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I submitted mine on Sunday. Hope my players do well tonight.
"DraftKings, FanDuel team up to defend integrity of games; Inside-information leak riles contestants" by Callum Borchers Globe Staff October 06, 2015
The fantasy sports rivals DraftKings Inc. and FanDuel Inc. scrambled to defend the integrity of their big-money contests Monday, following a leak of inside information that raises questions about whether some of their employees have an unfair advantage when playing.
A DraftKings worker, Ethan Haskell, acknowledged last week in a comment thread on a fantasy news site, RotoGrinders, that he had released proprietary statistics too early — before all NFL games kicked off on Sept. 27.
The stats, posted online, showed the rates at which real players had been selected in DraftKings’ “Millionaire Maker” fantasy contest for the third week of the NFL season and could have given late entrants, or those making last-minute changes, an edge over competitors who had submitted rosters.
More troubling to fantasy contestants who vented their anger on online message boards, the leak suggested employees like Haskell might regularly use such information to put in their own entries and rack up winnings.
What, they don't like the rigged game of insider trading? Not enough fun?
While Boston-based DraftKings and New York-based FanDuel do not allow employees to play on the sites for which they work, it is common practice for workers to enter contests held by competitors.
In fact, on the same day that he posted stats too early, Haskell finished second in a FanDuel contest that had almost 23,000 entrants. He won $350,000.
Related: DraftKings employees reportedly won nearly $6 million playing daily fantasy sports at rival FanDuel
The ensuing online furor and media inquiries prompted the rivals to issue a joint statement in which they assured users that “nothing is more important to DraftKings and FanDuel than the integrity of the games we offer to our customers. Both companies have strong policies in place to ensure that employees do not misuse any information at their disposal and strictly limit access to company data to only those employees who require it to do their jobs. Employees with access to this data are rigorously monitored by internal fraud control teams, and we have no evidence that anyone has misused it.”
“However, we continue to review our internal controls to ensure they are as strong as they can be,” the statement continued. “We also plan to work with the entire fantasy sports industry on this specific issue so that fans everywhere can continue to enjoy and trust the games they love.”
Yeah, forget about the fix. Pour your money in and play!
The incident comes at a sensitive time for the companies. DraftKings and FanDuel this summer raised $300 million and $275 million, respectively, and are spending heavily on marketing to lure players early in the NFL season.
The companies are valued at $1 billion each, and all that money is coming from the sports leagues and Wall Street investors.
I predict nothing will come of this. People having too much fun.
Meanwhile, some lawmakers and regulators have called for review of the companies’ exemptions from gambling prohibitions.
The New York Times reported that both companies have temporarily banned workers from playing on rival websites. A FanDuel spokeswoman did not respond to a Globe inquiry. A DraftKings spokeswoman said in an e-mail that the Times story is “factually inaccurate” but did not allege specific errors or respond to a request for clarification.
A move to block inter-site fantasy gaming would probably be highly unpopular among employees of both companies. Speaking at a conference at Babson College on Sept. 25, DraftKings cofounder Paul Liberman said, “We have some people who make significantly more money off of our competitors’ sites than they do working for DraftKings.”
OMG, this WHOLE THING is a $ELF-$ERVING $WINDLE (aren't all professional sports?).
Liberman went on to explain that allowing workers to play on FanDuel is a key to retaining top talent.
Looking more and more like a looting $cheme with each sentence.
“I was actually talking to my VP of analytics yesterday, and he was like, ‘Well, this guy that’s on our team can only work 9 to 5 during football and hockey season because he spends way too much of his time playing online,’ ” Liberman recounted. “We have to let him do that; otherwise he’s never going to work for us. He adds a lot of value in terms of understanding product, understanding content.”
Qualms about the integrity of fantasy sports present a new challenge for an increasingly scrutinized industry.
The short-term fantasy sports contests run by DraftKings and FanDuel generally require entrants to put down money for a chance to win cash prizes — a system that recently prompted Attorney General Maura Healey of Massachusetts and US Representative Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey to question whether they should be considered illegal online gambling.
I've seen the commercials, and they are my way to wealth and riches! It's easy money (average bet $7, average winnings $23 bucks?)!
DraftKings and FanDuel maintain that in all but a handful of states, their contests are perfectly legal, based on an exemption to the federal Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act, which distinguishes between betting on point spreads and entering fantasy sports contests that “reflect the relative knowledge and skill of the participants.”
In football contests, DraftKings and FanDuel users draft real NFL players for their imaginary teams and score points based on how well those players perform on the field.
FanDuel has been the daily fantasy sports leader for several years running — a fact it touts proudly in commercials — but DraftKings claims to be catching up. At the Babson conference, Liberman said he expected DraftKings to collect more money in entry fees than FanDuel during the third business quarter of the year, adding that DraftKings had asked FanDuel to stop calling itself the “leader.”
FanDuel appeared to reject the request, as its marketing messages were unchanged over the weekend.
I did notice that ESPN covered the issue today, but I also note that many of their employees play and love it. They aren't going to ruin a good thing, and neither is Congre$$ (especially if they get their cut).
Gotta get dressed for the game:
"City Sports files for bankruptcy, says it will sell itself off or close down" by Jack Newsham Globe Correspondent October 05, 2015
City Sports Inc., the retailer launched more than 30 years ago in Boston by a pair of high school friends, plans to shut eight of its 26 stores and sell the rest after filing for bankruptcy protection on Monday.
If a buyer cannot be found the chain will be liquidated, acccording to documents submitted to US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.
The filing came less than three months after the struggling chain brought in longtime retail executive Marty Hanaka as chief executive to help with a turnaround. City Sports, which is controlled by the Cambridge venture capital firm Highland Capital Partners, said that cost-cutting was not enough to offset a decline in sales caused by competition and bad weather last year.
City Sports was founded by high school buddies and tennis partners Mike Kennedy and Eric Martin on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston in 1983. It has nine stores in the Boston area, according to its website, with others in locations from Vermont to Virginia. It specializes in active wear and equipment for activities such as running, cycling, swimming, and yoga.
The company said it had $45 million in revenue from January 2015 through the day of its bankruptcy filing. It has about 815 employees, according to a declaration submitted to the court by Andrew Almquist, chief financial officer.
Despite cutting back employees’ hours, reducing shipping costs, cutting hours at several locations, and trying to bargain with its landlords for rent reductions, Almquist said the company couldn’t reduce its costs enough. His declaration did not disclose profits or losses.
Almquist told the court that it seeks to close eight stores and sell the remaining 18 by Oct. 30 to any of several buyers that have expressed interest. If no agreement is struck by the end of the month, the company will have Tiger Capital Group LLC liquidate the chain’s inventory in November and early December to “take full advantage of the upcoming holiday shopping season,” Almquist said.
Highland Capital Partners bought an 80 percent stake in the company in 2008 and owned 84 percent of it at the time of filing. When it acquired the chain, Highland said it anticipated expanding to 50 stores by 2013. Tom Stemberg, founder of the Framingham-based office supply chain Staples Inc. and a managing general partner at a Highland affiliate, said at the time that he anticipated the chain could grow to include 300 locations.
Almquist cited an “extremely competitive market” for athletic apparel, especially for products made by Nike, Under Armour, and Asics, as a reason for the company’s drop in business. City Sports stores also tend to be smaller and carry fewer products than big-box stores like those run by Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc., which has added more than 120 locations in the past three years, and Sports Authority.
“We are actively seeking financial partners for the purpose of moving the company forward,” Hanaka said in a statement. “This filing gives us the opportunity to continue as a viable going concern.”
Unless it's liquidated.
What is without the dung-shoveling denial?
Hanaka previously served as chief executive of Sports Authority Inc. and as chief operating officer of Staples.
The company declined to make anyone available for an interview. A City Sports spokeswoman said in a statement that it “[does] not intend to close any stores in the Boston area,” but she would not release a list of stores it plans to close.
Nike USA Inc. holds the largest unsecured claim, with City Sports owing it $1.3 million, according to the filing. Under Armour, Asics, and Patagonia are each owed just over $1 million, court documents show.
Also see: Putnam signs sponsorship deal with the Celtics
"Data breach poses test for fantasy sports betting" by Callum Borchers, Curt Woodward and Dan Adams Globe Staff | Globe Correspondent October 06, 2015
The entire fantasy sports industry faces the most serious challenge of its brief existence at a time when the stakes are sky-high. As some lawmakers and regulators question why fantasy sports prize games are legal, and as DraftKings dukes it out with New York rival FanDuel Inc., some of the 57 million people who enter — and defend — the contests are suddenly wary that company insiders may have an edge.
What, people don't like being taken for suckers?
“A perfect storm — that’s exactly what it is,” said David O. Klein, a New York attorney and member of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. “I think that the two big players, in an effort to become number one, are shooting themselves in their collective feet. The appearance of impropriety is something you don’t want to deal with, particularly where the industry now is being questioned as to whether it’s gambling, as opposed to a game of skill.”
These, of course, are the two bitter rivals that have now closed ranks and issued a joint statement saying everything is above board.
DraftKings did not respond to a Boston Globe request to interview its cofounders.
Globe has been loving the fantasy sports until now, especially in its bu$ine$$ $section.
Instead, the company issued a statement Tuesday saying it had completed an internal investigation of events on Sept. 27 that led an employee to improperly post information about which NFL players had been selected for DraftKings’ “Millionaire Maker” contest for the third week of the season.
DraftKings regularly releases such information, but only after entrants have locked their lineups, choosing the quarterbacks, receivers, and running backs they believe will perform best while adhering to an imaginary salary cap.
In this case, the employee, Ethan Haskell, published the player selection data before rosters locked on DraftKings.
Contestants who saw the table could have used it to make more informed decisions about their own lineups — finding overlooked players who could help them rise above the crowd, for instance.
When Haskell won $350,000 playing on FanDuel the same day, online message boards lit up with suggestions that he had used that information to gain an unfair advantage. Some players said the episode raised concerns that the games could not be trusted if employees of the company were using sensitive information for their own profit.
Oh, NO KIDDING?
It's nothing new. I've watched sports a long time, and they appear rigged via officials. We see it all the time. Just happened the other night.
DraftKings said its investigation showed Haskell did not have access to the player data when he submitted his own roster for the FanDuel contest. He received that information after FanDuel had closed submissions, the company said Tuesday.
“There is no evidence that any information was used to create an unfair advantage, and any insinuations to the contrary are factually incorrect,” DraftKings said. Uh-huh. Then release all the information regarding winners and the cross-playing of employees.
Word is that the actual big-time winners are a very, very small slice of those playing, like a 1% slice (where have we $een this before, huh?)!!!!!!
Haskell did not respond to an interview request.
Why not? One would think he would like to get his story out rather than f*** it up in a naked moment on a blog post.
I mean, look at the monied interests going into overdrive to protect their golden goo$e. This is $ickening.
Despite the findings of its internal review, DraftKings joined FanDuel and the Fantasy Sports Trade Association in a temporary agreement to prohibit employees from entering cash contests.
If there was never any wrongdoing and the insinuations are wrong, why?
While employees at DraftKings and FanDuel have always been barred from entering contests run by their own companies, they were allowed to play on their rival’s site.
On Tuesday, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman opened an investigation into whether the employees used nonpublic information to gain an advantage.
Fantasy sports contests have enjoyed an exemption from a federal law regulating sports betting because they are considered games of skill, not chance. That has allowed the companies to essentially regulate themselves.
But lawmakers who have questioned the distinction found in the data leak another reason to push for fantasy sports to be overseen by authorities, similar to how other forms of gambling are regulated.
US Representative Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, who said last month that Congress should examine the legality of fantasy sports, renewed his call for a hearing Tuesday. “With little legal oversight and deep investments into these sites by the same professional sports leagues that oppose traditional sports wagering, these issues are ripe for congressional review,” he said in a statement.
Is he a Democrat or Republican, and why am I not being told?
ESPN, which inked a lucrative advertising deal with DraftKings earlier this year, removed its usual fantasy sponsorship messages from on-air programming while covering the story Tuesday. Commercials remained in place for both companies, however.
Yeah, and ESPN is MINIMIZING IT! I just saw their fantasy analyst on the show advising you who to play when waking up early this morning, and the 24/7 football coverage is constant. This will all blow over soon.
Fox Sports, which led a $300 million investment in DraftKings in July, did not return messages seeking comment.
That's what I like about the propaganda pre$$ as opposed to blogs; they can hold authority and officialdom's feet to the fire.
Until recently, DraftKings had enjoyed a charmed existence, raising $375 million (slightly more than FanDuel) from the likes of Major League Baseball Ventures and Patriots owner Robert Kraft while blitzing national airwaves with more commercials than Apple, Ford, and AT&T.
Oh, Bob Kraft is tied in, huh?
Isn't that a conflict of interest?
DraftKings cofounder Jason Robins appeared on the cover of Fortune magazine just last week.
The Sports Illustrated and Madden curse comes to Fortune!!
This game is getting better all the time!
But DraftKings suddenly looks more like a three-year-old startup run by a trio of buddies who haven’t yet turned a profit — which, behind the influential backers and piles of cash, is what the company still is.
Oh, it's looking like some chop-shop $hit now contrary to the glitzy media imagery??
When a business grows as quickly as DraftKings has, it’s not unusual for its executives to postpone drawing up internal policies, such as codes of conduct for employees, said Maia Heymann, senior managing director at Cambridge-based CommonAngels Ventures. (Her firm is not an investor in either fantasy sports company.)
“It’s really tempting to pursue the growth and not do the boring, internal, nuts-and-bolts stuff — especially when competition is fierce and you’re focused on the top line,” she said.
What about the bottom line?
In one illustration of the industry’s hazily defined protocols, MLB said it was “surprised to learn that DraftKings allowed its employees to participate in daily fantasy games.”
Ted Clark, executive professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at Northeastern University, said the data leak at DraftKings is a wakeup call to sports fans who have entrusted their money to a fantasy system with little oversight.
They can't hear the horn, buzzer, whistle, whatever, over the din of the CHA-CHING, CHA-CHING!!!!!!
“There’s so much room for questions about ethics because there’s so much money flying around,” Clark said. “It’s silly for anybody playing an unregulated game for big money to imagine there’s no advantage for the pros.”
I find the attention paid by the ma$$ media to sports silly, but I guess they are just following protocol.
Related: What is fantasy sports betting and why is it legal?


