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Researchers at Cornell University have come up with a device that combines augmented reality (AR) and 3-D printing technologies, enabling designs to be made in physical space as they are printed as three dimensional objects in real-time.
In 3-D printing, a digital model is first prepared on a computer screen, and then printed as a physical object. Augmented reality adds multiple sensory modalities such as graphics, sounds, haptic feedback, and smell to a physical, real-world environment to the designing process.
The device called Robotic Modeling Assistant (RoMA) comprises an AR headset with hand controllers. The designers need to put on the headset and hand controllers, and they’re all set to use AR features. A separate robotic arm, meanwhile, prints the object in real-time.
Read more: How 3D Prosthetics Change Lives in Pakistan
Cornell University doctoral student Huaishu Peng, part of the team that worked on RoMA, has said in a statement that instead of designing 3-D models on the computer screen, users can now get the opportunity to work in conjunction with the robot.
“The designer has this tangible feedback early in the design phase and can make adjustments,” Peng says, adding, “The combination of AR and robot allows the designer to use the printed part to design their next features. The designer can even directly design and print on an existing physical object. This tightens the interface between design and fabrication.”
Further, Peng notes that this technology can be beneficial in making furniture designs. “There is a very promising future for the combination of augmented reality and 3-D printing,” he says.
RoMA improves print quality and designer’s control over the process by allowing them to work together with the robotic arm. If the designer is working on the front of the object, the robotic arm learns how to print the back of the object. It can automatically re-compute changes made by the designer in real-time.
Researchers from Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Central Florida, and the Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany will be presenting their paper on RoMA at the Human Computer Interaction conference being held in Montreal, Canada, later this year.


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NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — If you’re looking to make a cheesy dip to eat while watching your NFL playoff games, you might run into some trouble.
CBS News reported Tuesday that Kraft Foods Group has been experiencing a shortage of the iconic Velveeta cheese product. Kraft told CBS MoneyWatch some consumers may not find the product over the next few weeks.READ MORE: Caught On Video: Gunmen Open Fire On Man Sitting In Barber Chair In The Bronx
“Any issues with availability are much more noticeable given the seasonal demand,” the Kraft statement to CBS MoneyWatch said. “However, we have not heard from many consumers that they are having issues locating the product and we expect this to be a short term situation.”READ MORE: Woman Groped While Shopping At Macy's In Brooklyn
Advertising Age recently reported shortages in particular at East Coast grocery stores. One Brooklyn grocery store reportedly told the publication that shipments of Velveeta would not resume until February because of a plant issue.
The shortage came in what CBS News called the “prime chips-and-dip season,” with the NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl on Feb. 2.MORE NEWS: Subway Rider Shoved Onto Tracks After Fighting Off Attempted Robber, Police Say
Kraft has been producing Velveeta since 1928.

domain: news


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Friday, December 7, 2001
Battle Engine Aquilla announced for the Xbox
Eric @ 1:59 AM EST
Lost Toys has announced Battle Engine Aquilla for Xbox today on their official site. The game is a futuristic first-person shooter where you pilot mechs over changing environments. Infogrames is publishing the game and we will have screens and more details about Battle Engine Aquilla very, very soon.
Ultimate Blade of Darkness Xbox Exclusive
Eric @ 1:48 AM EST
Announced a few months ago for Xbox, today Codemasters has confirmed
that Ultimate Blade of Darkness will be an Xbox exclusive game. Ultimate Blade of Darkness, which is the sequel to Blade of Darkness, is being developed by Rebel Act Studios, and will be one of the bloodiest Xbox games to date. The release date for Ultimate Blade of Darkness has been set for Winter 2002. We will have more information as well as screens and movies when it becomes available.
Konami Announces Xbox Release Dates
Eric @ 1:36 AM EST
Konami has announced the North American release dates for many of their games, but still no word on MGS X. Heres the complete list:
Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams 12/18/2001 to 01/08/2002
ESPN NFL Prime Time 2002 Early January
ESPN Winter X Games Snowboarding 01/17/2002
ESPN Winter X Games Snocross 01/17/2002
ESPN International Winter Sports 01/29/2002
ESPN NBA 2 Night 2002 02/05/2002
ESPN MLS Extra Time 2002 03/26/2002
ESPN Winter X Games Snocross 03/26/2002
Thursday, December 6, 2001
New FPS, Iron Storm Announced
Steve @ 4:24 PM EST
Belgian-based developer, Wanadoo is making this game for XBox, PS2, and PC. Iron Storm is based on World War I as if it never ended. Some of the features are online multiplayer modes like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and CTF. This game is due out in the Spring. As soon as we get screen shots or anything, we will bring them to you.
Amazing new WWF Raw trailer
Eric @ 2:55 AM EST
THQ has just released an impressive new WWF Raw trailer. This is a must download for anyone who likes wrestling. You can grab it from the link below. Also, be sure to check out our 72 exclusive screens of the game.
WWF RAW Trailer
72 Exclusive WWF Raw Screens
Tuesday, December 4, 2001
TDK Announces 2 more XBox Titles
Steve @ 10:49 PM EST
Today, TDK Mediactive announced that Robotech and Mercedes-Benz are coming to the XBox console.
Vincent Bitetti, chief executive officer of TDK Mediactive said, "In 2001, the release of hit titles like Shrek and critically acclaimed games like Lady Sia marked a breakout year for our growing company"
"With great brands on the horizon, we are confidently moving forward and creating high quality games for future periods."
Both games are slated for a Q4, 2002 release. As soon as we get more information on these games, we will bring it to you.
Xbox out selling Gamecube?
Eric @ 12:21 AM EST
According to CSFB, as of November 24, 2001, Nintendo had sold 469,000 GameCube consoles compared to 556,000 for Microsoft's Xbox. Xbox had most of its sales activity confined to the Thursday, Friday and Saturday before GameCube's launch on Sunday November 18. For the week beginning on Sunday Nov. 18 and ending Saturday Nov 24, the Gamecube outsold the Xbox 469,000 to 186,000. But its also worth noting that Microsoft didn't ship as many Xbox's as Nintendo did its Gamecube, so there was a lot more Gamecube's out that week to go around. In any case, both consoles are selling well and with all the things that have been going on its nice to see something doing good. We will have to wait for more sales reports in the coming weeks to see who the true winner is, but in the end both are selling nicely.
Monday, December 3, 2001
THQ Now Shipping MX 2002
Steve @ 9:52 PM EST
THQ has just announced that they will be shipping MX 2002 featuring Ricky Carmichael to stores very soon. Some of the freestylers include Carey Hart, Trevor Vines and Mike Jones. The professional riders include Ricky Carmichael, Mike LaRocco and Kevin Windham. Some modes of play are a new mini game "Horse" as well as an "in-depth" career mode, and a freestyle mode. Two new bonus levels, Tacoma and Washington DC, are featured in the game.
Michael Rubinelli of THQ said, "MX 2002 featuring Ricky Carmichael features a blown-out freestyle mode with two new bonus worlds and a system that gives players the ability to tune their bikes with upgradeable parts."
"We are very excited to be bringing the number one motocross franchise to the Xbox."
Look for this game to be in stores sometime this week.


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New Delhi: The Indian government is likely to introduce a bill in the winter session of the Parliament scheduled to be held on November 29 which will restrict most of the private cryptocurrencies in India, excepting a few to advance the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses. The news has made cryptocurrency holders a bit worrisome. Besides, all major cryptocurrencies have undergone a downward trend suggesting a crash-like situation.
India’s aim is to ban private cryptocurrencies in India with the agenda to build their own version of crypto. The Centre might plan a conducive framework for the creation of the official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India. Thus, amidst this situation, it is important to have a fair knowledge about private coins in the market.
Private cryptocurrency tokens:
Cryptocurrencies have become popular in the last decade. Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Shiba Inu witnessed a rise with a large number of fresh crypto investors coming into the market in 2021. Most of the cryptos sold out owing to their privacy levels. The blockchain technology in Bitcoins is meant to be secure and anonymous while some coins are more private considering transactions. Here are some major private coins which aim to keep users’ identities and activities concealed.
As per Sarkarilist.com, here’s Public/Private Cryptocurrency in India List is given below:


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ALL PRODUCTION AREAS — Shipments (10-12-24) — Movement expected to increase. Wholesale prices at the New England Produce Center on Nov. 4: cartons of 24 12-ounce film bags medium MA late howe mostly $34-35.
Cranberries — Fo.b.s as of Nov. 4
- New melon varieties boast sweetness, firm flesh
- Paramount Citrus replaces Cuties brand with Wonderful Halos
- Sun Pacific buys Cuties brand, breaks ties with Paramount Citrus
- Organically Grown joins fair trade group
- Asian food safety officials react to Bidart Bros. apple recall
- Doing what I say might be easier with food coach


