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Fossil Farms is a mission driven company guided by a few core principles.
This means, consistently having the best quality products and the best service in the industry.
Making a living, hand to mouth
By Meghan O'Connell
Originally published in the Suburban News on July 8, 2009
For a number of business owners in northwest Bergen County, "buy local" is more than a campaign to boost the bottom line - it's a way of living, and the living, they say, is good.
Long after the Dutch arrived and began tilling and toiling to produce grains, fruits and vegetables to feed the marketplace, the area's rich agricultural heritage is still being tapped, from the fields of Sun Valley Farms in Mahwah and the coops of Goffle Road Poultry Farm in Wyckoff to the entrees on the tables at Café Panache in Ramsey and La Strada in Midland Park to the overflowing bins of produce welcoming customers to The Market Basket in Franklin Lakes and vegetables piles high in the Italian Riviera in Waldwick.
Bergen County is, in fact, home to 318 acres of farmland, including the 6.5-acre Twinbrook Nurseries on Franklin Avenue in Franklin Lakes and the 218 acres that comprise Sun Valley, both of which have been permanently preserved by the state.
Lance Appelbaum, who with his brother, Todd, operates an exotic meat business called Fossil Farms, headquartered in Oakland, said he thinks there's a lot more garden in the Garden State than people give it credit for.
"It's the word 'garden' for a reason," he said. "A lot of people don't realize that northern New Jersey - [including] Sussex County, Warren County - has some beautiful, beautiful farms."
Jim Abma says he remembers watching his father drive off in his truck to sell fresh milk and produce that was harvested on land that's been in his family since the 1790's. His father and his son have farmed the land, and now his 22-year-old grandson, Jim Jr., is in charge of the operation and is making plans to take over the business.
In addition to cultivating, 80 varieties of vegetables on the 30 acres in Wyckoff and on land rented in Mahwah, Abma raises chickens, pigs and turkeys.
Jim Jr. plants the crops in batches so that he can harvest vegetables in smaller quantities throughout the whole summer. Much of the produce sold in a store on the property on Lawlins Road is harvested that morning, Jim Jr. said. And the eggs are usually between two hours and three hours old.
"If it's not on the plate in four days," he asked rhetorically, "then what's the difference between ours and California's?"
That guarantee of freshness is one reason some local restaurateurs prefer to buy from Abma rather than from large-scale suppliers. Jim Jr. said Abma sells its produce to Café Panache in Ramsey, Café Amici and Christian Health Care Center in Wyckoff and La Strada in Midland Park, among other establishments.
"They grow and I pick," said Kevin Kohler, who has owned Café Panache for 24 years and is a hands-on kind of guy. For nine years, he has gone to Abma's fields each morning and evening to take his pick of the crop.
"Nobody can really get what I get because I go out and grab it personally," he says.
Kohler chooses the ripest produce and incorporates it in his dishes that same day, he said.
But Abma is not his sole source of fresh fruit and vegetables. He forages for mushrooms during hikes at Ramapo Reservation in Mahwah, but cautions the curious to leave that task to the experts, as many kinds are inedible.
Kohler buys all his meat and produce from small operations that specialize in particular products. As for large-scale suppliers, he said, "The pride isn't there, so there's going to be flaws" with what they sell.
And, he says, consistent high quality and freshness is worth paying a little more for.
"Our local lettuces aren't as pretty as California lettuces," Kohler said. "Visually they don't match, but if you close your eyes, you taste the difference."
Kohler also buys elk, duck and buffalo from the Appelbaums' Fossil Farms.
From left, general manager Fil Silva with produce at The Market Basket in Franklin Lakes; Mario Allegra, general manager of Arturo's in Midland Park, standing amid herbs planted outside the restaurant; Mike Mucci, owner of Italian Riviera in Waldwick, with produce he buys solely from local sources.
The Appelbaum brothers started their exotic meat business with an ostrich farm they bought in Pennsylvania. The pair had grown up in Paramus and got the idea for their business about 16 years ago, on a ski trip to Colorado.
"They had ostrich and venison and buffalo on the menu," Lance Appelbaum said. "And we tried some of these products and they were terrific."
Lance Appelbaum was in sales at the time and his brother was a carpenter. They did some research and named the business after their father, whom they fondly called "The Fossil" while growing up.
Twelve years later, the pair are leasing 400 acres in Andover in Sussex County, where they are raising 300 ostriches. The rest of the meat they sell is mainly produced on family farms on the East Coast, Lance Appelbaum said, including six farms in New Jersey from which they buy lamb, goat, quail, pheasant, bison and heritage breed pigs.
The brothers also own a small plant in Washington in Warren County, where they process and package their meat. They have about 500 clients, Lance Appelbaum said, including restaurants and food distributors throughout the country. Local buyers include King's Super Market, Mahwah Bar & Grill, Brady's at the Station in Ramsey, Elm Street Grill in Oakland, and Goffle Road Poultry Farm in Wyckoff.
The Appelbaums also buy Cornish hens and chickens from the latter, which doesn't look like a farm at all from the road.
The Goffle Road Poultry Farm covers two acres, with coops, store and processing building located behind a parking lot.
"Hi, girls!" Joseph Silvestri called to some white geese in a coop as he went about his business on a recent afternoon.
Like Jim Abma Jr., Silvestri is also following a family tradition: He is the third-generation owner of the business, and keeps about 4,000 birds on his property, in addition to rabbits. The rest of the poultry he sells is raised on a farm in Pennsylvania about four hours away, he said.
"A metropolitan area is expensive for farming," he explained. "That's why we do more processing here than farming."
If he was located in Pennsylvania and had more land, he said, he could grow his own grain for feed, use the chicken manure for fertilizer, and find ample, cheaper labor, since farming is a way of life there.
While Silvestri anticipates the possibility that his 17-year-old son will one day take over the business, he said he himself never planned to. He went to college at William Paterson University and earned degrees in business administration, economics and computer sciences. But his father offered him a partnership upon graduation.
"I knew the business inside and out by that time," Silvestri said. He also knew improvements were necessary to remain profitable.
"We changed it from a farm to a farming business, which we had to do to survive," he said.
The farm was once predominately a live market, where people could choose from a selection of live chickens. The meat would be so frash, it would need to be refrigerated for at least 24 hours to tenderize before cooking, Silvestri said.
Although customers can still select a live bird for processing, most prefer to pre-order, Silvestri said. He offers a greater variety of poultry and more products in the store, such as chicken sausage and pre-roasted chickens. He also sells to 50 restaurants and farmer's markets, as well as to butchers.
"We've gone into a lot of odds and ends to [become] more consumer-friendly," Silvestri said.
His store sells eggs - chicken, quail and duck - that, again, are often only a few hours old, Silvestri said. Quail eggs are sweeter, he said, and duck eggs taste yolkier. Similarly, the varieties of birds he offers all have different tastes and fat content, he said
A steady stream of customers were keeping the employees busy in the shop one afternoon.
"They're the best chickens I've ever had," said one, Tom McKinney of Wyckoff.
The different in taste and texture between locally produced eggs and those sold in grocery stores is "shocking," Wendy Leonard of Hawthorne, who co-wrote "WomenHeart's All Heart Family Cookbook," said as she stood on line. "He has the best eggs on the East Coast."
James Kropp, chef at La Strada in Midland Park, who buys some of his poultry from Goffle, adds another reason for buying local.
"If there ever is an issue, it's easier to deal with somebody who's local than it is to deal with somebody at a distance," Kropp said. And although buying from a smaller business sometimes means paying more for the product, he said, the difference translates into only cents for the consumer.
Fil Silva, general manager of The Market Basket in Franklin Lakes, said he also prefers to deal with smaller, local farmers rather than large-scale suppliers.
"They're more down to earth, so to speak," he said, adding, "From the farms, you pick it today, we have it the day after," compared to six or seven days for produce to be transported from across the country.
The Market Basket purchases onions and apples from farms in New York, corn and tomatoes from farms in New Jersey and beef from farms in Pennsylvania, Silva said.
Italian Riviera on Prospect Street in Waldwick, on the other hand, buys all its food locally, said owner Mike Mucci. In the nine years he's been running the market-slash-deli, he said, he has dealt with larger suppliers, but favors local food for the convenience.
"If I forget something, I can go pick it up or they drop it off," Mucci said. "It's a lot easier. Whereas larger suppliers only drop off once a week."
Mucci said he buys produce from Abma and poultry from Goffle Road Poultry Farm. His other suppliers are only as far as Hackensack.
Arturo's in Midland Park takes buying local to another level: It grows its own herbs and produce. And it proves gardening doesn't require a lot of space: Snake squash sprouts in a dirt buffer about two feet wide next to the entrance ramp and mint takes root between bushes that landscape the front.
Mario Allegra, general manager of Arturo's, estimated that half of the ingredients in his dishes are from local sources.
Allegra said his mother is the one with the green thumb, having grown up on a fram in Sicily and opening the restaurant with her husband in 1982.
The coupe still cook and help run the business, Allegra said.
"There's no hardships involved in purchasing local," he said. "Everybody has a product they deliver. It's super fresh, super tasty."
Sun Valley Farm was founded in 1862 on land that was once owned by Alexander Hamilton. It has been in the Greene family for 60 years, said Carol Greene, who owns it with her husband, Richard.
"We produced everything when I was growing up," she said, including cattle and sheep.
But it can be hard to earn a living as a farmer in this area. Sun Valley has never been a primary source of income for the Greenes. Carol's father built Teterboro Airport and was a real estate entrepreneur, she said. She and Richard are also in real estate. But that doesn't mean their products aren't in demand.
The Greenes focus on growing hay, which Carol said is important as a food source for animals during the winter because it retains its nutritional value for up to a year and is also an ideal coating for stalls.
"The minute the hay gets baled, people come pick it up," Robert said. "There's such a demand for it."
For two years, the Greenes also hosted a community-supported agriculture program which enabled people to buy a share of what was grown and harvested, but said they could not find a tenant this year.
Their neighbor, Ramapo College of New Jersey, is also big on gardening.
The college's president, Peter Mercer, and his wife, Jacqueline Ehlert-Mercer, founded the Havemeyer garden on the campus in 2006 after public institutions of higher learning were being urged to establish programs to combat obesity. Vegetables and herbs now fill six raised beds on the side of the president's home that are tended by his wife and volunteers.
Ehlert-Mercer is a registered dietician and said she wants to help students make better food choices. How students eat in college "has such potential to change their eating habits for the rest of their lives," she said. The garden has also been part of outreach efforts for children in the area.
"The find out about how to food is grown, that it just doesn't appear in Stop & Shop in plastic," she said, adding that if students and children can witness the process of growing a vegetable, they may appreciate it more.
"When they see a food that's come out from under the ground, it's magical," she said.


