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Asus is now distributing a firmware update that will change the default security settings on its broadband routers after files on thousands of external hard drives were found easily accessible over the Internet.
Tablets are getting bigger screens, moving into cars, and dual-booting Windows and Android at this year's International CES show as tech vendors give a glimpse into the gadget's future.
Files on thousands of hard drives connected to broadband routers from Asus are easily accessible over the Internet due to unsecure default settings, according to industry experts and tests conducted by PC World Norway and TechWorld Sweden.
PC maker Asus is taking the Windows-Android hybrid concept to another level with a convertible laptop that can switch between the two OSes with the click of an on-screen button.
Acer's latest 11.6-inch C720 Chromebook will sell for US$249.99, which is the lowest price yet in the newest wave of thin-and-light laptops with Google's Chrome OS.
The PC market remained weak in the third quarter, but the expiration of Microsoft's support for Windows XP in April next year may have prompted users to look at upgrades, which eased the slump.
Asustek on Wednesday announced a new Windows 8.1 tablet called the Transformer Book T100, which starts at US$349 and runs on Intel's Atom chip code-named Bay Trail.
Intel and Google showed off the next generation of Chromebooks from Hewlett-Packard, Acer and Toshiba, which will be faster and more power-efficient than predecessors.
Asustek has announced new tablets with different screen sizes, adding new 6-inch and 7-inch models to its Fonepad lineup and also two new 8- and 10-inch Memo Pad tablets.
Microsoft's plan to buy Nokia's phone business and have a larger presence in hardware devices has so far brought little response from PC and smartphone vendors in Asia. But the deal could end up bringing dividends to Microsoft's long-time partners in...
Asustek CEO Jerry Shen confirmed today that his company will no longer produce Windows RT tablets.
Surging tablet sales and the muted response to Windows 8 have opened the door for Android at this year's Computex and exposed deeper cracks in the Wintel powerhouse of Windows software and Intel chips.
The trusty old laptop is being kicked to the curb, with PC makers trying to spice up their offerings by pushing a variety of hybrids, tablets and smaller-screen devices at the Computex trade show in Taipei this week.
Asus has fired another shot in the Android tablet price war, putting the starting price for the Asus Memo Pad FHD7 at US$129.
Asus has introduced a new "phablet" device called the Asus Fonepad Note FHD6, which is part Android phone, part tablet.
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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has posted a new patent filing from Bank of America that describes a multi-signature blockchain system that can be applied to the Internet of Things (IoT). The system will allow a wide variety of devices to exchange data, while also allowing users to curate that data and share it with third parties at will. However, while this patent might be a good thing for Bank of America, it probably won’t be such a good thing for the blockchain industry.
Bank of America Could Become a Blockchain Patent Troll
What sort of interest might Bank of America have in a blockchain system for the Internet of Things? This large American bank does not have any obvious ties to the IoT industry. Therefore, it would be warranted for skeptics to wonder why Bank of America filed this particular patent.
Banks have attempted to demonize cryptocurrencies and, by extension, blockchain for practically as long as this up and coming technology has been well-recognized. Now not only is Bank of America filing a patent that will apply blockchain and data to IoT, but it has also filed a patent for recording and storing cryptocurrency-related transactions in a blockchain-based system. Bank of America is reportedly one of the largest holders of blockchain patents with a staggering 50 filings.
This would seem to imply that Bank of America is looking for ways to legally control what blockchain and cryptocurrencies are used for, even if controlling them on a technological level is near-impossible. This is bad news for cryptocurrency and blockchain startups that wish to operate in the United States because they may unintentionally infringe on patents held by Bank of America or a similarly large corporation, like IBM.
IBM has made no secret of its interests in blockchain and has also been awarded a patent that describes a system directed at autonomous self-servicing devices within a blockchain-based IoT system.
By filing patents like these, multinational corporations, like Bank of America and IBM, appear to be positioning themselves to become the patent trolls of the blockchain world. Patent trolls are notorious for never actually using the technologies described by the patents they own. They earn their money by suing individuals and businesses that unintentionally infringe on their intellectual property instead.
Bank of America could become the worst sort of patent troll simply because it can afford to hire the best patent attorneys. This is likely to reduce the level of growth in the blockchain industry, due to the fact that businesses with less clout will be less likely to invest in this nascent industry if they are afraid of legal backlash from a corporation that owns multiple blockchain-related patents.
Would Patent Reform Help?
The cryptocurrency and blockchain community may have been blindsided by the idea that large corporations would file patents for DLT-related applications. Perhaps some true believers in this technology could have ousted the corporations by filing patents first, then allowing anyone who asked politely use the technology described. Failing that, paying attention to the flaws in patent law may help keep these so-called “trolls” that can hire good lawyers under control.
If anyone should have received the patent for recording and storing cryptocurrency transactions, it should have been Satoshi Nakamoto, but he, she, or they chose to stay anonymous and disappear, probably for personal safety reasons. Satoshi Nakamoto invented the original application of this technology, but Bank of America is likely to win the patent because it was the first to file an application.
A better patent system would involve forcing Bank of America to prove that it hired Satoshi Nakamoto to invent Bitcoin as the first practical blockchain application if it wants to patent cryptocurrency transactions. That would be unlikely, given a headline describing bank bailouts baked into the Bitcoin Genesis Block that has been interpreted as a criticism of banks and the governments that support them. By forcing businesses to prove that they invented or purchased the technology described in patent filings, most patent troll behavior would be eliminated.
Does this sound paranoid?
Well, at their best, patents can incentivize innovation by enabling inventors to monetize their work even when they don’t have the means to bring their inventions to market on their own. However, patents also create effective monopolies on the systems and technologies they describe and can be used to crush smaller businesses that want to use them, especially in the hands of a banking industry that has a history of spreading malicious propaganda against cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies.

domain: news


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Yesterday we posted about leaked images of the Mercedes-Benz Concept Style Coupe which will debut this evening at an avant garde art party at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art and, in a few weeks, at the Beijing Auto Show.
Read This Article
Mercedes-Benz is recalling its high-end G-Class SUV for issues with the airbag molding strip.
What's in your air conditioning?
Live from CES, all the news from Google, Mercedes, and more from the tech trenches


