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Well, that didn’t take long: in the wake of Fernando Lugo’s quickie impeachment, Mercosur has suspended Paraguay’s membership in the trade block…which, magically, removed the one big obstacle remaining to Venezuela’s accession, allowing Venezuela to become a full member.
Politically, it’s a rich prize: signing onto a customs union with Chávez’s Southern Cone ideological fellow-travellers is a longstanding strategic aspiration for the Bolivarian regime.
But Mercosur is supposed to be, first and foremost, a trade agreement, so…what does it mean for Venezuela’s economy?
Well, it’s a funny thing. Normally, countries try to negotiate free trade agreements for one reason: to get better access to foreign markets for their exporters. But Venezuela’s a mono-exporter of a product that doesn’t face any trade barriers anywhere, because everybody’s desperate for it.
In the meantime, our non-oil export sector has been utterly defeated by the insane mountain of paperwork aspiring exporters face, and finished off by a crazy Currency Control regime that more or less guarantees exporters lose money. Under those circumstances, tariffs levels in Argentina and Brazil are number 7,398,328 or so on the list of practical problems keeping Venezuelan firms from selling stuff abroad. Still, it’s nice to know that’s been taken care of…
Caracas Chronicles is 100% reader-supported.
Support independent Venezuelan journalism by making a donation.Donate


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Back in September we reviewed a handy remote control app for the Roku video streaming devices called ROKUbox. It mostly provided a convenient substitute for a real Roku remote control, plus a few extra features. Fast forward to 2012 and ROKUbox has now become WPRemote for Roku. The name change is a result of the Roku company’s desire for keeping 3rd-party apps from being confused with official ones. Of course, there is no official Roku remote app for Windows Phone, but you know legal types are.
Additionally, the app’s version 2.0 update added a handy YouTube video playback function. See, for some crazy reason the Roku company doesn’t want to pay Google for the rights to provide an official YouTube channel on the Roku. Never mind that the Xbox 360, Sony Blu-Ray players, and myriad other devices have such channels. Thankfully the folks at Localyf have created their own custom Roku channel that plays YouTube videos.
To enable the feature, you’ll need to follow the instructions provided in the WPRemote for Roku app. Basically it involves going to the Channel Store on the Roku device and inputting a code to download Localyf’s channel. Once you’ve done that, simply press the YouTube button at the bottom of the WPRemote app. The app’s YouTube section allows you to search for YouTube videos by name and view recently played videos. Once you choose a video, it immediately starts playing on the Roku and your HDTV. You can also pin a live tile for the YouTube search function to your phone.
YouTube playback is the one glaringly missing feature of Roku devices, so it’s awesome that Localyf has found a workaround. There are other Roku remote apps for Windows Phone, but WPRemote for Roku appears to be the only one with a YouTube feature. That should be enough to make it a must-buy for Roku owners.
WPRemote for Roku costs $1.99 and there is a free trial. Get it here on the Marketplace.
PS5 games prices are higher than Xbox — but is that a good thing?
Sony's PlayStation 5 reveal came with some big caveats, and one of the most overlooked ones is the fact that games will be more expensive, seemingly across the board. Should Microsoft and Xbox jump on that train as well?
Review: Gigabyte's Z490 AORUS ULTRA is a gorgeous Intel motherboard
Gigabyte's Z490 AORUS ULTRA is a motherboard you should consider for a 10th or 11th Gen Intel-powered PC. On paper, it has plenty going for it, including amazing power design and cooling, passively cooled M.2 slots and good overclocking support.
You can get the Windows 10 October 2020 update early – here's how
In this guide, we'll show you the steps to upgrade your computer to the final release of the Windows 10 October 2020 Update before it's officially available to everyone.
The NFL is back! Check out these must-have Windows apps for football fans
After months of waiting through a unique offseason and no preseason games, the NFL is finally back this week. With these Windows 10 apps, you won't miss a snap of the NFL action.

domain: news


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The next-gen Mustang will step out of its retro clothes and into distinctively modern new apparel.
The Wall Street Journal has reported on the direction Ford will be taking with their upcoming next-generation Mustang. According to "people familiar with Ford's plans" and "people who have seen the new Mustang," Ford is working on a radical makeover to attract the younger generation of car buyers. These rock-hard sources also claim the new Mustang bears a close resemblance to the Evos concept revealed at Frankfurt last year.
While the story certainly piqued our interest, the inner cynic was quick to come out: could this simply be a subtle ploy to gauge public opinion about Ford's intended design strategy for the Mustang? Yes, the Mustang hasn't been selling as much as Ford would like lately; for the past two years it has been out-sold by the Chevy Camaro. And yes, the new Mustang must attract Generation Y - the 80 million or so prospective buyers born between 1980 and 1999 - who are entering their peak car-buying years. So the need for a refreshed vehicle is beyond doubt; as is the demand for a successful one.
With a new turbocharged four cylinder engine, a 2.7-liter turbocharged V6 and a turbocharged 5.0-liter V8 purported to represent the next Mustang engine lineup, the technical and mechanical side of things seems to be well under way. But how close is Ford to nailing down the design? According to the WSJ, Ford will mark the Mustang's 50th anniversary with a model that draws heavily on the aforementioned Evos concept coupled with Aston Martin styling cues while retaining the round headlights and shark-nosed grille. That's enough to send even the best rendering experts cross-eyed, but what is clear is the need to get the design right.
The 2005 retro-style Mustang was a big hit, and to change the design too fast and too dramatically is a big risk. Perhaps with mainstream stories such as this, Ford will utilize the feedback they generate to ensure the design of the 2015 Mustang has the right amount of modern to attract the Millenial generation, without sacrificing the muscle car's roots. Photos displayed are of the 2013 Ford Mustang coupe and Ford Evos Concept.
Check out more information about Ford Coupe cars.


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Big ideas, smaller audiences, and too many (or the wrong) metrics
John Battelle's Conversational Marketing Summit, which debuted last fall with much acclaim in a more intimate setting in San Francisco, faced a challenging task with its second edition last week in New York.
Tim Leberecht is Frog Design's chief marketing officer. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.
For starters, the speaker lineup was impressive, but two of the most important players of the social media Web were noticeably absent: Facebook (which, to be fair, took part last year) and Twitter. Yes, where was Twitter, the epitome of online conversations? Or at least another micro-blogging service?
Additionally, and more crucially, the program had to deal with what business lingo calls a "good problem:" the summit last fall had done such an excellent job establishing and exhaustively addressing the topic that it was hard for the NY program to offer new insights. Sure, the trend toward and the need for conversational media have continued and amplified. So has the emergence of the distributed Internet, or in Battelle's words: "To keep building our brands, we have to go to where the audience has gone." And the audience has gone to conversational media, as traffic data suggests, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
The most successful new online brands are indeed conversational: Blogging service Wordpress, for example, experienced a whopping 202 percent traffic growth since last year, YouTube is up by 80 percent, Wikipedia by 28 percent, Facebook by 72 percent, and Flickr by nearly 86 percent. Sites with tools, services, and platforms that enable conversations to thrive are thriving themselves while the traffic to traditional properties (aka portals) stagnates or shrinks.
"Too many advertisers buy impressions instead of making impressions," Matt Freeman of GoFish remarked. Despite all the momentum that conversational media enjoys, as far as marketers' best practices and tools are concerned, not so much has actually changed since the last CM Summit. And some of the panels seemed to artificially prolong a conversation that had already ended last fall.
B2B = B2C²
Yet it was still an excellent program that Battelle and team put together. Focusing on the role of conversational media in building brands, the summit set out to find the "online analogs to the executions we so love in magazines and television."
Beth Comstock, chief marketing officer of General Electric, was well-suited to provide answers, for she represents an old, venerable brand (the "Hillary Clinton of brands," as someone in the audience framed it) that is successfully adapting to the new branding paradigms on the web. Overseeing a $1 billion budget, she can afford to experiment. But it's not only the money, it's the latitude: "GE is a brand with the permission to do a lot of things," Battelle described it.
Comstock spoke about the importance of "visual storytelling" and GE's continued foray into social media and conversational marketing. She said that the company should--and will--be more aggressive in embracing online conversations, further enhancing the use of embedded video ads and engaging audiences through multimedia content in all of its online channels: "The media plan is becoming the distribution channel." Comstock also made an interesting point about GE's investment in consumer marketing: in her eyes, it elevates the overall brand because it provides a strong umbrella for all of GE's B2B marketing. She's on top of an emerging trend: at the end of the day, enterprise clients are consumers and have the same emotional needs (or as the saying goes, "B2B customers are consumers who have the luxury of having a company pay for what they desire"). On the engagement level, conversational media seem to increasingly force B2B marketers to think like consumer marketers and develop programs that connect directly with the customer--through narratives rather than benefit statements and feature lists.
Will standardized metrics stifle innovation?
The most interesting debates throughout the two-day program centered on the elephant in the room: measurement. Most people in the industry would probably agree that the "end of the click" is near. CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) and CTR (click-through-rate) do not suffice anymore as go-to metrics for the effectiveness of brand-building display advertising campaigns.
A recent report from Starcom MediaVest suggests that the majority of clicks being purchased are being consumed by unemployed, twenty-something, gambling, shopaholic, Internet addicts: "Heavy clickers represent just 6 percent of the online population yet account for 50 percent of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, (...) heavy clickers are not representative of the general public. In fact, heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet user, and while they spend four times more time online than non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites--a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers."
Therefore the cry for new types of brand engagement metrics is getting louder: "There is more and more emphasis by advertisers for greater return-on-objectives in campaigns, particularly in the digital space where the accountability data is so readily available," said Grant Prentice, Starcom USA's director of connections research and analytics. "'Natural Born Clickers' shows us that we can't count on click-through rate as our primary success metric for display ads; Starcom is more reliant on shifts in brand attitude metrics and analytics tying online exposure to sales as the true measures of online advertising efficacy."
Added Battelle: "The success of online advertising can no longer be defined only by direct response metrics. Today's brand marketers are focusing on an entirely different set of parameters."
However, at present, there exists a plethora of metrics but no standardized set of measurements that lets conversational marketers prove the impact of their programs.
"One of the greatest barriers that we've seen for marketers in social media has been a general lack of standards and tools for campaign measurement and reporting," said Debra Aho Williamson, analyst at eMarketer. "There are, of course, vendors who supply disconnected data points, but it has so far been up to the marketer to wade through this sea of data themselves. What is needed is a single device or methodology that aggregates relevant data in an easily digestible form." Several companies and industry alliances have developed dashboard models seeking to fill that gap.
Federated Media, the summit organizer, introduced its own product: the Conversational Measurement Toolbox, an open suite of campaign measurement, planning, and reporting tools across the three dimensions--"engagement-amplification-equity"--offering marketers greater control and insight into their conversational marketing efforts.
Not everyone working on the creative side of the business is buying into the quest for a standardization of metrics. George Bennett, founder and CEO of branded entertainment firm Magic Bullet Media, contends that viral marketing campaigns are by nature unmeasurable, at least by standardized measures.
Let 100 flowers bloom
Amid the fixation on engagement metrics, Rich Silverstein, co-chairman and partner of advertising agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, brought back the idea of the good old big idea: "If it's good, it will work. Nice ideas that are big and deep will go a long way." And they even become a broader conversation, a cultural phenomenon, as proven by the recent Clinton vs. Obama Saturday Night Live spot (and a Time cover), both of which were inspired by a Silberstein NBA commercial.
Maybe a standardization of metrics would indeed stifle innovation and social media marketers' appetite for experiments. In the unregulated, fragmented social media space that we're in right now, anything goes, which may very well be a major factor for its vibrancy. Failure is always an option. Andy Markowitz from Kraft Foods quoted Guy Kawasaki: "Let 100 flowers boom."
However, Steve Rubel, senior vice president and director of insights for Edelman Digital, slammed the industry.
"We've gone backwards. There's no standard. The TV screen has a number. A dollar is a dollar. Having a standard makes transactions work. IAB has been moving slowly, fearing, justifiably, that if they come down from Mt. Sinai with two tablets offering a Ten Commandments of metrics, they worry that things could change in six months and render any standard useless," said Rubel, who also writes the Micro Persuasion blog. "Because there are no standards, all agencies are speaking different languages and no one has an answer."
Yet he reminded the audience that the "social Web is made of people" and demanded additional qualitative metrics that measure the impact of conversational marketing on the other side of the equation--the consumer. Social media, at its core, is about collaboration, he argued, and attempts to simply apply the old, quantitative templates of tracking marketing programs would fall short of capturing the essence of online conversations. They are no longer one-way streets: "Consumers are tired of being treated like cattle." They know they are marketed to and expect substantial value in return for their permission, said Rubel.
Consequently, metrics failing to measure the value of marketing programs for consumers would be one-sided and skewed. He also suggested rebranding "conversational marketing" as "collaborative marketing."
"Conversations are just a means to an end," he said, and he finds them valueless if they don't have a positive impact on consumers' lives. That's a somewhat radical proposition, seemingly far ahead of its time. What would truly consumer-focused, impact-driven conversational marketing metrics look like? A good question for the next CM Summit, this fall, in San Francisco.


