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Axminster rescue rolls out after consortium buys royal carpet maker
Rolling out: The deal saves the firm's factory and outlet in Axminster
Historic carpet company Axminster – UK manufacturer and supplier to the Queen which can trace its roots back to 1755 – has been rescued by a consortium backed by Stephen Boyd, a local businessman who chairs leather firm Pittards.
It bought the Devon-based business from administrators Duff & Phelps for an undisclosed sum.
The deal saves the company’s factory and outlet in Axminster, an outlet in Buckfastleigh and 100 jobs.
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Carlsberg has launched an alcohol-free lager, Carlsberg 0.0%.
Carlsberg 0.0% retains the same taste of the brand’s traditional lager, yet is completely free of alcohol. Crafted using the natural ingredients of hops, malt and water, the new product is available to the off-trade in a four x 275ml bottle format.
The launch comes during a boom in the alcohol-free beer category, which has shown 30% off-trade growth in the past two years. The sector presents a huge opportunity for retailers to capitalise on, particularly in the run up to the summer months, when beer sales spike.
David Scott, Director of Brands and Insight at Carlsberg UK, commented: “Insight shows us that drinkers are increasingly looking to find alternatives for when alcohol may not be a suitable option but still want the satisfaction of a great tasting beer, and we’re confident that Carlsberg 0.0% delivers on these key factors.”
The launch of Carlsberg 0.0% comes during a period of major investment in the brand, which has a £14m media spend in 2015. A further two TV ads are planned for this year as part of the ‘If Carlsberg did’ campaign, which has been reintroduced for the first time in four years.
Carlsberg 0.0% is available now with the rrp of £2.50 for a four pack of 275ml bottles.

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feds issue warning about flurry of iTunes gift card scams
iTunes gift cards have become a common tool for online scammers to wring money out of victims, according to new warnings from Apple and U.S. federal authorities. One agency received a deluge of complaints during a recent weekend, including word from one victim who lost $31,000 in a recent iTunes payment scam, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The problem has grown so bad that Apple recently posted a notice on its gift card page, the agency said.To get more news about bigo 充值, you can visit nnxwheels.com official website.
“iTunes Gift Cards are solely for the purchase of goods and services on the iTunes Store and App Store. Should you receive a request for payment using iTunes Gift Cards outside of iTunes and the App Store please report it at ftc.gov/complaint,” the notice on Apple’s site says.
Criminals convince victims to buy iTunes gift cards, either online or in a store, and then email the secret code so the value can be drained – or traded.
“As soon as you put money on a card and share the code with (scammers), the money’s gone for good,” the FTC warned in a blog post.
Karen S. Hobbs, an attorney with Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said scammers like iTunes gift cards because they are “cash-like” in a few critical ways. It’s pretty hard to reverse an iTunes payment — unlike a credit card payment — and movement of iTunes dollars can be virtually untraceable.
With any fraud scheme — from sweetheart scams to fake IRS tax bill scams — a criminal’s biggest challenge is getting paid. Wire service payments are their preferring method, because wire payments are generally impossible to reverse. But apparently consumers are slowly heeding warnings about wire services, leading criminals to turn to other payment methods.
iTunes gift cards aren’t the only alternate money system scammers have adopted. The FTC warns that they are using Amazon gift cards, PayPal, reloadable cards like MoneyPak, Reloadit, and Vanilla, too.
Of course, criminals aren’t using the iTunes gift cards to feed their voracious appetite for music. They sell the cards on thriving gift card black markets, where iTunes cards — all cards, really – cman sell for pennies on the dollar. Still, that gives criminals a great way to receive funds from victims and quickly cash the out.It seems a bit far-fetched that consumers would believe the IRS, or any government agency, would ask for payment via iTunes “bucks.” But clearly, people are falling for the tactic.
“In some cases, (criminals) stay on the phone (with victims) while they go to the store and buy the gift cards, talk them through it,” Hobbs said.
The trend is international, too. Here’s a story about a similar tactic – a criminal tricks a victim into believing they have a big tax bill that must be paid immediately — working in the United Kingdom: a victim payment:


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Our parent company Continental Tyres, has joined forces with environmental product promoters, EcoDriven, to support its UK-wide Sustainability Showcase tour.
All the Latest News from Bandvulc...
Following our relaunch as a ContiLifeCycle facility in March, our retread plant in Ivybridge has assumed the role of a
At a first glance, it isn’t always obvious that a truck, bus, or van tyre has been optimised for a
We are pleased to be attending year’s Road Transport Expo Show and look forward to showcasing our latest Generation 5
We are delighted to announce the launch of our new Citymaster 5 retread tyre for the bus and coach sector.
Our Ivybridge plant which has been the the home of Bandvulc tyres for over 50 years, has been rebranded as
Continental supports fleet operators, dealers and service technicians with the TireTech mobile app for trucks and buses.
Our parent company, Continental Tyres has become the Rugby Football Union (RFU), England men and Red Roses’ Official Partner and
On How to Keep Your Fleet Moving with Conti360° Solutions
Find out how Conti360° Solutions can deliver a fleet service solution tailored to your business needs.


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Google's share price could easily reach four-digit levels, Carlos Kirjner of Sanford Bernstein said Friday.
"It's not controversial that this company has many opportunities to keep top-line growth healthy for the next couple of quarters and indeed for the next few of years, ranging from improving search through the knowledge graph, with YouTube capturing more print advertising dollars, entering new markets such as the IT infrastructure with the Google Compute Engine and Glass and Fiber and on and on," he said.
Shares of Google traded at $879.85 midday, up 0.3 percent.
On CNBC's "Fast Money," Kirjner said that Google still had to rein in costs for the stock to hit $1,000 per share.
"What we really need to see is management controlling operating expenses to deliver double-digit growth of operating common EPS," he said. "In that scenario, I think the stock would be trading more or less where it is today, at 19 times adjusted earnings, and the company would deliver EPS in the high 50s, which brings us, in fact, north of $1,000."
Asked about the role of Google's Android mobile platform, Kirjner said that he saw upside for the company.
"They are monetizing Android through Google Play by selling Android applications and content," he said. "And for them, I think it's important to bring more people online with low-end smartphones, with new devices such as the ones that you saw announced in the last few days, like game consoles.


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Direct selling FMCG company Amway India has appointed Havas Media to handle the media planning and buying duties of its beauty vertical.
On the appointment, Naveen Anand, chief marketing officer, Amway India, said, “Amway is a well known brand in India and our range is getting even more extensive to cater to a higher range of customer needs. So far we were focussed on building our Mother brand ‘Amway’ and health and nutrition brand ‘Nutrilite’. Now we have decided to launch our beauty vertical in mass media. We were looking for an agency that would do justice to our beauty vertical.”
The brand is ready to launch a campaign for the vertical, which includes the Artistry and Attitude range of beauty products.
“Amway is a great brand to be associated with but more importantly they are a great client to work with. This is yet another very important milestone in Havas Media India’s ambitious growth plans,” said Anita Nayyar, chief executive officer, Havas Media Group, India and South Asia.


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- Apr 12, 2001
It's unclear exactly when Apple added the Microsoft productivity suite to the online checkout process - it also appears when customers order the iPad Air 2, iPad mini 2, or iPad mini 4 - however the inclusion has raised a few eyebrows, not least because Apple usually positions its iWork suite as a better alternative to Microsoft's Office apps.
More significantly perhaps, Microsoft already offers all of its mobile Office apps to Apple customers on the App Store for free (with the exception of 12.9-inch iPad Pro users, oddly enough, since the larger tablet exceeds Microsoft's official definition of a mobile device). By contrast, an Office 365 subscription gives users Mac and iPad access to Microsoft's full suite of productivity apps, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more.
The move suggests Apple is heavily relying on the potential for Windows PC users to see the smaller iPad Pro as not only a Microsoft Surface beater, but also a complete desktop PC replacement that will draw them into the Apple ecosystem. Indeed, a look back at Monday's event highlights just how much effort Apple is now putting into encouraging Windows desktop users to switch to iPad.
"There's a second group of people that we'd love to reach with this iPad Pro: Windows users," Apple's senior VP Phil Schiller said during Monday's event. "You may not know this, but the majority of people who come to an iPad Pro are coming from a Windows PC."
Apple remains the largest vendor in a declining tablet market, shipping 16.1 million iPads in the fourth calendar quarter of 2015. While the iPad continues to be the best-selling tablet, its worldwide market share remains only 24.5 percent despite the larger iPad Pro launching in early November. Despite that, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro outsold Microsoft Surface tablets in its debut quarter.Windows PCs were originally conceived of before there was an internet, before there was social media, before there was app stores, and this is an amazing statistic: There are over 600 million PCs in use today that are over five years old. This is really sad. It really is. These people could really benefit from an iPad Pro.
When they see the features and performance and capabilities of a product like the iPad Pro, designed for the modern digital lifestyle, many of them will find it is the ultimate PC replacement.
iPad sales have declined for eight consecutive quarters year-over-year due to, among other reasons, longer tablet refresh cycles compared to smartphones. Apple's efforts to convince Windows PC users that an iPad Pro is a complete PC replacement appears to be the company's latest big push in its larger efforts to reverse this trend.
A one-year, single-license Office 365 subscription on Apple's website costs $69.95. A five-license subscription costs $99.95 and a four-year, two-license University download comes in at $79.95.
Article Link: Apple Promotes Microsoft Office 365 as iPad Pro 'Accessory'


