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During all a announcements done on day one of , a tellurian internet hulk slipped into a brew a tidbit that , it’s renouned AI-assistant speaker, will strictly be accessible in Australia starting midst year. That date means it could good arrive before Amazon’s internal sell launch — that might be when a Amazon’s competing Echo partner orator arrives in Australia.
Google has also announced , including Bluetooth connectivity and hands-free calling. While Google has nonetheless to confirm, it’s expected that this new and softened chronicle is a one that will launch Down Under.
If you’re unknown with Google Home, a device is pitched as a dedicated partner for a home, designed to assistance with elementary digital tasks around a residence – such as switching lights on and off, behaving web searches and responding questions, compiling selling lists, personification song and so many more.
Stop a imports
Australians who’ve wanted to squeeze a Google Home or Amazon Echo device have so distant indispensable to possibly import them from a US or purchase general batch from internal vendors like Tandy (which was bought adult by Kogan final year). But functionality for alien inclination are US-centric, tying what they’re able of when used in Australia.
With central internal batch shortly to come to market, Australians can demeanour brazen to removing continue reports for their city, trade updates that aren’t from a unfamiliar land and, perhaps, even internal news.
Australia isn’t a usually nation set to get a device – Google announced that Canada, France, Germany and Japan will also be saying internal launches starting “this summer”. Australian pricing and a specific launch date has nonetheless to be revealed.


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They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery.
For people this might be true but when it comes to honey it could be disastrous.
Have you ever noticed how clear honey can look sometimes? Almost unnaturally so. Well that is because most “honey” you buy is not honey at all just HFC(High Fructose Cornsyrup) with what you could call honey flavoring.
That’s right you’ve been had! These so called “honey” companies are selling you a sweet honey like substance that according to our own FDA does not constitute honey at all.
“the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration says that any product that’s been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen isn’t honey. However, the FDA isn’t checking honey sold here to see if it contains pollen.”
Well despite the gross negligence of the FDA we can definitely say there are people waking up to the nasty truth about the “honey” industry. After an investigation from Food Safety News consumers are now able to see the whole picture and it’s seems that there are quite a few prominent “honey” companies that are selling you more than what might be marked on their bottles. Even more interesting they are selling you these suspicious products under the guise of public interest.
Yes that is right, apparently the average consumer of honey is interested in receiving another form of High Fructose Cornsyrup sold to us as honey instead of just buying it with it’s original name. Oh yeah of course we want all the pollen removed from our honey so we can’t trace the source and accurately verify it’s nutritional properties.
Wait a minute.
All of that sounds incredibly stupid and doesn’t really make sense, perhaps these companies are not interested in what the public wants, but more in their profit margins from buying HFC cut or chinese imported at a much lower cost than actual honey.
Levelling the Playing Field
Just to make sure that these corporations are not getting an unfair advantage due to huge budgets and high quality marketing we wanted to share this list of major “honey” brands that have no pollen in their product.
“76 percent of samples bought at groceries had all the pollen removed, These were stores like TOP Food, Safeway, Giant Eagle, QFC, Kroger, Metro Market, Harris Teeter, A&P, Stop & Shop and King Soopers.
100 percent of the honey sampled from drugstores like Walgreens, Rite-Aid and CVS Pharmacy had no pollen.
77 percent of the honey sampled from big box stores like Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart, Target and H-E-B had the pollen filtered out.
100 percent of the honey packaged in the small individual service portions from Smucker, McDonald’s and KFC had the pollen removed.”
Bad for People and Bees
As if the possibility of toxic contaminants from chinese honey wasn’t bad enough we are starting to find that using HFC to feed the bees or ourselves seems to have negative effects on both. Go figure this nutrient deficient sweetener seems to be toxic to the natural healthy bacteria in the stomach of bees and people. So whether the honey is cut with HFC or it is fed directly to the bees it really doesn’t matter this stuff is no good to the stomach of the consumer.
Don’t worry there are trustworthy brands of honey out there.
“Bryant found that every one of the samples Food Safety News bought at farmers markets, co-ops and “natural” stores like PCC and Trader Joe’s had the full, anticipated, amount of pollen.”
Keep an Eye Out
Central Texas Bee Rescue Honey can be found at all Austin Wholefoods locations except the newest Domain location. We are also currently talking with HEB/Central Market and Trader Joes about having them carry our honey as well. In the next 3 weeks we should have a fully functional storefront that will allow you to purchase honey directly from us as well.

domain: news


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Sleet and snow has begun to fall and that means slick roads and a cold start to your morning.
As unseasonable as this storm may be preparation was not taken lightly.
When weather like this hits people head to the store buying everything they need all in preparation for the worst.
Brenda Gockel is one of many caught off guard by this winter storm.
“Just going to the store getting some groceries and got my shovel ready.”
Kansas First News has been tracking this weekend winter wallop for nearly a week.
The unseasonal timing brought many to stores like Menards buying shovels, ice picks and ice melt.
Assistant General Manager at Menards, Kevin Gleason was under the impression that the snow period had ended for the year.
Work went into double time on orders when rumor spread about the storm.
“About three or four days ago we heard that we had a pretty good storm coming so we’ve been trying to get as much stuff here as we can sell what we can and help everybody out.”
Gleason also says, they ordered 12 boxes of shovels Friday and on Saturday only one remained.
They also have dealt with a shortage of ice melt.
“Ice melts been pretty rough year for that with up north being a lot more than we have but I think this is our first real shot of ice so people have been rushing in for that.”
With a little bit left it’s hoped to last.
Unlike snow blowers which have all been sold even after more were ordered for the rush.
Now what happens next is up to mother nature.


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E-reading picks up in popularity
- Staff Business First
The number of people switching to digital reading is on the rise.
USA Today reports the number of Americans ages 16 and up who read an e-book grew from 16 percent last year to 23 percent for 2012. The Pew Internet Research Center released results Thursday that also found readers of traditional books fell from 72 percent to 67 percent.
Ownership of a tablet or e-book device jumped to 33 percent this year from 18 percent in 2011. Many who replied to the survey said they received Kindles, Nooks and other e-readers as gifts.
Pubic libraries offering digital texts grew from 24 percent to 31 percent, according to the report.
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Tata Motors Limited has issued an official notification, reassuring stakeholders that recent issues at the UK port had not caused any immediate impact for Jaguar Land Rover (JLR).
The statement has come on the heels of a ruckus at British ports caused by border closures. This week, France blocked arrivals of UK passengers and freight for 48 hours over concerns about the new coronavirus variant. Subsequently, an angry crowd rallied at the Port of Dover in the UK to express frustration over the cross-channel ban that left hundreds of truckers stranded. The temporary ban disrupted logistics and resulted in chaos at the UK port.
The automaker said, "Jaguar Land Rover has comprehensive contingency planning and actions in place to respond to ongoing COVID challenges and disruption. This is subject to constant review". "Our guidance of improved growth, profitability, and cash flows in the second half of the year continues to hold," Tata Motors added.
However, on Tuesday, trade and transportation links between the UK and continental Europe resumed after France agreed to end suspension despite fears over a new Covid-19 variant. The UK and France struck a deal to allow truck drivers, French citizens, and residents across the English Channel to enter France. All freight truck drivers are required to take an antigen test that can detect the new strain of Covid-19 and provide results in under an hour.
Jaguar Land Rover, part of Tata Motors since 2008, is Britain's largest automotive manufacturer. Tata Motors earns 47 per cent of its revenue from the UK and the European Union (EU) markets. Tata Motors stock on Wednesday jumped 4.05 per cent to Rs 176.05 on the BSE at 2:23 PM (IST).
Copyright©2023 Living Media India Limited. For reprint rights: Syndications Today


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100% Design, of which Hotel Designs is a proud media partner of, has opened its very colourful doors to the public…
As part of the nine-day London Design Festival, 100% Design has opened its doors unveiling this year’s theme to the eyes of the design world.
Speaking at the exclusive press launch, Max Fraser, the content editor for the show officially launched the show to the international press. “2018 is a bright and cheerful year, we have gone for colour,” he said. “Another feature we have focused on this year is the future, and where design is heading.”
Earlier this year, the show, which is located at Olympia London, announced some big changes for 2018 as it adopts a renewed vision to highlight its position as the unmissable show for design, innovation and emerging talent in London.
Featuring a number of new projects alongside inspiring collaborations and new product launches the show will also be at the heart of the newly launched West Kensington Design District – the most important destination during London Design Festival 2018.
100% Design is dedicated to showcasing a variety of brands from the UK and internationally, across each of the show areas. Brands to watch include Greek furniture brand mono.rocks, which sources unique and exquisite stones from around the world and crafts them into artful interior pieces. The brand has relationships with the world’s major quarries, enabling them to reserve pieces of stone that stand out.
Designed with the core principles of simplicity and finesse, Bulo is another brand to keep an eye on. Its pieces are understated with a timeless aesthetic. The Belgian brand creates quality furniture with collections that are recognisable for sleek lines and structured shapes. The fundamental idea behind the furniture from Thors Design, meanwhile, is that of upcycling, using rustic Azobé wood, sourced from decommissioned Danish wharves. The result is bespoke, hand-made, sustainable furniture with an original raw look and a natural Nordic feel that retains the integrity, history and natural character of the wood.
100% Talks: Thomas Heatherwick, Marcel Wanders and Marcus Fairs feature at this year’s Talks with 100% Design. 100% Brands: A stellar line-up of exhibitors include: Benchmark, Established & Sons, Dare Studio, Arper, B Sweden, Bulo, Antonio Lupi, Tesla, Riko with Starck, OnePlusEleven, Rubn, Casa Botelho, Missana and more. 100% Futures: A new exhibition that will shine a light on some of the most exciting designs under the theme ‘Designing for London’ across travel, technology, wellbeing, public spaces and sustainability.
100% Forward: The spotlight turns on eight emerging design talents across furniture, product, lighting and textile design. Each will be championed by an established designer who carved his or her career during the first decade of 100% Design. 100% Build: A new dedicated resourcing show for the construction and architectural industry. Within the exhibition Philippe Starck will present a prefabricated house with Riko, while Tesla will showcase Powerwall.
Continuing to be the show at London Design Festival that opens mid-week to breathe new life into the overall festival, 100% Design shelters leading brands, interesting panel discussions and all the up-coming trends.


