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SP Guide Publications puts forth a well compiled articulation of issues, pursuits and accomplishments of the Indian Army, over the years
I am confident that SP Guide Publications would continue to inform, inspire and influence.
My compliments to SP Guide Publications for informative and credible reportage on contemporary aerospace issues over the past six decades.
Ajeet as the name suggests is a testimony to the rising status of Bharat globally. Ajeet Mini India's only Off the Shelf consumer Micro drone unveiled to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Bharat Drone Mahotsav on May 27th, 2022 at Pragati maidan took to the skies for the first time in NCR at the Bharat Drone Shakti event at Hindon Airbase, Ghaziabad in the presence of the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.
The smallest Indian made drone is already gaining a significant fan following among Army units thanks to the fact that it is the only Atmanirbhar drone that is a direct replacement of the world renowned Chinese DJI drones in terms of performance and price that were being used by them over the past 4-5 years for the want of an Indian alternative.
Speaking at the event, Venkatesh Sai, Founder and Technical Director of ZUPPA Geo navigation Technologies the developer of Ajeet Mini, said, "We are able to make this world class product only because of our proprietary, DPCC computing architecture and the complete end to end control our company has over the core of the technology, right from PCB design to manufacturing including every algorithm at firmware and software layers of the product."
ZUPPA is the only Indian company to deliver world class user experiences like fully autonomous way point navigation with high precision positional accuracy and unflattering reliability for every flight only because its proprietary Made in India Autopilot/flight controller for drones NAVGATI.
Various DRDO establishments and drone makers have started adopting NavGati in favour of opensource autopilots like Pixhawk because of its ability to enhance the security, integrity and reliability of their products being a complete end to end closed loop control system for unmanned use cases. Customers using Zuppa's plug and fly autopilot solutions lower integration and tech support costs that is normally an unavoidable side effect of using open-source systems.
Ajeet Mini's Demonstrations at Bharat Drone Shakti were a highlight at the Drone Shakti Event.


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All Things Licensing; Fox Business Channel, June 15, 2011
Urban Meyer On Leave From OSU, Suspended by Bob Evans — Columbus Dispatch 8-03-18
The long-term implications for [Urban] Meyer’s brand and that of Ohio State [where he is on leave as coach] — the most-valuable college football brand — aren’t yet known.
Ira Mayer, a veteran licensing expert and co-director of the Institute for Branding & Licensing at a branch campus of Long Island University, agreed that Meyer is different from a professional athlete. He is not as widely known or seen as a brand in his own right, Mayer said, suggesting that based on what’s currently known, the impact on Ohio State in the commercial world could be relatively short-lived.
“It’s not going to do irreparable harm to the OSU brand,” Mayer said. “Generally speaking, the impact tends to be short-term … people still have an allegiance to the team and the school.”
Adidas To Exit The N.B.A., Opening The Door To Rivals NY Times, 3-17-15
Adidas’s withdrawal from the bidding [for the N.B.A. license] could set the stage for a showdown between its archrivals, Nike and Under Armour, over the right to supply the league with its jerseys. . . .
“It’s an enormously high-profile license,” Ira Mayer, a consultant to the licensing business and former owner of the trade journal The Licensing Letter, said of the N.B.A. license. “But once they did the math, it looked like it was going to be expensive.”
He added, “I’ve got to think that given that the rest of the business has not been doing well, the pressure is that much greater to make sure this would have been a deal that made sense.”
Rebranding The Charlotte Hornets Charlotte News & Observer, 10-24-14
Changing names and colors will typically cause a team’s merchandise sales to spike for a year, said Ira Mayer. But the hype will level out one day, he said.
“The biggest factor is, do you have a winning team or do you have a player who is a real standout that’s going to drive merchandise sales overall?” he said.
Ohio State Contemplates Single Supplier Columbus Dispatch, 4-26-11
It’s unlikely that consumer prices would shoot up if OSU went to a single supplier, said Ira Mayer, an industry expert.
“The environment is so competitive,” Mayer said. “Retailers are not going to put up with more than the market’s going to bear. I think you’ll find that when you have a Nike or adidas taking over a licensing program, they’re making a variety of lines at different price points that appeal to a variety of consumers.”
Charlie Brown Bobbles With The Yankees NY Times, 9-25-13
[In its troubled 2013 season] The [New York Yankees] marked its penultimate regular-season home game with an atypical giveaway for the first 18,000 fans who arrived: a bobblehead doll, honoring not one of its star-crossed players, but Charlie Brown. . . .
“You wind up with a limited number of options that are going to be meaningful for the fans,” said Ira Mayer, adding, “You weren’t going to give away an Alex Rodriguez bobblehead this year.”
Labor Woes Impact Licensing USA Today, 3-9-11
Licensed NFL merchandise generated around $2.7 billion in retail sales in the USA and Canada in 2010, according to Ira Mayer…
When a 204-day lockout cut the NBA’s 1998-99 season to 50 games from the normal 82, sales of licensed NBA merchandise dropped 15%, he says. It took two years for sales to rebound to pre-lockout levels.
“The impact (of a strike/lockout) is not just on the season when it happens. It carries over into the next season and beyond,” Mayer says.
Retailers are fickle. Once they swap NFL products for other goods that may sell better, it will be hard for the league to get that shelf space back, he adds. NFL products would be partly replaced by a mix of MLB, NBA, NHL and more generic sports.
On the other hand, a hot season, a hot player or a Super Bowl matchup between clubs with national fan followings (such as this year’s  Packers vs. Steelers) could regain that shelf space in a hurry.
“We’re not talking about a death knell, even if there is a lockout,” Mayer says. “If the amount of shelf space goes down 10%, it would come back as soon as the NFL is hot again.”
Fake Beards Support Giants’ Hairy Hurler Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 10-29-10
Fans purchased $2.82 billion of official baseball merchandise last year [20090, according to the Licensing Letter, an industry newsletter.
“That’s a lot of tchotchkes,” said Ira Mayer. “Major League Baseball has gotten really good at this kind of event-based merchandising. When a no-hitter is brewing, they’ve got T-shirts ready to be silkscreened by the seventh inning.”
The Jeremy Lin Fad NY Times, 3-16-12
Ira Mayer considered the Lin craze a fad that will continue to generate interest but not at the extreme level it once achieved. Because Lin was such an out-of-nowhere sensation, Mayer said, it became fun for fans to get caught up in the publicity.
“We’ve hit a certain peak with it,” Mayer said. “It’s not going to disappear,” he added, although he said he based that assumption on the notion that Lin continues to have a key role on the team.
Tiger Plots A Comeback NY Times, 11-25-11
“[Tiger Woods] was brought down, but he’s rebuilding again and rebuilding a different way,” said Ira Mayer. “At this point, he’s the underdog, and that’s a strategy, too. Bill Clinton survived worse, and Tiger is not a head of state.”
Jockey Rides ‘Anchorman 2’ Franchise LA Times, 11-14-13
Mayer praised the creativity of the various “Anchorman 2” licensing deals, singling out the Jockey arrangement because it is in keeping with the tone and spirit of the “Anchorman” franchise. “It is a smart, opportunistic move on Jockey’s part,” Mayer said. “For Jockey, it doesn’t even matter if the movie bombs.”
Secrets of Disney’s Top Franchises (video) Yahoo
Disney’s ‘Cars 2’ A Hit Already—in Stores Wall Street Journal, 6-20-11
The average royalty rate for all products licensed from entertainment properties last year was 9.4%, according to the Licensing Letter, a trade publication. Licensing Letter publisher Ira Mayer said that a successful film like “Cars” commands two or three percentage points more than an average movie or TV show.
When Princesses Were King Forbes, 9-17-12
“There are surprisingly few girl properties like it,” says Ira Mayer, publisher and executive editor of The Licensing Letter. “In play, girls like to pretend they are princesses. It was also a brilliant decision to group all of these princesses together.”
“[Disney] has a library that no one else can come near, and they are really good at marketing,” says Mayer.
“There is a finite market for licensed merchandise because there’s only a set amount of shelf space,” says Mayer. “So when [a sudden hit property like] Angry Birds comes in, it costs someone else.”
‘Duck Dynasty’ Audience Ebbs, Even As Phil Controversy Fades LA Times, 7-30-14
“It’s not routine for any [TV] show to sell that level of merchandise [an estimated $400 million in a year],” said Ira Mayer. “It had a huge following and a lot of word of mouth … Wal-Mart went in really strong.”
But that turned out to be the high-water mark. Ratings began sliding and for the season finale — weeks before the controversy over Phil’s remarks in a GQ interview — “Duck Dynasty” was back down to 8.9 million. The Season 5 premiere in January scored 8.4 million — suggesting that the uproar had little if any effect on viewership. The series was simply continuing a natural decline that started months before.
Mayer said that “Duck Dynasty” has, for all its ubiquity, failed to become a lifestyle brand — as, say, the Kardashians have become. Instead, the show represents another type of phenomenon familiar to anyone who follows pop culture. “Fads are what they are,” he said.
Keds Enlists Taylor Swift to Transmit Girl Power NY Times, 1-24-13
“She’s a classic in the mold of the great country singers with wide appeal” like Garth Brooks, said Ira Mayer… “Even people who don’t like country music like her.”
Mr. Mayer said he did not believe that the jokes about Ms. Swift would detract from her appeal as an endorser.
Although “no one wants his or her love life hung out on the line to dry,” he said, such “gossip is part of what celebrities have to cope with nowadays.”
When Angry Birds Were Flying… Kidscreen, 10-1-12
“They got it out there fast,” says Ira Mayer, a licensing industry veteran, referring to Rovio and agent Striker Entertainment’s ability to put products on the shelf quickly to capitalize on the white-hot burst of the app’s initial popularity. “This was not an 18- to 24-month to shelf program,” he explains. “At first, they had only a handful of licensees, so they could react fast.”
“Rovio has done some neat stuff [with Angry Birds],” says Mayer. “No one else was doing it then, and no one is really doing it now.” With its accessible game play, iconic imagery, relatable characters, deep interaction and multiple entry points, Rovio had a number of elements fall into place to make Angry Birds the first digital licensing blockbuster, but it’s not clear that similar properties can follow this blueprint to success.
On Marilyn Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 1-13-11
“You want to prolong the life of the celebrity, and licensing is a powerful means of accomplishing that,” Ira Mayer said.
Is This Peak Branding? Gucci Wants You to Wear $590 Advertisement for Viacom MarketWatch, 8-18-18
It may seem like an odd pairing. But the Paramount logo, so well known from countless movies, gives a retro feel to Gucci’s line, since the studio’s founding in 1912, says Ira Mayer. “The brand is hot right now, and clearly they are trying to prolong that renewed success.”
Why Sears Licensed Its Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard Brands Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 10-12-11
While selling brands elsewhere could give people less reason to come to Sears stores, “on the other hand, you could make the case that the Sears experience is going to be amplified elsewhere,” Ira Mayer said in a phone interview. “If you can exploit your trademarks in a wider context, you may be building your business long term.”
Interview for German television June, 2011