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Google Same Day Delivery is Disappointing? Compared to Dominos
Now Google is testing same-day delivery, too. That isn't likely to have Amazon, eBay, Walmart or any other quick-delivery wannabes quaking in their boots, because Google's trial looks pretty much like all the rest. But there's a question overshadowing all these efforts.
How quickly do either E-tailers or brick-and-mortar chains have to do those deliveries?
For those few critical days before Christmas, any same-day delivery for last-minute orders, could be a high-margin bonanza for retailers as panicked shoppers are willing to pay full price. But for the rest of the year, the customers already know what they expect when they order something for quick delivery.
And the benchmark to beat isn't Amazon. It's Domino's.
Details of the Google trial in San Francisco are scarce. But according to a New York Times report on October 26, 2012, its customers are limited to Google employees and hangers-on. The search giant has cut deals with existing delivery companies and with several national chains for the products to deliver. Google's role is presumably to accept orders, handle the money and coordinate the deliveries.
In other words, it sounds a lot like eBay's same-day delivery experiment, except that Google hasn't committed to eBay's one-hour delivery time (the Times story says Google will deliver "in a matter of hours).
Some tech bloggers with overactive imaginations have also suggested that Google plans to use its experimental self-driving car for deliveries to cut out the cost of the driver.
Leaving aside the astronomical cost of insurance for that plan, (what could possibly go wrong with a car piloted by Google Maps?) it would mean the customer would have to walk outside to the double-parked car, figure out how to retrieve their package while not stealing anyone else's, and somehow securely sign for it.
Someday, maybe. Today, a driver is definitely a better idea.
The fundamental problem with all these quick-delivery trials is that they're calibrating their efforts with an eye on Amazon. The thinking seems to be that if Amazon requires ridiculously early ordering and only offers a four-hour delivery window in the evening, that's the minimum competitors have to meet.
Yes, that is same-day delivery. And for a few days of the year right before Christmas, when conventional delivery for E-Commerce orders becomes impractical, that type of same-day can be really profitable for last-minute orders from shoppers who are willing to pay for the privilege and wait around for the package to arrive. Right now, E-Commerce drops off dramatically on December 21. Any type of same-day delivery can recoup sales on those lost days.
But the other 360 days of the year, that's not realistic. What is realistic is that lots of customers enjoy same-day delivery all the time, and they have for decades. They order a pizza and, in something less than an hour, it's at their door for a small delivery charge. That's what shoppers are going to expect from same-day delivery.
Not “order before noon.” Not four-hour delivery windows. Not even a long delay between ordering and delivery.
Customers know they can have a pizza delivered in an hour. They know it's no harder to deliver a pair of shoes or a sweater than it is to deliver that pizza. If Domino's can deliver inside a 30-minute window, why can't Walmart, eBay, Google and Amazon?
They don't care that Amazon needs a long lead time because its few-and-far-between distribution centers are set up for shipping, not quick delivery. Or that Walmart's use of UPS for deliveries means it's stuck with UPS's turnaround time.
Image courtesy of Dominos.com
Pizza chains have set the standard: You have to deliver the goods before the food gets cold.
And customers know it's possible, because the pizza chains do it all the time. It's not even just pizza anymore. Many cities now have restaurant-delivery services. On Wednesday, October 31, 2012, Burger King announced it is extending its Washington, D.C., delivery trial to Miami. Target delivery time: 45 minutes. Typical delivery charge: $1 to $2.
That's a long way from what Amazon, Walmart and Google are offering.
It appears eBay is the only same-day experimenter that currently understands this idea, claiming it will complete deliveries within an hour for $5. We don't know whether that's actually happening, but suppose it is. Then eBay only has one problem: Nobody in retail believes eBay can actually afford to deliver items from other chain's stores inside an hour for $5. Walmart, for example, is running deliveries out of its own stores and requires a four-hour lead time and a four-hour delivery window — and still charges $10.
Why? Probably because eBay really can't make money at this.
It would have to launch a whole new business to turn a profit, in any case. That means the stakes are low, and eBay can afford to burn through its budget for the trial. Google is in much the same position — if anything, it has even less skin in the retail game than eBay.
On the other hand, Walmart (like other brick-and-mortar chains) has a huge opportunity in same-day —make that same-hour — delivery that leverages the advantage of all that existing, expensive real estate.
It's an advantage that Amazon can't beat; Walmart's stores are literally so much closer to most customers than Amazon's DCs that Amazon can't possibly win that race. Maybe that's what's making Walmart hesitant to push its own delivery trial as hard as it pushes its suppliers. The stakes are high, and that's making Walmart skittish.
The irony is that, at its core, this is about logistics and integration. It's 90 percent IT, and Walmart has already solved 90 percent of the problems. Walmart has systems to optimize how to make deliveries. It knows how to track inventory and fill orders. It has site-to-store in place. In principle, the chain just needs to tack on quick delivery, guided by tweaked logistics beamed to a smartphone in the delivery guy's car.
In practice, it'll be harder. And Walmart has never been in the pizza business, so on-demand same-hour delivery may sound impossible. Being just slightly more convenient than Amazon, and only a little more expensive, sounds a lot more appealing.
But every chain that has ever gone up against Amazon should know that being only slightly better won't work. And every chain that has tried to force customers to change their expectations should know that's also a losing game. (Ask JCPenney about coupons or any chain about contactless cards.)
It's easy to rationalize that customers won't mind waiting hours for a long delivery window to roll around — after all, same-day is still a lot better than next-day, right? Except after more than three years, hardly anyone even remembered Amazon's "order by 10:00 AM and we'll deliver by 8:00 PM" same-day program until the Financial Times rediscovered it this summer. Hardly sounds like a customer favorite, does it?
Yes, customers will mind waiting, especially once they make the comparison to food delivery. And yes, chains — especially Walmart — can probably figure out how to make this work so it's about as fast and cheap for customers to pay for same-hour delivery as it is to drive to the store.
But not until they wake up and smell the pizza.
Written by Frank Hayes, Executive Editor of StorefrontBacktalk.com.


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EPA Criticized Over Greenhouse-Gas Findings
WASHINGTON—Internal investigators at the Environmental Protection Agency said the agency failed to follow peer-review guidelines when developing a key scientific document that underpins its greenhouse-gas regulations.
The findings are likely to stoke Republican opposition to the EPA's efforts to regulate greenhouse gases and could arm industry groups that are fighting the regulations in court. One prominent Republican is already calling for congressional hearings on the issue.
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2010 Yamaha Super Tenere spy pictures
MCN has obtained leaked spy images showing the new 2010 Yamaha Super Tenere in production form for the first time.
Greek website motorsite.gr was given the set of three images by a mystery Yamaha insider, who took pictures of a scale model designed to show the bike’s design before a completed production machine was available.
Yes, it’s made of plastic – but in every other respect, it’s an accurate representation of the real Yamaha Super Tenere 1200 due to be officially released in 2010.
The cloth-wrapped concept bike from the Tokyo show was accompanied by a presentation revealing that the production bike is around 1200cc in capacity and is fitted with traction control.
Three-stage ABS will feature, and the concept models shaft drive is also seen on the bike in our new spy shots.
Styling is very similar to the current on/off road Yamaha XT660Z Tenere, indicating Yamaha is aiming to compete more directly with the BMW R1200GS rather than the more road-orientated Ducati Multistrada 1200.
Comfort looks to be good – a deep and spacious dual seat is obvious.
Full details in this week’s MCN, on sale Wednesday December 9.