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|By Business Wire||
|July 30, 2014 10:00 AM EDT||
Virtually all large American publishers (98%) are now pursuing programmatic marketing strategies at home, but fewer—72 percent—have moved to deploy the same in support of their audience development efforts abroad. Despite this current discrepancy, international publishers active in this burgeoning market trend intend to neutralize the deployment gap over the next two years, according to a recent survey and whitepaper from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Winterberry Group released today, “Going Global: Programmatic Audience Development Around the World.” The study’s key findings overall showcase an international growth opportunity for companies with expertise in building programmatic advertising programs, and detail the priorities of U.S. and global companies seeking to expand beyond their traditional geographic borders.
Though their international efforts have largely been focused on markets with longstanding cultural and language ties to the U.S—such as the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, publisher respondents said they have every intention to expand their global programmatic marketing programs to a wide range of other markets over the next two years, with Brazil and China factoring most prominently among those countries likely to see new investment over that period. In considering which new regions to add to their programmatic portfolios, respondents ranked the “availability of third-party data” as the most important prerequisite for success (52%).
Conversely, the biggest roadblock to global expansion is a “lack of understanding of audience development,” with 34 percent of the study’s marketer, ad tech executive and publisher respondents seeing this as a problem. Government regulation was found to be a much smaller concern, with only 23 percent ranking it among their top three barriers to programmatic expansion.
To encourage worldwide expansion of programmatic marketing, the paper highlights seven key factors that typically characterize markets that are well suited for new or expanded investment:
- Embrace of the Audience: Advertisers in each market must be able to discover audience trends based on data and use these observations as the foundation of their advertising, marketing or media strategies
- Programmatic Know-How: Advertisers in each market must have a deep understanding of programmatic advertising and how it relates to specific use cases
- A Transparent, Open Market Culture: Marketplaces must be free and fair for all entrants, with significant protections against fraud and other adverse effects
- Data: Third-party audience data must be readily available and legally obtained via consumer-friendly means
- Technology—and the Means to Use It: The technology required to identify and develop audiences must be readily available, as well as the expertise required to utilize it
- Standards in Measurement and Accountability: Each market must commit to developing and maintaining a set of universal standards to govern audience identification, measurement and valuation
- An Opportunity to Build Scale: Each market, either independently or combined with other markets, must offer an audience population that drives value for all parties
“The promise of ‘programmatic everywhere’ is on the verge of being realized,” said Patrick Dolan, Executive Vice President and COO, IAB. “It is clear that programmatic advertising strategies have paid dividends for U.S. publishers, brand marketers, ad technology vendors and others in the industry, and now it is time for this practice to benefit marketplaces around the world.”
“While programmatic has succeeded wildly in the U.S., there is significant room for growth on an international scale,” said Jonathan Margulies, Managing Director, Winterberry Group. “By paying heed to the insights found in this report, a global environment can be cultivated which allows programmatic to flourish across borders, opening up new opportunities for digital advertising stakeholders across the board.”
Premier sponsors of the study included Adobe, DataXu and Visual IQ, with Oracle Marketing Cloud, Quantcast and Selligent serving as supporting sponsors.
To download the complete “Going Global: Programmatic Audience Development Around the World” study, please visit www.iab.net/goingglobal.
The whitepaper’s findings are based on an online survey of more than 145 advertiser, publisher, service provider and technology leaders sourced through the U.S. IAB membership and compiled between May and June 2014, as well as a series of intensive telephone interviews with more than three dozen global thought leaders. Though the online panel primarily represents companies based in the U.S., it includes substantial representation from both U.S.-based global companies, as well as non-U.S. companies that are members of IAB in the United States.
About Winterberry Group
Winterberry Group is a unique strategic consulting firm that supports the growth of advertising, marketing, media, information and technology organizations. Affiliated with Petsky Prunier LLC—a leading investment bank providing merger and acquisition advisory services to companies in the same sectors—the Firm offers its clients strategic perspective that is unparalleled in its addressable industries, while PPLLC maintains exceptional relationships with industry executives and business owners. This combination of market intelligence, research and strategic operating experience provides an educated outside perspective that we bring to each engagement. For more information, please visit www.winterberrygroup.com.
About the IAB
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 600 leading media and technology companies that are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.
Internet of Things (IoT) will be a hybrid ecosystem of diverse devices and sensors collaborating with operational and enterprise systems to create the next big application. In their session at @ThingsExpo, Bramh Gupta, founder and CEO of robomq.io, and Fred Yatzeck, principal architect leading product development at robomq.io, discussed how choosing the right middleware and integration strategy from the get-go will enable IoT solution developers to adapt and grow with the industry, while at th...
Jun. 29, 2015 06:00 PM EDT Reads: 1,738
"We provide a web application framework for building really sophisticated web applications that run on a browser without any installation need so we get used for biotech, defense, and banking applications," noted Charles Kendrick, CTO and Chief Architect at Isomorphic Software, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @DevOpsSummit (http://DevOpsSummit.SYS-CON.com), held June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York
Jun. 29, 2015 04:16 PM EDT Reads: 594
"Plutora provides release and testing environment capabilities to the enterprise," explained Dalibor Siroky, Director and Co-founder of Plutora, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @DevOpsSummit, held June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Jun. 29, 2015 03:34 PM EDT Reads: 560
The time is ripe for high speed resilient software defined storage solutions with unlimited scalability. ISS has been working with the leading open source projects and developed a commercial high performance solution that is able to grow forever without performance limitations. In his session at Cloud Expo, Alex Gorbachev, President of Intelligent Systems Services Inc., shared foundation principles of Ceph architecture, as well as the design to deliver this storage to traditional SAN storage co...
Jun. 29, 2015 03:30 PM EDT Reads: 1,797
Public Cloud IaaS started its life in the developer and startup communities and has grown rapidly to a $20B+ industry, but it still pales in comparison to how much is spent worldwide on IT: $3.6 trillion. In fact, there are 8.6 million data centers worldwide, the reality is many small and medium sized business have server closets and colocation footprints filled with servers and storage gear. While on-premise environment virtualization may have peaked at 75%, the Public Cloud has lagged in adop...
Jun. 29, 2015 03:00 PM EDT Reads: 2,240
Discussions about cloud computing are evolving into discussions about enterprise IT in general. As enterprises increasingly migrate toward their own unique clouds, new issues such as the use of containers and microservices emerge to keep things interesting. In this Power Panel at 16th Cloud Expo, moderated by Conference Chair Roger Strukhoff, panelists addressed the state of cloud computing today, and what enterprise IT professionals need to know about how the latest topics and trends affect t...
Jun. 29, 2015 01:19 PM EDT Reads: 789
The Internet of Things is not only adding billions of sensors and billions of terabytes to the Internet. It is also forcing a fundamental change in the way we envision Information Technology. For the first time, more data is being created by devices at the edge of the Internet rather than from centralized systems. What does this mean for today's IT professional? In this Power Panel at @ThingsExpo, moderated by Conference Chair Roger Strukhoff, panelists addressed this very serious issue of pro...
Jun. 29, 2015 12:19 PM EDT Reads: 642
SYS-CON Events announced today that BMC will exhibit at SYS-CON's 16th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. BMC delivers software solutions that help IT transform digital enterprises for the ultimate competitive business advantage. BMC has worked with thousands of leading companies to create and deliver powerful IT management services. From mainframe to cloud to mobile, BMC pairs high-speed digital innovation with robust...
Jun. 29, 2015 12:15 PM EDT Reads: 2,543
Even as cloud and managed services grow increasingly central to business strategy and performance, challenges remain. The biggest sticking point for companies seeking to capitalize on the cloud is data security. Keeping data safe is an issue in any computing environment, and it has been a focus since the earliest days of the cloud revolution. Understandably so: a lot can go wrong when you allow valuable information to live outside the firewall. Recent revelations about government snooping, along...
Jun. 29, 2015 12:00 PM EDT Reads: 2,122
There will be 150 billion connected devices by 2020. New digital businesses have already disrupted value chains across every industry. APIs are at the center of the digital business. You need to understand what assets you have that can be exposed digitally, what their digital value chain is, and how to create an effective business model around that value chain to compete in this economy. No enterprise can be complacent and not engage in the digital economy. Learn how to be the disruptor and not ...
Jun. 29, 2015 11:00 AM EDT Reads: 2,099
DevOps tends to focus on the relationship between Dev and Ops, putting an emphasis on the ops and application infrastructure. But that’s changing with microservices architectures. In her session at DevOps Summit, Lori MacVittie, Evangelist for F5 Networks, will focus on how microservices are changing the underlying architectures needed to scale, secure and deliver applications based on highly distributed (micro) services and why that means an expansion into “the network” for DevOps.
Jun. 29, 2015 11:00 AM EDT Reads: 2,259
Internet of Things is moving from being a hype to a reality. Experts estimate that internet connected cars will grow to 152 million, while over 100 million internet connected wireless light bulbs and lamps will be operational by 2020. These and many other intriguing statistics highlight the importance of Internet powered devices and how market penetration is going to multiply many times over in the next few years.
Jun. 29, 2015 11:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,869
"We got started as search consultants. On the services side of the business we have help organizations save time and save money when they hit issues that everyone more or less hits when their data grows," noted Otis Gospodnetić, Founder of Sematext, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @DevOpsSummit, held June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Jun. 29, 2015 10:46 AM EDT Reads: 554
It is one thing to build single industrial IoT applications, but what will it take to build the Smart Cities and truly society-changing applications of the future? The technology won’t be the problem, it will be the number of parties that need to work together and be aligned in their motivation to succeed. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Jason Mondanaro, Director, Product Management at Metanga, discussed how you can plan to cooperate, partner, and form lasting all-star teams to change the world...
Jun. 29, 2015 10:00 AM EDT Reads: 2,019
One of the hottest areas in cloud right now is DRaaS and related offerings. In his session at 16th Cloud Expo, Dale Levesque, Disaster Recovery Product Manager with Windstream's Cloud and Data Center Marketing team, will discuss the benefits of the cloud model, which far outweigh the traditional approach, and how enterprises need to ensure that their needs are properly being met.
Jun. 29, 2015 10:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,899
Containers have changed the mind of IT in DevOps. They enable developers to work with dev, test, stage and production environments identically. Containers provide the right abstraction for microservices and many cloud platforms have integrated them into deployment pipelines. DevOps and Containers together help companies to achieve their business goals faster and more effectively. In his session at DevOps Summit, Ruslan Synytsky, CEO and Co-founder of Jelastic, reviewed the current landscape of...
Jun. 29, 2015 10:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,974
The Internet of Things is not only adding billions of sensors and billions of terabytes to the Internet. It is also forcing a fundamental change in the way we envision Information Technology. For the first time, more data is being created by devices at the edge of the Internet rather than from centralized systems. What does this mean for today's IT professional? In this Power Panel at @ThingsExpo, moderated by Conference Chair Roger Strukhoff, panelists will addresses this very serious issue o...
Jun. 29, 2015 09:45 AM EDT Reads: 2,413
Malicious agents are moving faster than the speed of business. Even more worrisome, most companies are relying on legacy approaches to security that are no longer capable of meeting current threats. In the modern cloud, threat diversity is rapidly expanding, necessitating more sophisticated security protocols than those used in the past or in desktop environments. Yet companies are falling for cloud security myths that were truths at one time but have evolved out of existence.
Jun. 29, 2015 09:45 AM EDT Reads: 1,945
SYS-CON Events announced today that JFrog, maker of Artifactory, the popular Binary Repository Manager, will exhibit at SYS-CON's @DevOpsSummit Silicon Valley, which will take place on November 3–5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Based in California, Israel and France, founded by longtime field-experts, JFrog, creator of Artifactory and Bintray, has provided the market with the first Binary Repository solution and a software distribution social platform.
Jun. 29, 2015 09:20 AM EDT Reads: 622
In the midst of the widespread popularity and adoption of cloud computing, it seems like everything is being offered “as a Service” these days: Infrastructure? Check. Platform? You bet. Software? Absolutely. Toaster? It’s only a matter of time. With service providers positioning vastly differing offerings under a generic “cloud” umbrella, it’s all too easy to get confused about what’s actually being offered. In his session at 16th Cloud Expo, Kevin Hazard, Director of Digital Content for SoftL...
Jun. 29, 2015 09:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,937


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The Real Starbucks Red Cups Launch on 11/28: #GiveGood
The cute white Starbucks cup with a Christmas tree, present and holding hands wasn’t this year’s red cup. This year’s Starbucks red cup has a white heart with a hands around it, fingers in a heart shape. Lots of people thought this year’s red cup was the white one with a Christmas-design. I had a hunch that the Siren had something bigger up her sleeve! Starbucks has unveiled this year’s real red cup!
Starbucks hopes that Customers will recognize those people who fill their heart and embody goodness this holiday season by writing that person’s name in the heart of the cup. Customers can then share their dedicated cup on social media with the hashtag #GiveGood. This is a perfect Instagram or Twitter moment in the making.
Here’s a look at the new Starbucks red cup, available for a limited time at Starbucks stores beginning on November 28, 2017.
There’s more good news:
On World AIDS Day (12/1/17), Starbucks will contribute 25 cents for every Peppermint Mocha, Toasted White Chocolate Mocha, Caramel Brulée Latte or Eggnog Latte purchased in participating U.S. and Canada stores to the Global Fund to help (RED) fight AIDS.
Hope you get one of the above holiday drinks this December 1st!


