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The Justice Department on Monday filed a civil antitrust lawsuit seeking to block National CineMedia Inc.’s $375 million acquisition of Screenvision LLC, claiming the merger would eliminate competition in cinema advertising.
“The proposed combination of NCM and Screenvision is a bad deal for movie theaters, advertisers and consumers,” said Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer in a statement regarding the suit that was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. “This merger to monopoly is exactly the type of transaction the antitrust laws were designed to prohibit.
“If this deal is allowed to proceed, the benefits of competition will be lost, depriving theaters and advertisers of options for cinema advertising network services and risking higher prices to movie goers,” he continued.
If the merger goes through, the new company would serve 88 per cent of all movie theater screens.
Executives from both companies defended the deal and suggested they would fight the lawsuit.
“I am obviously very disappointed that the DOJ did not see the benefits of the new combined company to our advertising clients and their agencies and our exhibitor partners,” said NCM Chairman-CEO Kurt Hall. “We look forward to demonstrating those benefits.
“Combining NCM and Screenvision will enable us to offer advertisers a better product with the broader reach, ubiquitous geographic coverage, more advertising impressions, enhanced targeting capability, and lower costs that advertising clients and their agencies seek.”
Screenvision CEO Travis Reid said the merger “preserves all the desirable attributes of cinema advertising while allowing the combined company to compete more effectively on dimensions important to advertisers.
“Together, NCM and Screenvision will be more competitive in the expanding video advertising marketplace and provide long term incremental advertising revenue to our theater partners.”
The Justice Department’s complaint cites internal memos from the companies suggesting that the deal was NCM’s answer to intensified and successful efforts by Screenvision to steal business both by reducing the prices it charges advertisers and by offering theaters financial incentives to switch advertising networks. NCM’s founding members include Regal, AMC, and Cinemark.
According to the complaint, before 2012 both companies were charging advertisers cost per thousand rates “substantially higher” than advertising rates for either TV or cable and both enjoyed high margins.
After Screenvision was acquired by a private equity firm in 2010 and an outside consultant for the company concluded that NCM was benefitting disproportionately from that status quo and Screenvision was losing market share. Subsequently, the cinema advertising company became far more aggressive and moved to undercut NCM’s prices by 50 percent or more by offering more favorable revenue sharing, higher minimum payment guarantees, higher upfront payments, more control of the length of the preshow, as well as offering advertisers guarantees of reaching targeted audiences.
The Justice Department said both companies commonly offer exhibitors more than $1 million upfront payment from contracts, and quoted one memo from Screenvision’s head of advertising sales saying: “We will not lose [to NCM] on price … You must do whatever we need to do and win these head to head battles.”
After initially responding by lowering its own prices in a few instances to compete while hoping the pricing battle would subside grew, NCM grew increasingly worried that Screenvision’s pricing strategy was commoditizing cinema advertising. The Justice Department quoted a memo from the company’s CEO warning about following “down the pricing death spiral.”
According to the lawsuit, this year NCM developed a “Strategy Decision Crossroads,” identifying two possible ways to cope with Screenvision’s competitive tactics.
“Plan A” was to acquire Screenvision, to give NCM the ability to “control selling tactics,” including “pricing,” while “Plan B” was to compete by “resetting NCM CPMs to current market levels” and “continuing to expand.”
The lawsuit accuses NCM of adopting Plan A and says it violated antitrust law, stating: “NCM would be free to impose its will on exhibitors and likely would offer them reduced financial inducements, e.g., lower revenue shares, minimum guarantees, and upfront payments.”
It also suggested the merger would give NCM the ability to limit exhibitors’ flexibility over the preshow and could give NCM’s founding members too much of a role in determining what happens at independent cinemas.


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Microsoft has launched the public beta test for the second service pack for Office 2010, along with SharePoint 2010, which fixes a number of bugs and improves compatibility with Windows 8 and IE10.
...of Apple's Watch, a naughty Android and an Elephone WinDroid
Running Windows 10 on the Surface 3
Our coverage of Windows 10 build 10061 release
Windows 10 logo
Hands on with the $10,000 Apple Watch Edition
apple watch edition
Enter to win a Huawei Watch!
Service pack 2
With Windows 8 about to hit, sources close to Microsoft's Service Pack build team are suggesting that Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 will not be succeeded by Service Pack 2.
Microsoft has released the second service pack for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, adding a number of new features requested by customer feedback, as well as a mobile access update.

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HFT Bill Would Give CFTC Enforcement Powers06.10.2013
The debate over high-frequency trading has taken a new turn with a proposal of a law that would give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission broad authority to regulate the practice.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass), would require traders involved in HFT in commodities to register with the CFTC, ban simultaneous buy and sell orders by traders using HFT in commodities, and give the CFTC the power to fine HFT traders based on the amount of time of their violation (e.g., if found violating the regulations for more than a second or two, am HFT would receive a higher fine than violating a regulation for one microsecond).
“High frequency traders have contorted markets and impacted consumers,” said CFTC commissioner Bart Chilton in a statement. “Congressman Markey has initiated an important and imperative step to ensure they will be monitored and observed which can avoid future market meltdowns.”
In January, Markey called on the SEC to use the Market Reform Act of 1990 to oversee HFT in the nation’s stock markets.
With most retail odd lot orders being consumed by large market makers, concerns exist that visible odd lot orders are being posted by high-frequency traders.
‘Given there tends to be a significant direct correlation between the size a market participant is willing to trade in a single transaction and the length of that participant’s investment horizon, it can be assumed that those market participants willing to trade in lots less than a round lot are high frequency traders,” said Alex Hagmeyer, U.S. equity trader at Franklin Templeton Investments. “It is prudent to evaluate the trade-off involved in denying interaction with any type of liquidity, which may vary depending on the trading strategy, the type of stock and the time of day.”
According to a report by the World Federation of Exchanges, a substantial majority of the empirical research has concluded that HFT has had measurable beneficial impacts on a variety of core market quality metrics, including tighter spreads, increased liquidity, more efficient price formation, reduced transaction costs for market participants and lower market volatility in most circumstances.
In less liquid stocks, sourcing liquidity is more challenging and other channels must be used to avoid unnecessary signaling.
“We monitor and evaluate our interaction with odd-lot trades and tend to trade more with those execution channels that offer the largest average trade size as percentage of market interval trade size,” Hagmeyer said. “We also work with our electronic trading vendors to favor those exchanges/ATSs with a setup that attracts more natural order flow.”
While the rules concerning HFT are clearly defined on transparent or ‘lit markets’ such as exchanges, it is difficult to find rules or statistics about the ways that HFT is used in some dark pools, over-the-counter markets, and by brokers who internalize their order flow.
HFT, like automated trading more generally, “represents the rational evolution of electronic markets as participants adapted to new market structures to optimize the quality, speed and operational efficiency of trade execution,” according to WFE.
According to a blog by Themis Trading reflecting the anti-HFT viewpoint, “the WFE failed to mention some controversial issues that exchanges have been criticized for in the past. Payment for order flow, conflicted order types and the sale of enhanced proprietary data feeds all seem to conflict with the WFE goals of ensuring a level playing field.”
Strategy Studio allows brokers to create their own execution platforms.
Allowing algorithms to control the supply and demand of crypto was challenged by Terra Luna.
Infrastructure and sustainability will be one of the biggest opportunities in alternative investments.
The broker's algo development team gains access to high quality, granular Level 3 data.
Bank aims to gain share from its systematic approach to trading, market structure proficiency and modern techn...


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Virgin moves superfast to win business
Superfast is set to become the standard speed for broadband subscribers, after Virgin Media revamps its digital package to compete with BT and Sky.
The new packages, which come into effect next month and will be announced today, will make superfast broadband — speeds of 30Mbps — an entry-level product that costs £25 a month.
Virgin will scrap hundreds of different packages used by its five million digital customers as it moves to a three-tier price structure.
Neil Berkett, the chief executive, said that the new packages were the first step in turning Virgin Media from a recovery to a growth story. “This is about ensuring we stay competitive and get some volume through. We will generate more customers in our target segment and more


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The PlayStation 4 Pro has often been referenced alongside the Xbox One X with Sony’s console coming out almost a year before the new Xbox, but according to Microsoft’s Albert Penello, he was impressed and surprised by the PS4 Pro’s last November.
Penello, the senior director of product management and planning for Microsoft, spoke to MCVUK recently about the PS4 Pro. The Microsoft director was asked about the competition that the PS4 Pro would create for the Xbox One X since both offer significant performance enhancements and was questioned on whether or not he felt that Sony had beaten them to the punch with the release.
“I give them a lot of credit for what they did there,” Penello said. “But for me, the most interesting observation is that we both arrived at a similar idea even if the execution is slightly different.”
He went on to say that the industry takes interesting turns in development and added that they had no idea what Sony had up their sleeves before they announced the PS4 Pro.
“This business tends to diverge and converge in interesting ways, and obviously we don’t know what they’re doing. We don’t have insight into what their plans are, so when they announced the Pro, I was as surprised as anybody else was.”
But for those that claim Microsoft is trailing behind Sony with the release of the Xbox One X, he also added that they weren’t simply reacting to Sony’s moves.
“They had a different idea in mind for what they wanted to build, so in
As far as 4K gaming is concerned, Penello assured that they’re invested in the feature for the long run and aren’t simply treating it as a fad or gimmick.
“We saw the 4K shift coming,” he said. “We don’t jump on every technology that comes along, we pretty much skipped 3D if you remember in the 360
The Xbox One X releases on Nov. 7 for $499.


