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“As a result, the few surveys that are conducted do not have good sample frames.”
But most the underlying data are timely, the report said.
“However, detailed data needed to measured both output and intermediate consumption are mostly unavailable or not collected,” the report cautioned.
“As a result, the estimates of gross value added are prepared directly relying on outdated fixed ratios established from the base year 1996, often with outdated studies or ad hoc assumptions.
“Quarterly indicators are used for compiling quarterly value-added estimates.
“The methodology for deriving GDP at constant prices is not satisfactory. Expenditure estimates are available only annually and rely mostly on commodity flow techniques.”
Sri Lanka’s most widely watched Colombo Consumer Price Index could also be improved to cover the entire island and the IMF had suggested ways to overcome “missing prices”.There have been concerns raised about the absence of alcohol and cigarettes by statisticians and other analysts. Sri Lanka suddenly stopped an all island index when inflation started to shoot up over 30 percent during 2007.
But critics say most countries try to understate inflation and Sri Lanka may be doing it less than some advanced nations, who use very sophisticated mathematical methods to understate inflation and smoothen spiking prices found in the real world.
The IMF said fiscal statistics could also be improved and there would be technical missions in 2013 and 2014 to help.
Monetary and balance of payments data could also be improved particularly in relation to treating foreign currency deposits, the report said.
Sri Lanka has been a participant of IMF’s General Data Dissemination System (GDDS) since July 2000.
“In February 2003, the authorities appointed a coordinator with the objective of subscribing to the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS),” the report said.
“Work is in progress toward meeting all SDDS requirements.”
IMF’s resident representative Koshy Mathai told reporters earlier this month that the website of Sri Lanka’s central bank was one of the most informative, according to feedback he has received.
As a person living in Colombo, he said the price index did not appear to be very far off reality.
Critics of GDP have said such aggregates are largely meaningless for many reasons including counting wasteful state spending as value added, ignoring non-monetary transactions, the black economy, depreciation and counting the cost battling state regulations as consumption.
When autarkists chasing ‘self-sufficiency’ push up food prices through price support schemes, GDP and per capita GDP can go up, but people can go hungry and their children can suffer malnutrition.
There are also more fundamental arguments against using prices – exchange rates of various goods and services among people – to measure an aggregate of output over time.
“The attempt to determine in money the wealth of a nation or the whole mankind are as childish as the mystic efforts to solve the riddles of the universe by worrying about the dimension of the pyramid of Cheops,” economist Ludwig von Mises wrote in Human Action.
“The money equivalents as used in acting and in economic calculation are money prices, i.e., exchange ratios between money and other goods and services.
“The prices are not measured in money; they consist in money. Prices are either prices of the past or expected prices of the future. A price is necessarily a historical fact either of the past or of the future.
“There is nothing in prices which permits one to liken them to the measurement of physical and chemical phenomena.”
Due to the obsession with growth numbers that began in the last century due to ‘macro-economics’ politicians and state interventionists are now pushed into ‘stimulus’ and other measures to show ‘growth’.
The way GDP is measured to show ‘growth’ from wasteful state spending and understating inflation generates a natural bias for interventionists to spend or print money or both to generate bigger numbers and generate economic instability as a consequence.
If bigger GDP numbers can be generated statistically in the first instance instead of through dangerous manipulations of money supply and budgets, critics say the problem can be solved before it starts.(LBO)


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With 200 car raffle tickets still to be sold, Monte Davis, executive director of the Homer Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center, has announced the drawing of the winning ticket has been postponed until
The drawing was scheduled for Nov. 8; however with 200 of the raffle’s 500 tickets left to sell, Davis said the decision was made to wait a month.
Being raffled off is $25,000 toward the purchase of a car at Stanley Ford of Kenai or $15,000 cash. The other big prize is a new Honda ATV Rancher. Tickets are $100 for the car, $35 for the ATV or $130 for a combo ticket.
Proceeds from the raffle help sponsor such events as the winter carnival, cleanup day, the July 4 parade and benefit the annual Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival.
“We haven’t sold out raffle tickets for the last three years,” said Davis. “We’ve reached a point with the budget where, if we can’t come at least close to selling (the raffle) out, we’ll have to start looking at canceling things like the winter carnival or the Fourth of July parade or cleanup day. … Without this particular fundraiser, we just can’t continue to do it, but I don’t want to go there, so we’re going to postpone for a month.”
Only the date is changing. The ticket-drawing party will be held at the visitor center at 6 p.m. Dec. 6, with every 25th ticket winning a prize. Tickets are available at the centers or from board members.
“We hope the community will rise to support this,” said Davis.
Also on the Homer Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center’s calendar:
• Nov. 13: Luncheon meeting, noon, at the chamber. J&B’s Smok’n BBQ will serve the lunch. Davis will give a presentation on marketing businesses effectively. The cost is $12 for members, $14 for nonmembers, RSVP by calling 235-7740 or email firstname.lastname@example.org. Those attending are asked to RSVP by Friday.
• Nov. 30: Christmas tree lighting at the Homer Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center, includes Santa Claus, music and an outdoor fireplace for making s’mores.

domain: news


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Yesterday, we learnt that South Korea-based Samsung Electronics, agreed to pay Microsoft, fees (royalty) for every Galaxy S II smartphone and, or Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet it shipped, since they were based on Android – a platform that infringes on patents Microsoft owns. Post finalizing the deal, Samsung has joined the likes of HTC, and probably Motorola Mobility in the days to come. However, this move by Microsoft has displeased Google so much so that the search giant referred to Microsoft's patent litigations with Samsung, HTC, among others as 'extortion'. A report in eWeek featured the comments by a Google spokesperson on this issue.
Microsoft's trump card?
Clearly displeased, the spokesperson accused Microsoft of indulging in practices like this, as a compensation to its sinking presence in the smartphone market. The report further quoted the spokesperson saying that they (Microsoft) were resorting to legal issues to 'extort' profit from others, thereby coming in the way of innovation. Google is obviously not liking it one bit that rival Microsoft will earn each time an Android-based device ships.
Android has certainly carved its niche in an overcrowded mobile market, and giving it away to Microsoft is certainly not what it had planned for its green robot.
Published Date: Sep 30, 2011 05:48 pm | Updated Date: Sep 30, 2011 05:48 pm


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The lights are on
Pre-order customers get first crack at the upcoming
real-time strategy title from Relic and new parent company Sega.
The beta includes six maps supporting symmetrical
competitive matches from 1v1 to 4v4 against other players or the AI, as well as
the first 40 levels of progression through the metagame and the army
Sega plans to roll out the beta for a wider audience beyond
its pre-order customers in the coming weeks, so you’re not totally out of luck
if you’re waiting to see whether Company of Heroes 2 is worth your money. I was
sold as soon as I got my hands on an alpha build last year and could feel how
the new sightline modeling and weather effects completely change the way you
approach a map, but some of you may require further convincing.
Check out the latest trailer showing off the multiplayer
action in motion here.


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Microsoft recently performed a very high-profile U-turn when they announced that they were dropping the controversial DRM plans for the Xbox One that enabled the console to become region-free and they are now rumored to have done another one. The latest alleged policy change from Microsoft regarding the incoming Xbox One console states that it will now launch with a headset included (via Eurogamer).
Of course this is not the stance that Microsoft originally had regarding the Xbox One being bundled with a headset as they said that customers would have to buy one separately as you could use the Kinect to chat instead. Xbox 360 headsets were also not going to be compatible but Microsoft is now supposedly working on developing some type of adapter to allow gamers to use their Xbox 360 headsets with the Xbox One.
What do you think of this latest policy change from Microsoft? Please let us know in the comments below.