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Alberton's liquor store will now be open evenings, Sundays
'It's better for the merchants and the people in the tourist sector that they have it open in town'
The P.E.I. Liquor Control Commission is trying out longer hours at the liquor store in Alberton.
Mayor Mike Murphy asked in the spring for the store to be open Sundays and evenings, like the stores in the nearby communities of O'Leary and Tignish.
"It's better for the merchants and the people in the tourist sector that they have it open in town. It draws the people back in," said Murphy.
"This way they can do their grocery shopping or whatever and get their booze as well."
Murphy said the extended hours started two weeks ago. The store is now open until 10 p.m. Monday to Saturday, and noon to 5 p.m. on Sundays.
The extended hours will be reviewed in the fall, said Murphy, to see if the business is there to sustain it.
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With files from Angela Walker


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Sep 23rd, 2021 | By Nicole Sturzenberger
Imperfect Foods is one of the biggest sustainable business success stories of the last few years. Here’s how the small food rescue and retribution company became a model for food businesses and sustainable practices.
Sep 20th, 2021 | By Nicole Sturzenberger
Electric vehicles are about to be much bigger in the U.S. Here’s what to expect.
Food System, Innovation
Sep 15th, 2021 | By Nicole Sturzenberger
How a recent college grad is helping pear and apple packers waste less and save millions.
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Oct the 08 Corporate
Volleyball Canada App Now Available
October 08, 2020: Volleyball Canada has launched its new mobile application, which is free to download on Android or iOS devices.
"Although we had hoped to launch the app in conjunction with our major Nationals and international events this year to enhance the fan experience, we still believe that it will be a useful platform moving forward, especially when our tournaments resume in 2021,” said Volleyball Canada President and CEO Mark Eckert.
Download now and enter our trivia contest for a VolleyballStuff prize pack, which includes a hoodie and other Volleyball Canada swag.
"We are truly excited about our partnership with Volleyball Canada," said Gabriel Smallman, President, FanReach. "With their long, rich history in the sport, it's an honor to be alongside them as they expand their digital platform initiatives, and we increase our footprint in Canada."
For over a decade, FanReach has distinguished itself as the premier mobile app platform for sports teams, leagues, and venues. Its innovative, collaborative technology solutions provide a robust, engaging user experience for fans, and optimal value for a roster of world-renowned sports industry clients, including the NFL, NHL, NBA and MLS.
Media contact: Jackie Skender


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More reports of credit card fraud in Roanoke Valley
Police have multiple investigations that likely involve card skimmers
ROANOKE, Va. – There have been more reports this week of people in the Roanoke Valley falling victim to credit card fraud. Police say people need to watch out for card skimmers at gas stations.
Police in Roanoke County and the city of Roanoke have multiple investigations open looking at credit card cloning. They think people are probably using skimmers at places like gas stations and ATMs to take victims’ information.
Roanoke City police haven't found evidence of a skimmer recently, but they are investigating cases where people got a hold of credit card information and then tried to use it, including two men (shown above) using cloned card at a CVS on Colonial Avenue earlier this week. Police are still looking for them.
Scott Leamon, a Roanoke City Police Department crime specialist, says it's hard to catch people using skimmers.
“All the victims have their card on them, in their wallet or in their purse when they start noticing these charges. They’ve had somebody withdraw $1,000 out of their bank account and they’re like, ‘I’ve got my card in my wallet and I didn’t do it.'"
Police said if you’re trying to get gas don’t go to a gas station late at night that doesn’t have an attendant, and try to feel around for skimmers near where you insert your credit card, although you can’t always see or feel where they are.
Copyright 2017 by WSLS 10 - All rights reserved.


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R3 CEV has created its blockchain-based platform Corda specially for financial sphere.
A group of eight banks, including UniCredit, HSBC, and UBS, have finally tested a distributed ledger prototype for bonds exchange using Intel’s blockchain platform.
R3 CEV files a patent application for Corda, distributed ledger software underlying the Concord Project.
French airplanes manufacturer, Airbus, officially joined the Hyperledger Project, a blokchian intitative launched by the Linux Foundation almost a year ago.
The trials resulted in the development of two promising prototypes aimed to prove that shared ledger technology is a digital alternative for trade financing.
Now, the AIA Group will join a group of world’s leading financial organizations collaborating on the development of blockchain-based applications.
The UK banking giant has presented the new smart contracts app designed to record and manage financial agreements among its clients.
R3 CEV has unveiled the news on the Blockchain & Distributed Ledger Conference in New York.
The Chief Technology Officer of the R3 project has unveiled a new blockchain-based platform designed to record and synchronise agreements across financial institutions.
Microsoft joins R3 consortium to help developing the blockchain technology for the financial services industry.
Members of the bitcoin community, including investors and executives, are having a huge impact on the future of the industry, promoting awareness and mainstream adoption.
The R3 innovation group has announced a partnership with Japan’s largest financial group to explore the blockchain technology.


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Kodak has a buyer for major packaging division
Kodak announced Monday it has a buyer for a major packaging division, the sale of which will help the former film giant pay down debt.
Montagu Private Equity, LLP, will purchase Kodak’s Flexographic Packaging Division, which produces and markets the Flexcel NX system of flexographic equipment and products for printing on such packaging materials as plastic, paper and cellophane.
Kodak expects to receive up to $390 million in the sale, which should close during the first half of 2019. The business will then operate as a standalone company led by Chris Payne, who has been the division’s president for the past three years, Kodak said in a statement.
In August, Kodak reported that the division, which employs 300 people and is not based in Rochester, showed a 9 percent increase in revenue over the previous year.
Also in August, the company announced plans to shed another 325 workers (including approximately 80 in Rochester) to cut costs.


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The South African government is currently considering an Animals Protection Amendment Bill, which would criminalize the testing of cosmetics on animals and prohibit the sale and manufacturing of any that were tested on them. If the bill is passed, those who fail to follow the new rules will be heavily fined or face imprisonment.
PETA and our affiliates are working to end the testing of cosmetics and household products on animals in countries around the world. If South Africa passes its Animals Protection Amendment Bill, it will show that a full ban on such vile products is not only possible but also ethically responsible. PETA and PETA U.S. have been helping Chinese scientists switch to in vitro cosmetics testing methods and are encouraging the Chinese government to accept the results in place of the animal tests that it currently requires.
What You Can Do
Please buy cosmetics and personal-care products only from the more than 2,900 cruelty-free companies that don’t test on animals (and that don’t pay for such tests in order to sell their products in China). Write to companies and let them know that they won’t receive your support until they stop testing on animals.
You can find out which of your favorite products are animal-friendly by searching PETA U.S.’ online database of companies that do and that don’t test on animals.


