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When you travel boldly in the social media universe, mistakes are bound to happen.
“The biggest mistake is doing nothing,” says Noah Smith, executive consultant for AlexGPR.com, a public relations company specializing in social media and brand management. “Events such as tradeshows and conventions are the best places to curate followers and increase your reach."
He adds, “You’ll tweet more during a tradeshow than you do in two or three weeks. By engaging in social media, you're not only picking up followers, but quality followers that are interested in your brand.”
By contrast, there are companies that do too much. They concentrate excessively on promotion instead of sincere engagement.
“Some companies and organizations will simply engage in bare-knuckled promotion,” says David Erickson, vice president of online marketing for Karwoski and Courage, a Minneapolis public relations firm. “They interrupt the engagement experience with too many promotional messages, which turns people off.”
Before the start of an event, social media planners should determine a content ratio to serve marketing and sales needs. For example, a decision might be made to have five pieces of content in favor of the audience’s interest compared to one about the company.
Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of Social Media, highlights some of the most common mistakes made at meetings and events. They include:
- Creating hashtags that are too long and complex.
- Not encouraging attendees strongly enough to use the hashtag.
- Not providing a good place for people to take photos.
- Failing to have a knowledgeable, dedicated person to perform all the social media activities at the event.
- Failure to take the full inventory of pictures and video from the event and sharing them later.
Kawasaki and other experts believe hashtag misuse and confusion is a recipe for disaster.
“The biggest mistake I see planners and marketers make for any event is they don’t pretest their hashtag,” says Carolyn Wilman, a social media strategist for IdeaMajesty.com. “It’s too late once they discover it’s being used for another event and it makes it difficult for both events to track conversations, and it ruins any analytics from programs such as TweetReach as the numbers will be skewed.”
Longer is not necessarily better with hashtags.
“Don’t hog all of the space with a long hashtag,” says Emily Maxie, marketing director for SIGNiX, a cloud-based digital signature company. “Remember, hashtags must fit within Twitter’s 140-character limit along with a message, a link or even a few Twitter handles.”
Jim Spellos, president of Meeting U. and a top meetings industry social media and technology speaker, says that no matter how sophisticated a meeting or event’s social media component is, planners should make sure to not leave out those who may be new to the whole idea.
“If [attendees] are doing this for the first time, expect a lot of basic questions and have staff members available to help,” he says. “If you’re going to move in that direction you need to make sure your attendees are comfortable and not ostracized for not being in the ‘in crowd.’ Be aware of the needs and learning curve of the group.”


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The director of the FBI James Comey once again leaves the door open for a law that forces tech companies to put backdoors into their products.
By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai | MOTHERBOARD
In the a year after the heated battle between Apple and the FBI over the iPhone of a dead alleged terrorist, the US government war on encryption has been lying somewhat dormant. But that’s not because the FBI has given up on trying to change the status quo.
On Wednesday, FBI Director James Comey left the door open for a law that would require tech manufacturers like Apple or Google to come up with a way to decrypt data for the feds.
„I could imagine a world that ends up with legislation saying if you are going to make devices in the United States you figure out how to comply with court orders,“ Comey said during a Senate hearing. „Or maybe we don’t go there.“

domain: news


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20th March 2017
There are four key trends that emerged on the AW17 runway shows that the knitwear design industry should take notice of...
1st February 2017
Market analysis website Euromonitor reports sales of “sports inspired clothes” having a percentage year-on-year growth of 5.92% worldwide.
28th April 2016
Confidence in Tunisia by knitwear giant Benetton was recently shown by a visit to CETTEX (Centre du Technique et Textile) in Tunis.
21st March 2016
The conference brought Lycra licensees from the legwear industry, researchers and technical developers from the world of textiles and legwear.
4th March 2016
Portugal’s knitting and technical textiles industry is ready to take off in new directions.
9th February 2016
In this edition of Talking Heads Elizia Volkmann interviews the winners of the Interfiliere’s ‘Designer of the Year’ award – Willy Hermann and Hanro, of Switzerland.
5th February 2016
Visitors to this edition of the Interfiliére were treated to one of the most expanded trend forums entitled “Working in the Garden of Eden”.
29th January 2016
Elizia Volkmann interviews Jean Hegedus - Global Segment Director – Denim, for Invista and Ralph Hermann from Willy Hermann Fine Knitting.
24th June 2015
Fashion Knitwear designer Lucy Barandiaran has caught the wave of fashion’s trend towards 'one stop shop' buying for collections, Elizia Volkmann reports.
23rd June 2015
A revolution has been happening in the world of hand-knit in Peru, our special correspondent, Elizia Volkmann, reports.


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Spain had better watch its back.
The project began six years ago, when Missouri pig farmer Russ Kremer and La Quercia's Herb Eckhouse began envisioning an all-American version of Spain's jamón ibérico. Kremer's beloved Tamworth pigs, with their natural foraging abilities, seemed like a good fit. And now, three years later, 75 rosy Tamworths are yielding delicious ham.
Italian for "shoulder," the newly released Spallacia ($12 for 4 ounces) is made from the pigs' front legs, which are cured solely with sea salt, then aged at least 15 months.
When sliced into thin, delicate shavings, the Spallacia is silky and sweet, collapsing immediately in the mouth thanks to a low melting point.
In addition to the Spallacia, Tamworth coppa ($20 for 6 ounces) is now sliding into meat cases, and hardier textured meats, such as guanciale and salame, are on the horizon. But we're especially excited about the Tamworth prosciutto, which will land in stores come December.
Italy, you're next.
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MixFormer TNW Writer
Mix is a tech writer based in Amsterdam that loves cinema and probably hates the movies that you like. Tell him everything you despise about Mix is a tech writer based in Amsterdam that loves cinema and probably hates the movies that you like. Tell him everything you despise about his work on Twitter.
Everybody knows the Internet of Things (IoT) suffers from a troubling security epidemic – but what would happen if IoT manufacturers were to put warning labels on their products the same way tobacco brands have to put them on cigarette packets?
It is a common practice in many places around the globe to slap warning messages on cigarette packets in order to caution potential buyers against the detrimental effects tobacco has on their health.
But seeing how security breaches could be equally damaging – albeit in a different manner – web security pundit Troy Hunt has raised an unusual, but very intriguing conundrum: what would happen if careless IoT companies were to put cautionary labels on the boxes of their products?
Hey @vtechtoys, how about put this warning on the box so it can be seen before purchasing? Yeah, didn’t think so… https://t.co/erdFdUp4jS pic.twitter.com/qRUUCmz1SY
— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) October 12, 2017
Hunt actually went the extra mile and did just that; and, well, the outcome is actually pretty hilarious.
Check it out for yourself:
The hidden dangers of crappy IoT devices have been steadily coming to the surface over the past few years.
Over the last twelve months alone, there have numerous been reports about cute toys spying on children, unassuming internet-connected cameras for pets whispering to their owners, and camera-equipped vibrators that are worryingly easy to hack.
So next time you’re mulling on buying this cool smart rice cooker that connects to your phone, imagine there was a warning label on the box. That should knock some sense into you.
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FIFA, the international governing body for soccer, has taken a significant step towards embracing new technologies by filing a number of trademarks related to the metaverse.
The move indicates FIFA’s intention to tap into the potential of virtual reality (VR) and related technologies including non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The news comes amidst strong upwards price action for a number of metaverse tokens.
FIFA sets its sights on the metaverse
Football’s governing body FIFA has filed 9 trademarks covering various aspects of the metaverse including gaming, virtual clothing and entertainment services. In securing these trademarks, FIFA has staked its claim in the virtual realm, suggesting the possibility of further developments in the future.
#FIFA has filed 9 more Metaverse trademark applications as part of its “WE ARE” campaign. The filings claim plans for:
— Mike Kondoudis (@KondoudisLaw) June 20, 2023
FIFA is now well positioned with trademarks encompassing virtual stadiums, immersive soccer experiences, player avatars, and digital collectibles.
Metaverse tokens surge
The announcement of FIFA’s metaverse trademarks coincides with strong upwards price action for a number metaverse tokens, suggesting a positive effect on the market. Metaverse tokens represent digital assets that enable users to participate in and navigate the metaverse. According to data from CoinGecko, a cryptocurrency tracking platform, several metaverse tokens have experienced a surge in price.
One such token is Apecoin (APE), which has seen a 6.00% increase in price in the past 24 hours. With a circulating supply of 370 million APE and a market cap of $797,806,479, Apecoin’s surge demonstrates a rising demand for metaverse-related investments.
APE/USD daily price chart, source: CoinGecko
Internet Computer (ICP) and Stacks (STX) have also witnessed significant price increases of 4.4% and 17.62% in the last 24 hours. These price surges reflect the market’s positive response to FIFA’s commitment to the metaverse and the industry’s potential growth.


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Walmart(s wmt) has become the second large U.S. retail chain to announce that it will stop selling Amazon(s amzn) Kindles, after Target(s tgt) made a similar announcement in May.
Reuters first reported the news, citing a memo that Walmart sent to store managers on Wednesday. “We have recently made the business decision to not carry Amazon tablets and eReaders beyond our existing inventory and purchase commitments,” the memo read. “This includes all Amazon Kindle models current and recently announced.”
Walmart confirmed the change to Reuters and it appears to extend both to Walmart’s website and its stores.
The chain is still selling Barnes & Noble(s bks)’s Nook as well as some other e-reader brands.
As with the change in Target’s policy, it’s unclear why Walmart stopped carrying Kindles. But the company is working hard to beef up its own e-commerce strategy. The company recently built its own shopping search engine, which it is now deploying on Walmart.com, and it takes cash for online purchases. Meanwhile, Amazon is trying to sell as much Amazon.com content to Kindle device users as possible. (The company is even selling physical products through Kindle Fire apps.) So it makes sense that Walmart would not want to turn over more sales to a competitor.