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Even before the COVID19 outbreak, it was a time of rapid change and transformation in the sports betting and online gaming sector. Since my last post nearly a year ago, the big news was the merger of Flutter (FLTR.L) and the Stars Group Inc. (TSG) in an all stock deal (at a 55%:45% split). The deal was announced in October and closed in May. The headwinds in the sector include an increased regulatory focus, particularly on problem gambling, and an array of new taxes and restrictions which have pushed the sector further along the consolidation route. The great hope for the sector was the opening of online gambling and gaming in the US.
With that as the background, the COVID19 pandemic initially looked like it could create serious issues for the sector with cancelled sports events and retail shop closures. As the virus developed however, the upside in the demand for online gaming and gambling from people stuck at home combined with the spending power of government checks has resulted in a surge of online activity, particularly in gaming. The graph below of the relative share price movements over the past year for a sample of the market players illustrates the renewed optimism with the recent announcements on heightened online activity.
The performance of William Hill, with its over-reliance on retail, shows how far that business model must adapt to regain some of its former glory. 888, always the bridesmaid in the M&A dance of recent years, announced in June a 34% increase in average daily revenue in the year to date and boasted that it expected to beat EBITDA estimates for 2020 by a significant amount. In July, GVC announced a 30% H1 increase in online gaming and a 5% increase in online sports. For Q1, Flutter, which has been the focus of my posts in the past, initially announced approx. 30% growth in quarterly revenues up until the 15th of March with a dramatic fall off thereafter. In May, Flutter announced results to the 17th of May which showed extraordinarily strong gaming results and strong US and Australian performance. In late August, we will get a chance to see the H1 results of the newly merged entity in all its hoped for glory.
Projecting the short term in this pandemic environment is fraught with danger. Uncertainties relating to how the health situation develops, whether there will be more shut-downs or more openings, a second spike, whether government wage supports will be tempered, how defaults will progress are all subjects of daily discussion across the media. Notwithstanding these uncertainties, I have attempted to do a very rough and ready projection for the newly merged Flutter entity with the overarching assumption that gaming will remain strong, but not as extraordinary as the partial May figures, for the rest of 2020 (as will the US and Australia) but will pull back in 2021 as economies open back up and the full force of the recession and the COVID19 bills become reality. Offsetting the pull-back in 2021 of gaming is the opening of retail (albeit at a lower level than pre-COIVD) and the return of sports betting to a more normal level. The US is projected to continue its march forward in 2021. For my projections, the international and UK business of TSG is allocated to the online gaming and online sports lines as per the historical TSG breakdowns. The Australian business of Flutter and TSG is shown together.
I would again emphasize that my figures are rough guesstimates, particularly the operating results. Although the presentation released at the time of the merger announcement used 2018 figures, I looked through the updated prospectus from March which used 2019 figures and made my COVID adjustments for 2020 based upon trends to date and assumed impacts upon margins. For example, the merger presentation touted EBITDA margins of 30% and above for the future whereas I have assumed the 30% EBITDA margin in 2018 for the combined entity falls to 27%, 25% and 28% for 2019 to 2021 respectively.
The big difference in the business model of the newly merged entity is the amount of debt it is carrying now. I have assumed net debt of £3.85 billion at the end of H1 2020 and a pro-forma net debt to EBITDA multiple of 3.86 and 3.12 for 2020 and 2021 respectively (assuming no debt repayments over that time, the amount of which will depend upon whether they restart dividends). Their stated target to get below 2 quickly (e.g. by end 2022 or 2023 at the latest) looks very achievable given the highly cash generative nature of this business.
My proforma EPS estimates, based upon 144 million shares, is £2.70 and £4.19 for 2020 and 2021 respectively. The 2020 figure is marginally below their stated 150% uplift of the pre-merger 2019 EPS but not materially so given the COVID impact. On a forward PE basis, the stock currently trades at a 27.5 multiple of the 2021 EPS which is not out of line with the current market sentiment. Better growth than I have assumed for the remainder of 2020 and into 2021, the potential for the US business, and future synergies from the merger could justify such a premium rating. For me, cautious as ever and soooo remarkable bad at market timing, I would need to see more on the 2020 trends and a pull-back to be tempted out of my bear pit. I’ll leave it up to you, dear reader, to make your own mind up.
UPDATED H1 NUMBERS
On the 27 August, Flutter released their H1 figures and gave further insight into how 2020 may develop. I did highlight that my figures above were rough guesstimates and the actual H1 numbers showed that I got a few items wrong. First off, I missed the impact of the May 2020 equity raise which means net debt as at the end of H1 was £2.9 billion rather than the £3.85 billion I estimated. Also, share count at the end of H1 was 157 million rather than the 144 million as a result of the equity raise. Secondly, the H1 proforma revenue came in at £2.4 billion, making my FY2020 revenue estimate of £4 billion look light (ditto for 2020 earnings).
The H1 report also contained specifics on the one-off nature of items like poker revenue and net revenue margins, as below.
The report also shows the extraordinary trends from the height of lock-downs in certain sports and gaming categories, as below.
Guidance also highlighted the need to invest in the poker business and, as a result of heightened spending on items like marketing, the reduction in historical EBITDA margins of over 50% going forward. Based upon the pro-forma 2019 and H1 2020 results, my new projections on a half yearly basis are below.
I estimate that, even with tailwinds in 2020 such as the rescheduled UEFA 2021 Euro soccer tournament, 2021 revenue at £4.8 billion will only be marginally above my new 2020 revenue estimate of £4.6 billion. This assumes sporting events in 2021 return to a semblance of normality! I also estimate that EBITDA (excluding the US) in 2021 will be roughly equal to the 2020 mid guidance of £1.25 billion.
My new estimate of adjusted EPS for 2021 (excluding any SDI impact) is £5.00 which puts the current market valuation at 25 times the 2021 adjusted EPS. There is however a lot of uncertainty around that figure (not least that my estimates are way off base again!). It looks like it will take at least another few quarters before the combined business will stabilize into a more predictable pattern.


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BlackBerry devices proved their enduring appeal in Research In Motion’s third quarter, with the Canadian smartphone maker reporting 40 per cent growth in shipments from the same period a year ago to 14.2m units.
The record number helped revenues rise 40 per cent to $5.49bn, with 82 per cent of sales coming from devices, 15 per cent from services and 3 per cent from software and other areas.
RIM has been coming under pressure from Apple’s iPhone and smartphones running on Google’s Android operating system, although it has benefited as the smartphone market as a whole has continued to grow.
RIM said it added 5.1m net new BlackBerry accounts during its third quarter ending November 27 to give it a subscriber base of more than 55m.
Profits of $1.74 per share, or $911.1m, were up 58 per cent from the same period a year earlier. The numbers beat analyst expectations of earnings of $1.65 per share and revenue of $5.4bn, according to a Thomson Reuters survey.
“With strong results and momentum from our recent product introductions, as well as growing excitement from our partners and customers around upcoming smartphone, tablet, software and service offerings, we are setting the stage for continuing success,” said Jim Balsillie, RIM’s co-chief executive, in a statement.
He was referring to the launch of the BlackBerry Torch in August, which combines a slide-out keyboard with a touch screen, and its plans to introduce a tablet device called the PlayBook in the first half of next year.
The company forecast revenues of $5.5bn to $5.7bn in its quarter ending February 26, with profits of $1.74-$1.80 a share. They exceed analyst estimates of $5.46bn and profits of $1.61 a share, according to Bloomberg.
RIM shares rose nearly 2 per cent to $60.35 in extended trading in New York on the news.


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When it comes to medicine, quality and convenient care are essential. The world of medicine has also changed recently as a result of the covid-19 pandemic. With both of these things in mind, it’s no wonder that telehealth companies have been on the rise. In this video, you will get a more detailed look into just what telemedicine is and why its growth has really boomed in recent years.
As the video explains, telemedicine involves the use of electronic means in order to treat patients. For example, a meeting with a doctor could take place over the phone or computer instead of in person.
Telehelth services are getting more and more popular. In fact, it has seen a 34.7% growth rate in terms of revenue each year, according to IBIS World. It is also projected to more than double by 2026. This growth is in part caused by the pandemic because people saw a need to live their lives with limited in-person contact. Furthermore, even as the pandemic waned, people realized they enjoyed the convenience that telehealth provided and continued to opt for it out of want rather than need. It also takes some strain off of the health workers.


