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Web3-wallet development doesn't stand still
Are you looking to do the Web3 cryptocurrency wallet development?
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. Every year there are new technologies and practices that are making these applications better and better. In this article we will talk about such technologies and practices - 10 trends you need to know and consider when developing your WEB3 Wallet for cryptocurrency, smart contracts, Dapps, DeFi, GameFi and NFT
Cybercrime is perhaps the biggest problem in the world
of cryptocurrency, blockchain and Web3. Hackers stole $1.3 billion from cryptocurrency exchanges, various DeFi platforms and individuals in the first three months of 2022 alone, according to research by Schainalicious. The largest number of hackers' victims is from DeFi - 97% of all crypto stolen in the first quarter of 2022 was taken from DeFi protocols, up from 72% in 2021 and 30% in 2020. Moreover, the biggest thefts are usually the result of security breaches and bugs in the code.
Volume of hacking losses in the cryptocurrency, blockchain and Web3 market
Cryptocurrency wallets have also become hacked more frequently.
In August, hackers managed to steal $8 million in SOL and USDC tokens. According to Elliptic experts, the problem is apparently related to a bug in the code of the Slope hot cryptocurrency wallet (Phantom and Trust Wallet may also have been compromised). Another recent example is the hacking of the "most trusted" cryptocurrency wallet Trezor One. An American engineer, Joe Grand, hacked it to help the wallet's owner to recover $2 million stored on the device.
Based on this, it is safe to assume that all Web3-wallet developers in the future will pay more attention to their security. And this applies both to the protection of the wallet itself (the application that the user uses) and the protection of that wallet's web platform. Furthermore, developers will probably implement additional protection measures, which would help to keep tokens and users' data in case of hacking by third-party services (cryptocurrency exchanges, smart contracts, bridges, etc.).
GameFi area development.
The second major trend in Web3 wallet design will be the development
of integrations with GameFi. GameFi (a combination of Game and Finance) are blockchain-based games and non-exchangeable tokens (NFTs) operating on the play-to-earn (P2E, play and earn) model. Such projects have become very popular in the last two years and this market is only expected to grow: from $8.9 billion in 2021 to $74 billion by 2031 at a CAGR of 23.7%.
GameFi market statistics for August 2022
AAA games will be the main growth drivers for GameFi. Illuvium, Guilt of Guardians, Star Atlas, Ember Sword, Otherside (a game from publishers Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks and Meebits), as well as many other projects will be released by the end of 2022 or early 2023. Together with Decentraland, Axie Infinity and The Sandbox, which have already launched, they will greatly increase interest in the market - once teens realize that they can make money playing their favorite game, GameFi will be unstoppable.
When that happens, cryptocurrency Web3-wallet developers will start adding integrations with GameFi projects en masse - from buying and selling in-game money to smart escrow contracts that will enable players to exchange their NFTs from one video
game for the NFTs of another game project quickly and securely. In addition, we are also likely to see integration of cryptocurrencies with platforms such as GameJolt, Origin, Epic Games Store, GameJolt, Google Stadia Twitch and maybe even Steam.
Enhancing DeFi regulation
The next trend, which is almost 100% likely to affect the development of cryptocurrency wallets is the strengthening of pressure regulation by regulators and other government agencies. The United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan, China and many other countries have already announced stricter regulations on the cryptocurrency market. These have either already introduced or planning to introduce new laws and accounting regulations that will oblige all market participants to disclose more data about their activities, as well as strengthen controls over compliance with anti-money laundering, anti-terrorist financing and sanctions enforcement rules.
This would imply for developers of cryptocurrency Web projects mandatory KYC/AIM practices and expanded functions responsible for collecting company and user data. In addition, it may also involve a ban on integration with anonymous tokens and mixers (such as Tornado Cash) allowing to hide details about the amount and transaction counterparties.
How countries treat cryptocurrencies by August 2020
Privacy data protection
Another defining trend in Web3 is data ownership and privacy
. In the past and now, our personal data is centrally stored and controlled by large technology companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. That not only leads to constant leaks and identity theft but also violates users' privacy rights to own and dispose of their data, from Instagram photos to online shopping data.
We can already see this trend at the legislative level, for example in the European Union (General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR) and at the app development level (Apple allowed to prohibit data collection by apps in iOS). Therefore, there is no doubt that cryptocurrency wallet developers will also add these features. At least if they intend to operate in the U.S., Canada, EU, UK, Japan and China jurisdictions.
In other words, data privacy is becoming more and more important to users and developers will be responding to this challenge by creating products that will give more control over their users' personal data. It includes the following features:
- Tracking the data that the site/application generates.
- Ability to prohibit the collection of personal data by the user.
- Ability to decide independently who collects personal data and which ones.
- The ability to monetize personal data.
- Possibility to delete personal data.
- Other things.
Improving the users' experience
As more people become interested in cryptocurrency, there will be a growing demand for products/services that are easy to understand and use. This will create some tension in the market because cryptocurrencies and other blockchain projects are still difficult to use - people often need some training to interact with tokens, DeFi, NFT and other Web3 technologies. In the future, this will have to change.
The design and navigation should become easier and closer to the design of applications in the traditional financial marketplace - buying and selling cryptocurrency must be as easy as transferring money in online banking and PayPal. In addition, the cryptocurrency vocabulary also needs changing - the outside user shouldn't have to learn new terms such as mining, yield farming, stealing, etc., because each new term reduces the target audience's reach.
Perfectly Web3-wallets for cryptocurrencies have to be as simple and easy to handle as Mint, Amazon, SHEIN, Alibaba, Walmart, that we are used to.
Integration of Web2- and Web3-platforms
This year, I expect the major centralized Web2 players to integrate with decentralized Web3 platforms. We are already seeing the beginning of this process in Twitter, which recently introduced NFT profile images and integration with OpenSea. In PayPal, where they added the ability to buy, sell and transfer cryptocurrencies through a mobile app. Also Walmart, which has not only added the ability to buy goods for crypto but also actively integrates blockchain technology into its business processes and supply chain.
We are going to see much more of these integrations in the future, for example:
- Retailers and online stores will add support for cryptocurrencies.
- Subscription services such as Netflix, Spotify, Xbox Game Pass and others will also let their users pay in cryptocurrency.
- States will accept Bitcoin as the second official currency in the country (as El Salvador or the Central African Republic have done). In addition, states will also make it possible to pay taxes, fees and licenses in crypto.
Besides that, we can also expect blockchain integration into social networks to continue, e.g. to use virtual currency for payments, Web3-wallets for authorization, NFT for selling pictures (avatars, backgrounds, emoji, etc.). In the future, we can expect social networks to stop "taking away" rights to published content from users and allow them to manage their content through blockchain, smart contracts, NFT and cryptocurrencies.
Introducing Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence Midjourney, which drew a picture called Théâtre D'opéra Spatial, won in an artist competition in Colorado, it can be trained to create NFTs or even design applications
Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are also going to play
a big role in the development of Web 3.0. These technologies are already used extensively in search engines, translators, recommendation systems, image recognition solutions, business process automation, etc. But in the future, AI will become even more pervasive and integrated into our lives. Web3-wallet developers will have to take this into account.
Here are a few examples of how you can use AI in Web3 wallets:
- Writing cryptocurrency wallet application code. AI is already helping to test and optimize application code. AI solutions are also being tested to write program code from scratch.
- Using chatbots and digital assistants. You've probably come across or heard of Alexa and Siri. These artificial intelligence chatbots are getting more and more sophisticated; over time, they will become even more realistic and be able to perform more complicated tasks, from buying crypto upon your order to managing personal finances.
- Generation of new NFTs in your wallet. The most popular and expensive NFTs collections (Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks) are AI generated pictures. What prevents adding an AI capability to generate NFTs to Web3-wallet so that users can create rather than buy NFTs? As the Colorado fine art contest shows, AI can paint beautiful pictures as well as professional artists.
- AI on the security watchdog. Here's another thing with which artificial intelligence can help. It can be trained to look for "holes" in wallet protection, detect suspicious activity, block hacker attacks in real time, looking for the source of a hacker attack and so on.
Ricardian smart contracts
The Ricardian type of contract was invented by Jan Grigg in 1996. The idea behind it is that there are two contracts - one in a text format that will look like a regular contract and the other will be a digital version that only humans can read. That is to say, a Ricardian contract puts the defining elements of a legal agreement into a format that can be expressed and executed in software code (a smart contract).
Despite being revolutionary, the concept was not widely used when it was first presented because the technology at the time simply did not allow the concept to be put into practice. However, this is not a problem anymore. Thanks to the advent of blockchain technology, which seems to have everything to make full use of this idea.
In the context of blockchain technology, a Ricardian contract is a special kind of smart contract that is written as a textual agreement and can be read by humans and machines alike.
A Ricardian smart contract has many advantages:
- If there is any discrepancy or disagreement in the reading, counterparties can take such a contract to court, which is almost impossible with a conventional blockchain-based smart contract.
- A Ricardian contract would be understandable to ordinary people without any knowledge of programming or blockchain. They will be able to both read it and create as if it was an ordinary textual legal document.
- Ricardian contracts can integrate blockchain and smart contracts features into ordinary legal agreements, resulting in greater transparency, lower costs and faster dispute resolution.
The Environmental Agenda
One of the main obstacles to the bright future of blockchain is the enormous amount of electricity it uses. Bitcoin and other PoW blockchains require too many resources to operate properly and therefore leave a carbon footprint that is too large and thus aggravate the world's ecology. That is why a lot of people and organizations are against the mass adoption of Bitcoin. For example, in 2021 Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, even announced that the company would not accept Bitcoin because it is against greenhouse gas pollution.
Given the growing importance of the eco-trend, the world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies will have to respond to this demand. For example, by abandoning PoW blockchains and related Web3 applications. Which could become not just a private initiative of users and developers, but also a legal norm: in early 2022, Eric Teden, vice chairman of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), proposed to completely ban energy-intensive mining based on the Proof-of-Work mechanism.
Another way is to switch from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake, as the Ethereum blockchain network plans to do in late 2022 or early 2023, for example. This would free up huge amounts of capacity reserved for PoW-mining, thereby reducing the Earth's carbon footprint.
Compare the power consumption of PoW and PoS networks
Another possible way is to direct PoW computation to useful purposes, such as finding cures for cancer, deciphering some meaningful data sets or at least weather forecasting.
Low-code and no-code
The latest trend that will affect Web3 cryptocurrency development is the development of websites and applications using low-code and no-code. Low-code is the creation of software with minimal coding, while no-code is the development of websites and applications without any coding. Instead of traditional "high" coding to create interface or software logic, a drag-n-drop graphical interface is used which allows software to be created quickly and easily by matching function "blocks" from a pre-defined set of templates - like LEGO bricks.