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What is ABS?
Focus Group Reports
June 2, 2016
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Silicon Valley semiconductor company NVIDIA is forecasting Q2 2024 revenues of $11 billion, a more than $4 billion increase on what it secured in the same period last year. The rapid surge in growth is being fuelled by NVIDIA’s AI investments, as buyers rush to figure out how they can make the most of the advancing technology in the wake of generative AI tool ChatGPT being released.
NVIDIA announced its Q1 2024 earnings this week, with revenues of $7.19 billion (up 19% from the previous quarter), which sent the company’s share price up nearly 30% in after hours trading on Wednesday.
The company has struggled to meet demand for its AI chips, but CEO Jensen Huang told Reuters that NVIDIA had started full production of its latest graphic processing units (GPUs) in August last year, which helped expand to meet buyers’ needs when ChatGPT had its ‘iPhone moment’ earlier this year.
Speaking with analysts upon release of the earnings, NVIDIA EVP and CFO Colette Kress, said:
Outlook for the second quarter fiscal '24…total revenue is expected to be $11 billion, plus or minus 2%. We expect this sequential growth to largely be driven by [our data center division], reflecting a steep increase in demand related to generative AI and large language models.
This demand has extended our data center visibility out a few quarters and we have procured substantially higher supply for the second half of the year.
The key numbers for this quarter, Q1 2024, include:
Quarterly revenue of $7.19 billion, up 19% from previous quarter
Record Data Center revenue of $4.28 billion
Firstly, CFO Kress highlighted that the growth for NVIDIA is coming from the company’s data center division and she also provided some insights on the customer categories. She said:
“Generative AI is driving exponential growth in compute requirements and a fast transition to NVIDIA accelerated computing, which is the most versatile, most energy-efficient, and the lowest TCO approach to train and deploy AI. Generative AI drove significant upside in demand for our products, creating opportunities and broad-based global growth across our markets.
Let me give you some color across our three major customer categories…first, CSPs around the world are racing to deploy our flagship Hopper and Ampere architecture GPUs to meet the surge in interest from both enterprise and consumer AI applications for training and inference.
Multiple CSPs announced the availability of H100 on their platforms, including private previews at Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, upcoming offerings at AWS, and general availability at emerging GPU specialized cloud providers like CoreWeave and Lambda. In addition to enterprise AI adoption, these CSPs are serving strong demand for H100 from Generative AI pioneers.
Second, consumer Internet companies are also at the forefront of adopting Generative AI and deep learning-based recommendation systems, driving strong growth. For example, Meta has now deployed its H100 powered Grand Teton AI supercomputer for its AI production and research teams.
Third, enterprise demand for AI and accelerated computing is strong. We are seeing momentum in verticals such as automotive, financial services, healthcare, and telecom, where AI and accelerated computing are quickly becoming integral to customers' innovation roadmaps and competitive positioning. For example, Bloomberg announced it has a 50 billion parameter model, BloombergGPT, to help with financial natural language processing tasks such as sentiment analysis, named entity recognition, news classification, and question-answering.
Kress also highlighted the recently announced NVIDIA AI Foundations, which are modern foundry services that allow companies to build, refine and operate custom LLMs and generative AI models, trained with their own proprietary data, created for domain-specific tasks.
We saw a recent example of this at ServiceNow’s Knowledge user event in Las Vegas last week, where the cloud workflow vendor announced a partnership with NVIDIA to develop enterprise-grade generative AI capabilities, using NVIDIA software, services and infrastructure, to create its own custom LLMs trained specifically for the Now platform. On the new partnership, Kress said:
ServiceNow, a leading enterprise services platform, is an early adopter…they are developing custom large language models trained on data specifically for the ServiceNow platform. Our collaboration will let ServiceNow create new enterprise-grade generative AI offerings, with the 1,000s of enterprises worldwide running on the ServiceNow platform, including for IT departments, customer service teams, employees, and developers.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang also took time to talk to analysts about competition facing the company, given the heightened interest in where the AI market is going and how it will develop. Huang suggested that whilst competition is rife, he also argued that to gain advantage, companies need to be able to tackle the problem at scale and with the full stack - which few will be able to do. He said:
Regarding competition, we have competition from every direction. Start-ups, really-really well-funded and innovative startups, countless of them all over the world. We have competition from existing semiconductor companies. We have competition from CSPs, with internal projects. And so, we're mindful of competition all the time, and we get competition all the time. But NVIDIA's value proposition at the core is: we are the lowest cost solution. We're the lowest TCO solution.
And the reason for that is, because accelerated computing is two things that I talk about often, which is it's a full stack problem, it's a full stack challenge, you have to engineer all of the software and all the libraries and all the algorithms, integrated them into the frameworks and optimize it for the architecture - of not just one chip, but the architecture of an entire data center. The amount of engineering and distributed computing, fundamental computer science work is really quite extraordinary. It is the hardest computing as we know.
The second part is that generative AI is a large scale problem, and it's a data center scale problem. Another way of thinking about it is that the computer is the data center, or the data center is the computer, it's not the chip. It's the data center and it's never happened like this before.
And in this particular environment, your networking operating system, your distributed computing engines, your understanding of the architecture of the networking gear, the switches and the computing systems, the computing fabric, that entire system is your computer and that's what you're trying to operate. And so in order to get the best performance, you have to understand full stack and you have to understand data center scale, and that's what accelerated computing is.
This company has a whole lot of opportunity ahead of it - one to watch over the coming months and years, particularly as it partners with vendors higher up the stack (e.g. ServiceNow). The worlds of infrastructure and software are becoming more closely tied as the advancements in AI progress.


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The numbers around Snapchat's valuation "do not add up," according to an analyst note from Cantor Fitzgerald sent on Wednesday.
"The valuation looks stretched to us both based on the future cash flows of the business and when compared to peers like Facebook and Google at IPO," wrote three analysts from the bank, Youssef Squali, Kip Paulson, and Naved Khan.
The three analysts estimated Snapchat parent Snap's 2017 revenue to determine its enterprise-value-to-revenue multiple, and compared it to larger rivals Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Yelp.
The enterprise-value-to-revenue multiple is one metric for analysts to decide whether stock is over- or underpriced.
According to the analysts: "Snap Inc. trades at 28.6 x EV/revenue using our [full year 2017] estimates ... vs. the average of the peer group (FB, TWTR, GOOGL and YELP) of 5.5 x (and 9.6 x for FB)."
The reading here is that Snap's stock is overpriced. Facebook made $27 billion (£22.1 billion) from advertising in 2016, according to its financials. Google's parent company, Alphabet, reported $90 billion (£73.7 billion) in revenue over the same period. Meanwhile, the analysts predicted that Snap would make $1 billion (£819 million) in revenue next year, describing this as "aggressive."
This is how fast Snap's revenue might grow
The bank gave Snap the equivalent of a "sell" rating, citing its inflated valuation, an unproven advertising model, an "untested" management team, slowing growth, and the threat from Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
The analysts said the "jury is still out" on whether Snap would be the next Facebook or Twitter.
"[It] is yet unclear if user/[daily active user] growth will plot the course of a Facebook or tap out sooner with a more niche audience, like Twitter. Monetization growth can only take a company so far (as we've seen with Twitter), after which the size of the audience and increased user engagement become much more important revenue drivers longer term."
Snapchat's user growth slowed by more than 5% in the first half of 2016, the analysts said.
They blamed the slowdown on "competitive pressures" from Instagram, which launched the Snapchat-like Instagram Stories feature in that time. Facebook has more recently replicated the feature again on Messenger with Messenger Day. If the slowdown continues, the analysts wrote, Snapchat will look more like Twitter.
Finally, there's the fact that almost 1 billion shares will flood the market next summer, likely denting Snap's share price. The analysts said around 957 million shares would come onto the market after the expiration of Snap's lock-up period next July 29. Facebook's share price fell 4% the day after its lock-up period expired.


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The National Cotton Council says that President Obama’s FY2011 USDA budget ignores the extensive changes to production agriculture support that were embodied in the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008. In addition, the NCC notes, USDA already has announced unwarranted restrictions in program eligibility during the legislation’s implementation.
“The President’s proposal on phasing down direct payments and limiting total payments affects the farms that produce more than three-fourths of all agricultural products marketed in the United States,” says NCC chairman Jay Hardwick, a Louisiana producer.
“The financing demands of commercial agriculture require a high level of confidence by lenders in program availability. In the midst of a credit crisis, it makes no sense to threaten a vital component of the borrower’s cash flow.”
Storage Costs Were Offset
The 2008 farm law includes provisions for the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) to pay a portion of the storage costs during periods of low prices. These provisions’ costs were completely offset by changes in the upland cotton counter-cyclical target price.
“Baled upland cotton is an identity-preserved commodity that re-quires off-farm storage in facilities approved by CCC while under loan,” Hardwick says. “Loan eligible cotton must comply with a number of CCC regulations stipulating bale wrapping and packaging.
“Foreign sales account for one-third of U.S. agricultural production’s total value,” Hardwick adds. “Solid export performance is essential for the economic health of rural America.”
The National Cotton Council provided information for this article. For additional details, visitwww.cotton.org.


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The new comprehensive rebranding includes a new visual design, new packaging, a new design in all its digital channels and a new tone of voice.
SodaStream has announced a 360° brand repositioning. Continuing with its digital transformation and consumer-centric strategy launched three years ago, the company has taken into account the growing interest of its consumers in the fields of design, innovation, cocktails and user experience. Also, considering that the trend of making your own sparkling water at home continues to grow and that consumers are looking for more accessible premium products, especially in the food and beverage sector, SodaStream has completely redesigned the company symbol, the palette of colors, the web, and has included a new level of products, more premium.
At the center of the new positioning is the brand’s claim: ‘Push for Better’, inspired by the action performed when pressing the button on the SodaStream sparkling water machine. In this way, the slogan comes to life in the new visual identity, leading to a “domino effect” of positive change, inspired by the power of a simple push of a button and the current of change it sets in motion, both for consumers and for the planet.
The new visual language includes a new iconic symbol consisting of two intertwined drops of water arranged in a yin and yang formation, representing balance and harmony, as well as resembling the planet. The design forms the emblematic letter “S”, symbol of SodaStream. True to its commitment to improving the planet, the new color palette draws inspiration from nature. The brand’s primary colors are Fresh Blue, Deep Blue and Sand, referring to the purity and freshness of the water and the shine of the sand.
In addition, SodaStream also reveals Soda Stream Collection, a new level of premium products that represents a higher range of design products. The range offers a high level of user experience through superior innovation, quality and design, and will consist of the new SodaStream sparkling water machines, Art, which will arrive in the Spanish market in the future, and Duo. It will also include future innovations resulting from collaboration with world-renowned designers.
SodaStream’s new visual identity is now present on all of the company’s digital channels, including its websites, social media and additional platforms. And, starting in 2023, the new packaging will gradually reach the 47 world markets in which the company operates.
“Our new strategy and accompanying brand assets are the next chapter in SodaStream’s journey to change the way the world drinks and revolutionize the global beverage industry,” said Eyal Shohat, CEO of the firm, who He adds: “As experts in creating sparkling beverages, we are excited to offer our consumers the perfect sparkling water experience with an enhanced lifestyle. By using SodaStream, our consumers have the opportunity to do something that is better for them and better for the planet.”
SodaStream has collaborated with Pearl Fisher, a creative design and branding agency based in London, to create and implement the brand’s new visual identity, as well as Eitan Cohen, creative advisor to the group. “We are very proud of our partnership with SodaStream. It’s been a great process, from identifying the SodaStream opportunity, to evolving and optimizing key brand assets, to ensuring that every aspect of the new design vision and brand experience activates its pioneering attitude and its change current mentality”, comment Eitan Cohen and David Jenkinson, partners of design and experience of Pearl Fischer. “This is an exciting chapter for Sodastream and we can’t wait to see this bold, impactful and empowering new design hit the shelves.”