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Manchester City, the recent English Premier League winner, with Sony, has chosen to collaborate to build a Metaverse for the team’s supporters. The Japanese electronics company Sony announced at CES 2023 that its “Proof of Concept” would let spectators engage with a virtual replica of Etihad Stadium or participate in various online games.
Sony posted an official video exhibiting the immersive experiences on its YouTube account. Virtual avatars may be seen moving about the stadiums within the footage. Additionally, they can be seen twirling around the virtual stadium at designated areas.
Customers will be able to understand more about strategies, including the player’s location on the field, and experience the game from different perspectives due to the virtual reality experience. This technique might be a fantastic approach to fully comprehending the game. According to Sony, it installed numerous sensors on Manchester City players and recorded volumetric information and video for study.
The locations for the application’s release are still up for debate, even though it is scheduled for 2023.
This might be a fantastic new way for supporters to participate with their favorite sports teams and a chance to add more technology, including NFTs, to the unique Metaverse. Football teams, including Barcelona, Liverpool, and even Barcelona, have already entered the Metaverse and are now asking supporters to interact with them.


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Wednesday, February 7, 2018 - 16:30
Event caterer, Seasoned has announced that it has seen a 20% rise in the number of customers choosing menus specifically designed around dietary requirements, compared to last year.
Seasoned reports that clients have been tailoring menus to meet the increasing demand of special dietary requirements at events, which sees a surge of bespoke menus that omit meat, animal products and gluten. The event caterer says that 15% of their total requests last year were from vegan diners, contributing toward a significant portion of the overall increase of 20%, while 5% of diners accounted toward various other requirements, such as gluten intolerance and Ovo-vegetarian.
The rise in tailored menus has been a growing trend for the London based caterer, with Seasoned announcing that they had seen an increase of 75% in bespoke corporate menus last year, with dietary requirements being a catalyst for the niche menus. Vegan diets remain as one of the main reasons for changes in menus, after the number of people following Veganism has increased by over 360% in the last century, prompting the caterer to work closely with their audience to create new, cutting edge creations.
Seasoned, who feed thousands of guests a year, have showed their inclusiveness of all clients’ dietary requirements by crafting an allergen-free dish that caters for all known dietary requirements, to ensure consistency between all diners at events; their exclusive ‘Wonky Veg Terrine’, consists solely of vegetables, without any animal products and meets Seasoned’s environmental commitment of using produce that has been rejected by high street sellers due to aesthetic purposes. The dish has been hugely popular over the winter period and has been featured on 60% of all vegan menus from the caterer since its inception.
Managing Partner, Colin Sayers, commented: “We’re extremely honoured that our clients have identified us as a caterer who can accommodate not just only for vegans but for all dietary requirements. It is a testament to the ingenuity and creativity of our chefs, who are able to not only stay ahead of the curve, but craft exciting dishes that resonate with our clients.”
Sayers continued: “With veganism becoming such a norm within society, we [Seasoned] must do everything we can to accommodate for those not eating meat or animal products. We believe that incorporating vegan dishes shouldn’t be an after-thought, so we have pushed our very own creation, The Wonky Veg Terrine to the forefront of our offering, as it showcases our approach of accommodating for all diners while exhibiting our ethos of sustainability.”


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Last week, grocery delivery startup Grofers was said to be raising $125-150MM of capital from its early backer Softbank.
The intriguing journey of Grofers is encapsulated in the top search suggestion when you first Google “Grofers” (try it in incognito). With a BigBasket ad ranking as the first result, higher than Grofers itself, one can imagine what an intriguing place Grofers is in today. As search engine marketing (SEM) savants would know, it is really expensive for BigBasket to place an ad for the term Grofers.
That it has come to this is really surprising.
In 2015, Grofers was the most funded hyperlocal delivery startup in India, and likely one of the most well funded in the world. BigBasket, which optimizes better on search for “Grofers” than Grofers today, only got into the centi-million fundraise club a year later. Grofers clearly had the backing of some of the world’s biggest, and most prolific investors, but is now in 2nd place.
Following Grofer’s journey will help us understand what did. The company initially started in 2013 as a B2B inventory management tool for Kirana shops, connecting large brands with smaller Kirana retailers who needed to accurately track their stock. It is definitely a problem to solve because most of these retailers do not have any technology to manage inventory. Grofers, evidently, saw good adoption of the technology for these kirana retailers, and was clocking $15K of GMV every day in 2015. Processing grocery orders for retailers is a decent business, but when you see so many customers paying for these myriad goods what would you do?
You tap the customers (and become more appealing to investors in the process).
Just after raising its first round in late 2014, Grofers, opened up its platform to consumers (appealing to investors, anyone?). The platform allowed consumers to purchase goods and immediately began to see adoption. The pivot from being retailer focused to being consumer-focused immediately resulted in strong investor interest, and the company raised $45MM just in a matter of 2 months.
For a company doing 20K orders a month, with an average order value (AOV) of $15, that would peg the company GMV run rate of $3.6MM. Assuming a 30% equity investment for the $45MM, it would peg the company at a valuation of $150MM ($45MM/30%). Even in the heydays of GMV based valuation, Grofers was valued at a 35x multiple at GMV. Flipkart (although much larger in size) in the same year was valued at 3x GMV. By the end of 2015, Grofers had raised another $120MM from Softbank.
Grofers was flying as the rockstar in its category.
Given how expensive the investment was, it was clearly a bet on the category (groceries) and the team (ex-Zomato). In 3 years (i.e. today), this very market was to become incredibly hot and would see the Flipkart CEO eat his words (or, poetically, have some churan). It is a testament to investing acumen to identify a massive category ($600 Bn worth) long before others, and back a strong team to execute.
Strong team, massive market, growing momentum – but what about the business model?
Grofers believed that the marketplace model of owning no inventory, with hyperlocal delivery, would be successful in the low margin grocery market. The company would take orders from a customer, pick up the goods from a nearby grocery store, and deliver. It essentially functioned as a delivery company, coupled with a platform matching demand and supply.
The model was inspired by US grocery delivery startup Instacart, that though started just a year before Grofers, had already raised $300MM by 2015. Grofers and Instacart also had a common investor, which likely helped in shaping Grofers’ new business model.
Grofer’s largest competitor, BigBasket, followed the inventory-led model. BigBasket’s founding team had perfected the grocery inventory model at the company they sold to Aditya Birla Group, which would be known as More. More now interestingly comes under the wings of Amazon (which I analyzed as a masterstroke), in direct competition to BigBasket.
The marketplace model has the advantage of being frictionless, and easily scalable. Importing higher margins from Instacart would not be possible, because Indian grocers had lower margins to give from. Relying on gig-economy labour, as Instacart did, would not be feasible for Grofers because these lower margins would make it flexible labour prohibitively expensive. The company would thus need to hire their own delivery guys.
Winning would need scale, as Grofers gross margins would be low (5-6%) due to being inventory light. On a ticket size of $10, the company would make at best 0.5$. Assuming a customer acquisition cost of $4, Grofers would need at least 8 transactions to break even on its customer.
Strong team, massive market, growing momentum – but it now seems clear it would turn out to be a faulty business model.
2016 would be the nuclear winter for on-demand startups, both in food and in groceries. TinyOwl ($20MM) and PepperTap ($50MM) were the two largest casualties (full list here). It was a strong indication that the hyperlocal model would not fly in India due to low ticket sizes and high costs of delivery.
Grofers would not be spared.
The company saw a slight increase in revenue to $1MM, while the losses expanded to $10MM. Grofers had also scaled to 27 cities, with the faulty business model, and scaled-down as quickly – while laying people off.
How did the inventory-led model of BigBasket do, at the same time? It’s revenue grew 3x to $90MM, leaving Grofers in the wake. As swift as its rise, within a year of its Softbank investment, Grofers was struggling.
I always maintain that startup investing is about backing the jockey, and not the horse. Grofers, led by able management, saw the writing on the wall, accepted the issues in its own model, and pivoted to the inventory-led model (i.e. BigBasket). The company saw FY 17 grow to $35MM of revenue, and FY18 at $100MM. The inventory led model also provided the opportunity for better margins (35%).
Groceries are also an interesting category in India because people buy in bulk (rather than small numbers) and one could innovate for the customer by making prices like wholesale buying. Grofers caught onto this behavior and started wholesale priced “Smart Bachat Club” that already has 500K subscribers in mid-2018.
The groceries market in general also heated up in 2018, with Amazon’s acquisition of More, BigBasket’s 3 acquisitions, Swiggy’s potential entry, and Flipkart selling Churan. From high ticket, low-frequency items, everybody is fighting for the low ticket, high-frequency groceries. Like I had elucidated earlier, battling for the customer’s doorstep every day is much more lucrative than being there once in a while.
Grofers has big plans to scale even larger, to $300MM or revenue, and higher-margin private labels. The grocery market is huge, and $300MM of revenue would just account for 0.1% of the overall $500Bn market. BigBasket now has serious competition in its own territory, with the bigger players all descending on the “newly lucrative” grocery market.
Grofers could be well-positioned to rise again, while acquiring its rightful place on Google search.