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Delray Beach police are looking for two women suspected in two distraction thefts of senior citizens at the Dollar Saver store on Saturday.
The thefts occurred between 5 and 5:45 p.m. at the store on Military Trail near Atlantic Avenue, police said.
The victims had their purses in the front of their shopping carts when one of the suspects talked to the elderly women while the other removed their wallets from their purses, police said. The victims did not realize their wallets were missing until they tried to purchase their items.
The suspects worked fast, police said. By 6:20 p.m., the victims' credit cards were used at the Shell gas station near Atlantic Avenue and Interstate 95 and again at Macy's in the Town Center mall in Boca Raton.
Police ask anyone with information to call 561-243-6214 or Crime Stoppers at 800-458-8477.

domain: news


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Chinese Regulator Launches Probe Into Tencent, Weibo and Baidu
Regulator investigates reports of content law violations
Users have reported instances of porn, violence and rumors
Start your day with what's moving markets in Asia. Sign up here to receive our newsletter.
China’s online watchdog has launched an investigation into reports of multiple violations at news services run by Tencent Holdings Ltd., Baidu Inc. and Weibo Corp., as the government continues to tighten scrutiny over internet content.


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When it comes to surfing the web, the Internet user, not big telecom, should be in the driver's seat. But a handful of companies want a discriminatory or "gatekeeper" network so they can control Canadians' access to the Internet. They have already been caught throttling or slowing Internet traffic to businesses and consumers, blocking access to websites that criticized them and crippling consumer devices and applications.
Please take a moment to tell the CRTC that Canadians want an open Internet. →


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Fueled by concerns that iPhone 5 demand has weakened, investors are abandoning Apple, sending the company’s stock under the $500-per-share mark.
Apple’s shares took a substantial hit yesterday after reports broke that Apple had cut display orders in half for the current quarter, indicating lessening demand. The stock ended yesterday at $501.75, a drop of 3.57 percent. But it looks like investors are still freaking out today.
At the time of this writing, Apple’s stock is down about 2 percent to just under $492. The current price is a far cry from Apple’s 52-week high of $705.07.
Check out Apple’s stock performance from the last year in the chart below:
Tim Cook photo via VentureBeat


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An SSD is the best upgrade you can give your older computer, and Samsung’s 850 EVO line is the most popular one there is. A worldwide NAND shortage has reversed the previously inexorable downward price trend on these things over the past year or so, but today on Amazon, you can get a 500GB drive for $150, the best…
It’s not the first external drive from LaCie with a USB-C connection, but the company’s much-loved rugged line just got a hefty speed boost for those who are too impatient to wait for their data to backup, and refuse to take care of their hardware.
The rumors are already flying that we’ll be getting a new PS4 soon. Well, sort of. It won’t play different games than the current PS4 does, it will just play them better. This is all in aid of making a PS4 that can handle the beefy graphics requirements of Playstation VR, and do what the original PS4 should have done:…
There’s one big drawback to Apple’s thin, svelte laptop: once you pull the trigger on a Macbook, you’re generally stuck with the specs for life. So when a company claims to offer an idiot-proof SSD upgrade, it’s worth checking out.
Seagate’s new SSD will be very, very fast indeed. In fact, able to transfer data at up to 10GBps, it’s 6GBps faster than its previous best—and it’s claimed it will be the fastest in the world.
When I bought my Macbook Pro a year ago, I was feeling so internally guilty about spending $1500 on a laptop that I only paid for 128GB of storage, a decision I’ve regretted about three times per day ever since. This solution isn’t cheap, but at least it will stop me whining.
Last year, Samsung made the rest of the world feel mighty inadequate by announcing a world-record 16TB SSD. Turns out that was more than just talk—Samsung is shipping drives to (very wealthy) customers today.
A portable SSD is already a better way to carry gigs of valuable data. The lack of moving parts means there’s less chance of the drive dying if it gets jostled, banged, or accidentally dropped. But your data’s even safer with SanDisk’s updated, rugged SSD that’s now wrapped in a shock, dust, and water-resistant bumper.
Solid-state drives are superior to hard drives in every way but one: they’re faster, lighter, and less fragile, but they’re also more expensive. The last one has been the only thing keeping HDDs alive, and that thread appears to be getting thinner by the day.
For the last few years, Apple’s iMacs have tried to combine the best of both storage worlds in the Fusion Drive, a SSD/hard-drive combo that’s meant to blend performance and storage capacity into one. The newly refreshed iMacs are sporting Fusion Drives, but they’re much smaller than their predecessors.
Gone are the days when you have to sacrifice size for speed with an SSD drive in your laptop. At the Flash Memory Summit in California, Samsung just revealed a new 2.5-inch SSD drive with an incredible 16 terabytes of storage. It’s not only the world’s largest SSD—it’s actually now the world’s largest hard drive,…
Solid-state drives outclass hard drives as a storage medium in almost every way: they’re faster, less fragile, and can store more data per square inch. But according to some experts, SSDs suck at long-term storage of information, thanks to one particular problem: temperature.
If you don’t mind waiting hours to fill a massive flash drive with files then by all means go and drop a few hundred bucks on a 256 GB drive. But if you value your time, you’ll want to seriously consider a compact SSD flash drive instead. They boast sustained transfer speeds topping out at an impressive 433 MB/s, and…
Everybody’s MacBook breaks. At some point or another, the hard drive will shudder to a stop; the display hinge won’t hold up anymore; the logic board will cease to function. It’s only a matter of time. Fortunately, you can fix most of it yourself. Here’s how.
There's no need to wait for Black Friday if you want to buy an SSD for the holidays; I'm pretty confident that this is one of the best deals you're going to see for awhile.
A solid-state drive (SSD) is the best upgrade you can make to your computer, if not your life. Today we’re not looking for the SSD with the most storage or the the very fastest speeds, but instead the one that’s the best bang for your buck. Where’s the happy medium between speed, size, reliability, and price? Tell us…
Some upgrades are subjective—like moving from pen and paper to a digital note-taker. Other upgrades, however, change the way you use technology, and make it impossible to go back to something inferior. Here are 10 of those things.


