text:
Iridium Communications has launched its Iridium GO! device which uses satellite communication technology to give smartphone users Wi-Fi anywhere on Earth.
With a decidedly Nineties look to it, the Iridium GO! aims to bring satellite communications into the 21st century by letting up to five people connect to the internet, make phone calls and receive text messages from some of the most hostile environments imaginable.
While satellite communications has existed in the past, it was only available through large, bulky satellite phones that could only transmit voice calls and basic messaging.
However, the new device is not being designed to spend your time climbing Mount Everest playing Words With Friends with family back home as the device is being aimed particularly at people involved in search-and-rescue missions in remote locations, business people and dedicated adventurers.
Ease of access
The device has been designed to be simple to use and works by simply raising the antenna which then automatically connects to the Iridium network and establishes a Wi-Fi connection.
The user can then log on to an Iridium GO! app on his or her device and then use his or her phone or tablet.
In terms of spec, the device delivers a coverage radius of 100 feet and users can connect devices wirelessly without any special adapters.
The only hindrance to people visiting Russia, such as those descending on Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics this week, is that the network isn’t supported on the standard Iridium device and must be arranged and authorised through Iridium’s Russian subsidiary.
The device is set to launch in Q2 this year and will work on any smart device with a wireless network connection.


text:
Robocall Nightmare Spikes Again In October
SOUTH AMBOY, N.J., Nov. 5, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- RoboKiller, the app that stops spam calls, announced today that it estimates 5.5. billion robocalls were placed to Americans in October, a near record and a 12% spike from the previous month.
According to RoboKiller, California, Texas, and Florida were the states most impacted by spam during the month. The usual barrage of car warranty and free cruise offers were popular, but healthcare related calls topped RoboKiller’s charts as the November Obamacare deadline approached. The company continues to warn consumers to be cautious and vigilant, and to never share personal information with inbound callers.
“Although spam calls dropped following high-profile enforcement efforts by the FTC earlier this year, they unfortunately have bounced back as American’s received an average of 19 unwanted calls in October,” said RoboKilller’s Senior VP of Strategic Growth, Ethan Garr. “The November Obamacare deadline drove a record level of healthcare related spam calls last month, and RoboKiller continues to block these and other threats for its customers.”
RoboKiller is an award-winning mobile app that uses machine learning, audio fingerprinting and other innovative technologies to protect consumers from harassing spam calls. The service answers the calls it blocks with Answerbots™, recorded voices that talk back to spammers and waste their time in an effort to protect Americans from potentially dangerous calls.
RoboKiller is one of the top-grossing iPhone utility apps in the US, allowing users to immediately block over 1 million telemarketers and robocalls from calling their phones. With over 5 billion robocalls made to US consumers each month, phone spam continues to be the #1 complaint to the FCC, a problem that drives hundreds of thousands of RoboKiller app downloads per month. RoboKiller, a Teltech brand, is a division of Mosaic Group, an IAC Company (NASDAQ: IAC). Learn more at www.robokiller.com

domain: news


text:
New smartphone-based study to provide healthier food choices for China’s consumers
Focusing on improving community health care in China through affordable, sustainable mobile health (mHealth) technology, the Beijing based China Center for mHealth Innovation (CCmHI) is now collaborating with China’s Center for Disease Control (China CDC) on a new approach to enable Chinese consumers to make healthier food choices.
Established in 2014 and hosted at The George Institute, China, CCmHI is positioned to become a world-class center for mHealth innovation. Currently, CCmHI’s first new study has started with collecting food labeling and packaging data nationwide, that will eventually be the foundation for a new, free smartphone tool available to Chinese consumers this July called FoodSwitch. This new phone app will provide users with a traffic light system on key nutrients by product that allows comparison to similar items to encourage a healthier choice.
“China’s rapid economic and social development means a dramatic increase in the consumption of packaged foods,” said Associate Professor Puhong ZHANG, Acting Director of CCmHI and Program Head at The George Institute, China, when explaining why FoodSwitch was chosen as the first CCmHI study. “Although there are relevant policies and regulations about food labeling in China, the understanding of its usage among people is still inadequate and there is an urgent need for awareness-raising and a more standardized and systematic way to support the monitoring of the packaged food environment in China.”
Already available and popular in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, FoodSwitch is a smartphone app designed by The George Institute for Global Health to jointly support the individual and environmental approaches to the prevention of diet-related ill health. FoodSwitch empowers consumers to make healthier food choices by providing them with convenient, easy to understand nutrition information. By crowd-sourcing food data across tens of thousands of food items, researchers, policy makers and manufacturers will have the information necessary to change the food environment.
FoodSwitch is a platform that delivers on one of CCmHI’s priorities, which is to target the 10 leading causes of premature death and disability in China, while supporting the development and expanded use of mHealth technologies.
“FoodSwitch is an excellent example of how large-scale access to advanced communications technologies can provide unprecedented support for public health policy in China,” said Steve Mollenkopf, chief executive officer of Qualcomm Incorporated, founding party of CCmHI.
“From the healthcare point of view, there are still lots of things that need to be done to address this public health problem which affects many of us in China.” Professor ZHANG continued. “Imagine you are at a local supermarket overwhelmed by hundreds of brand choices of packaged food. The foods often contain high-levels of salt, sugar and saturated fat, which may contribute to the risks of heart disease and stroke. How can you be sure you make the best choices and buy healthier food for you and your family? ”
FoodSwitch has been one of the most popular health apps in Australia, and is expected to be tailored to benefit the people in China. “It will be the first attempt to investigate and standardize the coordination of packaged food information in China and empower people with access to this information via mobile technology to make their own decisions about what to buy and what to eat,” said Professor ZHANG. “We are excited to carry out this study and hope that the results can inform government policies and bring real impact.”
Professor ZHANG indicated that CCmHI would collaborate with the CDC to first start collecting as much of the data as possible to build up the database of China’s packaged food products. This work is expected to be finished before July 2015. “We plan to officially launch the app in China in July, providing better food choices to Chinese consumers who will continuously contribute to the database by scanning and uploading the food information,” added Professor ZHANG.
The government work report delivered at the China’s National People's Congress identifies health as one of the critical basic needs for the population, and recommends that the government aim to constantly improve capacity of medical service delivery. Enhancing the capacity to prevent and treat major chronic diseases, many of which are tied to diet, has been identified as a priority of the government.
“China is in a transition period where Chinese people’s diets, nutrition, and health status are changing significantly.” Said Professor Bing ZHANG, Director of Department of Public Health Nutrition and Nutrition Policy, China CDC, “In order to more fully understand this transition, we have initiated a mass cohort study covering 15 provinces. This study, based on the long-term nationwide health and nutrition survey, is the only long-term cohort study of its kind focusing on nutrition and chronic diseases in China. ”
Professor Bing ZHANG continued, “The FoodSwitch mobile solution will be one of the tools to conduct the study. Findings from this study will provide the basis for instituting policy measures to manage chronic diseases in China. ”
China Center for mHealth Innovation (CCmHI) is hosted by The George Institute for Global Health at Peking University Health Science Center and funded by Qualcomm Incorporated, through its Qualcomm® Wireless Reach™ initiative. CCmHI is positioned to become a world-class center for mobile health (mHealth) innovation. Working with central and provincial governments, CCmHI will help improve community healthcare in China by developing mHealth solutions, implementing clinical evaluations and contributing to strategies for the implementation and scale-up of effective and affordable mHealth tools. By helping the Chinese people make better dietary decisions, FoodSwitch is a platform that delivers on one of CCmHI’s priorities, which is to target the target the 10 leading causes of premature death and disability in China, and to support the development and expanded use of mHealth technologies.
For more information please visit www.ccmhi.org.cn


text:
mocoNews - Palm Investor Predicts The Day The Pre Will Overtake The iPhone
Friday, March 6, 2009; 7:00 PM
Confidence is good, but it can be taken too far? Roger McNamee from Elevation Partners (which has paid $425 million for a 39 percent stake in Palm) seems to think that the upcoming Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre is not only an iPhone killer, it will squash it like a bug. "You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone?Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later" McNamee told Bloomberg. "Think about it?If you bought the first iPhone, you bought it because you wanted the coolest product on the market?Your two-year contract has just expired. Look around. Tell me what they're going to buy."
I think McNamee has underestimated how much the iPhone being the "coolest product on the market" was due to it being from Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). Palm is where Apple was when Jobs came back?but even at its height its brand was never as good as Apple's. Before the iPhone was released I had multiple friends who had every single iPod that had been released...some even tried to justify why they not only needed 5 or 6 different portable music players, but couldn't live without them. Can Palm say something similar? The Pre looks like a good handset with good services, and I hope it's the positive direction Palm has been looking for for the past several years, but it's not going to kill the iPhone?if it just makes Palm profitable again it will be a raging success.
McNamee sees Palm's new operating system as giving the company the edge, noting that RIM's technology is about 13 years old and the tech behind the iPhone goes back almost 9 years. He's also confident that Palm can not only survive the economic downturn, but outrun its opponents?"I'm on a 10-year plan, here," McNamee said. "They are going to run out of gas way before we are." Considering how much of its funds are tied up in Palm, Elevation pretty much has to take the most bullish view possible.


text:
Microsoft has signed a deal with Hewlett-Packard, geared toward increasing use of its search products, reports The Seattle Times.
The deal makes Microsoft Live Search the default search engine when people launch Internet Explorer on new HP PCs. Internet Explorer will also feature a custom toolbar, built on Microsoft's Silverlight multimedia platform, with tabs that take people to information on Hewlett Packard products.
One Microsoft executive said many people don't know where to find Microsoft's search engine (www.live.com), negatively impacting adoption to a significant degree. The HP deal was positioned as a way to help people "find" it.
In past efforts, Microsoft has tried encouraging use of Live Search by incorporating it in games and paying users.
Microsoft supplants Yahoo, which has had a similar relationship with HP since 2006. The deal will impact PCs sold beginning January, 2009.


