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Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’
Health Groups Ask Federal Trade Commission to Investigate Merck’s Use of “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” Characters to Market Children’s Claritin®
Wednesday, June 20th, 2012
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Cara Wilking, 617-373-5699
Today, the Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI) at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, joined by 10 other organizations, sent a letter to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking that it investigate Merck & Co. Inc.’s Madagascar 3-themed marketing campaign for its flagship pediatric allergy medication, Grape-Flavored Chewable Children’s Claritin®.
“Marketing medicine directly to children at all, much less through entertainment tie-ins, is well beyond the pale and is not only inherently unfair, it is downright dangerous,” said Mark Gottlieb, executive director of PHAI.
To promote its June release of the Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted movie, Dreamworks licensed its Madagascar characters to Grape-Flavored Children’s Claritin®. It also licensed the characters to market other children’s foods including fruit-flavored Airheads candy, General Mills (Betty Crocker) Fruit Snacks, and McDonald’s Happy Meals. The use of the same characters on candy and gummy snacks and Children’s Claritin® creates the impression that the medicine is candy and could lead children to over consume the product at great risk to their health.
The FTC regulates over-the-counter (OTC) drug marketing and has protected children from marketing of vitamin supplements, and by extension OTC drugs, since 1977 when it found the use of Spider-Man to market vitamins to children to be unfair and deceptive (In re Hudson Pharmaceutical Corp., 89 F.T.C. 82 (1977)).
Merck’s campaign utilizes customized Madagascar 3 packaging including “5 Free Stickers.”with Madagascar 3 characters and containing “5 Free Stickers.” Mail-in movie ticket voucher promotions were prominently placed at retail outlets such as Walgreens and downloadable Children’s Claritin® Madagascar-themed activity games further targeted children. Merck also enlisted its “Children’s Claritin® Mom Crew” members to create social media buzz. Mom Crew members held Madagascar-themed viewing parties for children featuring product samples, coupons, DVD’s, popcorn containers and, Madagascar stickers and then featured the children’s parties on their blogs and websites.
Cara Wilking, a PHAI senior staff attorney who authored the letter, added, “the FTC stepped in and stopped this practice a generation ago. Apparently OTC drug-makers like Merck need to be reminded that targeting kids is unfair, deceptive, and unacceptable.”
PHAI, Berkeley Media Studies Group, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Center for Digital Democracy, ChangeLab Solutions (formerly Public Health Law & Policy), Corporate Accountability International, Eat Drink Politics, Public Citizen, The Public Good Law Center, Public Health Institute and Prevention Institute request immediate action by the FTC to stop this practice before it becomes widespread.
PHAI’s Friedman and Gottlieb Co-author: “Soda and Tobacco Industry Corporate Social Responsibility Campaigns: How Do They Compare?” in PLoS Medicine
Tuesday, June 19th, 2012
PHAI senior staff attorney Lissy Friedman and executive director Mark Gottlieb collaborated with Lori Dorfman, Andrew Cheyne and Asiya Wadud of the Berkeley Media Studies Group to produce this article published today in PLoS Medicine.
Soda companies’ PR campaigns are bad for health:
Health advocates need to organize strong public health campaigns to educate the public and policymakers about the dangers of both sugary beverages and the misleading industry corporate social responsibility campaigns that distract from their products’ health risks, according to US experts writing in this week’s PLoS Medicine.
In a Policy Forum article, the authors (media and public health experts from the Berkeley and Boston, USA) examined prominent campaigns from industry leaders PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, that, according to the authors, have embraced corporate social responsibility (CSR) with elaborate, expensive, and multinational campaigns.
The authors say that while soda companies may not face the level of social stigmatization or regulatory pressure that now confronts Big Tobacco, concern over soda and the obesity epidemic is growing.
In response to health concerns about their products, the authors argue that soda companies have launched comprehensive CSR initiatives sooner than did tobacco companies but that these campaigns echo the tobacco industry’s use of CSR as a means to focus responsibility on consumers rather than the corporation, bolster the companies’ and products’ popularity, and to prevent regulation.
However, unlike tobacco CSR campaigns, soda company CSR campaigns explicitly target young people and aim to increase sales.
The authors say: “It is clear that the soda CSR campaigns reinforce the idea that obesity is caused by customers’ “bad” behavior, diverting attention from soda’s contribution to rising obesity rates.” They continue: “For example, CSR campaigns that include the construction and upgrading of parks for youth who are at risk for diet-related illnesses keep the focus on physical activity, rather than on unhealthful foods and drinks. Such tactics redirect the responsibility for health outcomes from corporations onto its consumers, and externalize the negative effects of increased obesity to the public.”
The authors argue: “Emerging science on the addictiveness of sugar, especially when combined with the known addictive properties of caffeine found in many sugary beverages, should further heighten awareness of the product’s public health threat similar to the understanding about the addictiveness of tobacco products.”
They conclude: “Public health advocates must continue to monitor the CSR activities of soda companies, and remind the public and policymakers that, similar to Big Tobacco, soda industry CSR aims to position the companies, and their products, as socially acceptable rather than contributing to a social ill.”
This article is one in a PLoS Medicine series on Big Food that examines the activities and influence of the food and beverage industry in the health arena. The series runs for three weeks beginning 19 June 2012 and all articles will be collected at www.ploscollections.org/bigfood. Twitter hashtag #plosmedbigfood
Funding: This research was supported by the Healthy Eating Research program (http://www.healthyeatingresearch.org/) of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, grant #68240. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011
Prepared by Cara Wilking, J.D., Staff Attorney
Santa Clara County, CA and the City and County of San Francisco, CA enacted ordinances requiring restaurants to meet nutrition criteria for children’s meals that use incentive items such as toys to drive child consumer demand. Neither law bans the use of toys or other incentive items, and both laws are designed to protect children from being baited into requesting unhealthy meals. The Governor of Arizona recently signed into law a provision barring local governments from putting any limits on the use of “consumer incentive items” in “retail food establishment marketing.” Florida currently has an even broader law on the Governor’s desk that would prevent local control over “all matters related to the nutritional content and marketing of foods offered” at public food and lodging establishments. As chronicled by the LA Times, both of these laws were carefully orchestrated by the restaurant industry in response to so-called “toy bans.” In point of fact, both laws go far beyond Happy Meal toys.
In addition to protecting vulnerable child consumers, local governments regulate business conduct under their police power and zoning authority for a number of reasons including aesthetics, public health and public safety. Arizona’s consumer incentives law essentially exempts food retailers from any local regulation that may have an impact on their business activities related to consumer incentives. “Consumer incentives” are broadly defined to include: “any licensed media character, toy, game, trading card, contest, point accumulation, club membership, admission ticket, token, code or password for digital access, coupon, voucher, incentive, crayons, coloring placements or other premium prize or consumer product” associated with a meal served by or acquired from a restaurant, food establishment or convenience store. The legislation pending in Florida strips local control over “all matters related to the nutritional content and marketing of foods offered” at public food and lodging establishments.
Many communities maintain the character of their communities through local aesthetic-related zoning laws. Imagine a small city with a historic downtown preserved by local zoning ordinances to protect the aesthetic character of the city. The community becomes concerned when a quick service restaurant starts putting large signs in its windows marketing a combo meal with a wrapper that one can scan with one’s phone to get points towards a future purchase. A local authority goes out to talk to the franchise owner and ask him to remove the signs as they are not in keeping with the local zoning ordinance. The restaurant owner refuses to remove the signs. Under the legislation enacted in Arizona and pending in Florida, the city would be powerless to challenge the practice.
The as yet to be enacted Florida law, is so broad that it would prevent local governments from requiring additional nutritional disclosures to consumers about the calorie or sodium content of restaurant menu items. In addition, some states delegate consumer protection authority to city and county attorneys. Such authority was used by a city attorney to make the first formal challenge to misleading “Immunity” claims on children’s cereal marketed at the height of the swine flu outbreak. The pending Florida law arguably would even exempt any food marketing by a restaurant or public lodging from local city or county attorney enforcement of deceptive and unfair business practices laws.
A recent story by Reuters run in a number of news outlets analogized the current legislation to “cheeseburger” or “commonsense consumption” bills, also sponsored by the restaurant industry. Cheeseburger bills are on the books in over 20 states and bar personal injury claims against food makers and restaurants for injuries related to long term over-consumption of food. Many state cheeseburger bills, however, do not immunize food sellers from liability when they knowingly violate laws pertaining to marketing, distributing, advertising, labeling or sale of the goods such as state consumer protection statutes prohibiting deceptive, unfair or unconscionable trade practices. The very purpose of local ordinances tying child incentive items to nutritional quality is to protect children from the fundamentally unfair and deceptive use of toys to generate child requests for unhealthy foods. The Arizona and Florida laws contain no such exemption to allow local intervention to protect vulnerable consumers from deceptive and unfair food marketing.
The law in Arizona and the pending legislation in Florida, strip local governments not only of the ability to protect children from harmful business conduct, their expansive nature jeopardizes local control over many other important business conduct issues. These laws fundamentally change the rules of the game that local governments have depended on to maintain community character and to protect their communities.
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
On December 2, 2009, Mark Gottlieb and Cara Wilking presented a poster to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Healthy Eating Research program grantees in Tucson, Arizona.
PHAI is exploring how state consumer protection laws can be used to address unfair and deceptive food and beverage marketing practices directed toward children or those who purchase food and beverages for children. Such state laws may permit private citizens, attorneys general or prosecutors to bring actions consumer fraud.
Recently, Connecticut state attorney general Richard Blumenthal launched an investigation into the Smart Choices labeling program. The eight large food companies that participated in the labeling program (ConAgra Foods, General Mills, Inc., Kellogg Company, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, Inc., Riviana Foods, Sun-Maid and Unilever) have agreed to remove the program’s logo from their products, at least during the investigation.
PHAI’s findings will be available by the Fall of 2010.