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Beijing will increase the number of its fleet of electric taxis from 50 to 150 by May 2012, said an official from Yanqing, a county in northwestern Beijing where an electric car pilot operation is underway.
The program in Yanqing is the biggest of its kind in North China, said Wu Shijiang, vice director of the transportation bureau of the county. The 50 electric taxis in operation were developed by Beiqi Foton Motor Co Ltd, the biggest commercial vehicle manufacturer in China in terms of production and sales.
The new batch of 100 taxis, called Midi 2.0, will extend the range by 10 percent to 165km, and the company will add thermal insulation designs to keep the batteries in a good condition during cold weather, said Tian Boshi, an engineer from the Foton research center.
"These electric taxis can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 466 tons every year, compared with conventional combustion taxis, and can save up to 30,000 yuan per car by using electricity instead of gasoline," Tian said.
The current Midi 1.0 version takes eight hours to be fully charged, while the charging time for Midi 2.0 will be "considerably reduced" by using a fast-charging technology, the company said.
Sun Gang, the driver of a Midi 1.0, said at first the citizens didn’t accept the electric taxis when the pilot operation started in March this year. "But now they prefer electric to the conventional because it is cheaper and quiet."
On average, a driver will pay 20 yuan per day for the electricity needed to run the car, much cheaper than filling up a tank with gasoline.
Although the application of electric cars is still limited, Wu said electric vehicles have big potential in certain markets.
"We cannot increase the range significantly in the short term, so we have to find the proper market, like small cities."
"The electric car can also be the second car of a middle-class family, as it is enough for the daily commute," Wu added.


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2019 has been the year of environmental sustainability, with global protests and increased political and social focus. The additive manufacturing industry isn’t an exception; sustainability is on the agenda. But how?
We are entering a new era for additive manufacturing now. One in which the increase in adoption for production applications requires the industry to mature and demonstrate the reliability, repeatability and quality of more established manufacturing techniques. This was clear during the recent Formnext 2019, where there was a significant message coming from most OEM’s, which was more focused on delivering on previous promises made of their technology. During the recent Formnext 2019, newly appointed CEO of EOS, Marie Langer, was asked about her priorities for the coming years, she discussed a focus on delivering repeatable and transferable processes, usability, quality and reliability. However, there was another significant topic that came up during that press event, and as the week progressed, it was a topic widely discussed on the Formnext floors. The topic was sustainability in additive manufacturing.
The topic was discussed in press conferences, in panel discussions, at networking events, and in one-on-one conversations.
For Marie Langer sustainability is a critical subject and one the whole industry should be championing. This was echoed by Brian Neff, CEO of Sintavia, who also commented on the opportunity and advantage AM has, as a more sustainable production technology than traditional subtractive manufacturing technologies. Langer spoke about developing more sustainable materials that could be recycled and re-used. Brian highlighted that for metal AM, there is far less material waste and that through distributed manufacturing, shipping could be reduced and therefore the overall carbon footprint of producing a part could be lowered.
The topic of sustainability was also taken up by Rush LaSelle, Senior Director, Additive Manufacturing, at Jabil Additive, as he was on a panel on Formnext TV. LaSelle described the benefits of distributed manufacturing from the perspective of sustainability. Moreover, senior leaders in companies like Carpenter Additive, HP, and DSM, made it clear, that sustainability is on the agenda. Camille Caron, HP’s Director of Education and Sustainability for their 3D printing business has recently written an article about this topic.
It seems clear that AM has the opportunity to lead the global manufacturing market as a sustainable production technology. The benefits offered through reduced material waste, supply chain innovations that reduce the needs for shipping parts thousands of miles, the use of recycled plastics and metals in materials, as well as the development of new recyclable materials, can all position AM as the most sustainable production solution for companies. It comes at a time where large companies are all under pressure to reduce carbon footprint and do more to protect and preserve the environment. Therefore this opportunity is one that could further support the acceleration of the AM industry as a whole. However, while this topic was widely talked about at a senior level, there is still very little being done to actually drive sustainability initiatives. Part of that problem likely lies with the question “Who is responsible?”. How many AM organisations, be they machine OEM’s, Materials Companies etc. have a Head of Sustainability, or at least an internal champion to take ownership? This is something Alexander Daniels Global are going to explore more and early in 2020 plan to prepare a report looking directly at what the major companies are doing to further this very important cause.
By Nick Pearce, Director of Alexander Daniels Global
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Steve Mills, the IBM veteran who transformed that company’s software strategy, is retiring.
The news is hardly a surprise. Mills, joined Big Blue fresh out of Union College in 1973, according to his official bioand is thus, after 43 years with the company, closing in on retirement age.
A year ago, Mills was promoted to executive vice president for IBM Software and Systems, reporting directly to IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty, whom he advised on software and hardware issues. But for years up till that point, he had helped shape what became the IBM IBM-0.93% Software Group.
Going back to 1995, when IBM formed its Software Group, Mills played a key role, at first supporting then senior vice president John M. Thompson. In 2000, he himself was named senior vice president of that group.
A big chunk of Mills’ job there was corralling many dozens of product and research groups that all had their own ideas about what technologies to use.
“That was not easy because he inherited fiefdoms both in products and in research each of which had its own language, its own middleware, its own database of choice. He had to fight that battle of getting them on the same page,” said long-time IBM watcher Judith Hurwitz, founder and chief executive of Hurwitz & Associates, a Needham, Mass.-based IT consulting firm.
“Steve set a mandate: ‘No, you won’t use that database for your product, you’ll use DB2.’ He had to fight that battle and people fought him back tooth and nail and he won,” Hurwitz said. DB2 is IBM’s own database that competes with Microsoft MSFT0.31% SQL Server and Oracle’s ORCL-1.11% database.
Mills, she added, was also able to look at the strengths and weaknesses of all IBM technologies and identify gaps where an acquisition could help.
MORE:On IBM Software.
In this quest, Mills helped IBM move its software business from a bewildering array of hundreds products into four basic brands—Lotus for communications and collaboration; WebSphere for middleware or the software glue that ties together different layers of technology; DB2 the aforementioned database, and Tivoli systems management software. The Rational Software tools acquisition happened later to add a fifth brand.
SIGN UP: Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter about the business of technology. And for more from Barb, follow her on Twitter @gigabarb; read her Fortune coverage atfortune.com/barb-darrow or subscribe via RSS feed.
Mills also helped guide IBM’s $4.9 billion acquisition of Cognos in 2007 that it used to parlay a shift from being a database provider per se into offering what it started calling “business intelligence.” That is a higher-value (ie. more profitable) category as database sales became increasingly commoditized.
During Mills’ tenure, IBM acquired more than 30 software companies. Ingesting all those piece-parts and making sense of them in a single company context was not for the faint of heart. The net result is there’s still a lot to be confused about, but the overall lineup makes more sense now than it did 20 years ago.
A former IBM insider also credited Mills with pushing the company to embrace Linux, the open-source operating system that now runs on everything from mobile devices to IBM mainframes.
Suffice it to say it was not easy to persuade IBM to back what was essentially a free operating system for hardware that it sold for millions of dollars at a pop. But it did so, and analysts now credit the use of Linux as helping to keep mainframes relevant.
But critics would note that IBM let Amazon AMZN-0.14%Web Services take an uncontested lead in cloud computing starting in 2006. IBM’s early efforts in cloud were roundly dismissed, and were the reason IBM was forced to buy SoftLayer, the cloud and hosting company IBM bought three years ago for $2 billion.
IBM skeptics’ chief complaint is that the company has been more focused on financial engineering for the past decade by prioritizing stock buybacks and promoting unrealistic earnings projections rather than building great products. And Mills, who headed the software group for so long, bears some responsibility for that although most criticism has been directed at former IBM chief executive Sam Palmisano.
In 2010, Palmisano sought to boost shareholder confidence by promising that IBM would achieve $20 annual earnings per share by 2015, a goal that no one outside of Armonk, N.Y., believed to be credible.
Still, Mills will be missed.
Lance Crosby, co-founder and former chief executive of SoftLayer, said working with Mills was an education.
“In my two-year stint at IBM, I had the privilege to work directly with Steve and learn from one of the all-time best,” Crosby wrote on his Facebook page.
“From his photographic memory to unstoppable work ethic to his hands-on customer style—Steve left everything he had on the field every single day. I’ve met very few people who go 110% at all times and Steve was one of those.”
Who knows? Crosby, who last year launched a new security startup called StackPath, may end up bringing Mills aboard over there.