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Thousands compromised in Meriton data breach
Thousands of guests and staff have been compromised in the attack.
Property giant Meriton has confirmed it has joined a string of other firms after it was hit by a cyber attack earlier this year.
The company, which is known for its property development and serviced apartment accommodation, it was attacked more than two months ago on January 14.
The stolen data is believed to include personal information such as bank details, birth certificates and employee-related details such as salary information and HR issues.
Also read: Latitude Financial cyberattack worse than expected
Also read: Medibank class action: Millions of Aussies may be eligible for compensation
Also read: Details of 10,000 Optus customers leaked as hackers demand $1.5m ransom
Guests have been told their contact information and potentially health information may have been accessed.
Meriton told the ABC an investigation found "no evidence" of information being misused.
Mertion said an “unknown third party” was responsible for the attack and it had taken the “appropriate steps” to notify around 1,900 guests and workers of the breach.
Mertion said it had contact with the Australian Cyber Security Centre and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
Hack attacks rising
This is just the latest in a string of cyber attacks on Aussie companies.
In recent days, consumer finance company Latitude Financial revealed 14 million Australian and NZ customers were exposed after personal records were stolen from its systems by hackers.
The attack, detected earlier this month, snared 7.9 million drivers licences, about 53,000 passport numbers and an additional 6.1 million records, including names, addresses, telephone numbers and dates of birth.
The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission urged business leaders to re-double efforts to keep their customers safe amid a spike in online financial scams and identity theft.
Millions of people had their personal data stolen last year in a series of high-profile hacks, including Medibank and Optus.
Up to 10 million Optus customers may have had their personal details compromised after the major data breach.
And as many as 9.7 million Medibank customers could be eligible for compensation following it’s data breach.
- With AAP
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Android 10's 'Rules' feature reportedly goes live on Google Pixel phones
With each Android OS iteration, Google adds new features while also improving on existing ones from the previous OS version.
It’s close to two months since the stable Android 10 update arrived on the Google Pixel phones. And as tradition dictates, the OS comes with lots of new features over Pie, some that are quick to notice while others may take you quite some to dig out.
However, not all new features announced always arrive as part of the first stable release. Sometimes they follow up in future updates.
Such is the case with Android 10’s Rules feature. According to reports coming from Reddit, the Rules feature that popped up during the beta testing phase and went missing in the first stable release is now appearing on some units.
A Google Pixel 2 XL owner in Germany has accompanied his claim that the Rules feature is live with a series of screenshots and has been seconded by a certain Google Pixel 3 user, who says they also have the feature on their unit.
So I just got randomly a new setting called “rules” under the system tab. I think it was already leaked sometime ago but never got rolled out?
I got it too. Legit checked it after seeing your post. It’s not Tasker but it’s something.
The Rules setting is now appearing under System settings and can be enabled or disabled as you wish.
In case you are somehow lost in regards to how Android 10 Rules feature works, well, it is simply a tool that helps you automate the changes that you regularly make to the Settings of your phone to suit certain scenarios.
When enabled, you can pick from these set of rules:
– Turn on Do Not Disturb
– Set phone to silent
– Set phone to vibrate
– Set phone to ring
The Rules feature is applicable when you arrive at a certain location or connect your Pixel phone to a Wi-Fi network.
As you probably guessed, this little addition is part of Google’s focus on Digital Wellbeing and apparently, users will get Android 10 Rules suggestions based on the actions they take most on their phones. You will also get notified when a certain action is enabled.
Given that the Rules feature is showing up on some Google Pixel phones without any new OTA update, it seems its a server-side update. Granted, you may have to check manually to see if it has been enabled on your phone.
I don’t have it. So I searched “rules” in settings and I found the option. Nice trick for anyone curious.
As hinted above, you can do a quick search in the Settings menu to see if Rules is now enabled on your Android 10 Pixel phone.
PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.


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The main executive of JSR, a person of the world’s biggest suppliers of a materials essential for semiconductor manufacturing, has reported a lack of marketplace infrastructure will make it “very difficult” for China to build cutting-edge chipmaking technological innovation even with a drive for self-sufficiency.
Eric Johnson, a uncommon American leader at a Japanese semiconductor company, also explained in an interview that he predicted chip sector offer bottlenecks to carry on into 2023.
US export curbs on technologies essential to make the most state-of-the-art chips have prompted China to make investments intensely to create its personal semiconductor offer chain.
But Johnson said China would struggle to grasp the sophisticated chipmaking technology centered on a approach identified as excessive ultraviolet or EUV lithography.
“I feel China also would appreciate to create their individual EUV competency, their ecosystem for these matters. I think it is likely to be incredibly hard for them to do that, frankly,” Johnson mentioned.
Semiconductors, necessary to products and solutions from smartphones to washing equipment, have grow to be a concentration of competitors concerning Washington and Beijing. Joe Biden on Friday began his 1st excursion to Asia as US president by going to a Samsung chip plant in South Korea and stressing his desire to safe semiconductor offer chains.
EUV lithography is a hugely demanding approach utilizing gentle to etch minuscule built-in circuits on to silicon wafers.
Even if China “got a paper on specifically what the chemistries were . . . to manufacture that at the purities, and the precision and reproducibility is really tough”, Johnson reported. “It’s not that simple and they don’t have the provide chain to support that, both.”
Tokyo-centered JSR is a main supplier of photoresists, slim levels of materials applied to transfer circuit designs on to semiconductor wafers. Analysts reported JSR has about 30-40 for each cent of the international marketplace for photoresists utilized to make innovative chips and counts Samsung, Taiwan’s TSMC and Intel of the US among the its clients.
China is the world’s greatest importer of chips and has been investing seriously in semiconductor initiatives as aspect of its “Made in China 2025” press, which calls for 70 for every cent self-sufficiency in the most crucial components for vital technologies by 2025.
But Johnson claimed “leading-edge functionality takes a long time and a large amount of cash to develop . . . you seriously require apps like the Iphone to fork out for the stuff”.
Continue to, Johnson pressured that Beijing was aggressively investing in fewer superior chipmaking systems that were also significant and that China was a large portion of JSR’s growth strategy.
He explained he needed to balance currently being in a position to “respectfully” and “responsibly” support shoppers in China with “sensitivity to the problems that the US govt has and issues with protecting pursuits in Japan”.
“It is less than-appreciated how much possibility there is in China that’s not dependent on those quite foremost-edge abilities,” he reported.
Johnson explained world wide chip offer bottlenecks that had undermined the international economy would take until eventually next yr to solve.
“It just usually takes time to deliver new capability on the internet and that new capacity won’t seriously commence to make an effects most likely until finally the end of this yr or next year.”
He mentioned he predicted it to be specifically “problematic” for the sector to satisfy need for semiconductors for vehicles as they utilised much less state-of-the-art chips which had been fewer rewarding and captivated considerably less investment decision.


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The median household income of Americans has not increased in a decade, when adjusted for what has been modest inflation. The poverty level has not fluctuated either, stuck around 16%. Those figures could get worse soon. The unemployment recovery, started at the depth of the recession, has added many more low-wage jobs than middle level or highly paid ones.
The National Employment Law Project (NELP) said of the low-wage recovery:
- Lower-wage occupations constituted 22 percent of recession losses, but 44 percent of recovery growth.
- Mid-wage occupations constituted 37 percent of recession losses, but only 26 percent of recovery growth.
- Higher-wage occupations constituted 41 percent of recession losses, and 30 percent of recovery growth.
Today, there are nearly two million fewer jobs in mid-and higher-wage industries than there were before the recession took hold, while there are 1.85 million more jobs in lower-wage industries.
The news should send shudders through those who believe a consumer-led economy is the only route to GDP growth levels of past recoveries — 4% per year or better.
The data give some ammunition to those who believe the minimum wage is too low to pull millions of Americans out of poverty. These groups have argued that a new minimum wage should be set at $10.10, well above the pay of entry-level workers at huge employers such as McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD) and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT). NELP research supports that growth in retail and fast-food jobs are among those that have outstripped higher paying ones:
Service-providing industries such as food services and drinking places, administrative and support services, and retail trade have led private sector job growth during the recovery. These industries, which pay relatively low wages, accounted for 39 percent of the private sector employment increase over the past four years.
If the conclusions are true, a very broad recovery in economic activity is not close at hand.


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Bank of America (BAC – NYSE) is desperately trying to fight off rising labor costs in the face of lackluster growth.
The Wall Street Journal has revealed BAC plans to cut some 400 white-collar jobs in their investment banking, corporate banking, and sales units.
Now connect the rest of the dots: BAC’s wealth-management operations in Asia, Latin America, and Europe are up for sale. This sale will eliminate up to 2,000 jobs. And last spring, BAC announced a cost-cutting program aimed at eliminating some 30,000 consumer banking and technology jobs.
Eventually, these savings may help BAC’s bottom line. But right now, traders just don’t see these firings as the hallmark of a company on the upswing.
When we look to BAC’s weekly chart, we see a 70% complete Sell Signal Stack:
- Price has reversed at the top of trend,
- Accumulation has given way to distribution,
- And MACD has almost completed a Sellers Cross.
Trading Tip: The best BAC can hope for right now is a bounce off support at $6.94 (-14.53%). If that level doesn’t hold, that loss will double in short order.


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The Tile Mountain Group has acquired Kettering-based Walls and Floors to reportedly become the largest privately-owned tile company in the UK.
As part of the deal, Tile Mountain has also taken ownership of Walls and Floors’ retail, distribution, and specification divisions.
The move means Tile Mountain is now a multi-faceted operation, competing in multiple markets including online, store-based retail, wholesale and contracts.
Established in 1987, Walls and Floors employs nearly 200 people with an annual turnover in excess of £30m.
Its purchase by the Tile Mountain Group, spearheaded by chairman Mo Iqbal and managing director Jeremy Harris, forms part of the pair’s expansion strategy.
It has seen the recent acquisition of Coventry-based Capitol Tiles and online retailer Tons of Tiles by Tile Mountain.
Chairman Mo Iqbal, said of the deal: “Over the years led by Richard and Duncan, Walls and Floors has developed into one of the major players in the UK tiling industry and I am excited about leading the company into the next phase of its growth”.
Managing director Jeremy Harris commented: “Walls and Floors has a significant supplier base and great customer loyalty, both online, across its distribution and contracts networks and in store.
“We’re relishing working with suppliers and customers and developing opportunities further, with the ultimate goal of improving our offering across all our brands.”
Tile Mountain opened a £10million HQ in 2017 in Stoke-on-Trent.


