOW TO: Evaluate Your Social Media Plan - Why Your Next Business Card May Be Virtual - HOW TO: Improve B2B Sales Productivity with Social Media - HOW TO: Use Social Media for Lead Generation

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, slobo

Summary: Business owners want to stay on top of their analytics. Real-time data could offer new opportunities to learn and improve your company's performance online.


Ted Williams' journey from homelessness to the “Today Show” made the man with the golden voice a media darling last week. But when the dust settles, what will likely be left is a man unequipped to deal with the pressure of fame and instant fortune, experts say.

“Williams is the latest pawn in the media game which celebrates what is hot at the moment and leaves it behind as soon as the next ‘it’ thing comes along,” says Cooper Lawrence, author of “The Cult of Celebrity.” “The job of the media was to use Williams to get eyes on their shows, without regard for how it affects him down the road.”

Just one example that the Williams’ story hasn’t been a true-life narrative unfolding in real time was the battle last week between NBC’s “Today Show” and CBS’s “The Early Show” that kept Williams from reuniting with his 90-year-old mother for 24 hours as the networks tried to get the reunion live on film.

And while the public may have made Williams’ story go viral, it was the news media that elevated him to superstardom. It's this lightning-fast transformation is what could be dangerous for the very recently homeless man.

“I think there is a real danger,” says Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, author of “Starstruck: The Business of Celebrity,” comparing Williams to “Britain’s Got Talent” winner Susan Boyle, who was hospitalized for depression exhaustion following her win on the musical competition in 2009. “The fame can be too much to handle. Stars who rise in the Hollywood system have the protection of an entire infrastructure of publicists and managers and agents. People like Williams and Boyle are on their own.

It was clear there was no one giving Williams career or management advice when he gave out his cell phone number on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” during his appearance last Thursday night.

“How do they get a hold of you?” Fallon asked Williams about how people looking to hire him could reach him.

Williams then recited his cell phone number, which NBC later bleeped out. “I don’t have a website or anything like that,” Williams explained.

Moreover, a man in Williams’ position, a recovering addict who has been living on the streets, is even more vulnerable than someone like Boyle, who was propped up by the “Britain’s Got Talent” publicity machine. Homeless advocates, while cheering for Williams to succeed, say they have concerns about whether he will be able to maintain his sobriety.

“Williams’ disease of addiction needs to be recognized as well as the fact that we could now have to watch something profoundly sad happen to him,” Neil Donovan, the Executive Director of the National Coalition for the Homeless told FOX411. “Radical changes in lifestyle without a strong support system can hurt someone in recovery. If I were his case manager I would say there are red flags all over the place.”

And while Williams’ case has certainly raised the profile of the issue of homelessness this past week, advocates say getting one man off an exit ramp shouldn’t be enough to make Americans feel good about helping the homeless.

“The solution to homelessness is not giving everybody a YouTube video. Williams is only one visible face of homelessness, the family of five living in a cockroach infested motel is the face of homelessness we don't see,” says Mark Horvath, the formerly homeless mind behind Invisible People TV, a website that broadcasts videos of real-life homelessness. “What I hope is that Ted Williams uses this fame and his beautiful voice for advocacy on behalf of all homeless.”

Summary: Ted Williams Not Equipped to Deal With Pressures of Instant Fame, Experts Say


Rodrigo Freire may be just a 16-year-old laddie who loves high school football and modeling, but he sure learned fast how to scratch and bite with the Big People. Well his people have, anyway. Ruben Malaret Jr., Rodrigo's manager, is in a snit over Madonna's claim she doesn't know his client. Baloney, he says. This li'l tug-o'-war has been going on since we reported last week about the party for what everyone's been calling the Mad One's latest boy pal. The birthday bash for his 17th is scheduled for March 26. But Madonna's rep insisted she knows nada from Rodrigo. Well! That has Malaret ready to throw out her record collection. "How Madonna can say that she's never even met my client is insanity," he writes in a rambling missive to this column. "Madonna has met him, and she knows exactly who he is. Rodrigo and myself have from day one respected her wishes for not discussing with any media whatsoever their innocent acquaintance," but that may all change, he hints. "Rodrigo has been offered big dollars for interviews . . . which we turned down. If Madonna chooses [to say] she doesn't even know who Rodrigo Freire is, then maybe Rodrigo ought to reconsider the offer from several publishers who wanted him to pen a book on the Material Girl.

" Malaret says Rodrigo was even set to attend a party with Madonna given by L'Uomo Vogue magazine here, but the kid had to skip it because "he was at football practice that evening.

" As for the birthday party at Barney's on the 26, Malaret says he's "dis-inviting" the singing sex kitten. "If Madonna does not know [Rodrigo]," fumes Malaret, "then [Rodrigo] does not know Madonna.

S.: Liz Rosenberg, Madonna's rep, says she's sticking by her original statement: Madonna does not know this person, has never met him. Anne Frank remembered Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of the death of Anne Frank, whose World War II diaries were turned into a best-selling book and a movie. To mark the milestone, the Fifth Ave. Presbyterian Church holds an all-day reading of her "missing" diaries, beginning at 12:30. Among those taking part are Michael Moriarty, Marilyn Michaels, Fritz Weaver, Celeste Holm, Odetta, Estelle Parsons and Jerry Stiller. And at one point during the day, the readings will cease for a moment to honor Miep Gies, the woman who helped hide and feed the Frank family in Holland. The event is free. Fame is Perry-lous That Golden Boy of TV's "Beverly Hills, 90210," Luke Perry, is back in town and the other night was visiting his old neighborhood, up around W. 79th St., to be exact, checking it out, seeing what shops had moved and what was still there. He was expecting to meet a friend for dinner at Chaz and Wilson's, so as he walked the street, smelling the night air, feeling the rain and happy about being back in familiar surroundings, he suddenly found himself stopped. By two police officers. They stood there, one on each side, looking very stern. Like anyone else in those circumstances, Perry immediately felt guilty, and while he stood there, trying to figure out what he might have done, the cops broke into a big smile. They remembered him from when he wasn't famous, and now that he was, they wanted an autograph. Ah, the price of fame! Role reveals naked truth Jeremy Klavens is a young actor from Boston who recently picked up a part in a play called "Boy in the Basement," one of three one-acters by the late playwright William Inge ("Picnic," "Come Back, Little Sheba") now at the Kraine Theater on E. Fourth St. It's a good part, but unfortunately for Klavens, one scene has him lying on a gurney in an undertaker's room completely naked. After a bit of soul-searching, he agreed to do it with one stipulation: That he wouldn't have to be naked the night his mother came to the play. Agreed. The night she came, he wore shorts. Mom liked the play anyway. Thought Jeremy was terrific. Here and there . . . Robert Redford's in town this weekend for the Directors Guild of America dinner and awards in the Marriott Marquis Saturday night. He's up for a Feature Film Award for his "Quiz Show" . . . Diane Leslie plays piano at the Cafe Chopin. Her repertoire includes Liszt, Mozart, Grieg, Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert. But no Chopin . . . Marin Mazzie, last on Broadway in "Passion," Andrea Martin, Ken Page and Gregg Edelman will be in "Out of this World," the next musical "Encore!

" at City Center, March 30-April 1.


Patrick Brill, aka Bob and Roberta Smith, with his fourth plinth design. Photograph: Sang Tan/AP

Yet another reason for hoping Boris Johnson does not become mayor of London is that he has pledged to dump the fourth plinth competition and put a Spitfire on it instead. This will go down a storm with his usual Toryboy fanbase who couldn't care less about public art but do like Spitfires, but it's a tragic loss for Londoners like me who welcome a bit of art pizzazz in Trafalgar Square.

Also, much as I love Tracey's meerkats, I was really hoping Bob and Roberta Smith would win. He must inevitably count as the outsider against five much more established names - Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Yinka Shonibare and Jeremy Deller - but his Faites l'Art, Pas la Guerre, powered by wind and sun, looks amiable enough - colourful, eco-friendly, eccentric, much like the man himself.

His real name is Patrick Brill but for some reason (possibly because his father, Frederick Brill, was head of Chelsea Art School) he chose to operate under a pseudonym. He has a sister called Roberta, but she is a psychiatric nurse, not an artist. Nevertheless, she features as a pungent critic in his new show at the Hales Gallery in Shoreditch, east London, which consists of 'diaries' painted in his usual distinctive signwriting on planks. One of the diary boards says: '4 February 2008. Roberta, my sister phoned, We got into an argument. She said all you do is paint what ever the first thing that comes into your head on bits of old floorboard, you can't even spell.'

True, but I have a weakness for artists (Tracey Emin, Grayson Perry, Bob and Roberta Smith) who can write but not spell. It shows a sort of free-spirited gaiety I think, the opposite of those sticklers who know every use for a semi-colon, but never have anything interesting to say.

Bob and Roberta says the show is more personal than usual, about his memories rather than about politics, because he's just turned 45 and keeps thinking about death. '17 May 2007, I went to the doctor. He had the results of my brain scan. He said your brain is ok, but there are some areas of damage in your frontal lobe. He said, "Don't worry, the damage is insignificant." I said, "It might be insignificant to you, mate. That's my brain you are talking about."'

His brain seems fine to me. I saw him a few weeks ago holding forth to a glittering Notting Hill Gate crowd including Stella McCartney at Miller's Academy about his Art U Need project to bring art to the benighted housing estates of the Thames Gateway.

It was a startlingly unsuitable subject for such a glossy audience, but he held them spellbound. I see him as a sort of Ian Dury of the art world, someone who keeps on trucking, doing his own thing, making absolutely no concessions to fashion or marketability, but generally giving pleasure to everyone who comes across him. I hope Boris loses and he gets the fourth plinth.

