text:
Microsoft has proposed to Yahoo that it ally on a “transaction” that is something short of the full acquisition that Microsoft abandoned on May 3.
Although the companies aren’t detailing the nature of the May 18 proposal, which remains vague, sources indicate it centers on combinining forces in the search advertising business, an area where both companies trail far behind No 1 Google. Microsoft looks to be interested in buying Yahoo’s search ad business, or at least Yahoo running Microsoft search ads beside Yahoo’s search results, while Yahoo would keep the display-ad business in which it remains the clear leader. Kara Swisher’s hearing the same thing.
(UPDATE: John Furrier and Robert Scoble speculate that Microsoft could pick up both Yahoo’s search business and Facebook and combine them into something to rival Google, thanks to Facebook’s closely guarded and potentially valuable social graph information. I’m not sure Google will be quaking in its boots over this, because Facebook for all its value to users has a long way to go to fulfill its commercial promise, and I’m doubtful it can keep its social graph to itself for long.)
Microsoft’s statement highlights the continuing challenges the company faces in making headway in online advertising against Google. That position was acknowledged Sunday by Microsoft platforms and services chief Kevin Johnson in a memo to employees (full text after the jump). Johnson also said the company will announce a “major new initiative” in search this week at its advance08 ad conference in Redmond, Wash.
The Microsoft statement comes as Yahoo and Google could soon announce their own deal to outsource at least some of Yahoo’s search ad business to Google. To avoid regulatory issues involved with so dominant a force in search as Google essentially taking out a rival, the two companies are believed to be considering an arrangement by which Yahoo would operate an exchange open to all, including Google. It’s possible that Microsoft is simply looking to head off that deal before it’s done.
Microsoft’s announcement also comes after a week in which billionaire financier Carl Icahn launched a proxy fight to replace Yahoo’s board, in hopes of getting a Microsoft-Yahoo deal back on the table. Microsoft has not responded to that implicit invitation. But since Icahn’s move was expected to prompt Yahoo to turn up the heat on a possible Google deal, Microsoft apparently felt compelled to make its own move.
Continuing its recent tradition of waiting until the weekend to make a move, Microsoft said in a statement that it has approached Yahoo with the alternative to the aborted $44.5 billion acquisition that failed to come together after three months of back-and-forth between the two companies. The full statement:
“In light of developments since the withdrawal of the Microsoft proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft announced that it is continuing to explore and pursue its alternatives to improve and expand its online services and advertising business. Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo! an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo! but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo! Microsoft is not proposing to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo! at this time, but reserves the right to reconsider that alternative depending on future developments and discussions that may take place with Yahoo! or discussions with shareholders of Yahoo! or Microsoft or with other third parties.
“There of course can be no assurance that any transaction will result from these discussions.”
For its part, Yahoo issued a response, though it was remarkable chiefly for its lack of a new message:
“Yahoo! has confirmed with Microsoft that it is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo! at this time. Yahoo! and its Board of Directors continue to consider a number of value maximizing strategic alternatives for Yahoo!, and we remain open to pursuing any transaction which is in the best interest of our stockholders. Yahoo!’s Board of Directors will evaluate each of our alternatives, including any Microsoft proposal, consistent with its fiduciary duties, with a focus on maximizing stockholder value.”
The Microsoft statement, however, is interesting for two reasons: First, Microsoft is so worried about Google gaining absolute control of the lucrative search-ad business that it’s approaching Yahoo anew after trying to persuade the world that it doesn’t need Yahoo after all. Second, it’s now clear that Microsoft has not in fact “moved on” from the possibility of acquiring all of Yahoo, as it has insisted for two weeks, and would consider it under the right circumstances.
A number of people, including I, always wondered why Microsoft felt compelled to spend all that money on an acquisition that Yahoo clearly preferred to avoid. A deal focused only on search wouldn’t solve all of Microsoft’s online-ad problems, but if it kept Google from capturing the No. 2 player in Yahoo, Microsoft at least wouldn’t be in a position of losing any hope whatsoever of a presence in search ads. And Microsoft certainly has the financial means to outbid whatever Google could offer Yahoo, even if Microsoft loses money on the deal for a long time to come, as it apparently has on its Facebook ad deal.
On the other hand, Microsoft’s move, in explicitly leaving open the possibility of a full acquisition, may well lead to that outcome in the end. It’s the result most people, including Yahoo investors, have been expecting all along, even after Microsoft said it pulled out.
Here's Johnson's memo:
From: Kevin Johnson Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2008 1:30 PM To: Platforms & Services Division; APSP FTE - Adv & Pub Solutions Platform; Employees.email@example.com; Employees.firstname.lastname@example.org Subject: Online Services Strategy Update
We have been executing against the core strategy I first presented at our Financial Analyst Meeting in July 2007 to go after the growing opportunity in online services and advertising . Four pillars have formed the basis of our strategy: 1. Consolidate ad platform and win in display 2. Innovate and disrupt in search 3. Deliver end-to-end user experiences across PC, phone, and web 4. Reinvent portal and social media experiences We have many options that support acceleration of our strategy. As announced earlier today, we are also considering new alternatives for a transaction with Yahoo! which do not involve a full acquisition. At this time, we have not made a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo!, but we reserve the right to reconsider that alternative depending on future developments and discussions that may take place with Yahoo!, shareholders of Yahoo! or Microsoft, or with other third parties. Regardless of the outcome of any new discussions, it is important that we continue to move forward to strengthen our online services business. The fact is that we are not where we want to be in this business yet and we’ve been in this position longer than we’d all like. To that end, we will be accelerating elements of our core strategy, and breaking ground in new areas. On Tuesday, Brian McAndrews is hosting advance08, our annual advertising conference here in Redmond. Over 400 leaders from across the media, technology and advertising landscape will be here for two days to engage in dialogue on industry trends and opportunities. These leaders are some of our closest partners in the digital transformation of the advertising industry, and they recognize the increasingly important role Microsoft plays in this transformation. We are very excited to have these customers and partners on campus. Brian‘s keynote will highlight our unique position in the advertising industry. It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come with the aQuantive acquisition in differentiating our advertising platform. This foundation is paying off, with Q3 advertising revenue growth of nearly 40%, a rate that has accelerated over the past two quarters while growth rates at Google, Yahoo and AOL have slowed. On Wednesday, we will be announcing a major new initiative that our search teams have been driving. We are getting better and better with our core algorithmic search, and at the same time, we are investing to differentiate in vertical experiences and to disrupt the current model. You’ll hear more about our plans Wednesday. advance08 will underscore our commitment to search and online advertising, and you’ll continue to see announcements demonstrating our progress in this space. Earlier this week, I spoke to leaders across our online services business about our core strategy, the importance of acceleration and a set of actions we are taking, including: 1. Innovate and disrupt in search – We will disclose some elements of our plans with this week’s release of search and sharpen our focus on user experience and business model innovation. The work we have done over the last 4 years on search has established a solid foundation to build upon. 2. Win targeted distribution – With this release of search, we are now ready to throttle up broader distribution initiatives. 3. Reinvent portal and deliver new experiences across PC, phone and web - We are building our new releases of Windows 7, Windows Live wave 3, Windows Mobile 7, Internet Explorer 8, Search and MSN with an eye towards optimizing and unifying experiences and scenarios. 4. Fix our online branding – Our brands are fragmented and confusing today, and we recognize a need to clarify and align our online branding . We are now driving forward to address this opportunity. 5. Win in display advertising - We have an advantage in tools, agency assets/relationships and a team laser-focused on capturing the display ad platform opportunity. As we build from a position of strength, we will increase engineering resources to drive even more innovation. 6. Build on our strengths in Europe – As measured by comScore in March, our online business in Europe is doing well. We have over 3 times the page view volume and nearly 7 times the minutes of usage compared to Yahoo!, and 68% reach to internet users throughout Europe. We will double down on our investments in Europe and expand on this strong position. 7. Expand strategic partnerships – In addition to our organic innovation agenda, we will expand strategic partnerships that increase inventory on our display ad platform, enable new paradigms in search and accelerate growth in key geographies. 8. Pursue small, targeted acquisitions – Looking forward, we will focus on small, targeted acquisitions that support our work in search, complement our value in the ad platform and help us grow scale in key geographies. Recent acquisitions including Rapt and YaData are examples of these types of acquisitions. The PSD leadership team is actively working on the FY09 budget, including resources and investments to support the actions above. Additional elements of our work will be revealed in the coming weeks, leading to our Financial Analyst Meeting in July where I will share more details on our strategy and business/financial outlook. As we move forward, I want to remind everyone that we are well positioned to compete. We have some of the industry’s best assets on our side: technical and business talent, global scale, a culture of self-criticism and tenaciousness, a healthy balance sheet and an unparalleled product portfolio. It’s time for us to seize the opportunity. Thanks again for your continued leadership and focus on our business. If you have any feedback or thoughts, please feel free to send me mail at email@example.com. Regards,
Kevin Johnson l President Microsoft Platforms & Services Division


text:
March 3, 2022 |
Empresas Copec, one of the biggest fuel retailers in Chile, said it has invested in four start-ups to accelerate its energy transition business, including in electric vehicles and green hydrogen.
The Santiago-based company acquired an 80% stake in Chilean electro-mobility software developer Dhemax Ingenieros and invested in Israel's H2Pro, Australia's Zoomo and Canada's Busbud, according to a statement.
Copec made the deals through its San Francisco-based venture capital firm Wind Ventures, taki
Chilean fuel retailer buys stakes in four companies through its San Francisco-based venture capital firm

