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Bloomsbury has signed up to Google eBooks ready for its launch in the UK next year, as the internet giant confirmed it is in talks with the Booksellers Association ahead of bringing the platform to Europe.
The new cloud-based service enables customers to buy e-books through Google eBooks, participating retailers and publishers’ own websites. Readers can then store and access their e-books through a personalised account.
Head of Google Books Europe Santiago de la Mora said talks with the BA had already taken place, with Tim Godfray, chief executive of the BA, confirming it has been in “constant touch with Google for some time”. Jason Hanley, Google’s strategic partner development manager in London, recently addressed the BA Advisory Council, counselling that UK booksellers will be able to trade in Google eBooks in a similar way to US booksellers, providing they have the correct interface. Godfray said he hoped Google would also meet with the BA’s Independent Booksellers Forum.
Foyles c.e.o. Sam Husain, said: “We are certainly very pro it, and we would love to have another player. It’s open to all booksellers, there are no proprietory angles and no closed doors as far as I can see.”
UK publishers also responded positively to Monday’s US launch. Bloomsbury titles will be available on the new platform once it reaches Europe. Executive director Richard Charkin said: “We think it’s absolutely terrific; we think it’s good for authors, good for publishers, good for independent booksellers.” He added: “It will drive more sales online, but at least [independents] are in with a chance.”
Fionnuala Duggan, Random House Group digital director, said: “Random House Inc in the States is making all its adult and children’s e-books available on the Google e-bookstore from launch and we are having productive and ongoing talks about being involved with the UK launch next year.”
Sara Lloyd, Macmillan’s digital director, said: “We’re excited to see the launch of Google eBooks in the US and look forward to a roll-out beyond the US. They’re a welcome partner and bring a new and unique offering.”
This came as Amazon this week stepped up its own e-reading offer, launching its Kindle for Web service in the US. This will enable customers to read Kindle books on any web browser, sharing the cloud-based element of Google eBooks. It will also allow authors and independent booksellers to sell Amazon e-books from their own websites. Evan Schnittman, Bloomsbury’s group m.d. for sales and marketing, said: “Anyone that has any platform with any legs moving forward is on cloud.”
Google is yet to confirm a timetable for its worldwide eBooks launch, but de la Mora said: “We are now fully committed to Europe 2011. The UK is a very important country for us, and you could say a natural fit.”


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The intention behind Libra, the cryptocurrency, is to facilitate global transactions seamlessly and provide a solution for the world’s unbanked population. Well, at least that seems to be the case so. Given Facebook’s history embroiled in user privacy, data breaches, etc., the U.S lawmakers, however, are skeptical of allowing the social network to go ahead with its plans.
Thus, Libra is under heavy scrutiny from the U.S. government and regulators around the world where it plans to do business.
Industry experts, however, believe that Libra will aid in the progress of blockchain industry. Cryptocurrency leaders think Libra could be what the U.S needs to keep itself ahead in the blockchain technology game and keep China and other countries from taking the top place in blockchain development.
Mark Zuckerberg, says, Libra “will extend America’s financial leadership as well as our democratic values and oversight around the world”. This sums up Zuckerberg’s intention behind launching Libra.
Libra is a cross-border payment system. Given the enormous size of Facebook, the cryptocurrency will have an unprecedented impact. The currency would operate through Facebook (with more 2.2 billion users) and WhatsApp using a digital wallet called “Calibra”. Facebook partners with heavy-weight American corporations similar to itself like PayPal, Stripe, Visa, Uber, Master card, etc. to take Libra to the world.
If Facebook continues with its plans, libra and blockchain together will change the face of the finance industry.
Here are some points that favor Libra —
1. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, Libra will be backed by currencies— the U.S dollars, The euro, the pound sterling, the Japanese Yen (bank deposits and U.S treasury securities). Therefore, it will be a stateless currency and a multiderivative of several currencies.
- It will be headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. A country is known for its neutrality and financial know-how, which makes it easy for global policymaking.
This makes Libra truly disruptive in nature. Bitcoin, on the other hand, which has been widely used across the world, works as a good medium for exchange for trade has gained notoriety due to its volatile value. Therefore, it cannot work as a unit of account of a store of value, which is major function money has to perform. Libra will remain a stable coin.
This allows Libra to attain mass recognition and attainment.
Though Zuckerberg, clearly sees this vision, U.S policymakers’ views don’t seem to align with it. In a letter, several U.S. policymakers asked Facebook’s top decision-makers citing Libra may spark potential consequences citing national security, monetary policy, and privacy as concerns.
These concerns remain reasonable and justified. Here’s how.
The U.S is neither politically nor economically monolithic. In fact, the American polity is complex, which encompasses countless sectors whose interests are hard to reconcile. Facebook, of course, is a part of the country’s tech giants. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean the company’s individual interest aligns with the company’s interest.
Another barrier to Libra’s adoption is the challenge to traverse geopolitical tensions. No doubt, currencies involved in the development of Libra have robust GDP and well maintained financial network. However, looming adversities like NATO’s uncertain prospects and the decision to fine Google for anti-trust violations by European Union jeopardize Libra’s future from political view.
Further, cryptocurrencies are susceptible to cyber-attacks. Computational algorithms can be hacked to reprogramme it to the desired value. This will create instability and chaos. The cyberattack on NASDAQ by an alleged Russian intelligence, a few years ago, should be kept in mind to think that projects like Libra are not immune to attacks.
Contrastingly, the U.S dollar is not only backed by economic strength. Its global reserve status is preserved by armed forces including bombers, fighter aircraft, nuclear weapons, etc. While this can’t be said about Libra.
Libra presents an economic opportunity for the U.S and paves way for several other innovations. However, there are several questions raised by Libra which still need to be answered.

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For perhaps longer than we can remember, phones and other popular devices have had third-party vendors offering various accessories, from skins to screen protectors. Now VR gets the same treatment as Hyperkin reveals a host of VR accessories.
Shown off at E3 2016, the company’s initial VR offerings are made for the HTC Vive. Hyperkin is making things like protective covers for your headset and controllers, lens protectors, durable extra wrist straps, extension cables, and more.
The company plans to release these in Q4 this year, in smaller physical stores as well as with retail partners. For the pricing I was told to expect something like $25 for a pack of three headset skins for example.


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Jakks Pacific has revealed your first look at the Dana White UFC action figure. According to Jakks, this is the first prototype image of their new Dana White, President of the UFC, figure. He’s said to be officially part of the Jakks UFC line and will debut sometime this summer.
Great… just what we all want, an obnoxious chunky guy in a suit. Just kidding, the figure is spot on Dana and would make an excellent addition to any UFC action figure collection.
Although no double jointed knee makes Tito Ortiz cry.


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Vaping in the News with the Cotton and Kanthal Show, it’s back and this week we talk about flavour bans, Juul in America and price fixing. This is the week’s best vape review. Our vaping podcast. Each week Freddie and David talk what’s happening with vaping in the news around the world and what’s going on in the vape industry. Aspire and Innokin have been involved in price fixing allegations this month over their attempts to control the end price of products, while Juul and other pod vape kits like Myle have begun removing their products from US shelves. A lot is happening! On top of this we talk the importance of Customer Service and our new same day vape delivery service, Vaperun.
Watch the latest episode here: If you’re a fan of our content, subscribe and follow to catch the latest episodes!