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Google Launches Free Tools to Help Travel Industry in MENA
28 september, 2022
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported that Apple will hold an event on September 7 to unveil the new iPhone 14 line. The event could be postponed to a slightly later date, but given that the company usually holds presentations in the first half of September, this seems unlikely.
Announcements of the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Max, iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max are expected at the event. "Pro" models may get more significant changes compared to their predecessors. Previously, there had been rumours that the company would do away with the "notch" in them and move the front camera to a cutout in the screen. The iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max will use the next generation A-series processors. The regular iPhone 14, on the other hand, will retain the old design and possibly the current Apple A15 Bionic chip.
Apple is also expected to announce a new Apple Watches, including a new premium version of the device and an updated version of the Apple Watch SE. In addition, Apple is rumoured to be preparing a low-end iPad with an A14 chip and USB-C port, as well as new iPad Pro models with M2 chips.
2 september, 2022
19 july, 2022


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Ticket sales for the 2013 New Albany Classic Invitational Grand Prix and Family Day have increased since the announcement less than two weeks ago that Ariana Grande and Emblem3 would play the annual Tween Brands Concert, an event organizer said.
"Since we announced the concert online, and with the Justice and Brothers stores reopening at Easton, we saw immediate ticket sales on the website," event coordinator Stephanie Lorenz said. "We're ahead of where were last year (in ticket sales)."
Lorenz said she expects the Classic will sell out again this year.
The event, which includes an internationally sanctioned horse-jumping competition and family-friendly activities, will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 22, at the home of Leslie and Abigail Wexner in New Albany.
Proceeds benefit the Nationwide Children's Hospital Center for Family Safety and Healing.
The Classic's concert typically features up-and-coming musicians chosen by Tween Brands, which "knows what is hot with 'tween' kids and what's going to be hot for the next six to 12 months," Lorenz said.
She said the Tween Brands Concert, which this year is sponsored by Justice and Brothers, has featured the Jonas Brothers, Big Time Rush, Hot Chelle Rae and others, all of whom have had successful careers.
The concert has caught the attention of recording artists and record labels, which are now courting the Classic as an important step in a music career, she said.
"We're being told that these rising bands and singers are asking to be booked at the Classic," Lorenz said. "It's unique how bands are starting to reach out to us to come to the event."
Grande, who started her career on Nickelodeon's Victorious, sold 1 million copies of her first single, The Way.
Emblem3, which features Keaton and Wesley Stromberg and Drew Chadwick, will tour with Selena Gomez on the North American leg of her 2013 Stars Dance Tour, which begins Aug. 14 in Canada.
Tickets for the New Albany Classic Invitational Grand Prix and Family Day are $20; children younger than 10 are admitted free.
Visit thenewalbanyclassic.com for tickets or more information.


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Patents exist to protect innovation. But in recent years, hundreds of patents have been turned into weapons wielded by so-called patent trolls — entities that buy patents as ammunition for infringement lawsuits. Such lawsuits drain billions of dollars a year from the economy.
Now a who’s who of technology, automobile and other companies has banded together in a novel approach seeking to thwart patent trolls. LOT Network counts Google, Canon, Dropbox, Ford Motor Co., GitHub, JP Morgan Chase, Pandora, Pure Storage Red Hat, Solar City, Uber and Wikimedia Foundation as members. On Monday, it will announce that Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Motors Corp. have joined the nonprofit.


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Other than the HUAWEI P50 series, the Chinese tech company is also expected to launch its 11-inch tablet, MatePad 11. Earlier, it was reported both the smartphone series and tablet will arrive before September. Now, a tipster claims that the launch date for MatePad 11 will be on 6 July, which is in just a few days.
According to Changan Digital King, the prototype models of the device have already been sent to the official physical retail stores. On 4 July, the pre-order for the MatePad 11 will start to take off, and we'll have the launch on 6 July. As for the HUAWEI P50, it is tipped to launch on 29 July.
The HUAWEI MatePad 11 features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset. It is also paired with 6GB RAM as well as two storage variants of 64GB and 128GB. For the display, the tablet sports an 11-inch FullView panel that supports 2.5K resolution alongside a high 120Hz refresh rate.
Let us know what you think about the news on our Facebook page. Stay tuned to TechNave.com for more tech rumours.


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While GeForce Experience currently allows compatible desktop PCs to stream games to Shield on the same Wi-Fi network, today marks the first time laptop computers--with a Kepler-based Nvidia GPU--can take advantage of the Gamestream functionality. Twitch streaming, via Shadowplay, is also now available for notebooks.
Nvidia's Battery Boost technology, built into the GeForce Experience 2.0 update, analyzes CPU performance and memory allocation to supposedly double the amount of playtime on laptops.
"Battery life really sucks without any power source connected," said Nvidia's James Wang. "Now we've gone back to basics and optimized it on a system level."
Desktop PC gamers with a compatible Nvidia GPU can also expect new features in GeForce Experience 2.0. Game capture through the software now allows for full-screen broadcasting; a big plus for games traditionally played in windowed mode.
Shadowplay will also auto-name your Twitch stream with the title of the game you're currently playing, and wider broadcasting options--custom output resolution, custom framerate--should speed up the experience.
And at long last, Shield owners can now stream PC games away from home. The beta feature isn't available for notebooks just yet, and you'll need a recommended bandwidth of 5Mbps upload and download on the remote Wi-Fi location. Nvidia and Valve recently announced Portal would find its way onto Shield in the near future.
Matt Clark is a freelance writer covering the world of videogames, tech, and popular culture. Follow him on Twitter @ClarkMatt and MyIGN at Matt_Clark.
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Panasonic introduces the Eluga Power at MWC
A week ago, Panasonic announced the Eluga for European market which is one of the thinnest smartphones available in the market right now. However at Mobile World Congress, Panasonic has officially unveiled Eluga Power, which is almost like Eluga. Have a look on the specs:
- 1280×720 HD, 5.0 inch LCD screen with a 9.6mm thin frame.
- Slim form factor – 136x70x9.6mm.
- Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 1.5GHz dual-core processor, Android 4.0.
- International standard IP57 water and dustproofing.
- NFC – allowing for contactless payment and data transfer.
- Main camera with 8MP autofocus and 1080p Full HD video recording, including auto scene recognition and 8x digital zoom, as well as a front-facing camera.
- Superfast charging – 50% charge takes just 30 minutes, and 80% takes 57 minutes (provided it starts charging from a 10% charged status).
- 8GB of internal memory, with Micro SD Card Slot supporting a further 32GB.
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I should preface this review by saying, up until now, the biggest phone I’ve used on a daily basis is a Galaxy S 4 with an Otterbox defender case. But
We’ve all done it, in one way or another. Downloaded a Swype.apk file to give Swype’s amazing keyboard a try. Found a Swype.apk and sent it to our friends. But the fact is that some aspects of distribution are illegal according to Swype Inc.’s copyrights. Swype has released an official statement, directed mainly at users on XDA, about when it’s okay or not okay to distribute Swype on devices.
If you are a fan of Hulu and Hulu plus, and you carry an Android device around with you, there is reason to celebrate. During the Samsung Keynote at CES, Hulu’s CEO announced that they are working to bring the Hulu Plus subscription service to “select Android phones”.
A quote from Hulu’s blog about the announcement:


