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Biodiesel is the green alternative to viagra overnight delivery gas, but seems it takes more green to buy it these days. According to Treehugger, buying biodiesel in the Seattle area is about $1.20 per gallon more than mineral diesel, and it has nearly doubled in price over the last year. The cost of production is a major factor, since just buying enough soybeans for a gallon of biodiesel costs nearly as much as a gallon of pump-ready mineral diesel. Add on the cost of production, and it’s already more expensive, and therefore less desirable to webstuff.nl the only for you cialis online pharmacy average consumer, than diesel, proven by the 66% drop in biodiesel sales in Washington state over the past year. Imperium Renewables hopes to ride this out by exporting more of their fuel and focusing on non-food sources, including jatrpha, an oily seed that grows in barren areas (I wonder what fuel they’d use to transport jatrpha from harvest to refinery?).
Some folks say that biodiesel is chalk full of problems, including affecting food prices and taking over farm land. Unless we are able to utilize waste materials as raw material for ethanol or figure out a solid and cialis how much affordable method for solar powered vehicles, which beats out all biodiesel crops with algae coming in second, there is little we can do to keep farmers from switching to growing crops for biodiesel, regardless of what that crop is composed of, if that is more profitable for them. As proof of all the questions and concerns about biofuels, Iowa State University reports that last year the US only produced 500 million gallons of cheap tramadol fedex overnight biofuel of its 1.85 billion gallon capacity, with over half of that biofuel going to Europe. Nonetheless, Imperium Renewables is taking a crack at making biodiesel consumer-friendly again, getting a little help as Washington state (home country for Imporium Renewables) will require 2% of diesel sales to be biodiesel starting in December, equating to about 20,000,000 gallons if Washington meets or exceeds the 1 billion gallons of diesel consumed in the state last year. We’ll keep an eye on their progress, as well as that of the industry as a whole.
Via Treehugger, The Seattle Times; photo courtesy Imperium Renewables
Traditional methods of producing ethanol generally revolve around the digestion of waste plant matter from farms, switchgrass, corn, or even rice husks. BlueFire Ethanol of Irvine, California, however, has plans to build a facility later this year that will be able to produce 3 millions gallons of ethanol each year, from trash. That's right, your unwanted waste might one day find its way into your fuel tank.
Their current process, using sorted garbage can produce 70 gallons of fuel per ton of woman and cialis waste. They hope to wow look it online cialis prescriptions improve this to reach 100 gallons per ton. Any way you look at it, it's good news. Trash is cheap, and by locating their plants next to landfills, which they are doing, their source of raw materials is right next door, meaning that expensive feedstock doesn't need to be trucked in. This allows the ethanol to be cheaper than traditional processes.
Instead of using microorganisms to break down plant matter, BlueFire is using a concentrated acid hydrolysis process, where sulfuric acid is sprayed onto the trash, which is then submerged in a bath and pressed. The resulting mash is then fermented into ethanol and the acid reclaimed to use again. In addition to drug generic viagra the plant they are currently building, two more are in the works producing 17 and 55 millions gallons respectively.
"When you are talking about waste streams, there are maybe 15 or 20 landfills in the U.S. that could sustain a 100- to 150-million-gallon-per-year ethanol plant," says CEO Arnie Klann. "We're looking at those locations to build out, but the vast majority of landfills will handle that 17 million-gallon-per-year size."
We already know cellulosic ethanol works, so if they can produce it from trash at the right price and enough output, BlueFire can position themselves to be big competitors in the market against producers like Range Fuel, who is building the good choice best viagra US’s first cellulosic ethanol plant with a goal to produce 100 million gallons of fuel a year from tree waste, or even nudging up with Coskata (who is already producing ethanol from municipal waste) and Mascoma, both of whom have deals with GM. The realm of cellulosic ethanol from trash is an exciting development to keep track of.
The title might sound impossible, but Sapphire Energy, a California-based company, has been working away to create actual gasoline from a renewable, carbon neutral source: algae. While we've heard of many different processes for making fuels from algae, this one certainly tops the list. They've managed to produce 91-octane, ASTM certified gasoline, ready to www.transitofvenus.org be pumped into your car. They stress that it is not ethanol, and not biodiesel.
The company, they say, started with 3 friends discussing a very interesting question: "Why is the biofuel industry spending so much time and energy to manufacture ethanol â€” a fundamentally inferior fuel?" A very good question indeed, and one they sought to answer on their own terms. The friends - a bioengineer, a chemist, and a biologist - set out to recruit the best minds they could find to collaborate with them on the project, and the results are staggering. "The company has built a revolutionary platform using sunlight, CO2 and microorganisms such as algae" to produce the fuel, without the use of arable land, and while we haven't yet seen any data, they claim it to be very water efficient.
They also announced that they raised $50 million from Arch Rock Ventures, Venrock, and the Wellcome Trust. It is evident that Sapphire will become a major player in the coming years for alternative fuel production, and one cannot help but be inspired with confidence when Arch Rock says: "We realized at that point we could change the world, so we sat them down and told them, 'the checkbook is completely open; tell us what you need'." Not a statement you hear everyday from a venture capital firm.
We will have more on this story as it develops; we are eager for more info and levitra prices uk will pass it on as soon as we get it.
I'm the first to admit that the buy 100mg tramadol online current round of medication tramadol 50 mg ethanol is not perfect. The rising demand for ethanol has put more land under cultivation, increased water shortages, and increased fertilizer and pesticide use. For all that, corn isn't really a great way to create ethanol, only producing 1.3 units of energy for every 1 unit put into its creation.
However, it is NOT responsible for the 40% increase in food prices over the last few years. It might seem like an easy target, but let's start with some logic, and then move into the solid figures.
First, how could an increased demand for non-edible corn (used mostly to www.slic.de make high fructose corn syrup and feed for cattle, chicken and pigs) increase prices of pasta in Italy, onions in India and rice in China?
Second, is there any other trend, besides the increase in biofuel production that could be blamed for rising food costs. Any trend at all? Possibly a larger, more global, more significant, and much more difficult to deal with trend?
Yes, it turns out that there are two such trends. The rising prosperity of people in the world, who are now happy to be eating more (and more meat). And second, the related rise in fuel prices, due to increased demand in developing countries.
Of the 40% increase in food prices, about 3% can be attributed to food crops being used in biofuels. At least 8% (PDF) can be attributed to rising costs of fuel used to grow and transport the crops from farms to the grocer. But the big hunk comes in with increased demand.
As the world has become more prosperous, more people have begun to cialis brand eat more food. Particularly in China and India, more people have begun to eat meat regularly. Simultaneously investors, seeking non-mortgage or debt-based assets to invest in, have begun to speculate on food crops. Assuming that costs will continue to increase along with increased affluence in the developing world, the commodities markets in food products have spiked.
Simultaneously, fertilizer prices have skyrocketed as they are also created from petroleum, and peculiar weather patterns and cheapest price on cialis frequent droughts, possibly linked to global warming, have limited supply.
All-in-all, it's not a good time to be burning what can otherwise be eaten. But there is no good reason to say that biofuels are the one and only problem. SUV's are certainly limiting the orignal viagra online uk future of the world, but not by burning hungry people's food.
Corn ethanol is never going to be the whole solution, and we are very excited about the many cellulosic ethanol companies entering the market, but I'm tired of hearing about the supposed evils of viagra super store ethanol. Let's lay the blame where it belongs...greedy commodity investors, meat production, and the rising price of oil.
This article was inspired by VentureBeat's discussion of the controversy between the Wall Street Journal and Vinod Khosla


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NEW YORK, April 7 (UPI) -- Technology trackers said Thursday that U.S. retail giant Toys "R" Us would soon be selling Apple's hot-selling iPad2.
Web site ModMyi reported that a Toys "R" Us employee had sent it training material for iPad2 sales.
The material reviews iPad2 features and lists "accessories available at 'R' Us."
Intomobile reported the device is available at 10,000 retail outlets, including Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Radio Shack. Toys "R" Us also carries Apple's iPod.
A recent survey showed a move to a Toys "R" Us customer base might be a wise move for Apple. A Piper Jaffray survey said 20 percent of teenagers recently indicated they intended to buy a computer tablet within the next six months.

domain: news


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The Justice Department approved a $52 billion beer buzz Friday, allowing Belgian-based InBev SA to buy out Anheuser-Busch and create the world's largest brewer.
But InBev's buzz comes with a slight hiccup: it must sell subsidiary Labatt USA before regulators let the merger go through.
That's because Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. brews Budweiser and Bud Light compete directly with Labatt Blue and Labatt Blue Light in upstate New York. Without the sell-off condition, the Justice Department said beer prices would increase in metropolitan Buffalo, Rochester, N.Y., and Syracuse, N.Y.
"This divestiture will ensure that consumers will continue to benefit from the significant competition between the merging companies in upstate New York," Deputy Assistant Attorney General Deborah A. Garza said in a statement.
InBev and Anheuser-Busch don't compete in most other beer markets around the country. InBev brews Stella Artois, Beck's and Lowenbrau.
The Justice Department gave its blessing to the beer merger just two days after Anheuser-Busch shareholders approved the merger, which still is subject to regulatory approval in Britain and China.
Additionally, 10 angry beer drinkers in September filed a federal lawsuit in St. Louis, asking a judge to block the deal that they said violates antitrust law, regardless of the Justice Department's approval.
The new company will be known as Anheuser-Busch InBev. It brings about the end of the more than 150 years of family rule of the St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch, though the newly combined company's North American headquarters will stay there.
InBev has said it will keep open all 12 of Anheuser-Busch's North American breweries.
August A. Busch IV, Anheuser-Busch's president and chief executive, will be on the new company's board but in a non-executive role. He has said decision to sell the nation's largest brewer was a difficult one.


