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Update on testing and optimizing the electronics of the X-ONE H1
Following the last update in December, the X-ONE Team has kept working on testing and optimizing the X-ONE H1.
As indicated in the last update, we were making sure that every PCB (electronic module) is responding properly, testing every hardware features, including the vibration, the accelerometer, the Bluetooth and etc.
We noticed some issues with some batteries in regards to software development. In some cases the offline mode was not activated. The batteries were discharged completely, and they could not be uploaded again. Our team is working very closely with our supplier to find solutions. The meeting on February 6th has already brought a solution for the battery. However, due to these recent issues, we are not able to reveal a delivery date. We are working on fixing the software to prevent such happenings.
Reception of watch components
We also received the components for the wrapping of the watch, including the cases, the buckles and rubber straps, and the transparent dial unveiling the gorgeous mechanics of the watch.


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Over 15 Different Ways To Wrap. Wear It Again. Maternity Friendly.
We are thrilled to announce the newest color to our Classic Collection!
twobirds is launching our most popular pieces in Velvet for the holiday season!
English garden wedding in Michigan featuring our Petal Tulle Ballgowns
Join us next week at our NYC Showroom for amazing deals on our dresses!
Stay in the know about upcoming sample sales, new collection launches and exclusive event news.

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Peak consumer group ACCAN says annual report data released by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) today shows the number of customers who have gone to the TIO about an unexpectedly high bill has doubled over the past year.
“The past year has seen a big increase in the number of people who have made a complaint about an unexpectedly high bill,” said ACCAN Chief Executive Teresa Corbin. “This is a worrying trend, because unaffordable phone bills can lead to serious credit problems for consumers if they want to apply for a credit card or a mortgage later on.”
Disputed internet charges complaints are up 150% as the number of Australians using smartphones increases.
Once customers go over their monthly smartphone data allowance they incur excess charges ranging from 10c per MB to 50c per MB, depending on the provider.
“One of the main issues is that most people have trouble gauging how much data they’ve used - or how many megabytes are required to say stream video or download emails. We’re pleased that some providers have already started sending out SMS warnings to their customers when they are at or approaching their data limit,” said Ms Corbin. “People need timely, accurate information about their data usage to avoid an unexpectedly high bill.”
Under new rules from September 2013, all major providers will be required to send SMS alerts to customers when they have used 50%, 85% and 100% of their monthly data allowance. Smaller providers have until September 2014.
ACCAN says another worrying trend from the TIO data is that complaints about global roaming bills are up by 69%.
“The worst stories we hear are about high global roaming bills. People typically get caught out with data charges if they don’t realise they need to adjust the automatic roaming settings on their smartphone when they go overseas,” said Ms Corbin. “This is such a problem that the Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, has stepped in so that soon all mobile phone customers travelling overseas will receive an SMS from their provider about the costs involved.”
ACCAN says the good news stemming from the report is that the total number of complaints is down by 2%; however there is still a long way to go.
“While any decrease in the number of customers experiencing problems is welcome, 193,702 people having to resort to the Ombudsman to get their problem fixed is still far too many,” said Ms Corbin.
ACCAN has a range of tip sheets for telecommunications consumers available here via accan.org.au/tipsheets


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Samsung Galaxy S8 leaks shows that the upcoming flagship will have a new and more powerful features compared to the previous versions such as the Galaxy S7.
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Manitoba’s second-largest hogprocessing plant is about to get a whole lot bigger.
A major expansion planned for Springhill Farms in Neepawa will increase its slaughter capacity 5,500 hogs a day, or 1.4 million hogs a year. The expansion is scheduled to take effect April 2012.
Springhill currently slaughters 3,650 hogs daily.
The plant will also receive a new moniker. Its owner HyLife changed its name from Hytek Ltd., effective Feb. 1.
HyLife is Canada’s largest swine producer, with 53,000 sows producing 1.4 million pigs a year at over 100 sites, said Claude Vielfaure, executive vice-president and chief operating officer.
HyLife decided to rebrand itself as a food processor because it produces a high-quality product and food is essential to life, Vielfaure said.
“We wanted a name that we could trademark, that we could brand, something that would fit in with what we are doing.”
HyLife will also increase the number of employees at the Neepawa plant to just over 800 workers, Vielfaure said.
The plant employs workers from Ukraine, Korea and the Philippines, creating a local mini-population boom but also a housing shortage which Vielfaure hopes local developers will fix.
HyLife is a beacon of optimism for an industry battered by economic woes over the past several years. A combination of low market prices, a strong Canadian dollar and U.S. trade barriers have forced many producers out of business. Manitoba today has around 750 active hog producers, half as many as five years ago.
HyLife, on the other hand, has gone onwards and upwards since it bought Springhill Farms from the Hutterite Brethren in 2008.
At the time, the plant had 318 employees and was killing 3,000 pigs a day, half of them for carcasses to the Maple Leaf plant in Brandon. Vielfaure said the company immediately went to 3,650 pigs daily and began cutting up all carcasses for its own use.
Today, HyLife sells over 60 per cent of its fresh and frozen pork outside Canada. Major importers include the United States, China, Japan, Korea, Russia and Australia.
Vielfaure said HyLife sources 75 per cent of its pigs from its own barns. The rest are bought from independent producers, including Hutterite colonies.
HyLife was formed in 1994 under the name Hytek Ltd. The company was part of a joint effort in 2007 to build a large hogprocessing plant in southeast Winnipeg. The project foundered when local residents objected to it. Not long after, Hytek bought Springhill Farms.
Vielfaure was cautious when asked how his company has managed to be successful when others, including several large operations in Saskatchewan, have gone under because of tough times.
“It comes down to building a business plan that proves to be a little better,” he said.
“You need to feel comfortable with the business plans you have and obviously make sure you have some staying power. You just have to keep your powder dry and get through it.” [email protected]
– Claude Vielfaure


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Uh oh! While the Kardashian sisters are famous for his or her continuous presence on social networking, their lack about giving props to their own self- has caused them to be sued with accusations of deceit and fraud!
The Kardashian sisters are worth a bundle, as well as a fiscal management firm needs a $180 million ball of it according to a suit that is new. It is tough to picture the Kardashian sisters not going full blown on their Twitter above a beauty line named after them, however a fresh suit says they did not promote “Kardashian Beauty” as they’d consented to, as well as the possible gains lost are massive according to the legal doctors.
The women began their “Khroma” beauty products line using a firm called Boldface in the year 2012, however a legal hassle on the item name compelled it to be altered to “Kardashian Beauty,” but by that time Boldface was going under.
Enter Hillair Capital Management, which appeared to be a savior for the sisters at that time, slumping $10 million into the company and buying out Boldface. However, the firm alleges that even as soon as they came in and gave their beauty line the money to be successful, the Kardashians women quit promoting “Kardashian Beauty” to their millions of devotees since they desired to shop around to get a more profitable deal elsewhere.
Wow! We all know the sisters turn gold they touch, but that is a staggering amount!


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- 4 min read
Festive advertising trends – consumers will not splurge
The crisis has changed the consumer psyche and communication that is not rooted in overt consumerism will be more attractive to us...
Though the Ganesha festivities were much muted than before the pandemic, this year at least saw people coming out and shop. This was way better than the almost deathly silence that the festivals witnessed in 2020. Marketeers seem to be enthusiastic, hoping that the pall of gloom is finally being lifted and while India clocked in 70 crores + vaccination, “markets are opening” is the buzz phrase of this phase. In fact this last quarter of the calendar year is being predicted to be a revival of sorts for the Indian economy, as Indian consumers will loosen their purse strings a wee bit wider than last year. YouGov’s recent market study gives a big thumbs up to the Diwali spending Index, which is by and large traditionally indicative of the boost in third quarter sales every year in India. This year the propensity towards spending is higher than last year as per the survey and a major trigger for the same is an overall positivity marked by this period of festivities.
Nevertheless, this year though the sentiments are high in terms of consumer spending, urban consumers have become much more discerning than what they were in the pre-pandemic era. Uncertainties still loom large and therefore wiser spendings are in the anvil. BFSI brands are giving a major impetus to their strategies with attractive offers and sops that will get the consumer to buy into their products. Private lender Kotak Mahindra Bank’s limited festive offer of reduced home loan interest rates are a case in point.
There is a rise in demand as there is a greater interest in buying larger and comfortable home spaces, as work & education have both shifted to home. Strong rallies are being seen in the equity markets, which will perhaps get the wise and wary to look at mutual funds and SIPs especially, for making the rupee work harder for them. COVID 19 pandemic brought a major shift in how the insurance sector was viewed in India. It became deemed as an ‘essential commodity’ as many veered towards term life insurance plans – its simplicity & affordability led to its rising popularity. Consumers are viewing financial products that give them customized and exclusive solutions, with greater interest. More and more young people are buying into brands, now with the use of digitization in terms of modes of transactions, redemptions, renewals, etc. The pandemic set us on the path of second income and that is here to stay.
This festive season will see a major push by BFSI brands and experts are commenting that apart from consumer durables, telecom, FMCG, auto & e-commerce, the BFSI segment will drive the growth in spends this year.
Though there is a speculation about the third wave, the overall public sentiments are much better than the last year and the ADEX looks like touching the pre-covid era, what with Indian players bringing us cheer during the Olympics & Paralympics and with the IPL and the T20 World Cup Cricket coinciding with the festive season. Digital ad spends have shown consistent growth spends over the past years and the trend will continue with TV dominating the space and digital inching close behind. New categories like fintech, edutech, health tech, gaming, digital wallet payments, neo banks, etc. all are increasingly looking at digital spends and there is a much-anticipated growth in this segment.
Yes, the sentiments are high but we will not see aimless splurge anymore by consumers. The crisis has changed the consumer psyche and communication that is not rooted in overt consumerism will be more attractive to us. So, on a very positive note, let's herald new beginnings with a fresh sense of discernment that is palpable.
-The author is founder-CEO, Hotstuff Medialabs. Views expressed are personal.