text:
Tomato prices have shot up since last month due to the disruption in supply amid monsoon
As tomato prices continue to soar across the country, two men allegedly attempted to steal 90 kg of the kitchen staple at the Agriculture Produce Market Committee's (APMC) market in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, the police said on Tuesday, reported the PTI.
The incident took place at the APMC market in Vashi in Navi Mumbai on July 14, an official said.
Security guards at the market spotted two men who were later found to be labourers, dragging crates containing 90 kg of tomatoes around 2 am. The duo was attempting to take the crates outside the market when the guards intercepted them, he said, according to the PTI.
When they failed to give a satisfactory response to the questions posed by the guards, they were taken to the APMC police station, the official said.
However, the owner of the tomato stock refused to lodge a complaint against the duo, he added.
Tomato prices have shot up since last month due to the disruption in supply amid monsoon.
Meanwhile, Tomato prices in the retail markets of the national capital declined to an average Rs 150 per kg on Monday from Rs 178 per kg on Sunday, according to the government data, reported the PTI.
The Centre is selling tomatoes at a subsidised rate of Rs 80 per kg in Delhi-NCR and some other cities through the National Cooperative Consumers' Federation of India (NCCF) and the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED), the news agency reported on Monday.
As per the data compiled by the Department of Consumer Affairs, the all-India average retail prices of tomatoes was Rs 120.29 per kg while the maximum price was Rs 237 per kg at Hapur.
The minimum retail price was Rs 47 per kg while the modal price was Rs 120 per kg.
Among other metros, tomatoes were selling at Rs 155 per kg in Mumbai, Rs 132 per kg in Chennai and Rs 143 per kg in Kolkata.
In Delhi's Paschim Vihar, local vendors are selling tomatoes at Rs 120-140 per kg depending on the quality.
"Wholesale prices at Azadpur mandi have fallen. We bought at Rs 100-120 per kg and are selling at Rs 120-140 per kg," Jyotish Kumar Jha, a fruit and vegetable vendor at Paschim Vihar. said.
On Sunday, the Centre decided to cut the subsidised price of tomatoes to Rs 80 per kg from Rs 90 per kg.
Tomato prices normally shoot up during July-August and October-November periods, which are generally lean production months.
Supply disruption caused due to the monsoon has led to a sharp rise in the rates of tomatoes.
(with PTI inputs)


text:
Bedshe International Co. Ltd. has recalled about 350,000 Bedsure Electric Heating Blankets and Pads due to a risk of fires and burn injuries.
The recall was announced after the company received 137 reports of the blankets and pads catching on fire, burning, melting, overheating, or causing property damage due to the controller malfunctioning.
At least 17 people also reported burn injuries, including one person who suffered 2nd-degree burns.
The recalled electric heated blanket models include BS-HB5060, HB6284, BS-HB7284, and BS-LV0A.
The recalled heating pad models include BS-HP2422, BS-HP1224, and BS-HP2433.
The blankets and heating pads were sold online at Amazon.com and BedsureHome.com from August 2022 through November 2022 for between $25 and $110.
Bedsure is asking consumers to immediately stop using the recalled electric heating blankets and pads and contact the company for a full refund by registering at safety.bedsurehome.com.


text:
New estimates from NPR and Edison Research indicate that more than a million people a month in the last season bought a smart speaker.
The two institutions have published the spring edition of The Smart Audio Report indicating about 18 percent of American adults or 43 million people now own a smart speaker. This version of the report dives not so much into which brand of speaker people prefer as much as it does into the differences between first adopters that have owned their speakers for more than a year and what has been deemed the subsequent mainstream group of buyers.
In a survey of 909 adults, it was found that ownership was spread fairly evenly across several age groups with the greatest shares in the 45-54, 55+ and 35-44 groups which have a combined two-thirds share. 54 percent of owners are women. In both first adopter and early mainstream groups, owners tended to be older and female.
There was also shared enthusiasm between the groups in terms of using their speakers more often than in the first month of ownership (46 percent of first adopter respondents and 54 percent of early mainstream respondents). When first adopters were asked about which medium they used most often to listen to audio, smart speakers were the top answer — it was the number two answer for mainstream users.
When it comes to how people use their Amazon Alexa device or Google Home, about a quarter of users listened to podcasts through their speaker, more than a third controlled IoT devices and about 45 percent listen to radio. The most popular uses for devices are for playing music (~90 percent), checking the weather (~83 percent) and search queries (~84 percent).
22 percent of first adopters and 38 percent of early mainstream users bought a smart speaker in the hopes of reducing their screen time. However, first adopters have found that their speaker most often supplanted their traditional radio. Smartphones were number two, but by a long margin.
There’s some intriguing data about how more people prefer branded or sponsored skills and features than any other form of advertising. You can learn more at the source link below this story.


text:
Sales of new cars in north increase during March
New car sales grew by 5.3 per cent in Northern Ireland in March compared with the same month last year, according to figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).
Some 7,807 people have registered a new car since March 1, and sales for this year so far are running at 18,807, which is 2.8 per cent better than at the same time 12 months ago.
Ford and Volkswagen each have two models in the top-10 list for the region, while the Renault Kadjar makes an appearance at number nine.
In the UK as a whole, 518,707 new cars left showroom - the most sales in a month since the current system for changing number plates was introduced in 1999.
Demand was up year-on-year across all fuel types, with diesel and petrol registrations growing by 4.8 per cent and 4.7 per cent respectively, while alternatively fuelled vehicles enjoyed a rise of 21.5 per cent.
Registrations by private customers rose by 3.8 per cent, with fleet demand increasing by 6 per cent.
SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes said: "The sector's strong growth in March rounds off a robust first quarter as consumers continue to demonstrate their appetite for new cars, especially ultra-low emission vehicles.
"This confidence should see registrations remain at a high but broadly stable level over the year, but could be undermined by political or economic uncertainty."
Top 10 new car registrations in Northern Ireland during March were:
1 Ford Fiesta
2 Vauxhall Astra
3 Kia Sportage
4 Seat Ibiza
5 Volkswagen Golf
6 Hyundai Tucson
7 Nissan Qashqai
8 Volkswagen Polo
9 Renault Kadjar
10 Ford Focus


text:
For a Crainsny.com Q&A on this story, .
MONY Group's announcement that it will buy Lebenthal & Co., a municipal bond firm, continues the firm's continuing efforts to broaden its product offerings.
MONY, a 158-year-old firm that went public in late 1998, has been on a push in recent years to grow its services, and its profits. In a Crain's New York Business article published earlier this year, Colin Devine, an analyst at Salomon Smith Barney, gave the company, which has $25 billion in assets, low marks for failing to grow its revenue. "MONY's growth outlook remains below average despite a series of initiatives," he noted in a report.
The purchase of Lebenthal will mark the fifth acquisition for the old-line life insurer, which now derives 60% of its operating income from commissions and fees on mutual funds, securities transactions, investment banking and annuities. Advest, bought in August 2000, was its most recent buy. Still, observers question its ability to compete with behemoths like Merrill Lynch and American Express amid increasing consolidation in financial services.
The purchase price for Lebenthal is estimated to be $25 million in cash and stock. Alexandra Lebenthal, grandaughter of the firm's founders, will stay on as president and CEO of the Lebenthal division, which will be merged with MONY's Hartford-based retail brokerage, Advest Group.


text:
Best Buy’s sales fell 8.5 percent during the first quarter and earnings were down as the consumer electronics chain reported a modest increase in inventory. The retailer reduced its forecast for the year, but CEO Core Barry was confident in its future prospects. “Even with the expected slowdown this year, we continue to be in a fundamentally stronger position than we were before the pandemic from both a revenue and operating income rate perspective,” she said.
MORE RETAIL NEWS HEADLINES…
Check out RetailWire’s Engaging Online Discussions Featuring Our Exclusive Braintrust!
©2022 RetailWire LLC. All rights reserved.


text:
It has been reported that the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating General Motors (GM) attorneys for hiding evidence of the faulty ignition switch that led to massive recalls. This appears to be a part of a bigger criminal probe into misleading statements GM executives have made to regulators. The concealment of evidence delayed recalls of vehicles with the defective switches. There can be no doubt about that. It will be interesting to see which attorneys are involved in this probe.
A Brief Review Of GM Recalls
The number of cars in North America that GM has called back for repairs related to the defective ignitions has now passed 17 million. That’s more than the 9.71 million vehicles the Detroit-based company sold worldwide in 2013. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigation into GM’s actions involving the ignition switch defect already show the company had evidence of a safety defect that it covered up and hid from government investigators for years. NHTSA’s acting administrator, David Friedman, confirms this in an emailed statement. He said further:
GM knew about the safety defect for years, did not report it as required by law and did not take action to protect Americans from that defect until earlier this year. GM’s decision-making, structure, process, and corporate culture stood in the way of safety at a time when airbags were failing to work properly in millions of GM products.
This GM debacle may wind up being the worst performance involving safety issues by an automaker in U.S. history. GM’s massive cover-up of a safety hazard caused by a defect known to the automaker could send a number of folks to jail. If that happens, it would be “complete justice” and would send a needed message to the automobile industry!
Contact us today for a free legal consultation with an experienced attorney.
Fields marked *may be required for submission.
If you would like to subscribe to the Jere Beasley Report digital edition, simply visit our Subscriptions page and provide the necessary information or call us at 800-898-2034.
Attorney Advertising - Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.