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What's in Store
The coming generations will take the 'e'
of e-commerce. In fact, our kids already have
By JASON FRY
What hath e-commerce wrought?
The business trend of the late 1990s -- can you name anything bigger? --
altered the landscape of commerce. Virtual start-ups went toe-to-toe with
venerable real-world brands and won. Web-only competitors commanded
sky-high stock-market values without ever turning a profit. The Internet
began wringing the waste out of global supply chains, shifting power to
purchasers from suppliers. It eliminated entire classes of middlemen while
creating new ones, and transformed steelmakers and grandmothers alike into
Amazingly, all this is just beginning. Yet in one respect, it soon will
come to an end.
By many credible estimates, e-commerce -- including the vast
business-to-business segment of Internet buying and selling -- will account
for close to $2 trillion of annual economic activity by 2004. That's
roughly one-quarter of the U.S. economy taking shape in the time it takes
to put a kid through high school.
But in this same four years, e-commerce will cease to be a curiosity,
becoming just another way that companies and consumers sell and buy. It
will shed its novelty, its oh-so-trendy "e," and devolve into plain old
commerce. In fact, the word e-commerce will vanish from the vernacular.
A host of factors will drive this trend. Brick-and-mortar retailers with
online operations increasingly will tie together inventory and distribution
channels to make sure their real-world customers are their online
customers, too. At the same time, a panoply of wireless devices will
develop to incorporate Internet functions, extending e-commerce beyond the
domain of office and home personal computers.
Perhaps most important, new generations are growing up for whom
e-commerce is simply taken for granted. E-commerce already has made big
inroads among affordable items on which today's teenagers spend a great
deal of money, such as CDs and books. By the second decade of the
millennium, those Generation Y consumers will be buying bigger-ticket items
and think nothing of buying refrigerators and washing machines online.
E-commerce's triumph -- which is to say, its disappearance into the
woodwork of global commerce -- will be complete.
For people over 35 today -- maybe even those over 25 -- technology is
something new, says Bill Bass, vice president of e-commerce for Lands' End
Inc., a Dodgeville, Wis., retailer. "It's something they learned after they
already developed," he says. "It's a lot like learning a language after
you're an adult: You can speak it, but it's never natural."
Contrast that, he says, with the technological birthright of the kids
coming out of high school in 1999, who were born the year International Business Machines
Corp. introduced the PC. "They don't think of technology as something
'other,' " he says. "They internalize it." Take note: Among nearly 10,000
teens and young adults surveyed in 1999 by Forrester Research Inc., a
Cambridge, Mass., market-research firm, the No. 2-ranked brand in all the
world was Yahoo! (No. 1 was Coke.)
Different generations have found a preferred shopping method and stuck
with it over time, says Phil Kowalczyk, a partner in charge of strategic
services at Kurt Salmon Associates, an Atlanta retail-consulting firm. As
an example, he says his grandparents still shop downtown, but his parents
are big mall shoppers. And while people now in their late 20s and early 30s
grew up primarily as specialty-store shoppers, today's early-20s shoppers
are quite comfortable doing a variety of things online.
As e-commerce becomes invisible in about 2004, according to Forrester
Research, it also will hit a plateau. By then, with Generation Y buyers in
their mid-20s, Forrester expects the number of new online shoppers hitting
the Web to level off. By then, Forrester estimates, half of all software
sales will be made online, as well as 25% of music sales, 6% of book sales,
12% of car sales, 9% of apparel sales and even 3% of food-and-beverage
But the plateau won't last long. Forrester expects another boom to set
in around 2010 as the Gen Yers hit their 30s and begin to flex their
spending muscle. By then, nearly a third of sales in such established
brick-and-mortar categories as appliances and furniture will be made
online, Forrester says. Consumers will buy things without the usual cues --
the smell of freshly baked bread or the fit of a pair of jeans -- as they
come to trust ever-more-powerful online brands.
"There was the perception for a little while that brands mattered less
online," says David Risher, senior vice president for product development
at Seattle online-retailing giant Amazon Inc. "I think it's absolutely the
'Clicks and Mortar'
But the future of selling involves much more than creating a dot-com
division and throwing up a Web site full of brochure-ware. It means
integrating physical and Internet selling channels so seamlessly that
consumers can buy with equal ease through a store, a catalog or a Web
browser, a model sometimes known as "clicks and mortar." Forrester defines
the "post-Web retailer" as "a multichannel retailer that sells a complete
set of products targeted to a specific customer segment."
"The big picture for us is we're not going to let go of our stores,"
says Rich Fahle, site editor of Borders.com, the online arm of the major
bookseller. "Our stores are a huge asset for us ... . Everything we've done
has been about creating not two personas, but one." Borders opened its Web
site last spring. Yet it also offers a walk-up kiosk system called Title
Sleuth to shoppers in nearly 300 stores. The idea is to let the customers
get the books they want in whatever way they prefer. Books could be
identified as in-stock and then shipped to a store, home or international
destination -- or even digitally printed as a special order.
"We want to develop this as a single brand, with no wasted trips," says
Mary Jean Raab, the head of new-business development for Borders.
Customers, she explains, are "time-starved, they're stressed. They want
what they want when they want it, and it's our job to give it to them."
The same strategy is evident in a Staples Inc. store in the
Philadelphia International Airport. The store, opened in September by the
Framingham, Mass., office-products retailer, displays and sells merchandise
but also lets shoppers step up to a kiosk to order goods delivered. "If
your consumer likes your product, you want to put it wherever they want to
be," says Mr. Kowalczyk of Kurt Salmon Associates.
The idea of uniting online and real-world distribution and inventory is
extraordinarily challenging to some companies. They worry about
cannibalizing their existing distribution channels. It's a hang-up that
Lands' End's Mr. Bass warns they'll have to get over. "At the end of the
day -- this has become my mantra at Lands' End -- you ask, 'What do
customers want?' and give it to them," he says. "Then, discussions about
cannibalization and channel conflict go away -- because customers don't
care." In his view, executives who obsess about cannibalization are mired
in "an internal, company-centric point of view."
Amazon.com's Mr. Risher agrees that the Internet has transferred a great
deal of power to the customer. Ultimately, he believes, the shift will
affect not just Internet retailers but retailers of all stripes. "The
Internet really does put the customer at the center of things," he says.
The Net "forces all retailers to be incredibly focused on staying ahead of
what the customers' needs are."
Retailers say the integration of e-commerce into the broader world of
selling will happen even without further advances in technology (other than
the continuing spread of high-speed Net access). "Nothing needs to happen,"
says Mr. Bass. "It will happen no matter what."
Blurring the Line
But analysts do expect that the connection of cell phones, pagers and
so-called personal digital assistants to the Web will accelerate
e-commerce. Says Nicole Vanderbilt of Jupiter Communications, a New York
market-research concern: "I think that will have a huge impact in terms of
blurring the line between brick-and-mortar or paper-based options" and
"The one thing holding it back is that PCs are still too difficult to
use. It is scandalous," adds Paul Saffo, a director at the Institute for
the Future in Menlo Park, Calif. He says the day when machines turn on
instantly and thus offer instant access to the Net will be "when this thing
blows wide open."
How long before all this convergence is commonplace? Ms. Vanderbilt
thinks e-commerce as a whole will be considered "a viable option to
brick-and-mortar commerce" within five years. Mr. Bass pegs the time
required at "no more than 10 years," but adds, "That's the longest it's
going to take. It'll start before that."
Mr. Saffo offers the speediest timetable. "Within two years, the leading
edge" won't think of e-commerce and commerce "as separate categories," he
says. And down the road, people now just awakening to e-commerce will be
devotees. He cites a line from science-fiction writer William Gibson: "You
know, the future's already arrived. It's just not evenly distributed
-- Mr. Fry is the technology editor of The Wall
Street Journal Interactive Edition in New York.
Write to Jason Fry at


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Publishers and agents have welcomed confirmation of the Nook's imminent arrival in the UK, while warning that a well-backed launch for the device is crucial.
US retailer Barnes & Noble announced earlier today (20th August) that its e-reader would arrive in the UK in October, but is continuing to keep its choice of retail partners under wraps, saying only that they are "well-known” UK retailers.
Hachette head of digital George Walkley said the company was "looking forward very much" to the UK launch, saying the Nook had been "a popular and commercial success in the US market". Simon & Schuster executive director Kerr MacRae said: "Barnes & Noble is a major player in the e-book market and I really hope that its experience in the US doing digital and online in a physical world will add something to the market over here." Oneworld publisher Juliet Mabey said independent publishers would "especially welcome" the increase in competition represented by the Nook's arrival.
Agent Clare Alexander said: " I'd like as many partnerships as there can be. I'd just like an open playing field, and as much choice for the consumer as possible."
Little, Brown chief executive Ursula Mackenzie also welcomed the increase in competition but warned: "I think until we know how it is going to be sold, it's hard to know how much impact it will have. Kindle is very well-established and even Kobo has had a whole year now, and it's hard to know how many more people out there want to buy an e-reader.
"Quite a lot will depend on who Barnes & Noble partner with—and how much money they put behind it." Mackenzie added: "Clearly if they connect with someone known for selling books, then you arrive at that target market more easily."
Profile digital publishing director Michael Bhaskar said the Nook's arrival would "only help cement e-books as a vital segment of the market" but added: "The trick will be making a splash—half-hearted e-book launches get nowhere."