domain: news


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Is Hans Solo stuck in carbonite or has a Google Nexus 7 melted?
Imagine plugging in your Google Nexus 7
using the OEM charger and three hours later your tablet has had a meltdown. The owner of the tablet says that the slate was in his office overnight when the incident occurred. We should say, allegedly
occurred because you might recall this past June when a Samsung Galaxy S III, unplugged, resting in a car dock, exploded
. At the time, Carphone Warehouse, where the unit was bought, and Samsung seemed like they were being mean when neither would exchange the phone for a new one. But as it turned out, they both were right in being suspicious. The phone had sustained water damage and a friend of the phone's owner tried to dry it out in the microwave
We're not saying that something fishy happened with the Google Nexus 7, we are just pointing out that you can't always believe the device owner in a case like this. Asus apparently believed the man as the Taiwan based firm has already sent out a new model
to make up for the smoldering one that is probably undergoing an autopsy in the manufacturer's lab.
If you're into the macabre, check out the pictures below of the crispy Google Nexus 7.
(translated) via Phandroid


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(By Mani) J. C. Penney Co., Inc. (NYSE: JCP) CEO Ron Johnson threw Wall Street and investors another curve ball yesterday when the company broadly distributed a $10 gift card to customers.
The turnaround at J. C. Penney is taking shape under CEO Ron Johnson, who joined the department store chain in late 2011 and began to steer the beleaguered chain down a path of significant transformation.
Yesterday, in an email message, Johnson invited customers to come to stores and witness the company's transformation first-hand. As an incentive to come see the changes taking place, the email included a $10 gift card on a purchase of $10 or more.
[Related -Macy's, Inc. (NYSE:M): Cyber-Monday’S Biggest Winner?]
In the email, the CEO stated, "One of our core values is that you shouldn't have to wait for a sale or a coupon to get great value. So you'll find low prices every day on the brands you really love."
Naysayers immediately called foul, indicating this action represents a retrenchment from the company's new core everyday low pricing (EDLP) strategy.
"We disagree. In our view, behind lots of noise, the JCP turnaround is taking shape. We take the company's decision to entice its customers back with a one-off price promotion as an indication that Johnson is increasingly nimble in his strategy and views the chain's recent store enhancement as now worthy of better customer traffic," Oppenheimer analyst Brian Nagel said in a client note.
The department store chain is very likely to tweak its strategy as it comes together and is expected to augment its EDLP plan with select traffic-driving events.
[Related -J.C. Penney Company, Inc. (NYSE:JCP): $1 Million CEO Insider Buy – Why?]
Meanwhile, coupon is not a deviation from earlier methods. Under prior management, the company performed near 600 promotional events at a cost of over $1 billion annually.
However, as an incentive to get customers to visit the stores, a $10 coupon, valid through 11/4 and unable to be applied to online orders and Sephora, was attached.
"In our view, this serves as another admittance that the EDLP strategy transition continues to be difficult and on the heels of a month-long kids haircut giveaway in August, it shows that the management team is actually willing (and looking) for promotions that will aid the store draw traffic," Deutsche Bank analyst Charles Grom wrote in a note clients.
Investors should not be surprised to see additional coupons and promotional events provided by J.C.Penney as the Black Friday and the Holiday period approaches.
However, the upcoming holiday season may prove a challenge for the company, which currently operates 12 shop--in-shop concepts in its larger box stores despite encouraging early results.
"We do not, however, view the company as well positioned to compete effectively in holiday 2012," Nagel said.
The chain, which is in the midst of one of the biggest turnarounds in the history of retail, is abandoning its increasing reliance on aggressive, short-term price promotions and revamping its stores to better assort a wider selection of higher quality and often unique branded items.
J.C. Penney operates about 1,100 department stores in 49 states and Puerto Rico selling apparel, footwear, home furnishings, accessories, fashion and fine jewelry, and beauty products.


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MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — It’s that time of year again: We now know the new food offerings at this year’s Minnesota State Fair.
On Tuesday morning, the state fair released its lengthy list of new foods — 27 of them — as well as its five new food vendors for 2018.
GALLERY: New State Fair Foods For 2018
Some of the notable new foods include: the BBQ Split from Midtown Global Market’s Mama D’s, Firecracker Shrimp Stuffed Avocado from The Hideaway Speakeasy, Pepperoni Chips with Roasted Red Pepper Queso from LuLu’s Public House, the Rainbow Cloud Roll from Rainbow Ice Cream, Zesty PB&J Sausage from Gass Station Grill and much more.
The new vendors are Anchor Coffee House, The Hanger, Midtown Global Market’s Mama D’s, Midtown Global Market’s Taco Cat and Nordic Waffles.
The Hangar, located on Machinery Hill, will be serving many items, including breakfast items, Slider Flights, smoked turkey legs, and kids’ meals.
Nordic Waffle, the new vendor in the West End Market, will be selling fresh-made waffle wraps in seven varieties: All-Day Breakfast, Berries & Cream, Cinna-Sugar Butter, Slammin’ Salmon On-A-Stick, S’More, Turkey Chipotle Club, and Vegetarian Viking.
“We have a really, really cool booth which is going to be a Norwegian cabin that is traditional with the grass on the roof with a goat,” said Stine Aasland, the founder of Nordic Waffles.
To see the entire list of food and vendors, click here.


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Restaurateurs are constantly dreaming up new ways to market their restaurants and wow customers, but rarely do they host functions as exclusive and novel as June 25’s SkyHigh.
That event was part of a trend where restaurant owners partner with charities to create a wow factor and lure diners who normally might not pay steep prices for tickets.
At SkyHigh, 260 people consumed a five-course dinner while seated on 26 Peak2Peak gondola cabins that made multiple trips between Whistler and Blackcomb mountains.
Temporary chandeliers were added to the gondola cabins and gondola speed was slowed to prevent cutlery and plates from sliding off the tables.
Diners ate each course during 18-minute trips between the mountains while staff at kitchens on each mountain had approximately 80 seconds to enter the gondola cabins, clear plates and bring the next serving and wine selection.
The normal travel time is 11 minutes.
(Image: Bearfoot Bistro servers only had 80 seconds to enter gondola cabins to bring new courses and wines | Glen Korstrom)
Companies that paid $8,500 per cabin could invite up to 10 people to dine on food provided by Whistler’s Bearfoot Bistro; event proceeds after costs went to the Whistler Blackcomb Foundation (WBF).
“In our business, we need to always stay top of mind and, at the same time, we need to recreate ourselves and find ways to make the news and create an experience for the guests,” said Bearfoot Bistro marketing manager Marc Des Rosiers, who came up with the idea during a brainstorming session in early 2014.
He approached Whistler Blackcomb Holdings Inc. (TSX:WB), which owns the mountain and the gondola, and company executives liked the idea of a culinary event on the Peak2Peak, particularly if a charity was involved.
Des Rosiers approached the WBF, which provides financial support to registered non-profit organizations in the area, and the tripartite partnership was hatched.
(Video: Diners in one of the gondola cabins enjoy their first course with some Moët champagne | Glen Korstrom)
The first SkyHigh event was held in June 2014, and the three parties decided to skip the event last year in part because of the immense amount of work involved.
“You don’t necessarily want to do this every year,” Whistler Blackcomb CEO Dave Brownlie told Business in Vancouver during a reception before the event.
“But it’s a fun event that raises a lot of money for charity, and it is a unique, once-in-a-lifetime experience that you just cannot find anywhere else. You can’t just go out and buy something like this on any Saturday night anywhere in the world.”
SkyHigh is not the only innovative dining experience that Bearfoot Bistro has embarked on through the years.
(The Bearfoot Bistro hosted the SkyHigh event June 25 in partnership with Whistler Blackcomb and the Whistler Blackcomb Foundation | Glen Korstrom)
In late 2013, it partnered with Vancouver’s Market By Jean-Georges. Staff at each restaurant packed up the furniture and moved into the other restaurant. The restaurants’ kitchen teams then took over the other restaurant’s kitchen and served their food to guests at a one-night-only function.
“It is important for restaurants to be innovative,” said Richard Wolak, who is owner and editor of VancouverFoodster.com.
“For a lot of the events, though, unless there is a charity involved, it is not going to happen.”
Many restaurant owners partnered with the Vancouver Aquarium on June 23 to raise more than $460,000 at its annual gala. The aquarium plans to use the money to fund research and educational programs.
Chefs from Forage, Araxi, Blue Water Cafe, YEW Seafood + Bar and other restaurants prepared meals using ingredients approved by the aquarium’s Ocean Wise sustainable-seafood program.
Guests then ate a six-course meal while seated at tables placed among the aquarium’s many large fish tanks.
One of the more innovative dining events that Wolak remembers was in 2010.
The now-closed C Restaurant partnered with the School of Fish Foundation, which aimed to raise $100,000 and use the money to educate chefs about sustainable seafood and the importance of healthy oceans.
(Image: Floating dining room in False Creek in 2010 | Richard Wolak / VancouverFoodster.com)
School of Fish organizers built a 20-foot by eight-foot dining room on False Creek near the foot of Howe Street, outside what was then C Restaurant and is now Ancora.
The floor was composed of 1,700 plastic bottles that were recovered from the ocean. The entire structure was built with renewable, recycled, reclaimed or repurposed materials.
A table was then set up inside the temporary structure and was outfitted with a linen tablecloth, fine china and crystal.
“That was one of coolest and most memorable dining experiences that I’ve ever done,” Wolak said. •