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Opera Mediaworks has taken a closer look at the best creative principles for mobile video in its Short-Form Video study for the EMEA region. According to the research, shorter mobile videos, 6-8 seconds long are the best for branding campaigns, delivering 36% higher engagement rates than longer content. However, longer video forms were found to yield better results for driving traffic. Video was found to be one of the most effective ad formats on mobile.
Short-form video study
In 2015, Opera Mediaworks launched its EMEA Short-Form Video Fund, providing $1m to brand advertisers to leverage Instant-Play, HD video technology to run across full-screen mobile video inventory. Among brands that took part were eBay, Mitsubishi, Mattel, British Heart Foundation and Tourism Ireland. The Fund examined engagement rates as well as dwell times to gain a better understanding of best practices for advertisers and engagement rates across audiences.
Mark Slade, Managing Director for EMEA, Opera Mediaworks, explains:
“It has long been suspected that the length of mobile video creative has a direct impact on audience-engagement rates, and it’s reassuring to have a specific measure of this now. Mobile video continues to be a huge growth area for advertising, considering the ubiquity of smartphones and the changing habits of how we consume content. Following these findings, we look forward to working with brands and agencies in helping them further explore the nuances to deliver increasingly effective, mobile-first campaigns that are relevant and non-intrusive to consumers.”
As an example of short-form video success, Stella Artois ran a branded campaign to sponsor Wimbledon, looking to reinforce its brand perfection. Engagement rates shot up 60% higher for the 6-second video version compared to the 15-second video. Short-form video attracted 25% longer dwell times than long counterparts.
However, long-form videos of between 15-30 seconds were found to provide 30% higher engagement rates when viewers were asked to “Find out more”. A campaign for TomTom achieved a 62% rise in consumer engagement for its 15-second video and viewers were twice as likely to view additional video content, compared to those who had watched the 6-second version.
In addition, Unilever Lynx noted a 38% increase in clicks for long-form videos, asking users to “Locate store”.
Opera Mediaworks found that for dwell times and CTRs, 14-15-second mobile videos were the best format to increase audience engagement. At this length, videos offer concise information to help double engagement rates compared to shorter video forms.


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2015 sees our first venture into entering the coveted PIA awards and we’re proud to announce that Adreco Plastics is a Finalist for the “Plastics Awards 2015.”
Our owner Sam Hill , has worked for other companies who have been winners at the “Plastics Awards” in the past,but this nomination is without doubt his proudest to date. Since Sam took over Adreco Plastics, there have been a lot of changes and an increase in the diversity of the sectors we work within.
Hard work and determination from everyone at Adreco Plastics is paying off. We’re very proud of the level of service,quality and value for money we now offer our customers for Tooling and Injection Moulding projects.
The Plastics Industry Awards 2015 ceremony will be held in London in October,wish us luck!
You can find out more about these prestigious awards at plasticsawards.com/pia2015/finalists


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BMW recalls 220,000 vehicles in Takata airbag issue
(Reuters) - BMW (BMWG.DE: Quote) is recalling about 220,000 vehicles worldwide from model years 2002 and 2003 as part of a wider recall affecting airbags made by supplier Takata Corp (7312.T: Quote), BMW said on Tuesday.
The latest recall includes BMW's popular 3-Series sedans, coupes, convertibles and station wagons.
Last month, 3.4 million vehicles worldwide made by Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T: Quote), Nissan Motor Co (7201.T: Quote), Honda Motor Co (7267.T: Quote) and Mazda Motor Corp (7261.T: Quote) were recalled because of the airbags made by Takata, the world's second-largest manufacturer of airbags and seatbelts.
About 1.3 million of those vehicles are in the United States.
In BMW's home market of Germany, 64,044 vehicles will be recalled.
In the United States, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said 42,080 BMW vehicles will be recalled.
In Britain, 24,272 vehicles will be recalled, followed by Italy at 13,022, France at 10,449, Spain at 9,954 and Japan at 7,890.
BMW expects to have parts to repair the recalled vehicles starting in July, Buchko said.
BMW said that it was not aware of any injuries or accidents related to the issue, nor of any improper deployments of the airbags in its vehicles, company spokesman Dave Buchko said. Continued...


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WILHELM AUTOMOTIVE PUTS EMPHASIS ON TRAINED TECHNICIANS
Every year, Wilhelm Automotive, a family owned and operated automotive repair business, makes sure that its technicians are certified to be the most reliable and knowledgeable automotive repair employees available to their customers. They do this, in part, by having their technicians certified by the non profit Institute of Automotive Service Excellence (ASE). Wilhelm Automotive currently has five locations in the Valley, and all of the locations have at least three master certified ASE technicians.
The ASE certification insures the automotive technician is knowledgeable about all levels of car repair, and also stays abreast of current technology. Prospective ASE candidates take one or more of the ASE’s more than 40 exams that stress knowledge of job related skills. An ASE certified ‘Master Technician’ must pass a group of ASE automotive exams in a series. ASE certified technicians must also show at least two years of hands-on work experience.
Wilhelm ASE technician Gerry Martinez has been master certified since 1993, and says he believes the certification is important because it gives the technician a higher standard of knowledge and skill in the automotive industry.
“I tell our customers that being ASE certified not only means we have specialized knowledge but also the industry experience to back it up,” Martinez noted.
The technicians must retake the test every five years to continue to be certified, but Wilhelm reviews all the certifications every year to be sure all the technicians stay current.
“Because our technicians invest the time into earning their ASE certification, we know they take pride in their work and in providing the best customer experience possible,” said Wilhelm President Chris Garman.


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FTC Signs Off On Nokia-Microsoft Deal Following DOJ Approval
Peter Suciu for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
On Monday the Federal Trade Commission signed off on Microsoft Corp.’s proposed acquisition of Nokia’s mobile devices and services business. This transition was given the nod following approval by the United States Department of Justice.
The deal, which first went public in September, is reportedly worth around $7.2 billion, and would allow the Redmond, Washington-based software giant to acquire the largest OEM (original equipment manufacturer) for its Windows Phone line of smartphones. At present Nokia controls more than 90 percent of Windows Phone hardware sales and with this deal Microsoft will gain nearly complete control over its own platform.
About 32,000 Nokia employees will reportedly become Microsoft employees as a result of this acquisition.
This acquisition wasn’t expected to encounter any significant roadblocks with US regulators, and Microsoft noted that it was pleased that the deal was cleared by the DOJ without conditions.
“We look forward to the date when our partners at Nokia will become members of the Microsoft family, and are pleased that the Department of Justice has cleared the deal unconditionally,” a Microsoft spokesperson said via prepared statement
“The FTC had no problems signing off on the merger due to the extremely weak position of both companies in the smartphone world and their continuing challenge of extending the strength of Microsoft onto the mobile world,” Roger Entner, principal analyst at Recon Analytics told redOrbit. “The two companies are now coming together and the Nokia group will integrate into Microsoft.”
The quick approval by the DOJ and FTC will also likely make for a smooth transition for Microsoft, and it should also allow the company to better compete in the smartphone market. However, it won’t improve Microsoft’s place in that market overnight.
“Generally mergers like that cause a slowdown and delay right when they need to speed up the most,” added Entner. “The combined entity will be substantially faster in iterating its software releases. For the next six month, there will be probably no significant changes in their market share.”
This acquisition also won’t mean the end of the line for Finnish-based Nokia either.
“Just because Nokia won’t be a standalone company any longer, don’t think the name will disappear,” said telecommunications industry analyst Jeff Kagan. “Microsoft has a decision to make. Keep the Nokia brand or dump it for the Microsoft mother ship brand. We have seen this same choice from other companies over the years as well.”
Nokia is one of the strongest brands in the business Kagan told redOrbit.
“It just needs to be freshed [sic] up and as I like to say, ‘youthenized!’ Does that mean keep the brand name or dump it? That is the question we have next,” Kagan added. “If Microsoft and Nokia are lucky, they will have the same fortune as AT&T did when SBC acquired AT&T, BellSouth and Cingular. At that time the AT&T brand was old and tired, but they re-energized it and embraced the brand. Now the AT&T brand is hot.”
Microsoft must now look for final approval from the European Union, where anti-trust regulars will have the final say whether or not Microsoft’s bid breaches the EU’s competition rules. Online reports suggest that the European Commission could decide this week.