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February 7, 2010 |
Call it political will if you may. For, temple town Madurai is certainly a happening place in Tamil Nadu, especially after MK Alagiri (Chief Minister MK Karunanidhi's son) donned the cap of a Cabinet minister. The state, which has been making conscious efforts to showcase it as a prominent investment destination through tax-breaks and other incentives, has in recent times attracted Videocon. The company is planning a Rs 2,000 crore manufacturing unit in Manamadurai.
February 9, 2008 |
BANGALORE: The stone industry needs to adopt scientific and cost-effective mining and quarrying practices apart from investing in skill upgradation to face stiff competition in the global market, Subbaramai Reddy, Union Minister of States for Mines said here. Speaking at the Valedictory function of 'Stona 2008', organised by All India Granite and Stone Association, he said if Indian stone sector had to compete with the world market it needed to adopt latest technology to cut down production cost and improve quality.
February 4, 2008 |
BANGALORE: India has emerged as the third largest buyer of Italian stone technology after US and Spain. India's import of raw materials, mainly Italian marble,has also seen a rise of about 70 per cent from 2005, according to a press release from the Italian Trade Commission. Italy, the global leadr in stone technology and products, is now keen to take its association with the Indian granite and stone industry to next level, said Erica Di Giovancario, Italian trade commissioner in India.
November 15, 2007 |
But not only that... Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee . Let freedom ring from every hill & molehill of Mississippi . From every mountainside, let freedom ring These were the memorable closing lines of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's famous 'I have a dream' speech in Washington DC that electrified segregated America in August 1963. The place I'm writing about was in that speech — Stone Mountain, near Atlanta in Georgia.
June 27, 2007 |
Even as the G8 summiteers ruminated upon weighty environmental matters in the German resort town of Heiligendamm earlier this month, my mind flashbacked to Triberg, another pretty resort town in Germany's lush Black Forest region. The town – which I visited after experiencing the hardcore cosmopolitanism of Frankfurt, Berlin and Munich – seemed especially pure, unspoilt and idyllic. It offered – for my smog-clogged, under-oxygenated system – precious intangibles like fresh air and clear blue skies.
April 23, 2007 |
NEW DELHI: Granite tiles manufacturer Aro Granite Industries Ltd (AGIL) will be listed on the National Stock Exchange on Tuesday. AGIL, which is already listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, seeks to provide investors greater access to its shares with this listing, a company statement said. The granite processing firm would be the first 100 per cent export oriented unit (EOU) to be listed on the National Stock Exchange, the statement added.
March 22, 2007 |
Magnificently blue waters usually remind me of musical notes; it is like running your fingers on an instrument and enjoying the soothing effect of the music on the mind. In this case the soothe factor came from the visual charm of the vast desert meeting the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean Sea at historic Alexandria. It was love at first sight with this truly waterfront city with loads of history tucked away in every nook and corner. The first thing that struck me, though, was that despite Alexandria being founded by Alexander the Great, there isn't any trace of the conquering king anywhere in the city except in museums.
February 11, 2007 |
Ever thought how to make your house exude more warmth and appeal? Having the right flooring is the first step towards making your den look cosy and welcoming. Be it in wooden, granite or in Italian style, choosing the right base is next to having a comfortable private space. SundayET tracks the latest trend in the floor bazaar. Fashion designer Natasha Sehgal wanted a complete revamp of her plush residence in South Delhi's Greater Kailash area. "Earlier, the flooring was primarily wooden or tiles.
July 20, 2006 |
MUMBAI: Tamil Nadu-based modular granite tiles and slabs manufacturer, Aro Granite Industries Ltd on Thursday said it will invest Rs 34 crore in increasing its production capacity of both tiles and slabs manufacturing process by 360,000 sq mts and 95,000 sq mts respectively. The company expects to complete the expansion by December this year after which the total production capacity of tiles and slabs would be 540,000 sq mts and 390,000 sq mts respectively, the company informed the Bombay Stock Exchange.
July 3, 2006 |
NEW DELHI: Rich Americans seem to be going gaga over designer bathrooms and kitchens adorned with Indian granite. Americans now prefer Indian granite in place of Italian marble. While India has already amassed Rs 3,050 crore from the export of this product in '04-05, export demands are on the rise. In fact Indian exporters have started buying granite slabs from Brazil to process them into tiles and export them to the US. Market research on the sector shows that it is black granite that is hot in American households.


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February 24, 2014 — Published by: Charlie Gregory
MWC2014: Ericsson and Facebook Innovation Lab
There is plenty of interesting news and comment being generated as a result of Mobile World Congress this year. A major highlight has been the announcement that Ericsson and Facebook will be collaborating on an 'innovation lab' to support the work of internet.org - a company who's aim is to bring the internet to emerging markets and countries, to expand its usage and broaden its reach.
This new venture aims to optimise devices and applications across the board for the next five billion users of the internet, and utilises Ericsson's mobile knowledge - combined with Facebook's ability to enhance developer access to network environments - come together to make this dream of internet 'for the world' a reality.
There's more on the story over at The Drum, and more to come from Battenhall on all the events at Mobile World Congress.


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Just in time for beach weather, all six Louisville-area Ultra Tan locations are now officially closed, effective April 1. The chain of tanning salons had been in business in Louisville for over 20 years. But there’s at least a nominal silver lining, if not a tan line, for members of the tanning chain.
Louisville’s Sun Tan City announced it will honor all Ultra Tan memberships, session packages and prepaid tanning dollars purchased by Ultra Tan clients. Also, Sun Tan City said in a press release that the company has agreed to upgrade erstwhile Ultra Tan clients’ tanning packages to the next level, for free.
So, go forth and soak in those UV rays (if you’re into that kind of thing).
The six now-defunct Ultra Tan locations were in the Stonybrook Shopping Center, Westport Plaza, Dorsey Plaza, Tymberwood Shopping Center, Woodlawn Center, and Shops of Forest Springs.
Sun Tan City has over 290 tanning salons in 21 states, and is the second-largest chain of indoor tanning salons. It was founded in 1999 by brothers David and Rick Kueber.


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Redfall is being review bombed because of bugs and performance issues
As if a critical drubbing wasn’t bad enough Xbox console exclusive Redfall is also being criticised by fans – especially in terms of the PC version.
There are now two things which are almost guaranteed for the launch of every major new video game: that physical copies will have leaked out at least a week early and that if there’s a PC version it will be a buggy mess that barely works at launch.
Redfall at least didn’t suffer from the first problem, since Xbox gamers buy far fewer physical copies than PlayStation owners, but it definitely suffers from some sadly familiar performance issues and bugs.
The situation seems to be very similar to Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, which had some problems on consoles but is much worse on PC, to the point where it’s almost unplayable.
Perhaps because it only just came out, Metacritic is not currently displaying user reviews for the game, which is likely also a sign of its new policy to try and prevent trolls abusing the feature – even if in this case some amount of anger may be justified.
Steam has no such restrictions though and the game is currently rated as ‘Mostly Negative’ in terms of its reviews.
‘Ignoring the performance issues, this game is bad. The AI is pathetic, even on the highest difficulty. The controls are clunky. The graphics are average. The world is empty. I don’t understand why these companies think they can start charging $70 for unfinished garbage. I couldn’t even stomach an hour of this game,’ says reviewer Sean.
‘Another strong contender for worst PC port of the year. How did Arkane regress from Dishonored to this?’, asks the appropriately named aByZMal.
Karan76k cuts to the heart of the issue, with what they describe as a ‘next gen gaming starter pack’:
- Same or even worse graphics fidelity than old gen games!
- Abysmal optimisation that requires RTX 4090 minimum and still can’t hit 60fps!
- A $70-$90 price tag for a mid and unfinished games!
- Apology statement after releasing games in a broken state!
- After months of patching, nothing improves!
The latter two things haven’t happened yet but it’s probably only a matter of time, in what has become a sadly predictable state of affairs.
What makes it all worse is that it’s not just one publisher, or even just a small group, but virtually all of them, with everyone from Sony to EA having put out a broken PC game at launch this year and only gradually fixing it over time.
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Top Crops Retain Standings In Monterey County ProductionJuly 17, 2020
Monterey County’s top four most valuable crops remained unchanged from 2018 to 2019, led by leaf lettuce, which saw an increase of almost 15%, boosted by better pricing for romaine.
Overall, the county’s ag production value increased 3.5% in 2019, to almost $4.41 billion, according to the Monterey County 2019 Crop Report, issued by the county’s agricultural commission.
Of the top 10 crops, ranked by production value, seven categories are vegetables, with the exception being strawberries, in the No. 2 slot again, and wine grapes and nursery products. All 10 crops are the same crops from the 2018 list.
Strawberries saw an increase of about 5%, with a bump of more than $34 million, to $732.76 million, mostly due to improved fresh strawberry prices, according to the report.
Head lettuce, Monterey County’s third-most valuable crop, increased almost 12% to $514.09 million. Increased production and higher average prices for carton-packed lettuce are the main reasons for the increase, according to the report.
Overall, vegetable crops saw an increased production value in 2019 of about $228 million, at just under $3.1 billion. The fruits and nuts category dropped about $15.7 million in value to $1.03 billion, according to the report, but that includes a 25% drop in wine grape crop value. Dropping wine grapes from the category gives fruit and nuts a $46 million (5.7%) boost from 2018 to 2019.
Monterey County’s top crop values, followed by 2019 and 2018 rankings, are:
Leaf lettuce: $840.56 million, 1/1;
Strawberries: $732.76 million, 2/2;
Head Lettuce: $514.09 million, 3/3;
Broccoli: $457.39 million, 4/4;
Cauliflower $212.38 million, 5/6;
Misc. vegetables: $196.84 million, 6/7;
Celery $186.39 million, 7/9
Wine Grapes: $186.1 million; 8/5
Nursery: $143.98 million, 9/8; and
Spinach: $127.12 million, 10/10.
By The Packer


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Samsung Galaxy S8 which is expected to go live by march 29th, is now rumored to pack 1000fps camera. If it is true than the previous report of its usage of Sony IMX400 Sensor is true, which claims that Samsung Galaxy S8 is going to use the Sony’s newly built 3 layered camera sensor.
Samsung is already using Snapdragon 835 on its device if rumors are to be true, then camera is also going to be a big hit for the device.
What’s new in Sony IMX400? Sony has developed its first 3 layered CMOS sensor. Until now, camera sensors used 2 layers – one for sensor itself and other one for the chip which process the image. This time Sony has added the third layer that for DRAM. Well what’s the use? The added memory allows Sony’s new sensor to process a still image of 19.3 MP in only 1/120 of a second.
It is the new 3 Layer sensor which holds DRAM on the camera chip itself. It allows you to shoot slow mo videos at 1000 frames per second. It made camera 4x faster than the previous model of the Sony CMOS sensor.
Additionally, Xiaomi Mi 6 also going to hold the same sensor on its board. Talking about Galaxy S8, then it has got leaked in many photos in different colors. Even few cases have been leaked and it has even appeared before the certification agencies.
For any other information about the device you can head over to the Galaxy S8 portal.


