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With more than 100 million Amazon Alexa devices sold to date, there’s no doubt that Amazon is making significant inroads in the smart speaker market. The company, competing against both Apple’s Siri and the Google Home device, has moved quickly to get traction for its voice assistant, creating a myriad of different smart speaker devices with no end in sight. While consumer adoption of smart speaker devices is growing, there are still very real privacy concerns—and with good reason.
According to an in-depth story by Bloomberg, Amazon workers are listening on the other end of those devices nestled in millions of homes. Amazon employs thousands of workers around the world, to listen in on recordings captured by their Echo smart speakers. The global team reviews audio clips in an effort to improve the performance of digital assistant Alexa, and helping the AI better understand human speech.
One of the ways Alexa improves over time is by having human beings listen to recordings of your voice requests. While this work is intended to help improve Alexa’s speech recognition technology, and may seem like a no-brainer to people who are immersed in the voice technology space, it was a surprise to many. Amazon has never explicitly disclosed that part of its processes includes human workers listening to private Alexa chats. The company addresses the issue of humans listening in, in a rather vague statement on the company’s Alexa FAQ:
“The more data we use to train these systems, the better Alexa works, and training Alexa with voice recordings from a diverse range of customers helps ensure Alexa works well for everyone.”
The Bloomberg story brings up the challenge on how to train AI as it becomes an bigger force in our daily lives.
Analyst Take: We have entered an era where the public really can no longer be surprised to learn of breaches of trust; especially when related to data and the proliferation of new technologies. Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple, to name a few, all have similar practices of leveraging data in order to improve training and inference of their AI technologies. Amazon did make clear that the recordings are anonymized, post-awakening of the Alexa-powered Echo devices and that the volume used is only a small fraction of the total volume of recordings. However, this also confirms that real people are potentially listening to your conversations when you utilize the Amazon Echo platform. I believe that Amazon and all of these companies have large enough loyal user bases that they could create a beta(type) program and have opted in users to help with their training needs. This way they would continue to get the data required for training, but those providing it would be well aware of the situation and actually be opting in. This type of transparency would be beneficial for Amazon to gain trust from the public as most have very little idea of what Amazon is doing with their data.
The original version of this article was first published on Futurum Research.
Daniel Newman is the Principal Analyst of Futurum Research and the CEO of Broadsuite Media Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise. From Big Data to IoT to Cloud Computing, Newman makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology projects, which leads to his ideas regularly being cited in CIO.Com, CIO Review and hundreds of other sites across the world. A 5x Best Selling Author including his most recent “Building Dragons: Digital Transformation in the Experience Economy,” Daniel is also a Forbes, Entrepreneur and Huffington Post Contributor. MBA and Graduate Adjunct Professor, Daniel Newman is a Chicago Native and his speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.


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Research by East & Partners commissioned by WorldFirst, a global digital payments and financial services platform for SMEs engaged in cross-border trade, has found that Australian small businesses are missing out on valuable Foreign Exchange (FX) opportunities and are more vulnerable to currency risk stemming from mounting interest rates and persistent inflation.
The research found that despite nine out of 10 importing/exporting SMEs placing five transactions per month, the majority of these businesses have not considered FX solutions. Specifically, SMEs in the Australian Forward Market make up only 14.2 per cent of the total business FX daily volumes, whereas upper commercial and corporate contribute 40.1 per cent of average daily volume. Over 80 per cent of microbusinesses and SMEs have never traded FX Options and over 40 per cent have never traded Forward FX.
The report noted that FX Options can be more complex and riskier than Forwards, hence the firms that do trade FX Options are predominantly mid-market to large enterprises. Meanwhile, whilst SMEs prefer Forwards, these risk mitigation solutions are still underutilised. East & Partners noted that this is significant given most small businesses deal with more than one currency and are more prone to foreign exchange risk than others.
“A main reason why SMEs lag when it comes to FX trading is because of apprehension and misunderstanding of the FX tools available,” Jim Vrondas, Head of Commercial, Australia and New Zealand, at WorldFirst, said.
“However, SMEs can use forward contracts to hedge against and undesirable exchange rate outcome and to lock in an exchange rate for up to 24 months,” Vrondas added. “These solutions can help increase certainty for small businesses paying overseas suppliers and are an ideal way of protecting profits against a backdrop of volatility.”
According to East & Partners, of the small businesses already engaged with FX, 61.3 per cent both import and export.
“When the Australian Dollar trades lower Australian SME importers are less likely to hedge,” Vrondas explained. “This is risky because their costs are going up as it keeps going down and no one knows with any certainty at what rate or point in time it may stop. The lower AUD is better for exporters, SMEs selling overseas are seeing increased profits and they should consider hedging should the AUD start to rally higher at some point.”
The research also found that the US, China, and New Zealand are the top international markets for expansion for Australian businesses. But when entering new markets, 75.9 per cent of businesses cite issues with international payments as key challenges. Lack of visibility in inbound payments being received, lack of tracking in outgoing payments, delays in receiving payments from overseas customers are among these pain points.

domain: news


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PIP in Carmel recently received a Top 25 Sales Volume award recognizing the business as one of the top 25 in the entire PIP franchise network. The award is based on 2015 annual sales revenue and was announced at the annual PIP Convention, July 21-23 at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans in Louisiana. PIP in Carmel is owned by Tony and Laura Kistner and Bud Kistner.
“I commend Tony, Laura and Bud for leading the network with the foresight and character that make the PIP brand synonymous with quality, integrity, and leadership,” stated Richard Lowe, president and COO of Franchise Services, Inc., parent company of PIP, in a press release. “This achievement proves that dedication to growth and excellent customer service will generate great results.”


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Generation Genius! (IHT)
"All the 40-something designers at the Paris summer 2013 collections have reached a delicious, mature ripeness. And with even younger creators breaking bud, there is a real sense in this city of a generational change."
Analysts Debate: Has Michael Kors Become a Top Stock? (Daily Finance)
"The Motley Fool has been making successful stock picks for many years, but we don't always agree on what a great stock looks like... Today, we'll be discussing Michael Kors, a popular luxury retailer that's already seen its stock price double since going public late last year."
Aritzia fashionably late to Internet retailing (Globe and Mail)
"Brian Hill, chief executive officer of Aritzia LP, will need some of that luck, along with a healthy dose of business savvy, for the launch of his high-end fashion e-commerce site in mid-October. 'We’ve essentially had to create a brand-new business,' says Hill, the third generation of a Vancouver retail family whose store, Hill’s of Kerrisdale, is a local institution."
How Much Celebrities Get Paid to Sit in the Front Row (Hollywood Reporter)
"Some of the celebrities with their crossed Louboutined legs in the front row who are hitting the Paris fashion shows and already have shown up in Milan and New York actually might be fans of the brands, but spoiler alert: Few stars are attending just for the love of it anymore."


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Prevalence of lactose intolerance may be far lower than previously estimated, according to a study in the latest issue of Nutrition Today. The study, which uses data from a national sample of three ethnic groups, reveals that the overall prevalence rate of self-reported lactose intolerance is 12 percent - with 7.72 percent of European Americans, 10.05 percent of Hispanic Americans and 19.5 percent of African Americans who consider themselves lactose intolerant.
These new findings indicate that previous estimates of lactose intolerance incidence - based on the incidence of lactose maldigestion - may be overestimated by wide margins. Previous studies have found lactose maldigestion, or low lactase activity in the gut, to occur in approximately 15 percent of European Americans, 50 percent of Mexican Americans and 80 percent of African Americans. The new study shows that lactose intolerance, based on self-reported data, may actually occur far less frequently than presumed.
"There's so much confusion surrounding lactose intolerance," said Theresa Nicklas, DrPH, of the USDA/ARS Children's Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine and lead study author. "By getting a better handle on the true number of people who deal with this condition every day, the nutrition community can be better equipped to educate and provide dietary guidance for Americans, including strategies to help meet dairy food recommendations for those who self-report lactose intolerance."
Since increasing daily consumption of dairy can be an effective strategy for ensuring adequate intake of shortfall nutrients (such as calcium, magnesium and potassium), those who do experience symptoms of lactose intolerance should know there are several practical solutions that can allow for consumption of milk and milk products. In fact, according to a recent study in the Journal of Sensory Studies, adults who identified themselves as lactose intolerant reported a higher liking of lactose-free cow's milk compared to non-dairy, soy-based substitute beverage.
"Those with lactose intolerance are often relieved to know they can still enjoy the great taste and health benefits of dairy if they follow certain strategies," said Orsolya Palacios, PhD, RD, and lead author of the study. "The symptoms of lactose intolerance vary greatly for each individual, and there are options in the dairy case that allow almost everyone to take advantage of the health benefits provided by the recommended three daily servings of dairy foods."
Recommended Solutions for Incorporating Dairy
Several health authorities have addressed ways that those with lactose intolerance can benefit from dairy's unique nutrient package of nine essential nutrients including calcium, potassium, magnesium and vitamin A, identified as "nutrients of concern" by the current Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The Dietary Guidelines encourages people with lactose intolerance to try lower-lactose dairy food options to ensure they get the essential nutrients found in dairy. In a supplement to the October issue of the Journal of the National Medical Association (JNMA), the National Medical Association states that dairy milk alone provides a key package of essential nutrients, and that African Americans should use dietary strategies to increase the amount of dairy foods they consume. And in a 2006 report, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends children with lactose intolerance still consume dairy foods to help meet calcium, vitamin D, protein and other nutrient needs essential for bone health and overall growth. The report cautions that lactose intolerance should not require avoidance of dairy foods.
The National Dairy Council has identified some strategies to help people with lactose intolerance enjoy the taste and nutrition of dairy:
- The good news is lactose-free milk is regular milk, just without the lactose.
- It provides the same unique package of nine essential nutrients as found in the equivalent form of regular milk (reduced-fat, fat-free etc.) - calcium, potassium, phosphorus, protein, vitamins A, D and B12, riboflavin and niacin (niacin equivalents).
- Try drinking small amounts of milk with meals.
- Consuming milk with other foods or a meal can make it easier to digest, so try milk on cereal, in smoothies or licuados, and enjoy a glass of milk with lunch or dinner.
- Try cooking with milk.
- Make oatmeal with milk instead of water and add milk to soups, sauces, casseroles, etc.
- Try eating yogurt.
- Yogurts that contain live and active cultures can make it easier for the digestive system to digest lactose.
- Try aged cheeses.
- Aged cheeses like Swiss, Parmesan, Gouda, Colby, provolone, Cheddar, Edam, Fontina, Gruyere, Muenster and Monterey Jack have very little lactose.


