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Fiat has revealed new details about Maserati's future product lineup.
As part of €1 ($1.3) billion investment, the company will launch an entry-level Ghibli, a new Levante crossover and a redesigned Quattroporte. The company will also introduce an all-new GranSport as well as replacements for the GranTurismo and GranCabrio.
In 2014, Maserati is expected to introduce the Levante which costs approximately €60,000. Recently previewed by the Kubang concept, the Levante will be based on the Jeep Grand Cherokee but have unique styling. The slide also reveals the model will be built in Italy which contradicts earlier reports that said it would be made in Detroit.
2015 will likely usher in the next-generation GranTurismo and GranCabrio. Little is known about the models, but styling boss Lorenzo Ramaciotti recently revealed they will be smaller than the current models.
Last but not least, the slide confirms rumors of a GranSport revival which will likely come to market in 2016. Expected to be based on the Alfa Romeo 4C, the GranSport will battle the Porsche 911 and be available with a V6 or V8 engine.


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Economy News _ Baghdad
Iraq is preparing for a major change in the file of trade with the countries of the world and is preparing to exceed the limits set for Iraqi goods, with its return to the World Trade Organization 14 years after it was expelled as a result of its failure to adhere to the organization’s meetings.
The head of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s mission to the World Trade Organization/the Saudi Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organization and responsible for the file of Iraq’s accession to the World Trade Organization, Saqr al-Muqbel, visited Iraq today, Monday, and delivered a speech in which he reviewed the importance of joining the World Trade Organization.
Al-Muqbil said in a press conference followed by Al-Iqtisad News, “I find Iraq’s accession to be a serious message from Iraq to the whole world, that Iraq is continuing its path of engagement with the whole world,” adding: “I find myself among my loved ones and brothers to do everything we have for your participation.” “The Kingdom’s successful experience in joining the World Trade Organization.”
He explained, “The Kingdom joined the World Trade Organization in 2005, and our non-oil merchandise exports amounted to about 18 billion dollars, and exports have now reached 84 billion dollars with the world,” noting that “the Kingdom’s service exports alone amounted to about 11 billion dollars in 2005 and have now reached more than 34 billion dollars.
He pointed out that “these achievements depend on Iraq’s signals to join and accelerate its pace to find Iraq in its usual position and as one of the largest economies in the Arab region and the Middle East.”
For his part, the Iraqi Minister of Commerce, Atheer Al-Ghurairi, said, “Iraq is taking steps to return as a strong economic player by opening relations with Arab countries and all countries of the world,” noting that “today, within a year, we were able to finalize three files and submit them to the committee related to Iraq’s accession to the World Trade Organization.” global trade in goods and services.
He stated that “Iraq joined as an observer in the World Trade Organization in 2004, and in 2009 Iraq stopped meetings and reached the point of being removed from the organization, and last year 2023, through continuous work on that and with the help of Saudi Arabia and the head of the Saudi mission in the organization, Iraq returned as an observer to the organization.” Global trade, and we accomplished in one year the equivalent of more than 15 years’ work.”
Regarding the benefit of joining, Al-Ghurairi explained, “It means that the Iraqi economy enjoys any specifications enjoyed by world economies, but this does not replace the necessity of internal reform.”
He stated that “opening the doors to Iraqi goods and trade exchange through global controls will protect Iraq from entering the global market with its weight in the event that it fulfills its requirements and that our production is international and not local,” noting that “Iraqi goods are now not allowed to go outside certain borders, and joining is possible.” To reach the farthest country in the world.”

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The World's Best Single Malt is Irish!
Teeling Whiskey, Ireland’s leading progressive Irish whiskey company is proud to announce that its 24-Year-Old Single Malt has claimed the prestigious World’s Best Single Malt award at the 2019 World Whiskies Awards.
Irish Whiskey makes history
In winning the award, Teeling Whiskey has made history, as it is the first time an Irish whiskey has been named as the world’s best single malt. Teeling Whiskey received the award at the exclusive World Whiskies Awards 2019 ceremony, held in the Honourable Artillery Company in London on Thursday 28th March.
Jack and Stephen Teeling tasting the Single Malt 24 y.o.
This revered accolade marks a momentous occasion not just for Teeling Whiskey but for Ireland’s whiskey industry overall. At the awards, Teeling Whiskey overcame fierce competition from renowned whisky industry leaders from Scotland and Japan to take the number one prize for World’s Best Single Malt.
Single Malt is considered the “gold standard” of world whisky due to its production process as well as its character and flavour profile. The single malt category has become synonymous with Scottish whisky and more recently has been the style of whisky driving the emergence of Japanese whisky and other new age whisky producing regions.
Alex Chasco, master distiller, Jack and Stephen Teeling showing their best bottles.
Commenting on his win, Jack Teeling, Founder and Managing Director of Teeling Whiskey said: “Since reviving our old family trademark of Teeling Whiskey back in 2012, we have endeavoured to make sure every bottle of Irish whiskey we release with our family name on it is of the highest quality.”
“To be honoured as the World’s Best Single Malt and in the process become the first Irish whiskey to ever have achieved such world-wide acclaim is very humbling and reflects the global resurgence and revival of both Teeling and Irish whiskey. We are now right back at the top table of global whiskey and we look forward to continue leading this new golden era for Irish whiskey.”
“We are also extremely proud of the team we have created, and this award is a testament to the creativity, hard-work and dedication of our staff both here in Ireland and around the world, and I would like to thank them all for helping us achieve this ambition.”
The World Whiskies Awards is a premier celebration of the very best in all internationally recognised styles of whisky. Presented by TheDrinksReport.com and Whisky Magazine, the World Whiskies Awards is one of the highlights of the year for the global whisky industry selecting, rewarding and promoting the world’s best whiskies to consumers and trade across the globe. An esteemed panel of internationally recognised whisky experts chose Teeling Whiskey’s 24-Year-Old Single Malt as world’s best.
The Teeling Whiskey 24-Year-Old Single Malt is a multi-award winning super premium bottling of Irish single malt whiskey. The whiskey made from 100% malted barley was originally matured for 21 years in ex-Bourbon barrels, before it was aged for an extra three years in ex-Sauterne wine casks. The combination of aging processes and the unique Irish climate produces an extraordinary whiskey with complex yet silky smooth taste, with flavours of fig jam, honey, apricots, white chocolate and crisp saltiness at the end to balance the sweetness off. This very small batch bottling is available in select markets around the world including Ireland, US, Benelux, Germany, Switzerland, Australia and some Asian markets.


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30 November 2018
Volkswagen and Tesco are proud to announce the development of the largest UK retail electric vehicle (EV) charging network, powered by Pod Point. The world’s largest vehicle manufacturer and the UK’s largest fuel retailer will roll out more than 2,400 EV charging bays across 600 Tesco stores within the next three years.
21 August 2018
For the second year in a row, the GTI “Coming Home” meet will take place in Wolfsburg. GTI fans and visitors will be able to access the event area in the Volkswagen Arena and the Autostadt from 10 am on 1 September 2018.
10 August 2018
Volkswagen Retailers are today, Thursday 9 August, making available to order a new turbo diesel engine to the all-new Touareg range. The 3.0-litre V6 TDI unit has an output of 231 PS and joins the 286 PS TDI engine that the Touareg launched with in June.
13 July 2018
Volkswagen Navarra will manufacture the T-Cross1, the new compact SUV from Volkswagen. This was announced by Dr. Andreas Tostmann, Head of Volkswagen Production & Logistics today. Thus, the plant, which has produced the Polo since 1984, will build a second model for the first time in its history.


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The strike notice given by the union representing Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) employees is alarming two organizations, which fear major repercussions for companies’ supply.
• Read also: Three days away from closing down the Canadian Pacific
Therefore, manufacturers and exporters in Quebec (MEQ) have asked the two parties involved in the dispute to quickly reach an agreement to avoid service disruption.
We urge the parties to reach a settlement quickly. CP downtime is the last thing manufacturers need right now. This would have a significant economic impact on our business. It’s not manufacturers or exporters that are sitting at the negotiating table, but they will be directly affected by the situation, Véronique Proulx, MEQ’s president and CEO, said in a press release on Friday.
“After all that we’ve been through in the past few months, after all the turmoil that’s piled up and rocked our supply chains, we don’t need to,” she added.
With no agreement in sight, the organization requested Ottawa’s involvement in the matter, a solution also supported by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB).
“It would be a bad time for further supply chain disruption for small and medium-sized businesses, many of which depend on rail transportation to send and receive goods domestically or internationally,” said Yasmine Genetti, CFIB’s Vice President of National Affairs.
Nearly 89% of small and medium-sized businesses are already affected by supply chain disruptions, particularly in the construction and manufacturing sectors, according to CFIB data.
CP sent out a notice of the closure on Wednesday, which will take effect on Sunday if no agreement is reached with the Canadian Rail Teamsters Conference (TCRC).
Train drivers and yard workers as well as locomotive engineers, for their part, voted by majority to start a strike in early March.
“Unapologetic pop culture trailblazer. Freelance troublemaker. Food guru. Alcohol fanatic. Gamer. Explorer. Thinker.”