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Ofcom has announced that, from December 2021, mobile phone providers will no longer be able to sell phones locked to their network
27/10/2020: Network locked phones to be banned
Phones locked to specific networks are set to become a thing of the past when new rules take hold next year, banning providers from selling them.
This should make it easier for customers to switch networks, saving them time, money and effort.
Natalie Hitchins, Head of Home Products and Services at Which? said:
“We know that some customers who stay with the same provider for long periods of time are more likely to be overpaying than customers who switch, so this ban on selling locked handsets should make things easier for customers looking for a better deal.
If you think you might be out of contract, check your phone bills as you could potentially switch to a SIM-only deal and depending on the network you might find that you can already switch elsewhere and save money right away.”
Is your phone still locked to a network? Have you ever paid to have your phone unlocked in the past?
10/10/2016: Win! Mobile phone providers to unlock mobiles for free
Original author: Jack Madden
Over the weekend the government announced that it had finally brokered an agreement with UK mobile network providers to end unlocking fees for mobile phones – delivering a great win for our campaign to Unlock Better Mobile Deals.
This means that you can use a SIM card for any mobile network on your handset once the initial contract period is up. uSwitch estimate that this will collectively save mobile users over £48m per year.
Now when your mobile contract finishes, instead of having a restricted handset knocking around in your kitchen drawer, you ‘ll be able to easily keep your existing handset and move to another cheaper network, or even pass your old mobile onto a friend or family member.
This is all without the hassle or the cost of having to go and get it unlocked.
And for those of you who’d like to get a bit of cash out of your old handsets, there’s also evidence to suggest that having your phone unlocked also helps to increase the resale value of your old phone.
This is not only a big win for all mobile phone users, but also for our campaign supporters, nearly 80,000 of whom joined our call to an end unfair unlocking fees over the past two years. Over that time we slowly saw the debate shift in our favour, as individual operators promised to change their ways, and the government started to recognise there was a problem thanks to the persistence of our supporters.
But the pursuit of improving the mobile market doesn’t stop there. This victory comes as the Digital Economy Bill continues its way through Parliament, in which it looks like it’s going to deliver yet more gains for mobile phone users.
We’re hoping to see the introduction of gaining provider-led switching, meaning that if you want to change mobile provider, you only need to contact the company you want to move to – avoiding that awkward conversation with your existing provider who’s trying to persuade you to stay.
The bill also has measures to improve mobile network coverage and data signals – something that our research with Opensignal shows also needs action and should also be welcome news for the likes of RichardM, who told us:
Where I live in mid Wales there is so little signal anywhere I go that having a smart phone would be a waste of money because I’d rarely get the chance to use it.
So, hopefully over the next few weeks and months we’re going to be seeing some great improvements for mobile phone users, with unlocked handsets, better signals, better data access and hassle-free switching.
Is the ability to get your mobile phone unlocked for free good news for you?


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Premier Inn launches ‘Pillow Fight Club’ – and we all know the first rule…
By Lucy Turner on Monday, September 30, 2019
Hotel chain Premier Inn has announced a ‘Pillow Fight Club’ – as a fun and innovative way to recycle the chain’s old soft furnishings as it gears up for the launch of its ‘best ever’ pillow.
Just like it’s Hollywood namesake, the first rule of Pillow Fight Club, is you do not talk about Pillow Fight Club – well, except for right now.
The new ‘best ever’ pillow is due to be rolled out across the companies’ 800 hotels, meaning that up to four hundred thousand leftover pillows are up for grabs up and down the UK, before they are recycled.
Premier Inn has decided to have some fun with their leftover pillow stock and use it to inspire Brits to start their own Pillow Fights Clubs, with events taking place in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Bristol.
The most famous scene from the Hollywood blockbuster, which celebrates its twentieth anniversary this Autumn, has been recreated in a bid to explain the eight simple rules of Pillow Fight Club.
Leading the shot-for-shot remake is the clubs very own mini Tyler Durden, a character famously immortalised by Brad Pitt in the cult classic movie.
Sarah Simpson, Head of Product at Premier Inn said “Pillow fights are one of the few childhood ‘sports’ people can take through to adulthood and still be good at. Because of this, we thought Pillow Fight Club would be the perfect way to use leftover pillows before they’re recycled and bring families together to have some fun. With the launch of our new pillow in hotels and available to purchase online it seems like a perfect time to open up the club to Brits across the country and who knows just how many Pillow Fight Clubs will start to appear.”


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Any successful foreign companies may become targets for US attacks: China Daily editorial
The restrictions the United States has reportedly imposed on exports to China's leading silicon chip maker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, on grounds there is an "unacceptable risk" that equipment supplied to it could be used for military purposes, should come as no surprise given its previous actions.
It is due to US pressure since 2018 that the Netherlands has blocked its Advanced Semiconductor Material Lithograph from exporting its new generation lithography machine — a key item for making world-class chips — to the Chinese company.
But it is ridiculous that the US administration alleges SMIC is producing chips for the military. The chips it produces are generations away from those meeting the requirements for military use. Its manufacturing processes lag far behind the industry leaders and it cannot squeeze the number of transistors onto a piece of silicon to support military applications.
In a statement, SMIC reiterated that it has no relationship with the Chinese military, and manufactures semiconductors and provides services solely for civilian and commercial end-users and end-uses. Even to produce its less sophisticated chips for commercial uses, the company has to rely on US machines and software.
By ordering suppliers of certain equipment to SMIC to apply for individual export licenses, as it has done for those supplying Huawei, Washington is actually trying to gain the upper hand over the global supply chains of the telecom and information industries.
Washington's approach is no different when it comes to algorithms. With its looting of TikTok, the most popular short video sharing app in the US, for example, Washington is intent on letting US companies take control of it by preventing it from being downloaded and denying it support services — cutting off the app from users.
The national security and data security concerns that the US administration cites to justify its attacks on foreign companies are nothing but a pretense for its hegemony, taking advantage of the US' strengths in some infrastructural products and systems in certain industries to grab global technological and commercial dominance.
Which is to backpedal the process of economic globalization as countries retract into their respective shells fearing they might otherwise come into the crosshairs of the US.
While the world is confronted by so many common challenges that entail countries pooling their resources, wisdom and resolve together, it is absurd that, thanks to one country, they are compelled to dig their respective foxholes to not only fight alone, but more importantly fight against one another.
No onlookers of the US looting of Chinese companies will be immune from its aftereffects.


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The European Commission expects the eurozone economy to come to a virtual standstill towards the end of year.
It is forecasting growth of 0.1% for the bloc for the fourth quarter.
Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said fears about the Eurozone debt crisis and weakening demand from outside Europe are hampering growth.
But the commission remained confident that there would not be a return to recession.
Also on Thursday, official figures from Eurostat showed that inflation in the eurozone stood at an annual rate of 2.5% in August, unchanged from July's figure.
The BBC reports the inflation figure for all the EU was 2.9% in August, also unchanged from July.
The commission predicted that these would also be the inflation figures for all of 2011.


