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June 25, 2019
The International Living Future Institute (ILFI) and Living Future Europe Initiative (LFEI) has announced the full details release of a new edition of the Declare product transparency label for the European building and manufacturer market. The Declare Europe launch is taking place in Bolzano during the 2019 Klimahouse conference, which is focused on the exchange of ideas, innovations and insights on the latest trends in the energy-efficiency and sustainable construction sector.
The Declare transparency program aligns with other sustainability certification programs such as the Living Building Challenge, LEED and WELL, building product legislation, and purchasing programs. At the recent UK launch event hosted by Foster+Partners in London, delegates were told about ILFI’s work with manufacturers in Europe, where the program has been developed to address local markets.
Declare labels meet standards such as the Living Building Challenge Red List, REACH SVHC, and SIN List of chemicals present in the final product. Products free of these chemicals are highlighted within the Declare label and in ILFI’s database of Declare products and include many of which are common in the furniture industry, including Formaldehyde, PVC, Chrome 6, PFC stain-resistant coatings, and HFR flame retardants.
A worldwide success
“The success of Declare in the United States has been in large part because of the program’s ability to take complex chemical information of products and communicate that to architects, designers and manufacturers in a simple and compelling way,” Amanda Sturgeon, CEO of ILFI shared at the conference.
Carlo Battisti, the Executive Director of LFEI continued, “Similar to sectors like food or textile, the demand for healthy products and clear ingredient information from manufacturers for the construction industry is crucial, especially considering the time we spend inside of buildings. Declare is the comprehensive and effective answer we expected in the European market. It is the transparency revolution that changes the rules of the game for the benefit of everyone.”
At the London event, early adopters of the initiative Humanscale, Aspecta Flooring and Kingspan spoke of their experiences. Hani Hatami of Humanscale described how the firm became the first manufacturer to achieve full certification with the world’s two first Living Products, its Diffrient Smart chair and Float table (main image).


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With the launch of Apple Watch Series 5 last month, Apple has decided to slash the prices of its Series 3 Apple Watch worldwide. Apple Watch Series 3 can attract those who are in search of a premium smartwatch in the market.
Among many new features and changes in watchOS 6, a new application launched on the platform which is highly dedicated for listening to Apple Books audiobooks.
Apple has just released a new update for the Apple Watch users. The new watchOS 5.2 released today in Europe and Hongkong. The update released over the air through iOS for the watchOS and it brings a number of advanced features for the…
After the release of its beta version, Spotify has now finally announced the debut of Spotify Apple Watch app. The official version offers a lot of exciting features and capabilities, and some other features are on its way according to the…
Apple just recently released the WatchOS 5.1.1 update which includes new features, improvements, and bug fixes. The new improvements and bug fixes that are a part of the previous update is also highlighted.
Apple had unveiled the latest Apple Watch Series 4 with an all-new design and a slew of fitness-centric and health features last month, at the Apple special launch event at Steve Jobs theatre located at the Apple Headquarters in California.

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As we all continue to dig our teeth into the Lumia 950’s various nooks and crannies, we should remember that some Lumia handsets never quite made it to shelves. One such handset is the Lumia McLaren, which was cancelled over a year ago. While we’re never going to be able to see it for ourselves (at least, not in the same form), new pictures have surfaced through blogjack showing us what the McLaren would have looked like.
The handset was rumored to bring us “3D Touch” technology, but never ended up seeing the light of day for reasons that we aren’t entirely sure about. Whether or not the technology wasn’t ready, or if there was some other mitigating factor in the McLaren’s release, we can’t really know.
As the Lumia 950 has finally hit shelves, and eyes start looking forward to the future of Lumia phones, it’s going to be interesting to see whether or not 3D touch technology could make its way to a Lumia device in the near future.
While we won’t be seeing the McLaren hitting shelves anytime soon, it’s nice to at least have these photos of what could have been. It’s going to be interesting seeing if this design might make its way into any of the future iterations of the Lumia phones.


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Is the Microsoft Surface Hub An Overpriced Collaboration Board?
With the deluge of new collaboration boards that will hit the market over the next six months (this was the most popular launch product at ISE in Amsterdam, last month), there’s no question that Microsoft will have to cut the price of their Surface Hub — or, no one who knows any better will buy it. They can’t keep ripping people off at $8,000-$9,000 (55”) and $20,000 (84”) a pop — considering the limited functionality compared to the newbies on the market as well as they’re priced 20-30 percent higher than everyone else.
Although both are 4K resolution, the need for a 4K collaboration board at 55″ is more of a novelty than a requirement. Even at 55″ and standing next to the board, you can’t discern a technological advantage to a 3840×2160 resolution monitor versus a 1080p one. But, as most of the forthcoming collaboration boards that will hit the market in 2017 will be 4K too, that presents an even bigger obstacle to Microsoft. Everyone does 4K now.
And, as most of the new collaboration boards launched at ISE that were in the 55″ range (by the way, that’s where Microsoft sells more than 80 percent of them) and nearly all of them carried a $5,000 price tag, the giant software maker will, no doubt either drop their price or become irrelevant. Then, there’s Google’s Jamboard — which was hidden upstairs in the BenQ booth — which just debuted, officially, at $5,000. It’s way, way more simple to use than Surface HUB as well as has a much nicer user interface. Maybe not as many features, however, but all the features everyone is asking about. And, then you still have a plethora of other companies with collaboration boards too — all aiming at Microsoft, companies like Avocor, Cisco, NEC, Newline, Sharp and Google.
And, we haven’t even talked about SMART — yep, they’re back with all-new SMART Boards, InFocus and their industry-founding Mondopad, Epson and their projection-alternative BrightLink Pro line of projected interactive collaboration boards and the five or so other companies that recently launched into the space. And, more are coming to InfoComm in June.
And, all of them will be at InfoComm in Orlando, if you want to test each one out — oh, all except the Microsoft Surface Hub…


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PayPal has been hacked with thousands affected - Is your account safe?
Thousands of PayPal accounts have been hacked, according to a notice of security incident released by the multinational payment platform on January 18th. What does this mean for account holders? What information did these cybercriminals get access to? What should PayPal account holders do next?
According to the report released by PayPal, hackers managed to gain unauthorized access to at least 34,942 accounts. The attack was launched between December 6 - 8, 2022. The cybercriminals used a credential-stuffing attack to gain access to these accounts.
A credential-stuffing attack automatically forces its way into an account by using re-used credentials from other services. This means that anyone using the same password across multiple accounts has a higher chance of being caught in this attack. It also means that if you fall victim, you should check your other accounts as well as chances are one of them have also been breached.
Despite the security features that PayPal has in place, users reusing their passwords across multiple platforms creates a vulnerability in the payment systems defenses. This can then easily be exploited using a credential-stuffing attack.
In response to this attack, Paypal has already sent an official notification to all affected users. This notification clarifies the details of the attack. The notification went on to explain to users that at this point, there’s no evidence indicating that account information was misused or that any transactions were made from affected accounts. PayPal has also revoked all third-party access to the affected accounts.
However, it should be noted that these criminals did have access to personal information. This information includes name, address, Social Security number, individual tax identification number, and date of birth - everything a cybercriminal could need for identity fraud and theft.
Taking responsibility for the potential harm this hack could cause, PayPal is offering all affected account holders two years of free access to identity monitoring services from Equifax.
Customers who have received this notification are urged to make use of the identity monitoring services. It’s also recommended that these users immediately change the passwords of all of their accounts and wherever possible, enable two-factor authentication.
Account users who haven’t received a notification are unaffected by this most recent credential-stuffing attack. However, users are urged to change their passwords if they use the same password across multiple accounts to prevent any future issues of this nature. If you’re concerned about keeping track of multiple different passwords, a password manager like 1Password or Bitwarden makes this a painless exercise.
This latest hack proves how important it is to use strong and unique passwords for your accounts. In this case, the hack affected users who have re-used passwords across multiple accounts. This could’ve been avoided had users implemented unique, strong password usage. Hopefully, PayPal will also take additional steps in its security protocols to better protect against these types of attacks in the future.Advertisement


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Crypto wallet Exodus is now integrated with SportX, an online sports and crypto betting platform that offers users the ability to take part in esports games via smart contracts executed on the Polygon network.
The collaboration was confirmed today and it offers the over 1 million users of Exodus access to the decentralized betting exchange world of SportX, allowing them to place bets on a variety of sports and esports games using crypto. The minimum bet amount was established at $5, denominated in USD Coin. The amount can be sent directly to the Exodus wallet or exchanged from any of the 138 cryptos is currently has support for.
All markets that are created, traded, or settled on SportX are facilitated by the Polygon network.
As of now, SportX is allowed to function in most of Asia, most of Europe (except the Netherlands, and France), South America, and Canada.
Esports refers to multiplayer video games that are played competitively in front of spectators. It is now a billion-dollar industry especially thanks to the likes of Halo joining the market and helping it go mainstream.
Crypto and esports is a relatively new idea, but industry observers have noticed a “special connection” when it comes to the two areas as they both attract similar demographics and use technologies that go beyond geographic locations. GameFi is believed to come with new opportunities for the industry of esports.
Crypto exchanges haven’t stopped expanding in the esports market either, with FTX especially known for taking the lead, thanks to Sam Bankman-Fried. Just a couple of months ago, in August, the derivatives exchange signed a seven-year deal with Dolphin Entertainment in order to create NFTs that focus on brands in various sectors, like esports.
Previously, FTX also signed a $210 million naming right deal with TSM, the esports giant.