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According to the report The Wall Street Journal, the company Samsung will work on every iPhone X around $ 110, that overall $ 4 billion more than the sale of components for the Galaxy the S8.
To begin, let us explain that the Korean giant has powerful production capacity and is one of the largest manufacturers of components for various electronics. It just so happens that Apple currently still remains one of the major Samsung customers, despite the competition and litigation.
Counterpoint Technology Specialists conducted a study for the publication of the WSJ, which estimated that from one iPhone X Samsung to earn $ 110. In this case, cost of components for its own smartphone Galaxy S8 company is $ 202. The difference in the total income of the experts has received, based on the fact that the Apple 20 months should sell 130 million iPhone X, and Samsung – about 50 million Galaxy S8.
In addition to the batteries and capacitors, a Korean manufacturer of supplies for Apple OLED-displays, microcircuits of memory and of NAND-flash memory chips. For Samsung, it is a huge piece of the pie – about 35% of total revenue.
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In this video, well it shows the relationship Apple and Samsung. Both companies are highly dependent on each other and at the same time are competitors in the production of smartphones. Business, just business.

domain: news


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Most venture capital firms are based in hubs like Silicon Valley, New York City and Boston. These firms nurture those ecosystems and they’ve done well, but SaaS Ventures decided to go a different route: it went to cities like Chicago, Green Bay, Wisconsin and Lincoln, Nebraska.
The firm looks for enterprise-focused entrepreneurs who are trying to solve a different set of problems than you might find in these other centers of capital, issues that require digital solutions but might fall outside a typical computer science graduate’s experience.
Saas Ventures looks at four main investment areas: trucking and logistics, manufacturing, e-commerce enablement for industries that have not typically gone online and cybersecurity, the latter being the most mainstream of the areas SaaS Ventures covers.
The company’s first fund, which launched in 2017, was worth $ 20 million, but SaaS Ventures launched a second fund of equal amount earlier this month. It tends to stick to small-dollar-amount investments, while partnering with larger firms when it contributes funds to a deal.
We talked to Collin Gutman, founder and managing partner at SaaS Ventures, to learn about his investment philosophy, and why he decided to take the road less traveled for his investment thesis.
A different investment approach
Gutman’s journey to find enterprise startups in out of the way places began in 2012 when he worked at an early enterprise startup accelerator called Acceleprise. “We were really the first ones who said enterprise tech companies are wired differently, and need a different set of early-stage resources,” Gutman told TechCrunch.
Through that experience, he decided to launch SaaS Ventures in 2017, with several key ideas underpinning the firm’s investment thesis: after his experience at Acceleprise, he decided to concentrate on the enterprise from a slightly different angle than most early-stage VC establishments.
The second part of his thesis was to concentrate on secondary markets, which meant looking beyond the popular startup ecosystem centers and investing in areas that didn’t typically get much attention. To date, SaaS Ventures has made investments in 23 states and Toronto, seeking startups that others might have overlooked.
“We have really phenomenal coverage in terms of not just geography, but in terms of what’s happening with the underlying businesses, as well as their customers,” Gutman said. He believes that broad second-tier market data gives his firm an upper hand when selecting startups to invest in. More on that later.
We’re seeing a gradual expansion of national regulations that require data from SaaS applications to be stored locally, in the country where it’s sourced and used. Today a startup that’s built a service around that need — specifically, data residency-as-a-service — is announcing some funding to continue building out its company amid strong demand.
InCountry, which provides a set of solutions — comprising software as well as some consultancy — that helps companies comply with local regulations when adopting SaaS products, has raised $ 18 million in funding.
This is technically an extension to its Series A, but in keeping with the growth of its business, it comes with a big bump to its valuation: the startup is now valued at “north” of $ 150 million. Founder and CEO Peter Yared said this is more than double the valuation in its previous round a little over a year ago.
The money is coming from a mix of strategic and financial investors. It’s being led by by Caffeinated Capital and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala, with participation from new investor Accenture Ventures and previous investors Arbor Ventures, Felicis, Ridge Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, and Team Builder Ventures. Accenture is one of InCountry’s key channel partners, reselling the software as part of bigger data management and integration contracts, Yared tells me.
The company has seen a decent bump in its business in the last year, expanding to 90 countries from 65 where it provides guidance and services to store and use data in compliance with legal requirements. Alongside that it has an increasingly long list of software packages that it covers with its products. The list currently includes Salesforce, ServiceNow, Twilio, Mambu and Segment, with customers including a large list of enterprises including stock exchanges, banks, and pharmaceutical companies.
“This company was based off a crazy thesis,” Yared said with an almost incredulous laugh (he has a very jocular way of talking, even when he’s being serious). “Now it’s 20 months old, and our customers are banks, pharma giants, stock exchanges. We are proud that large institutions can trust us.”
A big bump in its business in recent times has been in Asia Pacific and the Middle East, which are two main regions when it comes to data residency regulations and therefore ripe ground for winning new customers — one reason why Mubadala is part of this round, Yared said.
“At Mubadala we are committed to backing visionary founders whose innovations fuel economies,” said Ibrahim Ajami, Head of Ventures at Mubadala Capital. “Since day one, InCountry’s cloud solution has addressed a massive challenge in this era of regulation by giving businesses the tools to grow internationally while remaining compliant with data residency regulations. We’re doubling down on our investment and are supporting InCountry’s expansion into the MENA region because we believe they are the best team to help drive global business forward.”
Partly due to the growing ubiquity, flexibility and relatively cheap cost of cloud computing, software as a service has been on a fast growth trajectory for years now. But even within that trend, it has had a huge boost in 2020, as a result of the global health pandemic.
COVID-19 has given the need for remote computing, and being able to access data wherever you happen to be — which in many cases today is no longer in your usual office space — and on top of that we have a lot more “wiggle room” in business, with organizations quickly scaling up and down with demand.
The knock on effect has been a big boost for SaaS. But that growth has come with some caveats, and one of the biggest alongside security has been around data protection, and specifically national requirements in how data is stored and used. Arguably, SaaS companies have been more concerned with scaling their software and business funnels than they have been with how data is handled and how that has changed in keeping with local regulations, and that’s the opportunity that InCountry has stepped in to fill.
It provides not just a set of software to store and handle data in a secure way, but also an extensive list of legal advisors with expertise at the local level to help companies get their data policies in order. It’s an interesting model: while InCountry’s been an early mover in identifying this market opportunity and building technology to address it, it’s buffered its competitive position not with a sole focus on technology, but an extensive amount of human capital to get each implementation right.
That can prove to be a costly thing to get wrong. In the EU in July, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) put down the EU-US Privacy Shield — a framework that let businesses transfer personal data between the European Union and the United States while ensuring compliance with data protection regulations. This has impacted some 5,000 companies, which now have to rethink how they handle their data. The fine for not complying with storing data locally means that they can be fined up to 4% of their revenues.
Yared tells me that for now, the main competitor to something like InCountry has been companies building their own policies in house. Some of those solutions would have been done completely in house and some in partnership with integrators, but all of them were hard to scale and were painful to maintain, one reason why companies and their business partners are turning to working with his startup.
“Accenture Ventures is pleased to support InCountry as it continues to expand globally,” said Tom Lounibos, Managing Director, Accenture Ventures, in a statement. “InCountry’s software solutions are helping companies address the critical issue of becoming and remaining compliant with a multitude of data residency laws. This expansion will help support enterprises as they unlock their business across borders.”
Zendesk has been offering customers the ability to track customer service statistics for some time, but it has always been a look back. Today, the company announced a new product called Explore Enterprise that lets customers capture that valuable info in real time, and share it with anyone in the organization, whether they have a Zendesk license or not.
While it has had Explore in place for a couple of years now, Jon Aniano, senior VP of product at Zendesk says the new enterprise product is in response to growing customer data requirements. “We now have a way to deliver what we call Live Team Dashboards, which delivers real time analytics directly to Zendesk users,” Aniano told TechCrunch.
In the days before COVID that meant displaying these on big monitors throughout the customer service center. Today, as we deal with the pandemic, and customer service reps are just as likely to be working from home, it means giving management the tools they need to understand what’s happening in real time, a growing requirement for Zendesk customers as they scale, regardless of the pandemic.
“What we’ve found over the last few years is that our customers’ appetite for operational analytics is insatiable, and as customers grow, as customer service needs get more complex, the demands on a contact center operator or customer service team are higher and higher, and teams really need new sets of tools and new types of capabilities to meet what they’re trying to do in delivering customer service at scale in the world,” Aniano told TechCrunch.
One of the reasons for this is the shift from phone and email as the primary ways of accessing customer service to messaging tools like WhatsApp. “With the shift to messaging, there are new demands on contact centers to be able to handle real-time interactions at scale with their customers,” he said.
And in order to meet that kind of demand, it requires real-time analytics that Zendesk is providing with this announcement. This arms managers with the data they need to put their customer service resources where they are needed most in the moment in real time.
But Zendesk is also giving customers the ability to share these statistics with anyone in the company. “Users can share a dashboard or historical report with anybody in the company regardless of whether they have access to Zendesk. They can share it in Slack, or they can embed a dashboard anywhere where other people in the company would like to have access to those metrics,” Aniano explained.
The new service will be available starting on August 31st for $ 29 per user per month.
Once upon a time, Box’s Aaron Levie was just a guy with an idea for a company: 15 years ago as a USC student, he conceived of a way to simply store and share files online.
It may be hard to recall, but back then, the world was awash with thumb drives and moving files manually, but Levie saw an opportunity to change that.
Today, his company helps enterprise customers collaborate and manage content in the cloud, but when Levie appeared on an episode of Extra Crunch Live at the end of May, my colleague Jon Shieber and I asked him if he had any advice for startups. While he was careful to point out that there is no “one size fits all” advice, he did make one thing clear:
“I would highly recommend to any company of any size that you have as much control of your destiny as possible. So put yourself in a position where you spend as little amount of dollars as you can from a burn standpoint and get as close to revenue being equal to your expenses as you can possibly get to,” he advised.
Don’t let current conditions scare you
Levie also advised founders not to be frightened off by current conditions, whether that’s the pandemic or the recession. Instead, he said if you have an idea, seize the moment and build it, regardless of the economy or the state of the world. If, like Levie, you are in it for the long haul, this too will pass, and if your idea is good enough, it will survive and even thrive as you move through your startup growth cycle.
Buildkite, a Melbourne-based company that provides a hybrid continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform for software developers, announced today that it has raised AUD $ 28 million (about USD $ 20.2 million) in Series A funding, bring its valuation to more than AUD $ 200 million (about USD $ 145 million).
The funding was led by OpenView, an investment firm that focuses on growth-stage enterprise software companies, with participation from General Catalyst.
This round is the company’s first since Buildkite raised about AUD $ 200,000 in seed funding when it was founded in 2013.
Co-founder and chief executive officer Lachlan Donald told TechCrunch that Buildkite didn’t seek more funding earlier because it was growing profitably. In fact, the company turned away interested investors “because we wanted to focus on sustainable growth and maintain control of our destiny.”
But Donald said they were open to investment from OpenView and General Catalyst because they see the two investors as “true partners as we enter and define this next generation of CI/CD.”
Buildkite’s team is small, with just 26 employees. “We’re a lean, focused team, so their expert advice and guidance will help more software teams around the world discover Buildkite,” Donald said. He added that part of the funding round will be used to give 42X returns to early investors and shareholders, and the rest will be used on product development.
In a statement about the funding, OpenView partner Mackey Craven said, “The global pandemic and the resulting economic uncertainty underlines the importance for companies to maximize efficiencies and build for growth. As the world continues to build digital-first applications, we believe Buildkite’s unique approach will be the new enterprise standard of CI/CD and we’re excited to be supporting them in realizing this ambition.”
Continuous integration gives software teams an automated way to develop and test applications, making collaboration more efficient, while continuous delivery refers to the process of pushing code to environments for further testing by other teams, or deploying it to customers. CI/CD platforms make it easier for fast-growing tech companies to test and deliver software. Buildkite says it now has more than 1,000 customers, including Shopify, Pinterest and Wayfair.
As part of the round, Jean-Michel Lemieux, Shopify’s chief technology officer, and Ashley Smith, chief revenue officer at Gatsby and OpenView venture partner, will join Buildkite’s board.
The increased use of online applications caused by the COVID-19 pandemic means there is more demand for CI/CD platform, since engineering teams need to work more quickly.
“A good example is Shopify, one of our longstanding partners. They came to us after they outgrew their previous hosted CI provider,” Donald said. “Their challenge is one we see across all of customers—they needed to reduce build time and scale their team across multiple time zones. Once they wrapped Buildkite into their development flow, they saw a 75% reduction in build wait times. They grew their team by 300% and have still been able to keep build time under 10 minutes.”
Other CI platforms available include Jenkins, CircleCI, Travis, Codeship and GitLab. Co-founder and chief technology officer Keith Pitt said one of the ways that BuildKite differentiates from its rivals is its focus on security, which prompted his interest in building the platform in the first place.
“Back in 2013, my then-employer asked that I stop using a cloud-based CI/CD platform due to security concerns, but I found the self-hosted alternatives to be incredibly outdated,” Pitt said. “I realized a hybrid approach was the solution for testing and deploying software at scale without compromising security or performance, but was surprised to find a hybrid CI/CD tool didn’t exist yet. I decided to create it myself, and Buildkite was born.”