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The county’s parking management division, part of the Department of Transportation, will once again institute enforcement measures against those who ignore parking tickets, officials said.
MCDOT will begin towing and starting cars on Monday, November 1 from drivers who have not paid at least three late parking tickets. The department will focus on vehicles that are continually parked illegally, as well as abandoned cars.
The MCDOT had suspended part of its parking enforcement program in March 2020 to avoid hardship for customers affected during the COVID-19 health crisis.
Violators can find their cars immobilized with a starting system that can be self-triggered.
In the event of starting, the car owner can call a free number 24/7 to immediately settle his debt and release the trunk with an electronic code.
“Vehicles immobilized for 72 hours, which have an unpaid debt of $ 1,500 or more, violate peak hour zone restrictions or are in an unsafe / abandoned condition may be towed immediately and are subject to fines and additional charges, ”according to a press release.
Drivers with outstanding parking tickets can pay them online or call 240.453.0113. Locally, they can pay for tickets at the parking store at 809 Ellsworth Ave., inside the Town Square Garage, 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday (except holidays).
MCDOT will reinstate the start-up parking and towing enforcement program effective November 1.
More info: https://t.co/jJU1VeV2kJ @MCDOTNow
– MCDOT parking management division (@MCDOT_Parking) 28 October 2021


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Pedder Road store burgledV Narayan | TNN | Aug 23, 2012, 03.04 AM IST
MUMBAI: Oraios, a fashion outlet on Pedder Road that is a 10-minute walk from the Gamdevi police station, was burgled on Wednesday morning.
Its owner, designer Kaushik Shrimanker, said dresses, dressmaking materials, handmade artefacts, crystals, precious stones and equipment worth over Rs 3.5 lakh were stolen. "Fortunately, a saree and a sherwani, priced at Rs 1.5 lakh each, were left untouched. The items have been ordered by a top industrialist. It seems the burglar(s) did not have a proper idea of the price of the clothes, or else I would have incurred huge losses. In this respect, I was lucky."
Shrimanker closed shop around 8pm on Tuesday.
Around 8am on Wednesday, he received a call from a neighbour, who saw the shutter of the store raised by three feet. "Police beat marshals had patrolled the stretch around 3am. They did not see any suspicious movements then. The burglar(s) must have struck between 3 and 4am," said Shrimanker, who usually opens his store at 9.30am.
Senior inspector Pradip Lonandkar of the Gamdevi police station said, "It appears the burglar(s) committed the crime after studying the locality carefully. He or they noticed that no business establishment on the high-profile stretch had taken efforts to install CCTV cameras."
He said the burglar(s) might have even visited the store in the last few days to take stock of its ware. "Shrimanker said in the complaint that he never keeps big sums of money at the store, depositing earnings in his bank as soon as possible."
Shrimanker said burglars had struck two years ago as well. "They tried to enter my store after breaking the shutter. But they failed as they then broke the window, mistaking it for the door. The window was not big enough to let them in. And they must have run out of time to try breaking the door next."


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ACH Network reports 23 billion payments in 2018.
Global Banking News-February 26, 2019-ACH Network reports 23 billion payments in 2018
(C)2019 ENPublishing - http://www.enpublishing.co.uk
ACH Network has announced that in 2018, its volume reached 23 billion payments, an increase of 1.5 billion payments, a Y-O-Y increase of 6.9 percent, the company said.
This is the fourth straight year the ACH Network has added more than 1 billion new payments.
The value of ACH payments in 2018 was USD 51.2 trillion, a 9.5 percent increase over 2017. It marked the sixth consecutive year in which ACH payment value has risen by at least USD 1 trillion.
Same Day ACH volume soared in 2018, the first full year with same-day debits as well as credits. There were nearly 178 million Same Day ACH payments last year: 98.3 million credits and 79.7 million debits. Overall Same Day ACH volume jumped 137 percent from 2017. Total Same Day ACH value in 2018 was USD 159.9 billion, up 83 percent over the year before.
Several core ACH use cases saw substantial growth in 2018 including:
-Business-to-business (B2B) payments, up 9.4 percent to 3.6 billion, total value USD 34.9 trillion
-Direct Deposit, up 4.4 percent to 6.8 billion, total value USD 9.7 trillion
-Internet payments, up 14.2 percent to 5.9 billion, total value USD 2.9 trillion
-Payments from health plans to medical and dental providers, up 11.5 percent to 306.7 million, total value USD 1.59 trillion
-Person-to-person (P2P) payments, up 32.2 percent to 128.7 million, a total value of USD 209.6 billion
NACHA is the steward of the ACH Network, an electronic payment system that safely and reliably moves tens of billions of payments annually. NACHA sets and enforces the NACHA Operating Rules and works to continuously enhance the ACH Network through innovation, education and advocacy. ??
((Distributed via M2 Communications - http://www.m2.com))


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Nuts.co.uk and NME.com more than doubled their online traffic in the year to June, new ABCe figures are expected to show.
The IPC lad’s mag site Nuts.co.uk increased its online readership by 121 per cent to 1.4 million unique users per month, up from 631,467 in June 2007, according to the publisher. The company credited the expansion of Nuts’ video offering and the social networking tool MyNuts.
Its sister title, music site NME.com, meanwhile, reported a 107 per cent year-on-year increase to 3.5 million unique users.
“Via its various platforms – print, NME Radio, NME TV, mobile, online, events – NME reaches up to 1.5 million music enthusiasts every week,” NME publishing director Paul Cheal said in a press release.
A third IPC Ignite title, Loaded.co.uk, saw its traffic increase 51 per cent to 366,610 unique users.
The new online figures come ahead of the next semi-annual ABC magazine circulation report, which is due to be released as part of a cross-media Group Product Report next Thursday, 14 August.


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Halfords has expanded its bike offering with its latest acquisition of Tredz and Wheelies Direct for £18.4m.
Both South Wales based etailers were founded by brothers Keith and Michael Jones, originally selling bikes in a store in Swansea in 1989. Tredz sells premium bikes, cycling parts, accessories and clothing, while Wheelies is the UK’s largest provider of parts and bikes for insurance companies.
Halfords’ partnership is likely to bring growth to its currently struggling bicycle sector as it has recently suffered from increased competition and slowing sales.
Halfords Chief Executive Jill McDonald noted that its acquisition would also enhance the retailers online presence in this category.
“We continue to believe in the long-term growth potential of the cycling market. We look forward to working with them [Tredz and Wheelies] to develop and grow the businesses further” McDonald added.
“The time has come for us to work with a partner on the next phase of growth. Halfords is exactly what we were looking for. With the support and resources of a large group, we look forward to building upon what we have achieved so far to drive long-term growth” Keith Jones said.
Tredz and Wheelies currently employ 250 people and reached an annual profit of £2.4m last year, from a total revenue of £32m.


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Armed with twin passions for fragrance and furniture design, Ben Krigler has set out to expand his family’s storied 100-year-old business, Krigler Perfumes.
“I always knew I’d take over the family business,” says Krigler, who created the concept for the company’s store in The Plaza Hotel and serves as its in-house designer, nose and president of operations. “We have such a legacy, such a treasure.”
Hermès is launching a Laundromat pop-up shop in NYC - dubbed Hermèsmatic - where customers can bring their old scarves to be dip-dyed by an expert. Get all the details on WWD.com. #wwdnews (📷: @donstahl)


