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Tata Sky, ABP News emerge as India’s most attractive DTH, TV brands in 2018: TRA Research
MUMBAI: Tata Sky and Dish TV have emerged as the top two direct to home (DTH) brands followed by Sun Direct and Videocon d2h, according to TRAI Research’s India’s Most Attractive Brands 2018.
ABP News has emerged out to be India’s Most Attractive Brand in the Media-TV Category 2018 by taking a leap from the seventh rank in 2017. Following it is Aaj Tak, retaining its 2nd position as compared to the last year, with 77% lower AI than the leader.
NDTV has slipped down from the leadership position to the 3rd position this year. Following it Republic TV, Star Plus, India TV and TV9 at 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th ranks respectively. Disney and Zee News follow in the 8th and 9th place slipping down from the previous ranking in 2017. Colors in the 10th position comes in after being absent in 2017.
From across media, Times of India claims the place as India’s Most Read/Viewed Media in MAB 2018 for the second consecutive time. Aaj Tak to the 2nd spot followed by Zee News, which gains a rank and is the 3rd Most Read/Viewed media. It is followed by NDTV in the 4th and Hindu in the 5th position. The 6th position is held by Hindustan Times, trailed by ABP News, The Telegraph, Economic Times and Midday in the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th position respectively.
At 11th rank is India Today, followed by India TV which jumps eight ranks from the previous year and ranks 12th position this year. Lokmat and Eenadu are new entrants this year and grab the 13th and 14th position respectively. Dainik Jagaran occupies the 15th position falling seven ranks as compared to the previous year.
The next five brands in the listings are Indian Express at the 16th position, Hindustan at the 17th, Dinamalar at the 18th, Sakal at the 19th and TV9 completes the top 20 Most Read/Viewed media in the country.
Though the borders between news and entertainment are getting blurred, a key factor that remains consistent is their Information Value. This is perhaps the reason that media exists – the core of their being. In this Aaj Tak takes the pole position as India’s Most Informative Media beating Times of India in 2nd place. The Hindu takes the 3rd position with Hindustan Times in 4th position.
The 5th position is held by NDTV followed by TV9, ABP News and Zee News in the 6th, 7th and 8th position respectively. The 9th and 10th spot is claimed by Mid-Day and Navbharat Times. A new entrant this year, Tarang claims the 11th rank followed by Eenadu and India Today at the 12th and 13th rank respectively.
The Telegraph occupies 14th rank beating Dainik Jagran at the 15th position. Hindustan, ABP Majha, Patrika, Indian Express and India TV feature at ranks 16 to 20 and round up the top 20 Most Informative Media rankings.
In terms of top 20 most attractive brands, Samsung – Mobile Phones Category has retained its numero uno position by ranking first All-India among the 1000 brands listed. Samsung features again in the 6th rank among the top twenty list – leading in the Consumer Electronics category and becoming the only brand in the history of TRA’s reports to achieve this worthy feat.
Tata Motors, India’s largest Automobiles company, secures the runners-up position, 27% Attractiveness Quotient (AQ) behind the first ranked. Just 2% AQ behind it, and with a massive jump of 89 ranks over last year, is Apple iPhone, climbing 8 places in the Mobile Phones Category over last year.
Reliance Jio, the three-year-old disrupter telecom brand, which has already raced up as the third largest mobile phone network in India, ranks 4th among India’s Most Attractive Brands (MAB) and leads the Mobile Telephony Category.


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As adoption of the Digital Advertising Alliance’s self-regulatory program for behavioral advertising continues to spread, the organization is now turning its attention to the mobile space. It plans to release a set of principles relating to behaviorally targeted mobile advertising by the end of the year.
The DAA also hopes to encourage global adoption of its program and icon, starting with the U.K. and Europe.
“Efforts are underway to transition the existing principles to the mobile space… Mobile is hugely important, and international is hugely important,” DAA managing director Peter Kosmala told ClickZ, adding that the organization would like to formulate a single global standard, icon, and opt-out mechanism for behavioral targeting.
Both in the U.S. and in Europe regulators are stepping up their scrutiny of data collection from mobile devices, specifically in relation to the collection of location-based data for purposes including ad targeting.
Various industry bodies such as the Mobile Marketing Association and the Interactive Advertising Bureau are currently formulating guidelines and best practices of their own relating to the collection of data from mobile devices, but the DAA says it plans to create an enforceable code of conduct around the practice, similar to the one it’s created for desktop-based behavioral targeting.
Its technology working group will also propose a technical solution for an opt-out, since the cookie-based method currently being used for desktop machines will be less effective on mobile devices, thanks to fragmentation in the way they handle that data.
Besides its work around mobile and its hopes to export its work internationally, Kosmala emphasized that the DAA’s current priority is still to address desktop-based behavioral advertising in the U.S. market. It plans to roll out a consumer awareness campaign in the fall to promote its behavioral ad icon and the data control mechanisms it provides.
Despite the DAA’s self-regulatory efforts, the Federal Trade Commission continues to discuss the possible implementation of a do-not-track mechanism, which would – in theory – allow users to completely opt out of any data collection whatsoever. The DAA’s current opt-out solution still required a cookie to be placed on users’ machines, for example, which the FTC appears keen to avoid.
However, Kosmala expressed confidence that the self-regulation program would stave off formal legislation around behavioral advertising, and added that FTC feedback on its progress so far has been encouraging
All restauranteurs have plenty to learn from a gastronomic tour of top chef’s mobile sites.
Programmatic is taking over the digital advertising world, and at an even faster rate than expected, according to eMarketer, which raised its forecast for programmatic ad spending in the U.S. on the back of growth in mobile and video programmatic buys.
Can Snapchat make tech-enabled glasses cool? It’s going to try. Last week, it was revealed that the company behind the ascendant social app ... read more

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Origins of online shopping examined
17 September 2013 - 10:09 by Graham Miller
Ahead of a new BBC series on the history of post-war retail in the UK, hosted by Robert Peston, BBC News has reported on the origins of shopping online, which began in an environment that not many would expect.
In 1984, the then 72 year old Jane Snowball became one of the first people to remotely place an order for her groceries, although unlike modern consumers, she did not use a dedicated computer terminal. Instead her television had been augmented with technology by the council to allow her to create a shopping list which was then fulfilled by the local branch of Tesco.
The idea was that elderly people would be able to remain relatively independent without having to head all the way to a bricks and mortar outlet and experts believe that this was one of the first examples of fixed line connectivity being used to enable retail activities in the home.
The technology in question was called Videotex and, like modern internet connectivity, it used Mrs Snowball's phone line to help her order her groceries. Its creator, Michael Aldrich, said that its implementation was a turning point for retail, both in the UK and internationally.
Although it was still almost a decade before the World Wide Web would be created, this experiment was a foreshadowing of the major shift towards safe shopping online that the market would take over the next three decades.
With the global industry for e-commerce hitting an annual valuation of over 117 billion in 2013, the humble beginnings are all the more intriguing.
One of the benefits of modern e-commerce is that it is accessible to everyone, irrespective of the generation into which they fall, with easy to use sites and services ensuring no one is left out of the revolution.


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As a country, we are not great at slapping onto a healthy layer of sunscreen when the rays are hot.
In reality, YouGov found a QUARTER of Brits forego this vital protection andout of those of us who do use sun tan lotion, over half are using expired – and therefore ineffectual – stuff.
You know, there is room for improvement. Although we are more cautious when it comes to our children.
Adding to this debate is 1 dermatologist’s warning targeted.
While It May Look like the thing to do, the threat with This is could actually”create a false sense of safety” and lead to sun damage.
Dr Steven Wang told the Skin Cancer Foundation :”Under perfect conditions, like in a laboratory, a sunscreen with higher SPF protection and broad-spectrum coverage offers more protection against sunburn, UVA damage and DNA damage than comparable products with lower SPF values.
However life isn’t like a laboratory. In actual life, products with very high SPFs often produce a false sense of security.”
The director of Dermatology and Dermatologic Surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Basking Ridge, New Jersey,Individuals who use these tend to stay out in the sun more.
“They may skip reapplying. And they may believe wear a hat, they don’t need to seek shade or cover up with clothes.
“They end up getting much more UV damage, and that, of course, defeats the purpose.”