Mirantis, the company that recently bought Docker’s enterprise business, today announced that it has acquired Lens, a desktop application that the team describes as a Kubernetes-integrated development environment. Mirantis previously acquired the team behind the Finnish startup Kontena, the company that originally developed Lens.
Lens itself was most recently owned by Lakend Labs, though, which describes itself as “a collective of cloud native compute geeks and technologists” that is “committed to preserving and making available the open-source software and products of Kontena.” Lakend open-sourced Lens a few months ago.
“The mission of Mirantis is very simple: We want to be — for the enterprise — the fastest way to [build] modern apps at scale,” Mirantis CEO Adrian Ionel told me. “We believe that enterprises are constantly undergoing this cycle of modernizing the way they build applications from one wave to the next — and we want to provide products to the enterprise that help them make that happen.”
Right now, that means a focus on helping enterprises build cloud-native applications at scale and, almost by default, that means providing these companies with all kinds of container infrastructure services.
“But there is another piece of the story that’s always been going through our minds, which is, how do we become more developer-centric and developer-focused, because, as we’ve all seen in the past 10 years, developers have become more and more in charge off what services and infrastructure they’re actually using,” Ionel explained. And that’s where the Kontena and Lens acquisitions fit in. Managing Kubernetes clusters, after all, isn’t trivial — yet now developers are often tasked with managing and monitoring how their applications interact with their company’s infrastructure.
“Lens makes it dramatically easier for developers to work with Kubernetes, to build and deploy their applications on Kubernetes, and it’s just a huge obstacle-remover for people who are turned off by the complexity of Kubernetes to get more value,” he added.
“I’m very excited to see that we found a common vision with Adrian for how to incorporate Lens and how to make life for developers more enjoyable in this cloud-native technology landscape,” Miska Kaipiainen, the former CEO of Kontena and now Mirantis’ director of Engineering, told me.
He describes Lens as an IDE for Kubernetes. While you could obviously replicate Lens’ functionality with existing tools, Kaipiainen argues that it would take 20 different tools to do this. “One of them could be for monitoring, another could be for logs. A third one is for command-line configuration, and so forth and so forth,” he said. “What we have been trying to do with Lens is that we are bringing all these technologies [together] and provide one single, unified, easy to use interface for developers, so they can keep working on their workloads and on their clusters, without ever losing focus and the context of what they are working on.”
Among other things, Lens includes a context-aware terminal, multi-cluster management capabilities that work across clouds and support for the open-source Prometheus monitoring service.
For Mirantis, Lens is a very strategic investment and the company will continue to develop the service. Indeed, Ionel said the Lens team now basically has unlimited resources.
Looking ahead, Kaipiainen said the team is looking at adding extensions to Lens through an API within the next couple of months. “Through this extension API, we are actually able to collaborate and work more closely with other technology vendors within the cloud technology landscape so they can start plugging directly into the Lens UI and visualize the data coming from their components, so that will make it very powerful.”
Ionel also added that the company is working on adding more features for larger software teams to Lens, which is currently a single-user product. A lot of users are already using Lens in the context of very large development teams, after all.
While the core Lens tools will remain free and open source, Mirantis will likely charge for some new features that require a centralized service for managing them. What exactly that will look like remains to be seen, though.
If you want to give Lens a try, you can download the Windows, macOS and Linux binaries here.
It seems the pandemic has forced the business world to digitize faster, and the industrial sector is no different. Parsable, a San Francisco startup that is helping digitize industrial front-line workers, announced a $ 60 million Series D today.
Activate Capital and Glade Brook Capital Partners co-led the round. They got help from new investors Alumni Ventures Group, Cisco Investments, Downing Ventures, Evolv Ventures and Princeville Capital, along with existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Future Fund, B37 Ventures, Honeywell and Saudi Aramco. Today’s money brings the total raised to more than $ 133 million, according to the company.
As I wrote at the time of the company’s $ 40 million Series C in 2018, “Parsable has developed a Connected Worker platform to help bring high tech solutions to deskless industrial workers who have been working mostly with paper-based processes.”
CEO Lawrence Whittle says that while the pandemic has shut some factories, and reduced overall worker headcount, it has still led to increased usage on the platform of companies whose products are considered essential services. What’s more, Parsable’s ability to deal with information on an individual mobile device or laptop means that in many cases, workers can stay separated and not share computers on the factory floor, making the process safer.
“Fortunately, the majority of our focus is in what’s often deemed as essential industries — so consumer packaged goods (CPG), food, beverage, agriculture and related industries such as paper and packaging. Those markets, interestingly enough, predominantly because of consumer demand continue to operate pretty successfully from a demand perspective during this COVID period,” Whittle told TechCrunch.
While the company would not give specific growth numbers, they shared that registered users grew 11x and the number of deployed sites tripled year over year. What’s more, they have users in more than 100 countries encompassing 14 languages.
With the money, the company wants to expand internationally into Asia, EMEA and Latin America. The startup has 120 employees, but plans to hire for essential needs over the next several months, preferring to be conservative and seeing where the pandemic takes the economy in the coming months.
Whittle points out that the diversity of its user base, and the desire to expand into other regions demands that they have a more diverse employee base, even while it’s a clear ethical consideration, as well.
“When you’re serving customers in over 100 countries, and you provide a product in in 14 languages, [having] diversity and inclusion is to some extent a given. What we’re doing as a company […] is taking every opportunity to further lean into that and that’s one of the leading lights of our of our business,” Whittle said.
Parsable launched in 2013. It took a few years to build the product. Today, customers include Georgia-Pacific, Henkel and Shell.
When Wendell Brooks was promoted to president of Intel Capital, the investment arm of the chip giant, in 2015, he knew he had big shoes to fill. He was taking over from Arvind Sodhani, who had run the investment component for 28 years since its inception. Today, the company confirmed reports that Brooks has resigned that role.
“Wendell Brooks has resigned from Intel to pursue other opportunities. We thank Wendell for all his contributions and wish him the best for the future,” a company spokesperson told TechCrunch in a rather bland send off.
Anthony Lin, who has been leading mergers and acquisitions and international investing, will take over on an interim basis. Interestingly, when Brooks was promoted, he too was in charge of mergers and acquisitions. Whether Lin keeps that role remains to be seen.
When I spoke to Brooks in 2015 as he was about to take over from Sodhani, he certainly sounded ready for the task at hand. “I have huge shoes to fill in maintaining that track record,” he said at the time. “I view it as a huge opportunity to grow the focus of organization where we can provide strategic value to portfolio companies.”
In that same interview, Brooks described his investment philosophy, saying he preferred to lead, rather than come on as a secondary investor. “I tend to think the lead investor is able to influence the business thesis, the route to market, the direction, the technology of a startup more than a passive investor,” he said. He added that it also tends to get board seats that can provide additional influence.
Comparing his firm to traditional VC firms, he said they were as good or better in terms of the investing record, and as a strategic investor brought some other advantages as well. “Some of the traditional VCs are focused on a company-building value. We can provide strategic guidance and complement some of the company building over other VCs,” he said.
Over the life of the firm, it has invested $ 12.9 billion in more than 1,500 companies, with 692 of those exiting via IPO or acquisition. Just this year, under Brooks’ leadership, the company has invested $ 225 million so far, including 11 new investments and 26 investments in companies already in the portfolio.
Big news today in the world of enterprise IT startups. Rippling, the startup founded by Parker Conrad to take on the ambitious challenge of building a platform to manage all aspects of employee data, from payroll and benefits through to device management, has closed $ 145 million in funding — a monster Series B that catapults the company to a valuation of $ 1.35 billion.
Parker Conrad, the CEO who co-founded the company with Prasanna Sankar (the CTO), said in an interview that the plan will be to use the money to continue its own in-house product development (that is, bringing more tools into the Rippling mix organically, not by way of acquisition) but also to have it just in case, given everything else going on at the moment.
“We will double down on R&D but to be honest we’re trying not to change the formula too much,” Conrad said. “We want to have that discipline. This fundraising was opportunistic amid the larger macroeconomic risk at the moment. I was working at startups in 2008-2009 and the funding markets are strong right now, all things considered, and so we wanted to make sure we had the stockpile we needed in case things went bad.”
This latest round included Greenoaks Capital, Coatue Management, and Bedrock Capital, as well as existing investors including Kleiner Perkins, Initialized Capital, and Y Combinator. Founders Fund partner Napoleon Ta will join Rippling’s board of directors. Founders Fund had also backed Zenefits when Parker was at the helm, and from what we understand this round was oversubscribed — also a big feat in the current market, working against a lot of factors including a wobbling economy.
It is a big leap for the company: it was just a little over a year ago that it raised a Series A of $ 45 million at a valuation of $ 270 million.
This latest round is notable for a few reasons.
First is the business itself. HR and employee management software are two major areas of IT that have faced a lot of fragmentation over the years, with many businesses opting for a cocktail of services covering disparate areas like employee onboarding, payroll, benefits, device management, app provisioning and permissions and more. That’s been even more the case among smaller organizations in the 2-1,000 employee range that Rippling targets.
Rippling is approaching that bigger challenge as one that can be tackled by a single platform — the theory being that managing HR employee data is essentially part and parcel of good management of IT data permissions and device provision. This funding is a signal of how both investors and customers are buying into Rippling and its approach, even if right now the majority of customers don’t onboard with the full suite of services. (Some 75% are usually signing up with HR products, Conrad noted.)
“We like to think of ourselves as a Salesforce for employee data,” Conrad said, “and by that, we think that employee data is more than just HR. We want to manage access to all of your third party business apps, your computer and other devices. It’s when you combine all that that you can manage employees well.”
The company is gradually adding in more tools. Most recently, it’s been launching new tools to help with job costing, helping companies track where employees are spending time when working on different projects, a tool critical for IT, accounting and other companies where employees work across a number of clients.
Second is the founder. You might recall that Conrad was ousted from his previous company, Zenefits (taking on a related, but smaller, challenge in payroll and benefits), over a controversy linked to compliance issues and also misleading investors. But if Zenefits was finished with Conrad, Conrad was not finished with Zenefits — or at least the problem it was tackling. This funding is a testament to how investors are putting a big bet on Conrad himself, who says that a lot of what he has been building at Rippling was what he would have done at Zenefits if he’d stayed there.
“Once you’re lucky, twice you’re good,” said Mamoon Hamid, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, in a separate statement. “Parker is a true product visionary, and he and his team are solving an enormous pain point for businesses everywhere. We’re thrilled to continue partnering with Rippling as demand for their platform dramatically increases in this era of remote work.”
“Rippling is not just a superior payroll company, but something much broader: they’ve built the system of record for all employee data, creating an entirely new software category. Rippling’s massive market opportunity is to streamline the employee lifecycle, from software to payroll to benefits, and fundamentally improve the way businesses hire and manage their employees,” said Ta in a statement.
Third is the context in which this round is coming. We’re in the midst of an economic downturn caused in part by a global health pandemic, and that’s leading to a lot of companies curtailing budgets, reducing headcount, and potentially shutting down altogether. Ironically, that force is also propelling companies like Rippling full steam ahead.
Its SaaS model — priced at a flat $ 8 per person per month — not only fits with how many businesses are being run at the moment (primarily remotely), but Rippling’s purpose is specifically geared to helping businesses both onboard and offboard customers more efficiently, the kind of software that companies need to have in place to fit how they are working right now.
Updated with commentary from an interview with Conrad.
Low-code is a hot category these days. It helps companies build workflows or simple applications without coding skills, freeing up valuable engineering resources for more important projects. Paragon, a member of the Y Combinator Winter 2020 cohort, announced a $ 2.5 million seed round today for its low-code application integration platform.
Investors include Y Combinator, Village Global, Global Founders Capital, Soma Capital and FundersClub.
“Paragon makes it easier for non-technical people to be able to build out integrations using our visual workflow editor. We essentially provide building blocks for things like API requests, interactions with third party APIs and conditional logic. And so users can drag and drop these building blocks to create workflows that describe business logic in their application,” says company co-founder Brandon Foo.
Foo acknowledges there are a lot of low-code workflow tools out there, but many like UIPath, Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere concentrate on Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to automate certain tasks. He says he and co-founder Ishmael Samuel wanted to focus on developers.
“We’re really focused on how can we improve developer efficiency, and how can we bring the benefits of low code to product and engineering teams and make it easier to build products without writing manual code for every single integration, and really be able to streamline the product development process,” Foo told TechCrunch.
The way it works is you can drag and drop one of 1200 predefined connectors for tools like Stripe, Slack and Google Drive into a workflow template, and build connectors very quickly to trigger some sort of action. The company is built on AWS serverless architecture, so you define the trigger action and subsequent actions, and Paragon handles all of the back-end infrastructure requirements for you.
It’s early days for the company. After launching in private beta in January, the company has 80 customers. It currently has 6 employees including Foo, who previously co-founded Polymail and Samuel, who was previously lead engineer at Uber. They plan to hire 4 more employees this year.
With both founders people of color, they definitely are looking to build a diverse team around them. “I think it’s already sort of built into our DNA. As a diverse founding team we have perhaps a broader viewpoint and perspective in terms of hiring the kind of people that we seek to work with. Of course, I think there’s always room for improvements, and so we’re always looking for new ways that we can be more inclusive in our hiring recruiting process [as we grow],” he said.
As far as raising during a pandemic, he says it’s been a crazy time, but he believes they are solving a real problem and that they can succeed in spite of the macro economic conditions of the moment.
- SaaS Ventures takes the investment road less traveled
- Tips (based on data!) to Manage Amazon Campaigns During Turbulent Times
- How to drive digital innovation necessary during the pandemic
- What you must know about TikTok for business
- Ride-hailing was hit hard by COVID-19. Grab’s Russell Cohen on how the company adapted.


