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With vSphere 6.7 update 2, VMware is deprecating help for exterior Platform services Controllers (PSCs). this is a movement VMware has been constructing in opposition t for a while now. With VMware vCenter Server improved link mode, which turned into introduced in vSphere 6.7, infrastructure groups can link as much as fifteen vCenter Server situations in the embedded PSC topology. The vCenter Server Converge tool delivered in vSphere 6.7 update 1 makes it possible for VI admins to migrate topologies with exterior PSCs to topologies with embedded PSCs. Between that and the other updates in 6.7 replace 2, VMware now feels that their embedded PSCs supply the entire identical merits exterior ones did, but with much less complexity. In happier information, vSphere 6.7 update 2 introduces a brand new vCenter Server Converge tool UI to provide intuitive snapshots of infrastructure environments and allows for VI admins to make informed lifestyles cycle administration choices. the brand new UI gives topological and prolonged views of the relationships between add-ons such asvCenter Server cases and PSC; embedded vCenter Server situations and other embedded vCenter Server instances; health tests; and replication fame. Even more advantageous for clients working database intensive functions reminiscent of SAP HANA, vSphere 6.7 replace 2 adds assist for 256 vCPUs and 6TB of vRAM.
clients who are the usage of Intel Skylake or older processors proceed to rely on the hypervisor or operating programs to offer protection to in opposition t the L1TF safety vulnerability. vSphere 6.7 update 2 offers more desirable coverage against L1TF with a modified scheduler that additionally recaptures efficiency impacted by the vulnerability.
vSphere ROBO business, or vSphere remote workplace department office business, is the new optimum end version of vSphere far flung workplace branch workplace offered by means of VMware. vSphere ROBO is designed to assist servers operating in far flung places of work with few or no local IT engineers. enterprise makes it less complicated for valued clientele to perform renovation on faraway hosts with the aid of providing distributed useful resource Scheduler (DRS) in protection Mode. It instantly strikes VMs out of a server when it goes offline for maintenance and brings the VMs returned to the server later on. vSphere faraway office branch office business additionally provides aid for VM-degree encryption.on account that encryption occurs at a hypervisor degree, it's VM agnostic, i.e. works with any VM and guest-OS.
CARLSBAD, Calif., April 02, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- VMware, Inc. (VMW), a number one innovator in commercial enterprise software, these days announced a primary transformation of its associate application panorama, re-imagining the way the company does business with and for its companions to deliver simplicity, choice and innovation.
at the business's associate management Summit, VMware unveiled VMware associate connect, a brand new, dramatically simplified and versatile application if you want to go are living early next yr. The application will allow partners to do business with VMware in a method that aligns to their company fashions. VMware accomplice join will empower partners with flexibility to fulfill customers' needs, making VMware applied sciences and functions opportunities more attainable. companions may have an more desirable adventure that recognizes and rewards them in accordance with the price they bring to customers, creating a clearer direction to profitability.
VMware associate join will present three tiers: companion, superior associate, and most important associate. principal partners may be essentially the most able companions to support purchasers identify and put in force foremost VMware solutions as evidenced by using success of master capabilities potential across distinctive strategic IT priorities. companions achieving major reputation will earn finished rewards including deployment and consumption incentives and prioritization for joint-enterprise planning and co-promoting alternatives with VMware.
VMware will predict all companions in the new program to show simple capabilities in the course of the success of VMware answer skills. These skills center of attention on establishing partners' selling abilities, structure proficiency and deployment skills. As partners make investments and expand their level of capacity and meet earnings and/or consumption thresholds, they will find a way to earn more desirable rewards, including better entrance- and back-conclusion margin in addition to deployment and consumption performance incentives.
In advance of the software launch, VMware will help companions prepare for the brand new software by using presenting support, resources and education. additional information on the program can be found at https://www.vmware.com/go/accomplice-join.
New VMware Cloud on AWS master features CompetencyAs consumers seek extra flexibility, faster innovation, elevated efficiencies, and lower costs from modern applied sciences, VMware grasp services advantage empower partners with better abilities, advantage, and equipment to handle digital transformation initiatives across industries. VMware grasp services expertise give customers entry to validated and licensed companions with the elements, advantage, potential, and tools to effectively deliver services for next-era VMware technologies.
VMware today introduced the new VMware Cloud on AWS master functions Competency. This competency joins 4 other master capabilities capabilities offered by VMware, and provides partners the skill to present knowledgeable features for VMware Cloud on AWS, along with the merits of priority engagement, enhanced investment alignment for assisting consumer deployments, digital badges and demand generation, and critical education coupon codes.
Innovation and Incentives in advanced VMware TechnologiesVMware's full portfolio of solutions helps purchasers power digital transformations from core datacenter, to cloud, to devices and edge/IoT. This opens up a large number of opportunities for partners to accelerate their increase and extend into new practices areas.
To assist ignite opportunities for hyperconverged infrastructure, VMware is providing a brand new HCI accomplice sales Incentive, obtainable best via partners. For a confined time, customers who have not yet deployed VMware vSAN in their environments can buy three nodes of vSAN licenses for the expense of two.
additionally, Hewlett Packard business (HPE), a long-standing VMware accomplice, is making it handy for customers who want to construct their personal hybrid cloud with the new HPE vSAN ReadyNode. This convenient-to-order answer is constructed on the HPE ProLiant DL380 and licensed under the VMware vSAN all flash 6 specification. The HPE vSAN ReadyNode removes complexity with a preconfigured server that facets an optimized balance of CPU, reminiscence and community, as well as I/O controller and storage for records administration and information analytics using frequent platforms like Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle Database.
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VMware has long led the x86 virtualization market with its line of hardware emulation-based products. VMware Workstation and Server require a "host" OS -- either Linux or Windows -- to run "guest" VMs (virtual machines) for a variety of OS environments, including BSD, Linux, NetWare, Unix, and Windows. The company's enterprise-targeted ESX Server product takes a slightly different approach, however. Instead of requiring a host OS, it is essentially a very thin and tightly controlled Linux-based OS that installs on a bare-metal system. Thus, it is relatively limited in hardware support, but it requires less overhead to host each virtual system and can support more concurrent virtual server instances.
VMware's hardware abstraction approach is very versatile, but necessarily introduces much more overhead than host-based virtualization products. The trade-off is that it allows true platform separation and BIOS-level customization of each virtual server. VMware's server products also provide client-side tools to connect to the console of each virtual server from admin workstations for management purposes, and provide APIs to allow for automation of virtual server creation and maintenance.
The launch of VMware's Virtual Infrastructure 3 suite, which should be available by the time you read this, brings a new version of ESX Server with many enhanced features. On the back end, VMware has added support for quad-CPU VMs, with up to 16GB of RAM per VM, and official support for 64-bit guest OSes. SAN connectivity has also reached new levels. ESX Server 3 can read VM disk files from either NFS shares or iSCSI SAN volumes, supports running VMs directly from a SAN, and can even boot from a SAN itself.
With the new ESX Server 3 release, VMware has radically changed the Web UI, making the Web experience sleeker and more refined; VirtualCenter, however, is still by far a better management tool for provisioning, management, and automation of VMware VMs. New to Virtual Infrastructure 3 is a feature called Distributed Availability Services, which allows VirtualCenter to automatically migrate a VM from one physical host to another in the event of a hardware failure.
Also new in this release is Distributed Resource Scheduling, a tool for dynamically migrating VMs between hardware resources. For instance, if a database server running in a VM is consuming enough resources on a single physical host to encroach on the performance of other VMs running on that same host, VirtualCenter will migrate the other servers to another ESX server instance to balance the resource needs of all VMs.
When implementing these tools in a production datacenter, it's fair to say that admins can consider each physical server to be simply a member of a large resource pool, and can forget about manually divvying up resources per server to handle load. Further, Distributed Availability Services means hardware failures are no longer the threat they once were.