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Surrounding himself with passion for the LGBT community, creative writing and cameras – Benjamin Butterworth overcame childhood struggles to become a successful journalist. “It was hard at the time but I never, ever thought it was my fault. It was their fault.”
24 hour London Overground services begin running Fridays and Saturdays starting 15th December 2017. An all-night service will operate between New Cross Gate and Dalston Junction. A map of the new service was released earlier in the week, showing passengers where they can expect to travel for the nights out in the South East (Bermondsey) […]
Since the rise of portable devices with Apple and other technology companies like Samsung and Google, our new reading habits have become more and more focused on reading on phones, tablets and other tech. This drives a need for not only compatibility in the sites that our content is displayed on but also for the […]
Hundreds of landlords have been fined in a Government crackdown on illegal immigration, official figures show. Seventy-five civil penalties totalling over £40,000 were issued under the ‘Right to Rent’ scheme from July to September 2017.
Theresa May has been dealt a fresh blow as the board of the Government’s Social Mobility Commission quit in protest. Four members of the board of the Social Mobility Commission (SMC) have quit in protest at the lack of progress being made towards a “fairer Britain“. Its chairman, former Labour minister Alan Milburn, said he […]
Technology has shaped journalism and our consumption of it massively over the past decade; with the rise of social media. the increase in available technology and the process of news derision. Technology has vastly improved in the last 10 years – the iPhone was about to be released – a touch screen sleek phone with […]


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Latest research has shown that consumers are also becoming increasingly adventurous choosing more specialist and deli inspired snacks
EASTERN TREATS FOR TASTY SNACKS ON THE GO
With increasingly busy lives and the economic crisis preventing regular restaurant visits, recent reports have shown an increase in consumers turning to snacks.
Whether we are on the go or in need of a tasty snack at home, the UK market has grown. Latest research has shown that consumers are also becoming increasingly adventurous choosing more specialist and deli inspired snacks.
The UK’s leading Oriental grocer, Wing Yip has seen the popularity of snacks increase and due to demand now dedicates an aisle in its stores to a vast array of sweet and savory snacks. From wasabi peas to chilli rice crackers there are plenty of tasty options to liven up your snack nibbles.
Take some inspiration from the Oriental selection available and give the kids some exciting alternatives to crisps and chocolate in their school lunch boxes. Why not try sesame snaps or even mild Thai rice crackers?
For the grown-ups, for an alternative to soups, salads and sandwiches choose filling and tasty samosas, spring rolls or even seawood crackers for an alternative to crisps.
Mr Wing Yip, founder and chairman of the Oriental grocery empire, said: “We stock a huge selection of snacks and sampling some of our sweet or savory treats is the perfect way to try a taste of the Orient and brighten up lunchtimes.”
Wing Yip is the UK’s leading Chinese grocer, with stores in Birmingham, Manchester, Cricklewood and Croydon.
Each store is situated close to the city centre with easy access to the motorway and plenty of free car parking for customers.
A visit to one of our stores is like taking a trip around the Orient with over 3,000 products from the Far East.
For information on Chinese recipes or for further quotes or information please contact Anna Jones on 0121 616 5800 or email email@example.com
This press release was distributed by ResponseSource Press Release Wire on behalf of Morris & Company in the following categories: Leisure & Hobbies, Food & Drink, for more information visit https://pressreleasewire.responsesource.com/about.


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A large part of the world’s supply of diamonds comes from Russia. The U.S. and Europe may try to cut off the revenue the country is raising from the gems given the war in Ukraine.
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Russia’s one of the world’s biggest diamond suppliers, and the sale of the product is an important source of revenue for the country. So far, the gems have not been subjected to the same kind of sanctions that the country’s oil and banking industries have faced. But NPR’s Jackie Northam reports there are efforts underway to change that.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: The port city of Antwerp, Belgium, has been the capital of the diamond trade for hundreds of years, with traders and jewelers concentrated within a picture-book area of the city less than a square mile in size. Now the war in Ukraine has arrived at Antwerp’s door. The European Union has tried several times to sanction Russian diamonds, but Belgium prevented it.
HANS MERKET: There’s always been a pushback. Belgium is the only player in the diamonds business in the EU. It’s only – also the only country who would have – who would feel the impact of any sanctions.
For the rest of this article: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/09/1168839350/the-eu-is-trying-to-sanction-diamonds-from-russia


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Calling all chocolate lovers - Godiva, the luxury Belgian chocolatier and Breast Cancer Now partner, has launched a UK-wide competition to unearth the nation’s best chocolate dessert and we want to give our supporters the chance to be involved.
Tying in with Breast Cancer Now, all competition recipes will have to include chocolate, meringue… and a touch of pink.
Entrants are invited to apply online by 30 September, and four lucky finalists will present their mouth-watering recipes at a prestige kitchen-design showroom during National Chocolate Week.
The Godiva Chocolate Challenge final will take place on the evening of Tuesday 13 October at the Alno Showroom in central London.
The finalists will cook for a top judging panel on the night of writer and MasterChef food critic, William Sitwell; leading British restaurateur, Mark Hix and Godvia's head choclatier, Jean Apostolou.
If that wasn’t enough, the winning dessert will be served in Mark Hix’s Soho restaurant and all four finalists will enjoy a 5-star weekend trip to Brussels, while the overall winner will also visit Godiva’s Atelier of Chocolate Innovation.
This mouth-watering event coincides with the launch of Mousse Meringue, Godiva’s latest collection.
Throughout October, boxes of Mousse Meringues will also carry a 10% donation to Breast Cancer Now, allowing customers to help fund life-saving research whilst indulging in a chocolatey treat.
So if you consider yourself a budding chocolatier and want to be in with a chance of winning this scrumptious prize then go online to enter now and don’t forget to purchase a box of Mousse Meringue while you are there. Chocs away!


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Snapple prioritizes taste in HFCS-free tea
Similar moves for newly released soft drinks include ‘retro versions’ of Pepsi and Mountain Dew, which feature 1970s-style packaging and 1970s-style formulation, sweetened with sugar instead of HFCS. Meanwhile, PepsiCo has also released an all-natural Pepsi version sweetened with sugar, marketed as Pepsi Natural in the US and Pepsi Raw in the UK.
The natural category was the most frequently used label claim in 2008, according to Mintel, appearing on nearly one in four food and drink launches, a nine percent increase from 2007.
Despite this notable trend towards natural ingredients – and much controversy surrounding HFCS – vice president of marketing for Snapple Bryan Mazur denied that either of these were driving factors in the new drink’s release.
He told FoodNavigator-USA.com: “We see sugar as being about the same [as HFCS], but it heightens the natural flavor and reduces calories up to 20 percent…Snapple ingredients evolve and get better. Sugar is one small part of the formula but it really comes down to delivering great taste.”
Notably, the company still produces other drinks that contain HFCS.
Mazur said that the reformulation of Snapple’s iced teas was the company’s “biggest changeover in 37 years.”
He added that the new sugar-sweetened version will be available in the US, Canada and Mexico, but would not say one way or the other if the new product would become permanently available, saying that the company’s formulations would continue to evolve.
Campaigners against HFCS point to epidemiological studies that have linked the consumption of sweetened beverages and obesity, as well as some science that claims that the body processes the syrup differently than other sugars due to the fructose content, leading to greater fat storage.
However, industry associations like the Corn Refiners Association have repeatedly claimed there is no scientific evidence to suggest that HFCS is uniquely responsible for people becoming obese.


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Hormel Foods (HRL) has a market cap of $18.9 billion. It rose 1.4% to close at $35.29 per share on January 3, 2017. The stock’s weekly, monthly, and YTD (year-to-date) price movements were -0.06%, 6.0%, and 1.4%, respectively, on the same day.
HRL is trading 2.1% above its 20-day moving average, 1.1% below its 50-day moving average, and 4.6% below its 200-day moving average.
Related ETF and peers
Latest news on HRL
In a press release on January 3, 2017, Hormel Foods reported, “Hormel Foods Corporation (HRL) today announced it has completed the sale of Clougherty Packing, LLC, owner of the Farmer John and Saag’s brands, along with PFFJ, LLC farm operations in California, Arizona, and Wyoming to Smithfield Foods, Inc.”
The report added, “The purchase price was $145 million in cash, adjusted for working capital.”
Hormel Foods’s performance in fiscal 4Q16
Hormel Foods (HRL) reported fiscal 4Q16 net sales of $2.6 billion, a rise of 9.5% compared to $2.4 billion in fiscal 4Q15. The company’s gross profit margin and operating margin expanded 220 basis points and 170 basis points, respectively, in fiscal 4Q16 compared to fiscal 4Q15.
HRL’s net income and EPS (earnings per share) rose to $243.9 million and $0.45, respectively, in fiscal 4Q16 compared to $187.2 million and $0.35, respectively, in fiscal 4Q15.
Fiscal 2016 results
In fiscal 2016, Hormel Foods (HRL) reported net sales of $9.5 billion, a rise of 2.8% YoY (year-over-year). The company’s gross profit margin and operating margin expanded 320 basis points and 240 basis points, respectively, in fiscal 2016.
The company’s net income and EPS rose to $890.1 million and $1.64, respectively, in fiscal 2016 compared to $686.1 million and $1.27, respectively, in fiscal 2015.
Hormel’s cash and cash equivalents rose 19.6%, and its inventories fell 0.77% in fiscal 2016. Its current ratio rose to 1.9x, and its debt-to-equity ratio fell to 0.43x in fiscal 2016 compared to 1.7x and 0.53x, respectively, in fiscal 2015.
Hormel Foods expects EPS of $1.71–$1.77 or $1.68–$1.74, excluding ~$0.03 from its Farmer John divestiture in fiscal 2017.