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For better or worse, airlines have treated social media as a critical customer service tool, catering to cranky travelers who tweet their gripes. That willingness has led to a deluge of issues for customer service to address — and created the need to automate it.
Take Dutch airline KLM. In a typical week, KLM has to respond to 15,000 social conversations in a dozen different languages. There is no programmatic solution here: KLM has a 235-person social media team. But KLM is exploring ways to combine artificial intelligence and humans in providing customer service that’s somewhat automated but still has a personal touch.
In the most basic form, KLM added in a Facebook chatbot in March. KLM uses Facebook for automated updates around checking in and flight delays and also gives users a copy of their boarding pass. When there’s a bigger ask, a (human) KLM agent will jump in. In its first month, KLM’s volume of Facebook messages jumped 40 percent. KLM said 1.7 million messages have been sent on Messenger by over 500,000 people.
“Social media is about having a timely and correct answer,” said Tjalling Smit, the airline’s senior vice president of digital. According to Smit, the time users are willing to wait for a response is dwindling, often becoming impatient in 20 minutes or less.
KLM is trying to find new ways to combine machines with humans in tackling the deluge of social media inquiries. KLM’s customer service agents on social media are given advice from a machine learning system created by tech company DigitalGenuis that has mastered over 60,000 KLM customer questions. It will get smarter over time as it monitors the social media team’s work. After taking in suggestions from the platform, the agents can then edit this text and hit send. “Right now 10 percent of responses are sent without any alteration,” Smit said. “But in time we’ll see more pure AI conversations.”
But Smit emphasized that while AI is good for “functional” answers, the human touch is still important. “People want a personalized answer, for example dealing with compliments is hard for an AI system,” he said. So far the system has increased the speed of replies by 20 percent.
“People do say that over time our tone of voice has become more functional,” Smit said. “But equally, they do appreciate it because they come to us to get a problem solved.”
KLM is now exploring adding more functions to Facebook Messenger and expanding its chatbot to other platforms like WeChat. These are expected to roll out within the next year. Integration with “conversational” services like Amazon Alexa is also a possibility. While its social teams were the most immediate need, Smit says AI has a clear use case for personalizing customers’ web and call centre experience.
“Robotics has a cold feel to it, people think it’s about efficiency, automation and having less people. But we don’t see it as a substitute for human interaction, just a way to improve it.”
More in Marketing
TikTok has officially launched its new e-commerce platform, TikTok Shop, earlier this month on August 1. Using the new e-commerce platform, brands and creators can sell products directly on the platform, potentially creating new revenue streams, and tap into the short-form video platform’s growing popularity.
‘The influencer industry can be really vile’: Confessions of an influencer marketer on the industry’s unfair hiring practices
While the influencer industry might sound exciting and like it’s full of opportunities, one marketer can vouch for the horrific scenarios that still take place behind the scenes.
After a tumultuous 12 months, marketers are getting a clear picture of how they really did during a time of true uncertainty. And, as it turns out, it wasn’t all that bad.
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News on Truck continually updated from thousands of sources around the net.
52 min ago | Examiner.com
It's a big year for Ford Trucks, last week I was in West Virginia driving new 2015 Super Duty's towing big trailers in the Appalachian mountains, this week I was in Detroit covering more news on the all new 2015 F150 that comes out closer to Thanksgiving.
52 min ago | The Motley Fool
Ford's new 2015 F-150 will make extensive use of aluminum to reduce weight. Now, GM is accelerating development of its own lighter-weight pickups.
2 hrs ago | The Car Connection
The 2015 Toyota Sequoia has room for the entire family and can tow a boat with ease, but its a challenge to maneuver for daily driving, and it's thirsty, too.
2 hrs ago | Autoblog
Last August, Nissan shook the truck world when it officially announced plans to source a diesel option from Cummins for its long-overdue Titan replacement, its full-size pickup that's slated to drop this January at the Detroit Auto Show .
5 hrs ago | Union-Recorder
Discrepancies on information concerning the loss of the high school's band transportation surfaced after the sale of a local dealership.
6 hrs ago | Forbes.com
His responses from this week's issue are below. Doll's take: " Meg Whitman is leading a classic turnaround driven by better execution across business lines and shareholder-friendly uses of the cash flow generated."
'Innovation's about making things,' Strager said. 'We have to look beyond what exists.
In a rich market, Ford is one of the remaining attractive values and should trade toward $24 by the end of 2015.
The invitation to come out and sample product at the General Motors Proving Grounds in Milford, MI is rarely dull, and after spending this morning driving preproduction versions of the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon all we can say is... under strict embargo.
There's now a mountain of detail available on the 2015 Ford F-150, as the entire order guide has surfaced on the Internet.
Ford's dealer ordering guide shows the new F-150 available only with 17-inch wheels, some of the smallest available in the big pickup segment.
Apparently General Motors is hustling to get their next Chevrolet and GMC pickup trucks out the door a little closer to the 2015 Ford F-150 launch, having just moved production "nine months sooner" to Fall 2018 with their new SUVs to follow in 2019.
It's no secret that the prices of vehicles have been crawling north for some time, due either to inflationary factors, more technology, a company's greater ability to command higher prices, or all of the above.
S&P Capital IQ remains positive on General Motors and Ford stocks, but S&P's auto analyst Efraim Levy slashed his GM profit estimates Tuesday.
Last month we went over the parts that LA Speed used to build us a 460 Ford engine with gobs of torque for off-road use .
That's Interesting The best-selling cars in the world, early-2014 edition? According to 24/7 Wall St., the Toyota Corolla was it.
Automotive News reported that the crux of the issue is Ford's claim in mid-July that a 2015 F-450 4 4 Crew Cab pickup can tow 31,200 pounds.
Tougher, lighter 2015 Ford F-150 welcomes two new engines to its four-engine lineup, providing choices to meet almost any customer need - from hauling tools to towing trailers.
Updated: Wed Jul 30, 2014 12:13 pm
Copyright © 2014 Topix LLC


