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It was refreshing to hear Jim McDowell talk about the joys of adding dealerships in urban markets.
McDowell, who is vice president of Mini USA, told me that his secret weapon for boosting Mini sales in 2009 will be the 10 dealerships Mini will open before the end of the year.
Of course it also helps that Mini is in the sweet part of the market: Its an upscale brand with stylish small cars that get nearly 30 mpg in the city and more than 30 mpg on the highway -- and they appeal to a wide range of demographics and psychographics.
Meanwhile, it has become an article of faith in Washington that General Motors and Chrysler LLC need to get rid of hundreds or even thousands of dealerships as part of their restructuring efforts.
There can be no denying that in some urban markets each of the Detroit 3 has too many dealerships for them all to be profitable. The dealerships just arent selling enough new vehicles per store.
I fail to see how thats a major cost issue for the factories, but in interests of equality of sacrifice you can bet the factories -- egged on by Washington -- will whack em and stack em.
That doesnt matter to McDowell. The average Mini store sold about 650 cars last year. McDowell told me his secret for adding successful points is to open dealerships in markets that already have a critical mass of Mini owners who bought their cars elsewhere. That helps assure healthy back-shop business from the day the dealership opens.
As Automotive News reported in December, exclusive Mini dealerships will open this year in Boston; San Diego; Seattle; Alexandria, Va.; Allentown, Pa.; Pensacola, Fla.; Raleigh, N.C.; and Tempe, Ariz.
Earlier this week McDowell revealed that the next markets on the list will be Austin and El Paso, Texas.
No wonder he enjoys his work.


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In fact, the number of paint cans stashed away in garages and basements and apartment storage lockers across the United States probably runs to the hundreds of millions, and grows bigger by the year. In 2010, about 100 million more cans were added to this pile of leftover paint, estimated Scott Cassel of the Product Stewardship Institute. The Envirionmental Protection Agency estimates that about 10 percent of the exterior and interior, water-based latex paint sold for residential use each year is leftover. In 2010, this amounted to about 65 million gallons.
Homeowners almost never use this leftover paint for touch-ups. Instead, they eventually toss it, either as liquid or, following the directive of their local solid waste department, let it dry out first. Either way adds to the burden of the local landfill. A more sensible alternative is to recycle all this paint.
But who will pay for it — the users, the producers or the cash-strapped local municipality? And would a recycled paint be usable?
From 2002 to 2010, these questions were debated in meetings and conference calls organized by the Product Stewardship Institute, a Boston-based organization that focuses on reducing the environmental impact of consumer products by forging cooperative agreements between manufacturers, retailers, trade associations and government officials. After more than 60 meetings and conference calls, the paint group eventually devised a self-financed program for recycling its paint.
The first stumbling block was the viability of a recycled paint product. Despite the skepticism of paint manufacturers, successful recycling paint programs in Oregon, California, Oklahoma and Minnesota have demonstrated that when many brands of water-based latex paint are mixed under tightly controlled circumstances, the resulting mid-grade paint is virtually indistinguishable from “virgin paint.” The only thing that a consumer might notice is the limited number of colors.
How does the recycling process work? Jim Quinn, manager of MetroPaint in Portland, Ore., and John Segala, president of Amazon Paint in Fridley, Minn., both firms that have been recycling paint for nearly 20 years, described the operation. When the paint is delivered to their plants — on average about 2,500 cans a day — a crew of eight or nine people checks each can, setting aside the 15 percent whose contents are curdled, moldy, rusty, dirty or otherwise unusable. The remaining paint is sorted by color, then mixed and filtered, and a biocide is added to prevent spoilage.
Amazon offers 12 colors of Metro Paint 18. Both firms carefully maintain color consistency from batch to batch. When asked why there are so few colors, both Quinn and Segala said their offerings reflect the colors in their feedstock. While major paint manufacturers offer literally thousands of different tints (Benjamin Moore, for example offers 3,330), most people stick to the same few colors and the most popular color, by far, both men said, is off-white.

domain: news


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Oct. inflation at 3-month high
Inflation accelerated to a three-month high of 2.5 percent year-on-year in October, from 2.3 percent in the previous month, driven by a combination of higher food prices, bigger tuition expenses and the still elevated transport costs.
The rate of increase in the prices of basic commodities last month brought the end-October headline inflation average to 2.5 percent, well-within the government’s 2-4 percent target range.
Despite the October uptick, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said the pace of increases in the prices of basic commodities and services would likely stay muted over the short term due to weak demand both locally and abroad, given the lingering economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The October 2020 inflation was within the BSP’s forecast range of 1.9-2.7 percent,” BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno said. “The latest inflation outturn is consistent with the BSP’s prevailing assessment of favorable inflation dynamics over the policy horizon.”
“The balance of risks continues to lean toward the downside due largely to the impact on domestic and global economic activity of possible deeper economic disruptions caused by the pandemic,” Diokno explained.
Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data released on Thursday showed that consumer prices in October inched up by 0.4 percent compared to September levels.
National Statistician Claire Dennis Mapa told a press conference that prices of meat and fish rose by a faster 4.7 percent and 3.7 percent year-on-year, respectively, last October.
In particular, the tight supply of pork amid the African swine fever scare pushed food prices up, Mapa said.
As such, the heavily weighted food index rose by 2.1 percent in October, cutting short five straight months of decelerating rate, the PSA said in a report.
In the case of rice, last month’s prices remained lower by 0.5 percent year-on-year nationwide, even as the cost of buying the Filipino staple food in Metro Manila inched up by 1.9 percent.
Mapa said prices of regular and well-milled rice were on the rise in the National Capital Region partly due to lower volume blamed by traders on supply chain bottlenecks. In contrast, the more expensive special rice varieties saw prices ease amid abundant supply, Mapa said.
With the start of classes moved to October, the cost of enrolling especially in private high schools and colleges or universities also added to the inflation pressure, Mapa said.
The gradual reopening of the economy likewise added to the inflation uptick—for instance, the cost of barbershop services rose by 7.6 percent in October from 7 percent in September, while the lack of mass transportation kept transport costs elevated.
Tricycle fare jumped 45.8 percent year-on-year last month; jeepney fare, up 6.4 percent, and bus fare, up 4.1 percent, Mapa said.
Meanwhile, core inflation—which excludes selected volatile food and energy items to measure underlying price pressures—eased to 3 percent year-on-year in October from 3.2 percent in September.
As food and transport prices were elevated, the bottom 30-percent households had to shell out more, with a faster inflation of 2.9 percent, also a three-month high among poor families.Food inflation rose 1.5 percent in October from 1.1 percent in September, while education costs also rose by 1.5 percent for the bottom 30-percent households, the PSA said in a separate report.
The October inflation figure was unable to capture the effects on prices of the weather disturbances that occurred toward the month’s end. Mapa said the impact of the typhoons specifically on agricultural goods would be felt in November.
In a statement, Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua said the impact of the adverse weather conditions in recent months on the agricultural sector and food prices also posed upside risks to inflation.
Given these developments, Diokno said the Monetary Board would consider the latest inflation outturn and the upcoming release of the third quarter gross domestic product data in its assessment of the outlook for inflation and economic activity for the group’s interest rate setting meeting on Nov. 19.
“The BSP stands ready to deploy all available measures in its toolkit in fulfillment of its policy mandate as it continues to assess the impact of the global health crisis on the domestic economy,” he said.
Earlier, Diokno said he would likely keep policy rates untouched over the course of the next two quarters with real policy rates now negative at -0.25 percent, and after rolling out a series of aggressive rate cuts earlier this year.
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- Rec Room announced it closed $100 million in a new round of funding at a valuation of $1.25 billion. These are the details.
Rec Room, a gaming platform for user-generated content, announced recently that it closed a $100 million round of funding. This funding round brought the company valuation to $1.25 billion. The new funding round was led by existing investors Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures with participation from existing investor Madrona Venture Group.
This news brings a year of unprecedented milestones for the company (launched in 2016) as it celebrates 15 million lifetime users and 566% year-over-year revenue growth.
Rec Room – which can be accessed via VR headsets, game consoles, PCs, and mobile devices – has over 5 million rooms to explore with friends. And these rooms are built by players inside of Rec Room leveraging their easy-to-use creative tools.
In Rec Room, you can party up with friends worldwide, and build everything from escape rooms to adventure games, battle royale islands to birthday parties. And to date, over 2 million players have created content inside of Rec Room, making it one of the largest collaboratively-built virtual worlds ever made. This number continues to grow with incentives like the Creator Compensation program – which will pay out more than $1 million to creators during 2021.
Beyond just gaming, Rec Room became the go-to place for digital hangouts, creative classes, adventures with your friends, office build-outs, weddings, and more. And this is yet another reason for the company’s rapid growth — though many of its users are in their teens, Rec Room is highly customizable and can be used by anyone and for nearly any function imaginable.
Rec Room – which is free to download and play – is available on iOS, Xbox, PlayStation, Oculus, and Steam.
“Rec Room was founded with the goal of bringing people together and giving them tools to express their creativity. Every day we see the Rec Room community creating friendships, making memories, and launching new digital entrepreneurs. We think providing those opportunities are more important now than ever. Rec Room is only at the beginning of its journey, and we’re excited to use this funding to help more people connect, create and play.”
— Rec Room Co-Founder and CEO Nick Fajt
“As a new generation comes online, Rec Room is the destination to explore new worlds with friends, create your own games and imaginative worlds, and even earn money sharing your creations. Since first partnering with Nick and team at the seed, we’re thrilled to continue working with them to build a safe and welcoming community for all, and to make Rec Room the digital third place for kids at heart.”
— Stephanie Zhan, Sequoia partner and Rec Room board member


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Cedar Rapids’ newest Indian restaurant brings not only a new taste from the owner’s home country, but a vision of it in a way many international cuisine restaurants haven’t attempted.
The popular Italian restaurant will reopen at the iconic former People’s Savings Bank nearly nine months after closing last year. Also in this week’s Chew on This: Black Sheep Brewed now open.
The new restaurant at Bowman Square in Northeast Cedar Rapids held a grand opening Aug. 25.
Dorothy de Souza Guedes
Restaurants Aug. 18, 2021 6:00 am
Fans of Villa’s Patio in Marion will find the same south-of-the-border specialties and favorite margaritas and tequilas in its second location in Cedar Rapids. But with indoor seating for up to 200 and a bigger patio outdoors, you’ll have more room to spread out.