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The 2017 Ford GT race car has begun testing at Daytona International Speedway.
Earlier this year, the Ford GT race car conducted tests at Sebring International Raceway and now the American automaker has stayed within the state of Florida by checking out Daytona. Both tracks will be home to endurance races next season that the Ford GT will compete in, so it’s no surprise that the GT is being put through the paces at both sites.
The 2017 Ford GT race car will campaign in the 2016 FIA WEC and TUDOR SportsCar Championship and will be powered by a 3.5-liter EcoBoost twin-turbo V6 engine with over 600 horsepower. The race car is also expected to represent Ford at the world famous 24 Hours of Le Mans race.
“As we developed the Ford GT, from the outset, we wanted to ensure we had a car that has what it takes to return Ford to the world of GT racing,” said Raj Nair, Ford Motor Company group vice president, Global Product Development and chief technical officer. “We believe the Ford GT’s advances in aerodynamics, light-weighting and EcoBoost power will make for a compelling race car that can once again compete on a global stage.”
Ford has released a short video of the 2017 Ford GT race car testing for the first time at Daytona International Speedway, which you can watch below.
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Discuss this story on our Ford Forum


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In India, so many businesses have established in several rural and urban areas which are run by non-English speaking entrepreneurs. That is why they don’t prefer online marketing despite having good internet experience. But in this era of smartphones and the internet four friends though something new which helped the next 500 million Indians to come online and conquer the world of online business. People who can access the internet now can access the content too in their own languages. In short, it severally improved the online content experience of over 500 million people. Those four friends are Sourabh Gupta, Manoj Sarda, Akshay Deshraj, and Prateek Gupta from IIT Roorkee and they started Vernacular.ai, an excellent platform that helps businesses to interact with multi-lingual customers in their preferred languages just by using NLP technology. This unusual platform works for businesses as a multilingual conversational agent.
Focus on the problem
This brilliant team has risen seed funding from K-Start which is the seed division of Kalaari Capital.
According to Sourabh the problems and the complexity are much bigger when it comes to India languages as these languages are morphologically rich and the conversational interaction is severally different from the textbook rules. Also, the frequent mixing of other languages can be seen. He says “We are building our own in-house technology in collaboration with leading industry participants and academia”.
Vernacular.ai has launched as B2C product earlier in this year but the product was in demand within a shorter period of time. Sourabh added, “The product saw strong traction, with 50,000 users exchanging over a million messages in a short period”.
Vernacular.ai, a B2B product
Now, this outstanding platform started focussing on B2B business to help companies build multi-lingual chatbots. The two key components of this technology are
- Language Understanding and
- Deep Learning
Language Understanding is using state-of-the-art NLP technologies they have extracted the meaning, context, and entities of coming messages in different languages. And Deep Learning is about achieving maximum accuracy for their chatbots.
“We have also been working with financial institutions on interesting use-cases resulting in scalable ways to increase business, reduce operational expenditure, and enhance customer loyalty and satisfaction,” adds Sourabh.
The people and the market
Over 100 million English speakers live in India which is just 10% of the total population. India is the greatest country where you’ll find the multi-lingual nation. 780 languages exist here according to the People Linguistic Survey of India. And more than 300 million users are about to join the internet market and they all prefer content in local languages. You’ll be amazed to know that in 2018 the no of the rural population is estimated to touch 280 million which is almost the total population of the United States and it is also estimated that 90% of this rural population is going to use the Internet from their mobile phone. So people started targeting this language game. For an example, ShareChat is India’s first social network which is in local languages. Similar wise, other news aggregators like Way2News, Tiger-backed InShorts, or Hike (News) are also focusing on local languages. In this scenario, Venacular.ai wants more people to join in their tech team to build a stronger product.


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Small Business Saturday UK is a grassroots, non-commercial campaign, which highlights small business success and encourages consumers to ‘shop local’ and support small businesses in their communities. The day itself takes place on the first Saturday in December each year.
Lean Body Vision, run by Hannah Johnson, was chosen as one of the featured 100 small businesses across the UK on the build-up to Small Business Saturday on 3rd December 2016 and received national media attention including a mention in The Guardian!
Lean Body Vision offers personal training from their studio in Earlsdon. They offer help with weight loss, fitness, nutrition and injury rehabilitation. The Earlsdon Running Club is also based at the studio.
Hannah said “I was delighted and very proud to find out that my business had been selected as one of the Small Biz 100. The message is simple: support your local small business. Not just on 3rd December but throughout the year. We are so lucky in Earlsdon to have small businesses that pull together to support each other. It’s a real community feeling.”


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President Ramaphosa, in his State of the Nation Address (SONA) on February 13, announced that within two weeks a new poultry import tariff would be set and implemented. The new tariff, which is meant to “support the local industry”, should be set by the end of this week.
Tariffs will be increased specifically on imports from the United States and Brazil, while they will not affect imports from the European Union as a result of a free-trade agreement.
Presently, tariffs are 12% for boneless chicken and 37% for frozen bone-in pieces. Experts, including Dawie Maree, FNB Agriculture’s Head of Information and Marketing, expect these tariffs to rise to 45% maximum.
The South African Poultry Association (SAPA) have requested this rise multiple times, however they suggested an increase in tariffs to 82% on both frozen bone-in chicken pieces and on frozen boneless chicken cuts. This was in the hopes of countering high rates of shipments which result in massive losses for the local industry.
“We completed the Poultry Master Plan to support chicken farmers and processors and save 54 000 jobs while creating new jobs,” said Ramaphosa at SONA.
If tariffs are higher, importers are likely to decrease shipments. This will result in a better market environment for local farmers and a better flow of money within the country.
“We trust that the tariff will be set at an appropriate level to bring the much-needed relief from unfair trade to South Africa’s chicken producers who have been battling to compete in a trade environment that has favoured unfair imports,” said Izaak Breitenbach, GM of SAPA’s Broiler Organisation in a media statement.
“Not all imports are unfairly traded and our poultry industry can compete with Brazil, the US and the EU on an equal playing field, which the tariff should ensure,” he added.
Too high an increase will cost the country, as a large drop in important will result in job losses for South African citizens. If the increase is raised to a reasonable amount, it will ensure minimum negative effects.
Since the likelihood is that the tariff will not be increased excessively, chicken prices should remain relatively the same. If they do increase, it is not expected to be by much. Therefore, consumers do not have much to worry about in this respect.
The specific tariff increase is yet to be announced.


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Target Corp. Chief Information Officer Mike McNamara is slated to retire in 2022.
Minneapolis-based Target disclosed McNamara’s planned departure in a blog post, saying that Chairman and CEO Brian Cornell shared the news with employees today in a company memo. Target didn’t indicate whether a search for a new CIO was under way or identify potential successors.
"When Mike McNamara joined us in 2015, it was clear that he had a vision for what technology can do for our guest and team member experience. He was competitive in the best and most motivating sense, and he was an uncompromising advocate for technologists. Mike was transparent in saying that if he could accomplish what he intended to accomplish on our team, he would conclude his career with Target," Cornell wrote in the Sept. 1 memo. "As with everything, Mike followed through on what he said he was going to do. So, this morning, I have the not unexpected but still bittersweet role of sharing Mike’s plan to retire next year."
McNamara (left) started at Target as CIO in June 2015 and added the titles of executive vice president and chief digital officer in September 2016. He came to the company after more than 16 years at United Kingdom-based grocer Tesco, where he started in June 1999 as chief technology officer for Tesco.com. He later moved up to serve as Tesco’s U.K. IT director and operations development director before being appointed CIO in March 2011. Prior to that, he spent over seven years as a senior manager at Accenture.
“Well, I’ve always been planning for Target to be my last job. I’ve loved every minute of my time here, but professionally and personally, the timing is great to begin the process of retiring and transitioning to a new CIO,” McNamara said in the Q&A-style blog. “The technology team and platform are in brilliant shape, and our business is already taking on its next growth chapter.”
As Target’s CIO, McNamara oversees the retailer’s enterprise technology systems that power its shopping experience. He also charts out the company’s tech roadmap and leads enterprise data analytics and business intelligence strategy.
Technology plays a pivotal role in “determining the winners of any industry,” according to McNamara.
“We focused on developing phenomenal in-house expertise and capabilities and have custom-built a tech platform that’s scalable, stable and secure. I pushed for ruthless prioritization and greatly reduced the number of tech projects under way so we could focus on doing fewer but bigger things to help grow and modernize our business,” he said in the blog, recalling his priorities when joining Target. “Fast forward to now, and I’m surrounded by over 4,500 of the brightest technologists and data scientists in the U.S. and India that help make Target one of the best omnichannel retailers out there. I didn’t come to Minnesota for a participation trophy, and I’m so proud of technology’s role in making Target a retail winner.”
One recent innovation is a new micro-fulfillment concept called a “sortation center” at a facility in Minneapolis. Under the model, which uses technology acquired from Grand Junction and Deliv, backroom store staff who process digital orders focus just on picking and packing. Orders then are brought to the sortation center for collating to the various carriers for last-mile delivery via Shipt. Joining the Minneapolis sortation center opened in 2020 will be another four facilities opening this fall in Houston, Dallas and metropolitan Philadelphia as well as in Lawrenceville, Ga.
“This momentum will only keep going,” McNamara said of Target’s tech innovation. “As a company, we see tons more opportunity ahead for technology to continue setting Target apart as an incredible place to work and shop.”
Cornell noted that McNamara led the rebuilding of Target's global technology and data sciences functions to develop top talent and capabilities in-house. In addition, he said, McNamara created a tech platform that drives "numerous guest experiences," including the digital and same-day services; supported the "nearly overnight conversion" of Target's headquarters to a virtual operation during the pandemic; helped Target "stand out with innovation and continuous learning"; refocused the company's tech hiring mindset to create a more equitable workforce; and committed to Target's growth in India to spur retail evolution.
"These are legacies of Mike’s leadership that will serve our team and guests for years to come," Cornell said in the memo. "As I mentioned, Mike’s run-up to retirement will be thoughtful. He’ll continue to lead the tech team through this upcoming holiday season and then help on-board his successor next year, once that leader is named. The strength of our technology team combined with the growth of our business makes this a great time to welcome a new CIO to build on our progress. Technology has played a critically important role in that progress and will continue to do so going forward."
*EDITOR'S NOTE: Article updated with comment from Target CEO Brian Cornell.