domain: news


text:
Scion Not Scorched by 2008, but Wants Fourth ModelBy Michelle Krebs February 2, 2009
By Bill Visnic
DETROIT -- Sales analysts for Toyota Motor Corp.'s Scion brand are still looking at the numbers from the last half of 2008 -- a disastrous six months for U.S. auto sales -- but the brand's vice president says the economy's credit meltdown probably did not hurt Scion as much as it might be assumed for a brand that broadly target's young and first-time buyers.
And despite the rapid and debilitating contraction of the U.S. market, Scion wants another model to sell.
Saying the rapid tightening of credit didn't seem to affect Scion's 2008 sales as badly as might have been expected, Andrew (Jack) Hollis told AutoObserver at the Detroit auto show, "we're looking into it right now," but added Scion's overall performance for the year seems to indicate credit availability is not a crucial component of Scion's sales potential.
Hollis points to the fact that although Scion's sales volume was down 12.5 percent for 2008 (113,904 sales in 2008 versus 130,131 in 2007), the brand's sales performance outpaced the broad industry (down 18 percent) -- and, according to data from Edmunds.com, Scion increased its market share by one-tenth of a point last year, to 0.9 percent of the market.
Edmunds data show that although several brands increased market share in 2008, only two -- Honda and Toyota -- increased by more than one-half a percentage point. And Scion was near the upper quartile of the 38 brands tracked by Edmunds in terms of percentage of sales loss in 2008, a year in which just three brands notched minor sales increases.
Considering the direness of the year, Hollis will take it.
He said Scion's ability to tread water is because, "This is a lifestyle brand," that does not rely on one type of customer -- despite Scion's stated mission of being Toyota's "youth" brand.
Hollis said fluctuating gasoline prices also proved the broadness of Scion's customer base. "We weren't sure" how last summer's record-breaking gas prices were going to affect Scion sales, but the rising prices, if they did bring more consideration for Scion, may have been offset by other market factors. He said fuel economy continues to be a lower-priority reason indicated for purchase by Scion buyers.
Going into 2009 -- in June, the brand marks its fifth anniversary -- Hollis is confident Scion is functioning as envisioned: he says 74 percent of buyers are new to the Toyota family, a figure that increased 1 percent.
"In that sense, I would say the year was very successful," he said, adding that some 55 percent of Scion owners stay in the Toyota family for their next purchase.
"That's really a pretty incredible story," Hollis said, saying the brand had sold some 700,000 units thus far.
Hollis, who issues Scion statistics at will, presents another rather remarkable one: not a single dealer was lost in 2008 -- and no dealer has left the brand or gone out of business since Scion's inception. The brand started with about 600 dealers; the number stands at 983.
But, he said, Scion could use more product. Even at a time when many brands are pulling in their plans for expansion, he says Scion needs to expand. Currently the brand has the comparatively new xB and xD models, and the aging but still reasonably strong tC coupe.
"A fourth product would be fantastic," he said. "It's our company's belief we need to expand our lineup."
Considering the disruption of buying trends in the U.S. market, what that product could, or should, be seems up for conjecture.
"What are the youth of today looking for in a car?" Hollis asked rhetorically. He said it could be about the "next level" of onboard communication/infotainment capability.
Despite industry conjecture the brand could branch into hybrids or even crossovers (a la BMW's Mini), Hollis said only, "Our goal is to look at the interior of the car," without providing a further indicator for where Scion is going -- or if and when it's going -- for a fourth model.
Photos by Toyota
Scion xD was sought by an increased number of older customers as gas prices skyrocketed last year.


text:
Super Pintendo is going to PAX! That's right - Super Pintendo will be featured at one of the biggest gaming conventions in the country. PAX East takes place this March in Boston from the 23rd through the 25th.
Super Pintendo pins will be available at Comic Controllers booth (Booth number coming soon!) along side all of their custom controllers. A PAX Exclusive pin will also likely be available, but those details are still to come!


text:
AT&T To Stick Customers With Higher Broadband Prices
February 5, 2008 2:48 PM
comment(s) - last by
AT&T plans rate increase for broadband service, hopes customers will be willing to pony up cash for higher rates
The state of broadband in U.S. was described in an in depth analysis at
as "pathetic" and "disgraceful"
. The industry is plagued with
poor service quality
, substandard data rates,
zealous attempts to limit file-sharing
, and most of all high prices.
Fittingly, San Antonion-based AT&T, notorious for
at one time suspending user's right to free speech
announced a rate hike
. The rate hike, a $5 flat rate increase to subscribers' current monthly fee, may be financially lucrative for the company, but is likely to make no one else very happy. The increase, announced Monday by a company spokesman will go into effect in March. All states besides those acquired by the buyout of Bell South will be effected. Bell South operated in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, so these states are exempt.
There are some other notable exceptions to the increase. The increase, while applying to the vast majority of accounts, only applies to the three slowest connections speeds; 768 kbps, 1.5 Mbps, and 3.0 Mbps. The 1.5 Mbps service tier is AT&T's most used, with 14.2 million subscribers. Most of these subscribers will be hit with the rate increase.
New subscribers to the 768 kbps service will be exempt, but most people don't choose this option. Also exempt are customers who signed up under special promotion packages. These customers are exempt for the remainder of their promotion's term.
AT&T informed customers of the increase by email beginning last week. AT&T spokesman Michael Coe states that the increase is to, "to better reflect the value of our broadband service."
AT&T has been having a tough time financially, ever since Chairman and Chief Executive Randall Stephenson announced that he saw weaknesses in the current consumer broadband and cell phone markets. AT&T has also recently announced a controversial new filtering plan to
snoop on consumer's use and block "rogue" file sharing traffic
The consumer internet world has been having a tough time in the U.S. and abroad of late. In France, the government
threatens an internet tax
which would raise prices. In the U.S.
domain tasters exploit the system
to take domains and ad-revenue from legitimate users. Meanwhile, Time Warner recently announced an even more
scary proposal for the consumer broadand industry
-- usage based billing schemes. Normal consumer broadband is speed limited, but has no monthly bandwidth limit, to the delight of many downloaders. Unfortunately, Time Warner labels these individuals "
devil users" and looks to curb a feeling of entitlement to "
all you can eat"
This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
RE: Worst Broadband in the Developed World
2/6/2008 8:04:18 AM
Are you joking? Excuse me, but my cousin owns stock in both AT&T and Verizon, and he has been getting a lot more than a 4% return on investment in his stocks. Closer to 20% to 40% for both.
You need to stop taking the numbers of these companies as the wrote truth, and look at the numbers of the neutral people and get the REAL numbers.
The oil companies have been groaning for years that they only get a paltry 1% profit...... but when the feds actually looked at it, it was more like 50% profit!
RE: Worst Broadband in the Developed World
2/6/2008 9:51:40 AM
> "my cousin owns stock in both AT&T and Verizon, and he has been getting a lot more than a 4% return "
This is an excellent example of the logical fallacy known as 'misleading vividness'. The industry (and corporate statistics for AT&T) are given below:
Note the 2.82% ROI for the five-year telecomm industry average, and AT&T's industry-leading value of 5.10...still less than you'll get from a decent bank CD.
Stock price changes, especially in the short term, don't equate to company profitability. A company can report a huge loss, for instance, and the stock value rise-- simply because the loss wasn't as severe as analysts feared.
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text:
Motor Trend's Justin Bell takes the 2013 Audi S8 to the track to see how it stacks up against its competitors.
Read This Article
A new study from R.L.
Audi's A2 all electric concept will debut next week at the Frankfurt Motor Show, but unlike the Audi Urban Concept, which will also be making its first public appearance, we may see the A2 soon again.
We're just a week away from the Paris Auto Show, and news of what will be on display as well as new details are still coming in.


text:
By Daniel Hunter
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) is responding to the launch of the Future High Streets Forum today (Thursday), calling it a welcome step towards addressing some of the deep-seated problems facing many of our high streets.
The Forum, being launched today in Loughborough, brings together businesses, councils, retailers and property experts to progress work on securing a successful evolution of our high streets and to take forward recommendations from the Portas Review of high streets.
The BRC launched its original high street rescue plan in 2009 and published an audit of progress, 21st Century High Streets: What next for Britain's town centres?, last December.
British Retail Consortium Director General Helen Dickinson will be a member of the new Forum. She said: "We welcome the continued focus on finding practical solutions to the difficulties that many of our high streets face. Successful town centres are the beating heart of our communities and essential to local economies. Many high streets are facing a real endurance test in these relentlessly tough times, and rising operating costs are making matters worse.
"The BRC has long campaigned for action to secure a successful evolution of our town centres and to make them safe, attractive and viable. We've set out clear steps for improving local trading environments and preserving and protecting local businesses. We very much support the implementation of meaningful measures at national and local level to support towns and cities across England."
Join us on