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This weekend only, get a Marketplace zip–up hoodie when you donate $8/month. Don’t wait — this offer ends at midnight Sunday!
When the pandemic shuttered retailers, schools, restaurants and cultural institutions around the world, theaters were no exception. But while many other businesses reopened or found ways to continue to make money through 2020, theaters were physically closed for months to over a year.
Those closures caused staggering economic impact to the arts sector. SMU Data Arts estimates that through December 2021, the nonprofit performing arts industry lost more than $3.2 billion as a result of the pandemic. In August 2020, Brookings estimated that fine and performing arts industries had lost almost 1.4 million jobs since the pandemic began — half of the total jobs in those industries.
Regional theaters have particularly struggled to recover from those losses and get customers back in seats. Average ticket sales for performing arts organizations are at 75% of what they were pre-pandemic, and may reach 80% by year’s end, said Zannie Voss, director of SMU DataArts. The story of how audiences have and have not returned and where organizations are feeling that strain is different place to place, but across the board, almost nowhere is back to 2019 numbers.
At La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California, subscribers have mostly kept their season tickets, but there’s been a big drop in single ticket sales. At Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s the opposite — subscriptions are down 40% compared to before the pandemic.
Raising ticket prices to compensate for lower sales and inflation-driven higher production costs might feel like the obvious solution, but that could drive even more patrons away.
“You don’t want to over-price in an inflationary period where people’s perceptions about economic uncertainty are really pronounced,” said Voss. “And at the same time, the organization’s recognize that they need to bring in money in order to stay afloat.”
In fact, there’s been an increase in sliding scale ticket models or pay what you can options, said Jill Robinson, CEO of TRG Arts, which does consulting for arts organizations and collects data on their sales. Some organizations have increased prices modestly and others have decreased — whatever it takes to get audiences in seats while keeping the lights on.
In places where attendance is close to normal, Robinson said, revenue is still down because patrons are paying cheaper prices for not-as-good seats rather than splurging during a time of economic uncertainty.
Theaters have also not escaped the inflationary pressures and supply chain issues that have plagued other businesses.
“Sheets of plywood, sticks of steel, bolts of fabric, and then even the cost of paper to send the postcard out about the production costs more than it used to,” said Mike Schleifer, the managing director of Alliance Theater.
Production costs have always fluctuated, but inflation and supply chain backups certainly haven’t helped theaters bounce back from pandemic closures.
At Barter Theatre in Abingdon, a town of just over 8,000 in southwestern Virginia, the set designers and builders have carefully reused old set pieces and existing materials since the onset of the pandemic. But as they plan the 2023 budget, producing artistic director Katy Brown anticipates a 20% increase for lumber, building materials, and paint costs, compared to 2019.
She said concessions are costing the theater more too, though they’ve purchased less since masking means fewer patrons buy snacks and drinks.
And as the world opens back up, travel for touring productions and housing or car rentals for out of town cast members are all costing more than they used to, said Elisa Spencer-Kaplan, managing director of Theater Latté Da in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The pandemic also brought with it new health and safety protocols. Routine testing is the norm now in many theater companies, which isn’t cheap. Some organizations purchased HEPA air filters for theaters and rehearsal spaces, as well as see-through masks used in the earlier part of the pandemic during performances.
Hiring understudies — which may have previously been out of budget for smaller companies — is now in many cases necessary. As is the hiring of a COVID safety officer to oversee ever-changing pandemic protocols.
The theater industry also felt the punch of the Great Resignation, especially as work was nearly nonexistent during lockdown.
“Those that stayed and those that are entering the field, I think still have the deep passion for the work but simply won’t accept the poverty that often came with a career in the arts, and nor should they,” Schleifer said.
In response, Alliance Theatre brought up minimum pay, gave raises and bonuses, conducted pay equity studies and improved benefits, he said. But it all adds up — at Alliance Theatre, labor makes up about 70% of costs.
“If we’re going to overcome what is really just an existential crisis in the American theater, we’re surely going to need some additional support from the government,” said Schleifer. While PPP loans, employee retention tax credits and the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant kept many theater staff employed during the pandemic, those programs are over. And smaller theaters have less capacity to fund raise, write grants or apply to federal programs, leaving the future of regional theater uncertain.
That also leaves all the small businesses that thrive around a theater, from bed and breakfasts to restaurants, wondering about their futures.
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Silicon Slopes Summit reveals uncanny parallels of Netflix and Qualtrics founders
Opening day of tech summit features big name speakers, insider takes on tech innovation, pro sports and how to catch ‘lightning in a bottle’
As it turns out, Qualtrics founder and Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith has an awful lot in common with Netflix’s founder and newly minted owner of Powder Mountain ski resort, Reed Hastings.
It all came to light in a candid on-stage conversation on the opening day of the tech-focused Silicon Slopes Summit Wednesday at the Delta Center.
For starters, both launched disruptive tech innovation companies that would go on to fundamentally upended their business categories. Smith’s Qualtrics created the new business category of customer experience via innovation that leveraged a simple survey interface with deep analytics systems to remake how businesses evaluate their successes and performance. And Hastings’ Netflix segued from a mail order DVD rental startup to become a streaming behemoth that fundamentally changed how viewers consume film and television content.
Both companies had similar startup dates, Netflix in 1997 and Qualtrics in 2002, and both founders now find themselves fully involved in ventures, funded by their first-act accomplishments, well removed from their high-tech roots. Smith is currently in the midst of building a multifaceted professional sports empire and Hasting is now embarking on a reimagining, and rebuilding, of a sprawling northern Utah ski area.
Smith celebrated Hastings’ new acquisition and predicted the changes he will bring will be a boon to the Utah outdoor recreation scene.
“What I’m most excited about is that Reed bought the mountain,” Smith said. “That’s pretty cool. Everything Reed’s done is about creating new experiences. He’s an innovator and he’s not going to just sit back.
“And we as a community are all going to benefit from that.”
Hastings noted those changes will take time, but said he’s ready to plow new investment into the resort after the previous ownership group stalled out on upgrades due to a lack of capital. He also sees the future of the resort as bigger than just a great ski destination and hinted that future improvements will build on the area’s natural beauty and lead to a “premium place in the world for being and doing.”
“It will be a place to bring people together,” Hastings said. “We’re going to make Powder feel interesting and different.”
Wednesday also marked another pseudo-convergence in the respective entrepreneurial paths of Smith and Hastings.
Their conversation took place just hours after Smith’s management team announced a new streaming service, Jazz+, that will provide direct-to-consumer broadcasts of Utah Jazz games. And that news comes just one day before Netflix officially ends the DVD-by-mail portion of its business and officially becomes a streaming-only service.
University of Utah’s tech roots
University of Utah President Taylor Randall joined Dr. Michael Good, CEO of University of Utah Health and dean of the University of Utah School of Medicine, both of whom head operations with long and vibrant innovation histories, to open the event Wednesday by touching on some of their past, and current, technological bonafides.
Of course, there’s an argument to be made that there would be no such term as Silicon Slopes if it weren’t for the very early work and tech expertise that came out of the University of Utah. Randall noted U. grads Ed Catmull, the computer graphics pioneer that would go on to help found Pixar, and John Warnock, the recently passed computer scientist who co-founded Adobe, as well as the U.’s distinction as one of only four nodes in the launch of Arpanet, the precursor to today’s internet.
And, U. Health has plenty of its own bragging rights, as Good noted, including launching the first health care IT department in the country and being the first medical institution to perform an artificial heart transplant, back in 1982.
Sports and tech
Professional sports were a recurring theme throughout the summit’s opening day, a venue appropriate vibe that touched on how big a role tech innovation has played, and is playing, in the delivery of sports-related content.
ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro spoke with Larry H. Miller Company CEO Steve Starks about how pandemic conditions wrought major changes at the sports-centric media company.
That included an anecdote about how a decision to allow an ESPN announcer to call a college game from his basement while still recovering from COVID-19 eventually led to the uber-popular Monday Night Football sideshow that features brothers and former NFL quarterbacks Eli and Peyton Manning. The “Monday Night Football with Eli and Peyton” has become a juggernaut, holding 19 of the 20 spots in ESPN’s top-20 most-watched alternate telecasts, and features the brothers Manning commenting on the game from their home-based studios, Peyton in Denver and Eli in New Jersey.
“We caught lightning in a bottle on that,” Pitaro said. “I can’t say that program would even exist without COVID.”
Rounding out Wednesday’s slate of speakers was self-help guru, business consultant and all-around ubermensch Tony Robbins. Robbins got Wednesday’s Silicon Slopes Summit crowd pumped up with his high-octane guidance on how to recognize our collective worst habits and shared strategies to elevate daily functions and take life by the horns.


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Another car fire in just over a month has analysts calling Tesla one of the hottest companies out there in more ways than one.
"Another Model S electric car has caught on fire. This is a picture of it posted on Twitter. It happened yesterday just outside of Nashville. The company says it was caused by a crash and was not spontaneous." (Via KTVU)
It marks the third Model S car fire since early October. This is video of the first blaze, and Tesla says all three fires followed accidents. (Via YouTube / Aj Gill)
Tesla stressed that point and immediately started damage control, with CEO Elon Musk telling ValueWalk:
"For consumers concerned about fire risk, there should be absolutely zero doubt that it is safer to power a car with a battery than a large tank of highly flammable liquid."
The electric car fires haven't helped the company's incredible stock performances. (Via YouTube / MotorTrend)
Tesla's stock dipped to around $138 late Thursday morning, down more than $40 a share from just two days prior. (Via Yahoo!)
But some analysts say the fires alone aren't to blame for that steep drop.
"I think the car fire is a sideshow. The real story is this thing is down 25 percent since they reported on Tuesday afternoon, and that's because they under-delivered on the number of cars that they were actually able to ship." (Via MSNBC)
Keep in mind that this time last year, Tesla's stock stood at just $31.
So yeah, we'd take that ... as long as the cars — and the stock — don't go up in flames.


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A German programmer is sitting on a treasure chest that he knows is there and yet cannot open and savor it. Why? Because he has lost its key! It may sound funny, but a computer programmer named Stefan Thomas is having his worst nightmare come true. Amid the bitcoin boom, he had invested and bought 7,002 bitcoins which are saved and safely stored in his wallet. However, Thomas has forgotten the password of his IronKey hard drive which holds the private key to his wallet. Stefan now has only two attempts left to correctly guess the password else his treasure will remain beyond his grasp for eternity.
Why Bitcoins are Being Cashed
The Bitcoin price which was at $20,000 per coin has soared to a record high of $36,000 in a months’ time. This skyrocketing is not new because if the price has soared by 92% in the last one month, overall, it has boomed by 340% in a year. This all-time high has pepped the bitcoin owners to sell their bitcoins and savor their riches. However, a New York Times report shows that 20% of the cryptocurrency owners have either lost their passwords or have their wallets stranded. This means they now own a fortune but still cannot enjoy the riches.
The Last Two Chances to Guess the Password
According to the NYT report, Thomas has stored the private key to his wallet in a small IronKey hard drive. This piece of hardware is protected by a password which allows the user to make only 10 possible attempts at getting the password right. However, if the user fails to enter the correct password on the 10th attempt then it seizes and encrypts the contents in the drive forever. Thomas has already used eight of his 10 attempts formulating his most utilized passwords, but with zero success.
A dejected Thomas says,
I would just lay in bed and think about it. Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.
The rise in the number of cases though has prompted a new booming business solution altogether, that of Bitcoin Wallet Recovery Services. But will they really be able to duplicate the key to these treasure chests? Only time will tell.