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A report from an analyst group has revealed that EA and Activision have grown double by almost $80 Billion since the introduction of games-as-a-service.
This report comes from DFC intelligence, revealing that EA has got an increase in its value from $4 billion to $33 billion since 2012. As for Activision Blizzard, their market value has increased from $10 billion to over $60 since 2012.
This rapid growth for Activision is mostly the result of live games like Destiny 2 and Overwatch. They are one of the most played games and always bring you back with something new inside. Other assets have also played a role in this growth. Games including Candy Crush Saga, Bubble Witch Saga and more. According to DFC, Activision’s digital profits increased rapidly since taking over assets like these.
As for EA, it’s not a surprise to know that this growth is a result of their live service sports games. These sports games include FIFA games, Madden, NHL, and NBA. Ultimate Team in each of these games have also brought additional revenues. Ultimate Team can be found in FIFA, UFC, and Hockey.
Other live services from EA include EA Origin, Origin Access, Battlefield Premium Pass, Pogo, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Star Wars Battlefront and Sims 4.
DFC reports also reveal that EA generated $2 billion alone from its live service games in fiscal 2018. During the same time, EA’s digital revenue grew by 31% while physical sales dropped by 17%.
This proves that the games-as-a-service model is very profitable and it’s just the beginning.
Despite a lot of criticism since Star Wars Battlefront 2, EA seems stubborn to use microtransactions in their video games. Patrick Soderlund has defended the Ultimate Team mode by saying that it’s choice and an optional mode. You can simply don’t play it if you want as there’s a lot of other content in the game.
FIFA 19 is now finally available and it’s better than ever with new gameplay mechanics. The game also consists of the UEFA Champions League for the first time in any FIFA game. A glitch has also been found in the career mode which allows you to get £1 Billion Transfer Budget.


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Stop & Shop cleared its first hurdle Tuesday night when the town's inland wetlands and watercourse commission approved a proposal for a new grocery super store at the Copaco Shopping Center.
The supermarket chain now must gain approval from the town's plan and zoning commission. If the commission approves the plan next month, Stop & Shop would have two stores in town.
The proposal calls for relocating the Mountain Avenue Stop & Shop to the Copaco Shopping Center, said Dominick A. Musilli Jr., real estate manager for Stop & Shop.
The commission's approval Tuesday allows Stop & Shop to demolish about 92,000 square feet of the former Copaco meat-packing warehouse and the former Waldbaum supermarket so it can build a 68,000-square-foot store on 60 acres on Cottage Grove Road. A review determined that the proposal would not significantly affect wetlands on the site, commission members said.
During the discussion, commission members B.C. Berliner, Nicholas Panke, Alan Budkofsky and Laurianetta Huguley questioned how the store would handle its construction and demolition materials, especially because asbestos is present in the existing buildings and must be removed.
John D. Plante, an engineer for Langan Engineering & Environmental Services and James W. Dzuiba, of Marin Environmental Inc. of Haddam, said the company would create an asbestos removal plan prior to construction. The materials, in floor tiles and other areas of the buildings dating to the 1940s, would be placed in plastic containers, then removed.
Plante said that the shopping center would be improved. The plan includes planting more trees and about 30,000 square feet of lawn. It also calls for a special water treatment and drainage system to collect dirt and oil and other debris from the site.


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A shopper in Alabama who tripped and broke his hip while buying a watermelon at a Walmart has won a $7.5 million verdict against the retailer.
Henry Walker of Phenix City, Alabama was awarded the damages earlier this week after a jury trial. Walker had sued Walmart, saying his foot got trapped in a pallet beneath the watermelons as he reached for one at the Phenix City Walmart in June 2015.
Walker’s attorneys say Walmart should have covered the pallet so it couldn’t entangle a shopper’s foot. The retailer maintains the display was not dangerous, and any negligence was Walker’s fault. In fact, according to court records, Walmart says the same watermelon displays are still used today.
Walmart spokesman Randy Hargrove says “We are disappointed in the verdict. We appreciate the jury’s service, however we believe the damages awarded were excessive in light of the facts of this case.”
Walmart plans to appeal.


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Jayme Halbritter, AP, AP2006
With the rising costs of beef, family budgets are taking a hit, according to the Omaha World-Herald.
Beef costs have risen about $1 to $1.50 a pound since last summer, Jason Perry, first cutter at Russ Market's meat department, told the Omaha World-Herald.
Consumers are paying higher prices for beef as national and international trends are pushing prices up, according to the article. Hamburger and steak prices are significantly higher now than they were a year ago, and they expect prices to continue upward through the summer, grocers and meat retailers in the Omaha area told the Omaha World-Herald.
The number of cattle in the U.S. has been downsized to its smallest since 1952 due to recent droughts in the Southern Plains, according to the article. Higher costs of feed and fuel also contribute to the rising cost of beef.
"The take-home message from the consumer standpoint is don't expect any real decrease in prices anytime soon," Jeff Stolle, vice president of marketing for the Nebraska Cattlemen, told the Omaha World-Herald.
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For Your Tummy continued...
Evidence: Microbiologists agree that the potential benefits of probiotics are enormous, but as a group of experts reported at an international conference a little over a year ago, consumers usually have no way of knowing what they're getting in the new products. "There are many different strains of probiotics, but only a few have been studied and shown to have a distinct benefit," says Mary Ellen Sanders, Ph.D., executive director of the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics. "Also," she adds, "products are often labeled inadequately. They may not tell you the strain of probiotic or the levels present through the end of a product's shelf life."
Nonetheless, there's definite promise. Several studies have shown that Dannon's Activia speeds intestinal transit time — the hours it takes food to pass through your digestive system — which may help if you have a problem with constipation.
Companies also claim that probiotics boost immunity. In one study, people who ate DanActive had shorter-lasting colds. Other research, in Sweden, showed that a certain strain of bacteria cut the number of sick days that employees took. But that study, like most others with probiotics, was conducted with supplements, not with commercially available foods, which don't contain enough of the strain in question.
There is also strong evidence supporting claims that three strains of probiotics — Bifidobacterium lactis, Saccharomyces boulardii, and Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG — relieve or prevent diarrhea. But again, you won't find enough of these microbes in any supermarket foods; you'd need to buy probiotic supplements such as Florastor (which contains Saccharomyces boulardii ) or Culturelle (Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG) in a health food store.
Shopping advice: If your goal is to just get some potentially beneficial bacteria into your diet, use products that contain Bifidobacteria and Lactobacilli. But you can hedge your bets still further by choosing items that would be good for you even if they didn't tout probiotics. Kashi's Vive Probiotic cereal is high in fiber. The yogurt, smoothies, and kefir drinks from Dannon, Stonyfield Farm, and Lifeway all deliver calcium and protein. Stonyfield and Lifeway also include inulin, a naturally occurring fiber that boosts your body's absorption of calcium, report several studies.