text:
September 10, 2012
September 10, 2012
MONROVIA, LIBERIA – Toyounon, a young woman in her early 20s, has a slim build. Unlike many young women the world over, she says she wishes she weren’t so thin.
“I wish I had a fuller body,” says Toyounon, who declined to give her last name.
She says this is because her society idealizes fuller bodies.
“In my community and my family, they look at me as if I am not part of them,” she says. “They say I am ‘dry.’”
Dry is Liberian slang used to describe slim people, Toyounon says.
Toyounon, like many other slim women in Liberia, says it’s difficult to find a Liberian man who is attracted to her.
Five out of seven men randomly interviewed here say they are attracted to women who are fuller. But they couldn’t describe why.
Desperate to fit in and attract men, Toyounon says she spends most of her money buying vitamins and pills that she believes make women “fuller.” She reveals a selection of pills that she bought recently and says are mainly imported from India. They range from multivitamins to pills that promise to increase hunger and help her “grow long.”
“I buy varieties of vitamins, and I mix them up for it to work faster,” she says.
But Toyounon says doesn’t know what the side effects are of taking these different pills at the same time.
Side effects include menstrual irregularities, skin rashes, dizziness, numbness, tenderness of the breasts and slow healing of wounds, according to Promoting the Quality of Medicines, PQM, a program run by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Pharmacopeia Convention.
Although Toyounon is still slim, she says she believes that the vitamins will gradually make her fuller.
“My friend took it, and now she is very big,” she says.
Toyounon is not the only woman hoping for a fuller figure here.
Men and women alike say that the ideal body type for women in Liberia is a full figure. To fit this standard, young women say they have turned to mixing vitamins and pills, which unlicensed dealers with little knowledge of side effects sell to earn money on Liberia’s streets. The government has been increasing regulation of the illegal medicine industry here, but initiatives to improve body image are rare.
Women’s bodies are seen as fair game for physical and verbal criticism from men in Liberia. Nearly 60 percent of women ages 15 to 49 say it’s OK for husbands to hit or beat their wives in certain circumstances, such as if she burns food, goes out without telling him or refuses to have sex with him, according to the latest Liberia Demographic and Health Survey from 2007. But women’s bodies are also subject to male standards when it comes to beauty, although official body image statistics are lacking.
The ideal body type for women, according to both men and women, consists of large breasts, big buttocks and wide hips.
Anna, a young girl who declined to give her last name, fits this description. She is a dream girl for many Liberian men. She says it’s because of her body structure that she gets attention from men anywhere she goes.
“In a day’s time, I get attention from guys who tells me they like my body,” Anna says.
Jacob Walker, a sociologist, confirms the preference for fuller bodies here. He says that the ideal body type for women is cultural and social, so it can’t be discouraged easily.
“It will take a long time for all body sizes to be accepted in our society,” he says.
Smiling, he says that he even prefers women with fuller figures because that is how he was brought up. He says this preference even pervades music here.
“Many girls are discriminated [against] because of their body figure,” he says. “Even in the music, their lyrics are discriminatory against girls who do not have a full body.”
Young women like Toyounon say one solution is taking supplements to help them develop fuller figures.
In Redlight, a busy commercial suburb of Liberia’s capital, Francis, a young man who declined to give his full name, sells medicine illegally.
“One of the fastest ways of getting money – apart from stealing – is selling medicine,” Francis says.
Francis, a “black-bagger” or “gobachov” – Liberian slang for people who engage in illegal transactions to make quick money – says he doesn’t have a degree in pharmacy. But he says he advises customers on how to take pills that they buy from him.
“Next to quinine that people buy regularly for malaria, one of the most common sicknesses in Liberia, vitamins are the sellouts,” he says.
He says he isn’t concerned with possible side effects of the medicine that he sells to customers. He says that all he cares about is earning money so he can take care of his family.
“I advise customers to buy different types of vitamins so it can work faster,” he says.
Earlier this year, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf announced the appointment of new members to the Liberia Medicines and Health Products and Regulatory Authority to serve as regulatory authorities of the amount, quality, sale and distribution of health and medical products coming into the country. The Ministry of Health also continues to warn people against selling medicine without licenses.
But there are still people who sell medicine illegally and medicine that comes into the country that is substandard and fake. According to a recent PQM report, nearly half of malaria medicine tested in the country was either counterfeit or substandard, providing one example of the counterfeit medication flooding the Liberian market.
Government and nongovernmental initiatives to promote healthy body image are rare. Some clinics address it while offering counseling to girls on general issues, while other organizations have emerged to promote self-confidence in girls.
Miatta Fahnbulleh, considered beautiful by many Liberians, has been a musical star since 1975 here and a women’s rights advocate. “Aunt Miatta,” as her admirers affectionately call her, says that African beauty isn’t only about body structure or physical looks. She defines African beauty for women as “having a self-desire and courage to break through the challenges on hand and to pursue her goals in life.”
To help instill this self-desire and courage in girls throughout the country, Fahnbulleh happily says that she organized a foundation called Obas Girls. She says the initiative, which has worked with hundreds of girls here, encourages girls who have dropped out of school to return to their education, with a special focus on girls who lack parental support.
Still, Fahnbulleh admits that the preference for fuller bodies exists.
“I don’t wish to be slim,” she says.
Toyounon says she wishes she weren’t either.
“If I had a fuller body, I will be a happy woman,” Toyounon says with a smile.


text:
Burger King Pioneer Dead at 70
MIAMI (AP) _ James Whitman McLamore, a founder of Burger King Corp., died of cancer Thursday at home in suburban Coral Gables. He was 70.
``He was not just the co-founder of our company, he was the heart of it,″ said Burger King chairman Robert Lowes. ``Jim’s passion for the business made him a pioneer that others to this day try to emulate.″
McLamore and Dave Edgarton opened Insta Burger King in Miami in 1954 and went on to create the broiled Whopper, now consumed at the rate of 2 million a day. The pair sold the business to Pillsbury in 1967, and the world’s second-biggest fast-food company is now part of Britain’s Grand Metropolitan PLC.
``His heritage is he’s left his brand name in pretty near every village in America in his lifetime,″ said former Burger King chief executive Barry Gibbons. McLamore developed a ``very, very early and clear concept of branding even before it was sophisticated and designed as such.″
Wendy’s International Inc. founder Dave Thomas ranked McLamore with McDonald’s Ray Kroc and KFC’s Harlan Sanders as leaders in an industry that grew up with America’s suburbs.
Thomas, an occasional golfing buddy, remembered McLamore as ``a very fierce competitor but just a super, super guy″ willing to cut the ribbon when Wendy’s opened its 40th restaurant.
Born in New York City on May 30, 1926, McLamore got into the restaurant business at 24, running a 14-seat counter at Miami in 1950. The hamburger restaurant opened in 1954, and McLamore and Edgarton dropped Insta from their name in 1957, the same year the Whopper was introduced. Television advertising came a year later, and early franchising pushed the company to a national stage.
``It was a matter of I think giving more value and trying to give really fast service,″ Edgarton said of Burger King’s early success. ``What we tried to shoot for was 15-second service. Of course, our menu was more limited then.″
McLamore tended the financial end of the business, while Edgarton hit the road for expansion. The partnership worked well because they agreed on everything, Edgarton said.
McLamore served as Burger King’s president until 1970 and remained as chairman until 1976. McLamore was drafted again in 1993 by Jim Adamson, then Burger King chief operating officer, to help reinvigorate the company.
``He was able to help Burger King rebound at a time it had suffered for seven years,″ said Adamson, who will deliver McLamore’s eulogy. ``He was really my guiding spirit.″
McLamore was recognized for his public service, heading a campaign that raised $519 million for the University of Miami. He was a former part owner of the Miami Dolphins and past president of the National Restaurant Association. An avid gardener, he served as president of Fairchild Tropical Gardens in Miami.
McLamore was survived by his wife, Nancy; four children, Pamela Spence of Crystal Lake, Ill., Lynne Maddux of Cookville, Tenn., Sterline McLamore Sr. of Tampa and Susie McCormack of Telluride, Colo.; and eight grandchildren.


text:
Despite speculation circulated by a few prominent news sites recently about the possible discontinuation of Dodge’s adored muscle cars in 2021, there is no real data that points to that conclusion. These sites also state that the cars will receive a refresh in 2019 ahead of their discontinuation two years later.
Instead of a real refresh, expect the Charger and Challenger to have even more performance options than ever around this time next year when the 2020 models begin hitting dealerships. Next year is finally slated to be the year that the Charger receives some high-performance love from Dodge, as a range-topping widebody Charger is rumored to arrive.
A naturally-aspirated 426 cubic-inch engine is also set to arrive with the next generation cars, with a displacement of 7.0-liters and output 520+ horsepower. Both next generation Charger and Challenger are said to be getting a new inline-six turbocharged powerplant as well.
Because both the Charger and Challenger have so many different variants, from V6 to V8 power, rear-wheel to all-wheel drive and mainstream to performance based models, the cars have continued to outsell the standards of the segments they are in.
If you are curious to know more about what is coming in the next generation Dodge Charger, you can read our past article about it. To make things short and sweet, FCA would not be pouring the money into the development of all these additional models like the new R/T Scat Pack Widebody, R/T Scat Pack 1320 and the SRT HELLCAT Redeye for a dying car. The future of Dodge will still be performance based, but we will see some new technology added into the future lineup.
Muscle cars are here to stay, especially at Dodge.


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Whyte Bikes have launched a new website to coincide with the launch of their 2009 range.
The site includes their E-120 full-suspension carbon fibre bike with modified carbon ‘Quad’ links and tweaked componentry.
Plus there’s the new titanium hardtail, the 19 Trail Titanium, which has been designed and built in conjunction with Litespeed.
Details of the 19 Race carbon hardtail are also there, as well as the 19 Trail and 905 hardtails.
Other neat features on the site, include an insight into Whyte’s design facility and a look at their patented technology.