text:
Only half of business owners have upgraded their card processing systems, according to survey.
Small business owners are facing increased fraud liability as a result of the new EMV chip card technology in credit cards, Property Casualty 360 writes. The article explains how merchants were given a deadline of Oct. 1, 2015 to start using new point-of-sale credit card terminals that would accept the chip-enabled cards. From that point forward, any business that did not upgrade its payment terminals became liable for any instances of credit card fraud. This article outlines additional scenarios in which the merchant is now liable.
On a related note, Wells Fargo surveyed business owners regarding their attitudes about chip-enabled cards. Forty-eight percent of respondents said that their credit card processing system is currently chip-enabled, while an additional 22 percent plan to upgrade in the next six months. Twenty percent say they never plan to upgrade their systems.
The Latest Orbit Headlines
- Most Small Businesses Would Have No Idea What to Do If Hacked
- This Works Better Than Patching to Treat Lazy Eye, Scientists Say
- Opticians Association of America to Hold Conference in February
- It’s Way Easier to Get a Small-Business Loan These Days — But There’s a Catch
- Cheap Sunglasses Need Warning Labels, Insurer Says


text:
It seems that Qualcomm is taking charge of making the 5G dream a reality by launching its new QTM052 mmWave antenna modules - a promising piece of tech to bridge the gap between 5G and smartphones.
The antenna is impressive for a number of different reasons, with its compact size being the most relevant part. For context, Engadget spotted Intel's 5G concept PC with a less than elegant solution earlier this year at MWC. The concept had a host of forgivable issues, but it also painted a clear picture that we maybe aren't as close to mainstream 5G as we would like to be.
Qualcomm's latest achievement is notable because it will ready smartphones for the paradigm shift. And not just because of its compact size, but also the ability to use the mmWave network. The chipmaker proved earlier this year in their own simulated tests that not all 5G is created equal and mmWave is poised to be best in class. One of the most significant issues being how efficiently the smaller, more compact 5G waves are blocked by passing cars, walls in your home, and even the hand gripping a phone.


text:
Amart has moved its $20.2m media account to WPP’s Ikon Communications from incumbent Carat Brisbane.
The shift in the account comes as the furniture retailer also moved its creative account from Next Thursday to WPP-owned Y&R Brisbane.
Amart has a new media and a new creative agency
Rodica Titeica, general manager of customer at Amart Furniture said it had enjoyed its partnership with Carat Brisbane, but the brand needed new thinking.ADVERTISEMENT
“Amart Furniture has been through an incredible period of positive change in the past four years,” Titeica said. “While we enjoyed a long partnership with Carat Brisbane, we needed new thinking to support our evolving strategy.”
Titeica said she was confident the new arrangement would help the brand achieve its new goals.
“There is a great alignment between the Ikon and Amart businesses and we’re confident they have the right mix of people and strategy to cut straight to the core of what we need to achieve.”
Nielsen Ad Intel reports Amart Furniture spent $20.2m on media between August 2017 and July 2018.
Carat and Ikon have been approached for comment.Vivienne Kelly
Vivienne Kelly was previously the editor of Mumbrella from 2016 to August 2020.topicsamart furnitureCaratcarat brisbaneIkonIkon BrisbaneIkon CommunicationsRodica TiteicaShare Tweet ShareComments: 1Ouch 31 Jul 18
Poor Dentsu and Carat can’t take a trick at the moment. Hopefully they win something soon.
User ID not verified.


text: Sony got hacked. Again. Seems they like it. Or better: liked it but now got enough of it. Sites seemingly hosting (parts of) Sony's Lost Data (100TB!?), are experincing DDOS-attacks. Some say it's Sony behind these attacks, all we know is Amazon stated “The activity being reported is not currently happening on AWS (Amazon Web Service)”.


text: zoom Dubai-based port operator DP World Limited handled 61.7 million TEU across its global portfolio of container terminals during 2015, with gross container volumes growing by 3% on reported basis and 2.4% on a like-for-like basis.According to DP World, growth in 2015 was largely driven by European and UAE terminals.“The portfolio benefited from the ramp-up in London Gateway and the UAE handled a record 15.6 million TEU, representing like-for-like growth of 2.3% for the year,” the port operator said.Utilisation at Jebel Ali remained high at approximately 90% despite the softer volumes in the fourth quarter of 2015, while challenging market conditions in the second half of 2015 led to a flat like-for-like gross throughput growth year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2015.At a consolidated level, DP World’s terminals handled 29.1 million TEU during 2015, a 2.7% improvement on a reported basis. Consolidated like-for-like volumes grew by 1.7% for the year.DP World’s terminals handled 29.1 mln TEU in 2015Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem said that the second half of 2015 was difficult for global trade operators, as various economic headwinds including currency weakness and lower commodity prices adversely impacted trade growth. “Against this challenging backdrop, all our three regions continued to deliver full year volume growth on a like-for-like basis which demonstrates the strength of our portfolio,” Bin Sulayem said.“Despite the uncertain near-term macro environment, and given the high utilisation at our portfolio, we remain confident about the medium to long-term outlook of our industry and continue to invest to meet the future capacity requirements of our customers. As we look ahead into 2016, we look forward to the new capacity at Rotterdam (Netherlands), Mumbai (India), Prince Rupert (Canada) and Yarimca (Turkey) to deliver a full year contribution to our throughput,” he added.According to Bin Sulayem, DP World expects to open its third berth at London Gateway (UK) in mid-2016, adding 600k TEU of new capacity. The additional 2 million TEU at terminal three (T3) Jebel Ali (UAE) should be operational in the second half of 2016.“While trading conditions in 2016 are expected to remain challenging, we believe a portfolio focused towards faster growing markets and origin & destination cargo, coupled with the addition of new capacity can continue to outperform the market,” he said.


text:
Strategies published an article about advertisers and agencies’ expectations towards Sales Houses.
This article is based on the results of Limelight Consulting’s annual Barometer conducted between December 2013 and July 2014.
One of the biggest fear for advertisers is losing their brand value (32% of them). The media agencies have to focus on the global performance, the marketing and on targetting. As the Sales Houses are concerned, they will have to include advertisers’ need. Indeed, they look for real consultants who will be able to work on their issues and bring them creative solutions.
The article highlights the pros and the cons for the RTB market, as well as the digital investments forecasts.
Qualitative study : 18 interviews (8 agencies and 10 advertisers) – Quantitative phase : 647 respondents, including 367 media agencies (40% sales persons, 39% media buyers, 14% CEOs and General Managers) and 280 advertisers (50% responsible for media, 31% media and marketing decision makers, 19% product/group managers). Period: Dec. 2013-Feb. 2014.
Strategies nb 1776 - 07/03/2014


text:
We believe Foxconn has really started to treat their workers like angels. Foxconn just announced they are offering a second time pay rise to their production line workers in Shenzhen, a performance-based monthly increase of 66 per cent from $1,200RMB (US$175). The basic monthly-salary at Foxconn’s Shenzhen plants, which make iPhones and other popular gadgets, was then about $900RMB (US$131). The company’s first pay rise was announced on June 2nd, which were given an increase of 33%. For now, it will be elevated to $2,000 RMB (US$292) as early as October 1st.
New employees under a three-month probation will first get a monthly salary of $1,200RMB. If they pass the probation, they will be eligible for the increase to $2,000RMB. Foxconn also said it would give further upward adjustments to salaries for senior workers, including production line leaders and supervisors, before August 1st.
We are keeping on to have good news on Foxconn, their employees should be happily dancing now, instead of jumping down from the roof. We believe this second wages increase should be related to the rumor on Apple’s subsidies. Well, no matter how it turns out, Foxconn’s worker can now celebrate with the rest of the world on today’s latest iProduct announcement.
Source : [ifeng] (with video news report in Chinese)
Chinese Motorcyclists Love Harley Davidson
Selling Clothing Buttons Online Can Really Make Some Good Money
There Are Too Much Light Pollution Over at Hong Kong Apple Stores
Amazon is the First Foreign Tech Company to Offer Paid Android apps in China


text:
On Tuesday, July 9, 2019, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) office released a sixth Notice of Product Exclusions to Section 301 List 1 products currently subject to a 25% tariff.
News / Supply Chain Alerts
On Saturday, June 29, 2019, the White House announced that the fourth tranche of tariffs on $300 billion worth of imports from China would not be implemented as China and the United States continue to pursue a fair trade deal.
On Thursday, June 20, 2019, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) published the procedure on how to request an exclusion of particular products from the Section 301 List 3 tariffs against China starting on Sunday, June 30, 2019.
On Friday, June 7, 2019, the President of the United States announced that the proposed 5 percent Mexico tariffs would be “indefinitely suspended” as Mexico has “agreed to take strong measures” to curb the flow of Central America migrants into the United States.
On Thursday, May 30, 2019, the United States Trade Representative office released a fifth Notice of Product Exclusions to Section 301 List 1 products currently subject to a 25 percent tariff.
On Friday, May 31, 2019, the President of the United States signed a Proclamation to Modify the List of Beneficiary Developing Countries which removes India from the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) effective June 5, 2019. This action is a follow-up to the initial announcement on March 4, 2019. By statute, a 60-day notice to the U.S. Congress and India was required before the removal from GSP could become effective.
On Friday, May 31, 2019, the United States Trade Representative announced that they intend to publish a notice in the Federal Register that “extends the amount of time certain goods exported from China have to enter the United States before they will be subject to an additional tariff increase from 10 percent to 25 percent.”
On May 30, 2019, in an effort to further address illegal immigration from Mexico, the White House announced that a 5 percent tariff will be imposed on goods from Mexico effective June 10, 2019. This action is being taken under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. Per the announcement, the tariffs will be increased pursuant to the following schedule if Mexico does not take sufficient steps to stop illegal immigration:
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Canada posted on Sunday, May 26, 2019, they would take limited and targeted job action on Monday morning, May 27, 2019, at the Global Container Terminals, GCT Deltaport (Delta) and GCT Vanterm (Vancouver). The ILWU did not move forward with a full-scale strike, however, an overtime ban at the GCT Deltaport and GCT Vanterm was initiated. The ILWU Canada President, Rob Ashton, advised all ports would remain open and no picket lines would go up as contract talks continue. Please refer to the ILWU press release: https://ilwu.ca/ilwu-canada-press-release-may-26-2019/.