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HBO’s production partnership with Sky
On April 20, 2017, Variety reported that Time Warner’s (TWX) HBO had entered into an agreement to co-produce high-end programming. 21st Century Fox (FOXA) has made a bid for Sky to convert its 39% stake to full ownership, and in December last year, it initiated the acquisition of Sky, a pay-TV operator in Europe, for $14.3 billion.
Sky is an important content distribution partner for Time Warner’s HBO. In international territories such as Western Europe, it has licensed HBO to third-party digital distributors such as 21st Century Fox’s Sky SVOD (subscription video on demand) service.
According to Time Warner, a core part of its strategy in extending the HBO brand has been launching the HBO Now video streaming service in addition to distributing HBO’s programming through traditional pay-TV operators. The company has employed this strategy in international territories, including Latin America and Eastern Europe, and later in Asia.
HBO’s international distribution strategy
The company also believes that outside the United States (SPY), it has a strong position when it comes to the distribution of its content through AT&T’s (T) DIRECTV in Latin America and Mexico, as well as its linear television networks such as Turner Broadcasting System, HBO, and Warner Bros.
The company is currently focusing on extending its presence in Eastern Europe and Asia, as it’s present on a smaller scale in these territories. The company stated during its 2016 earnings call that over the last couple of years, it had been trying to capitalize on the trend of viewers watching content through SVOD and VOD (video on demand) platforms.

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“Big shifts in stock markets, Oil hits record low, In the US the number of people filing for unemployment hit a record high, Companies stopped hiring” The Covid-19 pandemic has brought a huge downturn on the global market along with its large number of victims. Next to Suffer might be the advertisement Industry.
Some corners of the industry are likely to be hammered by the spread of the Covid-19. Paid advertisement Sector is expected to have a hit amid this Coronavirus Outbreak. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said “This is not going to business as usual, and the marketing industry is certainly going to see a real impact. I don’t think anyone knows how big. So we’re going to watch and look.” NY Times made a filing in which it said that ad revenue would be down about 10% this quarter. Analysts said they expect to see Facebook’s ad business take a hit in the near-term. Companies stopped hiring, conferences, etc. and reporting it as an earnings risk. These might extend to Digital Marketing companies.
However, this hard time where most of the people are under Lockdown or Quarantine is likely to bring high engagement and user activity in Social Media and Youtube. “Any time people are at home, there’s a chance their video consumption is going to go up.”- Steve Nason. It is the perfect time to optimise our Digital Marketing Campaigns. Direct your marketing budgets to more effective channels like SEO, influencer marketing, etc. Fixing your website; make it more user friendly, Working on your SEO, Optimizing your campaigns, focusing more on SMM, video marketing, educating your audience about Covid-19 and it’s safety measures, etc would be the best strategy to navigate your Digital Marketing Campaign.
This too shall pass! Let’s all stay at our homes and win the war together against Coronavirus!


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Friday, April 20, 2012
Samsung Galaxy S III caught on video
Samsung Galaxy S II was our most highly rated phone of 2011. Sales of the phone also showed it to be one of the top phones as well selling 20+ million units. So it was clear that people were going to be excited for it's successor the Galaxy S III. It seems like over the past few weeks the excitement has come to a boil with rumor flying left and right. It seems like we now have been graced with a video that looks like the most legitimate leak of them all. Straight from Vietnam is a video showing a Samsung Galaxy S III with it's full set of specs and being compared to a Galaxy Nexus. Have a look at the video after the break.


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As the head of Walmart’s e-commerce division, Neil Ashe oversees the sale of a lot of smartphones. But there’s one device he’s not selling.
“Is anybody selling the Fire phone?” he said in response to a question on stage at today’s GeekWire Summit in Seattle, drawing a handful of laughs and a healthy crop of boos. “I guess, the more important question would be is anybody buying the Fire phone?”
Despite the boos, earlier in the day, nobody in the audience here at the Westin stood up with one of Amazon’s new smartphones when asked to show off what smartphone they were carrying.
Ashe, the CEO of Global E-Commerce for Walmart, is leading the online charge for one of Amazon’s largest competitors in the commerce space. When asked about how small Walmart’s e-commerce business is compared with Amazon’s, Ashe said that he didn’t consider the chunk of the company he oversees to be separate from its physical retail operations. Moreover, he said that the future of retail won’t be online-only or only in stores.
“What’s interesting about the general conversation about the future of commerce is that it’s a conversation of ‘or,'” Ashe said. “Are you buying online, or are you walking into the store?” He disagreed with that sentiment, arguing that consumers buy where it’s most convenient, either online or in retail.
Walmart reported $10 billion in e-commerce sales during its 2014 fiscal year, and projected a 25 percent increase over that for its 2015 fiscal year.
In Ashe’s view, all of that boils down to a simple bottom line.
“We want you to shop at Walmart because we want you to trust Walmart and Walmart can serve you better than anyone else,” he said.


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By Chandral Selim
Miss Universe 2015 Pia Wurtzbach has opted to mix sexy and scary this Halloween.
The Filipino-German beauty posted a photo of herself on Instagram today, November 2, dressed as one of Tim Burton's most iconic characters, Edward Scissorhands.
And what's even more amazing? She did all the makeup by herself!
She wrote, "It was a good day for makeup lovers! Makeup by me! I used eyelash glue for the scars."
Pia was joined by her sister Sarah Wurtzbach, who celebrated Halloween with her in London.
Sarah dressed up as Jigsaw from the "Saw" franchise.
The ultimate online fan experience gets even better here at starcinema.com.ph.
See other latest news here, visit our online store, and talk about your favorite stars, movies, and TV shows on Fans Speak!
For more updates:
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For more updates on your favorite Star Cinema movies, continue to visit www.starcinema.com.ph


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Natural gas distributor $OGS said for 2016 it expects net income to be $127-137MM or about $2.40-2.60 per diluted share. For 2016, CapEx is expected to be $305MM. For 2015, net income is expected to be $118-120MM versus outlook of $113-118MM provided on Oct. 28, 2015.
$DB is going to cut off services for about 3,400 clients in equities trading.
$F stock slid more than 2% after the company issued two safety recalls involving more than 650,000 Ford Fusion and Lincoln MKZ model cars.
The new CEO of $SBUX, Kevin Johnson, has some pretty large shoes to fill but there are many who have good faith in his ability to do so.
$TSLA opening a showroom in Michigan. A bold move !!


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Apple plans to resume company-wide retail meetings, which have been postponed for three years.
Apple Store employees are beginning to hold meetings in the US in line with the big “Far Out” event, which kicks off in September. Apple originally planned to hold company-wide meetings, which take place once or twice a year during a busy season, but the global pandemic has resulted in lockdowns, store closures and similar issues.
This time around, Apple has unveiled a company-wide strategy and pep talk teams to discuss and prepare store associates for new products. The highly anticipated ‘Far Out’ event is believed to bring the latest iPhone lineup, as well as new Apple Watches.
Apple Store employees in the United States have been instructed in advance to prepare merchandise materials. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says the new iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 will launch on September 16, with pre-orders on September 9.


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Cosentino featured across several designs at Casa Decor 2018
July 9, 2018
Casa Decor in Madrid is a unique exhibition of interior design spaces visited by over 40,000 individuals from February 15 – March 25. Following last year’s success, Cosentino teamed up with several interior designers, decorators and artists this year to feature Silestone and Dekton in their spaces at Casa Decor 2018. These spaces include a variety of different Cosentino applications including table tops, countertops, bar tops, sinks and more. Of the 67 spaces designed this year, Cosentino has been featured in seven unique installations.
July 9, 2018 Categorised in: News


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New Android features include Digital car key sharing, Reading Mode and more
Google has announced a bunch of features for Android just in time for the winter season, headlined by a brand new Reading Mode. This is joined by new collage designs on Google Photos, new emojis on emoji kitchen, and more. Here’s everything you need to know about the feature drop.
Reading Mode is a new accessibility app that aims to provide a more accessible reading experience for people who are blind, have low vision, or are dyslexic. Once you download and enable it, you’ll see a tiny overlay on the side of your screen. Open any article on the web and tap that overlay icon to see content from the article in a much more readable format. The feature works with YouTube videos too. Users can also tap the play button at the bottom to convert the text content into speech.
Digital Car Key sharing support
Google launched Digital Car Key last with Android 12, allowing users to automatically lock/unlock supported cars. With this feature dump, users can now share their digital car key with friends and family across Pixels and iPhones. Think of it as letting someone you know borrow your car keys for a while. Users can manage multiple car keys and their access from the phone’s digital wallet app.
New Google Photos collage styles
Google Photos recently added Styles to the collage editor, allowing users to share customisable collages. Expanding on that, the company’s introduced some new designs from two new artists – Australian husband-and-wife visual duo DABSMYLA and renowned watercolour artist Yao Cheng Design.
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To create a new collage, open Photos, select multiple photos, hit “Add to” at the bottom, and then select “Collage.” Here you’ll see several designs and layouts you can use.
New Emoji Kitchen emojis
Emoji Kitchen already offers over 15,000 ‘hybrid’ emojis but it’s now gained even more combos – and this time they’re all about the winter season. Bring up Gboard on any messaging app, tap the emoji icon to the left of the space bar, and input any winter-related emoji to see new suggestions.
1. Starting next week, you’ll be able to directly cast from the Google TV app to your compatible TV through a floating action button at the bottom right of the app.
2. The Google Keep app on Wear OS devices has been updated to present better-looking notes and to-dos, with support for custom backgrounds and more.
3. New integration with the Adidas Running app in Google Assistant will let users start a run by saying “Hey Google, start a run with Adidas Running.”