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How does Wayne County's fast food landscape compare to other Indiana counties?
RICHMOND, Ind. — The rumors were proven true when it was announced that a franchisee recently closed on purchasing the far-east side Bob Evans to open a Culver's in Richmond.
When the Pal-Item posts a story about a quick-serve chain like this coming into town, it's typically popular, but a variation of this question also tends to pop up in the Facebook comments section: Does Richmond really need another fast food restaurant?
This question can be difficult to answer, but a look at the landscape as a whole can paint a picture. Since the new Culver's will be Richmond's first, the addition will provide Wayne County residents more variety. But when it comes to type of restaurant, Culver's is joining a rather abundant fast food landscape.
The city of Richmond holds three McDonald's restaurants, four Subways, three Taco Bells, three Dairy Queens, a pair of Burger Kings and Arby's locations. Add this to the recent and future additions, like Culver's, the Jimmy John's that opened last spring and Richmond's second Hardee's.
Data from 2016 show that overall, Wayne County ranks 10th out of Indiana's 92 counties when it comes to the number of fast food restaurants per 1,000 residents. With an overall population nearing 67,000, Wayne County tallies about 1.82, putting it above counties of similar population size like Boone (1.53) and Grant (1.49) counties. It might not seem like much of a difference, but for reference, the scale is 0.49 to 2.02.
So, does this statistic indicate an excessive amount of fast food places in Wayne County?
Rajaram Krishnan, professor of economics at Earlham College, said even if he stared at that data, he would be "very, very careful" to make any assumptions. If anything, he said, an argument possibly could be made that a multitude of fast food restaurants is a public health issue, but in terms of economics, the market will always decide.
"People are going to open restaurants if people are willing to eat in them," Krishnan said, adding that when there is too much fast food, the community will be able to tell as restaurants start to close due to not collecting enough of a profit.
With Wayne County's 10th-place ranking in the state, it must mean the county has an attractiveness to fast food franchisees. Krishnan suggested the following reasons: the area's traffic flow in and out of the city, total population, floating population, disposable income and, overall, evolving lifestyles.
When Krishnan's students tell him they're sick of new fast food restaurants, or they tell him Richmond doesn't need another one, he responds: "What you're saying is that you don't need it."
"Stop speaking for the others," he said with a laugh. "(Fast food restaurants) will be here as long as they’re making money. If people don't go, then you can be sure that the place is going to close down."
Audrey Kirby is a reporter at the Pal Item. Follow her on Twitter @ajanekirby, and email her story ideas: email@example.com.


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- T. Rowe Price is leading a $90 million investment in PagerDuty.
- Henry Ellenbogen, the manager of T. Rowe's New Horizons Fund, sees PagerDuty joining a portfolio of emerging tech companies that can continue to pick up steam before eventually going public.
Long before SoftBank lauched its $100 billion Vision Fund, and years ahead of the private equity and mutual fund rush to Silicon Valley, T. Rowe Price Group's Henry Ellenbogen saw the opportunity to write big checks to tech companies while they were still private.
He's now been investing in late-stage start-ups for a dozen years, providing capital and guidance for consumer businesses such as Twitter and GrubHub and business software vendors Workday and Atlassian, and then generally adding to his stake when they IPO.
Those bets have helped make Ellenbogen's $25 billion New Horizons Fund the top-ranked small-growth fund, according to U.S. News & World Report.
For his latest deal, announced on Thursday, Ellenbogen led a $90 million investment in PagerDuty, whose software helps technical staff at companies spot problems and respond to incidents such as customer complaints. The funding round values San Francisco-based PagerDuty at $1.3 billion.
Ellenbogen met PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada through venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who has worked with T. Rowe on numerous deals and whose firm, Andreessen Horowitz, was already an investor. Tejada traveled to Baltimore with Howard Wilson, the company's chief commercial officer, about a month ago to meet with Ellenbogen about a potential investment.
Ellenbogen told CNBC that he knew the product well because he hears of so many companies, start-ups in particular, that use it as a key piece of their infrastructure. It's part of a menu of providers that start-ups use to launch a company: They typically use Amazon Web Services for core infrastructure, add some Google tools, install Slack for communications, and buy products from Atlassian and GitHub (now owned by Microsoft) for their software teams. PagerDuty is right there on the list.
"This has become a start-up in a box," Ellenbogen said. "It's part of the roster of vendors you start with."
Founded in 2009, PagerDuty surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue earlier this year, said Tejada, a longtime industry executive who joined the company in 2016. Customers include Netflix, Spotify, Gap and eBay.
Prior to this funding round, PagerDuty had raised over $83 million from investors including Accel, Bessemer Venture Partners and Baseline Ventures. Tejada said she knew that, based on the company's traction and capital efficiency, it wouldn't take long to close a round, so she asked people in her network for names of later-stage investors who were effective at bringing value to the table.
"Henry's name bubbled to the top," Tejada said. "He has impeccable pattern recognition, good eyes and is a great operator himself." Wellington Management co-led the round with T. Rowe Price.
Even as PagerDuty grows rapidly, there's a bunch of competition from companies going after enterprise customers as well as start-ups. ServiceNow has built a $34 billion company by automating IT, and other companies are buying into the space. Splunk acquired VictorOps in July, and this week Atlassian bought OpsGenie.
Tejada said the fresh capital will be used both to expand the PagerDuty team, which is currently approaching 500 employees, and to grow geographically. The company recently opened a second headquarters in Toronto and also has operations in Seattle, London and Sydney.
As for Ellenbogen, he sees PagerDuty joining a portfolio of emerging tech companies that can continue to pick up steam before eventually going public. He said there are four companies in his fund's private portfolio that could debut in the second half of the year, including two that have publicly filed. One of those is ticketing site Eventbrite, which filed to go public last month. T. Rowe Price owns 6.8 percent of the company.
As of the end of 2017, according to the New Horizons Fund's latest annual report, Ellenbogen's group had invested $1.53 billion in 70 private companies since September 2009. Among that group, 40 had gone public or been sold and 30 were still private. The overall annual return was 40.9 percent, compared with an 8.2 percent average return for the Russell 2000 Growth Index, according to the report.
Ellenbogen said that his fund invests in five to seven private companies a year and that it's not slowing down even with more big-money investors, including SoftBank, jumping into the space.
"There are subtleties in the market, where certain parts are more expensive than others," Ellenbogen said. But, "we've found a lot of interesting things. We could do a lot more; we're just really limited by bandwidth," he said.


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Vehicle Impact Emergency Service and Property Damage Repair in Phoenix, AZ
Go To Services recently responded to an after hours emergency service call due to an out of control vehicle that drove into the center of a Circle K store in Phoenix.
Luckily, no one was said to be hurt by the vehicle impact that shattered the storefront glass and smashed into the snack-filled shelves. However, the 24 hour minimart had to temporarily shut down that evening while emergency services were performed.
Go To Services has been been performing routine maintenance repairs and installing new shelving systems in the back storage area of hundreds of Circle K stores this year, but this late night call was anything but routine. Circle K stores can be a busy place at anytime, but having the coffee station ready for their morning customers was imperative to our client.
We’re proud to say that our emergency restoration team was up to the challenge and had the store reopened by 4:00 AM.
Great Job Tim, Summer, and Jesus!
Commercial Account Manager, Timothy Longo, has been integral to building a great relationship with Circle K and leading our team on so many retail refresh projects, along with this emergency service call.
Summer Simmons and Jesus Carrillo have done a fantastic job supporting the high volume and sometimes logistical challenges of this regional account (with Circle K stores seemingly on every city block in Phoenix and all over Arizona).
We’re very grateful for the client relationship we have with Circle K and are proud to be their 24 hour Go To contractor.
9:45 PM Car crashes into Circle K store
10:00 PM Go To Services is called
10:30 PM Go To Services is on site
* Assess damage to store and inventory
* Discard damaged items
* Thorough sweep of broken glass
* Inspect and test coffee equipment
* Final clean
4:00 AM Store reopens