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Microsoft Launcher has received the version 6.2.200706.89878 update that brings updates to the app icons as well as an improved app layout and more. The new update is now available on the Play Store.
Windows 10 version 20H2 is coming - here's what you need to know
windows 10 october 2020 update
Articles by Anmol Mehrotra Advanced search
Earlier this month Nvidia announced the RTX 3000 series lineup and days after the launch users are reporting mid-game crashes. It looks like these crashes might be due to the use of cheap capacitors.
Earlier this month, the Indian Government banned PUBG Mobile in the country. Just after the news, PUBG Corp. dropped Tencent Games but the move was not enough for the government to reverse the ban.
Microsoft has been working on Sleeping Tabs that will help save resources by putting inactive tabs to sleep. The company has now shared its preliminary findings showing the benefits of the feature.
WhatsApp is in final stages to release the linked devices feature that would allow users to use WhatsApp across multiple devices simultaneously without having internet connection on primary device.
Microsoft has found a fix for the 'Error code 6' crash on Edge that has been causing problems for the Mac users. The company has not releaved all the details but is expected to roll out a patch soon.
Microsoft is working on a feature for its web browser that will help save resources by putting inactive tabs to sleep. The feature is called 'Sleeping Tabs' and is available in Edge Canary.
Apple has finally announced the opening date of its online store in India. This will be the first time that Apple is directly providing products and services to customers in India.
Facebook-owned WhatsApp is working on a new privacy-focused feature that will further improve the app experience by allowing users to sign in to WhatsApp Web using their fingerprint.
Microsoft has introduced the support for password suggestions for Canary and Dev Insider channels. The feature suggests users strong and unique passwords when creating a new account online.
Microsoft has updated the Outlook app for Android and users. The new update improves the dual-screen experience for Galaxy Fold on Android. It also brings bug fixes and improvements for iOS users.
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The Indian government has announced a ban on 118 Chinese apps for harming sovereignty and privacy of the country's citizens. The list includes popular battle royale game PUBG and WeChat Work as well.
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Google Pay has seen tremendous success with the UPI platform in India. The company is now expanding its reach by adding support for NFC-based credit and debits card payments in India.
Apple is planning to open its first online store in India next month, according to Bloomberg. The company initially planned to open its first store last year but the plan was disrupted by coronavirus.
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With hackers hijacking webcams, users have started using webcam covers that slide over the camera. Apple, however, has warned against the use of camera covers as they can damage the MacBook screen.
Since the release of May 2020 Update Microsoft has been blocking devices from receiving the update. Now it looks like the company has blocked some PCs with OneDrive from receiving version 2004 update.
After months of speculation, Lenovo has revealed the launch date of the company's first gaming smartphone. The smartphone will be launched under the Legion brand and come with top-of-the-line specs.
Recently, WhatsApp announced the dark mode support for its web app. The company has now started rolling it out to the users. You can follow this guide to enable dark mode on WhatsApp for web.
Microsoft has taken legal action against scammers who are attacking users left vulnerable by COVID-19. These scammers are using BEC attacks to steal personal information to access Office 365 accounts.
GPU manufacturers recently added support for hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling. The feature is available on the Windows 10 May 2020 Update and you can follow this guide to enable it.
Microsoft has been working on adding new features to Teams to compete with similar apps. Now, the firm has announced that it will allow users to add up to 300 participants in a meeting.
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Microsoft Surface Go 2 owners are now receiving the June 2020 firmware update. The new update brings fixes and improvements to the pen performance when your palm is on the device and more.
With the Windows 10 May 2020 Update Microsoft released a new way to handle memory usage. The company used it to reduce memory usage on Edge and now Google is planning to do the same for Google Chrome.
Microsoft rolled out the May 2020 Update last month but users have been facing issues with the update. Now Microsoft has acknowledged a problem with Storage Spaces that is causing issues for users.
Microsoft has updated the To Do apps for both iOS and Windows 10 users. The new Windows 10 update adds support for tasks coming from Front-Line Worker (FLW) flow while the iOS app received bug fixes.
We recently reported that the Fresh start feature on version 2004 is broken. Now Microsoft has updated its support page to clarify that the feature was moved to a different location and is not broken.
Microsoft's new blog post talks about the impact of COVID-19 on education. To facilitate better remote learning, the company is working on new features including 7x7 grid and breakout rooms.
Microsoft rolled out the May 2020 Update last month but users have been facing issues after installing the update. Now, Microsoft may have broken authentication and is signing out users automatically.
Microsoft officially rolled out May 2020 Update last month. However, users have been facing issues after installing the update. Now it looks like Microsoft broke Fresh start with the latest update.
Microsoft Teams free users have received a new update that adds two new features to the app. The features should set Teams apart from the competition and are rolling out to all free Teams users.
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Most of the websites and video publishers on the web either serve ads or use paywalls. However, if you are frustrated by the experience then there is a simple trick to block ads or bypass paywalls.


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Aetna, one of the largest health care insurers in the United States, is facing profitability headwinds from participating in the Affordable Care Act exchanges and has hinted that it may exit more in 2018.
In August of last year, Aetna announced it would limit its participation in the Obamacare exchanges in 2017, scaling back offering coverage from 778 to 242 counties after the company cited losses of more than $430 million since January 2014. The insurer said it would continue participating in four states, Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska, and Virginia.
Aetna released its first-quarter results from 2017 and reported a net loss of $381 million and adjusted earnings of $939 million. The insurer noted profitability issues associated with the Affordable Care Act, even going so far as to set aside a fund to buffer the company from projected losses.
"This strong start to the year has enabled Aetna to absorb continued pressure from our individual commercial products while increasing investment in our growth initiatives and raising our full-year 2017 earnings per share projections," said Mark Bertolini, chairman and CEO of Aetna.
"During first-quarter 2017, Aetna recorded a $110 million premium deficiency reserve that reflects anticipated future losses for the 2017 coverage year in Aetna's individual commercial products," the company said.
On an earnings call, Shawn Guertin, Aetna's chief financial officer, noted that Obamacare profitability continued to face headwinds and that the company would attempt to reduce its exposure to this segment of business.
"With respect to our Individual Commercial products, we continue to face headwinds related to profitability," Guertin said. "From a membership perspective, we ended the quarter with 255,000 individual commercial members, down from 964,000 at year-end 2016."
"Looking beyond 2017, we continue to evaluate our footprint with a view towards significantly reducing our exposure to individual commercial products in 2018," he said. "We have already disclosed our planned 2018 exit from one of our 2017 state-based exchanges and intend to communicate other 2018 footprint decisions when appropriate."
Earlier this year, Aetna's CEO said Obamacare was in a "death spiral," citing higher premiums and an increasing number of healthier individuals dropping out.
Bertolini also called for a health care product that is more suited to individual needs and budgets. "Eighty-one percent of the American public hate their health insurance, they hate the health care system. We have too many uninsured, it's not affordable even for people making six figures."
"So it still has to be fixed, we still need to insure everybody," he said. "We still need to have a product that's affordable, more personalized, simpler to use, that people can buy like they buy everything else today."


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Nearly 10 luxury fashion brands have apologised to their Chinese consumers for listing Hong Kong as a separate country in the past week.
Around a dozen Chinese celebrities said they were cutting ties with labels they represented after their ‘erroneous messages’ had – in media’s words – insulted China.
The protests in Hong Kong are leading western brands to carry out self-censorship to appease the lucrative market, with many of them vowing to immediately correct their mistakes and help safeguard China’s sovereignty.
Versace’s brand ambassador, actress Yang Mi (left), said she would stop collaborating with the Italian fashion house after it listed Hong Kong as a separate country on its T-shirts (right)
Supermodel Liu Wen (left, seen in 2017) said ‘the integrity of Chinese sovereignty and territory shall not be violated at any time’ after Coach failed to list Hong Kong under China (right)
Which brands have apologised to China over Hong Kong?
Hong Kong has become a particularly sensitive subject for Beijing with the financial hub plunged into months of pro-democracy protests, and international brands have been caught in the crossfire.
The companies that have been involved so far include:
- Calvin Klein
The companies that have been involved so far include Italian labels Versace and Valentino, U.S. fashion brands Coach and Calvin Klein, French firm Givenchy, Austrian jewellery maker Swarovski, U.S. skincare company Fresh, Korean electronics giant Samsung and Japanese sportswear brand Asics.
Some of them marked Hong Kong as a separate entity on their products; others listed the semi-autonomous city apart from China on their websites.
In a strongly worded column, China’s state newspaper People’s Daily urged international companies to obey the Chinese law if they wish to do business in the country.
‘[If you] challenge the bottom line, you are not far away from a tragic ending,’ the paper warned.
The trend began on Sunday when Chinese actress Yang Mi said she would stop collaborating with Versace on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter.
Versace had been widely criticised on social media in China for identifying the Chinese-controlled territories of Hong Kong and Macau as countries in one T-shirt design.
In a statement issued by her studio, Ms Yang said she was ‘extremely infuriated’ by the matter.
‘The sovereignty and territorial integrity of my motherland are sacred and shall not be infringed upon,’ she said.
Ms Yang said she had been ‘extremely infuriated’ by Versace’s designs and decided to stop working for the brand. Donatella Versace, sister of the fashion house’s late founder Gianni, then wrote on Instagram: ‘Never have I wanted to disrespect China’s National Sovereignty’
Versace said on its Weibo account that it had made a mistake and as of July 24 had stopped selling and destroyed the T-shirts. ‘Versace reiterates that we love China deeply, and resolutely respect China’s territory and national sovereignty,’ the company said in a statement
The T-shirt, images of which were widely posted on Chinese social media, featured a list of ‘city-country’ pairs, including ‘New York-USA’ and ‘Beijing-China’. But it also described Hong Kong and Macau as ‘Hong Kong-Hong Kong and Macau-Macau’.
Versace said on its Weibo account that it had made a mistake and as of July 24 had stopped selling and destroyed the T-shirts.
‘Versace reiterates that we love China deeply, and resolutely respect China’s territory and national sovereignty,’ the company said in a statement.
Donatella Versace, sister of the fashion house’s late founder Gianni, issued a similar statement on her official Instagram account.
‘Never have I wanted to disrespect China’s National Sovereignty and this is why I wanted to personally apologize for such inaccuracy and for any distress that it might have caused,’ she said.
One day later, supermodel Liuwen said she was terminating her contract with Coach over the same reason.
Victoria’s Secret angel Liu Wen may have to face a colossal bill from fashion house Coach after announcing she was breaking off her contract with the U.S. company this week. The 31-year-old supermodel is seen at the Victoria Secret Fashion Show in 2017 (right) and 2018 (left)
Coach issued an apology, stressing that it ‘respects and supports China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity’. The company said it realised the significance of the matter ‘profoundly’
Chaos could cost Hong Kong, researchers warn
The protests could push Hong Kong into a recession, research firm Capital Economics said, and risked ‘an even worse outcome if a further escalation triggers capital flight’.
Hong Kong’s property market, one of the world’s most expensive, would be hit hard in that scenario, it added.
Financial Secretary Paul Chan unveiled a series of measures worth HK$19.1 billion ($2.44 billion) on Thursday to tackle economic headwinds, but he said it was not related to political pressure from the protests.
Business and citizens’ groups have posting full-page newspaper advertisements that denounce the violence and back Hong Kong’s government.
The Chinese Securities Association of Hong Kong said the city’s reputation would be seriously damaged if the unrest did not stop soon.
The head of Macau casino operator Galaxy Entertainment , Lui Che-woo, urged talks to restore harmony. The protests have affected the neighbouring Chinese territory of Macau, with some visitors avoiding the world’s biggest gambling hub amid transport disruptions and safety concerns.
The 31-year-old supermodel said ‘the integrity of Chinese sovereignty and territory is sacred and shall not be violated at any time’. She was appointed Coach’s China Ambassador less than three week ago.
Coach marked Beijing and Shanghai as Chinese cities but listed Hong Kong as a separate entity on some T-shirts in May last year.
Ms Liu wrote: ‘Because I didn’t choose the brand cautiously, [this] has hurt all of you. I am apologising to everyone here!
‘I love my motherland and resolutely safeguard the Chinese sovereignty.’
According to Chinese media, the supermodel may need to compensate Coach 160 million Yuan (£18 million) for breaking off the contract.
Coach said it immediately pulled the relevant designs off the shelves worldwide and carried out an overall inspection on all products to prevent the same mistakes from happening again.
‘Coach is dedicated to long-term development in China and respect the feelings of Chinese people. [We] sincerely accept the supervise and correction from customers,’ the brand added.
Jackson Yee, a hugely popular singer in boyband TFBoys, also pulled the plug on collaborating with Givenchy on Monday.
Then French brand expressed their regret instantly in a Weibo statement, saying ‘For any negligence and errors, we will surely correct immediately and learn a lesson from it’.
Jackson Yee (left), a hugely popular singer in boyband TFBoys, said he would terminate his contract with Givenchy on Monday over a listing about Hong Kong on the brand’s T-shirt (right)
Austrian jewellery company Swarovski lost the support of their brand ambassador, Chinese actress Jiang Shuying (pictured). Her agency said on Tuesday they ‘uphold the one China principle and believe that our national sovereignty and territory integrity cannot be violated’
Swarovski apologised on Tuesday for ‘hurting the feelings’ of Chinese people with its listings
On Tuesday, Austrian jewellery company Swarovski lost the support of their brand ambassador, Chinese actress Jiang Shuying.
Her agency said in a statement that they had sent a notice to Swarovski to terminate their cooperation as soon as possible.
We ‘uphold the one China principle and believe that our national sovereignty and territory integrity cannot be violated’, the agency said.
Swarovski apologised for ‘hurting the feelings’ of Chinese people after calling Hong Kong a separate country on its website.
Simultaneously, actor and singer Zhang Yixing broke off his contract with the world’s largest smartphone maker Samsung after the Korean company listed Hong Kong on its own on its global portal.
In a warning to other international firms, China’s state newspaper said in a column: ‘Doing business in China, [one] needs to obey the Chinese law, this is a matter of principle.
‘Faced with multinational corporations that don’t stick to the rule, we should not only condemn but also take some self-defence tools from our “tool box”.’
‘All of the companies that have damaged Chinese sovereignty should wake up. [If you] challenge the bottom line, you are not far away from a tragic ending,’ the paper warned.