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Licensing can be a source of substantial revenues for publishers. Several publishers have created a sustained revenue stream by entering into licensing relationships with manufacturers and retailers, and extending their brands across a variety of products.
“Strategic part of the diversification plan”
They include legacy firms like Meredith, Playboy, Condé Nast, and Hearst. Sondra Newkirk, Senior Director of Brand Licensing at Meredith told Folio, “Over the last decade [brand licensing] has grown in importance and now is a strategic part of the diversification plan.” Some like Hearst have even gotten into creating their own products (yoga mat, Backslash Fit).
Digital native publisher BuzzFeed, which jumped into the licensing business a couple of years back has seen a steep rise in revenues. The publisher made $130M through retail sales of its branded products in 2018 and expects to double that figure this year.
While Good Housekeeping seals of approval and Playboy Bunny shirts have been familiar parts of the zeitgeist for decades, product licensing always tended to be an incremental side gig for publishers. Now, many media companies are expanding this side of the business and entwining themselves more deeply into product marketing and supply chain development.Steve Smith, Journalist, Folio
BuzzFeed started small, extending its brand with a set of cookbooks, followed by a line of cookware which it sold at Walmart. Now the company is set to rapidly expand its offerings through partnerships with Nestle (ice cream), McCormick (spice blends) and Wines That Rock (wines) among others.
Its Tasty brand will also grow to include products like soups, pasta, baking kits, and smoothies reports Digiday. The publisher is now set to take Tasty’s kitchenware program to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, through various partnerships.
Opportunities in licensing springs from the expertise and credibility, and of course the readership a publisher has earned. According to Business Insider, manufacturers are increasingly willing to partner with publishers to make branded products because of their digital properties i.e., compelling content and robust social media accounts. Additionally, they also possess the first party data of millions of customers.
When you combine the insight we can glean from hundreds of millions of consumers, the relevance of iconic brands in our stable and the power of our distribution platforms, I like our chances in any market environment.Josh Stinchcomb, Chief Experience Officer, Condé Nast
“Something we can do better than they can do”
Several publishers offer creative branding and marketing services. Condé Nast and Time Inc. use their social followings and influencer networks to promote their licensed products. SVP Consumer Products at Bonnier Corp, Elise Contarsy, told Digiday earlier, “If you look at how we support some of our licensing partners today, it’s completely different. If one of our licensing partners is looking for content, that’s something we can do better than they can do.”
Bruce Winder, a retail analyst, told Adweek that partnerships between publishers and retailers also serve the interests of the brick-and-mortar stores. For example, the partnership between BuzzFeed and Walmart is strategically advantageous for Walmart because it “adds a digital halo effect to the retailer—and keeps the products out of Amazon’s grasp.”
Looking from the publishers’ perspective, Diana Gordon, Director, Shop+ at Mindshare North America added, “It’s a chance for digital media companies to reach their audiences who would recognize their brands in these new settings.”
These partnerships also allow media companies to get into retail and reach more customers without investing in the expensive overhead of a store, according to Arnaud Simeray, VP of Strategic Partnerships at pop-up location platform company, Storefront.
This is not a trend. This is the way retail and the shopping experience is moving forward.Arnaud Simeray, VP of Strategic Partnerships, Storefront
“Maintaining relevance in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace”
Over the past year, publishers like Hearst, BuzzFeed, and Clique Brands have launched physical products either on their own or in partnership with other brands. Hearst has built a 15-strong product studio team that does creative ideation, product development, and marketing all the way down to fulfillment and customer service. The publisher is planning to launch around 10 products this year.
But then it’s not always a sure-shot formula to success. There have been some notable failures. In fact, according to Mitch Duckler, Managing Partner at Full Surge, a brand strategy consulting firm, the failure rate of brand extensions can be as high as 80-90%. He gives the example of KFC’s ‘Finger Lickin’ Good’ edible nail polish which was launched in 2016. It was supposed to taste like fried chicken and was a flop with Huffington Post describing it as “your worst nightmare coming true.”
Duckler says, “Robust brand extension strategies are vital to maintaining relevance in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace. To a degree, brand extendibility represents the most logical way to achieve profitable brand growth, however, many companies struggle with how far to stretch, where specifically to extend, and how to ensure success.”
He adds, “Marketers must weigh each potential brand extension by how effectively it leverages brand equity from the parent brand, as well as how effectively it contributes to the parent brand’s existing equity.”
“Fantastic way to spread the impact”
Steve Harvey, Co-founder of FabrikBrands a creative and branding agency recommends the following questions that publishers can ask themselves before making a plunge into extending their brands.
- Is there a desire for the new product? Can you find a USP that will sell your extension?
- Is the extension natural for your brand, or does it seem forced?
- Is your existing brand reputation strong enough to support a new product, service or marketplace?
- Do your customers trust you enough to see the value in your offering?
Harvey says, “Brand extension strategies are a fantastic way to spread the impact of your company into new areas and products. Used correctly, brand extension can reinforce the credibility of your company, help you connect with new audiences, and even strengthen your image around the world.”
He adds, “The key to a successful brand extension strategy is figuring out exactly how you’re going to stretch your company without going too far, too fast.”
Download WNIP’s comprehensive report—50 Ways to Make Media Pay—an essential read for publishers looking at the multiple revenue opportunities available, whether it’s to reach new audiences or double down on existing super-users. The report is free and can be downloaded here.


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Consumers are being urged to watch out for scam emails designed to appear as Verizon alerts.
Many Verizon customers received emails each month from the telecommunications company telling them that their latest bill is available online. Like most companies these days, Verizon uses email as one means of communicating with customers.
However, consumers across the country have been receiving phony alerts that appear almost identical to the real ones that Verizon sends out to its customers. The fake emails are actually part of a phishing scam, the Better Business Bureau warns.
Phishing scams are designed to trick recipients into divulging personal information that crooks can use to steal identities. Scam artists will send emails purporting to be from a legitimate organization that consumers may deal with, often directing them to bogus websites, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
The Verizon scam appears to be a particularly sophisticated attempt to dupe people. The scam artists have been thorough in their effort to copy real Verizon communications, the BBB says.
The tipoffs to the forgery are the large bill amounts — many are up to $500 — and links to third party websites, the organization says.
Consumers can figure out if their Verizon emails are fake by directing their mouse cursor to hover over the links in the message, without clicking on the link and going to the website. By hovering over the link, they can see the link's URL and see if it leads to Verizon's website or a different website, according to the BBB.
If you have any questions about whether an email you receive from Verizon is legitimate, you can try contacting the company directly — without using any links in the suspicious email — and ask them to verify the message's authenticity.
For its part, Verizon suggests checking for any misspellings in the message and looking carefully at the return address.
If the message appears unprofessional or has an odd return address, those are clues that something is amiss. However, consumers should be extra vigilant since some of these fake emails can be strikingly realistic.
Do you have a question about a consumer matter or tips on scams and other unfair business practices? If so, we want to hear from you. Contact Brian Boyd at 508-979-4473 or firstname.lastname@example.org. Current and past columns are available at www.SouthCoastToday.com/411.


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Metal-casing maker Catcher Technology Co (可成科技) yesterday said a partial shutdown of its factories in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China, over environmental protection disputes could cause a 20 percent fall in shipments this month.
If the partial closure at these factories continues, shipments could drop by as much as 40 percent next month, Catcher chairman Allen Horng (洪水樹) said at a press conference at the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Shares of Catcher, which makes metal casings for Apple Inc’s MacBook Air and HTC Corp’s (宏達電) smartphones, dropped by their limit yesterday to close at NT$175 on the stock exchange after the company issued a filing to the Taiwan stock exchange on Sunday night about its factory closures.
Catcher said in the filing that it was forced to partially shut down its production lines in Suzhou over the weekend after local authorities ordered the company to improve its manufacturing process in light of residents’ complaints about strange odors emitted by its factories.
Horng told reporters that the affected production lines were mainly involved in coating and computer numerical control (CNC) works.
He said the company planned to complete the improvements by the end of this month, but could not say when the affected production lines would resume operations because that would depend on the result of safety inspections conducted by the Suzhou authorities.
“If we cannot pass the review by the end of October, shipments to our customers will inevitably be affected,” local cable TV network UBN quoted Horng as saying. “Currently, we still have some casing inventories and semi-processed products. We estimate the closure will affect our shipments by nearly 20 percent this month and by about 40 percent next month in a worst-case scenario.”
Thanks to increasingly popular smartphones and notebook computers, Catcher reported record sales of NT$3.82 billion (US$126.24 million) last month, up 4.6 percent month-on-month and 89.8 percent higher year-on-year.
In the first nine months, the company’s accumulated sales increased 83 percent from a year earlier to NT$26.78 billion, which has helped boost the stock to rise 74.07 percent so far this year, outperforming a decline of 17.99 percent in the benchmark TAIEX over the same period, stock exchange data showed.
The Chinese-language Wealth Magazine first reported last week that Catcher was ordered to shut down part of its Suzhou facilities last month because of complaints by residents.
The report also said that about 1,600 new CNC machines were left idle in the production sites pending formal approval of local authorities’ environmental tests.
Catcher flatly denied the magazine’s report in a stock exchange filing on Thursday, saying its Suzhou factories were closed for China’s Golden Week holiday, not because of environmental protection disputes.
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday announced it would give incentive bonuses totaling NT$1.7 billion (US$59.7 million) to its employees and those at the firm’s major subsidiaries, after the smartphone chip supplier’s revenue hit US$10 billion last year. This is the biggest incentive bonus the Hsinchu-based handset chip designer has ever distributed in its 23-year history. About 17,000 full-time employees of MediaTek and five of its subsidiaries, including Richtek Technology Corp (立錡科技) and Airoha Technology Corp (絡達科技), would receive a “red envelope” of NT$100,000 each, the company said. “Surpassing US$10 billion is just the beginning. We will continue to [grow] on this basis,” MediaTek
TO SPUR REVENUE: The contract chipmaker expects its profit to grow 15 percent this year, outpacing the foundry industry’s projected advance of about 10 percent Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its projected capital spending for this year by 62 percent, a new high, in an attempt to satisfy customer demand for advanced technologies in the production of central processing units, high-performance-computing (HPC) devices and 5G applications. After investing US$17.24 billion last year, TSMC this year plans to spend US$25 billion to US$28 billion on manufacturing equipment and new facilities, including a fab in the US. About 80 percent of the budget would be allocated for developing advanced technologies including 3, 5 and 7-nanometer technologies, the company said. The larger-than-expected capital spending prompted speculation
CHINESE TIE-UP: The firm said its services with Zhejiang Geely would be related to vehicles, parts, intelligent drive systems and automotive ecosystem platforms Apple Inc’s local manufacturing partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) outside of Taiwan, is setting up a vehicle venture, strengthening its automotive capabilities at a time when technology companies, including its California ally, are looking to expand in automaking. Hon Hai is joining forces with Chinese automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co (浙江吉利控股集團) to provide production and consulting services to global automotive enterprises, the companies said in a statement yesterday. The production and consulting services are related to whole vehicles, parts, intelligent drive systems and automotive ecosystem platforms, Hon Hai said in a filing with
RECORD BUDGET: TSMC does plan to raise its proposed capital expenditure a lot, and could benefit if Intel outsources more of its production to foundries, analysts said Intel Corp’s earnings conference call on Thursday is expected to clarify the US semiconductor giant’s outsourcing production plans, which would be crucial regarding Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) performance, analysts said. “TSMC stands to benefit if Intel outsources more of its fabrication to foundries,” SinoPac Securities Investment Service Corp (永豐投顧) analysts said in a note on Friday. Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) was more cautious, saying that Intel’s contribution initially would be limited, but its outsourcing plans would still highlight TSMC’s leadership in technology, it added. “Intel will continue to manufacture server or high-end central processing units [CPUs], which have higher