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The Dublin-based company also announced job cuts last month, with numbers undisclosed, while it is also looking to offload some of its smaller businesses such as patient monitoring and respiratory interventions to focus on its core units – heart and diabetes.
ICU Medical has teamed up with a private equity firm to challenge GE Healthcare Technologies in its pursuit of two medical technology businesses that Medtronic Plc is seeking to sell for between $8 billion and $9 billion, according to people familiar with the process.
Neuralink, founded in 2016, has yet to receive FDA approval to test its brain chip in humans. Other implant makers have spent years or decades on research to secure U.S. regulatory approvals.
Medtronic Plc said on Tuesday it expects inflation in various markets to hit its profit in the next fiscal year after the medical device maker beat earnings estimate for the third quarter on strong demand for its heart and diabetes devices.
A unit of medical device maker Medtronic plc must pay $106.5 million to competitor Colibri Heart Valve LLC for patent infringement, a Santa Ana, California federal jury said Wednesday.
Baxter International Inc. said on Friday it plans to spin off its kidney care units, becoming the latest medical device maker to slim down in the face of supply-chain challenges.
Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Medtronic was also open to a sale at the right price and the businesses could be valued at more than $7 billion. The two businesses were also drawing interest from private-equity firms, according to the report.
Medtronic Plc on Tuesday lowered its full-year profit outlook, blaming a stronger dollar and a slower-than-anticipated recovery from supply chain disruptions.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday warned that certain types of insulin pump systems manufactured by Medtronic were vulnerable to cyberattacks and that hackers could potentially hamper insulin delivery by accessing the device.
A flaw in a widely used medical device that measures oxygen levels causes critically ill Asians, Blacks and Hispanics to receive less supplemental oxygen to help them breathe than white patients, according to data from a large study published on Monday.


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Days after iPhone battery fiasco, lawsuits against Apple begin to mount
Since news broke that Apple deliberately slows down the processor speed of iPhones as they age, the company has now been sued three times in various federal courts nationwide.
These proposed class-action lawsuits allege largely the same thing: that over time certain iPhones exhibited lower performance and that Apple fraudulently concealed this fact from owners. If those customers went to an Apple Store to investigate, they were encouraged to simply buy a new iPhone.
“Had Plaintiffs been informed by Apple or its technical/customer service support staff that a battery replacement would have improved the performance of the above devices, they would have opted to replace the batteries instead of purchasing new phones,” one of the lawsuits, Abdulla et al v. Apple, which was filed Thursday in federal court in Chicago, alleges.
This case was brought by customers in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and North Carolina.
A similar lawsuit, Bogdanovich v. Apple, which was filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Thursday, argues that Apple breached an “implied contract” and that the company trespassed on private property (namely, the already-sold iPhones) when it baked in a deliberate CPU slowdown.
A third case, Harvey v. Apple, was filed in federal court in San Francisco, also on Thursday.
Apple did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.
- Amazon acquires connected camera and doorbell startup Blink
- iPhone X is accelerating both iPhone upgrade and Android switching rates in China, says Morgan Stanley
- Meet Molekule, the sleekest air purifier on the market
- This Game of Thrones climate model is what’s been missing from your life


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October 27th, 2017 is set to be a day filled with new video game releases, brand new seasons and some geek-friendly feature films. Stranger Things Season 1 perfected the ending of a cliffhanger and now season 2 is set to launch in October, which means we will finally find out if Eleven is still alive, or what exactly happened to her and those meddling kids.
The new Assassin's Creed Origin video game will feature the lead assassin scaling buildings and a new set of modern features. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus will allow gamers to partake in smashing game footage with better footage, old school footage and alternate spins on icon American locations. Professor Marston & The Wonder Women will tell the story of the ever so famous Wonder Woman and it is set to be the best since the actual Wonder Woman movie that launched earlier this year – which are some big shoes to fill. There is a new Jigsaw in town and, after 10 years, the director said that the film is set to feature some plot twists, while Super Mario Odyssey ditches the mushroom world for some strange new locations.
Have a look at the video below to see why you should get excited for October 27th, 2017!


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‘Watch out for hot meat’
WITH the high demand for meat during Christmas, be careful about the sanitation quality of meat you buy.
Talisay City Councilor Richard Francis Aznar said a team led by the city veterinarian may conduct inspections any time.
”Dili gyud kalikayan nga naay makalusot nga hot meat pero amung gipaningkamutan nga masugpo ni,” Aznar said. (We are trying our best to prevent the entry of hot meat but we can’t avoid some of it getting through.)
He was referring to meat that is butchered outside of government accredited slaughterhouses.
Last October, authorities confiscated about 30 kilos of hot meat at the Tabunok Public Market days before the fiesta celebration./CORRESPONDENT GABRIEL C. BONJOC
Subscribe to INQUIRER PLUS to get access to The Philippine Daily Inquirer & other 70+ titles, share up to 5 gadgets, listen to the news, download as early as 4am & share articles on social media. Call 896 6000.


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By ANNE D'INNOCENZIOAP Retail Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - Daffy's Inc., which sells national fashion brands at up to 80 percent off, is going out of business, a victim of a fiercely competitive landscape that has already claimed rivals Syms and Filene's Basement as casualties.
By The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) - Treasury yields fell to near record lows Monday after a disappointing retail sales report sent traders out of stocks and into the relative safety of U.S. government debt.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note dropped to 1.46 percent from 1.49
NEW YORK (AP) - The dollar fell against most major currencies Monday after the government reported that Americans spent less last month.
The Commerce Department said retail sales fell 0.5 percent in June from May. It was the third straight monthly drop, which worried investors because it's the
By CHRIS KAHNAP Energy Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - Oil prices climbed for a fourth day on hopes that the Federal Reserve will take additional steps to prop up the economy.
Benchmark U.S. crude on Monday rose $1.33 to end at $88.43 per barrel in New York, while Brent crude rose by $1.95 to finish at $
By MARTIN CRUTSINGERAP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. companies added to their stockpiles in May. But their sales fell for a second straight month, adding to worries that the economy has slowed.
Business stockpiles grew 0.3 percent in May from April, matching April's increase, the
By BERNARD CONDONAP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - Stocks closed lower for the seventh day out of the last eight on Monday after the government reported that U.S. consumers cut their spending last month.
The news pushed stocks down from the start of the trading day. Though they recovered a bit
By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO and MARTIN CRUTSINGERAP Business Writers
WASHINGTON (AP) - The outlook for the U.S. economy appeared dimmer Monday after a report that Americans spent less at retail businesses for a third straight month in June.
The report led some economists to downgrade their estimates
By PALLAVI GOGOIAP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - Citigroup's net income fell 12 percent in the second quarter partly due to a loss on the sale of its stake in a Turkish lender. The income of $2.9 billion was still better than analysts were expecting.
Citi is one of the largest international
BEIJING (AP) - Asian markets rose Tuesday amid optimism China might take new steps to stimulate its slowing economy.
Japan's Nikkei 225 gained 0.5 percent to 8,768.46, while China's benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.3 to 2,154.44. South Korea's Kospi added 0.8 percent to 1,831.
BOISE, Idaho – For the second time in
less than a month, someone who played Powerball in Idaho is holding a winning ticket
worth $1,000,000. One winning ticket for
last night´s $90 million Powerball draw was sold at an Idaho Lottery retail
location in Bonner County, in northern Idaho.


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Meredith Corp said on Wednesday that it will explore a sale of Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money magazines as it seeks to streamline its operations following the acquisition of Time Inc.
The US media company also announced that it has eliminated about 200 jobs and that it will cut another 1,000 positions in the next ten months as part of a cost-cutting drive.
The layoffs come as the firm targets annual savings of up to US$500 million, Reuters reports.
In November last year, Meredith, which owns lifestyle magazines such as Better Homes & Gardens and Family Circle, announced the acquisition of Time Inc in a US$1.84 billion all-cash deal backed by conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.
Now the company is looking at selling some of the newly acquired brands, including Time, Sports Illustrated and Fortune.
The move to sell the brands illustrates how Meredith sees some of Time’s titles that attract primarily a male readership as not playing to its core strength in women’s magazines, Reuters noted.
Meredith last month said it would sell Time Inc’s UK arm to private-equity firm Epiris Fund II.
– Contact us at [email protected]


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The Restaurant Group has put 33 of its worst performing sites up for sale or potential closure after its leisure-focused dining business encountered a difficult first half of the year.
The 500-unit restaurant giant’s first half results incurred an associated charge of £39.3m as a result of the move, while the asset value of a further 29 sites were written down, which was reflected in a £17.8m non-cash impairment charge. TRG has not stated which of its brands the under-performing sites relate to or where they are based.
TRG bosses said the company had faced a “challenging” trading period across its leisure brands, but seen a good performance from its pubs and concessions business for the 27 weeks to 3 July 2016.
Total revenue fell 3.4% to £359m with like-for-like sales down 4%. Operating profit declined 4% to £37.5m.
The company admitted that Frankie & Benny’s performance had particularly suffered due to insufficient focus on value, unsuccessful menu development and poor operational execution. It acknowledged that increased competition has had some impact, but was not the major factor behind the weak performance.
Chairman, Debbie Hewitt, said that TRG will now take action at Frankie & Benny’s on pricing, proposition and customer service. Greater focus will be put on its core customer base of families, and new value offers will be tested and trialled. It will also add popular dishes back to the menu.
“The brand remains relevant and popular and we are confident that improved performance will be achieved by being more customer-focussed and data-driven, and through better operational execution,” said Hewitt.
Despite the disappointing figures, TRG reminded investors that its leisure brands, which also include Chiquito, remain relevant and operate in a growing market place. Overall it said that seven new sites had opened in the first half of the year, while trading has improved slightly in recent weeks, with like-for-like sales for the first 34 weeks of 2016 down 3.7%.
“This has been a challenging trading period for our leisure brands, albeit with a good performance from our pubs and concessions businesses,” said Hewit. “The board has moved quickly to undertake a review of the operating strategy and we now have clarity on the issues facing our leisure brands, particularly Frankie & Benny’s.”
A new executive team is in place to lead the implementation of the first phase of the review and to apply the learnings to its other brands.
“The company is profitable, highly cash generative and has a strong balance sheet, and given our confidence in the current trading forecast, we are declaring an interim dividend of 6.8 pence per share, unchanged from last year,” said Hewitt.