Fill this space: the plinth story

1841 The plinth was built for an equestrian statue of William IV but was left empty after funds ran out.

1999 The Fourth Plinth Project was established by the Royal Society of Arts. Mark Wallinger, Bill Woodrow and Rachel Whiteread were chosen to fill the space in successive years.

2005 Marc Quinn's sculpture of the pregnant artist Alison Lapper, born with no arms and shortened legs, was unveiled after the Greater London Authority took over responsibility for the space.

2007 Thomas Schütte's eight-ton glasswork Model for a Hotel 2007 replaced Quinn's sculpture on the plinth.

Summary: Patrick Brill, aka Bob and Roberta Smith, is an original and free-spirited artist whose work, says Lynn Barber, would bring a bit of pizzazz to Trafalgar Square


Arnos Grove station announces its presence in clean-cut, crystal-clear architectural terms. A great glazed and corniced, brick, steel and glass drum sits on top of what is essentially a hollow box made of the same simple and unadorned materials. The purpose of this overground London Underground station is straightforward: to smooth the flow of three and a half million passengers a year scurrying on and off Piccadilly line tube trains here, on to red London buses waiting outside, and so to the surrounding semi-detached housing estates built from the time when this calm and quietly self-confident masterpiece of modern design opened to traffic on September 19 1932.

When the station was built, this stretch of north London was still largely rural. It seems odd, and perhaps just a little sad, that the very building that spurred massive local housing development, and shops and schools and churches, and nurtured ever more commuters, was by far the best building in the new, if ill-defined suburb of Arnos Grove.

Seventy-five years on, this world-famous architectural emblem of what was the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB), under the aegis of its brilliant chief executive Frank Pick, is still by far the finest building in the neighbourhood. Restored, carefully for the most part, in 2005, it remains the very model of a modern metro station. In its own modest, yet confident way, its design and structure is as perfect as a Bach fugue, a Greek temple, or the letters A and G from the typeface - modelled on ancient Roman precedent - that the calligrapher, Edward Johnston, designed for Pick and the underground in 1916, and which adorns the station nameplates along the length of peerless Arnos Grove.

Although nominally modern, the design of the station is as much rooted in antiquity and classical principles and proportions - as well as 20th-century interpretations of these - as it is in any of the principles that were new when Charles Holden, its architect, took to his drawing board. Holden had begun work on the design of new stations for an extension of the underground's Piccadilly line from Finsbury Park to, eventually, Cockfosters immediately after a summer tour of new Scandinavian, Low Country and German architecture made with Pick in 1930. This was just two years after Le Corbusier's revolutionary Vers une Architecture had been published in its first English translation (Towards a New Architecture) and four years after Walter Gropius's Bauhaus, that crucible of modern German-led design, had moved to its cultural power-house home in Dessau.

Up to a point, both Pick and Holden were interested in what Le Corbusier and Gropius had to say. Client and architect had met at the first meeting of the Design and Industries Association, both committed to the notion that good design had to be "fit for purpose". And, yet, both these Arts and Crafts movement inspired, teetotal nonconformists wanted something different, something more humane and English, from Le Corbusier's modern European "machine-for-living-in" architecture. At once radical and conservative, Pick and Holden were also looking for an architecture that, new and distinctive, would be rooted, without fuss or adornment, in the pantheon of architectural history.

Which is why the two fell for the compelling design of the new Stockholm City Library, opened in 1928, by the great Swedish modern classicist Gunnar Asplund (1885-1940). Here was a Roman temple of sorts, founded - or refounded - in the architecture of the Pantheon itself, yet translated into a particularly convincing modern Swedish architectural language. Arnos Grove owes much to Asplund and the Stockholm library. Equally, Holden and Pick were much taken by the striking new Town Hall at Hilversum in the Netherlands. This superbly functional, yet highly crafted public building by Willem Marinus Dudok (1884-1974), a former military engineer, provided much of the inspiration for the detailing of Arnos Grove; mostly it inspired Holden to use brick as his basic building material and metal for his streamlined windows.

The brickwork at Arnos Grove is at once well laid, handsome and unpretentious. The palette of materials Holden chose shaped a building that was different from anything that had gone before in London, and very impressive and yet somehow quite at home in bricky suburban north London. I can readily imagine a baroque style fresco on the underside of Holden's great brick, steel and glass drum at Arnos Grove representing the design of the station as the apotheosis of the world of modern transport.

Homely yet magnificent, modest yet capacious, the design of Arnos Grove is a brilliant architectural tightrope act. In London, despite the bravura qualities of some of the stations built in the 1990s for the Jubilee line extension, its design has never been bettered.

When it opened, the station was truly what German art historians would describe as a gesamtkunstwerk, a total and entire work of art. Not only did lettering used throughout the station complement the architecture, so did its benches, lamps, ticket machines and, of course, Harry Beck's underground maps. Adverts on display inside and outside the ticket hall, and along the lengths of its platforms, might be designed by such distinguished graphic artists as Edward McKnight Kauffer, Hans Schleger and Man Ray. Trains that came to serve its platforms included the sleekly purposeful 1938 tube stock designed, at Acton Works, by a team led by W S Graff-Baker, the underground's chief mechanical engineer. By the 1950s, among the buses that met these trains were the RT double-deckers designed, at Chiswick Works, under the direction of Eric Ottaway, Frank Pick's technical officer (buses and coaches). In the 1960s, these superbly proportioned and beautifully engineered double-deckers were joined by the long-lived, and now much missed, Routemasters, the last buses designed and built in London for Londoners.

No detail was too insignificant for Holden, Pick and Arnos Grove station. From 1937, LPTB bus stops, at Arnos Grove as elsewhere, were standardised to a streamlined concrete design adorned with signs by Hans Schleger. Seat fabrics of tube trains and London buses - hardwearing, innovative moquettes - were styled by textile designers such as Enid Marx (1902-1998) and the American-born Marion Dorn (1896-1964). No wonder architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described Frank Pick's LPTB as "a civilising agent". No wonder many of us still look at Arnos Grove station today and think, why can't we ensure such high standards of integrated, imaginative, wholly convincing and well-crafted public design today?

In my imagination, I see Holden's great drum starting to revolve, and then spin as if designed, like some great centrifuge, to draw in commuters from the suburban homes all around it, together with their cases, rucksacks and shopping bags, their umbrellas, furtive hoods and mobile phones, their paperbacks, laptops and newspapers, their brow-furrowing concerns, daydreams and season tickets. In reality, I can't help hoping that this king, queen and all princes of a metro station raises at least one commuter's spirit each day as he or she passes into and out of what remains one of the finest of all 20th-century buildings.

· Jonathan Glancey is the Guardian's architecture critic.

Summary: Jonathan Glancey: The station is truly what German art historians would describe as a gesamtkunstwerk, a total and entire work of art.


Olympia's Trolley, a 1989 work by Roy Oxlade

Roy Oxlade, one of the most impressive British painters of the past 50 years, who has died aged 85, was what is sometimes known as an artist's artist. Although his name is perhaps unfamiliar to the general public, his peers, students, teaching colleagues and curators held him in high esteem. He exhibited regularly in the UK and abroad, was a prolific and stylish writer on the art of many periods and an influential figure in adult art education.

His first major one-man show was in Vancouver (1963) and his work was favourably compared with that of his teacher, David Bomberg, whom he much admired; just as his later paintings would reflect his admiration for the American Philip Guston. He was no mere imitator of either artist: indeed, his original output is tempered by wit, sensuality, a love of the absurd as well as a visceral dislike of artiness which he felt damaged art, French art in particular. "The problem with French painting," he wrote, "is it all seems a bit Montmartre." Similarly, he derided the insipid Britishness of much postwar British painting. "We all have to struggle to avoid coming out like Vaughan Williams."

Apparently wild, spontaneous brushwork, bold colour and improvised images characterise his distinctive style, demonstrated in Olympia's Trolley (1989) and Green Loops (2005).

"Painting, is a funny business," he told the US writer and artist Marcus Reichert in 2003. "It falls between the extremes of music and literature - both of which can be done seriously in the head in the way painting can't." His love of poetry and classical music, especially virtuoso piano pieces, was a central part of his art. "I do listen to music while painting," he said. "Bach and Mozart especially offer a subliminal connection to sheer positiveness, to an impossible standard of excellence."

Oxlade had solo shows in London at the Odette Gilbert Gallery (1985-88), Reed's Wharf Gallery (1993) and Art Space Gallery (2002); and at the Gardner Centre, University of Sussex (1990, now the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts). His work was shown in various group exhibitions, in the John Moores exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (1962), the Hayward Annual (1982) and EAST International at Norwich University (1991).

He was an outstanding teacher, mostly at the adult education centres in Tunbridge Wells and Sittingbourne, Kent, where he presided over popular summer schools. His selected writings in Art and Instinct (2010) bear witness to his original insights and teaching methods: benign discipline and the need for the personal vision and complete commitment. He expected to find in his students what he demanded of himself.

Roy Oxlade was born in Tottenham, north London, the son of William, an engineer, and Emily. He was educated at Bromley School of Art and Goldsmiths, London, and was taught by Bomberg for two years from 1951 at the Borough Polytechnic (now London South Bank University). Later, at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in 1976, his PhD thesis was Bomberg and the Borough: An Approach to Drawing.