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Huntingburg, IN – OFS Brands, a leading manufacturer of contract furniture and logistics provider, announced today that the company has promoted Ryan Menke to senior vice president of sales and marketing. Menke will be responsible for managing all sales and marketing functions for OFS Brands which goes to market under the OFS, First Office Loewenstein, Carolina and Styline Logistics brands. Menke previously served as senior vice president of supply chain for OFS Brands.
“For the past decade, Ryan has demonstrated leadership and results in just about every aspect of the OFS Brands organization. From sales to engineering to operations and everything in between, Ryan has played a critical role in the success of this company, and our sales and marketing teams will flourish under his guidance,” said Jim Huebner, CFO and senior vice president of OFS Brands.
Menke began his career with OFS Brands in 2002 as the vice president of transportation where he oversaw OFS Brands' specialized furniture transportation company, Styline Logistics. Under Menke’s leadership, Styline grew from one terminal in Indiana to one of the largest specialized furniture carriers in the nation.
From 2004 to 2006 Menke assumed responsibilities for OFS Brands' raw materials manufacturing operations, as well as supply chain operations. In 2006 he moved to NC to manage the acquisition and integration of Carolina Business Furniture. In 2008, he helped OFS Brands integrate Loewenstein into the family of companies. Since 2008, Ryan has served as the senior vice president of supply chain, and he was also responsible for Styline Logistics and OFS Brands' Seating Division. “As Ryan guided OFS Brands through new brand acquisitions, he also saw an opportunity to reshape the operational culture of OFS Brands by hooking up best practices across the company and all of its locations. His talent for creating logistics, manufacturing and sales synergies has delivered tremendous customer value to our larger corporate accounts,” said James Reese, national sales manager for OFS Brands.
Company officials also relied on Menke’s engineering expertise in product development.
“During the past five years, Ryan oversaw the engineering for the largest run of new product launches in the history of OFS Brands,” said Phil Mehringer, executive director of marketing of OFS Brands. “His practical, hands-on knowledge of what it really takes to bring a product to the marketplace will be an invaluable asset to our sales and marketing teams.
Prior to working with OFS Brands, Menke worked in new business development for a furniture dealer in St Louis where he was able to develop a solid understanding of sales and operations strategies at the dealer level, as well as the critical role of all stakeholders in the specifying process. Menke earned his Bachelors Degree in Business Administration from the University of Evansville.
"This is an exciting time at OFS Brands. We've experienced 40 percent growth over the last five years and we've outpaced the market by at least ten percent over the last three years," said Hank Menke, president and CEO of OFS Brands. "And based on the momentum we are building in the marketplace as well as the excitement around our new product launches, we expect 2014 to be another banner year for growth for OFS Brands."
OFS Brands, Inc. is a family owned corporation, headquartered in Huntingburg, Indiana, and is committed to providing socially responsible furniture and logistic solutions through better design, excellent performance, and innovative products and services. For more information contact Phil Mehringer, Exec. Director of Marketing, OFS Brands, Inc, email@example.com or 800-521-5381x7631.
Source: OFS Brands, Inc.
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The ever-expanding ecosystem of smartphone apps owes a great deal to MEMS sensors. Indeed, smartphones, with their always-on Internet access and growing complement of sensor technologies, are quickly becoming the planet’s premier wireless sensor network.
“The cell phone is inherently a sensor; even its microphone gives you information on what type of environment you are in, from background or perhaps traffic noise. By using sensor fusion, you can take information from all of these sensors, even the ambient-light sensor, and create apps that have never been thought of before,” noted iSuppli Corp. analyst Jérémie Bouchard.
MEMS sensors in mobile handsets are allowing apps that not only dazzle users but could one day monitor the pulse of the planet. “We are interacting with the world in a more effective manner today because of the MEMS sensors in our mobile handsets; it’s not just for the gee-whiz factor anymore,” said Karen Lightman, managing director of the MEMS Industry Group (MIG). “All over the world, MEMS sensors are improving the quality of life for those using them.”
“Today the Internet is just a brain that can find things and do calculations, but sensors will allow that brain to become aware of its surroundings,” said Peter Hartwell, a senior researcher at HP Labs and developer of Hewlett-Packard’s ultra-sensitive accelerometer. “We are adding a central nervous system to the Earth that will allow us to get the information we need to understand our impact.”
Apple began the revolution by equipping the iPhone with an accelerometer to switch its display automatically from portrait to landscape orientation. The competition quickly followed suit. Now Apple has a storeful of novel apps that exploit the iPhone’s accelerometer for gaming, health monitoring, sports training and countless other uses thought up by legions of developers.
Click on image to enlarge.
The accelerometer’s ability to respond to a user’s motions has turned previously pedestrian operations (such as manual scrolling) into gamelike experiences (such as tilt to scroll), redoubling users’ ardor for their mobile handsets. The race to add accelerometers to an earlier generation of smartphones has become this year’s race to add MEMS gyroscopes, and next year’s designs are likely to see the addition of barometric pressure, humidity and temperature sensors.
“Smartphones are getting smarter because of all the sensors being added to them; just having an Internet connection does not make your phone smart,” said Steve Nasiri, founder of Invensense Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.), which brought the first three-axis gyroscope to market last year.
Invensense pitched its gyro to Apple; the OEM bought from a larger vendor, STMicroelectronics. But Invensense, which plans an initial public offering later this year, claims it has many design wins with Android handset makers and predicts that gyro-enabled Android handsets will hit the market by year’s end.
“There are two camps now: the Apple camp and the Android camp,” Nasiri said. “Apple has the luxury of being able to add new sensors to its iPhone, because of this army of developers they have creating apps that use them. Other smartphone vendors have been envious but were unable to match Apple’s App Store.
“Android levels the playing field with an app store [Android Market] that rivals Apple’s. Now Android handset makers don’t have to identify the next killer application; they just have to add the sensors, and the app store will find the best ways to use them.”
Said MIG’s Lightman, “I believe there would be no app store phenomenon, if not for MEMS sensors.”
The stakes are huge. As the price of some MEMS sensors dips below a dollar, every smartphone vendor is scrambling to match Apple’s sensor complement. Hence the booming mobile device market for MEMS sensors, according to iSuppli’s Bouchard, who predicts that next year MEMS chips in cell phones will pass the $1 billion mark—up from $821 million in 2010—and that the market will exceed $2 billion by 2015.
Related to the Scott NcNealy quote and the statement: "Don't break the law and you have nothing to fear." That's all fine and good if the people deciding what the law is are fair and just. If those making the law decide that it should be illegal to petition for redress or to peaceably assembly in support of a cause that the law-makers don't support, then all of us have something to fear.
Our freedoms and privacy are not about having the ability to sneak around and do illegal things without getting caught. They are about ensuring that the government works for us rather than the other way around.
There is so much potential good that could come about from a mass-scale connected society. From simple things like always knowing where the bad traffic is and how to avoid it, to life-saving things like instantly transmitting medical emergencies along with health history and location to first-responders. The potential for good is almost unlimited.
Unfortunately, we live in s civilization where nefarious elements will take every opportunity to exploit weaknesses and governments without sufficient civilian oversight will try to over-control their citizenry. That's why privacy is still so important.
The killer app of the next decade or so is a methodology allowing society to benefit from this new ultra-connected and sensored world without opening all of us up to abuse and exploitation.
How's this for a use: plain-clothed law enforcement officers roam through a crowd at a protest or a sporting event and use their smart phones to surreptitiously scan the crowd for inflammatory speech. "Offenders" have their voice print and an image of their face logged. Their "good citizen" counter is decremented, and when that counter reaches zero, they vanish.
Mobile gaming will benefit quite a lot from MEMS development, and expectedly we shall see more and more applications making mobility to improve the user's experience.
prabhakar_deosthali your example sounds fantastic, but I'm not sure I'd like to see blood stains on my mobile phone, even if it is my own! I recently read of a company doing 'digital bandages', which is similar to what you have described in that it enables monitoring the healing process in a non-intrusive way.
In 1960s when the astronauts traveled in space I used to wonder as a kid to read that there heart beat, Bp and vital parameters were being continuously monitored by NASA at the Space center. Now this MEMS enabled smart phone technology has brought such conveniences in our day-to-day life. It is now only up to the imagination of those innovative entrepreneurs as to what applications to churn out of this technological boon. A simple application comes to my naive mind - A Patient makes a call to the doctor and tells him his/her symptoms and the doctor while talking to the patient automatically gets his/her body temperature, BP and pulse rate data on his mobile. may be a small needle pops out of the mobile and the mobile send the blood sugar information of the patient to the doctor's phone. The doctor sends the prescription to the patient's mobile with his digital signature so that the chemist can issue the necessary medicines to the patient ( and of course the patient pays the doctor using the payment gateway!)
Regarding the privacy issues then just have a look at the "cellular world" to see how things become commonly accepted facts of life - and that after a surprisingly short while. Already now any cellphone user leaves his or her digital footprints in operator logfiles. I, for one, do not see the harm in having that footprint expanded with sensor based information that would be useful to the greater community. Privacy, to me, relates to personal information while my whereabouts at any time, left my privacy sphere a long time ago.
Privacy is indeed a concern with all these intelligent sensor devices. However, with this much sacrifice, I am more interested in understanding what we are getting out from the technology. The article has listed a lot of potentials in different areas. Apparently, traffic condition and weather/ temperature are some of them. Yet, what are the other value added services that we can introduce to the market to make our life easier?
Scott McNealy former Sun CEO said it best, “Privacy is dead, deal with it” That was 1999. In 2010, I think the quote should be, "privacy is dead, enjoy it" Don't break the law and you have nothing to fear. Sensors everywhere means no gun shot would go unlocated. No cry for help will go unheard. No bad guy will go uncaught. My house is protected with senors and cameras, made so cheap I can afford a lot of them. That's good.
It's time to start thinking about personal safety. Folks are just getting too connected. It is amazing how quickly folks have compromised their privacy and think nothing of it. No facebook or the others here. I'm out of town...Please come rob my house.
I, for one, look forward to the next generation MEMs enabled devices with both interest and concern. I would like to see the ability to shut off these "features" or to make them "private" to provide the owner/user some privacy. In the coming age, we will have great technology and much improved real life experiences (say for example: real time traffic avoidance) but at a cost of public domain versus privacy issues. It seems every time I check the news (on-line of course) I read about some security breach of personal data from a large corporation. Even the web surfing, emails (private - not really) is all logged and kept. I hope that in the future we the consumers will have options that protect us as well as serve us.


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All-new Ford Ranger launched with funky new headlamps and oversized display
Nov 24, 2021 6:57 pm
The wraps are finally off. After plenty of teasers announcing the arrival of the new pick-up truck, Ford has officially unveiled the new Ranger,...
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7/10/23 – Mendocino County, CA: California cannabis brand Terphogz has released the following statement regarding its settlement with Mars Wrigley. “After using the ‘Zkittlez’ mark for over 10 years with no complaints from the candy maker, we welcomed the opportunity to resolve any trademark concerns with Wrigley. We want to let consumers know they can still enjoy our unique and highly sought-after cultivar under the name ‘The Original Z.’”
The brand is famous for developing a cannabis strain known as Zkittlez. In 2021 Wrigley sued Terphogz in Chicago federal court for trademark infringement, demanding Terphogz “never use the letter Z by itself or combined with any letters or numbers,” as well as pay $250,000 in damages. The brand rejected Wrigley’s demands as unsupported by federal trademark law and a violation of its first amendment rights.
Last week, the case against Terphogz was settled with no financial damages awarded to Wrigley. Per the settlement, Terphogz agrees to cease using the name “Zkittlez” and its “circle Z” branding, but will continue to use the name, “The Original Z,” as well as its iconic “Z” logo.
Terphogz’s attorney stated, “It’s important to distinguish between pirates that Wrigley separately sued who sell adulterated candy or who use Wrigley’s registered trademarks and copy Wrigley packaging.” When it first issued the complaint against Terphogz, Wrigley brought lawsuits against five other companies for violation of its intellectual property rights. In one such case, another company selling THC-laced candies awarded Wrigley $2 million in damages for trademark infringement.
Ironically, Wrigley’s candy ingredients have been recently called into question by California lawmakers, who proposed a ban on Wrigley candy products in California for ingredients that have been found to be harmful to children and adults. With this settlement, the legal battle between Terphogz and Wrigley comes to a definitive end. At the same time, it appears Beau Wrigley’s problems with cannabis have just begun as a fraud case moves forward against his cannabis company in Florida.