VMware overwhelmingly holds the largest piece of the x86 virtualization pie, and deservedly so. In the lab, a beta version of ESX Server 3 seems very solid on the server end, with only some minor quirks in VirtualCenter that are generally the hallmark of beta code. If Virtual Infrastructure 3 ships with all promised features intact and functional, it will push virtualization even further into the mainstream.
I've worked with VMware since its first available beta back in 1999. I knew when I saw it and saw what it did, that it would change the world. And it did. Fast forward to early 2009, which was a cool ten years after that first glance at a brave new virtual world, when I found RVTools. RVTools is a comprehensive VMware utility that connects to your vCenter server and captures every bit of information about your virtual machines (VMs) and your ESX hosts that you'd want to know. It does it fast and in a format that readily exports to Excel.
If there's any particle of host or VM information that's left out of RVTools, I'd like to know what it is. This tool is so good that VEEAM sponsors it. The following is a subset of the information that RVTools gathers for you.
You don't have to do anything special to run RVTools. Install it, connect to your vCenter Server, and watch the magic happen. Generally, it only takes a few seconds for the utility to gather the information and present it to you. The application looks like a tabbed browser, so that all your information is a click away. You can export your data to Excel by clicking, File->Export all to Excel or to a CSV file by selecting, File->Export all to csv.
And a special feature that I really love is that on the vTools tab, you can see every VM's VMware Tools version and upgrade them all at once. Repeat: You can upgrade VMTools on all your VMs with RVTools. Awesome. You can also disconnect floppy and CD drives (virtual or physical) with RVTools.
RVTools has saved me a lot of time and effort too because I take weekly snapshots of my environment (it changes quickly) and archive those Excel spreadsheets for future reference. I've had to go back and show when VMs were decommissioned, for example or show that a VM's memory had been reduced from 4GB to 2GB per request. For me, RVTools is an essential tool for any VMware Administrator or for any System Administrator who has to deal with a virtual infrastructure.
The download is free, but you have to register with Veeam before you get your download. By downloading, you agree to join Veeam's mailing list, which you can choose to unsubscribe from. But don't unsubscribe too quickly, Veeam offers some great VMware-related products, many free of charge.
Have you tried RVTools? If not, grab it, install it, and tell me what you think of it.


text:
package com.devinci.lib.sample.app;

import com.devinci.lib.app.BaseComponent;
import com.devinci.lib.dagger.module.FakeCrashReportingModule;
import dagger.Component;
import javax.inject.Singleton;

/**
 * Component with global dependencies.
 */
@Singleton @Component(modules = {
    FakeCrashReportingModule.class,
}) public interface AppComponent extends BaseComponent {
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Can Digital Photos Be Trusted?
The web is crawling with jokes, hoaxes and more insidious fakes. Digital-image experts aim to develop foolproof detection tools, but until then, seeing is not believing
By Steve Casimiro
Lance Corporal Ted "JOEY" Boudreaux Jr. was bored. It was the summer of 2003 in Iraq, the pause between the heavy lifting of the U.S. invasion and the turmoil of the insurgency, and you can joyride around the desert in a dusty Humvee only so often. Loitering at the back gate of his base, mingling with locals, Boudreaux says he scribbled "Welcome Marines" on a piece of cardboard and gave it to some kids, who then posed with him, smiling, for a snapshot. He e-mailed the picture to his mom, a cousin and a few friends, and he didn´t think about it again. Boredom moved on. That wasn´t the last of the photo, though. The image made its way to the Internet and fell into the hands of bloggers-Boudreaux says he doesn´t know how-except that the sign had been altered to say, "Lcpl Boudreaux killed my dad, then he knocked up my sister." Online commentators assumed Boudreaux was playing a nasty trick on kids who couldn´t read English, and the Marine was flamed as insensitive, ignorant or just plain stupid. The Council on American-Islamic Relations stumbled across the image and demanded an inquiry.
Around the same time, another image popped up on the forums of the conservative Web site freerepublic.com. Now the sign read "Lcpl Boudreaux saved my dad, then he rescued my sister," and a debate raged. Other versions of the sign appeared-one was completely blank, apparently to show how easily a photo can be doctored, and another said "My dad blew himself up on a suicide bombing and all I got was this lousy sign." By this point, Boudreaux, 25, was back in his hometown of Houma, Louisiana, after his Iraq tour, and he found out about the tempest only when a fledgling Marine brought a printout of the "killed my dad" picture to the local recruiters´ office where Boudreaux was serving. Soon after, he learned he was being investigated by the Pentagon. He feared court-martial. It would be months before he would learn his fate.
Falling victim to a digital prank and having it propagate over the Internet may seem about as likely as getting struck by lightning, but in the digital age, anyone can use inexpensive software to touch up photos, and their handiwork is becoming increasingly difficult to detect. Most of these fakes tend to be harmless-90-pound housecats, sharks attacking helicopters, that sort of thing. But hoaxes, when convincing, can do harm. During the 2004 presidential election campaign, a potentially damning image proliferated on the Internet of a young John Kerry sharing a speaker´s platform with Jane Fonda during her "Hanoi Jane" period. The photo was eventually revealed to be a deft composite of two images, but who knows how many minds had turned against Kerry by then. Meanwhile, politicians have begun to engage in photo tampering for their own ends: This July it emerged that a New York City mayoral candidate, C. Virginia Fields, had added two Asian faces to a promotional photograph to make a group of her supporters seem more diverse.
"Everyone is buying low-cost, high-quality digital cameras, everyone has a Web site, everyone has e-mail, Photoshop is easier to use; 2004 was the first year sales of digital cameras outpaced traditional film cameras," says Hany Farid, a Dartmouth College computer scientist and a leading researcher in the nascent realm of digital forensics. "Consequently, there are more and more cases of high-profile digital tampering. Seeing is no longer believing. Actually, what you see is largely irrelevant."
That´s a problem when you consider that driver´s licenses, security cameras, employee IDs and other digital images are a linchpin of communication and a foundation of proof. The fact that they can be easily altered is a big deal-but even more troubling, perhaps, is the fact that few people are aware of the problem and fewer still are addressing it.
It won´t be long-if it hasn´t happened already-before every image becomes potentially suspect. False images have the potential to linger in the public´s consciousness, even if they are ultimately discredited. And just as disturbingly, as fakes proliferate, real evidence, such as the photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, could be discounted as unreliable.
And then there´s the judicial system, in which altered photos could harm the innocent, free the guilty, or simply cause havoc. People arrested for possession of child pornography now sometimes claim that the images are not of real children but of computer-generated ones-and thus that no kids were harmed in the making of the pornography (reality check: authorities say CG child porn does not exist). In a recent civil case in Pennsylvania, plaintiff Mike Soncini tussled with his insurance company over a wrecked vehicle, claiming that the company had altered digital photos to imply that the car was damaged before the accident so as to avoid paying the full amount due. In Connecticut, a convicted murderer appealed to the state supreme court that computer-enhanced images of bite marks on the victim that were used to match his teeth were inadmissible (his appeal was rejected). And in a Massachusetts case, a police officer has been accused of stealing drugs and money from his department´s evidence room and stashing them at home. His wife, who has accused him of spousal abuse, photographed the evidence and then confronted the cop, who allegedly destroyed the stolen goods. Now the only evidence that exists are digital pictures shot by someone who might have a motive for revenge. "This is an issue that´s waiting to explode," says Richard Sherwin, a professor at New York Law School, "and it hasn´t gotten the visibility in the legal community that it deserves."
So far, only a handful of researchers have devoted themselves to the science of digital forensics. Nevertheless, effective, if not foolproof, techniques to spot hoaxes are emerging-and advances are on the horizon. Scientists are developing software, secure cameras and embedded watermarks to thwart image manipulation and sniff out tampering. Adobe and Microsoft are among the private funders, but much of the work is seeded by law-enforcement agencies and the military, which face situations in which more than just reputations are at risk. (Maintaining the integrity of the chain of evidence is of utmost importance to law enforcement, and the military is concerned about the veracity of images arriving from, say, Iraq or Afghanistan. Does that picture really portray Osama bin Laden? Are those hostages in the grainy video really American soldiers?)