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CoreLife Eatery, an active lifestyle restaurant offering a variety of greens, grains and broth-based dishes, has signed a new development deal that will bring 21 restaurants to Cleveland and several surrounding markets.
Franchisee Billy Lewis, president and CEO of Red Letter Hospitality, plans to establish eateries in and around Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio as well as Erie and State College, Pennsylvania. Red Letter Hospitality is a management company providing strategic direction and shared services to operating entities. Lewis comes to Red Letter Hospitality from TreeHouse Foods, where he was Senior Vice President and Business Leader of the condiments division. Just last week, Lewis opened his first CoreLife Eatery in Mentor, Ohio, which has been booming with business during its first days in operation.
“After 30 years in the food manufacturing business, you know a winner when you see one. I immediately fell in love with CoreLife Eatery and the healthy basis on which it was founded, and wanted to be part of the brand’s future and expansion,” Lewis says. “I’m very excited to deliver this incredible concept to communities around Ohio and Pennsylvania.”
“Mr. Lewis has a proven track record of success in the food manufacturing and restaurant industries. We’re thrilled Red Letter Hospitality will be helping us build what we firmly believe is one of the best and most promising new brands in the country,” Steve Corp, Senior Vice President of Franchise Development for CoreLife Eatery, says. “It’s obvious that Mr. Lewis and his team are committed to CoreLife Eatery and its mission. We’re confident they will do a fantastic job representing and developing our brand.”
This agreement comes in addition to another large development deal CoreLife Eatery recently cemented in Florida.
CoreLife Eatery offers a wide variety of fresh ingredients that are transformed into custom-created dishes. All foods are free of trans fats, artificial colors, sweeteners, other artificial additives and GMO’s. The chicken and steak used are sustainably raised and never given antibiotics or hormones, and the bone broth is slow simmered all day for maximum taste and nutrition. Creating a menu that tastes great because it’s healthy is the secret to CoreLife Eatery’s success.
Led by CEO Larry Wilson, the CoreLife Eatery executive team brings individual successes and skill sets to help the restaurant grow to meet the needs of more communities lacking convenient access to healthy and affordable eating alternatives. CoreLife Eatery plans to expand to 300 locations, including both corporate and franchise restaurants, nationwide over the next five years.


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NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The Board of Directors of Paychex Inc. PAYX, +0.86% said Monday Jonathan Judge resigned as president and chief executive officer, effective July 31, to pursue other interests. "I have decided this is a good time for me to move on to my next challenge," Judge said in a prepared statement. Judge joined Paychex in 2004 as the company's second president and CEO. He will complete his term as a member of the Paychex board of directors. While the company searches for a new CEO, it formed an executive committee to run the Rochester, N.Y. firm. Paychex Chairman B. Thomas Golisano and the board of directors will provide oversight for the executive committee.
Paychex CEO resigns to pursue other interests


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On the plus side, the Premium tier, which includes some 4K Ultra HD content, keeps its £8.99 price tag, as does the Basic Netflix package, which remains at £5.99.
According to an email sent out to subscribers, the price change only affects new members - for now.
The Netflix email reads: "As a thankyou for being a member of Netflix already, your current plan and price will not change for one year". So, it seems Netflix isn't ruling out an increase for all Standard subscribers at some point in 2016...
MORE: Netflix review
Netflix also confirmed that its user interface update, first mooted back in April, will roll-out wordwide during the course of June. The company claims the changes "bring video playback forward into the browsing experience".
Finally, the Marriott Hotel chain has announced that it's going to be allowing customers to either subscribe or sign into their Netflix accounts in their room through web-connected TVs.
Starting off with select hotels in the US, the initiative is set to be live in 100 hotels by the end of 2015 and nearly all 300 of its stateside hotels by the end of 2016.


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The Chinese Impact – as published in GGP Mag
I am currently in the US visiting a number of house building sites and manufacturing plants where talk of the effects of the Coronavirus is as rife as in the UK. The current US administration seems to try to dictate to the UK about our links with China and that we should be reducing any infrastructure alliance with the Chinese as opposed to strengthening them. However, due to former policy driving trade deals, like the UK, they have a strong reliance on supply of products from the East and production concerns are high.
The exact nature of the issue is still unclear as information out of China is often fairly restricted, but timing has been a serious issue for those serially unprepared. Businesses that carry stock often increase holding towards the end of the year in preparation for the impact that Chinese New Year brings, when working life shuts down for about 3 weeks. It can be common place in the US for companies to buy 40% of their annual stock 2 months prior to the Spring Festival.
However, those who adopt a ‘just in time’ approach to manufacturing are facing considerable issues as supply has dramatically dipped to almost standstill. Already impacted by Chinese New Year, the subsequent Coronavirus outbreak has delivered a serious problem, with increasing issues as the spread of the virus escalates. The flow of workers and their families throughout the provinces leads to more and more new cases being discovered and the requirement for quarantine zones.
It’s having a significant impact on manufacturing across the globe in a number of different sectors. Despite the latest report from IHS Markit, which states that the manufacturing sector has reported its fastest growth since April, as component stocks diminish, manufacturers will need to have a strategy for how they can continue production with this level of supply chain disruption.
In the UK, JCB is cutting production after facing a shortage of components from China, with reduced working hours for the 4,000 staff and an overtime suspension.
The automotive industry is being affected badly. Fiat Chrysler said that ‘at least one’ of its European manufacturing plants could be forced to stop production. Hyundai has already closed down all car manufacturing sites in South Korea when components stopped arriving from China. Jaguar Land Rover’s CEO said the situation could become critical next month and will affect the entire sector – he said they had even flown parts to the UK in suitcases. Technology is hit too – Apple announced last week that it will miss its revenue forecast for the March quarter due to the Coronavirus impacting both manufacturing and sales.
There is the potential for a domino effect and big British retailers are already preparing themselves for stock shortages due to China’s factory closures, including giants like Primark, Asos, DFS, B&M and Halfords. Even supply of toys and videogames has already been affected – no surprise really, when you consider that 80 percent of toys purchased in the UK are made in China.
Currently, indications for those who are prepared and have strong communications with China, are that it won’t get too bad. However, information out is not always accurate and whilst the West is reasonably unaware of the worker camps used for the quarantine of those returning from affected regions, so too are we wary of the situation.
Business owners who are reliant on products from abroad want certainty and currently there is none on offer. So all we can do now is prepare for the worst and hope for a clear end to this situation.


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If you open, will they come?
Enterprise photos by Nate Howard
The sidewalk along Park Street is nearly vacant on Tuesday afternoon in Gardiner.
Francesca Monte, owner of Outwest T’s & Apparel, says her business is down 97% compared with this time last year.
Chloe Chase sells ice cream from her food trailer,“ Scoop! There it Is,” Tuesday in Gardiner.
Annie Tan and Tony Chen, of Hollywood, Florida, drink coffee outside of Yellowstone Perk and Pharmacy on Gardiner’s Park Street Tuesday.
Enterprise photos by Nate Howard
There’s far more elk than tourists in the Gardiner area.
Yellowstone National Park, which typically sees more than 3 million people, primarily in the summer months, is, “super dead” according to Francesca Monte, the owner of Outwest T’s & Apparel.
Her sales are down 97% from this time last year.
Her computer software sent her a daily notice until she turned off the notification.
“My store is usually packed,” she said of traffic on an early June day before the coronavirus outbreak brought the tourism economy to a screeching halt.
“I’ve canceled all my orders,” she said of resupplying inventory.
“It’s nobody’s fault,” she said.
Monte has owned the store, which opened 30 years ago, for the past 11 years.
“Vacation rentals lost 80 % of their business. In May there were zero guests,” she said.
As for international tourists, “They’re not coming back anytime soon,” she said.
She’s hoping to generate at least 25% of her sales this year.
Presently, if you visit Yellowstone, “You have the park to yourself,” she said.
Monte explains that not having a timeline, with reopening dates and policies in flux, hurt most all. Tourists couldn’t plan a vacation to Yellowstone. The recently expired 14-day quarantine that eliminated out-of-state tourists was also a major blow.
Meanwhile, things are looking up for Heather Hardman at Paradise Adventure 大福彩票网. Hardman said they were starting to book trips now for July and August. The business offers guides for rafting, kayaking, horseback rides and fishing.
They opened the store on Monday but she said they’ve been getting inquiries by phone every day on their services the past few weeks.
The boardwalk along Gardiner’s Park Street is mostly empty while Annie Tan and Tony Chen, of Hollywood, Florida, drink coffee outside of Yellowstone Perk and Pharmacy on Gardiner’s Park Street.
The couple, who own a restaurant near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, drove north on vacation.
“Here I think there is less risk,” said Chen. “Here there is open space. That’s why I’m here.”
Chris Kramer, assistant manager of Yellowstone Perk and Pharmacy, said the tourism economy is “not even close to what it was last year.”
Opening the town to business is a “double-edged sword,” Kramer said.
“We want people to stay safe,” he said, but commenting on the local economy added, “A lot of people I know are hurting.”
Being the town’s only pharmacy, the business was an essential business and has remained open during the pandemic.
Libby Burke, an employee of the pharmacy, gift and coffee shop, was born and raised in Gardiner.
Burke returned to work serving coffee and ice cream three weeks ago. The store was mostly empty until a group came in Tuesday afternoon.
She said there is usually a line out the door this time of year.
The final stop before the park’s entrance is a small white trailer where Chloe Chase is selling ice cream at her new business, “Scoop! There it Is.”
“I definitely expected to see way more people,” Chase said.
She’s only on day two of her business.
Chase looks out her food trailer directly into the stone arch of the historic entrance and Electric Peak towering above and the green valley, with big, white puffy clouds against the Big Sky.
She believes the tourists will soon come.