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Fire crews are at Morrisons in Union Street, Heckmondwike, with shoppers being evacuated from the scene.
Fire services are reportedly already on the scene, with customers being sent away.
It is not yet whether there is an ongoing fire or how big it is, or if the store will be able to reopen again later today.
YorkshireLive has contacted West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue service for comment.
Follow our live blog for all the latest updates.
Summary of events
This is all for the live blog today. We’ll be back on Yorkshire Live tomorrow for all the latest news in the region.
West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue statement
“Our control room was called at 14.56 hours today, 25 August, to reports of a fire in a commercial premises on Union Street in Heckmondwike.
“Three fire engines attended – two from Dewsbury Fire Station and one from Morley Fire Station.
“Crews used a Co2 extinguisher to put the fire out.
“No one was injured and the fire did not spread.
“Crews left at 15.44.”
Morrisons to remain closed for rest of the day
It has been confirmed that Morrisons will remain closed for the end of the day, due to the fire.
The Well Pharmacy next door has also shut up shop for the day, after evacuating customers.
Neighbouring shops evacuated
Shops next door to Morrisons on Union Street have also been evacuated, according to reports from shoppers on Facebook.
It isn’t yet clear when shoppers will be allowed to re-enter.


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Fairfax County’s new plastic bag tax, set to take effect on Jan. 1, drew both support and opposition from the supermarket industry.
Food Lion and MOM’s Organic Market took opposite stances on the issue before the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved the change last Tuesday (Sept. 14), imposing a 5-cent tax on each disposable plastic bag provided at grocery stores, convenient stores, and drug stores.
“While Food Lion strongly supports responsible stewardship and waste reduction efforts, complying with a patchwork of varying local single-use bag restrictions in the Commonwealth negatively impacts Food Lion’s ability to serve our customers and implement uniform brand strategies for waste reduction and recycling,” the company said in a letter shared by Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity, the only board member who voted against the measure.
Headquartered in Salisbury, N.C., Food Lion has one store in Fairfax County, located in a shopping center in Herndon.
The company’s director of operations, Eric Sword, said in the emailed statement to the county that the business recycled 6,914 tons of plastic in 2020, among other recycling efforts, and it’s working to meet a parent company goal to make all plastic packaging fully reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025.
“Food Lion is supportive of broad-based efforts to reduce customer usage of both paper and plastic bags, and the brand continuously works to raise customer awareness of the value of using reusable bags,” the letter said.
However, Sword wrote that he believes the change will shift consumer behavior almost entirely to paper bags, even though the company seeks to encourage reusable bags for customers.
Meanwhile, a MOM’s representative noted during the Sept. 14 public hearing that their business voluntarily banned plastic bags over a decade ago and uses paper and compostable bags.
“We banned plastic bags 15 years ago because it was the right thing to do for the environment and the communities we call home,” Alexandra DySard, the company’s environment and partnership manager, said in video testimony.
The Rockville, Maryland-based supermarket, which has stores in Herndon and the Mosaic District in Merrifield, favors alternatives to a plastic bag that many people might only use for 12 minutes, DySard said.
“Plastic manufacturers are misleading consumers to believe that bags are being upcycled into benches and decks when the truth is the majority of plastic bags are being sent to landfills, incinerators, ending up in our waterways, or being shipped out of sight to third-world countries,” DySard said.
She also noted that D.C. saw a 72% reduction in plastic bags found in streams after its ban took effect in 2010.
FFXnow contacted other grocery chains in the area for comment, including Giant, Safeway, and Harris Teeter, but did not receive responses by press time.
The Board of Supervisors ultimately approved the new tax 9-1, as advocates likened it to a fee that people can avoid and expressed hope that the move will encourage consumers’ environmental stewardship.
“Plastic bag taxes are proven in jurisdictions across the nation,” said Braddock District Supervisor James Walkinshaw, who introduced the measure. “This measure will reduce plastic pollution and the modest funds collected will be reinvested into litter prevention and to providing reusable bags for low-income community members.”
Herrity dissented, saying in newsletters sent to constituents before and after the vote that now is not the time to add another tax.
“Instead of instituting a rigorous education campaign — one that encompasses how to recycle and dispose of multiple forms of trash — the Board is taxing residents into compliance,” Herrity said, suggesting the county needs to “create more ways for people to recycle and more materials to educate them on how they can” do so.
The county hasn’t allocated the future tax revenue to a specific purpose yet, but state law permits it to be used for pollution and litter mitigation, educational programs about reducing waste, and reusable bags for residents who receive federal food assistance benefits.
The tax doesn’t apply to:
- multiple bags sold in packages, such as those for garbage, leaves or pet waste
- plastic bags used solely for certain food products such as ice cream, meat, fish, poultry, produce, unwrapped bulk food items, or perishable food items
- plastic bags with handles designed for multiple reuse
- plastic bags for dry cleaning or prescription drugs
With the board’s vote last week, Fairfax County was the first Northern Virginia locality to institute a plastic bag tax, but neighboring Arlington County and the City of Alexandria quickly followed suit, adopting their own ordinances on Saturday (Sept. 18).
Photo via Google Maps
Fairfax County has committed to becoming carbon-neutral by 2050, and now, it has a plan to achieve that goal.
First proposed by the board’s Environmental Quality Advisory Council in 2018, the plan features an inventory of the county’s greenhouse gas emissions and recommendations for how to curb them so the community can realize its aspirations of carbon neutrality.
“Together, the strategies and actions are intended to power individuals and organizations within the community, to engage in, lead, and champion the emissions reduction needed to achieve county-wide carbon neutrality,” Mount Vernon District Supervisor Dan Storck said, reading from the board matter he issued. “Climate change is a major existential crisis already causing major impacts in Fairfax County.”
Proposals include cutting the use of fossil fuel-burning cars, installing solar panels at home, creating more through recycling and composting programs, adopting more stringent green-building policies, and being a “conscious consumer.”
Storck’s motion passed 9-0, with Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity not present during the vote.
A few moments before the vote, Herrity said he was going to abstain due to concerns over timing, lack of proper community engagement, and cost, particularly in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“The economic outlook over the next few years is uncertain,” Herrity said. “Our decisions don’t operate in a vacuum. This plan will have planned and unintended impacts on the economy and taxpayers. Beyond what I’m imagining will be a very steep cost to implement this plan, it will also have a very serious impact on the affordability of homes, increasing the actual cost as well as permitting and regulatory costs.”
The rest of the board countered that the county can’t afford to wait any longer to address the already-existing threat of climate change.
“The cost of doing nothing is significant, if not life-threatening,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay said. “And I think most responsible people who are paying attention to the subject and the science…most certainly get that.”
Storck, who helped spearhead the CECAP as chair of the board’s environmental committee, reiterated that county operations and schools only account for about 5% of Fairfax County’s carbon emissions. The remaining 95% of emissions come from the private sector and the general community.
As noted in a presentation that Storck delivered, transportation and commercial and residential energy consumption are the two largest sources of greenhouse emissions. Combined, those areas produce more than 90% of all emissions in the county.
As a result, while the county will have a leadership role, this new plan is about asking the community to take the necessary steps to curb emissions, Storck said.
“There will be no area, sector, or part of our society that won’t be impacted [by the reduction goals in this plan],” he said. “How much? That’s largely a function of how aggressively we move forward.”
As the county worked to finalize the CECAP over the summer, the United Nations released a sobering report last month that said, even if future emissions are lowered, global temperatures will continue to rise until at least the middle of the 21st century, leading to more extreme weather and other worsening climate issues.
County staff told the board’s environmental committee in July that the CECAP’s implementation was already underway, a process that includes community outreach, public education, and an exhaustive review of existing county policies to see how they line up with the now-accepted plan.
Additional plans related to the initiative’s implementation, such as how the county can build on existing programs, will be presented to the board at an environmental committee meeting in early 2022.
Photo via Sandra Parra/Unsplash
Fairfax County will require certain businesses, but not all, to pay taxes on disposable plastic bags in a move to encourage customers to use reusable bags.
The Board of Supervisors passed the measure yesterday (Tuesday) after a new state law gave counties and cities the authority to begin imposing a 5-cent tax starting in 2021. The tax will take effect on Jan. 1, 2022 for Fairfax County.
In a statement released after the vote, Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay acknowledged the challenges of introducing a new tax while the county continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, but he says the impact of plastic bags on the environment “is too great” to not act.
“There are simple steps residents can take to avoid the over-use of disposable plastic bags,” he said. “A small fee on plastic bags is an opportunity for residents to look at their habits while providing the County with avenues for environmental cleanup, education, and access to environmentally friendly alternatives.”
Fairfax County is the first locality in Northern Virginia to adopt a plastic bag tax, according to Braddock District Supervisor James Walkinshaw’s office. Walkinshaw initiated a board motion to pursue the issue in July as part of a joint effort with McKay and Mount Vernon District Supervisor Dan Storck.
Consistent with the state law, the tax applies to grocery stores, convenience stores and drug stores, but there are exemptions for reusable plastic bags, bags used for perishable food to prevent damage or contamination, bags that carry prescription drugs or dry cleaning, and bags sold in bulk, such as garbage bags.
“Plastic bags frequently end up in a landfill, where it can take more than 500 years for the bag to disintegrate. Many plastic bags end up in our streams,” Fairfax County Office of Environmental and Energy Coordination Deputy Director Susan Hafeli said. “While the impact on human health is still being addressed, there is evidence that humans ingest and inhale thousands of microplastics per year, which result in the breakdown of disposable plastic bags and other plastic products.”
The Office of Environmental and Energy Coordination says the tax is intended to influence consumer behavior by discouraging consumers from using single-use disposable plastic bags.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. uses over 380 billion plastic bags and wraps yearly, requiring 12 million barrels of oil to create. Turtles, one of several aquatic creatures that suffer from the trash, die of starvation after eating them.
The Board of Supervisors approved the measure 9-1 with Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity — the lone Republican member — opposing it. He said food banks reported relying on the bags to distribute food and argued that it’s the wrong time to add any tax. Read More
The disposable plastic bags that remain ubiquitous at grocery and convenience stores could soon be subject to a five-cent tax in Fairfax County.
Under an ordinance proposed by county staff, the tax would be imposed on grocery, convenience, and drugstore retailers, rather than their customers. There would be some exceptions, including:
- Plastic bags designed for reuse
- Bags exclusively used to wrap meat, produce, and other perishable food items to avoid damage or contamination
- Bags used to carry prescription drugs or dry cleaning
- Bags sold in packages for garbage or other kinds of waste disposal
Building off of legislation passed by the Virginia General Assembly in April 2020, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted on July 14 to direct staff to draft the ordinance, which would take effect on Jan. 1, 2022 if adopted.
Proponents of the measure on the board argued that imposing a tax will incentivize individuals and retailers to use fewer disposable plastic bags, which generally wind up in landfills or as litter that can be harmful to the environment.
Revenue from the plastic bag tax could be used to fund environmental cleanup programs, education on reducing waste, pollution and litter mitigation programs, and reusable bags for food assistance benefit recipients, according to the state law.
Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity, the lone board member to oppose drafting the ordinance, took issue with the idea of introducing a new tax in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Past research also suggests paper bags and reusable cotton bags require more carbon emissions to manufacture than disposable plastic ones, so they need to be reused a lot to be more environmentally friendly.
The timing of the ordinance is important, since the state law lets retailers retain two cents of the imposed tax to offset the cost of changing their operations until Jan. 1, 2023, at which point the discount shrinks to just one cent.
Community members will get their first chance to weigh in on the proposed tax at a public hearing scheduled for the Board of Supervisors’ upcoming meeting on Tuesday (Sept. 14). Speakers can register to deliver testimony in person, by phone or video, or in writing.
Photo via Takoma Park/Flickr