But Farid and other experts are concerned that they´ll never win. The technologies that enable photo manipulation will grow as fast as the attempts to foil them-as will forgers´ skills. The only realistic goal, Farid believes, is to keep prevention and detection techniques sophisticated enough to stop all but the most determined and skillful. "We´re going to make it so the average schmo can´t do it," he says.
Faked photography has a long and inglorious history. In the 1870s, "spirit photographs" were the rage-images of dead loved ones were combined with shots of living kin taken during sances and passed off by charlatans as proof of the spirit world. During the Cold War, the Russian and Chinese governments were notorious for their propaganda fakes; discredited officials were routinely removed from state photographs. But the human eye isn´t easily fooled: Hardwired for pattern recognition, people can readily spot subtle inconsistencies. Verification experts look for these anomalies-differences in light, shadow and shading; perspective that´s out of whack; and incorrect proportions, such as one person´s head being unnaturally larger than another´s. Thanks to the digital nature of today´s photos, though, never has it been so easy to fool the eye with high-quality forgeries, reshaping reality with a few clicks of a mouse. A digital camera contains a light-sensitive plate covered with tiny sensors called cells, which receive photons of light when the shutter opens. The cells collect photons like raindrops in buckets, then convert them into electrical charges, which are amplified and themselves converted from analog to digital form. In every digital image format-JPEG, TIFF, RAW-a photograph is really just a data file consisting of strings of zeros and ones. A program is required to translate that binary code into pictures, much the way your TV converts digital cable or satellite signals into moving images.
Such programs abound. Five million copies of Adobe Photoshop have been licensed, iPhoto is bundled with all new Apple computers, and Picasa 2 is available free from Google. This software not only interprets the original data; it´s capable of altering it-to remove unwanted background elements, zoom in on the desired part of an image, adjust color, and more. And the capabilities are increasing. The latest version of Photoshop, CS2, includes a "vanishing point" tool, for example, that drastically simplifies the specialized art of correcting perspective when combining images, to make composites look more realistic. Nor are these programs difficult to master. Just as word-processing programs like Microsoft Word have made the production of professional-looking documents a cakewalk, photo-editing tools make us all accomplished photo manipulators fairly quickly. Who hasn´t removed red-eye from family pictures?
Before the digital age, photo-verification experts sought to examine the negative-the single source of all existing prints. Today´s equivalent of a negative is the RAW file. RAWs are output from a camera before any automatic adjustments have corrected hue and tone. They fix the image in its purest, unaltered state. But RAW files are unwieldy-they don´t look very good and are memory hogs-hence only professional photographers tend to use them. Nor are they utterly trustworthy: Hackers have shown themselves capable of making a fake RAW file based on an existing photo, creating an apparent original.
But digital technology does provide clues that experts can exploit to identify the fakery. In most cameras, each cell registers just one color-red, green or blue-so the camera´s microprocessor has to estimate the proper color based on the colors of neighboring cells, filling in the blanks through a process called interpolation. Interpolation creates a predictable pattern, a correlation among data points that is potentially recognizable, not by the naked eye but by pattern-recognition software programs.
Farid has developed algorithms that are remarkably adept at recognizing the telltale signs of forgeries. His software scans patterns in a data file´s binary code, looking for the disruptions that indicate that an image has been altered. Farid, who has become the go-to guy in digital forensics, spends a great deal of time using Photoshop to create forgeries and composites and then studying their underlying data. What he´s found is that most manipulations leave a statistical trail.
Consider what happens when you double the size of an image in Photoshop. You start with a 100-by-100-pixel image and enlarge it to 200 by 200. Photoshop must create new pixels to make the image bigger; it does this through interpolation (this is the second interpolation, after the one done by the camera´s processor when the photo was originally shot). Photoshop will "look" at a white pixel and an adjoining black pixel and decide that the best option for the new pixel that´s being inserted between them is gray.
Each type of alteration done in Photoshop or iPhoto creates a specific statistical relic in the file that will show up again and again. Resizing an image, as described above, creates one kind of data pattern. Cutting parts of one picture and placing them into another picture creates another. Rotating a photo leaves a unique footprint, as does "cloning" one part of a picture and reproducing it elsewhere in the image. And computer-generated images, which can look strikingly realistic, have their own statistical patterns that are entirely different from those of images created by a camera. None of these patterns is visible to the naked eye or even easily described, but after studying thousands of manipulated images, Farid and his students have made a Rosetta stone for their recognition, a single software package consisting of algorithms that search for seven types of photo alteration, each with its own data pattern.
If you employed just one of these algorithms, a fake would be relatively easy to miss, says digital-forensic scientist Jessica Fridrich of the State University of New York at Binghamton. But the combination is powerful. "It would be very difficult to have a forgery that gets through all those tests," she says.
The weakness of Farid´s software, though-and it´s a big one-is that it works best with high-quality, uncompressed images. Most nonprofessional cameras output data files known as JPEGs. JPEGs are digitally compressed so that they will
be easy to e-mail and won´t take up too much space on people´s hard drives. But compression, which throws away less-
important image data to reduce size at the expense of visual quality, removes or damages the statistical patterns that Farid´s algorithms seek. So at least for now, until Farid´s next-generation software is finished, his tool is relatively powerless to
provide information about the compressed and lower-quality photos typically found on the Internet.
Given those rather large blind spots, some scientists are taking a completely different tack. Rather than try to discern after the fact whether a picture has been altered, they want to invisibly mark photos in the moment of their creation so that any subsequent tampering will be obvious.
Jessica Fridrich of SUNY Binghamton works on making digital watermarks. Watermarked data are patterns of zeros and ones that are created when an image is shot and embedded in its pixels, invisible unless you look for them with special software. Watermarks are the modern equivalent of dripping sealing wax on a letter-if an image is altered, the watermark will be "broken" digitally, and your software will tell you.
Watermarking is currently available in one consumer product, Canon´s DVK-E2 data-verification kit. This $700 system uses proprietary software and a small USB plug-in application to authenticate images shot with Canon´s pro-level cameras. It would seem ideal for news organizations: Photo editors (or anyone needing to authenticate) plug in the device, click on an image, and the software alerts them when a photo has been altered. Most digital news photos will be tweaked, of course, to adjust hue, saturation, contrast and brightness-editing procedures that were traditionally conducted in the darkroom-and then saved as a new file, but if the editor suspects funny business, he can compare the unaltered original with the altered copy and find out exactly how much it deviates.
The Canon kit won´t prevent self-made controversies, such as National Geographic´s digitally relocating an Egyptian pyramid to fit better on its February 1982 cover, or Newsweek´s grafting Martha Stewart´s head onto a model´s body on its March 7, 2005, cover, but it would have caught, and thus averted, another journalism scandal: In 2003 photographer Brian Walski was fired from the Los Angeles Times for melding two photographs to create what he felt was a more powerful composition of a British soldier directing Iraqis to take cover. Still, many media outlets remain dismissive of verification technology, putting their faith in the integrity of trusted contributors and their own ability to sniff out fraud. "If we tried to verify every picture, we´d never get anything done," says Stokes Young, managing editor at Corbis, which licenses stock photos. As damaging mistakes pile up, though, wire services and newspapers may change their attitude.
Meanwhile, work is progressing at Fridrich´s lab to endow photos with an additional level of security. Fridrich, whose accomplishments include winning the 1982 Czechoslovakian Rubik´s Cube speed-solving championship, is developing a camera that not only watermarks a photograph but adds key identifying information about the photographer as well. Her team has modified a commercially available Canon camera, converting the infrared focusing sensor built into its viewfinder to a biometric sensor that captures an image of the photographer´s iris at the instant a photo is shot. This image is converted to digital data that is stored invisibly in the image file, along with the time and date and other watermark data.