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Logitech launches Type+ & Ultrathin keyboards for iPad Air 2, ultraportable Keys-To-Go for all models
10/29/2014, 12:10 pm
Logitech this week updated its Type+ and Ultrathin keyboard cases to be compatible with Apple's new iPad Air 2, and also introduced a new standalone ultraportable wireless iPad keyboard dubbed Keys-To-Go.
03/04/2014, 03:03 pm
Logitech on Tuesday took the wraps off of the latest addition to its Harmony intelligent remote control lineup: a Bluetooth-enabled keyboard with integrated touchpad, compatible with a plethora of living room devices, including the Apple TV.
12/22/2013, 02:12 pm
Renowned accessory maker Logitech's first stab at an official Made for iPhone gaming controller features solid construction, but that's about where the positives end for this overpriced, disappointing accessory.
10/28/2013, 11:10 am
The two 800-pound gorillas in the Apple accessory ecosystem have taken the wraps off of their new collections of keyboard cases designed to complement Apple's forthcoming thinner, lighter iPad Air.
10/01/2013, 03:10 pm
New images have emerged giving the first clear shots of what is said to be Logitech's forthcoming iPhone-compatible game controller extension.
09/19/2013, 05:09 pm
Following the release of iOS 7, Logitech and ClamCase have both released promotional materials touting forthcoming devices that pair with iOS devices in order to turn them into game controllers.
08/28/2013, 05:08 pm
Logitech has announced a new Bluetooth mouse for MacBook lovers, one that sports an aesthetic meant to complement Apple's sleek line of notebooks.
08/20/2013, 10:08 am
Owners of Apple's iPad mini now have two new options from accessory maker Logitech to protect their devices: A thin and light folio cover that guards against water damage, and a full keyboard that boosts the tablet's productivity potential.
06/17/2013, 08:06 am
A new photo shows a prototype version of a Lightning-enabled iPhone 5 gaming controller from accessory maker Logitech.
04/23/2013, 10:04 am
Logitech on Tuesday announced two new iPad accessories, one of which leverages a novel case design to give Apple's iPad a keyboard while still maintaining a slim profile for the tablet.
03/26/2013, 02:03 pm
Owners of both sizes of Apple's iPad saw their accessorizing options expanded on Tuesday, with Logitech announcing new Keyboard Folio cases for both the iPad and iPad mini.
02/05/2013, 12:02 pm
Computer accessory maker Logitech announced on Tuesday that it would be rolling out a version of its Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for Apple's iPad mini.


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Josh James' Domo Named to Forbes' list of America’s Most Promising Companies
Lindon, Utah – December 1, 2011 – Domo, the new business intelligence (BI) venture started by Omniture co-founder Josh James, was named to Forbes’ list of America’s Most Promising Companies.
Forbes‘ list of America’s Most Promising Companies features 100 privately held up-and-comers with compelling business models, strong management teams, notable customers, strategic partners and precious investment capital.
“Sizing up younger, privately held companies is hard: Their fortunes can change very quickly and there’s a dearth of public data,” says Forbes Executive Editor Brett Nelson. “We took a more comprehensive approach to evaluate their health and potential.”
“We've identified a huge market in business intelligence, and we are fortunate to have the right people behind us as investors, board members and employees,” said Josh James, Domo founder and CEO. “This recognition from Forbes is copacetic—a not-so-subtle incentive to ensure we nail this opportunity in 2012.”
To sharpen its search, Forbes teamed up with CB Insights, a Manhattan-based data firm that tracks investment in high-growth private companies. With $650,000 in grants from the National Science Foundation, CB has developed complex software called Mosaic that mines myriad online sources (from press releases and social networks to job boards and court filings) to come up with one, algorithmically derived score that measures a private company’s health. Forbes married Mosaic’s data-crunching with old-fashioned reporting to assemble a list of rising stars with bright growth prospects. To view the complete the list, please visit www.forbes.com/ampc.
Domo has attracted $43 million in Series A funding from an all-star lineup of angels and investors including Benchmark Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Hummer Winblad, plus the who’s who of SaaS and Internet technology. The company was founded to address the fundamental problems James saw in the $10 billion business intelligence market. Domo is focused on delivering a new form of business intelligence that transforms how executives manage their business.
Domo's founding team consists of some of the most sought after talent in the industry with experience that includes Amazon, American Express, Ancestry.com, eBay, Endeca, Facebook, LinkedIn, MLB.com, Omniture, and salesforce.com, amongst others. Visit www.domo.com for more information.


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Nx, a startup creating tooling to make it less complicated for software program dev teams to work inside a solitary code repository, these days shut a $16 million Collection A round with participation from Nexus Enterprise Companions and a16z.
The funding will be utilized to increase Nx’s absolutely managed product, Nx Cloud, to make it much more of a alternative for current ongoing integration resources, this kind of as Jenkins, co-founder and CEO Jeff Cross informed TechCrunch in an electronic mail job interview.
“Having all dev workforces go remote for the duration of the pandemic, providers realized additional of the pains and overhead of siloed development, and the gains of working with evergreen ‘monorepos’ instead,” Cross stated. “Many companies are saying to solve all factors of developer working experience, which overwhelms decision makers with way too several alternatives. Our approach is far more prescriptive and narrowly centered.”
Prior to launching Nx, Cross and Nx’s other co-founder, Victor Savkin, were working at Google on the Angular crew — the group liable for preserving the Angular framework for creating net applications. They left Google to start out an Angular consulting organization in 2016, but say that they saw a pressing want for instruments to make it easier for devs to shop related apps and libraries in one particular shared code repository.
Nx’s main solution is a cloud-hosted model of Nx, the aforementioned Nx Cloud.
“The main worth of Nx and Nx Cloud is that we support merchandise improvement teams ship far more capabilities faster,” Cross claimed. “We do this by earning it quick to go all parts of a merchandise into a one repository … Then Nx & Nx Cloud have several layers of intelligence to make builds (i.e. turning a repo into a operating application) rapid by only constructing what needs to be constructed, caching undertaking outputs each time feasible and then distributing the function optimally.”
Now, so-known as monorepos confer benefits, like ease of reuse and streamlined collaboration throughout teams. But they also have shortcomings, namely requiring added storage by default and a absence of per-challenge entry regulate.
That’s to say that monorepos may not be for absolutely everyone. But there’s a consumer foundation clamoring for it — Nx, which has a 37-human being staff, statements to have hundreds of subscribers and far more than 15 million installs of the open resource Nx job per thirty day period.
“We’ve more than doubled our enterprise customers and quintupled our software-as-a-services income,” Cross stated. “We’ve bought more than two a long time of runway, and sturdy pull from company customers — we hold choosing to hold up with our inbound pipeline of company discounts.”