text:
Police have leapt to action after a Grimsby shop owner accused of trying to “frustrate the licensing process” withdrew an application to transfer his premises licence to his wife at the eleventh hour.
North East Lincolnshire Council’s licensing authority had been due to examine a request by Jeyathevi Rameshkumar to transfer the premises license for Cartergate News and Wine from her husband Thambiah, but the application was withdrawn on Wednesday.
Humberside Police, who already believed the application was an attempt to circumvent their own previous review application after investigations found he was selling stolen goods including Poundland tuna, have already submitted a new application to review the premises, a council spokesman has confirmed.
Consultation on the application will end on March 5, 2021 and a committee hearing will be held in due course afterwards.
Documents due before the council on Thursday included a statement from the licensing team’s PC Garry Stuart Chapman who said that in December 2020, officers “became aware that the shop was potentially purchasing stolen food items from a known male to sell in the shop”.
Evidence said the man, who is currently on bail charged with a number of offences, would enter Cartergate with a “full shopping bag” but would leave “moments later with the same bag looking less full or empty”.
Items found included multipacks of tuna and jars of coffee, some of which were found on the shop’s shelves.
When confronted, Mr Rameshkuma admitted buying the products and putting them on the store’s shelves. He also admitted that he knew the seller was a “thief”.
Officers said Mr Rameshkuma attended the police station on January 7 to and asked the officer if police would be reviewing the licence and was told papers were being prepared.
However, on the day the papers were submitted North East Lincolnshire also informed Humberside Police it would be rejected, as two applications had been received the day before to transfer the license and change the premises supervisor to Mrs Rameshkumar.
“It is believed the two applications have been made as a result of knowing Humberside Police would apply for a review and this would delay or potentially prevent this from happening,” said the report.
“By transferring the premise licence between husband and wife there will be no significant change in how this business operates now and has operated for a number of years.
“It is extremely likely the premises will continue to engage in behaviour likely to undermine the licensing objectives.”
In August 2019, Mr Thambiah was warned he could lose his livelihood if he appeared before licensing again.
It followed an assault at the shop in which a customer was hit with a hammer by a staff member.
Subsequent visits discovered an ornamental sword and a plastic cricket bat behind the counter.
He was also reported to have put CCTV images up of alleged young shoplifters, with labels such as “human trash”, “human scum” and “cancers of society”, sometimes with names, despite police requests not to do so
Previous reviews were made after reports revealed alcohol had been bought from the shop by underage or drunk street drinkers.
In 2009, licensing members tried to revoke the licence after feeling children’s lives had been put at risk, however, this was overturned at appeal.
Other issues include a knife incident and anti-social behaviour caused by drunk youths.


text:
Google's blackout is just part of it
The world was tipped into brief hysteria on Wednesday as Google Home and Chromecast devices started playing up for millions of users around the world. The subsequent scenes were horrifying: people physically reaching for remote controls, some daring a finger towards a dusty light switch; sources say some folks were seen leaving their homes wrapped in several layers of clothing, ignorant as to the weather’s plans for the day. Total anarchy.
Google responded by acknowledging the problem and announcing that a fix was on its way. At the time of writing our Home devices seem to be back in check, but if yours is taking a little longer (Google said it would take a few hours to reach everyone), it suggests rebooting the device entirely. This seems to have fixed the problem for a lot of people.
Read this: How to reboot Google Home
And yes, we joke about it because this type of “blackout” probably didn’t have a catastrophic impact for most people. If anything, the biggest frustrations were from Chromecast users who rely on Google’s streaming dongle to share content in offices, conference rooms and at home. But it’s these moments that can make the smart home look awfully… dumb.
It was only back in May that Nest had an embarrassing outage of its own
It also comes during a bad week for the Internet of Things: The New York Times just published a story documenting how smart home device have been used as tools of domestic abuse. According to the piece, abusers have used smart cameras to monitor victims, and controlled thermostats, smart speakers and other devices to harass. Not sure how that might be done? Cast your mind back to just a few weeks ago when a Ring doorbell vulnerability was revealed to be letting people still snoop after a password change.
As we bring more and more of these devices into our homes, upgrading our “dumb” appliances for something better, an outage like Google’s or a story like the NYT‘s make stark reminders that these devices are not without faults and vulnerabilities. And the more dependent we become on these technologies, the more impact those faults and vulnerabilities will have.
It was only back in May that Nest had an embarrassing outage of its own, where users across multiple countries were unable to operate locks, alarms and thermostats for three hours. Luckily all these devices could still be operated physically, and for things like locks especially, that should always be a fallback option. But if we are to put our trust in these devices, it’s going to be essential to keep the systems online. A game console network or Slack going down (the latter actually had a blackout the same time as Google) is not the same as a home security system going kaput.
Depending on your home setup, a Google Home knockout can be particularly troublesome, as these speakers are often used as hubs for controlling other smart home appliances. And just as the New York Times piece highlighted how important it is to have total control over the devices in our homes, Google’s and Nest’s outages remind us that there always needs to be a back-up plan.
The smart home is meant to simplify our lives, not complicate or endanger it. We know Silicon Valley loves to move fast and break things – this week has reminded us what those breakages can look like.


text:
Dr. Armul explained during the summer months that dieters “should allow themselves to go out for dessert [bonus points if you walk] as a special occasion “.
“We buy mini ice cream balls and mini dolls, and make mini muffins at home for our toddlers. But it is actually also good portion control for adults, ”he recommended.
Dietitian Sharon Natoli explained there are three foods that are extremely beneficial for weight loss during hot weather: eggs, leafy vegetables and melon.
Sharon explained eggs are a delicious protein to add to your breakfast and also “a rich source of the amino acid tryptophan, which means it helps you sleep better longer by telling your brain to shut down for the night. “.


text:
Fortnite Spider-Man crossover: Miles Morales and Spider-Man 2099 swing into action today
and live on Freeview channel 276
Fortnite has delighted comic book fans by announcing the latest Spider-Man update. It comes just weeks before the release of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse which is the sequel to the Oscar-winning animated movie starring Mile Morales.
The battle-royale have shared that their latest update, launching today (May 23) will feature Miles Morales and Miguel O’Hara (Spider-Man 2099). The pair will join the rankings of playable characters from today, adding to the Star Wars update that launched at the start of May.
Fortnite shared a teaser video to their official Twitter account which showed Miles Morales bursting through a window on a skyscraper before swinging out of frame. Migel O’Hara then steps into the hole before a teaser picture is shared with fans.
Web-shooters are back in the game, as well as new cosmetic items and Spider-Man themed quests. A trailer on Twitter has shown fans what new skins can be expected in the game. The video shows off the new Miles Morales skin with a couple of nods to the previous Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse film.
The video shows Miles and Miguel O’Hara running and jumping across the roofs of several high rise buildings with a cameo from Spider Pig.


text:
Gov. Dan McKee has announced up to $1.7 million to increase internet access for low- and moderate-income households across the state. “Today’s awards will help Rhode Islanders better access reliable and affordable high-speed internet and the valuable resources it provides,” said McKee in a news release.
At the end of every month, we recap the biggest tech and startup happenings in Rhode Island. To get this info weekly (Tuesday afternoons, to be exact), sign up for the Rhode Island Inno Beat newsletter.
In this constantly evolving society, the people in the information technology field, or IT as we call it, are learning new skills and keeping up with the latest trends. Rhode Island Monthly and Tech Collective have partnered up to highlight the amazing work of these tech innovators, as well as the Next Tech Generation winners, the future of the industry.
Tommy Sheehan, president of the Hi-Lo Neighborhood Association, saw kids struggling to do homework in Donovan Manor and other public housing complexes during the early days of the COVID pandemic because they did not have an internet connection. That’s when he began his crusade to provide internet service for the residents of the Donovan Manor high-rise building on Chapel Street and the single-story low-rise buildings of Chapel Terrace across the street, as well as for other Newport Housing Authority residents at developments like Park Holm.
A team of students from Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design took home the ‘Most Creative Concept’ award after presenting at NASA’s 2021 Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing Idea Challenge last week. The team was selected as finalists previously in January and were awarded $90,000 to develop concepts and technologies to address the problem of moon dust during space missions.
A couple of years ago, North Kingstown resident John MacKrell came up with an idea for a tech-enabled next-day laundry pickup and delivery service at customers’ fingertips. Now HappyNest Inc., with its business headquarters on Post Road in East Greenwich, is operating with 76 laundromat partners across 29 states and serving an average of 7,000 customers a month.
Women are responsible for more than half of online microbusinesses started in the U.S. since the onset of the pandemic. Black people and women have started more of these very small businesses during the pandemic than they did prior to it, according to GoDaddy’s Venture Forward initiative, which polled 4,000 online microbusiness owners in July. Nine out of 10 of these entrepreneurs have fewer than 10 employees. (NYSE: GDDY)
At the end of every month, we recap the biggest tech and startup happenings in Rhode Island. To get this info weekly (Tuesday afternoons, to be exact), sign up for the Rhode Island Inno Beat newsletter. Let’s take a look.
1. American City Business Journals is launching the Providence Business Journal, which will be a close partner with us here at Rhode Island Inno in covering startups and innovation in the Ocean State.
A Rhode Island entrepreneur is trying to create a community-focused alternative to video-game streaming titans like Twitch and YouTube, and is looking for investment from the community along the way. RitualMotion, founded by Rhode Islander Dana Paul in 2018, just launched its new GUILD (Gamers United In Live Discussion) platform, which Paul said is focused on “peer to peer” video experiences.
The founders of a Swedish digital clinic are looking to treat Rhode Islanders for their knee and other chronic joint pain. Joint Academy, cofounded by Jakob Dahlberg in 2014 with his father Leif Dahlberg, has already seen more than 70,000 patients across the globe through its treatment program, which connects patients with a licensed physical therapist through chat and video calls with the company’s app.


text:
Achieving ambitious mandatory recycled content targets for plastic packaging under the PPWR requires a functioning and defragmented European plastics recycling market. Therefore, EuRIC calls for avoiding measures that have the exact opposite effect when finding a common position in the trialogue. Removing waste entries EU3011 and EU48 would increase the administrative burden by requiring unnecessary notifications for many plastic waste shipments and jeopardise the competitiveness of the EU recycling industry. When competing with virgin raw materials, a level playing field for recycled plastics also requires minimising the cost of notifications within the EU. In addition, a mandatory recycled content target for all plastics will be essential to ensure investment stability and planning certainty for the industry.
Moreover, the establishment of EU harmonised end-of-waste criteria is crucial for better re-introduction of high-quality recycled products (e.g., pellets, powders and flakes) into new products and will be key to the development of the European recycling industry.