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Windows 11 hasn't been received too warmly by gamers, bringing several issues at launch (e.g. performance problems on computers with AMD Ryzen processors). And although most of the bugs have already been fixed, the resentment lingers and the system still raises concerns, although it is chosen more and more often.. Latest update may make even more people buy Microsoft's new system.
More for You:
- Windows 11 Increasingly Popular With Gamers, Reveals Steam Survey
- Windows 11 Upgrade Installed Twice as Often as Update to W10
- 'Worst Steam Update' - Windows 11 Users Furious With Valve
The optional update KB5008353 is supposed to fix some HDD and SSD issues that resulted in lower game performance in Windows 11. The bug causes unnecessary processes to occur during read/write operations. Interestingly, it was picked up back in late November last year as part of the KB5007262 update for members of the Windows Insider program. The patch description reads that it "addresses an issue affecting the performance of all drives (NVMe, SSD, HDD) in Windows 11 that is caused by performing unnecessary actions each time a write operation occurs."
What is Windows Insider?
This is a special Windows testing program. With a legal license, users can participate in the system improvement process. Those enrolled in the program can test new features and use options and fixes before they are officially released. Through the Feedback Center, you can share your thoughts on new changes.
The update hits non-Windows Insider users after eight months. If you own the latest Windows and have been complaining about system performance, check out the latest patch. You can download and install it through Windows Update or from going to the official Microsoft catalog.


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Clothes dryers cause about 15,000 fires per year. Most can be avoided with the proper preventive maintenance.
Guest post today from Active Paving – Dublin patio specialistsfor many years.
dryer fire, clothes dryer fire, clothes dryer, dryer
Few people realize the importance of dryer safety. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, there are an estimated annual 15,500 fires, 10 deaths and 10 injuries caused by dryer fire. Several hundred people a year are also subjected to carbon monoxide poisoning from improper dryer safety measures. The financial costs come to nearly $100,000,000 per year. In some cases faulty appliances are to blame, but many fires can be prevented with proper dryer safety precautions.


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The Google Neighbourly app was launched in May 2018.
The app is shutting down in the next few weeks.
Users have till October 12 to download their content from the app.
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Google may be one of the worlds largest tech companies but that doesn't mean that every product or service it released has been a success. From social networking platform Google Plus to the Daydream VR headset and even the Allo app, Google has a long list of products and services it has discontinued. Google even discontinued devices like the Nexus Player, Nexus phones and Nexus Tablets. Today, another service is entering its final days before shutting down. Google’s local community app - Neighbourly.
Google Neighbourly app was launched in 2018 and will shut down on May 12 2020. Users will be able to download their data till October 12 2020. For those unaware, the app lets users get local information, be it the safety of a particular area or the best food in a particular restaurant. Users can also be a part of multiple neighbourhoods in case they live and work away from home. The Neighbourly app was launched in India in May 2018. At launch, it was available only in Mumbai. Since then, Google expanded Neighbourly to Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, Mysore, Vizag, Kota, Delhi, Bengaluru, Kochi, Coimbatore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Indore and other cities in the country.
With the shutting down of Neighbourly, users of the app will have to go back to the good old days of asking people about relevant local information. However, since we are in a time of social distancing, people may resort to just Googling the information. Surprisingly, Google says the reason for discontinuing the app is because it hasn't grown as the company hoped it would.
There is an interesting website called Killed by Google which lists all the services, apps and products that Google has killed. In other Google news, the company has limited YouTube streaming to 480p in India. You can read more about it here.
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We are about leadership-the 9.9 kind! Building a leading media company out of India.And,grooming new leaders for this promising industry.


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The new Aston Martin RapidE will be limited to just 155 units, however the British automaker had originally intended to build more than 450 examples of the all-electric four-door.
Aston Martin joined forces with Chinese technology company LeEco as an investment partner for the RapidE project. The cash-strapped company then backed out of the endeavor, leaving Aston as the sole investor. Rather than abandon its plans to bring a Rapide EV to market, the automaker elected to power forward and instead build a car that was more exclusive and thus more expensive.
Aston wasn’t left entirely on its own with the RapidE project. It got the Williams Formula 1 team involved in the vehicle’s development early on and it remains an engineering partner for the car. The team’s Williams Advanced Engineering tech division helped develop the original RapidE concept and it will build the production car’s battery pack at a new “high performance, low volume, flexible battery manufacturing facility,” in the UK.
The RapidE concept, unveiled in 2015, produced 800-1,000 horsepower from its four electric motors and was all-wheel drive. The automaker claimed a driving range of over 200 miles and said the production car should cost around $250,000. Aston will begin taking orders next month, with deliveries commencing sometime in 2018.
It’s easy to see why Aston was keen to carry on with the RapidE’s development following LeEco’s departure. The vehicle will essentially serve as a test bed for the electric powertrain to be found in the EV version of Aston Martin’s upcoming DBX crossover. Unlike the RapidE, that model will be mass produced and should prove to be a strong moneymaker for the British manufacturer.
“The RapidE project was always about learning in readiness for the DBX derivative,” Aston Martin CEO Palmer said. “We can do that through a limited series.”


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The storm-weary Gulf Coast, an area still reeling from back-to-back blows from devastating Hurricane Laura and more recently Sally, is bracing for yet another strike, this time a potentially disastrous one from Hurricane Delta. AccuWeather's Bernie Rayno (@AccuRayno on Twitter) has all the details on today's "Weather Insider" podcast!
Download the new AccuWeather app today, available now in the App Store on iOS and in the Google Play Store - https://accuweather.onelink.me/dZpv/49183895
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices


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- 1 min read
Mercedes-Benz opens bookings for EQS 580 4MATIC at INR 25 lakh
Mercedes-Benz will roll out the EQS 580 4MATIC flagship luxury saloon from its assembly line on 30th September. This will be the first-ever luxury EV to roll out of the company’s manufacturing facility in India, the company said.
New Delhi: German luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz India on Monday said it has begun bookings for its Made-in-India luxury EV, EQS 580 4MATIC. The company’s existing customers will get priority delivery.
“Customers can book their EQS 580 4MATIC starting today with an amount of INR 25 Lakhs. Mercedes-Benz will roll out the EQS 580 4MATIC flagship luxury saloon from its assembly line on 30th September. This will be the first-ever luxury EV to roll out of the company’s manufacturing facility in India,” the company said in a statement.
Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport & Highways, Govt. of India, will roll out the new model from the company’s plant at Chakan, Pune.
Martin Schwenk, Managing Director & CEO, Mercedes-Benz India, said, “The EQS 580 4MATIC is Mercedes-Benz’s most futuristic ‘Made-in-India’ offering and promises to push the boundaries in design, technology, luxury, and safety. With the successful debut of the AMG EQS 53 4MATIC+, there is significant customer interest for the ‘Made-in-India’ EQS 580 4MATIC, and we are confident this luxury EV will surpass all customers’ expectations and be a game changer in the segment.”
It comes with a 107.8 kWh battery producing 385 kW power and 885 nm torque, and gets a range of up to 300 km in 15 minutes using a 200 kWh Ultra-fast DC charger.
The model is equipped with MBUX Hyperscreen of 56-inch, curved screen unit extending from A-pillar to A-pillar.