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A new survey by Directions Research, Inc. in Cincinnati, Ohio discovered that most people in the market to buy a new car would avoid buying a vehicle manufactured by a company that has decided to file bankruptcy.
The firm polled 1,063 adults during the three weeks ending December 14. According to the study, only 26 percent of new car buyers would consider buying a car made by a company that is in bankruptcy.
The survey did not collect data to reveal the reasons that consumers would not buy a vehicle from a manufacturer in bankruptcy, but it did note that more affluent consumers were more likely to take a risk and buy from a bankrupt company.
Approximately 32 percent of people earning more than $100,000 per year would buy a vehicle from a manufacturer in bankruptcy, while only 20 percent of people earning under $25,000 per year would even consider such a purchase.
The results of the survey may be bad news for General Motors, a company that many say may be headed for bankruptcy. However, this research may actually steer the GM executives away from filingbankruptcy, since doing so may drive customers away.
Consumer Affairs reported that the last major auto manufacturer to file bankruptcy was the Korean company, Daewoo. The company could not find a way out of bankruptcy and was eventually liquidated. Customers who bought Daewoo vehicles were then stuck with the cars, with no one around to honor the warranty, find parts or take for servicing.
Consumers who were burned by Daewoo show how risky it can be to buy a vehicle from a company that may be headed for bankruptcy.
When Daewoo went under, its physical assets including its plants, machinery and spare parts were auctioned off but the brand name vanished. GM bought most of Daewoo's assets and started building cars in the plants under the GM name. Now GM may be headed for bankruptcy too and that could cause temporary disruptions, changes in its dealer network and of course sinking sales of new vehicles.
During the first three quarters of 2005, GM lost nearly $5 billion from its North American operations. The company executives deny any plans to file bankruptcy, but there is growing evidence that the company may have to seek the protections of bankruptcy court.
GM has recently had mass layoffs and has announced that it will close 12 plants in North America. While company management says that this is not a signal that they are headed towards filing bankruptcy, there is much speculation otherwise.
While the recent survey showed that when an auto manufacturer files bankruptcy, they are shunned by many consumers, the same does not seem to be true when airlines file bankruptcy. United, Delta and Northwest are some of the major airlines that are currently in bankruptcy. None of the airlines have noticed any effects on ticket sales.


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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Some nimble traders in Tesla Inc’s options made massive paper profits on Tuesday, while short-sellers were hit with nearly $1 billion in paper losses after Tesla chief Elon Musk tweeted he was considering taking the company private.
A Tesla electric car supercharger station is seen in Los Angeles, California, U.S. August 2, 2018. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
“Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured,” Musk tweeted at 12:48 p.m. EDT (1648 GMT). Tesla shares rose nearly 9 percent before being halted pending news.
The tweet spurred a rush of trading in Tesla’s options, driving volume to 416,000 contracts, nearly twice the daily average, according to options analytics firm Trade Alert.
Call options, which convey the right to buy shares at a fixed price in the future, were particularly busy and logged significant price gains on the day.
One block of 714 Tesla call options, betting on the shares rising above $365 by the end of the week, were bought for 85 cents, for a total outlay of $60,690, at 12:21 p.m. EDT.
On paper, their value jumped to $790,398 by 1:11 p.m. EDT. Other near-dated bullish contracts also registered sharp gains.
The contracts were bought minutes after the Financial Times, citing unnamed people with direct knowledge of the matter, reported Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has built a significant stake in Tesla.
The rally after Musk’s tweet unleashed fresh pain for short-sellers in Tesla, the most shorted U.S. stock.
With shares at $369.90, short-sellers logged an on-paper loss of $977 million, according to financial analytics firm S3 partners.
Short-sellers, who had been saddled with sharp losses earlier this month after Tesla shares soared following quarterly results, were now $2.69 billion in the red for the year, according to S3 data.
“Tesla’s volatility makes it more of a trading stock than a value play,” said Ihor Dusaniwsky, head of research at S3 in New York.
“Both longs and shorts are susceptible to wild price moves which can easily swing a trader’s book from profit to loss in a single day, which may be the reason they are in the name in the first place,” he said.
“The added volatility of an Elon Musk tweet adds to the price uncertainty of the stock – and the possibility of sudden windfall profits or tragic losses,” Dusaniwsky said.
Tesla shares were last up 7.4 percent at $367.25. The shares have climbed about 23 percent this month, on pace for their best monthly performance since February 2014.
Reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed, Editing by Alden Bentley, Rosalba O’Brien and Cynthia Osterman


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Did you see NIADA on the Today Show this morning?
Unfortunately, most of NIADA COO Steve Jordan's interview didn't air. In anticipation of such, yesterday we m...ade available a list of helpful talking points for dealers who may get inquiries from the media, or even consumers, regarding the open recalls issue.
To access our open recalls talking points, visit: http://niada.pr-optout.com/ViewEmail.aspx…
To view the Today Show report, visit: http://www.today.com/id/26184891/vp/51080700#51080700
Dodah.com is a great alternative to Craigslist for selling your car online for free or to find a car for sale online.
Happy Throwback Thursday fans! In 1989, Lexus introduced its first two cars and now, 23 years later, they have a whole new lineup for people to drive. On this Throwback Thursday we want to know: if Lexus re-introduced one retro model, which one should it be?


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News by Andrew Kameka on Wednesday May 14, 2014.
|Sponsored links, if any, appear in green.|
Straight Talk Wireless, the MVNO sold in Walmart and operating on various networks, has announced that it is raising the ceiling on its unlimited talk, text, and data plans to allow for more 4G usage. For the price of $45, customers will be able to talk and text as much as they want within the United States. They will also be able to use 4G LTE speeds where available until they reach 3GB within a 30-day billing period. Once someone surpasses 3 GB of use, the phone will only be able to use 3G data until the billing period ends.
The previous 2.5 GB high-speed data allotment has been lifted to give customers an extra 500 MB of high-speed data every month, which can mean anything from watching a few more YouTube videos to being able to browse the web at high speeds for a a few more hours. Straight Talk also announced that its $30 "All You Need" plan has been changed to include unlimited text, 1,500 voice minutes, and 100MB of data.
Andrew is based in Miami, Florida.


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B5 Plus Ltd, manufacturers of steel products and producers of industrial gases has offered to provide medical oxygen to government hospitals across the country as the nations continues to fight the novel Coronavirus.
The company says it would for the month of April supply any public hospital that request for medical oxygen free of charge to meet the oxygen demand of hospitals and alleviate the plight of patients.
The Managing Director of the company, Mr Mike Thakwani who disclosed this to Graphic Online at Kpone indicated that the company has already begun importing key medical supplies such as nose masks, temperature guns, face protecting gears which will be donated to selected hospitals to will assist in the fight against COVID-19.
“We reckon that at this time, there will be a lot of demand for oxygen for patients and we are committed to offer it free to any government hospital once the requests are made within the month of April,” he sad
Mr Thakwani was speaking on the sidelines of an event where the company distributed food items to some households in selected communities where the company operated from.
The items include rice, cooking oil, soap, canned fish, and packs of toilet rolls.
More than 600 households in the beneficiary communities namely Lakpleku, Tsopoli, Old and New Ningo, Prampram, Dawhenya and Kpone were supported with the critical needs in the wake of the restricted movement imposed by the government following the COVID-19.outbreak.
Mr Thakwani explained that though these communities were not under lockdown, they were reeling under the unintended consequences for the poorest and most vulnerable, hence the intervention.
He said apart from the communities, the 4,000 members of staff engaged by the company have also received food packages to unable them cope during the period of partial lockdown while the company remains shut.
He urged other corporate organisations to support the government’s effort to protect the most vulnerable in the society as the nation continues to battle the disease.
Mr Thakwani commended the government of Ghana for its management of the situation so far and called on everyone to abide by the prescribed hand washing and social distancing protocols among others, to prevent a further spread of the virus.
“The pandemic is surely having a huge impact on our operations as we have had to suspend work however with the situation on hand at present, it is not about looking at the future but how we handle the current situation and how we can come out of it. I am hundred per cent sure that Ghana will weather this storm and come out stronger. So for now, we must all support the fight” he said.
The District Chief Executive for Ningo-Prampram, Mr Jonathan Doku expressed appreciation to the company for the gesture.
He said since the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak and the partial lockdown in Tema, Ashaiman and Accra, sources of income for community members though not under lockdown, have dried up.
“Our people are mainly farmers ad traders who travel to these areas to sell their produce but with the restriction of movement to these areas, a lot of people have been affected hence the intervention to cushion them is commendable,” he said.


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Craft beer has exploded in popularity, won devotees and created opportunities for entrepreneurs. It also has spawned debate.
Going into the 2014 legislative session, three bills in the Florida House and two in the Florida Senate address beer regulation issues such as legalization of the 64-ounce growler and off-premise beer tastings.
Last week, Jay Martin, president of J.J. Taylor Distributing Inc. of Tampa, spoke with Tampa Bay Business Journal on- and off-camera about what he would like to happen in the session.
Martin said he supports legalization of a 64-ounce growler. Craft breweries are valuable partners and they rely on tasting rooms to market their products, he said. Of the 70 beer suppliers J.J. Taylor represents, 41 are craft suppliers, and 12 of these are Florida-based.
Martin also wants to legalize beer samplings at off-premise locations.
The three-tier system of beer distribution – made up of producers, distributors, and retailers – is “critical to a healthy marketplace,” said Eric Criss, president of Beer Industry of Florida. The Tallahassee trade association consists of Florida distributors of MillerCoors and imported beers. J.J. Taylor is a member.
A decades-old loophole to the three-tier system, created to allow Anheuser-Busch to sell beer at Busch Gardens, is “used in a way that was not intended,” Criss said.
It is important to avoid the possibility of a federal judge deciding how the system operates in Florida, he said. He cited the example of Granholm v. Heald, a case wine shipment legislation that went to the Supreme Court in 2005.
“We’re not going to get all the toothpaste back in the tube, nor do we want to” Criss said. “But we need to have this industry operating on something other than a loophole.”
Rick Wolfe, owner of Brewers Tasting Room in St. Petersburg, has a different perspective.
The Brewers Tasting Room does not have an in-house brewer. Its business model is to produce small batches of beer on premise and to invite guest brewers in to brew unique batches. It operates from a 2,500-square-foot facility with a 1,000-square-foot beer garden.
Wolfe is concerned that proposed changes would drastically reduce the amount of “guest beer” he could sell, and therefore threaten his business.
Furthermore, he sees little reason to enforce a three-tier system. If the law didn’t require a three-tier system, he believes craft breweries would still use distributors.
“I don’t believe we need a law that says that craft brewers have to sell their beer to distributors in order for distributors to stay in business. Prohibition ended. Their justification for collecting taxes as a primary benefit is a thing of the past,” he said.
With so many people involved in craft beer, whether through their business or as consumers, the laws are likely to bubble up in March and the months that follow.
Stay tuned for developments from TBBJ.