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COVID-related mail delays at Post Office impacting businesses, residents across Tri-State
EVANSVILLE, Ind. — U.S. Postal Service operations in Evansville have slowed because of the coronavirus pandemic, further complicating an already disjointed holiday season for countless area residents and business owners.
With COVID-19 cases soaring, local officials — including Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke on Friday — has encouraged residents to buy holiday gifts online.
Nothing about 2020 has been easy, however, and delayed mail delivery is another reminder.
Sara Rhoades is among those in a bind. She owns The Confectionery, an Evansville-based maker of homemade soap and skincare products.
Rhoades wholesales products to about 70 boutiques across the country, and when items aren't delivered in time for the holidays, it's a major problem.
"Two or three days ago my mailman came in, and every time I give him packages he kind of rolls his eyes at me," Rhoades said. "He said the warehouse is full in Evansville. He said they were sending things to North Carolina to get processed, and then they are shipping things back to Evansville."
The U.S. Postal Service, Rhoades said, almost always offers the best price on smaller packages she wholesales. She said having to use UPS or FedEx for the rest of this year would impact her financially, but she will likely have no other choice.
Rhoades said one package, which is destined for Illinois, has been warehoused since Dec. 1. She said she could drive it to its destination easier.
She said she was told in the summer there would likely be holiday season postal delays, so, while difficult, it's also not been a surprise.
"I totally get why it’s happening," Rhoades said. "This summer I was shipping packages from my home, and we went through at least four mail carriers."
The delays are also impacting the most basic mail deliveries. In Union County, Kentucky, for example, customers of the county's water district are noticing their bills aren't arriving.
December bills were mailed on Dec. 1.
"We have been told there is a delay at the Evansville post office," the utility said in a Facebook post. "All bills are due by the 20th. If you do not receive your bill by then or the time you would normally pay, please contact our office and we will give you balance information. You may also look up your balance online at www.unioncountywaterky.com."
A U.S. Postal Service spokesperson said COVID-19 is complicating the distribution of mail this holiday season in the Evansville area and across the country.
Susan Wright, a corporate communications official, emailed a statement to the Courier & Press about the current state of package and mail delivery. Local postmasters in the region either didn't return calls or asked reporters to contact Wright.
Here is the text of Wright's email:
"The 640,000 employees of the U.S Postal Service across the nation are proud to provide an essential service to our customers during the pandemic and to meet unprecedented challenges of this extraordinary year.
"We have faced challenges recently due to COVID-19 at the same time mail volumes have dramatically increased. We have taken steps to address issues caused by the pandemic as we approach our busiest weeks, including hiring seasonal employees and allocating employees to facilities that need additional resources.
More:Large-scale vaccine operation is already underway in Vanderburgh County
More:COVID: There may be another source of infections in Indiana — federal executions
More:'Collectively out of balance': COVID-19 taking toll on mental as well as physical health
"There has already been progress at the Evansville postal facilities, and we are confident that our processing and delivery will return to normal levels quickly.
"As we do each year, the Postal Service reminds customers to send mail and packages early to avoid glitches. (Wright said the website about.usps.com/holidaynews contains information about expected arrival dates based on when items are sent).
"We thank our customers for their continued support, and we are committed to making sure gifts and cards are delivered on time to celebrate the holidays," Wright's email concludes.
Any delays experienced at the Evansville distribution center impact delivery in a large bistate region.
Wright said the Evansville location handles mail from zip codes starting with 477 (Evansville), 476 (Southern Indiana), 475 (north of Evansville), 424 (Henderson and Madisonville area), 423 (Owensboro area) and 420 (Paducah area).

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Christine Duffy, president and ceo, CLIA, has outlined the potential of the cruise industry in Europe and globally in a speech at the annual ITB tourism industry conference in Berlin.
APT’s first-ever river-cruising program in Myanmar (Burma) on the newly built AmaPura will include companion fly-free deals on selected departures, TD Cruise Update can exclusively reveal.
All Leisure Holidays Group has appointed Discover the World as its new GSA in Australia and NZ, as well as Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
The founder and original owner of Captain Cook Cruises, Trevor Haworth AM died Sat, aged 82.
Europe’s largest luxury hotel barge cruising company, European Waterways, has added new shore tours to its itineraries in Scotland and France designed to appeal to the peaking numbers of Australian passengers.
In A world first, Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth will celebrate Sydney’s Mardi Gras with a drag queen perched on a giant sparkly stiletto as the liner sails into Circular Quay on Sat morning.
Shannan Ponton, the fitness expert of ‘Australia’s Biggest Loser’ fame, has been appointed as Carnival Cruise Lines’ first ever Australian ambassador.
Carnival Australia has been singled out for specific recognition from Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop for its work with AusAID in helping to develop Pacific Island nation economies.
The consensus among Australia’s leading cruise consultants is that fares will keep falling for the foreseeable future, according to a quick survey conducted by TD Cruise Update.
Celebrity Cruises has released more details about its upcoming deployment of Celebrity Century to Sydney for the ship’s farewell southern summer season.


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The Carbon Dated research reveals that multinational companies will cut suppliers for failing to curb carbon emissions, with 78% of MNCs planning to remove suppliers that endanger their carbon transition plan by 2025.
For SA suppliers who fail to keep pace with MNC partners, this could mean a loss in export revenue of $33,7bn. However, the study also reveals a $1,6tn market opportunity for global suppliers who decarbonise in line with MNC net-zero plans.
According to the research, which looks at the risks and opportunities for suppliers in emerging and fast-growing markets as large corporates transition to net-zero, 15% of MNCs have already begun removing suppliers that might scupper their transition plans. In total, MNCs expect to exclude 35% of their current suppliers as they move away from carbon.
The study also found that:
• Supply chain emissions account for an average of 73% of MNCs’ total emissions
• More than two thirds (67%) of MNCs say tackling supply chain emissions is the first step in their net-zero transition, rather than focusing on their own carbon output
• Suppliers in 12 key emerging and fast-growing markets can share in $1,6tn worth of business if they can remain part of MNC supply chains
• 90% of MNCs with a supply chain in South Africa have set emission reduction targets for their suppliers, asking for an average reduction of 31% by 2025
Racing against the clock to hit their net-zero carbon goals, MNCs are increasing the pressure on their suppliers to become more sustainable, with companies based in emerging and fast-moving markets facing the biggest challenge. Some 64% of MNCs believe emerging-market suppliers are struggling more than developed market suppliers with their net-zero transition, and 57% are prepared to replace emerging market suppliers with developed market suppliers to aid their transition.
MNCs are concerned that emerging-market suppliers are failing to keep pace with for two key reasons: insufficient knowledge and inadequate data. Some 56% of MNCs believe that the lack of knowledge among emerging market suppliers (41% for developed market suppliers) is a barrier to decarbonisation.
With MNCs struggling with the quality of data, two-thirds are using secondary sources of data to plug the gap left by supplier emissions surveys and 46% say that unreliable data from suppliers is a barrier to reducing emissions.
The study also reveals that the current approach taken by MNCs could create a $1,6tn opportunity for the net-zero club: those businesses reducing emissions in line with MNC net-zero plans. This represents a major opportunity for net-zero-focused suppliers across the 12 markets in this study, but it also quantifies the potential losses to companies not embracing net-zero transition.
|Annual export revenue at risk
MNCs are also willing to spend more on net-zero products and services. Some 45% said they would pay a premium, of 7% on average, for a product or service from a net-zero supplier.
MNCs are exploring other ways to help their suppliers transition to net zero. Some 47% are offering preferred supplier status – a sales advantage – to sustainable suppliers, and 30% are offering preferential pricing. Some MNCs are going further, offering grants or loans to their suppliers to invest in reducing emissions (18%) or data collection (13%).
|How are MNCs supporting their suppliers to reach net-zero?
|Offering preferred supplier status to sustainable suppliers
|Investing in new technologies on behalf of their suppliers
|Helping educate them on effective energy efficiency strategies
|Helping educate them on reducing waste from their operations
|Providing access to industry specialists who will help suppliers reduce emissions
|Investing in clean energy infrastructure in key suppliers' local markets
|Preferential pricing for measurably sustainable suppliers
|Grants or loans to invest in reducing emissions from operations
|Grants or loans to invest in data collection
Bill Winters, group chief executive of Standard Chartered comments: “It’s no surprise that as multinational companies transition to net-zero, they are starting to look to their suppliers to help. However, suppliers – especially those in emerging and fast-growing markets – cannot go it alone. MNCs need to incentivise their suppliers to help them kick start their transition journey, but governments and the financial sector have a role to play too by creating the right infrastructure and offering the necessary funding.
Kweku Bedu-Addo, CEO for Standard Chartered South Africa and Southern Africa, says, “There is growing acceptance that decarbonisation is vital for the future of the planet Earth to remain hospitable as we have known it for millennia. What is required is the collective will to act with urgency to manage the transition towards net zero in a coordinated approach such that it minimises severe short-term economic dislocation across markets from stranded assets, unviable industries and activities.”
Carbon Dated surveyed 400 sustainability and supply chain experts at MNCs across the globe.