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DBL Distributing hosted its bi-annual Vendor Expo attracting 70 exhibitors and more than 100 retail customers here, last month.
DBL’s vendor exposition is designed to facilitate interaction between brand name consumer electronic manufacturers, DBL sales account managers and DBL customers, with a focus on products and brands in DBL’s most recent catalog, the company said.
Monster Power, Sherwood, Sansui, Memorex, Case Logic, Go Video, KOSS, DLO, Panasonic, JVC, Olympus, Ortofon, SanDisk, XM Satellite Radio, and JBL were a few of the participating manufacturers that provided onsite product experts and new product demonstrations at the expo.
“It is always satisfying to interact with our manufacturing partners and customers in a combined environment where we can present the latest in new product lines featured in DBL’s Summer/Fall Catalog. This particular event provided the perfect combination of hands-on product demonstrations and face to face interaction between sales representatives and customers,” stated Bruce Kuperman, senior VP of sales.
In addition to the excitement surrounding the abundance of new products from name brand manufacturers, the event also featured door prizes including products donated by Monster Power, OmniMount, Case Logic, Lorex, Ortofon, Blue Ant, TDK, Maxell, Griffin, Nextar, Nexus, Vantage Point, Sanus and Olympus.
DBL’s next vendor exposition will coincide with the release of the Fall/Winter 2007 Catalog tentatively scheduled for release in early October.
DBL’s new Summer/Fall 2007 Catalog for Consumer Electronic Dealers, Retailers and Online Merchants is the largest DBL catalog published to date with more than 1,100 pages, 3,000 new products, over 1,900 new permanent price drops and 31 brand-name manufacturers.
In addition to its catalog that is published three times each year, the company publishes monthly sale flyers and vendor flyers dedicated to introducing new products, new low prices and closeout items. Customers also receive daily promotions through the DBL Dispatch – the company’s e-marketing newsletter that promotes hot deals and special offers that link directly to www.dbldistributing.com.
“Ninety-thousand catalogs were mailed to our customer base and almost every consumer electronics retailer nationwide,” said David Lorsch, DBL’s president/CEO.


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Fiat-Chrysler has registered a jump of 196 percent in the sales of its Jeep brand in UK. As compared to YTDsales in 2014, thisis a huge jump this year, in the same month.
The Jeep Renegade was the best selling model in September , followed by theGrand Cherokee."The sales figures are fantastic news, not only for new Renegade, but for the Jeep brand as a whole," said Damien Dally, head of brand Jeep UK. "It is quite clear that more people are turning to Jeep for their next car, as we bring exciting new models to the UK."Dally also announced that there was more to come from them, saying that Jeep will certainly not "stop here" in terms of their growth.
Jeep's popularity in the UK is certainly on the rise compared to last year and Fiat-Chrysler are making considerable efforts to take the brand to newer heights. With other products lined up, the future seems much more brighter for the Jeep brand, globally too.Fiat-Chrysler has announced its India launch in early 2016 and thecurrently workingto establish separate sales network in around five major cities, in the first phase.
The company is planning toinvest $280 million in the country in its manufacturing facilityfor the production of Jeep models. TheGrand Cherokee and Wrangler brands would be launched together next year and would come as CBUs (completely built units). In 2017, the company plans to launch a locally manufactured SUV too.
Source : MotorOctane


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USA: Former US Foodservice execs charged with fraud
Dutch retail giant Ahold has confirmed that the US Department of Justice and the US Securities and Exchange Commission have brought charges against four former executives of its US subsidiary US Foodservice.
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Apple’s iAd mobile advertising platform has received mixed reviews since launch at the beginning of last month, with reports suggesting that advertisers and publishers are impressed with initial results but some ad campaigns have experienced delays as agencies attempt to learn the new system amid Apple’s tight control over the creative process. A Wall Street Journal report claims that Apple has been slow to roll the service out and is keeping tight control on the creative aspects of ad-making, “something advertisers aren’t used to.” That has reportedly made the creation of the mobile ads laborious, taking about 8-10 weeks from brainstorm to completion – “longer than normal for most mobile ads.” The building of the actual ad, handled by Apple, in some cases is taking two weeks longer than expected, and luxury marketer Chanel, one of Apple’s iAd launch partners, is believed to have dropped all efforts for now.
However, a Los Angeles Times report cites Nissan as stating that customers spent an average of 90 seconds in its iAd, ten times longer than interaction times for comparable online ads. Dictionary.com said the amount it could charge for its ad space has increased 177 percent since it enabled iAd in its iPhone app, and CBS Mobile said the company’s six apps were seeing up to US$25 CPMs (the cost advertisers pay for an ad to appear a thousand times). Meanwhile the CEO of gaming firm Backflip Studios said iAd “has exceeded our expectations thus far.” iAd is the result of Apple’s US$275 million acquisition of Quattro Wireless – a company that makes tools for embedding adverts in applications – in January. iAd is designed to work so that users clicking on mobile ads don’t need to leave their app and view the advertiser’s webpage via a web browser. Instead, iAd claims to display full-screen video and interactive ad content without users having to leave the app. Apple claims that iPhone OS 4 lets developers easily embed iAd “opportunities” within their apps, and developers will receive 60 percent of iAd revenue. In June Apple claimed to have iAd commitments for 2010 totaling over US$60 million, which represents almost 50 percent of the total forecasted US mobile ad spending for the second half of 2010.


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The Sims 4 has released a free patch that adds roughly 1,200 new colour variants across 149 different base game items.
This base game update launched earlier this week, and covers everything from tables and chairs to beds and kitchen furniture. Cabinets, mirrors, curtains, windows, and even chess tables have been given additional swatches, as well as garden items such as shrubs, bushes, and plant pots.
It's an impressive amount that's been added, and gives players a lot more options when building and designing their homes.
Below are just a fraction of the new swatches – anything marked with a green dot represents a variant that is newly added:
The game's official blog (found here) includes further screenshots plus the full list of base game items that have been updated.
These colour variants can be accessed in Build mode.
In addition, a few new Create-a-Sim items – including a turban, bracelet, and several hairstyles and outfits all inspired by the upcoming Fashion Street and Incheon Arrivals Kits – have been added for free with this update.
You can get a good look at the new stuff in the below screenshot:
The Fashion Street Kit is inspired by Mumbai's fashion scene, while the Incheon Arrivals Kit is based on iconic Seoul airport fashion. They're both being released on Tuesday, October 5, and you can check out more details of what's included in them here.
Two further Kits will be unveiled in due course as part of the current 'Season of Selves' schedule.
These announcements follow the Industrial Loft Kit's release last month and a major update for the Spa Day Game Pack (which added content including manicures, pedicures, and facial masks) a couple of weeks ago.
The Sims 4 is available on PC, Mac, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.


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Following the Assassin’s Creed Mirage leak, Ubisoft officially confirms the next entry in the Assassin’s Creed series.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage Leak, Confirmed!
Ubisoft has officially announced Assassin’s Creed Mirage following a leak. This is the next entry in the series, separate from Assassin’s Creed Infinity (codename), which is coming sometime later.
Assassin’s Creed games usually leak prior to their official announcement, and this proved to be true once again with Mirage. While Ubisoft is confirming the existence of Mirage today, that’s all the company is doing. More details on Mirage will be shared during Ubisoft Forward on September 10.
Assassin's Creed Mirage is the next Assassin's Creed game.
— Assassin's Creed (@assassinscreed) September 1, 2022
According to a leak, Assassin’s Creed Mirage will launch in Spring 2023. The game will reportedly take place in Baghdad in the late ‘800s. It will also be a “return to basics” for the series with no leveling, a report said.
According to an earlier leak, players will control Basim, a character from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, in his youth, leading up to when he arrived at the Hidden Ones. The game will do away with dialogue choices and the ability to select a gender, the leak said.
The leak added that Mirage’s reported back-to-basics approach is inspired by the 2007 original Assassin’s Creed, and that Ubisoft is working on a remake of this game. This alleged remake will be part of Mirage’s season pass, and there will also be Constantinople DLC, the report said.
In addition to Mirage, a new game codenamed Assassin’s Creed Infinity is coming later.