The application for a police photographer is obvious: If challenged in court, the image, camera and shoot are verifiable, the entire system secure. Unfortunately, the world of justice is the Dark Ages to academia´s Renaissance. The FBI has a special Digital Evidence Section and is funding authentication research, but federal rules of evidence don´t require verification of digital images other than by the photographer or someone else at the scene, let alone a secure photography system, and there´s been little effort to change them. "Most criminal courts are technically illiterate," says Grant Fredericks, a forensic-video analyst with forensic-systems maker Avid Technology. "They don´t have the tools and experience to deal with advanced technology."
Lawyers are just beginning to grasp the technology and its ramifications, but the bench is especially ignorant. "Trial judges have not been adequately apprised of the risks and technology," says New York Law School´s Sherwin. "I can recount one example where in order to test an animation that was being offered in evidence, the judge asked the attorney to print it out. What we really have is a generation gap in the knowledge base. Courts are going to have to learn about these risks themselves and find ways to address them."
One bright spot is that for now, at least, we only have to worry about still images. Fredericks says that to modify video convincingly remains an incredibly painstaking business. "When you´re dealing with videotape, you´re dealing with 30 frames per second, and a frame is two individual pictures. The forger would have to make 60 image corrections for each second. It´s an almost impossible task." There´s no Photoshop for movies, and even video altered with high-end equipment, such as commercials employing reanimated dead actors, isn´t especially believable.
Digital-forensics experts say they´re in an evolutionary race not unlike the battle between spammers and anti-spammers -you can create all the filters you want, but determined spammers will figure out how to get through. Then it´s time to create new filters. Farid expects the same of forgers. With enough resources and determination, a forger will break a watermark, reverse-engineer a RAW file, and create a seamless fake that eludes the software. The trick, Farid says, is continuing to raise the bar high enough that most forgers are daunted.
The near future of detection technology is more of the same, only (knock wood) better: more-secure photographer-verification systems, more tightly calibrated algorithms, more-robust watermarks. The future, though, promises something more innovative: digital ballistics. Just as bullets can be traced to the gun that fired them, digital photos might reveal the camera that made them. No light sensor is flawless; all have tiny imperfections that can be read in the image data. Study those glitches enough, and you recognize patterns-patterns that can be detected with software.
Still, no matter what technologies are in place, it´s likely that top-quality fakes will always elude the system. Poor-quality ones, too. The big fish learn how to avoid the net; the smallest ones slip through it. Low-resolution fakes are more detectable by Farid´s latest algorithm, which analyzes the direction of light falling on the scene, but if a photo is compressed enough, forget about it. It becomes a mighty small fish.
Which brings us back to Joey Boudreaux, the Marine who found himself denounced by his local paper, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, as having embarrassed "himself, the Marine Corps and, unfortunately, his home state." The Marines conducted two investigations last year, both of which were inconclusive. Even experts with the Naval Criminal Investigative Services couldn´t find evidence to support or refute claims of manipulation.
Boudreaux has taken the incident in stride. "My first reaction, I thought it was funny," he said in a telephone interview. "I didn´t have a second reaction until they called and said, â€You´re getting investigated.´ " He insists that he never gave the Iraqi boy a sign with any words but "Welcome Marines," but he has no way to prove it. Neither he nor anyone he knows still possesses a version of the image the way he says he created it, and no amount of Internet searching has turned it up. All that exists are the low-quality clones on the Web. Farid´s software can´t assess Boudreaux´s claim because the existing images are too compressed for his algorithms. And even Farid´s trained eye can´t tell if either of the two existing images-the "good" sign or the "bad" one-are real or if, as Boudreaux claims, both are fakes.
An unsatisfactory conclusion, but a fitting one. Today´s authentication technology is such that even after scrutiny by software and expert eyes, all you may have on your side is your word. You´d better hope it´s good enough.
Steve Casimiro is a writer and photographer in Monarch Beach, California.
by Courtesy of Worth1000.com
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Maca is a root vegetable, a distant cousin of the turnip and garden cress. Native to the high Andes of Peru, it has been consumed for over 2000 years. For people living in the area, it has long been an important traditional food and a valuable medicinal plant.
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In herbal medicine, a daily dose of 2-10 grams of this great tasting powder is recommended.


*According to a just published report by the Flight Safety Foundation, Alexandria, Va.
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text:
Top 30 Startups to Watch 2015
Carly Okyle
Assistant Editor, Contributed Content
September 15, 2014 40 min read
In theory, entrepreneurship sounds awesome. You're your own boss so you can set your own hours, work from home in your PJs and do work that really matters to you.
But as any entrepreneur will tell you, starting your own business is not nearly as glamorous. In fact, it can often be pretty scary and lonely. Entrepreneurs take a great financial risk to get their ventures off the ground, often using their own savings and quitting steady jobs to pursue their dreams. Yes, entrepreneurs make their own hours, but they put in many more of them than the average employee (often 12 a day or more) and, still, they face a high failure rate.
Entrepreneur values those who choose to create their own path, and we're not alone.
Empact, a Princeton, N.J.-based company that provides education and networking opportunities to young entrepreneurs, today released its annual list of 100 startups led by entrepreneurs under 35 that should be on everyone's radar. Those chosen for the Empact100 stood out among hundreds of submissions and impressed an all-star panel of judges that included Priceline co-founder Jeff Hoffman, Stairmaster co-founder Clifton Taulbert and the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the United Nations Foundation, Elizabeth Gore. Decisions were based on factors such as revenue, social impact, volunteer hours, growth over the past year and the number of employees.
We took the Empact100 and distilled it further, finding the 30 startups we think are most unique and have the potential to transform their industries, if not the world. While there were many impressive companies to choose from, these are the ones that excited us most.
Keep your eye out for them, and be prepared to tell your hipster friends that you heard of them before they got huge.
The list is below, in alphabetical order.
Andrea Huspeni and Lauren Covello contributed to this report.
AddShoppers
What it is: There's no denying that social media is a vital part of making a business successful. With that said, though, the collective mind of Internet users is hard to understand: Why does one tweet get shared more than another and what makes a Facebook post likeable to customers? AddShoppers is looking to take the mystery out of this by helping companies identify social influencers and get more shares and emails through social-marketing apps.
How it started: While in college, Jon West and Chad Ledford started their first business selling socks door to door. This company evolved into an ecommerce store, which eventually got acquired.
After recognizing the importance of social networks and onsite-marketing campaigns for ecommerce merchants, the next venture they launched together was AddShoppers
Why it's a winner: With more than 10,000 merchants using the software -- including the Economist, Everlast and O'Neill Clothing -- AddShoppers has caught the attention of Business Insider and Internet Retailer Magazine.
Related: Data Driven: What Amazon's Jeff Bezos Taught Me About Running a Company
Advocates for World Health
Tampa, Fla.
What it is: One man's trash is another man's treasure. Put another way, one country's surplus medical equipment is another country's life-saving miracle. Advocates for World Health is a nonprofit that redistributes surplus medical supplies to under-served hospitals in developing nations.
How it started: On the last day of his volunteer trip to Guatemala in the fall 2008, founder Ryan Kania witnessed a man die from a gunshot wound. Before he passed, the doctors had tried to save him but lacked the necessary medical equipment to do so. Kania was so overwhelmed by the shock, he felt he needed to do something. Advocates for World Health was born in Kania's dorm room, but because of growth, now is operating in a 15,000 square-foot warehouse.
Why it's a winner: This organization is solving one heck of a problem. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. healthcare industry generates more than 2 billion pounds of medical waste each year. Yet up to 60 percent of this waste is still usable: The unused and unexpired medical product. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization estimates that more than 10 million children under the age of five die in the developing world due to inadequate medical care. Advocates for World Health is helping to fix this issue and that deserves our attention.
Ajax Union
Brooklyn, N.Y.
What it is: The Internet is an incredible tool for companies -- if you can make yourself stand out in an overcrowded space. Ajax Union is there to help with that, as a professional online-marketing firm helping small and midsize businesses gain online exposure through strategy implementation, testing and analysis.