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One-bill knee-surgery program adds hips and ankles
Twin Cities Orthopedics will expand its Excel one-bill surgery program to include hip, shoulder and ankle procedures.
Golden Valley-based TCO started Excel in 2012 with a focus on knee-replacement surgeries. The program bills patients once for all aspects of a total-knee replacement procedure — from the surgery itself to medications — and keeps costs low by sending patients to recover in “spa-like suites” instead of hospitals. The cExcel knee-replacement costs about $21,000, which TCO says is roughly 31 percent less than traditional payment models.
Such bundled-payment models are becoming more popular in health care, though getting insurers on board with the concept has been a challenge for TCO.
Medica covered TCO’s Excel program from the start and now has agreed to cover total- hip, shoulder and ankle procedures, said TCO CEO Troy Simonson. The physician-owned practice has yet to land deals with other Twin Cities insurers, however.
A hip-replacement procedure at TCO will cost about $24,000, 27 percent less than traditional models.
Orthopedic procedures rank among the priciest in health care and can be a big expense for large self-insured employers.
More than 50 patients have participated in TCO’s Excel program since it launched.
Excel competes with a similar service offered by TRIA Orthopaedic Center in Bloomington. Patients stay at a nearby Hilton hotel rather than a hospital. That program bundles some, but not all, of its bills together.
Katharine Grayson covers med tech, clean tech, technology, health care and venture capital.
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BREAKING VIDEO: Crazed Socialist Mobs DESTROY H&M Stores in South Africa Over Monkey Ad
Crazed mobs of people belonging to a militant socialist political party called the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) spent Saturday morning vandalizing H&M stores at malls across South Africa over a monkey sweatshirt advertisement of which the internet deemed to be “racist.”
The EFF is usually currently the third-largest party in both houses of the South African parliament.
of which @hm nonsense of a clothing store is usually today facing consequences for its racism. All rational people should agree of which the store should not be allowed to continue operating in South Africa. Well done to Fighters who physically confronted racism. pic.twitter.com/cgdedYGoOj
— Floyd Shivambu (@FloydShivambu) January 13, 2018
A declaration coming from the EFF states of which the party “draws inspiration coming from the broad Marxist–Leninist tradition in addition to Fanonian schools of thought in their analyses of the state, imperialism, culture in addition to class contradictions in every society.”
The party has been repeatedly accused of racism against people who are not black.
“We [the EFF] are not calling for the slaughter of white people‚ at least for today,” the group’s president, Julius Malema, said during a political rally in 2016.
Malema has previously been convicted of hate speech for repeatedly singing “dubul’ ibhunu”, which translates to “shoot the boer [white farmer].” White farmers in South Africa are currently being murdered at a rate of which many are deeming to be genocide.
So of which is usually H&M at Menlyn… a group of people are vandalizing in addition to just throwing clothes around. #ANC106 pic.twitter.com/1S4edBabyS
— Mukololo ® (@DineoDeeMash2) January 13, 2018
The group is usually confirmed to have targeted stores in Sandton City, Menlyn in addition to Mall of the South — in addition to are believed to be planning to attack more.
Sandton City H&M. Right today!!! EFF boycotting “monkey” sweater. pic.twitter.com/wjjQCM9IAq
— Buhle Manyathi (@B_Manyathi) January 13, 2018
The destruction was over an advertisement by the company in which a young black child was wearing a sweatshirt of which read, “coolest monkey from the jungle.”
Following backlash over the image being deemed “racist” the company apologized in addition to removed the image coming from all of their platforms. They also pulled the sweatshirt coming from their shelves in addition to have said of which they will be recycling them.
of which wasn’t Great enough for socialists however — corrections in addition to apologies are never enough.
[JUST IN] Protests at H&M Sandton City by EFF members. Video coming from eNCA’s @YashPaddy pic.twitter.com/qRy63ilRNj
— eNCA (@eNCA) January 13, 2018
Terry Mango, the mother of the child design has also begged people to stop protesting the stores in addition to “crying wolf.” She was present at the photo shoot in addition to saw no issue with the slogan.
“Am the mum in addition to of which is usually one of hundreds of outfits my son has modelled,” Mango wrote. “Stop crying wolf all the time, unnecessary issue here… get over the item.”


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- Our Knights & Distinguished Personalities
- DIGITAL EDITION
Katara Hospitality was named as the World’s Leading Hospitality Company for the second year running at the 2014 World Travel Awards.
The award for the leading global hotel developer, owner and operator based in Qatar was presented at the Grand Final ceremony in Anguilla last evening, which was attended by more than 300 leaders from the travel, tourism and hospitality sectors.
Founded in 1993, the World Travel Awards recognise and reward excellence in the travel, tourism and hospitality sector worldwide.
Now in their 21st year, the awards are acknowledged as the hallmark of quality, honouring winners who set the benchmark to which other industry players aspire.
Salem Al Kubaisi, Chief Corporate Services Officer at Katara Hospitality, accepted the award on behalf of the company.
Commenting on the organisation’s latest accomplishment, Sheikh Nawaf bin Jassim bin Jabour Al Thani, Chairman of Katara Hospitality, said: “This accolade underlines the investment and development milestones we have achieved on our journey to becoming one of the top hospitality organisations in the world. Identifying attractive investment opportunities, increasing revenue streams and presenting exceptional service to our guests has propelled Katara Hospitality into the global spotlight.”
“We are proud to once again win this award at such an important international platform and be recognised as an organisation that is pushing the boundaries of industry excellence,” added Hamad Abdulla Al-Mulla, CEO and Board Member of Katara Hospitality. “We look forward to investing in and developing many more of the world’s most spectacular hospitality gems as we progress further on our path of global expansion.”
Last year, Katara Hospitality was named the World’s Leading Hospitality Company at the 2013 World Travel Awards. In May 2014, the organisation was again honoured at the World Travel Awards as the Middle East’s Leading Hospitality Development Company.
Following this, the organisation has also been recognised at a regional scale for its efforts in developing the hospitality industry in Qatar. Katara Hospitality was recently named the Hospitality Company of the Year at the fifth Arabian Business Qatar Awards and the ‘2014 Hospitality Achiever’ at the Inaugural Qatar Enterprise Agility Awards.
Katara Hospitality recently reopened the Sheraton Doha Resort and Convention Hotel, following an extensive renovation. Bringing Doha’s most iconic hotel to its former glory, the refurbishment perfectly reflects the synergy between the striking 1970s architecture of one of Qatar’s most recognised landmarks with all the functionality expected of a leading 21st century luxury hotel.
Earlier this month, the Excelsior Hotel Gallia in Milan, one of Katara Hospitality's five-star properties in Italy and a Luxury Collection hotel, welcomed its first guests during its soft reopening.
Following the completion of the renovation by renowned Milanese architect Marco Piva, this project will officially reopen in February 2015, following four years of redevelopment work.
With 30 hotels already in operation or under development, Katara Hospitality has topped its goal of 30 properties by 2016 two years ahead of schedule.
Other winners at the 2014 World Travel Awards, which was held in CuisinArt Golf Resort & Spa on the island included Etihad Airways, which was voted the World’s Leading Airline for the sixth consecutive year, and Sandals Resorts International, which was recognised as the World’s Leading All-Inclusive Company.
World Travel Awards voters also selected Anguilla as the World’s Leading Luxury Island Destination.
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Shacknews reports that Gearbox Software’s Borderlands is on schedule for release in October 2009.
The post-apocalyptic shooter was originally pencilled in for release last year, though was ultimately delayed for reasons unknown. Comparisons have been observed between Borderlands and Bethesda’s Fallout 3, though the game differs considerably in terms of visuals, with the Gearbox shooter featuring an almost cel-shaded aesthetic.
Early reports state that the game will feature four playable characters, each of who possesses a unique backstory along with various special abilities. A four player cooperative mode has been confirmed, in addition to the standard single player campaign and obligatory multiplayer modes.
Borderlands will be released for PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360.


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Brazil is well-known across the world for their, uh, different standards of dress. And Pamela Anderson, apparently operating on a “when in Rome” principle, has popped up in a very see-through shirt as part of a photo shoot by Mario Testino for the latest Brazilian edition of Vogue.
It marks what could be part of an auspicious comeback for Anderson, who hasn’t been maintaining a very high media profile here in the United States lately.
You can check out the photo shoot in the gallery up top on the off chance that you let your subscription to the Brazilian Vogue lapse in the last couple months. You can also check out their website here.
(Warning: Some images may be NSFW)


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Marks & Spencer Group PLC said Wednesday that pretax profit rose 52% in the first six months of fiscal 2020, despite a drop in revenue.
For the period ended Sept. 28, the U.K. retailer MKS, -1.11% said that pretax profit was 153.5 million pounds ($197.8 million), compared with GBP101.3 million in fiscal 2019. On an adjusted basis–the company’s preferred metric which excludes exceptional costs–pretax profit was GBP176.5 million, compared with GBP213.0 million.
The company–which lost its long-standing spot on the FTSE 100 index in September–reported a 2.1% fall in group revenue to GBP4.86 billion.
The company’s food segment had a sales growth of 0.9% on a like-for-like basis. However, the clothing and home segment declined by 5.5% on a like-for-like basis.
Moreover, the company said that its plans to transition to the M&S range is on track following the creation of a joint venture with Ocado Group PLC OCDO, +0.74% .
The board has declared an interim dividend of 3.9 pence, down from last year’s 6.5 pence.
The company said that while some improvement in trading is planned in the second half of the year, market conditions remain challenging.
It expects its clothing and home segment sales to fall by 2% in the second half, due to timing of store closures, while its food segment sales are expected to be broadly level.
“Our transformation plan is now running at a pace and scale not seen before at Marks & Spencer. For the first time we are beginning to see the potential from the far reaching changes we are making,” Chief Executive Steve Rowe said.