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Zhang wrote a note and put up flyers about the theft, which was picked up by ABC News and which a friend of his posted to his Facebook page, and which was then posted to Reddit and many other websites beyond that. He offered $1000 to the thieves for the data, telling them exactly where on the disk they could find it, giving them the password, and telling them they could keep the computer already; he just wanted to graduate.
Now, in honor of the “Everything Wrong With … in X Minutes” CinemaSins YouTube movie spoofs (and they’re hysterical), here’s everything wrong with this story.
William Steven Albaugh, 67, was arrested after police found “numerous files of child pornography” on his Verizon online storage locker and several thumb drives, the Baltimore Sun reported. “Detectives began investigating Albaugh after Verizon Online notified the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that Albaugh, a subscriber, had stored images of children engaged in sexual acts on the online cloud storage system, police said.”
We already learned, in 2011, that cloud storage systems such as Dropbox would turn over files if requested by law enforcement. We also learned that some systems such as Dropbox, when a file is uploaded, check to see if it’s already online, and, if so, just save a pointer to the original copy. While this saves space, it also means that, in theory, law enforcement could upload any number of files it’s illegal to own — such as copies of movies — and if the stored file length is less than the original file, it means someone has it on the system already.
In the process of that, we learned, if we didn’t know already, that in 2010 New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo made an agreement with several online services such as Facebook and LiveJournal to check uploaded images for child pornography. ”Through its investigations, the Attorney General’s Office has created a database of more than 8,000 hash values that are associated with images of child pornography,” the Attorney General’s office wrote at the time. “The database can be used to identify the corresponding child pornography images through the fingerprints and stop that picture from ending up on a site.” The office also said it would continue working with other online services to encourage them to do the same thing.
Apparently, at least one of them was the Verizon Online Backup and Sharing cloud storage service.
Media outlets have pointed out that this was all clearly spelled out in the terms of service. “Like many types of online storage or media services, Verizon’s Online Backup and Sharing states in its terms of service that the company is ‘required by law to report any facts or circumstances reported to us or that we discover from which it appears there may be a violation of the child pornography laws,’” writes the International Business Times.
Because, of course, we all read every word of our terms of service.
If this sounds familiar, it may be because, as of last July, four out of the five cases concerning whether people have to provide the key to their encrypted storage also have had to do with child pornography, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s attorney Marcia Hoffman.
Look, there isn’t any question that child pornography is bad. But there’s a saying, “Hard cases make bad law” — that is, an unpleasant case can lead to a harsher general law that can end up being more widely applied. (We don’t know whether law enforcement is more likely to push the envelope of legal search because they so badly want to catch child pornographers, or because they think people will be less likely to criticize their methods because the crime is so heinous.)
If it’s determined through these cases that checking people’s files as they are uploaded to a cloud storage service is an acceptable practice, it has the potential to apply to all files and all people, not just ones we don’t like.
In the meantime, it sounds like we’d better be sure to read our terms of service carefully.]]>
That’s the question that the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is asking the Supreme Court to decide, in a friend-of-the-court brief it has filed in the case of Jennings vs. Jennings.
“The privacy group is filing an amicus brief asking the high court to accept an email privacy case from South Carolina that’s exacerbated confusion over what courts consider electronic storage,” writes the political journalism site Politico. “In the filing, submitted on behalf of nearly 20 privacy advocates, EPIC tells the Supreme Court that email privacy rules and definitions have become increasingly unclear, thanks to the rise of cloud computing, and Congress has yet to step in to fill the gap.”
The whole issue of what “storage” is became an issue last fall, when a South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that, under the Stored Communications Act (SCA), email in a Yahoo! account should not be considered protected from unauthorized access because email sitting in the cloud was not “stored” the same way as it would be sitting on one’s own computer — which was protected.
This means that was also true for anyone who uses a cloud-based email system — not just Yahoo, but also Gmail and a plethora of other systems. Not to mention some components of the federal government itself that have moved to cloud-based email, EPIC notes in its brief.
The original case was a domestic dispute — a husband was cheating on his wife, and the wife’s daughter-in-law figured out the husband’s e-mail password and logged in to his personal account to read the e-mails between the husband and his paramour, wrote Orin Kerr in The Volokh Conspiracy legal blog. ”The daughter-in-law found the e-mails and shared them. The husband filed suit under several laws including the Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. 2701, which only allows a civil suit if the e-mails accessed were in “electronic storage.””
The Supreme Court may get involved because this decision conflicts with a similar case by the Ninth Circuit Court in 2004, wrote Andrew Hoffman at the Information Law Group blog.
“The Jennings opinion establishes a split with the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Theofel v. Farey-Jones, 359 F.3d 1066 (9th Cir. 2004), which found that emails that had been received, read, and left on the server were stored “for purposes of backup protection” and therefore within the ambit of the SCA,” Hoffman wrote.
This is a problem because it’s not good for different courts to have different ideas of what does and doesn’t constitute a legal issue, Hoffman wrote. “Thus, until the split of authority is resolved, the same conduct will disparately subject some individuals to civil liability, depending on the interpretation of the SCA applied by the court. Such disparate interpretations could create an incentive for forum shopping and pose conflict of law questions, when multiple states (and even nations) could be involved in an email hacking case. Such disparate interpretations may also pose problems for employers investigating suspected employee misconduct involving webmail.”
Just to show how confused the South Carolina court was, its judges couldn’t even agree on why the email wasn’t stored, but instead had three different opinions, Kerr wrote.
Aside from the issue of protection, the issue of defining what storage is is important because it is the primary difference between the Stored Communications Act — the law under which the original suit was filed — and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, according to EPIC.
A related question is “What is a backup?” because some of the legal arguments also hinged on whether the email retrieved from the account was the “only copy” or a backup — a question that is kind of irrelevant in cloud storage, which may feature multiple replicated copies of data, EPIC writes.
“A wealth of personal and private messages are now stored remotely in the cloud, and their protection depends on the interpretation of ‘electronic storage’ under ECPA,” EPIC writes.]]>
“Dropbox will be acquired by a major enterprise infrastructure player,” the company wrote. “In another sign that “consumerization” doesn’t mean mimicking consumer technologies in the enterprise but actually acquiring and/or integrating with widely adopted consumer offerings in the enterprise, IDC predicts that Dropbox will be acquired by a major enterprise infrastructure player in 2013. This will certainly be an expensive acquisition, but it will be one that brings an enormous number of consumers (many of whom are also employees), and a growing number of ecosystem partners, along with Dropbox’s technology.”
“Expensive” is putting it mildly; a $250 Series B funding round last fall gave the company a $4 billion valuation, which is expected to be even higher now (though GigaOm still thinks the market is small). Only a major enterprise infrastructure player would be able to afford it.
Part of what makes this prediction interesting is that a Dropbox IPO has been rumored — and highly anticipated — since last year. Dropbox founder and CEO Drew Houston had reportedly received a nine-figure acquisition offer from Apple early on, Forbes reported last year, but turned it down because he wanted to run a big company — though he sounded at the end of the article as though he might be reconsidering that.
As he walked out of [Facebook founder Mark] Zuckerberg’s relatively modest Palo Alto colonial, clearly enroute to becoming the big company CEO he had told Steve Jobs he would be, Houston noticed the security guard parked outside, presumably all day, every day and pondered the corollaries of the path: “I’m not sure I want to live that life, you know?”
The downside with getting a big funding round is that eventually investors want to see some return on their investment — and typically that means either an IPO or an acquisition. Employees also typically want their big buyout, though Dropbox employee stock has reportedly been available on the secondary market.
The advantage of an acquisition by a major vendor is that it could give Dropbox the credibility and structure it would need to fit into the enterprise. It’s not that people aren’t using Dropbox. Quite the contrary — a recent survey by storage vendor Nasuni found that 20% of corporate users were using Dropbox.
This is despite the security and governance holes inherent with using a system such as Dropbox, the security holes in Dropbox in particular, and rules that corporations have attempted to put into place to keep people from using it. (Nasuni found that 49% of the people whose companies had rules against it were using it anyway.) As long as people have multiple devices — and they show no signs of stopping — and need access to their files, as well as the ability to send large files to other people, there’s going to be a need for the functionality, and all the rules in the world aren’t going to stop it, especially when, as Nasuni’s survey indicated, some of the worst offenders are executives.
“The most blatant offenders are near the top of the corporate heap — VPs and directors are most likely to use Dropbox despite the documented risks and despite corporate edicts,” writes GigaOm’s Barb Darrow. “C-level and other execs are the people who brought their personal iPads and iPhones into the office in the first place and demanded they be supported.”
So being purchased by a major player offers the opportunity to rein in some of these users, while still giving them the functionality they need. The company itself has also indicated that it plans to address the issue to make the product safer for corporate users — which would also make it more attractive to an acquirer.
The other likely aspect is that, as we’ve seen with e-discovery and other emerging markets, when the first big vendor goes, many of the smaller vendors quickly follow like dominoes. A Dropbox acquisition would likely presage a whole round of other ones; Wikipedia lists 17 “notable competitors,” including Box.Net and YouSendIt, and there are others. Acquisitions would also help simplify the complicated market.
Although major players such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft already offer their own cloud storage solutions, the vendors might want to acquire other ones for their technology, their people, or simply to get them off the market, while other vendors (dare I suggest HP, which doesn’t have a great track record on acquisitions these days?) would do so simply to get a toe in the market.
Either way, it seems likely that something will happen to this market next year.]]>
The nice thing about three of them happening at once is that this makes it a Trend, so instead of addressing each acquisition individually, we can talk about What It All Means.
From the startup side, there’s really only three exit strategies you can have. You can die. You can file an IPO (like Violin also did last week). Or you can get acquired. If either the company isn’t strong enough, or the market isn’t strong enough, an IPO isn’t necessarily a good idea. So that leaves acquisitions. (We’ll assume no startup plans to die.)
Being acquired doesn’t mean giving up or throwing in the towel. Particularly in the case of the company doing the acquiring, it can be a good idea. It’s a quick way to collect a bunch of new people, a new technology, and perhaps some new customers. ”The vast majority (over 90 percent) of the successful private company exits in 2011 and 2012 have been through company sale or M&A,” writes Jim Price in Business Insider.
The next thing to look at is who’s doing the acquiring. Is it two small companies hoping that together they’ll be strong enough to survive? I don’t want to pick on Carbonite, but given the sort of year they’ve had, that might be a factor. Or is it a big company looking to add an innovative new technology to its portfolio? Certainly in the case of Microsoft and StorSimple, it’s the latter.
As far as what’s next, keep in mind that acquisitions tend to run in clumps. A new technology comes along, a bunch of little companies start up to use it, and then some of them die, some of them merge with each other, and some of them get acquired by larger companies — typically with the strongest players going first and the later ones being picked up by latecomers in the market who are desperate to own a piece of it, in sort of a high-tech version of Musical Chairs. For a big company, it can be a much safer way to innovate than trying to develop a new technology yourself.
We saw something similar a year ago, when Gartner did its first Magic Quadrant on E-Discovery, and predicted that 25% of the companies in it would be acquired by 2014 by major vendors. As it happened, Gartner didn’t even get the report published before the first acquisition happened, and they’ve been falling steadily like little dominoes every since — especially after Gartner conveniently provided a shopping list.
“Probably the prime imperative for Fortune 500 managers is to find areas for revenue and profit growth,” writes Price. “But the challenge is to do so without endangering the existing franchise. Too often, the dilemma from the helm looks like this: You know you need to get into a promising new space, but it’s quite unproven and you suspect running two or three concurrent experiments might bleed cash for years. So in a real sense, you can’t afford – on a quarter-to-quarter income statement basis – to run too many such risky projects. But if you let entrepreneurial startups run the experiments with their energy, time and capital – and let them ring out the technology risk and the market risk – then once a winner appears, you can buy that winner with capital off your balance sheet.”
Certainly Microsoft and StorSimple would qualify.