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It’s a divide and conquer strategy.
Remember that whole global debate over China’s market status? Well, it just took an interesting turn.
China has notified the World Trade Organization (WTO) that it intends to proceed with a panel request against the European Union (E.U.) over its current status as a non-market economy.
This wasn’t entirely unexpected, as China desperately wants to be named a market economy by both the E.U. and the United States. If China were granted market status, it would be much harder for the E.U. and the U.S. to take action against China’s ongoing trade cheating, particularly dumped imports.
But what is surprising is that the panel request China just filed is only for the E.U., not the United States. Specifically, it wants Europe to treat it equally with market economies in anti-dumping cases.
So why only Europe? Well, it appears China is betting that the E.U. is the easier opponent, and is employing a divide and conquer strategy.
Here’s the background: China contends that because it has been a member of the WTO for 15 years, it automatically has earned the right to be given market status. But the E.U. and U.S. have rejected that claim, and for good reason — China is simply not a market economy.
In the United States, there are six criteria that a country must meet before being granted market economy status. As we’ve repeatedly noted, China meets none of the six criteria.
The Obama administration denied China market status, with the Commerce Department noting that there are “serious imbalances in China’s state-directed economy… and significant state ownership in many industries and sectors.” The Trump administration is expected to maintain China’s current non-market economy status.
In December, China filed a WTO complaint against both the U.S. and the E.U. over its market status.
But now China is only moving ahead with the panel request against the European Union. AEGIS Europe, an alliance of 30 key industries in Europe, released an op-ed from spokesperson Milan Nitzschke on Monday that argues that the Chinese believe that it will be far easier to be granted market status by the E.U. compared to the United States.
And China is probably right, Nitzschke writes.
“This WTO panel request is a bit like Lance Armstrong suing the Tour de France in order to have doping be redefined as a medical treatment, and to get back all seven titles he won thanks to unfair competition,” Nitzschke writes. “But instead of immediately rejecting that claim and preparing a solid legal defence, the EU institutions are just rushing to change the Union’s anti-dumping legislation as soon as possible, to make it less efficient even before any WTO ruling from Geneva clarifies what the EU’s obligations actually are.”
He adds: “China first moves ahead with litigation against the weaker party which appears little interested in defending itself and ensuring the continued possibility of treating China as the non-market economy it is.”
If it ends up that the E.U. grants China market status but the United States and other nations do not, Europe will be placed at a huge disadvantage, as AEGIS notes.
Unfair Chinese imports have devastated entire industries in the United States. Tens of thousands of steelworkers have faced layoffs because of Chinese imports. The aluminum industry also has been left devastated because of unfair Chinese imports, forcing The Aluminum Association to file its first-ever trade case last week in an attempt to level the playing field.
But this is a global problem — and European industries also have faced layoffs and plant closures because of China’s continued dumping. We hope that the European Union stands up to China and fights to make sure it can defend itself against China’s trade cheating.


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It's not a secret that the iPad has had some rough quarters in recent years, but the introduction of a more affordable 9.7-inch model in March has helped Apple's tablet regain growth this year. The new 9.7-inch iPad priced at $329 has been such a success that Apple is considering launching an even more inexpensive model in 2018, according to the DigiTimes.
Bloomberg has published a report claiming that the next-generation iPad Pro models will ship with Face ID in 2018. Face ID was introduced on the iPhone X which began shipping earlier this month.
Citing "people familiar with the matter," Bloomberg notes "at least one new iPad model with a screen size similar to the 10.5-inch iPad Pro is planned to include Face ID." Face ID would replace the physical Home button and Touch ID on the new iPad models. Apple's facial recognition feature is used like Touch ID to unlock a user's device and for approving payments using Apple Pay.
There have been a few signs that Apple has been working on an iPhone stylus. First an apparent slip by Tim Cook about using an Apple Pencil with an iPhone, and second three different patents filed for a smaller stylus and other Pencil technology. Today, the publication The Investor claims Apple is indeed designing a "digital pen" for release as early as 2019.
Three Urban Armor Gear folio cases for the rumored 10.5-inch iPad Pro have appeared in an alleged photo taken from the stock system of an unnamed "Apple Authorized Reseller," according to 9to5Mac. As you can see from the 9to5Mac image posted above, the UAG Folio case is already available for both the 9.7-inch and 12.9-inch iPad models. The image also lists three "UAG Metropolis Folio cases for iPad 10.5-inch" in various colors.
The Apple TV will be the first Apple product to receive a multi-user login option with the release of TVos 11, according to The Verifier. The site posted a mockup showing how multiple profiles would look on a user's television display. According to the unverified report, Apple TV owners running TVos 11 or later will be able to use their personal Apple IDs to access their own songs, iCloud photos and more. Allowing multiple profiles on the Apple TV makes sense since it is primarily a shared device, unlike an iPhone which is considered more of a personal product.
Next-generation iPad reports have been all over the map when it comes to an actual release date. One day after MacRumors reported that Apple is planning a late-March event for its iPad refresh, the DigiTimes claims the event has been moved to April. Citing supply chain sources, the Taiwanese site reported today that Apple will unveil its new iPad lineup in early April to "mark the inauguration" of its new headquarters in California.
Apple is planning to launch its next line of iPad models "later this month, most likely between Monday, March 20 and Friday, March 24," according to MacRumors. Citing a "reputable supply chain analyst," the Apple blog reports that the Cupertino company is also gearing up to announce a few other new products besides its new iPad models at the March event.
If you believe all the latest leaks and analyst predictions then Apple is gearing up to release at least 3 new iPad models sometime in the next few weeks. While most reports have indicated a March announcement, Steven Sande of Apple World Today believes Tim Cook and team are waiting until April 4th to launch their new iPad lineup.
Sande points to the current iPad Pro shipping times on apple.com as a sign that the iPad Pro 2 will be available on April 4th. Sande also notes that Apple may be waiting until their new spaceship headquarters in complete to hold their first major keynote of 2017. The new 175-acre campus called Apple Park is slated to open in early April.
The 10.5-inch iPad Apple is allegedly planning to release in May will ship with a higher resolution than the current 9.7-inch iPad Pro model, according to Rhoda Alexander, Director Tablets and PCs, at IHS Markit (via Forbes). The rumored tablet will sport a 2,224×1,668 display with 264 ppi. This gives it a higher resolution than the 9.7-inch iPad Pro but same pixel density.


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Special to the
Airbnb, the world’s leading community driven hospitality company, announced last week that its Alabama host community earned a combined $31 million in supplemental income while welcoming nearly 215,000 guest arrivals to the state in 2018.
This comes as Alabama residents increasingly embrace the home- sharing platform as an opportunity to earn supplemental income and make ends meet. There are more than 2,600 Alabama hosts who share their homes via Airbnb, typically earning about $6,100 annually in supplemental income.
In Lee County, the total host income for 2018 was $1 million with nearly 8,000 guests.
In addition to the new income going into the pockets of Alabama homeowners, the state is generating new revenue through a tax agreement between Airbnb and the Alabama Department of Revenue that allows the company to collect the state sales tax and local lodging taxes on behalf of its local hosts and remit the revenue directly to the state. Airbnb also has individual tax agreements with the cities of Auburn, Birmingham, Opelika and Tuscaloosa to collect and remit the tax revenue for their respective lodging taxes.
The home-sharing community provides significant value through expanded lodging capacity for Alabama communities when hotels sell out during big events. These include Tuscaloosa and Auburn during college football weekends, Talladega during big races, Mobile and Birmingham during major conferences and festivals and the Gulf Shores community during summer tourism season.
Founded in 2008, Airbnb’s mission is to create a world where people can belong through healthy travel that is local, authentic, diverse, inclusive and sustainable. Airbnb uniquely leverages technology to economically empower millions of people around the world to unlock and monetize their spaces, passions and talents to become hospitality entrepreneurs. Airbnb’s accommodation marketplace provides access to 5+ million unique places to stay in more than 81,000 cities and 191 countries.


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SACRAMENTO, Calif., Feb. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- McClatchy (NYSE-MNI) will review its business and strategies in a presentation at the J.P. Morgan Global High Yield & Leveraged Finance Conference in Miami, Florida on Tuesday, February 28, 2017, at 10:20 a.m. Eastern, 7:20 a.m. Pacific time.
The company's presentation reviewed during the conference will be made available on its website, www.mcclatchy.com, shortly after 11:00 a.m. Eastern 8:00 a.m. Pacific time, on February 28, 2017.
McClatchy is a news and information publisher of such renowned brands such as the Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star, The Sacramento Bee, The Charlotte Observer, The (Raleigh) News and Observer, and the (Fort Worth) Star-Telegram. McClatchy operates 30 media companies in 14 states, providing each of its communities with high-quality news and advertising services in a wide array of digital and print formats. McClatchy is headquartered in Sacramento, Calif., and listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MNI.
To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mcclatchy-to-present-at-jp-morgan-conference-300411041.html


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Rockstar do battle with GTA IV cheats
Cheaters beware, Rockstar have got your number, the publisher confirming this week that a brand new 'Title Update' is on the way for Grand Theft Auto IV.
Available to the Xbox 360 only at present, the new update will be ushered in via Xbox Live - and will put a halt to cheaters said to be spoiling the game's online play for other users.
The publisher states that the new update "fixes the invisible player issue and prevents the use of cheat code exploits in multiplayer games."
It is presently unclear precisely when Rockstar will begin cleaning up the virtual streets of Liberty City, but it's good to see the firm supporting their multiplayer community, nonetheless.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops III is coming to the PS3 and Xbox 360 after all
- Tomonobu Itagaki's Devil's Third gets a release date
- Adr1ft is coming to PC and consoles at the end of the summer
- EA gives the new Mirror's Edge a name – Mirror's Edge Catalyst
- ZombiU PS4 and Xbox One port reportedly in the works
- Mike Bithell's Volume to be released this August
- Gearbox's new shooter Battleborn gets a pre-E3 trailer
- Steam Controller launches in October, Steam Machines arrive in November
- Gears Of War devs Black Tusk change their name to The Coalition ahead of E3


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Hyderabad: In a first of its kind initiative, a restaurant named ‘Robo Kitchen’ has come up in Hyderabad. The speciality of this place is the ‘Beauty Serving Robot’ which are always on duty to serve the customers. The restaurant has four robots that are to be charged for at least 3 hours to work for a day.
At this robot-themed restaurant, customers can order food of their choice such as Chinese or Thai dishes without interacting with a waiter. Every table at the restaurant has an iPad through which orders can be placed directly. Once the order is made, the robot picks up the food from the chef and delivers the same to the right customer.
The trend of robot restaurants is usual in places like Japan, China, Bangladesh and other western countries. Inspired by the ‘robot theme restaurant’, a group of youngsters in Chennai had earlier decided to start a venture that employs robots to perform manual tasks.
The restaurant was set up in Chennai last year. Jagadeesh, a partner of the ‘robot theme restaurant’ said that the robots are imported and come in different colours. Moreover, the restaurant has some manpower to programme the machines, he said.
“Each table has a tablet and the customer just have to enter the dishes they need on it and press send and the order will reach the cooks and once it’s done, the cooks will send out the robots to serve to the respective tables,” added Jagadeesh. These robots are capable of understanding two languages namely English and Tamil, said the restaurant partner.
(With Agency inputs)