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Apple’s iOS 17.4 update brings critical security fixes for iPhone; Update your devices now
iPhone’s iOS 17.4 update brings exciting changes for EU users but more importantly, tackles critical security threats. Know why updating is vital to safeguard your Apple devices.
Apple has rolled out iOS 17.4, grabbing headlines for its new feature allowing EU users to run third-party app stores on iPhones. While this has stolen the spotlight, there's a more crucial reason to hit that 'Update' button - it addresses two severe security vulnerabilities.
According to a recent security update from Apple reported by BleepingComputer, iOS 17.4 and iPadOS 17.4 tackle two zero-day bugs in the iOS kernel and Apple's RTKit. These bugs posed a risk of bypassing kernel memory protections, potentially granting attackers elevated access to your device. Taking quick action is paramount, and you can secure your iPhone by navigating to Settings > General > Software Update and following the prompts.
mobile to buy?
Critical Security Vulnerabilities
These vulnerabilities are not merely theoretical. Apple acknowledges being "aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited" in both cases. The term "zero-day" indicates that hackers could exploit these flaws undetected. With this revelation, the urgency to update your device becomes evident, given that Apple has promptly issued fixes.
The impact of these bugs spans across a wide array of devices, including iPhone XS and later, various iPad Pro models, iPad Air, iPad, and iPad mini from 3rd generation onwards. This potentially puts a significant number of users at risk.
Zero-day vulnerabilities are typically exploited in targeted attacks, often by sophisticated state-sponsored groups. Apple has not disclosed specifics about the exploitation or the discovery, leaving users in the dark about potential threats.
Apple devices, once considered impervious, are increasingly becoming targets. Reports indicate that there were 20 active zero-day flaws targeting Apple products in 2023, double the previous year's count. Three zero-day attacks on Apple devices have already been patched in 2024, highlighting the evolving threat landscape.
Why should you update your iPhone regularly?
In the face of these cybersecurity risks, it underscores the importance of keeping devices up-to-date with the latest patches, especially those addressing security vulnerabilities. The digital landscape is rife with sophisticated hacking groups, making it a perilous gamble to leave devices unprotected. Don't take chances – download the latest iOS 17.4 update promptly and fortify your device against potential threats.
Catch all the Latest Tech News, Mobile News, Laptop News, Gaming news, Wearables News , How To News, also keep up with us on Whatsapp channel,Twitter, Facebook, Google News, and Instagram. For our latest videos, subscribe to our YouTube channel.


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Where do diners go for a memorable meal out, whether they’re a foodie or just entertaining one? OpenTable Inc., the online restaurant reservation system, has compiled its Top 50 Restaurants for Foodies list as part of its annual Diners’ Choice award to help answer this question.
The San Francisco-based company polled nearly 10 million of its users to assemble these restaurant picks for those diners looking to be wowed by a restaurant’s fare.
“These restaurants have been singled out for being able to satisfy the folks for whom dining is practically sport — those avid, passionate eaters, often armed with cameras, who take careful notes and relish every bite,” said Caroline Potter, OpenTable chief dining officer, in a statement. “While the restaurants on this list specialize in different cuisines and styles of cooking, each winner is pushing a boundary, maintaining an ethic, and practicing perfection with each dish.”
Here are 10 selected restaurants from OpenTable’s list:
• Abattoir, Atlanta
• Coi, San Francisco
• Dirt Candy, New York
• Frasca Food and Wine, Boulder, Colo.
• Heartland Restaurant & Farm Direct Market, St. Paul, Minn.
• Osteria Mozza, Los Angeles
• Saffron Restaurant & Lounge, Minneapolis
• Sprout, Chicago
• Spur Gastropub, Seattle
• wd-50, New York
Take a look at these restaurants’ mouthwatering dishes


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Cox Motors gathers holiday toy donations
Cox Motors in New Richmond plans a Toys for Tots event aimed at making the Christmas holidays more special for underprivileged kids in the area.
The car dealership's first annual "Fill This F-150 Event" will be held from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 3.
Anyone who brings in a new, unwrapped toy to Cox Motors will get a free photo taken with Santa, courtesy of JC Design and Photography.
Jet's Coffee Bistro will provide coffee for the event. And New Richmond's Aaron Foster will perform live music.
Cox Motors invites the public to enjoy coffee, hot cocoa and cookies while getting into the Christmas spirit and helping out a wonderful cause.
Toys will still be accepted at Cox from now until Saturday, Dec. 10.


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INDORE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi
on Friday asked young entrepreneurs of Indore to set an example before the nation in organic farming by making Indore district free of chemical-based farming and linking street vendors with tech to increase profitability.
He was addressing a gathering of entrepreneurs virtually at the launch of state’s startup policy. Speaking to Tausif Khan
, founder of a startup working in agriculture sector for past six years, Modi
said, “Indore has set an example in cleanliness before the country.
Now, with efforts of your startup and Chief Minister who is also sitting here, can Indore district and its farmers get into chemical-free farming? If farmers decide, then Indore district can set up an example in organic farming.”
Modi asked about the trend in adoption of natural farming among farmers and how to integrate soil testing facilities with farmers connected with his startup.
Responding to the query Tausif said, “We are propagating technology in agriculture sector and promoting organic products so as to increase productivity and improve the quality of soil.”
Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan
speaking to media over Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging the country's cleanest city to also become first district to opt for 100 percent organic farming, said, “Under PM's direction, we are already working on promoting organic farming. Recently, we gathered farmers from across the state and educated them about organic farming.”
“For organic farming, a farmer must have at least one cow as cow dung, urine etc help in organic farming in 30 acre area. Therefore, we will give Rs 900/month for rearing a cow,” he said.
The Prime Minister also sought assistance from entrepreneurs in enhancing profitability of street vendors through technology and technological support for PM SVANidhi scheme that aims at providing financial assistance to these vendors.
Interacting with Tanu Tejas Saraswat, founder of an online store to organise kirana stores, Modi asked how street vendors can be linked with technology and a system can be created to bring them to online network. “Can you create a system for street vendors and bring them together on an online network. The central government is running a SVANidhi scheme for street vendors and can they be connected to technology?” he asked.
The PM also asked about initial challenges Saraswat faced in connecting kirana shop owners to technology. Saraswat said, “Now more than 50,000 kirana shops are connected with this startup but initially convincing non-tech savvy shopkeepers to upgrade to technology was a major challenge.”
The PM also interacted with Umang Shreedhar
, founder of a startup working with artisans in promoting Khadi & organic fabrics.


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Marriott woos tourists
The Doha Marriott Gulf Hotel used to be called the Sheraton Gulf until July 1999 when the Marriott chain took over the landmark hotel, established 21 years ago.Marriott immediately set about refurbishing and improving the 352-room property, putting in place a brand new lobby, one of the most spacious in the Gulf. According to director of sales and marketing Julian Hagger, every food and beverage outlet has been subjected to some kind of renovation. One tower of the hotel has been completed and another one is due to be renovated in 2002. "We are a mix between an airport hotel and a resort, the only one so far with its own private marina," boasted Hagger. He said the Marriott had gained a reputation as a "social centre" among Qataris with the large, Arabic-style lobby featuring live grand piano music impressing visitors. The emergence of several luxury hotels in Doha does not discourage Hagger who believes there is potential for all in the rapidly developing corporate business and tourism scenario of Qatar. As regards the endeavour to bring in larger numbers of tourists to Doha, he said it would succeed best if it became a co-operative venture with government authorities, local hotels, tour operators and airlines acting in the interests of all. The approach should be market-based, he said, pointing out that short getaway packages had already become established business in many Gulf cities, which should inspire Doha to do the same. "We're starting to change our image from a corporate hotel to a more leisurely hotel," said Hagger. The Marriott is now emphasising strongly its sports and fitness facilities to attract the short getaway tourists. "We've done the whole of the exterior pool deck. We're focusing on the leisure aspects," he said. The hotel has announced what it says are attractive rates to lure Qatar residents for weekend stays. "Corporate people don't stay for the weekend, so we are making up by having the local community come in for that period," said Hagger. They are offered use of the Health Club featuring steam and Turkish baths, Jacuzzi, massage and therapy rooms as well as a gymnasium with the latest equipment. Fare highlights at the four restaurants are Asian, Indian, Mediterranean and Mexican cuisines. The leisure side is further emphasised by arrangements for dhow trips and visits to the dunes and monuments. The hotel sees opportunities in convention tourism and has the facilities to cater to that aspect of the business with three seminar rooms and the ballroom Al Fayrouz which can host corporate banquets as well as weddings and state banquets. The Executive Tower Concierge Lounge is the largest facility of its kind in Doha with meetings and conference rooms overlooking the bay.