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It's been less than four months since Samsung was forced to issue an embarrassing recall of the Note 7, but the company has announced that it is expecting a big increase in year-on-year operating profit for the fourth quarter of 2016. In Q4 earnings guidance, Samsung said it was expecting a consolidated operating profit of 9.2 trillion won (about $7.2 billion) for the period — almost double the 6.14 trillion won (about $5.2 billion) in profit it received in the same quarter last year.
If accurate, the guidance indicates that Samsung's costly recall of its Note 7 smartphone was only a temporary blip in the company's financial situation, rather than a lingering hit to consumer confidence. That's not to say that the Note 7 didn't have an effect, but that it appears its major financial repercussions on the wider company may have been confined to the third quarter of 2016. Samsung had originally predicted a year-on-year profit growth for Q3 this year, but had to revise those estimates after it issued a full recall of the Note 7, slashing profit expectations by a third. The actual figures bore those revised expectations out, with Samsung earning just 5.2 trillion won (about $4.4 billion) for Q3 2016, having previously expected some 7.8 trillion won (about $6.6 billion). The new guidance, suggests that the company is in line for its strongest quarterly profit in three years, beating market expectations. Analysts noted that, with the Note 7 off the market, the mobile division still did reasonably well off the back of older Samsung phones like the Galaxy S7 — an indicator that the upcoming S8 could do well at market. But as other analysts noted, unlike 2013's previous profit high, Samsung's apparent Q4 success would not be driven by the mobile division, but by sales of memory and screens, as well as the devalued Korean won against the dollar. Samsung's Note 7 recall may not have caused as much damage financially as expected, but the company still has something to prove with its next major phone release. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has set an initial production target of 10 million Galaxy S8 smartphones, South Korea's Electronic Times reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources.
Samsung is counting on the S8 to rejuvenate sales after it scrapped the Galaxy Note 7 smartphones last year in one of the biggest product safety failures in tech history.
The firm has yet to disclose what caused some Note 7 phones to catch fire on their own. The newspaper said Samsung would start production of the Galaxy 8 in March and planned to start selling them in April. Galaxy S7 phones went on sale in March last year.
Last week Samsung Electronics’ supply chain had begun to receive orders for components to produce the upcoming Galaxy S8 flagship phone. Initial production was expected to be 10m units for the pre-release build but no full shipment targets were revealed. South Korean trade press has indicated however, that Samsung has set a shipment target of 60m units, 25% higher than the Galaxy S7 and 33% higher than the Galaxy S5 and S6. Samsung’s optimistic view, despite the phones later than normal release, comes at a time when the high-end smartphone market has seen slowing growth, particularly as the world’s largest smartphone market, China, is becoming saturated.


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05 September 2013 10:44 [Source: ICIS news]
SINGAPORE (ICIS)--South Korea’s LG Chem has bought by tender a 25,000 tonne naphtha cargo for delivery in the second half of October, traders said on Thursday.
The deal for the cargo was done at a premium of $1/tonne (€0.76/tonne) to Japan quotes CFR (cost & freight), they added.
Previously, LG Chem bought two naphtha cargoes totalling 50,000 tonnes for delivery in the first half of October.
The deal for the Yeosu-bound cargo was done at a discount of $1/tonne to Japan quotes CFR, while the Daesan-bound cargo fetched a discount of 50 cents to Japan quotes CFR.
($1 = €0.76)
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- The Wall Street Journal•1 hour ago
Shareholders allege director Marc Andreessen privately coached the CEO by text message on how to win over other members of the board.
- Bloomberg•6 hours ago
Techonomy Media CEO David Kirkpatrick and Bloomberg’s Brad Stone discuss a lawsuit in which Facebook shareholders say venture capitalist Marc Andreessen was advising Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg when ...
- Forbes•8 hours ago
After Facebook revealed this fall that it had greatly overstated the average video advertisement view time on its platform for several years, the company said on Friday that it has miscalculated several more metrics that marketers use to assess the value of their ads.
FB : Summary for Facebook, Inc. - Yahoo Finance
Facebook, Inc. (FB)
NasdaqGS - NasdaqGS Real Time Price. Currency in USD
Add to watchlist
|Bid||119.66 x 300|
|Ask||119.75 x 3800|
|Day's Range||118.95 - 119.94|
|52 Week Range||89.37 - 133.50|
Trade prices are not sourced from all markets
|PE Ratio (TTM)||46.14|
|Dividend & Yield||N/A (N/A)|
|1y Target Est||N/A|


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Food entrepreneurs have a new commercial kitchen in Fort Worth where they can try their hand at mass producing their favorite recipes in a collaborative and supportive environment.
Locavore, or local foods, opened a few months ago on Hawthorne Avenue just south of downtown Fort Worth.
“Instead of making a dozen cookies at a time, they can make 15 dozen cookies in 10 minutes.”
Co-owners Carlo Capua and Cortney Gumbleton said Locavore works like a coworking space, where individuals or startups can rent space month-to-month but with commercial grade appliances.
“Locavore is here to help food entrepreneurs scale their product,” Gumbleton said. “Folks who want more than just cooking at home. Instead of making a dozen cookies at a time, they can make 15 dozen cookies in 10 minutes.”
One day, Locavore could smell like fresh vegetarian desserts. Another day, there’s the smell of pulled pork for a catering job. Or, it could be fresh pies or salsa.
Instead of hackathons and pitch competitions, Locavore hosts pop-up dinners, exclusive chef-driven events, and other chances for entrepreneurs to showcase their food. They’re able to host an indoor event in the dining room, or set up on the outdoor patio for food trucks.
“With the event space here, they’re not just stuck in the kitchen trying to find a consumer or client,” Capua said. “They can actually organize an event here. They can organize their own pop-up dinner. When we do a big event and we need a dessert course, instead of us making it, we’re going to ask one of our renters to do it.”
“We can move the needle from people having an idea to being profitable and making money.”
This solves one of the biggest problems food startups have—finding customers to test their creations. Restaurants have a high failure rate and many times the idea never gets off the ground. Locavore has a team of mentors who can share their experiences not just in the kitchen, but on the business side, too.
“We can move the needle from people having an idea to being profitable and making money,” Capua said. “We give a natural pipeline straight from the kitchen to the dining room.”
Once word about Locavore got out, the phone started ringing off the hook. Some dreamed of opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant, while others wanted to go the consumer packaged goods route by selling into grocery stores.
“By the 21st day, we’d signed our last renter here,” Capua said. “We’re full. There’s not enough hours in the day to accommodate everybody who has needs.”
Spiral Diner moved its baking operations from the Fort Worth restaurant on Magnolia Avenue to Locavore and will be the anchor tenant.
“Our stores are high volume and low space,” said Lindsey Akey, owner of the Spiral Diner in Fort Worth. “Right now, we’re primarily just baking here. But to be able to move that somewhere off-site is helpful to the store and the bakers. It was a no-brainer once we saw it.”
WHERE THE LOCAVORE IDEA CAME FROM
A few years ago, Gumbleton sold her house in Fort Worth and moved to Azle so she would have enough land to raise 50 free-range chickens. She started selling the fresh eggs to restaurants in downtown Fort Worth. Then, she got the idea to sell fresh jellies and jams.
But she needed a commercial kitchen to do it on a massive scale.
“I couldn’t really find anything locally that met all of my needs,” she said.
“We said, ‘One day when we have our own kitchen, we’re going to be that resource we wish we had when we started.’”
That’s when she met Capua, who is also the co-owner and general manager for Z’s Cafe & Catering in Fort Worth.
“We decided to join forces and create a home for foodie trailblazers, food entrepreneurs,” Gumbleton said.
For Capua, this fulfills a dream he had since he and his mother started Z’s Cafe a decade ago.
“There was no such thing as a rent-by-the-hour commercial kitchen. We had a hard time finding a place,” Capua said. “We said, ‘One day when we have our own kitchen, we’re going to be that resource we wish we had when we started.’”
NEED TO KNOW
The Locavore hosted a launch party on Aug. 23 at the space on 715 Hawthorne Ave. in Fort Worth, as well as its first Bite Club event on Aug. 31, a pop-up dinner that featured a four-course meal from chef Andrew Dilda. The Bite Club will feature food from Locavore entrepreneurs.
Locavore is BYOB.
Get on the list.
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Jaguar's been teasing its upcoming Tesla rival, the I-Pace since late 2016. While it isn't revealing the full details of the car for another month, Jaguar has announced its first electric vehicle will come with quick charging.
The company has claimed the I-Pace will be able to charge its battery from zero per cent to 80 per cent within 45 minutes. There is a catch, though. To be able to charge the vehicle at this rapid rate owners will need to plug-in to a 100kW DC charger.
At present, chargers in the UK won't support this potential speed. Jaguar has previously claimed the I-Pace's battery will charge to around 80-90 per cent on the more common 50kW charger in 90 minutes. This is still pretty nifty but as more high-speed charging points become available owners will undoubtedly make the transition across.
While the 100kW charging infrastructure isn't widespread at present, there are efforts to increase the capability of fast chargers. An 'ultra fast' system with charge rates of up to 350kW was installed in Germany in December 2017. When Nissan announced its new 2019 electric Leaf at the beginning of this year it also included 100kW fast charging.
Electric Motors: Power per motor: 200PS, Torque per motor: 350Nm, Total system output: 400PS/700Nm.
Drivetrain: Motor and transmission integrated into front and rear axles; electric all-wheel drive.
Battery: 90kWh Li-ion; liquid-cooled; pouch cells. Number of modules: 36.
Dimension: Length: 4,680mm. Width: 1,890mm. Height 1,560mm. Wheelbase: 2,990mm.
**Performance and range **: 0-60mph in around four seconds.
The I-Pace itself is a four-door, five-seater electric performance SUV and it's predicted the battery will have a range of around 500km (310 miles) from a single charge. This puts it in direct competition with Tesla's Model X. Jaguar says the I-Pace will also be able to be "prepared" for a journey at its owner's house by plugging it into the mains.
The I-Pace was first revealed at the LA Auto Show back in December of 2016. At the time the car was only a concept but the company's previous conversion of the F-Pace from a design project to production vehicle showed it's serious about turning its ideas into new roadworthy vehicles.
When revealing the concept vehicle, Jaguar said it will have electric motors at the front and rear axels. Each motor will produce the equivalent of 197bhp. It's claimed the car will have a 0-60mph time of four seconds. The final form of the car hasn't yet been revealed by Jaguar, which is due to reveal the production car on March 1. Importantly, it will also finally announce how much the I-Pace will cost customers when it goes on sale.