text:
Written by Jen Finn
HARTFORD -- In the wake of five reported illnesses, the state agriculture department has shut 22 shellfish beds in Norwalk and Westport and instituted a so far voluntary recall of oysters and clams harvested since July 3.
The culprit is Vibrio parahaemolyticus, naturally occurring bacteria that is generally seen more on the west coast. It does, however, thrive in warmer water, and the underlying question is whether water temperatures this summer are responsible for the outbreak and if they are, whether climate change is poised to make things worse.
"It's a question that needs to be looked at," said Kristin Derosia-Banick, an environmental analyst with the department's bureau of aquaculture. "We just don't know."
Last summer, when water temperatures ran warmer than usual due to the unseasonably warm winter before, there was one reported case of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in Connecticut, though an outbreak (more than one case) occurred in Oyster Bay on Long Island's north shore.
The bacteria is in the same family as cholera, causing diarrhea, stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting, headache, fever, and chills that are usually non life-threatening except in those with compromised immune systems.
Read the full story at The Hour>>
National Fisherman Live: 3/10/15
In this episode, Online Editor Leslie Taylor talks with Mike McLouglin, vice president of Dunlop Industrial and Protective Footwear.
National Fisherman Live: 2/24/15
In this episode:
March date set for disaster aid dispersal
Oregon LNG project could disrupt fishing
NOAA tweaks gear marking requirement
N.C. launches first commercial/recreational dock
Spiny lobster traps limits not well received
The Gulf of Maine Research Institute is partnering with restaurants throughout the region for an Out of the Blue promotion of cape shark, also known as dogfish. Starting Friday, July 3 and running until Sunday, July 12, cape shark will be available at each participating restaurant during the 10-day event. Cape shark is abundant and well deserving of a wider market.
As a joint Gulf of Mexico states seafood marketing effort sails into the sunset, the program’s Marketing Director has left for a job in the private seafood sector. Joanne McNeely Zaritsky, the former Marketing Director of the Gulf State Marketing Coalition, has joined St. Petersburg, FL based domestic seafood processor Captain’s Fine Foods as its new business development director to promote its USA shrimp product line.


text:
ABOUT 90 minutes into a high-speed scouting expedition through the artists’ studios of Gowanus, Brooklyn, Alex Tryon paused. In a small subdivided studio taking part in an annual event known as the Gowanus Open Studios Tour, her eye fixed on some acrylic paintings of neon-colored plastic squirt guns. They had a weird presence, cheery but menacing.
Her partner, Scott Carleton, leaned over and said, conspiratorially, “I like the squirt guns.” Ms. Tryon whipped out her iPhone and began taking pictures. “That goes to the Twitter feed,” she said. “It lets people know the Artsicle team is out on the streets, and this is what we’re seeing.”
Artsicle is the ear-catching name for an offbeat venture, an online business that rents inexpensive art cheaply. Ms. Tryon, 26, and Mr. Carleton, 27, have taken aim at novice collectors with small budgets, limited art knowledge and no appetite for the intimidating atmosphere at many established art galleries.
They are trying an end run around the gallery system, an idea that has enticed a number of entrepreneurs recently. This spring, Artify It began offering an art subscription service, on the Netflix model, in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles.
“I thought the art market was ready for innovation and disruption,” said Idan Cohen, one of several investors who put a total of $390,000 into Artsicle last November. “I thought that Artsicle could reach young people not exposed to the art world yet, but who still want something that looks good in their home, to which they have an emotional attachment, that has a story behind it.”
Ms. Tryon knows their predicament. Just a few years ago, she went shopping for a print by Jock Sturges, known for his photographs of adolescents and their families taken at California communes and nudist colonies.
She got nowhere fast. “The galleries made it very clear that they were not very interested in a young buyer with a budget of $1,000,” she said. “I encountered a lot of attitude everywhere I went. At the same time, I met a lot of young people interested in art. There seemed like a disconnect, an inefficiency in the market.”
“Inefficiency in the market” is business code for “moneymaking opportunity.” Ms. Tryon thought of creating an online business that was inexpensive and accommodating, what she calls a “Zappos for art.”
Mr. Carleton became her unlikely partner in the venture. The two met when she was studying communications and art history at the University of Pennsylvania and he was majoring in mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon. On a weekend trip to Philadelphia with a classmate, he ended up sleeping on Ms. Tryon’s couch. “Uninvited,” she pointed out.
A long-distance relationship developed. After college, Mr. Carleton found engineering work in the nuclear division of Westinghouse Electric. Ms. Tryon, whose nickname is short for Alexis, was hired by American Express, where her liaison work with top Manhattan restaurants dovetailed with her and Mr. Carleton’s enthusiasm for good food, craft beers and fancy cocktails. The couple have taken a solemn vow to eat at the world’s 50 best restaurants by the age of 50. (The tally so far: four.)
The relationship became short-distance when Mr. Carleton got out of the nuclear-reactor business, moved to New York, rented an apartment with Ms. Tryon and plunged into Web site development.
To test his code-writing skills, he badly needed a real-life Web project, something like Ms. Tryon’s art scheme, which had no name until Mr. Carleton spontaneously blurted out “Artsicle” while driving on a freezing winter day.
The word means nothing in particular, but the two partners thought it sounded friendly and fun. “I knew it was good when someone told me, ‘I don’t remember your name but I do remember Artsicle,’ ” Mr. Carleton said.
The first version, with work by 10 artists, was unveiled in December 2010, but within a few weeks the two partners decided to shift the emphasis to renting rather than selling. The business began to gain traction.
In the early days, the company shipped about 30 works a month. That number is closer to 100 today, as business clients have signed on. The roster of artists has grown to 150, with 3,000 works in the online inventory, most of them small- to medium-size paintings.
New users go to the company’s Web site, at artsicle.com, and start by taking a visual quiz that offers clues to their taste. After they click on images of cars, kitchens and landscapes, a magic curator somewhere in the cyberdepths assembles a portfolio of works that are likely to please.
“The art you like has nothing to do with your social set and your friends,” said Ms. Tryon, who refined her quiz by e-mailing questions and sample art to the site’s most active users. “I found that the questions ‘What did you do last weekend?’ and ‘What kind of couch do you have?’ were the most closely correlated to art taste.”
Clients who rent pay $25 to $65 a month, depending on the size of the work. After living with the art for a while, they can renew the rental, trade in the old for the new or take the plunge and buy, usually for $500 to $2,500. Shipping is free.
“It lets you live with a piece of art that you would not give a chance to otherwise,” said Alexandra Portnova, a 31-year-old software developer who lives in Williamsburg and rented a painting six months ago. “In New York, there’s limited wall space, and this is a way to enjoy and look without making a commitment.”
Artsicle keeps 50 percent of the rental price, and 30 percent of sales, compared with the 50 percent typical at most galleries.
Artsicle is not Amazon. It has a grand total of six employees, three of them part-time. They toil in a small office on Broadway just north of 26th Street, where their neighbors down the hall include the Mystery Writers of America and PetFlow, an online pet-food delivery service.
After raising new capital, Ms. Tryon and Mr. Carleton hired Dan Teran, 23, to cultivate new artists and run the Artsicle blog. With a degree in international relations from Johns Hopkins, he was not the obvious choice. But since moving to New York, he had infiltrated the art and fashion worlds by assisting his photographer roommate at runway shows.
Mr. Teran carries the title of creative director, but at Artsicle, titles are pretty much meaningless. When clients ring the customer-service line, anyone with a free hand answers the phone.
The Artsicle team constantly trolls neighborhoods like Bushwick and Gowanus in Brooklyn, or Long Island City in Queens, indulging in marathon look-fests when events like Go Brooklyn or the Gowanus tour expose hundreds of artists to view.
Williamsburg is pretty much finished as hunting ground, they agreed. “Surprisingly, Bushwick is getting a little bit snobby,” Mr. Teran said. On the plus side, Red Hook is starting to show promise.
Sometimes, they can make a discovery right at home. A few years ago, while bartending at an auction to benefit Figment, an art project, Mr. Carleton and Ms. Tryon put in a winning $400 bid for a painting by Jon Coffelt, their first joint purchase. “We found him a week ago, and now we’re trying to get him on the site,” Mr. Carleton said. Mr. Coffelt signed with Artsicle on Monday.
Most of the time, the Artsicle team sees bad art. A lot of bad art. Acres and acres of it. Despite this, Ms. Tryon does not flag. She has an easy social manner, an ultradiscreet nose stud and the ability to seem pleased by everything she sees, regardless.
“I can go all day,” she said, as she cruised past a porcupine sculpture made from genuine Montana roadkill. She pointed to a wall densely populated with semiabstract acrylics. “Now here’s something we are really short on,” she said. “And they come in nice sizes.”
The three Artsiclers huddled over the official Gowanus route map, plotting the next move in a building-to-building trek that would last several more hours.
“I like these open studios around Halloween,” Ms. Tryon said, reaching for one of the free treats offered by most artists. “You get lots of candy.”