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China car sales plunge 38% in January as subsidies, tax cut end
SHANGHAI/BEIJING, Feb 8 (Reuters) - China's passenger car sales slumped 38% in January, reversing a 2.4% gain in the previous month, industry data showed on Wednesday, as demand weakened after a tax cut on combustion engine cars and subsidies on electric vehicles (EV) expired.
Sales of new energy cars that include pure battery EVs and plug-in hybrids also fell 6.3% in January after a blistering 90% growth in 2022, the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) said.
"New energy car sales in January didn't meet our expectation, with a rare year-on-year decline in a single month sales," said Cui Dongshu, secretary general of CPCA in an online briefing on Wednesday.
He said the Lunar New Year and the end of EV subsidies were among the factors leading to the decline.
Chinese people celebrated a full week of the Lunar New Year holiday in the month, making it a quieter January compared with the previous years.
Despite signs of easing demand in the world's largest car market, China's central government did not extend a 50% purchase tax cut on combustion engine vehicles when it expired at the end of December.
It also decided to end a more than decade-long national subsidy for EV purchases, forcing automakers including Tesla (TSLA.O) to deepen discounts to defend their market shares.
China's auto market is more reliant on various incentives from local governments to encourage purchases.
Shanghai extended a 10,000-yuan ($1,470) rebate for those who exchange their oil cars for electric ones, while cities of Zhengzhou, Wuxi, Shenyang and Beijing issued coupons for auto consumption.
Tesla sold 66,951 China-made EVs in January. That was up 18% from December and 10% higher from a year earlier.
Its market share in China's battery electric car sector rose to 12.5% in January from 9% in December, according to a Reuters calculation.
The U.S. company was the second best-selling EV maker in China last month after BYD Co Ltd (002594.SZ), which shipped 150,164 cars, the CPCA said.
New energy vehicles accounted for a quarter of the total 1.3 million car sales in the month, CPCA data showed, down sharply from 35% in November 2022.
($1 = 6.7830 Chinese yuan renminbi)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.


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High-growth cybersecurity company Okta (OKTA) announced its fiscal 2020 second-quarter results (for the period that ended in July) after the market closed yesterday. The company reported revenue of $140.5 million, a rise of 49% year-over-year. Its adjusted EPS were -$0.05.
Okta reported sales of $94.58 million and EPS of -$0.15 in the second quarter. Analysts expected the company to post sales of $131.2 million and EPS of -$0.10 in the quarter. So why have its shares fallen despite its earnings and revenue beats?
Okta expects revenue of $143 million–$144 million and EPS of between -$0.13 and -$0.12 in the third quarter of fiscal 2020. For fiscal 2020, Okta expects sales of $560 million–$563 million and EPS of between -$0.44 and -$0.42.
In comparison, analysts expect it to see sales of $140.53 million and EPS of -$0.09 in the third quarter. They also expect Okta’s sales to be $549.06 million and its EPS to be -$0.46 in the year. So far today, its stock is down 5.8% and is trading at $125.47.
What drove Okta’s revenue in the second quarter?
Okta managed to grow its subscription sales by 51% in the second quarter, while its billings were up 42%. It added 450 new customers, bringing the total customer count to 7,000. Around 17% of enterprise customers have an annual contract value of $100,000, and this number continues to grow for the company.
Company CEO Todd McKinnon stated, “We had another exceptional quarter with strong growth in subscription revenue, billings, and remaining performance obligation. Identity plays a foundational role as organizations look to adopt more cloud technologies and accelerate their businesses’ digital transformation in a highly secure and easy to use manner.”
He added, “The recent recognition we received from notable industry research providers further validates our view that Okta has become the identity standard for organizations worldwide ranging from fast-growing businesses to the world’s largest organizations. Our success is achieved by helping these organizations with their mission-critical initiatives with our growing platform of identity solutions. We couldn’t be more excited about the tremendous market opportunity ahead of us.”
Stock has gained 95% year-to-date
Despite the pullback today, Okta stock has generated staggering returns so far this year. The stock is up 95% year-to-date and a whopping 427% since its IPO in April 2017. Okta is still posting a non-generally accepted accounting principles loss and is trading at a premium valuation. Any earnings or revenue miss will likely result in a significant correction.
But the company’s growth is far from over. Analysts expect Okta’s sales to rise 37.5% in 2020 and 31.1% in 2021. They expect its EPS to rise at a compound annual growth rate of 25% over the next five years.
In June, we identified Okta as a solid long-term bet. We remain optimistic about Okta’s performance going forward. The stock is trading 13% below it’s 52-week low and should be on investors’ radar after every major correction. Analysts have a 12-month target price of $129 for Okta.
Aditya Raghunath does not hold any position in Okta stock.


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by • May 4, 2016 • No Comments
One day we should have a 3D printing device in each household, but we are not there yet. So now the American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy has posed the informative question: should we have one in each library as a public resource?
ALA Senior Policy Analyst Charlie Wapner conducted a study, together with the OITP and 3DPrint360 CEO Zach Lichaa, to discuss how America’s libraries can play a pivotal role in the 3D printing revolution. The resulting published paper is called: “Progress in the Making: Librarians’ Practical 3D Printing Questions Answered.”
“Libraries represent the public on-ramp to the world of 3D printing and design,” said Dan Lee, chair of OITP’s Advisory Committee. “Library professionals who have adopted, or are looking to adopt, a 3D printing device must answer inquiries related to printing device operation and maintenance, workflow management, cost recovery, patron safety, and much additional. As a by-product of OITP’s policy advocacy on 3D printing devices and libraries, once again OITP is doing excellent work for libraries in providing this practical information to assist library professionals.”
A new way for libraries
On the surface it manufactures absolute sense. Libraries have been marginalised in new years and have to reinvent themselves. There is so much written content out there for free and the traditional concept of borrowing books and actually films in physical form has fallen by the wayside. The likes of the Kindle, as well as Amazon’s Lending Library, mean folks can borrow books and other media without leaving the comfort of their own home.
So libraries require a physical reason for the public to use their services and 3D printing may be ideal. Libraries have become additional of a desktop workshop in new years, but as innovation gets additional accessible and so the institutions can just have to move to the upcoming level. Exploiting the vast pool of customers at its disposal to cover the worthwhile costs of 3D printing equipment is one obvious way of keeping libraries relevant.
Printers are yet expensive for people
3D printing devices are coming down in price, but the consumer variants are pretty rocky round the edges and far of the cutting edge. If libraries may invest in the most equipment, software packages and subscriptions to the primary databases of CAD files, they may re-establish themselves as a pillar of the community with this innovation alone.
This may manufacture the libraries a potent force once again and assist manufacture 3D printing a part of eachday life. We are certain to have private 3D print shops opening up on the high street, but if the library system adopts the system in one cohesive movement and so it may become the de facto supplier for public’s occasional 3D print requires.
This paper is the third one in the American Library Association’s series: “Progress in the Making.” All of them deal with the future impact 3D printing may have on the system. So this is additional than a casual interest. The ALA has previously released a PDF sheet of tips on how to print in three size and in 2014 it generated another paper on 3D printing in libraries.
Funding may be a stumbling block
There’s little doubt that the ALA wants to adopt 3D printing, but it either requires significant funding of government sources, that is complex to come by in this age of austerity, or it requires to ponder laterally. Sponsorship is the obvious version, alyet one 3D print supplier may struggle to cope with the costs of supplying primary libraries across the land with equipment.
So the libraries can have to go back to great old-fashioned fundraising drives in the local community to get the money to implement this brave plan. If they can find a solution, yet, 3D printing may be a ideal way forward for the ALA and libraries around the world that are struggling for a raison d’etre on an increasingly digital world.
by admin • March 5, 2017
by admin • November 28, 2016
by admin • November 28, 2016


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Associated Food Stores Loyalty Program Logs Increased Basket Size, E-Coupon Use
AFS and Accelitec have teamed up on a loyalty program giving independent grocers the ability to customize the offering
Associated Food Stores’ (AFS) renewed loyalty program service contract with software provider Accelitec will offer new digital features to AFS members.
The partnership, which began in 2012 with loyalty services has grown into a fully digital customer experience enabling customers to earn points on every purchase, save with digital coupons, and monitor rewards online or with a mobile app.
Now a new “coupon limits” feature is slated to roll out this fall, giving retailers and vendors the ability to control limits with e-coupons, with up to five redemptions per coupon.
“We are incredibly pleased with the partnership we’ve established with Accelitec,” said Jessica Cronin, shopper marketing manager at Salt Lake City-based AFS. “We have many progressive retailers, and offering tools that allow them to take advantage of new technology helps us remain competitive. We look forward to continuing to innovate with Accelitec to deliver the best shopping experience possible to our guests.”
The program has driven increased customer retention and sales, with AFS corporate stores reporting the average basket size of rewards members is $14.75 higher than that of nonrewards customers. Further, digital coupon use continues to annually: E-coupon redemptions are up 34 percent and coupon clips are up 20 percent from 2018.
The Accelitec loyalty offering also allows customization that’s desirable to independent retailers: AFS members can offer a branded program providing unique offers and deals. Among the additional options are digital coupons, continuity programs that require action (like a digital clip), or instant offers, a mobile app and email marketing features to help AFS retailers meet shoppers’ needs.
“We are very pleased to continue our partnership with AFS and their forward-thinking marketing team,” noted Amy Iversen, director of customer experience of Bellingham, Wash.-based Accelitec. “They are consistently seeking new ways to enhance the shopping experience on behalf of their retailers, and we look forward to helping them build stronger connections with their guests through innovation.”
Other loyalty programs aimed at helping independent grocers compete with their larger counterparts have been recently introduced by Associated Supermarket Group, Associated Wholesale Grocers, and C&S Wholesale Grocers.
AFS is an independent retailer-owned warehouse that provides complete warehouse facilities and services to more than 400 grocers across the Intermountain West.