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Despite rising fuel prices, the mass adoption of electric cars is still some distance away, is the finding of a new study by Deloitte, the business advisory firm.
According to the survey of 4,760 European consumers, only 16% see themselves as potential first movers to buy or lease an electric vehicle, while 53% say they might be willing to consider it, and 31 percent say they are not likely to consider purchasing or leasing an electric car.
David Raistrick, automotive partner and head of manufacturing at Deloitte UK, commented: “There is no doubt that electric vehicles are the future of the automotive industry. However, while interest in electric vehicles is growing, with 69% of respondents willing to consider an EV today, current market offerings generally fall far short of consumers’ expectations for driving range, charging time, and purchase price.
More than 80% of European consumers surveyed said that convenience to charge, range, and the cost to charge were all key considerations when buying or leasing an electric car.
Three-quarters of European consumers surveyed (74%) said that before they would consider purchasing an EV, they would expect it to be able to travel 300 miles between charges – much higher than what is currently available – and 67% said the battery must take no longer than two hours to charge.
The majority (57%) of respondents who say they may be willing to consider an electric car expect to pay the same or less for an EV than they do for a regular car. Only 24% of the same group say they would be willing to pay a premium. Currently, hybrids and battery electric vehicles represent a tiny fraction of total cars on the road. The adoption of all forms of green vehicles will be significantly influenced by government policies.
David Raistrick added: “For mass adoption, manufacturers will need to meet the challenge of pricing electric vehicles in line with consumer expectations, while still maximising their margins. Consumers are not likely to want to pay a high price premium for EVs. This means that incentives such as tax reductions and exemptions will be very important to the purchase decision. Just like the Government supported the highly successful car scrappage scheme, they should now be turning their attention to electric vehicles.
“However, a bright note for the UK is that it appears from our research that UK consumers are more willing to pay a premium for electric vehicles than their counterparts in other European countries.”


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Customers of the InterContinental Hotels Group were subject to a credit card data breach late in 2016 at nearly 1,000 of its domestic locations, the company announced Thursday.
According to a company statement, the company identified signs of the operation of malware designed to access payment card data from cards used onsite at front desks at certain locations between September 29, 2016 and December 29, 2016.
InterContinental Hotels Group is the parent company of hotel chains Holiday Inn, Candlewood Suites, Crowne Plaza and Staybridge Suites.
"IHG has been working closely with the payment card networks as well as with the cyber security firm to confirm that the malware has been eradicated and evaluate ways for franchisees to enhance security measures. Law enforcement also has been notified," the company said in a statement.
The company added that it has since added security measures, rendering the malware harmless.
Among the information that may have been breached, customers' names in addition to card numbers, expiration dates and internal verification code were potentially stolen.
To see which locations were affected, click here.
IHG recommends customers who stayed in the impacted locations to check statements and credit reports.
If you have questions or believe your data may have been stolen, you can reach the Federal Trade Commission at 1-877-IDTHEFT.
A woman who milked people out of $130,000 by falsely claiming to have breast cancer has been sentenced to nearly six months in jail.
A private jet once owned by Elvis Presley is set to be auctioned after sitting on a runway in New Mexico for 30 years.
Didn't recognize everyone at the Billboard Music Awards? No worries, we got you covered with our handy guide.
Celebrities will storm the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday for the Billboard Music Awards at the T-Mobile Arena. Here's what you need to know.
A tourist is suing a Las Vegas Strip hotel, claiming a life-sized mannequin in his darkened room caused him to flee and suffer injuries.
McDonald's says it removed artificial flavor from its vanilla soft-serve dessert.


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KUALA LUMPUR: Property developer Titijaya Land Bhd is joining a growing list of local listed companies venturing into the medical device industry.
Deputy group managing director Lim Poh Yit said in a statement today that the economic uncertainty and the possibly long term health risk to the public at large due to the onslaught of Covid-19 has necessitated Titijaya’s involvement in the healthcare-related business.
The company today announced it has entered into a strategic collaboration agreement with China’s Sinopharm Medical Equipment QuanZhou Co Ltd to develop the marketing and sales, trading and supply of medical and hospital equipment, as well as medical industry-related real estate.
The immediate focus will be to produce medical supplies to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, such as personal protective equipment (PPE), RT-PCR test kit, rapid test kit and mobile test lab, among other necessities.
“This business will provide Titijaya a good opportunity for growth expansion in its core real estate business by providing medical-related real estate, which entails infrastructure, land and facilities for medical industry operators, as recommended by Sinopharm and its network," Lim said.
“The geographical areas to be covered by this joint business development will include South East Asian countries and other Asian countries -- a potentially large market for Titijaya and Sinopharm in both real estate and medical-related businesses,” he said.
Sinopharm is part of the Sinopharm China National Medical Device Company, which is an entity of the state-owned China National Pharmaceutical Group Corp (Sinopharm Group).
Sinopharm Group’s businesses encompass research and development (R&D), manufacturing, logistics and distribution, retail chain, healthcare, engineering services, exhibitions and conferences, international business as well as financial services.
The agreement inked between Titijaya and Sinopharm shall remain in force for a period of five years and is subject to a renewable period of five years.
The collaboration’s medical-related business shall be catered to both private and public medical facilities, leveraging on Sinopharm Group’s supply and value chain in China, as well as both parties’ networks.
Meanwhile, Titijaya shall be responsible for the medical industry-related real estate by providing infrastructure, land and facilities.
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Wahlburgers Will Open in Fenway on Friday
The burger joint owned by Mark, Donnie, and Paul Wahlberg is finally opening a Boston location, scheduled to start serving its signature “Wahlfaves” to the public on Friday, October 2.
The latest Wahlburgers outpost is located at 132 Brookline Ave., next door to Yard House and three blocks away from Fenway Park. It will be the third Wahlburgers to open in Massachusetts, joining the chain’s flagship location in Hingham and another outpost in Lynnfield. A fourth Massachusetts location is scheduled to open later this year at Logan Airport, inside Terminal C.
Like at other locations, the interior of the 4,200-square-foot Wahlburgers in Fenway will boast photographs and other mementos from the brothers’ childhood in Dorchester. It will also feature an outdoor patio and a full bar, serving “Fenway Fizz,” a sparkling specialty cocktail available only at the Fenway location.
An invite-only grand opening bash will take place on October 1, but people can attend virtually by signing up for a VIP live stream on the restaurant’s website, which will also offer a chance to win an exclusive swag bag. Additionally, Wahlburgers has been promoting a raffle, which closed last Friday, for an Indian Scout motorcycle that will be presented to the winner at the grand opening by Mark himself.


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David Hyman, who negotiated the sale of the MOG music service to Beats Electronics in July 2012, announced he has joined Chosen.fm, a stealth music start-up based in San Francisco.
Hyman was deliberately vague about his new company, saying that Chosen.fm is “a mobile application company focused on changing how we interact and engage with the performing arts.” The company, he said, will focus on unsigned artists and be “broader than music.”
Chosen is funded by Rhodium Group, an early stage venture firm based in Israel with offices in New York. Among Rhodium’s other investments are Outbrain, HopStop and Singr.fm, a music creation and auditioning platform that has not yet launched.
Hyman, a former marketing executive at MTV Networks, has a track record heading up music start-ups, starting with Gracenote, where he was president and CEO from 2000 to 2004. In 2005, he founded MOG, an on-demand music streaming service that he sold to Beats in 2012 for somewhere between $10 million and $15 million. MOG, which continues to operate, formed part of the technology that undergirds Beats Music, a music service set to launch Tuesday.
Just prior to signing up with Chosen, Hyman did a brief four-month stint as interim CEO of Pono, the high-resolution audio venture started by Neil Young.
“Chosen is right up my alley,” Hyman said in a statement the company released Monday. “Music is my passion, and I see this as an exciting opportunity to expand my interests into video and the broader spectrum of the performing arts.”