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London-based artist Russell Marshall has joined forces with gallery Beautiful Crime to produce a limited edition screen print in honour of John Lennon’s 75th birthday: endorsed by Yoko Ono Lennon.
The stunning limited edition screen print will launch at a special ‘bed-in’ on Lennon’s birthday (Oct 9th) and will remain on display as part of a week long event celebrating the much-loved British star.
From 9th- 16th October, Beautiful Crime's gallery space in Shoreditch, London, will be transformed into the Montreal hotel room where Lennon and Yoko held their famous bed-in for peace in 1969 - for Beatles fans and Lennon lovers to visit and take a selfie 'bed-in' style with the fantastic Lennon artwork as a backdrop.
The print itself is based on a classic image of Lennon taken on a New York roof in 1974 by his friend and legendary rock n roll photographer Bob Gruen. Hand screen-printed in retro blue on pearl at Jealous Studios, only 23 out of the 25 prints are available for sale - numbers 1 and 2 are already reserved Gruen and Yoko Ono Lennon.
Artist Russell Marshall said: “I’m delighted to have been able to work with such an amazing piece of rock n roll history and my thanks go to Bob Gruen and Yoko Ono Lennon for allowing me to do so. There are millions of published rock n roll photographs and thousands more are taken every year... but there is maybe a handful of iconic images that define a place, a time, a sound - one moment in music history: Bob Gruen’s rooftop Lennon image is right up there at the top.”
Beautiful Crime Director Liam West added: "We are honoured to be working on such a prestigious project as this with internationally renowned artist Russell Marshall. This iconic image has been re-worked in Marshall's signature screen print style, and to have the support of the photographer of the image, Bob Gruen and permission from Yoko Ono Lennon only adds to the gravitas of this official print release by Beautiful Crime."
Marshall is a rising star on the international art scene. Last year an original canvas signed by the artist sold at auction for £50,000 at the President’s Club Charity dinner, followed by a signed screen-printed colour proof fetching £14,000 at Eva Longoria’s Global Gift Gala. To accompany the Lennon print, titled ‘Lennon 1974’, and explain its history, a short film will also shortly be available to view at www.beautifulcrime.com


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A new report by the World Bank Group (WBG) has canvassed reforms in Nigeria’s digital economy, saying by leveraging Information communication technology (ICT), the country has the potential for economic diversification and job creation.
The multilateral financial institution said digital financial services alone could be transformative and capable of creating over three million new jobs in the next few years.
In its latest ‘Nigeria Economic Update’, the Bretton Woods institution said Nigeria currently uses only four per cent of its internet capacity.
The update with the theme, ‘Jumpstarting Inclusive Growth: Unlocking the Productive Potential of Nigeria’s People and Resource Endowments,’ said at the end of 2018, fixed broadband in the country had a household penetration rate of 0.04 per cent, below the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) average of 0.6 per cent and far below the world average of 13.6 per cent.
Citing the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the Nigeria Economic Update said mobile broadband (3G) coverage reached 54 per of the population against the SSA average of 62.7 per cent, adding that 5G coverage is also very low and concentrated in urban areas.
“According to the State of ICT in Nigeria 2018, there is a serious digital gap in mobile broadband, with just over 29 per cent of Nigerians owning a smartphone, 45 per cent a feature phone and 32 per cent a basic phone.
“The gender gap in mobile phone is also significant, with a higher probability of mobile phone owners among men than women. In 2018, 19.9 per cent of Nigerians used their cellphone to connect to the internet. Overall internet usage in Nigeria stands at 27.7 per cent–above the 22.1 per cent average for Africa (ITU 2018),” the Nigeria Economic Update said.
The multilateral financial institution observed that Nigeria lacks digital skills, ranking 121st out of 139 countries in Global Competitiveness Report’s assessment.
“Thus, the poorest are excluded from the benefits of the digital world. Of the total population of around 200 million, the labour force is estimated to be about 90 million, with a literacy rate of 51 per cent.
“Although Nigeria does not participate in international or regional student assessments, after completing grade 4 only 66 per cent of public school students can read at least one of three words and only 78 per cent can add single digits.
“Nigeria trails Ghana, Kenya, and Senegal in the quality of its Maths and science education. Such shortages of foundational skills will make it difficult for Nigeria to heighten digital literacy and will lower the chances it can take advantage of the opportunities the digital economy offers,” the WBG report said.
It noted that Nigeria’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) demon.


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Airbnb said in the coming months as people begin to travel again, cleanliness and safety will continue to be a key consideration for travellers and that its enhanced cleaning protocols will play an important role in helping revive confidence in the safety of travel and stay within India among hosts and guests.
“We have reviewed Airbnb’s enhanced cleaning protocol for the homestay sector. Airbnb protocols are comprehensive and are in compliance with the standard procedures related to sanitation and hand hygiene. This initiative will ensure safety and hygiene of guests," said Dr R V Asokan, honorary secretary general, Indian Medical Association.
Airbnb said the new protocols will be rolled out in India in the coming weeks and will provide step-by-step guidance to hosts in India on how to clean and sanitise their homes to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Hosts who follow the programme will receive a special badge on their listing and guests can identify and book listings that follow these cleaning standards.
Amanpreet Bajaj, general manager - Airbnb India, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan said these enhanced cleaning protocols are the need of the hour in the sector. "These measures are aimed at restoring traveller confidence and driving the systematic recovery of communities through the economic impact of tourism and travel. We are working to bring our hosts global best practices backed by expert counsel and medical guidance from professionals who are at the forefront of the industry. We strongly believe that this can be industry-wide standards” he added.


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A field of almost 50 cars is due to take part in the official FIA GT Championship test session at Paul Ricard early this week.
The test will mark the first outing for cars in the main series, as well as the FIA GT3 and GT4 championships.
In GT1, 13 cars will be taking part, including two Maserati MC 12, four Corvette C6R, four Saleen S7R, two Ford GT1 and a Nissan GT-R. GT2 has ten cars testing: six Ferrari 430 GT2 cars, three Porsche 997 GT3 RSR and a Lamborghini Gallardo. A sole Porsche bi-Turbo will test in G2.
GT3 has a bumper grid of 21 cars, with the Aston Martin DBRS9, Audi R8 LMS, BMW Alpina B6 GT3, Corvette Z06 GT3, Ferrari 430 Scuderia, Ford GT, Jaguar XKR-S, Lamborghini Gallardo, Morgan Aero Super Sport and Porsche 911 GT3 Cup S all due to take part in the test sessions.
For the GT4 European Cup, Maserati will be launching their Maserati Gran Turismo MC GT4 car and three Donkervoort D8GT cars from Donkervoort Automobilien wil also be on track.
The full-season entry list for the 2009 season of the FIA GT Championship will be issued on Monday during the press conference, including 25 entries.
“Despite the difficult economic times, I am delighted with the grid we have for 2009,” Stephane Ratel, CEO of SRO Motorsports Group, promoter of the FIA GT Championship said. “This proves that the slightly reduced calendar, the generous team assistance and the new tyre regulations have played a part in reducing the costs involved.”


text: The Coimbatore Centre for Weavers, KCT organized a visit to the carpet city. Bhavani on January 20, 2021 to study the socio-economic status of handloom weavers and business opportunities for product “Jamakkalam”. A team consisting of student volunteers from KCT Business School (Batch 2020-22) and Dept of Fashion Technology under the guidance of Dr. B. Poongodi, interviewed 17 handloom weavers of Periamolapalayam village, Bhavani Taluk using snowball sampling method. The team collected data with the help of an unstructured questionnaire containing around 40 variables through personal interview method. Analysis has helped the CCW to identify the requirements of handloom weavers and the carpet industry to take the trade forward and make it sustainable. Recommendations will be submitted to the Directorate of Handlooms and Textiles, Tamil Nadu.