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Datapipe Expands Global Presence with First Data Center in Russia
New data center in Moscow strengthens company’s European presence to meet global, enterprise demand, and growing need for e-commerce throughout Russia
Jersey City, NJ – July 12, 2016 – Datapipe, a leader in managed cloud services for the enterprise, today expanded its presence in Europe with the opening of a new data center in Moscow, Russia. Designed in part to accommodate the growing demand for e-commerce throughout Russia, the new state-of-the-art center will provide Datapipe enterprise clients with global reach, scale, and organizational agility across the European region.
In 2015, 30 million online shoppers in Russia generated an estimated 148 million orders. With 160 million small packages sent to online consumers in 2015, up 10 percent from the previous year, Russia’s domestic online retail market is growing in real terms. The location of Datapipe’s Moscow data center lets global enterprises operate and sell in Russia while abiding by the country’s data sovereignty laws.
“The new center in Moscow continues our strategic global expansion allowing our clients to take advantage of the rapidly growing e-commerce industry in Russia,” said Robb Allen, CEO. “Many enterprises are focused on Russia in anticipation of the 2018 FIFA World Cup – this expansion enables us to more effectively partner with them.”
The new Moscow center is the fifth world-class data center in the Datapipe Europe network. Datapipe’s complete range of managed cloud services are available throughout Europe, including Datapipe Managed Cloud for AWS, Datapipe Managed Cloud for Microsoft, and the company’s hosted private cloud solution, Stratosphere. Clients can move data efficiently and securely between each Datapipe Europe location and all the other facilities in the global Datapipe network.
For more information on the new data center and to see a complete listing of Datapipe’s global world-class facilities, visit https://www.datapipe.com/data_centers/.
A next generation MSP, Datapipe is recognized as the pioneer of managed services for public cloud platforms. Datapipe has unique expertise in architecting, migrating, managing and securing public cloud, private cloud, hybrid IT and traditional IT around the globe. The world’s most trusted brands partner with Datapipe to optimize mission-critical and day-to-day enterprise IT operations, enabling them to transform, innovate, and scale. Backed by a global team of experienced professionals and world-class interconnected data centers, Datapipe provides comprehensive cloud, compliance, security, governance, automation and DevOps solutions. Gartner named Datapipe a leader in the Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting.


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ALBANY, N.Y.--Fifteen gas stations in New York state, including three controlled by major oil companies, have been fined $63,500 for increasing prices 25 percent or more after Hurricane Katrina, according to an Associated Press report about the case pursued vigilantly by State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office.
Spitzer investigated 80 gas stations following complaints by consumers of prices immediately after Katrina. While the 15 gas stations fined represent the more serious cases, investigations against other retailers reportedly continue.
According to a report by the state Deputy Attorney General Martin Mack, a subsidiary of Getty Oil Co. increased its price at a Binghamton, N.Y.-area station from $2.65 per gallon before Aug. 29 to $3.52 after Aug. 29;. BP Amoco increased the price at a Bronx, N.Y. station from $2.79 per gallon to $3.51 after Aug. 29; Lukoil Co increased the price at its Bronx, N.Y. station to $3.49 per gallon from $2.79. Other prices were set by regional dealers or gas station owners. In Westchester County, Hilltop Service Station in Shrub Oak, N.Y. increased its price from $2.69 a gallon to $4 a gallon.
The companies were fined under the state's business law. Since there is no specific state crime against price gouging, the fines were civil actions, Mack told the Associated Press.
"When disaster strikes, state law requires that price increases be linked directly and proportionately to increased costs," Spitzer said in a statement. "This investigation has found numerous instances of unwarranted price increases. In fact, many retailers appear to have used the disaster as an excuse to gouge consumers."


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- Global Shortage of Chips
- HFC Orders to Resume in May or June
- Affected Subscribers
Weeks ago, NBN Co announced that they would stop taking new hybrid fibre coaxial or HFC orders for several months. However, that break won't last long because recent reports said that they would restart taking orders on new hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) services by at least June.
Global Shortage of Chips
The company responsible for the National Broadband Network (NBN) stopped HFC sales earlier this month because of the global shortage of chips. They even released a statement that it could be several months until they could resume.
NBN Co said that the COVID-19 pandemic causes an increase in consumer demand for devices--this puts pressure on silicon foundries.
"[This has] impacted the manufacture and supply of the integrated chips that are used across various industries, including the telecommunications industry."
NBN Co's supplier of HFC NTDs has been unable to secure sufficient chipsets supplies to fulfil its commitments. That's the reason why NBN Co says that it will stop taking orders for a while.
HFC Orders to Resume in May or June
The global shortage of chips can be a big problem for NBN Co and RSPs. But fortunately, NBN Co said in a recent statement that its NTD supplier would resume taking new HFC orders to recommence from the end of May or early June.
However, the timeline could still change depending on the demand. About 50,000 new orders are delayed because of the four-month pause. That's why it's more likely that not everyone can get a new HFC connection immediately.
But despite the delays, there's no need to panic. NBN Co also said it had made a special provision for subscribers waiting for a new HFC connection to remain connected to their existing phone or internet service. The company is still offering new HFC connections using its remaining HFC NTD supply.
NBN Co said that the pause would affect fewer subscribers since more than 1.9 million premises were activated in the HFC footprint, out of a target of 2 million premises for FY21.
Furthermore, NBN Co states that they would "continue enabling orders to be placed for premises that will be reconnecting to the NBN HFC network (i.e. if the previous occupier of the premises had been connected to the NBN before moving)."
NBN Co also assures that they have sufficient stocks of HFC modems for medically vulnerable subscribers and emergency services organisations where no other legacy service exists.


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Student Designers Shine at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week
Filed under: Fashion
December 14, 2014
Fashion designers have a dream—to present their creations on the runway. For 13 students and graduates of The Art Institute of New York City, their dedication and creative focus made that dream a reality. They debuted their Spring/Summer 2015 collections at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in September 2014 in front of an international audience of potential employers and clients. Our ongoing partnership with Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week is now in its third season, providing the prestigious platform for our star designers to shine even brighter.
Watch the video to learn more about the designers, their collections, and their premiere on the runway.
Learn more about our programs.Get Brochure


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The money will back two initiatives: $1.5 million to endow a chair to support the Fashion School's director and a matching grant of up to $1 million to support the study-away program for fashion school students.
"This incredible gift from the Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation will greatly enhance global experiences for our fashion students," said Kent State President Beverly Warren, in a news release. "The foundation's support of our Fashion School elevates the professional trajectory of both faculty and students and positions Kent State as a distinctive global innovator."
Kent State's Fashion School is rated among the best fashion institutions in the United States and worldwide. It is currently ranked No. 3 in the U.S. for design and merchandising by Fashion-Schools.org and No. 19 in the world by The Business of Fashion's 2016 Global Fashion School Ranking.
The school is the first in the country to require a study-away experience for all fashion students. Opportunities to spend a semester in Florence, Italy, with the world's best designers, work in the Fashion School's New York City Studio, and participate in programs in Paris and Hong Kong help make Kent State fashion students globally competitive.
"Peg Morgan, our founder, had a lifelong interest in fashion and always deeply valued education," said Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation President Rick Kellar in a release. "The Fashion School at Kent State is a perfect match for her creative and personal passions. Peg's legacy of support for Kent State will continue to be carried out through this gift, accelerating the ascension of Kent State as the premier global educator of future fashion industry leaders."
Warren formally announced the donation on April 29, at the 2017 Annual Fashion Show, FS2 presented by Michael Kors. The annual fashion show highlights the talents and creations of the Fashion School's design and merchandising students. At the event, Don Witkowski, a Kent State alumnus and president of men's at Michael Kors, was inducted into the Fashion School's Hall of Fame.
cleveland.com is a partner of the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. Every dollar buys four meals for the hungry. Click here to donate.