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Mindtree said it expects more digital deals in its retail and communications businesses, its two main verticals, which will help it grow in double digits this fiscal and maintain margins similar to its larger rivals.
TCS’s workforce expanded by 40,005 people to touch 4,88,469, Infosys’s went up by 17,248 and Wipro’s by 14,826. In comparison, in FY10, the year after the global financial crisis, these three companies cumulatively hired about 36,000 people.
Demand for a variety of tech roles is shooting through the roof, leading to many sitting pretty with multiple job offers, and negotiating higher pay packages.
With the sharp pickup in demand after the lockdown lows, Indian IT firms have lined up robust hiring plans for 2021-22. The top four IT firms — TCS, Infosys, HCL Technologies and Wipro — collectively plan to hire 91,000 from campuses, a little higher than last year.
Thierry Delaporte joined Wipro as CEO in July last year from Capgemini. Since then, he has undertaken a major organisational revamp, created a new operating model that put the focus on geographies instead of industry verticals, and empowered P&L owners more.
Google is followed by Microsoft and Facebook, where 4% and 3% of the rank holders work, respectively, according to a report by staffing firm Xpheno.
The video conferencing company has plans to double its presence in the country, which is the second largest in terms of number of visitors to its website after the US, Japan, Canada, and the UK occupy the next spots.
Interns in tech companies receive attractive stipends, a real-world job experience, and they get a foot in the door to full-time employment. Glassdoor, a website that sources data from employees anonymously, shows the average monthly intern salary at Cisco India is Rs 49,324.
Hiring in the first half was limited to offers already committed last year at campuses. Unlike during the financial crisis of 2008, where many offers made were revoked, this time the companies said they have honoured all offers and onboarded everyone virtually.
IBM is setting up an artificial intelligence (AI) centre of excellence with the government e-marketplace, its CEO Arvind Krishna said, to improve usability and transparency and help in cost-savings in public procurement.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), which once was the world’s most popular browser, had a peak market share of 95% in 2003 will soon become history. Microsoft has announced that it will cease all support for it in August next year.
Cognizant had 281,200 people on its rolls as of June 30, down from 291,700 sequentially, and 2.5% from 288,200 in the second quarter of last fiscal.
Barely three years ago, there were analysts who looked at the advances in technology, in new digital areas like AI/ML, sensors and robotics, and were convinced that Indian IT was not responding to these changes.
IBM is seen to be working towards a sharper alignment with its strategic priorities - cloud and AI - even as it navigates the business impact of the pandemic.
The US government’s massive $2-trillion stimulus is expected to provide liquidity to companies, including banking and financial services that are the biggest outsourcers of IT. Infosys gets 31% of its revenue from banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI).
A tech hub of Bengaluru was in the grip of an H1N1 influenza scare on Thursday after German software major SAP pressed the panic button following two of its employees in the city contracting the virus.
E-commerce behemoth Amazon is set to lease a huge office space as part of its massive expansion plan of Bengaluru operations, dwarfing its presence in Hyderabad.
About 62% of Indian businesses accept payments via social media as compared to the global average of 55%. This has led to an increased adoption of social commerce in the country, a survey by digital payments company PayPal and market research firm Ipsos has found.
Driver license testing is a pressing problem; for instance, a survey by SaveLIFE Foundation in India reports that a whopping 59% of the respondents did not give a test to obtain a driving license.


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Furniture and bedding retail sales increased an estimated 2.7% this year, reaching $104.8 billion. In 2015,retail sales totaled $102 billion, 3.9% over 2014 sales of $98.2 billion. These furniture and bedding sales figures are Furniture Today’s migeof market research estimates, based on personal consumption expenditure data from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.
As in recent years, 2016 economic indicators have been a mixture of both good and bad. One good economic sign is U.S. household income levels that are up for the first time since the recession. The real median household income for 2015 was up 5.2% to $56,516 from the 2014 median income of $53,718, according to the latest information from the U.S. Census Bureau. The 2015 real median income office desk is 1.6% below the median income of $57,423 in 2007, the year before the recession. The in crease in median income was seen across all characteristics including region, age, and race and ethnicity. Sales for housing have seen improvement. Through September, new home sales have increased 3.1% from August to 593,000, an increase of 29.8% over September 2015. Existing home sales rose strongly in September by 3.2% to 5.47 million, with an increase in closings for all major regions. Unemployment has seen little change since August 2016. Unemployment levels are at 5% for September 2016, and the number of unemployed persons, at 7.9 million,also changed little. Conversely, Consumer Confidence recently declined. After rising 2.3% in September to 103.5 on the index, an increase for the second consecutive office partition month and the highest level since the recession, it fell in October to 98.6.


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Malvertising and crypto threats have rocketed in 2017
You might not have noticed it yet, but 2017 has seen some interesting malware trends, and not of the kind you might expect.
Inevitably, malware has continued to diversify in 2017, and while ransomware volumes have continued to grow, a different trend has also been tracked - in spite of an 18.65 per cent rise in malvertising, the total amount of malware in advertisements decreased by 42.73 per cent from Q1, along with a 24.21 per cent drop in exploit kits. In fact, exploit kits have been declining consistently for the entire year.
The research, by RiskIQ, blames the overall rise on the ever-increasing popularity of programmatic advertising, but also highlights the variance in tactics displayed. That drop in exploit kits was offset by a 131.36 per cent rise in phishing-related advertisements. Clearly harvesting sensitive data and/or login credentials direct from the user has begun to be more efficient than dropping malware. Phishing malvertising has been on the rise for a while, too - in 2016, RiskIQ saw a massive increase in phishing malvertising, identifying 1,978 per cent more incidents over 2015.
The data does show a considerable drop in scams, down 36 per cent, but that still leaves a huge number, more than a million incidents in Q2. The company also detected 845.9 per cent more scams in 2016 than 2015.
As RiskIQ points out, these rises are bad for everyone online, as they’re a major driver of ad blocking, which in turn inhibits genuine digital advertising. In the US in 2016, 69.8 million individuals were expected to use an ad blocker, an increase of 34.4 per cent over last year. In 2017, that figure is projected to grow by another 24 per cent, to 86.6 million people, according to eMarketer.
Meanwhile, interesting data from Kaspersky Lab shows that cryptocurrency-mining malware has expanded exponentially, managing to infect more than 1.65 million endpoints. According to Kaspersky, volumes have risen from a seed 205,000 infections in 2013 to nearly 1.8 million in 2016, and 2017 is on track to beat that figure with ease.
Ilia Kolochenko, security expert and CEO of High-Tech Bridge said: “Statistically speaking, this number is a drop in the ocean. However, it clearly highlights that cybercriminals have found a new vector to monetize massive breaches of personal machines and devices. In the past, user machines were compromised, backdoored and sold to send spam, host illicit content, infect other machines or to be used as proxies in new attacks. Today, cybercriminals have a more reliable way to make profit from botnets turning them into cryptocurrency mines. As cryptocurrencies provide pretty good anonymity by design, risks are minimal, while profits are high and guaranteed. Therefore, I think we should expect to see this trend growing pretty quickly in the near future.”
“If mining software can use the full processing power of the infected machines their hardware may fail much faster. But otherwise, I don’t think we can clearly distinguish any particular risks for businesses whose machines are used for cryptocurrency mining. I’d even say that legal risks would be much smaller compared to using compromised machines to hack new victims.”
Of course, the main reason for this increase is the exponential rise in the cryptocurrency markets, led by massive gains for Bitcoin and Ethereum, but with considerable ‘trickle down’ to less mainstream currencies such as Monero and Zcash, especially of late. The latter two currencies are particularly popular with nefarious types due to inbuilt privacy safeguards, in the shape of anonymous transactions. The two currencies are also still (just) mineable via CPUs, so building a botnet to do so makes practical sense. Of course, spotting a Trojan miner infection is relatively easy, as the CPU will be running at very high loads. This heavy usage is the main threat to infected businesses, as their hardware will age significantly faster than through normal corporate use.
In short, attackers are not only diversifying their methods, but the target item(s) of value your business has for any given group or individual can vary widely. The value of a full and comprehensive digital audit has never been more apparent...


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Minecraft games have been very popular over the past years, as they have been at the forefront of video game broadcasting platforms and have achieved wide spread all over the world. And here is the Minecraft Legends game that comes to us from Mojang studio in cooperation with Blackbird Interactive, maintaining this success within a short period of its official launch.
Mojang Studio revealed via the official Minecraft Legends account on the site Twitter That the game collected within just two weeks of its release 3 million players all over the world. Of course, the biggest credit for achieving such an achievement is due to the Xbox Game Pass service, during which the game was available on launch day.
The developer has also announced the first game update that is now available and is fixing several game bugs with significant improvements to the matchmaking system. The start time for an identical game is now 10 seconds instead of 60, and matches start much faster than before.
#MinecraftLegends just launched and over 3 million players have already hopped in! We’re pleased to announce our first game update, which is starting to make its way to supported platforms right now!
Find out more here: https://t.co/R9gVpqsA0J pic.twitter.com/hA0heojV4B
— Minecraft Legends (@legends_game) April 28, 2023
The aforementioned game became the first title in the series to support the Arabic language, but unfortunately its translation was mediocre. This made her team go out on social media, apologizing and promising the players a fix soon, without specifying a date yet.
Minecraft Legends is available on Xbox One, Xbox Series, PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC.


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NORMAN — Stories of shopping and return horrors circulate among friends, family and coworkers beginning with Black Friday in November and continuing through the holiday shopping season to the new year.
Stories mention lines for miles, hours of standing, irate customers, pushing, shoving, no empty parking spots and crying children. While some of these scenarios may be unavoidable, this year, day after Christmas sale shoppers seemed upbeat with positive attitudes. By six o’ clock Thursday, Sooner Mall was bustling but not overcrowded, and lines were short, if non-existent.
With special holiday hours, the mall opened early at 8 a.m. and didn’t close until 9 p.m. Some sales associates said they had been there all day, while others said they’d only been working a few hours, but most agreed the day had gone as smoothly as possible.
Tolu Ayeni, a Bath & Body Works sales associate, said it was her third time to work the day after Christmas sale.
“It’s been pretty crazy, and I’ve only been here an hour, but it’s going as good as expected,” Ayeni said.
Several shoppers, like Madison Brammer and Jaycee Stevens, said they were a little surprised that the mall wasn’t too crowded.
“We didn’t have a shopping strategy. We just came out for fun,” Madison Brammer said.
Mother and daughter Alicia and Danielle Parrish, who were about to make a purchase at Dillard’s, also said they came out to the mall for fun, but they were focused on the sales.
“She wanted a pair of boots, and we found what we were looking for,” Alicia Parrish said. “So many things are on sale. It’s been a good day.”
Renee Roe, a JCPenny sales associate, said even though she hates shopping, this weekend, she’d probably be searching through racks; she couldn’t resist the sales like 40 and 70 percent off, either.