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A few weeks ago, 60 minutes discussed how one sector of our economy after another is being disrupted by new apps and technology. We have seen the change in how we do almost everything, like booking travel, purchasing books, and using taxi’s. Is the Banking Industry the next change?
Thousands of startups are challenging the many aspects of banking. Now this is being referred to as Financial Technology or The Fintech revolution. However, many say that banks are too set in their ways.
Stripe, which has investment money from Paypal, is founded by two brothers age 25 and 27. Stripe is one of the many startups that allow companies to instantly accept payments online - a process that only takes five minute to set up and allows you to accept payments for goods and services for your business. Stripe charges the seller a small fee and the buyer pays nothing. Their idea is that the buyer doesn’t have to write a check, mail the check, and then have the seller take it to the bank to deposit the check. Even recent technology allows the seller to scan and or take a picture of the check to deposit the check, but Stripe wants the process to be even quicker.
Stripe has developed software for the “buy” button which is integrated into the seller’s website. This allows buyers to buy quickly online with their debit card, credit card, or electronic check. They are working on the technology that will allow a buyer to purchase without a bank account.
The goal is for consumers to be able to send money as easy as sending an e-mail from any device. Twenty-five percent of Americans have used Stripe already on Facebook, Twitter, large department stores, and Apple pay.
Stripe is just one of the many startups that are challenging the way we bank. Paypal, Fundbox, Personal Capital, Active Hours, Simple, Ripple, Square, and Venmo are just a few of the thousands of startups that are helping to make banking faster, cheaper, and mobile.
Some of these technologies allow a customer that is looking for a loan to make a loan request similar to the way we request a car on Uber.
So what is next for banking? Do the Banks fear these startups of Fintech? Will banks eventually just hold our money for us and will all these startups determine a way to unbundle the banking system as we know it today?
Millennials are now in their mid 30’s and are the creators of many of the startups. Will they force banks to change the way they do business? Many millennials prefer to go to the dentist vs going to a teller at a bank; millennials don’t trust banks. The financial crisis is fresh on their minds. They have seen their parents lose their home and how student loans can crush their earnings.
$20 billion has been dumped into over 12,000 Fintech company startups in the last year and a half. How does this technology effect the hundreds of thousands of jobs in the banking field?
Do consumers trust the startups enough with their money? Some feel that these startups are not regulated enough to handle large amounts of money being transferred. They also don’t trust the online security of these startups.
How are these startups going to change the commercial real estate environment? We have already started to see online payments for rent, but when will this become the only way rent can be paid? When will we use an app to find a loan for a property or to hold deposits?


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Kelowna to consider cutting cannabis fees
Published on March 26, 2021 by David Wylie
The City of Kelowna is considering slashing annual cannabis retailer business licence renewal fees, but it won’t happen quickly.
Ryan Smith, the city’s divisional director of planning and development, told the oz. that city staff are working on a report to present to city council this spring.
Kelowna currently charges a yearly business licence renewal fee for a cannabis store of $9,465.
“We’re going to do some review of cannabis bylaw zoning bylaw regulations and fees to some extent this spring,” he says.
If the fees drop, it won’t likely be until 2023.
As first reported by the oz., pressure is mounting for municipalities to consider treating cannabis retailers equitably.
Why are cannabis licensing fees so high?
Smith says part of the reason fees are so high is the province hasn’t helped municipalities cover cannabis retail costs.
He says the province initially talked about profit sharing cannabis revenue with local governments. However, there has been no action.
The fees help to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff time and RCMP costs, Smith says.
He says the city had intended to lower them once the province helped financially. But that hasn’t happened.
“It’s expensive but sometimes things are expensive in these new industries,” says Smith.


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Categories AlphaGraphs, Earnings, Technology
Earnings: Nvidia (NVDA) Q1 adj. profit declines; revenue down 13%
Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) announced financial results for the first quarter of 2024, reporting a decline in adjusted earnings and revenues.
The Santa Clara-headquartered tech firm reported adjusted earnings of $1.09 per share for the April quarter, compared to $1.36 per share in the same period of last year. The bottom line was negatively impacted by a 13% decline in revenues to $7.19 billion.
Net income, including special items, was $2.04 billion or $0.82 per share in the three-month period, compared to $1.62 billion or $0.64 per share in the first quarter of 2023.
“Our entire data center family of products — H100, Grace CPU, Grace Hopper Superchip, NVLink, Quantum 400 InfiniBand, and BlueField-3 DPU — is in production. We are significantly increasing our supply to meet surging demand for them,” said Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang.
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Shares of Signet Jewelers Limited (NYSE: SIG) were over 3% on Monday. The stock has dropped 13% over the past 3 months. The jewelry retailer is set to report its
MDB Infographic: Highlights of MongoDB’s Q1 2024 earnings report
Software company MongoDB, Inc. (NASDAQ: MDB) has announced financial results for the first quarter of 2024, posting an increase in revenues and adjusted profit. The company reported a 29% increase
Campbell Soup to report Q3 results Wednesday. Here’s what to expect
Campbell Soup Company (NYSE: CPB) is coming out of a rough patch after the packaged food company's sales and earnings got affected by the pandemic, due to the widespread movement


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As determined by Dollars and Sense, the average woman will spend $17,000 on menstruation in her lifetime, including an approximated three to five products a day, five days a month, for 33 years. For tampons and pads, the cost breaks down to approximately $144 each year. Not cool, right?
One country at least is recognizing the unfairness of women having to spend so much money on something they cannot control. On Tuesday, the parliament in Scotland approved plans to make sanitary products available for free, making it the first country in the world to do so.
The draft for the bill was first proposed in 2017, a nod to the lengthy process it took to get it approved and put into action. Under the new law, pads and tampons will be available for free in places such as community centers, youth clubs, and pharmacies. "These are not luxury items. They are indeed essential and no one in Scotland should have to go without period products,” says Scottish lawmaker Monica Lennon, who submitted the bill.
While Scotland is the first country to give free access to menstruation products, the United States is considering eliminating the tax on period products. The "tampon tax" is being fought by politicians such as Jennifer Weiss-Wolf in an effort to help women save money on products that—again—are not really their choice to purchase.
One might wonder if it's really such a big deal for women to have to shell out for these products. After all, is $12 a month really that big of a deal? What would women spend this extra money on anyway? The answer: Literally anything else.
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Nextel Communications Inc. is bringing users of less expensive phones an e-mail capability similar to what users of smart phones and Research In Motion Ltd. BlackBerry devices already enjoy.
The Reston, Virginia, mobile operator on Monday began offering instant two-way e-mail for all of its Java-enabled phones. The new Mobile Email Enhanced service can synchronize with Microsoft Corp. Outlook, IBM Corp. Lotus Notes and most Internet e-mail accounts, and it delivers each message over the air as soon as it hits the mail server, said Sanjay Kamble, vice president of marketing at Visto Corp. The service is based on Visto's ConstantSync technology.
Mobile Email Enhanced can also instantly synchronize users' contacts and calendar items, which can be viewed on the phone through and easy-to-use interface, Kamble said.
Nextel already offers the BlackBerry 7520, which doubles as a phone, but is now extending push e-mail to lower-end phones including the Motorola i605, i355 and i275, according to a statement by Visto and Nextel. The service is available in three plans priced from $14.99 to $29.99 per month.
Though most users would have a hard time sending e-mail messages from a phone with a standard 12-button phone keypad, being able to see e-mail on that device would have benefits, said ABI Research analyst Ken Hyers. The Visto-based service even has an edge over the widely used BlackBerry technology, he said: The mobile device receives e-mail instantly, whereas a delay of three to five minutes is typical on a BlackBerry. Though not all users care about that delay, there are cases in which workers need information -- more than can be sent via instant message -- immediately. One good place to find those workers is in the kinds of industries Nextel has specialized in serving, such as construction and delivery.
Large organizations can set up Mobile Email Enhanced to work with an enterprise server, while employees in smaller companies can have the system synchronize the phone with their own PCs. A key advantage of the service is that employees can start using the system on a new phone without an IS staffer's help, Kamble said.
Visto already offers ConstantSync for high-end mobile devices that use Microsoft Corp.'s Pocket PC operating system, PalmSource Inc.'s PalmOS and Symbian Ltd.'s Symbian OS, according to Kamble. This is the first commercial carrier deployment of ConstantSync on Java, he said. The company worked closely with Motorola Inc., which makes all the Java-enabled phones that run on Nextel's iDen network. Visto will soon announce a carrier deployment using Java-enabled Nokia phones, Kamble said.
Mobile Email Enhanced is offered as part of Nextel's $29.99 per month Premier Data Service Plan, which also includes unlimited data access, 120 MMS (Multimedia Messaging System) messages, unlimited text messaging and wireless Web browsing. It is also part of the carrier's Enhanced Data Services Plan, at $19.99 per month, which has 2M bytes of data access (including e-mail) and other features. Mobile Email Enhanced is also offered as a standalone service, with 2M bytes of e-mail, for $14.99 per month. Nextel offers a wide range of Java-enabled phones, some for less than $100 with purchase of a service plan. By contrast, Nextel is offering the BlackBerry 7520 at a final price of $149 with a service plan, though customers can get it for $49.99 with trade-in of an eligible PDA (personal digital assistant).