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3D printing software and services provider DigiFabster, established in 2015, uses its software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform to help companies automate and streamline certain business processes in a single step. Recently, Belgium-based 3D printing service bureau ZiggZagg used DigiFabster’s platform to greatly improve its productivity and growth – the company is currently experiencing a 25% month-over-month growth rate.
ZiggZagg got its start back in 2011, and currently operates a total of 13 3D printers with different technologies, such as SLS, SLA, FDM, and HP MultiJet Fusion. In addition, it also provides manufacturing technologies such as CNC milling, laser cutting, and vacuum forming.
Most 3D printing service bureaus invest plenty of time in teaching their customers how to submit jobs and about the ins and outs of pricing said jobs. While it’s easy to absorb these costs when it comes to contract work and large 3D print jobs, smaller customers that don’t use the business as often can often cost more than they’re worth, as they need the same attention but offer less revenue. However, a plus is that lower volume jobs are helping 3D printing service bureaus, like ZiggZagg, fill unused areas in their 3D printers’ build space, which in turn can improve productivity. By completely filling the build area, companies can lower the cost of each part of a print run, so fixed costs can be spread over more volume.
“We were looking for a way to smooth out our production. Small orders are useful in helping us fill out our build trays, but we couldn’t afford to manage them offline,” said ZiggZagg CEO Stijn Paridaens. “We needed an online tool that would handle quoting and order entry.”
Using DigiFabster’s SaaS platform offered ZiggZagg the opportunity to automate its customer relationship agreements, in addition to its order entry and quoting services. ZiggZagg has even set some new goals for itself, including adding new orders to help fill its print capacity.
Right from the get-go, ZiggZagg was able to configure its site based on its existing capabilities. After providing company information, including its machines, materials, and finishing options and setting up an account, the service bureau installed and deployed DigiFabster’s iFrame-based widget on the website.
“DigiFabster offered us the potential to have our cake and eat it too,” explained COO at ZiggZagg. “We could use the web to attract smaller jobs to fill our builds and maximize our efficiency, without the typical costs of customer acquisition.”
ZiggZagg populated and configured the administrative area of DigiFabster’s software with its specifications and pricing. Then, the widget automated operations by allowing customers to instantly quote and place orders for 3D printing projects. After the software was fully configured, ZiggZagg began marketing its new online capabilities…and reaping the benefits.
Thanks to DigiFabster’s technology, ZiggZagg produced more than 9,100 models for almost 650 customers last year – a client base growth of 20%. It was able to generate over €6,000 in new revenue just in January of 2018, with an average order size of €150. Now, for the first time, ZiggZagg is reporting over $50,000 in monthly revenue. Before using DigiFabster’s platform, ZiggZagg’s 3D print runs were averaging about 60% of total capacity – this has now increased by over 15%, which has lowered the total cost of each part by roughly 10%.
“We want to serve more customers using similar resources,” said
DigiFabster’s platform also includes customer relationship management software, which helped ZiggZagg increase its workload with current customers and move from self to full-service support. The software will be upgraded as ZiggZagg’s business continues to grow to support additional capabilities, such as offline quoting.
The two will also continue to work together to create specific features to help improve workflow. For instance, in order to give teams that package and ship out orders final confirmation, ZiggZagg requested that the packing slips DigiFabster created also include a thumbnail image of the specific models so that employees can confidently confirm that the orders match the models.
The interesting thing here is that people are really looking at how to efficiently manufacture using 3D printing. Legacy airlines had high-cost structures but complete services. Could seeing the print volume much akin to the way that Easyjet looks at unused aeroplane seats lead to further cost reductions? Will we see high end service bureaus eclipsed by cheaper but more efficient ones? Or will we see last minute pricing and cheaper offers just like we see in aeroplane tickets?
Discuss this story, and other 3D printing business topics, at 3DPrintBoard.com, or share your thoughts in the comments below.[Source/Images: DigiFabster]
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Is the Google+ Deadpool Inevitable?
Social sharing platform Shareaholic has released its annual Social Media Traffic Report. The results, if you're familiar with the performance of your existing traffic sources, likely will not surprise you.
Shareaholic examined 13 months of data from its 200,000 active publishers (the total reach of these publishers exceeded more than 250 million unique monthly visitors on average). The platform tracked eight of the most popular social media platforms to see how they were driving traffic.
- THE POSITIVES: Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter are dominating, accounting for 15.22 percent of overall website traffic for Shareaholic users. The three networks are also growing rapidly (Facebook - 58 percent, Pinterest - 66 percent, and Twitter 54 percent).
- THE NEGATIVES: YouTube and LinkedIn are gaining share of overall traffic, increasing the share of overall traffic sent to publishers 52.86 percent and 34.51 percent respectively. Reddit and Stumbleupon (despite now claiming profitability) referrals are declining - dropping 35 percent and 27 percent respectively.
When it comes to Google+, Shareaholic found that while the platform referred a "fair number of visits to online publishers last month, it is hardly a leading referral source." Google+ referred just 0.04 percent of overall traffic. While the digital deadpool is anything but inevitable for the platform, digital marketers may be tiring of the platform's promise and anxious to see its potential.


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A study of recent car buying trends suggests that dealerships’ transition to digital sales during the pandemic will become a permanent fixture in the process.
Researchers at Cars.com also say that six trends that have altered how dealers and consumers interact have changed the process for the better.
"The current climate drove dealerships across the country to quickly adapt to meet the changing needs of American car buyers," said Alex Vetter, president and CEO of Cars.com. "It has been incredible to witness an industry as large and established as automotive respond with new technology and adopt new processes to ensure a safe and frictionless car-buying experience.
Vetter is referring to the business model quickly adopted by dealers. Dealers already had new and used vehicle inventories online, so websites were modified to allow consumers to select a car and have it delivered to their home for a test drive.
Consumers seemed to like that approach, as people continue to purchase cars during the height of the economic shutdown, albeit at a slower rate than before. Dealers also like the approach since it makes their salespeople more productive, enabling them to handle several transactions simultaneously.
Ridesharing less attractive
Vetter says the pandemic also appears to have stopped another automotive trend dead in its tracks. After years of ridesharing ascendency, consumers are increasingly interested in personal transportation.
“As the pandemic continues into the second half of 2020, more people will turn to car ownership to safely get around while social distancing,” Vetter said. “And I believe we will see durable changes to car buying and selling that deliver an improved experience for all."
Digital buying is one of those durable trends. Consumers have long used the internet to shop for cars, but Cars.com predicts that the sales process will stay online long after the pandemic.
By May, car sales through Online Shopper, a digital sales platform, were up 63 percent compared to before the pandemic hit. According to Cars.com research, 71 percent of car shoppers want to complete some, if not all, of a car purchase online.
The report also shows that AI chatbots were widely deployed at the beginning of the pandemic to support digital sales. That trend, the company predicts, will continue.
Thirty percent of American car shoppers want their local dealerships to offer at-home test-driving, while 31 percent want dealers to deliver their car at home after the purchase.
After years of decline, the sedan is making a comeback. Cars.com reported a 14 percent uptick in sedan search activity from April to June.
Finally, consumers appear to be focusing more on the used car market. Cars.com reports that the highest average search price fell from $39,000 to $27,000 between March and June.


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In the spring of 2011, for any one who was keen enough to listen in, there was an abundance of smartphone patent wars. Almost every smartphone manufacturer suddenly thought it was cool to sue perceived competitions for allegedly infringing on their “ingenious designs” . Everybody were basically suing ‘everyone’ and of course the master patent troll — Apple inc were not left out of the tea party. The Cupertino based tech giant sued rivals Samsung for ‘allegedly infringing ‘ the company’s patents for features such as tap-to-zoom and multitouch gestures. This was the beggining of what would become a long drawn Apple Vs Samsung legal war. Apple immediately asked for $2.5 billion in damages, an amount that got Samsung panting for breathe. In the courtroom As the verdict was read aloud, things looked bad for Samsung from the onset. The first item up for consideration was Apple’s bounce-back patent. The jury found that Samsung had infringed the patent with every single accused device.
Apple to pay $234 million in damages for patent infringement
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Now after almost five years of legal battles, South Korea’s Samsung has finally decided to pay up, acknowledging that it infringed on Apple’s patent. However, the company is only paying about $548 million a far cry from Apple’s initial $2.5 billion damage claims. The reduction in damages claims didn’t come easy — it took Samsung about five years and lots of legal bouts to trim down the amount. Firstly, on an August 24, 2012 verdict, after what was seen as a surprisingly short time in deliberations, the jury in the Apple vs Samsung case reached a first ‘favourable’ decision for Samsung. Though the nine jurors in the case decided unanimously that Samsung had infringed on Apple’s intellectual property, they however decided that Apple won’t be getting the more than $2.5 billion it asked for. Instead the jurors decided that Apple will be getting at least $1,049,343,540. A hearing about possible injunctions against Samsung products that infringed on Apple’s patent was set for September 20th with Samsung defiantly vowing that “this is not the final wthi in this case.” Apple tried to get a sales ban on Samsung’s infringing phones and tablets without success. It then subsequently requested an additional $707 million from Samsung, again without success. In what was rather a negative turn of events for Apple, the second amount ($1B) was recalculated and cut back to reflect ‘legal realities’ of the infringement. Samsung was able to whittle down the amount to about $930 million. Both parties were however still very much optimistic, at least in the tone of their press releases;
“We are pleased the Federal Circuit Court of Appeal confirmed Samsung blatantly copied Apple products…….’ “……..This is a victory for design and those who respect it. Even though Samsung must pay for its widespread infringement of our patents, this case has always been about more than money. It’s about innovation and the hard work that goes into inventing products that people love, which is hard to put a price on.” —Apple inc.
We welcome the US Court of Appeals’ ruling overturning
Apple’s infringement and damage claims against Samsung over trade dress…..”……Today’s decision shows that Apple’s claims over trade dress and damages lack merit and are grossly exaggerated. We remain confident that our products do not infringe on Apple’s design patents and other intellectual property, and we will continue to take all appropriate measures to protect our products.” — Samsung
The end of the infringement tussle was still very much not in sight. In another filling on May 18th 2015, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reaffirmed that Samsung had copied specific design patents in Apple’s iPhone. However, once again the court whittled down the amount to $548 million (of which Samsung just recently agreed to pay) on grounds that samsung wasn’t infringing on Apple’s IPhone’s overall look and feel amidst other legal patent technicalities.