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Simone Biles has basically claimed the identify of Imo’s Pizza’s No. 1 fan. While artists Harry Styles and Mick Jagger have pretty much sworn their allegiance to the Arch, Biles has proven time and time again that the square beyond compare was the highlight of her St. Louis experience.
And this time, she fought against Jimmy Kimmel’s opinion that “Imo’s is very, very bad pizza.”
In a clip from Kimmel’s September 23 show, Kimmel details that his wife is from St. Louis and he’s heard Biles “really loves Imo’s Pizza.” Biles and Kimmel begin to argue about the quality of provel — Biles says it’s the best, the great number says “provel is the most disgusting cheese.”
“We could fight right now,” Biles laughs.
Kimmel declined a physical fight against Biles, saying he doesn’t want to get beat up, and then had a box of Imo’s brought out and said the people at the business are “very nice.”
“But, provel is to provolone what Velveeta is to cheddar,” Kimmel says.
When the crowd laughs, Kimmel looks at them and tells them it’s not a joke — it’s the description. He then recaps the time he bought his wife a frozen pizza for Valentine’s Day, thinking he had melted the plastic over the cheese when he first tried the dish.
The gymnast, who has also received plenty of frozen pizza from the St. Louis biz, consistently defended the ‘za. Kimmel ended up caving to Biles’ will, saying that the pizza brought out tasted better than his first experience.
Biles visited Kimmel to promote the “G.O.A.T – Gold Over America Tour” that kicks off today in Anaheim, California. The tour comes to St. Louis at the Enterprise Center on October 15. Tickets are obtainable on Ticketmaster. Let’s hope that she gets some well-deserved Imo’s delivered when she’s in town next.
Follow Jenna on Twitter at @writesjenna. Email the author at [email protected]
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Facebook looks to future with $2bn acquisition of Oculus Rift VR company
Tim Walker is The Independent’s Los Angeles correspondent, covering entertainment and other concerns from the West Coast of the US. He was previously a features writer and the editor of the paper’s diary column. His first novel, Completion, is being published in January 2014.
Wednesday 26 March 2014
Now that Facebook has all but taken over this world, it is turning its attention to creating new ones. On Tuesday night, the Silicon Valley firm announced its purchase of the virtual reality gaming company Oculus VR for $2bn (£1.2bn). Although Oculus’s signature virtual reality headset, Rift, is yet to be made available to consumers, it is already considered a hit thanks to a successful 2012 Kickstarter campaign and a buzzed-about demo at the recent SXSW festival.
The Rift, which resembles a pair of blacked-out ski goggles, reportedly allows users to enter immersive, computer-generated 3D worlds far more convincing than any existing virtual reality hardware.
Mark Zuckerberg, head of Facebook, wrote in a post: “Mobile is the platform of today, and now we’re getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow… Oculus [could] create the most social platform ever, and change how we work, play and communicate.”
Virtual reality may finally be coming of age. Sony recently revealed a prototype for its own virtual reality gaming headset, Project Morpheus, which will work with the Playstation 4 console, while Microsoft is also believed to be developing a similar device for the Xbox.
Mr Zuckerberg said that while immersive gaming would remain Oculus VR’s initial goal, he imagined a far broader future for the technology. “After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences,” he wrote. “Imagine enjoying a court-side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face – just by putting on goggles in your home… One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people.”
The acquisition gives Facebook a foothold in the hardware space occupied by Amazon and Google, which plans to release its own wearable device, Google Glass, in 2014. This week the search giant announced that it was partnering with the eyewear manufacturer Luxottica, owner of Oakley and Ray-Ban, to create fashionable designs for its high-tech specs.
Oculus VR was founded in 2012 in Irvine, California, by the 21-year-old Palmer Lucky. Its chief technology officer, John Carmack, created the classic games Doom and Quake. The Rift’s early development and production was crowd-funded via Kickstarter, which led to a pair of multimillion-dollar financing rounds. At the end of last year the company was valued at approximately $250m. Already, about 75,000 Rift developer’s kits have been sold to prospective game designers, for $350 each.
Not all gamers were equally enthusiastic. Markus Persson, who created the popular Minecraft, revealed on Twitter that he had cancelled a plan to develop a virtual reality version of that game for the Rift. “Facebook creeps me out,” he said.
Mr Persson, who invested in Oculus VR during its Kickstarter campaign, also wrote: “I did not chip in ten grand to see a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition. I definitely want to be part of VR, but I will not work with Facebook.”
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Navarre kicks off holidays with fifth annual Christmas in the Village event
One of the first events kicking off the holidays in western Stark County is this weekend.
For the fifth year, this little village is doing it up big.
The annual two-day Christmas in the Village begins today. Area retailers are participating in an early bird shopping day today and the first 100 visitors will receive a Christmas shopping bag.
This is just a taste of what’s to come. On Saturday, local businesses, organizations and churches will be decked out and will have activities, music, displays, goodies and more in a schedule packed full of fun for all ages.
This is Navarre business owner Rose Fearon’s first year participating in Christmas in the Village. She has been busy decorating Falcon Floral and has been getting a reindeer craft ready for people to take home with them.
“I’m excited, I want to be ready and make sure everything looks really beautiful,” she said.
Saturday’s events kick off with a parade at 10 a.m. downtown featuring the Fairless High School marching band, horses, bicycles, a float, local dignitaries, and, of course, Santa Claus.
For the first time, people may park their cars and hop on and off a red and green Christmas trolley, which will make seven stops in the village and two stops down state Route 21, said Claudia Anderson, president of the Village of Navarre Business Association. An all-day pass on the trolley is $5 or people can take individual rides to their destinations for less.
Throughout the day Saturday, people can enjoy live music, shopping deals, a “Frozen” celebration at the Towpath Trail YMCA, story time with Mrs. Claus at the library, historic horse-drawn wagon rides, bicycle rickshaw, craft expo and tours of historic buildings.
Music lovers can visit various locations to listen to the sound of Christmas with dulcimer music, Sugarcreek Duo, Random Guys, Tim & T.J. Gang and Kallie Lou Cleaver.
ON THE ROUTE
The Barry Askren Memorial Branch Library is one of the locations on the trolley route. The library is extending its hours and will be open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. today and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday to participate in Christmas in the Village.
On Saturday, kids are invited to enjoy story time with Mrs. Claus at noon and at 3 p.m., and they can stop by any time Saturday to make a craft and write a letter to Santa.
The Barry Askren Branch Library is next to the Towpath YMCA, 1200 Market St. NE.
Speaking of the Towpath Y, have you ever done sock skating? The Y will have a “Frozen” theme and children can meet Elsa and Anna.
The Navarre-Bethlehem Township Historical Society will host its annual Christmas open house from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today and Saturday. The event will take place at the Mathews House Museum, 123 High St. NW. The Museum has been decorated for Christmas with many antique decorations and more than 125 nativities from around the world. The art gallery will have a Christmas Boutique and art work available by local artist Steve Shonk.
On Saturday, the society will offer horse-drawn wagon tours of old Rochester and Bethlehem from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The tour locations are behind St. Clement Church at Wooster and Market streets and at the museum. The museum is free of charge but there will be a small fee for the tour and horse-drawn wagon ride.
The J.D. Define Building, 202 Market St., is beautifully decorated by Navarre’s Garden Club, in conjunction with Altercare.
For more information, visit www.visitnavarreohio.com; or Facebook users can search “Navarre’s Christmas in the Village.”
Reach Christina at 330-775-1133
On Twitter: @cmccuneINDE
• Early Bird Shopping day at retail locations 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
• The Navarre-Bethlehem Township Historical Society will host its annual Christmas Open House 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Mathews House Museum, 123 High St. NW, and the J.D. Define Building, 202 Market St., also will be open.
• 8-10 a.m. — Breakfast with Santa at the Firehouse Pub, 9 Main St. N.
• 10 a.m. — Official Christmas in the Village kickoff parade.
• 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. — Craft and Vendor Expo at Holy Family Parish, 216 E. Wooster St. NE, with 75-plus vendors with raffles including gas cards, lottery tickets, 43-inch LG flat screen TV, and free massage station.
• 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. — Dulcimer music at J.D. Define Building.
• 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. — Historic horse-drawn wagon tours sponsored by the Navarre Historical Society. Departing from the Mathews house, 123 S. High St., and Holy Family Parish.
• 11 a.m. — Bonfire with marshmallow roasting and a visit from Forever Safe Farm (non-profit animal sanctuary) at A.J.’s Alpaca Ranch.
• 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. — Live music with Sugarcreek Duo at McAlpine Meadery.
• 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. — Fuzzy sock skating (socks provided), Frozen movie and pictures with Elsa & Anna, alpaca petting with Romar Farms, and silent tree auction at Towpath Trail YMCA.
• 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. — Free bicycle rickshaw rides with Rickshaw Willie at Navarre Flea Market.
• noon to 2 p.m. — Woodcarver at Firehouse Pub.
• noon and 3 p.m. — Story time with Mrs. Claus at Askren Branch Library, 1200 Market St. NE.
• noon to 4 p.m. — Falcoln Floral — reindeer pin craft.
• 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. — Making S’mores with Elves at Main Street Deli.
• 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. — Free face painting at Real Deal Discounts.
• 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. — Live music from Random Guys at Anderson’s in the Village.
• 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. — Tim and T.J. Gang musical performance at the Firehouse Pub.
• 6 p.m. — Live music from Kallie Lou Cleaver at McAlpine Meadery.
SOURCE: Village of Navarre Business Association


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At this year’s BaselWorld in Switzerland, the crème de la crème of watch events, enduring luxury watch brand Rolex has revealed eight new models.
For our bling loving selves, one model in particular really popped out, the men’s Yacht-Master 40, a watch that isn’t new, but has received a rap star-worthy update highlighted by a multi-color gem bezel made up of 32 sapphires, eight tsavorites and one diamond. Phew!
Pricing hasn’t been provided yet for this new model, but the standard issue Yacht-Master 40 sans all the gems is priced at $24,950. Many more details on this amazing piece at hodinkee.com, where the watch is stirring up a ton of controversy–some people not only don’t like flash, they’re very bothered by it.