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Four Loko, the Chicago-based maker of the popular party drink, has been sued by the family of a 15-year-old boy who was hit by a car and killed.
The boy had become disoriented after drinking two of the alcoholic beverages. The family of John Donald Rupp III, who was known as Bo, contend in the lawsuit that Phusion Projects was “careless and negligent” for making a caffeinated, alcoholic beverage that “desensitizes users to the symptoms of intoxication and increases the potential for alcohol-related harm.”
In November 2010, a few weeks after Rupp’s death, Phusion Projects announced it would remove caffeine and other stimulants from its products. The Food and Drug Administration had warned Phusion Projects and three other companies that caffeine was an “unsafe food additive” when combined with alcohol.
The FDA said experts believe caffeine can mask some effects of intoxication and said peer-reviewed studies suggest that drinking beverages containing caffeine and alcohol is associated with risky behaviors. In an e-mailed statement, Phusion Projects said its products no longer contain caffeine, guarana or taurine and are for adults older than 21. The company said that Rupp’s accident, while tragic, speaks to “serious, societal concerns regarding the misuse of alcohol,” including underage drinking.
Rupp, who lived in a suburb of Washington, D.C., bought the beverages at a convenience store before attending a tailgate at a concert last fall, Simon said. Rupp reportedly drank two cans of Four Loko, after which concert venue staff called his mother to pick him up because the boy’s behavior was “erratic and agitated,” his mom, Karla Rupp, said. She drove him home and as she reached their neighborhood, Rupp took off on foot.
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Asustek Computer, a top manufacturer of netbook PCs, anticipates a global slowdown in growth of the lightweight laptops as tablets gain ground.
Acer on Wednesday in a statement said that it has no plans to phase out netbooks as it increases its focus on tablets.
Acer will begin selling two or three new tablet PCs in the first half of the year, including one with a seven-inch screen, a company sales manager said on Monday.
Compal Electronics, one of the world’s biggest contract laptop makers, will raise component prices this year to shore up a drop in profits, affecting computers made for Acer, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, the company said on Wednesday.
A faster, more secure and energy-efficient update to the WiMax wireless Internet standard will get final approval and see commercialization within a year, industry officials said on Monday.
Dolby's new PC Entertainment Experience 4, or PPEv4, pushes the capacity of one of the weakest sound players on the planet: the laptop. Built into the new line of Acer Aspire Ethos computers, PPEv4 sounded great and didn’t disappoint at CES this week...
Thanks to a handful of emerging technologies, virtual touch-screen keyboards are getting closer to the feel of real electromechanical keyboards. Enhancements such as tactile feedback and surfaces that change to mimic physical keys could eventually re...
Coinciding with the launch of Intel's new 2nd Generation Core processors, AMD's Fusion processors, and the 2011 CES, Acer is unveiling a string of new laptops aimed at enthusiasts and gamers. The Aspire 5750, 5750G, and 7750G are available with Intel...
Feeling a bit of MacBook Air envy, Acer, Asus and Lenovo may soon offer alternatives to Apple's ultra-thin computer, according to Digitimes.
Google's prototype Chrome OS laptops do not yet support Java, and support for Flash Player 10.1 is being called a "work in progress."
The price of DRAM, the main memory inside personal computers, will likely keep falling throughout the first half of next year before a recovery takes hold, analysts and market researchers say.
Are physical keyboards soon going to be a thing of the past? At a splashy event here in New York City, Acer Tuesday announced its new concept for a laptop: The Acer Iconia. The name's gravitas is appropriate given that it's the first laptop to ditch ...
Acer executives on Tuesday previewed tablet computers planned for release next year, including three Android-based devices and one that runs Windows. They also detailed plans to introduce a portable computer that has the form factor of a laptop but r...
Not content to gobble up smartphone market share, the Android operating system is poised to capture 15 per cent of the tablet market in 2011, according to IMS Research.
Fans of Android and Windows 7 have a reason to smile with the release of the Acer Aspire One Happy netbook that runs the two operating systems side-by-side without the need to reboot.
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A report published by two Chinese game industry organizations on July 21 shows that the actual revenue of the Chinese game market has decreased.
Specifically, revenue was $21.84 billion, down 1.80% year-on-year, the first annual decline in recent years.
The number of people playing games is about 666 million people, down 0.13% year-on-year, including 655 million mobile game players.
The official pointed out that the year-on-year decline in market revenue and user size is mainly due to a decrease in user income, consumer readiness and an increase in operating costs of businesses. games during the pandemic. The decreasing size of users also shows the increasing competition for quality in the gaming industry.
From January to June, the actual sales of self-developed games in the domestic market was $18.43 billion, down 4.25% year-on-year. During the same period, overseas sales of Chinese games reached $8.989 billion, up 6.16% year-on-year, indicating that overseas market growth is also slowing.
By 2022, the number of countries and regions to which China’s mobile games can be reached has increased significantly. The US and Japan remain the two most important markets for mobile games trying to go overseas. Korea, ranked third, is no longer stable, as the share of other regions is increasing year by year. The ranking change shows that China’s self-developed game is constantly expanding into emerging markets, with a very wide development room.
Revenue from strategy, role-playing and shooting games accounts for more than 70% of the total revenue of all Chinese mobile games, which are still popular in overseas markets. In the first half of last year’s report, the market share of strategy games was 28% larger than that of RPGs. However, the gap this year is less than 20%.
The actual sales revenue of China’s e-sports game market was 63.712 billion yuan, down 11.59% year-on-year. The negative impact of the pandemic on the e-sports industry is striking. Fewer offline events and a poor supply of live streaming content lead to a significant decline in users’ enthusiasm for online gaming and their willingness to pay.


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Fruit Ninja from Halfbrick Studios was developed for the iPhone in 2010, and since then, it’s been one of the best-known mobile games. The Apple Arcade version is set to come to the Vision Pro, and Halfbrick today shared details on how it was customized for Apple’s spatial computer.
Halfbrick Studios lead gameplay programmer Samantha Turner said in a profile published by Apple that the game on Vision Pro is «truly bananas» and has the potential to «do something very special.»
To develop the game, the team worked to bring a traditional 2D interface to 3D space. «We were full of ideas: What if players could squeeze juice out of an orange? What if they could rip apart a watermelon and cover the table and walls with juice?» she said. Halfbrick had to work out how to launch fruit at people, and settled on a set of cannons in a virtual space.
How to interact with fruit was also a question, and while Halfbrick experimented with variety of hand motions and weapons, they settled on hands. Fruit is chopped up with hands, which turned out to be the most satisfying interaction experience.
«We always knew hands would be the center of the experience,» she says. «We wanted players to be able to grab things and knock them away. And we can tailor the arc of the fruit to make sure it’s a comfortable fruit-slicing experience — we’re actually using the vertical position of the device itself to make sure that we’re not throwing fruit over your head or too low.»
Users will be able to slice and dice pineapples and watermelons by jabbing at them, send bombs away by pushing them to a far wall, and fire shuriken into fruit by brushing the palms in an outward direction.
Super Fruit Ninja is just one game coming to the Vision Pro. The headset will support more than 250 Apple Arcade titles, some of which have been customized with spatial experiences. Other options include Game Room and What the Golf, plus other titles that third-party developers are working on.
Gaming will be one of the key features of the Vision Pro headset, but there are also a number of productivity and entertainment apps coming to the device. Slack, Microsoft 365, Fantastical, JigSpace, Disney+, and Max are just some of the customized Vision Pro apps that will be available at launch.
Pre-orders for the Vision Pro begin tomorrow, January 19, at 5:00 a.m. Pacific Time. A launch is set to follow on Friday, February 2.


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Many Argentines consider Juan Perón a demagogue (or worse), and his political legacy is mixed (at best). The labor unions he encouraged could make Jimmy Hoffa's ethically challenged Teamsters look like Common Cause. It was Perón and the unions, though, who helped transform Mar del Plata from an elite enclave into an affordable Atlantic beach resort that more nearly reflects the diversity of Argentine society.
Personally, I would never visit Mar del Plata in January or February, when you can hardly walk the beach without bumping
both elbows, and long lines of diners wait outside restaurants. This has been a particularly strong season despite rising hotel prices, but some middle-class vacationers have found a way to manage costs: they're staying at labor union hotels built during the Peronist heyday.
According to an article in Monday's Clarín, half the guests in union hotels this season are not union members (members have priority, but the hotels accept non-members on a space available basis). While these hotels might not have the luxuries of higher-priced accommodations, they're well-kept and unpretentious, and cost about half what a comparable private hotel does (members pay only a fraction of what non-members do, however). Regular hotel owners, however, are complaining of unfair competition, as union hotels are exempt from many taxes that others pay.
I've always shied away from union hotels, as in the recent past some had become rundown and, in any event, Argentine prices were so low that I wasn't worried about the cost. Given recent inflation, though, I may well choose one when I next update my Argentina guidebook--but I'll still go in November or December, before the crowds hit.