How it started: Joseph Apfelbaum is no newbie to marketing. In fact, he was the CMO for a luxury watch retailer, and he found that he got better results when he used freelancers and underlings than when he used a large digital marketing agency. The saying is, if you want something done right you have to do it yourself, so he followed that advice and started Ajax Union with Zevi Friendman, focusing on helping small and midsized businesses.
Why it's a winner: Ajax Union has grown by 50 percent in the last year, going from 50 employees in 2012 to 72 in 2013. We were equally impressed with co-founder Joe Apfelbaum's commitment to paying it forward. He is involved in a variety of networking and mentoring groups, including entrepreneur-networking group EO Brooklyn, which Joe helped found and where he serves on the board of directors.
Bloomboard
Palo Alto, Calif.
What it is: Great teachers are essential. They're also hard to find, and those who strive to improve themselves may have a difficult time figuring out what they need to work on most, since providing feedback and training has traditionally been difficult and expensive. BloomBoard looks to solve this issue by using technology for teacher development and support.
How it started: Prior to launching BloomBoard, both co-founders Eric Dunn and Jason Lange had education in their blood. Dunn had spent more than a decade building adaptive learning management systems for students while Lange worked for an education-focused nonprofit. When a mutual friend introduced them to each other, they hit it off. Both were looking for a professional-development solution for educators, as the quality of a teacher is the greatest driver of student outcomes in the classroom. After joining forces in 2010 and armed with only their experiences and a rough prototype, Lange and Dunn set out to test their beliefs.
Why it's a winner: BloomBoard revolutionizes education by integrating technology into its solution. The company offers a "click to schedule" option, saving on paperwork and back-and-forth phone calls while also organizing evaluator notes. Because of this innovation, BloomBoard was able to get the attention of both the Gates Foundation and Birchmere Ventures, securing $5 million in funding.
Related: 8 Hacks to Become a Better Entrepreneur
What it is: Have you ever Googled your name and been shocked by what appeared in the search results? For those wanting negative (and possibly false) information to be buried on Google, BrandYourself can help. The startup is an online-reputation service that allows people to take control of their digital footprints by helping boost positive links about themselves to the top of Google.
How it started: They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and co-founder Pete Kistler is a prime example of this. In 2009, when Kistler was a junior at Syracuse University, he noticed no one was following up on his internship applications. This was strange, since he had a 3.9 GPA. When he Googled himself, however, the lack of professional interest started to make sense. His name is not unique and others with his moniker included a suspected drug dealer and a convicted sex offender. When he realized he couldn't afford the services of reputation-management companies, he turned to classmate Patrick Ambron for help. Ambron knew the ins and outs of search engine optimization and was able to repair Kistler's online reputation. Thinking there were others who might need similar assistance, the two joined up with co-founder Evan McGowan Watson and created BrandYourself before they could legally drink.
Why it's a winner: Not only has the site garnered a bunch of media attention -- including support from The Wall Street Journal, CBS and NPR -- but it's quickly gained a large customer base. Within its first eight months of operation, BrandYourself boasted 150,000 users. Understandably, the number of employees has jumped from five to a total of 43 within a year. Because of its success, the company has won numerous awards, including "Top 5 College Entrepreneurs" of 2009 by Entrepreneur magazine.
What it is: Some say that fashion is essentially wearable art. Bucketfeet is a company that believes that in the most literal way, becoming the first footwear company that finds a different artist to design every shoe it creates.
How it started: The idea for Bucketfeet came after a chance meeting in Argentina between two strangers -- an artist named Aaron Firestein and a global backpacker named Raaja Nemani. The two got along well, and before parting ways, Firestein drew a design on a pair of canvas shoes and sold them to Nemani, who wore the shoes for the rest of his travels and inspired thousands of conversations with people on six continents. When Nemani's year-long global trek ended, he and Firestein joined up in Chicago and founded Bucketfeet.
Why it's a winner: At a time when arts programs are cut in schools and the emphasis on STEM programs can make artistic endeavors seem almost pointless, Bucketfeet is giving creative people an outlet and some respect. The company works with nearly 4,000 artists from more than 60 countries. And while the wearer gets recognized for one-of-a-kind style, the artist gets exposure for their work and financial support.
Brighton, Mass.
What it is: Dashed, a restaurant-delivery startup servicing the Northeast, is all about speed. The company recruits athletes to deliver food items from more than 700 restaurants and does so in environmentally-friendly vehicles including electric smart cars, bikes and scooters.
How it started: After one of the biggest food-delivery services in Boston went out of business, founder Philip Dumontet saw an opportunity. Since the most common complaint about the previous company was slow delivery times, Dumontet made speed the heart and soul of Dashed (hence the name). Using a bike for deliveries allowed him to maneuver around traffic and avoid wasting time looking for parking spots. Customers noticed the difference and business grew.
Why it's a winner: Dashed recruits and hires athletes who share the founder's obsession for speed. Once hired, they compete by pedaling faster or uncovering timesaving shortcuts with the knowledge that they'll be rewarded for it with Dashed Olympic gold, silver, and bronze medals along with cash bonuses for the three fastest monthly deliverers. To increase speed still further, the company introduced smart cars, which have reduced delivery times by 23 percent and cut down the company's gas expenses by 63 percent. With such laser-focus on his mission to deliver food to hungry customers as quick as possible, it's no wonder his business has grown at a rapid speed as well; it has increased 2,984 percent in three years. Equally impressive is Dumontet's commitment to his workers. In a space traditionally driven by low-wage labor, Dashed offers high pay and benefits.
Related: The 3 Most Important Questions Every Entrepreneur Must Answer
Front and Center Marketing
Boulder, Colo.
What it is: The best product in the world is worthless if nobody knows about it. To help get the word out there's Front & Center Marketing, a company that increases awareness for natural food and packaged good brands through marketing events.
How it started: Founder Avi Gardner started Front & Center Marketing after having worked for a number of natural foods brands and seeing them struggle. The companies didn't have enough people to actually do the marketing that needed to be done, and they weren't able to keep a marketing person employed. Gardner decided to quit her job and merge her two passions, food and marketing, into Front & Center Marketing. The company now helps these businesses accomplish the sampling and marketing responsibilities.
Why it's a winner: Front & Center Marketing offers a flexible work environment for those people that are passionate about starting a career in nutrition, personal training or fitness, among other related industries. Most of the team works part time, with many being single moms. This sort of schedule helps build financial security while allowing the flexibility needed for child care. Because of this environment, Front & Center Marketing has tripled in size from 2012 to 2013.
What it is: Fueled builds mobile apps, websites and videos for big-name companies like MTV, the Chicago Bulls, Hallmark and Porsche, along with up-and-coming startups. The startup also launched Fueled Collective, a shared workspace in Manhattan for more than 35 startup companies.
How it started: In 2008 Rameet Chawla decided to leave his finance job and work for himself, starting an advertising agency and development shop named Fueled. A few pivots and more than $500 million in ecommerce transactions later, the company is on track to being one of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the U.S.
Why it's a winner: Fueled has generated more than $250 million in revenue for its clients and its apps have caught the attention of a lot of people. The company has taken home awards for mobile and website creation from W3, FWD, the Omma Awards, Digiday Mobi Awards, Creative Review, the Hive Awards, Communication Arts and the Webby Awards.
San Francisco, Calif.
What it is: Good neighbors will lend you a cup of sugar or a light bulb when you need it. Great neighbors will lend you their car. Complete strangers that lend you their car? Well, they must be one of the 200,000-plus members of Getaround, a peer-to-peer car rental community. The idea is that those who need a car can get one and those who aren't using their car can make some extra money. Car owners set the terms of availability and the rates. For lenders that don't want to hand off their keys in person, the company also has technology that will allow renters to open up the car from their cell phones. All cars on the service are covered by primary insurance during the rentals, but owners must have their own insurance as well.
How it started: While taking classes at Silicon Valley's Singularity University, Sam Zaid and Jessica Scorpio were challenged by Google's Larry Page to positively impact 1 billion people in 10 years. They considered transportation, and realized that, with the average car sitting idle 22 hours each day, there was an opportunity for people to share their cars instead of adding more cars to the road. The duo were already working to launch Getaround when they met Elliot Kroo at iPhone DevCamp in 2009. With the final piece of the puzzle now in place, Getaround was born.