text:
If you have not been impacted by the current retail apocalypse, take into account your self fortunate. Over the previous few years, firms have been hit exhausting by quite a lot of challenges: the COVID pandemic, provide chain points, labor shortages, and rising inflation. In consequence, even a few of the most established retailers like Walmart and CVS have needed to shut places across the U.S. And now, a preferred grocery retailer chain is gearing as much as shutter a few of its shops nationwide. Learn on to seek out out which grocer is closing places beginning subsequent month.
READ THIS NEXT: This Fashionable Retail Chain Is Closing All of Its Shops as of Sept. 30.
Grocery shops haven’t been spared by the challenges throughout the retail area. Again in Might, six Complete Meals Market shops throughout the U.S. have been closed by Amazon, which had bought the upscale grocery store chain in 2017. The corporate advised Bloomberg that the closures have been a part of an everyday efficiency and progress potential analysis of particular person shops so as “to place Complete Meals Marketplace for long-term success.” Shortly after that, three Sprouts Farmers Market places have been shuttered in June.
And earlier this month, Lidl confirmed it might quickly be closing a number of “underperforming” places, beginning July 31. Because it seems, the grocery chain closures are removed from over.
Kroger, a Cincinnati-based grocery firm that operates shops all through the U.S., might be closing at the least two places within the coming weeks.
A Kroger in Little Rock, Arkansas, is likely one of the places being shuttered, native Fox-affiliate KLRT just lately reported on July 25. The opposite retailer is a Kroger in Plano, Texas, in line with Neighborhood Influence, a sequence of month-to-month newspapers servicing cities in Texas and Arizona. The Plano Kroger doesn’t have a cut-off date but, however firm officers advised KLRT that the Little Rock Kroger will formally shut on Aug. 13.
For extra up-to-date data, join our
every day e-newsletter.
The 2 Kroger closures will not be indicative of a significant nationwide pattern. In actual fact, the places are getting shuttered for various causes. Based on the corporate, “important revenue loss” is liable for the choice to shut the Little Rock Kroger. “This retailer has misplaced important revenue for a few years and if left open, the losses are projected to get even worse going ahead,” worker Sheleah Harris advised KLRT.
The Plano closure, however, was initially introduced in mid-April. On the time, The Dallas Morning Information reported that the grocery store is planning to shut its retailer on Coit Highway in Plano as a part of a “main relocation” with plans to open one other location in the identical space to be run by the identical retailer employees.
The Little Rock Kroger shouldn’t be the one retailer the corporate has closed within the final yr for monetary causes. Again in March, a Kroger in Campbellsville, Kentucky, was shut down as a result of it had been unprofitable for years, and “monetary projections [showed] that the shop would undergo even larger losses sooner or later,” firm spokesperson Erin Grant advised native Fox-affiliate WDRB on the time. Simply two months later, a Kroger in Columbus, Ohio, was shuttered over misplaced income, native CBS-affiliate WBNS reported in Might.
That very same month a yr prior, the Kroger Firm, which owns quite a lot of different grocery chains along with its namesake chain, additionally closed a number of shops in Los Angeles after the town voted in favor of a $5-per-hour hazard pay mandate for grocery staff. The corporate closed two Ralphs shops, and one Meals 4 Much less location on Might 15, claiming the brand new hero pay legislation made it “financially unsustainable to proceed working underperforming places,” in line with LAist.


text:
Planet has started conversations with Amazon as a possible partner for future projects and the first collaboration between the two companies will be presented in Bari, Italy, on 12th April.
At the occasion, the audiobook by the Italian writer Gianrico Carofiglio will be presented and a video will be distributed via the augmented reality bracelet developed by Planet.
Planet Idea has collaborated in the development of the AudioStage App, which combines audiobooks and augmented reality to create a unique user experience.
The company also collaborates with important multi-utilities, OTT Companies and TelCo both in Italy and abroad, with the shared vision of building tomorrow’s life together.
“We are committed to working closely with key partners in various fields aiming at creating an ecosystem designed around the customer, through technology, digital transformation, sustainability and social innovation,” says Angelo Piazzolla, Chief Business Development Officer at Planet Idea.


text:
Fertitta Interactive, the online arm of Las Vegas-based Station Casinos’ owner Fertitta Entertainment, will launch its free-to-play Ultimate Gaming site this week. The site will be powered by games developer CyberArts, which Fertitta Interactive acquired in October after scuttling its prospective joint venture with Full Tilt Poker following the events of Black Friday. The first game on the site will be Ultimate Poker, which will make its Facebook debut this Friday. Fertitta Interactive chairman Tom Breitling told eGamingReview that a bingo product would follow the poker launch. A mobile app is planned for release later this year.
At a press conference in Vegas announcing the deal, Breitling said the company would draw heavily on the parallels between online poker and Fertitta Entertainment’s Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) mixed martial arts franchise, run by Frank Fertitta III and Lorenzo Fertitta (pictured right). “[MMA] is almost the same demographic as online poker.” Ultimate Gaming CEO Tobin Poster said the UFC’s broad social networking reach – 8m Facebook ‘likes’ and 2.4m Twitter followers – will enable the company to ramp up awareness of the gaming site tout de suite. The official promo campaign will kick off July 7 during the UFC 148 broadcast on the FX Channel.
Fertitta Interactive has applied for a Nevada online poker license, and Breitling says the company will be ready to switch from free-play to real-money “from Day 1” following the regulatory okay. CyberArts founder/Fertitta Interactive CTO Chris Derossi said the company’s mission was “to provide an authentic experience for people who care about the game. As we move from the social side of gaming to a real money space, we will have serious players.” (Serious, or Cereus? The first association many online poker players will likely make with Ultimate Poker will be Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker, the two scandal-plagued Cereus Network sites that have been injected with formaldehyde ever since the Black Friday legal actions. Just sayin’.)
Like most US-based casino outfits looking to branch out into online poker, Breitling is “fully supportive” of a federally regulated scheme. “We would prefer an online poker-only bill, which would make all other games illegal. But it’s moving very quickly on a state-by-state approach.” Breitling says the company is prepared to follow a “partnership model” on a state-by-state rollout. (Before Fertitta acquired CyberArts, the software outfit had inked a partnership with Skip Bronson’s US Digital Gaming to tackle the US on a state-by-state basis.) Regardless, Breitling is thinking beyond US borders, believing the site represents a “global opportunity.”


text:
Microsoft's first home console, the original Xbox, turned 18 years old today. The console first launched in North America on November 15, 2001, followed by Japan on February 22, 2002 and in Europe and Australia on March 14, 2002.
The original Xbox sold 24.65 million units worldwide. Looking at the regional breakdown, it sold 15.77 million units in North America, 7.17 million units in Europe and 0.53 million million units in Japan. It also sold an additional 1.18 million units in the rest of the world.
Unsurprisingly, Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 are the best-selling games on the platform. Halo 2 sold eight million units lifetime and Halo: Combat Evolved, a launch title for the Xbox, sold five million units.


text:
Among food trucks, there is an implied rule: Vendors that serve the same cuisine don't park next to each other. Or even on the same block. The reason is obvious: They tend to cannibalize each other's business.
On Friday, however, a handful of food trucks plan to blow up that rule as part of the fifth annual Meat Week. BBQ Bus, Carnivore BBQ, Curley's Q, Hardy's BBQ and Rocklands Barbeque and Grilling Co. will all serve smoked meats at one location: the LivingSocial space at 918 F St. NW.
For better or for worse, the food truck operators will be sans vehicles during the second annual Barbecue Food Truck Face-Off. They'll be spread throughout LivingSocial's building trying to impress the general public, as well as a crew of judges, to determine who produces the best curbside 'cue in the area.
"It's basically going to be a catering face-off," quips Mike Bober, the food blogger and founder of the D.C. chapter of Meat Week.
Unlike every other pit stop during Meat Week, the Barbecue Food Truck Face-Off comes with a price tag. It'll cost you $49 to enter, and tickets are available only through LivingSocial. For the price, Bober notes, you'll get 15 samples of barbecue, a PBR tall boy to wash it all down, access to barbecue demos (from butchering to wood sources) and a chance to vote for the People's Choice awards. Last year, the public crowned BBQ Bus the grand champion.
This year, Bober has lined up an official panel of judges to bestow awards, too. The panel includes Pork Barrel BBQ co-founder Heath Hall, The Post's Smoke Signals columnist Jim Shahin and yours truly. Meat Week founders Chris Cantey and Erni Walker, who launched the first event in 2005 in Florida, will arrive in Washington for the food truck contest and may be drafted to serve on the official judging panel, Bober notes.
"We wanted it to be bigger and better than last year," Bober says about the D.C. edition of Meat Week.
The meat-centric week officially kicked off Sunday at Urban Bar-B-Que Co. in Rockville and continues through Feb. 1, when smoked-meat enthusiasts gather at Mr. P's Ribs & Fish at Sixth Street and Rhode Island Avenue NW, where they will not only enjoy some of D.C.'s best spare ribs but gawk at Mr. P's new truck.
All events except the Barbecue Food Truck Face-Off are free and open to the public. Each person is responsible for paying his or her own check at every location. For more information, check the Meat Week site.
Monday, 6:30 p.m., Hill Country Barbecue Market, 410 Seventh St. NW.
Wednesday, 7 p.m., Pork Barrel BBQ, 2312 Mt. Vernon Ave., Alexandria.
Thursday, 7 p.m., Smoke BBQ, 4858 Cordell Ave., Bethesda.
Friday, 6 p.m. Barbecue Food Truck Face-Off at LivingSocial, 918 F St. NW. Tickets available through LivingSocial for $49 each.
Saturday, noon, Mr. P's Ribs & Fish, corner of Sixth Street and Rhode Island Avenue NW.


text:
-I'm really pleased to tell you today all about the brand new iPhone 4S.
-That pretty sums up the Apple announcement, it's the 4S, not the new iPhone 5 that everyone wanted.
-But don't be deceived because inside, it is all new.
-Apple analyst and consumers alike were speculating the press conference at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California would yield a new phone entirely not just an update to the existing model.
-I can just to say that the announcement was a bit under whelming.
A lot of people expected iPhone 5with the case changed, something might able a little sleeker and substantially different.
This isn't just substantially different.
This is an incremental improvement.
-Some of those incremental improvements include changes to the camera.
It boasts more features and can now shoot 1080p high definition video.
-For many customers, this iPhone 4S would the best still camera they've ever owned, the best video camera they've ever owned and they have it with them everywhere they go.
-It also comes with new voice recognition software call Siri.
-What's the best sushi?
-I found a number of sushi restaurants 18 of them are fairly close to you.
-I think it's something that Apple is now catching up to maybe surpassing what android has offered.
It's too early to say whether it's going to be a bit a hit.
-The iPhone 4S will on sale on October 14 here in the US and worldwide in December.
The base model at 16 gigs will cost $199.
The most expensive for 399 for 64 gigs.
This version of the iPhone is also enabled for worldwide compatibility and is not available on Sprint network in addition to AT&T and Verizon.
-Apple has been moderately aggressive with pricing here.
I mean, this is Apple, you're always gonna pay a little bit more like you can get a decent amount for your money.
-For those people not ready to upgrade their iPhones, Apple execs explained new changes that will be made to iOS 5, the operating software for existing phones and tablets.
We have a new notification center.
You can get to it anytime by swiping your finger down from the top and you get all of your notifications.
Notifications are no longer blocking.
So, if you're playing a game and notification comes up, it just suddenly comes with the top, doesn't interrupt you, you can keep on playing the game, it will dismiss itself.
-iOS 5 will be available starting October 12.
In Francisco, I'm Kara Tsuboi, cnet.com for CBS news.
Tech accessibility is lagging. Here's why that needs to change


text: Illinois and Massachusetts are just the two most recent states that are now considering some kind of new tax on sugary drinks. Illinois Senate Bill 9 would apply a new penny-per-ounce tax on any beverage containing 5 or more grams of sugar that is sold in the state. The tax, which is being viewed as a means by which to balance the state budget, is projected to raise $560 million statewide. It will be charged directly to retailers and will hike the price of a standard 2-liter bottle of soda by almost 70%! As many as 3 different versions of a sugary drink tax have likely been filed in the Massachusetts legislature for consideration in the 2017/2018 session. Notwithstanding that the session formally began the first week in January, new legislative proposals have yet to be uploaded for public viewing so we cannot give you all the specifics on pending sugary drink taxes in the Bay State. Last year, Philadelphia implemented a 1.5 cent per ounce tax on sugary beverages, becoming the first major city in the country to do so.