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Coffee to Connect
On Wednesday, 1 April, AmCham EU CEO, Susan Danger was a guest speaker for AmCham Slovenia’s Coffee to Connect series. A discussion with AmCham Slovenia Executive Director, Ajša Vodnik covered the EU’s measures and response to the COVID-19 crisis, the reactions of Member States, and the impact on EU-US relations. Representatives of AmCham Slovenia’s member companies joined the call. You can watch the insightful discussion here.


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Ag News: China Fruit Tariffs
**The hits keep on coming for U.S. fruit exporters as China’s tariffs on U.S. apples, pears, cherries and other U.S. commodities increased an additional 10% yesterday.
According to agweb.com, the move is another insult to the mounting injury caused by the more than year-long trade fight between China and the U.S.
In response, the U.S. announced planned tariff increases on a variety of Chinese goods.
**The demand for fluid milk has been dropping for many years as consumers move toward other beverages that can offer convenience, better flavor, certain health characteristics and other demands.
Milkbusiness.com reports, a recent Rabobank study suggests fluid milk products that can differentiate themselves from regular, commodity milk are turning the demand curve upward.
In addition to more premium products, whole milk continues to be the only conventional milk category that is growing.
34% of milk produced in the U.S. ends up as fluid milk on grocery shelves.
**If you’re planning to grow hemp for fiber, flower, or seeds, crop insurance is now available, according to the USDA.
Agriculture.com reports, certain industrial hemp growers will be able to obtain insurance coverage under the Whole-Farm Revenue Protection program for crop year 2020.
USDA’s Risk Management Agency announced the coverage will be available to producers who are in areas covered by USDA-approved hemp plans or who are part of approved state or university research pilot programs.


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Barcelona, February 27th, 2019
As the largest gathering in the world devoted to the mobile industry, the Mobile World Congress brings together more than 2400 exhibitors and over 400 mobile operators.
Transatel is once again on site this year, from February 25 to 27, to collectively build the future of the telecom and IoT sectors. Most players’ major concern today is the deployment of 5G, though 4G is not yet used to its full potential.
According to Jacques Bonifay, Transatel CEO and President of MVNO Europe, “the telco market is fully focused and involved in discussions on 5G, when we’re still far from using 4G to its maximum potential.
The connected car, for instance, requires coverage in rural areas. 4G is only just starting to address this need. It will take another 5 to 10 years to have decent 5G coverage in rural areas, considering the investments this represents.
Let’s remember that most IoT applications still only require a few MB a month… Most IoT applications are still so far from using 4G capacities!
If there is no doubt that, on the long term, 5G will bring huge value to the world, it’s also clear that the sense of urgency imposed by politicians and 5G telecom vendors isn’t in any way justified…”
Transatel, Europe’s leading European MVNO enabler and serious challenger in the IoT, has entered exclusive negotiations with NTT Communications for a majority stake in Transatel. The 19-year-old company has secured deals with some of the biggest names in automotive (Jaguar Land Rover, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles), consumer electronics (Microsoft Surface, ASUS, Acer, Vaio), and the industry (Airbus, Worldline). These companies today rely on Transatel’s eSIM-capable, secure, cellular solution for global connectivity, for their connected car, connected objects and embedded connectivity projects.
As the leading European MVNE/A (Mobile Virtual Network Enabler/Aggregator), Transatel has, since its inception in 2000, launched over 170 MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) and built a strong expertise in Machine-to-Machine connectivity, before entering the Internet of Things arena in 2014. Today, the company offers an unparalleled cellular solution for global, multi-local data connectivity with eSIM capabilities for the IoT, addressing the connected car, connected objects, and embedded connectivity markets.
Download PDF : English
|PRESS CONTACT FOR TRANSATEL|
+33 (0)1 44 18 65 58
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California lawmakers are considering a package of economic incentives and environmental regulatory waivers to convince Tesla Motors to build a new electric car battery plant in the state.
Democratic and Republican legislative leaders are participating in the talks with Tesla along with Governor Jerry Brown’s office.
Republican Senator Ted Gaines says environmental review timelines could be shortened to help an environmentally friendly company expand in the state.
“This is an opportunity for green jobs that the environmental community ought to be very excited about. It’s an opportunity for job creation, which I’m very excited about," says Gaines.
Some environmentalists oppose the proposal to allow Tesla to start building without a California Environmental Quality Act study.
Kathryn Phillips with the California Sierra Club says trying to fix problems as they arise can create new problems.
“That’s why you have CEQA review," says Phillips.You have the document that analyzes all the environmental impacts. That’s why you try to get that done all up front.”
But Gaines says the incentives would only expedite the process.
"We’re not talking about eliminating it," he says. "We’re just talking about speeding it up so that the project can move forward.”
The Governor’s office has also reportedly offered Tesla $500 million in tax relief to build the battery plant in California.
Follow us for more stories like this
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The Stars Group, the company behind the most popular online poker room, PokerStars has made a switch from BetStars sportsbooks brand to PokerStars Sports. This move was made as a part of the previously announced plan to boost its PokerStars brand.
The change has occurred around April 23st on a global level, and both local and international websites are now redirecting users from BetStars to PokerStars domains.
The switch to the PokerStar Sports is a part of The Stars Group strategy that includes bringing several key gambling products such as online poker, sports betting and online casino, under the PokerStars brand.
News about the rebranding of BetStars brand emerged last summer when CEO Rafi Ashkenazi announced their main goal will be to promote two master brands: “One is the PokerStars brand and the other one would be the Sky Bet. So, in markets where we operate PokerStars and we don’t have great brand equity in Sky Bet, we are likely to move away from BetStars and start promoting PokerStars Sports.”
Ashkenazi also noted how this approach will help them get “more marketing efficiencies” in the markets where its master brands are present.