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AMD has introduced its Puma notebook platform and announced the availability of products based on the platform at a press conference in Taipei city today.
The Puma platform features the new AMD Turion X2 Ultra dual-core ‘Griffin’ mobile processors and ATI Radeon HD 3000 series graphics. AMD claims that this will enable users to experience “the ultimate HD visual performance and increasing energy efficiency.
“There are only two companies in the world that can build and deliver high-performance microprocessors and there are only two companies in the world that can build and deliver high-performance graphics solutions. Only AMD can do both,
” said Dirk Meyer, president and COO of AMD.
Puma is based on AMD’s M780G chipset, which is very similar to the desktop version that launched earlier this year – it includes the same technologies that were in 780G, such as Hybrid CrossFireX, ATI’s UVD engine and Avivo. In addition to that, AMD has integrated a technology known as PowerXpress – this allows notebook manufacturers to include a Mobility Radeon 3000-series graphics card and it’s only running when it’s required.
We’ve seen demos of this technology working on some early development notebooks and we have to say it was pretty impressive. As soon as you unplug the notebook’s power supply, a driver window pops up and warns you that the discrete graphics adapter will be disabled. The switch isn’t quite perfect because the screen flickers a little when you’re changing from discrete to integrated graphics, but it’s automatic and that is what is most important in our opinion.
That’s not all though, because AMD has also introduced a new technology known as ATI XGP Technology, which enables gamers to enjoy gaming on the go on small notebooks that you wouldn’t normally associate with gaming. ATI XGP Technology works in much the same way as the Asus XG Station, although this time it runs over a dedicated PCI-Express x16 interface instead of via ExpressCard (PCI-Express x1).
We’ll be having a closer look at some of these technologies over the next few weeks, so stay tuned for more soon! In the meantime, you can discuss these announcements in the forums
Addendum 10th June 2008:
AMD now has a (marketing) video to complement its Turion X2 Ultra launch here


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RIM sheds 5% after apps offer
Shares of Research In Motion dropped more than 5% on Monday after it sought to appease disgruntled BlackBerry customers by offering free apps and technical support to make up for last week’s global smartphone outage
TORONTO — Shares of Research In Motion dropped more than 5% on Monday after it sought to appease disgruntled BlackBerry customers by offering free apps and technical support to make up for last week’s global smartphone outage.
Tens of millions of BlackBerry users were left without mobile email and other messaging for up to four days last week after a failure at a RIM data center in England triggered a service disruption across five continents.
RIM will offer premium apps worth more than $100 to customers and a month of technical support for businesses free of charge, hoping to stem fresh defections from the BlackBerry, whose market share was already shrinking before the incident.
Analysts have said RIM needs to quickly repair the damage to its image caused by the outage and stem the loss of corporate customers who are now questioning the reliability of the BlackBerry.“RIM has responded swiftly but this won’t undo the damage done to its reputation,” analyst Geoff Blaber at CCS Insight told Reuters earlier on Monday. “This may go some way to appeasing customers but what’s critical is that the problem does not repeat itself.”
The stock was trading 5.1% lower at US$22.75 on the Nasdaq by 11:30 a.m. It has shed more than 60% of its value since the start of the year.
The BlackBerry has in recent years lost market share to Apple Inc’s iPhone and devices powered by Google’s Android system. At the same time it has sought to make deeper inroads beyond its core corporate base, with a special focus on younger consumers and in emerging markets.
Highlighting the challenges, Apple said it sold 4 million of its new iPhone 4S in the first three days after launch last week.
RIM co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie told Reuters on Monday the company wanted to make amends with customers.
“This is our way of expressing appreciation for their patience during the recent service disruptions and a tangible way of telling them how deeply grateful we are for their continued business,” he said in a phone interview.
Balsillie declined to estimate how much the offer would cost RIM and said he was unable to say whether RIM might have to revise its earnings forecast for the current quarter, which ends in late November.
The financial impact could prove sizable if a large enough portion of RIM’s more than 70 million subscribers take up the offers.
Balsillie said RIM was not running any tests on its network at the time of the failure and was still investigating the precise cause of the breakdown, the company’s worst ever.
The free apps on offer include games such as Bejeweled, and premium versions of a translation service and the music discovery tool Shazam.
Richard Levick, who runs a U.S. consultancy that specializes in crisis management, praised the move but said the company should have made the announcement last week.
“I think it’s a good start, but they are always late,” he said. “They are always behind the curve.”
Francisco Jeronimo, an analysts at IDC, had a different perspective on the offer. He said the decision was a clever move by RIM because it would help customers to discover the app service.
He said the company was likely to have struck a deal with app developers to keep the cost down.
“For RIM, this is an interesting way to attract users to the App World and incentivise them to search and download apps,” he said.
“More important than the offer itself, is that RIM is showing goodwill and being humble. They recognized the problem, apologized and now they are compensating their users.”
© Thomson Reuters 2011


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Candy-Colored Stripes Stole the Show on Day 2 of Milan Fashion Week
Fall is looking to be one sweet season — sartorially, at least.
Emilio Pucci’s New Creative Director Doesn’t Like the Word ‘Luxury’
It's a new era at the Italian house, starting with spring 2016.
Pucci Hires MSGM's Massimo Giorgetti as Its New Creative Director
He replaces Peter Dundas, who is returning to Roberto Cavalli.
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Six Designers Who Are Shaping the Future of Italian Fashion
Is the Italian fashion industry doomed? These six promising designers would tell you that it's definitely not.


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According to a new report, around 415,000 routers throughout the world are infected with malware having the potential to steal computer resources and discreetly mine for the cryptocurrency. The campaign is an active one and it primarily targets MikroTik routers.
Researchers claim that the cryptojacking attacks started in August and in the first string of attacks, about 200,000 devices got infected. Since then, the number has doubled. It is worth noting that MikroTik routers are the most widely used ones in the world and most internet service providers and organizations use them. It becomes apparent with so many infected devices that many of the users of MikroTik routers haven’t installed the latest firmware update.
Despite that, the threat is expanding but its targeting of MikroTik users indicates that a number of infected devices could have been higher if it was targeting other brands too. However, still, the number of affected devices is high, The Next Web reported.
It is also identified that a majority of the infected devices are located in Brazil. But, the scope of infection is expanding quickly as new infected devices are located almost everywhere in the world including Europe, North America, South America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
Attackers are exploiting a directory traversal vulnerability present in WinBox interface of the older versions of MikroTik routers, MikroTik RouterOS through 6.42, to inject Coinhive script on the webpages that the user visits. Exploiting the vulnerability, unauthenticated remote attackers can read arbitrary files while authenticated remote attackers can write arbitrary files.
Update your MikroTik routers to the latest firmware
Luckily, a patch is already released by MikroTik to protect vulnerable routers from the cryptojacking campaign. It is recommended that MikroTik router users immediately download and install the latest firmware from the company’s official website to address the looming threat.