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Infinity Models has been testing the fit of the canopies on their 1:32 scale Nakajima B5N2 "Kate" and Aichi D3A1 "Val"
This new book from Mushroom Model Publications [MMP] chronicles the conception, design, development and utilisation of the Mitsubishi Ki-15 Babs Army Type 97, the world’s first strategic reconnaissance aircraft
Revell has released their 1:48 scale Eurofighter Typhoon with the distinctive RAF display marking for this years UK display season
A fantastic build of the C-212 Aviocar tiger meet from modelling friend Moises Ballester Pardo I believe the tiger meet in which this aircraft took part was in 2016 in NTM 2016 BA Zaragoza, ESP
Eduard have released a set of washi-tape painting masks for Tamiya's classic 1:48 Skyraider. Rowan takes a look.
Airfix has revealed on their Workbench blog images and information of the sprues and test build of the quarter scale Avro Anson Mk.I
Eduard have released two new ways to spice-up the cockpit of Tamiya's popular 1:48 Bristol Beaufighter. Rowan compares the options.
Double Excellent Models [DXM] is to release Part I of a new set of 1:48 decals featuring the F-16’s of the Israeli AF
Clearprop Models has released details of the marking schemes for the forthcoming release of the early version of the Airco DH9a in 1:72 scale
TwoBobs has released a new 1:48 scale decal set featuring the Boeing EA-18G of the US Navy Squadrons ‘Rooks’ [VAQ-137] and ‘Yellow Jackets’ [VAQ-138]
Modelling friend Tom Grigat builds a superb Grumman Hellcat F6F-5 with just a stunning finish let alone build
Arma Hobby is releasing five limited edition 1:72 scale kits of the Hurricane Mk.I and Yak-1B with free 3D printed parts
Eduard is to re-release next month as a ProfiPACK the 1:72 scale MiG-21MF
Print Scale has released part III of the decal set for the Republic F-105D Thunderchief in 1:72 scale
ICM is to release soon a 1:48 scale 'Vietnam Forward Base' set which will include Cobra AH-1G, OV-10А Bronco, pilots and ground crew figures.
Kovozávody Prostĕjov [KP] has re-released in limited numbers three 1:72 scale editions of the LVG C.VI