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The company said in a press release issued on Thursday that the campaign aims to raise brand awareness among consumers by targeting the new generation that use social media in their day to day lives.
With the launch of the campaign, Pink Lady aims to position itself as the number one apple brand in Thailand."
Ryan Au, Regional Brand Manager for Asia Pacific and India, Pink Lady, said: “Thailand is one of the biggest markets in Asia, importing over 180,000 tons of apples yearly. Since we started importing Pink Lady to Thailand, we have grown over 400 per cent within five years. In the past, our brand awareness has been measured at 58 per cent amongst consumers in Thailand. With the transition in marketing strategies from B2B to direct consumers, we hope to create a more emotional connection with consumers and in turn grow awareness to 65 per cent.”
“What makes Pink Lady different from other brands, apart from consistently delivering the freshest and tastiest apple in the market, is that we strive to be a part of the consumer’s lifestyle. Our target customers are those who is particular about the quality of product they purchased.
“With the launch of #PinkLadyClicksTH food photography and videography contest, we are confident that participants will be able to experienced first-hand the Pink lady brand in conjunction with Pink Lady Food Photography of the Year in London,” Ryan Au said.
The conditions for participation in the #PinkLadyClicksTH contest is a simple post of any lifestyle food photo or video through social media with the hashtag #PinkLadyClicksTH. Content can consist of anything related to food and represents inspiring stories like a culinary trip, a favourite dish, or a skilful chef, for example, something that gives that ‘Always Wow’ feeling, which is the theme of the campaign. The winning prize is a trip to London’s Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year 2019.
Sithisak Chantamornwong, CEO of Cititex Group, sid: “The apple market in Thailand is one of the most competitive markets in fresh produce. Although there are many brand options, consumers still can’t separate one from another. With this, Cititex Group saw the market to make a difference and decided to join an exclusive partnership with Pink Lady, the apple brand that prioritizes quality of product and aims to connect with consumers in at a more personal level. With #PinkLadyClicksTH campaign, we believe that consumers will recognise the playful nature of Pink Lady, which will increase brand awareness as well as position the brand higher in the market.”
Gunn Vitidphapatumrong, Category Manager, Produce, Tesco Lotus, said: “Tesco Lotus always strives to bring customers the best quality fresh produce for an affordable price. As consumers grow more health conscious, they have started to pay more attention to where products are made, the quality standards they uphold, and the safety and production process. Since Pink Lady focuses so heavily on the quality of their product, it has proven to be a brand that meets Tesco Lotus' consumer needs. I am confident that the partnership between Tesco Lotus and Pink Lady for the #PinkLadyClicksTH campaign will add more fun to consumer shopping experience.”
Published : November 01, 2018
By : The Nation


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As the greater world of search goes, so goes ecommerce search, and retailers can’t afford to fall behind as consumers change the way they look for products online.
Major search engines, led by Google, rely on artificial intelligence (AI) to extract a user’s intent in a search. Keywords has been one of the signals, or actions, AI uses to figure out what people wanted to find. However, because of the increased adoption of voice control by consumers in their homes, cars, and mobile devices, searchers are increasingly writing queries in conversational language. (See companion story, “Focus on Keywords Fades as Consumer Habits Shift.”)
“Search has gone from producing relevant results based on term matching, what we usually call keywords, to intent matching,” said Michael Cizmar, president, founder and managing director of MC+A, a consulting company that specializes in enterprise search, data analytics, and information management.
Intent, simply put, is the objective of a search. Technology has advanced to the point where searchers no longer need to type keywords to convey their intent. AI can take a user’s actions and compare them to the data gathered from millions of other searches and direct the searcher to the result that is statistically most likely to fulfill a query.
To deduce a searcher’s intent, AI uses signals. A signal is any action a searcher takes, such as the search terms they type in, autocomplete threads they select, results they click on, filters they use, products they add to their carts (add-to-cart), and purchases they make. Signals also include less-desirable actions, such as abandoned searches, null searches, abandoned carts, and exits. Certain user characteristics, such as their device or geo-targeted location, are also signals.
With machine learning and deep learning, a search platform such as Lucidworks Fusion is able to interpret the intent of a given search because it has been trained by processing vast numbers of signals from billions of searches, including those on ecommerce sites.
Lucidworks recently spoke exclusively to two customers actively engaged in ecommerce — John McQuade, director of software development at New Pig, and Marc Desormeau, product owner for site search and product data optimization at Lenovo.com — about how Lucidworks Fusion has helped them elicit intent and improve their shoppers’ search experience.
New Pig Leads Visitors to Solutions, Not Products
New Pig operates an ecommerce site for selling its industrial absorbents. “As we say, we make the world’s best stuff for leaks, drips, and spills,” MacQuade said in a video interview. New Pig has been using Lucidworks Fusion for about five years.
New Pig site visitors increasingly are using natural language in their searches. “Our users are starting to search for solutions; they’re not looking for products anymore. “We’re getting a lot more sentences like, ‘I need a mat that absorbs diesel fuel,’” McQuade said.
At about 2,500 products, New Pig’s product catalog is relatively small for an ecommerce site but “the complexity in our catalog is the dictionary and the terms used in the industrial absorbents industry. We have a lot of difficulty with that,” he noted. “For new customers, especially, it’s critical that they find their products quickly. If they don’t know us, or know our products, we have to get the user engaged as quickly as possible so they don’t leave the site,” McQuade observed.
Lucidworks Fusion can handle common retail queries “out of the box,” Cizmar said. For a specialized site such as New Pig, the system must be given additional training. This is accomplished by directing a data feed into the engine and telling the system the desired outcome, such as a click, an add-to-cart, or a purchase. “Because the data scientists and engineers at Lucidworks have done the hard work of developing the algorithm, the system can use New Pig’s data to tune itself,” Cizmar added.
With signals, rather than keywords, guiding users to the products they want to find, New Pig’s merchandisers are free to use whatever language they think best describes their items without affecting the search experience. “There are a lot of nuances in this industry, and the merchants provide that expertise, but that knowledge doesn’t necessarily translate into how a searcher is thinking,” Cizmar explained. “When AI is directing a search based on intent, that problem goes away.”
“Fusion allows us to quickly analyze user behaviors, find problem searches, and quickly use the query pipelines to fix those in a meaningful way,” McQuade said. “Search has changed quite a bit with AI and machine learning coming along and providing a lot more personalization. Users are seeing that on B2C sites, and they expect the same shopping experience in B2B.”
Lenovo.com Boosts Customer Satisfaction and Revenue
Desormeau presented with Lucidworks at an educational session at the National Retail Federation’s Big Show in January. (See the video here.) He leads Lenovo.com’s global search team, which is a fairly new function at the company.
“Historically, we looked at search as the little box that sits in the corner of the website, and we were trying to just make sure that it worked,” he said. That entailed “trying to structure data in a way that would match the perceived goal of the customer in manual ways using keywords. That was very time consuming and fraught with errors, and it very quickly became unmanageable in terms of the scale.”
When he started building out a formal search practice, Desormeau had two major challenges. One was massive scale. Lenovo sells a wide range of products, from tablets, laptops, and accessories for consumers to servers for enterprise data centers. It is also a manufacturer and a major provider of technology consulting services. The second was data quality and hygiene. A $50 billion company operating in 130 markets around the world, Lenovo has a distributed management structure that was mirrored in the lack of consistency and varying quality of data across the organization.
To solve those challenges, Desormeau decided “using signals was the number one thing we had to do.
By adopting signals very quickly, we were able to offset a lot of the quality issues by using customers to start telling us what they feel is important.”
With Fusion, Desormeau and his team are able to shape the customer experience “in real time to respond to search results, navigation preferences, and other interactions and to start presenting products that are in line with what our customers actually want, which is not necessarily what we think they want,” he said.
“Since implementing signals, we have seen a 30-point increase in customer satisfaction, which is one of our compensation metrics, so that’s a very key metric to show that we’re headed in the right direction,” Desormeau pointed out. “We’ve seen substantial growth in click-through-rate, reduced abandonment rate, reduced exit rate, and improved ranking in terms of our overall metrics.”
Noting that “we’re now on year three of this journey,” Desormeau said “our revenue contribution from search grew 95 percent year-over-year the first year,” which he sees as “a recognition that we really needed to get on a more coherent platform. Year two, we saw 47 percent growth year-over-year, and we’re on track this year for 30 percent growth. Clearly the foundation is working. Customers are finding what they’re looking for.”
Desormeau has also seen a personal benefit. “The number of complaints I’ve gotten from our internal executives has dropped significantly,” he noted.
Looking forward, “as we start analyzing the data, we can start making associations with certain triggers and certain data points, and then we can start influencing the behavior by setting up rules and configurations,” Desormeau said.
“The beauty of it is that it’s not a one-time thing, it’s a learning model.”
Download our ebook today to explore how companies with advanced personalization features understand user intent. Plus, learn how you can use the same techniques to boost sales and improve customer loyalty.
Contact us today to learn how Lucidworks can help your team create powerful search and discovery applications for your customers and employees.


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For Immediate Release
Staffing Franchise Shows Strong Sales and Solid Investment Returns
OKLAHOMA CITY, May 2, 2012 – Express Employment Professionals recently released its 2012 Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) that boasted strong sales figures and a solid return on investment for the nations’ largest privately-held staffing franchisor.
According to the FDD, the average Express territory posted $4.5 million in sales in 2011, which is a $2 million increase from 2009. Franchise offices opening since 2009 have seen an average of $965,000 in first year sales.
“It’s prime time to be part of the $105 billion staffing industry,” said David Lewis, executive director for franchising. “The industry is projected to grow to $164 billion by 2018. And, with Express’ Core and Expanded Ownership Models offering two investment options, it’s never been easier to become an Express franchisee.”
Express’ Core Model requires an investment of $100,500 to $135,000 and an active role in new business development by the franchise owner. The Expanded Model requires an investment of $152,500 to $193,000 and is formatted so the franchise owner will manage a sales staff of two and work with them to develop client relationships.
“Express plans to award 64 new franchise locations in the U.S. and Canada this year,” Lewis said. “We offer franchisees the opportunity to build income and equity while helping people find jobs and impact their community. As an Express franchise owner, you can control your life with flexible weekday hours in a professional business.”
Express began franchising in 1985 and ranks No. 1 in the staffing and HR franchise category by Entrepreneur magazine’s Franchise 500 for 2012. The staffing company has been named a World-Class Franchise since 2006 with a 98 percent approval rating from franchisees on the quality and opportunity of the Express system.
In 2011, Express experienced its best year in 29 years of business, with Express franchisees generating $2.1 billion in combined sales.
Express Employment Professionals helped 335,000 people find jobs in 2011. With nearly 570 franchises in three countries, Express provides expertise in evaluation hire, temporary staffing, professional search and human resources. For information about purchasing an Express franchise, visit www.expressfranchising.com/usa. For more information about Express and its services, visit www.expresspros.com.
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Hiring Still Strong for NJ Tourism Industry [AUDIO]
With the summer tourism season just ahead, there are still many jobs available in the state's hospitality, tourism and retail industries.
The New Jersey Labor Department was in Freehold Township Wednesday along with leaders from the state's Retail, Hospitality, and Tourism Talent Network in order to stress the importance of retail and hospitality sector jobs still available.
"There's a lot of hiring now; it's certainly not too late," said Aaron Fichtner, deputy commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. "There's hiring really always going on in the retail, hospitality and tourism industry, so there are some really good opportunities for people."
The Networks, which are divided into North and South, are a partnership between educational institutions, businesses, government, and employees that helps fill and train position on the retail, hospitality, and tourism sectors. It is partnered with both Fairleigh Dickinson University and Stockton College.
Tourism and hospitality is a major sector in New Jersey. If counted as one business, it would rank 70th on the list of Fortune 500 businesses in the country.
Fichtner said while many retail and hospitality positions are often overlooked, they can often be pathways to prosperous careers.
There are some part-time opportunities, there are some seasonal opportunities, but there are career ladders for folks to be able to move up into management and supervisory positions," Fichtner said.
While the tourism industry managed to remain strong last summer, even in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, Fichtner said anecdotally, they are predicting a stronger season with even more hiring.
"The economy is getting stronger and we're seeing growth across the board," Fichtner said. "This has been an important industry for us and will continue to be so into the future."