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Unicode 14.0 is now official. The Unicode Consortium has presented the new characters included in the new version, among which are 37 new emojis that will arrive on your mobile soon.
The Unicode Consortium, the organization responsible for coordinating the development of the Unicode character encoding standard, has just released Unicode 14.0, the new version of the Unicode standard.
Unicode 14.0 includes 838 new characters, of which 37 are new emojis that will soon arrive on your mobile. These new emoticons will also have 75 skin color variations, making a total of 112 new ones that are included as part of Emoji 14.0.
Although we had already seen a preview of these designs in the draft that appeared last July, now that Unicode 14.0 has been officially presented we already know for sure which are the emoticons that we will be able to start using shortly on WhatsApp and other apps on our mobile.
As we can see in Emojipedia, the emoji keyboard of our smartphones will receive new facial expressions, gestures, characters and objects.
Among the new collection of emoticons that comes with Unicode 14.0, the most important are the face that makes the military salute, the one that melts, the one that covers its mouth and the one with watery eyes.
In the gestures section The gesture that invites a handshake, the hand that points to us, the hand that crosses the forefinger and thumb, and the mouth that bites the lower lip stand out.
They also reach the emoji catalog new characters, among which the king with a crown, the pregnant man or the troll stand out.
Nor could they miss the new objects. Very soon we will be able to use the disco ball, the nest full of eggs and empty, the slide, the life preserver, the tire, the low battery indicator, the crutch or the X-ray. In the following capture you can see them all with their different skin tone variations:
The official presentation of Unicode 14.0 does not mean that we can start using the new emojis now. Following the launch of the new standard, now major vendors, such as Apple, Google or Samsung, can start to implement these emoticons in their software.
Therefore, we will still have to wait a few months until we can use the new emojis on our smartphone. From Emojipedia they point out that most of the updates will take place in the first half of 2022.


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Two powersports dealers have signed on as sponsors for the first Ventura County Off-Road Expo May 8-9 at the Ventura County Fairgrounds in Ventura, Calif.
Thousand Oaks Powersports and Off Road Werkz of Ventura have joined the sponsoring ranks.
Organizers promise that national and local exhibitors will showcase the latest models of trucks, Jeeps, UTVs, sand rails, ATVs, SSVs, dirt bikes, RVs, aftermarket accessories, buggies, camping accessories and toy haulers, for enthusiasts.
“This is the first event of this kind in Ventura County and we hope the local community will come out and support the expo and participating local businesses as well as exhibitors from all over Northern and Southern California,” said Courtney Holland, show promoter. “Our goal is to raise awareness and show support for the growing off-road community while promoting off-road safety and adventure.”
Holland says a portion of each ticket sold would benefit several non-profit organizations that work to preserve public lands for off-road enthusiasts.
Consumer ticket prices are $10 for adults, $2 military ID discount, children under 12 attend free with adult. Online ticket sales are at www.VenturaCountyOffRoadExpo.com and www.BrownPaperTickets.com.
Those interested in exhibiting may contact Holland at (805) 822-3018.
Posted by Holly Wagner


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International Confex’s Let’s Do London Theatre’s final session, 2 September, was a discussion on ‘The Power of Data’. The panel analysed how data will play a role in helping event venues and bookings build for the future.
Speakers included Lily Lubowitz, group sales manager at CH&CO Venues; Peter Heath, owner and founder of Venue Performance; Luis Desouza, CEO of NFS Technology Group; Leigh Cowlishaw, managing partner and former chair of Black Box Partnership, HBAA; and Jamie Blackmore, managing director at Revenage.
Lubowitz highlighted how the pandemic had forced businesses “to use data, because there was no other experience on which to base strategies”. Desouza stated that there was now an “urgent need to be informed”, which data is crucial to. There was, he said, a need to collect data after a shortage of traditional databases owing to the pandemic.
Blackmore added that data must be used to have “a better understanding of demand” and Lubowitz concluded that post-event data is the key to understanding “satisfaction with the venue”, which allows prices to be adjusted justifiably.
For further information on International Confex 21, visit here


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New York's new MLS club checking out Bronx property for stadium
- Staff New York Business Journal
Major League Soccer’s next expansion team, the New York City Football Club, appears to have moved on from plans to build a stadium at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and instead could propose building one in the Bronx, near Yankee Stadium.
According to a report by the New York Times, the team has begun laying the groundwork for a facility that would hold more than 25,000 spectators and would sit on land currently occupied by a parking garage run by the nonprofit Bronx Parking Development Company. That company is in some financial trouble, the Times said, so it’s not clear what, precisely, MLS and New York FC’s owners may have to do in the way of compensation.
The Wall Street Journal explained that the Bronx Parking Development Company’s fortunes have turned with the New York Yankees’ -- parking occupancy in the garage often fails to exceed 45 percent, which is about half of what was projected before the new Yankee Stadium was built.
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The London-based agency was also responsible for the design elements of the 2012 London Olympics.
In December 2022, Tata Group onboarded FutureBrand, a London-based design consultancy which is a part of the Interpublic Group of Companies (IPG), to reconfigure Air India’s identity. Yesterday, the brand revealed a new logo designed by the agency.
Helmed by CEO Nick Sykes, FutureBrand has worked with some global brands such as American Airlines, where they helped the company redesign its identity. The company also helped Lenovo-owned Motorolla, where the agency used Lenovo’s brand personality to develop a ‘more is more’ aesthetic for the brand.
For Bentley, FutureBrand helped the brand to decipher the emerging global luxury consumer and redefine how Bentley looks, feels, and communicates with them. The agency took upon itself the transformational journey of Bentley, and decided to departure from the super-premium car sector, seeking a place in the world's top luxury brands.
What followed was an extension of Bentley's prospects. The introduced a premium Suite in St Regis, New York, and also announced an exclusive range of luxury ladies handbags.
The agency was also behind the 2012 London Olympics’ colours, identity elements, logo, and font. The challenge for the company was to develop a gamestime look for both Olympic and Paralympic games, while maintaining a uniform overall look for London 2012.
To bring this to fruition, FutureBrand developed an identity system that worked across all touchpoints and campaigns. This included signage, interior dressing, street dressing, ticket design, medal ribbons, the transport for athletes. As per the agency, this was the first time in Olympics history when 'One Look' was created to work for both Olympics and Paralympics and for the rest of the city.
The brand strategy intricately linked the torch relay with the volunteering programme, aligned the visual aesthetics of the games with the ticket sales approach, established a connection between sponsors and their customer base, intertwined the Olympics with the Paralympics, and fostered a sense of unity between the people of London, the broader British population, and their Games. This comprehensive approach played a pivotal role in reshaping the perception of both the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The company has now helped Air India find a new skin, with the unveiling of ‘The Vista’, as the company calls its new logo. The new Air India identity retains the familiar "Maharajah" mascot, but it's subtly reimagined to resonate with a modern audience.
As per the agency’s website, it offers services including corporate & service branding, consumer branding, retail & hospitality experience, digital brand experience, brand innovation, brand research & measurement, employee engagement, and country branding.


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Does content impact engagement with advertising? Nova has commissioned what it is calling the “biggest neuroscience radio research project in the world” in a bid to prove to advertisers its Smooth format is the right mix for ad reception.
The study, commissioned by Nova’s in-house integration team Create, was conducted by Neuro-Insights to find out the impact of its “relaxed” Smooth format from an engagement and advertising point of view.
It found that SmoothFM’s audience is 11% more engaged in ad breaks than its competitors, and 8% more engaged with its programming content in general. The study found women, Smooth's key demographic, are 10% more engaged in the Smooth content than with competitor stations. This results in 160% stronger conversion into memory encoding.
The research measured 115 billion data points by studying the electrical brain patterns of 400 participants hearing real time content from Smooth and four direct competitors: WSFM, Kiis, 2Day and Triple M.
Neuro-Insights director Peter Pynta said the study also looked at how much the ad break engagement can be explained by the program engagement.
“There really is a transfer of engagement from the program into the ad break,” Pynta said. “The same ad in two different program environments can be processed very differently as a function of how engaging the program environment is.”
He said the Smooth FM memory encoding or potential for that to be stored in long term memory is 92% more influenced by content and ad break engagement than for competitors.
Head of create Kate Day said neuroscience was chosen by the network because it could stand up to scrutiny.
“It has an objective and scientific nature,” Day said. “The results are factual and real, so it removes any chances of data manipulation.
“There’s no other media brand in Australia created around the feeling of relaxation – we believe this unique program format is our point of difference and is the key reason our audience is so highly engaged with our content,” Day added.
Did you catch our previous neuroscience-related piece with Richard Silberstein who works as a part-time professor and leads an internationally operating company in neuroscience? Check it out :Conceptual closure can kill television ads.
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at email@example.com


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Euronda in Riga for Expo Latvia Dental 2022
Expo Latvia Dental of Riga from 21 to 22 April 2022
On 21 and 22 April 2022, Euronda will be taking part for the first time in the Expo Latvia Dental in Riga, the international event dedicated to dental innovation.
Two days during which Euronda will be bringing to Riga all the high safety standards and attractive colour of its product line, with its comprehensive suite of equipment dedicated to the sterilisation protocol (Pro System) and its disposable devices and product ranges (Monoart) as well as sterile disposables for surgical environments (Alle).
Expo Latvia Dental will be held in ATTA Center in Riga.


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If we've said it once, we've said it a million times before: it's not easy keeping an all-new vehicle under wraps.
Read This Article
Picture Jeep dropping the ever stalwart Wrangler from its line-up.
According to corporate overlord Tata Motors, the Range Rover Evoque is single-handedly buoying the Jaguar Land Rover business.
The name "Defender" has long been synonymous with Land Rover, although lately its future has been in doubt.