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New rumor adds to 15-inch MacBook Air chatterMARCH 15, 2012 COMMENTS OFF
Adding to the chatter of new sizes for the MacBook Air, Electric Pig weighed in today, saying Apple has a 15-inch version due next month. That information comes courtesy of a “premium Mac accessory maker,” which the outlet talked to at the Computers Unlimited: Exposed show in London yesterday.
That company was not named, but is apparently a “key player in MacBook docking solutions.” Looking at the show’s exhibitor list, it’s likely Henge Docks, which has docks for both of Apple’s Air models, as well as Apple’s MacBook Pro line.
First things first, Apple accessory makers have typically not been in the know about the gadget maker’s plans, even just weeks ahead of a release. Besides the latest iPad, that’s most clearly been seen from some of the cases that turned up ahead of the iPhone 4S that did not match up with the final result.
That said, this is the latest in a series of rumors about Apple expanding its line of thin notebooks, which currently come in two sizes: an 11.6-inch version, and a slightly larger 13.3-inch model. By comparison Apple’s MacBook Pros come in 13.3-, 15-, and 17-inch configurations.
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Users will soon be able to view, delete and control how their data is shared more easily.
Ahead of the EU’s upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Facebook has announced updates to its terms and data policy that will roll out first in Europe and then to the rest of the world.
The social network has brought together employees from its product, engineering, legal, policy, design and research teams to comply with the upcoming regulation and offer all of its users more choices regarding their privacy while using the service.
Facebook will soon ask users to review how it shows ads based on data from its partners and they will be able to decide whether or not they want to be served ads that use this data.
When it comes to user profiles, the company will ask users whether they want to continue sharing personal information and inform them that sharing this information online is completely optional. Facebook will also make it easier for people to delete their information if they choose to no longer share it.
The company will also allow EU and Canadian citizens the option to use face recognition to better protect their privacy. The feature helps detect when others are using their image as a profile picture and allows Facebook to suggest friends’ users may want to tag in photos and videos.
The new Settings and Privacy Shortcuts announced by the company last month will also soon be available on the social network. These tools will allow users to see their data, delete it and easily download and export it. While these tools are available globally, the company has designed them to comply with GDPR as well.
Facebook is also rolling out new features for young people as under the regulation, people between the ages of 13 and 15 will need the permission of a parent or guardian to enable some of the site’s feature in some EU countries. Face recognition will be turned off by default for teens and they are not permitted to post publicly on the site.
Following the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook has a lot of catching up to do in terms of privacy settings and data sharing though GDPR could present the perfect opportunity for the social network to re-evaluate itself and provide better privacy protections to all of its users.