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By Ange Kumasi, bird stories agency
Ivorian entrepreneur Olivia Akouba Angola has launched a fast food chain with a West African menu.
There is a steady flow of people into a fast food joint in Abidjan’s Zone 4 neighborhood despite the hour – 11 a.m. – often a respite in the restaurant business when business dwindles between first coffee and breakfast customers and lunch time. crowds.
This is Dabali Xpress, which operates seven days a week, between 11 a.m. and 10 p.m., to welcome customers “to serve quickly and eat well” according to the company’s slogan, in a joint whose name means “fast food ” in Ivorian slang. .
On the menu at the outlet, which opened in September 2021, is diverse African cuisine, mainly from various regions of Côte d’Ivoire and more recently from the wider West African area. Meals are also accompanied by local desserts.
Among the first customers served that day was a table of four at the back of the fast food restaurant. They all work for a local company and have become regular customers of Dabali Xpresss.
“Before, it was a little difficult to eat there between noon and 2 p.m., because here in Zone 4, all the restaurants offer Western dishes. It is therefore a breath of fresh air for us to have this beautiful Dabali Xpress where you can be served in less than 10 minutes and enjoy your good palm seed soup,” said N’guessan Honoré, the one of four.
The brains behind this concept is Olivia Akouba Angola, 30, mother of two, who is co-owner with her husband, Daniel Aggré.
“The name Dabali Xpress came from brainstorming with my husband and we wanted the name to reflect the concept of fast food. We opted for “express”, which is a nouchi word, which in Ivorian slang means “fast food”. It captures the look of food being served quickly,” she explained.
Angola says it took her and her husband seven to eight years of brainstorming and assembling before finally, in September 2021, their idea came to fruition.
“This idea was born out of my husband’s experience as a student abroad where he had to work in fast food restaurants to pay his fees and bills. We said to ourselves ‘why not reproduce the system here in Côte d’Ivoire but with our local dishes?’ “, she says.
“It took longer because local African dishes take longer to prepare, but we were determined to do this by finding a formula to serve these dishes quickly.”
Angola, who returned from the United States in 2015, said that once the concept was adopted, it was easy for him to put his business skills, knowledge and experience to good use to make his plan a reality.
After the opening of the first point of sale, things went very quickly, because many people adopted it. This allowed them to open more outlets in Abidjan, bringing the total in the city to three.
In addition to Ivorian cuisine, Dabali Xpress now serves dishes from other countries in the West African sub-region, such as fried rice, “red-red” (a Ghanaian dish made from black-eyed peas and plantain ), and many other dishes, all with a price of around US$5.
On a good day, Angola said they are able to serve around 300 customers, both local and non-local, in their three outlets.
She added that they were keen to tap into the diversity of the clientele by offering dishes from other African countries because Abidjan is a city of all nationalities, including expats from the rest of the world, who are often eager to savor the African cuisine.
Although work starts early at Dabali Xpress, it opens for customers at 11am.
“Early in the morning, we start cooking the ingredients so that all the menus are ready by 11am. There are days like Saturday and Sunday when we have a lot of work, but we have everything we need at our disposal because our supply is well kept in a cold room and that makes our work easier,” Olivier said. Kouame, one of the chiefs. .
A year after its opening, Dabali Xpress received a rare visitor: the Ivorian Minister of Tourism and Leisure, Saindou Fofana.
Besides honor and approval, the minister had good news; he announced the selection of the channel as one of the chosen outlets to welcome guests and officials of the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, which will be hosted by the country.
“It is a real pleasure to see that our government is on the dynamics of supporting local entrepreneurs and we are happy with this news while hoping that it will always be so,” she said.
To meet the growing demand for its food, Dabali Xpress has launched outdoor catering and delivery services, with customers able to order their food either on its website or by phone. Out-of-home catering now accounts for 30% of its daily sales.
The founders also installed technology to improve the outlet’s ability to serve “quickly and with great food,” in line with its motto. “When the customer arrives, there is the display that shows all the menus on offer, which makes it easier and faster for them to check and order. Once the order is ready, they are alerted by a beep telling them to choose their food,” Angola explained.
Dabali Xpress sources its supplies from local farmers and suppliers. “Our supply is done locally. It ranges from meat (beef and chicken) to fresh vegetables and cereals… everything is local,” Angola said.
“While we strive to excel and attract more customers, we are aware that we face fierce competition from global brands selling Western meals, a space they have occupied for a long time and established a following, especially among the urban elite,” Angola said.
The broader market, however, is there for the taking.
“We present these dishes that in the past were not necessarily presented in ideal sanitary conditions or in an environment that does not compete with other exotic restaurants. So we try to make sure non-locals can enjoy it too. Excellent ambience and hygiene are key elements in the food industry and at Dabali Xpress it is essential,” she said.
Angola is now planning to expand Dabali Xpress to several cities in Côte d’Ivoire, as well as further afield in Africa and even around the world.
/bird story agency


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Wed, 07 Aug 2013 17:02:00 EST
No doubt, Porsche has produced some of the best endurance racecars around, such as the turbocharged, slant-nose 935 of the 1970s and the ground-effects-enhanced 956 and 962 of the 1980s. But the company's most famous racecar, its first overall winner at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, was the 917.
Thu, 23 May 2013 12:46:00 EST
The 917 embodied many of Porsche's technological achievements up to that point, such as the company's first 12- and 16-cylinder engines (the flat-16 was never used in competition), fiberglass bodies that implemented early aerodynamic practices and the use of new, exotic materials, such as magnesium and titanium.
The racecar was commissioned by the head of Porsche Motorsports, Ferdinand Piëch, to win overall at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1970, after he realized a loophole in the rules that allowed cars to compete with engines up to five liters in the Sport category if they were also production models. Piëch saw opportunity: the top prototype class was restricted to three liters; the production minimum to compete in Sport was 25 cars. And so, with much effort, Porsche assembled 25 "production" 4.5-liter 917s and had them parked in a neat line for the race inspectors to verify their legitimacy. It didn't take long before people realized the new Porsches were much faster than the prototype racers, with a top speed approaching 250 miles per hour.
American race driver Connor de Phillippi was recently added to the roster of Porsche Juniors, the arm of Porsche's factory racing program that develops new talent. The 20-year-old is contesting the Porsche Carrera Cup Deutschland series with FÖRCH Racing by Lukas Motorsport, and last weekend, he raced the series round at the Nürburgring. Starting 15th on the grid, de Phillippi would cross the line in ninth out of 32 finishers.
Mon, 19 Aug 2013 15:30:00 EST
Courtesy of his in-car camera, you can watch his entire first lap in the video below - there's no music added, just engine whine during nine minutes of crests, turns, bumpy straights and that wicked Carousel. Enjoy.
Just weeks before he was supposed to become CEO of Porsche Cars Australia, Infiniti has apparently offered Porsche COO and Executive Vice President Michael Bartsch a deal he couldn't refuse. Thus, Bartsch has join the company as Vice President of Infiniti Americas, the luxury marque's top North American post. Bartsch replaces Ben Poore, who has been with the automaker since 2008, having led both a 22-percent sales surge in 2012 and the brand's current sales slough, Automotive News reports.
Bartsch, Porsche's No. 2 US executive, has held the COO and Executive Vice President positions at Porsche since 2005 and was scheduled to become CEO of Porsche's Oz division on September 1. Infiniti has experienced a number of recent personnel changes in the past week: it named Vincent Gillet, formerly an executive for Starwood Hotels & Resorts, to lead its marketing efforts worldwide and Simon Cox, a former designer for automakers including Ford and Peugeot, to head a new design studio in London.
Poore reportedly will pursue other interests outside of the auto industry. Read more about the personnel change in the press release below.


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Cipla to set up manufacturing facility in Iran in JV with Ahran Tejarat
15 December 2016
Cipla Holding BV, the Netherlands-based wholly-owned subsidiary of Cipla Ltd, has entered into an agreement with Ahran Tejarat Company to form a joint venture manufacturing facility in Iran.
Cipla will initially acquire a 75-per cent stake in Iranian firm Issat Co, which is currently owned by Ahran Tejarat, for a cash consideration of €1.35 million and infuse up to €15.525 million into the JV as equity over the next one year.
The Iranian partner will own the remaining stake in Issat Company, an existing company which has a valid pharmaceutical manufacturing licence and also owns certain fixed asset, but has not undertaken any business activity since incorporation in January 1998.
Cipla Netherlands is expected to invest up to a maximum of €16.8 million in cash in the joint venture company.
The acquisition is expected to be completed by March 2017, subject to completion of conditions precedent and applicable regulatory approvals.
The joint venture company proposes to undertake manufacturing and marketing of pharmaceutical products in Iran.