While at Goldsmiths, in 1957 he married a fellow painting student, Rose Wylie. Their marriage was an extraordinary love match, an inspiring and touching union of restless intellects and imaginations. When Roy and Rose were so-called mature students in the 1970s at the RCA, they strolled about hand in hand deep in animated conversation. In those days, the RCA intimidated some students, but never the Oxlades, who mimicked the foibles, obsessions and absurdities of the teachers, including me, to great effect.

It is held that Roy was the student who once famously engaged a grandee member of the college council, Lord Howard of Henderskelfe, in intense debate about the meaning of art education. Roy referred in passing to the RCA as the Royal College of Hobbies and sailed on using his pet expletives, piss-pots and hell's bells, interspersed with his mighty infectious laugh. Howard was not amused. Everyone else was delighted.

A lifelong Labour voter, no lover of monarchy, the establishment, or honours for artists or writers, he particularly loathed militarism. He regarded the recent national predilection for military heroes as sentimental claptrap. He derived considerable inspiration from TS Eliot, whose poetry he recited while driving one or other of a succession of brightly coloured Renaults at high speed along the narrowest Kentish lanes. At the Faversham golf club, he played off a handicap of 12.

Invariably he could be found at Sunday mass. He never lost his faith. He was intolerant of long-winded sermons and when he jammed his paint-stained fingers into the ears beneath his very full head of hair it was the sign that the priest had carried on long enough.

During my 15 years of teaching at the RCA, my students taught me far more than I taught them. Roy Oxlade was among the very best. He was, as he often said of others, a VGM: a very good man. Goodness was his hallmark.

He is survived by Rose; his son, Luke-John; his daughters, Elizabeth and Henrietta; and his two grandchildren, Albert and Rose.

• Roy Oxlade, painter, born 13 January 1929; died 15 February 2014

Summary: Painter with a distinctive style characterised by wild, spontaneous brushwork, bold colour and improvised images


Once unemployment extends beyond a few weeks, beware of letting one day slide into the next as if it’s an extended holiday. In some places, like the United States, it can be much harder to find a job when you’re unemployed, so making the best use of your time off the clock is crucial.

Use your time outside the 9-to-5 to take the kind of action to get yourself noticed. Here’s how to employ those free hours wisely — and toward your next big career move.

Taking a professional course demonstrates initiative and dedication to self-development, wrote Neil Matthams, recruitment team leader at Sydney-based recruitment firm Talent International, in an email.

Employers and recruiters are also well aware that qualifications can be quite expensive, according to Matthams who works out of the company’s Perth office. That can be a good thing.

“A potential employer may get a positive insight into an applicant’s character if they are willing to invest in their development even when they have reduced disposable income,” he wrote.

Courses should be “in sync” with your field, according to Jorg Stegemann, managing director of Paris-based Kennedy Executive Search & Outplacement. “We are in a specialist market today,” he wrote. “If you have worked in marketing for 10 years and now take a course in finance hoping to become a finance manager, it won't work. [It’s better to] learn the latest trend in marketing and complete your profile instead of diluting it.”

When it comes to being unemployed and standing out from the crowd, a professional blog can help set you apart.

If you have a professional website that includes your CV, plan on adding your blog stream to it. Also, make sure to attach a link to it as part of your contact/correspondence details, wrote Mattham. “If it’s in this position on a CV, it can’t be missed.”

“The reason bloggers impress hiring managers is that [blogging] demonstrates a love and enthusiasm for what they do,” wrote Matthams. “Therefore, if you’re going to include a blog on your CV, it would make sense to write a blog that relates to your profession or line of work.”

Software developers, for example, could blog about the latest technologies or projects that they are doing at home while engineers could blog about new projects in their cities and what challenges they might face, he said.

There aren’t any set rules on how often you need to blog. “It really doesn’t matter as long as the content is interesting and demonstrates to the reader that the blogger has a passion for what they do,” wrote Matthams.

But remember any recruiter or potential employer could be reading your posts, so be prepared to discuss them in an interview. Make sure to keep your personal online presence separate from your professional one.

Being unemployed offers an opportunity to grow your professional network, according to Dave Ciliberto, senior vice president of career transition at New York-based organisational and talent consulting firm Partners International.

Be clear on what you need from people when you contact them.

“The more specific you are, the more people can assist you,” said Ciliberto. Also, don’t forget to ask them if there is anyone else that they suggest you contact.

You will need to prepare answers to questions such as “What do you want to do?” and “How can I help you?” said Ciliberto. “Too often job seekers will assume that people in their network will know what kind of position they are looking for or what their skill set and expertise are,” he said.

But that is rarely the case – and you don’t want to make extra work for them. “Avoid making assumptions and avoid the fear of asking for what you want. Be specific and let your network [of contacts] know exactly what you are looking for and what you can do.”

Contact outsourcing and contract employment firms in the fields that interest you, suggested Ford R. Myers, president of Pennsylvania-based Career Potential, LLC. Often, the work can turn out to be quite interesting and challenging – and potentially lucrative, he wrote.

“In some cases, these consulting or contract assignments turn into full-time job offers after the company gets to know you.”

Consulting for any firm or contact is better than doing nothing, whether it’s making a business plan for your brother-in-law’s tattoo shop or preparing tax returns for a friend, wrote Kennedy’s Stegemann.

“Write it on your CV and on LinkedIn to show that you are in the driving seat of your career,” he suggested.

Volunteer for a charity or non-profit organisation – even if it is only for a few hours a week. “How much time is up to you,” said Partners International’s Ciliberto.

For Matthams, a stint volunteering during a period of unemployment always stands out on candidates’ CVs, because it shows that they didn’t just sit around but kept themselves busy and kept their skills sharp while giving back to the community. It might not be as hard as you think to find volunteer work in your field of expertise.

“A web designer (could his services to a local charity whose website needed updating,” suggested Matthams.

But none of these actions will impress anyone – if you don’t present them well on your CV or resume, warned Matthams. Lumping your most recently completed courses with ones you took years ago “significantly reduces the impact of what you’ve achieved,” he wrote. “More importantly, the person reviewing the CV won’t be able to see how you’ve been spending your time.”

Employers and recruiters spend just 5 to 7 seconds scanning each CV or resume, according to Birmingham, UK recruiting firm BeHiring. Their eyes usually dart straight to the description of your last role, according to Matthams. So, that’s where you want to put what you’ve been working on while unemployed.

Career Coach is a twice-monthly column on BBC Capital in which we consider the career turning points and questions many professionals face. We welcome questions from readers at careercoach@bbc.com.

Summary: Donât settle into a routine of job-searching and sleeping late. Instead, do these six things to stay on track and get back to work better than before.


‘Alan Partridge” is the cinematic equivalent of Marmite: a much-loved condiment in Britain and a puzzlement almost everywhere else. An acquired taste, certainly, but on the basis of this movie, well worth sampling at least once.

Star Steve Coogan has become a recognizable figure on this side of the pond in such movies as “24 Hour Party People,” the “Night at the Museum” series, and “The Trip,” and he has been broadening his resume with such recent dramas as “Philomena” (which he co-wrote and produced) and “What Maisie Knew.” To the Brits, though, he is Alan Partridge — egotistical radio DJ and legend in his own mind — in much the same way that Rowan Atkinson is Mr. Bean.

The character has been bouncing around since 1991 in various radio programs, TV shows, and Web series, but “Alan Partridge” (titled “Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa” in England) is the character’s feature film debut. Directed by Declan Lowney, it opened at number one at the British box office, a fitting return for the national equivalent of an adored family screw-up.

For Stateside newcomers, it’s helpful to think of Alan as combining the fatuous cluelessness of “Anchorman” legend Ron Burgundy with some of the genial idiocy of that movie’s Brick Tamland. Make no mistake, though: Alan’s a high-functioning moron. The host of the local radio show “Mid-Morning Matters” (“Music and Chat for the Norfolk Generation”), he knows how to direct his listeners to the big issues: “Large question: What smell would you miss most?”

“Alan Partridge” could have unloosed the character on America, or even England at large. In keeping with the tatty original concept, it heads the other way. When the radio station is taken over by corporate owners and its format is renamed The Shape (tagline: “The Way You Want It To Be”), Alan desperately avoids the sack by suggesting his colleague, the sweet but slightly psychotic midnight DJ Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney), get fired instead. Pat’s response is to take the employees and new owners hostage. Alan, conveniently outside the building at the time of the event, is sent back in as negotiator. Acidly droll British character humor ensues.

In fact, the difference between “Alan Partridge” and a movie like “Anchorman” is the difference between British comedy (retentive) and American (expulsive). The makers of this film — including co-scripters Coogan and Armando Iannucci, writer-director of “In the Loop” — are not above (or beneath) putting Alan down a Porta Potty in his bid to escape Pat’s wrath, but the bit is more of a sight gag than a splat-gag, as it were. And it’s the throwaway lines you almost don’t hear that tend to stick, like an ad for one of Alan’s sponsors (“Banton’s Butchers: Yesterday’s meat at today’s prices”) or the hero’s advice to his long-suffering second banana (Tim Key): “Never criticize Muslims [on-air]. Only Christians. Jews a little.”

“Alan Partridge” could have been an expansion of Coogan’s original character concept into the international big time. Thankfully, it’s not. Instead, the movie is a fond gift to fans and an example of a star remembering his roots. Alan Partridge: Marmite you can depend on.

Summary: *** Alan Partridge The fatuous local radio DJ created by comic actor Steve Coogan has been bouncing around England since 1991 in various formats, but this is the character’s first big-screen iteration. It’s refreshingly small, rude, and funny -- the cinematic equivalent of Marmite, but try some, you might like it. With Colm Meaney. (90 min., R) (Ty Burr)


Arnold Worldwide has long created TV ads for Progressive Insurance that feature a character named Flo; now the Boston-based ad agency has created a series of special Progressive video ads designed for Facebook, and these early Facebook ads definitely don’t go with the Flo.