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A video on YouTube shows the front, side and rear of a prototype Mercedes-Benz ute, which is based on the Nissan NP300 Navara and will launch in 2018.
Mercedes-Benz looks to be joining the charge with Tesla to offer electric vans with the next-generation Sprinter likely to offer an electric drivetrain.
Hybrid technology is not new, yet it’s not always been practical. But now there’s three new Mercedes-Benz plug-in hybrids. WE HAVE run the numbers many a time, and the average hybrid doesn’t make financial sense. In short, the extra premium you pay isn’t recovered until after many, many years of use
Mercedes-Benz has released details of the refreshed E Class for 2016. It’ll be launched later in July.
Robert Pepper’s 2016 Mercedes-Benz AMG A45 review with pricing, specs, ride and handling, safety, verdict and rating.
This is not about luxury, nor about value. It’s just about hot hatch fun and practicality – Mercedes-Benz AMG A45 vs Suzuki Swift Sport.
Want a tough 4WD? The new Mercedes-Benz G350D Professional might be what you’re looking for. The Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen is not well known in Australia, but is one of the classic 4WDs with a history dating back to its origins as a joint venture with famed offroad specialists Steyr-Puch in 1979.
For about the same amount of money as a new Mazda MX-5 you could buy a 2002 Mercedes-Benz SLK 32 AMG… so, what’s it like to drive a 14-year old AMG roadster?
In buying the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen/Wagon, the ADF has taken its ability to go cross country to a new level. Like comparing chalk with cheese, both the 4×4 and 6×6 variants are light years ahead of the Land Rover Defender in terms of technology and capability.
Robert Pepper’s Mercedes-Benz G-Class G350 review with pricing, specs, ride and handling, safety, verdict and rating.
In a rare partnership, Audi, Mercedes-Benz and BMW have joined forces to buy Nokia’s maps business, HERE, to distance themselves from Google and Apple and push forward with autonomous vehicle development.
The Lego Mercedes-Benz Arocs 3245 construction vehicle joins the Lego Technic range and will go on-sale around the world from August 1.
The 2016 Mercedes-Benz GLC has been revealed with a new five-function off-road system.
BRABUS has released a bodykit for the 2015 Mercedes-Benz V-Class and Vito and fiddled with the engine, upping power by 33kW.


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The swift acceleration of foodservice delivery is no doubt one of the biggest storylines to come out of the pandemic.
As restrictions took hold on dining rooms–many of them still lingering–consumers quickly got comfortable having their food brought to them, despite the added cost. Third-party delivery app revenue more than doubled between April and September 2020, for example, while a new report from Rabobank finds that delivery’s share of foodservice doubled to over 15% in the U.S.
That delivery narrative extends beyond DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub
Chowbus has perfectly illustrated that niche can also work in this space by partnering specifically with independent Asian restaurants. The concept turned investors’ heads well before the pandemic, including a $4 million funding round in 2019.
That attention reached a fever pitch in the past year, however, as the pandemic pushed delivery to the forefront and generated consumer urgency about saving their favorite local eateries. In July, Chowbus secured a $33 million Series A round of funding.
Like its delivery peers, the company experienced staggering growth in 2020–700% to be exact. It also expanded into 25 cities across North America. Prior to the pandemic, Chowbus was located in 12 markets.
“No doubt the pandemic changed our business dramatically. We’ve grown into a company with serious momentum behind it,” said Matt Jones, head of Central and Cities Operations.
That momentum is particularly intriguing considering Chowbus’ bootstraps beginnings just five years ago. The company got its start through a WeChat group facilitated by CEO/co-founder Linxin Wen, a Chinese immigrant who came to the U.S. to attend college.
“He noticed the bigger players just didn’t have the coverage of restaurants he loved to eat at. What does any great entrepreneur do? He tried to solve the problem,” Jones said.
Wen used that WeChat group to connect friends and restaurants and he picked up the orders and delivered them himself. He gained a proof of concept along the way, as well as a friend who was digitally savvy and willing to create an app. Co-founder Suyu Zhang is now the chief technology officer of Chowbus.
Together, they tested and tried several different approaches to get their business off the ground, including a shuttlebus that drove pre-determined routes for customers to place their orders and then offered a pickup spot for those customers.
This scrappiness paid off when delivery became a table stakes channel in the past year.
“Chowbus became an on-demand service out of necessity. With indoor dining closing, there was really just a need for more players to be providing delivery,” Jones said.
With its latest round of funding, Chowbus has expanded its staff and market coverage area and will continue to do so. It has also expanded its services.
“For us, it became about what we could do to best help our restaurant partners survive and thrive. I believe delivery will still be a huge part of our business. We’ve seen those behavior shifts with customers and they’re largely going to stick,” Jones said. “We’re also working on exciting tools to help restaurants better serve customers holistically.”
That means enhancing its app, dispatch technology, driver management platform and building a proprietary point-of-sale system that helps restaurants run their operations better. Take a closer look at the delivery players across the space and you’ll notice all of them are diversifying their services beyond just delivery logistics. That is intentional as many restaurants just weren’t positioned to shift their technology infrastructure seemingly overnight, as the pandemic essentially mandated.
Chowbus plans to continue to further diversify itself from that crowd, however, by staying niche. Its restaurant roster is specific, while its menus are available in Mandarin, Cantonese and English.
“Our local teams that manage our restaurant relationships are 100% Mandarin speaking. A lot of them have similar backgrounds to the restaurant owners. The cultural connection we have with restaurants at that local level helps our business in ways that can’t be explained,” Jones said.
This cultural connection also drives engagement, he adds. Chowbus continues to use WeChat to cultivate its follower base, and word-of-mouth has been the company’s friend as it expands. It also helps that authentic Asian cuisine is growing at a staggering pace.
“There is a huge opportunity, both because the cuisine is growing and because there are pockets of underserved restaurants when it comes to ecommerce and digitalization,” Jones said. “There is an opportunity for the restaurants, too. We have a huge delivery radius and a large base of customers live in suburbs who wouldn’t drive 20 miles every time they want Asian food. We help them expand their restaurant presence.”
Jones has heard the negative narratives about delivery, particularly as it pertains to high commission fees. Without getting specific, he said Chowbus’ commission rates are “way below” industry standards. The company also offers a $9.99-per-month subscription service.
The company plans to do what it can to keep its service affordable so it can help independent restaurants recovery and thrive.
“We’re only scratching the surface in this segment,” Jones said. “There is so much more growth to be had, and so much more we can be providing our restaurant partners and customers and that is what we’re focused on day to day.”


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Crescent Electric Supply, East Dubuque, IL, has endorsed NEMRA’s POS/POT Minimum Reporting Standards. According to Debra McCashin, the company’s national VP of Supplier Partnerships, Crescent has provided POS information to many of its manufacturers for a while. “We recognize the importance of POS data for our rep community,” she said in the press release. “It’s critical to our success as we stand up DCs across the country.”
Crescent currently has three distribution centers supporting its branch network. Jim Johnson, President of NEMRA, added in the press release, “On behalf of the NEMRA independent manufacturer representatives, we appreciate Crescent’s endorsement. As companies grow through acquisition and by transitioning to an RDC model to serve their branches and customers more efficiently, the importance of POS reporting becomes more vital in ensuring independent manufacturer representatives are compensated for providing local support. Every distributor that does business with manufacturers in multiple territories can benefit by adopting the NEMRA POS standards. Thank you to Crescent for recognizing the opportunity and supporting NEMRA representatives.”
Click here for more information on NEMRA’s POS initiative and to read the research and see which manufacturers and distributors have endorsed and adopted the standards.
Founded in 1919, Crescent Electric has over 130 locations branded as Crescent, Lowe Electric, Stoneway Supply, and Womack Electric.


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May 10, 2021 Farm Animals, Alternative Proteins, Economics & Sustainability
It is now commonplace for any new report on global sustainability to recommend that people should eat fewer animal products to help address climate change, biodiversity losses, personal health and several other challenges facing the world today. The Dasgupta Review (see related article in this newsletter) is the most recent major report to recommend that humans eat lower on the food chain. However, by all reports and analyses, consumption of animal products has been rising relentlessly over the last sixty years. In 1961, the world consumed 71 million metric tons of meat. By 2018, consumption had risen to 341 million metric tons – almost a 5 – fold growth in just 57 years, a very short period in the history of humankind and, by comparison, the human population grew 1.5 – fold in that time period. Furthermore, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) predicts that global meat consumption will double by 2050.
The rapid increase in meat consumption comes with a significant cost in environmental damage and biodiversity loss and is unsustainable. It is also unclear how the world could produce enough meat to further double consumption in the next thirty years. Almost 80% of the world’s agricultural land is already devoted to the production of dairy products and animal protein.
Fortunately, there are now signs of a dietary revolution emerging in the alternative protein sector. In the last ten years, new investments have poured into start-up companies that are manufacturing protein-rich foods (alternative meats and dairy products) with a much lower ecological footprint than the products now obtained from animals. The Good Food Institute notes in its 2021 review of investment in alternative proteins that this sector raised $3.1 billion in 2020. This increase is three times more investment dollars than in any previous year and is more than half the total investment funding ($5.9 billion) raised over the last decade.
Although Bill Gates and other investors (including major multi-nationals currently engaged in the production of animal proteins) are investing in alternative protein companies, this does not mean that they are necessarily doing so primarily to reduce meat consumption. The development of synthetic biology and its broad potential application to other industries may be at the root of their interest. And, as Lewis Bollard of Open Philanthropy’s Farm Animal Welfare program notes, plant-based proteins and alternative meats are still a lot more expensive than their animal-sourced competitors (see chart). Although various banks and food consultancies project that the global market for meat alternatives will increase to somewhere between $85 and $390 billion by 2030 but these figures are still only a fraction of the global meat market (approximately $1,200 billion in 2019).
Animal products (in red) are cheaper than their plant-based (in green) competition.
Sources: Chart compiled by Lewis Bollard of Open Philanthropy. Meat and egg prices are national retail averages based on US Bureau of Labor Statistics data for August 2019, complied by the USDA’s Economic Research Service. For all other products, Bollard found the lowest priced option on Walmart.com, except for Beyond Beef (which is cheaper at Target), and Just Egg and the Impossible Burger (which are not available at Walmart.com).
A major challenge for the new alternative protein products is the very low cost of meat. On a per pound basis, chicken is cheaper than peanuts. Since 1950, the inflation-adjusted price of chicken has dropped from $4.64 to around $2 a pound. Meanwhile, Morningstar and Gardein chicken strips cost between $4 and $5 a pound.
One reason why meat is so cheap is because meat production costs do not include such externalities as the pollution caused by the manure produced by farm animals or the costs of antibiotic resistance resulting from the use of antibiotic-laced feed additives for production animals. For example, in the EU, food animals consume three-fifths of the total volume of antibiotics used annually. As for farm animal manure, the 2 billion pounds of farm animal waste produced annually in the US is mostly spread untreated onto fields. In contrast, human waste must be treated before it can be applied to fields. If farm animal waste was similarly treated, it would cost the industry somewhere between $80-200 billion a year (the US meat industry earned around $220 billion in 2019).
We can expect the cost of alternative proteins to continue to fall as sales volumes increase and the technology advances. The huge drop in the price of solar power has been driven almost entirely by the increased volume of sales (see Swanson’s Law). The costs per installed watt have dropped 65% since 2010. As the volume of alternative proteins ramps up, their costs should also continue to fall. If governments also begin to introduce policies to discourage the unsustainable production of meat (e.g., see this analysis of the growth in interest in alternative proteins in the Netherlands), then we could see alternative protein production follow the same trajectory as solar power – an increased uptake of both would produce substantial benefits in global sustainability and permit some restoration of biodiversity.