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Facebook Inc is currently negotiating with Major League Baseball to live stream one game per week during the upcoming season, which could be a key win as the social media platform works to offer more live sports, according to two people familiar with the situation.
Facebook has pushed to sign deals with owners of sports rights to live stream their games, going after an audience that competitor Twitter Inc is also trying to capture, according to sports media consultants.
For social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, live streaming sports is key to attracting people since sports is one of the few types of content that people still watch live.
“Facebook is aggressively going after sports content and they are now one of a number of competitors to traditional media outlets that are going after sports programming,” said sports media consultant Lee Berke. “It makes perfect sense that they would be going after name brand properties like the MLB.”
The companies were in advanced talks, according to one source. It was unclear which games MLB would live stream on Facebook. A representative for Facebook and MLB declined to comment.
By partnering with Facebook, MLB would get access to a young audience at a massive scale, consultants said.
The size of Facebook’s reach was a big reason Univision Communications Inc decided to use Facebook Live to live stream Mexican soccer matches in English, said Tonia O’Connor, chief commercial officer and president of content distribution at Univision.
Under that deal, Facebook will live stream 46 matches by Mexican soccer league Liga MX in 2017. Terms were not disclosed.
Over the past few months, Facebook has live streamed global basketball and soccer matches and table tennis.
Finnish mobile games and animation developer Rovio Entertainment is intensifying its search for new hit games by opening a studio in London to focus on multiplayer games that would not rely on the company’s Angry Birds brand.
Privately-held Rovio has struggled in recent years as profits from the Angry Birds franchise dropped, prompting deep job cuts and divestments.
But last year Rovio launched an animated Angry Birds 3D Hollywood film that it said did well at the box office and yielded new licensing deals.
“MMO is a genre that is growing in mobile, but it is not fully saturated. We are not looking for a niche position but a very wide, inclusive game,” Wilhelm Taht, head of games, told Reuters.
The original Angry Birds game, in which players use a slingshot to attack pigs who steal the birds’ eggs, was launched in 2009 and it remains the top paid mobile app of all time.
Rovio exploited the brand early on by licensing its use on a string of consumer products. But the company’s failure to bring out new hit games resulted in falling profit, prompting Rovio to cut more than 300 jobs in 2014 and 2015.
“In the long term, our new characters may generate intellectual property and even a brand,” Taht said.
Rovio has a series of smartphone games based on Angry Birds characters. In 2015 it published a puzzle game called Nibblers and it will soon put out Battle Bay, a real-time multiplayer game.
Rovio is not looking to launch a large number of games this year, Taht added.
“Perhaps there’s been some change in our thinking here,” he said. “The market is favorable for games that will live long and that are operated with a service mindset.”
Asked about Nintendo’s hit smartphone game Pokemon GO, Taht said the game truly put augmented reality (AR) on the gaming map.
“We will, of course, be following AR as a technology and a tool,” he said.
In the first half of 2016 Rovio booked a small operating profit, compared with a loss a year earlier, help by growth in game sales.
Rovio has around 200 employees spread between its four game studios in Finland and Sweden and about 400 in total.
There’s something quite noble about Phil Larsen, Luke Muscat and Hugh Walters, and their reasons for turning their collective backs on Halfbrick.
The trio had been partly responsible for some of the biggest games in the smartphone space, including Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride, but they felt they had nothing left to learn working at the developer, so took the gamble to go it alone.
“There weren’t too many more challenges, and the challenge of starting something new and being small and agile seemed like a smart idea,” says Phil Larsen, who is the MD at the studio. “And we are all basically in our early 30s, and we thought that maybe we wouldn’t get another chance. So we decided to go for it.”
The team left Halfbrick at the start of 2015 and attended GDC with “no money, no game, no nothing”. Although Larsen felt the newly formed team, named Prettygreat, had the capacity to pull in some big investors, they instead decided to aim a little lower, and accept funding from the founders of Crossy Road makers Hipster Whale.
“Matt [Hall] and Andy [Sum], being so successful with Crossy Road at the time, wanted to put some investment into other studios, and they were the perfect fit for us,” Larsen explains. “They were other developers who understand what we do, they trust in us as a team because we’ve done it all before, and it just helped us get everything off the ground. It has basically been the best possible decision we could have made.”
Prettygreat has only been going for 18 months, but it’s already created two games, with a third deep in development. The firm initially made the modestly popular smartphone title Landsliders, a casual collect ’em up project that it managed to pull together in just four months.
“Although we’d worked together before, working on our first game is always going to be tricky, you’ll be understanding each other and finding a new approach,” Larsen explains. “The way we did that was to try and create something a little bit unique, a bit weird, with some control innovation… as a game, it was profitable, which is good. It wasn’t the mega hit of the year or anything like that, it wouldn’t have reached any Top Ten charts in terms of downloads, but we made that game in four months, and we supported it for six months after launch, which we wouldn’t have done if there wasn’t profit to be made. The game has about 5m downloads so far, which is not bad. We’ve come from a place where 200m or 300m downloads were the norm, so we’re scaling back, which is fine. But Landsliders is a first game that says: ‘hey, this is what we can do. Make a game fast and make it successful’.”
It may seem like a rapid turnaround, but Prettygreat managed to outpace that with its second game, Slide the Shakes, which was designed and released in just six weeks.
“Basically, we had about three weeks left at the end of last year, because we’d done everything for Land Sliders. So we just decided to make a game. It also made a profit and had 3 or 4m downloads already. That was also a game where we understood its scope and potential, so we invested the appropriate amount of time – which was six weeks, but I think our quality level for that was quite high.
“We are game strategy agnostic, for want of a better way of expressing that. We are not sitting here saying we’re going to make triple-A games on mobile, or make six months projects every time. We are going to pick projects that we like and we are going to develop it to the level that we think it will be successful – and if that means it is six weeks, fine, if it is six months, which is our current project, then we will do that. We just want to make all sorts of crazy ideas. We don’t have any specific business model or genre.”
The Prettygreat team seem to know a thing or two about building sustainable smartphone games, which is difficult in a market where discoverability is difficult and the competition is plentiful. Even some of the world’s biggest mobile developers struggle to enjoy repeat success in this space. It’s a fact that’s not lost on Larsen, but he says if developers are smart, plan carefully and make sure the projects are in tune with the team’s talents, then success is not necessarily that hard to come by.
“A lot of people talk about how competitive it is, which is true. And they talk about how hard it is to make a whole bunch of money, which is true. But a misconception that a lot of people have is that you have to be making Clash Royale money, or you need to be spending loads of money, or you need to take years making the games,” Larsen begins.
“There is a lot of competing factors as to what makes a business successful. For a while it was Angry Birds, and building a brand, and merchandise. Then it was all about free-to-play. We have been through all of that at Halfbrick. Our perspective is, it is competitive but you need to pick the right business model for your team, and you need to pick the right approach for you. With three dudes at the start of a company, we weren’t saying: ‘Let’s do a Candy Crush and make $1m a day.’ No. We will pick something that we know we can get out there in a short amount of time, know generally what monetisation trends that are happening, and what is the easiest way of getting some revenue going for our games.
“Yes it is hard, but it is not impossible. A lot of people say it’s impossible, but no, you just need to be smart about how you approach it for your team specifically. If we had taken AUS$2m in funding when we started, or attacked it in a bigger way, then people would be expecting us to make a Candy Crush. But we didn’t want to do that.
“Our biggest strength as a company is scoping products right, and making them for the right people at the right time. It is very easy for an indie team to say mobile is hard, but that’s possibly because they’ve spent 18 months making the game – that might be hard to recoup as an investment. We would sooner spend four months on a game.
“Having a team that works together really well, and approaching it with a clear focus, then you can make money. We haven’t made millions of dollars yet, but that’s ok, you don’t need millions to pay three people.”
Prettygreat’s next product is currently not announced, although Larsen says it is an online multiplayer project that will be unveiled soon. This title has a much bigger scope and has already been in the works longer than its previous projects. However, Larsen is reluctant to suggest the team will continue to make bigger, more ambitious projects. He tells us that the following game could take six weeks again, or four months.
Yet don’t take this to mean there is a lack of ambition on the part of the former Fruit Ninja makers.
Larsen concludes: “I don’t want to be perceived as just three guys making stuff for the hell of it, and it’s all crazy and whatever happens, happens. That’s true to an extent, and day-to-day things are very fun and casual. But we are very serious about success financially, and our reputation is very high and we want to keep that going. The path we take is sometimes a bit unconventional, and it doesn’t necessarily have a simple six month or 12 month goal, which is what the bigger investors want to see. But we still have our eyes on the prize. We are probably not going to become a 100-person studio anytime soon, but the idea that we can create some of the biggest games in mobile and strategically scale to support them, then that’s fine. If that happens, then we will make that happen.
“We have come from a place where we were working on Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride, which were some of the biggest mobile games ever for a few years. We are not strangers to that environment. We haven’t started a studio to figure out how to do mobile, we absolutely already know how to do that. We’ve been through the highs and lows of some of the biggest things out there. We know what to expect and we are definitely aiming for it, but we are not going to compromise quality or our studio culture to get there.”
Amazon.com Inc has officially launched a full-fledged music streaming service with subscriptions as low as $3.99 per month for owners of its Amazon Echo speaker, accelerating the industry trend toward more flexible pricing after years of sticking to $9.99 subscriptions.
The new streaming service, called “Amazon Music Unlimited,” lets users access a vast catalog of songs on demand, similar to Spotify and Apple Music. Subscriptions to play music on the Echo cost $3.99 per month; for access beyond that device, subscriptions cost $7.99 a month for members of Amazon’s Prime shipping and video service and $9.99 for non-members. Amazon will continue to offer Prime members a limited streaming service for free.
As it plunges deeper into the crowded streaming field, Amazon is counting on the Echo, a smart speaker that responds to voice commands, to set it apart. Released broadly last year, the Echo has become a surprise hit, prompting many to predict that voice will become a key way users interact with technology – and music is central to the device’s appeal.
Amazon has built an elaborate system of voice controls for listening on the Echo. The company believes such smart home devices will be a key source of growth for the music industry, said Steve Boom, vice president of Amazon Music.
“The first phase of growth (in music streaming) was driven almost entirely by smartphones,” he said in an interview. “We believe pretty strongly that the next phase of growth in streaming is going to come from the home.”
The low price for Amazon’s streaming service is consistent with the company’s reputation for undercutting the competition and signals the music industry is beginning to accommodate consumers who are unwilling to pay $9.99 per month. Having watched revenues plummet from the CD era, label executives have been reluctant to budge on price, but they have come under pressure as streaming accounts for more of the pie.
Boom said he is optimistic that the new prices will expand the market.
“We’re moving music away from a one-size-fits-all approach,” Boom said. “We are the ones who have been pushing this the hardest.”
Streaming services must pay a majority of their revenues to rights holders, a business model that has left Pandora and Spotify struggling to turn a profit. But Amazon can afford to take a loss on music streaming, and the boost to Prime is well worth it, analysts say.
The premium music service, following the release of a standalone video service, suggests Amazon will increasingly offer basic media options through Prime while selling additional subscriptions for consumers who want to go deeper, said analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research.
The first-generation Echo device is a voice-activated household digital assistant that can be used to play music, read audiobooks, answer questions about the weather, traffic and latest news, or control IoT-connected light switches and thermostats, among other useful utilities. The device launched in November 2014 and features a Texas Instruments single-core ARM Cortex A8, along with 256MB of LPDDR1 memory and 4GB of storage capacity.
The new Echo Dot will be launching later this month with a MediaTek SoC, while the report suggests shipments of the chip are expected to peak between October and November. The chip is expected to improve the device’s ability to hear a user ask a question from any direction, though this will likely be tested when reviews are posted in a couple weeks. Meanwhile, Amazon will continue sourcing from Texas Instruments to produce Cortex A8 chips for its existing Echo device.
Amazon been purchasing chips from MediaTek since at least 2014 for use in Kindle Fire HD tablets and OTT devices, and now wants them to be part of the smart home device market as well.
In September, the company announced it would release a software update to support Echo Spatial Perception between existing Echo and newer Dot devices, allowing a single device to answer a voice command based on nearest proximity to the user. Of course, Amazon wants its customers to buy at least half a dozen of these assistants to scatter around the house, with bulk discounts available on six and twelve packs at $49 and $99 price reductions, respectively.
The Echo Dot will go on sale October 20th and is currently available for pre-order on the product page for $49.
A Democratic U.S. senator requested the software developer behind Nintendo Co Ltd’s Pokemon GO to clarify the mobile game’s data privacy protections, amid concerns the augmented reality hit was unnecessarily collecting vast swaths of sensitive user data.
Senator Al Franken of Minnesota sent a letter to Niantic Chief Executive John Hanke asking what user data Pokemon GO collects, how the data is used and with what third party service providers that data may be shared.
The game, which marries Pokemon, the classic 20-year-old cartoon franchise, with augmented reality, allows players to walk around real-life neighborhoods while seeking virtual Pokemon game characters on their smartphone screens – a scavenger hunt that has earned enthusiastic early reviews.
Franken also asked Niantic to describe how it ensures parents give “meaningful consent” to a child’s use of the game and subsequent collection of his or her personal information.
“I am concerned about the extent to which Niantic may be unnecessarily collecting, using, and sharing a wide range of users’ personal information without their appropriate consent,” Franken wrote.
“As the augmented reality market evolves, I ask that you provide greater clarity on how Niantic is addressing issues of user privacy and security, particularly that of its younger players,” he added.
Franken additionally asked Niantic to provide an update on a vulnerability detected on Monday by security researchers who found Pokemon GO players signing into the game via a Google account on an Apple iOS device unwittingly gave “full access permission” to the person’s Google account.
Pokemon GO on Tuesday released an updated version on iOS to reduce the number of data permissions it sought from Google account users.
Niantic did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Franken’s inquiry.
The company, spun off by Google last year, created the game in tandem with Pokemon Co, a third of which is owned by Nintendo.
Amazon.com Inc is gearing up to launch a standalone music streaming subscription service, placing it squarely in competition with rival offerings from Apple Inc and Spotify, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The service will be offered at $9.99 per month, in line with major rivals, and it will offer a competitive catalog of songs, the sources said. Amazon is finalizing licenses with labels for the service, which likely will be launched in late summer or early fall, the sources said.
Amazon, which offers a free streaming music service with a limited catalog to subscribers of its Prime shipping and video service, did not respond to a request for comment about the new, full-fledged music plan.
Although it will be a late entrant to the crowded streaming space, Amazon believes a comprehensive music service is important to its bid to be a one-stop shop for content and goods, the sources said.
The new music offering also is intended to increase the appeal of the Amazon Echo, its home speaker, which searches the Internet and orders products from the retailer with voice commands.
“A music service will further increase the daily interactions between Amazon and its customer base,” said former music executive Jay Samit when told about the company’s plan.
The new Amazon effort will compete directly with Apple Music and Spotify, which boast more than 30 million songs. Apple launched its service last year in one of the highest profile signs that listeners wanted subscription services, rather than paying for individual songs or albums.
The service also will diversify Amazon’s subscription offerings and be another step away from a single, annual subscription. Amazon recently began allowing subscribers to Prime to pay monthly, for instance.
Silicon Valley titans such as Apple and Alphabet Inc’s Google have muscled into music streaming in recent years, aiming to weave themselves more tightly into their customers’ daily routines and drive device sales.
Amazon similarly hopes its new service’s tight integration with the Echo will help it stand out and reinforce the speaker’s appeal, the sources said.
Released broadly last year, the Echo has become a surprise hit that rival Google is now seeking to emulate with a speaker of its own.
The move suggests that Amazon will increasingly offer basic media options through Prime while selling additional subscriptions for consumers who want to go deeper. The company recently launched a standalone video service.
The new music service is unlikely to steal many customers from Spotify, but it could pose a threat to other players, said David Pakman, a partner at Venrock who headed early Apple music efforts, when informed of the move.
After sliding its slide-rules, flicking its abacus, and counting its toes, the bean counters at Gartner have decided that the smartphone business bubble has burst splattering in the face of those who depend on it.
Big G says the market will shrink from 14.4 per cent growth in 2015 to just 7 per cent in 2016 — with only 1.5 billion smartphone units being shipped globally this year. Compair this with 2010, when Gartner notes the market grew 73 per cent.
However the signs have been obvious for about a year. Mature Western markets saturated, China’s growth engine slowing as demand has topped out and other markets unable to afford the higher margin gear. The smartphone has come to the end of its ability to provide new technology too with companies only able to offer incremental upgrades. Carriers are moving away from subsidizing upgrades which means that them wasting their own profits to prop up the likes of Apple are over.
In emerging markets it says the average lifetime of premium phone is between 2.2 and 2.5 years, while basic mobiles have an average lifetime of three years and up.
Gartner sees the biggest remaining opportunity for smartphone growth in India, noting that sales of feature phones — aka dumbphones — accounted for a majority (61 per cent) of total mobile device sales last year, leaving plenty of scope for upgrades as smartphones continue to become more affordable.
It is estimating 139 million smartphones will be sold in India this year, growing 29.5 per cent year-over-year. It notes the average selling price of mobiles in the country remains below $70, and it expects smartphones priced under $120 to continue to contribute around half of overall smartphones sales there this year. Apple’s hope that it can save its flailing business numbers by selling into India show the complete lack of understanding of how that market is working. It is tending to favor small local smartphone makers like Intex.
China is going to offer Apple no help either Gartner is expecting “little growth” in the region in the next five years. IT says it is “saturated yet highly competitive” market. Smartphones represented 95 per cent of total mobile phones sales last year.
Gartner analyst Annette Zimmerman said that “non-traditional” vendors in China could do well and thinks that by 2018 at least one such phone maker will be among the top five smartphone brands in the country.
“Chinese internet companies are increasingly investing in mobile device hardware development, platforms and distribution as they aim to grow their user bases and increase user loyalty and engagement,” she said.
The Sub-Saharan African region is also couched as an attractive region for smartphone vendors, with smartphone sales only overtaking mobile phones sales there for the first time last year. Nokia brand licensee and newly formed smartphone OEM HMD will want to take note, given it has paid for the right to build feature phones (and smartphones) bearing the previously iconic Nokia brand name.
The U.S. International Trade Commission has launched an investigation into seven smartphone makers on charges of patent infringement, which could lead to a ban on the sale of certain phones imported and sold by these vendors in the country.
The commission said it is looking into devices from a group of mainly Asian companies, including Lenovo and its Motorola subsidiary, Samsung Electronics, ZTE, Sony, LG Electronics, HTC and BlackBerry.
The complaint was filed against these companies by Creative Technology of Singapore and its U.S. subsidiary Creative Labs of Milpitas, California, on March 24.
Known for its Sound Blaster sound cards for PC audio, Creative has charged these companies with infringing U.S. Patent No. 6,928,433 entitled “Automatic Hierarchical Categorization of Music by Metadata,” which claims various methods for accessing different types of data, such as music or video files, on a portable media player.
Apple is said to be one of the licensees of the patent, and in 2006, Apple paid Creative $100 million for a nonexclusive license, according to Creative’s complaint. Creative had earlier that year asked the ITC to block the sale of Apple’s iPod devices for allegedly infringing the same patent.
Among the alleged infringing products named in the complaint are Samsung’s Galaxy S6 smartphone and other Samsung phones containing either the Google Play Music app (version 5.9.l854R.l904527), or the Samsung Music app (version 6.0.1508051449), which were installed on the phones prior to import.
The products at issue in the investigation are smartphones, “with the capability of playing stored media files selected by a user from a hierarchical display,” the ITC said in a statement Thursday.
If it finds infringement after investigation, the ITC can place a ban on the sale of products by these vendors, under a limited exclusion order requested by the complainant. The ITC cautioned that the launch of an investigation did not imply a decision on the merits of the case. It will set a target date for completion of the investigation within 45 days of its institution.
Nintendo has confirmed that its next-gen console, the Nintendo NX, will launch in March 2017.
Causing many to screw up their Christmas lists, the company told shareholders during its earnings call on Tuesday: “For our dedicated video game platform business, Nintendo is currently developing a gaming platform codenamed ‘NX’ with a brand-new concept. NX will be launched in March 2017 globally.”
Probably also causing some to cancel a trip to Los Angeles, Nintendo said that the NX will not be demonstrated at the upcoming E3 video games conference in June, despite speculation that Sony plans to show off its so-called PlayStation 4.5 console.
Nintendo’s keynote at the games show will focus instead on the next Legend of Zelda game, which will launch simultaneously on the Wii U and Nintendo NX in 2017. Rumour has it that Smash Bros 4, Splatoon and Super Mario Maker are all set to receive an NX makeover too.
A launch is now less than a year away, but we still don’t know much about the Nintendo NX, which Nintendo confirmed this week is just a codename for the incoming console. However, rumour claims that it will arrive as a hybrid between a home console and a mobile games console to sit alongside the New Nintendo 3DS.
Nintendo president and CEO Tatsumi Kimishima reiterated in December last year that the company is “not building the next version of Wii or Wii U” and that the device will be something “unique and different”.
News of the Nintendo NX’s launch date no doubt came as the firm looked to play down the fact that its profits fell 61 per cent year over year. Worked, didn’t it?
The National Football League has selected Twitter as its exclusive global partner for streaming its Thursday night games during the 2016 regular season, both parties announced, a deal that could help the social media site expand its user base.
CBS Corp and Comcast Corp unit NBC, which won the broadcast rights in February, could also gain more viewers via Twitter, TV executives said.
Twitter Inc spokesman Brian Poliakoff declined to disclose the financial terms, or elaborate on how the games would be streamed. But technology news website Re/code, citing people familiar with the bidding process, reported that Twitter paid less than $10 million for the streaming rights.
The deal comes as sports fans are increasingly relying on the Internet to watch video at the expense of traditional cable and satellite connections. Livestreaming the games would give Twitter a new avenue to attract users as it tries to catch up with rival social networks like Facebook Inc, which has over a billion users.
The NFL partnership helps cement Twitter’s position as a destination for live video, said Tom Richardson, president of consulting firm Convergence Sports & Media.
“I don’t think it’s going to cannibalize viewership at all,” CBS Sports Chair Sean McManus said. “I don’t see people turning off their televisions and watching the game on Twitter.”
“The fact that our national commercials are running on the Twitter feed is a big benefit,” he said.
An NBC spokesman declined to comment.
Twitter will livestream 10 games for free to the more than 800 million people who use its service, as well as non-registered users.
Last year, it was loose lips in the supply chain for console manufacture, now it’s seemingly loose lips within Nintendo’s own marketing department, but there’s a common thread to every leak or rumour that spreads about the platform holder these days – they all point to a late 2016 launch for the company’s next console platform, codenamed NX.
The numbers Nintendo was said to be targeting for NX that were floated around from sources at overseas parts suppliers checked out pretty well. Similarly, the more recent marketing leak has lent significant credibility by being on the money regarding the now-announced Pokemon Sun and Moon titles. It’s all still in the realm of rumour – a dedicated faker could have done the maths required to arrive at plausible manufacturing numbers for NX, just as we did when we dissected the claims; someone with knowledge of a soon-to-be-announced Pokemon game could have tacked on fake information about an upcoming console in order to troll gaming forums. It happens.
Besides, in the skeptics’ corner, there are some solid reasons to question the 2016 launch window. For a start, there’s the simple fact that we know nothing about NX. It’s already March, and all we know is a codename and some vague, hand-waving stuff about the console bridging home and handheld paradigms. That’s pretty much it. Assuming a November launch, that would leave Nintendo with a grand total of eight months to unveil, explain, market and promote an entire new console launch – even assuming that they were to start that process tomorrow. It’s not impossible, of course; that eight months would encompass E3, GamesCom, Tokyo Games Show and as many Nintendo Direct shows as the company wanted, so getting the message out there is plausible… But bear in mind that this is also the year in which Nintendo’s mobile gaming partnership with DeNA will bear its first fruit, and while I maintain that the company views that as a support to its console business, not a replacement for it, it’s reasonable to be dubious of the idea that it would willingly completely overshadow the marketing of those games with a blitz of promotion for a new console.
There’s also the simple matter of history to consider. Nintendo has never, as far as I can recall or uncover, announced a console in the same calendar year that it released it. The pattern for its systems’ pre-launch promotion has been fairly consistent since the turn of the millennium; a slow build-up from the reveal of hardware to further details and the introduction of software, with a launch often as much as 18 months after the unveiling. Compressing that into eight months (or seven, or six) might be possible, but it would be totally outside the pattern of what Nintendo has done up until now with its consoles.
On the other hand, Nintendo is in a pretty unique situation right now. It has a new CEO who, although he’s essentially pledged to follow the path Iwata set the company upon, will also have his own way of doing things and his own vision for the firm. It also has an absolute albatross in the form of the Wii U, which has not been saved from commercial disaster even by successful, acclaimed games like Splatoon and Super Mario Maker – and, almost uniquely for the company, it faces giving the Wii U an early bath at the same time that its all-conquering handheld platform, the 3DS (which has done very well despite not matching sales of its predecessor, the DS) is also slowing down significantly. Nintendo does face entering 2016 without a particularly strong handheld or home console platform and only the 3DS’ installed base to keep things ticking over – which might be a significant impetus to speed things up on the introduction of something new.
Let’s think in more details about the factors that would be involved in launching the NX by the end of the year. It would absolutely have benefits; perhaps the most clear one is that it would prevent 2016 being a “wasted” holiday season for Nintendo. The flatlining Wii U and the rapidly slowing 3DS suggest that without the introduction of a new platform this year, holiday 2016 will likely be Nintendo’s worst for many years – arguably not something Kimishima will want on his report card so early in his tenure. A rapid build-up and launch for the NX would give the company a blow-out Christmas, since Nintendo platforms pretty much always do well at launch – and of course, this would also place NX in the window to receive a prettied-up port of the upcoming Zelda title for Wii U at the same time as the Wii U version itself launches, a mirror of the very successful strategy the company used for Twilight Princess across the GameCube and Wii a couple of hardware generations ago. Even if the game isn’t totally exclusive to NX, a Zelda game at launch would be an enormous boon for the new platform and a great way to ensure a solid holiday season.
It’s definitely a short period of time, though, and the window in which Nintendo can announce the console is probably quite limited. It’s highly unlikely that it would wait for E3 to unveil its plans; much as turning up with a brand new console to the show would be a very effective way to “win” E3, it’s probably more sensible to unveil some aspects of the device, at least, in a Nintendo event well ahead of the show. Indeed, if NX details aren’t revealed to some degree either this month or next, I suspect a 2016 launch can be said to be entirely off the cards – although I wouldn’t actually put money on that, since if we’re talking about reducing the pre-launch promotion window from 18 months to 8 or 7 months, why on earth not make it six, or five, or four?
In fact, it might be more instructive to think about that window in terms of how other devices manage it. Consoles are actually quite unusual in having a lengthy, protracted period where everyone is talking about them, everyone is showing off software for them, but nobody can buy them. Compare that to smartphones or tablets, which are generally available to buy within a matter of days or weeks after they’re first unveiled. That short lead time doesn’t seem to stop Apple’s devoted fans from camping out to buy a new iPhone; perhaps a short lead time for a console might actually spur fans to excitement, rather than denying the new system a build-up? If the NX console is really a complex concept that it takes people a while to get their head around, then perhaps that will be problematic – you don’t want to launch a device that hardly anyone actually understands yet – but if it’s merely an interesting twist on the familiar, then perhaps a short, intense few months of promotion is actually a marketing advantage over a year or more of drawn-out arguments regarding the merits of a still-vapourware device.
Whatever Nintendo actually plans for the NX, it will represent a very dramatic choice for the company. A 2016 launch will be an aggressive strategy that overturns its previous approach to console launches and suggests dramatic reforms under Kimishima’s guidance. Pushing its launch out into next year, though, will leave the company facing a bleak holiday season with an ailing, albeit still popular, handheld device and a home console that’s almost totally dead in the water – and even with the prospect of a Zelda swan song on the Wii U, that will be a bitter pill to swallow for Nintendo. The company is, in some regards, painted into a corner – no matter what it does next, it’ll require a very different Nintendo difference.
AT&T Inc announced that it will debut three new ways to stream DIRECTV content on wireless and wired devices from smartphones to PCs, targeted at price-conscious U.S. viewers who shun pricey cable and satellite subscriptions.
The Dallas, Texas-based wireless provider said it expects to launch the three offerings in the fourth quarter of 2016. They can be streamed on apps through any Internet or mobile connection, it added.
The first option DIRECTV Now will offer all content in its current packages, including add-ons, live and on-demand video. DIRECTV Mobile, for smartphone users only, will include premium content and youth-oriented videos created by Otter Media, an AT&T joint venture with an investment group headed by media entrepreneur Peter Chernin. Free, ad-supported DIRECTV Preview will offer content from “AT&T’s AUDIENCE Network,” which has exclusive original videos, in addition to Otter Media offerings.
Prices will be announced at a later date, a company spokesman said.
AT&T acquired DIRECTV for $48.5 billion last year, making it the world’s No. 1 pay-TV operator with 45 million video subscribers, including Mexico and Latin America, at the end of 2015. It is betting big on video to tap new revenue as the U.S. wireless market stagnates.
The online video market is competitive, with players such as Netflix Inc and new entrants like Dish Network Corp and Verizon Communications Inc rushing to service viewers who increasingly consume video online than through pay-TV services.
AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson hinted in December that his company was planning content packages that can be viewed on a smaller screen, or to a single screen in a home that’s not set-top box-driven.
AT&T executives have said the company has already acquired mobile streaming rights, by leveraging DirecTV’s relationships and agreements with content providers, for various premium cable channels such as Showtime. It will deploy 40 megahertz of contiguous airwaves to relay content over its network.
“We intend to offer customers a quality pay-TV experience, including top channels, sports and more, with increased value and flexibility of pure online streaming and no need for home installation,” John Stankey, CEO, AT&T Entertainment Group, said in a statement.
Nintendo’s finances took a dip in the company’s third quarter report for FY 2015 – sales stayed relatively stable with just 3.9 per cent shrinkage to 427.7 billion Yen ($3.5bn), but profits dropped by 32 per cent year-on-year to 40.5 billion Yen ($336m).
Although the bottom line failed to excite, plenty of familiar faces performed well for the publisher’s software arm, as well as a few new names. Top seller was Child friendly Wii U shooter Splatoon, shifting over four million units. Super Mario maker wasn’t far behind on 3.34 million, whilst Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer reached 2.93 million. Collectively the 3DS family sold 5.88 million units of hardware and 38.87 million games. The Wii U totalled 3.06 million consoles and 22.62 million pieces of software. 20.50 million Amiibo figures were sold, and approximately 21.50 million Amiibo cards.
Those eagerly awaiting news of either the new NX system or the company’s first smartphone game will be disappointed – neither was mentioned in the company’s forward looking statements. Instead, the publisher focused on relatively known quantities.
“For Nintendo 3DS, we will globally release a special edition hardware pre-installed with Pokémon title(s) from the original Pokémon series on February 27 which marks the 20th year since the original Pokémon series release,2 read the accompanying statement.
“Furthermore, Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and key titles from third-party publishers are scheduled for release. For Wii U, we will strive to maintain the attention level of Splatoon and Super Mario Maker, which are continuing to show steady sales, while introducing new titles such as The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD. Meanwhile, for Amiibo, we will continue to expand the product lineup in order to maintain momentum. At the same time, we will aim to further expand sales by offering new gaming experiences with the use of Amiibo. In addition, the first application for smart devices, Miitomo, is scheduled for release.”
The company has maintained its full year target of 35 billion Yen in profit.
The Nintendo NX may surpass the Wii U’s lifetime installed base in its first year on shelves. According to a Digi-Times report, Nintendo’s upstream component suppliers are expecting to provide the company with enough hardware to ship 10-12 million units in 2016.
That would mark a rebound after the Wii U, which through September had put up lifetime sales of a little under 11 million. However, Nintendo may be expecting even more from its next platform; in July, Digi-Times reported that the company was planning to ship 20 million Nintendo NX systems globally in 2016.
The report states that Foxconn Electronics will manufacture the NX, with mass production beginning at the end of the first quarter. Foxconn Technology, Macronix, Pixart Imaging, Coxon Precise Industrial, Nishoku Technology, Delta Technology, Lingsen Precision Industries and Jentech are expected to be supplying components for the NX.