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Paul Holmes 21 Jan 2004 // 12:00AM GMT
Nine years after the merger of Ciba and Sandoz, Novartis was beginning to deliver on its promise – especially in the U.S., its largest market. However, preliminary data suggested that Novartis’s brand recognition was relatively low among key U.S. audiences compared to other major pharmaceutical companies. With a negative image of “Big Pharma” becoming more apparent within the media, political arena and investor community, it was important for Novartis to differentiate itself and shine as an industry leader. Novartis enlisted Ruder Finn (RF) to implement a bold communications program designed to build positive awareness and enhance its reputation in the U.S. as an innovative and caring pharmaceutical powerhouse.
RF launched a corporate reputation program with a particular focus on driving feature stories in top-tier business press. Media relations focused on building and establishing meaningful relationships, resulting in a major Novartis story nearly every week of 2002 in high-profile publications. Novartis’s messages were communicated in each story, reinforcing the corporate print-and-radio-advertising campaign, which was part of the reputation-management program.
Measurements at year-end showed that the program had successfully differentiated Novartis from the industry, with both awareness and favorability increases across all target audiences. In addition, Novartis’s increase in market capitalization was emphasized in large-scale publications including Forbes, Fortune and Time magazine.
Novartis had been achieving steady double-digit sales growth in the U.S. and had achieved more drug approvals than anyone else in the industry, including breakthrough oncology treatments such as Gleevec (which was approved by the FDA in record time), as well as Zelnorm, a treatment for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Novartis’s robust pipeline, combined with its recent major research announcement – that the company would substantially increase its research investment at a time when many companies were cutting back, and moving its research headquarters to Cambridge, Massachusetts – was moving the company into the limelight in the U.S., especially with business, financial and elite audiences. An opportunity existed to parlay this positive visibility toward generating similar results with U.S. consumer audiences – an important goal as the U.S. was the company’s most important business market.
Though Novartis had made great strides already in raising awareness and favorability among key audiences, trust in “Corporate America” was at an all-time low, and the pharmaceutical industry in particular had been under constant scrutiny for a variety of reasons: access to medicines and prescription drug pricing continued to be on the political agenda; marketing practices, including direct-to-consumer advertising and sales-force activities with physicians, were under attack, with prominent stories in major news publications questioning the ethics of the pharma industry.
Compounding the hostile media environment was the fact that many of Novartis’s competitors had significantly bigger promotional budgets. Novartis would have to create and leverage compelling story opportunities in order to grow and maintain the glow it was starting to achieve in the U.S.
To gain a clear understanding of Novartis’s reputation, RF commissioned Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates to benchmark awareness/favorability levels among key audiences, and to track changes in these levels at regular intervals through the course of the campaign. A thorough analysis of messages, combined with focus group testing, helped Novartis and RF determine the “Think What’s Possible” theme for the campaign, which was communicated through advertising and all media relations, utilizing news stories of primary interest among key audiences.
The results showed impressive gains across audiences in both awareness and favorability.
In an aggressive pursuit of every reputation-building opportunity, RF trained all top-management spokespeople to deliver consistent messages, and sought out all potential editorial opportunities in leading national media. Senior Novartis executives made themselves available for media interviews, with each spokesperson focusing on their specific areas of expertise. RF conducted research to identify industry trends and worked to develop thought-leadership for key Novartis spokespeople.
All media relations and advertising were targeted toward the audiences polled by Penn, Schoen & Berland, focusing on markets where those audiences were clustered and publications those audiences noted reading.
Media tactics focused on stories including that of the breakthrough oncology drug Gleevec, the positive financial performance of the company, profiles of key executives, Novartis’s patient assistance programs, the establishment of NIBR in Cambridge and of the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases in Singapore, among others. These stories drove home the “Think What’s Possible” campaign’s key messages, that Novartis is a caring, innovative leader. A simultaneous “Think What’s Possible” corporate-advertising campaign featured full-page advertisements designed to tell the story of individual patients with dramatic life improvements due to a Novartis treatment in each of Novartis’s key therapeutic areas.
Among the results:
· 92… the number of new media contacts in just the first six months
· 48… the number of Novartis business stories in top-tier print press (non-brand focused)
· 36… the number of media briefings with tier-two media
On the advertising front:
· 14… the number of first time full-page color ads (NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, USA Today)
· 12… the number of ads placed across from table of contents (Forbes, Institutional Investor)
· 10… the number of back covers (Financial Times, Atlantic Monthly, Scientific American)
· 5… the number of inside covers (National Journal, Black Enterprise)
· 4… the number of ads across from key editorial features (Fortune, HBR, New Yorker)
“This year [Novartis’s] shares in the U.S. are up about 10%--the best performance among major drug companies—even as the Morgan Stanley Capital USA Health Care Index, a basket of big drug stocks, has fallen about 25%. Novartis is the 17th most valuable company in the world, up from 27th last year.” – TIME Magazine, July 29, 2002
Novartis was ranked one of the “Top 5 International Stock Picks” by Fortune in August 2002: “Novartis has emerged suddenly as a big player in the global drug biz”
Sega Brand Repositioning
Sega with Access Communications
Access Communications’ client SEGA, a leading video game publisher, was in need of a corporate image makeover at the start of 2002. The company had successfully transitioned from being a hardware developer to a third party video game publisher for all three of the console gaming systems. 2002 would be a “make or break” year for SEGA, as the company had a stated goal of becoming the #2 independent console publisher in the U.S. by the end of holiday 2002. Access Communications’ extensive efforts on behalf of this client helped ensure positive corporate image with media and analysts, and ultimately, consumers.
Although SEGA had already began to create video games for consoles such as PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox, investors, analysts and media were looking to for more information and proof points as to why SEGA would be a successful third party publisher like competitors such as Electronic Arts (EA).
Following the industry’s largest trade show, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), in May of 2002, analysts, investors and media believed SEGA’s achievement of goals was contingent upon the success and timing of SEGA’s game launches.
Since the company only had a history of developing games for one gaming platform, Access needed to communicate that SEGA could manage the launches of 35 different titles on a variety of different platforms and ship them on time with competitive titles. And competition for coverage was fierce – EA and Activision had blockbuster titles such as “Madden” and “Tony Hawk Pro Skater,” among many others. Further, general consumers still seemed confused about SEGA’s transition. Thirty five percent of gamers did not know which game platforms SEGA developed for; educating them was another major challenge for Access.
Despite these challenges, there were opportunities. SEGA was known for more than 40 years as the leader in creating original content utilizing its 12 powerhouse development teams, a strong message for Access to drive home with media and analysts. Also compelling, SEGA had just announced its first positive financials in at least five years and had a well-admired management team.
Finally, media and analysts were anxious for the competition to “heat up” between SEGA and EA, particularly because SEGA was the only game publisher that made strong sports games that could compete with EA’s. Access had the opportunity to fuel the fire with SEGA’s messages delivered strong to investors, analysts and media.
Access first conducted a media audit to assess how media and analysts felt about SEGA and the company’s chances of success. In terms of SEGA’s biggest challenges to become a leading software publisher, 44 percent found that achieving brand recognition was key; 38 percent cited making continuously great games; 10 percent cited poor financials and 8 percent cited EA as SEGA’s biggest challenge. Seventy five percent of respondents found that SEGA’s greatest opportunities were its strong game library/developers, online development expertise and the SEGA Sports games.
Second, SEGA and Access conducted a Brand Tracking Study, in which it was discovered that 35 percent of gamers did not know which platforms SEGA developed games for. Given this information, Access PR focused on the following points in messaging – reinforcing that SEGA made the best games on multiple platforms and had the best development teams, that the company was financially stable and meeting milestones and that the company had the right game plan in place for continued success.
The communications objectives were to re-position SEGA as a leading video game publisher; secure positive coverage for the company, positioning it as being “on par” with successful game publishers such as EA; communicate that SEGA makes great multiplatform games and has strong developers; and secure positive analyst quotes in coverage. Key audiences included business press, analysts, gaming and consumer press.
The Access and SEGA PR team created a series of monthly creative postcards to media and analysts ranging from a “Back in Black” card to reinforce SEGA’s first positive financials to a postcard defining the word “transition” to show that SEGA has successfully transitioned to a third party publisher.
There were four developer events which helped expose media and analysts to SEGA’s incredible development talent and reinforce content strengths, including: “Developers Unleashed” event, which brought all 12 of SEGA’s global development studios together in one place for the first time; “Virtua Fighter 4” and “Jet Set Radio Future” held concurrent with these game kick-offs to spotlight the developers. The multiplatform message was stressed at these events by showing games on various platforms. Media and analyst attendance at these events totaled more than 400.
Given that sports accounts for 55% of SEGA’s business and 30% of all platform sales, pushing the SEGA Sports message was critical in the overall repositioning of the SEGA brand. To that end, PR put on an exclusive Sports Summit at a New York Hotel on September 5, concurrent with the launch of the NFL season. At the event, SEGA Sports’ developers conducted game demos and pro athletes like Jason Giambi were on hand to sign autographs.
Executives also explained how SEGA was meeting and exceeding 2002 objectives. More than 90 reporters and industry analysts were on hand to hear executives discuss the future of the SEGA Sports brand and to try their hand at SEGA Sports’ 2K3 line up. The multiplatform message was stressed in saying SEGA was making “all sports games on all platforms.”
Executives were active on the speaking circuit, participating in industry panels and speeches at E3, Game Developers Conference, Bear Sterns Conference and many others. During these speaking engagements, SEGA reinforced how the company is meeting/exceeding milestones, its strengths in game development and its 12 studios, its online gaming expertise and success in the sports gaming market.
Monthly in-person and phone meetings with all key analysts, business press and gaming press during which executives would reinforce how the company was meeting/exceeding objectives; discuss game sales, game features and other relevant topics. More than 150 briefings occurred in total.
This “rolling thunder” campaign ensured that SEGA was showcasing how the company was meeting milestones on a monthly basis.
Because of the PR team’s proactive outreach, excellent media results ensued and all objectives were met. In a mid-term media audit, 86 percent cited that SEGA’s games that they’ve seen thus far have been better than the competition. 75 percent thought that SEGA could achieve the #2 publisher status – a 15 percent increase from earlier in the year. Messages stating that SEGA makes great games were replayed in 85 percent of industry stories and game reviews.
Ten feature spotlight stories on developers and at least five feature stories were secured focusing on SEGA’s comeback opportunity, and 95 percent of game reviews hit the multiplatform message by listing all platforms a particular game was available for. In a follow-up study, only 20 percent were not aware that SEGA was multiplatform vs. 35 percent six months prior.
In addition, three critical analysts upgraded the Japanese stock to “buy” status. By the second quarter of the year, SEGA was the #1 publisher on Nintendo GameCube (up from #2 in Q1) and #2 on Xbox (up from #5 in Q1). Finally, more than 75 percent of analyst quotes about SEGA were positive.
The key quotes reinforcing messages Included:
· “SEGA is mounting a comeback…the company is known for the high quality of its sports games. SEGA can come knocking on EA’s door, and I think EA’s a bit nervous about that.” San Francisco Chronicle, May 2002
· “Two years ago, gaming industry insiders were wondering whether Sega would survive. Now they’re wondering how far it will go.” CNN/Money, June 2002
· “Analysts say Sega’s financial recovery is much faster than expected. ‘It’s impressive considering their recovery pace, and the fact that Sega’s core consumer game sector is returning to the black is a very good news for them,’ said Lisa Spicer, a game sector analyst from ING Barings. CBS MarketWatch, March 2002
· “A gaming powerhouse is back; Sega embracing console systems.” Florida Times Union, August 2002


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Retail chain 7-Eleven wants people to visit its store for not just their daily fix of cigarettes and gum but now to also pickup their packages from Amazon and Walmart.
Its new package pickup service is an expansion of its pilot test with Amazon, which it ran in 2011. The service is now materializing into 200 stores across North America hosting an automated package pickup service powered by UPS and FedEx, which will now also accommodate deliveries for Walmart at six of its locations in Toronto, Canada.
While 7-Eleven’s experiment backs the company’s effort to rethink its revenue streams as its consumer base moves towards shopping online, the service’s success rate runs a risk of losing its shelf space to the lockers that take up about the same space as a full-sized shelf.
The road to new profits, however, might not be all that smooth after all, analysts told The Wall Street Journal. According to Tim Barrett, an analyst at Euromonitor International, each square foot generates about $600 in sales at an average convenience store, WSJ reported.
“I don’t have data for what revenue comes from this to us, about how much [these customers coming in] are buying,” Mohammed Uddin, a 7-Eleven manager in Toronto, told WSJ. In the store, Uddin said, they had to remove a rack of two-liter sodas for the new Walmart lockers. For now, they “are in the cooler … if [customers] don’t see it, sometimes they don’t ask for it, and we lose the sale,” he said.
Even though 7-Eleven’s plan to monetize this offering remains unclear at the moment, it appears to be a win-win situation for the retail chain and its partners, Amazon and Walmart. With the new lockers in place, 7-Eleven is bound to see fresh foot traffic in its stores, which aligns well with its impulse buying business model. As for Amazon and Walmart, they will save much more on shipping costs and will essentially free themselves from being forced into signing deals with shipping companies at undesirable rates.
To check out what else is HOT in the world of payments, click here.