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“This is the first time that the benefits of virtual cards can be applied to commercial tap and go payments. Commercial card program managers will be able to see the rich data that a virtual card can deliver, together with a payment experience that’s as good as any in the consumer space”. explained by Simon Barker, CEO, Conferma Pay.
Conferma Pay , May 6, 2020
Brings a fully integrated solution with virtual and tap to pay capabilities to commercial card issuers.
Fintech leader Conferma Pay has teamed up with Visa to integrate Visa virtual cards in the Conferma Pay mobile app. This solution is now globally available to Visa’s commercial bank clients, allowing them to bring the Conferma Pay app to their corporate customers as part of Visa’s broader technology offering.
Employees can now make virtual-card payments anywhere contactless payments are accepted, with a tap of a phone, using the Conferma Pay app to provision a virtual commercial card to their phone’s digital wallet. With Conferma Pay’s mobile app, the total spend will be captured in a single record, providing the commercial card program manager with complete visibility into an individual’s spend, eliminating the need for paper receipts or manually submitted expenses.
Simon Barker, CEO, Conferma Pay explained: “This is the first time that the benefits of virtual cards can be applied to commercial tap and go payments. Commercial card program managers will be able to see the rich data that a virtual card can deliver, together with a payment experience that’s as good as any in the consumer space”.
The collaboration between Conferma Pay and Visa creates an efficient and globally available mobile payment solution. Participating companies will now have the ability to grant controlled spending power to individuals without the need to issue physical cards. Additional benefits to businesses include:
- Avoids the need for employees to use their own money to pay for expenses, which amounts to $1.6 Billion a month in the U.S. alone (Conferma Pay)
- Gives managers the ability to access data and oversee costs incurred in real time
- Drastically improves the payment experience for employees by ensuring one payment method can be used for all spend requirements, incorporating tap to pay payment capabilities.
“Visa’s collaboration with Conferma Pay is another important initiative in greatly reducing friction in expense payments for businesses globally,” said Kevin Phalen, SVP, Global Head, Visa Business Solutions. “Conferma Pay is an innovative fintech partner that will help Visa’s commercial clients bring virtual-card innovation to their business clients worldwide.”


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Android Mobile Casinos Big Winners as OS Grabs Half of Market Share
Feb 22, 2011
Android finally took the 50% share of the smartphone market, which is great news for Android mobile casino developers, as 4 out of 5 top selling mobile phones are now powered by Google’s OS.
According to the latest data, provided by uSwitch, Android powered smartphones now account for 50% of all new mobiles sold throughout the world. Apple, who is still recovering from the lackluster reviews and lukewarm reception of its new Verizon iPhone, is in for even more bad news, based on the latest sales data. For the first time, the iPhone is no longer on the top 5 list of the best selling smartphones, putting even more pressure on Apple to make sure that iPhone 5 will be something truly fantastic to remain competitive.
The mobile casino software development companies, who have carefully followed the sales trends for the past year, have begun to reshuffle their development budgets to relocate the biggest piece of the pie towards new games for Android casinos. Reports from employment agencies indicate that expert Android programmers are now the hottest property in the tech market, commanding salaries of over $100/hour.
A quick look at the five best selling smartphones, shows the big picture. Android-operated HTC devices take three top places in the chart, thanks to their OS, technological scope, innovative functionality and slick design. The two newly unveiled HTC “Facebook” phones: ChaCha and Salsa, which will retail within 60 days, are sure to climb to the top of the list as well. The Samsung Galaxy S is in fifth place, and is also powered by Android, which according to recently leaked data, is the most frequently used Android powered smartphone used to access Android mobile casinos. The soon to be released Galaxy S2, which was the winner of the Barcelona World Mobile Congress, will make the top 5 list within days of its release, according to industry analysts.
The 16 gigabyte iPhone 4, dropped down to the lowly sixth place, which is sure to cause heart palpitations for the operators and developers of iPhone casinos, who have another 3-4 months of sleepless nights before the iPhone 5 makes its debut. The overall market is extremely volatile and a dose of completion between Google, Apple and Microsoft is sure to benefit both consumers and developers. Yet the lower licensing fees of Android, as well as the amazing functionality of the soon to be released Android Honeycomb, make this mobile operating system the hottest piece of real estate in the world of mobile technology today.
List of top 10 best selling smartphone as of February 22, 2011
1. HTC Desire
2. HTC Desire HD
3. HTC Wildfire
4. Blackberry Curve 8520
5. Samsung Galaxy S
6. Apple iPhone 4 (16Gb)
7. Motorola DEFY
8. Sony Ericsson S500i
9. Samsung G800
Tags: Android, Cloud clients, Computing, Google, Input/Output, iPhone, Linksys iPhone, Mobile phone, mobile phones, Portable media players, Smartphone, smartphones, Technology, Touchscreens, uSwitch, Verizon, Verizon iPhone


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What started as a hobby for many students during the pandemic has grown into a profitable side-hustle. Here’s how some gifted note-takers turned creators are making their study guides sell.
Chelsea Reinhardt didn’t set out to make a living from nursing study guides. Initially, she just had a lot of free time on her hands.
As a former nursing student herself, she understood how difficult it could be to grasp concepts just by reading textbooks. So while working as a tutor for nursing students, she would often spend her downtime making condensed, highly visual course notes on her tablet. “While I had time between helping students, I would tweak my notes to make them a little more aesthetically pleasing, and I got pretty good at it,” she says. Before long, her students started noticing, and when some of them offered to buy copies of her notes, she thought she might be onto something.
“I have no background in design or art,” she says, “I’m a very scientific person. But I just knew how to organize content in a way that made sense visually.” Perhaps it was her scientific side then that prompted her to run an experiment one day: “I decided to just see what would happen if I posted some of my notes on Etsy.”
So she did, and the results spoke for themselves. “Within a year, I was making more money from my Etsy shop than I was at my part-time job,” she says. Her shop has been so successful, in fact, that Chelsea’s fiancée recently quit her job to help run the admin side of the business, processing orders and managing customer emails.
Today, CeceStudyGuides has sold over 27,500 guides on more than 50 nursing-related topics, from respiratory disorders to EKG essentials. And it’s not just Chelsea who’s found success in the niche student note market. A cottage industry of study guides, slideshow explainers, and curated notes has taken off online in the last few years.
Part of this surge in specialized notes and study guides can be tied directly to the rise of online marketplaces like Etsy, which offer an easy, agile way for people to sell their own content online in a digital format. But Etsy’s been around for a while now, and it wasn’t until the cultural shift towards remote learning in 2020 that this industry truly took off.
It seems that, for this subsection of the creator economy, the timing couldn’t be better. More projects that would have been side-hustles before are now viable career options. Here, we hear from some of the big players in this space about how they got their start, how they plan to grow their businesses, and more.
A cottage industry of study guides, slideshow explainers, and curated notes has taken off online in the last few years.
Accelerated by online learning, sustained by student need
Although Chelsea’s been running her shop successfully since 2018, she noticed that sales really started to spike in March and April of 2020. The increased appetite for visual resources as students were adjusting to at-home learning made sense. As Chelsea tells it, “Nursing isn’t something you can learn easily from home, and people were really struggling,” she says. “Without as much clinical time and in-person learning, it was just a lot of sitting on Zoom and trying to read through a textbook, which is overwhelming.”
Chelsea’s guides were a great antidote to that overwhelm and monotony; they stood out for their visual appeal as well as their straightforward simplicity. Being able to bridge that gap for students gave Chelsea a renewed sense of passion for the study guides she was providing. “I remember how hard nursing school was, so to be able to make students’ lives easier is really important to me,” says Chelsea. But even as students have been transitioning back to in-person learning, demand hasn’t slowed.
In fact, it’s stayed as strong as ever. “I think my guides help people feel less stressed about having to spend so much time reading their textbooks,” says Chelsea. That’s a benefit that students will always find value in, and it’s a nugget of truth that Chelsea’s used to keep up her truly prolific amount of output.
Chelsea’s done such a good job of creating student resources, in fact, that she’s even been approached by educators asking if they can use her guides as a class textbook. And while she’s not sure what the future holds, she knows there’s no shortage of subject matter she could improve with the CeceStudyGuide treatment. “When I first started, I was doing custom orders on subjects people were asking for help with,” she says, “But as my portfolio grew, I was just going through textbooks and finding the holes, seeing what could be explained better.”
This strategy served her well, and it’s what continues to inform her work. “I’m planning to branch out to pre-nursing course notes soon, like anatomy and physiology, but eventually I’d like to teach classes on how students can make better notes themselves.” If nothing else, Chelsea’s success has proven that there’s an appetite for resources like this that’s only going up—and spreading to other subject areas, as well.
Subject expertise is an advantage, but not essential
Jessie’s story, like Chelsea’s, shows that impressive alchemy can take place when a great eye for organization meets a passion for a specific subject matter. But other sellers are catching on that there’s also value in setting up templates that let people fill in that second part of the equation themselves.
Erika Grimaldi of WildberryPlanner got her start this way. Today, she sells digital notebook templates that allow students to choose from a number of formats, depending on the subject matter and the student’s specific needs.
Unlike Jessie and Chelsea, Erika’s background is rooted in design, and she uses that skill set to inform the resources she creates. “When I got started, there were similar resources out there, but they were all pink, and the design quality was often lacking.” She focused on creating unique, retro-inspired templates that offered flexibility and allowed for information hierarchy.
The key to Erika’s success has been adaptability. Students can use her notebooks for any subject, and they can also include hyperlinks to further online resources and separate them out by subject. These features make each template repeatable and infinitely useful, empowering students to harness their own expertise.
The market for organization isn’t going anywhere
There’s a lot to learn from the star sellers of the online note-taking community. Passion and a knack for organization seem to serve as the universal spark that helped them get started, but it’s a love of learning that has kept the fire going. Those creators who are willing to put the time into Instagram and TikTok advertising are also finding new audiences every day who are looking for learning hacks.
As students return to in-person learning, it doesn’t look like online note sales will suffer, either. Whether creators set up an Etsy shop or use extensions like Shopify or Dropbox Shop to sell, there’s no shortage of avenues these creators can take to reach audiences and sell their content. As it’s been said often over the last few years, you can’t go back through a one-way door. The online creator economy is thriving, and subsections like this one are proof that it’s finding ever more ways to grow.