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They’ll be able to creep up on all those cheeky crims if this goes ahead. Oh yes, the Police are thinking about using the mighty Tesla Model S for enforcing the law. Though don’t get too excited – you won’t be seeing one on Police Interceptors just yet. That’s because this is potentially happening in America. Los Angeles, to be precise.
Yup, the LAPD likes the thought of electric motoring. And why not? The Model S is supremely fast, it’s incredibly safe and there’s enough room in the back for the bad guys. Plus, it’d be really easy for the officers to recharge their tazers.
Model S – Police trials
It turns out this isn’t some sort of whimsical fancy. The LAPD have actually had a couple of Teslas on the force for a few months, albeit as a trial. The P85D models were used for evaluation, so the force could work out if it would be able to cope with the stresses of police life. Most importantly though, the LAPD also said it was looking at the possibility of a Tesla high pursuit vehicle. Hear that? That’s the sound of hundreds of cops, giddily jumping about at the idea. The idea of a Police car. A Police car that has ‘Ludicrous Mode’. That’s a winner, right there.
Model S – Taking it further
Now, it seems the LAPD are taking things more seriously. A Model S will be kitted out as a fully functional police vehicle, so it can be used on active duty. No simple wrap and lights here, this will be the real deal. And, should it prove it has what it takes, a Model S could be on the force as soon as 2017.
However, don’t get too giddy. There might be a few, but that’ll be it. The Tesla range is still too costly for the Police to heavily invest in. But, when the prices fall, the LAPD has said it will be waiting. Until then, we’re just thrilled to see such a car make it into the world of law enforcement. It’s like RoboCop, with wheels!


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As ERP market uncertainty eased slightly last week with the conclusion of PeopleSoft’s acquisition of JD Edwards, the fate of a key local project remains up in the air.
Swaffield has no comment on whether the PeopleSoft-JDE merger — and Oracle’s continuing bid to buy PeopleSoft — is having any influence on the casino’s decision.
“At this stage we’re not commenting; it’s an internal process.”
In December Swaffield told Computerworld half a dozen vendors had responded to the tender and the system would be implemented early in 2004.
Oracle’s effort to buy PeopleSoft, meanwhile, looked increasingly shambolic last week. Letters in US boss Larry Ellison’s name “reassuring” PeopleSoft New Zealand customers that Oracle had their interests at heart were mistakenly mailed before getting US approval (Oracle NZ jumps gun with Larry letter). The letters are intended to set right “misunderstandings” about Oracle’s intentions, says Oracle New Zealand marketing manager Nigel Murphy.
Oracle was reported as planning to stop selling PeopleSoft products when it first made its bid for the company. Murphy says “certain statements might have been misinterpreted or misunderstood”, with the help of PeopleSoft executives.
Trade & Enterprise New Zealand made a decision to stick with JD Edwards financials when the government agency was created from the merger of Trade NZ and Industry NZ on July 1. Wellington-based CIO Phil Hayward says Trade NZ was a JDE site, and the decision to deploy it within the new organisation was made before PeopleSoft made its move to acquire JDE.
Extending JDE, which has been “more of a data migration” than a full rollout, is costing less than $100,000. If PeopleSoft — or potentially, Oracle — puts the software out to pasture after only a couple of years, Hayward is satisfied the agency will have had its money’s worth.
“Nothing will happen for a couple of years,” Hayward says.
Even if it does, it will not be a major issue. “It’s only a financial system; we’re not using a huge amount of functionality.”
PeopleSoft hasn’t made its plans for JD Edwards’ portfolio clear. JD Edwards 5 includes ERP, CRM, supply chain and business management products.
According to Gartner Australia analyst Kristian Steenstrup, speaking to Computerworld when the acquisition plan was announced in early June, a merger of the two would work if their products are integrated.
“It would make sense to merge the products into a single architecture, a single technology, to make one marketable, deliverable product.”
While product development decisions are yet to be made, and the fate of Oracle’s bid is still months away, the conclusion of the JDE acquisition at least clears up one area of uncertainty. According to the head of IT at medical products supplier Johnson & Johnson, Kevin Thrower, that will be a relief for everyone.
“I pity anyone who is making an ERP purchase at present,” says Thrower, “because when there’s change there’s uncertainty, and possible price rises and retrenchments.”
Johnson & Johnson isn’t in the market for systems. The company is both a JDE and SAP user, and the New Zealand subsidiary takes its lead from the US. Thrower says there is a trend in the company towards consolidation of platforms, but no decisions have been held up by the PeopleSoft-JDE-Oracle situation.
“But I’m not sure what might happen in the future,” he says.
Pharmaceutical company Merck Sharp & Dohme is in the unusual position of being both a JDE and PeopleSoft customer. Finance and IT director Shelley Fraser says PeopleSoft’s HR software was a local choice, while JDE financials are managed from the company’s Singapore office.
“Locally we don’t have anything to do with JDE,” Fraser says.
The merger of the two could lead to better deals for the company, she says.


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People ask me all the time. Will Facebook be here in a few years?
A report by NBC Universal called “The Curve Report” shows that among Facebook users, many people believe that social networking is here to stay. 43% say they cannot imagine a future in which the site is not part of their lives.
When it comes to the role of Facebook in human relationships, the opinions are clearly divided. 52% believe that social networking helped deepen relationships; 48% believed it weakened them. 43% think Facebook is creating a global humanitarian movement; 57%, believe it is creating an epidemic of privacy.
However the most interesting figure, 52% say Facebook is where they go to learn about brands, while 48% say it is where brands got to learn about consumers. What side are you on? ;-)


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In the past few days, WB Games have made a controversial change to Wizards Unite and the community isn’t happy.
Following the recent addition of charms to the game, kickstarting Year 2, fans have been enjoying one of the charms in particular.
Trace charms, which can be levelled up and developed through the games new SOS Training give players the power to benefit from multiple spawns of similar severity.
For example, if a Ministry Newt appears on your screen, you could drag your charm onto it in the overworld and benefit from several Emergency spawns from another family. This boost would also give you another Ministry Newt spawn and, if caught, would see you earn 4 fragments instead of 2. This has been present in the game since mid-July.
However, on Thursday evening, WB Games quietly implemented a fix which nerfed the benefits of the charm and instead of producing multiple foundables of a similar severity, you now get a random mix of foundables appear on your screen.
Word quickly spread and people put the question to WB Games, which prompted a full statement. Basically, WB Games said this was a glitch that’s been present in the game since the launch of SOS Training and should never have worked this way.
This unintended bug caused the Trace Charm to reveal repeats of the same revealed Traces instead of revealing various Traces of differing threat levels. Of the Traces revealed, a minimum of one Trace should be of an equal or higher threat than the original Charmed Trace.
Now, according to WB Games, the Trace Charm is working as originally intended and this has been done to “maintain a balanced progression in the game”
Essentially, WB Games are concerned that, in its previous form, it would allow people to sprint through the content of the game faster than they can produce new content.
As expected, this didn’t go down well, with many people calling this a ‘downgrade’, others launching and adding their names to petitions, and some even calling for a boycott of the game on September 8th.
Many are also frustrated that they’ve invested resources in-game into a feature that no longer works as it once did. This is backed up by comments from WB Games, who had previously stated ‘there will be no changes to the SOS Training mechanics or node bonuses.’.
Almost immediately following this announcement, the team announced a Dragon Week which has been one of the most requested additions since the launch of the game and it drops next week. This will see all four dragons available globally for the very first time.
The announcement has seen other events shift dates slightly and has been done to give the team time to prepare the 2.15 Game Update, which is rumoured to have more new features.
The updated calendar of events for September can be seen below. (Credit to Orange Wizard)


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On Thursday, the city of Berkeley’s Community Environmental Advisory Commission voted to move forward with a mandate for labels on gas pumps explaining that fuel usage produces greenhouse gas emissions and contributes to climate change. A letter from the president of the petroleum association was immediately presented, claiming that such labeling would violate the First Amendment rights of the station owners, while questioning the reality of climate change and the role of fossil fuels in that process. If successful, however, this mandate could set Berkeley as an example to other cities looking for ways to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The preliminary stickers offer a statement about the effects of driving a car that runs on fossil fuels and offers a website where more information may be obtained. This step may seem small and almost futile to people who are concerned with pollution and emissions who know that the individual consumer does not bear the most blame for this spiral of resources and environmental impact.
It may also seem misguided to discourage the use of gas and a personal car when many Berkeley citizens have no choice but to drive, and the market does not offer many alternatives to the internal combustion engine yet. But no step in the right direction is so small that it should be dismissed. As these stickers can do no perceivable harm and may achieve slight gains, they should be implemented.
Opponents claim that these labels violate the rights of gas station owners, much as those who fought against cancer-labeling on cigarette packages once claimed that tobacco corporations were unjustly censored by that requirement. It is unlikely that the First Amendment claim will nullify this measure.
Precedent allows for its success. It is possible that labeling like this may begin to appear on other products with devastating environmental impact; beef, foods flown in using jet fuel or commercial products produced through environmentally irresponsible manufacturing means. All these labels do is provide information and allow the consumer to make a more informed choice.
The city of Berkeley could do more to make driving less viable in the city, if it wishes to control emissions without simply guilting the average consumer who may have no better option. The best way to encourage people to stop driving is to make alternatives affordable, convenient and worthwhile. Although stickers at the pumps may be as effective as a string tied around an absent-minded finger, the thing we must not forget is to make actual, measurable progress.