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Industry Experts Weigh in on the Factors Shaping Up the UK Gambling Landscape in 2023
Updated On July 31, 2023 | by Samara Davis
The overall gross gambling yield for the UK betting business increased 10.9% from the previous year, indicating that it is back on track. Despite regulatory challenges and changing customer tastes, the industry is still thriving and expanding in 2023.
Many variables have contributed to the industry’s long-term prosperity and popularity. These vary from utilizing digital technology to fostering creativity and invention.
Different strategies have assisted UK gambling companies in standing out from the sea of other online entertainment choices. Some of the factors that industry experts have pinpointed to be shaping up the UK gambling landscape in 2023 include:
GamStop came out in 2018 as a self-exclusion program for people who want to take a break from iGaming. Five years later, the UK is experiencing a demand in the rise of non gamstop casinos.
Non-Gam-Stop casinos provide a way to play online slots and poker even after you’ve self-excluded on GamStop. However, that’s not the main reason these sites are getting popular.
Some people are avoiding GamStop casinos to protect their personal information. Or, they don’t want to deal with the hassles of canceling their accounts from the self-exclusion program.
Creativity and Innovation
The prosperity of the UK betting business has always been centered on creativity and innovation. There are so many businesses competing for customers’ interests.
As a result, companies must continuously look for novel approaches to set themselves apart from the competition. Operators have done this by developing cutting-edge goods and services suited for particular markets or by providing distinctive experiences.
However, creativity isn’t limited to products and services. It includes business and client interactions as well. Modern online bookmakers are particularly eager to provide a wide range of deals and promos beyond the typical free bets.
The UK wagering business will be heavily regulated in 2023. Companies working in this industry are subject to several laws and rules. Furthermore, it is now commonplace to anticipate that a wagering website will hold multiple trustworthy licenses.
Despite these difficulties, the gambling business has survived and thrived. This is in part because best practices for regulation conformance have been adopted. Companies with strong compliance programs are better able to manage the risks involved with the legal environment’s constant change and handle it.
In the UK, bookmakers are still impacted by evolving laws and heightened rivalry. But those who can change and develop will probably continue to be prosperous. In the future, it will be crucial for companies to maintain their technology investments and innovation efforts. To maintain competitiveness and satisfy client standards, it is crucial to prioritize regulatory compliance.
The betting business in the UK has been changed by digital technologies. They have increased their client base to millions of people globally. You can now more easily access betting services thanks to new internet bookmakers and smartphone betting applications. You can interact in real-time with your preferred activities and events.
These sites offer a wealth of information and views along with advice and forecasts supported by professionals. These help you predict outcomes and make better choices even if you are unfamiliar with a particular activity in-depth.
The capacity of the gambling business to effectively and creatively utilize digital technologies will ultimately determine how successful it remains. Businesses that don’t adjust risk slipping behind the competition as we advance in this quickly changing environment. However, those who make technology investments can put themselves in a situation for future development and success.
Virtual Reality Gambling
Virtual reality (VR) is seen by some as having great potential for the UK and global internet gaming markets. In 2023, we can anticipate significant input from VR organizations.
Major game makers already receive gambling titles from the industry. Naturally, to access these activities, you must acquire or own a specialist headset. A major overhaul is therefore improbable.
Future developments in online gambling will be significantly influenced by virtual reality. The number of partakers is predicted to increase in 2023 as more people become aware of the advantages of gambling in the metaverse. In 2023, the groundwork for the development of such technology-based internet gambling should become clearer.
The global industry for VR headsets is worth over $13 billion and has over 170 million consumers. As a result, virtual reality gaming is expected to grow in popularity both in the UK and globally.
Rise of Crypto Gambling Sites
In 2022, cryptocurrencies took a beating. The demise of the FTX trading network served as the spoiled topping on top of a dessert that had gone bad. But cryptocurrency will undoubtedly have a significant impact on UK internet gaming in the future.
The most popular digital coin in the world, Bitcoin, is already recognized at the best online casinos in the UK. You should anticipate more websites converting to cryptocurrency given the existence of Ethereum, Tether, Dogecoin, and other well-known payment options.
There isn’t a fixed market because so many casinos and bookmakers are making an effort to draw in more customers. In 2023, there will inevitably be an increase in specialist crypto-betting websites. And you can anticipate a rise in that figure well into the next decade.
Some estimates place the number of UK citizens who use cryptocurrency for gaming at 50 million. Additionally, that figure will continue to rise over time.
The Emergency of Immersive Slot Games
All people adore slots. They undoubtedly appear to be a top choice for bettors in the UK and around the globe. This higher rate of interest naturally results in more money to play with. The fact that slot machine developers are competing with one another to produce the next amazing game is always excellent news for us.
The UK gaming industry’s survival depends heavily on slots. But in 2023, significant adjustments are likely, particularly concerning jackpot positions.
Jackpot gaming game ideas are not particularly novel. They have existed for years in a variety of forms. However, those that are approaching aim to alter the direction of the UK online gambling sector.
You can obtain several significant progressive rewards and in-game prizes in 2023. Hot jackpot games have also recently appeared, and they seem to be on the verge of continuing their sharp increase in appeal.


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- LG Innotek’s developed new pressure sensors that are flexible
- Sensors detect pressure at whole exterior instead of specific points
- New pressure sensors work across temperature range
LG’s subsidiary LG Innotek has developed a textile pressure sensor that is flexible, and could find its use in industries like healthcare and manufacturing according to the company. The company is yet to commercialise the technology but said that the sensor is superior to the present inflexible and stiff pressure sensors.
The South Korean consumer electronics giant says that its new pressure sensor is made from a flexible and elastic polyurethane material that enables it to be integrated into other products seamlessly. Further, LG has said that its new sensor detects pressure across the whole of its exterior rather than just specific points.
The company says that apart from being flexible, the new sensors are durable as well and are able to work from temperatures as low as 40-degrees Celsius below zero to 80-degrees Celsius above zero for more than 240 hours at a time. According to the company, its new pressure sensors can withstand a person (weighing 70 kilograms) sitting on it 100,000 times.
The sensors can be used to make pressure-sensitive shoes or carpets to detect a patient’s movement or to make pressure-sensitive golf club to improve a golfer’s grip.
They can be used in cars to detect driver’s posture, body type, weight, and automatically adjusting the seat or pressure of an airbag.
The company has not given a timeline for the availability of the sensors for commercial use but the sensors are not expected to be seen in any products for a couple of years.


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You can’t imagine the consternation on the part of some Mac users after reading published reports that Mac OS X Leopard was being postponed until October because Apple wanted to improve compatibility with Windows Vista.
Without much thought, some folks ignored the illogical nature of the basic premise and the story simply took off. It’s not that Apple has helped much, since they’ve said very little about Leopard in recent months. Everything about Leopard’s progress is unofficial, with reports from folks who ought to know better about the state of 10.5’s development process, which was said not to be going so well.
So where are all the “top secret” features touted by Steve Jobs at last year’s WWDC? His excuse was that he didn’t want to give Microsoft a chance to copy those features for Windows Vista. As a practical matter, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Even if Microsoft wanted to steal some of those features, it might take a year or two to alter an operating system that was already in the final Q&A process.
In other words, it was all just marketing hype, or perhaps a clever excuse to avoid saying those extra features weren’t quite ready to display publicly last year.
Of course, when Apple barely uttered a word about Leopard’s progress in January at Macworld Expo, you can bet that the rumor mills were fueled to overflowing. Every single month, we heard that final release was just weeks away and Apple would reveal all of Leopard’s secrets to an eager audience of Mac users.
To be sure, I felt reasonably certain in January that Leopard would arrive in late March, to coincide with the sixth anniversary of Mac OS X. As February turned into March, I realized my expectations wouldn’t be fulfilled. At this point, though, it really didn’t matter. It could be May or June and it would make no difference. I have other things to spend my money on, and Tiger works just fine for me. As much as I enjoy putting a new Mac OS through its paces, I’m content to wait.
Update: Anyway, the theory that Leopard would be postponed until fall made no sense either. What would Apple need to do to Leopard when it came to Vista compatibility that would delay it so long? It couldn’t be Boot Camp, since third parties have already managed to induce it to run Vista, and this wouldn’t seem a valid reason to put Leopard on the back burner. What’s more, version 1.2 of the Boot Camp beta has since added official support for Vista, eliminating one more silly argument about the alleged delay.
To make things all the more interesting, Apple was finally quoted as saying that it wasn’t changing its promise to deliver Leopard during the first half of this year.
Now that doesn’t mean that you should always believe Apple, because it may well be that a final delivery date is still in flux. Besides, as most of you realize, Apple has been known to say one thing and do another. For example, as some have mentioned already, the Mac mini first appeared only a few months after Apple’s finance executives said they didn’t intend to enter the low-cost PC arena.
Of course, that could have been a little sleight of hand to misdirect potential competitors. Or perhaps the final decision about whether to go ahead with the mini wasn’t made until after the analyst meeting in question.
So where does that leave us? Well, nowhere I should imagine. After all, the original story about a Leopard delay had no verification and was without logic. It probably should not have been published in the first place.
Of course, so long as Apple continues to say nothing about Leopard, I suppose there’s plenty of room for rampant speculation to fill in the gaps. At the same time, I would hope that a few of those so-called journalists who are ripe and ready to run with any story about Apple, whether verified or not, will learn a few of the basics of their profession.
However, that’s something I’m not betting on.
In any case, for the sake of any of you who really care at this point, I think Apple’s decision to schedule the WWDC in June says it all. They fully expect to have Leopard shipping or close to shipping at that time.
Meantime, I would hope the official announcement will be coming soon, so all the speculation can end for good. Or until there’s something else to speculate about.
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Reader Tim says that Banana Republic sent him a Visa after he opted out of the program and that the card’s mailer was misleading (it looked like a replacement for his regular Banana Republic card, not a new “optional” Visa account) and didn’t disclose important details… like the card’s interest rate.
Reader Maegan wrote Banana Republic to let them know that their credit card website was buggy and annoying to use. She got back a canned response that halfheartedly apologized for the state of their website and recommended that she use another service to pay her bill.
A freelance journalist has caught the GAP using child labor to produce hand embroidered clothing for its GAP Kids line. The children, who are as young as 10, are quoted as saying they were sold to the factory by their families and cannot leave until their debt is paid. A video of the factory’s squalid conditions shows GAP Kids labels on the clothing.
Mike Antonucci at the San Jose Mercury News took your complaints to the Gap’s top brass and got some interesting responses. They even responded to our editorializing about the Gap’s general state of failure with some upbeat sentences touting their own profitability. Whoops! We guess we were wrong and everything is just fine. Wait, what about the three-year sales slump, the recent layoffs, and the fact that same-store sales (the most important indicator of the health of a retail operation) have fallen in 12 consecutive quarters. Teehee! Sorry, we were sooo mean!
A while back we asked the readers to tell us what was wrong with Gap, INC. Since we asked, they’ve sh*tcanned their CEO, closed a chain of stores, launched new ad campaigns featuring celebrities, rethought their merchandise and…nothing has has helped.
There’s some weirdness going on with Banana Republic’s store credit card website. Reader Bernard wrote us to say that a Banana Republic CSR told him that every 3-4 months Banana Republic’s credit card site would be “updated” and that everyone would have to re-register—including signing up for a new user name. Is this the case of an incompetent CSR, or is there something strange going on with Banana Republic’s credit card site? Has anyone else had trouble with it? Read Bernard’s email inside.
Pressler’s penny-pinching may have turned off the Gap’s core customers. Sweaters that were once 100% cotton or wool, for example, showed up in stores as acrylic blends, and people noticed. Banana Republic tried to woo the same high-end consumers as J. Crew but didn’t go far enough in offering luxury fabrics, like cashmere, that those shoppers wanted. In 2005, while department stores couldn’t sell enough $100-plus premium jeans, the Gap skipped denim and tried to push khakis. “Pressler went too far in focusing on costs at the expense of merchandising,” says Christine Chen, senior research analyst at Pacific Growth Equities. “Sometimes you just need to go with your gut and do what makes sense to get customers in the door.”
The article also mentions the way in which stores like H&M refresh their looks faster, drawing in and keeping customers in their 20s and 30s. By the time a look hits the GAP, it’s already over, and possibly expensive for the store and unflattering for the customer (skinny jeans?)—MEGHANN MARCO
Dog-like sycophants that we are, we love loyalty. Especially when people are more loyal to The Consumerist than the organization that helps them have a roof over their hands. A little bird tweets into our ear about the sugar daddy who pays his bills, Gap, Inc. Looks like they had a lot of whacky doodle malarkey going on with their online shopping system this week. Looks like we got a new stoolie as well.