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|By RealWire News Distribution||
|February 26, 2013 03:03 AM EST||
Global mobile commerce group identifies HTML5 cloud products and Android in-app as the hottest business opportunities in the mobile ecosystem
MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS, BARCELONA, 25th February 2013 - Android, HTML5 and cloud services will drive the global mobile entertainment market in 2013-2014, representing the key opportunities in the marketplace for carriers, internet merchants, content providers and ad-networks, which make up the Neomobile business ecosystem.
The leading mobile commerce company is on target to achieve an organic 25-30% additional growth in 2013, following a very successful four-year period when it recorded a +50% compound annual growth rate, with a peak of €250 million in total user transactions in 2012.
Strengthening the vision
Neomobile's focus is to market and distribute premium digital content and services to a broader range of mobile devices and screens, reaching more and more smartphones, tablets and soon smart TV users.
"We are the natural mobile internet monetizer for digital companies with compelling consumer products," explained Gianluca D'Agostino, Neomobile CEO. "Our company already works in partnership with carriers around the world to allow mobile users to choose carrier billing instead of OTT solutions when discovering and paying for apps, games, virtual goods and other mobile consumables."
Neomobile's strategy is to combine aggregation and delivery with targeted mobile advertising and easy one-click purchasing and payments, to create a single, inter-connected mobile content ecosystem.
This integrated content network allows partners to monetise mobile goods and assets quickly and efficiently through direct carrier billing. At the same time, it provides a convenient, intuitive and secure mobile commerce experience for end users.
Carrier billing cashes in
Neomobile picked out 2013 as the year when carrier billing comes into its own as the preferred global payment method for mobile apps, content and other digital assets.
"Carrier billing is already easily available to six billion people and it's the only electronic payment channel for the 1.7 billion people worldwide who own a mobile phone but don't possess a bank account," said D'Agostino. "As we've seen in Europe already, as more mobile consumers in emerging markets like India and Latin America swap their feature handsets for smartphones, we expect mobile content demand to surge - and the use of carrier billing to surge with it."
"The benefits of carrier billing versus other competing methods are already clear," he continued. "App stores with carrier billing enjoy a 5X boost in sale conversion rates, which in turn deliver higher pay-outs for developers. Neomobile will be at the forefront of the carrier billing trend in 2013. With agreements already in place with over 260 operators in 70 countries, we expect to announce more global deals with carriers in upcoming months."
HTML5 takes off on all devices; more global growth from Android
Neomobile also predicts an important year ahead for both cloud-based mobile services and HTML5. HTML5's flexibility allows Neomobile to capitalise on its mobile expertise and launch innovative new apps and services that run across the ever-expanding range of smartphones and other mobile devices on the market. Neomobile is set to launch several new HTML5-based apps and content services - including mobile games, video streaming, social networking, and infotainment - in its 11 core markets. Operators and service providers will use the cloud to deliver always-on, cross-device services and web apps created using HTML5.
"As the volume and choice of mobile devices increases, cloud-based services possess a valuable advantage versus native apps, in that they be can be accessed easily and seamlessly by consumers from any type of connected devices," concludes D'Agostino. "We believe that the era of the mobile download is now making way for a wave of cloud and streaming services that is set to widely disrupt the mobile video, music and gaming industries."
The broadening global uptake of Google, Samsung and HTC smartphones, all powered by Android OS, will be another key trend in 2013. Neomobile points to Google Play app store growth as evidence: its revenues grew by 200% in Q4 2012, compared to just 20% growth by the Apple App Store in the same quarter. Neomobile's own Android in-app payment solution enables developers to trigger payment via mobile carriers for premium features and is expected to boost new revenue streams.
Gianluca D'Agostino will be speaking at Mobile World Congress at 1430 CET on Wednesday February 27, in the conference panel session entitled "Back to the future: Mobile Innovation 2023" alongside leading technology companies and executives from Deloitte, Qualcomm and Telefonica Digital.
- ENDS -
Neomobile is a global Mobile Commerce Group at the forefront of the new mobile ecosystem. Established in 2007, today Neomobile is a mobile entertainment leader in Europe, LatAm and India. Neomobile offers and markets a broad digital content suite to millions of consumers, downloadable or in the cloud, multi-screen (feature phones, PCs, tablets, TVs, smartphones), that is easy to discover and consume.
Neomobile reached a leadership position also in mobile payment, offering its Onebip solution and its mobile advertising know-how to web and mobile merchants in 70+ markets. With almost 300 experts in mobile, Neomobile is headquartered in Rome, and also has offices in London, Paris, Madrid, Milan, Reus, São Paulo, Beograd, Istanbul, Berlin, San Francisco, Ciudad De México and Mumbai.
+44 (0)207 033 2660
SYS-CON Events announced today that IBM Cloud Data Services has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON's 18th Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. IBM Cloud Data Services offers a portfolio of integrated, best-of-breed cloud data services for developers focused on mobile computing and analytics use cases.
May. 31, 2016 07:15 PM EDT Reads: 1,782
SYS-CON Events announced today that Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in Embedded and IoT solutions, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 18th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI), the leading innovator in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology, is a premier provider of advanced server Building Block Solutions® for Data Center, Cloud Computing, Enterprise IT, Hadoop/Big Data, HPC and ...
May. 31, 2016 07:15 PM EDT Reads: 1,000
The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing rapidly by extending current technologies, products and networks. By 2020, Cisco estimates there will be 50 billion connected devices. Gartner has forecast revenues of over $300 billion, just to IoT suppliers. Now is the time to figure out how you’ll make money – not just create innovative products. With hundreds of new products and companies jumping into the IoT fray every month, there’s no shortage of innovation. Despite this, McKinsey/VisionMobile data...
May. 31, 2016 07:15 PM EDT Reads: 1,893
18th Cloud Expo, taking place June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world. Cloud computing is now being embraced by a majority of enterprises of all sizes. Yesterday's debate about public vs. private has transformed into the reality of hybrid cloud: a recent survey shows that 74% of enterprises have a hybrid cloud strategy. Meanwhile, 94% of enterprises are using some...
May. 31, 2016 07:00 PM EDT Reads: 3,330
@DevOpsSummit taking place June 7-9, 2016 at Javits Center, New York City, and Nov 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, is co-located with the 18th International @CloudExpo and will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world.
May. 31, 2016 06:45 PM EDT Reads: 3,233
We’ve been doing it for years, decades for some. How many websites have you created accounts on? Your bank, your credit card companies, social media sites, hotels and travel sites, online shopping sites, and that’s just the start. We do it often without even thinking about it, quickly entering our personal information, our data, in a plethora of systems. Sometimes we’re not even aware of the information we are providing. It could be very personal information (think of the security questions you ...
May. 31, 2016 06:45 PM EDT Reads: 1,140
The cloud era has reached the stage where it is no longer a question of whether a company should migrate, but when. Enterprises have embraced the outsourcing of where their various applications are stored and who manages them, saving significant investment along the way. Plus, the cloud has become a defining competitive edge. Companies that fail to successfully adapt risk failure. The media, of course, continues to extol the virtues of the cloud, including how easy it is to get there. Migrating...
May. 31, 2016 06:30 PM EDT Reads: 890
In today's enterprise, digital transformation represents organizational change even more so than technology change, as customer preferences and behavior drive end-to-end transformation across lines of business as well as IT. To capitalize on the ubiquitous disruption driving this transformation, companies must be able to innovate at an increasingly rapid pace. Traditional approaches for driving innovation are now woefully inadequate for keeping up with the breadth of disruption and change facin...
May. 31, 2016 05:45 PM EDT Reads: 1,781
As machines are increasingly connected to the internet, it’s becoming easier to discover the numerous ways Industrial IoT (IIoT) is helping to shape the business world. This is exactly why we have decided to take a closer look at this pervasive movement and to examine the desire to connect more things! Now if you need a refresher on IIoT and how it is changing the world, take a moment and listen to Greg Gorbach with ARC Advisory Group. Gorbach believes, "IIoT will significantly change the worl...
May. 31, 2016 05:00 PM EDT Reads: 2,147
"What we see what happens when you have a completely networked society and the potential to now drive the value creation and the collaboration and the ecosystems that are possible when you start to be able to connect people and industries together in ways that have never been possible before," explained Esmeralda Swartz, VP of Marketing Enterprise & Cloud at Ericsson, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @ThingsExpo, held November 3-5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
May. 31, 2016 04:45 PM EDT Reads: 1,901
How will your company move to the cloud while ensuring a solid security posture? Organizations from small to large are increasingly adopting cloud solutions to deliver essential business services at a much lower cost. According to cyber security experts, the frequency and severity of cyber-attacks are on the rise, causing alarm to businesses and customers across a variety of industries. To defend against exploits like these, a company must adopt a comprehensive security defense strategy that is ...
May. 31, 2016 04:30 PM EDT Reads: 973
SYS-CON Events announced today that AppNeta, the leader in performance insight for business-critical web applications, will exhibit and present at SYS-CON's @DevOpsSummit at Cloud Expo New York, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. AppNeta is the only application performance monitoring (APM) company to provide solutions for all applications – applications you develop internally, business-critical SaaS applications you use and the networks that deli...
May. 31, 2016 04:00 PM EDT Reads: 2,730
SYS-CON Events announced today that Zerto will exhibit at SYS-CON's 18th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Zerto is committed to keeping enterprise and cloud IT running 24/7 by providing innovative, simple, reliable and scalable business continuity software solutions. Through the Zerto Cloud Continuity Platform™, organizations can seamlessly move and protect virtualized workloads between public, private and hybrid clou...
May. 31, 2016 03:50 PM EDT Reads: 302
SYS-CON Events announced today that Catchpoint Systems, Inc., a provider of innovative web and infrastructure monitoring solutions, has been named “Silver Sponsor” of SYS-CON's DevOps Summit at 18th Cloud Expo New York, which will take place June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Catchpoint is a leading Digital Performance Analytics company that provides unparalleled insight into customer-critical services to help consistently deliver an amazing customer experience. Designed...
May. 31, 2016 03:45 PM EDT Reads: 2,180
Cloud computing delivers on-demand resources that provide businesses with flexibility and cost-savings. The challenge in moving workloads to the cloud has been the cost and complexity of ensuring the initial and ongoing security and regulatory (PCI, HIPAA, FFIEC) compliance across private and public clouds. Manual security compliance is slow, prone to human error, and represents over 50% of the cost of managing cloud applications. Determining how to automate cloud security compliance is critical...
May. 31, 2016 03:00 PM EDT Reads: 2,062
SYS-CON Events announced today that ContentMX, the marketing technology and services company with a singular mission to increase engagement and drive more conversations for enterprise, channel and SMB technology marketers, has been named “Sponsor & Exhibitor Lounge Sponsor” of SYS-CON's 18th Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. “CloudExpo is a great opportunity to start a conversation with new prospects, but what happens after the...
May. 31, 2016 02:30 PM EDT Reads: 1,503
As organizations shift towards IT-as-a-service models, the need for managing and protecting data residing across physical, virtual, and now cloud environments grows with it. Commvault can ensure protection, access and E-Discovery of your data – whether in a private cloud, a Service Provider delivered public cloud, or a hybrid cloud environment – across the heterogeneous enterprise. In his general session at 18th Cloud Expo, Randy De Meno, Chief Technologist - Windows Products and Microsoft Part...
May. 31, 2016 02:15 PM EDT Reads: 932
The IoT is changing the way enterprises conduct business. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Eric Hoffman, Vice President at EastBanc Technologies, discuss how businesses can gain an edge over competitors by empowering consumers to take control through IoT. We'll cite examples such as a Washington, D.C.-based sports club that leveraged IoT and the cloud to develop a comprehensive booking system. He'll also highlight how IoT can revitalize and restore outdated business models, making them profitable...
May. 31, 2016 02:00 PM EDT Reads: 3,152
Customer experience has become a competitive differentiator for companies, and it’s imperative that brands seamlessly connect the customer journey across all platforms. With the continued explosion of IoT, join us for a look at how to build a winning digital foundation in the connected era – today and in the future. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Chris Nguyen, Group Product Marketing Manager at Adobe, will discuss how to successfully leverage mobile, rapidly deploy content, capture real-time d...
May. 31, 2016 01:45 PM EDT Reads: 1,806
What a difference a year makes. Organizations aren’t just talking about IoT possibilities, it is now baked into their core business strategy. With IoT, billions of devices generating data from different companies on different networks around the globe need to interact. From efficiency to better customer insights to completely new business models, IoT will turn traditional business models upside down. In the new customer-centric age, the key to success is delivering critical services and apps wit...
May. 31, 2016 12:30 PM EDT Reads: 1,425


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Pamela King of Greenwire reports that the campaign, Target Hunger Now, builds off the 30-year-old Illinois Sportsmen Against Hunger program in which hunters donate a portion of their venison harvest to poor families through independent processors and distributors. Through Target Hunger Now, the state agency contracts anglers to catch Asian carp and handles processing and distribution.
Tracy Smith, director of a partner organization to Target Hunger Now, Feeding Illinois, told King the public has been receptive to the idea of eating Asian carp. The fish are rich in protein, a nutrient often overlooked by struggling families during hard times. However, a spokesman for the agency told King this solution is a short-term one; they are looking for a way to completely eradicate the fish.