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McDonald's Customers Sue for $5 Million Over Unwanted Quarter Pounder Cheese
The McDonald's Quarter Pounder with cheese has been a staple of the billion-dollar food chain since its debut in 1973. But two Florida customers are now suing the company for $5 million over the iconic food item.
Cynthia Kissner and Leonard Werner, two Florida residents, filed a lawsuit claiming they are being forced to pay the same amount when the order Quarter Pounders even when they ask for the burger without cheese. They see this as unfair given that McDonald's hamburgers and cheeseburgers are priced differently elsewhere on the menu.
According to the Miami Herald, the two customers filed a class-action lawsuit with a Fort Lauderdale federal court on May 8.
The lawsuit points out at one point, the McDonald's menu offered Quarter Pounders and Double Quarter Pounders with or without cheese, and the difference between the two would be 30 to 90 cents higher for the cheese option. Yet "at some point," the company stopped "separately displaying these products for purchase on menus, and currently lists the availability of Quarter Pounder with Cheese and Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese.
"Customers have been forced, and continue to be overcharged for these products, by being forced to pay for two slices of cheese, which they do not want, order, or receive, to be able to purchase their desired product," the lawsuit continued.
Andrew Lavin, who filed the lawsuit for Kissner and Werner, claims his clients "have suffered injury as a result of their purchases because they were overcharged, and were required to pay for cheese, which is not a component of either a Quarter Pounder or a Double Quarter Pounder, that they did not want and did not receive."
The lawsuit points out that other menu items, such as the Big Mac, are specifically trademarked to have cheese included as one of the ingredients in the sandwich and calculated into the sales price. Levin claims the Quarter Pounder does not fit this category.
"A product that was sold for years and trademarked as a Quarter Pounder and is affirmed by a separate product 'with cheese,' is an acknowledgment that something is added to the base product," Lavin said. "Which is why they should not have to be compelled to pay for cheese when they don't want it, especially when they do offer it in other means."
A McDonald's spokesperson commented on the lawsuit via email to USA Today.
"We do not believe the claims in this lawsuit have legal merit," McDonald's wrote. "The advertised Quarter Pounder burger comes with cheese. We try to accommodate our customers' requests by allowing them to customize their orders, such as a Quarter Pounder with no cheese."


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The Department of Homeland Security is warning U.S. firms that drones made in China may be spying on them and sending sensitive data to the Chinese government.
Tag: data privacy
Data breaches relating to unsecured Internet of Things devices have jumped by more than 10 percent since 2017, suggesting security efforts aren’t keeping pace with the growth of the Internet of Things, a new study finds.
Researchers have found an unsecured Microsoft-hosted cloud database that holds personal information from 80 million U.S. households, exposing sensitive data and putting people at risk for identity theft, ransomware and other cybercrimes.
A group representing European telecommunications firms last week published technical specifications for securing a wide range of consumer Internet of Things devices including toys, smart cameras and wearable health trackers.
Despite a litany of high-profile data breaches, federal action on data privacy is unlikely to go anywhere in 2019 as partisanship and lack of technology literacy complicate Congressional action.


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Resilient Farms Conference – Livestream in Durand
Date: December 11th, 2018
Time: 8:30am – 3:30pm
Cost: No cost
Contact: Micheal Travis, Pepin County Agriculture Agent
Faced with lower milk and other commodity prices, many Wisconsin farmers are looking to diversify and add new revenue streams. Towards that end, Compeer Financial and University of Wisconsin-Extension announce the Resilient Farms Conference, a one-day event on Tuesday December 11 for farmers interested in exploring new business ideas for their farms. Farmers are encouraged to attend the live event in Wisconsin Dells, however, it will also be possible to “join” the conference electronically at several sites around the state, including Durand.
At the Durand location farmers will have opportunity to attend nine different sessions to gather information, resources and tools that can help them explore potential new revenue streams. Industry experts, including many farmers who have successfully implemented alternative enterprises, will also be available for one-on-one consultations at the Wisconsin Dells location.
The Durand event will open Tuesday Dec. 11 with registration at 8:30 am. The keynote address by Tera Johnson, Food Finance Institute and founder of Tera’s Whey, will begin at 9 am. The morning session will provide attendees in Durand a business and food safety track with Rachel Armstrong from Farm Commons. The afternoon will feature farmers presenting dairy value-added processing, hops production, agritourism, and hemp production.
The goal of the conference is to provide ideas and resources to farmers and producers interested in starting something new and diversifying their revenue stream. While creating alternate farm revenue streams isn’t a one-day process, analyzing the business, financial and market components are a key next step. Hearing from farmers who have successfully built a value-added venture is a great way to begin exploring possibilities for your operation.
The event will be held in the Pepin County Government Center, County Board Room. For more information, contact Mike Travis, UW-Extension at 715-672-5214


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While mold, insects, rats and dust may sound like we're listing plagues, these are actually common violations found in supermarkets and grocery stores across Long Island, including Port Jefferson, state data show.
Patch has pulled together information on grocery store inspections across New York state to create our exclusive interactive map, culled from public data supplied by the state's Department of Agriculture and Markets. Unlike restaurants, which are inspected by the Suffolk County Department of Health, grocers in town are inspected by this state agency.
For Port Jefferson Patch, we collected data on 35 markets in the Port Jefferson and Port Jefferson Station area, ranging from major chain supermarkets to smaller meat or seafood shops, pharmacies and convenience stores. And while sushi restaurants are inspected by the county, sushi stands located in grocery stores are inspected by the state.
RELATED: 5 Things You Should Know About Grocery Inspections
In the data above you find results of a store's latest food safety inspection as of Jan. 30, and the location’s past performance. Violations are either listed as "general deficiencies," which inspectors say did not present a heath risk, and "critical deficiencies" that pose a real hazard to customers. One critical violation and the market fails inspection.
How Port Jefferson Scored
Of all the markets in town, Uncle Giuseppe's on Route 112 had by far the worst record for health inspections in 2012, failing inspection twice. In its last inspection, the grocer was slapped with five critical violations and 51 general violations, putting it in a league of its own in Port Jefferson. In fact, the market has failed three of the four inspections it's had since opening in 2010.
RELATED: Uncle Giuseppe's Fails 2 Health Inspections in 2012
Smaller grocery Kayla Express Store did not fail inspections in 2012, but did fail its most recent inspection in January for not having a two- or three-bay sink for sanitizing equipment. The same went for Dollar Tree, which passed in 2012 but this January failed its inspection for dented cans. In fact, inspectors had to destroy 20 pounds of cans at that store that were dented at the seams.
When it came to general deficiencies, the Bravo Supermarket in Port Jefferson Station had the most with 24 violations, mostly related to problems with its hand washing equipment, dust and workers eating food in certain areas and not wearing hair coverings. Upper Main Deli and Grocery had 18 general deficiencies including citations for mold and dirty surfaces. So did Pathmark, with 18 violations including one for heavy frost buildup in the reach-in freezer.
Guintas Meat Farms had 17 violations, including ones for dust and a single live fly, as did esteemed local bakery La Bonne Boulangerie, whose 17 deficiencies included a citation for an employee pocketbook that was stored in a frosting area. All of these deficiencies are not considered a risk to anyone's health.
As for the cleanest stores in the area, hot sauce retailer Pepperheads had only one general deficiency, though it hasn't seen an inspector since 2004. For a more recent example, the Sunoco station at 669 Old Town Road had only 3 violations.
According to the state, there were 110 inspectors on the state’s payroll in 2012 responsible for about 31,000 retail food stores and around 6,200 food warehouses, wineries and other processors. Delis are included in the department’s inspections if 50 percent or less of their business is selling ready-to-eat food.
"They are our eyes and ears behind the scenes," said Robert Gravani, a professor at Cornell University who trains state inspectors.
Inspectors show up unannounced, and can spend as little as hour or more than a day inspecting a store, said Stephen Stich, Director of Food Safety and Inspection at the department.
The Inspection System
In 29 percent of the 30,372 retail food store inspections conducted statewide in 2012, the inspector found one or more problems that could make customers sick, Patch’s analysis of public records shows.
If an inspector finds a serious hazard to food safety, the store fails the inspection. Our analysis found more than 5,300 stores across the state failed an inspection last year, and more than 1,100 stores failed more than once. The department can fine the store up to $600 for the first critical deficiency, and double that amount for any more critical problems.
The department does more than just hand out fines. Sometimes, inspectors supervise supermarket employees as they correct violations on the spot, such as sanitizing dirty deli slicers, Stich said. Inspectors also hold in-store trainings to educate employees on the importance of food safety.
"These companies want to do things right," Gravani said. "Sometimes they fall down. That’s why you have a regulatory system."
Shoppers should call state inspectors with complaints about their local supermarket, such as spoiled food, Stich said.
You can reach the Long Island and NYC regional office, located in Brooklyn, at 718-722-2876.
But if you think food from the supermarket made you sick, contact your local health department, Stich said.
You can reach the Suffolk County Health Department at 631-854-0000.
Reading Patch on a phone or tablet? Use our mobile map on the go, or visit Patch from a computer to view the full map.


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New iPad vs. Galaxy Note 10.1: Specs Comparison Chart
Now that Apple’s highly anticipated tablet is out and set to go on sale soon, inevitably the specs of the new iPad are up for comparison with rival tablets on the market. Samsung has already accepted the challenge and started fighting back, comparing the latest iPad specs with their new Android device, the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1.
According to the Android Community team, Samsung has come up with its own spec comparison chart, putting the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 next to the new iPad to highlight what they consider better.
Comparing specs, Samsung noted that its Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet can view two apps simultaneously, it can work with two apps side by side and it allows users to write as they would with pen and paper. It has precision photo and video editing, offers the ability to take notes in one app while seeing the content in another app, as well as the ability to copy and paste between two apps.
Needless to mention, Samsung says that Apple’s new iPad cannot do any of the things listed above. In addition, Samsung boasts that the Android-running Galaxy Note 10.1 is thinner and lighter compared to the new iPad.
This, however, is just Samsung’s view on things, and who could blame them for sticking up for their own product. Android enthusiasts will likely go for the Galaxy Note 10.1, while Apple fans will prefer the new iPad, regardless of Samsung’s spec comparison sheet. Apple’s new tablet has plenty to offer as well, starting with its high-resolution Retina display, quad-core graphics processor and 5-megapixel rear-facing camera.