Photo taken from Progressive website.

In fact, long-time pitch-person Flo is nowhere to be seen in ads that Progressive seems to be aiming at a younger crowd.

The Facebook ads, which includes a “campaign microsite,” are intended to be more “disruptive” and “eye-catching” than traditional TV ads, Arnold said, as the ads seek to court young consumers who are frequent users of Facebook’s News Feed feature.

The mantra of the Progressive Facebook ads? “Act your age! Dump your parents’ insurance company. Save @ Progressive.com.”

And instead of Flo, the ads feature a Peter Pan-like millennial, a young man presumably in his 20s who refuses to grow up. In several of the spots, he’s seen sitting in a high chair or being lugged about in front-loading papoose.

Presumably, the ads’ subtext is, Only an immature nerd would so lame as to sign up with the same insurance company that is used by his parents and their Oldsmobile-loving contemporaries.

Summary: Arnold Worldwide creates Facebook ads for Progressive Insurance, and long-time pitch-person Flo is nowhere to be seen.


07/11/2014 at 03:30 PM EDT

Will the real Jane Austen please stand up?

unveiled a waxwork likeness of the

author in Bath, England, on Wednesday, the closest "anyone has come to the real Jane Austen for 200 years," a spokesperson for the Centre says.

Until now, the only accepted portrait of the writer was a sketch done by Austen's sister Cassandra in 1810. This sketch was the starting point for the waxwork, which was constructed with the help of former FBI forensic artist Melissa Dring.

"[Cassandra's portrait] does make it look like she's been sucking lemons," Dring told

. "She has a somewhat sour and dour expression. But we know from all accounts of her, she was very lively, very great fun to be with and a mischievous and witty person."

Dring used diaries, letters and other contemporary accounts of the author's appearance to help flesh out Austen's likeness. Royal sculptor Mark Richards then took Dring's findings and built the 5-foot-6-inch waxwork from them. The artist is happy with the results, saying she believes the statue looks "pretty much like her."

"She came from a large Austen family and they all seemed to share the long nose, the bright sparkly brown eyes and curly brown hair," Dring said. "[The waxwork] is as close as anyone can possibly get to her."

Summary: FBI forensic artist Melissa Dring used diaries, letters and more to construct a waxwork of the beloved author


Updated JUL 16, 2014 6:17p ET

PHOENIX -- It was a lazy mid-March afternoon on the west side of town, mild and sunny. Birds caught the wind, made leisurely loops on a day that seemed expressly assembled to lighten the drudgery of spring training. Until the sky fell.

After his 91st pitch in his final tune-up, Patrick Corbin summoned Diamondbacks coaches and medical personnel to the mound at Goodyear Ballpark. His elbow hurt, and it had for a little while. Corbin had just struck out Luke Carlin in the seventh inning, and with the D-backs ahead he would be the winning pitcher.

But that was the last pitch Corbin will throw in 2014, and his injury and subsequent Tommy John surgery turned into the first domino in a cascading chain of events that was the biggest contributor to the D-backs' struggles before the All-Star break.

The D-backs placed 12 players on the disabled list and compiled a 40-56 record before the break, tied with Houston for the second-worst record in the majors behind Texas, the only team that has lost more player-games to injury that Arizona.

The extended losses of Mark Trumbo, A.J. Pollock, Eric Chavez and Cliff Pennington robbed them of two top threats in the lineup and two valuable, veteran reserves. The offense has suffered -- the D-backs ranked No. 21 in runs (376) and No. 23 in home runs (76) despite All-Star seasons from first baseman Paul Goldschmidt and catcher Miguel Montero.

But pitching is where the losses were most felt, and what has been the biggest cause of their slow start. Setup man David Hernandez had Tommy John surgery a week after Corbin, and right-hander Bronson Arroyo, slowed in spring training by a balky back, went under the knife Tuesday.

With No. 1 starter Corbin gone and designated Nos. 2-3 starters Trevor Cahill and Brandon McCarthy uncharacteristically ineffective -- for a second straight year -- the D-backs opened the season 8-22, beginning with their two-game season-opening series against the Dodgers in Sydney, Australia; they never recovered.

From Down Under to down under.

The D-backs have about a win for every loss since April 29, but the poor start leaves new chief baseball officer Tony La Russa and general manager Kevin Towers facing the post-break portion of the season mulling trades and using the time to evaluate young players rather that looking for a veteran to add for a possible playoff run.

The D-backs had a major league-high 5.11 ERA and a major league-low seven quality starts in March/April, the major culprit. The D-backs made two quality starts in their first 18 games and three in their first 25, putting so much of a burden on the bullpen that manager Kirk Gibson was forced to use his relievers based on rest rather than in set roles.

"Our starting pitching needs to be better, period," Gibson said at the time.

The Corbin loss opened a spot for Randall Delgado in the starting rotation, but by the end of April both Delgado and Cahill had been moved to the bullpen, their jobs gone to Josh Collmenter and Mike Bolsinger. Chase Anderson later replaced Bolsinger, who was brought back when Arroyo hit the DL but was returned to the minors again this week when Cahill was activated for the second half.

The revolving door was not what the D-backs needed, inasmuch as left-handers Tyler Skaggs and David Holmberg had been traded in the offseason and top prospect Archie Bradley missed six weeks in the minor leagues with elbow soreness.

Delgado gave up nine runs in 7-2/3 innings of two starts before Collmenter (6-5, 3.97 as a starter) added some stability. Cahill gave up 18 runs in 17-2/3 innings before losing his job. Cahill also struggled in relief, and he accepted his minor league option on June 11 rather that test free agency with the guarantee that he would return to the majors this season.

McCarthy did not win any of his 10 home starts and was traded to the Yankees for Vidal Nuno on July 6. Like Anderson, Nuno will be evaluated in the second half as the D-backs look toward 2015.

As the pitching staff failed to stabilize, other parts of the D-backs' game became out of round in an attempt to compensate. The D-backs ran into outs on the bases, attempting to force offense knowing that it might take six runs, not four, to win a game. They tried too hard on defense, such as throwing behind runners, while trying to create outs that were not there. And so it went.

Wade Miley (5-6, 4.18), Collmenter and Anderson (6-4, 3.64) have helped stabilize the rotation, which has a 4.58 ERA at the break. Still, that would be the second-highest in franchise history, one-hundredth of a point higher the 1998 expansion team.

"Baseball is a crazy game," Towers said at the end of April.

For the D-backs, first half confirmed it.

Follow Jack Magruder on Twitter

Summary: Arizona's staff injuries and ineffectiveness doomed the team to a slow start from which it has not recovered.


07/19/2014 at 06:45 PM EDT

On July 11, Dolores Jefferson became a local hero after she rescued a neighbor's dog from a pack of wild coyotes.

The 84-year-old Bensenville, Illinois, resident was enjoying a cup of coffee when she heard noises coming from behind her home.

Jefferson went outside to investigate and found her neighbor's dog, Roxie, an Egyptian Pharoah Hound, surrounded by five coyotes.

According to Jefferson, one of the coyotes had Roxie by her head.

"He was huge. He was as big as any German Shepherd I've ever seen," Jefferson

. "He turned around, looked at me, and Roxie got farther away from him."

As for how Jefferson scared the coyotes away?

"All I could remember, my son told me to yell, make a lot of noise if you see one, and that's what I did," she said.

Roxie was examined by a vet and is expected to make a full recovery, and her owner, Rich Parent, can't thank Jefferson enough.

"Here's this lady, pushing 85 years old, and she's my hero,"

Jerry Douthett and his 1-year-old Jack Russell terrier

Summary: Dolores Jefferson becomes a hero after saving her neighbor's Pharaoh Hound


Cloudera, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based developer and distributor of Hadoop distribution for enterprise customers, has raised $65 million in new VC funding. Accel Partners led the round, and was joined by Greylock Partners, Ignition Partners, In-Q-Tel, and Meritech Capital Partners. Cloudera now has raised around $140 million in total VC funding. AllThingsD reports that the round now values Cloudera at around $700 million. www.cloudera.com

Centric Software, a Campbell, Calif.-based provider of PLM software for retail and consumer goods companies, has raised $11.6 million in new Series C funding from return backers Oak Investment Partners and Masthead Venture Partners. The total round now stands at $19 million.www.centricsoftware.com

AppFirst, a New York-based provider of SaaS-based application management solutions, has raised $8.7 million in Series B funding from Safeguard Scientifics. The company previously raised $6.3 million from FirstMark Capital, First Round Capital and Javelin Partners. www.appfirst.com Validity Sensors Inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based provider of identity authentication solutions, has raised an undisclosed amount of new Series E funding from Intel Capital. The entire round now stands at $22 million, including past participation from TeleSoft Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, VentureTech Alliance, Panorama Capital and Crosslink Capital. www.validityinc.com

Sign up for Dan’s daily email newsletter on deals and deal-makers: GetTermSheet.com

Summary: Cloudera, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based developer and distributor of Hadoop distribution for enterprise customers, has raised $65 million in new VC funding. Accel Partners led the round, and was joined by Greylock Partners, Ignition Partners, In-Q-Tel, and Meritech Capital Partners. Cloudera now has raised around $140 million in total VC funding. AllThingsD reports that the round now…


August 14, 2014: The body of a 62-year-old woman has been found stuffed inside a suitcase outside a Bali hotel.