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Shanghai ports rank third in international shipping
Shanghai continues on its path towards becoming an international shipping center, as it secures its position as the third-ranked global shipping hub for the fourth consecutive year, according to the Xinhua-Baltic International Shipping Center Development Index 2023.
The index, released on Friday at the North Bund Forum on international shipping and aviation, reveals a new pattern in the shipping industry, with Singapore, London, and Shanghai leading the way.
Over the past decade, Shanghai has undergone a transformative journey, evolving from a solitary player to a cooperative force within the coastal port group. The city's shipping industry, once struggling with its soft power, has now successfully established the "Shanghai Shipping" service brand. Also, the city has taken significant steps towards environmental sustainability through accelerated green initiatives, low-carbon practices and digital transformations.
The Xinhua-Baltic International Shipping Center Development Index was first launched in 2014 by the China Economic Information Service, a subsidiary of Xinhua, in collaboration with the Baltic Exchange. It has once again ranked the 43 top port cities and maritime centre around the world, using a variety of metrics.
The latest index results indicated the stability of the top 10 cities in terms of comprehensive strength of global shipping centers. Singapore remained in the lead, followed by London and Shanghai. Hong Kong and Dubai secured the fourth and 5th spots respectively, while Rotterdam, Hamburg, Piraeus-Athens, Ningbo-Zhoushan, and New York-New Jersey completed the rest of the top 10. Notably, Piraeus-Athens and Ningbo-Zhoushan have both advanced in their rankings, with New York-New Jersey falling to 10th place.
A shift of international resources
The index reflected a significant shift in the gathering and allocation of international shipping resources, with a gradual eastward movement along the flow of goods, trade and capital. Asia-Pacific regional shipping centers continued to strengthen their capacity as the world's economic and trade situation evolves, the report showed.
Shanghai's rise as a global shipping center was evident with its consistent ranking among the top three cities for four years in a row. In 2023, Shanghai stood firm in third place, joined by five other Chinese cities in the top 20. Compared with a decade ago, all Chinese cities in the ranking have seen substantial improvements.
The Shanghai Port, renowned for its exceptional container throughput, has led the way for thirteen consecutive years, the report showed. Additionally, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's Liner Shipping Connectivity Index, Shanghai Port has maintained its position as the top global port for twelve consecutive years.
Experts attributed Shanghai's success as a shipping hub to various factors, including its status as the leader and hub of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The city benefits from having the world's largest container port, a business-friendly policy environment, and a highly educated population, said Xu Chen, executive editor of the report.
The report also highlighted the advantages of Ningbo-Zhoushan which boasts excellent port hardware conditions and business scale, as well as the remarkable progress in overall competitiveness of Qingdao Port.


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What you need to know
- Another rumor points to the iPhone 14 getting a big camera upgrade next year.
- Jeff Pu says it will get a 48MP camera and increased levels of RAM.
- However, he also claims that 120Hz displays are coming to the whole lineup and that Apple will lower the base storage of the iPhone 14.
The claim comes from Jeff Pu, as reported by MacRumors:
In a research note with Haitong International Securities, obtained by MacRumors, Pu said the two Pro models will be equipped with a triple-lens rear camera system with an upgraded 48-megapixel Wide lens and 12-megapixel Ultra Wide and Telephoto lenses. This lines up with information shared by TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who in April claimed that the 48-megapixel lens will support 8K video recording.
Pu also reportedly stated that Apple will equip the iPhone 14 Pro with 8GB of RAM, more than the 6GB in current Pro models. As the report notes, the only reason to really put stock in the first claim is that it has already been reported by the much more reliable Ming-Chi Kuo, who reported Apple's 48MP iPhone 14 plans in September..
Pu also claims that Apple's 120Hz display will come to all four iPhone 14 models and that Apple will lower the standard base storage from 128GB to 64, a very strange prediction given Apple has only ever increased the base storage of iPhone models when it has changed configurations.
Pu did accurately note the price of the iPhone 12, and mini-LED displays for the MacBook Pro (2021) and M1 iPad Pro (2021), however, he missed on the release windows of both and has missed on a couple of other rumors, notably stating in 2017 the HomePod would get Face ID in 2019.
Apple's iPhone 14 is expected to debut a new design, complete with a hole-punch camera in the pro models in place of the notch. Camera upgrades are on the cards as well as a new processor.


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Designed by BrandOpus, United Kingdom.
BrandOpus bows to royal wedding fervour
To celebrate the royal wedding and meet the demand for brands marking British nostalgia and the best of British, award-winning design agency, BrandOpus has created a special limited edition pack Rowse. The celebratory design will hit the shelves in April and will be available for a month beyond the event.
BrandOpus was tasked with creating a bespoke label for Rowse Limited Edition Royal Wedding British Honey that will be available in major supermarkets such as Waitrose, Morrisons and Tesco. The new iconic packaging features a heart-shaped crest at the centre incorporating devices like the thistle and the shamrock that celebrate the honey brand’s long-established British heritage and quality dating back to 1938. Founder Tony Rowse started beekeeping in a small shed in Ewelme, Oxfordshire before turning his passion into a business. From humble beginnings the company has grown to become the country’s market leader in honey for which BrandOpus overhauled its identity and packaging last year.
Excitement is also mounting at British chocolatier Choc on Choc which recently supplied Highgrove with 900 heart-shaped dark and white chocolates with edible glitter encapsulating the intertwined initials W and C. The family-run business, based in the village of Rode near Bath, some 30 miles from Highgrove, saw a 13 per cent total sales uplift in the first six months of the BrandOpus redesign, and an impressive 600 per cent increase in Christmas orders from Waitrose. It has become more recognisable amongst the British public, winning many prestigious awards, including most recently a DBA Gold for design effectiveness.
Paul Taylor, creative director, BrandOpus says: “Royal wedding fever is definitely upon us and major British brands are capitalising on the feel good factor that the event invokes in the population’s psyche. For brands whose core values include Britishness this is surely the ultimate opportunity to reiterate their British origins.”


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The UK branded restaurant market is set to grow by £5.6b over the next five years.
That's according to a new report by Allegra Strategies, which forecasts significant growth up to 2018 as branded operators eat into independents' market share. Allegra surveyed 22,000 consumers about their eating out habits, as well as 120 industry leaders about their expectations for the industry.
With an expected turnover of £16.4b in 2013 the market, which includes fast food operators, casual dining and pub/restaurants, is also being reshaped by changing dining habits, which are seeing diners being less formal and structured about the way they eat.
The main findings were:
• Branded/managed pubs, forecast at £7.6b turnover (for 2013) across 8,488 establishments with annual growth of 6.0% in sales and 3.1% in outlets, are well placed to benefit from the propensity to eat out informally throughout the day, with JD Wetherspoon leading the way.
• Branded fast food, valued at £4.5b turnover across 5,343 outlets, delivering annual growth of 5.7% in sales and 4.1% in outlets, is also in a strong position to benefit from all-day dining, with McDonald's leading the way.
• Branded full-service/casual restaurants are at a relative disadvantage, according to Allegra's report. It said that although growth in 2013 is robust with turnover of £4.3b across 3,896 establishments, representing annual growth of 6.3% in value and 3.7% in outlets, it will be harder to maintain growth and win consumer share as the market evolves.
• The inability to successfully offer a fast, quality breakfast menu will hamstring many of the leading casual brands. Casual brands are already under pressure as their key day-parts, particularly lunch, face intense competition from the widening eating out market, according to the report.
• Giraffe is one of a few good examples of branded casual restaurants catering to the all-day trend, influencing the strategic investment by Tesco, Allegra said.
Meanwhile, the report also documented the rise of branded chains at the expense of independents:
• Since 2007 branded outlet share has grown by 2.4 points to 14% by 2013, and by 7.3 points to 35% in share of total turnover value
• Allegra Strategies estimates that the branded restaurant market will continue to take share from independents in the next five years to hold 16.4% of outlets and 43% of value by 2018
• Branded/managed pub restaurants are significantly out-performing the wider pub market, driving the increasing branded market share, according to Allegra.
Independent/Tenanted pubs face more closures, pressure from off-trade and declining consumer engagement with wet-led formats. Branded pubs have increased outlet share by 3.1 percentage points to reach 16% by 2013. Value share has increased by 8.8 percent points to 48% since 2007, driven by the significant increase in food sales
And Allegra said that the street food movement, with its low-cost market entry model was gathering momentum, encouraging strong growth, influencing strong operators and challenged weaker small brands.
Anya Marco, director of insight, Allegra Strategies said: "Eating out is the new normal for UK consumers. The ability to eat out at any time of day is leading to a change in day-part frequency as consumer visits at breakfast are growing, while lunch and dinner are under pressure.
"The slow economic growth is less impactful than feared, though consumers are employing various money saving tactics in order to maintain their eating out habits. The pub restaurants channel is the most frequently visited by UK consumers, and JD Wetherspoon's is the nation's favourite restaurant brand for the first time. Make no mistake, pub restaurants will become an increasing force to be reckoned with!"