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Consumer Reports has sent a letter to 25 manufacturers of IoT cameras with a call to improve their security.
“In response to multiple reports of hacks and unauthorized access of smart cameras and doorbells, Consumer Reports writes to urge your company to raise the standard of security for your connected camera, doorbell, or security system,” wrote the company.
“We request clarification on the steps you are taking to prevent hacks and unauthorized access to these cameras and the systems that underlie them.
IoT cameras are one of the worst offenders when it comes to security. Given that cameras are essentially an eye into your premises; they’re among the devices consumers expect to be most secure.
However, cheap IoT cameras in particular are notorious for poor security practices. Many devices are compromised simply because they use a default password and fail to prompt the user to change it.
If you need an illustration of the problem, directories can even be found on the web which allow you to stream all the cameras found with default passwords used.
Consumer Reports sent their letter to the following 25 companies:
- ADT / LifeShield
- Honeywell Home
- Night Owl
- Samsung SmartThings
Consumer Reports warns the IoT camera manufacturers that its ratings will reflect whether it believes adequate steps have been taken to ensure the security and privacy of users is protected.
The company goes on to highlight the following recent incidents of hacked IoT cameras:
- A woman reported that a man had hacked her camera, which she only learned when the man started to harass the woman through the camera in her bedroom.
- A stranger also hacked a family’s camera to spew racial slurs at the family.
- A hacker demanded a man pay a ransom in Bitcoin through his connected camera.
- A woman was awoken by someone shouting “wake up” through a connected camera located in her bedroom.
- A family learned that their home cameras had been hacked only when a stranger’s voice yelled through the camera to “Come here. Come here.”
Research conducted by Consumer Reports found at least 17 reported incidences of hacked cameras in the US in December alone.
“All people have an inherent right to privacy—especially within their own homes. This right to privacy at home is protected in the US Constitution and is clearly reflected in consumer preferences regarding connected products used at home,” Consumer Reports wrote.
In a survey conducted by PCMag, the publication found that privacy was more important to most consumers than cost when it comes to smart home devices. However, the bad publicity from a manufacturer’s camera being hacked is bound to be costly – so it’s in everyone’s interests to ensure security is given the priority it requires.
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Paul Joseph Watson
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Jurg Kiener, CEO of Swiss Asia Capital, told CNBC this morning that the flight from paper currencies as a result of global interest rate cuts will lead to a doubling in the price of gold within a short period, as demand for physical precious metals outstrips supply, causing paper contracts on gold to default.
|Kiener pointed out that the expected global reduction in interest rates, kick-started last night by the Australian central bank’s one point cut, means gold is a far more attractive option than any currency because purchasing power of paper money will continue to decline.|
“The physical market has been on fire – it’s getting very hard to buy one ounce coins and smaller bars, most jewelry shops have been running out so we have a supply problem,” said Kiener.
Kiener said that there was a two tier market in gold, the one on Wall Street where the bankers continue to gamble, and the physical market which is “red hot” and demand is outstripping supply.
“I think we’re going to get very close where we see the environment where the paper contracts on precious metal defaulting, and with that we’re going to get a massive price increase in the overall prices of precious metal,” said Kiener.
Asked where he expected gold to go after the paper market broke down, Kiener said he expected gold to double in price, “in a very short period of time, it will spike up quite fast,” he added.
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
“If you had an oil rally going from $65 to $140 dollars in nine months, I think it can double in gold in a much shorter period because the market is much much smaller,” Kiener stated.
Kiener pointed out that the expected global reduction in interest rates, kick-started last night by the Australian central bank’s one point cut, means gold is a far more attractive option than any currency because purchasing power of paper money will continue to decline.
As we highlighted yesterday, the demand for physical gold is frantic and people are willing to pay premiums of $50 or more to get their hands on the precious metal.
The potential for hyperinflation is a very real threat, and it has led to a spike in gold purchases. The Royal Canadian Mint recently sold out of one ounce gold bullion bars in what tellers described as a “crazy” demand to own the precious metal.
The U.S. Mint also ran out of one-ounce American Eagle coins in August and one-ounce American Buffalo coins at the end of September.
Michael Levy, a gold broker based in Surrey, B.C., said the volume of people purchasing gold is at its highest since the inflation scare of 1979. “People were buying then because of inflation, now because of a growing distrust in paper currency,” he said. “It’s a different mentality but the same rush.”
Yesterday, 40-year market veteran and fund manager Robin Griffiths of Cazenove Capital Management told CNBC that the overprinting of dollars as a result of the Wall Street bailout will act as a catalyst for gold prices to rocket to $2,000 an ounce, as demand for precious metals outstrips supply amidst rumors of market manipulation.
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CHICAGO (CBS.MW) -- With a travel boom in Las Vegas, quarterly earnings reports from casinos should show healthy gains when they report next week.
which announced its buyout of the larger Caesars Entertainment
during the quarter, is expected to report on Wednesday that it earned $1.04 per share, up 12 percent on torrid revenue growth of 19 percent, according to analysts polled by Thomson First Call.
which is gobbling up a rival of its own in Mandalay Resort Group
should earn 57 cents per share, according to the Street view, up from 36 cents in the year-ago period.
Another healthy report in the travel and leisure sector should come Wednesday from holding company Cendant
The owner of the Avis car rental, Ramada hotel and Coldwell Banker real estate brands is expected to earn 55 cents per share, a 16 percent bounce off the year-ago quarter.
Hotel chain Starwood
on tap for Thursday. It's expected to earn 37 cents per share, up a whopping 55 percent. The report will be its first under new CEO Steve Heyer, who walked away mad from the president's job at Coca-Cola earlier this year when he was passed over for the beverage behemoth's top slot.


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On Wednesday night, Facebook reported fabulous results and beat almost all expectations. Did the market even blink at the stock? Barely. Jim Cramer thinks this is a mistake investors should take advantage of.
Unfortunately, Facebook reported on a crappy day in the market. According to the "Mad Money" host, if the company would have reported on any other day, it would have rallied $5 easily. That's just how darned good the quarter was.
If you are an investor willing to think long-term, then this is the perfect time to get in on Facebook at bargain levels, Cramer said.
"I think it's practically a steal, and certainly a no-brainer versus Alibaba, which just reported an exceptionally disappointing quarter this morning and really made you wonder if it didn't come public right at the peak of its own business," said Cramer.
Mark Zuckerberg has proven that he knows how to execute, as evidenced by the mobile platform that now represents 70 percent of its revenue. According to statistics, U.S. mobile Web-surfers spend 20 percent of their time on Facebook or Instagram.
No one else has conquered the realm of human connectivity, and Facebook will benefit from this in the long run.
So, what caused a negative reaction on the stock? Let's look at the numbers.
Facebook earned 54 cents a share, up 22 cents from last year. The average monthly user grew to approximately 1.39 billion people, up from 1.2 billion one year ago. That is an increase of 64 percent, and it continues to grow.
What scared investors was that expenses increased by 50 percent in the past year, to $1.63 billion. That was much higher than expected.
"My view? Yes, Facebook is spending a lot of money. But this isn't some gang of drunken sailors, it's an incredibly well-run company," said Cramer.
When Facebook invests in its business, it has a track record of those investments paying off. The company has shown that it cares very much about profitability. It wouldn't just blindly go out and spend a ton of money without a game plan. It is growing rapidly, and the CEO is clearly using the cash to grow even faster and longer.
Essentially, if you are an investor who is looking for slow growth with a buy back and a dividend—Facebook isn't the stock for you. Go buy a cereal company instead.
There are several opportunities that secure Facebook for growth. Take one look at its mobile business, where Facebook is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition in terms of engaging users on mobile. A quarter of Americans spend their time on mobile, yet only 10 percent of advertising budgets are allocated to mobile. Facebook will reap the benefits when advertisers ramp up mobile spending.
The average number of videos posted per person on Facebook also increased by 75 percent. This could be a huge opportunity for the company, as it is expected that video ads could represent $17 billion a year in the U.S. by 2017.
Read more from Mad Money with Jim Cramer
Cramer Remix: I'm emphatic on MCD news
Cramer: Why Apple's gonna roll higher this year
Cramer: Respecting the damage of high-frequency traders
Those are just a few of the vast opportunities available for this vast company. Facebook's CEO has won Cramer's trust, and he thinks he will monetize all of them.
"I think CEO Mark Zuckerberg is clearly King Midas in a hoodie. He's proven he can execute," Cramer added.
So take advantage of the rare opportunity that exists for Facebook, and hang on to it. Just like Apple, Cramer said you hold Facebook, don't trade it.