Why it's a winner: Traditional car sharing platforms, like Zipcar, have proven that car sharing is service that people want to use. Getaround expands the benefits of car sharing to people who don't live in dense urban areas and does this without requiring new cars be manufactured. Besides starting a business that fills a need quickly and safely, Getaround has developed patented technology that is purpose-built for the peer to peer market and has increased convenience. And it's got major backing behind it: investors include Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, PayPal COO David Sacks and actor Ashton Kutcher.
Related: 5 Ways for Bootstrapped Startups to Get Through the First Year
Global Good Fund
Arlington, Va.
What it is: While many would like to make the world a better place, few have an actionable plan to do it. Enter the Global Good Fund, a nonprofit organization that helps young social entrepreneurs fulfill their dreams through leadership development training in the form of both human and financial capital.
How it started: At age 27, Carrie Rich worked at nonprofit health-care system Inova Health System and reported to CEO Knox Singleton. She made an impression on him with her passion for social entrepreneurship, so for her birthday Knox gave her money and said, "see what good you can do." Wanting to support numerous organizations, Rich knew she had to increase the amount of cash, so she sent out emails to everyone she knew. And the donations starting pouring in, with one person providing a $1 million gift. The large sum made her realize the importance of cross-generational connections for social entrepreneurs. Her mentors had provided support over the years, and Rich wanted others to have the same experience.
Why it's a winner: Any organization empowering young social entrepreneurs is a winner in our book. And the Global Good Fund gets extra points for focusing on female entrepreneurs, with at least 50 percent of Fellowship classes being women. And Rich's role as founder is not some cushy position, she is hands on. For instance, when an intern approached her with a vision beyond the scope of the Global Good Fund, Rich helped by investing her personal time, energy and finances.
Gravity Media
What it is: Gravity Media is a full-service advertising agency looking to help integrate brands into culture. Services include cultural consulting, web and app development, media planning and buying, public relations and more.
How it started: Co-founder and CEO Yuriy Boykiv was born into poverty in Ukraine, but he'd always dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur. After arriving in the U.S. during the summer of 2001, Boykiv was about to head back to his home country when September 11 attacks occurred, prolonging his stay in the states. Stranded in a foreign land, Boykiv went to school and eventually landed a position at a small advertising firm. where he managed DirecTV as a client. Upon noticing his capabilities, DirecTV offered Boykiv a job and eventually became the manager of International Business. One of his responsibilities was to see why certain channels weren't selling. After visiting the company's call center he realized some sales people couldn't tell the difference between a Chinese customer and a Korean customer. He fired 400 people and brought on 600 culturally diverse employees, which resulted in a huge increase in sales. It was then that he "realized if I can do this for DirecTV I could do this for anyone." He, along with two other Ukrainian friends, built multicultural agency Gravity Media.
Why it's a winner: While multiculturalism is a great buzzword for companies, Gravity Media has taken it to a whole new level. While all 45 employees are based in the U.S. -- the company has offices in Manhattan and Los Angeles -- the team consists of international marketing professionals who are fluent in 20 languages and represent 12 nationalities. This is especially helpful in providing services like strategy, design and storytelling to global brands. Not only has this approach allowed them to secure big-name clients like the CIA and the NBA, but it also earned them accolades at major publications.
Hotels for Hope
What it is: What if you could contribute to charities just by doing things you were planning on doing anyway? It's worked for clothing and footwear companies, and it's working for the hotel industry. Hotels for Hope is a hotel brokerage firm that books hotel rooms for large events or for individuals. The company works with more than 1,000 hotel partners and ensures the booking process is smooth for its clients. At the same time, Hotels for Hope back by donating $2 for every night booked to charities that seek to improve the lives of children worldwide.
How it started: Founder and CEO Neil Goldman studied hotel management at Penn State and had stints at Marriott and the Four Seasons, before setting up Austin Hospitality, a hotel referral service in Austin, Texas. Austin Hospitality transitioned to Hotels for Hope in 2010 when Goldman decided to add a philanthropic component to his business model, asking its hotel partners to make a $1 donation for every actualized room night, which Hotels for Hope then matched, creating a $2 donation to children's charities.
Why it's a winner: Hotels for Hope has shown that thinking outside the box and implementing small change can lead to big results. To date, it has contributed more than $300,000 to charities, positively impacting the lives of more than 90,000 children around the world. The company is on track to book 80,000-plus room nights annually, and expects to have donated $1 million by the end of 2015.
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Infographic World
What it is: If a picture is worth a thousand words, Infographic World's pictures might be the visual equivalent of a Tolstoy novel. The agency provides exactly what the name implies: eye-catching, memorable pictures that express data or other information visually in the form of infographics.
How it started: Justin Beegel started his company in 2009 at the age of 23 with no funding, savings or partners. Originally, it was a side gig to make a little extra money: Beegel would take on a job, outsource the work and reinvest the profit into marketing. Now, five years after he made infographics his priority (and full-time job), Beegel's company is going strong having worked with approximately 20 percent of Fortune 500 companies.
Why it's a winner: Even if you've never heard of Infographic World, you've seen the work it does. Remember the infographic that ran on Mashable's website, the Life and Times of Steve Jobs? That was Beegel's company, and it was voted Best Infographic of 2011. Another Infographic World creation won Best Infographic of 2013 and won the Platinum Award in the 2014 Creativity International Awards for best in its category.
Ivee
What it is: Ivee lets people control various home "Internet of Things" with their voice. The startup's latest product, Sleek, is a Wi-Fi voice-activated device for the home that answers questions, obeys commands and controls other Internet-connected gadgets (think Nest thermostat and WeMo power outlets).
How it started: When Jonathon Nostrant was studying abroad in Hong Kong in 2008, he saw voice recognition technology for the first time and says he "knew instantly that it was going to be the future." Once he was back in the U.S., he enlisted his father and two good friends from school and began working on a voice activated clocked they called Moshi. That model eventually sold 300,000 units to retailers like Brookstone. In 2011, Nostrant wanted to concentrate his efforts on improving on voice activation by connecting it to the Internet. The result was Ivee.
Why it's a winner: By creating a voice-controlled gadget that connects to various devices in the home, ivee is helping the elderly and people with disabilities have greater control over the devices they use regularly, such as lights or the television.
What it is: Taking a page from Eric Ries' lean-startup methodology, Javelin is an enterprise software firm that gives companies tools to determine whether a business idea is worth pursuing. The service arm, known as the Lean Startup Machine, is a three-day workshop teaching entrepreneurs validation techniques. In terms of tools, the company offers analytics for landing pages and experimentation boards for businesses to track their progress. ESPN, General Electric and the United States Postal Service are among Javelin's clients.
How it started: Trevor Owens and Grace Ng met four years ago, when Grace was working on her last startup and Trevor ran the first Lean Startup Machine workshop as a side project. Having both had previous failed startups, they realized the Lean Startup process was a more effective way of creating a successful business and decided to work on the idea full-time, co-founding Javelin. They have since hosted workshops around the world to help fledgling entrepreneurs turn their ideas into a reality and started building software this past year.
Why it's a winner: Rather than handing entrepreneurs the proverbial fish, Javelin gives them a fishing rod and some bait and makes sure they're in a populated lake with a seasoned fisherman nearby to answer questions. The company hosts educational workshops in more than 200 cities worldwide, with plans to scale up to 600 cities in the next year. The company is able to help people in all different stages of entrepreneurship, whether someone is considering starting a business but doesn't know how, or is already an entrepreneur and wants to figure out if their next idea will work without wasting time and money. Who doesn't love a startup that pays it forward to other small businesses?
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LCDcycle
Huntsville, Ala.
What it is: LCDcycle knows that what is broken can often be fixed. Specifically, the company recycles broken smartphone screens, preventing thousands of phones from being dumped in landfills each month. The business is also a wholesale distributor of smartphone and tablet parts to repair shops.