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Back in July of this year, while schoolchildren dreamt of holidays and commuters sweated their way to work, management consultancy McKinsey sat down with president of eBay Marketplaces Devin Wenig. The interview is above; we’re going to pick on some highlights below as Wenig pontificated on the future of bricks and mortar stores, the change needed in marketing, the fallacy of big data and what will make for good competitive advantage over other retailers in the months and years to come. Often with talking heads the output can be generic and anodyne. Wenig though offers some insightful thoughts.
The future of the store: “I think stores are going to become as much distribution and fulfillment centers as they are full-fledged shopping experiences… They’ll become technology enabled so that you can go to a store and see enough inventory, but you may shop “shoppable windows.” We’re building those right now for retailers around the world. You may end up hollowing out the real estate, where the showroom is a much smaller part of the footprint, and the inventory and the distribution center become more of that footprint.”
How marketing needs to change: “There are still many instances that I see where it is old-school marketing. It’s still about major TV campaigns, get people into the stores. That’s still important, and that’s not going to go away. But understanding how to engage in a world of exploding social networks, how to use search, how to use catalog, how to optimize, and how to engage—very different skills.”
Competitive advantage: “I think the answer is data… While from the merchant standpoint incredible selection may seem great, from the consumer standpoint it can be overwhelming. I actually don’t want to shop in a store with a billion items for sale, I’m just looking for this. Data is the way to connect a long-tail advantage with consumers that oftentimes want simplicity.”
Executing on strategy: “Great data is both art and science. There’s a lot of press about the science; there’s not as much about the art. But the truth is that judgment matters a lot… we bring quantitative analysis to that to say, “The right way to look at our customers is this, not this,” even though there are infinite ways we could.”
The fallacy of big data: “It’s not about big data, it’s about small data. Big data is useless… it’s about me connecting with you, my business connecting with you. You don’t want to be part of a big data set; you’re just looking to buy a shirt. And that’s about small data. That’s about understanding insights that I can glean about you that don’t feel intrusive, don’t feel creepy, and don’t feel artificial—but feel natural. That, to me, is the future. There are glimmers of success there. I wouldn’t say the industry has arrived. For all the rhetoric about data, it’s a work in progress, but a critically important work in progress.”
Merging experiences: “E-commerce [fulfills] a utilitarian function… Stores have an important element of serendipity… The future of digital commerce is trying to get the best of both… we’re trying to spur inspiration.”
Late last month, Zeitgeist went with friends to his local theatre to see “Teh [sic] Internet is a Serious Business”. The play, a story of the founding of the hacktivist group Anonymous, was the most well-publicised dawn of cyberattacks on businesses and governments. The organisation, at its best, set it sights on radical groups that promoted marginalisation of others, whether that was the Church of Scientology in the US or those trying to dampen the Arab Spring in Tunisia. This collective, run by people, some of whom were still in school, showed the world how vulnerable institutions were to being targeted online. We wrote about cybersecurity as recently as this summer, summarising the key points in a recent report from The Economist on what was needed to mitigate against future attacks and how to reduce the damage such attacks inflict. The issue is not going away (and in fact is likely to become worse before it gets better).
It was back in January that management consultancy McKinsey produced a report, ‘Risk and responsibility in a hyperconnected world: Implications for enterprises’, where they estimated the total aggregate impact of cyberattacks at $3 trillion. There is much to be done to avert such losses, but the current picture is far from rosy. Most tech executives gave their institutions “low scores in making the required changes”, the report states; nearly 80% of them said they cannot keep up with attackers’ – be they nation-states or individuals – increasing sophistication. Moreover, though more money is being directed at this area, “larger expenditures have not translated into an increased maturity” yet. And while the attacks themselves carry potentially devastating economic impact on a company, their prevention comes at a price too for the business, beyond the financial. McKinsey reports that security concerns are delaying mobile functionality in enterprises by an average of six months. If attacks continue, the consultancy posits this could result in “a world where a ‘cyberbacklash’ decelerates digitization [sic]”. Revelations about pervasive cyberspying by Western governments on their own citizens could well be a catalyst to this. Seven points are made in the report for enterprises to manage disruptions better:
- Prioritise the greatest business risks to defend and invest in.
- Provide a differentiated approach to defence of assets, based on their importance.
- Move from “simply bolting on security to training their entire staff to incorporate it from day one into technology projects”.
- Be proactive; develop capabilities “to aggregate relevant information” to attune defence systems
- Test. Test. Test again.
- Enlist CxOs to help them understand the value in protection.
- Integrate risk of attack with other corporate risk analysis
Given the amount of business and social issues that involve digital processes – “IP, regulatory compliance, privacy, customer experience, product development, business continuity, legal jurisdiction” – there is a huge amount of disagreement about how much state involvement there should be in the degree to which enterprises must take steps to protect themselves. This is an important point for discussion though, and we touched on it when we wrote about cyberattacks previously.
But that report was way back in January, things must have solved themselves since then, right? Last week, PwC reported that corporate cyber security budgets are being slashed, even while cyberattacks are becoming far more frequent. The FT reported that global security budgets fell 4% YoY in 2014, while the number of reported security incidents increased 48%. Bear in mind these are only reported incidents. This is potentially no bad thing, if we’re to go by McKinsey’s diagnosis of too much money being thrown at the problem in the first place. At the same time, it’s not exactly comforting.
Only a few days after PwC’s figures were published, JP Morgan revealed that personal data for 76 million households – about two-thirds of total US households – had been “compromised” by a cyberattack that had happened earlier in the year. Information stolen included names, phone numbers and email addresses of customers. It was also revealed that other financial institutions were probed too. Worryingly, the WSJ reports that investigators disagree on what exactly the hackers did. It was also unclear who was to blame; nation state or individual. Such disagreements over the ramifications of the attack, the identity of the attackers as well as the delayed revelation of the attack itself, illustrate just how necessary transparency is, if such attacks are to be better protected against and managed in the future.
For those in London at the end of the month, The Economist is hosting an event for those who apply, on October 21, examining “how businesses can and should respond to a data breach, whether it stem from a malicious insider, an external threat or simple carelessness”. Hope to see you there.
If a market sector hasn’t seen a great deal of activity or customer engagement, after several attempts by respected companies, it might be deemed a bit of a risk for a business to enter the market. Why try where others – with the benefit of first-mover advantage – have failed?
For Apple, the opposite is the case. Sony was already trying to make laptops look beautiful with Vaio before the success of the iMac, Creative Labs and others had been selling MP3 players for years before the first iPod launched in 2001. Microsoft had tried its hand at smartphones with the Pocket PC before Apple wowed the world with the iPhone and Intel made a tablet in 2001 that saw little success. So it was curious to see the below quote yesterday from Ben Bajarin, analyst at Creative Strategies, on the eve of the release of Apple’s Watch device.
“There really isn’t a market for wearables yet… You struggle to find the value proposition and the reason for Apple to do it.”
The reason for doing it is precisely because so many of Apple’s peers and pretenders have failed to create a market for wearables, just as they failed to create a market for the tablet, the smartphone and the MP3 player.
How to define innovation, how has it been studied in the recent past, and what does future innovation hold for the human race?
Sometimes the word innovation gets misused. Like when people use the word “technology” to mean recent gadgets and gizmos, instead of acknolwedging that the term encompasses the first wheel. “Innovation” is another tricky one. Our understanding of recent thoughts on innovation – as well as its contemporary partner, “disruption” – were thrown into question in June when Jill Lepore penned an article in The New Yorker that put our ideas about innovation and specifically on Clayton Christensen’s ideas about innovation in a new light. Christensen, heir apparent to fellow Harvard Business School bod Michael Porter (author of the simple, elegant and classic The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy) wrote The Innovator’s Dilemma in 1997. His work on disruptive innovation, claiming that successful businesses focused too much on what they were doing well, missing what, in Lepore’s words, “an entirely untapped customer wanted”, created a cottage industry of conferences, companies and counsels committed to dealing with disruption, (not least this blog, which lists disruption as one its topics of interest). Lepore’s article describes how, as Western society’s retelling of the past became less dominated by religion and more by science and historicism, the future became less about the fall of Man and more about the idea of progress. This thought took hold particularly during The Enlightenment. In the wake of two World Wars though, our endless advance toward greater things seemed less obvious;
“Replacing ‘progress’ with ‘innovation’ skirts the question of whether a novelty is an improvement: the world may not be getting better and better but our devices our getting newer and newer”
The article goes on to look at Christensen’s handpicked case studies that he used in his book. When Christensen describes one of his areas of focus, the disk-drive industry, as being unlike any other in the history of business, Lepore rightly points out the sui generis nature of it “makes it a very odd choice for an investigation designed to create a model for understanding other industries”. She goes on for much of the article to utterly debunk several of the author’s case studies, showcasing inaccuracies and even criminal behaviour on the part of those businesses he heralded as disruptive innovators. She also deftly points out, much in the line of thinking in Taleb’s Black Swan, that failures are often forgotten about, and those that succeed are grouped and promoted as formulae for success. Such is the case with Christensen’s apparently cherry-picked case studies. Writing about one company, Pathfinder, that tried to branch out into online journalism, seemingly too soon, Lepore comments,
“Had [it] been successful, it would have been greeted, retrospectively, as evidence of disruptive innovation. Instead, as one of its producers put it, ‘it’s like it never existed’… Faith in disruption is the best illustration, and the worst case, of a larger historical transformation having to do with secularization, and what happens when the invisible hand replaces the hand of God as explanation and justification.”
Such were the ramifications of the piece, that when questioned on it recently in Harvard Business Review, Christensen confessed “the choice of the word ‘disruption’ was a mistake I made twenty years ago“. The warning to businesses is that just because something is seen as ‘disruptive’ does not guarantee success, or fundamentally that it belongs to any long-term strategy. Developing expertise in a disparate area takes time, and investment, in terms of people, infrastructure and cash. And for some, the very act of resisting disruption is what has made them thrive. Another recent piece in HBR makes the point that most successful strategies involve not just a single act of deus ex machina thinking-outside-the-boxness, but rather sustained disruption. Though Kodak, Sony and others may have rued the days, months and years they neglected to innovate beyond their core area, the graveyard of dead businesses is also surely littered with companies who innovated too soon, the wrong way or in too costly a process that left them open to things other than what Schumpeter termed creative destruction.
Outside of cultural and philosophical analysis of the nature and definition of innovation, some may consider of more pressing concern the news that we are soon to be looked after by, and subsequently outmaneuvered in every way by, machines. The largest and most forward-thinking (and therefore not necessarily likely) of these concerns was recently put forward by Nick Bostrom in his new book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. According to a review in The Economist, the book posits that once you assume that there is nothing inherently magic about the human brain, it is evidence that an intelligent machine can be built. Bostrom worries though that “Once intelligence is sufficiently well understood for a clever machine to be built, that machine may prove able to design a better version of itself” and so on, ad infinitum. “The thought processes of such a machine, he argues, would be as alien to humans as human thought processes are to cockroaches. It is far from obvious that such a machine would have humanity’s best interests at heart—or, indeed, that it would care about humans at all”.
Beyond the admittedly far-off prognostications of the removal of the human race at the hands of the very things it created, machines and digital technology in general pose great risks in the near-term, too. For a succinct and alarming introduction to this, watch the enlightening video at the beginning of this post. Since the McKinsey Global Instititute published a paper in May soberly titled Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy, much editorial ink and celluloid (were either medium to still be in much use) has been spilled and spooled detailing how machines will slowly replace humans in the workplace. This transformation – itself a prime example of creative destruction – is already underway in the blue-collar world, where machines have replaced workers in automotive factories. The Wall Street Journal reports Chinese electronics makers are facing pressure to automate as labor costs rise, but are challenged by the low margins, precise work and short product life of the phones and other gadgets that the country produces. Travel agents and bank clerks have also been rendered null, thanks to that omnipresent machine, the Internet. Writes The Economist, “[T]eachers, researchers and writers are next. The question is whether the creation will be worth the destruction”. The McKinsey report, according to The Economist, “worries that modern technologies will widen inequality, increase social exclusion and provoke a backlash. It also speculates that public-sector institutions will be too clumsy to prepare people for this brave new world”.
Such thinking gels with an essay in the July/August edition of Foreign Affairs, by Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee and Michael Spence, titled New World Order. The authors rightly posit that in a free market the biggest premiums are reserved for the products with the most scarcity. When even niche, specialist employment though, such as in the arts (see video at start of article), can be replicated and performed to economies of scale by machines, then labourers and the owners of capital are at great risk. The essay makes good points on how while a simple economic model suggests that technology’s impact increases overall productivity for everyone, the truth is that the impact is more uneven. The authors astutely point out,
“Today, it is possible to take many important goods, services, and processes and codify them. Once codified, they can be digitized [sic], and once digitized, they can be replicated. Digital copies can be made at virtually zero cost and transmitted anywhere in the world almost instantaneously.”
Though this sounds utopian and democratic, what is actually does, the essay argues, is propel certain products to super-stardom. Network effects create this winner-take-all market. Similarly it creates disproportionately successful individuals. Although there are many factors at play here, the authors readily concede, they also maintain the importance of another, important and distressing theory;
“[A] portion of the growth is linked to the greater use of information technology… When income is distributed according to a power law, most people will be below the average… Globalization and technological change may increase the wealth and economic efficiency of nations and the world at large, but they will not work to everybody’s advantage, at least in the short to medium term. Ordinary workers, in particular, will continue to bear the brunt of the changes, benefiting as consumers but not necessarily as producers. This means that without further intervention, economic inequality is likely to continue to increase, posing a variety of problems. Unequal incomes can lead to unequal opportunities, depriving nations of access to talent and undermining the social contract. Political power, meanwhile, often follows economic power, in this case undermining democracy.”
There are those who say such fears of a rise in inequality and the whole destruction through automation of whole swathes of the job sector are unfounded, that many occupations require a certain intuition that cannot be replicated. Time will tell whether this intuition, like an audio recording, health assessment or the ability to drive a car, will be similarly codified and disrupted (yes, we’ll continue using the word disrupt, for now).
It’s no secret that the publishing industry is struggling mightily as customers shift from paying for physical newspapers and magazines to reading information online, often for free. The shift has caused ruptures among other places at that bastion of French journalism, Le Monde, with the recent exit of the editor as staff rued the switch to online. So-called ‘lad’s mags’, the FHMs and Loaded magazines of the world, have been hit particularly hard, as the family PC and dial-up internet gave way to personal, portable devices and broadband connections, which provided easier access to more salacious content than the likes of Nuts could ever hope to provide. FHM’s monthly circulation is down almost 90% from a 1998 peak, according to the Financial Times. Condé Nast have pushed bravely into the new digital era, launching a comprehensive list of digital editions of its wares when the iPad launched in 2010. More recently, the company launched a new venture, La Maison. In association with Publicis and Google, the idea is to provide luxury goods companies with customer insights as well as content and technology solutions. We’ve often written about the need for more rigorous customer insights in the world of luxury, so it’s refreshing to see Condé Nast innovating and continuing to look beyond newsstand sales. We’ve written about other ways publishers are monetising their content here and here.
Time Warner is not alone then in its struggles for new ways of making money from previously flourishing revenue streams. According to The New York Times, Time Warner will be spinning off its publishing arm, Time Inc., with 90 magazines, 45 websites and $1.3bn in debt. In 2006, the article reports, Time Inc. produced $1bn in earnings, which has now receded to $370m. Revenue has declined in 22 of the last 24 quarters. This kind of move is not new. Rupert Murdoch acted in similar fashion recently when he split up News Corporation, creating 21st Century Fox. But with the publishing side of the business there were some diamonds in the rough for investors to take interest in; a couple of TV companies, as well as of course Dow Jones’ Wall Street Journal, which has been invested in heavily. Conversely, the feeling of the Time Inc spin-off was more one of being put out to pasture, particularly as the company will not have enough money to make any significant acquisitions. Like the turmoil at Le Monde, there have been managerial controversies, as those seeking to shake things up have tried to overcome historical divisions between the sales and editorial teams – something other large business journalism companies are reportedly struggling with – only to be met with frustration.
Setting that aside, Time Warner moved swiftly. A day later, the FT reported that the company was “finalising an investment” in Vice Media. We have written extensively about Vice previously, here. The company certainly seems to know how to reach fickle millennials, through a combination of interesting, off-beat journalism, content designed to create its own news, as well as compelling video documentaries that take an unusual look at topical subjects. Such an outlook however does not preclude it from partnering with corporations. As a millennial myself, it seems what people look for from those like Vice is authenticity, rather than the vanilla mediocrity arguably offered by others. We don’t mind commercialism as long as it’s transparent. It does not jar then when Intel is a major investor in its ‘content verticals’, or when last year 21st Century Fox invested $70m in the company. This bore fruit for the movie studio most recently in a tie-up promoting the upcoming Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. The sequel takes place 10 years after the 2011 film, and Fox briefed Vice to create three short films that would fill in the gaps. A great ploy, and the result is some compelling content to keep fans engaged in the run-up to the film’s release, particularly in territories where the film opens after the US market. Such activity is far beyond the purview of the traditional newspaper. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. Publishers must face up to the reality that newspapers alone will not deliver enough revenue to be sustainable. Seeking other content revenue streams while engaging in strategic partnerships with other companies looks, for now, to be a winning formula.
UPDATE 08/07/14: When it comes to engaging with millennials, mobile is most definitely the medium of choice. The FT reported today on Cosmopolitan magazine’s 200% surge in web visitors, year on year in May. Fully 69% of page views were from mobile devices (compared to a 25% average for the rest of the web). The publication has also wised up to the type of content this group likes to consume, as well as create. Troy Young, Hearst’s president of digital media, said the new site is “designed for fast creation of content of all types… Posts aren’t just text and pictures. They’re gifs, Tweets, Instagrams.” Mobile will only get the company so far though. PwC thinks US mobile advertising spending will account for only 4.6% of total media and entertainment advertising outlays this year. Cosmo is looking beyond mobile though to “exclusive events or experiences”, perhaps along the same lines as those other businesses are practicing who are looking for additional revenue streams. The article suggests users might “pay to see the first pictures of an occasion like Kanye West’s and Kim Kardashian’s recent wedding”. Beggars can’t be choosers.
UPDATE 10/07/14: Have all these corporate manoeuvres on the part of Time Warner been in the service of making itself appear an attractive acquisition? As the famous and clandestine Sun Valley conference takes place this week, rumours abounded that Google or 21st Century Fox were both interested in buying TW. This according to entertainment industry trade mag Variety, which commented, “Time Warner could be an attractive target. Moreover, unlike Fox or Liberty Media, it is not controlled by a founder or a founder’s family and with a market cap of $63.9 billion it is a relative bargain compared to the Walt Disney Co. and its $151 billion market cap”.
A recent McKinsey report declared that, for businesses, “The age of experimentation with digital is over“. That may be for most B2B and B2C private sector companies, but not for the luxury goods industry. Bemoaning the woeful development and investment in strategic initiatives for luxury brands online is something this blog has done once or twice before. There are understandable reasons why the industry has been reticent to commit to online retail, based on customer insight (the assumption that HNWIs don’t like to shop for something without being able to see and touch it for themselves) and conflicting priorities (physical store expansion into China and more experiential events has been the name of the game in recent years). But with a China slowdown mooted, particularly in the area of luxury gifting, and no real concrete research to show that HNWIs aren’t just as digitally savvy as their less liquid counterparts, there becomes less and less justification for what are, across the industry, woeful examples of digital strategy and innovation.
It can’t be easy for profitable businesses like LVMH, with an eye on quarterly earnings, to make drastic investments in the online space. Luxury’s brand equity often comes from provenance and tradition; a company’s roots are in its founding stores, the connotations of Milan, Florence, Paris, etc. They also worry about their neighbours; a flash-sale site or, worse, one full of counterfeit knock-offs, is always just a click away. From a logistical point of view, there is also the issue of back-end infrastructure to contend with. For several years, PPR (now Kering) ran much of its e-commerce business through Yoox, as we’ve talked about before. It would be wrong to single out those in luxury. L2 Thinktank recently tweeted with much excitement about Bacardi’s “cocktail discovery site” that worked seamlessly across web, mobile and tablet. Well, forgive us if we don’t leap for joy in an ecstasy of delirium, but this is 2014, that should be the minimum deliverable. Still, luxury is a sector in blatant need of redirection.
Burberry is lauded by many as an outlier in this world of luxury goods, a company that has truly embraced digital. For all the talk of such innovation though, the website itself is utterly dominated by a rote e-commerce site, as are its social networks such as Google+. It is the physical stores where technological innovation has been injected. And this is supposedly the company pushing the rest of its peers forward. It comes as little surprise then that eConsultancy published a superb piece at the end of April excoriating the sector, leaving no brand unscathed. Headlines included, “painfully slow load times“, “awful UX” and “not making much effort“. But the worst and most perplexing atrocity had to be the above screengrab on the purposeful hiding away of an e-commerce platform, one that was presumably quite expensive to source and implement in the first place. We can’t overestimate the necessity of having a clear user journey through to purchase, just as it would be difficult to overestimate the amount of luxury good companies that are guilty of this sin for which Dolce & Gabbana have been singled out for here.
On this note, Gucci’s recently relaunched mobile site – replacing among other things a tablet site that had been left to wither since 2010 – was welcome news to us, as it seemed to be also (logically) to those wishing to actually part with their money on Gucci wares. L2 in May reported the news, saying that the new site now accounts for 27% of all traffic, a 150% YoY increase. Sounds good, except that means traffic through the mobile site in 2013 was a miniscule 0.18%, right? Terrible.
There are signs of hope. Gucci’s move to invest in a new mobile site, though monumentally belated, is a welcome one. As more brands cotton on to the importance of online, the Financial Times recently reported on the moves many are making to secure ‘.luxury’ suffixes, in the wake of IPv6, if only to avoid the complications of cybersquatting. And Michael Kors, which seems only to be going from strength to strength every quarter, has praised its own social media presence for “driving international sales”. We’ve almost entirely focused on fashion brands here, but other companies within the luxury sector are getting the message loud and clear. Take the auction house Christie’s, a legacy company if ever there was one, having been founded in 1766. Not only have they dedicated time and energy to investing in major online auctions, they have also recently created a new sector vertical of ‘luxury’ within the house itself. New thinking might well take new talent, it will also take C-suite buy-in, as well an acceptance that digital commerce is an integral part of business now, no matter how exclusive your product is.
Interesting video from the FT on Moncler, above. London’s more tony neighbourhoods of Chelsea and Belgravia have seen an explosion of thick down jackets over the past three years, mostly colourful, all with the same logo on them. They are worn as much by macho Eurotrash as Yummy Mummies. The brand is seemingly reaching a tipping point, where exclusivity leads to a bling reputation, where mass acceptance is quickly followed by mass exodus. La Martina has done a good job of steering clear of such waters, as we reported on in a state of retail article. While Moncler considers its IPO and a strategy for selling hot coats in Hawaii, North Face takes a completely different tack, embracing its mass appeal while still communicating an aspirational feel by showcasing the demanding professionals who use their apparel. Canada Goose, another recent entrant into the winter sportswear / city chic market, has also seemed to have had a burst of popularity recently. Zeitgeist saw no fewer than a dozen such coats around Soho and Chelsea this past weekend. An interview with the CEO of the company earlier this year described the strategy thus: “By focusing on the made-in-Canada, used-in-Canada story behind the coats, people would clamour for them.”
It will be interesting to see what happens to Canada Goose as it develops; whether it will try to emulate the more ritzy path of Moncler or the performance-related one of North Face. Zeitgeist doesn’t see many people in Europe on the ski slopes wearing Moncler, and doesn’t see many players on the polo field wearing La Martina (unless they are a sponsor). North Face, on the other hand, seems to have a deeply-seated place among hikers and skiiers, particularly in North America. Time – and a sound strategy – will tell whether Moncler retains its exclusive airs.