Since that’s the case, it seems likely that StorSimple competitors like Nasuni and Panzura — which were speaking with a great deal of bravado about the 800-pound gorilla suddenly in their midst — should be expecting to get calls from other large vendors in the next few weeks, and decide which startup exit strategy they plan to follow.]]>
What makes this a big deal? As Wikibon mentions, nearly 30% of Oracle shops are managing more than 100 TB of data that needs to be backed up. And with ‘big data’ becoming a buzzword, not only is the data getting bigger, but people are paying more attention to it.
Wikibon points out several trends, including increasing virtualization, more space devoted to backups, and that tape is still around. 45% of customers report that more than half of backup data resides on tape, Wikibon says.
But one of the newer backup choices that Wikibon mentions is RMAN. And the advantage to that is brought up in one of the other big recent developments in Oracle backup, which is RMAN’s newer ability to back up to the cloud.
That’s where the Amazon Web Services white paper comes in. It describes how Amazon itself started backing up all its Oracle databases to the cloud using RMAN. While such white papers are often pretty self-serving — and now we’re talking about one where a vendor is using its own product, or what EMC’s Paul Maritz refers to as “eating your own dog food” — this one has some hard numbers behind it.
“The transition to S3-based backup started last year and by summer, 30 percent of backups were on S3; three months later it was 50 percent. The company expects the transition to be done by year’s end — except for databases in regions where Amazon s3 is not available,” writes Barb Darrow for GigaOm. Moreover, the company is saving $1 million per year for backups that take only half as long, she writes.
Whether you want to go the AWS route for Oracle backups or not, the Wikibon report has some interesting information on the backup subject. Granted, some of them are pretty Mom-and-apple pie — implement redundancy, test your backups, use dedupe — but others are more nuanced.
For example, the company notes, organizations are increasingly virtualizing their Oracle servers — which could have an impact on the speed of backing them up. ”The big initial attraction of server virtualization is that it increased average utilization from 15% to about 85%,” Wikibon writes. “This means that virtualized environments will see a drastic reduction in overall server capacity, some of which was used to run backups.”]]>
The company, which is known for providing low-cost constant backups for its subscribers, is also known for building its cloud out of a whole lot of teeny (well, 3 TB) commodity disk drives rather than a few great big ones. This saves money and helps the company grow more granularly.
The only problem is if you suddenly run out of teeny commodity disk drives — or find that, in a matter of two weeks, that they’ve tripled in price, as BackBlaze did, when it was adding 50 TB of capacity a day. At the same time, the company wasn’t buying enough to be able to get deals from the manufacturers.
In an extremely detailed, hysterically funny blog post, the company is now relating how it dealt with the crisis — basically, by buying them as consumer commodities rather than as parts, and turning them into the parts they needed to build the “storage pods” on which their service was based.
“With our normal channels charging usury prices for the hard drives core to our business, we needed a miracle,” writes Andrew Klein, director of product marketing. “We got two: Costco and Best Buy. On Brian [Wilson, CTO]’s whiteboard he listed every Costco and Best Buy in the San Francisco Bay Area and then some. We would go to each location and buy as many 3 TB drives as possible.”
While the company then had to “shuck” the drives from their cases, this saved the company $100 per drive over buying them from its usual suppliers. Problem solved.
For a while.
“The “Two Drive Limit” signs started appearing in retail stores in mid-November,” Klein writes. “At first we didn’t believe them, but we quickly learned otherwise.” So workers started making the circuit – circled the San Francisco Bay hitting local Costco and Best Buy stores: 10 stores, 46 disk drives, for 212 miles. It put a lot of miles on the cars, and a lot of time, but it solved that problem.
For a while.
Then BackBlaze employees started getting banned from stores.
At that point, they started hitting up friends and family, and not just in the Bay Area, but nationwide. “It was cheaper to buy external drives at a store in Iowa and have Yev’s dad, Boris, ship them to California than it was to buy internal drives through our normal channels,” Klein writes.
(The company also apparently considered renting a moving van to drive across the country, hitting stores along the way — a variation on the “bandwidth of a station wagon of tapes” problem — but decided it wouldn’t be economical.)
By the time internal drive prices got to their normal level, the company had bought 5.5 petabytes of storage through retail channels — or more than 1800 disk drives. But finally, it could go back to its normal practices.
“On July 25th of this year, Backblaze took $5M in venture funding,” Klein writes. ”At the same time, Costco was offering 3TB external drives for $129 about $30 less than we could get for internal drives. The limit was five drives per person. Needless to say, it was a deal we couldn’t refuse.”
Disclosure: I am a BackBlaze customer.]]>
Virtualization. In talking about how under-utilized data center servers are, and in appearing to limiting himself to less than state-of-the-art facilities, Glanz failed to notice how prevalent virtualization is becoming, which enables an organization to set up numerous “virtual servers” inside a physical server — which, in the process, results in much higher utilization. ”[V]irtualized systems can be easily run at greater than 50% utilization rates, and cloud systems at greater than 70%,” writes Clive Longbottom in SearchDataCenter.
“[I]n many cases the physical “server” doesn’t even exist since everyone doing web at scale makes extensive use of virtualization, either by virtualizing at the OS level and running multiple virtual machines (in which case, yes, perhaps that one machine is bigger than a desktop, but it runs several actual server processes in it) or distributing the processing and storage at a more fine-grained level,” writes Diego Doval in his critique of the New York Times piece. “There’s no longer a 1-1 correlation between “server” and “machine,” and, increasingly, “servers” are being replaced by services.”
“Although the article mentions virtualization and the cloud as possible solutions to improve power utilization, VMware is not mentioned,” agrees Dan Woods in Forbes‘ critique of the piece. “If the reporter talked to VMware or visited their web site, he would have found massive amounts of material that documents how thousands of data centers are using virtualization to increase server utilization.”
Storage. Similarly, Glanz appeared to not be aware of advances in storage technology, even though some of them are taking place in the very data centers he lambasted in his articles. In Prineville, Ore., for example, not all that far from the Quincy, Wash., data centers he criticized, Facebook is working on designing its own storage to eliminate unnecessary parts, as well as setting up low-cost slow-access storage that is spun down most of the time.
Facebook — which does this research precisely because of the economies of scale in its massive data centers — is making similar advances in servers. Moreover, the company’s OpenCompute initiative is releasing all these advances to the computer industry in general to help it take advantage of them, too.
In addition, Glanz focused on the “spinning disks” of the storage systems, apparently not realizing that increasingly organizations like eBay are moving to solid-state “flash” storage technology that use much less power.
Also, storage just isn’t as big a deal as it used to be and as the story makes out. “A Mr Burton from EMC lets slip that the NYSE ‘produces up to 2,000 gigabytes of data per day that must be stored for years’,” reports Ian Bitterlin of Data Center Dynamics in its critique of the New York Times piece. “A big deal? No, not really, since a 2TB (2,000 gigabytes) hard-drive costs $200 – less than a Wall Street trader spends on lunch!”
Disaster recovery. Glanz also criticized data centers for redundancy — particularly their having diesel generators on-site to deal with power failures — apparently not realizing that such redundancy is necessary to make sure the data centers stay up.
And yet, even with all this redundancy, there have been a number of well-publicized data center failures in recent months caused by events as mundane as a thunderstorm. Such outages can cost up to $200,000 per hour for a single company — and a data center such as Amazon’s can service multiple companies. If anything, one might argue that the costs of downtime require more redundancy, not less.
Of course it’s important to ensure that data centers are making efficient use of power, but it’s also important to understand the context.]]>
Last week it was Facebook’s Sub-Zero. This week it’s Amazon’s Glacier.
In both cases, the vendors are offering low-cost storage for long-term archiving in return for customers being willing to wait several hours to retrieve their data — though, in Facebook’s case, the customer appears to be primarily itself, at least for the time being.
“To keep costs low, Amazon Glacier is optimized for data that is infrequently accessed and for which retrieval times of several hours are suitable,” says Amazon. “With Amazon Glacier, customers can reliably store large or small amounts of data for as little as $0.01 per gigabyte per month.”
A penny per gigabyte equals $10 per terabyte (1,000 gigabytes) – compared with $79.99 for the cheapest 1-TB external drive from Amazon’s product search, while Dropbox’s 1-TB plan costs $795 annually, notes Law.com.
The service is intended not for the typical consumer, but for people who are already using Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) cloud service. Amazon describes typical use cases as offsite enterprise information archiving for regulatory purposes, archiving large volumes of data such as media or scientific data, digital preservation, or replacement of tape libraries.
“If you’re not an Iron Mountain customer, this product probably isn’t for you,” notes one online commenter who claimed to have worked on the product. “It wasn’t built to back up your family photos and music collection.”
The service isn’t intended to replace Amazon’s S3 storage service, but to supplement it, the company says. “Use Amazon S3 if you need low latency or frequent access to your data,” Amazon says. “Use Amazon Glacier if low storage cost is paramount, your data is rarely retrieved, and data retrieval times of several hours are acceptable.” In addition, Amazon S3 will introduce an option that will allow customers to move data between Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier based on data lifecycle policies, the company says.
There is also some concern about the cost to retrieve data, particularly because the formula for calculating it is somewhat complicated.
While there is no limit to the total amount of data that can be stored in Amazon Glacier, individual archives are limited to a maximum size of 40 terabytes and up to 1000 “vaults” of data, Amazon says.
While it doesn’t deal with the issue of data for software that no longer exists, the Glacier service could help users circumvent the problem of the “digital dark ages” of data being stored in a format that is no longer readable, notes GigaOm.
Can similar services for other cloud products, such as Microsoft’s Azure, or for consumers, be far behind?]]>
So here we are today, and we have a batch of cloud storage and cloud synchronization services — Box, Dropbox, Drive, SkyDrive, and so on, not to mention my venerable Qwest Digital Vault, which magically changed its name to the CenturyLink Digital Vault when CenturyLink bought Qwest.
I have quite an assortment of space kicking around — 25 GB with Google Drive, 2 GB with Dropbox, 5 GB with Box, and I think 7 GB with SkyDrive; I already missed out on a 25-GB offer there, and if there’s an easy way to find out what my capacity is there, I’m not finding it. (I can consider myself lucky I don’t have iCloud. I don’t think.)
My Digital Vault is a whole other kettle of fish. I thought I had 25 GB there — but when I try to log in, it doesn’t recognize my password. Then again, unless my mother has come back from the dead and changed her maiden name, it doesn’t recognize that, either, so perhaps I’m actually using the wrong ID — but the site doesn’t offer me a way to be reminded what that is, and so far I’ve gone through two separate kinds of chat sessions and neither of them can tell me, either. In any event, its website says it only offers 2 GB free, so that’s probably what I have.
(Plus I have BackBlaze for my actual backups, but I’m not counting that.)
That all totals up to 41 GB, which sounds pretty impressive.
The problem is, it’s not really enough to do anything with. It’d be great to store all my pictures in the cloud, so I could always retrieve them and have plenty of copies to keep them safe, but the picture folder on my NAS (aka “The Big Brick,” 2 terabytes) is 57 GB all by itself. Yes, some of those are duplicates — remember the part about copies to keep them safe? — and some of those are videos, now that I have a camera that can take both still photos and videos. Plus every few months or so I collect all my pictures from all the various sources and save those to the big brick, so they’re all together.
Yes, I should delete all the picture copies sometime — but I’m petrified about making a mistake, and who’s got time?
But for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that I’ve found something I can store in the cloud, something that fits. So then I have to try to keep track of which of my fistful of services I’ve stored it in. I also have to keep track of how to get into each one — something I’ve already demonstrated I have trouble with.
I can sign up for Spanning Stats for Google Drive, but that’s yet another site I have to remember to go check. Plus it turns out that it’s actually a sales tool to encourage you to sign up for its Google Drive backup service. Great. Google doesn’t back up its own cloud service?
That brings up my next level of fear — how do I make sure that what I put into the cloud is still there the next time I look for it? I certainly wouldn’t put my *only* copy of my pictures up there — what if there was a problem? What if the service went out of business? If I have to keep copies and worry about backups and synchronization with the cloud, too, then what’s the point?
(I’m not even worrying yet about the different levels of privacy that the different products offer — and I probably should.)
Spanning Stats also helps me only for Google Drive — I would need an application for Box, Dropbox, SkyDrive, and so on. So that’d be at least five applications and websites (each with their own user ID and password) that I’d have to remember.
What I really want is one thing that would check all my cloud storage systems and tell me what’s in each of them. And maybe while it’s at it, it could also keep track of all the various special offers I get for more free cloud storage space — and when they’re going to expire, and how to move the files around so I don’t get charged for anything. Because you know that’s coming, if it’s not already here. We’ve seen it with the credit cards.
Speaking of which, maybe someone could write an app like that for credit card offers, too.]]>