How it started: While Chris Koerner started LCDcycle in 2013, he had been a pioneer in the smartphone industry long before then, having founded one of the country's first smartphone-repair chains. But instead of going down the traditional repair route with LCDcycle, Koerner was looking for a way to make a dent in e-waste. Noticing the large amount of e-waste involved with repairing smartphones and tablets, he decided to develop a method of recycling these components. Today his mission is to recycle every broken iPhone screen that comes through repair shops each day.
Why it's a winner: While customers today will be thankful to have their phone fixed, future generations will also be thankful of Koerner's services. Almost half of the devices the company fixes are done with the most destructive e-waste material there is: LCD screens. Specifically, the business has recycled more than 140,000 iPhone screens In 2013, LCDcycle contributed to the repair or refurbishment of more than 150,000 devices all across the world. Because of his "green" approach, Koerner's company has gotten the attention of publications like CNET, Mashable and Gizmodo.
What it is: One of the biggest roadblocks to greater energy efficiency is the storage component -- but LightSail Energy thinks it has a solution. The company, which was founded by Danielle Fong, Steve Crane and Edwin Berlin, has found a way to use compressed air to create what it calls the "cleanest and most economical" energy storage systems. And Silicon Valley seems to agree -- the 55-person company counts Bill Gates, Peter Thiel and renowned VC firm Khosla Ventures among its investors.
How it started: Danielle Fong once said, "Innovation is social." The story of how she started LightSail Energy proves her theory. Fong, who enrolled in college at age 12 and spent two years studying physics in grad school at Princeton, left the East Coast in 2007 in the hopes of doing work she could call her own. While couch-surfing and networking in Silicon Valley, she met her future co-founder, Steve Crane. She had many different ideas for possible startups, but saw an opportunity to create more efficient vehicles through the use of compressed air. She told Crane, who put in $100,000 of his own money and left his job to join her in her venture. They then teamed up with Ed Berlin, who was working on a similar prject. Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla eventually heard about their idea at a party, which resulted in the trio meeting with Khosla's partner. The partner was particularly interested in the implications of using compressed air to improve the power grid. Realizing the potential, Fong and crew agreed to focus on the power grid rather than vehicles.
Why it's a winner: In our ever more connected world, energy sustainability and efficiency is of critical importance. We like that LightSail is trying to tackle one of the most long-standing problems facing the energy industry, and we think it has potential to change the future of the grid as we know it.
What it is: Once you've accepted a marriage proposal, you've also accepted the responsibilities of planning a wedding -- or finding the experts who will plan it for you. Loverly is a one-stop shop for wedding planning online -- a bridal search engine, if you will. Instead of running all over town to search for venues, flowers and dresses, a bride and groom can find vendors for all of those things -- plus the latest trends for inspiration and some tips from experts -- from their own home, assuming said home has a decent Internet connection.
How it started: When Kellee Khalil was chosen as maid of honor for her sister's wedding, she expected the planning would be easy -- after all, she was working at a PR agency whose clients were predominantly wedding vendors. She was wrong. At one point, Khalil had 15 tabs of clothing websites open while she was on the 30th page of a Google search and she questioned how women without any wedding industry connections plan their big day. She used some savings and her entrepreneurial studies degree from the University of Southern California to launch Loverly with her sister, Leila.
Why it's a winner: If you've ever had to plan a wedding, the answer is an obvious one. Not only does it simplify an often overwhelming process, but it is also tapped into an industry that's super hot right now. Since its launch in April 2013, the Loverly app has been downloaded more than 150,000 times, the company says. So, if someone asked us if we thought this company had a bright future, we'd have to say, "We do."
MobileXLabs
What it is: MobileX Labs is an app-solutions company with two branches -- MXLBuild and MXLApps and Games. MXLBuild allows anyone to create their own mobile apps in minutes (no coding experience required). MXLApps and Games combines social utilities and gaming to create apps for download on Apple, Google Play and Amazon.
How it started: Dan Novaes met his co-founder Kiran Panesar on the odd job site Fiverr when he was looking for a developer to create an app for his music blog. After creating the app for $85, the pair began developing others apps for businesses and music artists. They realized there was a business opportunity: simplify the creation of apps without losing quality. That's where the idea of the DIY App Builder, or MXLBuild, came from.
Why it's a winner: How could we not love a company that is looking to help small-business owners and entrepreneurs with the confusing world of apps. Not only do they provide an amazing service for people on a budget, but they are continuing to innovate. The company will soon be launching Kai, a platform for creating and publishing mobile content.
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Mobius Consulting
What it is: There is an adage that behind every man is a great woman. Apparently, behind the U.S. government is Mobius Consulting, a woman-owned small business that provides engineering, technical analysis, management and strategy to the government.
How it started: Melaine and Frank Privitera obviously work well together -- they're married. They decided to take their partnership to a professional level when they founded Mobius Consulting. Melanie says the company was crafted over two years of late-night patio summits, bold cabernets and intense masterminding sessions. Frank's family background of entrepreneurship and his education in computers combined well with Melanie's experience as an organizational strategy consultant. Together, they saw many opportunities to modernize, streamline, and innovate within the federal contracting industry, particularly in the Defense and Intelligence market. The company received it's first federal contract on the same day that the Priviteras gave birth to their daughter.
Why it's a winner: Mobius Consulting is on a roll, cited as one of the fastest growing woman-owned federal contract companies in the Washington D.C. area. In just the past nine months, the company has experienced more than 200 percent growth and had more than $3 million in revenue in its third year of operation. For this, Melanie has received numerous accolades including Under30CEO's "14 Young Entrepreneurs to Watch in Washington D.C."
Myriad Mobile
Fargo, N.D.
What it is: Besides the huge oil boom, people don't really think of North Dakota as an epicenter of business or technology. The founders of Myriad Mobile are hoping to change that. The startup is a one-stop shop for all things mobile including app development, consulting and design services.
How it started: Myriad Mobile was born at North Dakota State University while Jake Joraanstad and Ryan Raguse were undergraduate students. Initially the two were both competing against each other in the app world, trying to make a profit off of developing low-cost apps. They realized they would be better off joining forces and decided to pivot their strategy to provide app-building services for businesses. In a matter of six months, Myriad Mobile has grown from eight part-time engineers to more than 60 full-time staff members.
Why it's a winner: While the pair nixed the idea of moving their startup to a bustling entrepreneurial community, the decision to keep their roots in North Dakota didn't make things easy. To overcome the challenges they faced scaling their startup in "flyover country," Joraanstad and Raguse decided to simultaneously grow their business and community. Joraanstad is the co-founder of Emerging Prairie, a digital-media company that connects entrepreneurs in the area, and also provides mentorship at local startup events including Startup Weekend Fargo and 1 Million Cups Fargo. Raguse also participates in local entrepreneur event and is the co-founder of farm app Virtual Farm Manager and chairman of Adshark Marketing.
RejuvaHealth
What it is: Standing all day, taking long flights and pregnancy can be tough on veins -- in some cases, even deadly. Medical compression stockings, which have been around for ages, can help, but they're not the most stylish garments. RejuvaHealth has created a line of fashion-forward socks, tights and leggings that provide different levels of FDA-listed medical support. In addition to relieving symptoms such as swelling, discomfort and fatigue, they also help slim and shape the wearer's physique.
How it started: When Kelsey Minarik was 21, she developed Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT), a dangerous blood clot in her leg. Her doctor treated her with injections for weeks and put her on a year of blood-thinning medication, but also asked that she wear support stockings for relief. Minarik loved how much the stockings helped her, but she hated how they looked. She tried to find fashionable styles of the compression clothing, but there weren't any. The college student combined her fashion sense with medical necessity and created her own. Two years later, she founded RejuvaHealth to offer stylish compression clothing to others.