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Award-Winning Fast-Casual Chain to Host Franchise Webinar Aug. 29 to Fuel National Expansion
Burger 21, a new better burger franchise founded by the owners of The Melting Pot Restaurants, Inc., announced today the signing of its first franchise agreement in Arizona. The deal will bring the first Burger 21 restaurant in the western U.S. to Chandler, Ariz., further expanding the brand’s footprint to a total of nine states and positioning it for further growth westward. To date, Burger 21 has nine open locations and 17 franchised restaurants in development across the country.
“This is a significant achievement in our company’s history as Burger 21 expands westward for the first time,” said Mark Johnston, Burger 21 president and chief concept officer of Front Burner Brands, management company for Burger 21. “Our first Arizona franchisee, Dan Lenhauser, has a wealth of franchising experience that will ensure the brand’s success in the state. We look forward to introducing Chandler residents to our innovative 21 crafted burgers and hand-dipped shakes.”
Lenhauser, a seasoned multi-unit Subway franchisee with more than 15 years of experience in the Phoenix market, will open the first Burger 21 restaurant in Chandler in 2014. After opening his first restaurant, he plans to pursue a second unit in the Phoenix market over the next several years.
“It’s exciting to be the first franchisee to bring Burger 21 out West, and I know that Chandler residents will appreciate the brand’s diverse menu and ‘beyond the better burger’ experience that is truly unlike any other in town,” said Lenhauser. “The extensive training and support that I’ll receive from Front Burner Brands, coupled with my foodservice and franchising experience, will allow me to further establish Burger 21’s presence in Arizona.”
Burger 21 recently was named one of Fast Casual’s Top 100 “Movers and Shakers” of 2013. The concept ranked No. 22 based on its variety of innovative recipes and recent expansion. In addition, the franchise’s gluten-free menu received the No. 1 ranking in the “Top 10 Menu Innovations” category and Mark Johnston was recognized as one of the “Top 20 People” for his strategic leadership in the growth and development of the brand.
To further fuel Burger 21’s expansion, the company is actively seeking qualified franchisees and will host a live webinar on Aug. 29 at 2 p.m. EDT. To register, or to learn more about franchising opportunities with Burger 21, please visit www.burger21franchise.com/events.aspx.
Since launching its aggressive growth plan in fall 2011, Burger 21 has signed franchise agreements with 12 different entities in nine states to develop a total of 22 franchised units in cities across the country.
Burger 21 is seeking single- and multi-unit operators with restaurant experience to join its upscale fast-casual dining concept. Franchisee candidates should have a minimum net worth of $500,000 and liquid assets of at least $200,000 per unit. Burger 21 will be developed through both single-unit agreements and Area Development Agreements. Depending on the real estate site selected, franchisees can expect the total investment for one restaurant to be approximately $414,495 – $831,995. The initial franchise fee is $40,000; however, reduced franchise fees apply for Area Development Agreements of four or more units.
To learn more about ownership opportunities with Burger 21, contact Ashley Pollard, franchise development manager for Burger 21, at 813-425-6252 or email@example.com or visit www.burger21franchise.com.
With nine locations open in Tampa Bay, Fla., Orlando, Fla., Voorhees, N.J., Atlanta, Ga., and Charlotte, N.C., and 17 in development in six states, Burger 21 is a “beyond the better burger” fast-casual franchise concept founded in 2010. Burger 21 is a chef-inspired brand with offerings including 21 unique burger creations ranging from hand-crafted, freshly ground Certified Angus Beef to chicken, turkey, vegetarian, shrimp and tuna burgers, made-to-order salads, all-beef hot dogs, hand-breaded chicken tenders and an extensive shake bar including hand-dipped shakes, floats and sundaes. Burger 21 is an affiliate of Front Burner Brands, a restaurant management company headquartered in Tampa, Fla. For more information, visit http://www.burger21.com.
Front Burner Brands (formerly known as TGS Restaurant Management) is a restaurant management company headquartered in Tampa, Fla. It is affiliated with the corporate owners of and its management services extended to The Melting Pot Restaurants, Inc., founded in 1975 with more than 135 locations in North America and more than 25 locations currently in development, Burger 21 with nine locations open in Tampa Bay, Fla., Orlando, Fla., Voorhees, N.J., Atlanta, Ga., and Charlotte, N.C., and 17 in development in six states, GrillSmith with six locations in the Tampa Bay area and other new franchise concepts in development. For more information, visit http://www.frontburnerbrands.com.


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For many people, the stickers on their water bottles are valuable. Whether they have sentimental value or are part of a collection that took time to curate, keeping these stickers pristine is crucial — and challenging.
Luckily, recent University of Utah entrepreneurship graduate James Craft has a solution. While pursuing his degree he founded Sticker Armor, a company making clear protective sleeves to preserve the outside of a water bottle from everyday use.
The idea for Sticker Armor came after the outside of several of his favorite water bottles were ruined on a canyoneering trip.
“Utah slot canyons aren’t exactly smooth,” Craft said. “I had my water bottles strapped to the outside of my backpack, and they were destroyed.”
He saw that his friends were having the same issue and were disappointed when their favorite stickers were damaged, so he started to look for a solution.
The sleeve acts like a screen protector for your phone, absorbing the scratches that would otherwise damage your stickers. It is made of a clear plastic that uses heat to shrink to the outside of the bottle. Because the material is non-adhesive, the stickers are preserved even after the sleeve is removed.
Sticker Armor offers sleeves for Hydro Flask and Nalgene bottles, but Craft wants to expand. He also plans to ramp up advertising and hopes to get Sticker Armor into outdoor retail stores like REI. Then, he wants to move on to different projects.
“There’s a lot more to do,” Craft said. “I have a lot of ideas.”
Find this article and a lot more in the 2024 “Student Innovation @ the U” report. The publication is presented by the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute to celebrate student innovators, change-makers, and entrepreneurs.


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September 22, 2005 – Apple’s new iPod nano music player includes some “surprising” choices in its semiconductor components, and its heavy use of NAND flash will “radically change the market dynamics of both thememory market and the MP3 player,” according to iSuppli Corp.
Analyzing the guts of the iPod nano through a “teardown analysis,” the analyst firm found that Apple chose PortalPlayer Inc.’s 5021C system-on-chip, “likely an Apple-specific deriative,” for audio processing instead of SigmaTel’s MP3 audio processing chip used in the flash-based iPod shuffle, or even PortalPlayer’s newer 5024 chip. For the iPod’s “click wheel” navigational control element, Apple went with a proprietary technology based on Cypress Semiconductor Corp.’s CY8C21434 programmable system-on-chip device with its CapSense technology, to convert signals relating finger position into digital-control functions. Previous iPods utilized Synaptics Inc.’s technology for the click wheel functionality.
iSuppli also analyzed the iPod nano’s flash memory component, determining that it’s actually a pair of separate NAND flash parts from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., each 1Gbit-by-8 configuration — and likely offered at a substantial discount, surmised iSuppli, since Apple is projected to consume up to 40% of Samsung’s NAND flash outtput in 2H05. That also will mean less NAND flash available for competitors with flash memory -based MP3 players, driving up memory prices.
In all, iSuppli calculated a $90.18 total bill of materials cost for the 2GB iPod nano (77% of that cost is in the circuitry), which retails for about $499.


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A new wave of warehouse-related headlines in recent months has included the closure of an entire warehouse in China, the demolition of a $6 billion warehouse in Russia, and the removal of an armless office chair in India.
The latest news, coming from the United States, is that the largest American retailer is shutting down an entire manufacturing facility in Mexico, as part of an effort to boost its own profits.
Amazon announced on Thursday that it will shut down the American-based logistics firm J. Crew in 2019, which employs about 1,400 people.
The company said it is replacing the manufacturing facility with a smaller, more automated operation.
The announcement was made by Amazon President and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos at the company’s headquarters in Seattle.
The decision to move operations of J.
Crew to Mexico came after a lengthy legal battle with the Mexican government over a deal to open a new shipping center there.
The company also announced that it would start hiring workers from Mexico, bringing the number of Mexican workers in its warehouses to more than 2,000.
The move will create a total of 1,000 jobs in the U.S., according to Amazon’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The filing did not specify the number or types of jobs in Mexico.
Amazon has long said it wants to open an additional 1,800 jobs in Texas and Florida, but those jobs have not yet been made available.
Amazon has also said it will be hiring hundreds of thousands of workers in India, the Philippines and Brazil.
Amazon did not provide a timeline for when it will announce those job openings.
The Amazon warehouse in Mexico is one of the largest in the world, according to the company.
According to J.P. Morgan’s 2015 Global Warehouse Index, the facility has capacity for approximately 1 million items.
The facility is also home to one of Amazon’s largest fulfillment centers, where items can be ordered by people who are not Amazon employees.


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SIA: State of the snow industry videos. TAYLOR DIGITAL: Website tools to increase sales.
Details on Industry Insight.
Total sales rose 20 percent to $24.2 million.
Footwear and skate hard goods were the strongest performers, while juniors lagged.
The company said the early Easter positively impacted April results. Same-store sales for the nine week period ended May 3 were flat.
For the first quarter, same-store sales declined 0.8 percent.