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Carnival Cruise Line has cut the length of one of its cruises from 14 days to 10 in the of face rising new cases of the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus.
The story was first broken by Cruise Industry News.
Carnival was forced to notify passengers on the Legend that its expected two-week cruise from Baltimore through the Caribbean – including through the Panama Canal – would be cut to 10 days.
The Canal was one of the places dropped because of the decision, replaced by three extra ports of call.
“The voyage will now operate as a 10-day cruise returning to Baltimore 4 days earlier, on Wednesday, January 19, 2022,” according to a letter sent by Carnival to passengers seen by Cruise Industry News.
“Unfortunately, this also means we will not be able to operate the Panama Canal itinerary you were expecting. We are truly sorry for this unexpected change of plans and trust you understand we are making this decision given our commitment to the safety of our guests, crew, and the communities we visit.”
Many cruise lines have canceled or delayed sailings because of the proliferation of the new strain of COVID-19.
In this instance, Cruise Industry News said guests on the Legend will receive a $300 stateroom credit, have four days worth of fare removed from their bill and receive a future cruise credit.
Carnival also said it would accommodate passengers who decide not to sail, writing “We will be happy to discuss rescheduling you for another cruise, or process a full refund of your cruise fare and any pre-paid/purchased items to the original form of payment.”


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ORLANDO, Fla. - Store owners at Orlando's Magic Mall are reacting after police say two suspected robbers were shot and killed during an attempted ‘smash and grab’ at a jewelry store on Friday. The store owner opened fire on the suspected thieves, killing two of them. Two are still on the run.
According to Orlando police, officers swarmed the Magic Mall on West Colonial Drive just before noon. Police say a jewelry booth inside the mall was robbed by four suspects. They say at least one of the suspects was armed.
"The store owner shot at the suspects," police said in an email to FOX 35. "One suspect was found deceased on scene. The three other suspects fled in a vehicle that was later found at a nearby location."
Police say one of the suspects was inside the vehicle with a gunshot wound and was transported to the hospital where he died.
Witnesses say the two other suspects hopped into a waiting SUV and took off.
Johnny Jordan lives next door to the crime scene.
"Sooner or later, they're gonna get them."
General view of police presence outside Magic Mall in Orlando. Photo via SKYFOX
Other store owners at the Magic Mall told FOX 35's Connor Hansen this is why many of them are armed.
"There's a lot of concealed license carriers here. So if you come to the Magic Mall and you want to commit a crime, there's a really good chance you're gonna get shot."
Another said, "Normally we're good, but we have to take care of ourselves."
As of Saturday morning, the two other suspects have not been caught.