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Guerrilla Marketing International and Jackstreet Media have announced details of an agreement aimed at commercializing podcasting. Under the agreement, the alliance will sponsor five conferences aimed at bringing together the business, marketing, and media expertise required to use podcasting as a viable, profitable business channel. The conference is part of the Guerrilla Marketing Business University Tour.
Sessions will be held in Orlando, Las Vegas, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Vancouver. Each event will focus on podcasting's possibilities as a media business, a brand building tool, a marketing and business development tool, and a sales channel. One approach that will be explored is called nanocasting, a form of Internet radio that encompasses podcasting, but is profit-driven, ecommerce enabled, and uses multiple approaches to hyper-target the right commercial audience.
Presenters will include Jay Conrad Levinson, the founder of Guerrilla Marketing and author of the marketing series, "Guerrilla Marketing," and Errol St. Clair Smith, reporter at KTLA, radio talk show host and founder of Jackstreet Media -- a company that has been developing and market-testing Internet radio business models since 1999. Other speakers will discuss key business and financial issues.
Each conference will have limited seating capacity for 200 people and will last two and a half days. Dates have already been booked for Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, The Ritz Carlton in New Orleans and the Peabody Hotel in Orlando. The program aims to attract guerrilla media entrepreneurs and to identify promising new media models and partners for possible co-ventures.


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Each week Nikolas Badminton, Futurist Speaker, summarizes the top-5 future looking developments and news items that I find to be inspiring, interesting, concerning, or downright strange. Each day he reads through dozens of blogs and news websites to find those things that we should be aware of.
In Future Trends – Robots Need Humans we look at the growth of industrial robots that need our help, removing echo, visions of the world in 2050, Bitcoin adoption in Japan, and cheap short-haul electric flights.
The growth of industrial robots
The popular narrative about robots is that they are stealing human workers′ jobs. A new paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research broadly supports this belief, estimating that each additional robot in the American economy reduces employment by 5.6 workers. However, the relationship between automation and employment is not always straightforward. One big trend is the growth of “collaborative robots”, smaller and more adaptable machines designed to work alongside humans. Barclays, a bank, thinks that between 2016 and 2020 sales of these machines will increase more than tenfold. Moreover, by improving productivity, automation can sometimes create new jobs for humans, or at least relocate them. Adopting robots has made it economical for some manufacturers in high-wage countries to “re-shore” production from poorer countries. This year Adidas, a sportswear firm, will begin producing running shoes in a German factory staffed by robots and 160 new workers.
Read more at The Economist
News site created to break down online echo chambers
The internet, despite promising to broaden our horizons, can serve to narrow them. In the wake of Brexit and the US elections, we have seen several innovations designed to encourage internet users to engage and debate with those outside of their tribe. One such innovation is a video platform which emboldens users to participate in live video debates with those outside their networks, and now The Perspective is a current affairs website encouraging readers to engage with opinions opposite to their own.
Read more at Springwise
What the Earth will look like in 2050, according to experts and people who live here
2050 is only about 30 years from now, which means it’s close enough that we can imagine it happening, but far enough away that we can’t confidently say what it will look like. Maybe that’s why 2050 is the year Kaspersky Lab chose to envision for its new futuristic, interactive map. The map, called Earth 2050, imagines our world three decades from now, Wiredreports.
The project allows users to explore how different cities around the world might look in 2050, 2040, and 2030. It’s like Google Street View, except the streets are all a little shiner looking. Each city and experience is equipped with predictions from experts at Kaspersky, futurologists, and random site visitors. Predictions range from the believable (humans will live in buildings stocked with amenities so they’ll never need to leave their homes) to the strange (toilets will analyze our poop) to the ambitious (students will be able to choose what time they go to school, thanks to pop-up hologram teachers).
Read more at The Verge
Bitcoin to Be Accepted at 260,000 Stores in Japan by This Summer
While Nikkei reports that about 4,500 stores in Japan currently
accept bitcoin as payments, in an interview with Bitcoin.com in January, Coincheck revealed that more than 5,000 merchants and websites accept bitcoin through the company’s system.
Electronic money is popular in Japan. In addition to cash payments, some of the most popular electronic payment methods are Suica and Rakuten’s Edy, which are rechargeable contactless smart cards. While Suica is accepted at about 380,000 outlets and used as a fare card on train lines in Japan, Edy can be used at 470,000 locations nationwide.
The partnership with Recruit Lifestyle “will add 260,000 more stores that accept bitcoins”, Coincheck claims, adding that:
Bitcoin will be accepted at 260,000 shops by this summer.
Read more at Bitcoin.com
Zunum Aero’s electric passenger plane hopes to offer cheaper flights by 2020
Zunum Aero, a company backed by funding from Boeing HorizonX and JetBlue’s tech venture arm, has revealed its plans to create a hybrid electric aircraft designed for regional flights with plans to fly by 2020. The aircraft would have a range of around 700 miles at launch, and the plan is to get that up to over 1,000 miles by 2030, which means it could service many popular commuter routes in the U.S., potentially.
The Zunum Aero plane is designed around the idea that by routing more traffic to regional hub airports, and providing much lower operating costs for smaller craft with between 10 and 50 seats that do short-haul trips, between locations like L.A. and Silicon Valley, air travel can become much more efficient and convenient for commuters. Zunum says that air travel between hubs as an alternative to slower options like overland rail and highways hasn’t really gotten any better in the last 50 years, but it hopes to change the economics with its electric drive technology.
Read more at TechCrunch


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With the farm bill legalizing the cultivation and sale of hemp, growers, entrepreneurs and investors look to cash in on a crop that has been around since our nation’s founding but was made illegal to grow and trade in 1937. Hemp was even classified as a Schedule 1 drug in 1970.
Proponents of CBD and CBD-infused products claim it helps calm nerves, reduce stress, and alleviate pain, all without the high associated with marijuana. Typically, and as is required by the farm bill, hemp is a species of cannabis grown with less than 0.3 percent tetrahydrocannabinol (“THC”), the principal psychoactive constituent of cannabis.
CBD production in the U.S. is exponentially expanding, and as more and more products come online with CBD as an active ingredient, it can be found in everything from gummies, cookies, coffee and tea, to lipstick, shampoo, creams, and oils.
While this new hemp legalization is good for CBD manufacturers and entrepreneurs, the end product’s legal status is still murky. The Drug Enforcement Administration considers CBD illegal, though it rarely enforces laws against its use or sale. So far, the DEA has remained salient on whether they will reclassify CBD’s legal status after passage of the farm bill.
Another federal agency, the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”), has weighed in with a statement from Commissioner Scott Gottlieb that indicates it still considers CBD a drug, and that it is illegal to put it in foods or health products without FDA approval.
“Selling unapproved products with unsubstantiated therapeutic claims is not only a violation of the law but also can put patients at risk, as these products have not been proven to be safe or effective,” Gottlieb wrote. “At the same time, we recognize the potential opportunities that cannabis or cannabis-derived compounds could offer and acknowledge the significant interest in these possibilities. We’re committed to pursuing an efficient regulatory framework for allowing product developers that meet the requirements under our authorities to lawfully market these types of products.”
Legalization will Jumpstart the CBD Industry
The rise in CBD production and use is beginning to create an industry all its own, with a broad range of public acceptance. Hemp legalization will create a whole new generation of farmers and provide existing farms with an opportunity to cultivate a new and eco-friendly crop that may be more profitable than traditional crops.
Previously, cultivators faced barriers to growing hemp — namely, restricted banking, risk of federal confiscation, lack of insurance options, and other issues that made hemp production financially prohibitive. The farm bill removes these restrictions, putting the US Department of Agriculture and state departments in charge of its oversight. Many states have already passed legislation to create rules for the production and sale of hemp and hemp-based products.
As CBD begins to go mainstream, new CBD products have been hitting the market in record numbers. The CBD industry sold over $350 million worth of products last year, and analysts predict that number to grow to $1 billion by 2020.
While proponents of CBD claim there is a long history of using the holistic properties of cannabidiol, most medical researchers believe more work needs to be done before the efficacy of CBD products can be confirmed.
With hemp legalization and expansion of CBD production, most analysts agree that it will lead to increased mainstream research into its benefits, as well as open doors for greater investment into a brand new billion-dollar market.
Legal, Yet not Without Risk
While passage of the Farm Bill and President Trump’s signing the bill into law legalized the cultivation of hemp and the manufacture and sale of products containing CBD, risks remain. Growers, manufacturers, sellers and financiers of hemp and CBD products, however, can mitigate those risks.
With state legalization of medicinal and recreational marijuana, Federal drug enforcement officials and the Department of Justice have mostly taken a “hands-off” approach – deferring to state law provided growers and sellers are complying with state regulatory schemes. Legal observers anticipate that these Federal authorities will pursue a similar approach to hemp and its lucrative byproducts. Entrepreneurs interested in investing in this space need to consult with legal counsel to ensure that their investment platforms follow state law, and that deficiencies in compliance are remedied quickly. Investors need to get informed and stay vigilant retarding the regulatory obligations of their investments.
Further, and unlike recreational or medicinal marijuana, investors also need to consider Federal food and drug law compliance. With the FDA regulating the use of CDC in consumer applications, manufacturers and sellers of CDC-based products face enforcement actions and the possible seizure of assets when their products are not approved. Again, investors are urged to get informed and consult with legal counsel or an FDA regulatory consultant prior to investing in an unapproved CDC application.