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- THQ has announced it will acquire Big Huge Games (Rise of Nations, Catan) for an undisclosed sum, making the Maryland-based studio a wholly-owned subsidiary.
To quote: In May of 2007, THQ and Big Huge Games announced a development agreement for an RPG led by Oblivion developer Ken Rolston, currently anticipated for a 2009 debut on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
So why bring Big Huge in-house? When Gamasutra spoke to THQ executive vice president of worldwide studios Jack Sorensen, he stated that getting to know the Big Huge team played a role in motivating the acquisition, as opposed to continuing a purely developer-publisher relationship.
Said Sorensen, "From THQ's perspective, I view this acquisition as a poster child for the way we like to approach things, which is that clearly we have a strategy of being in big genres on big, original IP, but we also have a very carefully constructed philosophy in how we look at internal developments, so working with a developer for an amount of time so we can get to know each other is a big prerequisite on internal versus external, so Big Huge Games hits all our strategy points."
Big Huge Games COO Tim Train agrees that plenty of common ground was an essential factor: "When we founded Big Huge Games, we wanted to make great games and also be...


text: Secaucus, NJ - A crowd of nearly 150 kosher food industry officials heard Yarden Horwitz, a Trendspotting Lead at Google, deliver the keynote presentation at the opening breakfast (sponsored by www.kosher.com) session of Kosherfest 2017 (November 14th). Ms. Horwitz shared insights from the Google Food Trends Report on the most impactful search trends affecting the food industry at large, and how kosher food companies can leverage these trends to develop and promote winning products. Ms. Horwitz turns new data sets into cultural signals. Not surprising was the fact that Passover was the most active time of the year in terms of kosher searches on Google. Nearly 40% of kosher foods are sold around a holiday celebrated by nearly 70% of American Jews. Interest soared following an HBO mention of kosher during last year’s holidays in September. Surprisingly, many consumers in Nevada searched for kosher hotdogs last July and August. In November the focus shifted to Florida but overall New York and New Jersey were the leading areas for searches on kosher at Google. Ms. Horwitz co-founded Trendspotting at Google to help brands identify and understand shifts in consumer behaviors, values and intents. Yarden partners with top global brands to innovate in trends analyses with the goal of enabling consumer trend identification, exploration and prediction across categories. Ms. Horwitz was introduced by Michael Gray of Napkin Marketing, which followed the 29th annual State of the Industry address by Menachem Lubinsky, founder and co-producer of Kosherfest. Napkin and Lubicom are collaborating on the new age of digital marketing.The breakfast was sponsored by Kosher.Com, the rapidly emerging definitive site for the kosher consumer. It includes top-quality kosher recipes by celebrity chefs, menu generators, and shopping lists. Kosher.com is geared for everyone: from the newest cook still trying to figure out how to make a boiled egg, all the way up to the gourmet chef looking for new and creative ideas to impress important guests.


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Welcome to the latest edition of Tuesday Newsday, your weekly source for what’s happening in the world of content marketing, digital marketing and social media. In this week’s post, Twitter’s CEO divulges his intentions to open up verified accounts to all users and a new study by UMass Dartmouth indicates the most effective social media platforms for the Inc. 500. Plus, can longer meta descriptions actually get you ranking higher on SERPs? Find out below.
Verified Accounts For Everyone? Twitter CEO Hopes So
Back in November 2017, Twitter suspended the verification process, which allowed celebrities, athletes, public figures and brands to sport the signature blue checkmark.
After a controversy stemming from the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., some users saw the blue badge displayed on the rally organizer’s account as an endorsement. While Twitter attempted to clarify that the checkmark was actually a means for authenticating identity, not an endorsement, they ultimately decided to suspend the application process.
Because of the anonymity of Twitter, the platform has historically served as an open invitation for trolls, bullies, spam-bots and other troublemakers to spread misinformation. However, during a live-stream chat on March 8, 2018, CEO Jack Dorsey admitted that the previous verification process was “very broken” and shared the social media giant’s intention to open verification up to everyone. In the end, a verified account free-for-all could boost credibility across the board.
According to New Study, Inc. 500 Companies Succeed Most on LinkedIn and Facebook
Recently, the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth released a study that looked at the most utilized channels of communication between companies and their customers.
LinkedIn and Facebook were considered the most effective social media platforms for the 2017 Inc. 500, while Twitter and YouTube were at the bottom of the list. Other key findings include:
- Only 30% have a strategy in place in the event of an online crisis
- Blog usage increased for the third year in a row and is currently at 55%
- Instagram adoption is up 17% since 2015, with 49% of the Inc. 500 now utilizing the platform
- Content development ROI and resources are the top two concerns regarding social media
SEMrush Finds That Longer Meta Descriptions May Actually Increase CTR
At the beginning of 2018, Google rolled out some new changes in regard to their SERP. Of these changes, the one content marketers are still hesitant about is the length of meta descriptions. Should all meta descriptions be 160 characters long? Or can you now make them 300 characters? SEMrush was on a mission to reveal the truth.
In their case study published March 6, “Will a Longer Meta Description Increase CTR?,” SEMrush performed a small-scale sequential test over the course of 84 days to determine which meta description length garnered the best click-through rate (CTR). Their findings? The full-length meta description beat out the version with fewer characters – and by a landslide.
In the end, even with a meta description that’s been truncated with an ellipsis, pages with longer meta descriptions may just result in a higher CTR. We suggest running a similar study with one of your own landing pages to see if you get the same results.
And that just about wraps it up for this edition of Tuesday Newsday. Be sure to come back next week for another curated list of what’s new and exciting in the content writing industry. Want to know what you’ve missed this past month in digital marketing, content marketing and social media? Check out other recent posts in our Tuesday Newsday series:


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Capps, WEV Celebrate Small Business at Goodland Kitchen & Market
Owners Julia and Michael Crookston opened their business with help from Women’s Economic Ventures
By Genesis Lopez for Women’s Economic Ventures | Published on 08.15.2012 12:41 p.m.
The event sparked the attention of more than 50 attendees, many current business owners and “foodies” as well as others interested in entrepreneurship.
Goodland Kitchen & Market owners and siblings Julia and Michael Crookston took WEV’s Business Plan Intensive course in the fall of 2011. Since opening their doors in 2011, they have created seven new jobs and have provided space for several other local food businesses to produce their products.
Goodland Kitchen & Market is a combination of a grab-and-go eatery specializing in delicious, locally sourced and affordable meals and a commercial kitchen space that can be rented by the hour to local food producers.
WEV’s goal is to boost economic recovery and support individual independence through the process of creating and supporting small businesses — a common goal between WEV and Capps.
The WEV Connects event at Goodland Kitchen gave the opportunity for those thinking about owning their own business to speak with other small-business owners and connect with the WEV community of business people, donors, volunteers and staff. Attendees also learned more about how WEV helps small businesses succeed and had the opportunity to check out the popular Goodland Kitchen & Market in Old Town Goleta.
Since 1991, WEV has helped to create or expand more than 2,000 businesses, creating or retaining more than 3,000 local jobs through training, loans and other resources to help local women — and men — start or grow a business. In fact, so far in 2012 alone, WEV has provided nearly $90,000 in new loans to local entrepreneurs and has served 130 clients (those with 10 hours or more of service) by providing them with the tools to start or grow a business.
WEV’s core small-business training programs, the 14-week Self-Employment Training and accelerated six-week Business Plan Intensive, start in September in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.
To learn more about the upcoming Self-Employment Training and Business Plan Intensive courses, attend a free orientation in August. Remaining Santa Barbara orientations will be held from 6 to 7 p.m. this Thursday and from noon to 1 p.m. next Wednesday, Aug. 22. Orientation attendance is required for anyone considering course registration. Click here for more information.
— Genesis Lopez is a publicist representing Women’s Economic Ventures.


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GLOBAL: SPI Group head attacks Russia's 'anti-gay' laws
Some US gay bars have reportedly stopped selling Stolichnaya
The CEO of Stolichnaya owner SPI Group has come out in support of gay and transgender people, branding new Russian laws against homosexuals as “dreadful”.
In an open letter to the global lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community yesterday (25 July), SPI head Val Mendeleev said the vodka brand “fully supports and endorses your objectives to fight against prejudice in Russia”. “As a company that encourages transparency and fairness, we are upset and angry,” he said.
Last month, Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, signed a law banning the promotion of “non-traditional relationships” toward people under 18, sparking international criticism and fears of an anti-gay agenda. Putin also signed a law that allows police to arrest and detain gay foreigners for up to 14 days before expelling them from the country.
According to reports yesterday, some gay bars in American city Chicago have pulled Stolichnaya from shelves because of its association with Russia.
However, in yesterday's letter, Mendeleev thanked the LGBT community for adopting Stolichnaya “as their vodka of preference”, while maintaining that the brand has no connection to the Russian Government.
“The Russian Government has no ownership interest or control over the Stoli brand that is privately owned by SPI Group, headquartered in Luxembourg in the heart of Western Europe,” he said.
SPI's Stolichnaya is made using Russian ingredients and bottled in Latvia, Mendeleev said.
SPI bought the Stolichnaya and Moskovskaya trademarks, along with 41 other brands, from state-owned Soyuzplodoimport in 1997. However, the Russian Federation regained the rights within its borders and in 2002 released Stolichnaya in Russia under its own label. It claims SPI illegally bought the rights at far below market value by taking advantage of the chaos of the Soviet Union's breakup.
If Scotch sales receive an end-of-year bump this month, there's a good chance it is from whisky executives toasting a banner year for the brown stuff....
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The study found that approximately 27% of Facebook users intend to spend less time on this site this year, while only 3% plan to spend more time. Currently, 61% of Facebook users have already taken a break from the site for several weeks and some of these departures have become permanent.
The reasons for taking a hiatus from Facebook range from being too busy, to being too bored with the site, to annoyance with excessive “drama”:
Facebook faces increasing competition from other up and coming social media sites such as Twitter, Google+, Pinterest. According to the Pew Research, not everyone who leaves Facebook returns to the site. If Facebook starts to feel stale, more of its users will be taking permanent vacations from the site, like they did with the previous hot social site such as MySpace.
Check out the below infographic by Online Courses on the stats for user Facebook fatigue.