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My Money Is on Intel
In January 2008, I considered the possibility of adding a tech company to my dividend income portfolio. It couldn’t be just any tech company since most are quite volatile and don’t produce sufficient cash to pay a consistent and rising dividend. Two tech companies that were worthy of consideration were Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel Corp (INTC) due to their ability to generate free cash flow. I considered INTC the stronger of the two and had high hopes, but things didn’t initially work out. Eventually, patience paid off and when INTC’s price and interest rates dropped to the point the numbers made sense, I purchased it. So what’s INTC’s outlook now?
While flipping through some of the finance and IT free magazines that I get at work and came across an interesting article on INTC in the February 16, 2009 ComputerWorld magazine. The article, “Intel Looks to Pull Itself Out of Economic Hole”, could be perceived as negative on the surface but after closer consideration offered me some assurance that INTC would prevail in the end.
The article described the horrendous fourth quarter that INTC endured where revenues fell 23% and profits 90%. In February INTC announced plans to close four manufacturing facilities in Malaysia, the Philippines and Silicon Valley that would reduce its workforce by 6,000 jobs. Things are so bad that INTC did not provide projections for the first quarter due to “economic uncertainty and limited visibility.” Sounds bad, right?
The hope came from INTC’s plans to invest $7 billion over the next two years upgrading U.S. factories in Arizona, Oregon and New Mexico so they can produce chips based on 32-nanometer (nm) technology and accelerate the shipments of it first 32nm chips into Q4/2009. Why is spending this much money during an economic downturn a good thing?
Forrester Research Inc. analyst Frank Gillett said not moving ahead with the 32nm plan could blunt the company’s hard-earned technology edge over Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD). This is the is the fundamental core of INTC’s competitive strategy - use its huge cash flow to constantly push into manufacturing technologies that lower costs, making investments that can’t be matched by competitors. Will this work?
Leslie Fiering pointed out that one of INTC’s tremendous strength’s is process control in manufacturing. Contrast that with AMD’s strategy of spinning off all its manufacturing into a new joint venture and relinquishing some control over the manufacturing process. INTC is smart enough to play both sides of the fence. Its deal with Taiwan Semi will let INTC cut costs in making chips that rely on older manufacturing technology while putting its money into pushing the new manufacturing technologies where its future lies.
While most analysts are projecting significant drops in chip sales during 2009, INTC has the vision and ability to execute its long-term strategy. The road will not be smooth, but it in the end, my money is on Intel.
Full Disclosure: Long INTC
1. Stock Analysis: INTC Intel
2. Stock Analysis: Intel Corporation (INTC) Attractively Priced
3. Two Winning Bank Stocks
4. The Winning Score - Part 1 of 2
5. The Winning Score - Part 2 of 2
Tags: AMD, INTC


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EA is making changes to its yet-to-be-released “Celebrity Wars” title following online backlash disparaging large in-game costs.
The uproar centered on in-video game purchases that allow players to save time by paying to “unlock” characters like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. (The traditional method of unlocking a persona is to take up for a specific number of time – which users likewise found unreasonable.)
The business said Tuesday it was reducing the price to unlock key characters by 75 percent, according to a statement.
“Unlocking a good hero is an excellent accomplishment in the game, something we want players to have a great time earning. We used info from the beta to help set those levels, but it’s clear that considerably more adjustments were needed,” EA said.
The reduced costs could certainly harm the potential payout on the remarkably anticipated game, nevertheless they will also likely prevent a proposed boycott.
The changes will take effect immediately for early-access players, the business said, and you will be designed into the game for its official release Friday.
“We know a few of our virtually all passionate fans, including those in our subreddit, have voiced their opinions, and we hear you. We’re making the adjustments to the credit amounts for unlocking heroes and we’re going to keep making adjustments to increase the game experience as time passes. We welcome the discussion,” EA said.
A good Reddit thread calling focus on the costs garnered practically 3,000 comments before the thread was locked – one from an official EA company bill that became the most downvoted Reddit comment in history, according to Venture Defeat.


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02 Jun 21 | Podcast
At Innovation Forum’s recent sustainable apparel and textiles conference, Textile Exchange COO Cl...
Corporate commitments, how to achieve transparency and build trusted and effective sugar sourcing policies are discussed in this new Innovation Forum webinar. With Rob Meyers, sustainability director at PepsiCO, Diane Stevenson, director of sustainability at CSC Sugar, and Simon Usher, CEO of Bonsucro. Introduced and moderated by Innovation Forum's Ian Welsh
Stay updated with the latest news, insights and updates


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By Steven Loveday This March assures that 2018 plug-in sales will be on the rise toward a massive year. March will mark the 30th month of consecutive year-over-year monthly sales gains* for plug-in vehicles. The month should continue the trend toward a monumentally impressive year for the segment. The start of 2018 was …read more
- Tesla Model 3 production crossed 2,000 last week; is it sustainable?
- Plug-in electric car sales for Mar: Prius Prime romps, but monthly data an endangered species?


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SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio Spurs have hit record-breaking ticket sales for the team’s return to the Alamodome on Jan. 13.
To celebrate having the most tickets ever sold for a Spurs game and the team’s 50th anniversary season, the Spurs are offering 50 lower-level tickets for $50 each, according to a news release.
The “hidden” seats are available in pairs online on a first-come, first-served basis, with a limit of one pair per household, according to a news release.
“Our fans are putting us on the map to break the NBA attendance record in what is already a historic season celebrating our 50th anniversary,” said CEO of Spurs Sports & Entertainment RC Buford.
“We are grateful to our fans for an incredible 50 years in the Alamo City and now for 50,000 tickets sold. Let’s keep this momentum up – we can’t wait to see all 65,000 of you in the Dome,” said Buford.
A limited number of $10 community tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis at the Alamodome box office and online, with a limit of six per person.