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Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey is an advocate of digital currency bitcoin. But he also says it is not ready to be a currency.
"It's not functional as a currency. The peaks and troughs are like an investment asset and are equivalent to gold," Dorsey told the Australian Financial Review in a story published Thursday.
"What we need to do is make it more usable and accessible as a currency, but it's not there yet," Dorsey said.
Bitcoin is volatile: It is currently trading at around $10,250, according to digital currency exchange Coinbase; in December 2017 it traded above $19,500, and in January 2019, it traded below $3,350.
Still, Dorsey is a supporter of both bitcoin and the broader idea of an Internet-based currency.
Dorsey's payment processing company Square is working to ready itself and the community for what Dorsey considers the eventual future: digital currency going mainstream.
For example, Square is hiring five engineers to work entirely on making the crypto ecosystem better," Dorsey told the Australian Financial Review. "I think the internet will have a native currency and anything we can do to make that happen we'll do."
Further, when bitcoin becomes ubiquitous, as Dorsey predicts, Square will focus more on building services to support it. "It'll be things like hardware, analytics and payroll and lending," Dorsey said.
In February, Dorsey tweeted that he himself exclusively owns bitcoin (of the bevy of cryptocurrencies available).
"Bitcoin is resilient. Bitcoin is principled. Bitcoin is native to internet ideals. And it's a great brand," he tweeted.
TWEET: Bitcoin is resilient. Bitcoin is principled. Bitcoin is native to internet ideals. And it's a great brand.
Dorsey prefers bitcoin for its longevity, among other reasons, he told The Sydney Morning Herald for a story which also published Thursday.
"I think [bitcoin's] the best bet because it's been the most resilient, it's around for 10 years, it has a great brand and it's been tested a bunch," he said.
"As I look at all cryptocurrencies that could fill that role of being the native currency for the internet, [bitcoin is] a pretty high probability."
In March, 2018, Dorsey said it would roughly a decade before bitcoin would become the global currency.
"The world ultimately will have a single currency, the internet will have a single currency. I personally believe that it will be bitcoin," Dorsey told The Times of London at the time. It would happen "probably over ten years, but it could go faster."
Jeff Bezos: Amazon is still 'small'—90% of US retail sales happen in brick and mortar stores
Neuralink president: You have to be 'very careful' telling Elon Musk something is impossible
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Anderson Direct Marketing will launch a b-to-b direct mail and email campaign on August 1 to introduce the company’s interactive services division, as well as the firm’s new tagline and website.
Anderson Direct customers and prospects will receive a postcard promoting the interactive services unit and the new “Connecting you to a greater ROI” company slogan and logo, said Danielle Nelson, marketing manager at the company. The shop will also send a promotional email to customers and prospects August 1.
The Poway, Calif.-based company will also send a T-shirt to customers promoting the website’s new look and feel that will arrive on or about August 8. It is also planning a second email blast on August 8 encouraging prospects and customers to follow the company on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
The firm launched the interactive services division last October to expand on its traditional marketing services with email, search, social and microsite-building capabilities.
“We’re keeping our name but changing our look considerably,” said Nelson. “Our website is five years out of date. The new website is more state of the art, and it plays up the additional services we can provide for clients.”
The new company logo retains the brand’s signature grid of dots but features a new color scheme and layout.
“We changed the fonts in our logo [from orange, green, purple and red to orange with one red dot] to be more modern. The current look is outdated,” said Nelson.
The new arrangement of dots is 3-D, as opposed to the current logo’s 2-D layout. The company’s current tagline is “Mastering the art and science of ROI.” Nelson said Anderson worked on the changes for two years. All of the marketing, creative and design was done in-house.