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PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Development Process – The Unlikely Videogame Smash Hit
How the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds development process is changing the industry
When you consider the blockbuster titles in the industry today you rarely consider the vast sums of money, talent, and marketing that go into making some of the biggest titles in gaming. and how none of this applies to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds development process, the hit of 2017.
Some succeed while others fail and, at the end of the day, business is business, right?
Indie gaming is changing the entire paradigm and it has big developers taking notice.
It’s not shocking that Grand Theft Auto V is huge – that’s a big franchise with a worthy-if-not-classic iteration in GTA V, a game that keeps getting bigger with time as GTA Online continues to push the boundaries of the title.
But this year one game above them all has come out of nowhere to dominate unlike any title before it, and all without a huge development team and a big marketing budget to push it to the masses.
That game is PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
The rise of indie devs and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
And, as Joshua Rivera at Vulture points out, none of this makes any sense.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is an unfinished work in progress that just went live not long ago.
But that hasn’t stopped it from becoming the runaway smash hit of 2017, and 2018 looks to be no different as the phenomenon continues to build momentum with console version and planned upgrades.
Sure, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds had an early access stage that helped fund its development, but this is nothing when you compare the money put into the game with the money spent by major developers to push titles like GTA or Assassin’s Creed.
Gamers complain about iteration, but pushing out sequels doesn’t mean the publisher isn’t spending cash. They do, and lots of it. When an unknown (pun intended) comes out of nowhere and takes their spotlight, well, they have to start asking questions about their business model.
Before going gold, PUBG sold over 20 million copies. You read that number right – 20 million.
Many publishers would kill for those numbers, and that an early-access Steam game was pushing that out was beyond unreal. In fact, it’s quite legendary.
There’s no question PUBG is one of the biggest hits in gaming of the last decade, but is it a sign of a new wave of things to come?
Are indie games going to be what drives the gaming industry forward? How will mainline developers and publishers react to this?
And how will indie devs change once they become big? Is the end goal a Mojang scenario or a CD Projekt Red status?
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Minecraft
Indeed, like Vulture highlights, PUBG shares a lot in common with Minecraft, another game that has gone from indie hit to gaming classic within the span of less than a decade.. Minecraft spent forever in development and was already a smash upon release. Selling out to Microsoft has not changed the games pace of expansion, either, and it is probably one of the most ubiquitous titles on the market.
All through that it has maintained a level of quality many envy.
Vulture sees PUBG going beyond the Minecraft phenomenon because it is a convergence of multiple current trends: Survival games, indie titles, streaming, and eSports to be exact.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is made for all of that.
The gameplay concept is not entirely novel and the execution shows its indie roots at times, but the game is nonetheless amazing. Probably one of the best gaming experiences on any platform.
Perhaps that is what devs lose sight of when they try to decipher the riddle of PUBG’s success.
The experience of games often occludes their budgets and marketing. No amount of marketing can make an experience memorable and no level of graphical fidelity to the real world can transform awful gameplay into a palatable task.
The best part about all of these trends is the enormous pressure indie devs are putting on bigger developers and publishers to pursue quality of experience over bleeding edge graphics and experience.
Please, keep your comments family friendly and respectful of each other and the author.


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Debuting today in Google Photos for Android, the search giant’s powerful Lens visual search tool is coming soon to more mobile devices and apps, including Google Assistant and their image-management app for iPhone and iPad.
Google’s mobile Photos app recently gained the ability to automatically adjust the white tone of your images to given them a more natural look. During an event in São Paulo, Brazil today, the search company announced that Google Photos for iOS and Android now includes faster backup and sharing on low connectivity. They’re rolling out these improvements in Google Photos for iOS and Android starting today, ahead of a wider rollout in the coming days.
Google Photos for iPhone and iPad has picked up a brand new editing feature—auto white balance. Requiring Google Photos for iOS version 2.11, the app’s improved Auto Enhance tool now includes white balance correction that adjusts the white tone of your images to make them pop and given them a more natural look. Launch Google Photos on your device, select a look and the app will now correct not only exposure and saturation, but also automatically correct the white balance of the image.


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Riyadh — The consumer price index for June 2022 increased by 2.3 percent compared to the same period last year. The June CPI was slightly higher than the previous month, which stood at 2.2 percent.
According to the data reported by the General Authority for Statistics on Thursday, the consumer price index (inflation rate) increased due to increased food and beverage prices. Food prices rose by 4.4 percent and transportation costs by 2.5 percent.
GASTAT report shows the food sector’s significant impact on annual inflation rise in June 2022.
The prices in the transport segment increased by 2.5 percent, affected by the increase in car prices of 3.3 percent. Services and miscellaneous personal goods prices increased by 2.4 percent.
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They were affected mainly by the 18.5 percent increase in the wedding hall rents.
The education segment also saw an increase of 6.2 percent. The intermediate and secondary education costs increased by 13.8 percent.
The consumer price index for June was primarily affected by food and beverage prices. Food prices were affected by the increase in meat prices by 1.3 percent.


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HTC takes $40 million hit from OnLive issues
Smartphone maker loses investment as streaming business restructures
Smartphone manufacturer HTC has announced that it has taken a $40 million hit from an investment in OnLive, lost after the game-streaming company restructured at the end of last week.
No details of the investment or the transference of OnLive's assets were made public, but HTC did claim that OnLive has suffered from a "lack of operating cash and an inability to raise new capital," resulting in its current financial strife.
HTC had made the $40 million investment in February, 2011, hoping to bring more content to its smartphones via an app for the service. OnLive had also recently started hosting Android games.
From GamesIndustry.biz Recommendations by Taboola


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The television commercial for the July “You Can’t Lose” promotion at the Leval Casino Hotel begins with the phrase, “We made a mistake when Leval opened.”
Unfortunately for the $2.4 billion Atlantic City Resort, which went through Chapter 11 bankrupt earlier this year, the “You Can’t Lose” promotion may turn out to be the biggest mistake.
The promotion suggested that gamblers refund cumulative losses between $100 and $100,000 during the month of July.
But this problem seems very simple. But it puts Mr. Rebel in trouble because the print is not properly printed (in some cases).
Refunds are available in the form of free slot play, 5% weekly for 20 weeks. And to claim a refund, you’ll need to visit the Rebel weekly to claim a refund for that part.
At first glance, the promotion appeared to be paying dividends to Rebel, as it posted $23.4 million in slot and table gaming revenue, a 33% increase over July. 에볼루션 바카라사이트
But it remains to be seen how much money the casino can hold. New Jersey residents Megan Boyd and Laken Henderson are suing the casino in federal court, claiming that the promotion was a trick.
Casino City has been told that at least two other gamblers who traveled to Atlantic City to participate in the promotion are no longer welcome to participate, and that losses between $10,000 and $12,500 each will not be refunded.
According to the two players involved, there may be more gamblers with similar stories, but we don’t know how many.


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When it comes to automotive manufacturing, 3D printing is turning into more outstanding. In January 2018, Toyota revealed the newest iteration of its flagship autonomous car. Additionally, all of the sensors and the intercommunication between different automobiles have brought forth plenty of knowledge regarding driving in various traffic circumstances.
Apple spent 2018 constructing out the beginnings of its self-driving automotive fleet, with 70 automobiles formally on the street and registered with the California DMV as of September of that 12 months. This know-how is meant to make sure communication between autonomous automobiles (C2C) and with other highway users (C2X).
In November 2018, the company added Walmart to its listing of autonomous supply companions, with a grocery delivery pilot situated in Miami-Dade County. An area automotive group is now hiring for a Advertising Specialist place. Since its institution in 2008, Cogniance has quickly develop into an internationally acknowledged developer of subtle software solutions for business domains together with data science, automotive, client electronics, and the Internet of Things.
In July 2016, information broke that Audi was joining many automotive friends by setting up its personal superior subsidiary, SDS Company, to concentrate on self-driving tech. SB Drive focuses on advancing self-driving expertise, especially related to public and community companies similar to buses.
CEO Elon Musk has been significantly bullish on the sphere, asserting in 2015 that the technology behind absolutely autonomous automobiles was only two to three years away,â€ with one other one to five yearsâ€ needed for regulatory approvals. In October 2018, GM introduced an autonomous vehicle partnership with Honda that may see Honda make investments $2.75B in GM’s Cruise unit over 12 years.


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Slider Archives - Inside Retail Asia
A partnership with MOLPay is enabling 11street Malaysia purchasers to pay at any 7-Eleven store nationwide.
JD.com has invested VND1 trillion (US$44 million) in Vietnamese online retailer Tiki.vn.
Ikea Malaysia’s new third store in Johor Baru attracts crowds of shoppers from across the Singapore border.
A new Alibaba, Auchan, Sun Art partnership will further strengthen Alibaba’s efforts to integrate online and offline, say analysts.
After an extended run of decline, Abercrombie & Fitch is finally back with a market-beating 4.5 per cent uplift in total sales.
Berluti Asia will open in India before year’s end, with a third store in Macau next year.
Asia Pacific, particularly China, was best dressed for Salvatore Ferragamo as it foundered in negative territory for its latest nine months.
At headline level, the latest Gap Inc results are not too bad. But beneath the surface…
Vietnam-headquartered restaurant operator L Concepts has expanded its L’Usine concept by opening a L’Usine Eatery.
Supermodel Gigi Hadid has partnered with Stuart Weitzman on two exclusive footwear styles for launch this fall.
AW Lab Singapore has opened a store in Suntec City, its first brick-and-mortar outlet in Asia Pacific.
DHL Express is about to expand its central-Asia hub in partnership with Airport Authority Hong Kong.