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These are among the findings of Travelport’s 2019 Global Digital Traveler Research, which surveyed 23,000 people from 20 countries:
Value is more important than cost but can be hard to find
- When booking a flight, value is a key priority for over four out of five travelers (81% in Kenya and 86% globally) with customer service being the top priority for 84% of Kenyans.
- To find offers of value, travelers ‘nearly always’ use a combination of travel review sites like TripAdvisor (49% in Kenya and 42% globally), price comparison sites like Kayak.com (46% in Kenya and 38% globally) recommendation sites like Kiwi.com (46% in Kenya and 36% globally), and half have conversations with travel consultants (47% in Kenya and 31% globally).
- But when shopping online, nearly three out of five travelers have mounting frustrations when it comes to knowing which companies they can trust (56%). They are also frustrated by not being able to access their bookings across all their devices (61%).
Travelers want more control and transparency when it comes to personalization
- Across all age categories, when booking a flight, travelers typically want to personalize their own experience (35% in Kenya and 42% globally) through add-ons like extra legroom, additional baggage allowance, and meal upgrades. Almost as many Kenyans (31%, compared to 17% globally), however, are willing to give airlines more access to their personal information if it meant they would be able to receive personalized offers – in fact, Kenyans were the most likely to say so amongst all countries surveyed.
- When attempting to personalize their experience, however, a growing number of travelers are getting frustrated by not being able to understand what is included as standard (50% in Kenya) and not knowing what add-ons are available to them (57%).
- Half (51%, significantly above the global average of 35%) of Kenyan travelers are also increasingly frustrated by companies they regularly use not remembering their preferences.
A wide range of technologies are now influencing decision making
- Three quarters (76%) of Kenyan travelers today consider it important whether an airline offers a good digital experience when booking a flight, with a similar number (74%) also considering this when choosing accommodation.
- When researching a trip, 38% of Kenyan travelers ‘nearly always’ review videos and photos posted by travel brands on social media. Facebook is considered the most influential social media platform by Kenyans (50%), however, Instagram is on the rise with 28% saying it influences their travel decisions.
- In addition, nearly three-quarters of Kenyan travelers (74%) now believe augmented or virtual reality experiences would help them better plan their trips – significantly above the global average of 48%.
Demand continues to rise for technologies that make travel easier to manage
- Three in five (61%) of Kenyan travelers get frustrated when they are unable to access their booking information round-the-clock on mobile devices, such as smartphones and smartwatches. This is considerably higher than the global average (45%).
- Over three quarters (77%) of Kenyan travelers highlight free WiFi as a must when deciding on accommodation, while 68% (against a global average of 56%) thought to have a smartphone-based concierge feature was important.
- Technology, however, is not always the answer. Over two fifths (43% and 42% globally) of Kenyan travelers, for example, find not being able to speak to a human frustrating.
Commenting on the findings of the research, Nita Nagi, Director, Kenya at Travelport said: “Kenyans want an experience from travel providers and travel agents that is as simple and engaging and founded on excellent customer service. Our global research shows that for Kenyans, technology is key to this -from serving relevant and personalized offers to providing attractive propositions from trusted sources. At Travelport, we will continue to accelerate developments in all these areas, and more, to help the industry keep pace with the rapidly evolving needs of the modern traveler.”


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In Halo Infinite’s campaign, the Master Chief returns when humanity’s fate hangs in the balance to confront the most ruthless foe he’s ever faced – the Banished. The legendary Halo series returns with the most expansive Master Chief story yet. Enjoy a first-look at Halo Infinite campaign gameplay, captured real-time and representative of the experience on Xbox Series X running at 60FPS and up to 4K resolution.
The recent news came from the Halo community and it made the fan of its online franchise extremely sad. As we know the Halo online services, will be discontinuing from December 2023. But recently rumours have been floating on the internet that the last-gen version of Halo Infinite.
Some social media outlets started spreading the rumour that suggested that the upcoming Halo Infinite would not be exclusive to Microsoft’s next-gen consoles, the Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Some fans of the game may be happy with this platform change due to concerns over the last-gen version of Infinite holding back the next-gen versions.
Back in August of this year, Junyszek already denied that the Xbox One version of Halo Infinite has been dropped in favor of the Xbox Series X|S and PC versions. Recently, all theories have been debunked by him once and for all. بطاقات ون كارد
“Hey Eric – we’re seeing lots of fake “leaks” out there, so please don’t believe everything you read. There are no plans to change our 2023 release or the devices and platforms we’ll be supporting. فريق روما We’re building Halo Infinite to be the best it can be on each device/platform. كازينو 888 ”
Halo Infinite is slated for a release next year on the Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.


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A Liechtenstein-based family bank has arguably started a revolution when it was announced earlier this week that they would be permitting customers to invest directly in cryptocurrencies.
Making the declaration not long ago, Bank Frick said that the main clump of digital forms of money to be accessible for exchanging will include bitcoin, bitcoin money, litecoin, Ripple, and ethereum. The bank said it is focusing on institutional and high-esteem private customers, who can purchase cryptos directly with euros, U.S. dollars, and Swiss francs.
As per the declaration, The crypto resources under the bank’s care will be put away in icy wallets – a safety effort that keeps private keys to the digital forms of money disconnected and far from potential programmers. Exchanging exercises through the bank’s stage will likewise be done in consistency with know-your-client methods required under Liechtenstein and European (EU/EEA) law.
The declaration also further revealed “Customers can just put resources into digital currencies once they have been completely identified and confirmed. The confirmation and identification process likewise include checking the inception of the cash used to put resources into them,”
“Our administrations are in demand from organizations over the entire of Europe,” said Hubert Büchel, boss customer officer at the bank. “We plan to put crypto-counts on, in any event, an indistinguishable level of value from customary managing an account.”
The move denotes the most recent exertion among money related establishments in the district to move to help the development of digital currency and blockchain development.
Reports have likewise emerged revealing that Falcon Group, a Swiss private bank, has additionally begun offering a bitcoin acquiring administration through customers’ customary records in the organization with the bitcoin financier firm Bitcoin Suisse AG.


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A site that previously welcomed taco lovers will soon be a hot spot for burger buffs in Lehigh County.
Colliers International, a global real estate services and investment management company, on Monday announced that fast-food chain Burger King has concluded a ground lease at 1116 Chestnut St. in Emmaus, the site of the former Fiesta Ole Mexican restaurant.
Construction of the new Burger King eatery is underway with plans to open this summer, Colliers said. The new restaurant will feature a drive-thru window.
Burger King, founded in 1954, is the second largest fast-food hamburger chain in the world. Known for its signature Whopper hamburgers, including the Impossible Whopper that it debuted in 2019, Burger King operates approximately 14,000 locations in 100 countries and territories, including about two dozen locations throughout the Lehigh Valley.
The forthcoming Emmaus restaurant will be located at the busy intersection of Cedar Crest Boulevard and Chestnut Street, across the street from McDonald’s and close to convenience store chains 7-Eleven and Wawa.
The retail corridor also features other brands such as Anytime Fitness, Weis, BB&T, Fulton Bank and Santander.
A former Pizza Hut eatery a block away is set to become a new fast-casual restaurant, Melly Mel’s Chicken, in the fall. The restaurant will be operated by husband and wife Juan and Melanie Martinez, who also operate five Don Juan Mex Grill eateries throughout the Lehigh Valley.
Derek Zerfass, a senior vice president of the Colliers Retail division facilitated the lease of 1116 Chestnut St. on behalf of the owner. Adam Hagerman of Bennett Williams represented the tenant in the transaction.
Fiesta Ole closed in February 2020, a month prior to husband and wife owners Humbero and Elia Chavolla opening a new Mexican restaurant, Casa Catrina, at 1905 Brookside Road in Lower Macungie Township.


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More Law Firms Are Accepting Bitcoin Payments
More large law firms are accepting bitcoin payments for their legal services, signaling the digital currency’s firmer foothold in corporate America.
Representatives from firms such as Steptoe & Johnson LLP, Frost Brown Todd LLC, and McLaughlin & Stern LLP told Bloomberg BNA that they started the new payment option to meet the demand of clients that deal with cryptocurrency assets. Accepting bitcoin may also help the firms attract new clients, they said.
It is “not surprising that law firms that counsel companies that handle cryptocurrency or are looking for advice on cryptocurrency-related issues would be accepting cryptocurrency themselves,” Alan Cohn, co-chair of Steptoe’s Blockchain and Digital Currency practice, told Bloomberg BNA.
Frost Brown Todd, a law firm with more than 500 lawyers spread across eight states, announced its acceptance of bitcoin payments Aug. 28.
Clients who work with cryptocurrency generally “have more cryptocurrency-based assets than they do fiat currency,” and clients had asked about paying in bitcoin to avoid converting the currency to cash, said John Wagster, a Nashville, Tenn.-based member of FBT who specializes in blockchain and digital currency, and electronic payments.
Between one and two dozen FBT clients have expressed interest in making bitcoin payments since the firm’s announcement, Wagster said. “We expect that to increase dramatically.”
View the original article in its entirety on Bloomberg BNA: More Law Firms Are Accepting Bitcoin Payments


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Southern California’s premier travel expo, the Los Angeles Times Travel Show, has just released the lineup for their upcoming show on February 22nd – 24th. The travel show’s 15th annual all-star roster includes some familiar faces, including our very own Johnny Jet! Tickets are available now at http://events.latimes.com/travelshow/.
Rick Steves, Phil Keoghan, Andrew McCarthy, Arthur Frommer and Johnny Jet to Headline 2013 Los Angeles Times Travel Show
By Carly Blatt: Make your daydreams a reality by exploring a plethora of travel options at the New York Times Travel Show or the Los Angeles Times Travel & Adventure Show this month. Whether you’ve been imagining yourself watching the World Cup in South Africa, exploring the cultural delights of Europe, getting pampered in the […]