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Reports indicate that Dubai Ports World, a state-owned international port operator, cleared its last major hurdle yesterday in acquiring a British company that helps run several U.S. terminals the companies said yesterday. The acquisition of Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co., whose shareholders agreed yesterday to accept Dubai Ports World's offer of 3.9 billion pounds, or $6.8 billion, in cash, would create the world's third-largest port operator, with 51 terminals in 30 countries. It will also give the aggressive Dubai a larger foothold in the booming trade between Asia and the United States. P&O officials have said they expect the company to be run separately out of London and do not expect changes in U.S. operations in New York, New Jersey, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Baltimore. P&O is the terminal operator and stevedore for container cargo at the Seagirt and Dundalk marine terminals, where it has about 65 employees. The Dubai Ports World's purchase of P&O has not drawn opposition from world regulators or U.S. Homeland Security officials, who have labeled ports as potential terrorist targets. Dubai Ports World, formerly Dubai Ports International, began as the port authority in Dubai. In 1999, it began aggressively buying up other port operations in the Middle East and around the world, Shaerf said.
A January 5 report from Port World stated that an explosion on an oil tanker docked in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong has killed one person and left two others missing.valve-replacement works on the deck. (Source: Port World)
On March 2, the House Armed Services Committee will conduct a Hearing on the national security implications of the Dubai Ports World acquisition of P&O Ports. source: HK Law
Representative King (R-NY) introduced the Foreign Investment Security Improvement Act of 2006 (H.R. 4807) to require an investigation under the Defense Production Act of 1950 of the acquisition by Dubai Ports World of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, and for other purposes. This is a companion bill to S. 2333, introduced earlier by Senator Schumer. source: HK Law
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs received a Briefing from Administration personnel on the Dubai Ports World (DPW) acquisition of the Peninsular & Oriental (P&O) company. Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-ME) issued a Press Release stating that she introduced a resolution calling for a thorough review and Congressional consultation before the transaction could proceed. Source: HK Law
Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., called on Congress on March 10 to fund technology that would scan 100 percent of the cargo containers entering America. Menendez wants Congress to add $1 billion to the 2006-07 federal budget to improve scanning technology, help developing countries improve their ability to inspect containers and provide for additional inspectors at U.S. ports. President Bush said Friday that he was troubled by the political storm that forced the reversal of a deal allowing
Mermaid Marine Australia Ltd will merge with Dubai Ports World subsidiary P&O Maritime Services Pty Ltd through a share-trading arrangement. Mermaid will issue 221.9 million shares to DP World in return for 100 per cent of the shares in P&O Maritime Services Ltd and P&O Polar Australia Pty Ltd, subject to shareholder approval. The deal will result in DP World owning 60.4 per cent of Mermaid, with existing shareholders holding the remaining 39.4 per cent.
Managing new larger-draft ships, key to future growth of Mid East trade - technology and environmental issues also major challenges for region’s ports Senior executives from the region’s largest ports and shipping organisations, including ADPC (Abu Dhabi Ports Company) and DP World, took to the stage today (Tuesday 29 March) at the World Ports and Trade Summit. Tony Douglas, CEO, ADPC (Abu Dhabi Ports Company), joined Dirk Van Den Bosch, Chief Commercial Officer
DP World, UAE Region has been named Shipping Port of the Year for the third time at the prestigious annual Supply Chain and Transport Awards 2010 (SCATA). The award was presented to DP World, UAE Region, at a gala ceremony held at the Grosvenor House on Wednesday, June 2. The event was attended by several hundred supply chain industry leaders. Jebel Ali Port, which previously won the Outstanding Achievement and Port Operator of the Year Awards in 2007 and the Port Operator of the Year
ISS World of Ports is responding to the demand for more collaborative marine assurance data with new feedback features, improved accessibility and online mapping tools. With safe operations always at the forefront of tanker operations, the service available at www.iss-worldofports.com provides marine assurance teams with the data to assess whether a vessel matches up with the particular requirements of load, discharge and husbandry port.
The Port of Prescott owned and operated by the Township of Edwardsburgh/Cardinal, located on the St. Lawrence River south of the Canadian Capital of Ottawa, Ontario has announced that effective January 1, 2014, the Port will be officially renamed the Port of Johnstown
Classification society ClassNK and Rio Tinto Iron Ore (part of the Rio Tinto Group, one of the world’s largest metal and mining companies), announced that they have signed a collaborative agreement focused on the safe carriage of iron ore.
Port Officials and Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL), on the eve of WWL’s 26th anniversary at the Port, executed a fifth modification of its 1991 contract extending its agreement for an additional five years through December 31, 2018.
The European Union will support with €3.6 million from the TEN-T Program a series of studies preparing for the upgrade of the infrastructure in the Swedish Port of Luleå. The studies, which were selected for funding under the 2012 TEN-T Annual Program
GAC EnvironHull, part of global shipping, logistics and marine services provider GAC Group, has launched HullWiper, its new offering diver-free, cost effective and eco-friendly underwater hull cleaning. Despite its compact size of 3 x 1.5 x 0
Offshore Patrol Vessels Middle East 2014 examining maritime security challenges in region, world As policy leaders wrapped up the Manama Dialog, an international security conference in Bahrain, maritime and naval leaders commenced their meetings in Abu Dhabi to discuss practical implementation
Ministers from 159 countries have reached agreement on a deal intended to boost global trade at a meeting in Bali, Indonesia. The World Trade Organization's (WTO) first comprehensive agreement involves an effort to simplify the procedures for doing business across borders.
The company says it created history in marine and offshore operations when they lifted the 10,000-tonne topside of the first gravity base of the semi-submersible (and world’s largest offshore HVDC platform structure) 'DolWin Beta' to a height of 52.8 metres from the dock bottom.
Damen Shipyards Group is set to deliver the fifth Platform Supply Vessel in a series of six to World Wide Supply of Norway. World Opal is a Damen PSV 3300 CD. The first ship, World Diamond, was delivered in July and the last in the series World Sapphire is due to be delivered mid-December.
Leading US Gulf Coast port and cargo solution provider, Millard Maritime®, & HELM Fertilizer Corporation, a major fertilizer distribution and marketing company for the Americas, have jointly agreed to import HELM products to the Millard Maritime facility in Theodore
Recent orders for Liebherr Mobile Harbor Cranes (LHM) from the Middle East include two LHMs and the first LiSIM LHM550 unit for the region, paving the way for state-of-the-art crane operator training. Additionally, one Liebherr Reachstacker has been delivered to the region.
CTI Corporate Travel International, the £100 million company formed by the acquisition of Hotelscene by the TD Travel Group, continues its expansion with the opening of new marine travel office in Hull. CTI Marine is the specialist maritime travel division of CTI
Teesport, recognized as the first port in the world to be fitted with a Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) system, will upgrade to C-Scope, the next generation maritime surveillance system from Kongsberg Norcontrol IT. “The relationship between Kongsberg Norcontrol IT and Teesport is the
Users of the Voyager Planning Station, developed by Global Navigation Solutions, the maritime services group, can now plot their route directly onto the official ENCs on board their vessel. Visitors to this year’s Marintec China exhibition will have the opportunity to see a demonstration of
Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. (MOL, President: Koichi Muto) , a Member of the G6 Alliance has announced plans to expand their cooperation to the Asia-North America West Coast and Trans-Atlantic trade lanes. The G6 Alliance said the expanded cooperation will provide customers with more service


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Poppin Huis to close, hold liquidation sale
HOLLAND — Almost two years after reopening under new ownership, a downtown popcorn and candy shop will close its doors for good.
Poppin Huis — specializing in gourmet popcorn, candy and gift baskets — announced a liquidation sale on social media Monday, Feb. 8.
“It is with heavy hearts that we are closing our family-owned business after two wonderful years,” the owners wrote in a joint letter to The Sentinel following the announcement.
“We've enjoyed your support, enthusiasm and encouragement throughout our short tenure in our mission to provide a space where everyone could enjoy quality flavor-packed gourmet popcorn, candies and gifts.”
The closure was attributed to “unforeseen circumstances.”
Liquidation deals include in-stock inventory up to 75 percent off, candy and popcorn barrels for $60 and vintage popcorn wall art starting at $5. All inventory, equipment and fixtures must go.
The sale will run noon-5 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays, ending before Friday, Feb. 26.
Poppin Huis was opened in May 2015 by Randy Schaap and his late wife, Darlene.
The business quickly became known for gourmet popcorn and vintage candies — featuring flavors like caramel, garlic herb, two cheese, bloomin’ tulips, snickerdoodle and chocolate.
But running a storefront eventually became too much for Schaap. It was listed for sale in January 2019.
“It was more of my wife’s dream to have a popcorn and candy store,” Schaap told The Sentinel in 2019. “And she passed away in 2016, so I was working full-time and trying to run a store.”
Just weeks later, Poppin Huis was purchased as a joint venture by three couples — Ashley and Ryan Nelson, Katelyn and Ben Herrygers, and Lisa Sandor and Craig Van Melle.
The new owners hoped to sell the business, but were unable to secure a buyer. The building at 224 S. River Ave. is owned by Brett and Jennifer Zeerip, who also own and operate Salon Cheveux.
According to Poppin Huis, the space will switch to office/administration use Monday, March 1.
“As we move forward, we recognize that together we can create better — better opportunities, better understanding and, with that, stronger communities,” the owners wrote.
“When we recognize we are part of a larger whole, we are able to embrace our inherent value as human beings. Our family will be forever grateful for the way Poppin Huis was accepted into the Holland community. We ask that you continue to support local, now and in the future.”


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Amazon’s Prime Day, the company’s annual sales event that’s now its biggest, will be held this year on July 16, starting at 12 PM PT/3 PM ET, and will feature over a million deals, the retailer announced today. One big change this time around is the event’s length — last year, Prime Day ran 30 hours, but this year’s event will run for 36 hours. In addition to being the longest Prime Day to date, the event will also expand to new markets this year, says Amazon.
Australia, Singapore, Netherlands and Luxembourg will join the other countries hosting Prime Day this year, which includes the U.S., U.K., Spain, Mexico, Japan, India, Italy, Germany, France, China, Canada, Belgium and Austria.
As in previous years, Amazon is touting deals across product categories, like TVs, smart home, kitchen, grocery, toys, fashion, furniture, appliances, back-to-school supplies and everyday essentials.
Of course, Amazon will again mark down its own devices for Prime Day, and it’s teasing some of its deals in advance. The retailer says it will offer “double the deals” on Amazon devices, including the lowest prices to date on Echo, Fire TV and Fire tablets.
The expanded number of deals comes from Amazon now owning more hardware brands. For example, it acquired the smart doorbell maker Ring earlier this year, and the smart camera and doorbell startup Blink back in December. Today, it’s selling a suite of home security products that includes these brands and others, like its own Echo Dot and Amazon Cloud Cam.
These could be the “home security devices” that will be newly on sale this year during Prime Day, alongside the Echo Show.
Also new this year is Amazon bringing Prime Day to Whole Foods.
Prime members shopping in-store can take an additional 10 percent off hundreds of sales items and will receive other deep discounts on popular products, Amazon says. Plus Prime Rewards Visa card members will receive double the rewards — 10 percent back — July 14 through 17 when shopping Whole Foods.
In addition to the usual slate of deals, some brands are unveiling new products, new content or special edition products for Prime Day 2018.