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Mark Gee has joined Gandalf as International Marketing Director. Gee joined at the turn of the year from Azlan, where he had worked since 1989. Before that he was with City Business Systems as a field...
US Federal Trade Commission plans investigation into Google, Facebook and Amazon over data collection practices
FTC lays the groundwork for an in-depth investigation with a 6(b) demand for information from data-gathering technology companies
Tesla alleges that an engineer who left suddenly in January copied more than 300,000 files containing Autopilot source code
Unencrypted passwords could be accessed by Facebook's army of engineers
The Minimal Agency Consensus Scheme is a best-of-both-worlds between blockchain and DAG, the startup says


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DON'T SHARE NUISANCE.
Obama remembers Steve Jobs as a visionary
Apple confirmed the death of it's co-founder Steve Jobs on Wednesday. Jobs was battling cancer since 2004.
Washington: President Barack Obama said he remembers Apple co-founder Steve Jobs as one of America's greatest innovators and says the world has lost a visionary. The man behind the iPod and iPhone as well as the personal computer and the iPad, Jobs died of cancer on Wednesday at the age 56.
Obama said in a statement on Wednesday night that Jobs was brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.
The President also said Jobs exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity.
In a tweet sent separately from his statement, Obama said, in his words, "There may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented."
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Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy has suggested one of the analyst’s fears about its business is coming true -- the company is not selling enough mobile ads... Spotifty’s Plan To Concur America... Subscription service Rdio has surpassed 10 million songs in its catalog... and much more.
A District Court judge has drastically reduced the fine in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset file-sharing case from $1.5 million to to $54,000. The defendant was found guilty for stealing and distributing 24 songs for personal use.
A new Nielsen white paper shows that audio streaming services in the U.S. -- and four European countries – have potential but lack growth. However, the scope of the company’s survey may have led to results that are at odds with generally accepted trends in the U.S., not least because its sample period ended more than two months before the Stateside launch of Spotify.
Subscription services may actually be working, at least if you consider the economics of the New York Times once-controversial decision to install a paywall on its website. Also, Bandcamp dissects the stages of its users and the Electronic Frontier Foundation dusts off archaic complaints for Spotify.
Pandora Media has partnered with Verizon to offer its Internet radio service to subscribers of Verizon’s high-definition TV service FiOS, according to various media reports. The partnership will give subscribers to FiOS TV, Verizon’s high-definition TV service, access to Pandora’s personalized Internet radio service
Internet radio startup Earbits has found a clever way to get its product to market: SFGate, the online version of the San Francisco Chronicle, launched the Earbits-powered SFGate Radio on Wednesday. Also, Dubset raises a half-milli, Sir Mix-A-Lot Facebook game gets back from Business Insider, and did Spotify's launch partners pay a cool milli?


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Unilever is forgetting the “the old ways of marketing” as it invests in digital hubs and hiring new talent.
The FMCG giant is investing two-thirds of the £1.75bn it plans to save through efficiency programmes into marketing and digital, while the other third “to trickle down to the bottom line”, according to new CEO Alan Jope.
Speaking on an investor call today (31 January) Jope explained that a key priority for Unilever is improving its digital capabilities as more than 35% of the company’s media spend is on digital channels.
He explained: “It turns out that when you’re shifting directly and aggressively into digital, the constraint is not money in the BMI [brand and marketing investment] line, it’s people to run the digital campaigns.”
To combat this the business is aggressively hiring people for digital hubs to “build around the company”. In order to “manage the content-driven, highly-targeted, data-led campaigns” it needs “new people with new skills”.
In its first set of results since Jope became CEO of Unilever at the start of the year, he said the company now creates “content rather than advertising” while praising its personalised ads.
“Our old mass market model of driving consumer goods with mass brands sold in mass channels through mass distributions, systems and mass media is really being complemented by a very different type of marketing where we put purpose centre of our brands,” he says.
Unilever’s sales were lower-than-expected in the fourth quarter, as both economic and political uncertainty hit volume growth in developed market.
Unilever’s underlying sales were up 2.9%, behind analyst expectations of 3.5%. Turnover hit €49.6bn, with full-year sales growth likely to be at the bottom of its 3% to 5% forecast range, with the FMCG giant forecasting that market conditions will “remain challenging” through 2019.
Homecare was a highlight, with sales up 4.5%, while beauty and personal care saw underlying sales grow 3.1%, 2.5% of which was accounted for from volume growth. Food and refreshment (excluding spreads) was up 2.5%, with 1.6% volume helped by strong ice cream sales.
Jope added that the company was streamlining it supply chain and “adding back heads in the marketing space”.
However, he was quick to point out that the new sets of priorities were not set in stone. He said: “If we think for one second that our brands are being under-supported and that our BMI is insufficient, then we will react and we will prioritise growth and sufficiency of brand investment ahead of the bottom line. We just don’t think that’s necessary right at the moment.”
He concluded: “I’m calling out quality growth as our overall priority because it’s going to stimulate the business to put the attention on those changed areas that are so important in this madcap dynamic world that we’re doing business in.”


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It's that time again. Every six months, or thereabouts, there's a bundle of news stories and opinion articles predicting the death of television. Much of the material is generated because of marketing efforts done by services that claim to free consumers from traditional TV – Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and others.
Also, about every six months, someone writes to me and declares that I write about an irrelevant medium. They proceed to tell me how they ditched their cable and watch TV shows and movies online. And then, with the same predictability that requires people looking for a boyfriend/girlfriend online to declare that they enjoy "long walks and live theatre," the same people tell me they get more exercise and read more books. The gist, smugly declared, is that television is dead.
It isn't. There is a mess of confusion about the future. But it is mainly about how TV content will be delivered. Yesterday, this newspaper ran a much-read piece about the pros and cons of abandoning traditional TV. "Five reasons you should give up TV bills – plus five reasons you shouldn't" was an interesting read. But it was really about having "no TV provider" – it wasn't about a life without TV content.
Right now, with such online services as YouTube and Hulu holding "upfront" presentations to advertisers in New York, the chatter about the end of TV rises noisily again. Much of the chatter is absurdly out of touch with the realities of human nature, technology and consumerism. TV isn't dead or dying, and here's why.
One: Most people are angry about cable TV fees and a lack of choice in what they want to watch. They're motivated by fiscal prudence, not fear of TV or hatred of TV.
Two: The main concern of people who abandon cable TV is continuing access to TV shows they want to watch. Downloading an episode of HBO's Girls, because it's the most talked-about TV show of the moment, is not a signal that TV is dead. It actually means that TV is thriving.
Three: Sports. Ditch your TV and you miss the communal experience of watching major sports events. Try watching many sports events on your computer and you're either a) paying a fortune for it or b) wishing you were watching on a big HDTV set.
Four: YouTube, Hulu and AOL can have all the upfronts they want, presenting original content. For a start, we can't access Hulu in Canada and we won't until copyright issues are sorted out. The point of the upfronts is to tell advertisers that new measurement technology allows an outfit such as Hulu to tell how many eyeballs watch their ads. It's about forcing viewers to watch advertising. If there's one thing that puts people off traditional, network-model TV, it's the ads. You cannot – repeat, cannot – avoid the ads while watching these online services.
Five: Nobody knows what to watch or download online unless the content is on TV first.
Six: In Canada, apart from the CBC, most television is now controlled by cable/satellite/phone companies. What they want is for you to watch TV content through a multitude of platforms. That doesn't mean TV is dead. It means the traditional TV set, hooked to your cable or satellite provider, is in a precarious position. But what most consumers watch on a tablet or smartphone, is still TV content. That is, what I review and write about for you.
Seven: It's a myth that a generation which has grown up with easy access to TV content on computers will never accept the traditional TV model. Considerable anecdotal evidence suggests that getting a big ol' TV set is a rite of growing up. It comes with the first real job and first home.
Lastly, people, the future of television is in on-demand. That means on-demand on the box in your house: a TV/computer hybrid or your laptop or tablet. And what people demand is TV content. What's on YouTube is what you watch while taking a break from work or chores. It's not the equivalent of television content.
Go ahead, give your cable company heck. Cut the cord. You are still looking to watch Game of Thrones or Big Bang Theory. Netflix has one, not the other. And they're both TV shows and always will be. The death of television is not something to put your money on.


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PumpsOK was recently recognized by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) as a 2014 “Voice of Small Business.” The recognition came as part of the 16th Annual Small Business Day at the Capitol event held April 30 at the Oklahoma State Capitol’s 2nd Floor Rotunda. The event was hosted by Lieutenant Governor Todd Lamb.
PumpsOK’s profile was displayed along with ten other small businesses at the event, which was attended by elected officials, the media, and hundreds of attendees. PumpsOK attendees included treasurer Terri Greenly, sales & marketing director Russell Rupp, and controller Pat Painter.
“PumpsOK has been part of the business community in Oklahoma since 1968,” says Greenly. “We’re proud to be members of NFIB, and we’re proud to give a voice to small business around the state.”
“Strong small businesses provide a healthy economy, a healthy economy creates opportunities for families, and those families create a great Oklahoma,” says Lt. Governor Lamb.
NFIB is a nonprofit, non-partisan business advocacy organization who stated mission is “to promote and protect your right to own, operate and grow your business.” In addition to offering research, training, and other resources, NFIB advocates for small business issues at both state and national levels.
PumpsOK is the premier supplier of pumps and custom-manufactured pumping systems to the water well, industrial, municipal, environmental, and oil & gas markets both in Oklahoma and throughout the U.S. Their in-house experts include engineers, geologists, pump specialists, and manufacturing specialists who have helped customers complete some of the largest water well and environmental remediation jobs in the nation.
PumpsOK represents a variety of manufacturers of submersible, horizontal and vertical multistage, centrifugal, and self-priming pumps, as well as controllers, flowmeters, variable frequency drives, and in-house custom-manufactured pumping solutions. To learn more, send us a message or call (800) 669-3574.