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Blogging can be a valuable tool to grow your business, but only if you do it right. No matter if the blog you are running is a secondary activity, or if your blog IS your business, the main goal remains the same: to attract a big audience.
Full Article! Podaj dalej: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn więcej
Wordfence is now a CVE Numbering Authority, or a CNA. As a CNA, Wordfence can now assign CVE IDs for new vulnerabilities in WordPress Core, WordPress Plugins and WordPress Themes. An outage at Fastly takes down major websites including Reddit, Twitch, Amazon, and many others. Microsoft patches numerous Windows 0-day vulnerabilities, and Google patches a…
We recently interviewed four WPMU DEV members, who provide professional WordPress security services, about keeping WordPress secure. Here’s what they said… Full Article! Podaj dalej: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn więcej
As a follow up to a previous post, in which we took a look at the differences between Squarespace and WordPress — and in parallel to another of our previous posts, in which we had a look at 50 Notable Examples of Extremely Famous Brands Using WordPress — we figured it might be fun to…
The holidays bring a lot of growth potential for online stores and this year, with COVID-19 decreasing in-person sales, we can expect a record-shattering season. But in order to make the most of the holidays, it’s important that your ordering process is streamlined and efficient. Full Article! Podaj dalej: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn więcej
Atarim is launching its 2nd annual Web Agency Summit in a couple of weeks. The free event will run from March 23 – 26. The goal of the event is to help agencies and freelancers in the WordPress space grow sustainable businesses. Full article! Podaj dalej: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn więcej


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Procrastinators Jam Good To Go Offices
GIG HARBOR Good To Go customer service centers are much more crowded than the toll bridge they support.
Although cars are racing across the Narrows in its first days open, people should be prepared to wait in line for an hour to pick up electronic window stickers that let them skip the toll booths while giving a discount. The booth fare is $3; it's $1.75 with a transponder.
Thousands of people waited until last weekend to install their transponders for Monday's bridge opening and, judging from the lines at the customer service centers this week, many more procrastinated in picking them up at all.
Lines are getting shorter, said transportation department spokeswoman Janet Matkin, but a magazine or book might be in order. Better yet, fill out the application while waiting in line, or before arriving, said Matkin. Make sure to have the make, model, year and license plate number of all the vehicles that will be on the account, and the credit card information.
There's also the option of applying online and waiting a week or 10 days until the transponder arrives by mail.
Payment can be made by credit card or a debit card at the booths, said Matkin, or with cash. Exact change is not necessary.
On Monday, opening day, 41,241 drivers paid to cross the bridge. More than 73 percent used transponders. Fewer than 5 percent didn't pay at all.
More than 60,000 customers have established Good To Go accounts and more than 130,000 transponders have been distributed.
The customer service centers are at 3212 50th St. Court, Suite 200, in Gig Harbor and at 2115 S. 56th St., Suite 306, in Tacoma. Or apply online at www.wsdot.wa.gov/goodtogo or by calling toll-free (866) 936-8246.


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With more people listening to the radio at home during the day, AM talk radio listenership spiked more in 2020 than it had during most presidential elections. And digital audio listenership saw an increase of 5.6%, “the fastest growth rate since the double-digit increase in 2015, when subscription digital audio services were breaking into mainstream,” said PQ Media CEO Patrick Quinn.
PQ Media’s Global Consumer Media Usage Forecast 2020-2024 found that, while advertising and marketing spending decreased 6.8% in 2020, total consumer time spent with media grew 21.8%.
“The prime beneficiaries of this paradoxical growth surge in media usage were consumer-supported media, particularly digital video, audio, games, social media and chat services,” Quinn said in a press release. “There’s no doubt that streaming media as a group were the hands-down winners in an otherwise loser of a year for many media stakeholders, particularly those dependent on advertising-driven media.”


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Read. Learn. Share
TECH TALK SHOW NOTES
February 6, 2021
General John Murray, head of Army Futures Command, told a webinar audience at the Center for Strategic & International Studies that humans may not be able to fight swarms of enemy drones and that the rules governing human control over artificial intelligence might need to be relaxed.
“When you are defending against a drone swarm, a human may be required to make that first decision, but I am just not sure any human can keep up,” said Murray. “How much human involvement do you actually need when you are [making] nonlethal decisions from a human standpoint?”
This indicates a new interpretation of the Pentagon’s rules on the use of autonomous weapons. These require meaningful human control over any lethal system, though that may be in a supervisory role rather than direct control – termed ‘human-on-the-loop’ rather than ‘human-in-the-loop.’
If you want to improve your online privacy, you’re supposed to “use Signal, use Tor.” The clichéd phrase, now five or so years old, was meant to be a sardonic joke underscoring the need for more nuanced online security and privacy advice. But even as the humor became lost on security practitioners (not to mention the general public), the point remains an important one: There’s a lot more to managing your online data privacy than just using an end-to-end encrypted messaging platform (Signal) and a network based on onion routing (Tor).
While using Signal and Tor do provide varying degrees of security, anonymity, and privacy depending on how they’re used, there is much more to improving online privacy. In the absence of strong consumer privacy regulations and enforcement, software tools to enhance user privacy have thrived. There are numerous browser add-ons to reduce the personal information that data brokers collect, apps to encrypt and reroute Web traffic, and websites to help figure out who’s tracking you.
Your Personal Privacy Risk Assessment
However, it’s no small feat and not very effective to start using a bunch of apps simply because they’re supposed to be good at protecting privacy, says Lorrie Cranor, professor, and director of the CyLab Security and Privacy Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. There are no cookie-cutter models, she says.
Both the number of data breaches and the number of individuals affected by data breaches plummeted in 2020, as attackers moved away from collecting mass amounts of information and instead targeted user credentials as a way to infiltrate corporate networks to install ransomware.
That’s according to a new report, out Jan. 28 from the Identity Theft Resource Center, which estimates that more than 300 million individuals were affected by data breaches in 2020, a large number but a drop of 66% over the previous year. In addition, the number of reported data breaches fell to 1,108, a decline of 19% over 2019.
Because more than half of workers shifted to remote work during the year, many expected data breaches to increase, but instead, cybercriminals became more focused, says James Lee, chief operating officer of the ITRC.
The Oversight Board, an independent organization, set up to review Facebook’s content moderation decisions, handed down its first batch of rulings on Thursday. The rulings didn’t go well for Facebook’s moderators. Out of five substantive rulings, the board overturned four and upheld one.
Most technology platforms have unfettered discretion to remove content. By contrast, Facebook decided in 2019 to create an independent organization, the Oversight Board, to review Facebook decisions, much as the US Supreme Court reviews decisions by lower courts. The board has an independent funding stream, and its members can’t be fired by Facebook. Facebook has promised to follow the board’s decisions unless doing so would be against the law.
In response to Comcast imposing a data cap on Massachusetts residents, state lawmakers have proposed a ban on data caps, new fees, and price increases on home-Internet services for the duration of the pandemic.
The legislation was filed on Tuesday this week by Democratic state representatives Andy Vargas and Dave Rogers. Vargas called the bill a “response to Comcast Internet data cap plans,” while Rogers said the goal is “to push back at Comcast and any other service providers who try to raise prices or fees during a pandemic.” Verizon FiOS and RCN also provide Internet service in Massachusetts but do not impose data caps.
Vargas and Rogers previously led a group of 71 Massachusetts lawmakers who urged Comcast to halt enforcement of its 1.2TB monthly data cap, arguing that the cap hurts low-income people and is unnecessary because of Comcast’s robust network capacity. While Comcast already enforced the data cap in 27 states for several years, the cable company brought the cap to the rest of its territory—an additional 12 states including Massachusetts and the District of Columbia—this month. Comcast is easing-in enforcement so that the first overage charges for newly capped customers will be assessed for data usage in the April 2021 billing period. (Update: The grace period has reportedly been extended until August.)
Today, Apple announced plans to finally roll out its previously delayed change in policy on apps’ use of IDFA (ID for Advertisers) to track users for targeted advertising. The feature will be in the next beta release of iOS 14 (the company just rolled out the public release of iOS 14.4 this week) and will reach all iOS devices supported by iOS 14 “in early spring.”
Apple made the announcement with a white paper and Q&A targeted at its users. To illustrate the benefits Apple claims the change will offer to users, the document describes in detail a typical scenario where a father and daughter would have data about them tracked and updated while doing normal, everyday things in the current digital ecosystem.
Apple’s document goes on to explain Apple’s stated philosophy on user data protection and privacy, and it announces the release window for this upcoming change.
The document explains the change this way:
App Tracking Transparency will require apps to get the user’s permission before tracking their data across apps or websites owned by other companies. Under settings, users will be able to see which apps have requested permission to track so they can make changes as they see fit.
Apple also provided an FAQ about the feature. Among other things, it clarifies that app developers will not be able to require users to allow tracking in order for those users to gain access to the “full capabilities” of the app.
Apple first announced these plans at its developer conference last June, and at that time, it intended to launch the feature alongside iOS 14 and the iPhone 12. But in September, Apple delayed implementation and enforcement of this new tracking policy until 2021 in order to give businesses and apps dependent on advertising more time to manage the transition.
When security firm Malwarebytes announced last week that it had been targeted by the same attacker that compromised SolarWinds’ Orion software, it noted that the attack did not use SolarWinds itself. According to Malwarebytes, the attacker had used “another intrusion vector” to gain access to a limited subset of company emails.
Brandon Wales, acting director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), said nearly a third of the organizations attacked had no direct connection to SolarWinds.
Many of the attacks gained initial footholds by password spraying to compromise individual email accounts at targeted organizations. Once the attackers had that initial foothold, they used a variety of complex privilege escalation and authentication attacks to exploit flaws in Microsoft’s cloud services. Another of the Advanced Persistent Threat (APT)’s targets, security firm CrowdStrike, said the attacker tried unsuccessfully to read its email by leveraging a compromised account of a Microsoft reseller the firm had worked with.
Ransomware payments using cryptocurrency surged 311% in 2020, nearing a total volume of $350 million, as cybercriminals gravitated to crypto-locking as the easiest way to turn compromised systems into cash, blockchain analysis company Chainalysis stated in an analysis this week.
While ransomware payments through cryptocurrencies are skyrocketing, cybercrime overall is accounting for less volume of digital currency transactions, the company stated. Cybercrime transactions using cryptocoins dropped by more than half to $10 billion, but because overall cryptocurrency transaction volume increased, the share of cybercrime dropped even more precipitously to account for only 0.34% of all cryptocurrency transactions in 2020, down from more than 2% in 2019.
The data demonstrates that, while ransomware has become a greater problem, cryptocurrency continues to expand its markets, says Kim Grauer, head of research at Chainalysis.
“Cryptocurrency has a reputation as being driven by cybercrime, speculation and tax-avoidance strategies,” she says. “But it’s increasingly being used as a store of value both in developed markets where asset managers are entering the space and in emerging markets.”