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New regulations set to come into force this year should make the process of making online payments safer by stemming the chances of fraud taking place.
So, what is this new system?
Enter, Confirmation of Payment
The Confirmation of Payee system will mean that anyone making a payment online will be alerted if the name used does not match the account. The aim of Confirmation of Payee system is to cut down on authorised push payment (APP) scams, where victims are tricked into sending money to another account.
Regulators want it to come into play as soon as possible to stop systematic online banking fraud, suggesting a date of July 2019. However, regulators UK Finance says the system would not be ready until “some time next year”.
What does online banking look like right now?
The Confirmation of Payee system should stem the rate of fraudulent online transactions that take place across the UK.
Regulators are keen to introduce the system and rectify the low-security measures currently in place when online payments are made.
Currently, anyone making a payment online adds the recipient’s name manually, but this is ignored by the bank. Only the account number and sort code need to match for the bank to approve the transaction and for the payment to be successful. This loose system has allowed fraudsters to pose as the recipients and trick victims into paying them money.
“The aim of Confirmation of Payee is to cut down on so-called authorised push payment (APP) scams, in which people are conned into sending money to another account.” BBC News
How will Confirmation of Payment work?
When setting up a new payment, or amending an existing one, banks will have the ability to check the name on the account of the person or organisation the customer is paying. Here’s the breakdown:
The 3 steps the new system will take to counter”fraud online
1. If you use the correct account name, you will receive confirmation that the details match, so you can proceed with the payment
2. If you use a similar name to the account holder, you will be provided with the actual name of the account holder to cross-reference it. You can then contact the intended recipient to check the details
3. If you enter the wrong name for the account holder, you will be told the details do not match and advised to contact the person or organisation you are trying to pay
Why APP scams are serious: The Bank cannot recover the monies stolen
Banks are not obliged to give customers a full refund of money that’s lost through APP scams. This is why it’s so important that measures are introduced that stops these fraudulent activities taking place, as there isn’t?much banks can do to help customers once it has.
“One APP victim was Angelene Bungay, of Shrewsbury, who was duped into paying £13,000 to someone posing as the builder carrying out her loft conversion. She was not refunded by her bank. Banks typically refund only about a fifth of the money that goes missing, pointing to legislation that says customers may be liable if they authorise the payment and are negligent.” BBC News
So, SMEs and individuals, keep your eyes peeled for the Confirmation of Payment D-Day, whenever it comes…


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HonourTech to Re-Enter Indian Smartphone Market Under Honor Brand
HonorTech plans to relaunch the Honor brand of smartphones in the country in September, with an initial investment of Rs 1,000 crore, according to a senior company official. HonorTech will work in India under a licensing agreement with Honor, a Chinese smart device company.
HonorTech CEO Madhav Sheth told PTI that the company's goal is to gain a 4-5 percent market share in terms of volume by the end of next year, resulting in a revenue of Rs 10,000 crore.
"The government is considering the idea of Indians owning and managing the company's business and authority."
"HonorTech is a completely Indian entity. We are going to work under a licensing deal with Honor where they will license us and we will do everything from sales to manufacturing in India. No royalty will go to Honor," Sheth said.
Huawei launched and owned the Honour brand before selling it to another Chinese firm, Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology, in November 2020.
HonorTech is his own joint venture with PSAV Global, which is owned by entrepreneur C P Khandelwal.
"Honor's 70% manufacturing is completely automated, and 40% of their machinery is entirely manufactured by them." In India, we must meet comparable standards. "Under the terms of the agreement, Honour will assist us with product know-how, entire supply chain management, technology transfers, and software transfers at a fixed cost," Sheth explained.


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OXFORD, England, March 29 (Reuters) – Portugal’s largest utility, EDP (EDP.LS), said a compromise by the European Commission to allow the sale of cars running on e-fuels after 2035 would not impact the company’s target to roll out electric vehicle (EV) charging stations.
European Union countries’ energy ministers on Tuesday gave approval to the bloc’s law to end sales of new CO2-emitting cars in 2035, after Germany won an exemption for cars running on e-fuels.
The policy had been expected to make it impossible to sell combustion engine cars in the EU from 2035. The exemption won by Germany offers the potential for continued sales of traditional vehicles – although e-fuels are not yet produced at scale.
EDP CEO Miguel Stillwell D’Andrade said he didn’t think the compromise would have a significant impact on the growth of sales of EVs in Europe and would not impact the company’s current plans to increase its EV charging sites.
“It was a compromise, but there is certainly still a lot of space for electric vehicles,” he said on the sidelines of the Aurora conference in Oxford, southern England.
“Primarily there is still a large deficit in terms of infrastructure and that will need to be built out over the next few years,” he said.
EDP has over 3,500 charging points in operation or development on the Iberian peninsula and aims to deliver more than 7,000 by 2026.


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Among the unanswered questions at Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional hearings this week, the CEO was a bit stumped when asked if he would be willing to change Facebook’s business model in order to protect users’ privacy. Facebook’s data collection has received a lot of attention from a security perspective, but a new report illustrates why we should be just as concerned about how it uses that data to influence our behavior.
The Intercept has obtained what it claims is a recent document that describes a new service being offered to Facebook’s advertising clients. Going beyond micro-targeting ads based on what it knows about your past and present, the social media company is now reportedly offering to use its artificial intelligence to predict what you will do in the future—and giving clients the opportunity to intervene through a barrage of influence. From the report:
One slide in the document touts Facebook’s ability to “predict future behavior,” allowing companies to target people on the basis of decisions they haven’t even made yet. This would, potentially, give third parties the opportunity to alter a consumer’s anticipated course. Here, Facebook explains how it can comb through its entire user base of over 2 billion individuals and produce millions of people who are “at risk” of jumping ship from one brand to a competitor. These individuals could then be targeted aggressively with advertising that could pre-empt and change their decision entirely — something Facebook calls “improved marketing efficiency.” This isn’t Facebook showing you Chevy ads because you’ve been reading about Ford all week — old hat in the online marketing world — rather Facebook using facts of your life to predict that in the near future, you’re going to get sick of your car. Facebook’s name for this service: “loyalty prediction.”
Facebook is reportedly using its FBLearner Flow technology to drive this new initiative. The tool was first introduced in 2016 as Facebook’s next step in machine learning and in since then it’s been discussed as a way to improve people’s experience on the platform rather than a way to improve marketing. Any time Zuckerberg was asked for a solution to a tough problem by a member of Congress this week, his response was some variation on “better AI will solve it.” Well, the company calls FBLearner Flow the “backbone” of its AI initiative and it introduces plenty of problems of its own.
For years, advertising has relied on a few core principles and a handful of tools. There are essentially two kinds of businesses: those that recognize a problem and offer a solution, and those that have a solution and want to introduce a problem that people didn’t really have before. Advertising is useful for both, but it’s essential for the latter. It’s well-understood that ad execs prey on people’s insecurities and concoct unnecessary desires to shape their behavior. And for a long time, that business was conducted through gut feelings, limited market research, and a little dash of Freud. The era of Big Data changes that.
Someone might lie or withhold the truth from a marketing survey, but they spill their guts inside their private “place for friends.” Online users betray their true instincts as they travel around the web tracked by cookies and walk around the real world bugged by the GPS in their phones. Now we have facial recognition, ubiquitous cameras, microphones, and fingerprint scanners to worry about. Even so, the billions of data points about billions of people couldn’t be effectively parsed by humans, so we have machines go through it, categorize it and analyze it.
If you keep up with the marketing or tech business, you probably think you understand that. Check out tech Twitter to see people smugly explaining that we’ve known everything bad about Facebook since forever. But just because knowledge is around doesn’t mean that everyone understands it, or has received it, or has been convinced to accept it as true. The Intercept is detailing further developments about a tool that would, of course, be used for marketing purposes but has barely been discussed in that light.
It’s worth hammering home just how consequential it is that an algorithm is slowly being trained to be extremely good at making behavioral predictions, extremely good at monitoring how those predictions play out, and extremely good at adjusting based on its failures and successes. When that same system is trained to modify your behavior through advertising, it’s going to learn how to do it well. It’s equally troubling that Facebook will have a monetary incentive to make its predictions come true. Frank Pasquale, a scholar at Yale’s Information Society Project, pointed out to The Intercept that it’s entirely possible that AI predictions will become “self-fulfilling prophecies.”
Say that Facebook tells a client that its system predicts 10,000 people will stop buying name-brand detergent this year. It goes to all of the name-brand detergent advertisers, tells them its prediction, and they all decide not to run Facebook ads. Over the course of a year, Facebook has an incentive to make that prediction come true by tilting what you see in a way that might persuade you not to buy name-brand detergent. Pasquale notes that this is akin to a machine learning “protection racket.”
One of the common lines of questioning that Zuckerberg received from Congress this week was whether or not it provides all of the data it possesses on a user through its “downloading your info” tool. Zuckerberg was evasive and took advantage of his inquisitors’ lack of technical knowledge—always saying that’s his “understanding” or hedging with “your” data. He was asked directly: “If I download my Facebook information, is there other information accessible to you within Facebook that I wouldn’t see on that document, such as browsing history or other inferences that Facebook has drawn from users for advertising purposes?” His response was “Congressman, I believe that all of your information is in that—that file.” He can get away with that answer because Facebook doesn’t consider its inferences regarding your data as belonging to you. It would be crazy interesting to find out what Facebook thinks we’re going to do in the future, but that would ruin the whole gambit because you’d have it in the back of your mind when making those decisions.
By its own admission, Facebook is unable to adequately address many of the negative consequences of its scale. “The reality of a lot of this is that when you are building something like Facebook that is unprecedented in the world, there are going to be things that you mess up,” Zuckerberg told reporters in a conference call last week. Things it has “messed up” include aiding foreign actors in a propaganda campaign to interfere in the 2016 US election and being a conduit for ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. If you follow the news, you know that there many, many more examples. It’s not hard to imagine things going terribly wrong when Facebook fulfills its dream of deploying its own mini-version of the internet in regions of the world that don’t have it, and then proceeds to nudge people in whatever direction the highest bidder demands.
Facebook did not respond to The Intercept’s questions regarding whether or not these predictive behavior tools are currently offered to clients working on political campaigns or healthcare. We’ve also requested an answer to that question and will update this post if and when we receive a reply.
But Facebook isn’t the only company to worry about, everyone is working on machine learning in one way or another. For now, AI systems will be clumsy, but likely superior to old-fashioned market research. When machine learning really comes into its own, it could hold tremendous power over our dumb monkey brains. It will be like the difference between a musket and a rocket launcher. We should really consider whether we to continue in this direction, largely oblivious thanks to corporate secrecy.
Update: Facebook provided this almost completely unrelated response to our inquiry: “Facebook, just like many other ad platforms, uses machine learning to show the right ad to the right person. We don’t claim to know what people think or feel, nor do we share an individual’s personal information with advertisers.”