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Three California Sears stores among 79 outlets to close nationwide
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Three Sears stores in California are among 79 stores nationwide on the chopping block after a dismal holiday season forced Sears Holdings Corp. to retool its strategy.
Two Sears stores in San Diego and one in El Monte will be closed at a date yet to be determined. The Illinois retailer posted a list of 41 Sears and 38 Kmart outlets targeted for closure, the first wave of the 100 to 120 total stores that the company ultimately plans to shut down. The list can be viewed here.
Retail analysts believe that the company, which has suffered more than four years of sales declines, may be edging toward bankruptcy unless it takes drastic action to upgrade its stores and revamp its merchandise.
After domestic sales dropped 5.2% in the two months leading up to Christmas, the retailer announced a new strategy redirecting resources away from ‘marginally performing’ stores and toward more profitable shops. The company said Tuesday that lackluster holiday sales coupled with rising costs will slash fourth-quarter earnings to less than half the $933 million it reported a year earlier.
Sears Holdings is controlled by billionaire financier Edward Lampert, who gained control of Kmart in 2003 and two years later brought Sears, Roebuck & Co. into the fold. As board chairman, Lampert has held down costs by cutting investment in stores and reducing product assortment, decisions that retail analysts say won short-term profits at the expense of long-term growth.
Sears shares fell 43 cents, or 1.3%, to $32.90 on Thursday.
-- Shan Li


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An arbitrator with the National Arbitration Forum has recently awarded the domain name Guesssoldesparis.com to Guess.The company submitted the complaint on October 26,2015..
According to whois records, Guesssoldesparis.com was first registered in August,2015.
Guess owns many trademark registrations for the “GUess” mark all over the world.Therefore,it is more than obvious that the disputed domain name is confusingly similar with its trademark .Moreover,the company contended in the complaint that the respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name and that the respondent registered and used the disputed domain name in bad faith .
The arbitrator assigned to the case ruled in favor of Guess,indicating that the company has full rights to the disputed domain name .The respondent’s loss was also partly due to the fact that he failed to submit a response in this proceeding ,accepting these way Microsoft’s allegations as fact .
You can read the decision here .


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The 39th annual Natural Products Expo West is now behind us, and, with more brands taking part than ever before, it proved to be one of the most successful in the event’s history.
For those who didn’t attend, try to imagine walking through football fields of never-ending aisles with products from your favorite brands, and a wealth of products not yet available to the public. From ingredient transparency, to CBD in all forms, to keto diet goods, Expo West provided visitors with an abundance of incredibly interesting trends and innovations emerging from the natural products marketplace.
Approximately 90,000 industry professionals descended upon California for the event, where over 3,500 brands displayed their products, including 300 first-time exhibitors.
As in year’s past, we came away from the event with a tremendous amount of inspiration and insights in a variety of fields. However, there were definitely a few emerging trends and innovations that stuck out to us.
CBD is still taking the market by storm! For consumers seeking out natural alternatives to over-the-counter medicine, whether it be muscle and joint pain relief, anti-anxiety and relaxation, or just a better night’s sleep, CBD is more widely available than ever before. We saw tons of brands touting their innovative hemp and CBD-infused products and ingredients – ranging from oils and skincare to CBD-infused water and brownies!
Whether it was the keto, paleo, or gluten-free diet, the Expo West show floor was filled with brands, products, and innovations pushing functional nutrition. Clean eating, which has always been an ebb and flow fad within the health industry, has gained a remarkable amount of steady interest from consumers over the past year. This is a space to keep an eye on, especially as studies continue to be published on the latest and greatest nutritional trends.
Whether it is with nature or the body, sustainability, which means choosing and consuming foods and products that positively impact our environment and society, was a predominant theme at Expo West this year. This concept was best expressed through brand’s attempts to be ultra-transparent with ingredient quality and origin by harvesting them themselves. We encountered brands with walnut butter made by their own walnuts and beauty brands growing their own calendulas and florals for their products.
Beauty from within
Food brands are creating beauty products and beauty brands are creating food products. We saw the start of this on the floor two to three years ago, but this year we saw the products have evolved to be more routine and behavioral, versus just taking a pill without changing your wellness regime. Collagen shots, special shakes, and products from beauty brands that belong in your refrigerator instead of your medicine cabinet, were competing for attention.
Watch the Natural Products Expo West 2019 video here:


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Texas Petrochemicals Commissions Baytown Operations
Wednesday July 11, 11:22 am ET
HOUSTON, July 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Texas Petrochemicals, Inc., a leading petrochemical company specializing in the production of valued added products derived from C4 and C3 hydrocarbons, today announced it has started the commissioning of its new nonene and propylene tetramer facility in Baytown with start-up and initial plant operations expected to begin by the end of July.
TPC's Baytown Operations, which will expand the Company's product portfolio, include a two-train, world-scale facility that will produce nonene and propylene tetramer as well as polymer gasoline and propane. The majority of the facility's output is already committed to customers under long-term contracts.
"The expansion of our Baytown Operations and the completion of this project is a significant milestone for the Company and marks an important step in servicing our customers' needs," said Charles Shaver, president and CEO of TPC.
Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Texas Petrochemicals Inc. is a premier chemical company with more than $1.5 billion in annual sales. Its products are sold to a wide range of performance, specialty and intermediate markets, including synthetic rubber, fuel additives, plastics and detergents. The Company has manufacturing facilities in the industrial corridor adjacent to the Houston Ship Channel, Port Neches and Baytown, Texas and operates a product terminal in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Source: Texas Petrochemicals, Inc.
Engineering News Archive


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It's one of the biggest hits in mobile gaming history and this week it reached a huge milestone. Rovio announced this week that the puzzle arcade game Angry Birds has now achieved over 500 million downloads. The original version of the game was first released back in December 2009 for Apple's iOS platform and has since expanded to Android, Mac, PC, Windows Phone, the PSP-PS3 platforms and more.
It's not a shock to see why. The combination of creating a addictive mix of puzzle and arcade gameplay with heavy use of physics and some cute (but angry) birds being shot into the air was a brilliant move. It didn't hurt that you could play the game for free with some banner ads popping into view briefly (you can also purchase the game to get rid of the ads).
Angry Birds is also starting to make itself known in the mainstream. You can already buy Angry Birds stuffed animals at your local Wal Mart and Rovio has announced that more than 10 million Angry Birds toys have shipped worldwide so far. It's also not a shock to learn that Rovio has acquired its own animation studio in order to make its own Angry Birds animated cartoons.
But it's the game that will continue to expand to other platforms (where is our Xbox 360 version, Rovio?) and will also continue to keep people fixated on trying to complete just one more level before moving on to the next. Making a game hard to put down is the hallmark of any great game and Angry Birds has shown it is truly a great game.


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After getting beat to the punch by its primary rival, Google plans to add conversational AI to its flagship Search product, CEO Sundar Pichai told The Wall Street Journal in an interview. "Will people be able to ask questions to Google and engage with LLMs [large language models] in the context of search? Absolutely," he said. Google has already said it would integrate LLMs into search, but this is the first time the company has announced plans for conversational features.
The move isn't unexpected, particularly after Microsoft released a version of its own Bing search engine that used OpenAI's ChatGPT AI engine. However, Google's implementation would potentially have more impact, considering its 93.4 percent worldwide share of the search market. Pichai added that he saw AI chat as a way to expand its search business, rather than a threat. "The opportunity space, if anything, is bigger than before," he told the WSJ.
Pichai didn't reveal a timeline for chat AI search, but it's clear that Google lags behind Microsoft. OpenAI's release of ChatGPT prompted Google to declare a "code red" as it saw the AI as an existential threat to its core business. That proved to be warranted, as Microsoft (which owns a large chunk of OpenAI), soon released a version of Bing Search powered by OpenAI's latest GPT 4 model that gave it some uncanny abilities.
Google released its own conversational AI called Bard strictly as a chat product on a standalone site and not in Search. However, it was clearly lagging behind ChatGPT, displaying incorrect answers in a Twitter ad. Pichai recently said Google would soon switch to a more "capable" language model in an effort to close the gap.
While Google is cutting jobs in an effort to achieve Pichai's goal of becoming 20 percent more productive, the company is accelerating work on new AI products. To be more efficient, it plans to allow more collaboration between divisions like Google Brain and DeepMind, its two primary AI units. "Expect a lot more, stronger collaboration, because some of these efforts will be more compute-intensive, so it makes sense to do it at a certain scale together," he said.