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A presentation by Professor Marc in het Panhuis, University of Wollongong, Australia.
The Surf Flex Laboratory at the University is a dedicated facility for mechanical testing of surfing equipment, e.g. fins, surfboards, cloths, inlays, leash bars, and leashes to name but a few.
Continue reading “Surfing the waves, Internet of Things and 3D Printing (VIDEO)”
As the data-driven revolution in business and industry continues, companies now have more data than ever before and an incredible range of opportunities to transform multiple operations across the enterprise.
But too many businesses remain locked into “old-school” processes and patterns in terms of how they use their data assets. Continue reading “The Rise of the IoT: How the Cloud Enables New Data Uses”
Smaller, cheaper microprocessors. The rise of automation. Widespread wireless communications. Over the past two decades, the convergence of these trends has created the much-ballyhooed Internet of Things (IoT). And now it is ready for prime time. Continue reading “The Data of Things: IoT is ready for prime time”
On March 08, 2016, The Sports Innovation Conference will take place at Thomas More in Turnhout, Belgium.
The conference covers a variety of topics related to sports technology, including wearables, big data, and a key note detailing how Microsoft is working with some of the world’s top brands to digitize and transform the global sports industry. Continue reading “International congress on sports innovation and technology in Turnhout, Belgium”
Artificial intelligence techniques have been used for years, and lately there has been an explosion in their applications. As a matter of fact, in a recent Q3 earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai claimed that artificial intelligence is a core, transformative way through which society is re-thinking just how everything is done. Continue reading “Artificial Intelligence is everywhere and is not going to take over businesses”
How Manufacturers Handle Big Data Is Key to Boosting Productivity
Manufacturers have always had to sift through large quantities of data from their production lines in order to understand how their businesses are performing.
But with the increasing use of sensors and instrumentation to monitor, measure and automate the production process, the sheer quantity of information that manufacturers are now faced with has risen dramatically in recent years. Continue reading “How Manufacturers Handle Big Data Is Key to Boosting Productivity”
Both startups and big companies are bringing connected sensors and data analytics into commercial offices
Motion sensors driving light switches used to be state of the art in office buildings, but now startups and big companies are bringing connected sensors and data analytics into commercial offices that will make building management look a lot more like IT. Continue reading “Both startups and big companies are bringing connected sensors and data analytics into commercial offices”
In these early days of the Internet of Things (IoT), much of the focus has been on industrial applications, such as improving operations with autonomous machines, or standalone consumer products, like a Fitbit. But from our research, we’re seeing a more human-centric category of IoT activity starting to emerge. It’s less about automation and more about personal augmentation; less about individual devices and more about “living services” that let people program and connect smart devices however they want. Continue reading “What People Really Want from the Internet of Things”
The objective of making an Intelligent Factory is based on the principle of industry 4.0, a hi-tech strategy of the German Government and industry associations. The purely technical pre-requisites for it must be delivered by cyber-physical systems and the Internet of Things. From now on even tool and mould making will travel on this path to the future of production technology. Continue reading “Industry 4.0 takes over tool and mould manufacturing”
Manufacturing organizations are faced with many challenges to bring new innovative products and services to market in short time and also to improve overall efficiencies. Industrial IOT or Industry 4.0 brings together many technology solutions for manufacturing organization to meet these challenges. Continue reading “How Manufacturing is Changed by Big Data”


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Google You have not yet added the privacy labels for the App Store after they arrived, with iOS 14.3, the new privacy rules of Manzana.
The arrival of iOS 14.3 and the same version of iPadOS, was the arrival, among other novelties, of the new Apple privacy rules. These rules, mandatory for apps and developers, focus on user protection by allowing know the data that apps collect from us and whether or not to authorize our tracking.
Since Apple announced them, and until they arrived, they were highly criticized by some companies. But, as they were mandatory, they only had to comply with them and add the data labels if they updated the apps after the release of iOS 14.3.
Google has not updated its apps since before the launch of iOS 14.3 and the arrival of privacy regulations
And application updates are where it comes into play Google. From the looks of it, since the launch of iOS 14.3 and that the new privacy rules were mandatory, Google has not updated all its apps.
As indicated by certain media, that Google It has not been a coincidence. It seems that this is something deliberate to delay, as much as possible, the knowledge of the data that your applications access and compile. This is precisely due to the amount of data that their apps are “rumored” to access.
Despite all this, since Google have already made a statement about the data labels of the App Store. In it they have made it clear that either this week or next week, at the latest, they will update their apps and they will include the privacy labels and data of the App Store.
What do you think of this news? It is, at least curious, that a company like Google of which the access to your users’ data is known, you have not yet updated your apps since iOS 14.3 was released in mid-December.


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On September 20, 2022, Understory hosted the 'Startups Driving Sustainability' Showcase highlighting the startup innovators making our world more sustainable.
A recording of the event is available below.
Our featured speakers include:
- Tom Ward, Co-Founder & CEO of Epoch Boats
- Constanza Gomez, Co-Founder of Sortile
- Noah Godrey, Co-Founder of Ampliphi
- Franz Hochstrasser, CEO & Co-Founder of Raise Green
In this showcase, we discovered a new type of electric vehicle - boats! We also talked about the circular economy, focused on both plastic and textile waste. The event ended talking about how we can all invest in and support these sustainable technologies. A few key takeaways:
- Boats have an oversized impact on climate change. A single boat generates almost as much carbon per year as an automotive vehicle, despite operating less than 20% as often.
- One overlooked aspect of textile recycling is the collection and sorting piece of the process. A robust end-to-end recycling process could recycle up to 95% of all textile waste.
- Plastic reporting is following in the footsteps of carbon disclosures. New global treaties and local legislation are pressuring companies to measure, disclose, and reduce their plastic impact.
- Substantial investment in climate tech is still needed to avoid additional global warming. While $1 trillion a year is currently being invested, we need $5 trillion a year by 2030 to hit our targets.
For more information about innovators driving sustainable change or our upcoming events, check out Understory's 'Startups Driving Sustainability' Showcase information page.


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Amazon signs on launch partners for space internet
Stay tuned with 24 News HD Android App
The overall cost and timing of launches booked to make Amazon's Project Kuiper a reality were not disclosed.
"We still have lots of work ahead, but the team has continued to hit milestone after milestone across every aspect of our satellite system," Amazon senior vice president Dave Limp said in a statement.
"Project Kuiper will provide fast, affordable broadband to tens of millions of customers in unserved and underserved communities around the world."
Project Kuiper aims to provide high-speed broadband internet service to households, schools, hospitals, businesses, disaster relief operations and others in places without reliable connectivity, according to Amazon.
Amazon is developing Kuiper in-house, and planned to take advantage of capabilities already present in its other divisions, such as logistics operations and AWS cloud computing arm.
"We're honored to support Amazon's ambitious mission to provide reliable, affordable broadband to unserved and underserved communities around the world," Blue Origin senior vice president Jarrett Jones said in a joint release.
"These large, heavy-lift rockets also mean we can deploy more of our constellation with fewer launches, helping simplify our launch and deployment schedule," Badyal said.
The massive number of launch bookings was also expected to boost that industry in the US and Europe.
Badyal gave the example of Arianespace relying on suppliers from 13 European countries to produce its Ariane 6 rockets.
Eighteen of the contracted launches will employ Ariane 6 rockets.
"This contract, the largest we’ve ever signed, is a great moment in Arianespace’s history," Arianespace chief executive Stephane Israel said in the release.
"It is a major win for the European launcher industry."
ULA won the largest share of contracts and planned to build a second launch platform at its site in Cape Canaveral, Florida as part of the arrangement.
That joint venture is operated by US giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
"This agreement marks the beginning of an exciting new era for ULA and for the entire US launch industry," said ULA chief executive Tory Bruno.