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CarBuzz (Full Story)
Girls of the 2012 Moscow Motor Show. The Auto Show season is back under way, and that means pretty Russian girls in tight outfits. The summer holidays are over for the car industry, which means we can start looking forward to the car show circuit starting up again - along with it the buxom beauties that we know as car show girls. Moscow has kicked off proceedings this year, and although it may not be as prominent as Detroit, LA, Geneva or Tokyo, the Russian expo made up for it with enough curves and smiles to keep the million visitors expected to come each day entertained.


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Netherlands-based supplier DSM says it is witnessing an uplift in demand for its vitamin C products in light of strict pollution enforcement measures introduced in China - and believes the days of vitamin C oversupply on the market might have ended.
China’s tough new environmental policies are to hit a wide-range of industries after Chinese premier Li Keqiang called for ‘heavy blows’ to be struck against air and water polluters, as it looks to improve its environmental standards, and address its urban smog problem.
Central to the crackdown is the government’s move to limit factory emissions of harmful particles that cause air pollution.
Earlier this year, it published its draft “2017 work plan or Control of Air Pollution in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region”.
Under the draft plan, a number of vitamin C producers in the area face restrictions on the use of coal. Some chemical and pharmaceutical companies have been told to restrict output, by the authorities.
Currently, it is estimated that over 90% of the world’s vitamin C supply comes from China.
Increase in demand
Speaking to NutraIngredients, Dennis Rijnders, global product manager, DSM said: “What we clearly see is a lot of customers were not very happy with how our Chinese completion behaved. We see a clear increase in demand for our vitamin C.
“We see market prices going up so that is a second element where in the end there is a benefit to DSM.”
The vitamin supplier has a vitamin C manufacturing site in the Chinese city of Jiangshan.
Rijnders says DSM’s manufacturing will not be hit by the environmental crackdown as it has taken a ‘proactive stance’ on sustainability and investing in its Jiangshan site so it meets compliance targets, as well as in its site in Scotland.
Urging customers to be cautious
“I think the biggest thing here is customers of vitamin C need to be very cautious about the risks that are occurring in the market at the moment,” he told us.
Over the next five years, due to the restrictions in China, Rijnders believes there will be less oversupply of Vitamin C in the market.
“I don’t expect that to be the case in the years to come,” he told us.


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TalkTalk sells off its fibre networks business to infrastructure platform Cityfibre for £200m
- Deal for Fibrenation was delayed due to the General Election
- TalkTalk feared the Labour party would nationalise parts of BT if they won GE
- Fibrenation was founded in 2018, after a joint venture between TalkTalk, Sky
TalkTalk has sold its fibre networks roll-out business to Cityfibre for £200million.
The deal for Fibrenation was supposed to be completed last year, but was delayed following Labour's announcement that it planned to nationalise parts of BT if it won the general election.
But it has now been finalised and makes Cityfibre the UK's third-largest digital infrastructure platform behind Virgin and BT.
Fibrenation was founded in 2018, four years after a joint venture between TalkTalk, Sky
Greg Mesch, chief executive of Goldman Sachs-backed Cityfibre, said: 'The UK is a service-based economy, and this runs best on full fibre.'
He continued: 'Ensuring national coverage is critical and this can only be achieved by driving infrastructure competition at scale. This deal demonstrates the appetite from industry to see it established.'
TalkTalk chief executive Tristia Harrison said: 'This agreement is good news for TalkTalk and good news for Britain's fibre rollout.
'Our investment over the last five years and the excellent work delivered by the Fibrenation team, combined with Cityfibre's well-established platform, will support wide geographical reach of full fibre and further drive competition and customer take-up in the market.'
The deal is still awaiting approval from TalkTalk's shareholders.
Fibrenation was founded in 2018, four years after a joint venture between TalkTalk, Sky and Cityfibre was launched to roll out full-fibre broadband across York.
The deal also sees Cityfibre announce that it has changed the terms of its partnership with Vodafone to allow other internet providers to access its networks sooner than planned.
The deal comes as survey by comparison site Cable found that Britain is now in 81st place in the world for the value of home broadband packages due to slow internet speeds compared with other countries.
Vodafone aims to bring full-fibre broadband to one million homes and businesses by 2021, with a further four million added by 2025.
The Government's Culture Secretary Baroness Morgan also welcomed the deal.
She said: 'This is great news for full-fibre rollout.
'We want every corner of the country to benefit from world-class, gigabit-speed broadband and this agreement will help to stimulate competition in the market so that the UK has the infrastructure in place to support businesses and our economy.'
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With the recession in mind, Drake University is again promoting a food campaign that will help Iowans keep more money in their pockets by buying local food while supporting local farmers and businesses.
The Drake University Agricultural Law Center is promoting the 2009 Greater Des Moines Buy Fresh Buy Local (BFBL) campaign, which aims to increase production and sales of fresh, local foods.
The food marketing campaign, which began in 2004, is building a network of local farms, restaurants, food retailers and processors to expand the program in the seven-county region surrounding Des Moines — Polk, Boone, Dallas, Jasper, Madison, Marion, and Warren counties. The campaign also includes Iowa farms from more distant counties that sell their food in the Greater Des Moines market.
Last year’s campaign success
During 2008, the campaign collected 1,556 pledges from consumers committed to buying fresh, local foods every week during the growing season. Greater Des Moines BFBL also produces a regular electronic newsletter informing Central Iowans about what is happening and what is fresh throughout the year.
Based on a survey of people who took the pledge, 60 percent of households spent $25 or more on local foods in a typical summer week in 2008. In 2007, 52 percent of households spent $25 or more on local foods.
In addition, 87 percent of people surveyed agreed that they are eating more fruits and vegetables because locally grown produce tastes better and 96 percent said that their interest in locally grown foods comes from a desire to support local farmers.
“This is an excellent opportunity for farms and businesses to work together to promote food grown right here in central Iowa,” says Matt Russell, state food policy project coordinator and BFBL coordinator at the Drake University Agricultural Law Center. “Buy Fresh Buy Local is a campaign based on cooperation among more than 60 farms and 20 businesses, and new members are always welcome.”
Join the campaign
Drake is recruiting local farms and businesses to join the campaign and be listed in the new Buy Fresh Buy Local directory. Farms and businesses can join the campaign by sending an e-mail to email@example.com, by calling 515-271-4956 for membership information or by going online to www.buyfreshdrake.org to register.
The membership fee is $50 for each farm, but farmers can apply for scholarships to defray this cost if the fee is prohibitive to their participation. Registration for businesses is $100. Farms and businesses must register by Friday, March 27, to be listed in this year’s directory.
In addition, Drake will conduct consumer outreach and provide a range of Buy Fresh Buy Local promotional materials to help farms, restaurants, retailers and food processors identify with the campaign.
For more information, contact Matt Russell at 515-271-4956 or firstname.lastname@example.org.


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Monday, March 10, 2014
Folks do you believe that there is a RM1 chicken in the market.
Round the world there is no RM1 chicken except when Najis appears.
If Najis did indeed bought a chicken for RM1, then Rosie's chibei must be free.
Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak has advised the public to shop wisely instead of complaining about price hikes after buying a whole chicken for RM1.
The premier said that Malaysians should not complain about "barang naik" because bargains can still be found.
"I've bought one, so there's 999 left," he said with a grin, adding that this special price for chicken applied only to 1,000 customers at NSK Trade City, Jalan Kuchai Lama today.
He said this during his speech at the Fair Price Award ceremony held at the hypermarket.
Within 100 days already there are two death. Sungei Kandis and now Balakong. In Chinese it is bad omen. So who is the jinx? Mahathir ...
THE MALAYSIAN ROGUE BANKER WHO WEAR’S SHEEP’S CLOTHING Who are Nazir Razak & Azlina Aziz? How they cheated the rakyat’s money throug...
TODAY ALLAH HAS ANSWERED MALAYSIANS' PRAYERS. HAPPY TO NOTE THAT IGP KHALID CAN LOOK FORWARD TO SETTING UP A NEW BUSINESS OF SELLI...
Chinese New Year has been very interesting this year especially in the mad political scene in Malaysia. Malaysian Chinese by nature ...