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Wall Street falls on China trade worries
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell on Friday after Reuters and others reported that the Trump administration is considering delisting Chinese companies from U.S. stock exchanges, fuelling more worries about the U.S.-China trade war.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average <.DJI> fell 68.36 points, or 0.25%, to 26,822.76, the S&P 500 <.SPX> lost 15.67 points, or 0.53%, to 2,961.95 and the Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> dropped 91.03 points, or 1.13%, to 7,939.63.
(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Find latest and upcoming tech gadgets online on Tech2 Gadgets. Get technology news, gadgets reviews & ratings. Popular gadgets including laptop, tablet and mobile specifications, features, prices, comparison.
(Reuters) -Tesla Inc chief and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk surpassed Amazon.com Inc's top boss Jeff Bezos to become the world's richest man, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Daimler is starting the year with optimism after a strong finish to 2020, Chief Executive Ola Kaellenius said on Thursday, adding that sales in the fourth quarter had continued the strong trend seen in the preceding three months.
By Laura Sanicola NEW YORK (Reuters) -Oil prices edged higher on Thursday, hitting 11-month peaks as markets remained focused on Saudi Arabia's unexpected pledge to deepen its oil cuts and firmer equities, shrugging off political unrest in the United States. Brent crude rose 18 cents to $54.48 a barrel by 1:32 p.m. EST (1832 GMT) after touching $54.90, a high not seen since before the first COVID-19 lockdowns in the West.


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ASHLAND — Transition has been a way of life for Sunday Afternoons.
From its start in Robbin and Angeline Lacy's living room more than two decades ago, the protective sun hat and clothing maker has been on the move, long ago soaring past $1 million in annual revenue, with 30 employees.
Name: Sunday Afternoons
Service: Protective sun headware and clothing
Owners: Robbin and Angeline Lacy
Location: 167 E. Main St., Ashland
Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday; 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday
Phone number: 541-488-6155
Facebook: Sunday Afternoon
Sunday Afternoons' latest retail location debuts Friday at 167 E. Main St. in Ashland — just in time for the summer solstice and throngs of visitors.
The 1,200-square-foot shop marks a return to the company's headwaters.
"Like every small business, we started in the living room," Angeline Lacy said. "Then you move to the kids' bedroom, until you move to the garage. After one summer in the garage we were ready to move."
Sunday Afternoons set up shop on Hersey Street until the Lacys bought the old Talent firehouse a half-dozen years ago and remodeled it into their headquarters. Two years ago, another remodel produced more than 1,000 square feet of retail space.
Meanwhile, Sunday Afternoons began operating a warehouse in Central Point where it stored a line of 70 items produced at home and abroad in Vietnam and China. The company sells its gear — priced from about $24 to $55 — online, through distributors and at retailers, including REI.
Sunday Afternoons began making picnic blankets, drawing its identity from the day when customers went to the beach, lake, park or lounged on their lawn. Trips to craft fairs, art shows and wine shows in the San Francisco Bay Area led to a change in identity.
"We started making hats from left-over scraps from the blankets," she said.
"Pretty soon people were buying more hats than blankets. Our customers helped design the perfect hat. They told us they wanted a neck veil ... or that their hat was blowing off in the wind; so we added a chin strap."
The company's early logo featured a dragonfly. That, too, morphed as Sunday Afternoons became associated with protection from the harmful effects of a sunny day.
"We respond to the marketplace and what happens to the market, making changes, adapting to the changing world, and making it graceful," Lacy said.
That meant adding a line of winter gear a couple of years ago to protect against the cold and rain.
"We make most of our income during spring and summer," Lacy said. "We make less in those other months, but we manage our business then, take a breath, straighten out systems and make improvements."
While the Great Recession was a death blow for many businesses, Sunday Afternoons continued to thrive, suffering through just one "flat" sales year.
"One thing about hats, clothing and sun protection," she said. "People still need them. We're not selling $200 items, we're selling things people can afford — and what people need."
Parking and the need for more space led the Lacys to look around for alternatives.
"We would look around at places for rent in Ashland and think how our store would look there," she said.
Earlier this spring they asked Ashland real estate agent Stephanie Pollard about open locations and found the Main Street location would be available in May.
"We made the decision," Lacy said. "Real quickly."


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National Cheeseburger Day Seattle
Sep 13, 2018 ... National Cheeseburger Day Deals - Seattle, WA - Why eat just one? With these deals, you can eat multiple cheeseburgers at restaurants ...
Sep 18, 2018 ... Tuesday is National Cheeseburger Day, and whether you like yours with “lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and French-fried potatoes. Big kosher ...
Sep 18, 2018 ... September 18 is National Cheeseburger Day. That means there are tons of burger deals to be had. Here's where you'll find them.
Sep 18, 2018 ... Today, September 18th is National Cheeseburger Day! I don't know who makes this stuff up but I am all about cheeseburgers and deals!
Sep 18, 2018 ... Tuesday, Sept. 18 is a National Cheeseburger Day, and there are a lot of options on where to get a free or discounted patty.
Sep 11, 2018 ... National Cheeseburger Day falls on Sept. 18. To mark the occasion, we've rounded up cheeseburger freebies and deals from major ...
Sep 18, 2012 ... Zippy's Giant Burgers has moved its beef-grinding, hand-forming patty operation to White Center, but the Zip Burger remains the same: a ...
Sep 18, 2018 ... Is there anything better than a cheeseburger? National food holidays are great for a bargain, and September 18 brings us National ...
Sep 18, 2014 ... Local Seattle swimming pool, hot tub, bbq, fireplace dealer. ... In honor of National Cheeseburger Day we wanted to share one of our favorite ... Weber Grill's Mesquite-Grilled Cheeseburgers with Warm Chipotle Salsa.


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News about the NFC market in Germany — trials, pilots, tests and live services.
September 19th, 2016
More than three in five European consumers (62%) believe using biometric forms of payment authentication will be faster and easier than passwords and PINs, research by Visa reveals, with 42% believing that the procedure could completely…
July 26th, 2016
Mobile network operator Telefónica Deutschland has launched a mobile-only bank in partnership with Fidor Bank in Germany. The service will allow peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions to be made using mobile phone numbers and will come with a Mastercard debit card for in-store and ATM transactions.
July 6th, 2016
Swedish mobile payment specialist Seamless has launched its Seqr mobile payment platform in Austria, Ireland, Malta and Luxembourg. “The company’s rapid expansion means that consumers can now use Seqr to make payments in 16 countries,” the company says. Seqr is already available in Sweden, Finland, Romania, Belgium, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the UK and the US.
July 4th, 2016
Payment processor Worldline is adding support for Alipay mobile payments in Germany. “The partnership allows Chinese tourists on trips to Germany to pay conveniently with their Alipay app at authorised retailers,” Worldline says. “The current pilot phases will be completed in July of this year and after that it will go live. The next step will extend the service to other countries.” Alipay partnered with payment provider Concardis to launch the service in Germany last month, marking its European debut after the company unveiled its expansion plans at Money20/20 Europe in April 2016.
June 27th, 2016
Customers of Vodafone Italia can now make NFC mobile payments through PayPal using the mobile network operator’s Vodafone Wallet. The service will allow for in-store payments at any Visa contactless terminal across the country.
June 27th, 2016
Alipay is in negotiations to take a 25% stake in German payments technology provider Wirecard, according to German newspaper Bild. “At the talks, it comes to a share of up to 25%,” the publication reports. “Later, it could well be more.” Wirecard began rolling out support for Alipay mobile payments across Europe in December 2015 and worked with Alipay to add support for the service across Munich Airport earlier this month.
June 13th, 2016
Chinese passengers at Munich Airport will be able to make payments at participating retailers using Alipay from mid-July through a partnership between German payments technology provider Wirecard and airport stores retailer Eurotrade. “Wirecard has integrated Alipay barcode payment into Eurotrade’s central till system,” Wirecard says. “The Alipay mobile payment by barcode will be possible in all 69 Eurotrade shops, at around 160 tills in total, both in the public area and the transfer zones.” Wirecard began rolling out support for Alipay mobile payments across Europe in December 2015.
June 3rd, 2016
Chinese tourists will soon be able to make payments at 210,000 store locations in Germany serviced by payment provider Concardis using Ant Financial’s Alipay mobile payment platform. The move marks the service’s launch into Europe after the company unveiled its expansion plans at Money20/20 Europe in April 2016.
May 23rd, 2016
German payments technology provider Wirecard is supporting the launch of Curve, a physical payment card that will let consumers store an unlimited number of bank cards and make contactless payments at POS terminals where MasterCard is accepted. “The card and smartphone app solution is supported by Wirecard’s technology, ensuring global usage of the Curve card,” Wirecard says. “Curve is initially providing the card to small business users.”
May 13th, 2016
Mobile network operator Telefonica is to launch a mobile banking service in Germany this summer using technology supplied by Fidor Bank. Customers who sign up for an account will receive an O2 MasterCard for cash withdrawals and shopping, and a mobile app that will allow P2P transfers. “This cooperation is the first disruptive alliance in Germany between a telecommunications company and an innovative digital bank,” says Fidor Bank CEO Matthias Kröner.
May 5th, 2016
Apple has added more than 20 further banks and credit unions to its list of Apple Pay supporting financial institutions in the US, 9to5mac reports. The news follows German payments technology provider Wirecard’s Boon service integrating with Apple Pay in the UK.
May 3rd, 2016
Consumers across the UK can now make host card emulation (HCE) based mobile payments using German payments technology provider Wirecard’s Boon service. The service has also been integrated into Apple Pay for the first time, enabling those…
April 29th, 2016
German loyalty program Payback is to launch a new app in May that will include loyalty points, coupons and NFC mobile payments. “The points via smartphone [function] should be possible at the big Payback partners in a pilot phase in June,” Handelsblatt reports. “The payment function will be based on a QR code and NFC technology. The amount due will be paid by direct debit.”
April 5th, 2016
Amazon has launched the Amazon Payments Partner Program, a new service designed to enable ecommerce platform providers and developers to offer merchants Amazon Payments, which allows customers to log in and pay using their account with the online retail giant. “The program is free to participate in and available by invitation in the US, Germany, UK and Japan,” Amazon says.
March 22nd, 2016
German airline Lufthansa is using Bluetooth beacons installed across Munich Airport to push special offers to passengers and enable them to use their mobile phone to book and buy access to its business lounge as well as purchase upgrades from economy class to business class.
March 18th, 2016
Vodafone Germany has demonstrated at CeBIT 2016 the first NFC mobile payment transaction made with a Girocard — the most common debit card in the country— stored in a Vodafone Wallet. “The transaction was made using a smartphone and a POS terminal with NFC, initiated and successfully authorized by the Girocard system,” the carrier says. “In a next step, the partners explore concrete possibilities of joint implementation in the market.”
March 16th, 2016
Visitors to this week’s CeBIT show in Hanover, Germany, can get an NFC chip implanted into their hand by visiting the Digiwell stand. “It will cost you €69 (US$77) including the special syringe to insert it,” PC World reports. “You can get chipped for free at CeBIT if you’ll submit to the procedure on stage.”
March 15th, 2016
Close to half (46%) of the top marketers surveyed for a new location-based marketing report say they plan to invest in NFC this year. 41% plan to invest in Bluetooth beacons, 63% in WiFi and 57% in GPS.
March 11th, 2016
More than 90% of British, German and Spanish business leaders interviewed for a survey of attitudes to contactless technology have already invested in contactless projects and expect that 10% of all transactions will be contactless within the next three years, a white paper now available to download from the NFC World+ Knowledge Centre reveals.
February 24th, 2016
PARTNER NEWS: NXP has put its support behind two new reference platforms that will enable “innovation and rapid development” for smart wearables. The platforms target a range of internet of things (IoT) applications with open-source hardware and software, form-factor flexibility and expandable solutions for designers to adapt to changing market needs.