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Compaq president resigns amid slump
HOUSTON — Compaq Computer Corp. president and chief executive officer Eckhard Pfeiffer resigned yesterday, one day after the slumping PC giant's board of directors told him they wanted new leadership.
"The board over a period of time came to the conclusion, not for a single event, that we should have a change," Benjamin M. Rosen, chairman of the world's largest personal computer maker, said yesterday in an interview.
Rosen was named acting chief executive while the company searches for a permanent successor.
Pfeiffer's resignation came just over a week after Compaq stunned Wall Street by announcing that first-quarter profits would be just half of analysts' estimates.
The company said on April 9 that it expected to earn 15 cents per share in the quarter on revenue of $9.4 billion - $600 million lower than expected - in large part due to industrywide price-cutting. Final first-quarter results are expected to be announced later this week.
Compaq has struggled to maintain profits in an environment in which prices are dropping fast and sales of personal computers for under $500 - or even less - are growing.
"What this says is that things (at Compaq) are more screwed up than even the results would have you believe," said Aaron Goldberg, vice president and principal analyst at Ziff-Davis Inc. in New York.
Shares of Compaq, which traded as high as $51.25 earlier this year, dropped 22 percent on April 12, the first day of trading after the announcement. Compaq closed Friday at $23.621/2 on the New York Stock Exchange, barely above its 52-week low of $22.933/4.
Earl Mason, Compaq's chief financial officer, also resigned yesterday in what Rosen said was an unrelated move.
"In Earl Mason's case, he was offered every CFO's dream: to be chief executive officer of a company," Rosen said. Rosen didn't identify the company, other than to say that it was in a totally different industry.
Rosen said Compaq is well-positioned as a major player on the Internet, but Goldberg said the company has done little to take advantage of the Net so far.
"It's like the NFL draft: You have 31 guys based on potential, but haven't done anything yet. Compaq has tremendous potential but hasn't done anything yet."
In a statement, Pfeiffer stuck to the positive. "Compaq has come a long way since I joined the company in 1983," he said. "We are a world leader in personal computing, enterprise computing and Internet applications."
Pfeiffer, who took over as CEO in October 1991, created the strategy that helped make Compaq the leader in global PC sales. His belief in a computer run by a Microsoft Windows operating system and powered by an Intel microchip help solidify the "Wintel" platform as the dominant one in the industry.
In 1998, Compaq shipped 12.8 million computers worldwide to gain 14 percent of the market, according to the research firm Dataquest Inc.


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The ACE Awards are organized by UBM plc, a global business-to-business events organiser headquartered in London and are held in collaboration with leading U.S. electronics design journals EE Times and EDN. The awards present the “best of the best” in today's electronics industry, including the hottest new products, start-up companies, design teams, executives, and more. The awards also celebrate the promise of new talent and innovation, and pay tribute to the lifetime achievement of a top industry veteran whose contributions have had a demonstrable impact on technological, business, and cultural advancements in the world.
"We are honored to recognize some of the brightest minds in the electronics industry for their impeccable achievements at the 2017 ACE Awards," says Nina Brown, Vice President of Events, UBM. "This is an industry that is continually on the cutting-edge of innovation and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to fully identify the impact that they are having on the world."
“Nordic Thingy:52 is the ideal development tool for app developers to test ideas and explore the potential of connected things using all the onboard features and sensors — truly an IoT device,” says Geir Langeland, Director of Sales and Marketing, Nordic Semiconductor. “App developers can start working with Nordic Thingy:52 straight out of the box without the need for any specialist expertise, and we are delighted to receive this award so highly prized by the global electronics design community.”


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The Information reports that Apple is set to upgrade iPhones that are equipped with NFC chips with the ability to unlock doors, hotel rooms, and cars.
The NFC (near-field communication) chip, present in the iPhone 6 and up, allows for contactless information exchanges, and makes it possible to use Apple Pay to pay for purchases at stores by holding your phone close to a supported credit card reader. Apple is expanding its capabilities so it can interact with smart locks, building security systems, vehicles, and even mass transit payment facilities.
The company already has employees using their iPhones to unlock doors at its new Cupertino campus. While some smart locks already work with Bluetooth, NFC is more secure because it stores sensitive data on a chip that isolates its contents from the operating system.
As 9to5Mac notes, Apple began working on allowing for increased functionality with its NFC chip by including the rudimentary CoreNFC framework in iOS 11. However, it only allows for scanning RFID tags at present. If The Information’s report is accurate, the company is most likely opening up its APIs to allow third-party apps to take advantage of the chip. It could also see the iPhone being used to pay for subway rides by emulating transit cards.
That should give Apple a chance to catch up to Android phone makers on the contactless solutions front; devices from Samsung and Google can already access secured buildings and rooms using NFC. But more importantly, it might spur IoT hardware makers to support NFC authentication for their connected gadgets more widely in the future. Expect to hear more at Apple’s upcoming WWDC event starting June 4.
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Software Co's ability to understand and work according to our business requirements and best practices has made for a pleasant experience. Their coding is high-quality and so are their team members.
Software Co's team is down to earth, knowledgeable, passionate, and motivated. We have like-minded principles and passions, and Software Co felt more like an extension of our team than a vendor.
Software Co has proven to be a talented vendor capable of integrating seamlessly into design and development workflows. They are engaged communicators and dedicated problem-solvers.
Their dedication to both their work and the partnership yielded impressive work that grew the app’s user base. It's now receiving increasingly positive reviews online, proving the technical capabilities of the team. Adapting to a scrum development process, they went above and beyond expectations.
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Berry Superfos and Neste equip Tchibo with bio-based coffee capsules for Qbo brand
German coffee producer Tchibo is introducing a bio-based capsule for its Qbo brand made 70% from second-generation renewable raw materials. Coffee capsules are becoming more popular around the world. However, the downside is the environmental footprint they have by generating a lot of packaging waste from virgin PP material. Tchibo wanted to change the material composition of its Qbo brand capsules to improve their environmental sustainability. The company explains its first step was to partner with the producer of their capsules, Berry Superfos, and the Finish feedstock supplier, Neste, to explore what could be done.
TIPA and G. Mondioni SPA partner to produce market-first home compostable wet food container
The market-first partnership will see G. Mondini offer paper-based, fully compostable Paperseal® packaging solutions optimized for wet, chilled, frozen, and fresh food products. The TIPA film will then act as a liner to create a barrier against oxygen, moisture and humidity. TIPA and G. Mondini’s collaboration aims at reducing plastic waste and is an innovation in the sustainable plastics industry and in packaging wet food products. These compostable films and paper solutions carry food waste to compost in line with Italy’s EU-leading regulatory regime, which sees compostable plastics collected with organic waste. This solution is addressing the urgent need to divert non-recyclable waste, that may contaminate the organic recycling stream, such as food-soiled containers and plastic packaging, out of landfills.
CJ Bio & NatureWorks sign letter of intent for long-term cooperation
CJ Bio, a division of South Korea-based CJ CheilJedang specialised in the production of fermentation-based bioproducts, and NatureWorks, a leading producer of PLA, have signed a letter of intent (LOI) establishing a strategic alignment between the two companies. Both are now working toward a Master Collaboration Agreement (MCA), that will govern their collaboration on the development of sustainable materials solutions based on CJ Bio’s PHACT Marine Biodegradable Polymers and NatureWorks’ Ingeo biomaterials technology. The companies realise the potential to further enhance performance and end-of-use solutions for biopolymers and increase the level of adoption across the board. The goal of the agreement is therefore to develop high-performance biopolymers to replace fossil fuel-based plastics in applications ranging from compostable food packaging and food service ware to personal care, and beyond.


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In Estonia, 73 percent of the polled companies said they planned to invest in innovations during 2015, while a year ago 60 percent were planning to do so. Significant surge of innovation plans is observed in Lithuania: in 2015, 69 percent of SMEs plan to engage in innovation activities while a year ago only 42 percent had plans to innovate. However, in Latvia there is an opposite trend: the number of Latvian companies who are planning to innovate has fallen from 48 percent to 39 percent during last year.
“Through innovations, companies in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania aim at increasing competitiveness both in the domestic and international markets, especially as the low-cost production advantage of Baltic markets is gradually diminishing. Companies are aware that after investing in innovations, fewer resources are required in production or provision of services, which will have a positive impact on company finances. However, it is clear that inactivity of Latvian SMEs in terms of investment in new technologies and new products is a negative trend. In medium-term this attitude could lead to decreased competitiveness and diminished export capacity of Latvian companies,” said Ieva Tetere, member of the board of SEB Bank of Latvia.
Product or service innovation is the preferred field, with 46 percent of Lithuanian, 36 percent of Estonian, and 26 percent of Latvian SMEs opting for that. 24 percent of all polled SMEs in Estonia, 14 percent in Lithuania, and only 6 percent in Latvia plan to invest in employee development. 11 percent of Estonian, 5 percent of Lithuanian, and 3 percent of Latvian SMEs have plans to change their business model next year.