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Premium Inventory from DISH TV, SLING TV, National Networks, and U.S. MVPDs, representing 62%+ of all U.S. addressable impressions, now available through a self-service platform.
Cadent announced the launch of the first cross-screen self-service platform for buyers and sellers of addressable TV advertising. With a rollout beginning this month, Cadent Aperture Platform will power a new multi-seller addressable TV marketplace that includes CTV, OTT, and addressable STB inventory from the most established sellers of addressable TV, such as DISH Media’s addressable footprint which includes both DISH TV and SLING TV, in addition to other MVPDs and national TV networks.
Next year, ad spend for addressable TV is projected to reach $3.64 billion, according to eMarketer data. However, a recent study commissioned with Forrester Consulting (The Transformation of TV, March 2021) noted that “complexity and siloed approaches are hindering addressable TV adoption and understanding.” By automating access to over 60% of all U.S. addressable impressions across multiple providers, Cadent Aperture is eliminating the fragmentation and complexity that has held back addressable’s adoption.
Marketing Technology News: ZoomInfo to Acquire Conversation Intelligence Leader Chorus.ai
“We know buyers are looking for this exact type of solution – one that aligns offerings against common standards and platforms, promotes interoperability, and delivers unified stewardship, measurement standards and great addressable scale,” said Kevin Arrix, SVP, DISH Media. “This marketplace provides access to millions of consumers while safeguarding their personal information.”
For advertisers, the marketplace is a groundbreaking solution that automates and simplifies the process of planning, buying, and measuring cross-screen addressable TV advertising by bringing scale of execution across multiple providers. Cadent Aperture enables advertisers to directly negotiate private rate cards with suppliers, and plan, buy, and execute campaigns across all partners in the marketplace. The workflow provides users with unified views of budget, pricing, household, and device counts for desired audiences, campaign pacing, and attribution.
For inventory providers, Cadent Aperture automates the activation, sale, delivery, and reporting of addressable TV advertising within a suppliers’ footprint. Each inventory owner can manage its own demand relationships, rate cards, orders, yield optimization, and ecosystem partnerships from within their private marketplace on the platform. This means providers can continue to sell their own addressable inventory with more executional ease while providing customers with the benefit of incremental reach from the rest of the marketplace through a neutral platform.
“Today marks an inflection point for the Advanced TV industry. For the first time, advertisers and agencies, networks, and inventory providers have a self-service, independent platform to transact addressable TV advertising across national audiences on any screen. By unifying the needs of the advertiser and the supplier into a transparent, open platform, Cadent Aperture is providing the scale and automation necessary to accelerate the data-driven TV marketplace,” said Nick Troiano, CEO of Cadent.
Marketing Technology News: DispatchTrack Announces Client Billing and Driver Settlement Automation for 3PLs and Enterprises


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Category Archives for "Commentary"
Fully updated second edition of Social Media Promotion For Musicians features everything you need to know to market yourself, your band, or your music online. Includes new chapters on Instagram and Streaming Music Playlist marketing!
The music business was once all about the single song, transitioned to the album, and looks to be transitioning back again, as album sales sink lower and lower. While the writing may be on the wall that the concept of an album may be as outmoded as a buggy whip, artists, bands and record labels […]Continue reading
A report from the Wall Street Journal yesterday has Apple in talks to buy Jay-Z’s Tidal streaming service, and even though Tim Cook’s company has a truck load of cash on hand, this is one acquisition that seems to be a waste of money. When Apple purchased Beats two years ago for around $3 billion, […]Continue reading
As Apple Music reaches its first anniversary, the service is now up to 15 million paid subscribers, second only to Spotify’s 30 million. That number may not be as rosy as it seems though, since it may be well below what many in the industry initially expected. A recent report from Cowen & Co. predicted […]Continue reading
Now that Brexit has unleashed its shock and horror on the financial markets worldwide, other much smaller sectors are wondering how it will affect them as well, and the music business is no exception. The traditional music business (meaning record labels) is run by a crafty street-wise bunch that know how to roll with the […]Continue reading
With Taylor Swift and U2 the latest superstars to sign a petition to congress complaining about the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the movement appears to be gaining traction. Chances are this one ends up like others before it though, with lots of strong talking points presented, Congressman shaking their heads yes, but not […]Continue reading
Twitter has made an investment in SoundCloud for a reported $70 million and if you’ve been following the story between the companies, you have to ask yourself “Why now?” About two years ago Twitter almost acquired SoundCloud before walking away at the last minute, and an acquisition certainly would have made a lot more sense […]Continue reading
Artists, labels and music services alike continue to lament the fact that not enough free streaming subscribers are converting to the paid tier, yet the possible incentive to get those free tier customers to upgrade is being ignored by the different players along the product pipeline. Superstar albums continue to be released without the industry […]Continue reading
With the battle over streaming music leadership raging on between Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube, there’s one major company that’s been lying silently in the weeds waiting for the right time to pounce on an industry increasingly ripe for the picking. Don’t look now, but it may be Amazon that may soon be the one […]Continue reading
Word came out over the weekend that Google was a clandestine bidder for Michael Jackson’s half of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, and the news had the music business wiping its collective brow in relief. Had that purchase happened, we might be looking at a very different industry landscape today. To recap, last March a buy-sell clause […]Continue reading
One of the hopes that digital music brought was for a faster and more accurate way for everyone in the food chain to get paid. That sounds good on paper, but unfortunately hasn’t quite panned out the way anyone in the industry expected. While it’s true that it’s easy to count online sales and downloads in the digital […]Continue reading
It wasn’t that long ago when it looked like electronic dance music, or EDM, might be the savior of the music business, thanks to an impressive growth rate of 54% over the course of just three years. With overall CD and download sales slowing down, and streaming paid subscribers not increasing as fast as the […]Continue reading
I just returned from speaking at Nimbus School of Recording and Media in Vancouver (one of the best recording schools anywhere – thanks Mike, Rob and Brandon), and one of the questions that I received from the students was if the music business is more difficult now than it was in the past. Actually, getting into […]Continue reading
I’ve been no fan of the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, as you probably know if you read this blog. I don’t believe there should be such an institution, since there’s really no way to quantify who should be in it, unlike a sports HOF where there are plenty of statistics to gauge someone’s […]Continue reading
If you’re a record label, or an artist, band or publisher for that matter, the one thorn in your digital side is YouTube. Why? It’s by far the most widely used streaming service for consuming music, yet it pays the least of all the services. However, it’s come to light that YouTube’s licensing agreements with the three […]Continue reading


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WOODBURY, Minn. – When discussing the current fragile state of America, the topic of business often comes up. The problem with this discussion is the assumed conflation between the interests of Wall Street and Main Street. Most people are mistakenly led to believe that what is good for big business is good for small business. Nothing could be further from the truth. Small businesses and big businesses must be looked at through completely different lenses and, in fact, what is good for big business is almost never good for small business. The interests of Wall Street and Main Street are in inherent conflict and it is precisely this naïve conflation of small and big business interests (and our feeble understanding of these differences) that pollutes our ability, as a larger society, to have a sober conversation about what is truly in the best interests of our country. In a nutshell, small business can save America with help from newly elected President Donald Trump.
Here are six examples of actions newly elected President Donald Trump can take to stimulate small businesses in America and raise the personal fortunes (and overall quality of life) for the rest of America:
- Reduce the corporate tax rate for all businesses from 35% to 15% while simultaneously eliminating big business tax loopholes that currently allow major corporations to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. While reducing taxes eliminates tax revenue on the front end for all businesses; by comparison, an estimated savings of $90 billion dollars could be achieved by closing tax loopholes for big businesses on the back end. This levels the tax playing field for all businesses and offers a new incentive to bring high paying manufacturing jobs back to American soil. Loopholes for big businesses allow for an effective tax rate of 14% (a far cry from the 35% rate most people naively assume big businesses currently pay in taxes).
- Offer a tax incentive (the specific benefit needs to be vigorously debated) to patent new technology that leads to manufacturing in the United States. Small businesses produce 16.5 times more patents per employee than large companies. In 2015, the United States led the world in patents produced annually with 57,385. Innovation drives manufacturing and, ultimately, high paying manufacturing employment. How many more patents would we achieve with a patent-based tax incentive that stipulated manufacturing in the United States (essentially, prohibiting offshore manufacturing)? 100,000? 200,000? This would be interesting to see over the next several years.
- Require mandatory entrepreneurship education in public high schools and colleges that prepares new entrants to the workforce to seriously consider starting a small business. Small businesses outnumber large corporations be a factor of 1,162 to 1. Currently, there are 28 million small businesses in America that provide roughly 70% of all employment opportunities in the United States annually. The fact of the matter is large corporations offer much less employment opportunities than small businesses. As a society, we have a moral obligation to promote entrepreneurship over employment with large corporations.
- Regulate the size of big businesses by controlling the number of employees a big business can employ with a maximum ceiling of 5,000 employees. This not only promotes competition (which lowers the cost of products and services for consumers) but it also dramatically improves customer service. Currently, four out of five customers surveyed (approximately 80%) believe that small businesses put a much greater emphasis on customer service than large businesses. This cap also naturally limits the lobbying discretion a large business can afford as it relates to promoting reckless (pro big business) regulations. These regulations (written in support of big businesses) are designed (in part) to neuter competition by penalizing small businesses who would otherwise compete with those same large corporations.
- Eliminate federally guaranteed students loans. This forces colleges and universities to dramatically lower their tuition and overall costs. Without a guaranteed payday, these institutions of higher learning would be forced to compete in the open market. Tuition would drop like a rock falling out of the sky and students would be removed from the burden of graduating with a $150,000 (or more) of student loan debt. This would also truly make college affordable for a much larger percentage of the population. With more access to higher education, a greater number of entrepreneurs (along with other student categories) would be released into society (bringing with them all of the fruits of entrepreneurship discussed earlier in this piece).
- Offer easier access to performance-based business loans that tie repayment to annual earnings for small businesses. Small businesses need capital and credit lines to function day-to-day and month-to-month. Rather than giving small businesses traditional loans with a greater risk of default, the banks should offer government sponsored business incubation loans that offer easy access to capital on the front end but require a 20% stake in quarterly profits that ensures timely repayment (automatic payments versus voluntary payments). This would give more small businesses access to greater capital on the front end while ensuring that businesses are required to pay these monies back quarterly based on their profit performance over time. The risk for entrepreneurs would be getting stuck with a business loan that their business failed to pay for as a result of a lack of profit performance. The program would require a personal guarantee on losses that would result in a mandatory personal bankruptcy without traditional business bankruptcy allowances. There should also be a cap on the number of times an entrepreneur can take this risk (maybe one to three times over a 10 year period). The idea is to create more access to capital needs for small businesses while enacting responsible banking protections that prohibit a malignant serial entrepreneur from liquidating a bank’s assets with essentially a series of fraudulent business efforts.
President Donald Trump could do these six things for small businesses and the result would be the reshaping of the American business landscape that benefits not just small businesses, but consumers as well. Our country has adopted a corporate mentality that dictates that the welfare of major corporations comes before the well-being of small businesses. This is a top down (rather than a bottom up) business growth mentality. It is high time that the average citizen be made aware that their overall quality of life is dramatically improved when small businesses are aggressively promoted and protected with strict government regulations that increase business competition (rather than decrease it) for all businesses. This is a bottom-up business growth mentality that has been sorely missing in our national economic strategy for decades (and through successive presidential administrations within both political parties). President Donald Trump could do this and, if he did, we might have to seriously consider adding a fifth bust to Mount Rushmore. Small business can save America and Donald Trump may be the only president in the history of the nation with enough business sense to understand that the political party that fosters small businesses is the party that dominates American politics for the next eight years and beyond. By comparison, the party that coddles large corporations is the party that consistently loses presidential elections. Are you skeptical of this thesis? Look no further than the last presidential election: the candidate that had Wall Street in her hip pocket stumbled embarrassingly at the polls. There is no such thing as a monolith of business. There is only small business and large business. President Donald Trump knows more than you think.
For more information, contact Carefully Chosen Words Inc. 10995 B Oak Grove Circle Woodbury, MN 55129 612-518-1238 (Telephone) 877-297-1044 (FAX) firstname.lastname@example.org