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Consumers are hitting department stores and furniture shops to splurge the windfall from cheaper petrol and food, figures showed yesterday.
Retail sales volumes jumped by a much stronger than expected 0.7 per cent in February, while January’s sales were also revised higher, according to the Office for National Statistics.
On the high street, the strongest performers over the month were department stores, where sales rose up 1.7 per cent, while household goods also saw a 1.2 per cent rise. Internet sales rose 1.9 per cent. Including plunging prices at petrol stations, prices were 3.6 per cent lower than a year ago in February – the biggest annual fall since records began in 1997.
The spending surge comes as inflation over the month fell to a low of 0 per cent. That has given shoppers a real-terms pay boost, as wages across the country rose at an annual 1.8 per cent pace in the quarter to January.
Alan Clarke, an analyst at Scotiabank, said: “If you wanted a demonstration that low food and energy prices are good for consumer spending, then this is it. People are clearly not deferring – they are spending the windfall.”Reuse content


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The Emoji Company, launched just three years ago, is now taking licensed products to every corner of the globe.
Warner Music U.K. and The Smiley Company have joined forces to incorporate Smiley in several marketing activities to support Ed Sheeran’s new album “Divide.”
Vans has partnered with artist and illustrator Kendra Dandy to design a collection of illustrations across Vans footwear, apparel and accessories.
Dark Hall Mansion, in partnership with Warner Bros. Consumer Products, will release contemporary artist Laurent Durieux’s print featuring his take on the 1939 classic Gone with the Wind.
The Smiley Company has tapped Anya Hindmarch to launch a marketing campaign highlighting both companies’ long-term partnership.
Edutainment Licensing has appointed three new agents to further expand its global partnership network for the art brand Arty Mouse.
Artist Amylee Weeks has teamed up with a number of licensees to feature artwork from her dog and cat collections, Dog Diggity and The Cat’s Meow, acrossa range of categories.
Smiley has partnered with Chinese retailer Metersbonwe to launch a new apparel collection inspired by the emoticon brand.
International design house Turnowsky has partnered with Lifetime Brands to develop a collection of tabletop products featuring the brand’s designs.
The Smiley Company will celebrate long-term partner and French retailer Colette’s 20th anniversary with two co-branded items that will join the retailer’s “20 Products for 20 Years” campaign.
Design company Poketo and Misfit have joined forces to design and release a special edition accessory for Misfit’s Shine 2 Activity Tracker.
Tokidoki, the Japanese pop culture brand meaning “sometimes,” has unveiled a new character–the Mermicorno–and accompanying merchandise.
SmileyWorld has partnered with the French maternity and children’s apparel retailer Orchestra to create a new line of children’s apparel and accessories.
SmileyWorld has partnered with Scholastic for a range of titles in the U.K and Eire.
TV host and celebrity personality Kelly Ripa has teamed with Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores to unveil the Kelly Ripa home décor fabric collection.
EmojiOne has tapped Walls360 to launch a collection of branded wall graphics.
Mr Men Little Miss and Sushi Shop have joined forces for branded boxes of sushi.
Rachael Hale, who is represented by Start Licensing, has tapped Dot Dash Design for a new range of designs and artwork styles for licensing.
Michael Miller Designs has extended its partnership with RJM Licensing, who will actively be seeking licenses for the U.S.-based design company.
Journée Monégasque de Nez Rouges and the Smiley Company have joined forces to feature the Smiley brand during the 12th annual Monaco Red Nose Day.
Koko Rose Media and licensing agency Empire Multimedia have launched the art and lifestyle brand Deer Little Forest and the preschool series “Flora of the Forest” in Asia.
©2017 UBM. All rights reserved. A UBM Company.


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Processors, and especially those active in the automotive and consumer goods sectors, have the opportunity to join a project to demonstrate how the mechanical, electrical, thermal and barrier properties of thermoplastics can be improved by introducing graphene to the material. Twelve companies and four research institutes already are participating. Companies would have input into the specification of properties, applications, and markets.
Gordon Bishop, managing director at NetComposites, which is organizing the project, says many of these already signed up for it are involved in producing aerospace applications, but the project organizer hopes to broaden the participants' list to include plastics processors involved in other markets. The dozen participants does include Tier 1 suppliers to sectors such as auto and consumer goods, but he'd like to involve more processors too. To participate as a formal members of the partnership, then a company needs to be based in Europe. "However, there is also an opportunity for end-users to be involved in a steering/advisory role in a less formal capacity, which includes non-European organizations," explained Bishop....>


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Executives will have to help Apple meet its environmental and social goals in order to get a bonus.
What you need to know
- Apple is changing how its executives get their cash bonuses.
- The company is incorporating environmental and social goals into its bonus structure.
As reported by Reuters, Apple has said in an annual proxy filing that it will be making some changes to the cash bonuses for its executives. According to the filing, bonuses will begin to be earned if progress is made towards the company’s social and environmental goals.
The filing says that the changes will go into effect this year.
“Beginning in 2021, an environmental, social, and governance modifier based on Apple Values and other key community initiatives will be incorporated into our annual cash incentive program.”
The company’s bonus structure used to be based mostly on financial results, so this is another strong indicator that Apple is taking its commitment to the environment and social initiatives seriously. The company says that it hopes the changes further push its executives to follow values-driven leadership.
“This change is intended to further motivate Apple’s executive team to meet exceptionally high standards of values-driven leadership in addition to delivering strong financial results.”
Apple has made a number of environmental moves in recent history. The company removed the power adapter and headphones from the box of the iPhone. All of the company’s retail and corporate locations run on renewable energy. The company has also set a goal to become completely carbon neutral by 2030.


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Announced at the Educause 2016 conference, Blackboard Learn users will now be able to collaborate on documents using the cloud sharing platform Dropbox.
My note: BB is only catching up with Google, which has Google Drive (~ Dropbox) and Google Classroom (~ BB). It doesn’t matter how much hype BB is trying to produce, the fact is that BB is behind.
D2L is even farther behind, without an integration of any video tool. Google has Google Hangouts and BB purchased several video conferencing tools until it got “the right one.”
D2L announce in 2010 an integration with Skype but it has not happened. Now, D2L will be double behind without integration of a cloud-based file space.
But unicorns are no longer so rare, and failure is part of a healthy economy’s means of turning over into new ideas and new leadership. With tech in the midst of a wide-ranging boom, there are other, more financially-stable and innovative companies hungry to hire away talent into positions better suited to the employees and the economy as a whole.
Aside from anecdotal stories like the Zirtual mess, unicorns don’t simply vanish over the weekend like Bear Sterns. Unicorns die a slow death as their core products lose relevance, new product initiatives fail, user growth slips away, costs mount, and key employees and talent drain from the system.
After a multi-year period of what can only be described radio silence from Evernote, the company made a change at CEO in late July of this year. Phil Libin, a member of the founding team who had repeatedly talked about building Evernote into a ‘100 year company,’ was departing and handing the role over to Google Glass executive Chris O’Neill.
Aside from Evernote’s success in China, the Evernote of 2012 sounds little like that of 2015. The short-term market conditions that Evernote of 2012 worried about failed to materialize
Evernote competes with Dropbox, Box, iCloud, and Google Drive in cloud storage, Instapaper and Spool in web clipping, and Photoshop and Gimp in image editing as Evernote acquired image annotator Skitch last year. The wealth of established competitors indicate a challenge for Evernote, but also a clear need for its products. Libin tells me he doesn’t see competitors as Evernote’s biggest threat, though.
Most business customers are using other products already that more than adequately address the need of a note taking application. Many customers have long converted to Google Apps, which bundles document sharing (and spreadsheets, and ‘power point’) into a larger, more valuable suite of products centered around Gmail. Microsoft’s OneNote is available for free, and its collaboration tools are available already for organizations running Microsoft’s Office 365.
The most interesting shift away from an Evernote-like model is Slack, which has seen its own meteoric growth into the unicorn club. Slack’s power is not just as a messaging platform; it’s a real, live, categorized and searchable history of business happenings sorted by channel.
For Dropbox it’s a lot easier to partner with companies and build a platform rather than try and create a rival to Microsoft Office. Dropbox’s updated apps will be available across mobile platforms in the coming weeks alongside Microsoft’s own Office apps. Additionally, Dropbox has also committed to building a Windows Phone version of its app which will be available in the coming months.
Still storing those pictures and documents on your hard drive? Being cramped in your Huskynet file space (1GB)? Using the 10GB space, which Dropbox gives you for free? Using Google Docs and storing them in your Google Drive account?
MultCloud offers you a single interface to navigate through all these and more cloud-based storage accounts.