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People are building illegal streaming services powered by YouTube.
Spotify’s subscriber numbers are going up but there’s still an appetite for free music: TorrentFreak is reporting that a $38 script is powering multiple clones of the streaming service that uses YouTube content to work.
Youtubify first appeared on the CodeCanyon marketplace in November, where it has since been purchased 310 times. The script pulls music from YouTube and allows users to create their own accounts and create playlists, just like Spotify.
“Youtubify allows you to create your own music streaming website in minutes with no coding knowledge,” reads a product description. “It has an impressive feature set that rivals and even surpasses other biggest streaming services on the market.”
The script is of course completely illegal. As The Next Web points out, setting up a streaming service using YouTube content is against its terms of service, something that prompted the owners of a service called Wefre (that used the Youtubify script) to close voluntarily last year.
Despite Youtubify being legally dubious, a number of clones using the script have appeared across the internet, each of which come with a similar black and green livery to the Spotify interface. Though using the script to harvest YouTube’s content is against its terms of service, the company hasn’t yet blocked Youtubify from accessing the API that allows it to pull YouTube’s music.
Youtubify isn’t the only recent instance of developers trying to emulate Spotify without the price tag. Last year saw the launch of a site called Aurous, which was described as a musical equivalent of illegal Netflix-style movie streaming site Popcorn Time.
Aurous was sued just hours after launch by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), following an ill-judged attempt by its creator to crowdfund the service. The site has since been taken offline.
Earlier this month a browser plug-in called Torrents Time also appeared on the web, allowing people to stream torrents from inside their browser.


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Spotify's revamped mobile app unshackles free users from shuffle mode -- and opens up a cache of new data in the process.
The world's largest music-streaming service said Tuesday that after years of limiting mobile users of its free tier to shuffled songs,like your personalized Discover Weekly mix and popular curated playlists like RapCaviar.
That's cause for all cheapskate music fans to rejoice, but the move has a hidden side effect. Most of Spotify's listening happens on a mobile device, and most of its listeners are streaming without paying. By opening up that giant population to a bigger playground of music, Spotify is triggering a bumper crop of data about how to make the best music recommendations for everyone's individual taste, including yours.
"All of this ... understanding of music was locked into Premium," Babar Zafar, Spotify's vice president of product development, said in an interview Tuesday. "What happens when you add another 90 million users?"
With 71 million paying members and almost 90 million free users who stream at least once a month, Spotify's scale has made it a major force in a larger cultural shift in listening to music. After decades of buying music outright -- whether through records, tapes, CDs or digital downloads -- the explosive popularity of services such as Spotify and Apple Music mean people are increasingly paying flat fees for all-you-can-access tunes.
The model opens up listeners to a vast catalog with tens of millions of songs. But it also creates a dilemma for companies figuring out how to suit consumers' specific tastes as their listening habits change. A digital download library, packed with music that you already cared about enough to buy, is simple to just shuffle and play. Tapping this extra data could give Spotify an edge as it seeks to maintain its lead over fast-growing Apple Music, which boasts 40 million subscribers, as well as other services such as Pandora and Amazon Prime Music.
Russ Crupnick, managing partner at market researcher MusicWatch, said music-streaming services are all data-driven companies. The more data one company gets, the more of an edge it has over the competition. And people who use Spotify's free tier are less likely to be the kind of proactive music aficionados who fervently craft perfected playlists of their own.
"From a sample of one, all the things that I create I get tired of in a week. I want my music service to give me good recommendations," he said. "When people get tired, that's when they stop using it."
The popularity of Spotify's playlists is big and growing. About 31 percent of everything people listen to on Spotify comes via playlists. Those include curated playlists, such as RapCaviar, Viva Latino and Ultimate Indie, or personalized algorithmic playlists, such as Discover Weekly, Daily Mix and Release Radar. The figure was less than 20 percent two years ago.
"Three years ago, everybody was listening to playlists that either they made or friends made," BTIG Research analyst Rich Greenfield said. "The key is can [Spotify] transform playlists from just lists of music to must-have consumer brands?"
Spotify's taking a stab: RapCaviar, sometimes referred to as the "most influential playlist in music," moved offline into the real world with a self-titled concert series last year.
Spotify's expanded data collection on the new free tier will most directly affect purely algorithmic lists like Discover Weekly. But widened data will strengthen human-curated playlists like RapCaviar, too. The programmers behind lists are genre experts who use Spotify's data as well as their gut instincts and trained ears. Tuma Basa, Spotify's former head of hip-hop programming and the Svengali behind RapCaviar, has said he crunches numbers to compile the list. Factors he considers include the number of times a song or artist is searched and the percentage of people who skip the song.
With nearly 100 million more people searching and skipping, Spotify will soon have even more clues that'll tell it exactly what to play for you.
The Smartest Stuff: Innovators are thinking up new ways to make you, and the things around you, smarter.
Tech Culture: From film and television to social media and games, here's your place for the lighter side of tech.


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To come up with that figure, Pew noted that, based on two different measurements, 61 percent of cell phone owners say they have a smartphone. Since 91 percent of the U.S. adult population owns some sort of cell phone -- ta da -- 56 percent of all American adults now own smartphones.
That leaves 35 percent of American adults who have some sort of cell phone, and 9 percent who are communication Luddites and don't have a cell phone at all.
While last year’s Pew report found that smartphone owners represented 53 percent of cell phone owners, crossing a milestone, this year's data went one further. It said that over half of the U.S. population -- not U.S. cell phone owners -- had a smartphone. This is the first time this has ever occurred, and there's no going back now.
With smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S4, the Nokia Lumia 928, and the iPhone 5, it was inevitable.
Breaking things down into age groups, as you might expect, the percentage of smartphone adoption is highest among the younger audience.
- 18-24 - 79 percent (243 respondents)
- 25-34 - 81 percent (284)
- 35-44 - 69 percent (292)
- 45-54 - 55 percent (377)
- 55-64 - 39 percent (426)
- 65+ - 18 percent (570)
Other tidbits of information from the report:
- Younger adults -- regardless of income level -- are very likely to be smartphone owners.
- For older adults smartphone ownership is more of an “elite” phenomenon: smartphones tend to be quite prevalent at the upper end of the income distribution but much less common among those with lower income levels.
- Education has a role to play: The overwhelming majority of smartphone owners have attended or graduated from college
- Almost half, 49 percent, of cell owners with a household income of $150,000 or more say their phone is an iPhone. Among cell phone owners with an income of less than $30,000 annually, only 13 percent own an iPhone while 28 percent own an Android phone.
- African-American cell phone owners gravitate to Android -- 42 percent own Android, and only 16 percent own an iPhone.
- Hispanic cell phone owners are evenly divided -- 27 percent own Android, while 26 percent own an iPhone.
- Among whites, the percentage is reversed -- 27 percent own an iPhone, while 26 percent own Android.
- Younger cell phone owners skew toward Android. As an example, 43 percent of cell phone owners 18-24 own Android and 31 percent own an iPhone.
- Meanwhile, among older cell phone owners, only 7 percent of cell phone owners 65+ in age own Android, while 11 percent own an iPhone.
- Margin of error is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points for results based on Total [n=2,252]
- Margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points for results based on all internet users [n=1,895]
- Margin of error is plus or minus 2.4 percentage points for results based on all cell phone owners [n=2,076]


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Supermarket backflips milk prices
A NORTHERN Star inquiry into exorbitant retail milk prices in some Northern Rivers’ supermarkets has resulted in an embarrassing about-face by Coles supermarkets yesterday.
Three of the retail giant’s stores in Lismore and Ballina raised the price of two-litre bottles of Norco Lite by almost a dollar to $4.37 last week, causing consternation for customers keen to support their local dairy company.
The same product was priced at $3.43 at all Northern Rivers Woolworths supermarkets.
The current price war between Coles and Woolworths has seen generic-branded milk, both full cream and light, slashed to a dollar a litre, making it increasingly difficult for consumers to support alternative and independent outlets.
This has outraged dairy farmers who have complained that the unsustainable pricing will reduce competition and ultimately drive farmers off their land.
The stoush forced the Federal Government to initiate a senate inquiry into predatory milk pricing last month and it is expected to report back to government later this month.
After repeated inquiries, a Coles media relations manager said yesterday that the price rise in northern NSW stores was a mistake and should not have occurred.
“It has been reviewed and will be changed,” the spokesman said.
“The Norco two-litre lite milk price will be put back to its original retail price (this) morning.”
Last month Norco representatives made a 45-minute submission to the inquiry revealing costs of production, processing and delivery.
Norco board chairperson Greg McNamara said that after drought and flood it had become a critical issue for dairy farmers.
In an interim report two weeks ago, inquiry chair Senator Alan Eggleston said the committee had received 151 submissions and had held public hearings in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra.
He said there were complex interactions between farmers, processors and retailers and the impact of the price reductions on the industry depended on how long they were kept in place.