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Sam Altman has emerged over the past year on a ChatGPT-fueled tidal wave as yet another tech entrepreneur intent on ushering in a new era of civilization. But unlike his contemporaries, Altman isn’t interested in colonies on Mars, he’s interested in the creation and implementation of artificial intelligence.
Altman, the founder and CEO of OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT) is working hard to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), or AI that is generally smarter than humans. The company’s goal — despite the many risks they themselves often trumpet — is to build and deploy AGI in order to benefit all of humanity.
But Altman, in true tech magnate fashion, isn’t tied down to just this one company. He has another venture, one that ties together AI and cryptocurrency in a new firm with lofty goals and privacy risks possibly more severe than those posed by his AI models: Worldcoin.
The idea of Worldcoin is twofold. First, the company wanted to find a way to verify humanity in a world that is already teeming with AI bots. It’s achieving this through a piece of tech called the Orb, which scans people’s irises and converts those scans into a string of numeric code.
Second, in a world that is already threatened by explosive AI-driven job loss, Worldcoin is intent on providing universal basic income to its users. Right now, that means 25 units of its Worldcoin cryptocurrency (for everyone outside of the U.S.). But the company’s goal is to scan every human on Earth.
Crypto meets AI and privacy concerns abound
Worldcoin has stressed regularly that the focal point of the company is to preserve privacy. The intent is total individual fiscal control, while still maintaining anonymity.
“Since you are not required to provide personal information like your name, email address, physical address or phone number, this means that you can easily sign up without us ever knowing anything about you,” the company’s website reads, adding that Worldcoin never stores the data of its users.
Still, the company has faced fierce criticism since launching over the exact issues that it says are already resolved.
Worldcoin’s ‘orb,’ which is responsible for scanning people’s irises. All biometric data, the company says, is stored locally before being deleted.
Edward Snowden, whistleblower and privacy advocate, warned against the idea in 2021.
“This looks like it produces a global (hash) database of people’s iris scans (for ‘fairness’), and waves away the implications by saying ‘we deleted the scans!’ Yeah, but you save the *hashes* produced by the scans,” he tweeted. “Hashes that match *future* scans. Don’t catalog eyeballs.”
More Artificial Intelligence:
“Don’t use biometrics for anti-fraud,” Snowden added. “In fact, don’t use biometrics for anything.”
As Worldcoin has begun to roll out, it has faced criticism not only for questions on privacy, but also over issues of exploitation and deceptive marketing practices. An extensive investigation by the MIT Technology Review found that the company bribed people — with giveaways of AirPods, cash and cryptocurrency — in countries including Indonesia, Kenya and Chile to sign up.
Worldcoin, who said the investigation is full of “inaccurate information,” has garnered around two million sign-ups thus far, far off from its goal of eight billion, but still a significant number of eyeballs scanned.
Altman, posting a video of long lines leading to one of these orbs toward the end of July, said that a new user is getting verified every eight seconds.
And despite the company’s apparent drive to use Worldcoin as a means of creating a soon-to-be vital universal basic income, about a quarter of its crypto coins, according to the New York Times, are being held for investors and company insiders.
The Kenyan government suspended Worldcoin’s operations last week over concerns around its data collection, in the wake of news that people in Cambodia and Kenya were selling their iris data on the black market.
“Of course there will be fraud,” Worldcoin co-founder Alex Blania told Bloomberg. “It will not be a perfect system, especially early on.”


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The leaks have been coming through thick and fast for Google’s next Nexus handset which we can safely say is going to be named the Nexus 5. It’ll run Google’s latest version of Android, 4.4 or Kit Kat as it’s now known. The latest leak shows us the clearest footage we’ve seen yet of the device as well as some of the features it, and Android 4.4 has to offer.
The latest video shows us all of the angles the Nexus 5 has to offer including a closer look at the softer, rubberized back and edges as well as a closer look at the camera lens. The video also shows us that LG have decided to move the phone’s speakers to the bottom of the device as well as splitting them up into dual speakers. The back panel also looks to be removable which leads us to believe that we can also replace the battery if needs be.
On the front of the device we have a smaller circular ear piece with the front facing camera on the left this time.
In terms of software, this is what let’s the video down a little. It seems to be running a fairly older version of the software which doesn’t match up with some of the later leaks, whether that’s an inconsistency or the latest leaks have been added fairly recently remains to be seen.
According to recent leaks Google are planning on announcing and even launching the new Nexus 5 as soon as tomorrow. Google are yet to confirm this rumour but there’s not long to wait. Whilst you do wait, feel free to browse our collection of Nexus 5 leaks by checking out our Nexus 5 tag!
No doubt we’ll be seeing you tomorrow if Google do announce something.


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Ericsson grew net income by 76 per cent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2014, as political unrest that affected sales in some of its Middle East and Africa operations was offset by strong sales in China and India.
Ericsson CEO, Hans Vestberg
The equipment manufacturer generated net income of SEK2.7 billion (€292 million/$395 million) in the second quarter, compared to SEK1.5 billion in the same period of 2013, despite a marginal 1 per cent drop in sales in the recent quarter.
On a sequential basis, net income was up 57 per cent compared to the first quarter of 2014, while sales grew 13 per cent and the company maintained its gross margin at 36.4 per cent in the recent quarter, compared to 36.5 per cent in the opening three months of the year.
Despite noting that some Middle East and African markets were affected by political unrest, Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg named the region as one of the company's success stories in the second quarter, alongside China, India and "continued capacity business in North America." Sales growth was offset by "lower revenues from two large mobile broadband coverage projects in North America that peaked in the first half of 2013, and reduced activity in Japan," Vestberg added.
The CEO also noted Ericsson's networks business grew its gross margin on the back of "improved business mix with an increased share of mobile broadband capacity projects in advanced LTE markets, as well as higher recurring IPR revenues and efficiency improvements." The networks business also began "executing on previously awarded 4G/LTE contracts in Mainland China and Taiwan" Vestberg said, after a "slow start" to rollouts in the countries.
Looking ahead, Vestberg noted Ericsson's mobile phone modem business "will start generating sales by the end of this year," as the company's M7450 modem begins to feature in "smartphones and data devices." The CEO added that Ericsson has invested SEK1.2 billion "primarily in R&D" in the first half of 2014, but added the success of the business is closely linked to the success of its handset customers.
The company's second quarter results beat analysts' expectations. Analysts polled by Reuters predicted operating income of SEK3.7 billion compared to the SEK4 billion Ericsson generated, while the Wall Street Journal noted Ericsson's revenue of SEK54.8 billion beat the SEK52.06 billion analysts forecast.
Ericsson claims 3-Carrier HSDPA first
Ericsson maintains global 5G standards push with SK Telecom partnership
Ericsson predicts industry casualties as cars get connected
EC teams with South Korea to harmonise 5G development
Qualcomm: European operators making up lost ground in LTE with Cat 6


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Bitcoin has received a sudden boost from Christine Lagarde, subsequent to the head of the International Monetary Fund all-inclusive the worldwide advantages of cryptocurrency. Ms Lagarde wrote in a blogpost which cryptocurrencies like bitcoin could allow rapidly and cheap transactions, whilst the underlying blockchain technology could make monetary markets much safer. The total cost of the planet’s most effective cryptocurrency came back over $8, 000 following the publication of Ms. Lagarde remarks, nevertheless it is uncertain if the proceeds are directly conducive to the content. As a few technology that emerged out of the dot com era have shifted our own lives, ” the crypto resources that survive may have a major impact on the way in which people save, invest and pay off our debts, Ms Lagarde composed in the blogpost.
Ms Lagarde revealed remarks she’d in the Bank of England a year that called to get an even handed approach to law, with the expectation exploiting the advantages while simultaneously diluting the dangers. Earlier crypto resources can transform financial activity at an extremely purposeful and durable fashion, they need to secure the confidence and support of consumers and authorities, Ms Lagarde wrote. A crucial preliminary step will likely probably be to achieve a consensus in the worldwide regulatory local community on the job crypto assets needs to playwith. Because crypto assets know no bounds, international collaboration will be essential.
Last 30 days, Ms Lagarde voiced her worry regarding crypto currencies in an alternative blog post titled: Tackling the Dark Side Effects of the crypto planet. Inside, she also explained the possible peril which comes together side the warranty, due to this decentralized and semi anonymous temperament of these technology. Such drawbacks include the funding of terrorism along with brand new methods of income laundering, as well as easing buying weapons and drugs on the web. Cryptocurrency markets can be notoriously challenging to forecast and investigation is frequently suspended in speculation, but nevertheless experts believe the rocketing price can have been the result of a handful of celebrities.
Personally, I think that the growth was due to a substantial institutional investor, Olga Feldmeier, CEO of block chain startup Smart Valor, ” told The Independent last week. You will find many associations , hedge funds and large investors anticipating the directly to measure in. Bitcoin has been able to preserve that the unprecedented gains, and with all the cost steadying around $8, 000 lately. That might have been aided by valuable information while in the crypto currency field, including an Islam scholar declaring the digital advantage halal beneath Sharia Law. The comments from Ms Lagarde is likely to add into this optimistic impression and could possess activated the marketplace latest uptick.
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