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Regulatory divergence—variations in financial regulations around the world—inevitably creates stress for financial companies that neglect to keep close track of their clients’ data. Many companies cannot even identify where their customer data is stored, nor can they fathom the extent of the data they’ve collected. And the practice of employees using multiple tools to compile and store data only adds to the stress.
The implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) across the European Union (EU) has been a game-changer for the finance world. According to research from Sia Partners, the cost for financial institutions to become GDPR-compliant dwarfs the investment for organizations in other sectors. While technology firms and media organizations in the United Kingdom might spend 20 million pounds or 7 million pounds, respectively, the average bank in the UK needs to fork over about 66 million pounds to reach full compliance.
GDPR has also heightened regulatory uncertainty everywhere in the world. Combining that with the patchwork of federal and state regulations for data-management systems in the US financial industry, firms here are feeling the weight of divergence more than ever.
Regulations such as those implemented with GDPR give customers greater control and agency over their own information, which means businesses cannot afford to spread data across disparate systems that make it difficult or impossible to track. Such gaps create compliance liabilities, and in the event of a security breach, the consequences of mismanaged content could be catastrophic.
Considering the divergences between not only financial regulations but also systems and processes, compliance can be costly and time-consuming. To ease widespread concerns and address operational flaws, companies need to streamline processes and resources to clarify where and how client data should be stored.
GDPR’s cascading effects
The implementation of GDPR has compelled the largest Silicon Valley firms to make it easier for users to amend or delete their own data and prevent personal information from being collected and shared without consent. These changes will soon be required, not optional, domestically—and some US states are already enhancing their individual regulations.
California, for example, is trying to be proactive on data security, and New York in 2017 implemented what one analyst called “the most stringent rules” in cybersecurity outside of the military. Those new rules, called 23 NYCRR 500, require that a chief information security officer oversee and maintain a cybersecurity policy, perform periodic testing of a company’s vulnerability, establish limits to data access and retention, and keep the state informed in the case of a cyber-event.
As for the states without regulations, individual companies and associations are taking matters into their own hands before waiting for more restrictive regulations. Many are treating the European policy changes as a chance to improve their data privacy and security systems.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, for example, argues in favor of privacy online and has called for Congress to pass federal legislation to make it more attainable. He argues that this would give consumers control of their data and shed light on those who are currently using it in such a way that undermines trust and abuses sensitive information. Cook believes that technology and privacy do not have to be mutually exclusive.
But the lack of consistency among state and federal regulations in the United States adds layers of difficulty to financial businesses that are already developing responsive policies. Fragmented regulations also conservatively place a $780-billion economic drag on the industry, according to a recent study conducted by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) and Business at OECD (BIAC).
Firms hiring data-protection officers (DPOs)—team members who keep companies compliant in employee culture, policy implementation and disaster training—should manage to stay ahead of moderate or elevated regulatory litigation. GDPR mandates the appointment of a DPO if a company acts as a public authority, engages in the systematic monitoring of people or processes sensitive personal information on a large scale.
Preparing for tougher regulations
Unfortunately, the adoption of heightened regulations has hit many companies where it hurts: square in the pocketbook. A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) survey of 300 executives in the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan found that 88 percent of those companies had spent more than $1 million to make changes because of GDPR; of those same companies, 40 percent said they had spent in excess of $10 million to get ready for GDPR.
As with any security measure, policies widely considered to be the most restrictive eventually become standard for the industry. Whether it happens in 2019 or over the next few years, compliance with regulations such as GDPR will ultimately be mandatory.
This means financial firms must be ready to handle massive amounts of personal information by increasing their bandwidth and investing in new information technology (IT) products. Another complication is the fact that financial institutions must find ways to navigate “special category data” that is similar in some ways to health data. This particularly sensitive information is subject to a higher level of protection—and rightfully so—requiring firms to store and use this data with increased discretion.
As time passes, increasingly restrictive global standards and penalties—hefty fines and pressure from clients as they gain greater control of their data—will be a part of any broad-sweeping policies adopted in the US. Companies should be aware of a higher chance of increased government restrictions and expect the companies they patronize to practice more stringent data-security measures. Businesses that fail to enact long-overdue changes will not be tolerated.
From a practical standpoint, failing to meet regulations increases the likelihood of data theft. A survey commissioned by VIPRE states that 23 percent of respondents report daily cyberattacks, and two-thirds said their businesses would suffer a short-term or long-term shutdown if their systems or data were compromised.
And to what do breaches always boil down? The improper and insecure storage of customer data. Developments such as GDPR highlight the same concern: how client data is handled. The only difference this time around is that the timeframe has been condensed, and affected customers are demanding to be heard.
That shift might seem small, but the steep regulatory fines for GDPR violations are nothing to scoff at. Serious errors, including failure to receive consent to process data or any sort of privacy breach, could result in fines of up to 20 million euros or 4 percent of a company’s annual global revenue. Google learned this lesson the hard way, as the company recently was fined 50 million euros for allegedly failing to provide consumers with enough information about how it would use their information and for not disclosing its data-consent policies in accordance with GDPR standards. With consequences that harsh, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a large number of businesses that remain non-GDPR-compliant go out of business in the event of a breach.
Regardless of the confusing nature of compliance, the most significant disruption to the status quo in privacy laws in at least two decades is transforming the financial industry. To continue to grow and thrive, US organizations must recognize the importance of data security and take steps to streamline their operations now. Those that start the process sooner will lessen their risk of noncompliance and come out ahead in the eyes of consumers and competitors alike.


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A new Google patent details a system to allow the pairing of items such as keys or a wallet with a mobile device to alert a person when they are about to leave the house without one of the items. “The monitoring device monitors the presence of items in its vicinity using a short-range wireless communication or sensing technology such as NFC, Bluetooth, RuBee, RFID or any other method of wireless communication or sensing,” the patent says.
- Lessons learned from implementing HCE for cloud-based NFC mobile payments — See the webinar now on NFC World
- Cartes Bancaires picks Gemalto to ease member banks’ NFC mobile payments offer
- Alipay comes to more Australian stores
- Australian bank reveals NFC payments sticker use
- Apple Pay adds US and Australian banks


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Abu Dhabi official says confident that Uber will return to the UAE capital following 2016 suspension
Uber Technologies is reportedly in talks to resume services in Abu Dhabi.
Mohamed Darwish Al Qamzi, general manager of The Centre for Regulation of Transport by Hire Cars (Transad), was on Tuesday quoted by Reuters as saying he was confident Uber would resume services.
Uber suspended its services in Abu Dhabi in 2016. It continues to operate in Dubai.
At the time, Uber told its app-users in Abu Dhabi: "Due to unforeseen circumstances, we will suspend operations in Abu Dhabi effective immediately till further notice. In the meantime, we will keep you informed when operations resume. Thanks for your understanding and apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused."
Later the company said: "This is a temporary suspension and we will let you know of any further updates. Our goal is to resume operations as soon as possible."
Last month, Uber's chief operating officer Barney Harford said the company will increase its investment in key growth markets like the Middle East, which might include a bid for Dubai-based Careem, its rival in the region.
The US-based ride-hailing firm recently sold its South-East Asia business to Singapore-based rival Grab and now has "resources available that are allowing us to double down in critical competitive markets in particular India and the Middle East North Africa", Harford told CNBC television.


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Franchised hotel operator Premier Hotels has appointed The Hausemen Group to carry out an interiors and brand positioning project, following its move into the serviced apartment sector.
A decision has yet to be taken on whether a standalone brand will be created. Premier Hotels managing director of brands and franchising Stuart Harrison says the review includes how “the product will look”.
It is likely, according to The Hausemen Group head of design, Richard Welchman, that one standard interior look will be created and rolled out to each apartment. Work is expected to take “a couple of months”, says Welchman.
Premier Hotels will make its debut in the serviced apartment market in 18 months with a 58-unit property at the ExCel conference centre in London Docklands.
The offer is aimed at the medium- to long-stay overseas business traveller, who may need enough space for family members. Apartments will offer a kitchen and distinct living area to encourage lengthier stays.


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This Police Department Has Just Inducted Its First Electric Patrol Car - A Used Tesla Model S
Brookhaven, a city situated northeast of Atlanta, aims to go green with its transportation mediums, just as many other regions across the world. This inevitably involves replacing the existing IC engine vehicles in the city with electric ones. And in case it doesn’t come to mind right away, this list of vehicles to be replaced also includes those used by the city’s police force.
So following suit, the Brookhaven Police Department has now bought a 2015 model of a Tesla electric car. The new $45,000 patrol vehicles has been purchased through confiscated funds and is supposed to be a part of a larger initiative by the police force to completely switch to a zero-emission, electric drivetrain.
Now considering the ongoing electric vehicle (EV) revolution around the globe, authorities using EVs is nothing new. But to use them as a part of police patrolling is comparatively unheard of. City Manager Christian Sigman reaffirms this in a press release, “We will be the first to use them for law enforcement patrol operations.”
Brookhaven Police Department posing with the newly bought Tesla Model S. (Image: City of Brookhaven)
Also read: Elon Musk Shows What A Zero-Emission Future Will Look Like With This Image
The car will not be put to use by the police force right away though. It will undergo several tests to determine its use case scenario as a patrolling vehicle. For this, the Tesla Model S will first be sent to Georgia Public Safety Training Center, where it will be made to run on a specialised track as a part of field testing for endurance and speed.
Once the field tests are conducted, the EV will then be compared to the patrolling cars currently in use, in terms of both mileage and usage patterns. Comparative feasibility of the EV will then lead to its induction in the police force for six months, before a final decision is made to purchase more electric cars or not, as per city officials.
As for the EV in consideration here, the pre-owned Tesla Model S already has 22,000 miles (around 35,400 kms) on its odometer. Though the warranty on the car is that of 100,000 miles (or 1.6 lakh kms) and 8 years, meaning much of its life is still ahead of it.
Tesla Model S inducted by Fremont Police Department (Image: Fremont Police Department)
Also read: Iconic Ambassador Car Might Make A Re-Entry In India, But This Time It Will Be All-Electric
To complement the new EVs in its patrolling fleet, the project also involves setting up of corresponding charging infrastructure in the region. As of now, there is only one electric car charger located at the Brookhaven City Hall which will be replaced by four new smart chargers as per the plan.
This is not the first time that Tesla vehicles are being used in a police department’s patrolling fleet. Only last month, Fremont Police Department in the San Francisco bay area debuted its Tesla Model S patrol car. The Los Angeles Police Department and Denver Colorado Police Department have been a step ahead, having had Tesla Model S vehicles in their fleets for a few years now.
The notion here is simple. Electric cars denote the future of patrolling fleets in more than one way. They are efficient, both in terms of speed, performance as well as maintenance. As a part of a department that always needs to be on its toes, such enhanced efficiency can profit multi-fold, all while contributing to the environment as well.
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Chicago (IL) – The next round of legal proceedings against alleged music mass piracy has begun. AllofMP3.com has become the latest example, with looming lawsuits from Arista Records, Warner Bros, Capitol Records, and more, aiming to take down the site.
AllofMP3.com, owned by Moscow, Russia-based Mediaservices, allows users to purchase music for just cents per track, offering a price advantage over the $1 price on iTunes and others. According to the case filed, the site does not distribute any of the proceeds to the artists or recording labels.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal New York court, alleges, “Defendant’s entire business…amounts to nothing more than a massive infringement of plaintiffs’ exclusive rights under the Copyright Act and New York law.”
Mediaservices at this time claims that it pays a Russian licensing group (Russian Organization for Multimedia and Digital Systems), therefore being in compliance with Russian laws. However, like many legal cases involving the Internet, the issue falls under international private law and international jurisdiction.
Earlier this year, Visa and Mastercard prevented sales to all of Mediaservices’ sites because of the legal issues surrounding them. A related suit has been filed in Europe as well on behalf of major UK recording companies.