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New findings from the National Association of Realtors® show that a record high 77 percent of…
New findings from the National Association of Realtors® show that a record high 77 percent of Americans believe that now is a good time to sell a house, while those that think now is a good time to buy continues to decline.
NAR’s second quarter Housing Opportunities and Market Experience (HOME) survey1 also found that a majority of consumers believe prices have and will continue to rise, while the quality of schools is a critical factor in deciding whether or not to buy a home.
Half of all Americans strongly believe now is a good time to sell (compared to 46 percent last quarter), while 27 percent moderately believe this is the right time (29 percent last quarter).
Respondents in the West are the most likely to think now is a good time (85 percent) as are those who currently own a home (82 percent).
Only 22 percent believe that now is not a good time to sell, down from 29 percent in the second quarter.
Optimism that now is a good time to buy has declined slightly from last quarter.
Sixty-three percent of respondents either strongly or moderately believe that now is a good time buy compared to 68 percent last quarter.
Among renters, positive feelings about purchasing continue to fall, dropping from 49 percent in the second quarter to 45 percent this quarter. Optimism is highest among older U.S. households (65 or over) and those with a household income of more than $100,000 a year (70 and 68 percent respectively).
NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun says several consecutive years of strong home price growth are enticing homeowners to consider selling. “Though the vast majority of consumers believe home prices will continue to increase or hold steady, they understand the days of easy, fast gains could be coming to an end. Therefore, more are indicating that it is a good time to sell, which is a healthy shift in the market.”
Respondents were also asked about their view of home prices in their neighborhoods. Seventy percent believe that home prices have gone up in their area in the last 12 months, up from 68 percent in the second quarter.
Fifty-three percent also believe that home prices will continue to increase in their communities in the next six months; this is down from the last quarter (55 percent).
Consumers feeling positive about the economy and concerned about qualifying for a mortgage
A near-record high of 60 percent of households believe that the economy is improving – up slightly from 58 percent last quarter and up significantly from 53 percent in the third quarter of 2017. People in a household income of over $100,000 are more likely to view the economy as improving (67 percent) compared with those with an income $50,000 to $100,000 (64 percent) and under $50,000 (49 percent).
The HOME survey’s monthly Personal Financial Outlook Index2, showing respondents’ confidence that their personal financial situation will be better in six months, rose slightly from 62.1 in June to 62.6 in September. A year ago, the index was 62.0.
Among those who do not currently own a home, 28 percent of those surveyed believe that it would be very difficult to qualify for a mortgage and 31 percent believe that it would be somewhat difficult given their current financial situation (compared to 26 and 28 percent last month respectively).
“This is most likely a manifestation of the constantly rising prices,” said Yun. “As prices rise so do down payments, making the mortgage qualifying process more challenging.”
See the full report at www.realtor.org.


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Events - Fashion Central
L’atelier fashion retail store celebrates 5 years Anniversary in the retail industry by hosting an event in Islamabad called Fashion Day Out.
Young fashion designer Sonam Parmar showcased her collection at the multi-designer fashion store, Amara.
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy First animated film 3 Bahadur released all across Pakistan on May 22nd, the launch event took place in Lahore.
Asifa & Nabeel presented floro matrical Digital Emprimare lawn 2015 in their pre celebration of Ramadan, 2015.
Home & Soul Launches F Premiere exclusive evening were the crème de la crème of Delhi including socialites, fashion designers, models, entrepreneurs and members of the expat community.
Masarrat Misbah announces the launch of her makeup line Masarrat Misbah Makeup- MM Makeup IN Karachi on May 15, 2015.
Amy Billimoria’s House of Design (ABHD) launched its first store on the main street of Juhu/Juhu featuring Pret and Couture label.
Yasser Anees Sheikh opened a new flagship outlet in Islamabad labeled Raj@Yas.
Fortress Square mall in Lahore celebrated Mother’s Day with thoughtful surprises on Sunday, May 10.
INDEX Furniture and Home Accessories launched a furniture event in Islamabad at Safa Gold Mall.


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Top stories in today’s VentureWire:
Domo, a secretive company founded by Josh James, a founder and former chief executive of Web analytics company Omniture, has raised $60 million in Series B funding. Domo purports to be solving some of the problems that have plagued business intelligence for decades–namely, how to get data to the employees who need it in time for it to make a difference– though it has said little about how it does that. New investors include GGV Capital, Greylock Partners, Bezos Expeditions, Founders Fund, Mercato Partners and Cougar Capital.
500Friends has raised a $5 million Series B round to capitalize on traction it has gained in helping retailers turn infrequent customers into loyal ones. Intel Capital, which took part in the company’s $4.5 million Series A round in March 2012, led the new equity financing, with Crosslink Capital, another returning investor, and Fung Capital, a San Francisco-based fund, participating. The round values the company at $24 million post-money, higher than the $13.75 million valuation of last year’s Series A, according to company founder and Chief Executive Justin Yoshimura.
Also in today’s VentureWire, Mobile apps performance company Crittercism has captured fresh funding from existing investors, having already captured the hearts of developers…Automatic Labs has emerged from stealth with a $69.95 hardware device called the Automatic Link that connects to the onboard diagnostics port of a car and acts as a driver’s assistant…and IMS Health has acquired venture-backed marketing-software maker Appature to expand its commercial-services capabilities for life-sciences and health-care organizations.
(VentureWire is a daily newsletter with comprehensive analysis of all the investments, deals and personnel moves involving startups and their venture backers. For a two-week trial, visit our homepage, scroll to the bottom and click “try for free.”)
Elsewhere around the Web:
Rovio Entertainment, maker of the Angry Birds game, is launching its first animated series this week across mobile devices and TVs, another sign that the Finnish company looks to be more than a mobile-games developer. Rovio’s venture backers include Accel Partners, Atomico Ventures and Felicis Ventures.
If you can’t find your venture investors this week, you might look for them at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, which draws a diverse crowd of VCs.
For six years, a startup called Compass-EOS has been developing router hardware that would be faster, smaller and cheaper than that made by companies such as Cisco. But Cisco likes to keep an eye on such developments and is one of the startup’s backers along with Comcast and Deutsche Telekom well as venture firms Benchmark Capital, North Bridge Venture Partners and Pitango Venture Capital. Private equity investor Crescent Point Group has also contributed to the company’s $120 million in financing.


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Semiconductor supply in the first quarter of 2021 was significantly below demand, and on March 8th, Samsung Electronics issued a warning that there was a serious shortage of semiconductors around the world. In this situation, executives from leading semiconductor companies around the world, such as Intel, Nvidia, and TSMC, asked the question of how long the semiconductor shortage will continue, and in the worst case, they are attracting attention, predicting that it will continue until 2023.
When asked about the semiconductor shortage, the CEOs of these three companies have in common that their predictions are slightly different, but will continue throughout 2021.
Intel CEO Pet Gelsinger announced plans to establish two new factories worth $20 billion in Arizona to meet the increase in production of chips for vehicles suffering from silicon shortages. It will take years, and it expressed the view that the chip shortage will continue after 2022.
Not only the CEO of Gelsinger, but also the CEO of TSMC, Wagerja, has a pessimistic view. He said that he wants to support customers by providing larger quantities in 2023, and he believes that the supply shortage will be resolved little by little by that time. .
Compared to these, Nvidia’s CFO Collette Kress expressed optimism. In his report on the financial forecast for the first quarter of 2022, he announced to investors that he expects demand to exceed supply for most of 2021, but he believes that after the first quarter of 2022, sufficient supply can be provided to support sustained growth. Showed. In other words, it is predicted that the shortage of semiconductors will gradually disappear by 2021.
Due to the global shortage of semiconductors, a move to strengthen production capacity by introducing new manufacturing equipment is spreading to chip makers around the world. According to a report by SEMI, a semiconductor manufacturing industry group, the amount of investment in semiconductor manufacturing equipment around the world rose 19% from $59.7 billion in 2019 to $71.19 billion in 2020. By country, investment in 2020 is $18.72 billion in China, $1.75 billion in Taiwan, $16.80 billion in Korea, and $7.58 billion in Japan. Compared to the previous year, they recorded 39% (China), 0.2% (Taiwan), 61% (Korea), and 21% (Japan). As a result, China overtakes Taiwan, which was the lead in 2019, and Korea is in a fierce pursuit.
Meanwhile, in the United States, there is an argument that the congressional hardline should limit Chinese semiconductors, and that a sales license should be requested for Chinese-made chips designed under the 14nm manufacturing process. Related information can be found here.


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KUALA LUMPUR, May 12 — Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Alexander Nanta Linggi has refuted allegations that he was taking AirAsia’s side on the issue of the company’s recent flight delays.
Nanta said his ministry understood airline-related issues fell under the Transport Ministry and the Malaysian Aviation Commission (Mavcom).
However, he said his ministry took proactive steps when receiving complaints from consumers regarding the flight delays and their compensation claims made against the airline.
“Due to the complaints made to the ministry and on the policy of this ministry that oversees consumer affairs, I have contacted AirAsia to seek further clarification on the problems besetting fliers.
“The accusations stating that I favour AiraAsia are unfounded, and I hope it will stop,” he said in a statement here tonight.
Nanta said several statements have been issued on social media to share the results of the ministry’s engagement with AirAsia, including the details of the meeting between the ministry and AirAsia’s top management this afternoon.
He said the statement made was not in favour of AirAsia, and he himself had urged the company to prioritise the welfare of affected travellers. — Bernama


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Police are looking for a pair of suspects who were caught on camera using a truck to smash into a Hollywood T-Mobile store to steal several expensive electronics.
The incident happened around 3:30 a.m. Sunday at the store at 4907 Sheridan Street, Hollywood Police said.
Surveillance footage showed the truck ram through the front of the store before two men run inside and start grabbing items. Police said they stole two Apple watches, an iPhone X, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, JBL speakers, a Samsung Note 8 and a Samsung Galaxy 9, worth about $5,000 total.
The suspects are in their 20s or 30s, both with a medium build and around 6 feet tall. They used a white truck, possibly a Ford F-250 with a partial tag of #JCE.
Anyone with information is asked to call Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS.