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A previous article on The Kratom Herald discussed how the American Kratom Association (AKA) spokesperson Mac Haddow owns a lobbying firm called Upstream Consulting, and Upstream Consulting has been doing lobbying work for the AKA while simultaneously lobbying for anti-Kratom organizations including Big Pharma companies and the Natural Products Association (NPA). Literally, the firm that Haddow owns has received $380,000 in the past 4 years from the NPA, which is an aggressively anti-Kratom organization that almost got Kratom banned in 2016.
The story goes deeper than that however. Apparently, Haddow played a major role in passing the Dietary Supplement Health And Education Act (DSHEA), which is the same law that the FDA is leveraging to seize tremendous amount of Kratom at the borders via an import alert, and also the same law that the FDA uses to justify U.S. Marshall raids on Kratom vendors, such as the seizure of 34,000 kilos of Kratom from a vendor in May.
Indeed, in the below screenshot you can see a picture of Mac receiving a Lifetime Achievement award for his efforts in helping to pass the DSHEA, and right under that you can see Mac personally verifying the situation. This screenshot is from a Kratom group that Haddow frequents.
Even worse, in the picture Haddow is receiving the reward from Doctor Fabricant, the aggressively anti-Kratom leader of the NPA. Indeed, when Kratom was almost banned in 2016, the NPA said that banning Kratom was not enough, and that any Kratom users and vendors needed to be heavily attacked by law enforcement.
Further verification of Haddow’s and Doctor Fabricant’s close relationship is the below tweet, where Fabricant is bestowing a reward upon Haddow for helping out the NPA so much.
This topic will be covered more in-depth in another article.
Back to the point of this article, there is no doubt that Haddow played a big role in getting the DSHEA passed, a law which is being used as precedent for the FDA to declare Kratom illegal.
Essentially, due to the DSHEA, Kratom is considered a new dietary ingredient (NDI), and all NDIs are illegal until they get approved by the FDA. And since the FDA will never approve Kratom, this puts Kratom in a permanent state of being illegal.
Indeed, the FDA used the DSHEA to establish the import alert, which causes tremendous amounts of Kratom to be seized by Customs at the border. The import alert references the DSHEA, saying “When marketed as a dietary ingredient, FDA also considers kratom to be a new dietary ingredient under section 413(d) of the Act [21 U.S.C. 350b(d)] because, to the best of the agency’s knowledge, there is no information demonstrating that this substance was marketed as a dietary ingredient in the United States before October 15, 1994… kratom and kratom-containing dietary supplements and bulk dietary ingredients are adulterated under section 402(f)(1)(B) of the Act [21 U.S.C. 342(f)(1)(B)], because they contain a new dietary ingredient for which there is inadequate information to provide reasonable assurance that such ingredient does not present a significant or unreasonable risk of illness or injury”.
Furthermore, in the recent U.S. Marshalls raid on a Kratom vendor, which resulted in the seizure of 34,000 Kilos of Kratom, the FDA used the same DSHEA-based justification.
Thus, Haddow played a major role in passing the DSHEA, the same law which is being used to attack the Kratom industry. In-part due to Haddow’s efforts on the DSHEA, untold millions of dollars of Kratom have been seized by the FDA, and these seizures are intensifying as of this writing.
All things considered, it is absurd that the American Kratom Association’s spokesperson is the same guy who played a big role in passing a law which is terrorizing the Kratom industry. To make an analogy, Haddow being the spokesperson for a pro-Kratom organization is like putting a Big Tobacco CEO in charge of an anti-smoking advocacy group.
Further, adding up everything that Haddow has done, Haddow has done far more damage to Kratom’s legality than he has helped.
Stay tuned to The Kratom Herald, the rabbit hole goes even deeper than this, and more articles are coming.
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The bizarre, WTF-is-going-on triangle between Chris Brown, Rihanna, and Karrueche Tran seems to have escalated into all-out war…and possibly, all in the name of FASHION!
While the singers have once again been spotted leaving the recording studio together, the other woman in the equation has been hard at work on her fashion line, The Kill! But recently, some photos surfaced on the internet featuring what was ASSUMED to be a graphic t-shirt from her collection, featuring a photo of RiRi below text that reads "Hi
And although Miz Tran immediately took to Twitter to
Tags: celebrity feuds, chris brown, diss, ex-girlfriend, fashion line, karrueche tran, recording studio, response, rihanna, t-shirt, the kill


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Economy forcing consumers to make risky health tradeoffs: report
In times of economic dread, it’s no stretch that we’d compromise.
We’d compromise our wardrobes (when consumers stopped buying $300 premium jeans, for instance), we’d compromise our leisure time (when we had to kick pay porn out of the rotation) and we’d compromise our private jetting (when rich people had to, ick, learn to “jetpool”).
But one thing we wouldn’t compromise, darnit, was ourselves. Our health, above all, would be immune to the recession.
Make that “should.” According to a new poll from Consumer Reports, that’s just what we’ve been doing: stretching our health care dollars and making risky tradeoffs.
By the survey out of the U.S. (yes, we’ll address that in a second), nearly half of consumers (48 per cent) admitted to trimming costs in 2011 by putting off a doctor’s visit or medical procedure, or even ordering cheaper drugs from out-of-country pharmacies, an increase of nine percentage points from a year earlier.
Further, 28 per cent of Americans that take medication have been resorting to, in the verbiage of Consumers Reports, “potentially dangerous actions.” For instance, 16 per cent said they had skipped filling a prescription, 13 per cent said they took an expired medication and 12 per cent skipped a schedule dosage without consulting their doctor or pharmacist.
Now, sure, this is an American poll, and even with Obamacare, health care – and associated health care costs – are different south of the border.
But in many regards, Canadian health care isn’t quite the oasis we make it out to be. Canucks are lucky they don’t have to sacrifice a doctor’s appointment or medical operation because of cash concerns, but where does that leave us on prescription drugs?
For those Canadians without employer-provided health insurance, guess who’s on the hook for pills: them. It stands to reason plenty of Canadians have likely skipped, or skimped on, prescription drugs as the economy’s tanked. Same goes, we’d imagine, for scheduled dental appointments.
Have you compromised your health care needs during the downturn, whether they be prescription drugs, dentist appointments or otherwise?
By Jason Buckland, MSN Money


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Up until recently, when Apple wanted to roll out security updates for iPhones, iPads, and Macs, the company had to push a major operating system patch to users. But last year the company introduced a new Rapid Security Response system with the introduction of iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Venture.
Now Apple has rolled out its first Rapid Security Responses. The process was a bit on the bumpy side at first, but the update should now be available for most devices running the latest version of Apple’s operating systems.
Since these aren’t full-scale operating system update, they’re relatively small packages that won’t take long to download and install. The iOS update, for example, is just over 85MB.
Users have reported that they did need to reboot their devices in order to install this Rapid Security Response update, but Apple says that not all updates will require a reboot.
According to Apple’s support page, once installed, you should see a letter after the OS version number in your System Settings. For example, a Mac with the latest security patch applied will be running macOS 13.3.1 (a) rather than just macOS 13.3.1.
via Ars Technica