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Fashion models have lined up on the runway at London City Airport to launch British Airways flights to the catwalk of Milan.
The first of the twice daily flights took off from the Newham transport hub on Monday, April 24.
But first Diana Rimshelis, Addis Miller and Chantelle Fan posed on the tarmac with a British Airways Embraer 190 aircraft and the iconic Canary Wharf backdrop.
The trio are represented by Model Students which aims to promote a healthy attitude towards body image and hope to one day walk the fashion runways at Italy’s fashion capital.
British Airways’ general manager customer and commercial Luke Hayhoe said: “As our new service links two of the greatest fashion cities in the world it was fitting to ask these young models to help us celebrate the launch of flights to Milan.
“This is a very exciting new route for us as it will appeal to both business and leisure customers. The flights compliment the British Airways Heathrow service, offering our customers more choice with well-timed flights to Linate, which is Milan’s most central airport.”
The service will operate on Embraer 190 jet aircraft, with two abreast seating and a flight time of around 1 hour and 55 minutes.
Flights will leave London City Airport at 10.20am Monday to Saturday and 7.20pm Monday to Friday and Sunday.
Sales Director at London City Airport Bernard Lavelle said: “Milan and London share financial hub status and cultural importance as global centres for fashion and design, with British Airways’ service between London City and Milan Linate playing an important role in connecting the two, for passengers travelling for business or pleasure.”
Basic each way fares from London City to Milan cost from £59 and are available to book at www.ba.com
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Instagram has ushered in a new breed of wildly creative, OTT makeup that should only exist online (if at all). One example of this is lip art, with tiny images once drawn only on fingernails now being drawn on mouths and including everything from watermelons to unicorns to palm trees.
While we would never suggest copying these imaginative yet highly absurd illustrations, we are in favour of embracing what makeup artist Lisa Eldridge deems “wearable lip art.” “If you think about the easiest kind of trend to replicate, it really is lip art,” says Eldridge, who is also creative director for Lancôme Makeup. “Many people can’t do liquid eyeliner or a smoky eye,” she says, “but everyone knows how to put lipstick on, so it’s instant gratification.”
This new wave of creativity has influenced current lip products, which are available in every possible texture and even with two shades in a single bullet. By using just one or two items, you can create something simple yet special. “It can be one colour on the bottom and one colour on the top or maybe two different textures,” says Eldridge. “Rub the lips together and you have something very beautiful.”


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Let’s say you’re a fast food chain and the Baconbomb Burger is your top selling item. If a customer walks in and orders that item, but you’re out of bacon, you’ve just really disappointed that customer.
“What’s the cost of disappointing that customer?” asks Steven LaVoie, CEO of ArrowStream, who knows well that the answer is “huge.”
Product promotions, whether for a national restaurant chain, a private label manufacturer, or a retail grocer, comprise a significant part of the business. And, they’re happening weekly, if not daily in some cases.
“These companies spend an enormous amount of time and money on promotions, but until recently they haven’t spent a whole lot of time trying to understand how to assure they have the right product in the right place at the right time,” says LaVoie. “It used to be they just jammed the supply chain with extra inventory, which just expired.”
Fortunately, the software and technology to support these types of demands is not only available, it’s also more affordable, secure, and sophisticated than ever before, thanks in large part to the use of the cloud to support virtual networks and platforms that connect people and companies in real-time.
For instance, while ArrowStream has offered software-as-a-service (SaaS) since 2002, they didn’t always offer it in the cloud, explains LaVoie. But they do now, which means that if one server were to go down, a customer’s access would not be interrupted because other servers are replicating the software in the cloud.
While the foodservice industry may not have been an early adopter of SaaS and cloud computing, it’s fair to say that they’re catching up fast. “The foodservice space is becoming aware that there is a lot of opportunity in supply chain management and they need to take advantage of it,” says LaVoie.
He tells the story of one customer who had a “protein problem.” Specifically, the customer had five suppliers of protein, but one plant was unexpectedly taken off line because of a bacteria outbreak.
“Our customer was able to get onto our system and immediately see where all of their product was in every single distribution center across the country. They reallocated all of the product—where it was going to go, how it was going to get there—and they were able to successfully manage their business with 80 percent capacity and they didn’t have to short a single restaurant in their network. That was a big deal.”
LaVoie mentions other big deals, like ArrowStream’s Inbound Transportation Management solution, which not only optimizes the supply chain, it optimizes it upstream in the form of simultaneous inventory replenishment, as opposed to this happening after an order has been placed.
“We haven’t had a single customer who has used this software report less than a 7 percent reduction in their total freight spend,” says LaVoie.
ArrowStream’s not stopping there, either. LaVoie says the company is working on a new supply chain management technology product that would eliminate pricing errors in the system. “In our experience, about 15 percent of all orders that are placed from restaurants to their distributors have errors of some kind, due in part to the complex nature of these type of orders.”
Jerome Malavoy, CEO of Trace One, is equally upbeat on how SaaS and cloud computing are impacting supply chains. In 2001, Trace One launched the first collaborative online platform in SaaS mode for managing the development of private label products. According to the company’s Web site, its customer base includes 18 retailers and 6,200 consumer goods manufacturers. Some of those listed include Coca-Cola, Sara Lee, Kraft, and Procter & Gamble.
“We link these companies’ entire ecosystems together,” says Malavoy, which is critical when the requirement is a promotion or a new product launch. “It’s all about time-to-market,” he says.


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Kraft's Tassimo to send personalised thank you messages
Kraft has launched an eCRM campaign supporting its coffee brand Tassimo, which sends "thank you" messages to customers' friends, in a campaign created by Publicis Chemistry.
Tassimo: runs thank-you campaign
Members of its CRM programme, which is called myTASSIMO, will be sent an email, inviting them to send a message of thanks to their friend in the form of a personalised video, accessible from a microsite. Participants will get access to a special offer.
To accompany the campaign there will be Facebook activity to show how many people are spreading thank you messages across the world.
There is also an opportunity to share the messages on social media channels, including Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and Facebook.
The activity runs across eight European countries, with Publicis Chemistry supported by Proximity Paris and TBWA Berlin.
It forms part of Tassimo’s current ‘Touch. Sip. Smile’ campaign.
This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk
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The acquisition follows approval by regulators and stockholders of both companies.
“Welcome, Vivint Solar employees and customers,” says Lynn Jurich, co-founder and CEO of Sunrun. “Together we will provide affordable, reliable and clean electricity at an exciting new scale. With our product offerings, millions of homeowners will rewire their homes with solar and batteries to enjoy enhanced comfort and affordability. The combined company will benefit from a broad market reach and differentiated consumer offerings.”
Sunrun’s growing fleet of solar homes and batteries will be networked to provide greater benefits to the grid and energy consumers. Generating energy at the point it is used reduces the need for dirty energy being produced far away that is increasingly expensive to transmit.
Over the coming months, product offerings will be transitioned to offer customers the best solutions, including expanded access to Sunrun’s Brightbox rechargeable battery solution which enables homeowners to power through grid outages. Vivint Solar will continue to operate as a Sunrun company for the immediate future and will be integrated into the Sunrun organization over the coming quarters. Sunrun estimates annual cost synergies of approximately $90 million to be realized over 12 to 18 months.
As previously announced, Vivint Solar stockholders will receive 0.55 shares of Sunrun common stock for each share of Vivint Solar common stock they own immediately prior to the consummation of the acquisition.
Photo: Sunrun’s landing page