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Announced over four years ago, Midway’s This is Vegas boasted one of the biggest budgets in video game history. With interiors that were “way beyond” anything seen in open world games and an “incredible AI simulation” the $50m budgeted game from the minds of Surreal Software had the potential to become as popular as RockStar’s Gran Theft Auto.
So what went wrong?
In a six page feature in the September issue of Play UK, This is Vegas senior producer Chris Klimecky spoke publicly about the numerous issues that would ultimately seal the game’s fate.
On his mission to push Midway Games out of the arcade age once and for all, company CEO David Zucker purchased Surreal Software in mid-2004.
“He was on a buying spree of indie developers,” stated Klimecky. ”Part of Zucker’s ‘grand plan’ regarding acquisition of all these studios was to unite them under a single technology. One engine to rule them all.”
But according to Klimecky this move was one of the early nails in This is Vegas’ coffin.
One of the side effects of using the Unreal Engine 3 at the time would mean that they would have to focus on Microsoft’s XBox 360, not the PS3 for the “foreseeable future.” All other titles developed within Midway would also have to use the same engine ( from Mortal Kombat to Wheelman ).
“The development delays and tech challenges created by this were staggering. The time spent on both the tech team and the production team side -entire groups of every studio, plus a dedicated engine team in Austin [Texas] had to be devoted to it- was likely many decades of man-years of effort.”
By February/March 2009 Midway’s financial turmoil was unfolding around Surreal Software as the studio was moving forward to a “do-or-die milestone” with This is Vegas. Despite news of bankruptcy spreading like wildfire, Surreal was reassured by Midway Senior Vice President Matt Booty and Surreal Software co-founder, Alan Patmore that the studio would be sold and This is Vegas would continue.
Unfortunately, after Surreal Studios was sold to Warner Brothers in July of 2009 the plug was pulled on This is Vegas. In the magazine Klimecky described that when the tech team tore the engine apart [yet again] to optimise it, This is Vegas took a dip in progress after alpha, causing some of the higher ups to panic.
During a meeting Samantha Ryan ( Warner Brother’s Senior VP of product and development ) insisted that Klimecky and his team ship the game, she didn’t care about quality. “Quality is under the floor!” she yelled after doing a physical comparison of priorities.
“There was noway it was going to work,” Klimecky explained to Play UK, ”Even at the lowest quality we could string together at that point, it would take us another six to eight months to be shippable at all.Easily another 12 months to get where we would feel good about it.”
After that meeting Klimecky knew it was over.
Soon Warner Brothers began peeling Surreal apart, with Klimecky being transferred to Snowblind to work on Lord of the Rings: War of the North. In the same year Surreal Studio attempted to release a mini game compilation of This is Vegas and a possible tie in with the Hollywood hit, The Hangover, but those plans never come into fruition as many were laid off or absorbed into other studios.
The demise of This is Vegas was “bittersweet” with plenty of finger pointing to be had. Despite the negative criticism the game garnered after it’s first and only public showing, Klimecky still believes that This is Vegas could have been tremendous success, even topping Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto in a variety of ways.
Read Chris Klimecky’s full This is Vegas interview in the pages of Play Magazine, issue 221.


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GWI data also revealed that global inbound wellness tourism trips will grow twice as fast each year (8.3%) as international trips overall (4.1%) from 2012-2017. And data on how exceptionally high-yield wellness tourists are, is welcome news for any nation: they spend 137% more than the average tourist per trip. And the international wellness traveler spends 59% more per trip than the average inbound tourist: at $1,639 USD vs. $1,030 USD.
The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) today unveiled its first of several panels in an exciting line-up of speakers for the upcoming GBTA Convention 2015, July 25-29 in Orlando, Florida: Future of the Distribution Landscape.
Rob joins Karin Sciavilla, COO, Magnus Nyström, CTO and Bojan Jokic, CEO as the latest addition to Eptecas impressive senior leadership group. As CCO, Rob will focus on strategy and direction in areas such as product and revenue development, on the vendor side of Eptecas marketplace ecosystem.
A new whitepaper from ALTOUR, a leading travel solutions provider with more than $1.7B of industry leverage, and The BTN Group, found travel industry professionals are hungry for change in the managed travel purchasing process.
International tourism receipts increased by US$ 48 billion in 2014 to reach a record US$ 1,245 billion. An additional US$ 221 billion was generated from international passenger transport, bringing total exports from international tourism up to US$ 1.5 trillion.
Viking Ocean Cruises today announced its first ship, Viking Star, has embarked on her maiden voyage from Istanbul to Venice, thus launching the travel industry's first entirely new cruise line in a decade.
Air New Zealand yesterday named Houston as its fifth North American gateway when the national carrier of New Zealand announced it will begin nonstop service to George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) beginning in December 2015.


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NFL DRAFTS FASHION PHOTOGRAPHER PATRICK DEMARCHELIER TO SHOOT WOMEN’S APPAREL ADS
Over the past few years, there has been a surge in stylish apparel and accessory offerings in the NFL, especially as it relates to female fans. Team-themed fashions continue to evolve to reflect current trends, while catering to the very diverse NFL female fan base. Women can now define themselves as football fans without sacrificing their personal style.
In addition to ramping up its fashion-forward product range, the NFL continues to incorporate high-end pieces into its dedicated women’s apparel campaign. According to WWD, the league recruited famed French fashion photographer, Patrick Demarchelier, to shoot the newest round of ads. Similar to last season, the year’s campaign will feature famous female personalities, actresses and supermodels, as well as wives of team owners. Included on the latest roster of brand ambassadors are: Suzanne Johnson, wife of New York Jets owner, Woody Johnson, Tanya Snyder, wife of Washington Redskin owner, Dan Snyder, Tavia Hunt, wife of Kansas City Chiefs owner, Clark Hunt, Charlotte Jones, Dallas Cowboys Executive Vice President and Chief Brand Officer, DJ Kiss, Stacey Keiber, Hilary Rhoda and Karolina Kurkova.
The shoot took place at Milk Studios in New York. Each of the women showcased their own sense of style and the versatility of the fan gear, complimenting the NFL team pieces with a variety of luxury fashions and jewelry. Formers Ravens cheerleader, Keibler, paired a Ravens logo tee with Christian Dior pants. Johnson “opted for Chanel and Van Cleef & Arpels to dress up a body-hugging tank from the home team.”
The new ads are set to debut in August. Below is a behind-the-scenes look at Johnson and Hilary Rhoda modeling some of the new NFL women’s threads:
(photo via WWD)
(photos via hilaryrhodafans.com)


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Hi penguin pals,
I’ve got important news for mobile players.
The Club Penguin Island app will be removed from Google Play and the Apple App Store on November 20. However, if you have the app on your device, you can continue to use it after that time—just be sure not to delete it because you won’t be able to re-download it.
The good news is, Club Penguin Island on Windows PC and Mac will be available until the closure on December 20.


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PLDT Enterprise continues to strengthen its partnership with Cebu-based internet service provider Fil Products, Inc. to deliver affordable and reliable fiber internet, elevating customer experience across Visayas and Mindanao.
“The PLDT Group has been partnering with Fil Products for over a decade. As their services continue to expand, we at PLDT Enterprise are also ready to continue enabling their goal of making fast and reliable connectivity more accessible to their customers, especially in underserved areas,” said Kent De La Calzada, Assistant Vice President and Head for PLDT Enterprise Customer Relationship Management Visayas.
Fil Products began as a cable company, before eventually venturing into providing fiber internet services. With PLDT Enterprise’s Dedicated Internet Access service or iGate, Fil Products has the guaranteed bandwidth that will allow it to respond to the connectivity needs of its subscribers.
“With this partnership with PLDT Enterprise, we are confident that we can deliver high-speed and affordable internet service to our subscribers and serve even more households in Visayas and Mindanao,” said Nonito “Tatay Dodong” Limchua, Founder and Chairman of Fil Products, Inc.
Present during the contract signing ceremony were (L to R) PLDT Enterprise Customer Relationship Management Business Head Oamar Tabiliran, Assistant Vice President and Head for PLDT Enterprise Customer Relationship Management Kent De La Calzada, Founder and Chairman of Fil Products, Inc. Nonito Limchua, and Fil Products, Inc. President Diana Limchua.


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Upper-end outdoor furniture producer Gloster has promoted Pamela Clark to the new position of vice president of sales and marketing for Gloster America.
High-end outdoor furniture producer Castelle has signed a licensing agreement with North Carolina’s Biltmore House and will unveil its first licensed Biltmore collection at next month’s High Point Market.
Fabric supplier Culp Inc. (NYSE: CULP) said it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Read Window Products, a producer of custom window treatments and other products for the hospitality and commercial markets.
Rent-to-own major Rent-A-Center (NASDAQ: RCII) said it has eliminated 250 jobs at its Plano, Texas headquarters – about 25% of the workforce there – as part of its effort to reduce costs and return the company to profitability.
Case goods and upholstery resource Abbyson has expanded its Asian operational footprint with the opening of a new office in Vietnam.
Home Furnishings Business is putting together its editorial coverage for the Spring High Point Market issue, and has set a March 16 deadline for exhibitors to submit new product photos.
The Home Furnishings Association will hold its first-ever Home Furnishings Leadership Institute in June – a four-day program aimed at training future leaders in the furniture retail segment.