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A controversial app that took photos of clothed women and stripped them naked may have been shut down, but it hasn't stopped versions of it from cropping up on the internet.
The DeepNude app used artificial intelligence to create realistic-looking nude photos of women - and it was only women, it wasn't designed to work on men.
Curtis Barnes is a legal researcher and artificial intelligence expert who co-authored a report on deepfakes for New Zealand's Law Foundation.
He told Kathryn Ryan that DeepNude is the latest in a long line of technologies which are using artificial intelligence to produce better and better representations of humans in video or photograph.
Someone using DeepNude would upload a photograph to the app and using various artificial intelligence paradigms, it would reproduce a new photo which had the clothes of the person stripped away.
“Obviously not the actual body of the women in the photograph but an artificial intelligence’s attempt to recreate what it thought that women’s body would look like in that particular photo.”
The app was trained using 10,000 photographs of naked cisgender women.
“It seems probably personal preference and perhaps a commercial decision because of course they were trying to sell this app, rather successfully actually, for up to $US50 a pop.”
Barnes found New Zealand law would cover harmful or use of the photographs.
“For instance, if you blackmail somebody with a photograph of them that’s been synthetically generated, it’s still going to be blackmail. It doesn’t matter if it was created by DeepNude or if it was really taken or if you had no photograph at all and if you slander them or harm their reputation or do harm to their company or things like that, this is all going to still apply.”
The Harmful Digital Communications Act could be helpful to deal with this phenomenon, he says.
“Any communication which can cause harm to somebody, serious harm as assessed in the courts, could be found to cross a line and have a criminal response to it.”
DeepNude may have gone from app stores, but the software was copied because the code was provided as opensource on the internet.
It’s not something you’d want to go for looking for, Barnes says.
“Because of the popularity of the nude, it’s become a place for cyber criminals to store malware, obviously because they know people who go looking for DeepNude are going to download it and may be trepidatious about revealing how they got certain viruses on their computer systems.”
The solution is not going to be entirely legal or technological, he says.
“People need to be aware that these things are going to be proliferating into their lives more and more, especially as we use the internet more and more. They need to be aware that using them is wrong.”


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David Carr and Lorne Manly write in the NY Times about the tremendous consolidation in the magazine industry:
Some 320 wholesalers served the magazine industry in 1995, but just four companies now control 90 percent of the marketplace. And those seemingly powerful players are being pushed around by Wal-Mart and an increasingly consolidated retail industry. The fallout has meant magazines that do not sell enough copies or are not part of a bigger company can lose access to consumers.
The subscriber side is bleaker, if that is possible. A surfeit of direct mail from all sorts of marketers had already depressed consumer response to magazine solicitations before the threat of anthrax came along. Sweepstakes providers like Publishers Clearing House had been a cheap source for subscriptions that accounted for more than a quarter of the industry's total. But misleading language, which fooled some consumers into thinking they had won millions of dollars, provoked the wrath of attorneys general across the country, and resulted in legal costs that nearly bankrupted the sweepstakes industry.
This circulation mayhem has "just decimated margins on the circulation side," said Lindsay Valk, director for consumer marketing at Hearst. "The biggest hit is going to be the smaller titles. They're going to get squeezed — squeezed a lot harder on the margins."
Scale also expresses itself in the advertising equation. As advertisers grow through consolidation, the advertising agencies are turning into a virtual oligopoly, with the Publicis Group's acquisition of the Bcom3 Group last week just the latest move. Both marketers and their agencies are using that size to demand better deals.
That should only accelerate the bifurcation of publishing into the top tier and the also-rans. Three companies now control almost 40 percent of total advertising in the consumer magazine category, a percentage that is growing every year. Scores of other companies are left to fight over the rest.


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La Cañada Troop 501’s first annual firewood sale is in full swing at the La Cañada Farmer’s Market. The scouts have been selling fragrant pine and oak logs on Saturdays since the start of the month and will continue to do so during December and possibly beyond.
The firewood promises to be both a great value and an environmental benefit, as it comes from downed trees in Angeles National Forest. In the wake of the 2009 Station fire, Scouts have gathered, cut and split wood from these downed trees so that they make high-quality firewood. Proceeds from the sale will help the troop fund future adventure trips and community service projects, such as an upcoming 10-day hiking trip to Philmont, N.M.


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Bhaskar Das, one of the longest serving member of the Times Group, is leaving the company, ending his 32-year stint. Das, who had joined the Times of India group in 1980 as management trainee, was subsequently promoted to the post of president and principal secretary to the managing director at Bennett, Coleman & Co. ltd. (BCCL).
Das was not reachable till the filing of this report, but highly placed sources in the company confirmed the development to Business Standard. It is also understood that he may join Subhash Chandra-promoted Zee Group in a consulting role for the TV and print business. Apart from the television channels, Chandra also owns the English daily DNA.
During his career at BCCL, he worked for 18 years in line function and profit centre and brand management during the another 14 years. Just after a year of joining as management trainee, he was appointed as head of the advertising and sales department in Gujarat, even before completing probation. Two years later, he took over as sales head of the Eastern Region in Kolkata and, in 1986, became the Profit Centre Head for East. In 1990, he was appointed Profit Centre Head of Gujarat and took over as Director of the Western Zone of Response (Ad sales) in 1995.
In 2005, he took over as the Executive President of BCCL and has been instrumental in maximisation of the company's volume and value market share by ensuring quality service to business constituents and driving value innovations.


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Travellers have demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice comfort and convenience for cheap airfares.
Now this low-cost ethos is extending into the cockpit, with budget airlines chasing the lowest pay, and most relaxed work rules for pilots.
Discount carriers in Europe are choosing to hire pilots through outside employment agencies, in order to cut costs and save money.
So far, Norwegian Air Shuttle and Ireland’s Ryanair amongst others, admit to operating under unusual hiring schemes.
While rival discounters in Europe such as EasyJet and Germanwings, choose to hire most pilots under traditional contracts.
Tweet us your thoughts at @CityVibeRadio
Who remembers AOL?
The dial-up internet service is still trying to save the company’s reputation.
But with competitors such as Sky and Virgin Media – the media firm is struggling to reach subscribers.
The company is instead investing in digital companies who have chosen to make the internet service their main broadband server.
This has meant that AOL dial-up, have predicted they’ll make five-hundred and sixty two million dollars next year purely based on the loyalty of those companies.
In tech news, Google have launched a health feature for smart phones – that provides information about specific medical conditions.
The facility provides medical illustrations, possible treatments, and more.
The firm have said it worked with doctors to develop the service, but adds that it is not intended to replace visits to a professional.


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Gem Diamonds 910Ct Recovery 'Fifth Largest Gem Quality Stone Ever Found'January 15, 18
(IDEX Online) – Gem Diamonds Limited has recovered an exceptional quality 910 carat, D color Type IIa diamond from the Letšeng mine in Lesotho which is believed to be the fifth largest gem quality diamond ever found.
The mining company said in a statement that it is the largest diamond recovered from the Letšeng mine in the landlocked country.
The Letšeng mine has a reputation for producing top color, exceptional white diamonds, and is the highest dollar per carat kimberlite diamond mine in the world, according to Gem Diamonds.
Clifford Elphick, Gem Diamonds’ Chief Executive Officer, commented: “Since Gem Diamonds acquired Letšeng in 2006, the mine has produced some of the world’s most remarkable diamonds, including the 603 carat Lesotho Promise. However, this exceptional top quality diamond is the largest to be mined to date and highlights the unsurpassed quality of the Letšeng mine."
Gem Diamonds did not give a preliminary price for the rough stone since it will need to be carefully examined and decisions made on the best-quality stones that can be cut from it.
However, Lucara Diamond Corp. sold a 1,109-carat diamond for $53 million last year, as well as an 813-carat stone for a record $63 million.
The announcement follows one last week by Gem Diamonds last week that it had found two diamonds weighing 117 carats and 110 carats, respectively.
Gem Diamonds owns 70% of the Letšeng mine in Lesotho and the government of Lesotho owns the rest.
Among the other remarkable diamonds recovered from Letšeng are:
2006 – Lesotho Promise (603 carat)
2007 – Lesotho Legacy (493 carat)
2008 – Leseli La Letšeng (478 carat)
2011 – Letšeng Star (550 carat)
2014 – Yellow (299 carat)
2015 – Letšeng Destiny (314 carat)
2015 – Letšeng Dynasty (357 carat)


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Last November's Black Friday was anticipated to be a day that generated a significant amount of consumer buying, and according to the estimates, it delivered.
Retail intelligence provider and website ShopperTrak reported that Black Friday sales purchases increased more than 6 percent in 2011 when compared to the same 24-hour period in 2010. The $11 billion worth of retail buys made this past Black Friday the most prolific one yet in terms of dollars spent.
"Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year and the traditional start to the holiday shopping season," said Bill Martin, founder of ShopperTrak. "Despite our sluggish economy, shoppers proved they are looking for value and ready to buy if given a good customer experience."
He added that it remained to be seen whether the increased buying activity would continue thereafter.
To keep consumers buying, many retailers now offer low-interest financing options in addition to deep price cuts on more costly items that can take some time to pay off, such as high-definition televisions or home furniture. Consumers with a clean credit history may be able to take advantage of these offers.


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Agricultural exports from the region of Vlora, in addition to fishing, also lead with the culture of watermelon and aromatic medicinal plants this summer season.
The Regional Directorate of Exports of Vlora, announces that, during July 2020, a total of about 207.6 tons of agricultural products were exported from the region of Vlora to regional markets and EU countries.
According to statistics, for this period lead exports of watermelon with about 196 tons, 26 tons more than in the same period a year ago for this crop. While exports of medicinal plants reach the figure of over 11 tons in July this year.
Agricultural experts say that Vlora leads in exports to EU countries for seafood, citrus and olive oil products, while following the tradition of products with a trend towards progressive growth, for agricultural products, especially in greenhouses (which is currently over). season) but also for livestock and processed ones.
According to statistics, in the region of Vlora are produced about 14,881 tons of olives, over 27 thousand tons of citrus while livestock occupies about 17.7% of total livestock production./ATSH


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If CGI-generated babies can work for Evian and eTradeXX, why not Mobilicity?
The wireless company debuted its latest ad from agency Sharpe Blackmore in time for the holidays with a dash of South Asian charm. Entitled “Bollywood Babies,” it shows clips of CGI toddlers performing various acrobatic feats and a tableful of dogs playing a high-stakes poker game.
“Bollywood Babies is a witty look at the crazy amount of time consumers spend watching crazy videos,” Mobilicity explains on its website, and aims to promote the affordability of its unlimited data plan. The spot also features an appearance by a Mobilicity alien, one of the company’s new extraterrerstrial mascots created earlier this year for the brand.