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The World Wide Web has come a long way since the early days of dodgy dial-up connections and rudimentary search engines. It was a point that Brenda Salinas, a Google executive, was at pains to make when she offered a demonstration of The Washington Post’s impossibly archaic website as it had looked at its inception in 1996.
Speaking at the World Media Group Briefing on ‘The Impact of Voice & Sound’ (London, March 2019), Salinas – who works on news partnerships for Google – emphasised that the industry is at a similarly embryonic stage of development when it comes to audio and voice.
“As far as the audio internet, this is where we are: we are in 1996. It is a very nascent technology and we think it has a bunch of potential, but there are a lot of unanswered questions. Even the most creative among us are still not sure which way this is going to go,” said Salinas.
Whether it be voice-activated devices powered by machine learning AI or journalistic podcasts, marketers are increasingly excited by the potential to establish a sonic connection with consumers. As event chair Clancy Childs, chief product and technology officer at Dow Jones Professional Information, commented, the “amount of audio-friendly content is multiplying minute by minute”.


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Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. Follow along with the Startup Roundup’s dedicated RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.
After it was announced that Invite Media was acquired by Google, there’s certainly been some reverberations. Forbes caught up with Google VP of Product Management Neal Mohan about the deal. GigaOM notes that the Invite buy raises a conflict of interest since Invite CEO Nat Turner said in February that a demand-side platform must “remain neutral and have zero allegiances to any publishers, exchanges, data providers or other vendors.” Thing is, there’s Google’s pesky DoubleClick ad network right down the block. Indeed there are other concerned parties as well. Consumer Watchdog and the Center for Digital Democracy have both asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate privacy and antitrust issues, MediaPost reports.
MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME
NearVerse‘s mobile proximity-based social networking app LoKast, which lets users share media, is reducing network strain per user by 2 percent per month. It’s an obvious play to get interest from carriers, but we’ll be watching this one closely.
Philadelphia Business Journal reports that new virtual workplace software developer VCopious has inked a deal with SAP AG to provide a virtual platform for its online Sapphire Now conference.
Proton Media has partnered with IBM Business Services, according to a company blog post. The companies will work together to create virtual biz environments for life sciences companies.
We must be fortune-tellers. myYearbook has released its iPhone app, which gives users the ability to add real-time, location-based updates to the company’s Twitter-like Stream service. Kids sharing their location seems a little shaky, but we’ll assume security is a top priority for the high school network. But back to fortune-telling: How’d we know? Oh yes, the company sought an iPhone developer a few weeks back. Duh.
Exton’s Scala, makers of digital signage, announced that it will show-off its new e2Campus messaging system, designed for college campuses looking for new ways to deliver emergency information.
GIVE A GLANCE
Web studio P’unk Ave has announced that its open-source content management system Apostrophe is now delivering a blog plugin that seamlessly provides publishers with a blogging platform that can be retrofitted to multiple content layouts within a single site.
Jersey-based call-unmasker TrapCall is now accepting PayPal, the company reports. Hrm, seems like it coulda been a great match for those two mobile payment platforms based in Philly.
Social media tracker ListenLogic founder Vincent Schiavone gets the video treatment at Social Media Explorer.
Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here.


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Tuesday, blockchain technology company Currency.com launched Currency.com is one of the world’s first tokenized securities trading platforms according to a company press release. The announcement demonstrates that the line between cryptocurrencies and traditional investment platforms continues to blur.
100 most influential people in Crypto.
Japan’s SBI Holdings Subsidiary Backs Mobile Crypto Wallet BRD Developer Breadwinner AG
Bansky in Tokyo!!


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Wednesday, June 19 2013 6:51 PM EDT2013-06-19 22:51:07 GMT
Ravi Mikel Givens was arrested Tuesday and charged with possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. He is being held in the Dougherty County jail. Givens, who played ball at Westover and StetsonMore >>
Agents say that police responded to the apartment because of a burglar alarm. Officers found the back door broken open and went inside. That's where they detected a strong odor of marijuana, and saw pot in plain view.More >>
Wednesday, June 19 2013 6:49 PM EDT2013-06-19 22:49:38 GMT
Moultrie Technical College unveiled its new $9.5 million, 46,000 square-foot Health Sciences Building Wednesday. The brand new structure is located at the school's Veterans Parkway Campus (VPC) in Moultrie. RepresentativesMore >>
Moultrie Technical College unveiled its new $9.5 million, 46,000 square-foot Health Sciences Building Wednesday. The brand new structure is located at the school's Veterans Parkway Campus in Moultrie.More >>
Wednesday, June 19 2013 6:46 PM EDT2013-06-19 22:46:04 GMT
Albany Humane Society officials say it's one of the worst cases of animal neglect they have seen. Tonight a veterinarian and Humane Society workers are trying to nurse a one-year old lab mix back toMore >>
Albany Humane Society officials and a veterinarian are nursing a dog back to health, after she was nearly starved to death.More >>
Wednesday, June 19 2013 6:45 PM EDT2013-06-19 22:45:45 GMT
Work is underway on a big empty retail space in Albany to bring in a new business and a spirit of celebration. Party City will open a store at 2709 Dawson Road, near the Albany Mall this August. EconomicMore >>
Work is underway on a big empty retail space in Albany to bring in a new business and a spirit of celebration.More >>
Wednesday, June 19 2013 6:41 PM EDT2013-06-19 22:41:48 GMT
An Albany prosthetist is coming to the rescue to help a Moultrie man who lost his arm to rare flesh eating bacteria. We introduced you to Michael Hobgood last night. His arm was amputated less than twoMore >>
An Albany prosthetist is coming to the rescue to help a Moultrie man who lost his arm to rare flesh eating bacteria.More >>
ALBANY, GA (WALB) –South Georgia isn't exactly Napa Valley but there is a successful family-run vineyard and winery here.
Despite the down economy Still Pond Winery in Arlington is growing.
Somewhere in between rows of cotton, corn and peanuts you'll find Still Pond Winery and Vineyard.
They're located in Arlington, It's family owned and has been a popular choice for wine enthusiasts for years. "We are way out in the country, so they have to make an effort to come see us," said owner Charles Cowart.
But due to high gas prices, not as many people are making the effort. "More disposable income is going towards gasoline than before," he said.
Friday and Saturday used to be the most popular days for people to stop by the vineyard, but that's recently changed."Now we are seeing more people during the week, they are in the area or passing by," he said.
But it's not hurting their sales, in fact they've seen an increase."We started out in south Georgia and we are slowly creeping North," he said.
Now, it's hard to find a store in Georgia that doesn't carry the wine. In 2010, sales were up by 15 percent from 2009.
Right now their largest sales area is from Macon...south.
Tommy Mc's country store is one of the stores that carries the wine. We've been selling their wine since the beginning and its been popular and getting more popular," he said.
He gets a shipment of still pond wine every week. "The grapes are locally grown and people are interested in that," he said.
But sales in the north Georgia area are catching up,"We've increased sales in the Atlanta area by 50 percent since last year.
They hope to continue to grow and give more people a chance to enjoy their south Georgia products.
They often hold events out at the vineyard, the next one will be the first weekend of April. It's called the "Bud Break Bash" and it doesn't cost a thing, and you can listen to music, sample wines and even have a petting zoo and pony ride for the little ones.
As far as Sunday sales, the owner says he can see the benefit. He thinks it will really help out the metropolitan areas.