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Via Weed News
There are so many marijuana industry events these days it’s nearly impossible to keep track of them all. I remember even just a couple of years ago there weren’t that many. Not all marijuana industry events are created equal. Trust me, i have been to a lot of them. Marijuana industry events range from stellar to events so lacking in knowledge and organization that I usually end up on the side dock with the banquet staff using an apple as a smoking device.
The Cannabis Collaborative Conference is back in Portland for its third installment. The conference is a Mary Lou Burton and crew event, and their events are always outstanding. In addition to the last two Cannabis Collaborative Conferences, Mary Lou and her team also organized the Oregon Cannabis Grower’s Fair which was an inspiring national story, and definitely one of the highlights of 2016 for me personally, as I traveled to the Oregon State Fairgrounds and saw history being made with live cannabis plants on display. While other states are only showing off large pumpkins (no offense pumpkin growers in other states), Oregon had dozens of cannabis plants with judges rating them like any other agricultural crop. It was one of the proudest Oregonian moments of my lifetime (fourth generation Oregonian!).
The second Cannabis Collaborative Conference made huge headlines as well, with Cliff Robinsonannouncing his entrance into the cannabis space and becoming more vocal of his cannabis advocacy. I obviously have never made it a secret how huge of a fan of Cliff’s I am, and I know I’m not alone, and he’s a hell of an ambassador for sports cannabis and a freedom fighter. Cliff has been hit by cannabis prohibition more than many people realize, and his passionate advocacy is sincere and has changed a lot of minds. Believe me, I’ve seen it first hand.
When it was announced that Cliff was speaking at the conference, it was covered by ESPN, The Washington Post, USA Today, and many other major outlets. And those were just the American outlets that covered it. It was crazy. I have literally been at other events and heard people comparing the event they were at to the Cannabis Collaborative Conference (CCC), and talking about how it wasn’t as good as CCC (true story). Mary Lou and her team really do an outstanding job.
The Cannabis Collaborative Conference is much more than just a conference where people fumble about wondering how they accumulated so many stickers and SWAG bags. The list of speakers is incredible, with some truly talented, knowledgeable people on the roster. Literally every facet of the industry is covered in some way by the speakers that are scheduled to present. I don’t know that they have announced the keynote speaker yet, but I have seen it, and it’s fantastic (will post an update when I can confirm that it’s OK to share).
Becoming a sponsor and/or exhibitor is a great idea to help boost your brand, as attendance is going to be high and the cannabis industry is becoming more and more crowded every day. Becoming a sponsor and/or exhibitor is a great way to get the word out, which is incredibly important these days.
The event is particularly timely for those looking for an investor. I get hit up all the time by people looking for help getting their idea(s) off the ground, and this event is a great place to network for that purpose. There is a pre-conference Investor Summit, there will be a ‘Match-making lounge’ to try to match up the right entrepreneur with the right investor, as well as a “Pitch Portal” which looks really fantastic.
For the amount of speakers involved, the networking opportunities, and the quality of the event, the event is a great price. I really like that there is a one day option for those that may not be able to make both days. If you are serious about the cannabis industry, and you are serious about networking and learning, this event is a great buy. Compare it to other reputable events that are out there and you will see what I’m talking about. More info to come. Stay up to date by following the Cannabis Collaborative Conference on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
View on Weed News


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Amazon is offering a special Prime membership rate to recipients of Medicaid, it announced on its blog. Medicaid recipients are now eligible for Prime for $5.99 per month.
To qualify for a $5.99 monthly Prime membership, customers must have a valid EBT or Medicaid card. Qualifying customers can renew their discounted membership every year, for up to four years, with the ability to cancel anytime.
Amazon Prime Vice President Cem Sibay was quoted in the post. “We hope to make Prime even more accessible. With more than 100 million products to choose from, low prices, time savings, and fast and convenient delivery options, the combination of shipping, shopping and entertainment provide tremendous value to customers.”
Amazon quoted several Medicaid recipients in the blog post explaining how convenient it is for them to shop by Prime and not having to make trips to stores given disabilities of family members or themselves.
Amazon published an accompanying video, and wrote: “More members shared stories about how Prime has made their lives easier with low prices and convenient delivery options, especially those living in rural areas or with physical limitations. We also found that members find value shopping for items online, such as diapers and paper towels, and devices including Echo Dot and Fire 7 Tablets.”
SOURCE: Amazon Blog Post


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Hawthorne TV Profiles NewspaperDirect's Advertising Widget: Adget
Today, Hawthorne TV profiled Adget in their Video Active Report, calling it “pretty nifty” – check it out:
Adget has really captured the attention of publishers and advertisers alike because it makes newspaper advertising more interactive and engaging for readers. As you can see by this article below, CanWest is already using NewspaperDirect’s Adget platform to supplement its movie review column by including trailers of upcoming movies.
Cool, don’t you think?
07 Dec 2007


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Motswako Office Solutions regained its crown as Ricoh SA’s business partner of the year at Ricoh SA’s recent annual financial year-end event.
Motswako Office Solutions, a Ricoh SA Platinum Partner and BBBEE partner, won a total of nine awards, including the coveted business partner of the year, which it last won in the 2012/2013 financial year.
“We’ve grown since I bought the company in 2010 and this year revenues have grown 54%,” says MD, Jaco de Jager. “We have 1 500% more machines in the field since 2010, we now have 10 national offices in South Africa and one in London, UK, our staff complement has grown from 25 in 2010 to 153 today and we recently bought a 50% stake in Thepa Trading, the level 3 BBBEE Ricoh partner in Free State.”
“Our partner network is fiercely competitive as they help their customers be ready for the future of business,” says Jacques van Wyk, COO of Ricoh SA. “Motswako Office Solutions has clearly met and exceeded customer needs and that demonstrates that our partnership drives success.”
De Jager attributes much of the company’s success to its exemplary BBBEE level 2 score, in part attained by the directorship of Sebenzile Matsebula, a disabled black woman who owns 26% of the business and who has worked for The Presidency promoting the rights of people with disabilities and who served as an advisor for development agencies including the United Nations.
Motswako Office Solutions has also diversified from solely office automation to offer additional solutions in software and telecommunications such as voice over IP (VoIP). It has also recently been awarded international business to supply its solutions to a UK company and won the tender to supply a large local concern with in excess of 3 000 devices.
“We have always invested in obtaining government and parastatal business alongside our commercial business,” says De Jager. “After-sales service and consulting is a key area that we focus on intensively and we have had some of our large corporate clients for 10 years or more as a result.”
He adds that Motswako Office Solutions has a policy to invest in its employees – a vision shared by him and driven by Matsebula. The business currently has 14 learnerships in progress, a strategy it has always focused on and these success stories infiltrate nearly every facet of the business. A man who formerly maintained domestic gardens, for example, is now a qualified technician servicing corporate customers.
Motswako Office Solutions this year won:
Dealer of the year
Annuity purchases – for achieving 329% of budget
Exceptional growth – 54%
Exceeded 100% of target for production printing value propositions
Exceeding 100% of target for machine and accessories
Highest machine and accessories purchases
Highest consumable purchases
Highest software purchases
Good payment award
The company won three categories in total when it previously won Ricoh SA’s business partner of the year in 2012/2013, including highest consumables sales and highest machine and accessory sales.
“An additional accolade for our Motswako Rainbow Family that year was an award for best spirit in any dealership, which shows the dedication of all employees in our company and their commitment to work together towards the common goal of providing the most efficient and friendly service to all clients,” says De Jager. “That is the true secret to our success.”


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If you’re a fan of the Kardashians, you may be wondering why they’re using fake news to spread their false narratives.
They are, after all, the biggest and most popular group of celebrities in the world.
It’s a great marketing opportunity.
And they are using it to their advantage.
According to a new study published by The Atlantic, the Kardashian sisters’ fake news campaigns have been a $100 million-a-year business.
And, as their success has grown, so has the fake news they have peddled.
They have been able to exploit people’s trust in their stories, and in the process, to spread misinformation and falsehoods.
In fact, the Kardashian sisters’ campaign to get the word out about their breast augmentation surgery was a $60 million-plus endeavor.
“When the Kardashias go to the media, they often get all of the negative attention,” said Chris Stirewalt, a social media strategist and senior fellow at the Atlantic Institute.
“But it’s always worth looking at their brand.
Their marketing has been successful in helping them spread misinformation.”
The Atlantic study analyzed nearly 10,000 Instagram photos posted by the Kardashues between December 2015 and August 2017.
It found that their “media content” was “designed to promote the Kardashia brand,” according to The Atlantic.
That’s a pretty good description.
The Kardashians’ stories about their breasts are often sensationalistic and false, with images that promote their bodies.
And the photos often include a fake caption, usually one that appears to say the Kardashiams are supermodel or a model from the Kardashienes.
The story often ends with the Kardashie sisters having to confront the person behind the photo.
For example, one Kardashian photo included a caption that read, “I think you can see my boobs.”
The caption read, “[T]here are more than a few women who think my breasts are supermodels, but I think you’d know me better as an ordinary person.”
It’s not the first time the Kardashies have gotten in trouble for using fake content on social media.
In 2017, a photo that appeared to show a model’s breasts appeared on the Kardashian Instagram account, with the caption, “Can you believe this?
My breasts have never looked so big!”
And in 2017, the family was criticized for a photo of Kim Kardashian’s family with their children that featured the family with an infant and an infant with a baby on top of it.
In an article published in the Daily Beast, reporter Michelle Goldberg detailed the “disgraceful” images the Kardashian family was using to promote their breast-enhancing surgeries.
“I know I’m not the only one who was shocked by the photo, but the Kardashes are the biggest media force to date, and they are shameless about their fake news,” Goldberg wrote.
“We are so used to seeing celebrity photos of celebrities with full-on tummies, it’s shocking to see a Kardashian family with two children and their mother’s breast.
Even worse, the image was shared more than 6,000 times and was reposted more than 10,600 times on Instagram.
What was Kardashian-themed surgery all about?
While it’s easy to see how the Kardashian brand is the main selling point of their brand, the reality is that the Kardashiones’ business model is about selling beauty products, and getting followers and viewers to buy into their marketing strategies.
“What the Kardashys are selling is products.” “
People don’t see the brand as the one that’s selling beauty,” said Stirewhal.
“What the Kardashys are selling is products.”
But that doesn’t mean the Kardashios are making money off of it, Stirewal said.
“It’s not a pure business model, because they don’t sell a product,” he said.
Instead, the brand is about building relationships with the Instagram community.
The Kardashian sisters were able to build this relationship through Instagram.
They built their following through their Instagram accounts, which are designed to promote beauty and create positive social interactions.
And because of that, Instagram can become a great platform for marketing.
Instagram can provide valuable insights into people’s emotions, such as how they perceive the Kardashinees’ products and the products themselves.
It can even provide useful insights about brand behavior.
“Instagram has helped us to understand the brand and what it’s about,” said Kristin Johnson, who works for the Kardashian Family Foundation.
“So now we can see the Kardashines’ brand and understand what they are talking about.”
In other words, the more people who use Instagram, the better the brand’s chances of staying alive.
And as it becomes more and more difficult for brands to keep up with the social media onslaught, they will have less and less opportunity to stay relevant.
Stirewar said that the Kardashians have done a good job of keeping up with their audience,