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NEW YORK — Luring beauty shoppers from other outlets, learning about Coty's plans for Del Cosmetics and finding that one item that could be the next big hit are the three top goals on retailers' to-do lists as they head to San Diego for the National Association of Chain Drug Store's Marketplace meeting.
The meeting kicks off Saturday, with Meet the Market, one-on-one appointments that are seen as golden opportunities for fledgling beauty brands to get their 10 minutes of fame with a buyer.
So crucial is the time to see new brands that manufacturers said Wal-Mart is sending some buyers who plan to meet only with new firms. This is the fifth year of Meet the Market and NACDS expects 10,000 face-to-face meetings among 400 exhibitors and more than 300 retailers representing 80 companies.
Retailers said they are on the prowl for something different they can use to make their stores stand out. "Everyone's looking for something 'special, different.' I think it's going to be a very challenging second half," said one top merchant.
Although she said large chains shouldn't be first seeing a new item at Marketplace, she did say the meeting still serves as a great locale to gauge the pulse of the market. Another said she is eyeing programs that can help her chain "get more of the pie." She said she's faced with some of the highest gas prices in the country and highest unemployment rates. "Our number-one goal is to drive sales," she said.
Tom Winarick, executive vice president with Prestige Cosmetics, who will not be exhibiting, said the major issue retailers face is the economy, specifically energy costs and all that impacts. "Shoppers are starting to count their pennies more closely and this is affecting not only front end, but pharmacy too," he said. Fewer pharmacy visits translate into lower front-end volume, he pointed out. "The energy cost increase also impacts their operating costs ranging from overhead to transportation from warehouses to stores. Retailers have to become even more aggressive promotionally to stimulate sales," Winarick explained. On the bright side, he said, mass beauty has always prospered during lean economic times.
For the 52-week period ended May 17, food, drug and mass sales of cosmetics (excluding Wal-Mart) rose 1.8 percent to $2.76 billion, according to ACNielsen. That was a smaller growth rate, however, than the same period last year when volume rose 3.3 percent.But industry consultant Allan Mottus isn't so sure that is true this time. "I think we are finally coming to the conclusion that pricing [in mass] is too high," he said. "Retailers were hoping a stretched shopper would trade down from department stores and that is happening, but they are going to Sephora and Ulta," he said. "And some are just trading out of the category." He said that Sephora's price points on its private label brand are low enough to compete with higher-end mass lines.
He believes mass merchants are trying to figure out what they want to be — the higher-end of the mass market or a value stop. CVS, Mottus said, is definitely pursuing the higher end, as the chain has been aggressive with new and exclusive launches.
Although the quest is for new, it is a mature market leader that many retailers want to meet with during the four-day gathering — Coty. As Coty absorbs Del Cosmetics, retailers want to know more specifics of its future plans. Coty did outline some of that at the Annual Meeting, but to top executives. Now those in the trenches want to know the score. Many urged Coty to keep some of the strong people in place, although Coty has announced many reductions in staffing. One top insider said the best idea for "The New Coty Beauty Company" is to keep much of the old. "They have a good business going as long as they don't try to reinvent everything," said one retailer who asked not to be named. Another source who also wanted to remain confidential wondered if three beauty brands are needed from one company, referring to Rimmel, NYC Color and Sally Hansen. Several buyers said they hadn't been brought up to date on Coty's plans or a new direction.
This year, Marketplace will bring together more than 250 retail companies representing over 145,000 stores with 675 manufacturing companies across 11 major retail categories. Marketplace represents more than 90 percent of the industry. "Along with the Successful Selling conference in the winter, Meet the Market gives exhibitors a chance to open doors with a wide range of retailers," said NACDS president and chief executive officer Steven C. Anderson.Still, there are a few beauty players sitting Marketplace out. Since it is such a big show, a few small firms feel they are overlooked and that it is an expensive meeting to attempt to get an audience with what has become an industry dominated by few players. "I'm wondering if it was the right decision," said one New York-based firm who passed on this year's event. "But I can get to most of the accounts in person now so I'm putting my budgets into travel to accounts. Still, being at Marketplace does give you an important presence...maybe next year."
Breaking News: @louisvuitton's men's artistic director @mrkimjones is leaving the French fashion house after nearly 7 years. Jones joined Louis Vuitton in 2011, following a three year tenure as creative director of British luxury goods brand Alfred Dunhill. Jones is to exit Louis Vuitton after showing his fall 2018 collection for the brand in Paris on Thursday. Read the full exclusive story on WWD.com. Link in bio. #wwdnews #wwdfashion
For men’s fall 2018, @giuseppezanotti drew on elements from streetwear, sport, biker, combat and rock ‘n’ roll. Pictured here are a pair of shoes from the collection, featuring zippers, rhinestones, and silver hardware. Head to WWD.com to see a roundup of the accessories from Milan’s men’s fall 2018 shows. #wwdfashion (📷: Andrea Delb)
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of @ralphlauren’s snowboarding collection, the brand is mining its archives. The iconic brand is reintroducing vintage styles and dropping new designs for a color capsule that will be available in Ralph Lauren stores and @openingceremony on January 25. The capsule will consist of 10 pieces, including the Snow Beach Pullover, pictured here, which is a collector’s item that rapper Raekwon wore in Wu-Tang Clan’s “Can It Be All So Simple” video. #wwdfashion (📷: Tom Gould)
For @rochasofficial’s pre-fall 2018 collection, creative director Alessandro Dell’Acqua channeled the sophisticated and intriguing Catherine Denevue in the film “Belle de Jour.” Polished collarless coats, midi skirts, suits and ’60s graphic motifs were all featured in the collection, adding a sense of discreet luxury. See the rest of the photos on WWD.com #wwdfashion
“We tried to produce clothing of that couture quality, but the most daunting part was that we only had a matter of days [to do it],” said costume designer Lou Eyrich, who recreated Gianni Versace’s iconic looks for @americancrimestoryfx. Eyrich searched online retailers and vintage shops for original pieces from the design house and for @penelopecruzoficial, who plays Donatella Versace. Head to WWD.com to read how she created the Versace world. #wwdfashion
Only three months after her stellar debut catwalk season, @kaiagerber has inked her first big design collaboration –– with @karllagerfeld. The collection blends Lagerfeld’s Parisian chic aesthetic and the model’s signature West Coast casual style via RTW, accessories, footwear and more. The #KarlLagerfeldxKaia collection will launch in September with a series of events. Get all the details on WWD.com. #wwdnews #wwdfashion
Harrods plans to remove the famous statue of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed from the bottom of the Egyptian escalators and hand it back to Mohamed Al-Fayed. “We are very proud to have played our role in celebrating the lives of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed at Harrods and to have welcomed people from around the world to visit the memorial for the past 20 years,” said Michael Ward, Harrods managing director. “With the announcement of the new official memorial statue to Diana, Princess of Wales at Kensington Palace, we feel that the time is right to return this memorial to Mr. Al Fayed and for the public to be invited to pay their respects at the palace.” More on the news, with reporting by @loreleimarfil, at WWD.com. #wwdnews