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US Airborne WW2 (1:35)
Minisoldiers resulpted their old 1/35 scale figure. The company now offers the improved miniature of US Airborne WW2.
Soviet Sniper (1:35)
Minisoldiers announced their new 1/35 scale figure for September 2016.
US Paratroopers (1:35)
After a lot of releases that dealt with American Civil War, Minisoldiers finally anounced a set that should make fans of WWII figures really happy.
Minisoldiers is expanding their range of Pacific Theater of Operations figures in 1/35 scale.
USMC Pacific Set WIP (1:35)
Minisoldiers so far released two sets of 1/35 scale USMC figures depicting close combat with Japanese. Now it is the time for the third set...
Union Standard Bearer (1:35)
Minisoldiers are expanding their line of ACW figures in 1/35 scale.
Soviet Cossack on Horse (1:35)
It has been a while since Minisoldiers released their last figure. Now they are back with an impressive 1/35 scale piece.
US Paratrooper WWII (1:35)
Anar from Minisoldiers informed us about their newest release.
Although a bit different than the usual figure news published on the site, this American Civil War range of figures from Minisoldiers is sculpted in 1/35 scale and we are covering them on Armorama.
It seems the American Civil War theme is working well for Minisoldiers... they have released a third figure in 1/35 scale in this series.
June News from Minisoldiers (1:35)
Minisoldiers released a new kit for June 2012:
Minisoldiers Cossacks (1:35)
Minisoldiers doesn’t get mentioned here too often but they do have a nice selection of 1/35th scale figures, in this news report we take a look at a new Cossack figure that they have released which has the ability to add a little colour to all that green, grey, black, and brown.
Minisoldiers are expanding their range of cossack figures. This time it is:
Minisoldiers are expanding their line of Desert Storm figures. This time it is:
Minisoldiers just informed us on their new release... something a bit different for the 1/35 scale: American Civil War!
Minisoldiers announced another figure in their 1/35 scale portfolio:
Minisoldiers announced a new figure, something interesting for all the Cossack fans:
Minisoldiers has announced two new figures into their range of 1/35th scale resin figures and this pair will appeal to fans of the Pacific theatre of War.
Minisoldiers the resin figure manufacturer has not been covered on Armorama that often but this new figure struck me as being a fairly unique offering and may meet the needs of members here. This new product represents a member of an L.A. SWAT team but I see no reason why it could not be used in a swat team for any of the US police teams and may be some other countries as well.
Minisoldiers announced a new figure, something out of their usual WW2 portfolio:
Minisoldiers has announced a new 1/35th scale resin figure of an American World War Two US Airborne soldier. Take a look inside for more details.
Minisoldiers announced a new figure in their 1/35 scale portfolio:
Minisoldiers announced their final release for 2011:
Anar Aytaliev from Minisoldiers announced their new release:
We already had a sneak peek news of this figure from Minisoldiers, and now it is ready to hit the market.
Minisoldiers released a new figure:
Our colleagues at Historicus Forma have been covering the 1/35th scale figure manufacturer, MiniSoldiers, for a while. Unfortunately, Armorama hasn't coverd the company yet. As the quality and breadth of the company's products is such, this needs rectification. So, in this News Report, we are featuring a very interesting company indeed - MiniSoldiers.
Minisoldiers announced a new release in 1/35 scale:
Anar Aytaliev from Miniasoldiers announced a new release in 1/35 scale:
Anar Aitaliyev from Minisoldiers shares a sneak preview of their upcoming release in 1/35 scale with KitMaker readers:
Anar Aytaliev from Minisoldiers announced a new figure in their 1/35 scale resin range of figures... another very welcomed addition for Allied figure modelers:
Anar Aitaliev announced his new figure under Minisoldiers label:
Anar Aytaliev informed us on two new figure releases from Minisoldiers:
Minisoldiers have released their second Desert Storm figure:


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Leaked from today's 404 episode:
- Square launches mobile payment service at 7,000 Starbucks stores.
- Razer Naga gaming mouse requires always-on Internet connection; license agreement says they can use this to spy on you.
- Four African teenagers invent a urine-powered generator.
Mobile payment processor Square will launch its service at 7,000 Starbucks coffeehouses tomorrow.
In addition to processing credit and debit card transactions, Square's agreement with Starbucks allows customers to make purchases at the coffee shops with Square Wallet, Square's payer app. The launch comes three months after the two companies announced an extensive partnership, in which the coffee giant also announced a $25 million investment in the payment startup.
Square Wallet links directly to customers' credit or debit card accounts, allowing users to tap "pay here" or scan a QR code to pay for purchases … Read more
At Square, the white-hot mobile payments company, someone must take notes during any meeting involving more than two people, and then distribute them to the whole company. Yet despite that process, instituted by co-founder Jack Dorsey, the company is airtight, with few leaks, especially involving key news.
In a new Forbes profile of Dorsey -- who also co-founded Twitter -- we learn that despite this "astonishing" system, even the most sensitive news has remained safe inside the startup's posh San Francisco digs.
It doesn't matter what the meeting is about: bug fixes, new partnerships, pending contracts, … Read more
Yesterday, Starbucks updated its iPhone app with iOS 6 compatibility, including the much anticipated Passbook integration. Adding your card to Passbook is easy, and takes just a few minutes. You're now just a few short steps away from adding a Starbucks card to your Passbook.
Assuming you already have the Starbucks app installed on your iPhone, make sure you've downloaded the update from the App Store.
The first time you launch the updated app on your iOS 6 device, you'll immediately be asked if you want to add your card to Passbook. Tap on OK.
If … Read more
The coffeehouse giant today said that customers will be able to use Square's mobile payment system in about 7,000 U.S. stores starting in early November. Customers will also be able to digitally tip their baristas using Square and Starbucks' existing mobile payment app beginning next summer.
The two companies in August formed an extensive partnership, as part of which Starbucks invested $25 million in the mobile payments company. Under the deal, Square agreed to process credit and debit … Read more
iOS 6 users who want to grab a cup of coffee at Starbucks can now pay for it through their iPhones.
Launched yesterday, the latest update to the Starbucks iOS app stirs in support for Apple's Passbook.
Starbucks Card owners can add their accounts to Passbook directly through the app. Once that's done, customers can pay for food and beverages, check their card balances, reload the card with more cash, and add rewards to score free drinks, all through the iPhone.
Starbucks says it will be integrated with Apple's Passbook by the end of the month.
The company announced the news on Twitter this morning, providing no further information about features or carryover for current Starbucks card holders.
A Starbucks spokesperson told CNET that an update to the company's iPhone app will let current Starbucks Card owners add their account to Passbook.
Passbook, which went out as part of iOS 6 earlier this week, is a new application from Apple designed to store membership cards, tickets, coupons, and boarding passes -- a bit like a digital wallet. As an … Read more
Apple is using Samsung's own words against it in their high-stakes patent-infringement trial.
Apple pointed to an internal Samsung document highlighting the weaknesses of the Galaxy S1 compared with the iPhone as further evidence that Samsung has copied its work. The document, a "relative evaluation report" on the Galaxy S1 and iPhone published in March 2010 and unearthed by Apple, highlights where Samsung's flagship phone fell short of the iPhone.
Apple will draw on this document as proof that Samsung actively compared its products against the iPhone, and made strides to better mimic the blockbuster device. … Read more
Jack Dorsey, the 35-year-old tech star who runs mobile payment company Square, today announced what he called an "epic" deal with Starbucks that could bring the "Pay with Square" app into the mainstream.
How big? It's too soon to say for sure, of course. But a firm that researches private companies, PrivCo, calculates that Square's deal with Starbucks will add $120 million in annual revenue for Square next year and, even more impressive, boost its valuation by $2.2 billion by the end of 2013. That would give Square -- already one of the most highly valued private tech companies … Read more


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After suffering a large data breach announced on May 20, Chicago based food delivery and meal kit service Home Chef has conceded that over 8 million user records were sold on a dark web marketplace in an incident that was likely orchestrated by hacking group Shiny Hunters.
According to a digital investigation by Bleeping Computer, the group was selling the user records of eleven companies over a dark web marketplace for between $500 and $2,500 per database. Meal kit service Home Chef was one of the companies on the list, with its stolen database allegedly containing 8 million individual user records.
How the delivery and meal kit service Home Chef became a target
The first suspicions that something had gone wrong arose on May 7, when researchers from the security firm ZeroFOX noticed a dark web listing advertising 8 million customer records stolen from the meal kit service, as well as records from other companies.
The records—which ZeroFOX said at the time contained emails, passwords, encrypted passwords, IP addresses, phone numbers and the last four digits of some Social Security numbers—were reportedly up for sale for $2,500.
The investigation was quickly picked up by journalists at Bleeping Computer, who emailed the findings of their investigation to Home Chef. Two weeks later, the meal kit service officially acknowledged that a data breach had indeed taken place, publishing a statement and answering questions on their website.
“We recently learned of a data security incident impacting select customer information, including names and emails, as well as limited customer account information and encrypted passwords,” the meal kit service conceded in a statement. “We are taking action to investigate this situation and to strengthen our information security defenses to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.”
According to an official Home Chef FAQ written up in light of data security concerns, the meal kit service acknowledges that among the stolen data points were email addresses, names, phone numbers, encrypted passwords, the last four digits of credit card numbers, and other account information that was accessed by Shiny Hunters.
What we know about Shiny Hunters
The Shiny Hunters hacking group was allegedly responsible for compromising all eleven companies on the dark web list, which resulted in more than 73.2 million user records being accessed globally in total.
According to security news network Cyberscoop, Shiny Hunters has a long record of so-called “data brokering”. According to reports, it is the same group that had tried selling 91 million customer records from e-commerce platform Tokopedia, photo-printing service Chatbooks, and many other organizations.
The group remains elusive, and very little definitive information is out there explaining its origin. Shiny Hunters appears to make its business by selling stolen data on the dark web, in precisely the same way as it had done to meal kit service Home Chef.
According to a person claiming to be a member of Shiny Hunters, who spoke to Wired, the process of hijacking sensitive information from companies is “not too hard”.
“It’s just a way to make money, but if companies are afraid and want their database taken off the market, they can contact me for an agreement, it has been done recently and both sides were satisfied,” the alleged Shiny Hunters member explained over instant message.
What to remember—for employees and employers
Evidence is increasingly showing that malware and data breaches are on the rise across the world. More and more, falling victim to hacking is becoming yet another threat with which businessowners must contend in an ever-changing risk landscape.
However, there are simple steps that workers and leaders alike can take to mitigate the risk of Home Chef-style cyber extortion from occurring.
According to Vinay Sridhara, the CTO of cybersecurity risk firm Balbix, the first risk exposure factor that place Home Chef vulnerable position was the rapid extension of its delivery and meal kit service to meet the demand brought about by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“Companies are increasingly shifting their business models online, especially now due to new remote work policies amid the coronavirus crisis,” explains Sridhara. “Food delivery services such as Home Chef are currently in great demand and for customers to use these services, they must first create accounts with email addresses and passwords as well as other personal and financial data.”
Sridhara goes on to point out that compromised credentials lie at the heart of many vulnerabilities, and that employees themselves have an important role to play in securing their own data and, by extension, the data of their company.
“Home Chef must ensure that the account data it collects and manages on millions of users is properly protected,” continues Sridhara. “Compromised credentials still account for over 80% of hacking-related data breaches, making credential theft a worthy target for sophisticated hackers like Shiny Hunters.”
He adds that, considering that around 99% of employees reuse passwords across an average of 2.7 work and personal accounts, “it is highly likely that this breach compromised many more millions of accounts beyond the Home Chef accounts alone.”
In this way, cyberattacks of this kind serve as a “rude awakening” for companies, and speak to the importance of incorporating methods such as multifactor authentication into computer networks.
“For Home Chef, this breach should serve as a rude awakening to ensure a strong security posture is met, including implementation of an effective multifactor authentication strategy for access to all customer data,” concluded Sridhara. “For consumers and enterprises, this is a similar wake-up call to leverage multifactor authentication whenever possible, and to stop reusing passwords across sites.”