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CONTEXT: According to report by the Ministry of Statistics, female labour participation rate in India fell to 16.1% during the July-September 2020 quarter.
- The percentage of women in the labour force had fallen to a record low of 15.5% during the April-June 2020 quarter, when India imposed strict lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19 virus.
- According to World Bank estimates, India has one of the lowest female labour force participation rates in the world. Less than a third of women – defined in the report as 15 or older – are working or actively looking for a job.
- The female labour participation rate in India had fallen to 20.3% in 2019 from more than 26% in 2005, according to World Bank estimates, compared with 30.5% in neighbouring Bangladesh and 33.7% in Sri Lanka.
- Most employed women in India are in low-skilled work, such as farm and factory labour and domestic help, sectors that have been hit hard by the pandemic.
- The unemployment rate among women touched 15.8%, compared with 12.6% among male workers during three months that ended in September 2020, the latest quarter for which data was released.
Reference: The WireSpread the Word


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COMMUNICATIONS Fiji Limited has estimated a 182 per cent hike in its profits after tax to $2.47million.
The company this week released its 2011 financial report during a stakeholder briefing with the South Pacific Stock Exchange.
For the year ending December 31, 2011, CFL raked in $876,558 of profit after tax.
The company said 2011 was a busy year with profits recorded for all centres. Radio advertising grew by about 5 per cent.
While the company trimmed its expenditure, the reorganisation of Fiji's frequencies last year cost about $0.5m.
However, the company was still able to record a 28.49 per cent profit.
The company's Papua New Guinea subsidiaries continued to perform strongly with a 38 per cent growth in radio advertising.


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The ice cream consists of vanilla ice cream, rum, fudge-covered rum balls and milk chocolate malt balls.
The company said the flavor is an homage to an old "Saturday Night Live" skit featuring Alec Baldwin as bakery owner Pete Schweddy. His unique holiday offerings included something called "Schweddy Balls."
Sean Greenwood, a spokesman for the Vermont ice cream maker, said Thursday that the company isn't worried about offending people with the name.
Schweddy Balls joins other oddly named flavors at Ben & Jerry's, including Karamel Sutra and Half Baked.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.


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Tesla Inc.’s cars contribute more to the U.S. economy because they are made with more American parts, manufacturing and labor than other automakers, a new report says, raising tantalizing questions about the future of electric vehicle manufacturing.
The survey, the American-Made Index by Cars.com, has been conducted yearly since 1998.
Tesla’s Model 3 sedan topped the list of 2021 model-year cars, with Tesla’s Model Y, a mid-size SUV, coming in third. Last year, Tesla models ranked third, fourth and ninth. This is the second year in which Tesla vehicles were part of the survey.
The results come as electric vehicles and domestic manufacturing are top concerns for Congress, and are sure to fuel the debate about how closely the two are related.
"What we’re seeing here with Tesla at the top really does highlight the potential for electric vehicles to have high domestic content," said Kelsey Mays, an editor at Cars.com who led the survey.
The manufacturing of an electric car is dominated by its battery, its most expensive and heaviest part.
Its weight prompts automakers to save money by locating the battery plant near the auto plant. And the strategic uncertainty around being able to secure enough batteries is encouraging automakers to play a key role in developing them, rather than entrusting a key component to a supplier.
For example, at an investor event last week, Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley said that he aims for producing batteries to be "a core competency for the company."
These pressures are causing big automakers in both Europe and North America to race to build battery plants in their home markets, forming the beginnings of a counterweight to China, where the bulk of battery manufacturing and development is now.
If Americans buy more EVs, that means that America’s future auto fleet might be more domestically sourced.
"You have one automaker who is really leading the charge in domestic production of electric vehicles and componentry, if you will, but others are not that far behind," Mays said.
A wave of U.S. automotive battery plants are currently under construction or on the drawing board.
They include SK Innovation’s plant outside Atlanta, which will supply Volkswagen Group of America’s auto plant, among others. Factories in Ohio and Tennessee are being built by General Motors Co. and LG Chem to make GM’s Ultium batteries, and Tesla’s new auto plant is in Austin, Texas.
Others have been unveiled just recently, like Ford’s revelation last month that it will build plants capable of producing 60 gigawatt-hours of batteries per year with SK Innovation. Last week, Volvo said it will build a battery plant in South Carolina.
Tesla scored far higher than other American automakers on a crucial metric — final assembly of vehicles sold in the United States. It scored 100% across all its models, compared with 53.8% for GM and 84.6% for Ford.
Stellantis, the multinational conglomerate that includes American brands like Dodge, Jeep and Ram, scored 70.8%.
All of Tesla’s cars sold in the United States are currently made at its factory in Fremont, Calif.
Cars.com also surveyed U.S. car shoppers, 72% of whom said a car’s economic impact on the United States is important, up from 70% a year ago. Almost a third, 29%, said it is ‘unpatriotic’ to buy a foreign-made vehicle.
The survey also demonstrates how outsourced the U.S. auto fleet has become. Of the 344 vehicle models that Cars.com analyzed, only 121 were at least partially assembled on U.S. shores.
Of the 80 vehicles sold in the United States that were at least partially electrified — gas-electric hybrids, plug-in hybrids and battery-only electric cars — only 27 were partially assembled here.
The only two non-Tesla and pure-EV models to make that list were the Chevrolet Bolt, made in Michigan, and the Nissan Leaf, made in Tennessee.
Among hybrids, a much larger number are mostly American-made, including hybrid versions of the Ford Escape, Explorer and F-150, the Honda Accord, the Jeep Wrangler, and the Toyota Camry, Highlander, RAV4 and Sienna.
Cars.com assembles its survey from data that automakers are required to disclose under the American Automobile Labeling Act, along with comparisons of the size of an automaker’s domestic workforce to its vehicle output. This year, the survey also evaluated 406,000 individual vehicles by their vehicle identification numbers.
The No. 2 car on the 2021 American-Made survey was the Ford Mustang, which is made in Michigan. However, the company’s new electric version, the Mustang Mach-E, is made in Mexico.


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The Magic Leap Two is now further away than ever, unfortunately. Today in a blog post the augmented reality pioneer announced major layoffs and has decided to cut up to half of its workforce, according to some reports.
The original Magic Leap One was supposed to be one of the first mainstream augmented reality headsets when it launched in 2018, but a high price point and lack of interest from developers left the headset high and dry after launch.
According to the blog post, Magic Leap says it will be focusing its efforts on enterprise solutions (a statement HTC has made recently as well) and shift its focus away from consumer technology… at least for the time being.
The company has been open about creating a second headset that would offer improved specs for some time, but how that work will now have to go forward without half of the team, according to some estimates, remains to be seen.
Is the window closing on augmented reality?
Although it’s just one company, Magic Leap felt like our best bet of bringing augmented reality to the masses: its infamous teaser trailer of a whale bursting out of a school gymnasium captured imaginations – and billions of investment dollars – and remains the end-goal for what consumer AR could look like in five to 10 years.
"Adapting our company to these new market realities and our increased focus on enterprise means we must align our efforts to focus on the areas of our business that advance our technology ... [and] this transformation also means that we must decrease investments in areas where the market has been slower to develop," Magic Leap explained in the blog post.
Layoffs are always unfortunate, especially ones that happen during a pandemic, but hopefully those who are affected will find work at other companies working on bringing augmented reality to the masses and continue to help make those dreams a reality.
- Need to escape the real world? Here are the best VR headsets available in 2020
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Nick Pino is Managing Editor, TV and AV for TechRadar's sister site, Tom's Guide. Previously, he was the Senior Editor of Home Entertainment at TechRadar, covering TVs, headphones, speakers, video games, VR and streaming devices. He's also written for GamesRadar+, Official Xbox Magazine, PC Gamer and other outlets over the last decade, and he has a degree in computer science he's not using if anyone wants it.


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DETROIT — Ford’s April U.S. sales fell 7.2 percent, dragged down by car sales that tumbled over 21 percent.
Nissan, General Motors and Toyota also reported U.S. sales declines in April, strong signs that demand for cars, trucks and SUVs is starting to slow after seven straight years of growth.
Industry analysts expect April sales to be down anywhere from 2 percent to 4 percent, but still run at a healthy annual rate of around 17.1 million vehicles.
Kelley Blue Book says it looks like 2017 U.S. sales will fall short of last year’s record 17.5 million for the first annual sales drop since 2009.
Ford Motor Co. says its SUV sales were up 1.2 percent, while truck sales fell by 4.2 percent.
But the company says it’s still getting strong sales prices due to high demand for F-Series Super Duty pickup trucks.


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While it’s not quite Hump Day just yet, Leigh Street favourite Casablabla will be celebrating the festive season by offering their customers with $5 mojitos from 5pm TODAY (February 26).
Having recently undergone a massive revamp that has brought a more open feel to their welcoming space across their bars indoors and outdoors, Casablabla will be boasting of a fresher and more modern look that will get the iconic West End venue to become an attractive spot over the upcoming balmy evenings out in town.
As a major supporter of Casablabla and helping with revitalize their outdoor garden, Bacardi will be launching their Mojito Garden today to celebrate the new look with $5 mojitos and free food platters from 5pm. Expect to see and enjoy a ton of items from their multicultural menu to add new sensations to your palate!
Whether you’re headed to an Adelaide Fringe show or are simply looking to have a good night out on a weekday at a responsible time, Casablabla will be giving you everything you need to indulge in their brand spanking new space, whilst being blanketed by an abundant ray of sunshine!
See you at the Bacardi Mojito Garden at Casablabla from 5pm today (February 26) for a mojito party extravaganza!
With thanks to Girl About Town for the information + images.