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Technology giant IBM (NYSE: IBM) on Monday released its first quarterly report under new CEO Arvind Krishna, at a time when the industry is passing through an era of unprecedented turmoil.
In the first quarter of 2020, adjusted earnings dropped to $1.84 per share from $2.25 per share in the corresponding period of last year, but topped the estimates. The unimpressive bottom-line performance reflects a 3% decline in revenues to $17.6 billion.
IBM’s stock has been on the recovery path since mid-March, after being battered by the market selloff spurred by the COVID-19 outbreak. The shares, which lost about 11% since the beginning of the year, closed Monday’s regular session higher. However, they slipped into the negative territory during the after-hours following the earnings announcement.
The semiconductor industry is a rapidly growing business segment that currently thrives on the digital transformation wave. The demand for memory chips and other semiconductor products increased over the years,
Shares of Bed Bath & Beyond (NASDAQ: BBBY) were up on Friday, a day after the company delivered disappointing results for the second quarter of 2022. The company reported a
Nike, Inc. (NYSE: NKE) has reported a decrease in net profit for the first quarter of 2023, despite a modest increase in revenues. The company's stock suffered a big loss


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Bernardo Rojo, Joseph Abboud’s still-fresh creative director gave the suits a rest and started the week off with a forward-thinking outerwear showcase.
Historically the only rival to royal families in opulence could be the ecclesial world of yesteryear, which is what Burton used as inspiration for the Alexander McQueen ready-to-wear fall 2013 collection.
Art as practiced by M/M (Paris) is a cumulative affair, spreading from medium to medium in a process of endless expansion.
The dream of owning a piece of Oscar de la Renta just became closer to becoming a reality.
Nicholas Kirkwood becomes first accessories designer to win the award.
The show must go, even under sad and tragic circumstances. Missoni knows this to its core and put on a show despite Vittorio Missoni’s disappearance.
Sending us on a Turkish adventure, Armani styled and designed dresses to be worn over pants with prints and patterns that seemed perfect for perusing a market in Istanbul.
Giorgio Armani release its new advertising campaign for Spring/Summer 2013.
Gregory Parkinson pulled a quick 180, leaving his signature taste for resplendent colors back in the studio to deliver a deep and moody Fall lineup.
A young, creative and very intelligent business-oriented gentleman. Founder & Editor-in-Chief of The GROUND Ryan Yoon discusses new and upcoming projects as he shares his personal views on the state of print media, life and inspiration.
It is an exciting evening for gentlemen around the world. Ermenegildo Zegna has relaunched their online website, Zegna.com.
The icons of the New York Skyline will soon have a new companion. Located on Park Avenue between 56th and 57th streets, 432 Park Avenue will be the tallest residential tower in the Western Hempishere upon its completion in 2015.
In light of the recent public outcry over Henry Moore’s public sculpture ‘Old Flo’, Tate Britain invites a panel to discuss ‘Who owns public art?’.
We Are Animal have returned to their native mountainous region of Snowdonia, North Wales to record a new album.
In honor of Valentine’s Day, Love magazine has released a video of Cara Delevingne, titled, “In Bed with Cara Delevingne.”
It’s hard to pinpoint the best words to describe the collection. It had touches of athletic wear, mixes of downtown cool, and even an almost Amish accessory.
“Fame”-themed online auction to feature works by Avedon, Basquiat, Colen, Guyton, LaChapelle, Lowman, Phillips, Prince, Warhol and others
Ruins in Reverse is the result of a curatorial collaboration between Tate Modern in London and the Museo de Arte de Lima in Peru, a partnership which will be celebrated by a new commission from José Carlos Martinat.
Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light is organized by Sarah Meister, Curator, with Drew Sawyer, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Curatorial Fellow, Department of Photography.
Italian illustrator Rubens Cantuni takes us on a trip of a lifetime, into the world of Tokyo Candies.
This is the long-overdue interview with the man behind The Orphanage Music, a musician, an artist and a true pioneer.
Mocci’s work spans from illustration to graphic design. Her work is influenced by minimalism of black and white as well as the “chaotic beauty and mystery of the universe.”
Fendi has offered its financial assistance to restore five fountains around the city of Rome, starting with the Trevi Fountain.
Peter Philips, Creative Director of Chanel Makeup prepped skin with Hydra Beauty Serum Hydration Protection Radiance, bringing light to the skin; “Shine is beautiful for the summer,” Lagerfeld said.
The work of Angel Olsen is entirely her own: a raw, glowing sound that stands out now just as much as it did in 2010.


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A glitched menu in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has revealed a new glimpse at the unreleased Warzone battle royale mode, which apparently will support up to 200 players in a single lobby.
The hype surrounding Modern Warfare’s battle royale has been at an all-time high in recent days after the launch of Season 2 led to a flurry of leaks about the unreleased mode.
It seems like every day now a new leak or glitch sheds further light on Warzone that’s supposedly coming soon, even though Infinity Ward and Activision haven’t officially announced or even acknowledged it.
The latest leak comes courtesy of a glitch within the game itself, as a player who loaded into MW noticed that the new tab that was previously locked and labeled as ‘Classified’ in the main menu was instead showing the BR’s alleged name and was fully accessible.
Under Warzone, there was a description of the mode revealing that it supports up to 200 players – a detail that had previously only been seen in unofficial leaks and never actually in-game. If true, this would make Warzone the largest-scale BR in terms of player-count.
The description was in German; when translated to English, it read: “Plunge into a unique battle with up to 200 other players to leave the battle as the last survivor.”
The player also posted a video of it on Twitter, showing how the previously-locked new middle tab was showing as Warzone on his screen.
When he scrolled over to the tab, it started playing a cinematic in the background much like the other main menu options for the campaign, multiplayer, and Spec-Ops.
- Read More: Leaked MW Warzone gameplay reveals new info
The short little scenes shown in the background video all looked like classic battle royale content: players dropping out of a plane onto the map, characters armed with guns traveling in squads, and a zoomed out shot of the large-scale map.
As mentioned above, this is far from the first in-game leak we’ve seen for Modern Warfare’s Warzone battle royale. On February 13, actual gameplay footage of the mode was posted online after a similar glitch was allowing players to access and even play a little bit of the BR.
The footage revealed some important details about the mode’s features and mechanics, such as Drop Kits, Plunder, the full list of purchasable equipment, as well as the five types of vehicles, various modes, and more.
As for when Warzone will be released, no one seems to know that yet since there’s been no official word from Infinity Ward or Activision. However, the speculation is that it’ll be launched sooner rather than later, considering all of the leaks that have surfaced and where we are in the game’s life cycle.


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The brand new 2017 Honda MPV Fit is stated by Honda that this car will be released near the future. This brand new MPV will have a more modern platform than its previous version which makes this car a little bit shorter.
2017 Honda MPV Fit Release Date
This compact MPV is created in Mexico. Honda will sell this brand new car worldwide. This model was revealed for the first time at the Detroit auto show, and even though the company has not announced the official release date for this car, many auto publishers expects that this car will hit the auto market later in 2016. In terms of the price, this car will have price tag that starts at $15,750.
2017 Honda MPV Fit Interior
The 2017 Honda MPV Fit comes with interior which has been updated. The cabin of the car is spacious and comfortable, even though the spot for carrying luggage is not very spacious. There are no changes that drastically happen inside, especially in the dashboard area. The car comes with technology, and entertainment system which is supported with USB port and also Bluetooth connectivity. The smart phone connectivity is very easy to navigate, even though you can also use any android device. However, the interior of this brand new MPV is similar to that of the Civic and Accord. Even though this car is little bit more like hatchback than MPV, the company categorize this car MPV because it is more popular.
2017 Honda MPV Fit Redesign
The visibility at the front of the car is very impressive which is supported with small hood and large windshield. Meanwhile, the company has restyled the whole front end of the car including new headlights, aerodynamic styling, new fog lights, and a front grille which has been restyled in the aircraft wings shape. This car comes with the large doors that will make passengers easier to enter the car, even though the roof-line if low or maybe it is very low at the rear. The tailgate of the car is also very large which is bringing the practical feel to this car.
2-17 Honda MPV Fit Engine
In terms of the engine, this brand new 2017 Honda MPV Fit comes with 1.5-liter, 4-cylinder that will produce up to 130 horsepower. This engine will also be paired with either CVT or manual transmission. This car is suitable for those of you who want to have family car.