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I'm currently working on platform where users can sell items of a certain niche. Without going into more detail, any user can create an item, and put it up for sale on the platform. Now, for other users to buy it, I'm considering using the Stripe SDK, but I would love to hear if there's a better way to do it. However, on the other hand, I'm confused as to how I would pay the sellers back, since anyone can be a seller. I was thinking direct bank transfer at the end of every month or so, but I can only think of manually doing it, by sending money from my business account to their personal accounts. Is there a better way to do this? What legalities should I be aware of?
The controversial push to force Chinese tech unicorn ByteDance to divest part or all of its smash-hit TikTok social media service to a US-based company could be in doubt after a report today indicated that China’s government may oppose the transaction. According to reporting by Reuters, the Chinese government may prefer TikTok to simply shutter its U.S. operations instead of allowing it to be sold to an American company.
The potential divestment of TikTok is not a regular business transaction. Instead, the deal is being demanded by the U.S. government, as President Donald Trump directs foreign and economic policymaking via executive fiat. Leaning on his own fabled business acumen, the American premier has also demanded that his government receive a portion of any final sale price. It is not clear if that concept is legal.
As the U.S. and China spar around the globe for both economic and political supremacy, the deal is a flashpoint between the countries with a muddle of companies stuck in the middle. ByteDance is in the mix, along with Microsoft, Walmart and other companies to a lesser degree, like Oracle. The Trump administration has set a mid-September timeline for a deal being struck, though as the month burns away it is not clear if that timeline could be met.
The United States is not alone in taking steps to curb Chinese influence inside its borders, as the TikTok sale comes after India banned the app, along with dozens of other China-based applications.
The deal is also under pressure from a changing regulatory environment in China, with the country’s autocratic leadership changing its export rules to possibly include elements of TikTok that could limit a transaction, and perhaps scuttle its sale.
For ByteDance, the situation is a nightmare. For lead-suitor Microsoft, the transaction is a shotgun marriage that it might not be entirely enthused about. For the Trump administration, it’s an attempt at a power play. And for China’s increasingly authoritarian government, the deal could feel like submission. So, if the deal does manage to come together it will be more surprise than eventuality.
Today, Priti Youssef Choksi is a partner with venture firm Norwest Venture Partners . But she previously spent five-and-a-half years at Google, where she worked on strategic partnerships, and nearly nine years at Facebook, where she began in corporate development and later focused on M&A.
Because Choksi knows firsthand how some of the biggest companies on the planet think about potential acquisition targets and how deals ultimately come together, we asked if she would share some of those insights with us during our recent founder-centric Early Stage event. The idea was to help attendees better how understand how — and why — certain acquisitions come together; her advice was so helpful that we wanted to share it more widely here.
So where to start? Choksi suggested people first understand the “build, partner, or buy” mentality of big acquirers. Indeed, while deals can look very much alike to outsiders (a deal is a deal is a deal), they are not. First, big companies will build internally if they are bolstering a strategic asset or what they need involves sensitive information or technology. A good example of something that Google would never buy, for example, is search tech, because search is the company’s crown jewel, she noted. Companies will meanwhile partner in order to fill a product or service gap or when they’re looking to stand up a new platform, she said, pointing to the early days of Google’s Android ecosystem.
As for when they finally go shopping, companies are driven by three things, said Choksi: talent, technology and traction. With talent, as you might imagine, companies may conduct an acqui-hire with the goal of filling a talent or leadership gap internally or to acquire niche skills that their current employees don’t already have, she said.
Companies meanwhile shop for technology when they need outside tech to boost their organic efforts. Choksi pointed to Luma.io by way of example. Back in 2013, the young company, which created a video-capture, stabilization and sharing app, was acquired by Instagram (which was itself already owned by Facebook); a week after it closed the Luma deal, Facebook launched video on Instagram largely based on Luma’s platform.
Really happy to anounce a big startup from my country (Spain) was sold for 250 milion to EQT.
They will keep the team for keep improving and expanding to Asia/America.
I highly recommend if you are freelancer to take a look of Freepik if you dont know it as it have lot of content freemium.
Congratulations freepik 😀
Hope everyone is well.
As per the title I'd love to hear from those out there that have hacked/hustled themselves some relatively quick cash to use for a business/startup/sideproject.
Two examples which I think are pretty well known are the AirBnB guys who sold the political themed cereal such as Obama Os which ended up making them around $ 40k. The other example being Alex Tew, now co-founder of Calm, who back in 2005 made 'The Million Dollar Homepage', selling off ad space and making just over $ 1m in 4 months.
Look forward to hearing any cool similar stories you have to share!


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Etisalat sponsors Lagos Photo Festival 2012
TELECOMS| July 8, 2012, 3:24 p.m.
Etisalat Nigeria, in line with its commitment to promote the nation’s cultural heritage, has once again made known its support for the annual Lagos Photo Festival.
The Festival uses the power of photography to bring stories that address social issues in and around the country, as well as celebrating Lagos State, a melting pot for arts and culture in Nigeria.
Speaking at the press conference to kick off the 2012 Lagos Photo Festival, Chief Executive Officer Etisalat Nigeria, Steven Evans, said that Etisalat appreciates the importance of creating partnerships that bring new and exciting content to the market they operate in. ”We are pleased to be a part of this important project which is an identification of the growing arts and culture industry in Nigeria, and with this we want to further assure Nigerians that we at Etisalat are committed to being a part of new and exciting concepts that celebrate the Nigerian essence as a whole,” he said.
Head Public Relations of Lagos Photo, Zainab Ashadu, disclosed that the 2012 Lagos Photo Festival tagged ‘Seven Days in the Life of Lagos’, will be featuring twenty-one local and International photographers. She said: “This year’s edition is aimed at exploring and capturing the very essence of Lagos State, the energy and soul that make the city a unique place. With this we wish to encourage artists to capture the city of Lagos in their own unique visual language.”
The Lagos Photo Festival, currently in its third year, is organized by the African Artists’ Foundation (AAF) and is a major photography festival in Nigeria. The AAF seeks to establish a community for contemporary photography, providing a platform for the development of photographic talent through mentoring, workshops and seminars. It also seeks to unite local and international artists through images that summarize individual experience, identities and beliefs from across the world.
This year’s edition will open with an indoor exhibition and grand opening ceremony on the 13th of October 2012 at the Eko Hotel & Suites, Victoria Island. There will be other indoor venues throughout the city, while the outdoor exhibition will open in early October 2012 at various landmark locations, including Falomo Roundabout, Muri Okunola Park, University of Lagos and the Oworonshoki – Alapere Median. The 2012 Festival is directed by Azu Nwagbogu, Caline Chagoury and Stanley Greene.
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Safe to say Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Denzel Washington may buy their next DVD player at Circuit City.
The star trio is suing California-based Fry’s Electronics claiming the company used their images without permission, reports the Associated Press.
In the suit, filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, each star is seeking $10 million in damages — given, they argue, that the ads could diminish their “hard-earned and well-deserved reputations as major motion picture stars and risks the potential for overexposure.”
Representatives of Fry’s, which is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and has retail outlets in Texas, Arizona and Oregon, did not immediately return AP’s calls for comment.
Similar lawsuits involving unauthorized uses of celebrities in advertising were filed recently against the cosmetics chain Sephora USA by married couple Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker and the divorced Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise.
Those cases are still pending.


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- Consumer credit health management platform Credit Sesame announced it raised over $43 million in equity and debt funding
Consumer credit health management platform Credit Sesame announced that it closed over $43 million in equity and debt funding. Menlo Ventures, Inventus Capital, Globespan Capital, IA Capital Groups, Symantec, Capital One Ventures, Stanford University, and several others also join the round.
This round of funding brings the total raised by Credit Sesame to $110 million. And it is helping the company further pave the path to an IPO.
With this round of funding, Credit Sesame plans to make more in-roads developing artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to provide consumers access to more personalized and actionable insights to improve their credit and financial health quickly and at scale.
Credit Sesame also plans to use the funding to expand data science, engineering, product, and marketing teams in both its San Francisco and Mountain View offices.
In Q2 2019, U.S. household debt hit a record $13.86 trillion — up 1.4% from Q1. And with rising consumer credit levels, credit health management has become an essential tool for households. Poor credit can negatively impact nearly all facets of a consumer’s life ranging from the type of home or car they can buy and where people can go to school or work.
There are many technologies available for managing assets, but very few tools available for managing the liabilities side of the balance sheet — which depends on a complicated calculus of the consumer’s credit, qualifications, and market offerings.
Credit Sesame helps solve this problem by serving as the leading Personal Credit Management (PCM) platform for managing credit decisions for better credit and financial health. And the company’s RoboCredit technology simplifies and automates the management of consumer credit and liabilities.
The company leverages aggregated data and advanced analytics at scale to provide consumers with personalized, actionable insights to help them manage and improve their credit and financial health.
“Credit Sesame was the first company to offer consumers free and monthly access to their credit picture including their score and credit details. However, we quickly realized that access was only the first step. Consumers need guidance to understand credit in order to effectively manage and improve it,” said Credit Sesame founder and CEO Adrian Nazari in a statement. “Our newly developed PCM platform ushers in a new era of Personal Credit Management with personalized analysis, machine learning and self-driving guidance to help consumers make the right decisions at the right time to better their credit and financial health.”
This funding round comes at a time of significant growth for Credit Sesame. The company has been operationally profitable since 2017. And its revenue and transactions have grown at an average of 90% compounded annual growth rate over the past five years.
The success of the company has been driven by the value consumers derive from its platform. About 61% see their credit score improve within the first six months. And more specifically, 27% of Credit Sesame members see their credit score improve by over ten points in their first month, and 20% see their credit score improve more than 50 points in their first six months.
“Credit Sesame is revolutionizing how consumers manage their credit. What once was a mystery and black box is now distilled by Credit Sesame’s PCM platform into easy to digest actionable insights that can effortlessly and meaningfully change a consumer’s credit and financial health,” added ATW Partners co-founder and managing partner Kerry Propper. “We’re thrilled to open the gates to a new age of Personal Credit Management with the Credit Sesame team leading the space.”