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BlueIndy Bluecar in Indianapolis
The much-touted electric car sharing program planned for the city of Indianapolis appears to have ground to a halt.
According to a local Fox 59 report:
"The city’s new electric car service is still waiting for the green light."
"Back in the spring, city officials unveiled the new all-electric car-sharing service called blueindy, with several cars unveiled and stationed Downtown along Washington Street."
"Bolloré, the company launching the program, had planned to establish 25 stations with 125 cars throughout the Circle City by the end of the 2014."
"But now it’s 2015, and the cars are still just sitting there on Washington street, with hopes to get the program up and running by the spring."
What's the hold up?
"The city is partnering with the company and with IPL to set up the charging stations. IPL has asked for a temporary rate hike to help pay for these charging stations. They’re hoping the system will soon make a profit so that it’s only a short-term solution. In the meantime, they’re still waiting of approval from the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission."
A city-wide rate hike on electric, even for those who won't ever use the program, isn't going over well.
Regardless, the city of Indianapolis remains confident that the program and rate hike will be approved, but as of right now, tons of BlueIndy electric cars are occupying "valuable real estate" and can't be used:
“They are sitting right in the middle of some of the most valuable real estate in the city and the parking spaces that should be left for consumers who are patronizing some of the business that are downtown."
Source: Fox 59


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Nintendo and LEGO have been working hard to make LEGO Super Mario something special. That includes both with the toys themselves and the accompanying app. In an interview with The Verge, LEGO design head Jonathan Bennink talks about how the app went through some big changes before getting to an approach everyone liked.
While the app shows you how to build pieces, it doesn't give you course layouts. Bennink said an earlier version of the app did just that, but the team moved away from it.
“...this totally overtook the joy of just building from your imagination, because you’re basically just completing a task that we gave you.”
Some LEGO/Nintendo fans have noted that while plenty of Mario features are represented in LEGO Super Mario, not all of the mechanics of a traditional Mario game are in play. Bennink took a moment to explain why.
“We simply couldn’t translate all of the main mechanics straight to Lego play — Mario games are often about skill and making it to the finish. So in that sense it’s more akin to Super Mario Maker, where you are intrinsically motivated to get to build levels. One of the decisions that we also made is that Mario doesn’t die or get hurt a lot, and this is mainly because of Tezuka-san saying ‘We want Mario to be happy, because if Mario is happy, kids are happy,’ which turned out to be very true.”


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Photo Lab Launches Mail-in Service For Disposable Cameras
DDC.com is your quick, easy online solution to getting your memories out of single-use cameras! Just print our prepaid mailing label, drop an envelope in a USPS box, and get your pictures back in about a week!
- (1888PressRelease) July 19, 2011 - DevelopDisposableCameras.com Offers Simple Solution For Processing, Scanning, Printing
Disposable ('single-use') cameras were-even just a decade ago-a major trend in photography, and they are still popular items in drugstores and tourist areas today. But the digital revolution has driven many photo labs out of business, meaning that many people find themselves with disposable cameras but without a place to have them developed. To cater to this need, Photosmith-a photo lab in Dover, NH that has been processing and printing pictures for over thirty years-has started a new website, www.developdisposablecameras.com.
The website emphasizes simplicity-simply print a prepaid mailing label, choose how many sets of prints you would like, and pop the camera in a bubble mailer in a USPS drop box. You'll receive your images back roughly a week later. A full set of scans of images is complimentary; it will be returned on a CD with the customer's negatives by mail. Customers can pay by check, credit card, or Paypal.
Steve Frank, owner of the Photosmith, says that questions about disposable cameras are among the most common questions that he encounters. "People have these cameras around, from a wedding, or a family trip, and they don't know what to do with them," he said. "We hate thinking about people throwing away their memories, and we still have the capacity to process their single-use cameras, so we wanted to reach out to make sure everyone had a place to develop them."
Part of the fun of having disposable cameras developed is that in many cases the images were captured long ago. "We've had people find photos of family members that have since passed away, photos of important days in their children's lives…" Frank says. "It's so wonderful to hear back from people when they say, 'Wow! I'm so glad I had that camera developed. I had forgotten all about that camping trip, or that birthday party.' When I got into the photo business almost forty years ago, the photo business was really the memory business. It's nice to get back to that with www.developdisposablecameras.com."


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The government has vowed to lead by example and only use and buy sustainable palm oil products where practical and appropriate.
The palm oil industry has been criticised for being responsible for the destruction of native forests and species, like rhinos and tigers.
Food in Jersey will, at some stage, be labelled to state whether they contain palm oil or palm oil derivatives.
There'll also be a public campaign to raise awareness of the issue.
The issue was brought to the States Assembly by the Constable of St Martin, Karen Shenton-Stone.
"If Chester, Oxford, etc can achieve sustainable palm oil status, and countries as large as Singapore can do this, then Jersey really can, and I do think it would be fantastic for Jersey to be known globally as a sustainably resourced island."
The Constable initially asked the government to only use and buy products that don't contain any palm oil at all.
She accepted a request from the Environment Minister to use 'credibly sustainable' palm oil products, where practical and appropriate.
Assistant Environment Minister Deputy Gregory Guida says the department is in full support.
"We are all well aware of the impact that palm oil production has on the natural environment across the world, and we must do what we can, even if our impact is small, to mitigate this senseless and unsustainable use."
The proposition was approved unanimously by States members.


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A year after coming under Axel Springer’s control, Politico’s Europe and North American businesses are closer than ever
It’s been nearly a year since German-based Axel Springer acquired Politico for over $1 billion, which included both the U.S. and EU iterations of the brand, in addition to the almost 3-year-old technology-focused title Protocol. Since that acquisition, the Politico brand has started undergoing a merger of sorts internally as well.
Despite sharing a brand name and founder — Robert Allbritton — Politico U.S. and EU have operated as separate businesses until earlier this year. Now, Politico EU’s chief revenue officer Nicolas Sennegon said the Washington, D.C.-based and Brussels-based teams have developed global ambitions that include working together to sell ads across both regions, bundle subscriptions and find ways to editorially cover unfolding political news for readers around the world.
Most of the cross-brand collaboration has originated at the advertising level, which represents about one-third of Politico EU’s revenue currently (the other two-thirds come from its subscriptions business, which runs about €17,000 per year), according to Sennegon. But as the brand pursues its global expansion, he added that there are opportunities to further link those two sides of the business, by turning subscribers into advertisers, where Politico EU already sees about a 50% overlap.
On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Sennegon said that over the next year, Politico will be further branching the two brands together, though he would not disclose exactly what a global Politico will look like or when we can expect its launch.
Below are highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Realizing a global brand
Rebranding or working on a brand is not something that you do overnight. It’s a bit of everything, but we need some time to make it happen. But the first thing is [looking at] the existing assets that we have across the pond and from existing resources [and figuring out] how do we provide the most [from] these two things. From the newsroom perspective, you can have stories coming from Europe and stories coming from North America. From a subscription model, we can have some clients that want to subscribe to both Europe and North America. So we need to facilitate that.
What is the new brand? What is the new operational structure? It’s still in conversation. But our priority is to use existing resources and processes and optimize them as far as possible, in a more combined and aligned way. It’s an evolution more than a revolution.
Taking an agnostic approach to selling advertising and subscriptions
My role is to optimize revenue and optimize client relationships across the pond. The interesting thing [about] my role in Europe is overseeing both B2B subscription and media solution revenue. I can facilitate revenue growth by being agnostic, client centric and agnostic of business. I can take one client and have a conversation across the pond and not separate between B2B subscription or media solutions. My motivation is growth, but not specifically one versus the other because they complement each other.
The selling strategy is about the value proposition we bring to these clients. So we have access to the information, the data, and we help them understand and anticipate how situations like the war in Ukraine, impacts policies and politics. But on top of that, within this period of uncertainty, these brands still need to communicate on specific topics either related to their business or related to a specific policy that has been discussed in Brussels. So it’s more about providing them with access to all different opportunities we have across the organization, and just finding a win-win solution for them and for us.
Covering politics for a global audience can be tricky, but the key is keeping news nonpartisan
Nonpartisan journalism is a value, which is core to Politico in both North America and Europe. So the way the newsroom approaches stories is the same. I live in Europe, so I’m more specifically knowledgeable about this part of the world, [and] the expectation from an audience in Europe is to be nonpartisan. So to be a global brand, which is the ambition of Politico, you need to be nonpartisan, you need to have a global perspective. And you need to have the same approach to the way you cover stories. The stories may have a flavor that is slightly different in North America versus Europe, but the principles [and] values are the same, which is, we need to cover that story with a nonpartisan approach.
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Need for Speed Heat was announced today, and naturally, the first thing that interested people turned to following the announcement was whether or not the game would have loot boxes in it. After all, the last Need for Speed game was nearly destroyed by them.
It looks like EA isn’t going to make that mistake again. According to Ghost Games who posted this to the Need For Speed subreddit, “There are no lootboxes in NFS Heat and there won’t be,” they also jokingly said there would be no “suprise mechanics” either.
What was revealed for NFS Heat is that it would have post-launch paid-DLC in the form of car packs. It was also said that there would be a “time-save pack” that would show all the collectibles on the map alongside this.
EA’s loot box stance does seem to start getting a little more nuanced as of late. While there’s no signs of things like card packs being removed from their sports games that are going to sell regardless, it’s good to hear that the loot boxes they so infamously defended recently to the UK Parliament.