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Back To CNNMoney
Colbert sets out to win Trump 'media awards'
by Fern Carpenter
Following President Trump's tweet announcing that he would hold the "dishonest media awards," late night host Stephen Colbert took out a billboard to avoid getting "snubbed."
Daymond John: Failure is a necessary process
Why are the French always striking?
Why JCPenney is in serious trouble
How Walmart is taking on Amazon
These companies are trying to win back your trust
See Cal Ripken's Maryland Estate for sale
An outrageous card offering 0% interest until June 2019
7 outrageous credit cards if you have excellent credit
5 cards charging 0% interest until 2019
Pay off credit card balances faster using this method
Millennials born in the 1980s may never recover from the Great Recession
Amazon asked to stop selling facial recognition technology to police
Musk says Tesla will fix Model 3 problems that sparked negative Consumer Reports review


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Cracking Down On Meth Labs In North Carolina
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director Mark Gwyn warned a House judiciary panel that methamphetamine manufacturers may be headed to North Carolina unless members approve a bill similar to a new Tennessee law. Tennessee experienced a 39 percent decline in meth lab busts in May, and Gwyn attributes the drop to a law restricting cold tablet sales to pharmacy counters. Attorney General Roy Cooper wants a similar law in North Carolina. The Senate already has approved the measure, but House committee members wanted more information about an alternative proposal that would keep the medicines in a locked cabinet behind a store counter, but not under a pharmacist's control. The Target and Wal-Mart retail chains, as well as the CVS and Rite Aid drugstores, announced this year they would put the cold tablets behind the pharmacy counter. A subcommittee will look at both bills, Senate bill 686 (Meth Lab Prevention Act) and House bill 1345 (Limit Certain Self-Service Drug Purchases) and make recommendations.


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Microsoft has unveiled a new logo featuring squares to represent the companies ‘diverse portfolio of products’.
“Starting today, you’ll see the new Microsoft logo being used prominently. It will be used on Microsoft.com – the 10th most visited website in the world,” reads Microsoft’s official blog.
“It is in three of our Microsoft retail stores today and will shine brightly in all our stores over the next few months. It will sign off all of our television ads globally. And it will support our products across various forms of marketing.”
The new video released by the Microsoft shows each part of the new symbol relating to a part of the company, with blue representing Windows, red being Office, green being Xbox and yellow as…umm, well it appears Microsoft couldn’t think of anything for yellow so it just decided to skip it and hope no one noticed…
Fully implementing the change takes time, so Microsoft has warned that there may be other instances where the public sees the old logo being used.
Back in February PCR report that Microsoft had released a new Windows 8 logo, in which it ditched the infamous Windows ‘flag’, choosing a new angled graphic.
Want to receive up-to-the-minute tech news straight to your inbox? Then click here to sign up for the completely free PCR Daily Digest and Newsflash email services. You can also follow PCR on Twitter and Facebook.


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What To Expect As Apple CEO Tim Cook Takes The Stand Today In Epic App Store Court Battle
There could be fireworks today, or it could end up being a boring round in the latest bout pitting Epic Games versus Apple. Either way, Apple CEO Tim Cook is expected to take the stand today and field questions from lawyers in the high profile lawsuit Epic Games filed against Apple over the company's App Store policies, and specifically the 15-30 percent commission it takes.
This is a big case, and it could have widespread repercussions, not just for Apple but for any company that operates an app store and collects a royalty (like Google and its Play Store). The brouhaha began when Epic Games suddenly decided to side-step Apple's commission on in-app purchases by updating Fortnite on iOS.
The move did not sit well with Apple, which promptly and predictably booted Fortnite from the App Store for violating its terms agreement. This seems to have been the plan all along, with Epic Games claiming an altruistic stance on behalf of other developers who are too afraid to take on Apple, and also customers, who it says are paying higher prices for app purchases because Apple's commission is ultimately baked into the cost of apps and services.
Apple has dubbed this play by Epic Games as "Project Liberty," saying this was Epic's "effort to challenge the software distribution and supposed payment monopolies of Apple and Google." According to Apple, this has all been a cunning ploy by Epic Games to share profits with its developers by cutting costs through lower distribution and marketplace fees.
The App Store operator also claims Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney and the gang hired a PR team and legal counsel to assist with this effort, planning for which dates back roughly two years. Hence the "Free Fortnite" campaign that ensued.
Cook has testified before congress in the past, but this will be the first time the Apple CEO will take the stand as a witness. Epic's lawyers will likely spend several hours questioning Cook, perhaps trying to trip him up in the process. That may prove difficult, however, as Cook has shown himself to be a calm and collected individual in various interviews.
We expect Apple's lawyers will spend a fair amount of time steering Cook towards shining a positive light on the App Store, and how it benefits developers, thereby justifying the 15-30 percent commission. Cook will likely talk about the security of the App Store, and reiterate that its fees are in line with other app marketplaces.
Cook's testimony is expected to dominate the day, with closing arguments by both sides to be heard after the weekend break.


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The owner of MoviePass announced on Tuesday that it is spinning off the troubled movie subscription service into a separate public company.
The new company, to be called MoviePass Entertainment Holdings, will try to become a more complete entity with movie production and marketing businesses, said Helios and Matheson, the owner of MoviePass, in a press release.
MoviePass has gone through a variety of ups and downs in the past 18 months. Though the company had been around since 2011, a price cut to $9.95 per month in August 2017 — which allowed users to see a movie in theaters every day as long as tickets were bought on the day of the screening — drew a wave of customer interest.
Since then, MoviePass has struggled to make money and repeatedly changed the terms of its service. In July, the company borrowed $5 million to keep the business afloat. The New York Attorney General is also investigating whether Helios and Matheson misled investors.
Ted Farnsworth, Helios and Matheson chief executive officer, said in the press release that the company's ownership of MoviePass had begun to overshadow the rest of its business, which is "focused on data analytics."
"Since we acquired control of MoviePass in December 2017, HMNY largely has become synonymous with MoviePass in the public’s eye, leading us to believe that our shareholders and the market perception of HMNY might benefit from separating our movie-related assets from the rest of our company,” Farnsworth said.
Helios and Matheson shares plunged in the past year as MoviePass struggled, but news of the spinoff sent its stock price soaring, up 46 percent shortly after U.S. markets opened on Tuesday morning.
As part of the spin off plan, Helios and Matheson said it will distribute some stock in the new company to its shareholders as a dividend.


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You only buy pure maple syrup, right? Well, at least you think you do – but it turns out for some people, buying the real stuff is trickier than you might think. According to US Representative Peter Welch (D-Vt), millions of Americans have been unknowingly purchasing artificial syrup, when they intended to buy pure maple.
What’s getting them so confused? According to Welch it’s due to purposefully deceptive packaging and false labeling claims made by fake maple syrup manufacturers.
Log Cabin Syrup, a division of Pinnacle Foods LLC, is the most recent manufacturer to come under fire by Vermont officials. Headquartered in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, Pinnacle Foods is the parent company for both Log Cabin Syrup (contains 4% maple) and Mrs. Butterworth Syrup (contains 0% maple), as well as Aunt Jemima Frozen Breakfast items.
The current controversy surrounding the company, however, has nothing to do with the maple content of their products, and everything to do with the design of their packaging. Log Cabin recently released a new package for their higher end “All Natural” syrup product featuring a beige jug with an image of a cabin in the woods – a design that’s virtually indistinguishable from traditional New England maple syrup packaging, and could easily fool even a seasoned pure maple buyer.
Vermont state officials asked the FDA to investigate whether or not the packaging is in violation of federal laws. In response to the allegations, Pinnacle Foods spokesperson Michelle Weese stated that the Log Cabin’s All Natural Syrup is “in compliance with all FDA regulations.”
She’s probably right, but only because the FDA doesn’t regulate the word “natural.” If Kool-Aid manufacturers decided to put “all-natural” on the label of their neon-colored kid’s beverage, they would be in compliance with FDA regulations also.
So while federal labeling laws may not have been broken, consumer trust is certainly swirling down the drain, and Vermont state officials are calling on the FDA to investigate whether or not the company is intentionally misleading consumers, a practice that is outlawed by the Food and Drug Administration.
No decision on the “all natural” claim has been made to date, however, Log Cabin has removed caramel coloring (which some studies have linked to cancer) from their recipe. In a prepared statement, the company announced the following:
“Although this product does not pose any health or food safety issues, we are changing our recipe to remove caramel color immediately. With regard to the other ingredients, xanthan gum and citric acid are natural plant-derived ingredients.”
Well, that’s true, but so is tobacco, and I don’t think anyone wants that in their child’s “all natural” breakfast syrup.