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RB tables $1.4bn offer for US vitamin group
By John Reynolds, marketingmagazine.co.uk, Friday, 16 November 2012 10:54AM
Reckitt Benckiser (RB) is aiming to break into the vitamins, minerals and supplements global market by making an offer to buy US company Schiff Nutrition International.
RB has made a $1.4bn (£883m) offer for Schiff, trumping a $1.2bn (£757m) offer made by German pharmaceutical company Bayer.
Schiff owns several vitamin brands, including MegaRed and Move Free. The company boasted revenue of $259m (£163m) in the 12 months ending May 31, according to its latest results.
Currently, RB has a presence in the health and hygiene sectors, but not in the fast-growing vitamin field.
Rakesh Kapoor, chief executive of RB, said: "For Reckitt Benckiser, this acquisition would provide a powerful entryway into the large and rapidly growing $30bn global VMS market. This market would be the largest consumer healthcare sector in which we operate.
"It is an ideal addition to Reckitt Benckiser's new strategic focus in global health and hygiene, and would give us immediate scale in VMS in the US. It also plays well to our consumer marketing, innovation and go to market capabilities."
Should RB's proposed takeover of Schiff go through, it would mark the group's biggest acquisition since July, when it announced a $3..9bn (£2.5bn) deal for SSL International, the maker of Dr Scholl foot products and Durex condoms.Follow @johnreynolds10
This article was first published on marketingmagazine.co.uk
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From the Editor's Desk American life is based on a reassurance that we like one another but won't violate one another's privacies. This makes it a land of small talk. Two people greet each other happily, with friendliness, but might know each other for years before venturing basic questions about each other's backgrounds. The opposite is true of Indians. At least three people I've sat next to on planes to and from India have asked me, within minutes, how much I earn as a writer (only to turn away in disappointment when I tell them). In the East, I've heard it said, there's intimacy without friendship; in the West, there's friendship without intimacy. Continue reading
Editor’s Pick THE BOXING CHAMPION Muhammad Ali marches in a protest in New York City in September of 1970, with members of the Black Panther Party—a radical group seeking to empower black Americans. Ali, who died early last month, was born in 1942, in Kentucky: a state in the racially-segregated south of the United States. Boxing offered an … Continue reading Editor’s Pick
An insight into business model of Flipkart India's E-commerce Giant !Techstory
An insight into business model of Flipkart - India's E-commerce Giant !TechstoryFounded in 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal , Flipkart is an e-commerce company which is registered in Singapore and has its headquarter in Bangalore (India). Initially the company was an online bookstore which has now come of age and operates ...articles
Telecoms to make $11 bn revenue from data in India Data revenues for Indian telecom network operators are set to double to $11 billion by 2017-18, said brokerage firm CLSA. Reliance Jio Infocomm, which has delayed the 4G service launch to 2016, is likely to drive the mobile Internet market in India. Bharti Airtel, which has presence in both 3G and 4G markets, is expected
Jade Global opens IT services unit in India US-based Jade Global Software, a leading information technology (IT) systems and solutions company, has announced the launch of a mid-enterprise IT services facility in Hyderabad, India.
Handset manufacturers get aggressive with marketing strategies : made-in-China rules In the last six months, there has been immense activity in the mobile handset market. Both the Chinese and the Indian players have turned quite aggressive with their respective marketing strategies. From roping in celebrities as their brand ambassadors, to associating with big ticket events and revamping themselves or making exclusive launches on the e-commerce platforms, this space has turned quite exciting.


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"For years, I had been cooking for my family and friends," owner Kimberly Knox says. "They would come over and eat, and everyone always suggested I open up a restaurant."
After years in the 9-to-5 corporate world, Knox took that suggestion and decided to open her own seafood joint. But she didn’t do it alone, recruiting her two daughters as her business partners; McKenzie Tukes is 14 years old, and Madison Tukes is 12 years old, surely making them two of metro Atlanta’s youngest restaurateurs.
"I wanted to own my own business and I like to cook, and my mom inspired me," says McKenzie.
"You have to be responsible," Madison adds. "And you can't play around in the restaurant, because the customers will think that you're not worthy."
No worries about that; since opening in September, the trio has gained a loyal fanbase thanks to its menu of what Knox calls "soulful seafood." The secret ingredients in every dish? Love and passion, says Knox — and that love is even reflected in the restaurant’s bright pink walls.
"My auntie, Sharon Knox, passed away a few years ago from breast cancer. So my daughters wanted to honor her by painting this building pink," says Knox.
Along the way, Knox says her two daughters have been encouraged and supported by their stepfather and their entire circle of close family and friends; meanwhile, the restaurant’s duo of middle school-aged owners says they’re learning lessons they hope will pave the way for an even more successful future.
"If you want to do something, just put your mind to it," says McKenzie. Adds Madison, "Whatever you want to do, just do it. And...it's working hard. Just work hard and you'll do it."
For more information on Infusion Crab ATL, click over to the restaurant’s website here. Right now, Infusion Crab ATL is open for to-go orders and delivery on Tuesdays through Sundays.
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By George W. Chapman
It should come as no surprise that OB-GYNs in states with restrictive or confusing abortion laws are considering moving to states that won’t interfere in the care between doctor and patient. The Kaiser Family Foundation published an article about what is happening in Idaho, which just passed a restrictive abortion law. Seventy-five of 117 Idaho OB-GYNs surveyed by the Idaho Coalition for Safe Reproductive Healthcare indicated they were considering leaving the state. Of the 75, 73 said it was because of the newly passed restrictive abortion law. Rural hospitals, typically staffed with minimal OB-GYN physicians, may be forced to close maternal services, forcing pregnant women to travel hundreds of miles out of state to deliver. OB-GYNs provide a lot more health services to women besides maternal care. So, their departure from states with restrictive abortion laws will have a far greater impact on women’s overall healthcare than anticipated. A research paper published in February found 76% (3 of 4) current and future (residents and medical students) OB-GYNs won’t even apply to work in states with restrictive abortion laws. The threat of potential fines and even imprisonment was too much of a deterrent.
Rise to Health
The American Medical Association (AMA), the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and Race Forward are collaborating as “Rise to Health” to mitigate the barriers that must be overcome to achieve health equity among us all. Barriers such as cost, access, isolation, housing and food security and racism, all impede health equity. The three organizations representing providers, payers, pharma and numerous professional societies and associations are combining their heretofore disparate efforts in the battle against impediments to equity and establish a set of common measurements and goals. Hopefully, Rise to Health will address our fragmented healthcare system which frustrates providers and consumers alike.
Customer Satisfaction Declining
According to a recently released study by J.D. Powers based on 32,656 interviews, customer satisfaction with commercial insurance plans is declining especially among Gen Y and Gen Z generations. Particularly low scores were given to customer service and communication. Only 17% of those who identified their health status as poor or fair were assigned a case manager. Care fragmentation (multiple providers and several prescriptions) usually leads to high costs, poor outcomes and increased patient frustration. Other scores that declined from previous studies were in coverage and benefits and provider choice. Low scores from new members indicate a need for insurers to do better job of onboarding or how to access benefits and navigate our complicates and fragmented healthcare system. Interestingly, digital health tool usage remained low.
Retail Clinic Usage Soars
Over last five years, retail clinics have experienced a 200% increase in business. Compare that to a 13% decrease in traditional primary care business (private physicians and hospitals), a 70% decrease in urgent care business a 1% decrease in emergency room business. (The decrease in non-emergent visits in ERs is a good decrease.) The pandemic was probably a major cause for the 200% increase at retail clinics as consumers got used to getting vaccines and COVID-19 testing there, so primary care usage at these locations grew by association and convenience. Being associated with a drug chain like CVS or Walgreens further enhanced the convenience, continuity of care and one-stop shopping. Ninety percent of retail health clinics are owned by six huge corporations with CVS being the biggest. Believe it or not, the second largest operator of retail clinics is grocery giant Kroger. So, you can see your doctor, get a vaccination, get tested, get your prescription and grab a dozen eggs all in the same place. Most retail clinics are in the Southwest and Midwest.
Monitor BP by Phone
The CDC estimates almost half of adults have hypertension. Engineers at UC San Diego have developed a simple clip that works with your smartphone camera and flash. It costs less than $1. It is so cheap it could be handed out by providers to their patients so they can easily monitor their blood pressure at home without the hassle of cuffs and BP monitors. The product is not yet available as the engineers are working on making the clip as user friendly as possible.
Healthcare in the Metaverse
Ever since Facebook introduced the metaverse (a digital world using virtual and augmented reality headsets) cash-rich CVS has filed for a trademark to sell their products in the metaverse. The pharmacy giant will begin to transition some in-store services like primary care, nutrition and wellness counseling to virtual. As they do so, a lot of people will lose their jobs as they plan to close 900 stores. CVS revenue last year was a staggering $304 billion. Meanwhile, cash-strapped hospitals still recovering from the pandemic are struggling to break even.
Caring for Resistant Elderly Parents
You want to help but your 80-plus-year-old parents are resistant. They are confused or believe you are interfering or they are afraid of losing their independence. Possibly all the above. It is the dilemma confronting most family caregivers. Negotiation and dispute resolution may be the answer. Researchers at Northwest University conclude the very same negotiation and dispute resolution tactics that work for businesses can work for families. 1) Determine the clinical, personal and financial issues. 2) What are your parents’ positions? 3) Lay out what are you willing to do as caregiver. 4) Find common ground. 5) What are your parents’ fears? Both real and perceived. Mitigate everyone’s emotions. 6) Ask questions, don’t present parents with edicts. 7) Agree you are all on the same team. 8) If all fails, seek third party help from social workers, family psychologists or case managers. Above all, don’t let the relationship with your parents devolve into resentment.
Cost of Care Up 5.6% This Year
The average annual increase in the cost of care since 2021 is 4.8%. According to the Milliman Medial Index, healthcare now costs a family of four just over $31,000 this year. It’s $7,221 for an individual. Healthcare inflation tends to lag six months to a year behind general inflation, so 2024 costs will probably go even higher. Driving costs up are supply chain problems, cost of drugs, labor shortages, ransomware attacks and catching up on the backlog of procedures postponed during the pandemic. Milliman expects employees will bear 60% of the increases. As discussed in an earlier column, commercial insurers are recoding record profits.
George W. Chapman is a healthcare business consultant who works exclusively with physicians, hospitals and healthcare organizations. He operates GW Chapman Consulting based in Syracuse. Email him at firstname.lastname@example.org.


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From twists to tubes, sheets to spirals, we all know pasta comes in varying shapes and sizes. But if you haven’t heard of honeycomb pasta, you’re clearly behind the times.
The strange creation, which has gone viral since it first appeared on the internet earlier this month, involves tightly packed pasta tubes, stuffed with cheese sticks, all arranged inside a cake tin and covered in tomato sauce and different kinds of meat.
So-called because it resembles a honeycomb in structure, the unconventional serving suggestion surfaced on TikTok and was later shared on Twitter, where it was liked 1.7million times.
When baked, it holds its shape and can be sliced into pieces like a giant pasta pie. It is, of course, topped with yet more cheese, which melts and turns deliciously golden brown.
While most fans agreed it was a mouth-watering – albeit a little non-traditional – idea, others declared the dish ‘absolutely cursed’ and ‘bizarre’. Some took issue with the use of string cheese, and the fact that the tomato sauce came straight from a jar, rather than being cooked first.
Meanwhile, others said it looked like a ‘simple inexpensive family meal’ and compared it to a ‘vertical lasagne’.
One viewer of the 59-second original video clip said there was in fact already an Italian dish called ‘ziti’, made from cheese-stuffed tubular pasta baked in a savoury pie, which was almost identical to the viral suggestion.
So, will you be giving ‘honeycomb pasta’ a go at home? As one fan said, it does look ‘ridiculously good’ – and you could experiment with different pasta, cheese and sauce to suit your own tastes. We know what we’re making for dinner tonight...