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In 2022, manufacturers of packaged foods did a lot better than their counterparts in household staples like soap and paper towels. That’s true for a variety of reasons, says The Wall Street Journal. With COVID easing, people aren’t stocking up as much on cleaning supplies. And being home-bound for so long, they’ve upgraded kitchens and cooking skills, keeping at-home food consumption strong. Food companies also get more of their revenue domestically, while non-food staples get more revenue from abroad, where economies have suffered more.
(Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Feb 4, 2024) Trion Industries issued the following statement: “It is with great sadness that we announce that John S. Thalenfeld, President and


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TeamViewer, an app that allows users to remotely access their computers, was recently updated for Windows 10. It now supports Continuum when used on a Windows 10 Mobile device.
The new feature was revealed on the app's Twitter page. That means some Windows 10 Mobile device owners who own smartphones that use Continuum, such as the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL can connect it to a big screen monitor, keyboard and mouse and use TeamViewer as if it was on a desktop PC.
Here's a reminder of the app's main features;
Windows, Mac or Linux --- Remotely control any computer within seconds
Highest security standard --- 256 Bit AES Session Encoding and 2048 Bit RSA Key Exchange
Integrated computers & contacts list --- See the online status of your partners and connect to them via quick access
No configuration --- Effortless access to remote computers even behind firewalls and proxy servers
Wake-on-LAN --- Switch on your computer remotely • Simple reboot --- Reboot remote computers or servers from anywhere
Multi monitor ---- Switch between multiple screens easily
The lawsuit against Activision Blizzard alleging harassment, unfair pay, and a "frat boy" culture has rocked the video game industry. Here's everything you need to know about it, from the suit itself to the aftermath.


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Battery materials firm Umicore will begin supplying Samsung SDI with around 80,000 metric tonnes of NMC (Nickel Manganese Cobalt) lithium-ion cathode materials next year after signing a multi-year strategic agreement.
The majority of the cathode materials will initially be produced in Korea, with additional volumes supplied from Umicore plants in different regions.
The agreement provides Samsung with security of supply to accomodate their lithium-ion battery businesses in Europe and Asia, particularly in automotive applications.
The materials are due to be used in automotive applications with a small amount set aside for energy storage systems, said Umicore.
Marc Grynberg, Umicore’s CEO, said the deal underscored a sustainable battery value chain was taking shape and demonstrated the commitment of key industry players to support the growing penetration of electric vehicles globally.


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It looks like Nokia plans to launch a new series of Lumia smartphones powered by Windows Phone 8, next year.
The company’s flagship handset, Lumia 920 is one of the most popular smartphones on the market, though it’s very hard to find.
Chinese site Cnbeta has just published a few pictures showing an unannounced Nokia smartphone, the Lumia 825.
This is a slightly improved version of Nokia Lumia 820 and is expected to hit shelves in February 2013.
Nokia Lumia 825 is said to boast an impressive 8-megapixel rear photo snapper with Carl Zeiss lens, dual-LED flash, autofocus and full HD (1080p) video recording.
On the inside, the smartphone packs a dual-core processor clocked at 1.5 GHz, which is complemented by 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal memory. It also sports a 4.3-inch PureMotion capacitive touchscreen display.


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Last week’s edition of the 2022 Travvy Awards was a major milestone for travel, but one of the biggest highlights of the show was the spotlight shined on the car rental industry.
During the eighth annual Travvy Awards, which took place on November 3 at the Hilton Fort Lauderdale in Marina, Florida, the Northstar Travel Group presented a series of awards to the top companies in the car rental industry.
In the domestic car rental category, Enterprise Holdings took home the gold statuette, Hertz brought home the silver and Avis Budget Group rounded out the top three with a bronze Travvy Award.
As for the car rental companies that thrived in the international markets, Hertz earned the top prize and took home the gold, while Enterprise Holdings finished second in the voting and Avis Budget Group collected its second bronze statuette of the evening.
“The Travvy Awards are voted on by travel advisors, AKA the real influencers in travel,” TravelPulse Executive Editor Eric Bowman said. “It’s an honor to gather together and celebrate with the best of the best in the travel industry.”
Enterprise Holdings also took home the gold statuette in the best overall car rental category, followed by Hertz earning the silver and Avis Budget Group winning its third bronze Travvy Award of the night.
The award ceremony has become an important part of the industry, thanks to the winners being selected by travel advisors and agents. Hundreds of Travvy statuettes were handed out to the winning destinations, hotels/resorts, cruise lines, tour operators and car rental companies that delivered the highest quality experiences.
Check out the complete list of 2022 Travvy Awards winners.
For the latest travel news, updates and deals, be sure to subscribe to the daily TravelPulse newsletter here.


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The scale of disruption has forced communications agencies globally to rethink their strategies, which, for many has meant a radical pivot to be more digital. Read more
JCDecaux Africa is playing out a #UNITY campaign in South Africa inspired by work done by a host of international brands who adapted their logos to promote social distancing. Read more
The agencies behind a series of painted billboards in Soweto have painted over a vandalised billboard with a strong message to the vandals. Read more
Beyond lockdown, beyond this global pandemic, we will return to a world where data will be the 'secret weapon' that sees some brands thrive – or not. So what side do you want to be on? Read more
TQ Group and Craft Creative Brew House, have joined forces in a campaign offering free digital creative executions to companies wishing to communicate COVID-19 related messages. Read more
Every single news channel is leading with COVID-19 reporting and SA is no exception. Ornico is creating a weekly infographic giving a visual aspect to the data. Read more
Copyright © 2015 - 2019 The Media Online. All rights reserved. Part of Arena Holdings (Pty) Ltd.


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An Australian family business has gone bananas after they accidentally discovered a new super food.
For many years Rob Watkins and his family were among the largest banana growers in Australia, specializing in a variety known as Lady Fingers. This variety requires 25-30% more labour to grow than ordinary Cavendish bananas and also has a reduction of 50% less plants per acre due to their height. But week after week Rob would find himself disposing tonnes of beautiful Lady Fingers because they were too big, too straight or too bendy for the supermarket giants. The fruit was perfectly good for eating and packed full of nutrients, but the only species that would flock to the area were local wallabies and cattle. They were eating as many green Lady Fingers their tummies could handle.
Orders began pouring in and now the couple’s Natural Evolution business is turning out five tonnes a week from a plant on their property, most of it for export to Japan and Europe.Demand has grown so strongly their 320-hectare property is at
capacity and they are bringing in extra bananas from other growers. It
has provided a profitable potential for the 500 tonnes of bananas dumped
every week in Australia because they are the wrong size or shape for
 De Silva et al: Women with metabolic syndrome improve antrophometric and biochemical parameters with green banana flour consumption in Nutrición Hospitalaria - 2014


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Jewel Branding & Licensing has acquired Artworks! Licensing and expanded via a new creative services division.
March 8, 2019
As part of the acquisition, Carol White, current president of Artworks! Licensing, will join JBL as vice president of art licensing, bringing 10 new artists to JBL’s portfolio of clients. White is a seasoned licensing veteran with more than 25 years working in licensing, with particular expertise in gift, stationery and home décor.
“We are thrilled to have Carol and her roster of clients join the JBL family,” says Julie Newman, chief executive officer and founder, Jewel Branding & Licensing. “The merger has enabled us to further diversify our portfolio of designers and design-based brands so that we continue to be a key resource for new and existing manufacturing and retail partners.”
JBL also recently established a creative services division, which provides services and assets to manufacturers and retailers. The division is led by Meredith Counts.
“In a short time, our creative services division has grown rapidly thanks to Meredith’s strategic direction,” says Ilana Wilensky, president, Jewel Branding & Licensing. “JBL has already been engaged for several creative services projects with nationally recognized brands and manufacturers, and we’re excited to offer these services to manufacturers and retailers who can benefit from our insights and expertise.”
Read more about:Jewel Branding & Licensing
License Global is the leading news source for the brand licensing industry, delivering award-winning editorial content including news, trends, analysis, and special reports about the global consumer product and retail marketplace.
Through its print edition, website, daily e-newsletter and event publications, License Global reaches more than 150,000 executives and professionals in all major markets. The magazine also serves as the official publication for the sector’s trade events, which include Licensing Expo, Brand Licensing Europe, Licensing Expo Japan, Licensing Expo Shanghai and the Licensing Leadership Summit.
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Top livestreamer Huang Wei, commonly known as Viya, is the latest internet celebrity to be fined for tax evasion in the last year.
The State Taxation Administration said in a statement Monday that top livestreamer Huang Wei, commonly known as Viya, must pay 1.34 billion yuan (approximately $210 million) in taxes, late fees and fines. She allegedly avoided taxes totaling 643 million yuan (approximately $99 million) along with underpaying by 60 million yuan (approximately $9.4 million) in taxes in 2019 and 2020, the statement added.
In response to the statement, Huang Wei, known online as the “queen of livestreaming,” posted her own statement on Weibo where she wrote she was feeling “deeply guilty.”
“I totally accept the decision of the tax regulator and will actively collect funds to pay the fines within the deadline,” she wrote in the post.
Crackdown on influencers
According to Bloomberg, this is the biggest fine that has been given to online influencers like Huang Wei, who make a living convincing others to buy things online. She is one of the biggest influencers on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Taobao marketplace, fueling consumption from a great portion of their customers. Viya is also the latest influencer to have been slapped with these charges in what is considered to be a crackdown on internet celebrities by China’s President Xi Jinping.
Two other influential livestreamers — Zhu Chenhui, commonly known as Xueli Cherie, and Lin Shanshan — were fined a total of 93.2 million yuan (approximately $14.6 million) for tax evasion in November, according to state-run media CGTN. Both of their Taobao e-shops were shut down afterward.