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The business sentiment of Australian SMEs has fallen 15 points to levels experienced just after the global financial crisis (GFC), according to a new survey.
Bibby Financial Services stated reasons behind the decline include a negative backlash against the Abbott government and its recent budget, and a depressing outlook on the global and Australian economy.
The Bibby SME Cash Flow Index revealed a score of -10.1, a fall of about 15 points from +5.3 in February this year. This latest score is the lowest on record since August 2012 when the Index recorded -11.2 and SMEs were struggling to survive the aftermath of the GFC.
Survey participants stated the federal government should be doing more to help small business, with 45 per cent believing the Abbott government is not stacking up well compared to the previous government.
“SME’s gloomy economic outlook is mirrored by the broader Australian investment community, as measured by the other industry surveys. SMEs are generally concerned about a decline in consumer spending, the direction of interest rates and maintaining a healthy cash flow," Bibby Financial Services A/NZ managing director, Mark Cleaver, said.
The survey found the industries most pessimistic towards government are retail (66 per cent) and manufacturing (64 per cent).
A substantial number of SMEs do not believe initiatives handed down in the May budget will be effective for SMEs, believing the Paid Parental Leave levy (47.5 per cent), Entrepreneurs Infrastructure Program (41 per cent), Company tax decrease (40 per cent) and Industry Skills Fund (44 per cent) will have a low impact on business.
The incentives most likely to have an impact are the reintroduction of the Fuel Excise Levy (52 per cent) and the increase of Superannuation Guarantee (45 per cent).
More than a third of SMEs expect sales growth to remain flat in the next 12 months and those expecting a decline in growth has increased from 10 per cent in February to 15 per cent. Three in ten SMEs believe the Australian economy will contract over the coming year.
“Managing cash flow continues to be an issue for SMEs, with two in five finding it more difficult than 12 months ago,” Cleaver said.
The factors most impacting SME cash flow were customers making excuses for slow payments (23 per cent), declining margins (21 per cent), long outstanding invoices (18 per cent) and issues with government red tape (16 per cent).
Kristen Turnbull, Head of Financial Services, CoreData Consulting, “As a result of poor cash flow, SMEs are planning to borrow more over the next 12 months. Reasons for seeking additional financing include to fund growth (30 per cent), refinance existing debt (26 per cent), funding for working capital (22 per cent) or to undertake innovation projects (19.5 per cent).”
“A quarter of SMEs plan to use credit cards as a main source of external financing in the coming 12 months, ahead of traditional bank loans or overdrafts (both 20 per cent),” Turnbull said.
A further quarter of SMEs believe they are not receiving the level of funding they desire from their bank, citing issues of insufficient security (19 per cent), a lack of security (18 per cent) and insufficient trading history (12 per cent); and one in five are using personal property to secure financing.


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Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso presented the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce with $20,000 in funding for their ongoing work under the Neighborhood Economic Development Division (NED) program. Earmarked for southeast Brooklyn, the funds were presented at Assemblywoman Jaime Williams’ office on Friday, May 6th.
The NED supports commercial revitalization activities across commercial corridors that lack representation by an organizing entity such as a Business Improvement District (BID), Merchants’ Association (MA) or Local Development Corporation (LDC), allowing businesses located in underserved neighborhoods to access business support services, government resources, district marketing and address key needs for commercial development.
“Small businesses are the lifeline of Brooklyn and so it’s a priority of my administration to help provide as much funding and support as we can to keep them in business,” said Borough President Reynoso.
“The past two years have been fraught with tremendous obstacles toward our small businesses,” said Assemblywoman Williams. “Brooklyn Borough President Reynoso‘s award of $20,000 to the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce for small businesses and restaurants and their equivalent is an incredible achievement and a sign that by working with private small businesses and government, we can overcome the past challenges and rise to former heights, if not soar higher. On behalf of the 59th Assembly District, I extend a heartfelt thank you to Borough President Reynoso.”
“Locally grown neighborhood businesses and merchants strengthen the fabric of our communities, but the climate has been tough,” said State Senator Roxanne Persaud. “I am very pleased that Borough President Reynoso will provide neighborhood development funding to the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce to support businesses in Senate District 19. This funding will help alleviate some of the challenges experienced by small businesses.”
“Trini Jam BK has been working with the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce since we opened in 2020 during the height of the pandemic,” said owner Calvin Sennon. “They provided us with PPE, technical assistance around regulations and secured us a grant when our basement flooded after Hurricane Ida. We believe the Borough President is making the right investment to support similar businesses like ours in southeast Brooklyn.”
Courtesy of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce


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New federal regulations intended to promote healthy eating could make it harder to use food stamps at convenience stores – a change that opponents say will leave disadvantaged people with fewer places to buy groceries.
The standards proposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture would require retailers that accept food stamps to stock more and fresher varieties of food. But many convenience stores won’t be able to meet the requirements and will be forced from the the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP, or food stamps, critics say.
So, on the one hand:
Why should the government be able to tell poor people where they can shop and what foods they can buy?
On the other hand:
Why shoudn't the goverment be able to tell people where they can shop and what foods they can buy using money supplied by us taxpayers?
This is the dilemma. Yes, we all hate the Obama administration's obesity-obsessed Nutrition Nanny State that won't even let schools hold bake sales to fund the marching band without conforming to strict limits.
But this situation is more problematic:
USDA drafted its proposal to codify language in the 2014 Farm Bill that required stores that accept SNAP to offer seven varieties of food items in each of four staple food categories. Those categories are meat, poultry or fish; bread or cereal; vegetables or fruits; and dairy.
The law states stores must include at least one perishable item in three of those categories. This more than doubles the varieties of foods stores will have to stock to 28, a change convenience store owners say they do not oppose.
Their problem, they say, is with how the USDA interpreted the law.
In particular, convenience store owners object to a new definition of what constitutes a staple food. Under the USDA’s proposal, products with more than two ingredients, such as soups or frozen dinners, no longer count.
Another major concern with USDA’s proposal is the requirement that six items from each of the seven food varieties must be displayed on a shelf at all times.
Ninety percent of small stores currently authorized to accept food stamps – about 175,000 stores nationwide – would need to add inventory items to meet the new requirements, according to USDA.
In other words, the government wants people on food stamps to use the stamps at actual grocery stores where maybe looking at the tempting piles of fresh shiny apples might inspire them to buy one of those apples instead of the package of Ho Hos that they came into the store to buy.
Now, many convenience stores are small family-owned businesses–although others are part of big chains like 7-Eleven. And, as the USDA has pointed out:
Some of these retailers operate primarily as restaurants, not retail food stores. Nothing in current regulations specifically prohibits items sold for SNAP benefits that are cold at the point-of-sale from being heated or cooked in the store after purchase. Further, current rules allow foods to be classified as staple or non-staple by their first ingredient; therefore some pizza restaurants, for example, have been deemed eligible with pizza as the qualifying staple food based on the primary ingredient (bread). After selling a cold pizza to SNAP customers, these firms subsequently heat the pizza and then have ultimately sold hot food from their pizza-restaurant location.
Since the point of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is to enable the poor to purchase food to cook at home, not to enable the poor to order takeout pizza, there does seem to a point in tightening the rules. The SNAP program is supposed to be an anti-hunger program, not a let's-eat-out-tonight program. Convenience stores sell convenience, so just for starters, even a wholesome quart of milk costs more at the corner store than it does at the Safeway. Do we want our tax dollars to be spent on convenience–or just plain food?
So, alas, the problem isn't convenience stores and their inadequate apple supplies. It's food stamps. Right now some 46.5 million people feed on SNAP benefits, one out of every seven Americans. That's more than the 38.5 million Americans deemed to be living in poverty by even the most generous standards. Not surprisingly, food stamps are misused in all kinds of ways,as ingenious "beneficiaries' figure out how to turn them into cash.
So, I feel sort of sorry for mom-and-pop bodega owners who might not be able to participate much longer in the food-stamp racket–and even sorrier for genuinely impoverished moms who might have to shop elsewhere for that gallon of milk for the kids. And of course I can't stand the health fanatics at the Obama USDA.
But isn't the real solution for Congress to get the SNAP program under control so that it actually does what it's supposed to do?


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NEW YORK — Online content distribution site Sightsound.com has inked a deal with Comedy Central to offer all of the back episodes of “South Park” as well as the recently canceled “Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist” for paid download over the Web.
Pennsylvania-based Sightsound, which recently gained notoriety for commissioning the $3 million mini-movie “Quantum Project” for a direct-to-Web release, will offer six early episodes of each show starting today.
Company expects to offer six more “South Park” episodes within the next four months. All the shows will be available simultaneously on Sightsound.com and ComedyCentral.com.
Sightsound chief exec Scott Sander says the downloads offer an alternative to buying VHS or DVD copies of the episodes that is cheaper and faster, especially in areas with minimal access to retail outlets. And for “Dr. Katz,” video copies are not currently available at all.
“For people sitting out in rural Iowa, it might take them a long time to get to a videostore,” he told Daily Variety. Site also offers faster access to the content than can be had through ordering hard copies online from a retailer like Amazon.com, he added.
Downloads will cost $2.50 for a two-day rental license and $4.95 for a full purchase. The files will take about five minutes to download with a broadband Internet connection, or more than an hour with dial-up access.
Ken Locker, Comedy Central’s senior VP in charge of new-media projects, said the cabler sees the Sightsound deal as a means to experiment with new windows of distribution online, especially for shows, like “Dr. Katz,” that no longer have a home on the network itself.
“This will be a great opportunity if it works,” Locker said. “The beauty of digital media is there’s virtually no incremental cost between the first copy and the thousandth copy.”
Locker added that Comedy Central will consider making more shows available for download depending on the response to the Sightsound deal.