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In line with latest job listings, Apex Legends developer Respawn Leisure is at the moment hiring for an “Apex Universe FPS Incubation Title” which will very properly be a single-player sport.
As reported by Dexerto, one of many job listings in query is for a Senior Engine/Programs Engineer – C++ that will likely be a “Senior Programs Engineer (Apex Universe FPS Incubation Title)” that may “design, construct, and keep know-how that permits the group to create participating gameplay and implausible experiences.”
One other job itemizing for a Onerous Floor Artist on this undertaking mentions that Respawn is “on the lookout for a proficient and skilled Mid-Degree 3D Hardsurface Artist to assist construct a model new Respawn single-player journey.”
It is essential to notice that Respawn is hiring for this “Apex Universe FPS Incubation” title alongside a “New Sport Incubation Staff” which will or might not be the identical sport.
For these hoping for a brand new Titanfall sport, it’s fascinating that Respawn particularly mentions this new undertaking is within the “Apex Universe” and never the Titanfall one, which existed earlier than Apex Legends was ever launched. Respawn additionally particularly stated it wasn’t engaged on a Titanfall sport because it has “too many different video games” in the meanwhile.
In 2021, Respawn was hiring for a “brand-new single-player journey” in a “distinctive universe,” and it’s unclear if these listings have something to do with the earlier ones.
Have a tip for us? Need to focus on a attainable story? Please ship an electronic mail to email@example.com.


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Apple has accused Epic Games of seeking special sales terms, but the company denies that this has happened. According to what was released by CNBC, Epic Games was looking for a new way to sell its applications through the store on iOS systems, in addition to making the money from purchases passed directly to Epic Games.
However, to counter the charges, Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, posted on Twitter a picture of the email that was sent to Apple, seeking to prove his point. In the publicly available text, the manager reinforces that he hopes that the conditions can be applied not only to Epic Games developers, but to all iOS developers.
More details of the fight between Apple and Epic Games
Although it makes sense what Apple says, actions that would generate greater revenue for Epic Games, the email released, supposedly, shows the company’s intentions from the beginning.
However, thanks to the discussions, it was reported that Apple will terminate the Epic Games developer account from the App Store, eliminating programs for any platform on the iOS system.
Apple says that all this movement generated by Epic Games is self-inflicted, as if the organization was only seeking to get the media’s attention – which it ended up achieving. In fact, with the spotlight on you, it was announced that the Free Fortnite Cup tournament will happen soon, earning several prizes for players and getting more people to know Epic Games.
In general, the allegations of the two parties make sense, although concrete evidence has basically not been presented until then.


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Novel time temperature indicator label that can reduce waste has been discovered, according to a report published on March 16, 2019.
This new innovation is a smart labeling project that is capable of bringing in drastic reduction in food waste. A Time Temperature Indicator label (TTI) can provide real-time information regarding a product’s condition throughout its supply chain journey. It uses a traffic light system to highlight the condition of the goods, which highlights shelf-life issues.
By using the amber-colored call-to-action function, the system also has the potential to save greater amounts of waste by alerting consumers to the condition of the goods as they deteriorate. The Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), which is a U.K.-based center, is engaged in helping companies to develop, prove, prototype, and commercialize next-generation products and processes.
CPI collaborated with SMEs Intray Limited and Mexar Limited to develop wet media formulations to ramp up production of the Oli-TecTM branded TTI. CPI said that existing sell-by, use-by, and best before dates does not provide complete information and alerts to consumers on the shelf life status and degradation of goods. This will result in greater risk of health hazards and increased waste.
Sarah Williams, Manager, Colloid Science at CPI, said, “We are excited to work with Intray and Mexar to develop the next generation of food safety labels, supporting the development of the wet media and timing mechanism.” The 18-month project is expected to help Intray strengthen manufacturing expertise by extending the use of TTI in other applications such as the pharmaceutical and medical sectors.