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What if you owned that stock? Now the very people who are making decisions, have the best information about the company, and can tell what might make the company boom or bust are selling it—HARD.
And we’re not talking chump change. We’re talking millions of dollars. What does that say about the state of that company?
That exact situation is happening right now with this services sector company:
CarMax Inc. (KMX) is US retailer of used vehicles with some serious insider transactions. In the past week or so, 9 company officers and directors have sold 840,719 shares in the company.
And with the price at approximately $52 per share, that’s an estimated value of $42.4 million.
That’s an incredible amount of selling going on. The great thing is that I caught it early, and that you now know about it early. Now we have a chance to dig deeper into KMX and figure out how to deal with it.
Although the annual data shows that KMX has had an increasing gross profit each year since 2012, the quarterly data doesn’t paint the same picture. In fact, it’s the opposite. Until the most recent one, each quarter has seen a steady decrease in gross profit since May of 2013.
Now let’s look at the daily chart for KMX from Stockcharts.com.
That could be the reason for so much heavy selling. Do you see the big jump the price of KMX made in June? It went from about $45 to $53. Then a few weeks later, insiders are dumping the stock.
I believe that insiders may have waited for the jump, expect the price to soon fall, and are now getting out while they can before the price falls again. In any case, the huge amount of insider selling gives us a great reason to keep an eye on KMX.
Now we just have to look at how KMX moves in the next few weeks. Keep in mind that the key to profiting from any stock is to understand WHEN to buy or sell, which is what you can learn to do in our Stock Code Breaker course.


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LED Korea 2011: A Success with New Technology, Latest Products, and Industry Collaboration Featured
SEOUL, Korea — January 31, 2011 — Amidst the backdrop of a growing global LED industry estimated at $100 billion and a local market projected to grow to 15 trillion Won by 2015, LED Korea 2011, held last week in Seoul, opened to increased attention and attendance. The event, organized by SEMI Korea and co-located with SEMICON Korea for the fifth time, is the largest exhibition in Korea focused on LED manufacturing and serving the solid state lighting (SSL) supply chain.
LED Korea 2011 featured 60 exhibiting companies, displaying the newest technology and latest products that will lead the next generation of the LED market. International companies, including Aixtron, Veeco, and Kulicke & Soffa, took part in the event. Major local firms in the exhibitor list included TSE, Mirtec, Top Engineering, and QMC. Combined attendance with SEMICON Korea is estimated to have exceeded 25,000.
The LED Workshop on January 27 presented the current status of the lighting and display market— covering materials to end-user applications including consumer electronics, lighting, medical equipment, automotive and other commercial products. The region’s leaders in LED shared strategies for the industry’s further development while also covering hot topics such as LED application products standardization, technical issues and development of LED lighting, and LED-IT convergence technology in Korea.
Next year’s LED Korea will feature a special session on environmental and safety related matters with the help of Taiwan’s LED Industry Association. LED Korea 2011 will offer an exclusive opportunity for exhibitors and participants to demonstrate their new products and technologies, expand their business abroad through supply chains, and ultimately gain competitive edge and stronger foothold both in and out of the country.
LED Korea is one of the many successful LED events that SEMI holds around the globe at all its major exhibitions. Like other SEMI events, LED Korea features an extensive technical conference and many exhibitors highlighting the unique materials, process technologies, and solutions needed to design and manufacture advanced LEDs and lighting systems. SEMI is also involved in LED Standards and produces an Opto/LED Fab Watch (quarterly database).
For more information on LED Korea, visit the LED Korea website (Korean: www.led-korea.org/ko/index.htm; English: www.led-korea.org/en/index.htm). For more information about other SEMI involvement in LED manufacturing, visit: www.semi.org/en/IndustrySegments/LED
SEMI is the global industry association serving the manufacturing supply chains for the microelectronic, display and photovoltaic industries. SEMI member companies are the engine of the future, enabling smarter, faster and more economical products that improve our lives. Since 1970, SEMI has been committed to helping members grow more profitably, create new markets and meet common industry challenges. SEMI maintains offices in Beijing, Bengaluru, Berlin, Brussels, Grenoble, Hsinchu, Moscow, San Jose, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.semi.org.
Deborah Geiger/SEMI HQ
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Britain’s furniture manufacturers represent an increasing share of overall UK manufacturing output, a new report has shown.
While some of the growth of the furniture sector has been fed by rising imports, UK furniture makers have also benefited, with 2016 being the latest in five successive years of incremental growth, a report by the Furniture Industry Research Association has shown.
The report’s analyses are based on latest available data sourced from Government bodies including the Office for National Statistics (ONS), HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), Communities and Local Government, and the Bank of England.
One of the main headlines within the report is consumer demand for furniture and furnishings continuing to grow.
Turning to consumer expenditure on furniture and furnishings; this was almost £16.7bn in 2016, representing a 24% increase from 2013. Year-on-year growth from 2013 to 2015 was between 8-9%. However, growth from 2015 to 2016 was somewhat less, at 6%.
UK furniture manufacturers have continued to perform well over recent years with 2016 turnover reaching £8.4bn; 4.5% higher than the previous year.
Furniture warranted special mention in the latest statistics office manufacturing bulletin, highlighting that the recent percentage increase in sales was the third largest in the UK (behind motor vehicles and pharmaceuticals) and was driven by sales of wooden kitchen furniture and upholstered wooden framed seats such as three-piece suites.
Putting this growth in context, in 2013 furniture manufacturing equated to 1.35% of the UK’s total manufacturing turnover, whereas by 2016 it was estimated to have increased to 1.60%.
Rising employment figures underline importance of UK furniture sector
Latest employment figures reinforce the importance of the industry to the UK economy with furniture manufacturing’s 88,000 employees representing almost 3.5% of the country’s manufacturing workforce.
It is estimated that the furniture and furnishings sector as a whole, including manufacturing, design, specialist retail, trade and repair comprises 50,000 registered companies supporting 327,000 jobs.
The Assocaition’s Dr Peter Beele commented: “Imports were on the rise, with the provisional figure for 2016 being £5.8bn. However, based on extrapolations of import data published up to September 2017, I expect that the total for 2017 could increase to about £6.5bn once the full year’s figures are confirmed”.
Imports are not the full story as export performance has also improved, perhaps due to the influence of a weaker pound and an industry more comfortable with trading abroad.
Exports reached £1.13bn in 2016, reflecting a year on year increase of 13%. A further 9% growth is expected when 2017 figures are published.
Sector focuses on trading relationships with EU
With Brexit on the horizon there is an inevitable focus on the UK’s trading relationships with the European Union. Despite 63% of all exports being sent to the EU it accounts for a considerably greater value of imports, resulting in a negative trade gap of £2.20bn.
The largest single country negative trade gap continues to be with China. This increased to £1.86bn (from £1.75bn in 2015). Next on the list were the negative trade gaps with Poland, Italy and Germany, which equated to £0.58bn, £0.56bn and £0.50bn respectively.


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With its coffee cup sign and prominent location on South Main Street near courthouse square, Four Seasons restaurant is an easily recognizable Bryan landmark.
Four Seasons, located at 233 S. Main St., has been a popular community staple for many years. And now current owners Chris and Dafni Manolas have a new reason to celebrate their popular restaurant — they have paid off the previous owners and now own the building outright.
This is very significant for the husband and wife ownership team.
“Working so hard all these years, it feels like we did something,” said Dafni. “Finally, working so hard and now it’s paid off — it can stay in the family so we can still continue the business for years.”
Originally opened as Lester’s Diner in 1965, the Manolas family changed the name when they took over in 2011. Dafni said it’s a relief to have the debt paid off and own their building outright, so they can rest easy knowing the business is secured in the family.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen. You see, you don’t want to lose everything overnight,” Dafni said.
Chris and Dafni run the business with the help of their three children, Tommie, Steve and Irene. The Manolases have been in the restaurant business in America since the 1970s, when Chris came over from Greece and started restaurants in New York City. In fact, his coffee shop, “Disco Donut,” was one of the locations in New York used in filming the Martin Scorsese film, “Taxi Driver.”
Now that they own the building, the family has some new goals for renovation.
“New floors, new booths. But not yet,” because for now the COVID-19 pandemic has put their plains on hold, Dafni said. “January, maybe March, we should be doing some construction.”
The Manolases plan to keep the ‘50s diner theme of the restaurant and just make some needed cosmetic changes. Steve said that they do buy new equipment as they need it. He also plans to replace the neon in the outside sign with LED, as neon can be harder to maintain and can get damaged from the cold winters, he said.
The Manolases also have Four Seasons Family Restaurants in Holiday City and Pioneer. And true to its name, Four Seasons restaurant is open through all four seasons, except on Christmas Day and Thanksgiving Day. Their hours are 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week, and the menu includes all-day breakfast, lunch and dinner.