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Get Identity Theft Assist!
Identity theft crimes aren’t new, but they have become more pervasive previously decade. One of the most insidious forms of white-collar crime, id theft is a federal criminal offense under the Identity Theft and also Assumption Deterrence Act. It occurs when an individual deliberately assumes your individual identity to impersonate you in a legal sense. There are people out there who are malicious and want to mess your life simply because they can easily. Businesses and financial institutions that lose $52.6 thousand each year are under huge pressure from buyers to tackle this problem.
Last year, identity fraudulence crimes topped the list of complaints documented to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the leading governmental organization offering identity theft assist, for the fourth sequential year. The Federal trade commission collects complaints concerning identity theft from consumers who have been victimized. Although the FTC does not have the ability to bring criminal circumstances, it can offers identity theft help by providing info to assist the victims inside resolving the financial and other problems that might occur from this crime. To supplement identity theft help, the actual FTC also pertains victims complaints with other appropriate government agencies and private organizations for further motion. The support of these knowledgeable resources expedites recovery, while enhancing your peace-of-mind.
Accurate and up-to-date information is the most critical aspect to minimize risk. Because of this, Federal Trade Commission recently launched an identity theft help web site annualcreditreport.com in which all consumers are qualified to receive a free copy of these credit reports. In order to successfully respond to suspected ID fraud you should spot an identity theft notify in one of the three buyer reporting agencies understanding that agency will notify the other remaining a couple of. These agencies tend to be: Equifax at 1-800-525-6285, TransUnion at 1-800-397-3742 as well as Experian at 1-800-680-7289. These credit reporting agencies can also be found on the web.
The ID Theft Resource managed by the Federal trade commission is a tool built to coordinate law enforcement initiatives in the United States. But, in the end, local law enforcement agencies like the police and district attorney end up working with most identity fraud cases. If you have been a victim of id fraud, it’s these local agencies that will mostly likely offer identity theft help.