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FISE WORLD is the largest and most legitimate international contest series in existence right now. There’s a 9-hour time difference here in China, but for all you die-hards, here’s the live feed, just incase your up at around 1am the next few nights. Drew Bezanson, Daniel Sandoval, Mike Varga, Alex Coleborn, Logan Martin, Daniel Dhers, Kenneth Tencio, and many many more will be battling it out for top honors here in Chengdu, China.
FISE WORLD CHENGDU CHINA 2015 LIVE
Chengdu – October 16th to 18th 2015 – Nanhu park, Tian Fu zone.
FISE World China on live this week-end, check it out!
The beautiful Nan Hu Parc of the huge Chinese city of Chengdu will be welcoming hundreds of the best pros and amateur athletes of the world to compete in the 5 star-disciplines of the event: roller, BMX, skateboard, mountain bike and wakeboard.
SCHEDULE (Los Angeles UTC-7h)
October 17th, 2015
1:15 am to 2:45 am – Honor BMX Pro Semi Final
October 18th, 2015
1:10 am to 2:40 am – Honor BMX Pro Final


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The missing AirAsia flight is thought to have crashed into the sea, a senior Indonesian rescue agency official told Reuters on Monday.» Read More
Peter Schiff, CEO at Euro Pacific Capital, says things look gloomy for consumers, pointing to a temporary reduction in gas prices, weak holiday sales, and low paying service jobs.
HSN President Bill Brand, discusses the holiday shopping season, and its partnership with celebrities to help sell products.
A company that sells truffles said it is auctioning off a huge truffle in New York with proceeds that will go to charity.
CNBC's Morgan Brennan reports from Berkeley, California, inside Wine.com's distribution hub, on expected shipping volume for FedEx during this holiday season.
Julie Busha didn’t slay any Sharks with her Slawsa – but that hasn’t stopped her from continuing to thrive.
CNBC's Dominic Chu runs through the standout retailers between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Discussing the overflow of email offers from retailers, and whether it really convinces consumers to spend their money, with Roger Dooley, author of "Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing," and behavioral psychotherapist Paul Hokemeyer.
Reebok struck a deal to provide apparel to UFC athletes at a time when more women are watching the sport.
November's auto sales rate is the strongest pace since 2003, reports CNBC's Phil LeBeau.
Christie's CEO, Steven Murphy, said Tuesday he would step down from his post at the London-based fine auction house at the end of the year.
Rent the Runway on Tuesday launched a capsule collection of ugly holiday sweaters.
Early holiday ads from companies is seen to be related to the early searches of consumers for Christmas gifts.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is partnering with Mythbusters' Kari Byron to launch a reality TV show about tech.
A handful of retail and consumer-oriented stocks may have potential to deliver holiday returns, if recent history is any guide.
Actor Burt Reynolds is downsizing and will auction off more than 600 of his personal items with Julien Auctions in Las Vegas this December.
Expect a resurgence in Apple shares due to strong holiday sales, JMP Securities' Alex Gauna told CNBC Tuesday.
Discussing how lower gas prices are impacting the sales of trucks and SUVs, with founder and CEO of TrueCar, Scott Painter.
CNBC's Phil LeBeau reports the auto sales list is dominated by SUVs and crossovers.
Which automobiles are selling the best this holiday season? Insight, with Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds.com, and CNBC's Phil LeBeau.
There has not been a national Takata recall yet, reports CNBC's Phil LeBeau. A congressional hearing will take place Wednesday.


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After 21 years, the Fat Slags come down from the top shelf
Viz, the adult comic renowned for its distinctive brand of bad-taste humour, finally gone soft on its readers? After 21 years among the sexually explicit top-shelf titles it is joining the mainstream men's magazine market.
Has Viz, the adult comic renowned for its distinctive brand of bad-taste humour, finally gone soft on its readers? After 21 years among the sexually explicit top-shelf titles it is joining the mainstream men's magazine market.
From now on, WH Smith, one of the most cautious high street newsagents, will stock the comic on its middle-level shelves alongside titles such as GQ, FHM and Loaded.
While the 18-and-over age constraint will remain, younger teenagers will now be able to browse through its pages, soaking up the tales of characters such as "Harold and Fred" who "make ladies dead".
Ed Axon, the publisher of Viz, said: "We will work hard with WH Smith to make sure they don't regret their decision. We won't be going out of our way to antagonise anyone. We've realised that if we are going to continue to be successful we have to be careful.
"But we think it's unfair to the Viz reader to have to look to the top shelf, which carries an embarrassment factor, for their periodical digest of humour."
In recent years the comic has faced pressure from advertisers who have been reluctant to spend money on a title that is displayed next to pornographic material.
Mr Axon said the company's campaign to have Viz moved to the middle shelves was not intended to attract readers outside its usual audience but an attempt to win back those that had deserted it in favour of glossy men's titles.
"It will still carry a warning that it is not to be sold to children but it will be up to the individual newsagents to enforce that rule," said Mr Axon.
That's some guestlist! Stunning images show huge dynastic wedding between Ultra-Orthodox Jewish families which attracted 25,000 guests
Emergency landing at Heathrow sparks further controversy over London airport capacity
Two bailed after arrest over Woolwich attack Twitter comments
Exclusive: Woolwich killings suspect Michael Adebolajo was inspired by cleric banned from UK after urging followers to behead enemies of Islam
Men arrested after RAF jet is scrambled to escort Pakistan Airlines passenger plane to Stansted
- 1 Liam Gallagher slams Daft Punk: 'I could have written Get Lucky in an hour'
- 2 What, let gays get married? We must be bonkers
- 3 'Something passed underneath us, quite close': Airbus A320 has close encounter with UFO
- 4 Lord of the Sings: Sir Christopher Lee, 91, to release heavy metal album
- 5 Two bailed after arrest over Woolwich attack Twitter comments
BMF is the UK’s biggest and best loved outdoor fitness classes
Find out what The Independent's resident travel expert has to say about one of the most beautiful small cities in the world
Nook is donating eReaders to volunteers at high-need schools and participating in exclusive events throughout the campaign.
Get the latest on The Evening Standard's campaign to get London's children reading.
Win anything from gadgets to five-star holidays on our competitions and offers page.


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Hammerpoint Interactive has renamed its online zombie shooter The War Z to Infestation: Survivor Stories.
The move follows a trademark dispute over the novel and film of a similar name, World War Z.
The studio said although it had been reluctant to change the name of the game given it had garnered almost one million players, it felt a new title was better to avoid confusion between the two brands.
“Effective today, The War Z has changed its name to Infestation: Survivor Stories,” read a statement from the developer.
“This change has come about primarily as a result of some confusion and trademark issues with a similarly titled property. While we were reluctant to rename the game so long after launch, especially with nearly one million registered players, it was ultimately decided to be in the best interest of our existing community as well as future players in order to eliminate confusion.
“Please rest assured that this will in NO WAY affect you as players. The only difference you will see is the change in logo and website. There will be no interruption of service or change in content.”
Infestation received a hostile reception when it launched on Steam earlier this year, with claims of misleading advertising, forum censorship and its controversial use microtransactions plaguing the title.
The furore surrounding the game resulted in Valve pulling game sales on Steam, although it has since been reinstated for sale.