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Business partners have been essential to the success of Notes and Domino, but IBM believes a renewed commitment to its Lotus partners will be a successful catalyst of future software growth.
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One key part of that renewed effort is its Move2Lotus seminars in which business partners and IBM Lotus experts join forces to demonstrate the collaborative capabilities of Lotus products. The program also rewards customers for "trading in" non-Lotus licenses when buying new Lotus software.
Those kinds of events -- emphasizing partners' skills alongside Lotus products -- represent a new thinking at IBM, said David Hough, a director with PSC Group LLC, a Schaumburg, Ill.-based consultancy and IBM business partner.
PSC specializes in combining customer relationship management software on customized Notes/Domino and WebSphere platforms. He said the event benefited IBM Lotus because PSC filled the room with its Lotus customer prospects. At the same time, Lotus' presence added credibility to PSC's customization and service abilities.
Hough said his company offers monthly seminars at a Chicago area IBM facility, with each session focusing on a particular technology topic. "We have recognized names in the Lotus community speak, and they talk about what it takes to move from a Microsoft environment to a Lotus environment," He said
"If you're IBM, PeopleSoft, SAP or any software vendor, you're always going to have your own default perspective of how to solve a problem," Hough said. Business partners, on the other hand, are better positioned to listen to a customer's problem, find a strategy to solve it and then worry about which software products will be the best fit.
Without business partners, Notes and Domino wouldn't have grown to where they are today, said Michael Loria, IBM Lotus' director of channel and product marketing.
Loria said customized Notes applications, which have been largely developed by business partners, have driven users' fervor over the years for the platform.
He admitted that about four years ago when the Lotus partner program merged with IBM's other software brands under the IBM PartnerWorld moniker, partners experienced some trauma. For instance, Loria said the IBM program was intended to support a smaller number of large partner businesses, while Lotus partners were large in number but small in size.
To help Lotus partners, Loria said IBM Lotus has adjusted its participation levels to provide smaller companies with more services and support. It has also helped the approximately 5,000 partners who "make their living on Lotus" to take advantage of other IBM partnership perks, such as training, sales materials, marketing support and customer outreach programs.
Hough said those efforts have paid off. For instance, when he has a problem or question, he now has a team of four IBM PartnerWorld support contacts he can call directly for immediate assistance. When he had a problem previously, "They pretty much said, 'It's online,' but there was so much information out there that you could never find what you needed."
He said the extra support has helped PSC's 100-employee business grow amid a brutal Chicago-area business climate that has seen many other small businesses suffer.
"Microsoft is focused on desktop functions … and IBM Lotus is a process-focused architecture," Hough said. "With IBM's help, we're able to deliver steak at hamburger prices."
Loria said his group is working diligently to court new partners, but even though IBM PartnerWorld is likely to remain smaller than the Microsoft Certified Partner program, he believes the quality of PartnerWorld's offerings is far superior.
"If you ask a partner of both IBM and Microsoft who does a better job supporting them in terms of enablement, skills development and customer support, we tend to score higher. That's what we stress, the quality of the engagement," Loria said.