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Microsoft Office 2016 Arrives, Office 365 Updated
Sept. 22 marks the worldwide release of Office 2016 for Windows, with a new delivery model and apps designed to pair with Windows 10.
Today marks the global launch of Office 2016 for Windows. Microsoft is also announcing new and enhanced services within Office 365 and the availability of Office 2016 for Mac as a one-time purchase.
The latest version of Office has been redesigned for Windows 10 optimization, improved collaboration and tighter security. All apps within the Office suite have been updated, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Project and Visio.
“The way people work has changed dramatically, and that’s why Microsoft is focused on reinventing productivity and business processes for the mobile-first, cloud-first world,” said CEO Satya Nadella in a Sept. 22 statement.
Microsoft Office has traditionally been the go-to tool for productivity but lacked the necessary tools to help people work together. The desktop apps and online services have since been updated to make collaboration more of a core priority.
To read the full article CLICK HERE
If you would like to discuss the benefits to your business or you want to upgrade your account please don’t hesitate in contacting us here at Arden Group email@example.com or call us on 0870 2 64 64 65


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3D printers are becoming more affordable and affordable-ish.
Nowadays, they’re a way to print a piece of hardware, and it’s also a way for people to print their own designs.
There’s also an increasing number of 3D printable items that you can order online for as little as $15.
That’s less than the cost of a cheap tattoo removal kit, and the first major 3D printed prosthesis is now available for sale on Amazon for $499.
That might seem like a lot, but it’s actually less than what you’d pay for a cheap prosthetic, according to the company that made the device, the company behind the device has now released an update to the device.
The update comes with a few other tweaks, including an updated app, and a new 3D-printing app that lets you take 3D models, photos and videos, and make your own prints.
It’s not perfect, of course.
It still doesn’t support all the printers in its catalog, and there’s no option for importing 3D objects into it.
It also lacks some of the other features that make 3D prints great, like a laser cutter, so it’s not the perfect option for making a tattoo removal device.
But it’s a good start.


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Aksaray Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chairman of the Board Cüneyt Göktaş and Aksaray Commodity Exchange Chairman of the Board of Directors Hamit Özkök, for industrial use for hemp production gave the good news.
Underlining that the fertile soil of Aksaray is the ideal place for hemp production, the Presidents took the necessary steps and expressed that they would work for hemp production in a common written statement.
Chairman of the Board of Directors of Aksaray Chamber of Commerce and Industry Cüneyt Göktaş and Aksaray Commodity Exchange Board Chairman Hamit Özkök signed the statement; "President of the Republic of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan, January 9th supports hemp production in Aksaray related to his call, and in our city, we are completing our application for the production of hemp as an official.
According to the Grand View Research report, the size of the cannabis market is expected to rise to $ 11 billion in 2025. Major cannabis producers are also announced in the US, Canada, China, India, Japan, Brazil, Germany, France and the United Kingdom. As Aksaray, we want to take part in the efficient land of our country in this market.
Hemp, which is an industrial plant, used in hemp, medicine, paper, fuel and fabric production, is also used in the automotive sector. It is an important alternative to petroleum and petrochemical products. Hemp, rich in amino acids that affect the functioning of the human body, is rich in volatile fatty acids called Gamma Linolenic acid, which is also rich in hemp seeds. It supports the balanced functioning of hormones in the body.
Since it will be used for industrial purposes, hemp will produce a new production gate for both our country's economy and our citizens. Aksaray, which has always been with the State until today, will be next in this production.
Representatives of the industry in our city Aksaray Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Aksaray Commodity Exchange Market in Aksaray wants to be the Production Center for hemp as we want to be known by all the public to accelerate our work, "the statement said.


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COMMIT!Forum is Coming Up Fast!
|Pictured are the 2015 CEO of the Year nominees.|
There will be a great lineup of speakers and presentations that will offer excellent learning opportunities. The 2016 event takes place Oct. 18–19 at the Westin New York in New York City.
Mosaic will offer a special session on the company’s latest innovations in mining, manufacturing, supply chain, and product development during the event. We will feature a post on Mosaic's presentation, and others like it, in the coming weeks.
The second day of the forum will also include the Responsible CEO of the Year Awards Dinner - an event dedicated to honoring those who make a commitment to corporate responsibility. Join us on Oct. 19 as we announce the winner.
This year’s nominees include:
• Emanuel Chirico, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, PVH Corp.
• John Crowe, President and CEO of Saint-Gobain and CertainTeed Corporations, Saint-Gobain
• Sury Kant, President North America, UK and Europe, Tata Consultancy Services
• Mike Lawrie, Chairman, President and CEO, CSC
• Robert Moritz, US Chairman and Senior Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers
• Richard Noll, Chairman and CEO, HanesBrands
• Christine Perich, CEO, New Belgium Brewing
• Richard Shadyac, President and CEO, ALSAC/St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
• David Steiner, President and CEO, Waste Management
• John Strangfeld, Chairman and CEO, Prudential Financial, Inc.
• Mark Wilson, Group Chief Executive Officer, Aviva
Check our website, www.commitforum.com, as we update the schedule and session information. More information will be posted shortly.


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Bengaluru-based Mocept firms its stand in quizzing arena, signs up MapMyIndia for Freehit
Bengaluru-based startup Mocept which launched an animated visual dictionary an year ago, is now establishing itself in the quizzing arena. After launching cricket trivia quiz app –Freehit for cricket lovers on Android and iOS platform, the company is conducting an exclusive brand engagement with MapmyIndia this week.
Mocept started operations in April 2013 with a team of professionals with expertise in core areas that make a video based education possible on mobiles or tablets. They currently have 3 apps on the Google Play Store. ‘Illustrate – Video Dictionary’, ‘Illustrate – Word Quiz’ and ‘FreeHit Quiz”.
The ‘Freehit’ in the quizzing space
In alignment to its vision to create fun learning solutions using interactive multimedia content, an interactive quiz was a natural extension for Mocept. The company in February this year, decided to enter the quiz app segment with the launch of Freehit for Android devices.
Th current video dictionary app has a Quiz section. Mocept launched Word Quiz, an interactive quiz app for English learning based on the video content they had created for the video dictionary. The user response and engagement was very encouraging. Quiz and Trivia is a large platform and there is a huge unaddressed need in India and the global market. So the company decided to build a Quiz platform, FreeHit, for users to answer trivia questions across variety of topics. Gomathi Sankar, CEO & Founder says,
The content was built in such a way that it connects emotionally with the users – often we remember a statistic or a fact because we were emotionally connected with that moment. There are live tournaments every day where users can win cash prizes. Users can challenge other users to score bragging rights.
Digital engagement platform for brands
FreeHit is a digital engagement platform for brands. The average session length in the app is more than 8 minutes and increasing. The user base is largely between 20 and 25 years old and come from all over India. Brands look at FreeHit as a platform to engage with young users and convey the value of their brand. FreeHit will be the primary app where different brands will collaborate with. Currently there are live tournaments held every day. We envision a future where live tournaments can happen every hour and variety of brands can engage with the users on different sections. And there will be something for every user – from Quiz aficionados to casual quizzers. The Mocept team has developed more than 6000 questions for the cricket quiz alone and has come up with unique IP around quiz mechanics and an adaptive quiz engine. Popular subjects include World Cup, ODI, T20, Tests, Legends of Cricket, Rules, Cricketing shots, bowling actions, player jerseys and team names. Freehit has been gaining popularity among cricket and IPL fans specially. The daily tournaments have seen more than 1,000 new registrations every day. In its new avatar, players can now challenge their friends to test their cricket IQ.
The content is offered in local languages – starting with Hindi but expanding to other languages. Though Freehit started off with Cricket as a focus area, it'll be expanding to variety of topics. Similarly the focus is India right now but the product is global.
MapMyIndia on board!
As part of the brand engagement with MapMyIndia, Freehit quiz will be themed around MapmyIndia. The app will organize a mega tournament on Thursday 11th June, 2015 where the winner will receive a MapmyIndia Navigator worth Rs. 12,990/-. Contestants will have to register on the app and then play the quiz. The one with maximum points will walk away with the reward.
Rakesh Verma, MD, MapmyIndia believes that Freehit will enable them engage with the young consumers who are tech-savvy and use smart-phones for entertainment and for utility, and who can benefit immensely from 'our suite of location based products and services.'
‘Illustrate – Video Dictionary’ app is essentially a collection of 30 seconds videos of English words where the meanings are explained with context and real life examples. Illustrate has been successful all over the world across geographies including India, SE Asia, Latin America and USA. The app is useful for students preparing for exams like the GRE and GMAT as well as for students learning the English language for the first time. Illustrate – The Video dictionary has racked up more than 100,000 downloads in less than a year since launch.
The brand engagement with MapmyIndia validates that Freehit is more than just a quiz platform and is on its way towards becoming a digital interaction medium for brands. We are excited to partner with MapmyIndia.
What happens to Video dictionary?
It is still part of the offering. Video dictionary is a Reference app focused on English learning. The company’s vision always has been to bring solutions that enable better learning through interactive multimedia content. Gomathi says,
We feel Video Dictionary and FreeHit address different consumer needs but are built on a singular fundamental platform.