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Four Reston eateries will be participating in the Metropolitan Washington Winter Resturant Week later this January.
Foodies around the area can enjoy lunch for $22 and dinner for $35 from Jan. 13 through 19.
A few places around the D.C.-area offer brunch specials — but not at any of the Reston locations.
Offerings vary from restaurant to restaurant, and places will feature either a specialed menu or a multi-course option.
PassionFish will offer lunch and dinner specials featuring nine different appetizer options like the Peruvian-style ceviche and main courses from their regular menu, as well as one of three desserts such as the almond biscotti crème brûlée.
A few items on their menu, such as the crab cakes, will include a $10 upcharge.
Anyone interested in taking advantage of the deals can either call ahead to reserve a space at the individual locations or make a reservation on OpenTable.
Photo via PassionFish/Facebook
Several local restaurants are offering special deals for the annual Northern Virginia Restaurant Week, which ends on Sunday (September 15).
The week, which is organized by the Greater Reston Chamber of Commerce, features special menus and deals by local restaurants. This year’s event kicked off on Monday (September 9).
The following restaurants are participating:
- Carrabba’s Italian Grill
- Mon Ami Gabi
- Not Your Average Joe’s Kitchen & Bar
- Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurant
- Founding Farmers Reston Station
Restaurants will offer menus specifically designed for the event. Reservations are highly encouraged.
The event is sponsored by Boston Properties and Carrabba’s Italian Grill.
Photo courtesy Mon Ami Gabi
Foodies can enjoy discounted prix fixe meals in mid-August during the Metropolitan Washington Summer Restaurant Week.
More than 200 restaurants in the District, Maryland and Virginia are set to participate in the event, which takes place from Monday, August 12 to Sunday, August 18. Restaurants will offer brunch and lunch for $22 and dinner for $35.
In Reston, four eateries will provide discounted lunch and dinner:
- Founding Farmers (1904 Reston Metro Plaza)
- The Melting Pot (11730 Plaza America Drive)
- Morton’s The Steakhouse (11956 Market Street)
- PassionFish (11960 Democracy Drive)
Restaurant menus have not yet been posted on the event’s website. Guests taking part in restaurant week can also sign up for a diner rewards program, which gives guests who opt-in exclusive access to deals on meals and prizes.
The event is organized by the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, a regional trade association that represents restaurants and the food-service industry in the DC-area.
Photo via RAMV
FCPS statement — Fairfax County Public Schools recently released a statement on seclusion and restraint after “special education advocates, concerned parents and community members have raised concerns in light of recent media reports.” [FCPS]
YP Connections events — Head to Founding Farmers from 5:30-7:30 p.m. for a networking event. Registration closes at noon, and tickets cost $15 for chamber members or $25 for guests. Light refreshments and one drink ticket will be provided. [Greater Reston Chamber of Commerce]
Get Woke! Book Club — Scrawl Books has a progressive book club that focuses on reading titles that cover timely political issues. This month’s book is “Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal” by Aviva Chomsky. The discussion starts at 7 p.m. [Scrawl Books]
Photo courtesy Navid
Updated at 9:35 on Jan. 10 — Includes McCormick & Schmick’s.
Four restaurants in Reston are among the 250 places in Virginia, Maryland and D.C. on the roster for Winter Restaurant Week in January.
Winter Restaurant Week will run from Monday, Jan. 14, to Sunday, Jan. 20, with prix fixe menus — $35 dinner and $22 lunch.
Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington announced yesterday (Dec. 20) that Founding Farmers, The Melting Pot and PassionFish will offer both lunch and dinner during the event. McCormick & Schmick’s is also on the roster as of Jan. 10, 2019.
Two of the restaurants have certain restrictions.
Located at 1904 Reston Metro Plaza, Founding Farmers will have its regularly priced buffet brunch instead of the prix fixe lunch available from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the weekend of Jan. 19.
The Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant located at 11730 Plaza America Drive, Suite 100, will not allow diners to share or split entrees or ask for substitutions.
Seafood-focused eatery PassionFish at 11960 Democracy Drive and McCormick & Schmick’s at 11920 Democracy Drive do not have any dining restrictions posted on Winter Restaurant Week’s website.
Photos via Passionfood Hospitality, PassionFish, Founding Farmers Reston and Google Maps
This story has been updated
Artists behind the artwork of Founding Farmers in Reston Station will offer explanations of their work at an “Art Reveal” tonight from 6-8 p.m.
The interior of the restaurant includes work by local and regional artists, all centered around the theme of Thomas Jefferson and Monticello. Featured artwork includes a North Dakota Farmers Union Laundry line, which hangs from the restaurant’s ceiling.
The piece was made from pieces of cloth from farm owners that were hardened into place with glue and paint.
Other pieces include colorful farm animals dispersed on the wall of the restaurant and an image of Sally Hemings, an enslaved women who had a relationship with Jefferson.
Co-owner Dan Simons and creative director Leah Frankl will be on-site to answer questions about the art in the restaurant. Tickets are available online.
Photos via Gina Carroll
Several Reston restaurants will participate in this year’s Metropolitan Washington Restaurant Summer Week, which begins on Monday (August 13).
Restaurants throughout the greater Washington region will offer three-course lunch and brunch menus for $22 and a three-course dinner for $35 at fixed prices. The annual event is sponsored by the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, a regional trade association that represents restaurants and the foodservice industry in the DC-area.
Restaurants in Reston that are participated are:
- Founding Farmers (1904 Reston Metro Plaza Drive)
- McCormick & Schmick’s (11920 Democracy Drive)
- The Melting Pot (11730 Plaza America Drive)
- Morton’s The Steakhouse (11956 Market Street)
- PassionFish (11960 Democracy Drive)
Special menus for the week, which runs from Monday through Aug. 19, are available online.
The restaurant by Farmers Restaurant Group is open seven days a week for breakfast, lunch, dinner and brunch.
Founding Farmers also offers on-the-go breakfast for customers at the “First Bake Cafe.” Reservations are available online. Validated parking is available in the Wiehle-Reston East parking garage, as well as valet parking for customers who pull up their vehicles to the plaza.
Here’s more from the restaurant:
Founding Farmers Reston will have many guest favorites, such as house-made pastas and our Southern Fried Chicken & Donut. Our chefs are also particularly excited to share a nice range of cuts from our Steak House, such as our classic 48-Hour Salt-Cured Prime Rib. Some of us can’t wait for the comforting and wholesome grain and protein bowls, or the decadence of our homemade desserts and hand-churned ice cream. Of course, we will be serving our large selection of craft cocktails made with spirits from our own distillery in DC, Founding Spirits.
The restaurant has been is built with the same sustainably-minded practices we use across Farmers Restaurant Group, pursuing LEED and Green Restaurant Association certifications. We also have amazing artwork from a great group of original artists to share with our guests and to help tell our story.
Sweet Leaf, a cafe adjacent to the new restaurant, also recently opened at Reston Station Plaza.
Photo via Founding Farmers Reston
The restaurant, which pushed back its opening date several times since 2016, will take up a two-level, 10,000 square foot location at 1904 Reston Metro Plaza.
The location features a private dining space to seat 40-50 people, a large mezzanine, and a bar with cocktails from their D.C.-based distillery. Their First Bake Cafe will offer freshly-baked goods, sweets and a Compass Coffee blend. The cafe is designed for Metro users and others who looking for a quick bite.
The second floor is dedicated to the kitchen, requiring staff to speed up and down stairs to serve orders.
The build out was complicated by a lengthy permitting process and the unique design of the restaurant, which requires an elevator due to limited space for loading fresh deliveries, staff said.
Founding Farmers relies on daily fresh deliveries and has limited kitchen space for freezing products. It serves weekday breakfast, lunch and dinner and a weekend buffet brunch. According to promotional material, the restaurant’s dishes are made with “pure ingredients honoring the farmers and their hard-earned bounty.”
Parking, which is not free at Reston Station, will be validated. Valet parking will be offered for $3, allowing guests to pull up their vehicles at the plaza.
No word yet on when Sweet Leaf, a community cafe near the Founding Farmers location, will open.
The restaurant has other locations in the District, Tysons Corner, Montgomery County, Md., and King of Prussia, Pa.
Photos by Fatimah Waseem
Welcome to the club — Reston Association added two new residential developments into the association. That’s a total of 98 units located at The Lofts at Reston Station and Valley & Park. [Reston Association]
An ode to Thomas Jefferson — Keep an eye out. Founding Farmers at Reston Station will open some time in early April. [Washingtonian]
Wind Warning in effect through 7 p.m. — The National Weather Service has issued a wind warning for Fairfax County. [National Weather Service]
Don’t forget: Reston Association assessments are due today — RA will have extended hours through today so members can make their final assessment payments. [Reston Association]
Photo by Fatimah Waseem
Founding Farmers plans to open its Reston Station location in early 2018.
The opening of the restaurant, originally set for summer 2017, was delayed due after plans to the 10,000-square-foot location (1901 Reston Metro Plaza Drive) were revamped.
No firm opening date has been made public, although the company has begun hiring for all positions and expects to open in the first quarter of this year. In August, a company representative told Reston Now the restaurant will open next month.
A spokesperson for Comstock Partners, the owner of Reston Station, said the company went back to the drawing board to improve the design and layout of the restaurant after opening a new location — Farmers & Distillers — in the District.
“After opening their downtown D.C. restaurant a year ago, they decided to make some major changes to better improve operations,” said Maggie Parker, vice president of communications and community outreach for Comstock Partners. “They can’t wait to open.”
The Reston restaurant rests on the ground floor of a planned 200-room hotel at Reston Station and on top of the 3,500-space Reston Station Transit Facility. A large mezzanine is planned at the site, which sits next to the 45o-unit BLVD at Reston Station.
The farmer-owned restaurant include a full-service menu and bar with breakfast, lunch and dinner and a Farmers Market buffet brunch on weekends. A “First Bake” menu will offer takeaway breakfast and coffee on weekday mornings, according to the restaurant’s website.
Founding Farmers is owned by more than 47,000 family farmers of the North Dakota Farmers Union and is supplied by hundreds of family farms, according to its website.
No update was available on when Sweet Leaf, a locally owned cafe chain scheduled to open next to Founding Farmers will open. Signage on the store front indicates an opening in the winter of last year.
(This post was updated on Friday, Jan. 12 at 10:29 a.m. to include background about Founding Farmers).
Photo by Fatimah Waseem
Founding Farmers has pushed back its opening at Reston Station until mid-2017.
The Washington Business Journal reports that that the restaurant will be delayed until next summer.
It was exactly a year ago this week that Founding Farmers announced its plans to open a 10,000-square-foot restaurant in Reston.
Initial estimates from Reston Station developer Comstock and Founding Farmers said the opening would be late 2016 or early 2017, but a peek into the the space last week showed it is still empty and no work has begun.
Founding Farmers will have a large mezzanine, which is complicating the construction permits, Farmers Restaurant Group CEO Dan Simons said.
“The combination of engineering complexities (we’re building a fantastic mezzanine) and the typical permit process labyrinth combined to push the timeline longer than originally planned,” he told WBJ.
Founding Farmers Reston will be on the ground floor of a planned 200-room hotel at Reston Station. No hotel tenant has been signed yet.
Comstock, which is developing Reston Station, is also hoping to sign a large, upscale restaurant for the ground floor space of the office tower that is currently under construction on the plaza.
Farmers Restaurant Group, which has restaurants in DC, Maryland and at Tysons Corner in Virginia, is preparing to open a new property, Farmers & Distillers, in DC.
Rendering of completed Reston Station development/Credit: Comstock
Reston will be getting a local outpost of Founding Farmers, the local chainlet of farm-to-table restaurants.
Comstock Partners confirms that the Farmers Restaurant Group has signed a lease to take over almost all of the current retail space at Reston Station.
The 10,000-square-foot restaurant is in the design stage, says Comstock spokeswoman Maggie Parker.
“We are delighted to have them out here,” said Parker. “Founding Farmers is a terrific, successful restaurant. It’s a great fit for Reston. “
The retail space was completed prior to the opening of Silver Line in summer 2014. It has not had a permanent tenant, but has been used for special events in the months since. Comstock late last year announced a new concept — The Stock Market @ Reston Station — that would bring retail and food booths to the space. The deal fell apart in July, however.
The restaurant space will eventually be the first level of a future hotel at Reston Station. Reston Station is Comstock’s mixed-use project that sits atop the 3,300-space underground parking garage adjacent to the Wiehle-Reston East Silver Line Metro station.
Founding Farmers, which has locations in the District, Rockville and Tysons Corner, said to expect “something different in Reston, including a rooftop dining scene.”
“Reston is a wonderful, growing community and we’re excited to be joining the neighborhood, ” Dan Simons of Farmers Restaurant Group said in a statement. “As we expand, we’re passionately committed to evolving with each new location. Between the location of Reston Station and the chance to work with Comstock, this was an opportunity that we couldn’t pass up.”
Founding Farmers is expected to open in Reston in late 2016, after the company opens Farmers & Distillers, a 12,000-square-foot restaurant with in-house distillery , planned for 600 Massachusetts Ave. NW in the District, Parker said.
Founding Farmers other locations include breakfast, lunch and dinner service; meats from an in-house butchery; local craft beers; Virginia oysters; and a selection of locally distilled liquors.
Comstock is also slated to start work on Reston Station’s first office building soon, said Parker. The 16-story, 365,000-square-foot building, designed by architect Helmut Jahn, will have, among other amenities, a rooftop helipad, and plaza-level retail.
The BLVD at Reston Station, the 528-unit luxury residential building by Comstock, will open a pre-leasing center soon in a small portion of the retail space on the plaza, said Parker. The building expects to have its first residents early in 2016.
Photo: Founding Farmers Rockville location/Credit: Greg Powers for Founding Farmers