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Peacock’s haul contributed to a 67% increase in digital and streaming upfront volume to $1.5 billion for NBCUniversal.
The shift in viewers to streaming and digital and a move by advertisers to buy more-targeted, cross-platform campaigns made this upfront different than past markets. NBCU said it has been making changes in its ad sales unit to take advantage of those changes with broader offerings across global and local markets, and more technology and automation.
NBCU wasn’t as precise about its upfront results as a whole, saying that overall volume and pricing rose by double digits from last year and topped the record 2019-20 upfront, prior to the 2019-20 season, when upfront volume was nearly $7 billion including the Olympics.
“We’ll have growth in digital and linear overall,” said Mark Marshall, co-president of NBCU Advertising Sales and Partnerships told B+C. “The big growth comes on the digital side of it. But we went into the market knowing we were one of the few places that had capacity.’”
Last month, NBCU CEO Jeff Shell told an investors meeting that NBCU was “pretty much done” with its upfront negotiations. “Our approach allowed us to go out early in the market and take advantage of the strength of the market,” he said.
At this point, all of the broadcasters and most of the cable networks are done with their upfronts.
NBCU said the Super Bowl was 85% sold or in discussions at this point. “I think there’s a good possibility that we will be sold out of the Super Bowl by the time this season kicks off,” Marshall said Commercials being sold now are going for more than $6 million, he said. That’s up from top prices of about $5.5 million last year.
In addition to sports, “Peacock was the biggest add of capacity,” Marshall said. “Peacock comes in with broadcast primetime reach over the course of a month, even though it’s only a year old. It was an easy way to slide into the connected TV world.”
The $500 million in upfront ad commitments is up from $100 million last year.
There have been many reports that while Comcast has reported 42 million sign-ups for Peacock, its actual base of customers that use or pay for the service is a fraction of that. But Marshall said that Peacock’s growth represents an “unbelievable transformation of something that didn’t exist 24 months ago.”
Marshall said NBCU expected this year’s upfront market to be exceptionally strong, based in part on the scatter market and also by post-pandemic behavior it was seeing in key categories.
“We absolutely knew that this was going to be this kind of lightning in a bottle year because we’ve never really since World War II just stopped the economy for a year and then flipped it back on,” Marshall said.
Marshall said NBCU identified four categories that would be growing by $1 billion each in entertainment, pharma, tech and auto. On top of that, there was surprising strength in other categories such as restaurants, which were spending two times what they spent in 2019-20, and retail.
Previous upfront reports had prices for broadcast increasing by 19% to 22% for broadcast prime and 9% to 12% for cable. Marshall said that because NBCU was selling its inventory as part of a single platform, “more and more the discussion is around an aggregate number, where you’re looking at the rollup of all the impressions from all the dayparts including digital now.”
Marshall said that NBCU is selling about the same percentage of its inventory as it has in the past and will be able to take advantage of continuing strength of the scatter market.
“We followed the macro trends in the categories and we had a real good sense of where the markets would be and what the marketplace would look like and partnered with the agencies to make the deals that made sense at the right time,” he said.
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Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.


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Supply Chain Matters has featured a number of prior blogs highlighting how escalating trade developments and actions related to both the U.S. and China, and specifically focused on high tech supply chain networks, Huawei Technologies, and other targeted high-tech providers are providing increasing concerns to perceived decoupling relative to semiconductor and high-tech supply networks. Our last commentary was published in late August.
The latest development in these ongoing tensions occurred last week with the Trump Administration threatening export controls on Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), China’s largest fabricator of semiconductor chips. That threat was another shock for the industry in that the implication is that China will elect to accelerate development of its own semiconductor supply network. As high-tech industry supply chain teams well know, reliance on Asia based chip fabricators and packaging firms is a reality, and as the Trump Administration continues to escalate tensions in this sector, the stakes grow far more significant in terms of the bifurcation of semiconductor, smartphone, and telecommunications supply networks.
This threat prompted the industry group SEMI, representing U.S. semiconductor interests to issue a letter of concern to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross regarding the implications.
We would like to call reader attention to Business Network CNBC’s published report, A brewing U.S.- China Tech Cold War Rattles the Semiconductor Industry. This report does a great job of contrasting U.S. government pushes for onshoring with the implication of what that involves with the U.S. share of global manufacturing capacity currently at 12 percent, While there a number of efforts now underway to change this situation, including a recent announcement from Taiwan based chip fabricator TSMC that it will invest in a new U.S. semiconductor facility in Arizona.
The report further highlights the hurdles for U.S. based industry itself as China has committed an astounding $120 billion to shore up that country’s domestic semiconductor manufacturing capability.
This week the Semiconductor Industry Association indicated that the U.S. federal government needs to deploy upwards of $20 billion, to as much as $50 billion to make the United States an attractive location for semiconductor supply networks. The stakes are being characterized as continued leadership of this sector as a whole in terms of design, intellectual property, and influence.
A further insight brought forward by the CNBC report is that: “While large manufacturers have the financial wherewithal and industry connections to navigate through disruptions in the supply chain, many small and mid-sized tech manufacturers in the U.S. do not.” Lead times for semiconductors as well prices are already rising for such firms. Supply Chain Matters found that statement to be extremely pertinent since it is start-ups and small nimble designers where innovation resides. The other argument here is a denial of global alliances and global trade forces that surround this industry that just cannot be dismissed.
In our last blog focused on global semiconductor supply networks, we pointed to related areas to monitor.
One was how China retaliates in the notions of controlling access to its own domestic market for high tech products, or in the access of U.S. high tech producers to China’s existing and vastly developed high-tech component supply networks. Now, the stakes are likely and all-out effort to develop comprehensive design and manufacturing capability of cutting-edge technology.
Similarly, prominent U.S. based high-tech producers could likely be targets for added scrutiny by China’s regulators, possibly disrupting existing supply or market access agreements.
We would now add the uncertainty as to how much the U.S. government is really willing to invest in this termed strategic industry, given the many other industries that are seeking financial assistance as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 disruption to markets and to supply network workers. That certainly includes aerospace supply networks and Boeing’s ongoing challenges.
For existing industry supply chain management or strategic procurement teams, the implication remains a highly sensitized cycle of geo-political tensions with short and longer-term implications. Short-term rests with the eventual outcome of the U.S. Presidential election that occurs in November, and how voters weigh-in on existing policies and economic challenges. Longer-term is centered on the strategic technology access and volume manufacturing opportunities that are presented by moving toward a regionally based strategy of supporting market demand and more regionally based high tech supply networks.
High uncertainty remains under statement for this industry segment as is the growing realization that the de-coupling threat is becoming far more likely.
© Copyright 2020, The Ferrari Consulting and Research Group and the Supply Chain Matters® blog. All rights reserved.


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DETROIT – GM is responding to allegations of racism that were printed in a full-page advertisement in Sunday’s Detroit Free Press.
The advertisement accuses GM CEO Mary Barra of consistently refusing to meet with several Black-owned media companies. Detroiter Byron Allen is asking GM to allocate at least 5% of its advertising budget to go toward Black-owned media companies. The ad claims less than 1% of GM’s marketing budget goes toward Black-owned media companies.
The automaker said Barra has met with Allen before and will continue to do so. Additionally, they said the claim that they spend only .5% of its advertisement on Black-owned media is not accurate, citing its partnership with the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a collection of African-American newspaper publishers across the United States.
GM released the following statement Sunday in response:
The automaker cited its work with HBCUs, its partnership with National Association Of Black Owned Broadcasters and AIMM.
GM said it is dedicated to increase diversity within its marketing and partner agencies.


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World Kitchen North America president and chief innovation officer Kristine Malkoski will be joining the board of directors of Trustmark Mutual Holding Company, according to Trustmark chairman David Weick.
“Her consumer focus and experience in a broad range of environments, including Fortune 500 companies, startups and private equity, will be valuable to the board,” Weick said.
Malkoski has over 30 years of leadership experience with brands such as Procter & Gamble, Ubiquity Brands, Sears as well as World Kitchen. Currently she is responsible for overseeing eight retail brands: Pyrex, Corelle, CorningWare, Baker’s Secret, Chicago Cutlery, Ekco, Revere and Snapware; as well as the Olfa industrial business, 90 outlet stores and an e-commerce business.
Malkoski has also created a comprehensive global new product development process looking at the retail, consumer and technology landscape over a five-year horizon, the company said.
Trustmark companies provide access to a spectrum of employee benefits to improve health and financial well-being, including payroll-deducted voluntary products, benefits administration, group healthcare benefits, population wellness programs and fitness center management, the company said.