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The Consumer Electronics Association, CEA, predicts car audio aftermarket sales will be near flat for the next four years as demand for Internet Radio control in car radios, keeps the radio replacement market afloat.
In a slightly brighter forecast for car audio than earlier this year, the CEA said car radios that can control Internet radio (from the radio itself) will see a 75 percent increase this year to 2.1 million units wholesale, up from 1.2 million units in 2012. These radios are also helping to keep the average selling price of car radios afloat. Wholesale ASPs for car radios overall will see a small drop from $83 in 2012 to $80 in $2014.
“The aftermarket is fairly flat. But that is not a bad story…The excitement and innovation taking place in the OEM vehicle sector is inspiring consumers that aren’t in the market for a new car to seek out the same technologies for their existing vehicles,” said CEA’s Steve Koenig.
Total car radio wholesale dollar sales will fall somewhat from $502 million in 2012 to $493 million in 2013 and $487 million in 2014. Total car radio wholesale unit volume will remain around 6 million, creeping up to 6.1 million in 2014.
Although the CEA would not reveal long range figures specifically, Koenig said, “The picture is fairly flat through 2014 and then we start to see some small declines in the single digits in volume and revenue between 2015 and 2017.”
Sales of radios, amplifiers and speakers, signal processors, satellite radio and OE integration will total $1.17 billion in 2013 up from $1.16 billion in 2012. By 2017, that figure is forecast at $1.07 billion.
If you add the categories of mobile video and navigation (including portable) and radar detectors, remote start and vehicle security, the total aftermarket weighs in at $2.6 billion wholesale in 2013, dropping to $2.5 billion in 2014. The biggest cause for the decline is portable navigation which will fall 17 percent from $778 million in 2013 to $681 million in 2014.
OEM auto electronics sales are one of the growth spots this year for all of consumer electronics (along with smartphones, tablets, audio soundbars and Bluetooth/Airplay speakers).
OEM electronics will grow from $9.13 billion in 2013 to $11 billion in 2014, predicts the CEA.
The CEA forecast for car audio appears a bit brighter than Strategy Analytics’ forecast through 2020.