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PM shows love for Thunder Bay's Northern Logger
Demand for Thunder Bay's Northern Logger shirt skyrockets after it appears in PM's social media photo
Thunder Bay's Sleeping Giant Brewing Company has earned friends in very high places.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has shown his allegiance to a Sleeping Giant brew through a photograph released via Trudeau's social media accounts on Father's Day.
In the photo, the Prime Minister is wearing a Northern Logger T-shirt while on a hike with his children.
Sleeping Giant has decided to take advantage of this unexpected publicity to help a local charity.
The brewery has partnered with the Boys and Girls Club of Thunder Bay, and for the next two weeks, all proceeds from the sale of Northern Logger shirts will go to the Boys and Girls Club of Thunder Bay.
"We chose the Boys and Girls Club because, although they are a local charity, they have national recognition," Pearson said. "Every community has, and supports, their Boys and Girls Club. So we wanted someone that wanted to buy the shirt in Vancouver to be kind of familiar with the organization that they were going to be donating to."
Those interested in obtaining a Northern Logger shirt can do so by e-mailing email@example.com.
"They e-mail their size and their address, and they'll be contacted about payment," Pearson said.
The shirts are $20, and shipping is included.
Photograph exposed 'human side' of PM
Pearson said Trudeau had expressed interest in visiting the brewery during a recent stop in Thunder Bay. The PM himself was unable to make it in the end, but a representative did. That's how the T-shirt ended up in Trudeau's hands.
Pearson said seeing Trudeau in an informal - and branded - T-shirt was refreshing.
"I think things like this making politics more accessible is a huge step in the right direction," he said. "If it's embracing or exposing a human side of a leader, I think that's great."