A US woman detained over her mother's suitcase murder in Bali posted a cryptic message online just days before she and her boyfriend were arrested over the killing.

The battered, half-naked body of Sheila von Wiese Mack, 62, found stuffed in a suitcase at an exclusive hotel on Indonesia's resort island yesterday.

On August 7, Mack's 19-year-old daughter Heather posted on Instagram a photo she presumably took from the window of their hotel, the five-star St. Regis, accompanied by the caption: "i refuse to let someone say what i can do, gettin (sic) money my attitude you know what it do #bali," the MailOnline reports.

Less than a week later, and just a day after she was joined by her boyfriend, 21-year-old Tommy Schaefer, Mack's body was found in a suitcase wrapped in a blood-smeared bed sheet and sealed up with tape.

The young couple were checking out and sent several suitcases down to a taxi, allegedly including the one that contained the victim, local police chief Djoko Hari Utomo told reporters.

The body was discovered when the couple failed to show up at the waiting taxi, Utomo said. They were seen on CCTV leaving the hotel via a stretch of beach at the back of the property, instead of the main entrance.

The victim had several wounds to her head, and appeared to have put up a struggle, a doctor who examined the body said.

Mack was recorded on CCTV arguing with Schaefer in the hotel lobby the previous night, he added.

Police launched a hunt and the pair were found sleeping at a hotel in the tourist area of Legian, north of Nusa Dua, early on Wednesday, Utomo told AFP.

CNN reports that the couple told police they had been taken captive at the resort by an armed gang whose members killed Mack but they later managed to escape.

However, local police are investigating a different version of events.

"This is murder, and we will decide from our investigation whether it is premeditated or spontaneous," Utomo said.

Body of American tourist found in Bali

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Summary: A US woman detained over her mother's suitcase murder in Bali posted a cryptic message online about refusing to "let someone say what I can do" just days before she and her boyfriend were arrested over the killing


Two years ago, Magnum, arguably the most famous photojournalism agency in the world for the past 50 years, was mired in a financial crisis. Then came September 11. "It was happenstance," says the agency's new president, Thomas Hoepker, speaking from New York. "We just happened to have had our monthly meeting the night before, and the next day there were 12 photographers in New York who would normally be dispersed throughout the country. That morning we all fanned out. I collected the pictures the next day, did a layout, we found a publisher immediately, and in late October we had the book. It was a shocking event, of course, but a boon to Magnum. We donated a big chunk [of the proceeds] to the families. The rest went to Magnum and helped us to make profits for the past two years."

Things have not been going well for independent photography agencies since the mid-90s. The giants, Getty and Corbis, have virtually obliterated the small agencies that served the world's journalists for a century. Three years ago, Hoepker reveals, both agencies made bids to swallow up Magnum. "What has been happening," he says, "is a steady shift away from photo-journalism. Art is filling the void that has been left by the lack of a photojournalist base. Whereas before we probably made 80% of our money from magazine work, now we are making 60% or our money in art sales."

So Magnum pictures are leaving the printed page and going on the wall. I reminded Hoepker that perhaps its most illustrious member, the 95-year-old Henri Cartier-Bresson, made it clear only a few months ago that he did not approve of photographs being hung on walls; they must be in books, he said. Indeed, he chose the eve of the French Bibliothèque Nationale's massive exhibition of his own work to make this characteristically trouble-making statement to Le Monde.

"I personally agree," Hoepker says. "I don't like the idea of a print on a gallery wall. I feel that our trade specifically was working for newspapers and magazines. I feel uncomfortable considering photography as art. But I must say I have come around for several reasons." One is the artistic patina that time gives old prints; the other is that the Magnum membership is able to accommodate photographers who are not strictly photojournalists, such as Harry Gruyaert. "He is more a poet," Hoepker says.

Magnum has a core of about 50 photographers who look at the work of new applicants at their annual meeting. About two are accepted each year and they become "nominees" who have to resubmit work after two years. If they are successful, they have to wait another two years to become associate members. Then, after an interval of two, sometimes three years, they are accepted as full members. The total, including newcomers and others "fading away", is around 70.

The last philosophical crisis for Magnum was the acceptance of colour. "Traditionally we are black and white," Hoepker says. "It was never a policy not to accept colour photographers. But acceptance came rather late and reluctantly. I am absolutely in favour. I am a colour photographer. The market called for colour and of course we have a few great colour photographers. There is Alex Webb [American], Gruyaert [Belgian] and Martin Parr [British]."

Hoepker, a German-born former Stern photographer, joined the agency in 1989. He is known for his often abstract colour photographs as well as a portrait portfolio featuring, notably, Willy Brandt and Muhammad Ali. Does he accept that TV has almost completely taken over war reportage, once the near-exclusive preserve of Magnum photographers?

"No I don't agree," he says. "Of course, TV is the first medium you look at. But there is dissatisfaction with TV because there are no good images. There may be newsy images - if you look at CNN, you can see the action as it unfolds - but you rarely see a strong image. What is surprising is, it was the same thing for September 11. All the TV images you have seen, they kind of disappear, evaporate from your mind. What stays is still images. People told us when we brought out the book that they wanted something they could hold in their hand."

Magnum is now producing a book on Afghanistan. "Not just about the war," Hoepker says. "It will be the history of Afghanistan over the past 50 years." During the war in Iraq, the agency chose not to "embed" its photographers. And, according to Hoepker, "Some of us found ourselves in Kurdistan, where nothing was happening."

So what happens now? Despite pressure from the likes of Getty and Corbis, Hoepker is determined not to let Magnum be absorbed by another company. "We are a dwarf next to the two giants," he says. "With multimillion, multibillion dollars behind them, they were trying to take over the market. They tried in a gentle way. They offered us a portal on their websites - you click and you would see Magnum on the Corbis/Getty website and that, of course, was tempting, because it would drive many people to our archive. But in the end we voted against it, to keep our independence. It was a difficult decision and it cost us a lot because we had to construct our own digital website and scan in our pictures.

"Compared with these gigantic markets," he says, "we are a niche market - a boutique, if you wish. We want to keep it that way. We want to keep the quality and hope that people will come to us if they want something special. It is sometimes hard to keep integrity, but that is what holds us together."

· Magnum Degrees, a book showcasing the best of the Magnum photographers' work, is published by Someone, price £6.99.

Summary: How can the world's best-known photo agency compete with technology, TV and its big-money rivals? Peter Lennon reports.


Think of your favourite famous painting, the one you could describe with your eyes closed. Now try to remember how it is framed. A riot of gold-leafed carvings? A simple strip of ebony? Nothing at all? A tenner to a penny says you haven't the faintest. The market in images has no room for frames. Magazines, newspapers, exhibition catalogues and art books act as if they don't exist, cropping them out of reproductions even when the painters saw them as integral parts of their work.

Charles Willson Peale's trompe-l'oeil Stairway, which he framed like a doorway leading on to a wooden staircase, complete with lintel, posts and a bottom step that you could actually climb, is stripped of all these elements to become a bog-standard image of two young men on a staircase. Michelangelo's Doni Madonna is separated from the five prophets who gaze in at the mother and child from the grotesque gilded surround. Ingres's Portrait of Madame Moitessier, who is posing in a sumptuous flowery dress, loses the extravagant border of gilded blossoms and buds that the artist designed. Matisse, who described the four sides of a frame as "the most important parts of a picture", must be turning in his grave.

But the frame-deniers aren't having things all their way. William Bailey, a framer-turned-lecturer and consultant to New York's Museum of Modern Art, has produced an eye-opening book on the subject. For him, the frame is not just a pretty border that protects the canvas, it is a mediator between viewer and painting. "The design," he writes in Defining Edges, "must effect a transition from the existing physical location, usually a wall in a room or a gallery, into the illusionistic realm of the painting. This should occur graciously and imperceptibly. The frame should also prepare the eye and mind of the viewer to accept and embrace the domain of the painting on its own terms."

Bailey can point to countless famous painters for whom the frame was a central part of their art. Van Gogh worried incessantly about framing his work. Only one of his paintings retains its original frame, but it is hard to imagine a more perfect combination. For Still Life with Fruit (1887), he took a simple wooden border and painted it with two shades of yellow, cross-hatching it to echo yet update the carving of a traditional gilded frame. The result delights in its own right and forces your attention to the image it encloses. "It's the epitome of the idea of the gold frame, from a man with no money to purchase one," says Bailey.

Whistler, who could afford the real thing, created such a sensation with his experiments with finishes, patinas and paint that, even now, manufacturers turn out "Whistler-style" frames. Degas scandalised his contemporaries by using bright colours, and found time to invent a shape of moulding that remains popular with framers. In the 1930s, Hannah Gluck even patented her design, a quintessentially deco triple-stepped rectangle that could be painted to match its surroundings, or even wallpapered. That same decade, Dali created the ultimate inner landscape by placing one of his desert scenes inside two human-shaped frames in Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds.

Major living artists such as David Hockney and Howard Hodgkin still believe frames serve a purpose beyond the purely practical. "They're where the picture stops and the world begins," Hodgkin says. When he paints, he carries his brush strokes over from the canvas on to the frames themselves "to make them part of the picture". Some traditionalists inevitably find this rather shocking: Brian Sewell of London's Evening Standard was outraged when Hodgkin painted over an 18th-century gilt frame. But the artist is unapologetic: "One is operating in a sort of no-man's-land between the picture and the world. There are all sorts of ways one can use that area."

It would be interesting to see what future generations make of Hodgkin. Will some future collector or curator strip off his painted-over frames or add further borders? While those who reproduce art apparently take no interest in its setting, those who have custodianship usually think it could be improved. "The frame is the only thing you can change about a painting," says Michael Gregory, managing director of Arnold Wiggins, a leading British frame dealer. "Once you've bought it, that is the only way you can personalise it."