Why it's a winner: Fashion has always been a way to express yourself, but very rarely is there a way to do that while addressing a serious medical issue. Being able to do both is not a frivolous endeavor; it allows people with vein disorders to live their lives without embarrassment and without self-consciousness. Moreover, the company has both an online and in-store presence, with products available in vein centers, medical offices, pharmacies, travel stores and select retailers nationwide.
Alexandria, Va.
What it is: If cleanliness is next to Godliness, then Soapbox Soaps is pretty angelic.Working under the equation "Soap = Hope," this startup provides a bar of soap, a year's worth of vitamin supplements or enough clean water for a month for every product it sells.
How it started: Apparently, the first step to starting a successful business is the first step as almost anything else: Google it. Co-founder Dave Simnick turned to the search engine to learn how to make soap and created his first batch in his kitchen while still in college. But not being satisfied with just selling a product, Simnick looked for a social entrepreneurship angle that would allow him to also give back. He combined the two ideas and brought in his friend (and future co-founder) Dan Doll. Together, they spent two years building a business after the regular work day. Once Whole Foods finally gave into their badgering and agreed to put the products in one store, they gained traction.
Why it's a winner: Though it might be hard to believe, there are still places in the world that don't have access to clean water and soap, nevermind proper bathrooms. Diseases that could be prevented through hygienic practices kill thousands of children worldwide every day. Even here in the U.S., where soap and water seem ubiquitous, people living in poverty struggle with procuring these staples. Soapbox Soaps provides bars of soap to shelters and food pantries throughout the country, in addition to communities worldwide.
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Syndio Social
What it is: Many employees with top-notch skills and leadership qualities are often overlooked (and therefore undervalued) when it comes to promotions. Syndio Social is looking to help break this cycle by providing tools to help identify internal influences and reward employees. In addition, Syndio Social looks to help companies streamline change, adopt new procedures faster and increase collaboration.
How it started: While attending Northwestern University Zachary Johnson was working at a startup record label. He couldn't figure out how to leverage social media to help budding artists get online attention. Things changed after Johnson took a social-media analysis class taught by Noshir Contractor. After the course was completed, Johnson continued to work with Contractor on finding influential college students to help build buzz around his artists at the record label. Seeing the successful outcome, the duo wondered if they could emulate this strategy with businesses that needed help finding influential leaders in a corporate setting. Johnson created a business plan while still in school and Syndio Social launched the following year.
Why it's a winner: With no outside funding, Syndio Social has doubled in size every year since its launch and has amassed a list of big-name brands like Exelon, P&G and Lurie Children's Hospital. The company also got a hat tip from Entrepreneur magazine, as it was named one of the "100 Brilliant Companies" in 2014.
What it is: Although businesses want to hear from their customers and adapt accordingly, the sheer number of channels available for customer engagement -- social media, emails, phone calls and Yelp reviews, to name a few -- can be hard to keep up with an impossible to sift through. Thankfully, UserVoice is here to help. The company gathers customer feedback in multiple forms and combines it with user analytics helping businesses get a better read on their users.
How it started: Back in 2006, founder and CEO Richard White was trying to figure out what his customers really thought about his calendar product. Scrutinizing emails, forums and comments was taking way too much time and not providing the information he needed. Realizing this was not just an issue for him, White set out to develop a product to help businesses gather information to improve their products. UserVoice launched in 2008 and in 2011 the company expanded its offerings to include a customer component, a helpdesk.
Why it's a winner: The company has grown to include a huge user base of 25 million people, making it a huge B2B player. The widget is being used by both startups and Fortune 500 companies to manage customer feedback and support. Because of its success, the company in the most recent winner of the CRM Idol competition, beating out 70 other companies to be anointed "what's next in CRM."
Vera Solutions
What it is: Vera Solutions is a B-Corp certified organization that builds cloud and mobile data systems for social-impact organizations. The company helps organizations collect, analyze and utilize programmatic data, streamline operations and better track their impact.
How it started: Co-founders Zak Kaufman, Taylor Downs and Karti Subramanian met in 2008 while working for an HIV-prevention organization in South Africa. Though the program staff was committed to using data effectively, vital information that could help inform changes and improvements was trapped in stacks of paper and spreadsheets that were only updated quarterly. Frustrated, the trio developed an application to help track beneficiary information including attendance, outcomes, testing and referrals. This new system had a huge impact, resulting in other organizations wanting a piece of the action. Vera Solutions was born with the mission to help organization streamline operations.
Why it's a winner: Look at what Vera Solutions allows people to do, and ask yourself how it could ever NOT be included on this list. The organization has helped businesses track sanitation in Nairobi's slums, organize farmers' livelihoods in Mali and Senegal, automate a hotline for human trafficking in Asia and develop a solution for a grant-management platform to track more than $10 billion of HIV, tuberculosis and malaria programs in 140 countries.
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VIP Waste Services
What it is: V.I.P. Waste Services is a startup focused on providing apartment communities doorstep pickup for recycling and trash.
How it started: When Jesse Lear and Travis Smith were roommates in an apartment building, they were irked with the inconvenience of the local trash and recycling programs. Realizing doorstep pickup was not available for their apartment building (or basically any complex in the midwest), they set out to change that. They quit their jobs as cable guys and founded V.I.P. Waste Services.
Why it's a winner: While V.I.P. Waste Services helps apartment complexes stay clean, the company's focus on recycling helps the environment as well. People who would not otherwise take the time to visit their closest recycling center can now filter out the reusable contents of their trash easily, without worrying about the hassle and logistics that come afterward. Because of this, the company has gained recognition from the National Apartment Alliance and The Metropreneur Columbus.
What it is: If advertisers, publishers, and agencies had a hammer, well, they just might use it to get more return from their digital ads. YellowHammer has created a "Performance Trading Platform" to help digital advertisers achieve higher impressions and positive ROI on their digital display ad campaigns. The team at YellowHammer, which consists of creative, media buying and engineering teams, creates new ad optimization and campaign management technologies designed to give advertisers true measures of performance.
How it started: Hagan Major and Joe Hirsch met when they were high school students in Alabama in 1999. The dotcom boom was in full swing and the boys both decided that they wanted to devote their professional lives to computers. When the online advertising agency where Major was working part time went out of business, he and Hirsch realised that they had the creativity and technological know-how to create an advertising network on their own. They built up a business but were forced to sell it during the dotcom bust. They decided to move to Los Angeles and start a different online advertising network, but had a falling out with their partners and moved back east. YellowHammer, which they named after the state bird of Alabama, is the result of the lessons they learned at their previous companies over the past 15 years.
Why it's a winner: Digital advertising can often produce murky results, but YellowHammer wants to make things clearer. Thanks to taking on well-known clients like the digital coupon company LivingSocial, Jamba Juice and the online members-only shopping site Rue La La, the company has grown at an incredible speed. The number of employees nearly doubled between 2012 and 2013, jumping from 23 to 40.
Zivelo
What it is: Zivelo is a B2B company manufacturing touch-screen kiosks for businesses. So just like your sleek smartphones and tablets, customers don't need to pound keys to enter in information but rather can swipe and tap to their delight. Clients range from the Fortune 100 companies like Coca Cola and CVS to nearly every branch of the U.S. government.
How it started: Founder Ziver Birg had been in the public computing industry for a few years reselling products for other businesses before he decided to start his company. He referred to this venture as "an $18,000 challenge," and said that he decided to make his mark on the industry by keeping all of the positive aspects associated with kiosks and leaving behind the negative ones.
Why it's a winner: While Zivelo has rapidly grown to become a leading self-service technology brand, the company is focused more on just the bottom line. While traveling in South Africa as a teenager, Birg met a young girl who was selling oranges on the street to earn money for her family. When Birg didn't buy the fruit, the girl attempted to sell herself instead, leaving Birg shocked and upset. It was at that moment he decided that whatever he did with his life, it would be to help people like that young girl. So when Zivelo launched, Birg created a philanthropic arm known as the Zivelo Foundation. The foundation's efforts include planting trees with every client order as well as donating proceeds from product sales. The Zivelo Foundation also offers significant discounts on products for projects that support economically and socially disadvantaged communities worldwide.
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