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Verizon announced Tuesday a $4.4 billion deal to acquire AOL, the former dial-up service turned media company home to news sites like The Huffington Post and TechCrunch.
Why does Verizon want AOL? Some observers have pointed to Verizon’s interest in its thriving advertising technology business, built over the past few years through various acquisitions. The unit lets other companies pay AOL to buy and sell targeted ads across the web algorithmically. It’s one of AOL’s fastest-growing units, and Verizon could use the technology behind it to make more money from videos streaming across its network:
AOL’s display and search advertising on its own sites isn’t growing as quickly compared to its ad tech business. But it has long been the backbone of AOL’s strong advertising revenue. In 2014, the company earned nearly $1 billion from these display and search ads:
Meanwhile, the unit that generates most of AOL’s income is probably the one that interests Verizon the least: Internet subscribers. While the number of AOL dial-up subscribers out there has slowly and steadily declined over the years, the company still counts about 2.2 million of them. The AOL unit that includes those subscribers generated over $600 million in revenue last year; their fate in a post-merger AOL is unclear:


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Listen up, Ikea meatball fans. The Tampines outlet is where you can gorge yourself silly on meatballs this weekend — without paying more than a dollar (unless you’re a big eater).
As part of the Swedish brand’s 75th anniversary celebrations, Ikea’s popular eight-piece meatball dish will go for the low price of $0.75 on Oct 6 and 7. However, you’ll have to be an Ikea Family member to get the promo. And it’s only limited to one plate per member per day. And it’s capped at the first 750 dine-in customers.
That’s a lot of restrictions, but hey, for less than a dollar, it’s probably worth it if you were thinking of paying a visit to Ikea Tampines sometime soon anyway.


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It’s easy to know exactly how to treat a close friend, because you know them inside out. Not only do you know the basics like name, age, location – you also recognise what they already have, what they don’t have but want, why they prefer one item to another, what annoys them and a whole plethora of other minute details that influence their purchasing decisions. Writing exclusively for RetailTechNews, Mike Shaw, VP, EMEA, dataxu (pictured below), here discusses the importance of using insights to buddy up with clients to maintain a competitive advantage.
If brands today want to maintain a competitive advantage, they have to really get to know their customers and get to know their personal buying quirks to understand what makes them tick.
Have a nice day!
Service with a smile isn’t exactly a new concept – if you want to build consumer loyalty, you have to make the purchase experience as pleasant as possible. And yet, despite nine out of ten marketers believing that customer experience is a key differentiator in consumer behaviour according to tech researcher Gartner, many UK retailers are yet to take this approach to heart.
American companies consistently outperform their UK counterparts, with as many as 92% of British shoppers saying they’ve experienced poor service in a survey by Censuswide and Magnetic North. These dissatisfied shoppers aren’t just settling for the subpar service – they’re taking their business elsewhere and buying from competitors.
As retail grows ever more competitive both on and offline, marketers need to get better at attracting, engaging, and retaining consumers – and they should start by putting their customers first.
Customers take centre stage
Thanks to the internet, news travels fast. Consumers can browse shoes, clothing, and electronic devices from bed when they wake up, on their daily commute, or watching TV after work on the sofa. They can also make purchases, request refunds, and read scores of online reviews, both positive and negative.
Being able to access firsthand knowledge about brands and their competitors in an instant has resulted in more knowledgeable and empowered consumers than ever before. Furthermore, they assume that retailers will really try to get to know them to provide personalised and seamless shopping experiences throughout the consumer lifecycle.
Modern consumers expect brands to know who they are and to customise their marketing efforts accordingly. In fact, they are so enthusiastic about personalisation, they’re increasingly willing to give brands their data in exchange for it, according to the State of the Connected Customer report. Companies looking to stand out from the ever-growing crowd need to put their consumers front and centre by crafting relevant and seamless one-to-one experiences to attract new customers and boost brand loyalty.
Identify and entice new customers
The general ennui that British shoppers have for customer service provides a rich opportunity for retailers looking to entice and impress new clientele. Today’s consumers leave hefty online footprints that reveal a lot about their interests and preferences so retailers needn’t reach out blindly. By harnessing a comprehensive data analytics approach, brands can collect and analyse this data and identify potential consumers.
For example, a retailer specialising in outdoor apparel can detect individuals who have previously begun – and perhaps abandoned – an online purchase on a competitor’s website. They can then use this data to craft one-to-one marketing experiences. If an individual was browsing high-tech rain jackets, the savvy retailer could reach out and suggest they take a look at their new range of waterproof gear, pointing out their improved features. In this way, retailers can set themselves apart from the competition by identifying potential consumers and attracting their attention with personalised advertising.
Keep your customers close…
However, the work isn’t done yet. Once a retailer has attracted new consumers with highly personalised ads, they must continue to keep customers engaged and unlikely to turn to a competitor by using personalisation and seamless experiences throughout the customer journey. Let’s say the ‘outdoorsy’ individual in the previous example finally buys a new waterproof rain jacket. The adventure brand can build a friendly, loyal relationship by offering personalised follow-up recommendations or special discounts.
Moreover, retailers can use the power of data analytics to make sure they’re delivering these suggestions and promotions to the same individual across different devices. In our example, the retailer could send a short adventure video to someone while they are sitting at home browsing on a tablet, followed by a quick banner ad when they are looking at their mobile phone at work.
Furthermore, by analysing campaign performance, retailers can make iterative improvements to their marketing, such as segmenting their audience further to boost results or avoiding non-responsive consumers to eliminate waste.
…then bring them closer
The trick is for brands to continue to employ personalisation creatively throughout the entire consumer lifecycle and build a healthy ‘friendship’.
Although shopping habits show that digital marketing should remain at the forefront of advertising efforts, retailers can also integrate their digital strategy with real-life consumer behaviours by focusing on customer-centricity. Getting consumers to visit physical stores is a big ask, especially when customers today can find just about anything they want online; but brands can use their digital prowess to craft personalised in-store retail experiences as well. Talking to customers across a range of devices and based on their physical location is crucial to bridging the gap between the online and offline worlds. The internet is great for staying in touch, but it’s a sign of true friendship to visit occasionally.
So, while the world of retail may be getting more complex and more competitive, retailers now have the tools at their disposal to differentiate themselves from the competition. By designing and launching a strong digital marketing strategy, informed by tailored data analytics, retailers will bring in more business, boost brand loyalty, and maintain a strong, ongoing friendship.


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Could Acer make its way back onto the Windows Phone circuit this year? If the operating system continues to grow they might do, according to reports.
Acer previously made the Allegro almost three years ago, the companies first ever Windows powered handset, but since then the production line has been kept silent on the Windows Phone front.
But, if Microsoft boosts the European market share to around 15%, Acer will jump back into the mix so to speak, if the company’s Vice President of smartphones is to be trusted.
Have a Windows Phone already? Why not check out the 5 things we bet you didn't know about the operating system!?
Allen Burns, the man in question, mentioned that if Windows Phone’s customer demands continued to grow, as they did last year, then they would take the risk of building another Microsoft based handset.
This risk isn’t a big one though, and Acer could pay for waiting, with both Samsung and Sony reportedly discussing working on a Windows based phone.
If Acer does eventually jump back on to the Microsoft powered phone though it wouldn’t come as a huge surprise especially considering the success that the operating system has seen since last year.
Nokia has been the main supplier of Windows Phones in recent years, with handsets like the Lumia 520 and 1020 proving huge successes, prompting other manufacturers to get in on the action this year.
Written by Luke Hatfield


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Take-Two Shells Out $1.1B for NBA 2K Video Game License
Ron Perillo / 3 years ago
More Than Double Previous Deals
Take-Two Interactive is apparently paying the National Basketball Association $1.1 billion dollars to continue the NBA 2K series. The specific terms of the deal were not disclosed, although according to WSJ sources, this amount is good to last for a 7-year license.
Is the NBA License Worth That Much to Take-Two?
Obviously Take-Two is not going to cough out that much if they did not believe they would profit from it. After all, the NBA 2K franchise has been going on for almost two decades now. The series is apparently the third best selling video game series on any genre, and last year’s NBA 2K19 is the best selling sports game of 2018.
Beyond up-front game sales, the game company also profits from in-game sale of virtual items via the in-game virtual currency. Gamers recognize these as “microtransactions“, however the company refers to them as “recurrent consumer spending”. Which are now increasingly growing revenue stream for the company, increasing by 28% and accounting for 53% of the total bookings in 2018.
Furthermore, there are also spin-0ff games such as NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 and NBA 2K Mobile. It also helps that the NBA is highly popular in China, thus their annual video game releases are as well.
The partnership between the two companies have also expanded into avenues such as eSports. In 2017, the NBA 2K eLeague was launched, first official esports league operated by a U.S. professional sports league.