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Consumer prices for hospital services dropped 0.7% in April, the largest one-month decline since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics first reported the figures in January 1997. The drop follows a 0.4% increase the prior month, figures for the BLS Consumer Price Index show. In April 2012, hospital consumer prices increased 0.5%.
Decline in hospital CPI biggest since '97
Daniel Ginsburg, supervisory economist at the Labor Bureau's consumer price program, said the sharp decline does not necessarily suggest a shift in price trends. Price declines that contributed to the drop occurred in geographic regions that carry more weight in the index because of population and historical spending, he said. Price increases occurred as well, he said, but were not enough to offset the decline.
The Consumer Price Index reflects what hospitals are paid by private insurers, privately insured patients and the uninsured. Unlike the Producer Price Index, the CPI excludes Medicare and Medicaid.
For the year ended last month, hospital consumer prices increased 4.3% compared with 5.2% the prior 12 months.
Last month's decline in hospital consumer prices was accelerated by the largest one-month drop in inpatient hospital prices since January 1997. Inpatient service prices dropped 0.9%. Outpatient services consumer prices also declined by 0.5%, the largest one-month drop since August 2004.
Consumer prices for physician service , meanwhile, increased 0.4% in April compared with 0.2% the prior month and 0.2% in April 2012.
For the year ended in April, physician service consumer prices climbed 2.7% compared with 1.4% the prior year.
Follow Melanie Evans on Twitter: @MHmevans
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Ludhiana, May 27
While on one side Covid-19 induced lockdown has caused immense financial loss to a majority of city residents with many losing their means of livelihood on the other cyber criminals seem to have come up with yet other novel way to loot people.
Many vehicle owners have reportedly received SMS messages about e-challans of their vehicles with details of a website, which purportedly provides details of e-challan and link to online payment of penalty.
Ludhiana Police Commissionerate has cautioned city residents on its official Facebook page that these messages are fake and there is no need to take any notice of such messages. The recipients of SMS have further been warned not to visit the provided website or proceed for payment of penalty.
Surprisingly, the website created by cyber criminals has complete database of vehicles registered with the RTA (Regional Transport Authority). Once a recipient of the message enters his vehicle number, all details like make and model of the car, name of the owner, the engine and chassis number are shown on a page, which looks like a genuine web page of the RTA or the city traffic police.
In the feedback from some recipients of such SMS, it was mentioned that on inquiry from the RTA office they were told that no such e-challan was pending against them and no such message was sent by the office for the payment of penalty.
Police officials said vehicle owners had been asked to remain cautious in their own interests and not fall prey to such cyber fraudsters. The matter was also referred to the cyber crime wing to launch an investigation and trace the gang of cyber criminals from the IP address, added officials.
On data of vehicles registered with the Ludhiana RTA shown on the fake website, officials said it was available on several sites after computerisation of all record pertaining to motor vehicles. It was no big deal to hack this data for IT experts and cyber criminals, officials added.
SMS for online e-challan payment
Many vehicle owners have reportedly received SMS messages about e-challans of their vehicles with details of a website, which purportedly provides details of e-challan and link for online payment of penalty.
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A new Executive Order aims to improve government websites, reduce roadblocks, and increase efficiency and accessibility for the American public.
International World Usability Day is November 11, 2021 and highlights the importance of incorporating user-centered design principles into all services and products.
While an automated or manual accessibility audit can ensure a product is legally compliant, your organization can do so much more to improve the user experience for people with a wide range of abilities.
Accessibility initiatives benefit from a shared, organization-wide mindset about the importance of providing equal access to information through products and services. But instituting that mindset that prioritizes accessibility can be a difficult task.


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Much has been written about Facebook’s acquisition of the rapidly growing WhatsApp. At a total purchase price of $19 billion, it’s one of the largest in history, and some harbingers of doom would say, yet another sign that we’re back in a dot com era bubble.
However, this particular merger is no AOL-Time Warner, nor is it any of the many other disastrous acquisitions that litter the early 2000s road to ruin. In fact, to pay attention only to the dollar sign behind any of Facebook’s historical acquisitions would be to miss the heart of the matter: where Facebook goes, so, too, does all of social media. After all, its initial spread pretty much made social media. Ever since Mark Zukerberg et al have continually expanded the role of social media in our society, setting the norm in terms of the kinds of services and behavior social media users can expect to enjoy and exhibit.
Even now as its competitors grow and its younger users flee to more private and streamlined sites, Facebook’s long shadow can be seen throughout the social sphere; while it may no longer be on the cutting edge of development, it certainly knows how to recognize companies that are and integrate them into its platform.
So, in context with this WhatsApp purchase, what can Facebook’s acquisition history, both of talent and of products, tell us about the future of social media? To begin an in-depth analysis, we highly recommend giving this acquisition timeline tool a look, as it effectively compares the history of acquisitions across the top tech firms. Below, we’ll analyze Facebook’s various acquisitions, with the caveat that many of these phases overlap even as they trend forward.
Phase 1: The no-brainer purchases
When Facebook was just a baby company, it made a number of purchases that it simply would have been stupid not to make. Purchasing Facebook.com and a host of like domains was one of them, as was purchasing Friendster’s patents, and ConnectU and FriendFeed outright. I’m calling these no-brainers, because they all emerged from the stew of proto-social sites that Facebook sought to dominate. By buying them, Facebook got to establish its foothold as the premier social site and to benefit from their basic patented social features such as liking statuses. To expand these features, Facebook also purchased Octazen, a contact importer, so users could easily find friends, thereby helping Facebook to continue its rapid expansion.
Phase 2: Expanding what social media is
Once these basics were established, Facebook got down to the business of expanding our conceptions of just what social media was, establishing the site at the center of its many users’ lives. During this phase, Facebook acquired companies like Divvyshot, Sharegrove and Nextstop, which offered such functionalities as photo sharing, travel recommendations, private conversations and forums. Together, these features established the idea that a social media site was more than a status update feed, providing a number of ways to connect with friends and colleagues that most users probably didn’t even know they wanted. As I’m sure you’re aware, many of these features spread across the burgeoning social field and became pretty much standard.
Phase 3: Monetizing
As Facebook approached its IPO and shortly thereafter, the pressure was on to monetize. It’s no surprise, then, that Facebook’s acquisitions took a turn into revenue generating territory, including advertising (Rel8tion and Atlas), customer loyalty apps (Tagtile), social gifting (Karma) and gaming (Spaceport). Together, these acquisitions either provided the company with increased functionality within these spaces or provided a tighter framework for the implementation of the technology they already had. Again, the model they set in all of these spheres quickly became the norm in much of the social world.
Phase 4: Going mobile
As a tech innovator, Facebook recognized the shift to mobile relatively early, acquiring the HTML5 mobile app company, Strobe, along with its talent back in 2011, as well as Hot Potato, and its mobile check-in feature. But lately the flight of its younger users to dedicated mobile apps, which have been built from the ground up with mobile in mind, has increased the pressure on Facebook to better establish itself in this sphere. As such, Facebook’s acquisitions have increasingly focused on mobile. Among the relatively smaller purchases, this has included a mobile app developer (Snaptu), a location based service (Gowalla), mobile bookmarking and content sharing (Spool), mobile software (Oseta) and mobile analytics (Onavo).
That brings us to Facebook’s two biggest purchases: Instagram and WhatsApp. Both fit neatly into this mobile trajectory, while offering slightly different benefits. At the time of the Instagram purchase, Facebook’s mobile app wasn’t great while Instagram’s was, so its purchase added a whole layer of mobile functionality. What’s more, Instagram helped modernize Facebook’s photo functionalities with fun filters — crucial, as social media has increasingly trended away from text-based sharing and into the visuals. Add to that additional data, which means more opportunity for ads down the line, and the Instagram purchase was a big move toward the future. (Need proof? Look at Facebook’s and Instagram photo sharing competitors. They pretty much all include filters now, something that definitely wasn’t the norm just a year ago).
Though in a different sphere, the WhatsApp purchase was made for similar reasons. Facebook clearly sees mobile messaging as the future of social, something made apparent in its failed bid for SnapChat. WhatsApp’s functionality far exceeds that of Facebook chat, and its user base is growing rapidly. While the purchase may never directly payoff in the strictest of numbers, it allows Facebook to staunch the exodus of younger users and again set the model of our social future, which may be worth billions more than it paid (at least, according to Mark Zuckerberg).
So, what does this mean for the future of social?
We already know that the present of social is mobile, and that it’s only going to continue to become more so. The question now — and the space Facebook is trying to dominate with its purchases — is what we’ll do with all of that mobile functionality. Clearly, to Facebook that mobile future has a lot to do not just with mobile sharing and marketing but also with social communication. It also may be a push towards streamlining and privacy, as WhatsApp messages guarantee more privacy between sender and recipient, and it does so in a pretty basic platform. The latter is true of most of Facebook’s recent purchases, which means that even as the platform adds more capabilities, it’s seeking ways to give users the simpler, individual app experience within the umbrella of their platform.
Social media companies and bloggers can capitalize on this trend by embracing brevity as well as mobile access and simplicity. These days, marketers should expect that their readers are consuming their media on smaller mobile devices, which tends to call for shorter posts, or at least those that are better divided on the screen. The push towards social communication may also put consumers in a more interactive mindset, which marketers can use to their advantage with a more gamified experience.
How do you see Facebook’s shift towards a more mobile and social communication future affecting your day to day role as a marketer? Let us know in the comments below.
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Nevada lawmakers have sent the governor a large-scale cannabis reform bill that would more than double the personal possession limit, consolidate licensing rules and broaden eligibility for participation in the market by people with prior felony convictions. The cannabis omnibus legislation from Sen. Dallas Harris (D) passed the Assembly in a 28-14 vote on Monday, just a few days after it cleared the Senate.
The measure would make a series of revisions to the state’s existing cannabis laws, in part by increasing the possession and purchase limit for cannabis from one ounce to 2.5 ounces. The amount of cannabis concentrates that adults can possess is also being doubled from one-eighth of an ounce to one-quarter of an ounce.
Also, it would make it so adult-use cannabis retailers would no longer need to have a separate medical cannabis license to serve patients. Recreational retailers would automatically serve as dual licensees.
Regulators would no longer be able to issue or renew medical cannabis licenses after January 1, 2024—unless the applicant is located in a jurisdiction that has opted out of permitting adult-use facilities. Medical cannabis patients would be exempt from the state excise tax at recreational retailers. Fees for licensing applications and renewals would also be reduced under the legislation.
Read more at marijuanamoment.net


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COSTA Coffee in Gunwharf Quays is holding a charity day on August 25.
The store will be holding a silent auction as part of its charity – The Costa Foundation.
There will be a silent auction for A1 poster board photographs of historic ships in Portsmouth and famous landmarks.
The charity was founded in 2006 with the aim of giving something back to coffee growing communities across South America and Africa.
It aims to provide education for children and jobs for teachers by building schools and classrooms in the regions.
To find out more about the fundraising day, contact store manager Emma Terracciano on (023) 9273 6214.