text:
WORCESTER, Mass. (WWLP)– The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) reports that adult use marijuana establishments have surpassed $4-billion in gross sales since stores opened in November 2018.
The amount passes the $3-billion mark reported on May 18, 2022. Read the breakdown of sales and product distribution here.
In 2022 Massachusetts saw the openings of 71 marijuana retailers, 3 marijuana couriers and 4 marijuana delivery operators, generating $1,483,898,510 in sales for calendar year 2022.
“Consumers’ demand for tested, quality cannabis products remains strong since Massachusetts became the first East Coast state to open adult-use stores in 2018 and delivery service in 2021,” Commission Executive Director Shawn Collins said. “As new jurisdictions come online, I am confident that licensees in the Commonwealth will maintain the competitive edge by demonstrating to peers what it takes to operate a safe, effective, and equitable cannabis industry.”
Marijuana Establishments and Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers sell products that have been tested and have detailed packaging and labeling information about product contents. They provide safe access for adults and patients seeking alternatives to buying on illegal markets. The cannabis tax revenue is used for programs including youth prevention campaigns and community reinvestment funds.
Cannabis industry sales information for the state is available by visiting the Commission’s Open Data Platform.


text:
PUTRAJAYA: The Government is considering lowering retail fuel prices, in line with falling global crude oil prices, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said.
He said the Cabinet discussed the possibility on Wednesday, a day after crude oil slipped to US$122.19 (RM402) a barrel.
Petrol prices were raised by 41% and diesel by 63% in early June to curb a runaway subsidy bill when crude prices were hovering around US$140 (RM460.60) a barrel.
“We are looking at it very, very carefully. Of course I would be so happy if we can reduce it,'' the Prime Minister told AP in an interview here Thursday.
But he said the Government was wary of lowering prices at the pump just to have to hike them when oil markets rose again, Abdullah said.
Crude has fallen over the last three weeks from a record high of US$147.27 per barrel on July 11, in part, on expectations that the spike in prices over the last year has begun to dampen demand by the United States for petrol.
But the slide has since halted and sweet crude for September delivery was holding steady at US$126.81 (RM417.20) per barrel Thursday in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Abdullah said the Government was conducting a study to find out if retail fuel prices can be brought down and would announce a decision “at an appropriate time.''
He acknowledged that rising inflation was weighing heavily on the Government by handing the Opposition a way to criticise its economic policies.
“This has been regarded as a weakness of the Government today for allowing prices to go up. I am upset also myself. We are paying more than before. It is a burden to us,'' he said, adding that the Government was taking steps to reduce inflation.
Abdullah said the Government was making efforts to boost income levels of the poor as well as improve transport services and seek cheaper sources of power.
Bank Negara has raised projections for average inflation for this year to between 5.5% and 6% from 4.2%.
Also, the Government announced last week that consumer prices spiked by 7.7% in June compared with the same month last year. It was the steepest climb in 27 years, spurred by higher gasoline prices.
[Source: The Star Online]
Well, let wait and see.
Or do we have to like wait forever...?


text: Amazon and Wal-Mart have a clear leadership position in online grocery already. However, only 2% of grocery purchases are made online. For the retail industry at large, only 10-15% of retail purchases happen online. That compares to the majority of sales happening in a physical store. While online grocery has been slow to catch on, the reporter in this Forbes article makes a bold claim that Amazon and Wal-Mart will together move 20% of the grocery market online in the next year. However, I don’t see this happening so quickly. Plus, why would more grocery purchases happen online than traditional retail purchases? The broader ecommerce market has developed over two decades to a point where it accounts for no more than 15% of total retail sales.


text:
20 Sep 2017
07 Sep 2017
SINGAPORE, 7 September 2017 – Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) will today release a joint stamp issue by Singapore and Indonesia, commemorating the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
08 Aug 2017
SINGAPORE, 8 August 2017 – Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) has released a 50th Anniversary of ASEAN stamp that is part of a joint launch by ASEAN postal operators to commemorate the milestone.
03 Aug 2017
SINGAPORE, 3 August 2017 – Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) has released a new set of stamps that depicts Singapore life through colourful illustrations of familiar morning scenes in the heartland.
10 Jul 2017
SINGAPORE, 10 July 2017 – A new set of stamps featuring four pieces of wedding jewellery inspired by the rich ethnic traditions of Singapore will be released by Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) on 12 July 2017.
28 Jun 2017
SINGAPORE, 28 June 2017 –Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) has released a new set of stamps that seeks to encourage positive social values among children with illustrations of adorable baby animals.
12 Jun 2017
Harnessing technologies like near-field communication, SmartPost will equip SingPost’s postal staff with new skills and tools to elevate their operational capability and efficiency
10 Jun 2017
SINGAPORE, 10 June 2017 – Singapore Post (SingPost) today celebrated Iftar with more than 100 staff, management and union representatives, sharing the evening meal that ends the daily Ramadan fast.
09 Jun 2017
Through an island-wide network of kiosks that were revamped in December 2016, a web portal and a mobile app, SAM enables access to postal and other retail services anytime and anywhere through smartphones and other mobile devices.
05 Jun 2017
Singapore, 5 June 2017 – Singtel and SingPost announced the launch of a nationwide recycling programme in conjunction with World Environment Day. ReCYCLE, Singapore’s largest electronic waste (e-waste) recycling programme by reach, encourages people to dispose of their redundant mobile or internet-related devices at ReCYCLE bins or by mailing them through any post box.
29 May 2017
Singapore, 29 May 2017 – Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) is offering festive postage rates for Hari Raya Puasa. These will be applicable for all stamped and franked greeting cards posted between 3 June 2017 and 25 June 2017.
Promotional postal rates are offered to encourage the sending of greeting cards during Singapore's four major festivals: Chinese New Year, Hari Raya Puasa, Deepavali and Christmas
17 May 2017
SINGAPORE, 17 May 2017 – Lazada, the leading online shopping destination in Southeast Asia, and Singapore Post Limited (“SingPost”), the country’s postal and eCommerce logistics service provider, today announced that Lazada Singapore has moved its warehouse operations to SingPost Regional eCommerce Logistics Hub in Tampines Logistics Park.
12 May 2017
Revenue rose 17.1 per cent to S$1.35 billion for the full year ended 31 March 2017
25 Apr 2017
SINGAPORE, 25 April 2017 – Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) will release on 26 April 2017 a new set of stamps featuring four kingfisher species that may be seen in Singapore.
27 Mar 2017
Singapore, 28 March 2017 -- Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) signed a Property Management Agreement yesterday with CapitaLand Mall Asia, CapitaLand’s wholly owned shopping mall business, to manage the retail mall at the new SingPost Centre. Their scope of work will include overseeing the pre-opening of the mall, marketing and promotion, lease management and facilities management.
24 Mar 2017
SINGAPORE, 24 March 2017 – Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) and TUMCREATE will on 28 March 2017 commence a road trial of a prototype electric three-wheeler that is environmentally friendly and features innovations to boost mail delivery efficiency.
13 Mar 2017
SINGAPORE, 13 March 2017 – Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) will release on 14 March 2017 a new set of stamps commemorating 50 years of National Service in Singapore (NS50).
10 Feb 2017
SINGAPORE, 10 February 2017 – Singapore Post Limited (“SingPost”) today announced its results for the third quarter ended 31 December 2016.
10 Feb 2017
SINGAPORE, 10 February 2017 – Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) will release on 17 February 2017 a new set of stamps celebrating milestone anniversaries of three organisations that have greatly contributed to the community, especially among youth.
09 Jan 2017
SINGAPORE, 5 January 2017 – Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) will release on 6 January 2017 a new set of stamps celebrating this Chinese New Year that marks the start of the Year of the Rooster.
03 Jan 2017
Singapore, 3 January 2017 – Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) is offering festive postage rates for Chinese New Year. The rates will be applicable for stamped and franked greeting cards posted between 7 January 2017 and 29 January 2017.