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By Jason Bramwell
Small business owners are working more hours, extending their workweeks, and taking less vacation than they were five years ago, according to the 2013 Sage Reinvention of Small Business Study, a Sage North America survey focused on how small businesses are changing the way they conduct business in a recovering economy.
"The latest reinvention survey reveals the true reality that many small business owners are facing: that they continue to show resilience in the face of an anemic recovery, all the while increasing their management acumen to ensure their businesses are successful", Connie Certusi, executive vice president and general manager of Sage Small Business Solutions, said in a written statement. "Identifying how small business owners have refined their skills and adapted their operations during the economic recovery helps Sage better understand their needs and serve as an advocate on their behalf."
The survey found that 37 percent of small business owners are working an additional eleven or more hours per week compared to 24 percent of respondents who reported the same in the 2012 reinvention survey. Sixty-eight percent are working both longer days and more weekends.
Small business owners are vacationing less as well, with 43 percent saying they have taken significantly or somewhat less downtime over the past three years.
Are these small business owners living the American dream? According to the survey, 56 percent responded "yes." When asked if they had contemplated giving up their business over the past five years during the economic downturn, 76 percent said "no."
Moreover, small business owners indicated the main reason they have their own business is they always had a dream of running their own business (38 percent), followed by it being a family or personal obligation (24 percent) and dissatisfaction in the corporate world (23 percent).
Of the small business owners who have contemplated leaving their business, the top reasons were dissatisfaction with the progress of sales at their business (38 percent) and more work or time than they thought it would be (30 percent).
In a sign of possible optimism, 49 percent cited investing in technology as the top change or improvement made to their business over the past five years. Other top responses included better management of cash flow (48 percent), more use of mobile technology (44 percent), and better management of inventory (32 percent).
AccountingWEB Readers – Join the Discussion:
- As a sole practitioner, are you working an additional eleven hours or more per week like those small business owners surveyed by Sage North America?
- Has the amount of vacation time you’ve taken over the past few years decreased?
- What has been the top change or improvement made at your firm in the past five years?
Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
About the survey:
The Sage Reinvention of Small Business Study was conducted in June by Sage North America and surveyed 347 small business owners who have fewer than 100 employees. The margin of error is +/- 5 percent with a confidence level of 95 percent.


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WELCOME TO The humanresources REPORT
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Feature market insights and perspectives from top C-Level executives, elite technology influencers and thought leaders from your company here. This signature initiative has garnered immense support...
Coca-Cola | March 10, 2020
Coca-Cola will consider the wages it pays all of its employees when setting executive salaries, aiming to bring them into closer alignment, the New York State Common Retirement Fund said in a statement. Following the agreement with the beverage giant, the fund, which is among the company's top 50 shareholders with 9,275,387 shares as of the end of 2019, withdrew a shareholder resolution against the company. Coca-Cola agreed to add language to its upcoming proxy statement that said "the ...
MHR International | February 23, 2021
MHR International is an HR tech, payroll, and analytics business. MHR has launched an AI-based iTrent Shield a new security solution that protects sensitive HR & payroll data. iTrent Shield is a cloud-based, single database, integrated HR & payroll solution, that supports all aspects of HR management, recruitment, and talent management.
It uses an AI-based user behaviour analytics algorithm to identify and alert user accounts that may have been compromised by hackers or tr...
Levi's | February 27, 2020
U.S. corporate and benefits-eligible retail employees at Levi Strauss & Co. will receive up to eight weeks of paid time off each year to care for an immediate family member who has a serious health condition, the company announced Feb. 27. The benefit "extends the company's commitment to building a best-in-class workplace," Levi Strauss & Co. said in a news release. Specifically, the benefit allows workers to take time off to care for an ill spouse, domestic partner, parent...
DataForest | January 05, 2022
On 4th January Sequoia, the premier people investment strategy advisor, announced the launch of DataForest. DataForest is a digital resource for total rewards and people benchmarking policies to enable HR teams to track people practices and policies against industry benchmarks. DataForest offers comprehensive insight into employee experience program data in an appealing and interactive format.
The rise of hybrid work policies has increased the need to create engaging employee prog...
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COMPANY NEWS; Varity in 3d Offer For Fruehauf
Published: April 4, 1989
TORONTO, April 3— The Varity Corporation, a maker of diesel engines and other machinery, said it was making another bid for the Fruehauf Corporation, its third effort to acquire the Detroit-based maker of automobile parts. Varity, based in Toronto, declined to disclose details of its latest bid.
The move follows the sale by Fruehauf last week of its troubled truck-trailer and shipbuilding operations to the Terex Corporation, based in Green Bay, Wis., for about $232.5 million. The sale, which is to close on May 15, leaves Fruehauf with the profitable Kelsey-Hayes Corporation, an auto-parts maker with operations in the United States and Canada. Varity made an offer for Fruehauf last fall but backed out after examining its books. A second bid in January featured a stock-and-debt swap, but it lapsed on Feb. 25.


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Now, is the time when it is consumers who are largely driving Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) packaging choices. Several factors have contributed, like the increased concern for sustainability and the uprising of e-commerce. As the retail landscape continues to change, food and beverage packaging will have to make room for the changes to protect brand integrity.
In this article, Mr. Gaurav Jalan Founder, and Director of Packman Packaging Private Limited (India’s leading corrugated boxes and food packaging supplier) tells about the top food and beverage packaging trends to expect in 2020.
Sustainable Food And Beverage Packaging
Brands are adopting the concept of reduce, reuse, and recycle to heart. Not does only it make sense in terms of their own expenses and sustainability actions, but it also reverberates with consumers.
Consumers want to make a responsible selection in the products they buy daily, and food and beverage packaging designed with sustainability in mind creates an impression. Though there is no single solution to sustainability issues, packaging designers, processors, recycling equipment owners, and communities are viewing these issues from various angles.
Post-Consumer Resins (PCR)
Post-consumer resins (PCR) comes from consumer product packages such as water bottles and shampoo bottles that are recycled. Many brands are using PCRs in their packaging, though there are some challenges.
PCR material usually has a greyish or yellowish tint that makes it difficult for brands to match their brand colors, but better technologies are being invented to address this. Research shows that the use of PCR can greatly reduce carbon footprint as compared to the creation of virgin plastics. Furthermore, the use of PCR can help keep microplastics away from the ecosystem.
Owing to busy lifestyles. consumers now prefer to buy groceries online. When the stage of sale occurs on a digital device, the packaging and delivery processes become more difficult.
A package on the retail shelf may have been handled numerous times before someone takes it home. Approximately up to 30 touches could happen before an e-commerce item reaches the buyer. Therefore, food and beverage packaging should increasingly meet the demands of e-commerce in terms of product safety while still attending to aesthetics, comfort, and buyer demands for sustainability.
Interactive packaging has been there for some time now, but new technological improvement is being added frequently. For instance, augmented reality has entered the scene, with packaging that provides games and other experiences that attracts the consumers. Whereas baby boomers and members of X generation have embraced interactive packaging, Millennials and their younger counterpart are expected to embrace it even more enthusiastically. Food and beverage packaging design has never been simple. Recent technological achievements, along with buyer demand for sustainability, have only added to the difficulty of developing packaging that meets consumer needs and wishes. The better news is that packaging manufacturing is becoming highly advanced, making it simpler for food and beverage brands to avail packaging options that work for them while maintaining consumer loyalty.
Mr. Gaurav Jalan is the Founder and Director of Packman Packaging, one of the largest Indian packaging company that has been serving some of the world’s eminent technology, pharmaceutical, retail, fast-moving consumer goods, food, courier, publication, Jewellery, fashion, e-commerce organizations for the past 30 years.
A brilliant academic, a good graphic designer and a graduate from India’s top management institutes, Mr. Jalan is a visionary businessman and an eminent spokesperson on matters related to the Indian Packaging industry. He has witnessed and as well as participated in the growth process of India’s packaging industry’s that was few billions dollar market in 2010, grew into USD 31 billion in 2015 and is expected to turn$72 billion by 2020.
Under the leadership of Mr Gaurav Jalan, Packman.co.in (Packman’s official website) became India’s first e-commerce store for packaging solutions in the year 2002 (5 years before Flipkart was launch).
In years 2003-2005, when the majority of Indian packaging companies were primarily focused on their revenue and operations, Packman under Mr Jalan’s leadership has started using eco-friendly and recycled packaging raw materials.
Today, Packman Packaging manufactures more than one lakhs of corrugated rolls, corrugated boxes, high quality bubble sheets, safety/courier bags and more from it state of art manufacturing unit, located in Delhi NCR region. The manufacturing unit uses some of the world’s most advanced packaging material manufacturing machinery with world’s best printing technology that ensures Packman’s customers get fast and efficient delivery, high-quality brand representation through their product packaging.