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Google has done it again. This company won’t stop with its strategy to make the world a better technological place for living. According to some reliable sources Google is on the verge of releasing a new Smart Computer. Yes, you’ve heard it right. Google’s researchers have revealed a computer that it could become a self-programing machine one day. The developers at DeepMind start-up, which was bought by Google for $400 million, are working on this computer. They want to include mimics of the short-term memory of the human’s brain. I don’t know how they will achieve this, but I think they will succeed in everything they have put as their goal. These researchers believe this will be a longer learning process as the combination of ordinary computer and the works of a human brain could be a complicated process. The computer is expected to learn to program by himself.
The computers will become us!
This computer was described as “Neural Turing Machine” that will be able to learn everything as it stores more and more memory. The stored memory will be retrieved every time the mighty computer will feel the need of it. According to the researchers, they have introduced this Neural Turing Machine as a network architecture that has really big inspiration from both the design of digital computers and models of the biological working memory. All of their experiments have already brought some results they can rely on and demonstrate the capability of learning some simple algorithms from a simple data and using them to generalize all of them outside its regime for training.
This new computer will be a type of neural network that will adopt working with an external memory. The result will come as a new computer that learns and retrieve the data for performing some logical tasks. The team said that they are extending its neural networks by coupling all of them to external sources for memory. The interaction between the computer and the memory is done by attentional processes. This combined system is similar to a Turing Machine, but it allows to be trained with gradient descent. The first results are showing that this new smart computer can read and perform some simple algorithms such as sorting, copying and recall from other output and input examples.
I won’t comment whether this new smart computer is really a smart thing to release in the near future because we, the people, are not ready to be replaced with computers.


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POLAND: Redan Posts 14% FY Profit Growth
Clothing designer and distributor Redan has posted a 14 per cent rise in net profit for 2004 to PLN15.15 million. Full-year sales totalled PLN226.4m.
Redan, which operates the Troll, Top Secret and Textile Market chains, has also appointed Piotr Kulawinski as its new chief executive officer.
- Fashion fit for the future – strategies for speed
- Digitisation to drive new apparel-making models
- Will new Vietnam wage hinder competitiveness?
- Under Armour Lighthouse will disrupt production
- How TAL Apparel is staying ahead of the game
- Gap to shutter all UK Banana Republic stores
- M&S "unappealing" clothing a barrier to growth
- Reebok Liquid Factory reinvents shoe production
- Child refugees found in Turkey apparel factories
- Bangladesh tops China as lead cotton importer
- Africa-Med strategic sourcing review – comparing East Africa, North Africa and Turkey
- REPORT BUNDLE: Africa-Med, Southeast Asia and Central America strategic sourcing pack
- Southeast Asia strategic sourcing review – a focus on Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar
- Apparel (GLOBAL) - Industry Report
- Global Sports and Fitness Wear Market 2016-2020


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When tragedy strikes in Fish City Grill/Half Shells’ neighborhoods, the restaurants jump in to help with their “Cup of Hope,” in which they donate 100% of sales from every cup of gumbo or soup that is sold on a certain date. On Thursday, May 18, all 11 DFW-area Fish City Grill and Half Shells locations will use Cup of Hope to raise funds that will directly benefit the first responders and victims of the horrific mass shooting that took place earlier this month at Allen Premium Outlets, claiming eight innocent lives.
Soups include the restaurant’s famous gumbo, clam chowder, cream of jalapeño, crab bisque and red beans and rice.
DALLAS/FORT WORTH AREA LOCATIONS
Allen – Watters Creek
Dallas – Lake Highlands
Dallas – Preston/Royal
Richardson – CityLine
Half Shells – Plano
Half Shells – Snider Plaza


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“Without data, there’s no great AI, says Amit Walia, President, Products & Marketing at Informatica. “Now that AI is really becoming pervasive and at scale, you really need to give it relevant good contextual data. We see that happening a lot in the world of enterprise. AI is a part of everything that we do in data.”
“We definitely help companies provide great customer experiences,” says Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane. “That is the new currency of today. You can have the greatest product in the world and you can have the greatest service in the world, but if you don’t provide a great customer experience you’re not going to survive.”
“When people look at what’s happening with Amazon trying to get into their businesses, the need to transform is also front and center for every c-level executive,” says Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. “Given that Adobe’s been through our own transformation they want to experience that same benefit that we have been able to see.”
“The surprise outcome ten years from now is there’ll be something much bigger than the private cloud and the public cloud,” says Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell. “It’s the edge. I actually think there will be way more computed data on the edge in ten years than any of the derivatives of cloud.”
“If you think about where we are on the technology adoption curve and the trillion dollars of spend that are ultimately going to move, there’s no doubt that it’s a cloud-first world,” says Prashanth Chandasekar, Senior Vice President & General Manager at Rackspace.
hat’s interesting is that IoT has been around for a long time but as companies start to enable it and start to leverage it more and more there’s just huge volumes of data that have to be managed and be able to analyze and be able to execute from,” says John Barcus, Vice President Manufacturing Industries at Oracle.
“Customers need in a lot of ways, I hate to say it, but almost an easy button for cloud,” says Matt Liebowitz of Dell Technologies Consulting. “Often when they try to build it themselves, they bring the components together themselves, but it’s really difficult to do that integration work.”
“There’s this explosion of innovation that’s going on,” says VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger. “I’ve called it the four superpowers; cloud, mobility, AI, and IoT. These are just causing so many new companies, investment of capital, major new IPOs that are going on.”
“This market is the largest market that we’ve ever seen,” says Intel CEO Bob Swan. “We view our market share as roughly 23-25 percent. The opportunities we have to grow in this increasingly data-centric world is fairly significant.”


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South Korean shares opened lower Wednesday, tracking overnight falls on Wall Street, as a key US Fed member hinted at more aggressive monetary tightening.
The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) had lost 16.52 points, or 0.60 percent, to reach 2,742.68 as of 9:15 a.m.
Overnight, the US stock market tumbled, after Federal Reserve Gov. Lael Brainard said the Fed would begin rapidly reducing its balance sheet in May and is preparing for "stronger" actions to bring down inflation. The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 0.8 percent, and the Nasdaq composite skidded 2.26 percent.
Also, Shanghai's extended lockdown amid soaring virus cases is feared to disrupt global supply chains.
On the Seoul bourse, most big-cap shares traded lower, with tech and chemicals leading the fall.
Market bellwether Samsung Electronics fell 0.72 percent, and No. 2 chipmaker SK hynix sank 1.72 percent.
Major battery maker LG Energy Solution lost 1.78 percent, and Samsung SDI went down 0.83 percent. LG Chem decreased 0.56 percent.
Carmakers also lost ground. Top automaker Hyundai Motor shed 0.84 percent, and its affiliate Kia declined 1.08 percent.
The local currency was trading at 1,219.30 won against the US dollar, down 6.6 won from the previous session's close. (Yonhap)


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SCPRT Launches Tourism Web Sites for Mobile DevicesAugust 13, 2008
COLUMBIA, August 12, 2008 – The S.C. Department of Parks, Recreation & Tourism has launched new Web sites designed specifically for smart phones and other hand-held devices.
The sites are www.DiscoverSouthCarolina.mobi<http://www.discoversouthcarolina.mobi/> and www.SouthCarolinaParks.mobi<http://www.southcarolinaparks.mobi/>. They contain key information about South Carolina attractions, events, lodging, shopping, golf courses, state parks, and even a select group of uniquely South Carolina restaurants, in a format suitable for the small screen.
Removing display items such as maps, photographs, videos and graphics from the full-featured sites at www.DiscoverSouthCarolina.com<http://www.discoversouthcarolina.com/> and www.SouthCarolinaParks.com<http://www.southcarolinaparks.com/> allows consumers to easily access useful information about the Palmetto State while on the go.
“South Carolina’s state tourism agency continues to keep up with evolving technology and consumer behavior by delivering relevant information in a quickly accessible format,” said Chad Prosser, director of SCPRT.
“Visitors appreciate the ability to get travel information while they are on the move, Prosser added. South Carolina’s new mobile Web sites will provide quick and relevant information about our state to everyone using a Web-enabled mobile device. This initiative helps us provide visitors with information when and how they want it, which will promote increased visitor spending in our state.