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Is Digital Advertising the ‘Mother of All Money Laundries?’
With media credibility watchdog NewsGuard reporting that over 1,600 top brands ran thousands of ads on sites that promoted false claims ahead of the 2020 Election and fueled the Capitol riot, the integrity of the digital advertising industry has never been more in doubt.
Are digital advertising agencies abiding by the terms of the insertion orders (IOs) that delineate the media inventory specified by their brand clients? The NewsGuard report, along with recent frauds exposed by ride-sharing company Uber and cybersecurity firm White Ops reveal that the answer to this question is a resounding “no.”
Online ad fraud cost global brands and media companies $42 billion in 2019. Losses are projected to approach $100 billion worldwide by 2023, according to UK-based consultants Juniper Research.
Just as the U.S. Treasury singled out fraud as the leading predicate crime for money laundering in its 2018 National Money Laundering Risk Assessment, proceeds from ad fraud are also reintegrated and rinsed via non-transparent, $336-billion digital media supply chains.
According to advertising analytics firm MediaRadar, 68 percent of the digital media ad industry is programmatic, or purchased via high-frequency automated auctions. But just three platforms, Amazon, Google, and Facebook, control nearly 70 percent of all digital ad spend, according to eMarketer.
Still, the industry is disintermediated by a myriad of different ad agencies, ad techs, ad networks, and other third parties. Given the opacity and complexity of the online media ecosystem, ad-fraud investigator Dr. Augustine Fou has even described this attack vector as the “mother of all money laundries.”
More specifically, Ron Teicher, the chief executive of Israeli anti-financial crime startup, EverC, has called ad fraud the “most insidious entry point imaginable” for transaction laundering (TL) or ‘ghost laundering.’ TL is a laundering scheme that leverages e-commerce and merchant processing to create fictitious transactions that appear legitimate, says Teicher.
Teicher estimates that TL, which generally entails criminals obscuring illegal products they are selling online via the willful misclassification of the merchant category codes (MCC) authorized by credit card companies, is a $200-billion-per-year problem globally. But Teicher’s projections don’t even factor illicit programmatic ad placements.
This portends an increasingly grave threat, because non-ad-tech-related TL alone has been linked to everything from terrorism finance, human trafficking, and illegal drug sales. A series of unresolved legal battles between ride-share company Uber and its former ad agencies and networks have exposed this gaping hole in financial integrity.
Ad Fraud Overview
On a “Marketing Today” podcast recorded last year, Uber’s former head of performance marketing, Kevin Frisch, said that mobile-ad fraud cannibalized at least $100 million, or two-thirds of the company’s $150-million online advertising budget, in 2017.
Ad fraud encompasses scams perpetrated across online-desktop, mobile, and in-app advertising channels. But so-called ‘Over-the-Top’ (OTT) ads, which are programmed to display across smart television sets, present a growing risk for fraud as well and will account for $42 billion in industry losses alone by 2023, according to Juniper forecasts.
In the mobile realm, ad fraud can be classified in one of three categories. The first is ‘attribution’ fraud, a “scheme where networks or publishers seek credit for organic installations and for installations actually attributable to other media sources,” according to a now-dismissed 2017 lawsuit filed by Uber against its former ad agency, Fetch Media, which details the specifics of Frisch’s podcast comments.
Attribution fraud is perpetrated in three ways, according to a second lawsuit filed by Uber in 2019 against four ad networks and 100 unknown entities used by its former agency, Fetch. Ad networks are digital platforms that broker unsold ad inventory between publishers (the supply side) and a pool of advertisers (the demand side) via an automated auction process.
Leveraging economies of scale and programmatic marketplace systems, groups of brands are able to place their digital ads at a much lower price than if they were negotiating directly with media companies.
One misattribution vector is called ‘click spamming,’ where a network or publisher fraudulently reports clicks for users without those clicks actually having occurred. Other forms of attribution fraud include the reporting of fake or malicious websites and ad stacking schemes where a “single mobile inventory placement is filled with several mobile advertisements, even though only one advertisement is visible,” according to the suit.
The last misattribution vector is called ‘metric smoothing,’ according to the 2019 suit, which “refers to the scenario when a network or publisher misreports where advertisements are placed in order to conceal the true placement of the advertisement.”
Fraudulent app installations is the second broad-category of mobile fraud, according to the 2017 Uber suit. The third and final type of ad fraud is known as ‘malvertising,’ where threat actors inject malicious code into ads then pay ad networks to display infected media on targeted websites, exposing every user browsing these sites to potential infection.
To illustrate the mechanics of attribution fraud out in the wild, allegations made in a trio of Uber lawsuits are instructive.
Initially, Uber sued UK-based Fetch and its Japanese parent company, Dentsu. Following the 2016 election, Frisch said on the podcast that a once-anonymous anti-bigotry Twitter group called Sleeping Giants beganpressuring corporate America to stop buying inventory on conservative media websites like Breitbart.
Uber, along with over 800 other companies, caved to mainstream media outcry against the alt-right. Frisch instructed his ad network vendors to stop purchasing ad space on Breitbart’s site. Despite this mandate, Uber ads continued to display on Breitbart. Frisch then cut his ad spend by 10 percent. But still, there was no change.
Uber decided to probe the matter further, according to court filings, and discovered that “deceptive naming was to blame.” To be specific, “the publisher-reported name of the websites and mobile applications where Uber advertisements supposedly appeared did not match the actual URL accessed,” according to the lawsuit.
The court documents cite one example of metric smoothing, where “one publisher retained by Fetch reported clicks on Uber ads as coming from placements such as “Magic_Puzzles” and “Snooker_Champion.” In reality, those clicks originated from ads placed on Breitbart.com, Uber discovered.
Uber suspended the Fetch campaign in March 2017, when the ad agency was spending millions of its client’s dollars per week on mobile media inventory “purportedly attributable to hundreds of thousands (even millions) of Uber App installs per week,” according to court filings.
If the ads would have been legitimate, Uber contends, the company would have seen a “substantial drop” in app downloads. Instead, Uber observed “no material drop in total installations.”
Uber voluntarily dropped the case against Fetch in December of 2017. But over the Summer of 2019, it refiled charges in two lawsuits against five ad networks and a hundred unknown defendants contracted by Fetch.
In 2019, Uber sued the new set of defendants for buying non-existent ads and junk traffic. Ad tech defendants that Uber was able to identify included BidMotion and its parent company, Hydrane SAS, Taptica, YouAppi, Ad Action, and Phunware.
Excluding Phunware, Uber sued all of the defendants above for fraud, negligence, and unfair competition. The ride-share company spotted all Fetch-related fraud through transparency reports authored by TUNE, a mobile analytics and performance marketing vendor that tracks user clicks and their attributable sources.
TUNE is designed to track clicks on ads and then matches the last reported click to user app installations. Last click is the standard compensation scheme in the mobile advertising industry, according to the suit.
One scheme Uber alleged Bidmotion to have perpetrated was omitting Device ID information, a key mobile forensic fingerprint, from TUNE reports. Thus, every attribution that Uber paid the ad network for was based on a “probabilistic fingerprinting method, which is much more susceptible to fraud” than deterministic Device ID logging.
Uber withheld $10 million in payment from the defendants as a result of these charges. But its most serious charges were reserved for Austin,TX-based mobile ad network Phunware.
Hit with the RICO
In its follow-up lawsuit that summer, Uber dropped a bombshell on Phunware, and four of the company’s executives and employees, in the form of civil charges related to the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
The lawsuit alleged a “massive, multi-year mobile advertising fraud committed by all defendants,” which “violated the federal criminal wire fraud, interstate transportation of funds obtained by fraud, and racketeering statutes,” and other fraud laws. All told, Phunware defrauded Uber out of some $17 million, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit said Uber first began suspecting irregularities with Phunware’s transparency reports in May 2016. “Uber became aware that Uber ads were running on adult sites with auto-redirects to the app store,” according to court documents.
According to the lawsuit, Phunware CEO Alan Knitowski “knew of, approved of and directed continuation of the fraud” against members of his Canada-based team who managed the Uber account.
Uber alleged the scheme involved the purchasing of ad placements that were not real, illegitimate, or prohibited, such as auto-redirects or “ads placed on prohibited sites such as pornographic” websites. Auto-redirects are the automatic rerouting of online traffic to an app store or marketplace, without any intent from the end-user.
Additionally, to spoof Site ID fingerprinting, Phunware employees “wrote and ran masking software known as ‘scripts’ to alter the names of the sites or apps where the ads allegedly appeared in order to trick Uber into believing the advertising was legitimate,” according to the suit.
Uber corroborated these allegations with emails exchanged between three of the defendants and another unnamed ex-Phunware employee’s deposition testimony about an interaction they had with Knitowski where he was made aware of the deceptive scripts.
Knitowski did not respond to comment for this story. Uber charged that Phunware defrauded three other companies using the same scheme. Phunware settled with Uber last year for $6 million, according to an 8-K the ad network filed with Securities & Exchange Commission last October.
Phunware also developed the mobile app for outgoing President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign last year. Facing sizable debt, the company has expressed “substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern,” according to the Associated Press.
In 2018, Fetch countersued Uber, claiming the ride-share company owes it $19.7 million in unpaid invoices. The case is still unresolved. Lawyers for Uber did not immediately provide comment on this case.
Perhaps the most prolific ad fraud case to date, however, is the Methbot scam. In 2016, White Ops “exposed the largest and most profitable ad fraud operation to strike digital advertising to date,” according to a report it published that year.
When U.S. prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York unsealed the indictment against eight Methbot conspirators in 2018, they said the fraud caused U.S. companies to pay roughly $36 million “for ads that were never actually viewed by real human internet users.”
But White Ops researchers spotted the fraud years earlier when they uncovered a ‘bot farm’ scheme that involved Russian cybercriminals, who were “siphoning millions of advertising dollars per day away from U.S. media companies and the biggest U.S. brand name advertisers,” according to the report.
The operation produced massive volumes of fraudulent video ad impressions by “commandeering critical parts of Internet infrastructure and targeting the premium video advertising space,” said White Ops researchers. The report said Methbot counterfeited as much as $5 million in video advertising per day.
The scheme commanded an army of automated web browsers run from “fraudulently acquired IP addresses” to watch as many as 300-million video ads per day on counterfeit websites “designed to look like premium publisher inventory,” according to the report.
According to White Ops, the hackers who executed the scheme farmed out their “operations across a distributed network based on a custom browser engine running out of data centers on IP addresses acquired with forged registration data.” Via forged IP registrations, Methbot operators were able to “evade typical datacenter detection methodology,” said White Ops.
White Ops said that Methbot disrupted the conventional method of bypassing data center detection. The traditional tradecraft entails infecting host machines to run ad-fraud botnets.
Instead, Methbot conspirators used fake identities to “obtain or lease 852,992 real IP addresses, putting them to work generating fraudulent ad calls that appeared to come from legitimate residential Internet providers such as Verizon, Comcast, Spectrum, and others,” according to White Ops.
Additionally, White Ops said Methbot acquired IP “diversity” by running proxy network connections on their servers. While this “single-source” approach is typically detected and blacklisted by IP metadata providers, Methbot evaded discovery by “gaining direct control of large contiguous IP allocations” and spoofing registration entries to look like residential Internet service providers in the U.S., according to WhiteOps.
Some other advanced techniques used by the Methbot scammers include faked clicks, fake mouse movements, and spoofed social network login information, manipulation of geolocation fingerprints, and “special case countermeasures against code from over a dozen different ad tech companies,” according to the report.
These special-case evasion tools are indicative of “inside help,” said San Antonio, TX-based cybersecurityengineer Dan Ehrlich. Some of “America’s largest tech corporations have been compromised by foreign cybercriminals, either through coercion or payoffs,” said Ehrlich.
White Ops said this sophisticated tradecraft was “employed to provide an even more convincing picture of humanity.” For example, scammers faked social network logins to create the appearance of account usage when ad impressions were made.
The counterfeiting of digital fingerprints and use of custom-made web scripts to evade fraud detection mechanisms overlaps with tradecraft applied by professional credit card thieves, said Andrei Barysevich, the chief executive officer of fraud-intelligence firm Gemini Advisory.
All told, Methbot conspirators targeted and spoofed more than 6,000 premium domains to swindle ad networks and media companies out of millions. By the time White Ops uncovered the fraud, the Methbot operation had become deeply “embedded in the layers of the advertising ecosystem,” the report said.
The scam reached its nadir in 2018 when police in various countries arrested three Methbot suspects, including the alleged mastermind, Russian hacker Alexander Zhukov, on an international warrant issued by the U.S. The then-38-year-old suspect was extradited to the United States in January 2019.
Zhukov, known as “Nastra” in the Russian cyber-underworld, and his co-defendants were indicted on 13 counts in the Eastern District of New York related to computer crimes, conspiracy, and wire fraud among other criminal charges. Zhukov has maintained his innocence throughout his legal ordeal.
Last year, Sergey Denisoff, who was not named in the initial indictment, was also apprehended on Methbot-related charges in New York City. Echoing Ehrlich’s claims about inside help, Denisoff, a California resident and the operator of an online ad company that bought and resold junk traffic, stands accused by the feds of instructing Zhukov on how to bypass ad-fraud detection filters.
White Ops was acquired last month from its previous investors and for an undisclosed sum by Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division, in partnership with ClearSky Security, and NightDragon.
The Digital Laundromat
On botnets, ad-fraud expert Fou noted that they don’t “come from Russia or China anymore, but from Asburn, Virginia and Bozeman, Montana.” When it comes to money laundering, Fou said it is “built-in to digital advertising.”
“You can think of digital advertising as both a mint and a laundry,” said Fou. “Scammers can make billions of dollars of illicit money via ad fraud, the literal money “mint.” Then, they can simultaneously launder the proceeds by purchasing billions of dollars of digital ads on millions of websites. This is the laundry,” he said.
Today, Fou said there are roughly 1.5 billion domains registered to some 350-million active websites, many of which monetize their content via advertising. But the vast majority of these sites have a freemium publishing model that enables users to view content without a subscription, notes Fou.
But with many of these domains featuring URLs reminiscent of jumbled, public crypto wallet addresses, marked by randomized strings of alphanumeric code, how many humans are actually accessing these web pages?
“These are all fake domains and apps used solely for ad fraud; they were never intended for human consumption,” said Fou.
What’s more, programmatic ad exchanges, by disconnecting buyers and sellers, have introduced opacity into the media industry, said Fou. Unrestrained by the regulatory oversight enforced in capital markets, this has “led directly to much greater opportunity for fraud and other crimes” in digital advertising, wrote Fou in a recent Forbes article.
While Fou lacks access to bank records and can’t conclusively prove that threat actors are laundering money, he highlighted two stealth ad-fraud-related laundering vectors. In the first case, a criminal group could create a dummy direct-to-consumer marketing company, hawking anything from diet pills to cooking products.
After receiving illegitimate proceeds under a false pretense like ghost laundering or false invoicing with fake e-commerce buyers or phantom wholesale distributors, respectively, said Teicher, criminals could add another layer to the rinse by purchasing digital ad space.
Fou said criminals, leveraging a relationship with a corrupt demand side platform (DSP), which connects programmatic exchanges and publishers, could buy false or non-existent ads and have the DSP route money back to them in exchange for a laundering commission.
“You set up a whole bunch of fake websites to pretend to run billions of impressions. All those impressions will cook the books to make it appear that all the ads you bought were actually placed,” wrote Fou in a blog postlast year.
Alternately, criminals could “vertically integrate” and create their own ad exchange. “The bad guys own the fake sites that pretend to show the ads. The bad guys have their own bots to generate traffic and ad impressions,” wrote Fou.
“They own the ad exchange, so they don’t have to pay Google or Facebook to do their laundry. Basically, the right hand pays their left hand and the money comes out clean!”
With Latin American drug cartels increasingly seeking to enlist hackers to help them launder their money, according to a 2020 report authored by threat-intelligence firm IntSights, ad fraud could thus be facilitating the rinse for much more serious security threats than otherwise unassuming “Silicon Beach” ad tech bros and Russian cyber-geeks.
Despite the lack of regulatory scrutiny over the digital media industry, bank compliance departments should thus consider conducting enhanced due diligence on their ad tech and digital agency customers.
Other Recommended Reading for OODA Members:


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Armenia is a highly vulnerable nation facing many challenges. Due to its geographic isolation, limited countries to export its goods and issues with the business sector, Armenia relies heavily on Russian support. Its aging infrastructure leaves the country open to casualties and significant damage if natural disasters caused by the effects of global warming are to occur.
Despite these challenges, efforts are being made to create sustainable agriculture in Armenia. There are many areas in which sustainable agriculture can have an impact, such as economic growth, the preservation of natural capital, the mitigation of climate change, reversing environmental degradation and alleviating poverty.
With financial assistance from the European Union, EaP Green Partnership for Environment and Growth seeks to develop sustainable and organic agriculture in Eastern Europe, including Armenia. In close proximity to the EU markets, this project will allow low levels of fertilizers and pesticides to be used on crops while also aiding in the labor market by creating more farming jobs.
Organic, sustainable agriculture in Armenia offers opportunities to revitalize the countryside and restore ecosystem functionality while also developing new local businesses and agro-tourism opportunities, according to UNEP’s comprehensive assessment of the region. Between 2003 and 2013, the EU’s organic market exploded, growing massively throughout the decade. “The subsequently high degree of dependency on organic imports from outside the EU provides excellent opportunities for potential producers and exporters in neighboring East European countries.”
Armenia has a wide range of traditional crop varieties that are ideally adapted to local climate conditions and are resistant to drought, diseases and pests. These crops require lower levels of fertilizers and pesticides, making them excellent candidates to create sustainable agriculture in Armenia. Armenian “ancient” crop varieties, like Armenian honey, herbs and dried fruit, are perfect for international trade thanks to their uniqueness in the market.
Although export bans in Eastern Europe are a threat to organic value chains, Armenia has signed the Russia-led Customs Union with the aid of the EaP Green Partnership for Environment and Growth. This will allow more access to the EU markets, which will lead to significant export opportunities.
By creating more opportunities for organic, sustainable agriculture in Armenia, the nation will be impacted greatly. Although this project will not solve all its problems, it is a step in the right direction, a step towards national security.
– Kailey Brennan


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Android Auto is gaining a large number of steam, and Google more than likely couldn’t be happier. The corporate found out that Android Auto will be put in in over 40 different car models as same old this year, and that isn’t together with adoption of in-sprint devices that would be bought by way of 3rd-birthday party audio device producers like Pioneer and others.
Of direction, it nonetheless has an extended method to pass to compare Apple’s succeed in. Apple has labored to get CarPlay make stronger in many producers’ most sensible automobiles, and feature already secured over 100 different car models for it to seem in on an annual foundation. That will have to obviously amendment over the years, even though, as increasingly Android customers call for a equivalent device in their automobiles. Android does personal extra general marketplace percentage than Apple’s iOS, in spite of everything, so it’d be foolish for a producer not to have the 2 methods dwelling in unity.
[by means of GreenBot]


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Cards Against Humanity took its "windfall profits" from its "Holiday Bullshit Promotion" and donated $250,000 to The Sunlight Foundation, an organization that tracks campaign contributions and lobbyist activities directed at the U.S. government.
"Cards Against Humanity believes that in American politics, cash is king," a post on the card game's official site reads. "If you want to get anything done, you've got to buy your way in. That's why this year, $2,414,337,089 was spent by 11,509 professional lobbyists trying to sell their bullshit to Congress."
On Black Friday, Cards Against Humanity sold cow dung to anyone willing to buy it for $6. It also offered a wider, days-long promotion including multiple gifts for $15. As announced today, those behind the card game and the literal bullshit donated proceeds earned from the campaign to The Sunlight Foundation.
"Instead of bribing our elected officials, we gave $250,000 to the Sunlight Foundation — a nonprofit that lets us see who's spending money in politics and how much they're spending," the site explains, after several visual representations of what the money could've purchased, including 1.25 million "fucking AOL CDs."
"You can use the Sunlight Foundation's tools to see who's giving money to your officials using Influence Explorer, and you can find out who represents you and what they vote for using OpenCongress."
On its website, The Sunlight Foundation's Gabriela Schneider expressed her gratitude.
"We are thrilled to be the recipients, once again, of Cards Against Humanity's largesse," Schneider wrote. "But beyond feeling grateful for their contribution of $250,000 to generally support Sunlight's operations (a rare thing in this day of grants that exclusively fund specific projects), we are excited Max Temkin and company used this opportunity to raise awareness of how much money pervades America's political system."
This is Cards Against Humanity's second contribution to The Sunlight Foundation this year. In February, those behind the self-described "party game for horrible people" donated $50,000 to the organization. The proceeds came from its House of Cards expansion pack.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that the dung cost $15. It was $6. We've updated the article to reflect this. We've also clarified that the funds did not come exclusively from the excrement, but from the organization's larger "Holiday Bullshit" campaign. According to Time, poo proceeds went to "Heifer International, a charity that aims to eradicate poverty and hunger by providing livestock to developing communities."


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Interim chief executive appointed at port company
Updated at 12:34 pm on 8 May 2012
Northland Port has appointed Graham Wallace as interim chief executive, replacing general manager Jim Smillie who is retiring.
Mr Wallace is a qualified accountant, who has been associated with the company for 18 years in a number of finance-related roles.
He says the new position will be an opportunity to drive the development of the company's extensive holdings in the Marsden Point area while enhancing its 50% investment in Northport.
Next story in Business: US consumer credit rising
Copyright © 2012, Radio New Zealand


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Scholastic, Inc. is taking a back-to-basics approach as it shuffles through a company-wide reorganization aimed at making the company more cost-efficient and profitable while not diluting its product.
Scholastic is focusing its attention on its four core businesses children’s books, instructional publishing, media and technology, and international as it continues to mature as a leading creator of educational and entertainment properties.
The company has eliminated about 400 positions, or about seven percent of its workforce, and expects to cut costs by at least US$25 million. Many of these positions are seasonal or overseas jobs. The magazines Agenda, Superscience Red and Math Power are being discontinued. The company has also retained the services of an investment banking firm to look into the potential sale of Home Office Computing and Small Business Computing, profitable magazines that do not fit into Scholastic’s redefined strategy.
Over the last year, Scholastic has experienced lower than expected revenues as well as the loss of many of the licensing rights for Goosebumps. Earlier in 1997, Parachute Properties, the creators of Goosebumps, assumed control of key licensing and merchandising rights held by Scholastic. Scholastic retains control of such areas as the TV series, CD-ROMs and on-line services.
Such setbacks are not expected to deter the company from moving forward on a slate of ambitious new publishing and television ventures. The company optimistically points to the growing popularity of its book series Animorphs as the type of property that will guarantee Scholastic’s long-term growth. Animorphs has surpassed Goosebumps on best-seller lists and will debut as a TV series on Nickelodeon in 1998. ‘It’s following much of the same trajectory that Goosebumps did at a similar time in its growth,’ says Deborah Forte, executive vice president of Scholastic Productions.
Dear America, a series of fictional historical books featuring a female teen heroine, has also shown strong retail sales. Discussions regarding a Dear America TV presence have been ongoing.
These literature-based properties are representative of Scholastic’s strategy to develop homegrown children’s franchises that work in a variety of media formats, while not compromising the original source material.
Scholastic believes its reorganization will allow it to stay focused on its mission to promote reading and literacy, but in a leaner, more efficient and more profitable manner.