Even in the 18th century, rich owners thought nothing of reframing a picture to suit the changing decor of their homes. A century later many of the impressionists saw their white or coloured frames swiftly discarded by conservative dealers and collectors.

Reframing is sometimes less than sympathetic. Bailey shudders at the thought of Van Gogh's unpretentious painting of clogs. "Around it is one of the most gorgeous Louis XV frames ever made - a gossamer, rich frame. They're both fantastic items. But in my mind, when the lights go down, they must have the most tremendous arguments and try to get as far from one another as possible. They have nothing in common." Gregory, however, points out that apparently incongruous juxtapositions can work. His firm has supplied antique gilt frames for a number of Picassos. "Sometimes it's a way of interpreting a painting," he says, "and Picasso is now seen as an Old Master."

If the ornate frame has become a must-have for a certain kind of collector, framelessness is often seen as the natural state for contemporary art. But you can also view it as a mark of the reverence with which the artist is treated today. In the 19th century, when exhibition organisers crammed paintings on to every available inch of wall, European artists developed what became known as the salon frame, its ever-wider border a way of keeping the competition at arm's length. Now curators and collectors are constructing virtual frames of "quiet time" and "breathing space" around their cherished possessions.

To see one of the best examples, take a trip to Tate Modern, where a whole room is devoted to Rothko's abstract Seagram Murals. The canvases were originally due to hang in the Four Seasons restaurant in New York, but Rothko decided they didn't belong with the rich grunting at the trough. At the Tate, nothing but a murmur reaches them. The lighting is muted. The rectangles of red, maroon and black lie against grey walls, rather than the gallery's usual white.

A few minutes here and you feel cut off from the world. Rothko's pictures have no frames in the conventional sense. But what is this whole setting if not a frame? Every time a gallery or artist takes such elaborate steps to display work in the best light, what are they doing but framing it? The frame hasn't gone away; we have just stopped noticing it.

· WH Bailey's Defining Edges is published by Harry N Abrams, price £27.

Summary: From Van Gogh to Matisse, great painters have always agonised over framing their work. So why does nobody notice? By Phil Daoust.


PayPal is splitting from EBay Inc and will become a separate and publicly traded company next year.

The separation is expected to occur in the second half of 2015.

EBay said on Tuesday that its board decided that the separation was the best path for growth and shareholder value creation for each business.

Dan Schulman, the president of the enterprise growth group at American Express, will be the new president at PayPal, effective immediately.

The 56-year-old will become PayPal's CEO once the separation takes place.

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Summary: PayPal will split off from EBay Inc next year, the company says.


FORTUNE — There’s plenty of talk about the importance of diversity at the top of companies to improve decision-making and risk management. Often left unsaid is the fact that it’s quite difficult to tell the difference between a true commitment to diversity and plain old window dressing.

For decades, corporate diversity programs have proliferated, aimed at filling the pipeline of talented women and racial minorities who could step into top executive and board roles. And yet, more than a third of Fortune 500 companies have either one or zero women directors, according to nonprofit organization Catalyst. Women hold barely 17% of corporate board seats, a figure that hasn’t changed in eight years. Similarly, the Alliance for Board Diversity reports that white men hold 73% of Fortune 500 board seats, marking little change over the last decade.

Clearly, there’s a disconnect: It’s not enough to have a Benetton-like rainbow of colors and genders throughout a company’s annual report, executive ranks, or even around the boardroom table. The key is when those diverse perspectives and individuals actually have an impact on the decisions that are made at a company.

MORE: Minimum wage campaign gains White House, small biz support

“Like anything else, there’s got to be a genuine commitment to it,” says John Veihmeyer, chairman and CEO of KPMG in the U.S. “It’s not just about numbers; it’s about the culture you create either in the firm or the boardroom.”

For an outsider trying to determine whether the numbers add up, here are three clues that suggest that a company is merely paying lip service rather than embracing legitimate diversity.

White men control profit-driving roles

You may have women and minorities at the table, but unless they have power over the bottom line, they’re likely to be considered token voices. For board members, such power means chairing nominating and compensation committees. For a company’s senior leadership team, that means running business lines and operations.

“If you have what looks like a diverse board but then you look at all the committee chairpersons and it doesn’t look diverse at all, that may tell you something,” Veihmeyer says. “One of the things I feel really good about is that our fastest growing business in the firm is led by a woman on my senior leadership team.”

Catalyst vice president Brande Stellings remembers when women’s initiatives began at law firms more than a decade ago to combat the departure of high-potential mid-career women. In some instances, women ended up “in a corner by themselves” because they weren’t integrated into the business of the firm or cultivating important client relationships. A 2012 report by the National Association of Women Lawyers found that such initiatives often lack a clear mission, are underfunded, and may even increase criticism or cynicism within a firm.

Deloitte aims to prevent this outcome by steering women and minorities toward profit-driving relationships from the beginning of their time at the firm.

MORE: Immigrant law grads fight to practice in the U.S.

“We have a significant focus on assigning our diverse talent at a very early stage of their career to our biggest and most important client projects,” says Chairman Punit Renjen. “We believe that if you want to have diverse leaders 10 years down the road, we’ve got to make sure they’re getting the right assignments, the right client experiences today.”

Compensation is unrelated to diversity

To evaluate the sincerity of a firm’s commitment to diversity, look at whether there’s a tie between executive compensation and advancement to success in developing and promoting women and minorities, Catalyst’s Stellings suggests. If an executive fails to develop diverse employees, do their pay or promotion chances suffer?

Stellings cites Kimberly Clark KMB Chief Executive Thomas Falk, who in October 2010 asked his senior leaders and top executives two simple questions: “Who took a chance on you and who are you taking a chance on?” The firm added a sponsorship program to its menu of initiatives, and has seen an increase in women board members to 25% from 17%. And internal promotions of women at the director level and higher climbed to 44% from 19% between 2009 and 2013.

“We’ve got to have the senior leaders of our firm feeling responsible and accountable for actually creating the opportunities and advocating for those high performers and putting them in a position where they have the opportunity to prove what they can do,” says Veihmeyer.

Deloitte has even reached down into high school to identify talented Hispanic and African American students and build relationships with them, Renjen says. Whenever a promotion or assignment decision is made at the firm, the question is raised: what women and minorities were considered?

“Because it’s become part of our questioning orientation, it forces individuals to look at a wide swath of qualified candidates,” he says.

Leaders only claim to want feedback

Perhaps you’ve been in a meeting in which a leader asks for feedback or concerns, and everyone smiles and nods. That’s a warning sign that true diversity of opinion isn’t welcome.

To combat this, Veihmeyer says that he will often ask each person in a meeting to offer a position on a given issue. “I literally will go around the table and force folks who haven’t expressed a view yet to jump in the pool,” he says.

MORE: The next tech revolution: Busting bureaucracy

At Deloitte, Renjen conducts an executive board session without management so that every board member can express concerns without concern of repercussions. He also defers votes on heated topics until the second day of a board meeting “so people can sleep on it and think on it.”

In 2005, Campbell’s Soup Company CPB launched a campaign to increase employee engagement and the promotion of diverse talent, with employee focus groups and mentoring. Top executives sought feedback from the ground up, including from a group of administrative assistants and plant workers. As a result, the company launched a successful line of soups aimed at “women on the go,” Stellings says.

Summary: For decades, diversity programs have flourished in corporate America. Yet the stats on women and minorities in business leadership tell a very different tale.


Getting your lips around a high quality cigar just got a bit easier.

Today’s announcement that the United States will normalize relations with Cuba means that it will be legal to transport Cuban cigars and other alcohol and tobacco products into the United States. Cuban tobacco and alcohol imports will be capped at $100, while ceiling for all Cuban goods brought back will be $400.

The impact on the cigar industry could be huge. Cuban cigars are considered by many aficionados to among the best, and their availability – at least legally, speaking – could mean a big lift sales.

“It’s going to be massive,” said Christopher Bledsoe, the president and owner of International Cigar Experts, a cigar shipping company. “Ever since we’ve been in business, which has been about 12 years, we consistently have people ask us about Cuban cigars.”

But first, Bledsoe said he’ll consult with the company’s lawyers to figure out exactly what’s allowed. For instance, can it only list Cuban products for sale that are priced below $100?

Cuban cigars have been one of the most controversial products banned by the United States as part of its Cuban embargo, which started in the early 1960s following the rise to power of Communist Fidel Castro. Despite the ban, cigar smokers have gone to great lengths to get their hands on Cohibas and Montecristos.

For instance, President John F. Kennedy, who was famously hawkish on Cuba and who expanded the embargo to ban the import of nearly all goods in 1962, bought 1,200 Cuban cigars just hours before they officially became illegal. More recently, people have bought up Cuban cigars in Mexico or other countries where they are legal, and smuggled them back home in their suitcases.

Now they can light up a Cuban stogie without breaking the law as long as they do so outside or in a spot where it’s otherwise legal.

Summary: A new policy by President Obama means that importing up to $100 worth of Cuban tobacco products will be legal.


Paul Wahlberg has dreamed of owning a restaurant almost since he started out washing dishes on Canal Street in the early 1980s, but the chef couldn’t have imagined something this big. Wahlburgers, the restaurant company he owns with his celebrity brothers Mark and Donnie, will on Thursday unveil plans to open 27 more locations.

The major expansion comes just three years after the first Wahlburgers restaurant opened in Hingham and follows deals for three in Las Vegas and five in the Philadelphia area. A Toronto restaurant — the second Wahlburgers — drew huge crowds to a grand opening last month.