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BONNER SPRINGS, Kan. -- Price Chopper is brewing interest with fresh-roasted coffee beans in its produce aisle.
Just weeks after putting in a bulk display of Gourmet's Choice coffee beans in 10 varieties, officials at the single-unit independent said they're happy with sales.
"We'd had it less than two weeks when I had to reorder. I was surprised. We'd sold out of two varieties, the lighter roasts, and Hawaiian hazelnut had a pretty good-sized dent in it," said Joe Pieper, pro


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|By Business Wire||
|June 16, 2014 11:01 AM EDT||
Digital River, Inc. (NASDAQ:DRIV), a leading global provider of Commerce-as-a-Service solutions, today announced it has added bitcoin as a payment option for merchants that are selling online in the United States and using its small to mid-sized commerce solution. Bitcoin will now be available along with other international payment options, such as credit and debit cards, wire transfers, bank transfers and third-party wallets.
“Bitcoin continues to attract more mainstream attention,” said Tom Peterson, executive vice president and general manager of commerce at Digital River. “We’re excited to be among the first pure play ecommerce providers to make the cryptocurrency available for small to mid-sized businesses interested in providing their online shoppers more payment choices and added convenience.
“Because Digital River acts as the merchant- and seller-of-record, our international base of customers can accept and process bitcoin payments in their U.S. online stores with less risk than they could on their own,” added Peterson. “In addition, this business model creates an opportunity for our customers to offer payment solutions that may be in earlier stages of adoption in their domestic markets.”
Digital River partnered with San Francisco-based Coinbase, a bitcoin wallet and platform provider, to handle the conversion of bitcoin into U.S. dollars and process the payments. “The payments world is energized by talks of digital currencies,” said Souheil Badran, Digital River World Payments’ senior vice president and general manager. “One of the bigger risks faced by merchants is dealing with the volatility of the digital currency market. Partnering with Coinbase allows Digital River to help mitigate that risk for our customers.”
“With Digital River’s expertise in the global commerce and payments industry, we’re proud to support the extension of their payment options for small to mid-sized businesses,” said Adam White, director of business development and sales at Coinbase. “This partnership is another positive step forward in bringing bitcoin payments to the everyday consumer.”
Digital River’s small to mid-sized ecommerce solution provides online merchants with multiple platforms and tools to successfully build, manage and grow profitable ebusinesses on a worldwide basis. Priced affordably, the solution is based on a do-it-yourself ecommerce model with short click-through contracts, global ecommerce features and customizable e-store set-up options.
For more information and to get started accepting bitcoin, please visit our self-service page.
About Digital River, Inc.
Backed by 20 years of ecommerce experience, Digital River is recognized as a leading global provider of Commerce-as-a-Service solutions. Companies of all sizes rely on Digital River’s multi-tenant, SaaS commerce, payments and marketing services to manage and grow their online businesses. In 2013, Digital River processed more than $30 billion in online transactions, connecting B2B and B2C digital products and cloud service companies as well as branded manufacturers with buyers across multiple devices and channels, and nearly every country in the world.
Digital River is headquartered in Minneapolis with offices across the U.S., Asia, Europe and South America. For more details about Digital River, visit the corporate website, read the Digital River Blog, follow the company on Twitter or call +1 952-253-1234.
In addition to the historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements, such as statements containing the words, “will,” “plans,” “intends,” “expects,” and similar words. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Digital River, or industry results, to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others: Digital River’s operating history and variability of operating results; competition in the electronic commerce market; the ability of Digital River to support bitcoin payments on its SMB commerce platform in the United States; the market’s acceptance of such offerings; and other risk factors referenced in Digital River’s public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Digital River is a registered trademark of Digital River, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks, registrations or copyrights of their respective owners.
Twitter Tags: #Bitcoin, @DigitalRiverInc, #SWREG
Click to Tweet: .@DigitalRiverInc now accepting #bitcoin as part of its global SMB commerce solution in the U.S.
Data is the fuel that drives the machine learning algorithmic engines and ultimately provides the business value. In his session at Cloud Expo, Ed Featherston, a director and senior enterprise architect at Collaborative Consulting, will discuss the key considerations around quality, volume, timeliness, and pedigree that must be dealt with in order to properly fuel that engine.
Oct. 22, 2016 08:15 AM EDT Reads: 3,748
All clouds are not equal. To succeed in a DevOps context, organizations should plan to develop/deploy apps across a choice of on-premise and public clouds simultaneously depending on the business needs. This is where the concept of the Lean Cloud comes in - resting on the idea that you often need to relocate your app modules over their life cycles for both innovation and operational efficiency in the cloud. In his session at @DevOpsSummit at19th Cloud Expo, Valentin (Val) Bercovici, CTO of So...
Oct. 22, 2016 08:15 AM EDT Reads: 2,069
More and more brands have jumped on the IoT bandwagon. We have an excess of wearables – activity trackers, smartwatches, smart glasses and sneakers, and more that track seemingly endless datapoints. However, most consumers have no idea what “IoT” means. Creating more wearables that track data shouldn't be the aim of brands; delivering meaningful, tangible relevance to their users should be. We're in a period in which the IoT pendulum is still swinging. Initially, it swung toward "smart for smar...
Oct. 22, 2016 08:15 AM EDT Reads: 349
SYS-CON Events announced today that eCube Systems, the leading provider of modern development tools and best practices for Continuous Integration on OpenVMS, will exhibit at SYS-CON's @DevOpsSummit at Cloud Expo New York, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. eCube Systems offers a family of middleware products and development tools that maximize return on technology investment by leveraging existing technical equity to meet evolving business needs. ...
Oct. 22, 2016 08:00 AM EDT Reads: 4,420
Fifty billion connected devices and still no winning protocols standards. HTTP, WebSockets, MQTT, and CoAP seem to be leading in the IoT protocol race at the moment but many more protocols are getting introduced on a regular basis. Each protocol has its pros and cons depending on the nature of the communications. Does there really need to be only one protocol to rule them all? Of course not. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Chris Matthieu, co-founder and CTO of Octoblu, walk you through how Oct...
Oct. 22, 2016 07:45 AM EDT Reads: 3,089
Fact is, enterprises have significant legacy voice infrastructure that’s costly to replace with pure IP solutions. How can we bring this analog infrastructure into our shiny new cloud applications? There are proven methods to bind both legacy voice applications and traditional PSTN audio into cloud-based applications and services at a carrier scale. Some of the most successful implementations leverage WebRTC, WebSockets, SIP and other open source technologies. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Da...
Oct. 22, 2016 07:00 AM EDT Reads: 2,251
So you think you are a DevOps warrior, huh? Put your money (not really, it’s free) where your metrics are and prove it by taking The Ultimate DevOps Geek Quiz Challenge, sponsored by DevOps Summit. Battle through the set of tough questions created by industry thought leaders to earn your bragging rights and win some cool prizes.
Oct. 22, 2016 07:00 AM EDT Reads: 3,512
In past @ThingsExpo presentations, Joseph di Paolantonio has explored how various Internet of Things (IoT) and data management and analytics (DMA) solution spaces will come together as sensor analytics ecosystems. This year, in his session at @ThingsExpo, Joseph di Paolantonio from DataArchon, will be adding the numerous Transportation areas, from autonomous vehicles to “Uber for containers.” While IoT data in any one area of Transportation will have a huge impact in that area, combining sensor...
Oct. 22, 2016 06:45 AM EDT Reads: 360
The Internet of Things (IoT), in all its myriad manifestations, has great potential. Much of that potential comes from the evolving data management and analytic (DMA) technologies and processes that allow us to gain insight from all of the IoT data that can be generated and gathered. This potential may never be met as those data sets are tied to specific industry verticals and single markets, with no clear way to use IoT data and sensor analytics to fulfill the hype being given the IoT today.
Oct. 22, 2016 06:30 AM EDT Reads: 2,195
@ThingsExpo has been named the Top 5 Most Influential M2M Brand by Onalytica in the ‘Machine to Machine: Top 100 Influencers and Brands.' Onalytica analyzed the online debate on M2M by looking at over 85,000 tweets to provide the most influential individuals and brands that drive the discussion. According to Onalytica the "analysis showed a very engaged community with a lot of interactive tweets. The M2M discussion seems to be more fragmented and driven by some of the major brands present in the...
Oct. 22, 2016 06:15 AM EDT Reads: 11,207
If you had a chance to enter on the ground level of the largest e-commerce market in the world – would you? China is the world’s most populated country with the second largest economy and the world’s fastest growing market. It is estimated that by 2018 the Chinese market will be reaching over $30 billion in gaming revenue alone. Admittedly for a foreign company, doing business in China can be challenging. Often changing laws, administrative regulations and the often inscrutable Chinese Interne...
Oct. 22, 2016 06:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,341
SYS-CON Events announced today that SoftNet Solutions will exhibit at the 19th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 1–3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. SoftNet Solutions specializes in Enterprise Solutions for Hadoop and Big Data. It offers customers the most open, robust, and value-conscious portfolio of solutions, services, and tools for the shortest route to success with Big Data. The unique differentiator is the ability to architect and ...
Oct. 22, 2016 05:45 AM EDT Reads: 458
DevOps is speeding towards the IT world like a freight train and the hype around it is deafening. There is no reason to be afraid of this change as it is the natural reaction to the agile movement that revolutionized development just a few years ago. By definition, DevOps is the natural alignment of IT performance to business profitability. The relevance of this has yet to be quantified but it has been suggested that the route to the CEO’s chair will come from the IT leaders that successfully ma...
Oct. 22, 2016 05:45 AM EDT Reads: 16,257
SYS-CON Events announced today that Pulzze Systems will exhibit at the 19th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 1–3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Pulzze Systems, Inc. provides infrastructure products for the Internet of Things to enable any connected device and system to carry out matched operations without programming. For more information, visit http://www.pulzzesystems.com.
Oct. 22, 2016 05:00 AM EDT Reads: 2,473
Without lifecycle traceability and visibility across the tool chain, stakeholders from Planning-to-Ops have limited insight and answers to who, what, when, why and how across the DevOps lifecycle. This impacts the ability to deliver high quality software at the needed velocity to drive positive business outcomes. In his general session at @DevOpsSummit at 19th Cloud Expo, Eric Robertson, General Manager at CollabNet, will discuss how customers are able to achieve a level of transparency that e...
Oct. 22, 2016 05:00 AM EDT Reads: 689