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We’ve already had news of CPU, graphics cards and PC monitor sales being hit. So, it’s no surprise that the latest data from analysts shows PC sales themselves are dipping. But if you look at the broader context, there’s absolutely no reason to panic. Actually, taken in the round, PC sales have held up remarkably well.
As reported by the Verge, both IDC and Canalys have PC sales down by around 30% in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2022. Specifically, IDC puts the figure at 29% with a total of 56.9 million shipments while Canalys puts it at 32.6% and 54 million units. The figures are for PCs in general, gaming PCs in particular aren’t separated out.
Either way, then, it’s a hefty drop compared to last year and the fourth consecutive quarter of fall in PC shipments. Apple, incidentally, was the hardest hit of the big personal computer brands, suffering a 40% drop. Ouch.
Of course, the usual narrative around these stories is that falls were bound to happen after a huge boom in sales during the pandemic. However, IDC notes that sales are lower now than before the pandemic implying that something beyond a mere return to normal is happening. Canalys reckons that higher interest rates are reducing demand.
Of course, a simpler explanation is that people bought a tonne of PCs during the whole work-and-game-from-home period during the pandemic, they don’t already need to replace all those PCs, so a drop off was inevitable regardless of any economic downturn.
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Likewise, if you go back to the first quarter of 2019, Canalys has PC shipments at just under 60 million units. So, it’s not as if the market has imploded. If anything, given that shipments ticked along at 80 to 90 million a quarter for about a year and a half during the pandemic, which is miles above the pre-pandemic trend, it’s remarkable how little they’ve dropped.
Indeed, both Canalys and IDC are predicting an upturn in PC sales in the second half of this year and into 2024. If that happens, it looks like overall sales over the last few year will end up being above trend taken in the round.
In other words, everyone chill. The PC industry isn’t imploding. It enjoyed an exceptional boom during the pandemic and, so far at least, this is a pretty mild adjustment in response.


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41MP Camera Officially Confirmed For The Nokia EOSBy cheatmaster 08:08 Fri, 16 Jul 2021 Comments
The Nokia EOS rumor fire has been burning for a very long time now, but since recently Nokia itself has started adding fuel to it. The first rumors started soon after the last Symbian Nokia 808 PureView was announced and even though the Lumia 920 with OIS lens was carrying the PureView brand it didn't turn out the 41MP monster many fans hoped for.
Well the wait is almost over. The company just posted a second teaser for its July 11 event in New York, which says that there will be 41 million reasons to follow it. Get it? 41 million - the same as the number of pixels on the sensor of the upcoming WP8 smartphone.
Over the past few weeks we finally saw the first live pictures of the mysterious Nokia EOS device. Now that we also got to learn the resolution of its sensor, there are very few unknowns about it remaining.
Now the 41 megapixel sensor recommends we might also see an update of the Windows Phone platform pretty soon. Since the currently available WP8 release doesn't support higher-resolution sensors, either Microsoft will have to deliver an update with added drivers, or Nokia will have to do it by itself.
Naturally we'll cover the event so create sure you stick around when the time comes.
Please LOGIN or REGISTER To Gain Full Access To This Article


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Global packaging leader commits to reach 30% recycled content across all products by 2030, tripling its prior target.
ZURICH, Nov. 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Amcor (NYSE: AMCR, ASX: AMC), a global leader in developing and producing responsible packaging solutions, today released its 2022 Sustainability Report, detailing continued progress against key sustainability metrics and announcing an enhanced target to achieve 30% recycled content across its portfolio by the end of the decade.
The new recycled content target, which is three times its previous target of 10%, comes as Amcor reflects on a landmark year for its efforts on sustainability. In fiscal year 2022, the company committed to net zero emissions by 2050, more than doubled post-consumer recycled material purchased since 2019 and achieved a Gold rating from EcoVadis for its industry-leading sustainability practices, placing Amcor among the top 5% of all companies assessed.
The Report highlights how Amcor has advanced on its pledge to make all products recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025, with 74% of total production by weight already designed to be recycled and the number of innovative solutions with more sustainable properties continually growing. In 2022, the company launched a product rebrand that includes its new EcoGuardTM brand that makes it easier for customers to choose from a number of more sustainable solutions, including products that reduce the carbon footprint of packaging, are designed to be recycled and use recycled content or biomaterials.
Progress on Amcor’s EnviroAction program also continues, with a 33% reduction in waste sent to disposal over the past three years and 121 Amcor sites achieving zero waste-to-disposal last year. All sites have water management plans in place, and every site that uses plastic pellets, granules or flakes has implemented Operation Clean Sweep methodology for preventing plastic pellet loss.
Ron Delia, CEO at Amcor, commented: “We’re continuing to show ambition and leadership to deliver better sustainability results for our people, our customers, our investors and the environment. We’re working with every part of the value chain to make this happen.
“I am particularly proud of our colleagues around the world who are dedicated to delivering on our sustainability ambitions. We now have an exciting lineup of innovative packaging products and we keep raising the bar to deliver the very best solutions for our customers’ specific needs.”
David Clark, Vice President, Sustainability at Amcor, said: “At Amcor, we’re proud of the work we’re doing to make our business, and the packaging industry, more sustainable.
“In ramping up our targets for recycled content, we’re helping radically scale the amount of recycled content coming into the market to create a circular economy for packaging. We do this by not only making sure that the packaging produced is designed to be recycled, but also by boosting infrastructure and consumer awareness to ensure content gets recycled and stays in the economy.”
Notes to Editors
The fiscal year covered by the 2022 Sustainability Report also saw Amcor’s operations and products recognized with numerous sustainability awards, including:
- Dow Innovation – Gold Award: AmLite® HeatFlex Recyclable Packaging
- Flexible Packaging Association – Gold Award: AmPrima™ Recycle Ready Pouch for the Tyson® Instant Pot family meal skit
- Flexible Packaging Association – Silver Award – Technical Innovation: Clear Anti-Grease Jerky Pouch
- Flexible Packaging Association – Silver Award – Sustainability: AmPrima™ Recyclable PE Shrink Film
- EcoVadis – Gold Rating: industry-leading sustainability practices
- Australian Financial Review – 2022 Sustainability Leader
- 2022 Australasian Packaging Innovation and Design Awards – Silver Award: PrimeSealTM Eco-Tite® Recycle-Ready Shrink Bag
Amcor is a global leader in developing and producing responsible packaging solutions for food, beverage, pharmaceutical, medical, home- and personal-care, and other products. Amcor works with leading companies around the world to protect their products and the people who rely on them, differentiate brands, and improve supply chains through a range of flexible and rigid packaging, specialty cartons, closures, and services. The company is focused on making packaging that is increasingly lighter weight, recyclable and reusable, and made using an increasing amount of recycled content. In fiscal year 2022, 44,000 Amcor people generated $15 billion in annual sales from operations that span 220 locations in 43 countries. NYSE: AMCR; ASX: AMC


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The Town of Caledon is adding a feature to foster entrepreneurship and innovation among local businesses.
They have unveiled a new space at Town Hall, called the "Caledon Business Innovation Zone".
It will be for entrepreneurs looking for a way to get started or for business owners who want to expand or network
CBIZ is a specially-designed space with a meeting room, internet-enabled work station, reception area, washroom and resource display.
It will be staffed by the Town of Caledon Economic Development Office.


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Source: Vientiane Times
All commodities produced in Laos will have copyright protection under the Property Law after it has been found that many products have been copied and sold because they were not registered.
To ensure they are protected under law, product owners need to submit documentation to the Department of Intellectual Property, Ministry of Industry and Commerce, to register their product so that the necessary information is recorded for the purposes of dispute resolution.
Registration protects their intellectual property rights and is an additional way of ensuring justice.
There have been many violations of copyright as evidenced by the widespread sale of certain goods.
But because items have not been registered with the Department of Intellectual Property, no legal action can be taken against the persons who copied the original product.
The department’s Director General, Dr Khanlasy Keobounphanh, told Vientiane Times about a workshop that was held in relation to intellectual property and the registration of industrial applications.
The meeting addressed the topics of trademarks, registration of copyright and rights related to copyright and intellectual property.
In addition to informing people about the importance of intellectual property, the department will conduct studies on industrial application registration, commercial brochures, dispute resolution, copyright protection, and other associated issues.
The workshop aimed to enhance participants’ knowledge of modern intellectual property management and ways in which to create a just society in this regard.
The ministry encourages industrial and commercial training departments across the country to apply for industrial registration.
In the future, the ministry will raise awareness of copyright and related rights and promote better understanding of the role of copyright in enhancing cultural and economic development and encouraging creativity.
Intellectual property applies, for example, to industrial designs, the layout of integrated circuits, trademarks, geographical indications, new plant varieties, copyright, and related rights and traditional knowledge.
So far, people in Vientiane have applied to register 55,000 commercial items including more than 550 industrial designs, and drawn up more than 700 copyrights and related rights notices, while more than 100 administrative disputes have been settled, according to the Department of Intellectual Property.