The new franchise agreements include 20 locations in Florida and seven in New York City. But Massachusetts isn’t being left out of the growth spurt — the Wahlbergs are getting ready to open their second and third Boston-area Wahlburgers restaurants, in Lynnfield and the Fenway. Eventually, the brothers say, there could be up to 300 across the country.

Unlike other restaurant chains, this one’s growing pains are playing out in front of a TV camera. A&E’s reality show, “Wahlburgers,” has featured the business in 18 episodes so far. The show brings people to the burger joints. But it also elevates the stage on which Paul Wahlberg works, putting more pressure on him to send customers away satisfied.

“We’re just fortunate that people are interested in it,” Paul, 50, says of the franchising efforts. “The family name has some celebrity status to it. But we still have to live up to that.”

Three years after the first location opened in Hingham, the restaurant company is set to unveil plans to open 27 more locations.

The route to becoming a national chain can be traced to a meeting Mark Wahlberg had with Rick Vanzura, a former cochief operating officer at Panera Bread, soon after the Hingham shop opened. Vanzura was brought on board in 2012, first as a consultant and then as the company’s chief executive, with the charge to chart an expansion plan. Vanzura works at an office across the street from the redeveloped Hingham Shipyard — the home of the first Wahlburgers and Alma Nove, a restaurant the brothers opened in 2010. Aside from Vanzura and Paul Wahlberg, the corporate staff now consists of just one other person. Vanzura anticipates a few more hires in 2015 and a more meaningful increase in 2016 as restaurants open.

The A&E show generated interest among potential franchisees. But most of the inquiries don’t make it far: Vanzura says he only considers operators with considerable restaurant experience and a net worth of at least $5 million.

The Toronto operators — including hotelier Henry Wu and investor Michael Wekerle — had a relationship with the Wahlbergs as investors in Hingham. Wu says he’s also investing in the Fenway and Lynnfield locations. He says he was attracted to the concept’s unusual mix of sit-down service on one side of the room, with alcohol, and fast-casual service on the other. His team plans to open several more in Canada, likely starting in Ontario. Wu says the 120-seat restaurant in downtown Toronto already has exceeded expectations: The tables turn at least three times every dinner period and up to six times on busy nights.

In Florida, franchisee Manny Garcia was introduced to the Wahlbergs through Orlando venture capital firm Blackwood Holdings. Garcia, a former Burger King franchisee who sold his 67 BK shops in the 1990s, established Davgar Holdings to oversee his family’s three restaurants in the Orlando area.

Davgar’s restaurants will include the Wahlburgers locations in Florida.

Garcia says that by the time he got involved, he had already seen the TV series. He saw a kindred spirit in Paul — someone with a passion for the restaurant business. The first Florida Wahlburgers will likely be on his home turf in the Orlando area, and he says he will scout for locations in Miami and Tampa, with Blackwood providing a major equity investment.

Wahlburgers faces plenty of competition as the chain grows. The “better burger” segment of the casual dining market is already crowded, with the likes of Five Guys, Smashburger, and Shake Shack, says Darren Tristano, of the restaurant consultancy Technomic in Chicago. Many rivals offer burgers for less than the $7 or more that Wahlburgers charges, although most don’t have sit-down service or alcohol. “So many players have gotten into the space,” Tristano says. “It’s hitting a saturation point.”

Like many restaurants, the Wahlburgers shops don’t always open on their original timetables. The brothers hoped they could open the location on Brookline Avenue in the Fenway — which, like the Hingham spot, will be in a Samuels & Associates development — in time for opening day at Fenway Park next year. Now, they’re aiming for the summer.

Paul admits to some nervousness as he works under the unyielding heat of a national spotlight. But he’s hardly planning on getting out of the kitchen. “There are going to be hiccups,” he says. “There are going to be bumps in the road. But we have to keep plugging along and doing the best that we can.”

Debee Tlumacki for the Globe/File 2011

Wahlburgers is looking to expand its restaurants brand beyond its first shop in Hingham.

Summary: Three years after the first Wahlburgers shop opened in Hingham, a plan to build a national chain is starting to come to fruition. Wahlburgers just signed franchise agreements to open 20 locations in Florida and to open seven in New York City.


Do you feel safe using Uber?

It is a question that everyone is asking after a string of sexual assaults — in Boston and abroad — involving Uber drivers or people posing as drivers with the ride-share service.

On Wednesday, the Middlesex district attorney’s office announced the arraignment of an Uber driver who lives in Boston on a host of charges, including rape and kidnapping.

The driver, Alejandro Done, allegedly picked up a woman who had ordered a ride on Tremont Street in Boston, then drove her to a secluded location where he sexually assaulted and beat her.

Hours before the arraignment, Uber had posted a statement promising new and more robust safety policies in 2015. The changes were in the works before the Boston assaults took place. Earlier this month, a woman in Delhi, India, was allegedly assaulted by an Uber driver, resulting in a ban on the company in that city.

The man overseeing the new safety measures is Phillip Cardenas, Uber’s recently appointed head of global safety. Cardenas has some serious bona fides in the security space: He is a former military intelligence officer who spent several years as Airbnb’s trust and safety manager. In the statement, he stressed the company is doing its part to ensure that users taking a million rides each day with Uber are safe:

“Our technology includes a two-way rating system to help ensure only the top drivers stay on the platform and riders are also held accountable. Our app also displays a driver’s photo, license plate number, and vehicle type, so when our riders enter a car, they know with confidence it’s the right one with the right driver,” he said.

Background checks, too, are conducted, he said, which has resulted in “tens of thousands of potential drivers being denied the opportunity to partner on the Uber platform.”

All of which is well and good, of course, but as the recent cases in Boston prove, many riders are not verifying the driver’s details before they get into the vehicles.

On Monday, the Boston Police Department announced specifics of three separate episodes that took place Dec. 14, in which women who were believed to have been ordering a car service were subsequently assaulted by the drivers who picked them up. Two of those women had called Uber.

Both the Police Department and Uber later determined that the drivers were not in fact working for Uber, however.

While the responsibility of verifying the driver’s identity remains with the rider, Uber does not currently provide any recourse or a way of getting assistance when a person suddenly feels unsafe. Cardenas acknowledged this:

The company has “more work to do, and we will do it,” he said. “Uber is committed to developing new technology tools that improve safety, strengthen and increase the number of cities and countries where background checks are conducted, and improve communication with local officials and law enforcement.”

Cardenas outlined several possible features that may be part of the app in the new year. The company intends to strengthen background investigation policies, particularly outside of the United States, and begin using biometric data and voice verification to help strengthen driver screening.

He noted that they’re also looking to provide ways for riders to communicate instantly with their loved ones when they feel unsafe or in case of an emergency.

Cardenas also noted that Uber would be bulking up its customer support efforts with the goal of creating a 24/7 global response team to help in crises and is partnering with the Rape, Incest, and Abuse National Network (RAINN) to train its staff how best to respond when abuse has occurred.

“This is a despicable crime, and our thoughts and prayers are with the victim during her recovery,” Uber spokeswoman Kaitlin Durkosh said Wednesday night, referring to the news of the Boston arraignment. “Uber has been working closely with law enforcement and will continue to do everything we can to assist their investigation.”

The bottom line: Be smart and be careful.

Summary: Do you feel safe using Uber? It’s a question that everyone is askingin the wake of a string of sexual assaults -- both here in Boston and abroad -- involving Uber drivers or people posing as drivers with the ride-share service.


How paltry are the paychecks of public defenders and assistant district attorneys in Massachusetts?

The Massachusetts Bar Association found that public defenders in this state are paid the lowest salaries in the country, when their $40,000 salaries are adjusted for the cost of living, putting Massachusetts just below West Virginia. The same review showed that newly hired assistant district attorneys, who make $37,500 a year, are paid even less than courthouse custodians.

It also found that, because of the low salaries, large numbers of these lawyers leave their jobs after just a few years, which creates an expensive cycle of continually having to train new hires.

Armed with that data, a gubernatorial commission in late December released a compensation study that recommends increasing the minimum annual salary for assistant district attorneys and public defenders to $55,360.

It also advises that the increase be phased in over no more than three years.

Every day, Massachusetts tells public defenders their hard work and dedication are practically worthless.

“It’s beyond dispute that [this] work is important, there is a lot of it, and it requires competent, experienced criminal justice attorneys,” the study says. “Unfortunately, the salaries of prosecutors and public defenders have persistently failed to reflect these realities.”

“We’re not spending our money wisely by underpaying our lawyers. ... As soon as we get people with sufficient experience, we lose them,” said Jack Cinquegrana, a lawyer at Choate Hall & Stewart who chairs the state’s public defender agency.

The pay problem is a perennial one for the state’s court system, exacerbated by high law school debt and heavy caseloads, which can quickly lead to burnout. Anecdotal stories abound of public defenders and assistant district attorneys who require routine financial support from family members to pay for basic expenses.

“It’s been going on forever,” said Jack Cinquegrana, a lawyer at Choate Hall & Stewart who serves on the commission and chairs the state’s public defender agency, the Committee for Public Counsel Services. “These are people doing substantial public service work and being extraordinarily underpaid for it.”

The situation has been worsened by a 2011 legislative mandate that the agency increase the number of cases it handles in-house to 25 percent of its total caseload. The agency hires private lawyers at hourly rates to handle the majority of its roughly 275,000 annual cases. In theory, former Governor Deval Patrick argued, handling more work in-house with salaried staff attorneys would be more cost-efficient.