text:
Here’s a round-up of activities by the Climate Policy Initiative that are useful in the leap up to COP.
Interactive Report & Webinar: Moving to a Low-Carbon Economy Could Free up Trillions
Some worry that a switch away from fossil fuels could have a significant cost to the global economy and undermine the financial system. New research conducted by CPI for the New Climate Economy project demonstrates that with the right policies, a transition to a low-carbon energy system could free up trillions of dollars over the next 20 years to invest in better economic growth.
Read the interactive report HERE.
Join the webinar on November 21st to learn how moving to a low-carbon economy can free up trillions.
New Animated Video: New Models for a Low-Carbon Electricity System
New finance and business models for a low-carbon electricity system in the U.S. and Europe can save consumers, investors, and…
View original post 101 more words


text:
SAN FRANCISCO--PacketVideo, creator of an interconnected multimedia streaming suite dubbed TwonkyMedia, will officially push out its mobile complement at the end CTIA's Fall 2010 conference on Friday, but that didn't stop the company from showing off the app at a swanky cocktail party in a SOMA loft a bit ahead of schedule.
Twonky Mobile is rather aptly described by the diagram at right, which we swiped off the Twonky Web site. In layman's terms, the app turns any Android phone into a really fancy universal remote for just about any networked media device on the market today, … Read more
SAN FRANCISCO--Sprint kicked off its CTIA presence today by announcing a user customization feature for its newest Android phones.
Sprint ID will transform the standard Android home screen with user-specified wallpaper, widget selection, and features. You'll be able to create up to five identities per handset and program each with your preferred options. As you switch between IDs, the home screen will change accordingly. For example, a work ID might have instant access to your e-mail while a home ID may offer a shortcut to your music player.
Though it may sound like your standard Android customization, Sprint ID … Read more
Up until this morning, Android users in need of up-to-the minute finance information were best served by the Google Finance app. Now, Yahoo's aiming to offer another easily accessible option with its own popular Finance app, which finally made its way onto the mobile OS earlier today.
Yahoo Finance for Android appears to carry over many of the most useful features from the Web service, including real-time quotes and a customizable stock watch list. You also get access to Yahoo Finance portfolios, company stats and news, and Tech Ticker videos.
The app is currently available in the United States, … Read more
Not long ago, I wrote an article aimed at helping music fans enjoy free audio from a variety of online streaming sources. Of course, I'm a firm believer in using the Internet to discover new music. But there is a threshold between discovery and entertainment for many listeners, and I think paying for a subscription music service is a great way to cross it--especially if you want to take your music "to go" on mobile devices.
There are a variety of pay-to-stream options on the Web, from Slacker's $4.99 Radio Plus service, which lets you … Read more
Skype calling is now available as a free download on Android-based devices, the Internet telephony company announced today.
The Skype for Android software allows users to make calls to Skype accounts, mobile phones, or landlines. Users can also send and receive text messages via the application when communicating with Skype friends. Those who want to keep all their content in one place can sync their address book with Skype. The company also said that users will be able to receive calls on their Skype online number.
But there are some limitations. For one, Skype for Android is only available to … Read more
Mobile-device typing has changed significantly with the iPhone's functional touch-screen keyboard, Android's reasonably advanced word-prediction system, and Swype's technology for sliding fingers over letters. But as any touch typist or hunt-and-peck tapper knows, mobile typing is still … Read more
Browser usage statistics for September provide a look at who's gaining clout on the Web: Google's Chrome, twin mobile powerhouses Apple iOS and Google Android, and Microsoft's IE9.
Google's Chrome browser continued its steady rise in usage on NetApplications' network of thousands of Web sites, which get tens of millions of visits monthly, increasing from 7.5 percent in August to 8 percent in September, the analytics firm said.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer remains the top-ranked browser, but its share dipped back below 60 percent, sinking from 60.4 percent to 59.7 percent. Second-place Firefox was essentially flat at 23 percent. Apple's Safari rose a tenth of a point to 5.3 percent. Opera kept its 2.4 percent share.
In what's turning out to be a trend for Android applications, Google's car home app today became available on the Android Market.
The app, which has come as a built-in system application in Android since version 2.0, lets Android owners use their phone as a GPS tool and a hands-free phone system when attached to something like a car dock. Now it exists as a standalone application that can be updated separately of Android system releases. This means if Google needs to release a quick fix to the app, it doesn't need to push out a … Read more
Amazon is opening an app store, HP tells Android it's not you it's me, and apps that can save your life. Join Justin Eckhouse and Jessica Dolcourt as they dig into the stories making news in the Android world this week.
Texting while driving is a serious safety problem, so much so that the activity is now banned in 30 states in the United States.
How dangerous is it? The U.S. Department of Transportation says that drivers who do anything with a handheld device increase the risk of getting in an injury crash by four times--a concept that can be easy to ignore if you've gotten away with this unscathed.


text:
Steel City Pops were a great refreshment for a cold day. Owner Jim Watkins, who has most of his locations in the Dallas / Ft. Worth area said: “Unfortunately, our store wasn’t operating at the level of profitability needed to sustain the location. It had nothing to do with our people or our products,” Watkins said. “It’s a combination of poor retail industry conditions and very high rents. We are grateful to the San Antonio community and their support of our business.”
SCP had two San Antonio locations. One downtown at 812 S. Alamo and at 17619 La Cantera Pkwy. You also might have seen their carts at festivals and The Pearl during hot months.


text:
Vivek Jalan, Partner with Tax Connect Advisory Services LLP, said “This would have a big impact on corporations who take guest houses on rent or take residential houses on rent for the use of their employees”.
“Furthermore, going by experience in such cases, the input tax credit (ITC) of GST on this rent paid by corporates may be disputed by the GST department arguing on the basis of Section 17(5)(g) of the CGST Act 2017 where the ITC NSE 1.07 % of GST paid for any service for personal consumption is blocked,” Jalan added.
Vivek Jalan, Partner with Tax Connect Advisory, said collection would further rise due to activities of GST scrutinies, summons, investigations, searches and seizures on the basis of data provided by DGARM, the data analytics wing of the GST Council. On, April 1, as many as 35,000 taxpayer’s scrutiny assessments were sent to field formations for initiation. This will be followed up by GST audits which will ensure enhanced collections.
Suspending/cancellation of GST number when there is a mismatch between GST returns, blocking of Input Tax Credit( ITC) of taxpayers where there is a ‘reason to believe’ that some suspicious activity is taking place, etc., have ensured that compliances under GST have improved.
The above, “seems to be a clear indication to trade and industry that robust compliances is the way ahead under GST. The requirement of current business is that it has to concurrently keep its GST and income tax books sanitised and be scrutiny ready at all times,” Jalan added.


text:
Bangalore based Trell experience discovery platform which assists you in finding all the happening things around you has secured $1.25 in Seed round funding which was led by BEENEXT and WEH Ventures. The other investors include individuals likes of Rajan Anandan, MD of Google India, Anupam Mittal, Founder of Shaadi.com. Sprout Venture Partners too joined the funding round. The company had earlier raised $250K in funding from the likes of Aprameya Radhakrishna, founder of TaxiForSure; Nirav Choksi, chief executive of supply chain finance tech firm CredAble; Shanti Mohan, CEO of deals platform LetsVenture; Nitin Gupta, CEO of Ola Money and founder of payments firm PayU India; and Amit Lakhotia, former vice president of business at Indonesian e-commerce firm Tokopedia among others.
The firm plans to utilize the fresh capital in scaling and strengthening their product, technology, and data science capabilities.The company was started by IIT alumni Pulkit Agarwal, Prashant Sachan, Arun Lodhi, and NITIE alumnus Bimal Kartheek Rebba in 2017. The firm creates short, engaging video contents to help users discover unique places and palates.
Commenting on the funding, Sachan said, “There is a rising trend of exploring local and travel experiences among the 230 million urban millennials in India. Also, these users have short attention spans and prefer visuals over text; the exponential increase in engagement in short videos and video-first platforms indicate the same, be it for education, news or entertainment. Their need to discover new experiences around them has to be served differently, as the existing platforms are using conventional and dated ways to do so,”
Co-founder Pulkit Agarwal said that “The content is all visual, geo-tagged and has a strong storytelling element, which makes it contextual and immersive, and this differentiates it from other competitors. It will offer an intuitive way for its users to discover real-life experiences around them." The firm says that it has half a million downloads on Android as well as iOS platform where it engages over 200,000 monthly active users. Apart from the mobile apps, the firm attracts users through their web presence as well.
BEENEXT's founder and managing partner Teruhide Sato says that they see a massive market for Trell. “We’re very confident about team Trell’s understanding of what we see as a massive market opportunity. Moreover, we feel the co-founders have strong technical backgrounds, incredible user growth strategies and a highly data-driven approach. I believe Trell will offer a new way for travel & local discoveries," said Sato.


text:
TARGO launches its Oculus Go application to distribute its original documentaries directly on the platform. Twice a month, TARGO will premiere new documentaries on extraordinary stories directly in its Oculus Go application. This is an important addition to TARGO distribution channels.
Since the brand is already published in the most popular VR applications across all headsets platforms, the ambition is to anchor its presence in the consumer side of the VR market. “It’s an important milestone for TARGO that will increase our visibility among VR users and allow us to connect directly with our audience,” says Victor Agulhon, TARGO co-founder.
TARGO will publish its signature stories on the application. The media has built its reputation releasing fascinating and magnetic documentaries on unsuspected topics: tractors racing competition, real-life ghost hunting, a freefall dancer….
TARGO documentaries tell the stories of people who follow their inner voices: those who do not follow, those who differ. “We have identified a type of content that really fits virtual reality in terms of format and narratives” says Chloé Rochereuil, TARGO editor-in-chief.
The service will be the home to all of TARGO documentaries, providing its users with a comprehensive experience. It will give them the perspective to explore the depth of TARGO experiences while giving them a privileged access at the new releases. Developing an application specifically for the Oculus Go makes sense in the context of the Oculus Go being a great consumer headset and a terrific product to experience 360° videos.
“We’ve seen a change in the way the people use headsets with the Oculus Go. Users are simply more engaged. They use it more often and for longer periods of time” says Victor Agulhon, TARGO co-founder. With TARGO being one of the leading media companies in the world to publish regularly great virtual reality content, the release of an Oculus Go application is a step forward offering more engaging content on the platform.


text:
Finland is to become the first country to move to mass market implementation of the Verified by Visa service, as Luottokunta and OKO Bank prepare for nationwide roll out of the card organisation's 3-D Secure technology.
From Q2 2002, OKO Bank's nearly 700,000 online banking customers will be able to register for the Verified by Visa service.
Luottokunta's digital point of sale (POS) service for e-commerce merchants will support Visa 3-D Secure technology enabling its existing 420 online merchants to accept authenticated secure payments with Verified by Visa. It plans to increase this number and enable the majority of Finland's e-tailers to accept authenticated payments.
Kurt Andersen, general manager, Northern Europe, Visa EU says: "This is quite an achievement for Finland to be the first country in Europe to have its leading banks choose Visa's 3-D Secure technology as the best way to provide consumers and merchants with the confidence they need to shop online safely and conveniently."
Under the Verified by Visa service, cardholders confirm their identities using, for example, a password in the same way that today they provide their signature when shopping in the high street. The issuing bank authenticates the cardholder during the sale and notifies the merchant that the buyer is legitimate.