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CapitaMalls Asia says to buy Guangzhou mall for $361 mln
SINGAPORE Nov 20 (Reuters) - CapitaMalls Asia Ltd said it has agreed to buy a shopping mall in Guangzhou for 2.2 billion yuan ($361 million) in the Singapore property developer's first foray into one of the largest and most prosperous cities in China.
CapitaMalls Asia will acquire the mall from Greenland Real Estate, a Chinese developer, and intends to finance the purchase from internal funds and external borrowings, the company said in a filing.
The acquisition is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2014 and is subject to regulatory approvals, the company said.
As of June 30 CapitaMalls Asia had 61 properties in China, where it collected 44 percent of its total revenue of S$91.8 million ($74 million) in the quarter ended Sept. 30.
($1 = 6.0927 Chinese yuan) ($1 = 1.2439 Singapore dollars) (Reporting by Rujun Shen; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)
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The UK IFA Centre has spoken out about the impact of the Retail Distribution Review – the British government’s FOFA equivalent – on changing consumer sentiment, claiming a growing focus on ‘independent advice’.
In a web broadcast with Morningstar UK, IFA Centre founder Gill Cardy, an independent advice activist, said consumers awareness is increasing.
“I think it’s fair to say that from a lot of the research that consumers haven’t always understood what sort of advice that they’re getting and I think a lot of consumers who aren’t absorbed in the world of personal finance don’t always understand what the implications are,” she said.
“But when they do understand what restricted advice means—that the costs might be higher, that there might be products that an adviser isn’t considering and solutions that aren’t available—then they do understand why independence is important and that an independent adviser can give them a full range of solutions.”
Cardy also rejected the common perception that the RDR has made running an “unrestricted” advice practice more difficult, as the core functions of financial advice work will remain the same.
“Advisers will still have to do all of those jobs that we have to do—fact find, risk profile, financial plan, consider the options, write suitability letters, do reports, keep compliance records—all of that is still important for everybody.”
SUBSCRIBE TO THE IFA DAILY BULLETIN
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2021 Diamond Sales Exceed Pre-Pandemic Levels for De Beers, Alrosa
The diamond giants finished the year with sales totals topping both 2020 and 2019 levels.
In its 10th and final round of sales for the year, held from Dec. 6-21, De Beers reported rough diamond sales totaled $332 million.
That is down 22 percent when compared with the previous sales cycle ($438 million), 27 percent year-over-year ($452 million) and 22 percent from the same period in 2019, pre-pandemic ($426 million), when the market began to pick up following a difficult year.
CEO Bruce Cleaver predicted last month rough sales would slow down again in cycle 10, citing seasonal closures in South Africa.
But, he noted, De Beers is still closing out the year ahead of 2020 and 2019.
“Rough diamond demand and midstream sentiment continued to be positive in the final sales cycle of 2021, although as anticipated we saw some impact on sales ahead of the seasonal closure of polishing factories in southern Africa over the Christmas period,” Cleaver said.
“Nonetheless, despite the ongoing challenges of COVID-19, our rough diamond sales for the year are higher than what we saw in 2019 before the onset of the pandemic and much higher than our sales in 2020. Consumer demand for diamond jewelry is continuing to perform very well over the key holiday period, so we head toward the new year with positive trading conditions and industry sentiment.”
De Beers’ rough diamond sales totaled $4.82 billion in 2021, up 71 percent when compared with 2020 ($2.81 billion)—a year in which COVID-19 had a significant impact on the miner’s sales and operations—and up 16 percent when compared with 2019.
Alrosa, meanwhile, recorded its highest monthly sales total since July, moving $334 million in goods in November, including $310 million worth of rough diamonds and $24 million in polished.
That is down 14 percent from November 2020 ($390.5 million) but up 16 percent when compared with November 2019, pre-pandemic ($287.8 million).
Deputy CEO Evgeny Agureev said midstream inventories are at low levels due to limited availability of rough and continuously strong consumer demand, particularly for bridal jewelry.
“Market players see increased demand for wedding jewelry and expect this trend to continue unabated in 2022,” he noted.
Year-to-date, Alrosa’s diamond sales have totaled $3.92 billion, which means it has already topped sales totals for both 2020 ($2.28 billion) and 2019 ($2.97 billion) with one month of reported numbers left to be added.
He first took a job at then Philadelphia-based Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone in 1963 and retired in 1996.
It cited two recent cases in California, plus incidents in Florida, Kansas, and Illinois.
Rare & Forever is helping to create an enjoyable diamond buying experience for the millions of newly-engaged couples.
The 10,000-square-foot location allows for expanded collections from design partners while continuing custom design and other services.
Svetlana Lazar’s “Wishing Well” collection utilizes an innovative component to mimic the movement of water beneath them.
Sponsored by AGTA
Experience all the Italian Jewelry market has to offer in Las Vegas.
All proceeds up to $25,000 will benefit the It Gets Better Project, a nonprofit that supports LGBTQ+ youth.
It’s a reminder that life is best lived with discretion.
The end-to-end software allows for real-time control over all sales, inventory, repairs, customer communications, and marketing.
Associate Editor Lenore Fedow shares her impressions of the Las Vegas Antique Jewelry & Watch Show and a few of her favorite finds.
The Asian Institute of Gemological Sciences aims to set a color standard for the trade name.
Kate Della Monica, a senior specialist in the Jewelry and Watches department, will relocate to the Sunshine State.
LVMH’s investment arm has taken a stake in Lusix, a lab-grown diamond company based in Israel.
Sotheby’s New York put a colorless diamond and a fancy deep orange-brown diamond up for sale last week, with mixed results.
Profits will help them recoup financial losses.
After suffering a professional setback, columnist Peter Smith reflects on our ability to bounce back even when the hits keep on coming.
Glatz owned and operated Glatz Jewelers in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania for more than 40 years.
The organization will present three awards at its annual dinner, dance, and gala in October.
The New York jeweler also made the pop star’s wedding bands.
It’s predicted to sell for up to $484,000 during the Bonhams Hong Kong Jewels and Jadeite auction on June 22.
The recipient will receive up to $17,500 toward a tech-focused certification or program of their choice.


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Colin Lloyd, head of Britain’s DMA, was ratified earlier this week as president of the International Federation of Direct Marketing Association (IFDMA). The appointment follows a meeting in New Orleans this fall of the thirty two national DMA leaders who comprise the IFDMA.
Lloyd will lead a working party of representatives from Australia, USA, Argentina, Canada and FEDMA to examine the establishment of a permanent secretariat for IFDMA, funding requirements and the establishment of policies on key issues faced by DMA's across the globe.
As many of these issues - privacy, e-commerce, telecommunication standards and education standards - are also being addressed by global organisations such as OECD, GBDe, WTO, UPU, ICC, the need for a global direct marketing representative was agreed.
Founded in 1996, the IFDMA has adopted a ten point Global Convention of Key Principles for delivering consistent direct marketing standards world-wide. Last year the body established a web presence at www.ifdma.org.uk as a global forum of best practice and information exchange.
Says Lloyd: "I am proud to have been chosen for such a prestigious role, particularly at a time when direct marketing continues its growth as a powerful business tool throughout the world.”
“I estimate,” Lloyd adds, “that some $400 billion is spent on direct marketing globally and it will be the responsibility of IFDMA to help make sure that direct marketing's case is properly heard on the global stage to protect this investment."
News source: IFDMA