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At Gamescom this week Microsoft has announced Age of Empires 4, a brand new title in the series that’s being developed by Relic Entertainment.
This is it, close the doors, Gamescom has been won by Age of Empires 4. Just the announcement alone is enough for me to call that. Sorry to everyone who made the effort to fly out, but it’s over.
Microsoft Studios and Relic Entertainment have announced Age of Empires 4, the latest in the series and the first AoE game since the launch of Age of Empires 3 back in 2005. Unfortunately, aside from revealing that it’ll be coming exclusively to Windows 10 and an announcement trailer, that’s pretty much all we know.
In the trailer however we can see that Age of Empires 4 won’t focus on a single era as various armies from previous games, such as Native Americans, British Redcoats, Roman legionnaires, Japanese samurai, and much more, appear in the trailer suggesting that the game may span several.
“[We] couldn’t be more proud to be a part of the legacy,” Relic wrote in a blog post. “We can’t wait to tap into our strengths as a studio to fuse historical context with deep strategic gameplay, and to bring this franchise back to the forefront of gaming and into the hands of its beloved community.”
During E3 Microsoft revealed that Age of Empires: Definitive Edition was on the way, which is a remaster of the first Age of Empires game. As part of the AoE4 announcement, Microsoft also revealed that they’ll be releasing remastered versions of Age of Empires 2 and 3.


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Mahindra USA has announced that Mahindra Tractors will return as the primary association partner with DJ Kennington and the #17 Dodge team in the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series for the 2013 season.
The partnership with Mahindra Tractors & DJ Kennington has grown significantly each year during their association. Mahindra and the Canadian Dealers this year will provide Kennington with a new Mahindra Max 28 XL Tractor.
“With our great partnership and continued support from Mahindra Tractors, that’s a big reason we’ve been able to have the kind of success we’ve achieved,” says Kennington. “Mahindra is the #1 Selling tractor in the world and having a long-term relationship to take their brand to the next level is what I am most proud of. I am very pleased to have them return as a significant member of our team once again.”
“Mahindra is proud to continue sponsoring Canada’s #1 NASACR driver – DJ Kennington for six years,” says Cleo Franklin, vice president of marketing and strategic planning for Mahindra USA. “We have been successful building the Mahindra brand in our strategically important Canada market as DJ is the perfect ambassador to promote Mahindra’s Rise philosophy of accepting no limits, alternative thinking and driving positive change in everything he does. We look forward to even more continued success with DJ as we look to both rewrite the record books.”
The 2013 race season began May 17th at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park near Bowmanville, ON, where Kennington began the defense of his championship.


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Blockchain-based Coffee E-marketplace for Farmers
The Ministry of Commerce and Industry has launched a blockchain-based online marketplace for coffee
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Blockchain has the power to accelerate the digital transformation world is currently undergoing. The Indian government has been promoting technology inclusion to bring innovation into different fields. In another step to make the system efficient, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry launched a blockchain-based online marketplace for coffee.
Currently, on the pilot stage, the initiative will help integrate the farmers with markets in a transparent manner and lead to the realisation of a fair price for the coffee producer. Speaking on the occasion, the Commerce Secretary, Dr Anup Wadhawan said, "Blockchain will also reduce the number of layers between coffee growers and buyers and help farmers double their income."
The Man Behind the Innovation
The Coffee Board of India will be joining forces with Bengaluru-based digital commodity management platform Eka Software Solutions (Eka Plus) for development of blockchain based marketplace application. "Eka Plus have developed the application and a group of 15-20 coffee farmers, exporters, roasters, importers and retailers are already registered on the platform from India and abroad," the statement mentioned.
During a recent interview with Entrepreneur India's Associate Editor, Aashika Jain, Manav Garg, the CEO and Founder of Eka Software had said, "We are trying to go with the coffee sector in India where we intend to digitize 300 farmers in 3000 acres of plantation."
His passion to bring digitize commodity management; from agri-tech, digital energy, digital mining, artificial intelligence and Blockchain, led to the inception of his digital commodity management platform that is driven by cloud, machine learning and analytics.
Reducing Farmer's Burden
Among the first few coffee blockchain processors for coffee in the world, the initiative will help in creating a brand image for Indian Coffee through traceability in reducing growers' dependency on intermediaries by having a direct access to buyers for a fair price for their produce and in finding right coffee suppliers for exporters and within the stipulated time to meet the growing demands.
India is apparently the only country in the world where entire coffee is grown under shade, handpicked and sun-dried. It produces one of the best coffees in the world, produced by small coffee growers and tribal farmers. Indian coffee is highly valued in the world market and sold as premium coffees. The share of farmers in the final returns from coffee is very meagre.
Blockchain-based marketplace app for the trading of Indian coffees is intended to bring in transparency in the trade of Indian coffee, maintain the traceability of Indian coffee from bean to cup so as the consumer tastes real Indian coffee and the grower is paid fairly for his coffee produced.


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- Related Games:
- Predator: Hunting Grounds
The Predator: Hunting Grounds release date has been confirmed for April 24, 2020. The asymmetrical online multiplayer game, which places players in the roles of a vicious Predator or a group of terrified soldiers, will officially launch next year.
Predator: Hunting Grounds is based on the film license, with players assuming the role of either the killer alien hunter or mercenaries tasked with killing it. Developed by IllFonic, the studio behind fellow asymmetrical horror game Friday the 13th: The Game, the release date was revealed during today’s PlayStation State of Play stream.
Players can pre-order the game to receive an exclusive ’87 Predator skin based on the first movie, along with early access to the ‘Ole Painless’ mini-gun, which can be used to take down the hunter.
Watch the new trailer below:


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The first major brand will shut down its website this year in a shift towards ‘conversational commerce’, according to Rob LoCascio, founder and CEO of Liveperson.
LoCascio, who came up with the technology behind pop up chat windows in 1995, made the prediction as a contributing writer on Tech Crunch.
Despite online retail growing steadily over the years, and the success of online retail giants such as Amazon and eBay, e-commerce still made up only 11.7% of total retail sales in 2016 and is remains less than 15% today.
LoCascio believes this is because the structure of the internet is inherently flawed for e-commerce, as it was originally intended to organise static content—much like a digitalised library.
Adding to its unsuitability, he claims, is the way Google revolutionised the way websites are designed, forcing them to conform to a certain style to appear at the top of Google’s search results. He believes that this ‘one-size-fits-all structure ultimately makes it flawed for e-commerce.’
In contrast, brick and mortar stores are keen to offer a unique experience, and LoCascio believes that the future of e-commerce is in utilising that same approach by using ‘conversational commerce—interactions via messaging, voice (Alexa and so on) and bots.’
Some retailers are already employing similar technologies, such as a Dominos bot that allows you to order through a chat, Lidl’s chatbot that helps you choose your wine, and Amazon’s voice ordering.
“There is something innate to our psychology in getting our questions answered through a conversation that instils the confidence in us to spend money,” said LoCascio, whose company provides live chat technologies for brands such as T-Mobile and American Express. “This is why there is so much chatter about bots and AI right now.”
The growing use of bots and AI to create a tailored, more human approach to e-commerce led him to predict that 2018 will see ‘the first major brand shut down its website’ and that ‘brands will shift how they connect with consumers—to conversations, with a combination of bots and humans, through a messaging front end like SMS or Facebook.’
However, others in the industry are more sceptical of LoCascio’s prediction that brands will start to shut down their websites, instead believing new technologies will integrate with existing web platforms.
“While I can’t foresee a major brand shutting down its website in 2018,” said Neil Gaisford, Managing Director of the Retail Division at Clarion Events, “I can already see deep integration of AI and machine learning systems personalising the shopping experience; these are obvious in some of the really smart recommendation and promotion systems, and some great chatbots.”
Henrik Nambord, VP of EMEA Sales at RichRelevance, also believes that new technologies will change the way people shop in 2018.
“If companies embrace using AI programmes, we’re likely to see an increase in personalisation – a shift from the usual ‘you might also like’ approach to online shopping, helping to decide or predict what the best product to show the customer next is,” Nambord said.
A survey by InternetRetailing Expo found that only one fifth of Brits would use a robot gift generator to choose the right Valentine’s gift, and with 41% believing it would make the gift less meaningful, it suggests that there is still some way to go before consumers fully embrace conversational commerce.


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MGA Entertainment revealed a new partnership with Terracycle on Global Recycling Day that will make it even easier for L.O.L. Surprise! fans and collectors to recycle their product packaging.
Toy owners can start saving their wrappers, bags, balls, trays, and more in any cardboard box. When ready to ship their waste, consumers can simply download a self-funded TerraCycle tracking label, seal the box, and send it to TerraCycle for recycling.
The program will kick off in the U.S. this May, and roll out internationally later this year.
The program launches with L.O.L. Surprise! but all MGA products and packaging will soon be recyclable as well.
MGA Entertainment’s CEO Isaac Larian announced the partnership through LinkedIn, adding “We all must do our part to save this beautiful planet for the next generation. #Globalwarming is NOT as hoax.”


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Forbes, December 27, 2016
Ransomware was a major problem for businesses of all sizes this year. In addition to the increase of ransomware attacks, new varieties of ransomware have continued to emerge and evolve using more sophisticated techniques than ever before. In fact, Forbes reports that Kaspersky Lab found 62 new variants of ransomware in 2016, and this trend is expected to continue in 2017.
Click here to read more!