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Alma, a 196-pavilion and 384-suite resort that commands 74 acres of beachfront, 14 sublime food and beverage outlets and a cascade of 12 beachfront swimming pools, will reopen in Vietnam’s new “it” destination on May 31 in the wake of Covid-19.
Park Hyatt Phu Quoc hotel and residences are poised to introduce the brand’s refined luxury and exceptional service to Vietnam’s emerging resort destination in 2022.
Publication permit No. 348/GP-BTTTT dated July 19, 2017, granted by the Ministry of Information and Communications of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
Editor-in-Chief: Nguyen Cao Cuong
Office: 7th Floor, HCMCC Tower, 249A Thuy Khue street, Tay Ho district, Hanoi
Hotline.: 08887 08817


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Networking vendors are reporting that there are no shortages of business- or consumer-grade networking gear despite the current floods inundating thousands of businesses and homes across much of the country.
According to D-Link Australia marketing manager, Maurice Famularo, there were no issues with its supplies, largely as it has its own supply warehouse located in Sydney and can provide stock when needed.
"Any company taking advantage of the floods by inflating their prices are only taking advantage of their own back pockets at the expense of those affected," he said.
"I believe there may be some price rise possibly due to vendors air freighting goods into Australia to speed recovery as opposed to sea freight, but would hope that this would be minimised. D-Link will not be increasing prices." Famularo said calculating the number of routers and switches needed to replace those damaged by the floods was difficult, but the number was likely to be sizable.
"There would be a high number of damaged broadband equipment located within the exchange and also quite a few products damaged at the CPE end," he said. "Businesses and schools would be affected with infrastructure damage, including damaged cables. [Consumer modems and routers] would definitely be in the thousands."
According to an HP spokesperson, inventories of the vendor's networking gear were adequately stocked and the company was working with customers, partners and distributors to identify those with urgent requirements and in need of priority shipment.
"This will help our customers to ensure their services and business transactions are back up and running quickly," the spokesperson said. "We anticipate that some customers will take this as an opportunity to consider wireless and also improve their core network performance."
The spokesperson said the company was also offering "substantial additional discounts" between now and April 30 and priority shipment for bona fide flood affected businesses, via its partner network.
A Cisco spokesperson said the company had mobilised its resources to help in the recovery and rebuilding.
"Fortunately, the impact to the Cisco supply chain has been minimal," the spokesperson said. "We understand that speed is of the essence in responding to a crisis situation and we're committed to providing our customers and partners with the best level of service and support possible as they rebuild."
Juniper has also been contacted for comment on the state of its networking equipment supplies


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World tennis star Maria Sharapova applies what she learned as a celebrity endorser to her new line of gummy candies.
Few food brands endorsed by popular athletes have made any health pretensions.
When high-profile athletes promote unhealthy foods, parents are half as likely to read the nutrition information panel on packages, and they are twice as likely to buy it, a study of moms and dads of 1,500 school-age children in the Public Health Nutrition journal noted last year, according to Australia’s Herald Sun.
Here are some athlete-endorsed foods in the United States through the decades, which helped sweet-toothed fans feel closer to sports stars when snacking, thanks to the Candy Wrapper Museum: The Ruth’s Home Run candy bar named for The Babe. The Muhammad Ali Crisp Crunch Bar label, which claimed “all natural ingredients.” The carob-coated Pete Rose Supercharg’r Energy Bar labeled as “Nature’s answer to candy.” The Reggie! bar named for Reggie Jackson.
Even when categories beyond treats are involved, the marketing is mostly about fantasy. Breakfast fans were able to start their mornings with Olympic champions Mary Lou Retton and Bruce Jenner on cereal boxes (which Gabby Douglas has done this summer with a competing brand). Other stars have endorsed fast-food chains, soft drinks, soup, salsa, mustard, tea and lemonade, weight loss programs, and macaroni and cheese.
Now Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova seeks an ace with Sugarpova, her 12-item line of gummy candies with a feminine touch—some are shaped liked handbags and shoes. What’s different from the typical athlete association with a food product? First, she has ownership interest in the business. Her agent and Sugarpova CEO Max Eisenbud told Bloomberg she invested “a few hundred thousand dollars.” A business partner is Jeff Rubin, the founder of IT’SUGAR and creator of FAO Schweetz candy departments inside the famed FAO Schwarz toy stores.
Second, the brand is not being sold at mass merchants—rather on its website, at IT’SUGAR stores in malls, and at Madame Tussauds wax museums, following its debut at high-end retailer Henri Bendel on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Third, she’s not an American. Fourth, Sugarpova donates a percentage of sales to a foundation benefiting students affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Yet it’s similar to most athlete food endorsements in one big way. Despite Sharapova being a well-conditioned athlete (and the world’s highest-paid female athlete), there is no health pretense to Sugarpova. If her U.S. path hits the sweet spot, it will be one more commercial triumph for sports celebrity.


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Google on Wednesday announced that Nvidia's Tesla T4 GPUs are now available on the Google Cloud Platform in beta. In November, GCP became the first cloud provider to offer the T4 GPUs via private alpha.
The T4 is now available in Brazil, India, the Netherlands, Singapore, Tokyo and the US. With T4s across eight regions globally, Google is promising customers low latency. Other GPUs in Google's lineup include the Nvidia K80, P4, P100 and V100.
The T4 is the best GPU in Google's portfolio for running inference workloads, Google notes, but it's also well-suited for machine learning training workloads. It's also the first data center GPU to include dedicated ray-tracing processors.
The T4's 16GB of memory supports large ML models, or running inference on multiple smaller models simultaneously, Google notes. The V100 GPU is the go-to choice for ML training workloads, but the T4 offers a lower price point.
Meanwhile, the T4 is baesd on the Turing architecture, which combines ray-tracing and AI inference for a hybrid kind of computer graphics rendering. Ray-tracing is a rendering technique that creates realistic lighting effects. Google is also supporting virtual workstations on T4 instances, so designers can run rendering applications from anywhere.


text: Nokia has nothing to lose now that it is in the process of exiting the mobile phone space, and the company recently took to Twitter to have some fun before disappearing into the sunset. Google earlier this week announced that Android 4.4 KitKat (ugh) would be the name of its next major Android release, and so Nokia thought it might be fun to play with KitKat’s famous slogan, “Gimme a Break!” In an image posted to Twitter, Nokia wrote “Have a break, have a…” above a picture of a Samsung smartphone being snapped in half. It’s an obvious jab at Android 4.4, of course, but we’re not sure why Samsung was caught in the crossfire. Then again, Samsung loves bashing rivals every chance it gets, so why not? Nokia’s tweet is linked below in our source section.


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ERP cloud market to grow by 8% until 2021, report says
The global ERP market is set for a sustained period of growth over the next five years, according to a new report.
Global Cloud ERP Market: Trends, Opportunities and Forecasts (2016-2021) forecasts that the growth rate will be around 8% until 2021 due to a number of combining factors.
Authors expect the market to be driving to a “surging adoption of cloud-based ERP solutions” across educational, retail and healthcare sectors. The growing popularity of cloud solutions in small businesses is also highlighted as being an important factor for future growth by researchers.
However, the report adds that overall need for on-demand and instant access to software and storage— which traditional on-premise solutions fail to provide — will be the real driver and see more companies opt to move to the cloud.
Researchers analysed historical market trends for cloud-based ERP solutions. They found that between 2011 and 2015 the market grew at a compound annual growth rate of 6.38%.
The report investigated and analysed all sizes of businesses, different types of cloud solutions, and focussed on organisations across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.
It found that unsurprisingly North America has the fastest adoption rate of cloud-based services with the region also set to take the largest market share in the next five years. But it is the Asia Pacific region that has the most growth opportunities with the report pointing towards “huge growth potential” in Australia and Japan.
Move to the cloud with Milner Browne and never worry about another SAP Business One patch-level or version upgrade again. Learn more about moving to the cloud in our webinar on Tuesday 13th September at 2pm.
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Aldi buys Bunbury St John of God site as expansion continues
German supermarket juggernaut Aldi’s rapid WA expansion is continuing with the purchase of a 10,373sqm Bunbury site for a new store.
The site, at 9 Edward Street, which features four street frontages in a high-profile commercial centre and existing approval for a mixed-use development, was sold by CBRE’s Ben Younger and Lloyd Jenkins via an offers to purchase campaign.
Formerly home to St John of God Hospital, the site was hotly contested because of its potential versatility, Mr Younger said.
Bunbury is WA’s second biggest metropolitan region.
The Aldi supermarket would be within walking distance or a short drive from “all civic and commercial amenities”, Mr Younger said.
“Aldi was attracted to the site’s high-profile location and extensive street frontage, with it offering a premium opportunity to expand further into the WA market,” he said.
Aldi, which this year opened its 45,000sqm distribution centre in Jandakot, has opened 17 WA stores, including in Belmont Forum, Kwinana and Lakeside Joondalup, and plans to open in Waikiki this month and Ellenbrook next month.
It has also received development approval for another supermarket at the masterplanned community in Banksia Grove, 27km north of the Perth CBD.
Aldi, which confirmed store opening plans in Morley, Lakelands, Cockburn and Secret Harbour, said it plans to have 70 WA stores in the long term.
“Each of our WA stores will provide jobs for 15 to 20 employees, offering rewarding career opportunities for local residents,” an Aldi Australia spokeswoman said.
A masterplanned community in Banksia Grove, 27km north of the Perth CBD, 5km north of Joondalup and 9km from the coast, will be adding another two supermarket chains to its central precinct.
The Banksia Grove Village already includes a Coles supermarket, petrol station, fast food outlets and specialty stores.
Woolworths is expecting to open its Banksia Grove supermarket late next year and Aldi, which has also received development approval for its supermarket.
Banksia Grove Management general manager Tony Naughtin said the new district centre would become the centrepiece of the community, which is already enjoying parkland, including its “bush forever” zone with walking and cycle trails and nature playgrounds and adventure play area and a proposed skate park.
“More walkable neighbourhoods with plenty of open space, served by transport services and local shops and infrastructure as well as schools and health services are critical to the success of housing developments,” Mr Naughtin said.
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Across the country, mobile credit card processing continues to surge as American consumers and businesses increasingly use smartphones, tablets and other electronic devices to buy and sell what they need.
All across the country, fewer and fewer Americans are carrying cash. And paper-based checks are on the decline, with just $18.3 billion in check payments in 2010, compared to $37.3 billion just 10 years prior.
Whether you operate a brick-and-mortar business or an e-commerce store, meeting employee salaries, overhead and other cash-dependent expenses can be difficult. A merchant cash advance is one of the most popular ways to tide your business over during a cas hflow crunch. But before you apply, it's important that you understand how merchant cash advance rates and fees work.