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The gummy vitamin market has continued to grow in popularity–gummy forms of vitamins are projected to have a compound annual growth rate of about six percent over the next ten years. So when CBD started being introduced to the market in gummy form in 2015, the market quickly exploded.
Seventeen states have legalized CBD, paving the way for CBD gummy companies to move offline and begin selling their products in retail stores. In eight of these states, the drugstore chain CVS plans to expand CBD products into 800 of its retail locations, making it easier than ever for casual consumers to find and purchase CBD products.
Studies show massive growth rates in the CBD gummy market– in the first four months of 2019, California alone saw a 200% growth rate, followed closely by 98% in Colorado, and 61% in Oregon. 2019 infused edible market sales are projected to be 4.1 billion dollars, compared to the 1.9 billion the industry made in 2018.
But how did this market grow so quickly? Michael Gonzalez, the CEO of Happy Tea, a CBD tea company, used influencer marketing to promote his products, a plan that he already knew worked from his earlier successes using celebrities to promote Fit Tea, his weight loss and detox tea company. To popularize Happy Tea, he partnered with Kylie Jenner, who is followed by 153 million people–and finished his first round of fundraising at six million–with plans to raise another six million before taking the company public in January 2020.
Influencer marketing continues to be a strong tool in CBD marketing–with the ability to tell stories on a personal level within various market sectors. It also can prove to have a massive reach: 3.04 billion users are active on social media and people spend 135 minutes a day using their social media accounts.
Partnering with the right influencers is key to creating a successful marketing campaign. But not every partnership has to be with an account over a million followers. CBD companies can start small by capitalizing on the rise of micro-influencers, or influencers with a following of less than 100,000 people. By speaking directly to their followers, influencers build personal trust with potential consumers. By showing your customers a real person that’s behind your brand, you can spur past the ad-blockers most people have and get directly into your consumer’s newsfeed.
By choosing the right influencer, CBD companies can break into multiple segments in social media. Popular CBD influencers range from fitness experts, beauty gurus, comedians, doctors, and celebrities who have found relief from both physical and mental health symptoms by using various forms of cannabidiol.
Not sure what kind of influencer is right for your brand? Partner with us today and start finding solutions.
About Cannabis Brands
Cannabis Brands serves cannabis corporations, growers, distributors, and dispensaries providing award-winning marketing communications strategies that give you the competitive edge. Contact the professionals at Cannabis Brands to learn more!


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Despite the lack of sunshine we have noticed a trend for shoppers buying summer essentials early.
The pop five-piece were recently pictured sporting the look in the video for their smash hit Kiss You.
Asda says sales of their Pacific islands-look shirts, sold under the George brand, have rocketed by 214%.
George brand director Fiona Lambert said: “Despite the lack of sunshine we have noticed a trend for shoppers buying summer essentials early.”
She said that improving weather had boosted sales of summer dresses by 192% and sunglasses by 93%.


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Tomas Tillberg Design has launched a new website, highlighting the firm’s ongoing and past projects with owners and operators as well as other designers in redeveloping and modernizing passenger areas, according to a statement.
Today, the design team’s advancements include the design of SunStone’s innovative series of expedition ships, in close collaboration with the Chinese shipyard CMHI, Ulstein, Makinen and the SunStone team. Tomas Tillberg Design’s new website illustrates the firm’s history, team, its current projects, and future direction.
Other clients include Crystal Cruises, Cunard, Celebrity Cruises, Carnival Cruise Line, Azamara Cruises, Regent Seven Seas, and others. The company has a broad range of expertise from the development and newbuild stage to refits.
“We are very focused on the innovation and integration of newly developed materials, cost benefits, sustainability and technologies targeting the evolving and diverse guest demographic and their onboard experience,” said Tomas Tillberg.
The company is also involved with developers in the evolution of a new generation of residential condo-ships.
“We’re creating an upscale, exclusive opportunity for ownership-at-sea. The leisure market is demonstrating a pent-up demand and revival for this captivating boutique product.”
Key principles include Carlos Reyes who specializes in the development, design, and planning of new ship projects and Nedgé Louis-Jacques who focuses on space planning, material and contractor specifications and compliance regulations.
Tribute Studios designed and developed Tomas Tillberg Design’s new website which will continue to be updated and refreshed.


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"I don't think Brexit should mean Brexit when it comes to standards of data protection," Elizabeth Denham told BBC Radio 4's PM programme.
She added she would press WhatsApp over plans to share data with Facebook.
The new EU data protection regulations are designed to strengthen the rights individuals have over their data.
The idea is to make companies take the issue of data protection far more seriously.
The rules make it mandatory for large companies to employ a data protection officer and data breaches must be reported within 72 hours.
The legislation will take effect in 2018 and will apply to any company that handles EU citizens' data, even if that company is not based in Europe.
"The UK is going to want to continue to do business with Europe," Ms Denham told the BBC's Chris Vallance.
"In order for British businesses to share information and provide services for EU consumers, the law has to be equivalent.
"The UK was very involved in the drafting of the regulation - it will likely be in effect before the UK leaves the European Union - so I'm concerned about a start and stop regulatory environment."


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California Sets Terms on IOUs as Questions Arise
CALIFORNIA, IOUS, DEBT, ECONOMY, BUDGET, BANKS, WELLS FARGO, BANK OF AMERICA, CITIGROUP, JP MORGAN
CNBC staff and wire reports
| 07 Jul 2009 | 10:30 AM ET
As California continues to issue "IOUs", more controversy is brewing over their use.
On one side, IOU recipients are beginning to trade them like currency, forcing the California state treasurer's office to issue guidelines if they are sold through eBay , Craigslist or other means.
Meanwhile, Bank of America , Wells Fargo , JP Morgan and Citigroup , among others, have said they will stop accepting the IOUs on Friday, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
A growing number of credit unions also are excepted to stop accepting them as well, and this will force more recipients to search for buyers online, according to the report.
This is situation is making it more necessary for there to be some guidelines for the use of IOUs.
California's treasurer is telling recipients of the IOUs that if they sell them to third parties, they will be redeemed by the state treasurer's office only if accompanied by a notarized bill of sale signed by their listed payee.
"We are in the process of contacting officials of eBay and Craigslist to post a notice of the policy on their sites," the statement said.
Speculation is rising over whether California's tax-exempt IOUs, technically registered warrants, can be bought, sold and traded.
The Securities and Exchange Commission must first determine if the IOUs are securities to regulate them, said Ernesto Lanza, general counsel to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, adding that the board was not working directly with the commis—sion on that decision.
"It looks like it has all the hallmarks of a security," Lanza told Reuters. "If they are securities, I think they're pretty clearly municipal securities."
California last week started issuing "IOU" promissory notes for some bills to conserve cash for priority payments, including payments to investors holding the state's debt, while Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers try to plug a $26.3 billion budget deficit and stave off a cash crisis for the state's government.
The IOUs carry a 3.75 percent interest rate and are payable Oct. 2.
But at least one website aims to offer a platform for selling the registered warrants. Obed Dorceus, owner of ioumarket.com, said he sees a potential secondary market for the IOUs — and potentially other government promises to pay.
"I'm thinking there may be a situation where other states may follow California," Dorceus said during a telephone interview. To sell warrants on his website, holders of the IOUs would pay a fee to advertise them.
"I wanted to offer it as an alternative," said Dorceus, of St. Augustine, Florida. "If you're an average guy, with an IOU for $2,000, you go the website and post an ad ... It's there for a month, and for up to $2,000, you pay $9.99."
Dennis Ciocca, a senior managing director at public finance banker Sutter Securities Inc, doubts financial institutions that accept the warrants will try to sell them because their payment date is relatively soon, they offer an attractive rate and prospective buyers would demand a discount.
"Is it worth it to set up a secondary market for such a short-term instrument? I kind of doubt it would pay," Ciocca said.


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Premier Daniel Andrews updated Victorians this afternoon on the further restrictions certain industries will face under stage four. Here's what you need to know.
According to the guidelines released this afternoon "supermarkets and grocery shops, including all food and liquor shops," will remain operational.
This includes "markets for food only with strict enforcement of density obligations."
Abattoirs are remaining open but reducing their workforce by 30 per cent, somewhat allaying the fear that there will be a mass shortage of meat products.
The premier made a plea to Victorians to have faith in the ongoing supply, and not to hoard either groceries or meat. Woolworths and Coles are placing restrictions on meat products in response.
Little seems to have changed for food businesses in metro Melbourne. Restaurants and cafes are able to continue operating for delivery and take away, as they were during stage three.
No restriction on delivery distances has been announced at this stage.
What will change is the behaviour of diners. One member of the household is allowed to leave the house per day to shop. That means ducking out for coffee runs is off the table. Individuals will also not be permitted to travel further than five kilometres to pick up a pizza. They may, however, travel further to visit a grocery store if their closest option is outside of this limit.
The bigger blow will be for regional Victorian businesses who are returning to stage three restrictions (take away and delivery only) from Wednesday night.


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Automaker Daimler AG Joins Hyperledger Blockchain Project
Daimler AG, the parent company of luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz, has joined the Linux Foundation led Hyperledger project.
The firm announced today that it had joined up with the initiative. Daimler is the second high-profile member to join Hyperledger this year. Late last month, credit card giant American Express announced that it had become part of the project.
Daimler AG CIO Jan Brecht said in a statement:
As part of the move, Jonas von Malottki, an IT executive for Daimler, will join the Hyperledger governing board.
The entry into Hyperledger is Daimler's first major foray into the blockchain space, though there appear to be some connections between the firm and the technology more broadly.
Last month, the conglomerate acquired European payment service PayCash, which supports bitcoin payments. While not explicitly tied to work with blockchain, the acquisition is part of a plan to develop in-car payment services.
Mercedes-Benz Vehicle via Shutterstock
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We had written last month about how Despacito & See You Again are the contenders to become first ever video on YouTube with 3 billion views. We have a winner now. Desapcito has now overtaken See You Again to become the most watched video and in the process hit 3 billion views as well. See You Again remained at the top for three weeks only when it overtook Psy’s Gangam Style.
It had taken See You Again more than 2 years to reach the top but Puerto Rican Louis Fonsi’s Despacito achieved the amazing feat within seven months of its release. The video has received 15 million daily views on average since releasing on January 12 earlier this year. The song had also become the most-stream track of all time, last month.
With 3.25 billion hours of videos being watched on YouTube daily by its more than 1.5 billion monthly active users, the video to overtake Despacito to become the most watched video might not need seven months to do it.
- ZoodPay acquires Pakistani consumer lending fintech Tez - May 23, 2022
- Colabs raises $3 million seed to make it easy for entrepreneurs and freelancers to build and grow businesses in Pakistan - March 30, 2022
- FlapKap – A fintech revolutionizing e-commerce and SAAS growth in MEA – Launches and completes $1.2 Million fundraise - March 23, 2022


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TRADING UP: With Paris trade show organizers looking to rethink their game, Tranoï on Tuesday revealed plans to open a temporary corner at Galeries Lafayette in January in tandem with its salon, presenting exclusive limited edition capsules by 28 designers participating in a new space in the event dubbed Only at Tranoï.
The aim, said a Tranoï spokesman, is to present the brands in a new light by offering buyers attending the show “a new level of exclusivity,” as the capsules are only being presented in Paris, and at Galeries Lafayette offer members of the public a taste of Paris Fashion Week.
“It’s a Tranoï concept store,” he added. Participating brands will include Russian down jacket specialist Shu, a Tranoï newcomer; China’s Jing Yu; Ukrainian fashion label Frolov, and Paris-based bag brand Zoobeetle.
Tranoï will be held at the Palais de la Bourse from Jan. 18 to Jan. 20, with the Galeries Lafayette corner due to run from Jan. 16 to Feb. 4.