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Did your business take advantage of federal COVID-19 programs in 2020? If so, questions are likely racing through your mind about the tax implications of receiving benefits from the various programs. Find out how the benefits may impact your tax return.
Read our highlights of the government's fall economic update and how it may impact you. The government is forecasting a deficit of $381.6 billion for the 2020-21 fiscal year, and they’re prepared to spend up to $100 billion over the next 3 years to rebuild the economy.
When the Endako Mine closed at the end of 2014, the Village of Fraser Lake lost its biggest employer. About a year later, the only grocery store in the community closed too. It was a tough time for the town. That’s when Lori and Bobby Hurry decided it was time to do something about it.
The federal government is launching a new rent relief program for small businesses impacted by COVID-19. They’ve released the draft legislation and proposed details for the first 12 weeks of the program. Find out if you qualify and how to apply.
The Ontario government unveiled its 2020-21 budget on Nov. 5, 2020, amid a backdrop of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the related economic fallout. Find out what new measures they've proposed in the budget.
It would be an understatement to say this has been an unusually challenging and difficult year. Those challenges will most likely continue for a while to come. What should you, as a small business owner be doing to weather the storm? Learn what 5 things you should focus on now.


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In 2022 and the first half of 2023, Canada went through a whopping 611.7 million grams (yeah, that’s 1.3 million pounds) of cannabis dried bud, but not in a fun way. All of the marijuana in question was tossed out by licensed producers as the result of a disparity between how much is grown and how much people use.
They chucked out nearly 44% more than the 425.3 million grams destroyed last year. According to Health Canada, the reported figures actually only account for the weight of destroyed unpackaged cannabis. This indicates that the total volume of cannabis waste in Canada, including products that had already been packaged, could be much higher, perhaps well exceeding 2 billion grams.
Industry expert and consultant Farrell Miller notes that the majority of this discarded product was destroyed for being too old and having too little THC. “There is no demand for old and low-THC products, so manufacturers of finished products are not buying this biomass as inputs,” she said. “It’s likely low-quality material with no value. “As consumers become more savvy with packaging dates on dried cannabis products, this trend will only continue.”
If the destructive pattern continues at the same alarming rate from July to December 2023, it could mean that Canada’s cannabis industry has already hit the apex of its supply-demand mismatch. So it’s trying to move towards a balance, as wasteful as it is (not to mention awful for the environment). Canada may be the first big nation to legalize adult-use weed back in 2018, but we know now that Canadians aren’t smoking enough to keep up with the supply. MJBizDaily estimates that more than 1.7 billion grams (3.7 million pounds) of unsold and unpackaged dried flower have been thrown out. And this number doesn’t even include the packaged products. Approximately 24 million packages of cannabis products have also met the same fate since 2018.
After Canada legalized recreational cannabis sales, there was a surge in licensed producers excessively cultivating the plant. As a result, from 2017 to around 2020, right before the pandemic hit and during the cannabis stock boom, the focus of analysts and investors was more on the potential production volume promised by cannabis companies rather than on their actual sales figures. This motivated licensees to invest heavily in giant greenhouses. However, the model was not sustainable. These vast cultivation areas generally fell short of delivering the premium, high-THC cannabis that consumers were seeking, highlighting a significant gap between production output and market demand.
Marie Sweeney, a cannabis team adviser at Cannabis License Experts, a consultancy based in Ontario, has also noted that the slew of weed business shutdowns in the industry is part of why they’re destroying so much herb. She notes that bankrupt companies are often forced to get rid of any unsold products if they are not sold off prior to the expiration date of their federal permits.
As per MJBizDaily, Sweeney also says that the new labeling standards for high-THC products are a major issue. While plenty of cannabis users understandably want strong weed, this creates a market surplus of lower THC but still quality cannabis flower. Plenty of wholesalers have policies of rejecting products with less than 20-25% THC. Furthermore, Sweeney points out that many companies don’t have effective business models. These are all problems made worse by the fact that there’s just a rampant overproduction of cannabis.
So what about a solution to this heartbreaking problem of wasted weed? Miller suggests that the Canadian federal government should seek methods to align public policy and regulatory activities more closely with provincial regulators and cannabis license holders. “There haven’t been any limits placed on issuing licenses, and that is contributing to the oversupply,” she said. “If there was more of a national coordination effort, that would give the federal government more insight into what is actually making it onto the shelves in stores. Only the federal government licenses production – and the provincial and territorial governments manage retail – so a more coordinated approach within the industry, among the provincial and federal governments, would help manage the oversupply of licensed products.”
She adds that those who have cultivation licenses must find a way to grow cannabis that meets minimum THC requirements if they want anyone to buy their product. “Retailers and wholesale suppliers across the country have adapted to consumer demands by purchasing primarily high-THC products,” she said. “Licensed growers and manufacturers have accumulated trim and biomass that cannot be sold or created into high-impact products, (meaning it) is often destroyed. Improved oversight, data sharing, and communication between the federal government and retailers across the country would help control the production of excess cannabis by balancing production with consumer demand.”


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By: Yeh Su-ping and William Yen
Taipei, Jan. 23 (CNA) President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Wednesday visited a Taiwan
Lottery store in New Taipei and bought some lotto scratch cards, which she said are a business that help fund public welfare.
She said 50 percent of the earning from sales of the scratch card lottery goes toward social welfare, 45 percent toward the country’s National Pension scheme and 5 percent to the National Health Insurance.
“I want to tell everyone that buying Taiwan Lottery tickets really helps public welfare,” Tsai said at the store in the city’s Banqiao District.
In addition, the operation of lottery stores is limited to certain groups of people, namely those with a disability, members of indigenous tribes, and people from low-income single-parent families, she said. [FULL STORY]


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“Now we have exported flowers to Hong Kong,” he said, “Slowly, we will export to other countries as well.” Amit Bastola, a farmer, said that he has been selling marigold flowers in 41 districts in the past years and is currently sending them abroad. “We have been cultivating flowers for 12 months since last year. We have planted them in 10 fields so that they will be produced in January,” he said, “The possibility of floriculture in Chitwan is good.”
Farmers of Chitwan have exported marigold and globe amaranth flowers to Hong Kong for Tihar, the great festival of Nepalis. Three brothers of Padampur, Kalika Municipality-2, sent 1,300 garlands and two quintals of flowers to Hong Kong.
Farmer Gobinda Bastola said that for the first time, marigold was exported from Nepal to Tihar. “We have sent 800 marigolds and 500 globe amaranth garlands. We have exported two quintals of marigold flowers,” Bastola said, “This is the first time that flowers have been commercially exported abroad from Chitwan.” According to him, garlands worth Rs 300,000 have been exported. He said that there is demand for flowers from other countries as well.
Read the complete article at myrepublica.nagariknetwork.com


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Dice Woyke, an entrepreneur who works in a top secret NFC project got a tip from his Apple insider friend regarding implementation of NFC (Near Field Communication) in the future iPhone 5. The only thing confirmed so far is that Apple is working on such technology, it hired a group of experts last August. Beyond that, all we have is speculation.
9to5mac also published a report that that one of their source working for Foxconn has seen prototypes arrive in their factories to launch mass production. iPhone 5 is said to look fairly similar to the iPhone 4 except for two very important differences: materials and screen size.


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Soldier says goodbye to his best friend
A Newcastle school 7th grade class is inspired by studying the life of blind adventurer Bobby McMullen.
Apple sales and profit soared last quarter despite a steep decline in demand for the iPad.


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Pegasystems announced this week that it has acquired Antenna Software.
Pegasystems, a provider of Customer Relationship Management solutions says its purchase of Antenna Software – a leader in Mobile Application Development Platforms – will dramatically improve the range and quality of resources available from the company.
According to projections made in a statement released to the media, key benefits of this new partnership include:
- Faster time-to-market and increased flexibility in end-to-end mobile application development
- Powerful mobile application and device management
- Mobile Backend-as-a-Service coupled with industry-leading BPM, case management, and advanced decisioning
- Proven expertise of two industry leaders in delivering enterprise solutions to a global clientele
- Powerful model-driven design to complement native mobile development and responsive UIs to “design-once and deploy everywhere”
“Research from IDC shows that by 2015, there will be 1.3 billion people in the mobile workforce,” Pegasystems says. “To serve today’s mobile users, applications must be prepared for multiple mobile platforms and more than 250 different screen sizes. Today’s enterprises require flexible capabilities for mobile solution development and management to meet the evolving requirements of their employees, partners, and customers. The combination of Antenna and Pegasystems will bring the power of both native and model-driven development to customers and prospects of both organizations.”


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February 15, 2019
The EU’s CE mark has been making the news of late, as not only does it have implications for British businesses post-Brexit, there is also a risk of confusing it with the Chinese CE mark, which comes with problems of its own.
Last week, The Recycler reported on the issue of the CE mark in the UK post-Brexit, when it will be superseded by the UKCA mark – although both marks will still be recognised for an unconfirmed “grace period”.
During this period, products that have not yet been CE-marked will have to be assessed and then given the UKCA mark. Meanwhile, British businesses exporting to the EU will have to make sure their products have been reassessed and remarked by an EU-recognised conformity assessment body before they are placed on the market.
While firms in the UK get to grips with this new system of conformity assessment for their products, European businesses have been facing some degree of confusion over the last few years over the similarity between the EU CE mark and the Chinese CE mark. This is a subject covered in a feature by The Recycler in Issue 307 of the magazine.
As we explain, the similarity between the two marks has been causing bewilderment for a few years, with an article by Yachting and Boating World warning of the similarity and the potential implications for resellers. The look-alike nature of the marks was also noted and analysed a few years later in 2014 by Asia Quality Focus.
Regarding the European CE mark, the EC gave out detailed information for manufacturers on the matter of the EU CE mark, enumerating the 6 steps which need to be taken to have a CE marking affixed to their product.
To find out more about how to identify a genuine EU CE mark, and the requirements for it, be sure to check out our feature, shown above.
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