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Troy, Mich. — Automotive plastics supplier Cadillac Products Inc. is investing millions of dollars into manufacturing hospital gowns in hopes of turning a charitable pandemic pivot into a full-fledged business unit.
Its newly launched health care subsidiary, ProTEC-USA, has donated nearly 1.2 million gowns since the COVID-19 pandemic started in early 2020 but has yet to land a paying customer. Its executives, however, are banking on sustained demand for local personal protective equipment after the pandemic exposed the United States' reliance on China for hospital supplies.
At the auto supplier's 62,000-square-foot plant in Troy, around two dozen of the company's 225 employees have a hand in making gowns at any given time. Around 10 are devoted full time to running the new $1 million gown-making machine, which sits in a 5,000-square-foot area carved out for ProTEC. The machine was built in-house and is capable of producing 2 million gowns each year, said Mike Williams, vice president of operations and purchasing.
At a sale price of $1 apiece, which Williams said is competitive with offshore sourcing, that would create $2 million in new revenue for Cadillac Products, or around 5 percent of overall revenue for the company.
"I've got a goal. I'd like to diversify our business outside of just automotive products," Williams said on a recent tour of the plant for dignitaries and media. "If I could get this to 25 to 30 percent [of overall revenue], that would be great."
Plastics News placed Cadillac Products at No. 104 in the most recent of North American film and sheet makers with an estimated $40 million in annual sales in the region.
The nation's supply of PPE was quickly depleted when the pandemic hit. Then supply from China, the world's largest exporter of PPE, was shut off. The shortage led to horror stories of nurses and doctors reusing equipment and treating patients without adequate protection.
While the frenzied early days of the pandemic have passed and hand sanitizer and masks now sit discounted on store shelves, many politicians are calling for PPE to be manufactured domestically to prepare for health crises in the future.
"I came into the [Michigan] Legislature and met with so many people who said that our economy is risky because we are so dependent on the auto industry," said state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, D-Royal Oak, who attended the company's tour to laud its "made in Michigan" PPE plan, alongside a few other Democratic lawmakers. "When the auto industry is hit hard, we're hit hard."
That's a big factor in Cadillac Products' desire to diversify. The company is planning to invest another $1 million to build a new machine and double gown production capacity, underscoring its confidence that there is a market for locally made PPE.
The company received a $100,000 grant from the state to help it build the first vertically integrated machine, which pulls plastic sheets made of resin pellets down a line and cuts them into gowns. Before the machine, gowns were cut by hand in a much more laborious process.
Photographs of the machine are prohibited, and it is concealed by makeshift walls to keep proprietary secrets from Chinese competitors, according to the company.


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Google finally put to rest years of speculation about its cloud service when it announced Tuesday morning the launch of its own cloud storage service called Google Drive.
The new service gives users online storage similar to Dropbox and Microsoft's SkyDrive. Users can access their files from computers and other devices including iPhones, iPads and Android devices. Google Drive gives users free 5 Gb of storage space. Google's new service is the company's first foray into cloud services. Google says its service encourages users to spend more time online with its Google Docs and now Google Drive.
"Drive is something we intend to be at the center of our users' online experience," Sundar Pichai, Google senior vice president for Chrome and Apps wrote in a blog post. "We see this as a primary place for people to go to create and collaborate and live in the cloud across devices and across applications and have their important data available to them seamlessly."
Google Drive will allow users to put a Google Drive folder on multiple computers and then drag any document, photo or file on the folder to make it accessible to any other computer. Users can now collaborate on spreadsheets, presentations and video on Google's own Google Docs service. Users can add comments to shared files. Google Drive is compatible with any computer that runs Windows, or Android or even Apple's Mac computer. Google says compatibility with Apple's iPhone is in the works.
Google isn't the only company entering the cloud storage market. Microsoft and Apple both have online storage while Dropbox and other companies have done well as cloud service providers. How does Google Drive stack up against them?
Google offers users an initial 5 Gb of storage space for free, which is about the same as Apple. By comparison Dropbox only offers 2 Gb of free storage. Microsoft has the upper hand in this comparison because its SkyDrive offers 7 Gb of free storage. Paid users will have to pay Google $30 a year for 25 Gb of storage plus 25 Gb of Gmail storage. For an additional 100 Gb of storage users will have to pay $60 a year or $5 a month to Google. This is a bit more than other service providers. Microsoft only charges $50 a year for 100 Gb of additional storage.
Google Drive does have the unique feature that allows users to turn on OCR text scanning which means that Google can scan any image for text and make them searchable. Google Drive also has the ability to open up to 30 kinds of files inside your browser. While this isn't as impressive as Dropbox' new feature that allows users to share a link to files inside Dropbox, Google Drive's features are certainly worth taking a look at.
With the launch of Google Drive and other cloud storage services it becomes clear that mainstream users will find that cloud storage will change the way that people will interact with the Internet.
"Personal cloud is far more than just storage; it's synchronization, it's streaming, it's sharing files. Those ultimately become more important to the consumer than things like the personal computer," said Gartner Research Director Michael Gartenberg. "The age of the personal cloud becomes far more important than the personal computer."
About International Business Times
The International Business Times is composed of twelve high-growth online editions (ibtimes.com) that give readers local reports balanced with multinational perspectives. Exclusive and transparent insights from global markets make The International Business Times an indispensable news source for business-minded individuals.


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Cristiano Ronaldo has been showing off a new pricey watch on his Instagram story.
The ex-Manchester United star posted a snap of him enjoying a hot drink on what looks to be his balcony in Saudi Arabia to his 585 million followers.
But whilst the focus was meant to be on his classy white mug, eagle eyed fans who saw the post noticed something blingy in the corner of the photo.
On his left wrist, Ronaldo was sporting a dark blue watch, fit with gold features.
It turns out the time piece is from the brand Jacob & Co. and is worth a whopping £750,000.
Other high profile sports stars have also worn watches from the brand that has 3.9 million followers on Instagram.
READ MORE ON CRISTIANO RONALDO
UFC icon Conor McGregor has been pictured with one of the New York-based retailers pieces.
Ronaldo's fellow football legend Lionel Messi has also been seen wearing the brand, too.
Ronaldo's expensive watch is just a fraction of the cost of his wages at Al Nassr, with him now making £3.3million a week at the Saudi Pro League club.
The Portugal legend's jump in wages following his Man United exit made him the best paid athlete over former highest earner Messi.
Most read in Football
Since making his big money move to the Middle East in January, Ronaldo has made 17 appearances for Al Nassr, scoring 13 goals in that time.


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Shell and Nissan have officially launched their new Formula E partnership at a ceremony at the Nissan Crossing in Tokyo. This is an exciting new partnership for Shell, which has been involved in motorsports for more than a century.
The alliance with Nissan and the all-electric racing series will help Shell to further develop its new energy and mobility solutions. Shell is partnering with Nissan because it shares Shell’s vision to improve the driving experience for EV drivers, helping to make them more attractive to motorists.
As part of the newly developed partnership, Nissan and Shell plan to explore opportunities to provide greater performance to the team in their ambition to win championships.
“We share Nissan and Formula E’s desire to deliver technological innovations from the racetrack to the road, so all electric vehicle drivers can benefit from them,” Istvàn Kapitàny, Executive Vice President Retail at Royal Dutch Shell said. “We are increasingly charging electric vehicles at forecourts, homes and workplaces, while developing specialised lubricants for electric motors. This partnership will help us to develop more and cleaner mobility solutions.”
Shell is exploring how best to serve an increasing number of electric vehicles drivers, both on and beyond its forecourts. A growing number of our retail stations in the UK, the Netherlands and China are offering the ‘Shell Recharge’ fast-charging service, which takes only around 30 minutes to fully charge an electric vehicle.
We also acquired NewMotion, one of Europe’s largest electric-vehicle charging providers, in 2017, and we are working with them to develop more flexible charging solutions.
In 2018, we began offering super-fast chargers that take around 10 minutes to charge the next-generation of electric vehicles, making them up to three times faster than any other charger currently available. Installing these high-powered fast chargers at 80 stations in Europe, in partnership with charging network operator IONITY, will also help make electric vehicle drivers’ journeys more convenient and comfortable.
These initiatives are part of Shell’s wider drive to provide more and cleaner energy solutions around the world.
For more information please contact ShellMotorsportMedia@edelman.com. Photos from the race are also available at http://motorsportmedia.shell.com


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Ikea is shifing its marketing strategy, moving away from its traditional focus on rooms to instead put the spotlight on product innovation and showcase how the addition of just a few new things can transform the home.
The ‘New Wonders Can Come Out of the Blue’ campaign, created by Mother, kicks off this week. The first TV spot, ‘Spinning Cups’, features three elderly ladies having their weekly get together before things get a bit wild.
Centred around its blue Frakta bag – a symbol of “newness” – three 20-second ads depict a range of living situations that have been designed to showcase the scale of Ikea’s new products and how each can improve the everyday lives of homeowners.
The Swedish retailer says the new creative and strategic approach is in response to changing shopper behaviours – especially as the delivery of the physical catalogue gives way to a more digital retail experience.
As such, Ikea has revamped its ‘New At IKEA’ hub on the UK website, which will feature all of the latest collections and will be updated every time new products enter the range. It will also showcase inspirational content to show how new and existing products can be incorporated into real-life homes.
“When it comes to revamping your home, you don’t always need a complete style overhaul. In fact, it’s often the little new things that can make all the difference,” says Laurent Tiersen, Ikea UK and Ireland marketing manager.
“At Ikea, we believe that even just one small new change transforms our everyday lives at home in wonderfully unexpected ways. All it takes is a little bit of imagination and inspiration – and from our humble Fraktabag, new wonders can come out of the blue.”
Ikea is using its UK arm to act as a global test for the brand to better explore the potential of non-physical marketing in an effort to drive better brand association and visitation and encourage a wider interest in home furnishings.
The campaign will air across TV and in cinemas in the UK and Ireland until October 2018, while wider communications around ‘newness’ at Ikea will continue across all other channels for the following 12 months.


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SV Microwave honored TTI, Inc. with the “2020 Distributor of the Year” award for their outstanding performance for the second year in a row. This award is based on point of sale (POS) growth, program support, customer reach, engagement efforts, market expansion, and more.
TTI’s Director of Supplier Marketing, Scott Stemley, says, “TTI is proud to be recognized by SV Microwave as their 2020 Distributor of the Year. Despite the challenging market conditions, we have grown our business together by continued investments in inventory, new design creation activities and new product introductions. Congratulations go out to the entire TTI selling organization, the SV Microwave team, and its Rep network who helped make this recognition possible.”
SV's Distribution Manager, Kelley Nall, said, “Despite a global pandemic, TTI stayed committed to selling SV parts and grew sales by almost 30%. SV Microwave values TTI’s commitment and is pleased to honor such a distinguished distributor.”
SV Microwave, an Amphenol company, is a world leader in the RF/Microwave industry with over 50 years of proven performance. SV designs and manufactures RF/Microwave coaxial connectors, cable assemblies, adapters and passive components designed for military, aerospace, satellite, high speed digital, commercial and telecommunications markets.
TTI, Inc., headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2021 as the world's leading authorized distributor specialist offering passive, connector, electromechanical and discrete components. TTI's extensive product line and supply chain solutions have made the company the distributor of choice for industrial, military, aerospace and consumer electronic manufacturers worldwide. Visit thier webiste here.