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Can you guess in which European nation is the number one fan the iconic sports car?
Of more than 21,000 cars that +Ford Europe has now sold, 1,600 went to Belgian enthusiasts. That’s one for every 4,693 of the country’s drivers – a far higher proportion than anywhere else in Europe.
Between them, Britain and Germany account for more half of new Mustangs sold since the current model went on sale across Europe, last year, for the first time since being launched in the U.S, in 1964 – and British drivers have bought 4,761 Mustangs (1 for every 7,743 drivers).
France is third with 2,126 sales and Belgium fourth, one of a number of countries with smaller populations, including Sweden, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic, that are showing huge demand for what, last year, was the world’s best-selling sports car coupe.
Belgium has a long-running love affair with fast cars. The famous Circuit de Spa Francorchamps was one of the first race tracks to host Formula One, while race driver Jacky Ickx won the 24 Hours of Le Mans six times, once in a Ford GT-40, gained 25 F1 podium finishes, and won the Dakar Rally.
Mustang customers in Europe have a choice of 5.0-litre V8 and 2.3 litre EcoBoost models, and fastback and convertible body styles. Red, grey and black are the most popular colours so far, with 72 per cent of buyers choosing fastback, and 64 per cent selecting the V8. EcoBoost models are most popular in southern Europe.
Click here for more Ford Mustang stories, or watch the Mustang in France or Romania.


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De Beers has been hit with—and defaulted on—another class-action lawsuit from consumers complaining that the company’s control of the diamond market has inflated prices.
De Beers did not answer the suit, as is its custom, because it has no legal presence in America, according to a report in the Madison County Record. The case has therefore been rendered an automatic default judgment for the plaintiffs.
Stephen Tillery, lawyer for plaintiffs Emert and Katie Null, did not return a call from JCK for comment. The Record called Tillery and partners “heavyweights among class-action plaintiff’s attorneys.”
De Beers has been hit with several of these suits recently. One, similar to this one, is largely moribund because the plaintiffs could not get their class certified by the court. (See “De Beers Wins Victory, But Keeps Defaulting,” JCK, April 2005, p. 36.)
Lynette Hori, De Beers spokeswoman, said she is aware of the suit but says it’s “without merit.”
De Beers has said this rash of lawsuits is preventing it from establishing a legal U.S. presence. It contends it is otherwise compliant with U.S. antitrust law.
In related news, the United Diamond Association of South Africa, a group of small diamond buyers, has taken De Beers to court for allegedly violating South Africa’s Diamond Act, press reports say.
The buyers complain that De Beers is not supplying enough of its production to local factories.


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SAN FRANCISCO — Internet security is broken, and nobody seems to know quite how to fix it.
Despite the efforts of the computer security industry and a half-decade struggle by Microsoft to protect its Windows operating system, malicious software is spreading faster than ever. The so-called malware surreptitiously takes over a PC and then uses that computer to spread more malware to other machines exponentially. Computer scientists and security researchers acknowledge they cannot get ahead of the onslaught.
As more business and social life has moved onto the Web, criminals thriving on an underground economy of credit card thefts, bank fraud and other scams rob computer users of an estimated $100 billion a year, according to a conservative estimate by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. A Russian company that sells fake anti-virus software that actually takes over a computer pays its illicit distributors as much as $5 million a year.
With vast resources from stolen credit cards and other financial information, the cyber-attackers are handily winning a technology arms race.
“Right now, the bad guys are improving more quickly than the good guys,” said Patrick Lincoln, director of the computer science laboratory at SRI International, a science and technology research group.
A well-funded computer underground has built an advantage by working in countries that have global Internet connections but authorities with little appetite for prosecuting offenders bringing in significant amounts of foreign currency. That was driven home in late October when RSA Fraud Action Research Lab, a security consulting group based in Bedford, Mass., discovered a cache of a half-million credit card numbers and bank account log-ins that had been stolen by a network of so-called zombie computers remotely controlled by an online gang.
In October, researchers at the Georgia Tech Information Security Center reported that the percentage of online computers worldwide infected by botnets — networks of programs connected via the Internet that send spam or disrupt Internet-based services — was likely to increase to 15 percent by the end of this year, from 10 percent in 2007. That suggests a staggering number of infected computers, as many as 10 million, being used to distribute spam and malware over the Internet each day, according to research compiled by PandaLabs.
Security researchers concede their efforts are largely a game of whack-a-mole, because botnets that distribute malware like worms, the programs that can move from computer to computer, are still relatively invisible to commercial anti-virus software. A research report last month by Stuart Staniford, chief scientist of FireEye, a Silicon Valley computer security firm, indicated that in tests of 36 commercial anti-virus products, less than half of the newest malicious software was identified.
There have been some recent successes, but they are short-lived. On Nov. 11, the volume of spam, which transports the malware, dropped by half around the globe after an Internet service provider disconnected Mycolo Corp., an American firm with Russian ties, from the Internet. But the respite is not expected to last long as cyber-criminals attempt to regain control of their spam-generating computers.
“Modern worms are stealthier and they are professionally written,” said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer for British Telecom. “The criminals have gone upmarket, and they’re organized and international because there is real money to be made.”
The gangs keep improving their malware, and now programs can be targeted to hunt for a specific type of information stored on a personal computer. For example, some malware uses the operating system to hunt for recent documents on the assumption they will be more valuable. Some are designed to watch for and then steal login and password information, specifically targeting financial information.
Beyond the billions of dollars lost in theft of money and data is a deeper impact. Many Internet executives fear that basic trust in what has become the foundation of 21st-century commerce is rapidly eroding.
“There’s an increasing trend to depend on the Internet for a wide range of applications, many of them having to deal with financial institutions,” said Vinton G. Cerf, one of the original designers of the Internet who is now Google’s “chief Internet evangelist.” “The more we depend on these types of systems, the more vulnerable we become.”
The U.S. government has begun to recognize the extent of the problem. In January, President George W. Bush established a national cyber security initiative. The plan, which may cost as much as $30 billion over seven years, is directed at securing the federal government’s own computers as well as the systems that run the nation’s critical infrastructure like oil and gas networks and electric power and water systems.


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Samsung might find itself in court again, but this time not against Apple and this time not alone. NVIDIA has filed a lawsuit against both Samsung and Qualcomm, accusing them of infringing on 7 of its patents related to computer graphics and is asking the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court in Delaware to confirm that, ban devices, and award them damages.
No one will perhaps question that NVIDIA owns patents related to computer graphics technology. No one will also perhaps deny the contributions the company has made to the field. Perhaps there are even some actual patent infringement to be found in its competitors products, too. But there are many parts of this lawsuit that are just quite difficult to fathom, much less stomach. For example, NVIDIA’s blog post lists seven infringed patents, a detail that seems to be missing from its official PR statement. Among those, four are given as follows:
- our foundational invention, the GPU, which puts onto a single chip all the functions necessary to process graphics and light up screens
- our invention of programmable shading, which allows non-experts to program sophisticated graphics
- our invention of unified shaders, which allow every processing unit in the GPU to be used for different purposes
- our invention of multithreaded parallel processing in GPUs, which enables processing to occur concurrently on separate threads while accessing the same memory and other resources
Like many software patents these days, those sound very commonplace and those are the very same foundational processes or algorithms used in graphics architecture everywhere. Surely, others in that market, like once bitter rival ATI (now AMD/ATI) would have a word or two to say about that.
The targets of the lawsuit are equally perplexing. It specifically names Samsung and Qualcomm as the culprits. But in the same breadth, it actually mentions a lot more. Qualcomm is being targeted for its Adreno GPU used in its Snapdragon SoCs. But the list of Samsung’s devices also include those that run on its own Exynos chips and so ARM’s Mali and Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR graphics architectures are also dragged into the lawsuit. In short, NVIDIA is basically targeting almost every mobile GPU maker or designer in the market.
Here’s the list of Samsung devices that NVIDIA says infringe on its patents:
- Galaxy Note Edge
- Galaxy Note 4
- Galaxy S5
- Galaxy Note 3
- Galaxy S4
- Galaxy Tab S
- Galaxy Note Pro
- Galaxy Tab 2
NVIDIA claims that this is the first time ever that they have filed a patent lawsuit against anyone in its 21 years of existence. It does make us question why it took them long to target these chips that have been in the market for so long. It is also strange that it is going after Samsung alone, considering the Adreno, Mali, and PowerVR chips have other customers as well. NVIDIA also says that it has repeatedly approached Samsung for licensing negotations but has been repeatedly told that it is the problem of Samsung’s suppliers, which might actually be true as well. Whatever NVIDIA really has in mind when it filed its complaint, it might turn out to become a PR problem for them. While it doesn’t fit the definition of a patent troll, there will be many who will question NVIDIA’s motives and sanity, not to mention its financial situation.


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Companies will not be allowed to tell customers if their messages are being shared with police
14 MARCH 2016 | BY Matt Broomfield FOR THE INDEPENDENT
Internet service providers and technology companies will be forced to install "back-door" flaws into their products, so British police and security services can access them on demand.
The move was announced in draft documents published in support of Theresa May's controversial Investigatory Powers Bill, announced in November 2015.
Companies will also be banned from revealing whether they had been made to install “back-door” access routes, leaving customers unable to know whether their messages and search history are truly secure.
And if the draft documents are approved and the Bill known as the “Snoopers’ Charter” is passed in Parliament, the controversial measures will be partially paid for by British taxpayers.
The move, intended to prevent criminals and terrorists from networking and organising illegal activities online, follows a legal dispute between the FBI and technology company Apple over a similar issue.
An American court ruled that Apple had to help the FBI bypass encryption on an iPhone belonging to Syed Farook, one of the San Bernadino killers. Farook and his wife killed 14 people in a mass shooting in December 2015.
But Apple launched a highly-publicised appeal, arguing that while they could unlock the phone, it would set a dangerous precedent and compromise their customers’ privacy and security.
When announced, the Investigatory Powers Bill also sparked an immediate backlash from privacy campaigners. It requires internet and phone companies to store the search history of web users for a year and hand this information over to the police upon request, and made explicit for the first time the power of the police to hack phones and computers.