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Tesla says Texas among 4 states still in the running for $5B Gigafactory
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A Tesla spokeswoman said Wednesday that four states still are in the running for the plant.
“The original four states — Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Nevada — are still in the running, and those are the only states we are considering for the Tesla gigafactory,” said company spokeswoman Alexis Georgenson.
Tesla is looking at places such as Tucson, Pinal County and Buckeye in Arizona, Reno, Nev., Albuquerque, N.M., and San Antonio, Texas, for the 6,500-worker factory.
A number of site selection and real estate executives believe a site at the Reno Stead Airport in northern Nevada is the front runner to land the much coveted plant.
The company was unsuccessful in its bid to get the Arizona Legislature to change auto sales rules to allow Tesla to sell directly to consumers.
Car dealers opposed the bill, and a pro-Tesla bill has died in the Arizona Senate.
Georgenson said Tesla will try again in 2015.
“We look forward to re-engaging next year,” she said.
Mike Sunnucks writes about residential and commercial real estate, government, law, sports business and workplace issues.
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Luckiest Lotto numbers revealed in lead up to tomorrow’s Superdraw
With only one sleep left before $21 million goes on offer in this Saturday’s Superdraw, Lotterywest has revealed some of this year’s luckiest Lotto numbers.
“The most frequently drawn Saturday Lotto number is 3 which has been drawn ten times, followed by 45 drawn eight times and finally 1, 5, 10, 20 and 24 each drawn seven times,” said Lotterywest spokesperson Pina Compagnone.
Ms Compagnone said tomorrow’s Superdraw is set to create quite a lot of excitement across the State with close to 800,000 tickets expected to be sold in WA for the draw.
“During our busiest hour tomorrow, about 600 tickets will be sold across WA every minute,” she said.
One Lotterywest retailer already experiencing the busy rush is The Mall Newsagency located in Perth’s CBD.
The Perth store experienced Lotto luck just shy of a week ago, selling a $701,962 Division 1 winning ticket in last weekend’s Saturday Lotto draw. The prize was claimed by a couple from Alkimos who are set to retire early.
“Good news spreads fast and we’ve certainly had lots of people coming in since the win. There’s no reason why lightning can’t strike twice!” said owner of the store Michael Rolling.
WA players have until 6pm tomorrow to purchase tickets in the $21 million Superdraw. Tickets are available in-store at Lotterywest retailers or from Lotterywest Play Online.
When you play with Lotterywest, WA wins! Support from local players in this weekend’s Superdraw, is also set to help Lotterywest raise an estimated $4 million for the WA community.
Media Enquiries Pina Compagnone: 9340 5227/ 0438 996 884


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Online ride-hailing service, Uber has of late been trying to weather the storm with attacks from seemingly all directions. The company which is valued at over $60 billion has been suffering a barrage of attacks and criticisms about its modus operandi. From accusations of blatantly flouting laws governing taxis, to benefitting from allegedly stolen data, Uber’s executives and legal team are bracing themselves for a tough time ahead.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick resigned from US president Trump’s economic advisory council which comprises 17 captains of industry like Tesla Founder and CEO Elon Musk. This came after concerted pressure from Uber staff and users who heavily criticized Mr. Kalanick and Uber as a whole of trying to benefit from an executive order by Trump that temporarily banned immigrants, refugees and citizens from Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Iran, Iraq and Syria. At the tail end of protests on Saturday 28th January against that executive order, Uber twitted that its surge pricing was off. This was seen as Uber making the most of a less than ideal situation. This led to #DeleteUber being the trending hashtag that weekend. Reportedly 200,000 users deleted their accounts and I hazard a guess that these users went straight for Uber’s rival Lyft.
Prejudiced corporate culture.
Susan Fowler, a reliability engineer at Uber quit her job in December 2016 after about 13 months. This is because she claims she was sexual harassed by her bosses from the get go. Though she reported the matter to the HR manager and other senior management staff, her claims were never adequately addressed. She was told that her boss was a top performer at the company and that it was an innocent mistake. After numerous complaints, she decided to quit and has a new job at technology company Stripe. She noted that since she joined Uber in November 2015, the number of female personnel has dropped from 25 percent to a meager less than 6 percent. This can be attributed to the sexism that seems to plague the tech giant. Uber has hired a legal team to look into her claims, which she documented in her blog in an article titled “Reflecting On One Very, Very Strange Year At Uber”.
Uber’s senior vice president of engineering Amit Singhal was asked to resign by the company’s CEO one year into the job. This is after Uber was informed of sexual harassment accusations which were levelled against Mr. Singhal by a female employee at Google where he was vice president of search. He resigned from Google in February 2016 ,after 15 years.
Uber has been using software called Greyball as part of its violation of terms of service (VTOS) program. This software reportedly uses geolocation, credit card and other data from users to identify and side step authorities who are investigating Uber for breaking the law in areas where the ride-hailing service is not approved by law or banned altogether.
Greyball identifies and tags users who are linked to law enforcement organizations based on geofence data, credit card information, social media profiles and other data that can be found on the Internet. When a tagged user hails for a ride, Uber serves up a different version of the app which shows ghost cars or even shows that cars are unavailable. However, if a tagged user manages to get a request to a driver, Uber calls the driver with instructions to cancel the request.
In a rebuttal, Uber said “This program denies ride requests to users who are violating our terms of service — whether that’s people aiming to physically harm drivers, competitors looking to disrupt our operations, or opponents who collude with officials on secret ‘stings’ meant to entrap drivers.” . Perhaps the Greyball program was created with the intention of protecting drivers from violent attacks in countries like France, India and Kenya but it has allegedly been used to evade law enforcement officers which makes its legality not only a grey area but also brings to the fore other ethical issues.
Google‘s self-driving car program currently a subsidiary known as Waymo has sued Uber after alleging that Uber is using technology stolen from Waymo to grow its autonomous car program.
Anthony Levandowski who worked in Google’s self-driving cars program which began in 2009 quit in January 2016 without notice after 9 years at the tech giant. He immediately co-founded Otto, a self-driving truck startup with three other ex-Google employees. Google alleges that Levandowski downloaded confidential information before leaving. In August 2016, Uber acquired Otto in a $680 million deal. In December 2016, Waymo was inadvertently copied in an email which had schematics of Uber’s Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology which is crucial to the self-driving cars.
Uber’s on its part says that Otto’s LiDAR technology was acquired from Tyto which has a patent for a LiDAR scanner .However if Google can proved that Uber’s LiDAR technology was stolen intellectual property, the Uber faces a suit that could potentially cost it millions or billions of dollars.