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Bboxx and EDF announced that they have teamed up with SunCulture and the Togo government to expand access to solar-powered irrigation systems for farmers.
As part of the partnership, the Togo Government will cover 50 percent of the cost of irrigation systems for 5,000 farmers. This is alongside tax exemptions on import duties and VAT on the water pumps. This builds on the “CIZO cheque” subsidy launched in 2019 by the Government, which made solar energy more affordable to help overcome energy poverty.
Supplied by SunCulture, Bboxx EDF Togo will be deploying the water pumps and arranging financing for customers. SunCulture’s brings experience from executing this solution at a large scale in East Africa while EDF brings its hands-on expertise in the sale and installation of off-grid solutions in Central and West African markets. EDF will also oversee design choices and help enhance product performance of the irrigation systems to be deployed in Togo.
The water pumps will be integrated with Bboxx Pulse, Bboxx’s comprehensive management platform using Internet of Things (IoT) technology, allowing for remote management and monitoring. The services will be provided on the same pay-as-you-go (PAYG) model used by Bboxx’s Solar Home Systems (SHSs).
According to the companies, this deal will improve farmers’ economic opportunities by increasing productivity by up to five times, while removing the need to travel long distances to bring back water. It will enable farmers to secure a harvest even during the dry season by creating additional irrigation. This contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8 – decent work and economic growth.
Working as part of the Togo Government’s national electrification “CIZO” program, Bboxx EDF Togo already have positively impacted over 120,000 citizens’ lives thanks to domestic off-grid solar kits. Both partners are now committing to expanding energy to an even larger part of Togo’s population, while also moving into other much-needed services, like sustainable agriculture.
Mansoor Hamayun, CEO and Co-Founder of Bboxx, commented, “For farmers in rural Togo, this latest deal will be life-changing, improving productivity, household income and quality of life, while fostering economic development at scale and contributing to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The Togo Government’s subsidy is vital to accelerate this program to thousands of farmers and make sustainable agriculture affordable for all.”
Xavier Rouland, EDF’s Off-Grid Department Director, added, “After two years of growth in Togo in the field of solar kits, this new step is crucial for us since it will help boost the rural economy, offering farmers tools that increase their incomes while using more environmentally friendly solutions.”
Samir Ibrahim, CEO & Co-Founder of SunCulture, said, “We are in a global food crisis, and this subsidy program is an important showcase of how innovating financing can play a leading role in addressing food insecurity across Africa. This partnership will be catalytic in promoting off-season and higher-value agriculture across Togo, and we’re certain that it will pave the way for other sub-Saharan African countries to mobilize resources to address food crises, improve livelihoods, and spur economic development.”


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DRIVERS in Hartlepool say they would welcome free parking with open arms.
The Mail spoke to several customers entering and leaving Middleton Grange Shopping Centre, in Hartlepool, about the prospect of being able to park charge-free in the town.
It’d definitely bring more people to the town because it puts them off paying when you can go to other places for free.Nicola Llewellyn
Dad Stephen Kearney, from Hartlepool, kicked off the positive response to the issue.
He said: “I wouldn’t say no to free parking. It would be a lot cheaper for us and for everyone.”
Heavy goods vehicle driver Peter Cook said: “Definitely. It would save me a fortune every week.”
The 50-year-old dad added: “I think it would bring a lot more trade to the town as well.”
Teenager Sam Tillott-Gray, 16, said: “I obviously don’t drive but I think it would be a good idea. Some people don’t always have the money on them when it comes to parking so it would be a lot more convenient.”
And friends Dawn Coleman, 41, Nicola Llewellyn, 40, Mandy Farrell, 45, Emma Spence, 39, and Stephanie Fleet, 34, who had all been shopping in Middleton Grange said they would definitely welcome the change.
Nicola said: “It’d definitely bring more people to the town because it puts them off paying when you can go to other places for free.”
Stephanie said: “It’d be more convenient because you don’t always have the money on you or the right change. I put £2 in the parking meter and should have got 60p change but I never.”
Dawn said: “It’d be ideal if you’re just popping in for something to be able to just park without paying. I think more people would use the shopping centre.”
Traders in town also said they would welcome the move.
Manager of Specsavers Ian Walker said: “It would be a long time coming. It would make a massive difference to both the shopping centre and the town centre as a whole.
“So many people are put off by parking charges. People want convenience, especially when they’re just popping in for something. They don’t want to be charged for an hour or two hours.
“I speak to so many people who say they go elsewhere because of the parking charges.”
And Mary Hetherington, a shop assistant from ladies clothing store Bonne Marche, in Middleton Grange, said: “It would be a big help to everybody.”


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One of America’s corporate giants has discovered the hard way that company messages related to the anniversary of the September 11 attacks are probably better left alone — especially when that message goes out on social media.
U.S. communications company AT&T posted a short message and image on its Twitter feed at 9:15 a.m. on Wednesday, the twelfth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The tweet read “Never Forget;” attached was a picture of New York with the “towers of light” where the destroyed World Trade Center used to stand. Inserted over top of the image was a picture of an arm holding a smartphone with the towers of light highlighted on the view screen.
The response to the tweet was immediate and visceral, with many on Twitter calling the move tacky and tasteless, and many more simply coming up with variations of the f-word to throw at the company.
The tweet quickly spawned the #ATTtragedies hashtag where people came up with ways that AT&T could have responded to other horrific events in tasteless ways.
The tweet was removed at around 1:20 p.m., just a few minutes after it started going viral. The company quickly responded with an apology.
On Tuesday, a golf course owner had a similar backlash after offering $9.11 discounts on 9/11.


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The BoiseDev team is off for the holiday break. (We’ll keep an eye out for any major breaking stories of course.) While our employees enjoy some downtime, we bring you a few stories you might have missed this year. We’ll be back at full strength on January 3rd!
Originally published June 1, 2021.
A new book on Amazon Inc. sheds light on the 2017 purchase of Whole Foods by the primarily online retail giant. And it details the crucial role Boise-based Albertsons Companies played in the deal.
In April 2017, the Financial Times reported Albertsons Companies looked to purchase organics grocer Whole Foods. Then, less than six weeks later, Amazon announced it would buy Whole Foods instead.
Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by journalist Brad Stone took a magnifying glass to many of Amazon’s projects and growth over the last decade. The book goes into depth about how the $13.4 billion Whole Foods deal went down in 2017. And it started with Albertsons.
That same spring, Jana Partners revealed it purchased 9% of Whole Foods’ stock, making it its leading investor. Jana is an activist investor – a firm that comes in, buys a large tranche of stock, and pressured management to make changes. And, according to Stone, execs worried Jana wanted the company to sell itself to Albertsons.
“Whole Foods executives worried that Jana’s plan was to merge the organic grocer with another food giant… Albertsons Companies, an amalgamation of traditional supermarket chains like Safeway and Vons,” Stone wrote.
Jana played a role with a similar idea a few years before. It bought up a large stake in Safeway, just as talks between that California-based grocer and Albertsons started to heat up. Albertsons later purchased Safeway and began to merge the companies.
According to Stone, the plan was for the combined company to take the Whole Foods brand name and “relatively unlevered balance sheet,” but “likely swap out” Whole Foods management in favor of Albertsons execs.
Albertsons tried several different routes to take the public company in the back half of the 2010s. After completing the Safeway merger, it announced it would take the company public in an IPO in 2015. It later pulled the idea after many peer stocks began to falter. In 2018, it announced it would merge with pharmacy retailer Rite Aid, but that project also didn’t come together under intense shareholder opposition on the Rite Aid side.
Taking the company public would give long-time investors a chance to monetize their stakes – some dating back to the 2006 spin-off of the stores during a complex transaction involving Supervalu and CVS.
A tie-up with Whole Foods, like the 2015 IPO attempt and 2018 Rite Aid merger would accomplish that — but it too was not meant to be.
Hail Mary attempt
Founding CEO John Mackey hoped to save his job – and took several steps that spring to keep Whole Foods out of the Albertsons fold. According to a former board member cited in Stone’s book, Mackey made changes to the board and sought a “white knight” to buy the struggling grocer – including private equity firms, Warren Buffet, and others.
Then, the Hail Mary. Amazon.
“One option remained, which almost everyone at Whole Foods Market considered fanciful. Over the years, they had engaged in several fruitless conversations with Amazon,” Stone wrote. “When Bloomberg News reported that Amazon executives had recently discussed acquiring Whole Foods, Mackey asked one of his advisors to place a phone call and try one last time to save the company.”
By 2017, Amazon had dabbled in the grocery business and opened a few small physical retail stores of its own. But the 1990s dot-com startup known for its online marketplace buying a chain of hundreds of grocery stores seemed, at the time, far-fetched.
“Throughout May, as it continued to indulge proposals from Albertsons, Whole Foods negotiated in secret with Amazon, responding to a constant stream of requests for more information,” Stone wrote. “On May 23, Amazon offered to buy the company for $41 a share.”
An Albertsons-Whole Foods deal wasn’t meant to be.
In the years since the Amazon deal, Whole Foods remained mostly stuck in place when it comes to sales. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon’s physical stores segment, which consists mostly of Whole Foods stores, has seen revenue decline each year since 2018 – the first full year after the merger.
“(Whole Foods’) year-over-year revenue decline of 16% in the March quarter was the company’s worst on record,” the WSJ reported – saying foot traffic to Whole Foods remained down.
In the corresponding quarter, Albertsons saw its sales increase from the prior year, driven by an 11.8% increase in same-store sales.
Albertsons finally found its path for long-time shareholders to monetize their stake in the private company, taking it public last summer in a second IPO attempt. After a slow start, the company’s stock appreciated by more than a third since the listing.
The twists and turns of Albertsons
Albertsons’ history gets a bit complicated at times. Joe Albertson founded the chain in Boise in 1939 – and it slowly, steadily grew over the years. In 1999, the company bought Utah-based American Stores and for a time grew to the largest grocer in the nation.
In 2001, Larry Johnston took over as CEO and Chairman. After five tumultuous years, the company sold itself off in 2006. Standalone drugstores went to CVS and rebranded. The bulk of the grocery stores, 1,124, including those in Idaho, were sold to Supervalu. A new company was formed to take over 661 so-called “underperforming” Albertsons stores, led by a consortium of investors led by Cerberus Capital. The Cerberus stores were based in Boise – despite not owning the locations here.
In 2013, after Supervalu struggled with the stores it bought, it sold them to the Cerberus-led company – reassembling the bulk of the grocery company. Headquarters for the company remained in Boise – and now included oversight of the Boise-area stores.
In 2014, Albertsons purchased Safeway – and in the years since worked to transition to many of Safeway’s back office functionality.