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As we all are waiting, Indeed. BlackBerry is expected to announce a new smartphone, the DTEK60, although news broke a few days ago that the company would stop manufacturing phones. There's quite a lot of information available on the upcoming smartphone, seeing as specs and images have leaked recently.
Rumors say that BlackBerry will announce the upcoming DTEK60 on October 11 in Canada for an estimated price of $530. It seems that online retailer NCIX launched pre-orders for the DTEK60, although BlackBerry has yet to officially announce the phone.
NCIX lists the DTEK60 at a price of $699.99 ($535), mentioning at the same time that he phone will arrive around October 11 and that the price is subject to change, according to CrackBerry. Customers won't be charged for the smartphone until the manufacturer confirms the estimated time of arrival.
The DTEK60 is also listed on DirectDial for a lower price
NCIX isn't the only retailer to list the newest phone by BlackBerry. DirectDial also created an entry for the phone on its website, but the retailer didn't provide any pictures and only mentioned that the phone would be coming soon. The price seems to be lower on DirectDial, $656 CAD ($499.70).
BlackBerry's upcoming DTEK60 is expected to have a 5.5-inch AMOLED display with Quad HD resolution. It might also feature a rear camera capacity of 21MP with phase detection autofocus, dual-LED flash and HDR. The front camera could be 8MP and the phone might run a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, with the option to expand to 256GB.
The upcoming smartphone is said to draw power from a 3,000mAh battery and it could include multiple connectivity options like 4G LTE, USB Type C port and Bluetooth 4.2. The DTEK60 might run Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow out of the box and it will surely come with BlackBerry Hub and its suite of productivity apps.


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BlackBerry has today released its annual 2020 threat report, which examines the scope of global attack surface expansion, including the latest adversarial techniques and tactics analysed by BlackBerry Cylance threat researchers. It also provides guidance organisations can leverage to mitigate risk.
The report found the continued evolution of nation-state backed threat actor groups, the increased availability of sophisticated attack toolsets, as well as analysis on which targets are becoming more appealing to attackers and why.
It also details more select threats focused on targets, like embedded technologies in connected vehicles, manufacturing and mobile devices, and those taking advantage of misconfigurations in cloud computing deployments.
Threat actors are weaponising hyper-connectivity with new adversarial strategies and tactics
“New techniques to obscure malicious payloads and distribute attacks across multiple organisations paid off for threat actors in 2019,” said Eric Cornelius, chief technology officer at BlackBerry Cylance.
“With the increasing ease of access to attack toolkits combined with the explosion of endpoints connected to organisations’ networks, the global threat landscape for emerging threats will only continue to escalate in 2020.”
Automotive and retail industries should be on alert
The research suggests there has been a shift in the industries targeted by malicious actors. The automotive sectors is particularly at risk with the advent of connected vehicles.
For example, BlackBerry Cylance researchers discovered new backdoors being deployed by APT group OceanLotus (APT 32) in a 2019 campaign targeting multinational automotive manufacturers.
As more vehicles become connected — and the attention given to potential outcomes of cyber attacks on vehicles increases — attacks against this sector are anticipated to grow. As such, the industry must continue investing in cyber security processes and secure connected software to ensure public trust in the transportation technologies of the future.
Cylance researchers also found that retail and wholesale remained the most targeted sectors, where almost a quarter (23%) of all retailers suffered a compromise of sensitive financial information. Three of the most prevalent threats of 2019 — Emotet, Ramnit and Upatre — all focused on retail organisations, and 47% of coinmining operations focused attacks on the sector.
BlackBerry CTO discusses his role, Cylance and meeting evolving security needs
The report identified four other industry verticals that are facing unique threats:
1. Technology/Software: Where attacks typically have a focus on stealing intellectual property, over a quarter (26%) were victims of ransomware specifically.
2. Service providers: This industry’s customer base was leveraged by threat actors to increase malicious distributions using remote management tools like Go2Assist and NinjaRMM.
However, it should be noted that NinjaRMM has taken extensive steps towards securing its platform.
3. Healthcare: Healthcare organisations were more likely to pay ransoms than other industries due to the critical nature of the targeted data.
4. Government: Attacks against government entities can have cascading effects that not only impact critical national infrastructure, but impact individuals as well given the significant quantities of personally identifiable information they store.
“Threat intelligence on APT groups can help organisations understand who is attacking their enterprise, and the actor’s mode of operations and motives, in order to be more proactive in protecting vulnerable systems against advanced threats,” said Brian Robison, chief evangelist at BlackBerry Cylance. “In 2020, AI and machine learning will continue to prove critical for threat prevention and remediation strategies because of the advantage they offer through continuous learning and proactive threat modelling of attacks that continue to become more complex.”
The other findings
The other findings from BlackBerry Cylance’s 2020 annual threat report included:
• Coinmining attacks becoming more commonplace as cryptocurrency prevails: criminals recognised an opportunity to passively generate revenue by infecting cryptocurrency machines.
• MSSPs becoming high-value targets for threat actors: new ransomware called Sodinokibi caused mass disruption by infiltrating hosted environments.
• Data loss increasing because of cloud misconfiguration: misconfigured cloud resources led to a total of over seven billion records being publicly exposed in 2019. This number is only expected to increase with cloud investments estimated to reach $49.1 billion in 2020.
• Continued evolution of ransomware tactics: an increased availability of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) offerings, and instances where ransomware developers have collaborated with banking trojan developers to exfiltrate data prior to encryption, are being used to further extort victims.
• Increased use of host-encrypted malware: static analysis of host-encrypted malware is almost impossible in a lab, decreasing defenders’ understanding of the malicious code and the ability for security solutions to block it.


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GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Despite objection from one city parking commissioner, an annual program of free holiday parking will return to downtown Grand Rapids.
The city’s parking system will work with the Downtown Alliance to promote coupons that customers of participating downtown merchants can redeem for an hour of parking at the Louis Campau, Monroe Center, Ottawa Fulton and Pearl Ionia parking ramps. The program, in place since 2005, is scheduled to run from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve.
The program partnered with 31 merchants to redeem 953 coupons worth $1,831 in parking fees in 2011, according to city data. More than 90 percent of coupon-users stayed parked longer than an hour and spent $2,449 in additional parking fees.
“Really what we’re talking about is $1,831 and 90 percent of customers stay longer,” said parking commission Chairman Kevin Denhof, security director at Van Andel Institute. “I think it’s a pretty good thing that supports downtown retailers.”
Responses to an informal city survey suggest broad support for free holiday parking among downtown merchants, but “I’m not always convinced what a merchant thinks is best for downtown is best for downtown,” said Andy Guy, a parking commissioner who wants parking revenue to fund other city needs.
“How about signs that say ’60 minutes subsidized holiday parking?’ said Guy, director of metropolitan and environmental affairs for Wondergem, a Grand Rapids public relations firm.
“Advertising 'free' parking is entirely the wrong message to send when the parking system carries tens of millions of dollars in debt, the city faces fiscal crisis, and struggles to fund essential services like streets and parks.”
Guy thinks the free holiday parking generates little return on investment, and wants parking staff to analyze the program’s worth. Parking staff said they will incorporate an evaluation into a comprehensive downtown mobility study.
- What Grand Rapids parking commissioners are thinking about your future
- Two views on Grand Rapids parking rates, and which one Mayor George Heartwell takes
Guy on Thursday, Nov. 8 circulated to fellow commissioners a 3-page memo he wrote on “car parking and city building.” In it, he advocates a list of actions summarized as “a new forward-looking parking philosophy based on urban, not suburban, place-making principles and solution.”
“We have to figure out what we want to be and do as a downtown,” Guy said. “We’re not competing with the suburbs as a place to be. We lost the battle with Woodland Mall and Rivertown (Crossings) Mall a long time ago.
“It’s really time to start rethinking a lot of the things we’re doing.”
While some of Guy’s recommendations – removal of surface parking lots, expenditure of parking revenue on non-parking projects, elimination of parking requirements in downtown zoning code – may be a source of future debate, the parking commission’s overall mood seems to support free holiday parking.
“I look at it as a marketing and economic development program for the downtown,” said Commissioner Mark Rambo, manager of operations for Grand Valley State University's Pew Campus. “That’s a lot of bang for your buck.”
The city’s parking system plans to promote the holiday parking program on downtowngr.org.