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Chevrolet Corvette Stingray on display in Frankfurt
All-new sports car celebrates German debut at IAA 2013
- Seventh-generation Corvette ready to stun enthusiasts
- Zero to 100 acceleration in 4.2 seconds
- European sales of Corvette Stingray convertible to begin in early 2014
FRANKFURT – Chevrolet’s brand new top-of-the-line sports car, the Corvette Stingray, is making its first appearance at a major industry event in Germany at the 2013 Frankfurt Motor Show. While sales of the Corvette Stingray kicked off in the U.S. this summer, select Chevrolet dealerships across Europe are gearing up for the arrival of the coupe toward the end of the year.
“Corvette has achieved dream-car status among generations of automotive enthusiasts around the world. The all-new Stingray is a statement of intent by drivers who want the pure exhilaration that’s tantamount with the name Corvette,” said Dr. Thomas Sedran, President and Managing Director, Chevrolet Europe.
The most capable and powerful standard Corvette ever
The Corvette Stingray will be equipped and tuned to meet the needs of customers in the highly competitive European markets, where it will feature the Z51 performance pack and the latest magnetic ride control suspensions as standard.
Power is supplied by the new 6.2L LT1 V8 engine that provides 460 hp (343 kW) at 6,000 rpm and 630 Nm (465 lb-ft) of torque at 4,600 rpm with the performance exhaust system.* The Corvette Stingray has achieved the highest standard power ratings ever for the Corvette; performance figures include 0-100 km/h acceleration of 4.2 seconds and more than 1g in cornering grip.
The Corvette Stingray incorporates a host of advanced technologies, including:
- a new 7-speed manual transmission with Active Rev Matching which anticipates gear selections and matches engine speed for perfect shifts every time
- Active Fuel Management, which enables the Corvette Stingray to cruise on only four cylinders during light load conditions such as highway cruising
- an all-new aluminum frame that is 57 percent stiffer and 45 kg lighter than the steel frame used in the predecessor model
- a dry-sump oiling system, differential and transmission cooling
- a five-position Drive Mode Selector that tailors 11 vehicle attributes to the fit the driver’s environment
- launch control: available in Track mode, for maximum off-the-line acceleration
- an entirely new exterior design that boasts race-track proven aerodynamics as well as a new interior with genuine carbon fiber and aluminum trim, hand-wrapped leather materials.
One of many highlights drivers of the Corvette Stingray can look forward to is the acceleration timer, which features a selection of programmable start/end speeds.
A new tablet-inspired state-of-the-art Chevrolet MyLink connected radio allows drivers to personalize a host of their car’s functions to match their ride every day, from relaxed highway cruising to high-performance laps at the track. The system consists of two eight-inch liquid crystal (LCD) display screens with a screen personalization option, USB port, SD card as well a center screen that lowers for device storage.
Up to 10 Bluetooth-enabled devices can be paired and several of them connected at one time. Voice recognition and text-to-speech are standard**, as is a rearview camera. In addition, customers can opt for an integrated navigation system. Owners will be able to upgrade the new systems with dedicated apps once they become available.
In Germany, prices for the coupe and convertible variants start from €69,990 and €72,990, respectively. The coupe will arrive at select European dealerships toward the end of this year, slightly before the convertible, which will be available in Europe as of spring 2014.
From sports car to pop culture icon
Though the new Corvette Stingray represents the latest and most capable model in the long and proud history of this iconic sports car, Corvette has offered state-of-the-art features, technologies and incredible performance over a period spanning more than six decades.
The Chevrolet Corvette has set many industry firsts and has taken a leading role in establishing the safe use of a wide array of innovative technologies, ranging from anti-lock brakes to windshield heads-up display to magnetic selective ride control.
Traction Control and four-wheel disk brakes – features once exclusive to Corvette – are now offered on many Chevrolet and GM car lines. Other features, such as extended mobility tires, also known as run-flat-tires, have yet to be offered by most manufacturers but seem likely possibilities for the mass market.
For the first 10 years, Corvette was produced only as a convertible. The very first Corvette – the legendary C1 launched in 1953 – was among the first mass-produced fiberglass automobiles in the world while the fixed-roof 1963 “split-window” Corvette Stingray launched the second generation Corvette and debuted the independent rear suspension in America.
Corvette went on to lead the industry in its use of innovative plastic and composite parts, such as the composite monoleaf rear springs introduced on the 1981 Corvette – the first of their kind in the world.
The new spring weighed 80 percent less than the one made of steel it replaced and was immune to corrosion, making it five times more durable than a comparable steel spring. The 1984 Corvette also featured radiator tanks and supports as well as a hood made from plastic – the largest plastic part ever made for an automobile at the time.
Selective Ride Control was first introduced on the 1989 Corvette and represented a first for any American-built car. The system allows the driver to adjust shock absorber damping for different driving modes. The automatic damping system reads the road surface and performs instantaneous changes to suspension damping.
While Corvette stands for one of the most iconic American sports cars, some of its fans are equally famous. The list of illustrious Corvette owners is long and includes John Wayne who purchased the 51st Chevrolet Corvette C1 made in 1953, Tom Cruise, American actress Farrah Fawcett, Neil Armstrong and his fellow Apollo program astronauts, as well as musicians Paul McCartney and Jeff Beck.


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Just over a year ago, I published some thoughts on r/WallStreetBets (WSB), a Reddit forum that I like to check out every now and again. The post is called GameStop Investment Thesis. My idea was that the US retailer GameStop – a bricks-and-mortar shop that sells video games, consoles, Funko Pop! toys and other miscellanea to enthusiasts, or nerds, like myself – might be worth investing in. The business, I suggested, had a substantial amount of cash on its balance sheet, which could be translated into value, and generally had a bit more promise than met the eye.
I was wrong. In fact, in their classically abrasive way, one Redditor pointed this out at the time: “The only theory supporting your $GME long is about your mother’s alcohol consumption during pregnancy.” The Covid-19 pandemic proved doubly that investing in a high-street store probably wasn’t a good idea. But, just as a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can lead to a hurricane on the other side of the world, my thoughts may well have been the catalyst for what would this week become one of, if not the, largest “short squeezes” in history. My post has been cited in Bloomberg and the Verge as one of early signs of Reddit’s interest in the store. After the post, the investor Michael Burry – who was depicted in the book and film The Big Short – subsequently made it public that he was buying GameStop. The rest is history.
In case you’ve managed to avoid the story so far: over the past several weeks, the stock price of GameStop has gone, in Reddit-speak, “to the moon”, from $19.94 a share as of market close on Monday 11 January to a peak of $347.51 on Thursday 27 January. A company that had made a net loss in the previous 12 months of $275m was briefly considered, in the eyes of the stock market, to be worth $25bn.
This wasn’t anything to do with the company’s underlying business decisions or “fundamentals”. There were no announcements of future partnerships; no decelerating pre-owned sales declines; no improving same-store sales – none of the news that would traditionally signal to the investment community that the company’s business performance was improving and that investors should buy the stock. It was all down to, essentially, a digital movement of ordinary people – acting with what they see as a keen sense of right and wrong.
Because of continued declines in GameStop’s operating income and the announcement that the next generation of gaming consoles would allow consumers to purchase new games directly online, institutional investors began to short the company, making bets that GameStop would continue to underperform. Aware of the large amount of GameStop shares that were being shorted, r/WallStreetBets decided to collectively buy shares (and options) in the company hoping that the flood of buying activity would cause the stock price to rise and, subsequently, force the big hedge funds to buy more shares to cover their positions, driving the price even higher.
To the chagrin of the financial news media, the hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman and Melvin Capital, a firm whose very solvency was reportedly in question due to its large short position on GameStop, it worked. Many posts were shared on r/WallStreetBets detailing the huge sums of money – some of them life-changing – made by members of the community. There are members who say they made enough to pay off student debt, afford an operation for a family member, and even buy a yacht, all thanks to their fresh delivery of “tendies” – WSB jargon for money (it’s an allusion to tender fried chicken). Since then, GameStop’s valuation has come tumbling down.
To some, the events were emblematic of broader anti-establishment sentiment; the result of what was perceived to be an inadequate response to the pandemic and the inability of lawmakers to provide adequate stimulus to those in dire financial situations. WSB members saw this as an opportunity to stick it to the man. One open letter that was widely shared on the forum detailed the user’s bruising experience of the 2008 financial crisis: they claimed to have put their life savings into GameStop stock and were keeping it there, not cashing out, “to make it as painful as [they] can” for the hedge funds.
As for my own balance, at the time I wrote that post a year ago, I owned 1,500 shares in GameStop – but I sold them before recent events. I guess not everyone gets to go to the moon.