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A lot of people felt deflated after Nintendo’s media briefing on Tuesday, but it’s starting to look like their major fault at this year’s E3 was just the briefing itself. It took a second look at the Wii U’s launch lineup to actually make me think about getting one sometime within the next 12 months.
The system’s launch window list actually has at least four or five games that I might want to play, which is more than I can say for most platform launches. It has at least a few more games that I’m sure will sell a ton of copies. The problem is that Nintendo made it so you have to actually look for them.
One of the games that may have been the most disserved by the briefing is Zombie U. From the name and target render video I was sure it would be this generation’s Red Steel – a throwaway game that get’s way more attention than it should because of the veritable vacuum around it. Some more information and a real gameplay demo have flipped my opinion almost 180 degrees.
For starters, Zombie U looks truer to the survival horror genre than Resident Evil 6 or Dead Space 3. It looks like almost the only “real” survival horror game I’ve seen on a console this generation, and people are comparing it to roguelikes and that DayZ mod for ArmA II. There’s an emphasis on low supplies, one bite from a zombie will kill you, and every time you die you have to start a new character. The footage linked above looks quite promising. Oh, and it’s in development at Ubisoft Montipiler – the studio responsible for Rayman Origins that is supposedly working on Beyond Good & Evil 2 and Rayman Legends, which, as we saw at the Ubisoft conference, also looks incredible.
One thing that really shocked me is that the next game from Platinum Games and director Hideki Kamiya (Viewtiful Joe, Okami, Bayonetta), is a Wii U exclusive. Tentatively called “Project P-100”, I have no idea what I’m looking at in these videos but it looks fun, and neither Platinum nor Kamiya has let me down yet. Whether or not this came comes out in 2012 will severely impact my decision to buy a Wii U or not.
I think we also need to observe the fact that the Wii U will be the first Nintendo console since the N64 with a full-blown Mario game in its launch window – and at a time when Mario is selling more than ever. The New Super Mario games are selling in the tens of millions of copies and we saw how 3D Land finally helped the 3DS pick up sales. New Super Mario Bros U will be the ideal killer app right out of the gate. I don’t think anyone doubts that it will be a good platformer.
Also, judging from comments and interviews from the show floor, I’m not sure the Wii U’s entire launch window lineup has even been revealed. Activision gave a “no comment” response when asked about Call of Duty, and EA confirmed that there were some sports games for the Wii U on the way (and I’m honestly interested in what EA sports games might be like on the Wii U’s controller), though we don’t know of what nature. Nintendo is still holding some of its cards for the next nine months close to the chest, much to our distress.
- To any SNK fans out there, the first Last Blade game is now available on Virtual Console. Worth $9?
- Masters of the Universe is now on Blu-Ray: http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/07/masters-of-the-universe-comes-to-blu-ray
- Apparently, most of the games at E3 were showcased on the PC, not consoles: http://t.co/vjNPc8Cq


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- Posted by: Mike Hedges MS
- Category: Press Releases
MIKE HEDGES WELCOMES NEWS THAT THE WALES RETAIL RELIEF SCHEME EXTENDED AND ENHANCED
Welsh Labour’s Economy Minister Edwina Hart has announced that the Welsh Labour Government has extended and enhanced the Wales Retail Relief scheme for 2015-16 which will help retail businesses cut up to £1,500 off their rates bill.
Mike Said…. I welcome the news that the Wales Government has extended the retail relief scheme; this scheme enables small retailers and food outlets to reduce their rates bill. I would urge any business who have not already done so to check if they are eligible.
Last year more than 10,500 retailers across Wales benefited from the scheme which cut annual rates bills by up to £1,000. Eligible retail, food and drink businesses are being encouraged to take advantage of the additional savings offered in the current financial year by the Wales Retail Relief scheme.
The relief is available to properties that have a rateable value of £50,000 or less, that are wholly or mainly being used as retail premises – shops, restaurants, cafes and drinking establishments. It is available until 31 March 2016 and offers up to £1,500 subject to state aid limits. Business that benefited from relief last year can also apply for the current relief.
The announcement comes during High Street Week, the highlight of the Welsh Government’s ‘Support Your High Street’ campaign, which encourages people to make use of the excellent shops and businesses available on their doorstep. Events and fun family activities are taking place across Wales this week, such as food and craft fairs, children’s activities, vintage days and street parties


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With the interest in cryptocurrencies becoming more and more mainstream, Bitcoin’s rise has been stunted somewhat by the emergence of rival currencies, among other factors.
Bitcoin fell short of the analysts’ prediction for the beginning of 2022, below the $100,000 mark.
There is the shift in the US Federal Reserve’s monetary policy which is causing some consternation amongst Bitcoin enthusiasts. It announced that they would be winding down their bond-buying program at a faster pace and this ensured that the projected interest rates rose significantly for 2022, which may add pressure to Bitcoin in the short term.
Preliminary models suggest that, on the whole, 2022 may not be as successful a year for Bitcoin as 2021 proved to be.
Some experts have predicted that there could be a sharp decline in Bitcoin value in the first months of 2022. Throwing caution to the wind might be good policy to start the year.
Bitcoin was on pace to close out December with a 19% drop. On New Year’s Eve, it fell as much as 3.5% to trade at $45,658, but Bitcoin ended up trading on the last day of the year at $48,276, 66% higher in 2021.
“We’re seeing a little more volatility,” Chris Gaffney, president of world markets at TIAA Bank, said in an interview. “It’s a speculative asset.”
In 2021, globally, more than $20 billion was invested in crypto exchange-traded products through November, a record, according to ETFGI, a research and consultancy firm.
Assets increased roughly 550% year to date, up from $3.1 bn at the end of last year.
Bitcoin has had a rough time since hitting an all-time high of near $69,000 in early November. Partly, analysts say, it’s being buffeted by concerns over greater regulatory scrutiny around the world. But it’s also losing dominance to other lesser-known upstarts that have gained in popularity as the crypto ecosystem expanded this year. Among the biggest cryptocurrencies, Binance Coin posted the best return, adding roughly 1,300% in 2021.
Looking ahead, many investors are expecting prices to recover and eventually reach new highs.
Crypto decoupling, the idea that not all coins will follow bitcoin up and down but will trade independently based on their own value, is happening.
“Different crypto sectors have different value drivers,” according to Messari’s Crypto Theses for 2022. “We’ve gone from ‘everything is a cryptocurrency’ to ‘actually, there are currencies, fat protocols, DeFi apps, distributed computing platforms, NFTs, work-to-earn markets…’.”
“Discerning investors increasingly look at the actual usage and underlying microeconomics of various networks and trade around their unique growth drivers.”
Also, regulatory attention on cryptos has been ramping up in 2021 and 2022 is likely to be a year of action on that front as more countries adopt cryptocurrencies.
El Salvador became the first country in the world in 2021 to recognize bitcoin as legal tender. Already more El Salvadorians have bitcoin wallets than bank accounts, according to the country’s president, allowing them to send and receive remittances at lower costs.
While the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have warned against such moves, citing a risk to financial stability, many other countries are said to be considering similar moves, particularly in South America, such as Panama and Paraguay. They might not adopt bitcoin specifically, but instead introduce a stable coin or a central bank digital currency, known as a CBDC.
China is planning to launch its CBDC, the e-CNY, in time for the Beijing Winter Olympics in February, and more than 140 million Chinese residents already have an e-CNY wallet, while $97 billion has been transacted in the digital currency through various pilot programs.
Paying in Bitcoin and crypto
Some businesses are considering attracting people to join their firms by paying in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
Young people see cryptocurrencies as a YOLO (you only live once) trade that could make them rich quickly.
Burdened with heavy college tuition debt payments, exorbitant apartment and home prices, coupled with an alarming inflation rate raising the prices of everything, digital assets seemed the only way to get ahead financially.
If you get paid in US dollars, as inflation increases, the value of your paycheck decreases.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said he would take a paycheck “100% in Bitcoin,” and will also offer cryptocurrencies to public employees too. Eric Adams, the new mayor of New York City, similarly announced that he’s looking into paying people in Bitcoin and other digital assets, and will accept his first three paychecks in Bitcoin.
With the ascendancy of remote work and employees now doing their jobs across the U.S. and world, companies are turning to third-party providers to help deal with payments, taxes, and compliance with local jurisdictions. Alex Bouaziz, co-founder and CEO of Deel, a company that manages these matters, offers to pay employees and contractors with crypto. Deel can deliver payments directly to bank accounts, digital wallets including PayPal, Payoneer, and Revolv, or directly to the person.
If you accept a salary in cryptos, you have to have a strong stomach and be comfortable with seeing strong gains along with scary plunges in value. Payment in cryptocurrencies is not without risk. There is a lot of volatility in this space.
In 2021, the price of Bitcoin hit $67,000 and subsequently plunged to under $30,000, and then bounced back again. Ethereum saw record highs of around $4,800 on Dec. 1 only to see it trade lower at around $3,600 to $3,900.