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Pork processor Cranswick has seen a sales increase in the fourth quarter of the year as a result of lower input prices being passed on to customers.
In an interim trading statement the group said organic sales growth for the period 1 January to 31 March broadly in-line with expectations at +1%, whilst including the acquired Benson Park business sales are reported up by 4%.
"The board expects to report a trading performance for the year ended 31 March 2015 in line with its expectations. With experienced management at all levels of the group, a strong range of products, a well-invested asset base and a robust financial position, the board remains confident in the continued long-term success and development of the business," Cranswick said in a statement.
Darren Shirley, analyst at Shore Capital said: "Cranswick’s Q4 delivery represents a solid improvement on the Q3 performance and we leave our profit expectations unchanged, looking for FY2015 CPTP of GBP56.4m (US$83.8m), EPS of 90.5p, with sales forecast to exceed GBP1bn for the first time."


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The Federal Highway Administration reported today (direct link here) that travel during October 2008 on all roads and streets fell by -3.5% compared to October last year. This drop follows the -4.2% September decline. Further, October marks the twelfth consecutive month of traffic volume decline compared to the same month in the previous year. Travel YTD through October 2008 also fell by -3.5% compared to 2007.
The twelve consecutive monthly declines (November 2007 through October 2008) in miles driven compared to the same month in the previous year is close to a record, and represents one of the most significant adjustments to driving behavior in history.
On a moving 12-month total basis, traffic volume in October fell to 2,907 billion miles, the lowest level in almost five years - since February of 2004 (see chart above), and this measure of traffic volume has fallen in each of the last nine months.
The moving 12-month total traffic volume in October 2008 (2,907 billion miles) is below the October 2007 level (3,007 billion miles) by 100 billion annual miles driven, the largest annual decline in FHA history (data go back to 1971).
At an average fuel efficiency of 20 m.p.g., and an average gas price of $3.39 per gallon over that period (data here
), that reduction in miles driven represents an annual savings of almost $17 billion for American consumers and businesses.
That's in addition to the much larger $350 billion expected annual savings for consumers and businesses from the drop in gas prices from $4.12 per gallon to $1.67 since July (gas price data here
), since American consumers and businesses save about $1.42 billion annually for every penny decrease in gas prices (see calculation here
Thanks to John Thacker for the FHA update.


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Apple’s new Studio Display is more than it appears – it has an Apple A13 chipset (iPhone 11), 64 GB of storage and runs the latest iOS 15.4. Apparently, only 2 GB of the internal storage are currently in use, so there is plenty of room for new features.
What is it that the Studio Display does that needs a fairly powerful smartphone chipset? Right now it implements Center Stage for the built-in webcam. This feature originally launched on the iPad . It follows one or more people and makes sure they are in the middle of the frame during video calls, even if they get up and move around.
The camera is reportedly suffering from some teething issues, but those may be fixed in software – the Apple A13 has a capable ISP after all. That camera has an ultra wide lens (122°) and a 12 MP sensor, by the way, so it’s already much better than a typical laptop webcam.
Interestingly, the second generation Apple TV 4K is powered by an Apple A12 chipset, so the Studio Display is actually more powerful than it. Apple could, in theory, get the display to work as a standalone Apple TV device, but whether it wants to do that is another question. It’s not clear what kind of connectivity is available on board, which may be the limiting factor.
New Apple ad targets data brokers – TechCrunch
Apple is doubling down on raising consumer awareness of privacy risks in a new ad campaign, unveiled today, which puts the spotlight on how the data broker industry trades in mobile users’ personal data — from selling browsing history and shopping habits, to location data, contacts and plenty more besides.
The campaign also highlights a number of features Apple has developed to counter this background trade in web users’ information by giving iOS users’ tools they can use to counter tracking — such as Mail Privacy Protection, which helps users combat email trackers; and App Tracking Transparency (ATT), which lets them request that third party apps do not track their mobile activity.
The new 90-second ad spot will run globally this summer on broadcast and social media across 24 countries, per Apple, which also said the campaign will include related creative being splashed across billboards.
In a press screening of the ad ahead of today’s launch the iPhone maker said the goal is to show how features it’s developed can help iOS users protect their privacy by taking back control over their personal data.
The ad (which can be seen in the embedded video below) casts the data broker industry as a gaggle of “dubious” ‘human trackers’ — who the protagonist, a consumer called Ellie, whom we meet as she’s shopping for records, stumbles upon engaged in a backroom auction.
Shock horror! — or, well, zero surprise to those of us who are more than casually online — it’s her personal data that’s going under the hammer.
In the ad, the smirking audience of data brokers can be seen making bids for Ellie’s ‘digital items’ — including her drug store purchases, emails she’s opened, details of her late night messaging habits and the contact data of her nana (as well as, presumably, the rest of her address book). With mounting horror at the sale of her private information, Ellie is shown activating features on her iPhone, including the aforementioned Mail Privacy Protection — which result in the data brokers vanishing in a puff of smoke, until, eventually, the room has been cleaned out.
The advert makes a decent stab at trying to get consumers to understand — and thus care — about a murky trade that’s designed to strip away their privacy by tracking their daily activity and trading and triangulating different bundles of information gleaned about them to create highly detailed per-person profiles — which may contain thousands of inferred characteristics.
It does this by dramatizing what is undoubtedly an exceptionally intrusive trade as an in-person auction for a single consumer’s data. Of course the reality is that most tracking (and trading) is done at scale, with trackers invisibly baked into everyday services, both online (via technologies such as tracking cookies and pixels) and offline (data gathered via card payment firms can and is sold to brokers) — so it can be hard for consumers to understand the real-world implications of technologies like cookies. Or know there’s an entire data broker industry that’s busy buying and selling their info for a fat profit.
The ad is perhaps not as instantly powerful as an earlier tracking-focused ad — in which Apple depicted trackers as an ever-growing crowd of stalkers, who inserted themselves, rudely and without asking, into an iPhone user’s personal space — watching them and taking notes on their daily activity.
One narrative challenge for Apple with this latest privacy-focused ad is it can’t show Ellie using a rival device — which could help explain how come so much of her info is being tracked in the first place.
That said, many of Apple’s privacy features do require the user to opt in to obtain the slated protections — not all, though (Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature is on by default, for example) — so even iOS users need to take proactive action to get the best level of protection possible. Hence there’s value in Apple shelling out to drive awareness of privacy — both for existing iOS users, as well as in the hopes of encouraging Android users to make the switch.
The tech giant has made pro-privacy messaging an increasingly important plank of its brand over the past five years or so, leaning into blistering attacks on what CEO Tim Cook memorably dubbed the “data industrial complex” back in a major 2018 keynote speech.
It’s a stance that has become an essential differentiator for a premium brand in a world of commoditized mobile devices and services. But it also brings Cupertino into conflict not only with adtech giants like Google and Facebook — the latter’s revenue was reported to have taken a hit after Apple launched ATT, for example — but with developers themselves, many of whom rely on ads to monetize free apps and do that by being plugged into the tracking and targeting adtech ecosystem Apple is busy warning consumers against.
The company also risks straining relations with carriers — many of whom are themselves implicated in privacy-hostile tracking of users — after it debuted a VPN-like, network proxy encrypted browsing feature for iCloud+, called Private Relay last year. The feature, which is still in beta, is designed to prevent ISPs from loggings web users’ browsing data — and it’s notable that certain carriers (and countries) have been reported blocking access.
Private Relay does not feature in Apple’s new ad on data brokers. Asked about this Apple said it necessarily had to limit the number of features it focused on to fit the 90-second ad format. It also noted that as well as the feature still being in beta it needs in-region partners for it to work as smoothly as possible — which is a network Apple said it’s still building out.
Certain of Apple’s privacy flexes — most notably ATT — have also drawn attention from competition regulators, following ad industry complaints. So there are wider reasons for Cupertino to be keen for its pro-consumer actions to be viewed through a privacy (rather than an anti-competition) lens.
Earlier this year, an interesting research paper found that Apple and other large companies had been able to increase their market power as a result of the ATT feature giving individual users more control over what third parties could do with their data — linking better consumer privacy to more concentrated data collection. Although the researchers also found evidence of the tracking industry trying to evolve its tactics to circumvent a user denial of tracking.
Apple iOS 15.5 Release: Should You Upgrade? – Forbes
Apple iOS 15.5 has arrived and it is an extremely important update, but not for the reasons you might expect. So should you upgrade? Here’s everything you need to know.
Tip: bookmark this page because I will keep it up to date if/when new problems are found. I will deliver my final verdict in a week.
Who Is It For?
Apple iOS 15.5 and iPadOS 15.5 have been released for all iOS 15-compatible devices, this means the iPhone 6S (2015) and newer and iPad Mini 4 (2015) and newer. I must warn you that there are now concerns around delays to the auto-update process, so the best method is to trigger it manually by navigating to Settings > General > Software Update. If you are running newer beta software (see ‘The Road Ahead’ section at the end), you must unenroll your device before the update will appear.
Note: this guide is not focused on older iOS updates or iPadOS, but I will touch upon pertinent issues in these guides.
The Deal Breakers
For everyone else, the first 24 hours is promising. While I have seen isolated reports from upgraders of poor network reception, screen wake up failing during calls and missing FaceTime notifications there has been no momentum around any of these so far. Reddit and Apple Support Communities are also quiet.
As always, I will continue to monitor this as more users upgrade.
So What Do You Get?
Apple’s official iOS 15.5 release notes read as follows:
– Wallet now enables Apple Cash customers to send and request money from their Apple Cash card
– Apple Podcasts includes a new setting to limit episodes stored on your iPhone and automatically delete older ones
– Fixes an issue where home automations, triggered by people arriving or leaving, may fail
Unsurprisingly, the release notes don’t mention the biggest news in iOS 15.5: the new Macs leaked in its beta code. Expect big news from Apple here at WWDC on June 6.
Aside from this, the potentially transformative introduction in iOS 15.5 is the ability to now receive money through Apple Cash not just send it. This could have a huge impact for small businesses, stall traders, etc. It’s also useful for getting friends/family to quickly pay their debts!
And yet the most significant reason you should upgrade to iOS 15.5 is security. The official iOS 15.5 security page reveals no less than 34 security patches. The good news is there are no known ‘Zero-Day’ vulnerabilities (flaws which hackers are actively exploiting before a fix can be issued) but there is a wide range of affected areas, including: graphics, memory, Apple Notes, Shortcuts, WiFi and WebKit (the engine that powers Safari) and Safari Private Browsing.
Apple iOS 15.5 Verdict: Upgrade
Despite a dumpster fire launch, iOS 15 is now a very polished platform. Few releases in recent months have had serious problems and iOS 15.5 looks like another solid entry to this list as Apple winds it down ahead of iOS 16.
For the most hesitant, bookmark this guide. I will continue to update it with any relevant flaws or features I find and you will receive my final verdict here in one week.
The Road Ahead
At the time of publication, Apple has not released a new iOS 15 beta and while several ‘minor point’ releases (iOS 15.5.1, etc) are likely, I would be surprised to see another major point upgrade (iOS 15.6) before the launch of iOS 16.
And we will see that soon. Apple will debut iOS 16 at WWDC 2022 which kicks off on June 6 and early leaks suggest our hopes should be high. Developer and public betas will follow, though reports claim test builds are buggier than normal which may delay this.
Apple has settled into a one-good-one-bad pattern for generational iOS releases in recent years (iOS 13 – bad, iOS 14 – good, iOS 15 – bad), so let’s hope iOS 16 doesn’t break the trend. We are due a good one.
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Wordle Game Help: 5-letter words starting with 'S' and ending with 'R' – Dot Esports
Wordle is a fun and casual game played by many players every day. Its simplicity and ease of sharing match results on social media were an essential part of its success. It wasn’t long before the game, created by Josh Wardle, conquered the internet and was acquired by the New York Times. It makes sense since Wordle brings that feel of crossword games in the newspapers. Many players even like to play Wordle in the morning over coffee.
There are many different types of Wordle players. Some are more casual and enjoy playing games when they are bored or have some free time, logging into the New York Times website during breaks during work or on the go on their mobile devices.
There are those players who prefer to take the game more seriously and engage in discovering strategies, researching which words are best to start with, and doing everything possible to keep their winning streaks recorded on the Wordle website and shared on their social networks.
It doesn’t matter if you are a more casual gamer or a hardcore one. If you play Wordle often, it is very likely you have come across secret words that are more difficult to discover than others. It is part of the game, as every day new words are chosen. And in these more difficult times, a little online help may come in handy.
If you’ve used several of your attempts but only managed to find that the secret word of the day starts with the letter ‘S’ and ends with the letter ‘R’, here are some five-letter words starting with ‘S’ and ending with ‘R’, sorted alphabetically so you’ll have less work to do with filtering your choices by the letters you’ve already eliminated.
Five-letter words starting with ‘S’ and ending with ‘R’ to try on Wordle
All the words on this list are accepted by Wordle and will give you more clues as to which letters are present or not in the word of the day until you get it right. Another good tip to get it right as early as possible is to find which other vowels are present in the word of the day to narrow down your options. Beware of words that may have repeated letters and don’t forget to try words you already know first, since Wordle tends to choose more common words as the right answer.
These tips should help you complete your latest Wordle task.
New Apple ad targets data brokers – TechCrunch
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MANCHESTER, England, August 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --
The launch of the website follows their recent entry into the discount clothing market and confirms suspicions about the forceful technique used to enter the fashion industry.
Owner of the business, Daniel Millington released a short statement on his blog which said: "Undercut everyone and forcing our way into the fashion industry can damage a lot of businesses throughout the UK, but with times the way they are and me being a business man, I aim to cater to the general public in the best way possible, which means offering the best prices possible for high quality products."
Tempa Legale are an online retailer of women's clothing and accessories. Based in the UK they ship to all corners of the globe and in the past year their rapid growth has seen an increase in profits by over 200% and the new launch of their website is set to make Tempa Legale one of the largest online retailers of women's clothing.
For further information please contact:
Or visit our website http://www.tempalegal.com
SOURCE Tempa Legale