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Study: Social Media Not Replacing Customer Service
A new study on consumer behavior found that social media has less impact on buying decisions than other social interactions.
Although Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites are gaining ground in affecting consumer behavior, they are still not the top influencers, a new study says.
“Social media does not yet warrant a lot of hype when it comes to how consumers make purchases, but it is becoming increasingly important,” said Bruce Temkin, managing partner of Temkin Group, the customer-experience research and consulting firm that conducted the research published last week.
The study surveyed 10,000 U.S. consumers about how social sources, including Facebook and Twitter, ratings and reviews websites, and more traditional interactions such as discussions with friends and family influence their decisions about buying cars, cellphones, computers, credit cards, health plans, insurance policies, and TVs.
Although social media sources remain relatively low on the list of influencers, but the study found that they did gain ground since last year. The largest growth in social media influence occurred in insurance and cellphone purchases.
For most purchases, though, consumers are more influenced by information from company websites and discussions with store employees. Those in-store interactions show the continuing importance of customer service to making the sale—a finding likely to resonate with associations looking to increase member engagement, conference attendance, or sales of products and services.
Holly Carson, meetings director of Community Associations Institute, believes in taking the time to speak with each of her customers, be they vendors or members, individually by phone, which creates a more traditional “social” effect.
Being available to customers “creates a trickle-down effect of positive customer service because they’ll share that information with other people,” Carson told Associations Now.
What techniques have you implemented to improve your association’s customer service and get the word out to others?


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* Second bidder exits after inspecting books
* Billabong shares tumble 16 pct to record low
* Company says focused on internal turnaround plan
SYDNEY, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Private equity firm TPG haswithdrawn a A$694 million ($713 million) takeover bid forAustralian surfwear retailer Billabong International Ltd, the second bidder to exit after inspecting its books,knocking the stock to a record low.
Neither TPG nor Billabong gave a reason for the withdrawal,but the move caps a tumultuous year for Billabong. Threetakeover bids have failed, the company dumped its chiefexecutive in May after several profit warnings and it revealedits first annual loss since listing a decade ago.
"When two bidders have walked away after seeing the books,the first question in investor minds is: what is hiding in thebooks? The TPG withdrawal is a big negative for the stock," saidStan Shamu, market strategist at IG Markets.
Billabong shares tumbled 16 percent to 84.5 cents a share inmorning trade, a record low for the stock that was trading atten times that level less than two-and-a-half years ago.
Deutsche Bank in a note to clients dated last week put afundamental valuation on the stock of 85 cents a share.
TPG's withdrawal means shareholders will have to rely on thecompany's recently outlined four-year plan to simplify thebusiness in the hope of reviving falling sales and restoringprofitability, analysts said.
Billabong Chief Executive Launa Inman declined to comment onthe bid withdrawal at a media conference call on Friday, sayingshe was pushing forward with her plan to revive the firm.
"I have been focussed on the transformation strategy," saidInman, who previously headed discount chain Target, owned byWesfarmers Ltd . "The next three months are crucial."
The surfwear retailer has suffered falling sales in Europe,Canada and Australia as the brand has been losing its cachetwith young shoppers.
Billabong has already conceded investors would have to waittwo years to see the biggest benefits of the new strategy.
SERIES OF APPROACHES
Billabong was initially approached by TPG in February butrebuffed an offer of A$3.30 a share, opting instead to sell halfof its watch brand Nixon and raise A$225 million in equity toreduce debt.
The stock continued to sag and TPG, which has a 12.5 percentstake in the company, returned with a reduced bid in July. Rivalbuyout firm Bain came in with a bid in September, only to dropout two weeks later.
Billabong shares fell sharply below TPG's offer price of$1.45 last week when the buyout firm said it had "concerns inrelation to some issues" over the bid.
The environment for retailers in Australia has been toughwith nimbler online rivals competing aggressively on price andAustralians switching to savings in the wake of the globaleconomic crisis.
Government figures showed the nation's retail sales rosejust 0.2 percent in August from July, when they slipped 0.8percent.
Billabong's competitors include Quiksilver Inc ,Pacific Sunwear of California Inc , Zumiez Incand Rip Curl.
Rip Curl said last month it had received unsolicitedapproaches from several international companies wanting toinvest in the privately held firm, in a deal that could fetch upto A$480 million.($1 = 0.9735 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Narayanan Somasundaram; Editing by John Mair andRichard Pullin)
Keywords: BILLABONG TPG/


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I actually wasn’t going to go trick-or-treating this year in fear that I could get bitten by a vampire. Luckily, KFC has come to the rescue and helping out people like me.
Food & Wine reports that KFC Romania says it’s is the only KFC region where garlic sauce is used year-round. And they’ve got a fun video on YouTube that tells you all about it. Of course, everyone knows that Romania is where Transylvania is, home to everyone’s favorite vampire, Dracula.
The promotion asserts that Romania has “some experience with vampires” and wants to bring “garlic sauce straight from Transylvania” that is “100 percent vampire repellent” to other countries to protect against any unfortunate Halloween vampire incidents.
The narrator in the video also says, “It might save your life.”
There are only 11 countries where garlic lovers, or anyone seeking vampire repellent, can get their hands on it while supplies last. The sauce is available at select locations in Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom. In the United States, however, you can only get the vampire-fighting sauce at one place, and that’s in Texas, where, at least in Austin, bats are famously known to exist. But you’ll have to go to YUM Brands, in Plano to get some. You can find them at 7100 Corporate Drive, Plano, Texas, 75024.
But you’ll have to hurry: Halloween is already here.


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Dell has announced the availability of its 13th generation servers with significant upgrades due to Intel’s release of its new Broadwell CPUs. The company, has, however, added some of its enhancements at the same time.
Dell has announced enhancements to its Dell PowerEdge 13th generation servers. Some of these are related to the efficiencies of Intel’s new Broadwell CPUs, which of course will be enjoyed by all OEMs. Some of them, are, however, unique to Dell, including a new Virtual Flex Zoning Backplane and an enhanced Host Bus Adapter.
“It’s a moment in time with Intel’s launch of their Broadwell CPUs to reflect on what’s going on in the server business at Dell – to introduce some new capabilities and also reflect mid-way through the 13th generation of PowerEdge servers, and look at how things have been going so far,” said Brian Payne, Executive Director/Server Platform at Dell.
The new Broadwell [Xeon processor E5-2600 v4] CPUs from Intel translate directly into significantly enhanced performance.
“We have introduced the Broadwell CPUs across all our 2-socket server models, and we will see important performance gains, in the 20-40 per cent range,” Payne said. For instance, the PowerEdge R730 with the E5-2699 v4 processor delivered a 27.6 per cent performance improvement from the previous generation running the SAP SD 2 Tier (Linux) benchmark.
“We don’t expect that people will run out and upgrade their Haswell CPUs, which were shipping until this week, with Broadwell, but there is a lot of aged infrastructure out there, and we see a big opportunity for Broadwell’s new performance capability to attract this market,” Payne said.
Concurrent with the Broadwell-related upgrades, Dell also introduced several new capabilities of their own.
“One is our new Virtual Flex Zoning Backplane design in the PowerEdge R730xd, Payne said. “It gives customers more granularity to get the right mix of SSD and spinning drives in rotation for a given workload – more SSD disks for read-intensive environments, and more spinning disks for archive. This gives customers the ability to dial in more granularity with this backplane to get the right workload.”
Dell also announced a new version of their HBA330 Host Bus Adapter.
“In a lot of software-defined storage, they don’t need RAID functionality, but they do need an adapter to conduct compute to storage, and that’s what we are doing with the H330 that we are releasing across the PowerEdge portfolio,” Payne said.
Dell also announced that it can support the new higher-watt Intel CPU, the E5-2689 v4, on the PowerEdge R730 with Dell air-cooled support, giving it a competitive advantage over liquid cooled solutions from competitors.
“This kind of CPU is used by customers like high-frequency traders, and we came up with a special heat sink just for this SKU so that it can be air cooled,” Payne said. “This gives us a significant differentiation in this particular market.”
Payne also indicated that Dell had added a systems management enhancement as well.
“We have introduced HTML5 support for virtual consoles, to make sure customers’ experience in managing it is a pane of glass,” he said.
Payne stressed that that the anticipated future strength from these enhanced servers builds on strong recent performance, reflecting significant Dell investment in making application performance more efficient and effective, and improving systems management tools, including the elimination of agents from the monitoring or server infrastructure.
“We have been on a successful venture in terms of driving revenue growth, including a strong growth multiplier in our North American channel business,” he said. “It increased over 28 per cent year-over-year for partners who are certified on PowerEdge servers. We also saw strong growth in our converged [blade] systems with our FX2 modular blade server architecture, M100E blade chassis, and VRTX mini-blade chassis. In Q3, IDC said we saw 5x growth in blades compared to the rest of the market.”
The upgraded Dell PowerEdge 13th generation servers are available now.