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Chamber offers health plans for small business
Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, March 12, 1997
1997-03-12 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO; LAFAYETTE -- Small San Francisco businesses belonging to the Chamber of Commerce will be able to offer employees affordable health care plans that for the first time include domestic partner benefits, the chamber announced Tuesday.
The chamber is offering the health plan through Benefit Marketing Insurance Services of Lafayette.
The health plan takes effect immediately, and the domestic partner benefits kick in June 1, the deadline set by the Board of Supervisors for businesses that enter into contracts with The City to include such coverage. The Board of Supervisors approved the domestic partners legislation in December.
"The chamber has been working for several months to develop a comprehensive health benefits plan for our members at affordable rates for small business," said G. Rhea Serpan, president and CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.
The Chamber of Commerce plan is expected to save small companies an average of 5 percent on their health care costs, Serpan said.
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Carol Piasente, a spokeswoman with the Chamber of Commerce, said it had 1,965 members, 75 percent of which have 50 or fewer employees.
"It's terrific," said Bill Wilkinson, owner of Green Leaf Produce, a produce distributor with 65 employees.
"It's about time, and it's the right thing to do. It's a question of equal treatment and civil rights."
He said that although the plan seemed like a radical concept now, he predicted other insurance companies would quickly follow suit.
"Companies that are taking chances are realizing that it isn't that big of a cost, and that fairness is an issue," he said.
Stephen Cornell, the owner of Brownie's Hardware on Polk Street, called it a "great idea" and said at least five of his 14 employees would most likely benefit from the plan.
"This is going to be a great option," he said.
The plan includes three providers, including Kaiser Permanente, United Healthcare and Blue Shield of California. It took three months for the chamber to offer the coverage because finding a company to offer affordable health care and include domestic partners was a challenge, Piasente said.<


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The cost of color
- By Dan Carney
- Jul 09, 2001
The increasing use of color displays in the handheld computer market has boosted interest in the devices.
Compaq Computer Corp.'s introduction of color in its iPaq line last year swamped the company with orders it had difficulty filling. Palm Inc. also began offering models with color displays last year and just introduced the Palm m505, which features a 65,000-color reflective LCD display. The question for some buyers is how to justify the greater cost of color models over monochrome units.
Color is especially useful for multimedia applications, such as training programs, that exploit the ability to display streaming video, said Steve Schanzer, director of strategic applications for Compaq's federal group. Because of the limited amount of video the device can hold, applications that stream data from a server via a wireless connection would be ideal, he said.
"Almost everyone I talk to prefers the color," said Doreen Canova, sales development manager for I-appliances at Hewlett-Packard Co. "They want it, but do they really need it? Not necessarily."
However, that may be because most current handheld applications are written for monochrome use, so they don't exploit color the way they could.
"I've seen prototypes that use red and green as an indication to the user of an error," said John Inkley, Palm's manager of federal sales. "The move to color is just beginning."


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Google's dedicated TensorFlow processor, or TPU, crushes Intel, Nvidia in inference workloads
Google has revealed new benchmark results for its custom TensorFlow processing unit, or TPU. In inference workloads, the company's ASIC positively smokes hardware from Intel, Nvidia.
IBM is bringing machine learning to a mainframe near you
Machine learning is the fastest growing area of computer science, but it's typically the domain of specialists. IBM aims to open it up to domain experts at its Enterprise customers to model their own data.
How a poker-playing AI could help prevent your next bout of the flu
What if the same strategic ability that allowed a computer algorithm to prevail over the best poker minds in the world tackled how to defeat a virus or a bacterial infection? One computer scientists believes its not only possible, but probable.
Google unveils super-resolution 'zoom-and-enhance' tech
Not content with traditional methods of increasing the detail in blurry images, Google researchers have invented a way to add detail by borrowing from other, similar images.
Deep learning algorithm diagnoses skin cancer as well as seasoned dermatologists
Remember how that Google neural net learned to tell the difference between dogs and cats? It's helping catch skin cancer now, thanks to some scientists at Stanford.
By Jessica Hall
AMD launches Radeon Instinct GPUs to tackle deep learning, artificial intelligence
AMD is throwing its own hat into the deep learning and AI markets, with a new lineup of Radeon Instinct GPUs. It's a mix of older and newer architectures -- and a new Vega part as well.
Intel announces major AI push with upcoming Knights Mill Xeon Phi, custom silicon
Intel is making a huge push into AI and deep learning with its upcoming Knights Mill -- but the revamped Xeon Phi isn't the only major product coming in the next few years. Intel wants AI processing capabilities baked into its cores (at least the high-end ones) at multiple levels.
AMD adds GPU firepower to Google's cloud services
Google and AMD are teaming up to put AMD GPUs in Google's data centers. It's a major win for AMD's GPGPU and HPC initiatives, since much of this space has historically been dominated by Nvidia.
Nvidia absolutely crushes its quarterly earnings, has its first $2 billion quarter
Nvidia announced its quarterly earnings this week, and the company's performance was off-the-charts good. Huge gains in gaming, AI, automotive, and data center sales propelled Team Green to its strongest quarter ever, by multiple metrics.
MIT makes breakthrough in morality-proofing artificial intelligence
In groundbreaking work on morality-proofing AI, researchers at MIT are designing neural networks that will provide explanations for why they reached a conclusion.


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The recent past of digital identity and data security really won’t much resemble its future all that much, according to Tom Thimot, Socure’s newly minted CEO, and that is very good news for everyone. Because, he says, old-school models built out of static models will never work as well as one-two punch algorithms and machine learning. The challenge? Getting it out there – and helping the entire ecosystem understand that not all “big data” shops are quite created equal.
It’s like the band is back together.
Thirty-three years ago, Tom Thimot, the newly appointed CEO of Socure, collaborated with founder Sunil Madhu on a business specializing in physical identity verification and access solutions: Netegrity, which was ultimately sold in 2005 to CA Technologies for $430 million.
From there, Madhu worked for Cisco and founded Hopskoch and Socure, while Thimot built a number of businesses that straddled data and security in some way. Most recently, Thimot was the CEO of Clarity Insights, which he built into the largest Big Data analytics consultancy in the U.S. Before that, he was the COO of Kazeon (acquired by EMC) and the CEO of GoRemote (acquired by IPass), among many others.
Last week, Madhu and Thimot joined forces again to break new ground in the identity verification space.
“I’m thrilled to work with [Thimot] again at Socure and [am] glad to pass the baton so he can help us accelerate the next phase of our growth as a pioneer of trust in digital identity,” Madhu said.
For Thimot, being at the helm of Socure means recognizing that digital security is no longer the same business it was a decade ago, let alone even five years ago. Thimot contends it’s no longer possible to verify the identity of a consumer via a linear process using a few pieces of static data, such as an email account or phone number, and be satisfied that the work is done.
“Consumers have very complicated digital histories that exhaust our smartphones each day,” Thimot said. “And to really validate identity requires a lot more than a few static data elements. The future of this space is all about data, analytics and machine learning.”
Today, the idea that Big Data combined with smart machines will be the future of building digital identities is not controversial. However, six years ago, Socure was a relative pioneer in building Big Data models and learning-based protocols that could be applied to digital identity and digital security. That head start, Thimot said, makes it an exciting opportunity.
It Is Rocket Science, and When One Starts the Race Matters
Because artificial intelligence and machine learning have gone mainstream, Thimot said, the power and potential of these algorithms obscures the importance and impact of the data science behind it.
“When you look at the complexity of the mathematical algorithms, we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Thimot said, adding that it really is “rocket science.”
In Socure’s world, those algorithms aren’t just written by smart doctorates; they’re being written so they can continue to train themselves once they’re put in place, Thimot said, adding that Socure has six years of history and learning to leverage.
It’s something that sets Socure apart, he said, but that source of differentiation often comes with a double edge.
Thimot noted that among the tougher parts of their job is convincing people that some of what is in the market today doesn’t offer a full suite of data services the same way Socure does. They can’t, he said, since those just getting started don’t yet know the value of a data environment that has been enriched over a long period of time.
“The thing about machine learning,” Thimot told Webster, “is that ‘learning’ is the operative word. The algorithms need data to be trained, and it just takes time to acquire and analyze the data on millions and millions of transactions. Our advantage is maturity.”
That maturity means they’ve had more time to feed data through their proprietary tech to train it. And that extra time — combined with the fact that their IP is solid — is the reason they can, on average, raise their financial institution partners’ approval rates by 30 percent and eliminate fraud in 90 percent of cases.
The Big Picture
For Thimot and Socure, the goal going forward is simple, albeit lofty.
“We want to be able to identify uniquely eight billion people on the planet so that we can know exactly who they are when they need their identity to be verified — and that those identities can be verified at sub-second speeds,” Thimot said.
That starts in financial services — a place where Thimot said Socure has already planted its flag. The company is in some form of discussion with many of the world’s largest financial institutions. The value proposition for them, he said, is (among other things) to serve the needs of their changing customer base, including those under the age of 30 who may not have thick credit files and who may not be as easy to identify and verify.
However, the need for a secure digital identity is much, much larger. In fact, it’s so large, he said, that it touches every single person on the planet in one way or another.
“We can think about retail, telecommunications, government, healthcare — there are so many places where the enterprise needs to [know] who’s on the other side of the interaction, and to know it in sub-second speeds,” Thimot explained. “When a business is trying to decide who to admit to a hospital, or whether someone can buy an iPhone or receive their tax rebates, sub-seconds matter.”
Thimot also said digital identity verification will start with payments and money, but will soon go much farther. It’s a race he believes Socure is well-positioned to run, since he said Socure has data science and a rich set of smart data to back it up.
“Just because you have a head start doesn’t mean you can win the race. There are a lot of players in the space who all want to win that race,” Thimot said. “For us, that means no matter what, we have to be nimble, we have to stay fast and continue delivering results that are better than the rest.”