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OCZ taking the solid-state drive market by storm
And unlike the Super Talent MX SSDs, these new Core series doesn’t give up much in terms of speed to its more expensive rivals. OCZ is projecting read speeds of 120 to 143 MB/sec and write speeds of 80 to 93 MB/sec. All Core Series SSDs feature a mean time before failure (MTBF) of 1.5 million hours.
“SSDs offer higher performance, reliability, and energy efficiency than conventional HDDs but the cost variance has limited adoption of vastly superior SSD technology, until now,” said OCZ Technology CEO Ryan Petersen. “It is our mission to deliver the highest performance products to consumers at reasonable prices, and with the release of the Core Series SSDs we have done exactly that.”
OCZ did not specify an exact launch date for the new drives, but given that pricing has already been announced, the drives will likely hit the market very shortly.


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Bolton Arena has revealed it is closing in on a sell out for the December 8 Amir Khan fight as details of the VIP package were announced. Amir’s 21st birthday bout with Graham Earl is heading towards the capacity 7000 mark with just a ‘few hundred’ tickets remaining at prices £50, £75 and £100..
The VIP packages are being offered at just £79.95 + VAT plus the cost of ticket and businesses and individuals are being invited to book soon to enjoy the fight with a 3-course buffet, drinks and VIP surroundings.
Amir Khan has spoken of his delight at returning to Bolton Arena next month for his Commonwealth Lightweight Championship fight versus Graham Earl.
The Bolton born champion says the atmosphere of the Arena will give him an even bigger boost when he steps in the ring, adding to the pre-fight tension that has already begun.
“It will be the best feeling ever stepping out at the Arena to fight in front of my own fans on my 21st Birthday.” said Khan.
“The atmosphere will be amazing and I’m confident I can give the crowd another victory.”
Hotels in the area are also starting to sell out, an indication that many people from out of town are travelling to the fight.
Khan tickets can be purchased from the Arena front desk or by calling 01204 488100.


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Report Shows Small Businesses Struggling
A recent National Small Business Association (NSBA) report shows a small business community struggling to stay afloat in a dismal economic climate. In the “2009 Mid-Year Economic Report,â€ released this week, 94% of small businesses said the national economy today is worse off than five years ago, and those who think the economy is doing much worse jumped to 75% in July 2009.
“Nearly half of small businesses, up from a third six months ago, are not confident about the future of their own business,” said Todd O. McCracken, NSBA president. “The ongoing erosion of confidence from traditionally up-beat entrepreneurs is a wakeup call to lawmakers that small business may not be able to tread water much longer.”
Included in the report are indications of the difficulty small businesses are facing in reference to three key factors — revenues, profits, and employee size — which all declined between December 2008 and July 2009. Revenues and profits took an even larger hit with 62% experiencing a decrease in revenues, and 66% reporting a decrease in profits. The number of small businesses hiring new employees in the past 12 months dropped from 18% in December to 9% in July.
Access to capital continues to be a key issue, with 80% of small business owners negatively impacted by the credit crunch — up from 67% one year ago. More than 60% reported worsening terms on their credit cards and 38% were subject to a decrease on their lines of credit or credit cards.
“We’re struggling. Despite several economic stimulus packages and lots of talk, only 3% of small businesses reported a positive impact of the stimulus bills on their business,” stated Keith Ashmus, NSBA chair and co-founding partner at Cleveland, Ohio-based Frantz Ward L.L.P. “America’s small businesses need and deserve better.”
The NSBA is a small business advocacy organization that reaches more than 150,000 small firms nationwide.


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More than 50 Taiwanese, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese businesses expressed interest in opening factories and manufacturing lines for furniture, flooring, construction machinery, equipment, air conditioning, and controls over the past 18 months, according to the order.
The business in charge of developing industrial parks has visited and assisted various Asian suppliers of Tesla who are considering relocating to Mexico, the representative of that company recalled.
The ability of businesses to relocate is predicated on their ability to adhere to the TMEC Treaty’s new regulations, as well as their ability to stop paying increased transportation costs and relying on the maritime sector. Also, they are confident to invest since they have discovered skilled labor in Mexico.
According to the order of the developer of industrial parks, enterprises from Taiwan, China, South Korea, and Japan should be aware that regulations, legislation, and labor culture in Mexico differ from those in Asia.
Occasionally businesses from Taiwan, China, South Korea, and Japan want to run and produce in Mexico the same way they do in Asia, he continued.
Businesses must be able to comply with the new rules set forth in the TMEC Treaty in order to move, as well as be able to cease spending more on transportation and relying on the maritime industry. Additionally, they are confident in making investments since they have found skilled workers in Mexico.
Businesses from Taiwan, China, South Korea, and Japan should be aware that regulations, laws, and labor culture in Mexico are different from those in Asia, according to the industrial park developer’s directive.