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Last Updated on 7th October 2013
Kate Moss has obviously caught the designing bug.
After her fash tech collaboration with Carphone Warehouse was a roaring success, Kate now wants to give designing for Topshop another go as she is set to resume her collaboration for the high street chain. Can we get a Hallelujah?
Mossy will reportedly be working with Topshop creative director Kate Phelan and stylist Katy England for the spring/summer 2014 collection that’s slated for release in April 2014.
“I am personally thrilled that Kate wanted to come back to Topshop to work with us again,” Philip Green said. “The first time around was such a lot of fun, and she has been sorely missed.”
We missed her too! And it sounds like Kate is pretty chuffed to be back too…
“I have really missed being involved in the design process, and working with the team at Topshop,” she said. “Now more than ever, with London being at the forefront of fashion…it feels like I’m back home working with Topshop.”
According to reports, we can expect a collection comprised of clothes, shoes and accessories, and it will be available in 40 different countries in the world, with pop-ups in several worldwide department stores too. Sounds exciting!


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WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- U.S. wholesale inventories rose 0.5% in November to $516.4 billion, the U.S. Commerce Department reported Friday. At the same time, wholesale sales increased 1%. November's inventory-to-sales ratio was 1.17 months. Inventories of durable goods rose 0.5% in November, as did stockpiles of nondurables.
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WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.–GLM plans to introduce a new branding platform called Signature Mix Marketplace at its New York City events next spring. The Signature Mix umbrella will include the National Stationery Show, Creative & Lifestyle Arts, and the premiere of Gift>it – Distinctive Gifts. Gift>It will feature products from among popular leading brands and emerging, … More »
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.-The inaugural Surtex Asia, which took place in Shanghai from Aug. 25-27, attracted 11 European and U.S. design studios and 300 manufacturers and attendees, according to a statement from GLM, the show’s owner and manager. The event took place at Shanghai’s Kerry Hotel Pudong. “We had an excellent showing of manufacturers eager to … More »
NY Now, the reformatted New York International Gift Fair, debuted last month.
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.-One hundred companies, more than double the exhibitor count from the winter show, participated in the Artisan Resource show last month, according to a statement by GLM, the show’s owner and manager. Those companies represented 25 countries and three continents, GLM said. Country pavilions from Cambodia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Peru, South Africa, … More »
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.-More than 32,000 attendees crossed the threshold to view products from 2,800 exhibitors in which show owner and manager GLM called a “dynamic debut” for NY Now, the reformatted and rebranded New York International Gift Fair, last week. The show’s reorganization—with four product collections: NY Now Home, NY Now Lifestyle, NY Now Handmade … More »
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.-GLM has promoted Melissa Gray to director of digital marketing and analytics, a newly created position for the trade show owner and manager. In her new role, Gray is part of GLM’s eight-person digital-products team, and works in cooperation with various show teams to develop a strategic vision for the launch and integration … More »
NEW YORK–Four Bloggers’ Choice Awards for exemplary product design were presented to Accent on Design exhibitors at NY Now earlier this week. Four bloggers from noted design and trend-watching sites each were invited to select one product, representing “urgent, odd and delightful design,” from among Accent on Design’s more than 150 exhibitors. “Design bloggers are … More »
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.-Trade show owner and manager GLM has introduced an enhanced corporate branding and positioning initiative involving a new corporate website, a new logo and the tagline “Global Lifestyle Markets.” A GLM statement said the effort reflects “the evolution and expansion of its services, which extend beyond trade shows to include consumer events and … More »


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Blog: Out with the old, in with the new
- Francisco Vara-Orta
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H.E. Butt Grocery Co.’s oldest standing grocery store is doing what many do nowadays when they reach 60 years of age: getting a makeover.
The popular San Antonio-based grocery chain will hold a grand re-opening Friday, Nov. 12 for its Allandale store, which has been expanded by one-third with new features and products.
The store at 5808 Burnet Road now has 68,000 square feet with an expanded produce, seafood, dairy and other sections. Additions include a floral department, sushi station with fresh rolls made in store, and a general merchandise section, which will carry holiday items and do-it-yourself products. Five additional check stands will be added, as well as widened aisles for added shopping space with more 5,000 new items.
The original Allandale HEB opened its doors in 1950 and featured 15,000 square feet of offerings, the company said in a press release.
To celebrate the newly expanded store, the location will host the following events on the weekend of the grand re-opening:
Nov. 12 – Attendees can register to win an HEB gift basket at 5 p.m. The basket, valued at $60, represents the nearly 60 years the Allandale store has been serving the community, the store said. Shoppers can stop by a table near the front of the store to enter the drawing, and do not need to be present to win. Additionally, customers can win HEB gift baskets every Monday and Friday for the rest of November.
Nov. 13 – Home for the holidays from noon to 6 p.m. featuring a performance from Ballet Folklorico from noon – 1 p.m., a visit from the store’s mascot HEBuddy, and food samples and demonstrations throughout the store.
HEB, with sales of more than $16 billion, operates 329 stores in Texas and Mexico, the company said.
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At the end of last month, exciting news was reported that the most notable creator of low-cost 3D printed prosthetics, e-NABLE, had received a $600,000 grant from Google.org. Today, the Enable Community Foundation (ECF) laid out a highly detailed two-year plan outlining exactly how they’d use that money, including the hiring of new staff, the developing of new Handomatic software, and getting 6,000 3D printed prosthetics out to those in need over the next two years.
e-NABLE has demonstrated just how effective a distributed 3D printing network can take advantage of open source design to make the world a better place. With their funding from Google, ECF plans to make this network tighter, smoother, and better through a variety of measures ranging from a database for aggregating information about hand designs to improving the designs themselves. So, while e-NABLE hires on new staff to aid their volunteers in designing and manufacturing prosthetics, the group will also be collecting data on how happy wearers are with their new devices, as well as how easy they were to be printed and assembled by 3D printing volunteers. This will help inform future iterations of their prosthetics, which will be better organized with standardized language across the web.
The organization also seeks to expand their device portfolio from wrist-powered hands for those with amniotic band syndrome to exoskeletons, orthotics, and arm prosthetics. To design these new devices, ECF plans to launch global design competitions with cash prizes through such sites as GrabCAD, with their first contest likely to take place this fall. And e-NABLE will bring these 3D printed prosthetics abroad by partnering with international aid organizations, also starting in the fall. Not only that, but ECF plans to connect with commercial medical device manufacturers in order to get their prosthetics out of their own community and into the industrial world, as well. They’re also seeking to partner with universities, introducing fellowship programs, and with companies like 3D Hubs, for the possibility of producing devices through their 18,000+ network of 3D printer owners.
Another significant plan is an upgrade to their Handomatic app, a parametric software that allows anyone to tailor a prosthetic hand to a specific wearer to 3D print it themselves. Handomatic 2.0 will be even more effective at creating customizable devices and, with the Handomatic 2.0 Mobile app, practitioners could potentially scan a person’s arm to fabricate a personally-tailored device while in the field. And, because e-NABLE plans to make their hands easier to print and assemble, the Handomatic app will be even more useful.
All of these improvements will help the non-profit meet its goal of getting 6,000 3D printed devices to people in need over the course of the next to years, as well as engage 10,000 3D printer users to fabricate their designs, reduce the material cost of their prosthetics from $45 to $25, and reduce the time it takes to get their devices to their wearers by 60%. Given the detailed outline posted on the e-NABLE site, I’d say that ECF really knows what they’re doing and has the means to make these goals. Maybe by 2020, there won’t be a person in need of a prosthetic that can’t get one.