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Eye of Judgment fans can rest easy knowing that there should be a new card set coming sometime after March. It’s been announced that Japan will receive a 2nd set during March itself, and we’re pretty sure that, that would mean another set for North America can’t be too far off.
It’s been reported that software upgrades to support the new packs will be made readily available with the release of said cards. There will reportedly be a 3rd set being sold sometime in the summer as well.
It’s still unclear as to when the SCEA will pick up on this and provide its North American users with something new and refreshing finally. However, we figure here at PSU.com that it obviously shouldn’t be that long of a wait after Japan’s release. You’d think with the way Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh worked out, they’d be putting out cards at a rapid rate. Yes, we’re aware they’re not the same.


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New Zealand's biggest poultry producer Tegel has reported a slight drop in its profit because of one-off costs from last year's Kaikōura earthquake.
Its net profit for the six months ended October was $14.8 million compared with the previous year's $15.1m.
Revenue rose 2 percent to $302.3m.
Domestic volumes were up 1.7 percent, while export volumes fell as expected, because it is changing its strategy in Australia.
Chief executive Phil Hand said the company's move into the retail market in Australia has started well and represents a significant opportunity.
"It has been particularly satisfying to see Tegel products achieving such significant national distribution in Australian retail."
Mr Hand said Tegel has kept its market position in New Zealand, despite pricing challenges.
"We are continuing to invest in our brand, and at the same time accelerating our innovation and new product development programme which is resulting in more higher value product in market, particularly free range products and value added meal solutions," he said.
He said it is looking to boost its growth in New Zealand and continue to build market share overseas.
Tegel will pay an unchanged interim dividend of 3.45 cents per share.


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Telecommunications provider Pivotel has congratulated Iridium Communications on the commercial launch of its Iridium Certus broadband service, enabled by the company's new $3 billion Iridium NEXT satellite constellation.
The competition watchdog, the ACCC, has initiated court action against Internet provider Activ8me for allegedly making false or misleading representations over advertising of its broadband services.
Telecommunications consumer interest lobby group ACCAN says rural and remote telecoms consumers will be better protected if recommendations put forward by the 2018 Regional Telecommunications Review are adopted by the Australian Government. But it has harsh criticism of regional consumers being promised telecoms services that could not be delivered.
The "Bully Boys" are still hard at it I see.
I find it incredible. VOIP is expected as an extra charge on top after cutting phone service. It should be[…]
TelSoc passed this resolution yesterday BTW…Telsoc calls upon the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission (NCCC):To include in its considerations the inequity[…]
Another hard hitting piece from Sam with which I entirely agree. The fundamental problem is that if we all jib[…]
I think that's a bit harsh, Sam. Windows is ubiquitous which makes Windows machines attractive targets. These days there isn't[…]


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OnePlus, the Chinese smartphone maker, has earned huge popularity for its two mid-budget smartphones- One and 2. In fact, OnePlus is the first smartphone maker in the world that earned so much of popularity after launching only two devices.
Its debut device OnePlus One earned 'Flagship killer' and still gets counted among one of the best devices to buy. The OnePlus 2, which received a mixed response, yet got adored by the fans.
And now the company is reportedly bringing another device dubbed OnePlus X, a budget smartphone with a decent hardware specification.
The budget device is expected to be launched later this month with a price tag of 249 USD, which roughly translates to Rs 16,295, GizmoChina reports.
For the price, OnePlus X is rumoured to feature a five-inch display and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC, which combines Krait 400 CPU and an Adreno 330 GPU. If the rumour comes true, OnePlus X will be the first smartphone from the manufacturer with a five-inch display.
Apart from these, OnePlus X will purportedly feature a rear mounted fingerprint scanner and two camera sensors instead of one as primary camera.
The OnePlus X alias 2 Mini was also spotted recently at the Antutu Bechmark suite with a model number of OnePlus A2301. The device scored 54,311 which is almost at par with the OnePlus 2 which was managed to score 54,188 in our review.


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Alkaram Studio poaches Nida Siddiqui from Bonanza Satrangi
Alkaram Studio has hired Nida Siddiqui as its new head of e-commerce, taking over from Usama Bin Shoaib, who left the retail arm of Alkaram Textiles in March 2022 in order to join Swvl as the general manager of Karachi. In a similar role with Bonanza Satrangi for nearly five years, Siddiqui managed to build up a digital business from scratch including technology, operations, and customer service.
She is credited with setting up the eCommerce operations and warehouse, introducing seasonal sale concepts such as Black Friday and 11/11 at Bonanza Satrangi, and migrating the eCommerce store from Magento to Shopify. Delivering triple-digit year-on-year growth in her business unit, which contributed to nearly 15% of overall revenues for Bonanza Satrangi, she is credited with establishing key marketplace partnerships such as Daraz, Yayvo, and Bagallery.
Reporting to chief operating officer Khurram Koraishy, Siddiqui faces an uphill task in taking Alkaram Studio towards being a top-five contender in the Pakistan eCommerce Awards 2021, which was awarded to Bonanza Satrangi by the event created by the most trusted one-click checkout solution in Pakistan.
When it pours
A 2020 study by Profit magazine found that the lockdown created by COVID-19, combined with steep discounts, substantially grew the adoption of the eCommerce channel in the buyer decision journey. Speaking with Profit, AK Marketing’s chief executive Abid Umer shared that nearly 50% of the revenue of 2020 was being generated from eCommerce, up from 10% in 2019.
The numbers may have been higher if it were not for the inherent challenges across the eCommerce space that impacts marketplaces and merchants. These include poor logistical infrastructure, service level disasters, the absence of real technology, a weak understanding of a geographic spread, the lack of trust between shippers and 3PL, and the lack of data transparency that is solved with real-time integrations and dashboards.
(Stay tuned for a detailed report from Founder Pakistan).
Industry experts that spoke to Founder Pakistan shared that the biggest reason why the 2020 and 2021 eCommerce revenues were not as high as they could be was an overreliance on cash on delivery (CoD), a problem solved thanks to Z2C Limited providing the pre-seed investment that created bSecure, the most trusted one-click checkout solution in Pakistan.
To understand why is bad for your business, read this whitepaper.


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Alimentation Couche-Tard has put up for sale 21 Circle K convenience stores with gas operations located in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
In September of this year, the company announced it was putting up for sale 68 Circle K convenience stores across 21 states.
As with that sale, this current one is being handled through NRC Realty & Capital Advisors LLC (NRC), a firm specializing in the structured sale of convenience stores and commercial real estate.
Bids for the 21 sites are due by January 16, 2024.
In June of 2022, Alimentation Couche-Tard through NRC coordinate and manage the sale of 114 Circle K and Couche-Tard sites in the United States and Canada


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Popular mobile instant messaging app WhatsApp was at the center of a recent security breach which saw the information of as many as 200 million users potentially exposed to the mercy of hackers and malware. The threat, which affected the recently launched web-based version of WhatsApp, was detected by an IT security firm in Israel and patched up before news of it became public. Yet it serves as a reminder to remain vigilant when using web and mobile apps, whether for business or pleasure. Here’s what you need to know.
The web-based version of the WhatsApp app was only launched a few months back, initially for WhatsApp accounts on Android and Windows Phone devices and later for those on iPhones, but has already grown in popularity. The recent security vulnerability related to vCards, electronic business cards shared by WhatsApp users, and effectively amounted to a kind of phishing.
An error in the WhatsApp web client meant that less-than-innocuous vCard business cards created by hackers were not properly filtered out by the app. As a result, these phishing-style cards made it through to users who, if they clicked them, were at risk of the cards converting themselves to more harmful executable scripts once downloaded – and potentially accessing and playing foul with users’ personal data. There are even reports of a ransomware approach being taken by hackers in this case, with attempts being made to extort cash from WhatsApp users in exchange for restored access to their infected devices and hijacked data.
WhatsApp put a fix in place, by releasing an updated version of the app, prior to making public news of the security vulnerability. It’s worth making sure you have the latest version of WhatsApp installed on your phone, if you haven’t checked recently – WhatsApp’s phone and web versions are linked to one another, so ensuring you are up-to-date on your phone is the way to ensure you’re safe when using the web client too. The patch is also available directly through the web client, though this won’t update your phone’s version of the app at the same time.
The whole affair also serves as a timely reminder that it pays to be vigilant when it comes to using WhatsApp and other instant messaging platforms – including email. Avoid opening links or downloading files that you’re not expecting to receive, and proceed with caution even if you were anticipating them. It’s better to double check with the sender that they’re consciously passing a file to you, and that they’re fully aware of its contents, than to wait until your device has been infected and damage has potentially been inflicted on your vital data.
Want to learn how to keep your devices safe from phishing attempts and other potential security vulnerabilities? Give us a call and let us equip you with tamperproof solutions.