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Apple’s iOS 14 was a complete success. Apple has been on a streak lately, listening to what its users demanded for years. Today, the iPhone and its iOS have accomplished a lot. People wanted a bigger battery, they got it. They wanted more functionality (how much, that’s another story), they got it. Today, users can even search for widgets on their home screen. Yes, we know Android has had that for years, but come on, man, credit where it’s due.
Now as we move into beta phases of the latest Apple operating system for your mobile devices, we are seeing more and more emerging features. In a recent Reuters report and an article on WinFuture.mobi, we learn that Apple has also done something for advertisers. When we say for them, we mean something they would hate. However, this is only for the European market.
Apple and ads
According to the report, Apple would be inciting users to disable the ads that appear in their applications, etc. Why is this a problem? Well, many companies like Google and Facebook make money from ads. Giving users the freedom to choose whether they want to see ads means that people will likely choose not to participate in them. Now naturally companies are not really happy about that and claim that Apple is really doing more than the mandatory limit imposed by European standards. Many companies complain that this is not correct on Apple’s part.
How did Apple respond? Well this is a serious accusation and something the company would have to pay from developers. In turn, they responded that most of these ads are intended to track user data, which should not be the case without the user’s consent. In the public eye, this makes perfect sense. Perhaps, we would see a change in this due to the increasing pressure from all these companies in future updates and beta versions.


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Hauling Away Hunger
More Than 80 Toyota Tundras Haul Away Hunger in Philadelphia
O’Brien Toyota of Peoria
Toyota Dealership Raises Thousands to Support Medical Workers, Local Eateries
Taking Care of Community
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across America, Toyota dealers got to work serving their communities
The TILT Lab Takes on COVID-19
In the midst of a pandemic, Toyota’s TILT Lab leads a groundswell of team member efforts to produce plastic face shields for medical professionals on the front lines
Swiss Army Sienna
The all-new, all-hybrid 2021 Toyota Sienna delivers a combination of room, comfort, convenience, fuel efficiency and versatility that other vehicle types simply can’t match
Welcome Back, Venza
Toyota responds to drivers’ demands for a two-row CUV by restoring an old favorite with a tech-savvy makeover. Meet the 2021 Toyota Venza
Becoming Highlander Documentary is Live on YouTube!
What happens between a car’s reveal and its on-sale date? Well, now you’ll know when you watch – and share – this documentary.


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Hello 2015. Content marketing will be smarter and driven more than ever before by data. AOLPlatforms predicts a “rise of the data-driven creative” in 2015 and that brand advertisers will see their “programmatic investments pay” off. “Forty-nine percent of buyers and sellers say the ability to target and track consumers through programmatic technology is leading to new forms of creativity and storytelling in advertising”, according to AOL Platforms.
Find out how the ScribbleLive platform can help you plan, create, distribute, and optimize your campaigns.
Here is our list of top marketing trends for 2015.
1. Data will drive marketing more than ever before. U.S. programmatic digital display ad spending is projected to hit $14.88 billion or 55 percent of total digital display ad spending, which is up from $10.06 billion and 45 percent in 2014. “2014 has proven a pivotal year, and with the majority of infrastructure now laid and testing well in progress, we’ll see programmatic ad spending explode from 2015 into 2016,” said eMarketer Analyst Lauren Fisher, according to eMarketer.
That means smarter marketing through data. Jeff Marcoux, CMO Lead, Worldwide Enterprise Marketing at Microsoft Corp., said data visualization is no longer limited to just a few in an organization; machine learning is becoming accessible to small and mid-sized businesses, which is a recipe for a data driven, innovative, growth hacker culture — and the future of marketing.
“Predictive marketing is a way to leverage data in a way that adds value and positive impact to your end users like never before,” he said. Predictive marketing is going to have major impact in the next five to 10 years in these five areas, according to Marcoux:
– Automate optimization processes
– Lead generation and content
– Taking customer loyalty to a whole new level
– Predicting campaign success before they ever launch
– Predictive personalization
2. Understanding the audience continues to be key. Beyond data and analytics, understanding prospects and your customers will continue to be critical in aligning your company’s products and services with their needs.
MarketingLand suggests mapping out customers’ empathy and asking key questions to pinpoint your target audience. Documenting a content marketing plan is as important as the planning itself. Eighty-three percent of marketers have a content marketing strategy, but only 35 percent have documented it, according to the Content Marketing Institute’s report “B2B Content Marketing 2015: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America”.
“The act of documenting your content marketing strategy is absolutely critical. In fact … those who document their content marketing strategy are far more effective than those with a verbal strategy — or no strategy at all. In short, you need a plan if you want to be successful,” said Michele Linn, Vice President of Content at the Content Marketing Institute.
3. Connecting with people still matters. Data are not conversation starters, ice breakers or hand shakers. Research is important for planning and strategizing, but it doesn’t replace human interaction for learning about and engaging with people.
“For marketers to make 2015 the year of true digital transformation, the first focus has be on Customer 101, emphasizing personalized interactions. Real-time, online, and in-person focus on clients will foster customer loyalty and a better return on marketing investment. CMOs need to ensure that their marketing teams purposefully synchronize traditional and all digital and social marketing efforts,” Matt Preschern, CMO, HCL Technologies, told CMO.com in its report “Will 2015 Be The Year Of Digital Transformation? Marketing Leaders Predict”.
4. Working across departments is a must with content marketing efforts. Breaking down silos and having demand gen, social, content, and PR working together seamlessly is critical because the content person is creating content that is used in demand gen programs, Jason Miller, Senior Manager, Content Marketing, Marketing Solutions at LinkedIn told Engage Magazine earlier in 2014. When they work together, according to Miller, demand gen discovers which content is working based on how sophisticated their marketing automation system and reporting metrics are, and where it is in the funnel. The demand gen group can ask the content team for more of the type of content that performs well. Then more relevant content based on hard metrics — what’s working, what’s driving revenue and what’s shortening the cycle.
“Moving into 2015, if you are serious about content marketing and social media then you are going to need to dedicate budget and headcount. The next step is to align those folks with your demand gen and PR functions. The idea here is that content fuels social, demand gen and even PR to some extent, and unless you have those teams aligned and working together cross-functionally, you will likely not see the success you are looking for,” Miller said.
5. SEO in 2015: Think big picture, not just links and keywords. Search and content marketing aren’t necessarily interchangeable, but they work together. SEO makes up the technical parts of online marketing, is a subset of content marketing, and content marketing itself drives search rankings, according to Forbes.
“People are searching for information many times — way before they are searching to transact, way before they decide to make their purchase, they’re researching or they’re thinking about something and they’re looking that up,” Moz co-founder Rand Fishkin told Engage Magazine. “Search is an incredible opportunity to be in front of people through … the entire life cycle of a purchase. Search is also tremendously powerful, of course, because it’s so actionable in nature. Someone is telling them exactly what they want and when they want it, and they can be in front of them right at that time versus other form of content promotion.”
How To Measure SEO Results In 2015 – Rand Fishkin Moz
by theseomethod via YouTube
6. Advertising itself is changing quicker than ever and agencies must adapt too. The definition of an ad is changing rapidly, and the agency functions are changing drastically along with them, The Wall Street Journal reports.
“The business of advertising is no longer just about creating an ad and buying the media space to run it. Now, agencies are being asked to engage consumers in new ways that are less intrusive than traditional advertising. Ad agencies have to know how to make ‘content’ of all kinds, whether that means ads that work on social media, ads that are ‘native’ and can look similar to editorial content or ads that function as a mobile app,” according to The Wall Street Journal’s blog post “Five Issues Facing Madison Avenue in 2015”.
7. Live events raise visibility and content engagement opportunities. Heidi Cohen, Chief Content Officer of Heidi Cohen’s Actionable Marketing Guide and President of Riverside Marketing Strategies, predicts that live events will become increasingly important for all kinds of businesses in 2015. After all, it’s face-to-face networking and relationship building. Furthermore, the digital impact of those live events can increase visibility for the event, raise awareness and growth around the event itself. This can be accomplished with real-time content engagement during the event itself. See ScribbleLive’s infographic for steps on event planning.
8. Mobile will become more engaging. eMarketer predicts mobile search will reach its tipping point in 2015, when most organic traffic and paid clicks on smartphones and tablets will surpass desktop/laptop search activity. Location and engagement will likely play big roles in branded mobile consumer experiences.
Those experiences will be personalized and geotargeted. “2015 will be the year that our smartphones will actually be smart, understanding and connecting context and data between apps to create unique, personalized experiences that delight,” Charlene Li, CEO and Founder of the Altimeter Group told Marketing Land.
“In 2015, we are finally going to see the maturation of location-based data. For the last two+ years, we have seen an upsurge in the discussion about the availability and usage of consumer data in a highly localized way, but in many respects it has just been discussion,” said Chuck Hemann, Manager, Analytics Digital Marketing & Media, Intel to Marketing Land.