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Marking the glorious 50th anniversary of Samsung globally, the big-name electronics equipment manufacturer has executed a riveting campaign in Bangladesh for its consumers.
The auspicious program ran for two weeks. The objective behind the campaign was to call for the submission of consumers’ longest memories with ranges of Samsung products including mobile phone, television, refrigerator, and washing machine.
Samsung received approximately 400 responses through the social media platform after launching the campaign. The program ran for two weeks. During the time frame, the participants shared their stories with a number of products of Samsung.
After wrapping up the campaign successfully, among all the customers who responded, one participant was named for each category as the winner. Samsung Bangladesh office later invited the winners for the award ceremony.
On October 28, the winners were welcomed to Samsung Bangladesh’s Head Office to receive gifts from Seungwon Youn, Country Manager, Samsung Bangladesh; Bomin Kim, General Manager; Muyeedur Rahman, Head of Mobile and Shahriar Bin Lutfor, Head of Consumer Electronics.
At the prize-giving ceremony, Seungwon Youn Country Manager, Samsung Bangladesh said, “We are elated and honored to present the gifts to our valuable customers who have been trusted partners of the journey.” He also thanked the customers and stakeholders for their unremitting support.
Winners from each segment received another brand-new product of the same kind. For example, the customer who has been using a Samsung TV for the longest period of time won another new TV.
Adding to the colorful occasion, On October 28, Samsung invited customers to celebrate its Foundation Day. One lucky customer joined the celebration and received a smartphone as a birthday gift from Samsung.


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Technology companies seek to transfer the functions of artificial intelligence in smartphones and other wearable devices. For example, it is convenient to carry in your pocket the ability to show mechanics how to repair an engine or to tell tourists in their native language what they see and hear. But there is a problem: you can not manage a huge amount of data that make the implementation of these tasks possible, without slowing down the operation of the device and not discharging the battery in minutes.
For many years, central processors from Intel, ARM, and others have provided enough power for devices and servers around the world. But the rapid development of artificial intelligence over the past five years has led some traditional chip makers to face real competition. The increasing capabilities of AI are largely related to neural networks that analyze patterns and participate in them. Universal processors used on PCs and servers do not handle multiple threads at the same time.
On July 23, at the CVPR2017
conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, Microsoft announced the second version of the HoloLens Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) chip. HPU 2.0 is an additional AI processor that analyzes everything that the user sees and hears right on the device, and does not spend precious microseconds to send data back to the cloud. HPU 2.0 is currently under development and will be included in the next version of HoloLens. This is one of the few cases where Microsoft is involved at all stages of development (except for production) of the processor. Representatives of the company say that this is the first chip designed specifically for a mobile device.
Microsoft has been working on its chips for several years. The company has created a motion tracking processor for the Xbox Kinect, and recently used custom chips — user-programmable gate arrays — to apply AI capabilities to real-world tasks. Microsoft buys chips from Altera, a subsidiary of Intel, and then adapts them for its purposes using software.
In 2016, Microsoft used thousands of these chips to translate the entire English-language “Wikipedia” into Spanish — three billion words in five million articles — in less than a tenth of a second. In 2018, the corporation plans to allow cloud computing users to use these chips to accelerate their own AI tasks: recognize images from large data sets or use machine learning algorithms to predict various economic and other models.Promotional animation HPU 2.0
Microsoft has a lot of competitors in this business: Amazon uses user-programmable arrays and plans to use the new Nvidia chip for the Volta microarchitecture AI
, and Google has created its own AI semiconductors - the Tensor Processing Unit
. Creating chips within a company is expensive, but Microsoft says it has no choice, because technology is developing very quickly.


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More than 65 million set-top boxes for cable, satellite and IPTV digital shipped globally last year and the market is tipped to continue growing at a rate of 13pc year on year to reach 120 million shipping annually by 2011.
The new figures from Understanding & Solutions exclude digital terrestrial adapters and free-to-air satellite receivers, which together drove the total worldwide set-top box market to 115 million units shipped last year.
Further growth is anticipated as over-the-air broadcast markets move towards analogue switch-off by the end of the decade.
Fuelled by the continuing global rollout of digital multi-channel TV services, set-top boxes give providers a secure platform to push value added products like high definition, personal video recorder (PVR), video-on-demand and multi-room services.
Set-top boxes are also being seen as a weapon new entrants will use to break into markets dominated by established operators.
Understanding & Solutions predicts that the pay TV set-top box market will be sustained by the upgrade of the maturing digital satellite market, high growth for digital cable and new market growth for IPTV as telcos and other broadband service providers drive into digital video services.
“The growth of online TV and video is both threat and opportunity to the STB industry,” says Andrew Carroll, Consultant at Understanding & Solutions.
“Broadband may possibly impact the need for dedicated digital TV infrastructure long term, but, for the next two to three years at least, subscription Service Providers actually see the set-top box as a way to network and integrate broadcast and IP services into one seamless ‘any content, any screen’ proposition for customers.”
Security and quality of service will remain key set-top box added value elements.
“Live” broadcasting will remain a key reason for dedicated services infrastructure for several years in a period of increasing load on the internet as video and TV traffic continues to mushroom.
By John Kennedy


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Company results: Latest news and analysis articles
The Coca-Cola Co's first-quarter results may have looked familiar to investors - flattish growth injected with life mainly through price inc...
On Wednesday, PepsiCo will release its first quarter results for 2017. Here, just-drinks takes a closer look at the company's performance in...
On Tuesday, The Coca-Cola Co will release its first quarter results for 2017. Here, just-drinks takes a closer look at the company's perform...
In a fiscal-2017 trading update yesterday, Remy Cointreau praised the continued strong performance of its Remy Martin Cognac division - nami...
In 2013, Belvedere entered administration after falling into debt thanks to its purchase of the Marie Brizard liqueurs brand. Four years later, the French spirits company - renamed Marie Brizard Wine & Spirits - is debt free. What's more, its William Peel Scotch whisky has just become the top-selling spirits brand in France. Couple that with an entry into China and you have a company back on the up. just-drinks spoke to Marie Brizard's CEO since 2014, Jean-Noël Reynaud, about how he has turned the firm around by shunning premiumisation, as well as the benefits of Brexit. We also asked: Whatever happened to Bruce Willis?
Yesterday, Gruppo Campari posted strong sales and an adjusted profits leap for 2016. Speaking to just-drinks following the full-year results announcement, CEO Bob Kunze-Concewitz discusses plans for newly-acquired Bulldog gin, a move away from flavoured vodka and the path to premium rum in the US.
Jim Koch, the founder of The Boston Beer Co, has said the brewer will continue to produce seasonal beers despite recent releases struggling to find an audience.
The Boston Beer Co's troubles have continued into 2017 as first-quarter results dropped significantly.
Marie Brizard Wine & Spirits has posted a double-digit leap in net profits from 2016, but has seen its first quarter this year hampered by destocking.
Dr Pepper Snapple Group has posted a slight lift in first-quarter sales as the recent purchase of Bai Brands pulled on the group's bottom line.
The Coca-Cola Co has retained its full-year growth outlook despite flat Q1 organic sales and volumes.
Strong growth in the US has helped drive solid nine-month sales for Pernod Ricard despite continued weakness for Absolut vodka.
Jim Cramer, the excitable host of stock-picker programme Mad Money on CNBC, turned his attention on US brewers last week, attempting to forecast which has the most potential for investors.
Does Pernod Ricard have something to hide? In a press conference after the release of full-year results today, only a quarter of the 100 minutes were given over to questions from journalists.
- Have spirits companies forgotten the mainstream?
- Does alcohol accelerate the onset of dementia?
- Ten questions for Diageo - Analysis
- Pernod's mood darkens over India - Analysis
- Why Scotch must drop the 'malts good, blends bad'
- Moet Hennessy unaffected by LVMH Dior buy
- Distell acquires majority stake in Cruz Vodka
- Diageo to cut 105 jobs in Scotland, 50 in Italy
- Portman Group heads to Tesco for new chief exec
- William Grant names Europe & NA Travel Retail head
- Global Scotch insights - market forecasts, product innovation and consumer trends
- Global Champagne and sparkling wine insights - market forecasts, product innovation and consumer trends
- Battle of the Generations - The fight for iGen, Millennial, Gen X and Baby Boomer consumers
- Myanmar - ISA Country Report
- Craft Beer: Coming of Age or Past Its Prime?


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The Lion, the Nanny and the Mermaid
Disney Theatrical Productions has been heavily discounting tickets to its three Broadway shows during the economic crisis, which has decreased weekly revenues since 2008, The New York Times reported.
Although Disney has said “The Lion King” draws more foreign tourists, “Mary Poppins” does better with an older crowd, and “The Little Mermaid” has proved popular with New Yorkers, the three musicals risk contending one another with the commonality of struggling to fill seats on weeknights. They also compete with a growing number of Broadway shows such as “Shrek,” “Hair” and “West Side Story," which appeal to parts of the core Disney audiences.
A comparison of ticket sales for the first 15 weeks of 2009 with the same period of 2008 shows that gross revenues for “The Little Mermaid” have declined 27 percent, “Mary Poppins,” about 17 percent, while “The Lion King” is off about 5 percent.
“Disney faces major questions in this economy. Can it sustain three shows at a time when the cost of going to Broadway is very high for a family of three or four, say, and can it differentiate its shows from ‘Shrek,’ ‘Wicked’ and other competitors?” said Stuart Oken, a theater producer who spent nine years at Disney Theatrical, where he served as executive vice president before leaving in 2003. (The New York Times)
Broadway has 35 shows to choose from, and many are discounting tickets. However, Disney was the first to use this marketing strategy.
“Discounting is always dangerous because once you start, it’s very hard to ever stop,” Oken said. (The New York Times)
In order for each show can pursue its target audiences through its own advertising and marketing strategies, Disney plans to separate the three this spring, said David Schrader, executive vice president of Disney Theatrical in an interview on April 1 with The New York Times.
“Out of efficiency for the past two of three years, when we could, we bundled them together — with two shows buying TV or space in the paper, for instance, or discounting all three,” Schrader said. “Now we’ll try to let each show do what it wants to do to address its needs.” (The New York Times)
Disney Theatrical executives declined to cooperate with The New York Times article.