But “that’s resulted in CPCS having to hire more lawyers, and we have this waterfall where young lawyers come in, get trained, and then they leave us,” typically in one to three years, Cinquegrana said. “So we can never staff up sufficiently to handle the caseload we’re asked to handle.” Raising salaries would increase retention rates and, in turn, increase the number of experienced lawyers, the commission argues.

Added Cinquegrana: “We’re not spending our money wisely by underpaying our lawyers, who we expect to carry significant caseloads, only to lose them and have to start over. As soon as we get people with sufficient experience, we lose them. It’s not an efficient way to use our money.”

The study says the issue “requires immediate attention,” and commission members hope their findings will be a factor in state budget conversations, despite the estimated $750 million budget deficit facing the new governor, Charlie Baker.

“Without a doubt, we’re mindful of the fiscal reality,” said the agency’s chief counsel, Anthony Benedetti. “But even in good times, policy makers have the challenging task of making decisions on how to spend limited tax dollars. So we’re hopeful that with this report, on top of the MBA report, there will be some positive movement on this critical issue.”

A spokesman for Baker, Tim Buckley, said: “This issue is obviously important to the [governor] and he looks forward to learning more.”

• Budget boosts pay for sheriffs, district attorneys

• Yvonne Abraham: A salary that’s hard to defend

• Criminal justice lawyers are becoming ‘working poor,’ study says

Summary: A gubernatorial commission in late December released a compensation study that recommends increasing the minimum annual salary for ADAs and staff public defenders to $55,360. It also advises that the increase be phased in over no more than three years.


FORTUNE — Think a phone call or a floral display is going to satisfy Mom this Mothers Day?

Think again. According to a survey released Tuesday by the shopping site TechBargains.com, 91% of mothers polled would much rather have an Apple AAPL iPad than yet another bunch of flowers.

What Mom wants and what Mom is going to get may be two different things, however. According to the poll:

The survey is full of curious and contradictory results, including the fact that despite their iPad dreams, most mothers don’t want their children to spend more than $50 on them, and only 18% are expecting gifts that cost $250 or more. (iPads start at $399.)

The poll was conducted from April 4 to April 25 via Facebook, Twitter and the TechBargains website and drew 1,547 responses. You can see the full results here.

Summary: But only 12% of their kids plan to buy them a gadget, and most will spend less than $50


Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

49ers linebacker Patrick Willis wipes away tears as he prepares to announce his retirement at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.

49ers linebacker Patrick Willis wipes away tears as he prepares to...

San Francisco 49ers' Patrick Willis, talks of his retirement during a press conference at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Ca. on Tues. March 10, 2015.

San Francisco 49ers' Patrick Willis, talks of his retirement during...

San Francisco 49ers' CEO and owner Jed York comments on the retirement of linebacker Patrick Willis, during a press conference at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Ca. on Tues. March 10, 2015.

San Francisco 49ers' CEO and owner Jed York comments on the...

49ers' Frank Gore, 21 stiff arms San Diego's Eric Weddle, 32 en route to a 52 yard first quarter touchdown run, as the San Francisco 49ers take on the San Diego Chargers at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Saturday Dec. 20, 2014.

49ers' Frank Gore, 21 stiff arms San Diego's Eric Weddle, 32 en...

San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore #21 in action against the Arizona Calif.rdinals during an NFL game played at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. on Sunday, Dec. 28, 2014. (AP Photo/Michael Zito)

San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore #21 in action against...

Killion: Willis won’t be so easy to replace

Patrick Willis is a giant of a man — an enormous talent, a rock of integrity, an imposing presence on and off the field.

Yet, he was felled by the smallest of things: his toes.

Willis kept looking down at his feet during a tear-filled retirement news conference at Levi’s Stadium on Tuesday, amazed that such a small part of his body betrayed him.

“I no longer have it in these feet to go out there and give you guys that kind of 'Wow,’” Willis said of his ability to play at the level he demands.

He regularly queried his teammates with gnarled feet about why they weren’t dealing with the type of pain that he has endured for so long.

But, he assured his audience that he was at peace with his decision, quoting from Psalm 18 in the Bible: “It’s the Lord who makes my way perfect. Even when we’re standing on heights, he makes my feet like the feet of a deer.”

Willis took the 49ers to heights in his eight years with the team. One of the league’s great linebackers, and a strong team leader, he was a seven-time Pro Bowler and the heart of a defense that guided the team to three straight NFC Championship Games and a Super Bowl.

He is walking away from the game at age 30. After suffering for years from constant pain in his feet, he took that pain as a sign from above that it was time to retire.

“The Lord has put something so much stronger on my heart,” he said.

His departure leaves a gaping hole on a team desperate for leadership and integrity. On a day that should have been devoted fully to Willis, there were other issues swirling around the 49ers’ concrete and steel fortress. Fullback Bruce Miller was arrested on spousal-battery charges last week, a development that became public Monday. It’s the 11th arrest of a 49er since 2012.

This is a pattern of behavior that doesn’t fit into the “winning with class” mantra that team CEO Jed York has chanted since Jim Harbaugh left. But if the team has a zero-tolerance policy, it remains to be seen. Aside from a statement saying the team is aware of the incident, no action has been taken.

York and general manager Trent Baalke were on hand for the Willis news conference, giving opening remarks. They stood near the auditorium door and bolted as soon as the news conference ended, taking no questions.

“We’re keeping this about Pat,” snapped Bob Lange, the team’s director of communications, when I asked if I could talk to either one. “I hope you can respect that.”

York has demanded that the public hold his team to a high standard, that we hold him accountable. But he hasn’t been officially available for most of the past two months. It was an inconvenience that the 49ers’ unpleasant reality intruded on a day to honor Willis.

“Pat, to me, embodies 'winning with class,’” York said in his opening remarks.

He’s gone now. Willis said he thinks the team is in good shape without him, with NaVorro Bowman poised to come back from his knee injury. He joked that even before his toe injury derailed his season, he was starting to get worried about the talent that rookie Chris Borland was showing.

Willis is too humble of a man to speak to the larger issue. His departure, combined with the loss of Frank Gore to free agency, leaves a gaping hole in the 49ers’ locker room. They were both the leaders and the conscience of the team.

Willis’ story is an amazing one. Abandoned at a young age by his mother, he had to fight off his abusive father and care for his three younger siblings alone. When Willis was in high school, child-protective services was called. Eventually, Willis and his siblings moved in with his baseball coach, Chris Finley, and his wife, Julie, whom he calls Dad and Mom. One of his brothers drowned the year before Willis was drafted.

Willis persevered through the difficult times, worked hard and became the first of the 49ers’ two first-round draft choices in 2007 (Joe Staley was the other).

“There has not been a day when I didn’t feel that I gave this game everything I had,” he said, wiping away tears.

Willis spoke of wanting a future in which he can play with his children. Of being able to commit his time to his “beautiful lady.” Of being content whether he’s considered Hall of Fame-worthy or not. He said he didn’t want to be like Brett Favre, leaving open the possibility of returning.

The state of the NFL is such these days that it feels good, even right, to see someone walk away happy and healthy. We all know the toll the game takes on a player’s body and future health. Willis knows it, too.

The 49ers are going to miss him. And not just on the field.

“That,” said new head coach Jim Tomsula, his eyes brimming with tears, “is what a man looks like. In every sense of the word.”

After the news conference, Willis asked to speak privately to the writers who have covered him for years. He thanked us, took a picture with us and apologized if he was ever unprofessional.

He was not. Not for one moment.

Ann Killion is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. E-mail: akillion@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annkillion

Round drafed (11th overall) in 2007 from Mississippi

Summary: Patrick Willis is a giant of a man — an enormous talent, a rock of integrity, an imposing presence on and off the field.  Willis kept looking down at his feet during a tear-filled retirement news conference at Levi’s Stadium on Tuesday, amazed that such a small part of his body betrayed him.  “I no longer have it in these feet to go out there and give you guys that kind of 'Wow,’” Willis said of his ability to play at the level he demands.  [...] he assured his audience that he was at peace with his decision, quoting from Psalm 18 in the Bible: It’s the Lord who makes my way perfect.  Even when we’re standing on heights, he makes my feet like the feet of a deer.  After suffering for years from constant pain in his feet, he took that pain as a sign from above that it was time to retire.  On a day that should have been devoted fully to Willis, there were other issues swirling around the 49ers’ concrete and steel fortress.  Fullback Bruce Miller was arrested on spousal-battery charges last week, a development that became public Monday.  Aside from a statement saying the team is aware of the incident, no action has been taken.  York and general manager Trent Baalke were on hand for the Willis news conference, giving opening remarks.  “We’re keeping this about Pat,” snapped Bob Lange, the team’s director of communications, when I asked if I could talk to either one.  Willis said he thinks the team is in good shape without him, with NaVorro Bowman poised to come back from his knee injury.  Abandoned at a young age by his mother, he had to fight off his abusive father and care for his three younger siblings alone.  Eventually, Willis and his siblings moved in with his baseball coach, Chris Finley, and his wife, Julie, whom he calls  Dad and Mom.  Willis persevered through the difficult times, worked hard and became the first of the 49ers’ two first-round draft choices in 2007 (Joe Staley was the other).  “There has not been a day when I didn’t feel that I gave this game everything I had,” he said, wiping away tears.  The state of the NFL is such these days that it feels good, even right, to see someone walk away happy and healthy.  “That,” said new head coach Jim Tomsula, his eyes brimming with tears, is what a man looks like.  After the news conference, Willis asked to speak privately to the writers who have covered him for years.  All-Pro first-team selections