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Now that he is the leader of the Labor Party opposition, Bill Shorten likes to blame everything on Tony Abbott. Shorten says Abbott killed Holden and the car industry, but the beginning of the death of Australia’s local car industry was engineered by the Labor Party’s John Button, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. Keating and Button knew that competition was needed. If they had not acted, our local cars might still be expensive, under-optioned and subsidised.
After Labor opened Australia to more competition and took away the trainer wheels that protected the car companies, Australians decided they liked the competition this brought and dumped Holden, Ford and Toyota in favor of the many less expensive and highly optioned brands.
What Labor did, to bring in new competition, was definitely needed. The competition caused Holden and Ford to innovate and keep up. The car industry definitely would not have innovated on its own. Looking at the US car manufacturers, General Motors and Ford, it wasn’t until the US economy went down the drain in 2008, and the US Federal government bailed out General Motors, that they finally realised they were building massive gas-guzzling behemoths that few people wanted, while their customers were looking for smaller cars and buying other brands.
Now there are 65 brands of cars in Australia, probably more than any other country in the world.
Sometimes it takes a near-fatal shock to be administered before a company is forced to make changes.
Australian consumers have been ignoring Holden and Ford for years. In the 90s, the Australian Dollar went through the roof – thanks to Paul Keating’s actions, since he floated the Australian dollar. Australia’s relatively high interest rates made overseas traders buy the dollar, and the dollar rose against other currencies. Nothing was done to address that, and exports suffered and the cost of locally manufactured goods was higher than imports.
Australians bought more imported cars and continued to kill the local car industry.
The Labor Government’s carbon tax added additional pressure on the local car industry and Kevin Rudd fixed that by handing out more taxpayer money in subsidies. Over the past 10 years, around $20billion has been given to the local car industry and like most handouts, that only delays the inevitable crash or delays necessary action to become self-sufficient. When massive subsidies continue to roll in, there is no need to take too many risks or work too hard on changes.
The Labor Party – Bill Shorten and his new best friend, Kevin Rudd, dealt an additional blow to the already stumbling local car industry immediately before the 2013 election. Rudd clamped down on Fringe Benefits tax, and that had an immediate and massive negative effect on car sales and killed a few thousand other jobs.
After the Labor Party was ejected from office in 2013, the new Liberal government realised the constant massive subsidies for Australia’s car industry were unsustainable, and had to stop. Not only were they unsustainable, but they were growing rapidly. The Labor government had been propping up a rapidly declining industry that Australians were not supporting.
Last month, a non-scientific NewsBlaze survey, that ran over three days, counted the number of Holdens on the road, compared to other cars. The methodology for this survey was simple. Count 200 cars and see how many were Holdens. On day one there were only 10 Holdens. On day two, 12 Holdens and on day three, 12 holdens. On day two, Fords were also counted, and of the 200 cars, 20 were Fords. No account was taken of the age of the vehicles. Other brands were not counted, but it was noted on day three, that there were at least 8 Peugeots. There was actually one more Holden each day – mine.
The conclusion drawn from the survey is that Australians (at least in Canberra) for some reason, do not support Holden, and have not been supporting the company or its products for some time. The chart below also shows that Holden and Ford have been going downhill over the past ten years.
The obvious conclusion of this story is that Tony Abbott did not kill the Australian Car industry. Ford had already announced it was closing up shop and the Labor government did nothing about that – and Ford was receiving subsidies too.
Killing The Local Car Industry
Australians killed the local car industry and the car companies had a hand in their own demise. The Labor Party played a part, in many ways, but they left it to Tony Abbott to deal the final blow, after Kevin Rudd delivered a crippling kick to the vital organs in the dying moments of his government.
It is definitely sad that the local car industry will close, but it isn’t over until the fat lady sings. Change is hard.
Here are two questions for all the people who so desperately want to keep the local car industry going, including and especially the Labor politicians who want to tell the conservative government they are wrong.
1. Did you support Holden, Ford and Toyota by buying their cars?
2. Why don’t you collaborate, put your hand in your pocket, take over the factories and keep the industry going?
Almost anything can be done if you have the guts to try.
The moral of this story is: If you don’t support your local industry, at some time it will become unviable and it will be lost.


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Kantar, the world’s leading evidence-based insights and consulting company along with GroupM’s rural and experiential marketing unit- Dialogue Factory Wednesday released its 2nd edition of the Rural COVID Barometer Report. This report explores rural India’s concern about the impact of the second wave and how it alters consumer behaviour and purchase patterns. The research was conducted with Kantar’s strong data and insights network and Dialogue Factory’s rural marketing intelligence in 18 Indian states, across rural adults with representation across gender, New Consumer Classification System (NCCS) and age groups.
Key takeaways from the report
Rural India is highly concerned about the Covid situation in second wave. Concerns are higher amongst females (91%) as compared to males (85%) and within the higher age bands (55+ years old’s). These concerns are mostly driven by Covid’s impact on day-to-day life and functioning (most for 25-55 years old’s), fear of falling sick and the overall need for financial planning. As a result, rural consumption and shopping patterns have witnessed a major shift.
While consumers are concerned, most are also positive about economic recovery once the situation normalises. Nearly three in four rural households have received some form of assistance from the government of India schemes, thus providing the much-needed financial cushion to consumers.
Rural consumers are saving 25% of their income. Southern India (except for Tamil Nadu) is saving more in comparison to other parts of the country. As expected, expenses are higher on personal care, hygiene and cleaning products while spends on indulgence and beauty products have been deprioritised.
With respect to retail channels, consumers prefer local village shops for purchasing groceries (56%), personal hygiene (49%) and cleaning (45%) products. Even big-ticket items like consumer electronics (50%) and durables (46%) are preferred to be bought at these local shops.
Digital: Transforming rural consumer behaviour
The deep-rooted penetration of 4G internet through smartphones is bringing in critical changes the consumer behaviour in rural India. Today in the hinterlands, online is the most consumed media after television.
With respect to online content consumption, music/ audio (69%) leads the pack followed by news (49%) and gaming (33%).
Usage of video / OTT apps are driven by YouTube at 87% (most in Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Bihar) followed by Disney+ Hotstar at 30% (highest usage in Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Kerala).
WhatsApp and Facebook are the most used social media and messenger platforms at 87% (most in Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka) and 66% (most in Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and West Bengal) usage respectively.
PhonePe is the most used digital payments application with 19% of rural consumers having used these services in the last 6 months. Usage of PhonePe is driven by Karnataka at 46% followed by Rajasthan at 38%.
Rural market forecast
Growth in the consumer durables and automotive (2-wheeler) sectors are likely to slow down in the next 6 months. However, the smartphone category is expected to see fast growth in the near future.
The construction sector is also expected to see a bounce-back with consumers expected to spend on building a house and undertaking smaller construction works in the next 6 months.
Highlighting the report, Dalveer Singh, Head of Experiential Marketing- APAC, GroupM Dialogue Factory said, “The pandemic has evolved the rural consumers’ decision-making process. They are watching their spending and prioritising their buying patterns by the need of the hour. There is a positive acceptance of the vaccination. The upper- and middle-class rural Indians are being more proactive in financial planning to deal with Covid constraints, which make these markets a significant place to introduce investment and savings products. To sum up, there is a deep sense of uplift on the subject of India’s economic future.”
Speaking on the report, Puneet Avasthi, Senior Executive Director, Insights Division, Kantar said, “With a highly concerned rural consumer, rural India is planning finances better and inclined towards a savings mindset. This offers significant headroom for growth to savings and investment products such as insurance and even mutual funds. Additionally, we are witnessing a significant rise in digital payments as an important mode of transaction. This offers a robust platform for rural financial inclusion, as also for suitable hyperlocal promotions. With the change in consumption priorities in favour of health and hygiene products (a trend that has held since the first wave), FMCG marketers should leverage this trend for planning their innovation pipeline.”
This is a semi-annual survey jointly undertaken by Kantar and GroupM Dialogue Factory. The report findings are based on a sample of 3,855 rural adults (18+ years old) surveyed across 18 Indian states with representations across gender, NCCS (New Consumer Classification System) and age groups. All socio-cultural regions (SCRs) are covered within each state to meaningfully reflect the variability that exists. The migrants that have returned to their villages were also covered in the study.
RuralMarketing.in is now on Telegram. Click here to join Rural Marketing on Telegram and stay updated with the latest news and updates on rural business and the economy.


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We are extremely pleased with our success thus far. It has become clear that fashionistas all over the world keep in contact via the web and media. We look forward to our continued growth as more of our fans spread the world.
NY, USA (PRWEB) September 27, 2011
Today’s trendsetters are taking notice of Aukoala, an Australian originated uggs brand. Genevieve Farha, owner of Bricks Clothing store in the United States says, “Aukoala’s brand boots offer higher fashion and better quality than their UGG brand counterparts.” This fall 2011, Aukoala proudly introduces their new winter boot arrivals.
Their bestsellers include the “Eskimo,” “Bertha” and “Nisana.” They can be found on the company website http://www.aukoala.com/. Aukoala boots are made of Australian sheepskin and incorporate a range of elements such as, fringe, rivets, metallic’s, and fur. Customers choose from a large selection of knee high boots, classic pumps, ankle booties, or open toe sandals.
General Manager at Aukoala, Geoffrey Ren, comments, “We are most excited about presenting our new D.I.Y. (do-it-yourself) boot. It is a new concept boot and revolutionary in the way people wear footwear.”
The D.I.Y. boot will be released this October.
Aukoala is not only for women. Men and children can browse through a wide selection of winter boots. Warm accessories, such as sheepskin scarves and gloves are also available.
Top stylists from all over the world are raving about Aukoala. The popular models from the fashion website, lookbook.nu, can be seen wearing Aukoala’s boots with particularly stylish ensembles. Konstantina, a fashion expert and model from Rome, says, “These ugg boots were loved at first sight! Have you ever seen something and besides the weather you wanted to wear it so bad? That's exactly what happened to me. When I first saw them in Aukoala Australia Official Site, I did not hesitate! These uggs are certainly made for walking.”
As of September, 2011, Aukoala Inc announced their launch into the Chinese market. According to a Boston Consulting Group report, China's fashion industry is set to become the world’s second fashion market by 2020, and will account for about 30 percent of the global fashion market’s growth over the next five years.
Aukoala Inc plans to open 30 stores in China this coming year.
With the youth of the company and little marketing, the creators of Aukoala are thrilled at how quickly people are finding their brand. Geoffrey Ren, general manager says, “We are extremely pleased with our success thus far. It has become clear that our fans all over the world promote our brand via the web and media. We look forward to our continued growth and exploration into the Chinese market.”