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Nintendo's Super Mario 64, First Released 25 Years Ago, Sells at Auction for $1.56 Million
The sale of the unopened, pristine copy of the game shattered a record made just days ago by the sale of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda for $870,000.
During its initial release in 1996, Nintendo’s Super Mario 64, one of the first games produced for Nintendo 64, would have gone for about $60. On Sunday, an unopened, near-pristine copy of the game was sold for $1.56 million at auction.
“I was blindsided, to be quite honest with you,” said Valarie McLeckie, the consignment director for video games at Heritage Auctions, where the game was sold, according to the New York Times.
With an opening bid of $330,000, the game ultimately went to an anonymous buyer for $1.3 million, who paid an extra 20% buyer’s premium, bringing the total price to $1.56 million.
The game was the first to feature Mario in 3D, Heritage Auctions said in a statement.
The purchase shattered the record for the sale of a single video game – a record that was made just days before when a copy of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda from 1987 sold at the same auction house for $870,000.
Before that, Heritage Auctions sold an unopened copy of Super Mario Bros from 1986 for $660,000 in April, which also set records at the time.
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Amazon's youthful units drive profit to double analysts' estimates
By Jeffrey Dastin and Arjun Panchadar - Jul 27th 2018, 12:43
Amazon.com forecast strong northern hemisphere autumn sales and posted a profit that was double Wall Street targets thanks to the retailer’s younger, higher-earning businesses, including cloud computing and advertising.
Its shares rose more than 3% in after-hours trade.
The report was a relief to investors in the US technology sector, still reeling from a profit warning by Facebook that sent its stock plunging 19%.
Amazon’s report shows how the world’s largest online retailer has increasingly learnt to compensate for the high costs of fast package delivery and video streaming by controlling expenses and building up higher-profit businesses.
It was the first mover in the business of selling data storage and computing power in the cloud, a bet that continues to reap rewards and give it the leeway to invest in grand projects. For instance, the company is working to ship food from Whole Foods Market stores across the US, in an ambitious attempt to bring groceries into the age of online retail.
Amazon’s spending typically climbs in the northern hemisphere summer quarter, pressuring profits as the company prepares for Christmas and the winter holidays, its peak sales period each year.
Yet the company said it expects an operating profit between $1.4bn and $2.4bn, up from $347m a year earlier. The company also reported a second-quarter profit of $2.5bn, its largest ever.
"A big contributor to the quarter and the last few quarters obviously has been strong growth in our highest profitability businesses and also advertising," Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s chief financial officer, said on a call with media. "We’ve seen a greater-than-expected efficiency in a lot of our spend in things like warehouses, data centres, marketing."
The Seattle-based company cut hundreds of consumer jobs in its headquarters earlier this year, in a move that may have lowered costs and freed up resources for fast-growing areas like Amazon’s voice aide Alexa.
Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter called the expansion in the company’s gross profit margin "remarkable," citing impressive results from cloud sales and services to third-party merchants on Amazon.
"That drove the bulk of the earnings beat," he said.
Olsavsky noted that third-party sales were changing the profit equation for Amazon, too. For years, the company was notorious for roller-coaster results.
More lucrative than sales of goods that Amazon owns, third-party transactions offer the company a commission that increases significantly when merchants choose to hand over fulfillment and advertising to Amazon, as many do. Half of all units sold through Amazon are from these sellers, and these sales keep growing.
Angling for advertisers
Highly profitable ad sales were a bright spot last quarter. The company said revenue from the category and some other items grew 132% to $2.2bn. Analysts were expecting $2.1bn, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
The company is working to automate tasks for advertisers and to help media buyers measure the results, Olsavsky said.
Key to its allure has been that advertisers’ placements result directly in sales, reaching customers on Amazon with an intent to shop. That contrasts with ads reaching users who are on industry leaders Facebook and Google for a range of purposes.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s most lucrative unit, saw its operating profit margin expand from a year earlier. Sales picked up speed from the year prior, too, rising 49% to $6.1bn and beating the average estimate of $6bn.
The unit’s success has helped make Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos the richest person in the world.
"It’s really becoming the crown jewel of Bezos’s empire," said GBH Insights analyst Daniel Ives. "They’ve invested significant dollars in building out the infrastructure, sales force and AWS partner ecosystem worldwide that I think now is starting to pay just massive dividends."
While cloud rivals are gaining ground, AWS remains far in front with 31% of the fast-expanding market, versus 18% for Microsoft and 8% for Google in the second quarter, research firm Canalys said.
Amazon shares, up 55% this year versus 6% for the S&P 500, trade at a premium, too. The stock’s price-to-earnings ratio is more than 10 times that of Microsoft.
Cloud and ad sales, along with a July event that Amazon created to drum up revenue during the summer shopping lulls, are helping the company overcome high costs in the third quarter.
During the event, called Prime Day, Amazon sold more than 100-million products and signed up more people to its Prime loyalty club than on any other previous day in its history.
Prime members spend above average on Amazon. The company said it now expects third-quarter sales of between $54bn and $57.5bn, up from $43.7bn a year earlier.
Hiking the annual US price of Prime 20% in the second quarter appeared to have few negative consequences: Amazon said subscription revenue increased 57% to $3.4bn.
Total net sales for the second quarter rose 39% to $52.9bn, missing the average analyst estimate of $53.4bn.Business Live
Digital marketing: multi-touch attribution
19/09/2019 - 13:43
The effective tracking of digital marketing campaigns is not as easy as initially thought. One question that often pops up is: at what point did consumer conversion take place? During a campaign, it’s difficult to attribute this correctly, especially with multiple touchpoints such as display and native advertising, sponsored social posts, video ads on mobile or paid-for search results all running consecutively.
Working towards better data management
17/09/2019 - 11:31
Big data is seeing organisations becoming more mindful of aligning their data management practices with newer paradigms such as data lakes, elastic and cluster computing, and real-time data. As such, the cloud provides an environment capable of managing the volume and scale required to do so.
Clover, Milco merger puts 657 jobs on the line
17/09/2019 - 10:05
A total of 657 existing jobs will be on the line at Clover Industries in the next two years if the R4.8 billion merger between the JSE-listed dairy company and Israel-based Milco is approved by the Competition Tribunal.
Rhodes Food Group's turnover rises amid healthy international growth
16/09/2019 - 11:14
The international turnover of Rhodes Food Group, which makes Bull Brand corned meat and Bisto gravies, rose 13.4% in the 10 months to end-July, boosted by a weaker rand and exports of fruit snacks to the US.
The changing UX and CX landscape
13/09/2019 - 16:16
An exceptional customer experience (CX) builds a foundation of loyalty and trust. Similarly, a positive user experience (UX) encourages brand connections with people wanting to come back for more. And yet, local organisations must learn to embrace these more effectively to differentiate themselves from their competitors.


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There's no question that Grasshopper Manufacture's Lollipop Chainsaw
has captured people's attention since it was announced
a little less than a month ago. The first gameplay trailer
was released at the beginning of Gamescom, and I think it's fair to say that people's interest in the game has remained piqued.
Now, Grasshopper Manufacture has followed up with several screens of Juliet, who is shaping up to be everyone's favorite zombie-slaying cheerleader, in action against the undead masses.Lollipop Chainsaw
is currently set for a 2012 release.


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The flaw, which is similar to a buffer overflow problem, is a privilege escalation bug, according to Marc Maiffret, co-founder and chief hacking officer of eEye Digital Security, an endpoint security company based in Aliso Viejo, Calif.
The flaw, which eEye first reported as an Upcoming Advisory, is one of the first to be found in the brand new operating system. Earlier this month, Microsoft patched a flaw in Windows Defender, which is a built-in spyware and security component in different applications, including Windows XP and Vista. Maiffret points out that this new flaw is in the Vista operating system itself, not in a component that has been used in various programs.
eEye researches found the vulnerability on Jan. 9 and reported it to Microsoft on Jan. 19. Vista wasn't released for retail until the end of January.
The vulnerability enables regular users to grab more power on the system.
"A main security feature added to Vista is that regular users have a lower level of privileges," says Maiffret. "They have fewer privileges in Vista than they did in Windows XP. When regular users are running the operating system, they have regular user-level access, but with this vulnerability, you can elevate yourself to system-level access. Any normal user can do anything they want to the system."
Maiffret says they gave it a "medium" security rating because it doesn't enable a remote user to control the system. But he also says it wouldn't take much to elevate it.
"If it was coupled with a virus or a different remote vulnerability, it would be a lot more serious," he adds. "Viruses are very prevalent and there are plenty of other vulnerabilities you can couple it with. In a real world context, it's high because there are a lot of other things you can couple it with to make it pretty nasty. On its own, though, it's only medium."
A spokesman with Microsoft said researchers still are investigating the vulnerability.
"Microsoft is aware of a responsibly disclosed report indicating a possible vulnerability in Windows Vista," said a Microsoft spokesman in a statement e-mailed to InformationWeek. "The company is not aware of any public discussion of the report itself. It is also unaware of any attacks attempting to use the reported vulnerability or of customer impact at this time, and will continue to investigate the public report to help provide additional guidance for customers as necessary."


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It seems that Paul McCartney is ready for another round of wedded bliss. The iconic Beatle's girlfriend, Nancy Shevell, was recently snapped by the paparazzi sporting a giant piece of bling on her left ring finger.
According to Life & Style magazine, the 68-year-old spent $650,000 for the bauble. The piece resembles a vintage engagement ring – the huge round-cut diamond is set in a platinum band with interesting detailing. Of course, for McCartney, every penny spent was worth it for his darling, who he met in 2007.
It also looks like the singer isn't the only one smitten with the 51-year-old businesswoman. With the recent announcement of their engagement, friends and relatives are showing their support for the couple. The View co-host Barbara Walters said of Shevell, "I love her very much. Her mother, who died, was my first cousin. And I have been very close to this young woman." McCartney's kids are also said to be very thrilled for their father's decision to finally gift Shevell with a diamond engagement ring. According to People, the singer's designer daughter, Stella McCartney, approves of the relationship.