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There’s not much that has been revealed by Motorola, at least intentionally. However, a recent leak gives us a good idea at the name of the upcoming device
Motorola will be unveiling an all new smartphone tomorrow at 12 PM. The company is expected to launch a new smartphone which will be sold exclusively on Flipkart. There’s not much that has been revealed by Motorola, at least intentionally. However, a recent leak gives us a good idea at the name of the upcoming device.
The new device that will be launched on 24 August has been teased multiple times by the official Twitter handle of the company. The tweets shared by the company also link a dedicated Flipkart page. A report by Gadgets360 shows that the company is planning to launch the Moto G9 or some other phone in the Moto G9 series as the name was spotted within the URL of the page.
In terms of specifications, there’s not much to go about. However, the teasers and the dedicated page on Flipkart give us a slight hint at what to expect. Since previous G-series smartphones under Motorola have been placed in the mid-range segment, we can expect the same with the phone that will be launched tomorrow.
The company reveals that the device will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset which it claims will provide ‘spectacular performance’. Looking at the teasers, on the camera front we can say that the front camera will be housed in a water drop notch display. However, nothing can be said about the primary camera setup. Motorola just claims that it will provide a stunning camera. The battery is also a talking point with the new phone. The teaser goes on to claim that the battery on the phone will be massive.


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Updated 2.15.16 with first USA photos from Daytona
Cool to see and hear the new MINI sports flagship at Daytona the other week. It might have lagged the BMW M-livery M5 and M3s off the line for the IMSA Hot Lap Experience shown in the below video…. but it definitely looked like it was enjoying every second on that high-speed racetrack!
The new look is most recognizable thanks to the new full-moon LED DRLs, LED fogs and smart bi-xenon projector beam main lamps in front.
We even hate the tail less than before: in JCW guise, the too-large rear lamps shrink into the bodywork thanks to less chrome. What is normally a ridiculous chrome ring around the brake lights is now subtle gloss black. The high-riding rear wing is a highlight around back too.
2016 MINI JCW Hardtop – USA
Update: we prepared this whole post just now — before realizing a double deja vu. This car debuted online months ago. Sigh. See below.
MINI has a bit of a problem. This hottest-ever JCW hardtop is just not doing it for us today. Aside from the cool new cabin and better LED accents outside, we see zero reason to pick this 2015 model over a pre-owned 2009 model. Trouble ahead for MINI.
This big news here is that US pricing is announced with a base of $30,000.
2015 MINI John Cooper Works Hardtop
The 2015 MINI John Cooper Works Hardtop will make its much-anticipated World Premiere with a grand introduction by none other than rally legend Rauno Aaltonen at MINI’s press conference in Hall D of the COBO Center, at 1:20 pm ET. Aaltonen will take the stage in a Classic Mini similar to the 1966 Mini Cooper S that he drove to victory in the famed Monte Carlo Rally in 1967.
With Aaltonen on hand and the new MINI John Cooper Works Hardtop in the spotlight, MINI proudly announced a new motorsports partnership with LAP Motorsports to compete in the Street Tuner (ST) class of the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge. The Indianapolis-based team owned and operated by racing veteran Luis Perocarpi will begin running the MINI John Cooper Works cars in the series later this year.
MINI’s long history of rally-car racing has always been reflected in the brand’s John Cooper Works performance series, and the newest Hardtop further extends that tradition. The latest edition in the premium line, the 2015 MINI John Cooper Works Hardtop offers the most powerful engine ever installed in the brand’s production models, delivering optimal performance to the premium small-car segment.
“This is undoubtedly an exciting time at MINI as we relaunch the John Cooper Works sub-brand as a true model in itself and with the most powerful engine we’ve ever had in a production model MINI,” said David Duncan, Vice President MINI of the Americas. “The new MINI John Cooper Works Hardtop will be an important part of our business moving forward, offering customers a premium high performance vehicle in a small package.”
Specially tuned for high performance on the track and on the road, the first John Cooper Works model to be built on the shared front wheel drive global architecture with BMW Group will be powered by the latest generation MINI TwinPower Turbo Technology four-cylinder engine. The car also features a sports exhaust, refined suspension technology and model-specific design features which not only optimize the car’s aerodynamic features, but also guarantee a fun and efficient ride with an irresistible temperament.
In addition to the World Premiere of the MINI John Cooper Works Hardtop, the stunning MINI Superleggera Vision concept will also be on display, along with the MINI Hardtop 4-Door which made its North American debut at the Los Angeles International Auto Show.
Check out the latest video of the new MINI John Cooper Works Hardtop in action featuring legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk and French Rally Car driver Guerlain Chicherit.
Tom Burkart is the founder and managing editor of Car-Revs-Daily.com, an innovative and rapidly-expanding automotive news magazine.
He holds a Journalism JBA degree from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Tom currently resides in Charleston, South Carolina with his two amazing dogs, Drake and Tank.
Mr. Burkart is available for all questions and concerns by email Tom(at)car-revs-daily.com.


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Mike Hearn News
Mike Hearn is a software developer famous for the development of Bitcoinj and his contribution to Bitcoin Core. Before he started his work on Bitcoin, he was employed at Google and worked on such projects as Google Maps and Gmail’s anti-spam and login security. After two years of Bitcoin development, Mike Hearn joined R3 — an enterprise software company, focusing on building blockchain platforms for businesses. Mike is currently working as a lead platform engineer for Corda — R3’s main product, which is specially designed for business blockchains. His texts on Bitcoin’s problems, new technologies and approaches to blockchain technologies published on blog.plan99 received good feedback from other blockchain experts. Mike is a popular blockchain specialist who has given talks on Bitcoin, Corda and cryptocurrency’s future at various events and meetups.
- Coinbase reintegra il supporto per PayPal, attualmente soltanto per gli Stati Uniti
- Direttore del DTTC: le blockchain potrebbero "mettere a repentaglio la sicurezza" del sistema finanziario
- Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, Stellar, EOS, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Bitcoin SV, TRON, Cardano: Analisi dei prezzi, 14 dicembre
- I modelli di business dovrebbero essere "ripensati" per le blockchain, sostiene un rappresentante di Barclays
- Binance Labs rilascia la prima serie di progetti blockchain


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California Coastal Commission OKs desalination plant in Orange County
A new plant for the production of drinking water from seawater is going to open next summer near Huntington Beach.
The $10.6 million facility will convert sea water to drinking water and other useful products like power.
The facility was approved in January after the California Coastal Commission in June granted the permits needed to build the plant.
The plant was built by San Diego-based Southern California Water and will be operated by the Costa Mesa-based Southern California Aquaculture Research Inc. The two companies plan to share the profits from the plant by creating a business model with a partnership that is modeled after that of energy companies like Xcel Energy.
The plant will draw about three million gallons of fresh water a day from the Pacific Ocean. If all goes as planned the plant will produce about 2.8 M gallons of drinking water, enough to serve about 1.3 million people a year.
The plant’s water will use a technique called reverse osmosis to filter out salt and other impurities.


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QNB & # 39; s QinSpikeer website on the Qin Block and virtual currency company described the UAE as an ideal location for implementing initiatives to implement Block Qin as a platform for commercial financing solutions.
"The excellent position of the UAE in the world of Qin Block is attributed to the fact that the state has created a favorable environment for the application of all new technologies, including Block Qin, in all government transactions.
The Queen Spikeer website yesterday published a report to comment on the intention of Siemens, the German financial services company, to launch an initiative in collaboration with Standard Chartered Bank of Britain and Trade Finance for commercial financing based on Block Qin. .
The website said that the partners of the initiative intend to launch it in the UAE.
© Statement 2018