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HONG KONG (Nikkei Markets) -- Shares of Tencent Holdings headed for an eight-month high after the company received the go-ahead from Chinese regulators to sell a video game based on the hit TV show "Game of Thrones," the first approval of an imported game title in more than a year.
"Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming," based on the HBO TV series, is developed by Chinese game maker Yoozoo. Tencent, which owns the popular Chinese messaging app WeChat, released a test version of the game in January, describing it as a simulation that lets players aged 14 and above take on identities and control various characters from the show.
Analysts were cautious about the extent to which Tencent would benefit from the game, as the company iss only the sales agent and will have to split revenue with the developer.
Jason Chan, senior portfolio manager at South China Asset Holdings, said the title never made it to the Top 10 lists on Chinese game review websites.
However, many cheered the broader implications of Beijing's move.
In all, China's State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television approved 30 video games on Tuesday, saying it was the first list of imported online games released by it since February 2018. Besides "Game of Thrones," the lineup included "The Room Three" by NetEase, the second-largest online gaming company after Tencent.
Although Beijing is likely to maintain a quota for imported games, the approval is nonetheless positive for both domestic publishers and overseas game developers, brokerage Jefferies said.
"Previously, people feared that licenses would be granted only to functional or educational games," said Chan of South China Asset. Now that Beijing is approving imported games, "it signals more core games entering China, a positive for Tencent," he added.
Shenzhen-based Tencent, the world's largest gaming company by revenue, has grappled with a slowdown after Chinese regulators stopped approving new games last year due to concerns about violent content, addiction and deteriorating eyesight, especially among the young. Tencent's games are available in other countries. Still, a large share of its revenue comes from China, the world's largest gaming market.
The weakness in its gaming business and a slowdown in the domestic economy pushed Tencent's quarterly profit down 32% in the October-December period, its steepest quarterly drop in 13 years. The stock lost nearly a quarter of its value last year.
In a bid to reduce its dependence on the online games segment, Tencent has diversified into other businesses such as payment services, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. At the end of last year, gaming revenue contributed 29% to its total, down from 37% a year ago.
On Tuesday, the company increased its shareholding in Weimob, a cloud-based commerce and marketing solutions company, to 7.7% from 2.9%. Its other investments include food-delivery service Meituan-Dianping and social e-commerce platform Pinduoduo.
Despite its muted quarterly results, Beijing's decision in December to resume approvals for games has helped lift Tencent's stock by more than 20% so far this year. It has outperformed the benchmark Hang Seng Index, which is up 16% in the same time.
The stock gained 3.3% Wednesday to close at HK$378 ($48.16), the highest level since late July.
"The share price movement means the market thinks its revenue growth will resume the pace ... seen in the past. This is a bit of an overreaction," said Tony Cheung, an analyst at CASH Financial Services.
Since January, Tencent has received approvals for eight games. But it is yet to get permission to sell its PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, or PUBG, which has proved hugely popular overseas and is expected to bring in major revenue for the company.
"The key to Tencent's future revenue lies in whether its popular, self-developed PUBG game can get a license. But it is hard, as it has more violent elements," Chan said. If PUBG is approved, it will be a big positive because it means that every type of game can get a license, Chan added.
Cheung warned of a weak first quarter for Tencent as a refresh of some games, such as "Honor of Kings," failed to gain additional traction, with players moving on to other titles. He also said advertising revenue could weaken amid the economic slowdown.
--Benny Kung and Dhanya Ann Thoppil


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LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — Shares of Blyth Inc. jumped late Monday after the company agreed to defer the closing of a planned acquisition of its ViSalus Inc. nutritional supplement subsidiary, and Fifth & Pacific Cos. dropped after the marketer of the Juicy Couture brand cut its full-year forecast.
Blyth US:BTH shares rose 4.2% to $27.90 after the company said it reached a nonbinding preliminary agreement with the founders of ViSalus to defer the final phase of its acquisition of the company until April of 2014.
The move comes almost a week after ViSalus, which offers weight management, energy drinks and nutritional supplements, withdrew plans for an initial public offering because of uncertain market conditions. Blyth was expected to retain a stake of more than 50% in ViSalus after the offering.
Blyth said Monday the purchase agreement will be amended so that the purchase price would be based on ViSalus’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for 2013. See: Blyth to defer final closing of ViSalus purchase.
Also gaining in late trading was PetSmart Inc. US:PETM , up 3% at $69.56 after S&P Dow Jones Indices said the pet-products retail will replace Sunoco Inc. US:SUN in the S&P 500 Index US:SPX . The change will be made after the close of regular trading Thursday, when Energy Transfer Partners LP US:ETP is expected to close its acquisition of Sunoco.
Fifth & Pacific US:FNP shares slid 14% to $11.04 after the company cut its 2012 forecast because of weakness in its Juicy Couture brand. The apparel maker now expects full-year adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $100 million to $110 million. It had previously expected $125 million to $140 million.
Fifth & Pacific said there were significant shortfalls in sales of full-priced Juicy Couture items, and expects the trend to continue for the rest of the year. More on Fifth & Pacific cutting 2012 forecast.
Ahead of the late trading session, U.S. stocks closed mostly higher following an unexpected rise in manufacturing activity in September, but ended off their best levels of the session after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke defended the bank’s latest round of asset purchases aimed at strengthening the economy. See more about Monday’s action in U.S. stocks.


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Posted in: Cars,
by Gregg Laskoski on Jul 13, 2013 06:00 AM
If you're interested you better speak up now because the Hennessey people are only making a few of them. The Hennessey Venom GT has been named the world's fastest production car, taking away the title from the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport. The fastest street-legal production car in the world has a maximum speed of 265.7 mph, while the production Veyron, which features a tuned engine, maxes out at 258 mph. The Veyron Super Sport still holds the title as the world's fastest car, with the pre-production model reaching 267.8 mph.
It might be fun to make a run on the interstate (driving within the speed limit) in one of these. (And then again, it might be more fun to open it up on a test course or track.) But it will set you back a little... $1.2 million.
According to the NY Daily News, the Hennessey Venom GT was tested in February but the figures have only now been ratified. The car, which is loosely based on the Lotus Exige, is powered by a twin turbo-charged 7.0-liter V-8 engine. It pumps out 1244 horespower and, as the car weighs exactily 1244kg, its power to weight ratio is 1000 horsepower per ton.
"While a Veyron Super Sport did run 267.8 mph, Bugatti speed-limits its production vehicles to 258 mph," said company founder and president John Hennessey. "Thus, at 265.7 mph the Venom GT is the fastest production car available to the public." Hennessey also suggested that his company was at a disadvantage because it only had a 2.9-mile runway over which to set its benchmarks, whereas the Veyron had the luxury of using Volkswagen Group AG's private test track located near Ehra-Lessien, Germany which, at 5.9 miles, has one of the world's longest straight sections of track. "Afforded the same distance to accelerate, the Venom GT would exceed 275 mph," said Hennessey.
In February of 2013, the Venom GT officially became the quickest accelerating production vehicle in the world as it ran 0-300 km/h in 13.63 seconds, thus establishing a new Guinness World Record. The car also managed to go from 0-60 mph in 3.05 seconds and 0-100 mph in 5.88 seconds, and it ran the standing quarter-mile in 10.29 seconds at 158.83 mph.
Only 29 Venom GTs are scheduled to be built and each will cost their lucky owner $1.2 million plus shipping, not including options. Hennessey claims that the first 10 have already been sold.
While there was no discussion of fuel economy, I'm guessing that when I hit Lotto and splurge for one of these, I'll fill it up with premium. What the heck, you only live once.


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If you own an Apple Watch, you can look at it for the fastest or cheapest gasoline after checking your car’s fuel gauge with a new app function by AAA.
The driver’s aid might come in handy. AAA Travel forecast Tuesday, Nov. 13, that 46.9 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more for the Thanksgiving holiday, an increase of 0.6 percent over the previous year. More than 89 percent of holiday travelers will drive to their destinations, the AAA said.
The organization also forecast the lowest Thanksgiving gasoline prices in the past seven years.
The AAA Gas Price feature for the Apple Watch searches for gasoline station prices in a radius of several miles of the user, who can program the app to identify either the fastest — as in nearest — or the cheapest gas.
The functionality updates gas prices in the United States and Canada seven times a day.
Users can also program what grade of gasoline they want. The watch can give turn-by-turn voice directions to the chosen station, or a passenger can take over the navigation.
Program it before you get on the road, of course.
The Apple Watch feature “puts consumers in charge of their time and helps them make decisions on how much money they spend on gas,” AAA president and CEO Marshall Doney said in a statement.
The Apple Watch feature is a riff on the free AAA Mobile App for iPhone, iPad and Android that can be used to map a route, check gasoline prices, access member discounts and find AAA-rated lodging.
This article was written by Richard K. De Atley from Press-Enterprise and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.


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For a number of years now, the savings ratio has been at historically low levels, with 2008 marking the lowest figure for nearly 50 years at 1.5 per cent. For over 30 years prior to 2003, the figure had been above 4 per cent and over 8 per cent for the majority of this time.
But recently things have started to change quite dramatically. Each quarter since the end of 2008 has seen the figures rise, with Q3 2009, the most recently published figure, at 8.9 per cent. This change has been clearly reflected in the sales figures for funds.
The Investment Management Association collates the figures for all UK investments in funds and publishes them every month. One of the favourite parts of my job is putting together the monthly statistics press release. It is really interesting to see what has changed and what trends the figures show.
We have recently published the figures for the whole of 2009 and they really are quite remarkable. 2009 was a record year for fund sales, with £25.8bn of net retail sales. This figure is 45 per cent higher than the previous best year, which was 2000. It was also in marked contrast to 2008, with net retail sales more than six times higher in 2009.
The total for 2008 was just £3.8bn, the lowest figure since 1995. In 2008, no month had net inflows over £2bn. By contrast, in 2009, net retail sales exceeded £2bn a month for nine months in a row. The total for the last two months of 2009 was more than the whole of 2008.
So, what is going on? Some of what we are seeing is part of longer-term trends. One trend has been the move away from with-profits into unitlinked funds. Another long-term trend is as a result of the decline of the definedbenefit employer pension scheme and the increase in defined-contribution schemes that invest in funds.
But there is more going on than that, as looking at Isa sales shows. Isas are a bellweather for what ordinary investors are doing. Net sales of stocks and shares Isas in 2009 totalled £2.8bn – the highest they have been since 2001. In contrast, the previous five years had seen outflows.
The very poor level of interest rates available from savings deposits accounts has led those with money to look elsewhere.
This, perhaps combined with the growth in stockmarket returns last year, saw savers voting with their wallets for equities. The first half of 2009 was dominated by bonds but the second half saw inflows into equities well ahead of bonds.
We are also seeing the classic response to recession – a return to the habit of saving, with families putting by a bigger proportion of their incomes.
Overall, it looks like a vote of confidence in funds by both the institutional investor and the ordinary saver.
Ginny Broad is head of communications at the Investment Management Association