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Postage rate increases went into effect on January 26, which affect the price of a number of mail pieces. Across the board, rates increased 6 – 7%, making this the largest postal increase in over a decade.
This recent hike in rates is known as an exigent increase, which the United States Postal Service proposed last year in an attempt to offset staggering losses the agency has faced in recent years. First-class mail volume has seen a significant decrease since consumers upped their usage of electronic statements and bill pay. The country’s economic downturn has also contributed, though more notably to standard mail volume, which began to drop as marketing budgets were slashed. In addition to these factors, a significant part of why the USPS has faced such financial suffrage is due to a congressional mandate for the agency to pay $5 billion annually to fund health benefits for future retirees.
The Postal Regulatory Commission has ruled that this increase can only take effect for two years, during which the USPS can expect to gain $2.8 billion from the postage hikes. The Commission says this duration of time is adequate to help the service recover from losses due to the recession. In other words, any suffrage faced due to consumers increasing their Internet usage for mailing alternatives is not acknowledged as being a justifiable reason to increase postage prices permanently.
The answer is no, for a variety of reasons. Because direct marketers rely heavily on the USPS to operate their direct mail businesses, USPS solvency is a necessity. It’s not as though those in the industry can just go elsewhere to reap the same services offered by the USPS. That’s not an option. At the root of this, the fact stands that direct marketing professionals are long-term business partners with the postal service, so the latter’s stabilization, in the inevitable form of the recent postage increases, is to the industry’s benefit.
After all, the USPS and direct mail are still alive and well, and we want to keep it that way. If the question of the postal service’s viability has been clouded with any doubt, a look at recent figures should dispel that uncertainty. For instance, in 2012, 160 billion pieces were mailed, 65 billion dollars in revenue were generated, and 40% of the world’s mail volume was handled by the USPS. In an average day, 22 million mail pieces are processed each hour (that’s 366,000 by the minute), and 528 million pieces of mail are processed and delivered during the entire day—262.4 million of those being advertising mail pieces. On the web, each day 1 million people visit usps.com, and about $809,210 in online stamp and retail sales are generated on the site daily.
So we can take comfort in knowing that the USPS isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The question now, is how do you work with the cost increases, which will undoubtedly impact mailing volume and strategy, so it won’t negatively impact your bottom line? The answer lies in improved efficiency, and a further refinement of the target-specific approach.
For direct mail marketers, this is a golden opportunity to freshen up content and improve analytics. You have to be smarter about the way you segment your mail. Invest your marketing dollars only on your best performing segments. If you don’t know those yet (and even if you do), be sure to perform testing to determine your sweet spot. If you employ this method, you may not need to mail as large of a volume, but you will see equal or better results, and a stronger ROI.
So although nobody enjoys experiencing rate increases, when you take everything into consideration, there is a silver lining here for direct marketers. You not only get to maintain your relationship with a tried and true mail partner as they now have the realistic ability to sustain their services, you also simultaneously uncover the opportunity to run your business in an even more efficient, innovative fashion.


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ILLEGAL wines and spirits worth £8,000 were seized by officers from West Sussex County Council Trading Standards Service when they raided two premises in Worthing with Sussex Police and HM Customs this week.
The swoop was part of a drive to protect local businesses and prevent consumers from being conned at Christmas by rogue traders selling food and drink that is falsely described.
The drink, which included vodka, whisky and brandy, was poor quality, falsely described and counterfeit. In past cases, counterfeit vodka has proved to be very dangerous to people’s health and can cause blindness. HM Customs’ officers also discovered duty evasion on the goods found.
Peter Evans, County Council Cabinet Member for Public Protection, said: “This joint raid was part of our Trading Standards Service’s ongoing drive to protect consumers and legitimate businesses in West Sussex from the activities of counterfeiters.
“As well as conning people out of their hard-earned Christmas cash, counterfeiters also make large amounts of money by exploiting the reputation and trademarks of established brands.
“Their activities impact upon the West Sussex economy and could ultimately lead to local, legitimate businesses closing.”
If you suspect anyone of selling counterfeit goods you can report direct to the Trading Standards Service using the anonymous reporting facility on its website at www.westsussex.gov.uk or contact Consumer Direct on 08454 04 05 06 or visit http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/.


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Farmers in Cambodia’s pepper-growing provinces are increasingly turning to produce the profitable crop as the price of rubber on the world market has declined over the past six months, with land used for pepper cultivation doubling in some areas, according to growers.
In Dar commune in Tbong Khmum province’s Memot district, one of the richest pepper-growing areas of the country, the number of households farming pepper has increased from 1,730 last year to 2,300 this year, while cultivated farmland has doubled from 600 hectares to 1,200, according to Yin Sopha, executive director of the Dar-Memot Pepper Agriculture Development Cooperative.
Mr. Sopha said most of the farmers have switched from rubber to pepper production as rubber revenues have declined due to falling global prices.
Revenue from rubber exports for the first half of the year fell nearly 2 percent, from $76.5 million to $75 million.
“Pepper is an agricultural product that provides high income because the global demand has become higher and higher and it can be sold at a very high price, while there are not so many countries growing it,” Mr. Sopha said.
Pepper production costs farmers about $12,000 per hectare and can provide yields worth between $35,000 and $50,000, he said. The crop currently sells for around $10 per kg.
During this year’s harvest, from March to May, farmers in Dar commune reaped about 5,000 tons, with next season expected to yield about 6,500 tons.
Kep and Kampot provinces, renowned for quality pepper, have seen a similar increase in pepper growing amid increasing international recognition for their crops, said Ngoun Lay, president of the Kampot Pepper Promotion Association.
In 2013, there were 265 families farming pepper over 90 hectares in both provinces compared to 300 households farming on 155 hectares this year, he said.
Mr. Lay said the approval and enactment in November of a law on geographical indication—a globally-recognized status given to protect reputable goods that originate from a specific region—has seen increasing demand for the high-quality Kampot pepper.
The pepper association has recently received orders to supply 6 tons per year to Japanese and U.S. companies amid vigorous international demand that is putting pressure on producers.
“The buyers around the world are increasingly recognizing the quality of our pepper, especially Kampot pepper because it is a geographical indication product. But pepper production cannot keep up with demand,” Mr. Lay said.


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The intruder infiltrated the popular commerce app by impersonating an outside employee in a phone call with the company’s customer service. The loot: emails, full names and additional details of about 7 million customers. The company is reassured that the situation is under control
The American trading app Robinhood Markets reported last night that a stranger broke into its systems last week and stole the personal details of millions of users. The incident happened last Wednesday (3.10) in the evening and according to the announcement in the company, she managed to take control of the situation. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, among the details revealed are the email addresses of about 5 million users as well as the full names of about 2 million other users. The burglar also gained access to more personal details of about 300 users.
However, the company stressed that no Social Security numbers, bank accounts or credit card numbers were disclosed, and customers did not incur any financial losses as a result. While this is information that is mostly not very sensitive, cyber security researcher Alison Nixon warned that those 300 customers from whom more personal information was stolen are now exposed to attacks like SIM card replacements, in which hackers take over victims’ cell phones in an attempt to hack into their online accounts.
The person who gained access to the systems did so by impersonating an outside employee in a phone call to a customer service employee, according to Robinhood, who added that she had received a ransom demand after she had already taken over the break-in. The company, she said, has updated law enforcement and continues to investigate the incident with the help of cyber security company Mandiant. A senior Mandiant official also noted that the company has identified the burglar while in security incidents and it is estimated that he will continue to “operate and blackmail more companies in the coming months,” he said.
Robinhood, founded by Vlad Teneb and Beijo Bhat in 2013, has 22.4 million accounts and oversees $ 95 billion in assets, making it an attractive target for hackers. The company also recently noted, in a prospectus ahead of the July IPO, that due to the corona “there is an increased chance of experiencing cyber security incidents because employees, service providers and other third parties work remotely, in systems and less secure environments.”
Perhaps one of the reasons for the recent breakthrough has to do with the fact that Robinhood is having a hard time keeping up with it: millions of users have been added to the service since early 2020. The company, in response, tripled customer service last year and plans to double that number again this year. Last March, the company announced that it intends to spend $ 11.7 million on recruiting and employ nearly 400 new employees at its North Carolina service and customer support center.


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Twitter makes advertising campaigns easier
AFPSAN FRANCISCO--Twitter on Wednesday made it easier to run ad campaigns using tweeted messages in a move that promised to ramp up the company's money-making potential and prospects for a stock market debut.
February 22, 2013, 12:03 am TWN
San Francisco-based Twitter announced that five partners are using new software that automates and streamlines advertisements displayed as “tweets” and promoted to high-profile positions in user feeds.
“We've been testing the Twitter Ads API since January with our partners, and today we're officially launching it,” revenue product manager April Underwood wrote in a blog post.
“Marketers now have more tools in their arsenal to help them deliver the right message, to the right audience, on the desktop and on mobile devices — all at scale.”
Twitter started the year with more than 200 million users and a prediction by industry-tracker eMarketer that the company's annual revenue would top US$545 million.


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|BBB Warns Local Consumers: Don’t Fall for Government Grant Ploy|
The Mountain States BBB is receiving ten to twelve calls per day from consumers who have been contacted by a company offering them “free” government grant money.
Consumer Grants USA, which also operates under twenty or more other names, calls local residents with an enticing promise of free grant money. Consumers are told that they are “approved for a grant from the federal government” in amounts that range from $8,000 to $30,000. They are frequently told that they “qualify” for the grant because they paid their taxes, or because they are senior citizens.
What’s the catch? Once the consumer is hooked, the telemarketer on the other end of the line requests their bank account information in order to deduct a “fee” of $199.00 to $249.00. If the consumer does receive anything, it is a publication titled “Government Grant Information Guide” that tells them how and where to apply for government grants. This information is available to consumers for free from public sources.
The Better Business Bureau of West Florida (www.bbbwestflorida.org) has an unsatisfactory report for Consumer Grants USA, due to unanswered complaints and a pattern of complaints. In the past 12 months the Florida BBB has processed 420 complaints against this company, 309 of which relate to selling practices. The Consumer Grants USA report is accessible under 20 different names and 10 different phone numbers on either the West Florida BBB Website or the national BBB site, www.bbb.org.
On November 9, 2004, the Florida Attorney General’s Office filed a six-count action against the company, alleging violations of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. Prior to this action, both the North Dakota and Ohio Attorney General’s offices have filed actions against the company. The information about these actions is part of the BBB report on Consumer Grants USA.
Pam King, President of the Mountain States BBB encourages consumers to protect themselves from unethical business practices:
Shop smart. Use the free services of your Better Business Bureau to identify ethical and unethical companies before you buy. In Weld County call 686-0245 or visit www.mountainstates.bbb.org. It’s just good business.