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Indian Apparel is the app on apparel & related sectors - news, events, directory
Textile B2B App for SUPPLYING - Fibre, Yarn, Fabric, Apparel, Handloom & Jobwork
Textile B2B App for BUYING - Fibre, Yarn, Fabric, Apparel, Handloom & Jobwork
The LZ is the leading trade and business newspaper in the consumer goods industry.
All the important news from the meat industry directly on your smartphone!
The only online B2B platform for the entire food service and catering market.
LebensmittelZeitung.net as an app - the news portal of the Lebensmittel Zeitung (LZ).
The HORIZON app brings top news from the communications industry on smartphone.
Experience Sportswear International Magazine on a new level – everywhere you go.


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Welcome to Kickedface, we are here to provide You with the best news about Android as soon as it happens!
We promise to provide you with the best news and stuff that matters to you! http://kickedface.blogspot.com/
HomeMaterial Design[APK] Google News And Weather App Updated To v2.2, Brings Dark Theme and Much More
Thursday, December 4, 2014
[APK] Google News And Weather App Updated To v2.2, Brings Dark Theme and Much More
Google’s News & Weather app has been present on Android devices for quite some time, most of them anyway, and now Google has seen fit to issue an update for the app.
With the newest version of News & Weather, users will see new features like a dark theme, searchable news right from the app itself, and new weather graphs to soak in all of the details one might want. The update also includes the ability to curate stories from the user’s favorite publishers.
As Google notes, the update is now available in the Play Store and is available to download for free if it’s not already loaded up onto the device in question. With this update, this newest version has been bumped up to 2.0, and it requires devices running Android 4.0 and up.
The update will be rolled out in phases from now. If you are not able or willing to wait so long, then you can download the APK of Google News & Weather
Sid Goswami is a tech enthusiast, besides being an avid Android fan and blogger, Sid wants to be a photographer and a designer. He can usually be found reading through blogs, taking photos. He's a student and a PHP web developer.


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Two-thirds of motorists want to buy an electric vehicle (EV), with the majority seeking lower fuel bills.
A survey, commissioned by Bridgestone, found that 67% of motorists intended to switch to an EV and, of that figure, 47% want to change to save on fuel bills, while 56% are sold by the environmental benefits of EVs.
There were 39,315 new battery electric vehicle registrations during March, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), compared to just 37,850 electric sales for the whole of 2019.
The survey did unearth some driver concerns about the EV switch, despite their appetite to make the change. Of the 2,000 respondents, 74% raised concerns at the initial cost of purchase, 66% also expressed worries about charging point infrastructure, while 29% had issues with insufficient range.
Bridgestone North Region vice president Andrea Manenti said that the survey results offered a valuable insight into the minds of the general public when it comes to electric vehicles.
He added: “The results of this survey confirm that we’re undergoing huge change in the automotive industry, and that change is happening now. We were also reminded of some common concerns still associated with EVs, which we need to tackle as an industry.
“These concerns were insightful and we are already on our own journey at Bridgestone to address them. We’re developing premium tyres that meet specific EV requirements and help deliver optimal performance.”
Bridgestone developing its tyre technology to ensure that EVs can travel further between charges, while prolonging battery life. The company has also committed to install up to 3,500 new charging points across Europe over the next five years, with new plans for the UK set to be announced shortly.
EV leasing company, DriveElectric, predicts that registrations of new EVs will rise by more than 74% in 2022.
The figure is based on DriveElectric’s own forecasts and represents an increase to more than 330,000, from around 190,000 in 2021, to represent around 16% of all sales this year.
The Government has opened consultation over a proposed EV mandate that would demand at least half of all new cars sold in the UK emitted zero exhaust emissions by 2028.
Under the Department for Transport’s (DfT) proposed scheme, car and van manufacturers’ EV sales will be converted into ‘certificates’, which could be traded between brands, with fines levied for OEMs that fail to achieve a specified number of certificates by the end of each year.


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Blockchain news: Blockchain Technology is the most disruptive technology since the Internet. It is the technology that everybody is talking about, but few know how and why it works. It has the power to change the world, to the extent that big entrepreneurs and blockchain experts are predicting that blockchain will be a main layer of society like the Internet currently is. Blockchain can remove third parties, increase security, make data permanent, improve consensus of peer-to-peer and many more. Blockchain technology can decentralize systems, decrease corruption and many big corporate names, as well as many governments are actively investing in the development of blockchain technology. The fight for blockchain patents is fierce and with the rate of Blockchain’s development, it will come a time soon, when not using Blockchain technology will not be practical.
Cryptocurrencies have been expanding everywhere. In the rich city of Dubai this is not the exception. The Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) has issued a trading license to the Dubai based gold trader Regal RA DMCC, a subsidiary of Regal Assets Inc.
After Brexit, one of the main fears of enterprises settled in in Great Britain was losing competitiveness. At the same time that Prime Minister Theresa May is negotiating with the European Union (EU) Brexit terms, Blockchain technology keeps expanding among enterprises.
Most of the times, Banks have been opposed to the increased demand for Cryptocurrencies. In the United Kingdom, the US and South Korea, banks have taken different steps to reduce the exposure to cryptocurrencies. But some banks in Europe are looking forward to giving clients the deserved access to the cryptocurrency market.
Are there ways to earn tokens for free or for completing tasks or certain objectives? There is and it’s called an airdrop. It is a great way to distribute a certain amount of coins to the user base. Why do companies do this and how do airdrops happen? Read about airdrops in this comprehensive guide.
In the world of crypto when a token offers dividends it makes us feel a tad more excited. Profit share reminds us of the safety of stocks. However, although essential for stocks this option is often not effective for tokens.
Bitcoin’s blockchain uses an electronic accounting ledger, with each block holding a limited amount of transactions made with the cryptocurrency. The energy issue is that cryptocurrency mining uses a lot of electricity and this has put a spotlight on mainstream power generation which is mostly from unclean methods.


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Flipkart recently announced a new sale - 'Big Shopping Days' - from 18th to 21st December, in the backdrop of the upcoming holiday season. While Flipkart promised 'surprises' through a twitter contest, Carl Pei, one of the co-founders of OnePlus, woke up to a surprise earlier today, and tweeted to Sachin Bansal regarding a special promotion that Flipkart had teased at on their homepage.
Flipkart's homepage notes that the OnePlus 3 will be sold for less than Rs 20,000 during the Big Shopping Day sale. The OnePlus India team responded to the above promotion with a statement-
OnePlus is focused on creating premium flagship smartphones. We have an exclusive partnership with Amazon in India. We advise customers to purchase OnePlus products only through official channels as we cannot guarantee the authenticity of the products sold elsewhere.
YourStory reached out to Flipkart with detailed questions to better understand the situation. A Flipkart spokesperson responded by saying,
"Flipkart is a marketplace that helps sellers connect with customers across the country. All our sellers are mandated to adhere to stringent guidelines. The prices and discounts for all our sales are decided by the participating sellers and brands."
YourStory requested Flipkart to share the details about the seller or sellers who are offering up the OnePlus 3 device for less than Rs 20,000, but has so far not received a response. We will update the story if and when the company responds. Sachin Bansal, Chairman at Flipkart, has also not responded to Carl on Twitter yet.
It will also be interesting to understand how these sellers passed the stringent guidelines and were able to source OnePlus devices, as Amazon India and OnePlus have an exclusive partnership. Even if the OnePlus devices have been attained through legal means, will the seller(s) be able to offer warranties on them? There are many questions right now, and we will have to wait for Flipkart to answer them or for the sale to commence to better understand the situation.
How has the coronavirus outbreak disrupted your life? And how are you dealing with it? Write to us or send us a video with subject line 'Coronavirus Disruption' to firstname.lastname@example.org


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New renders have given us a first glimpse as to what HMD Global’s forthcoming flagship phone, the Nokia 9, could look like.
A new rumour has cited that Huawei’s upcoming Mate 10 might well be its first device to ship with an edge-to-edge display.
Developers have trailed through Apple’s HomePod firmware to find new mentions of a forthcoming LTE Apple Watch and 4K Apple TV set top box.
New leaked design renders have pictured LG’s V30 in earnest, revealing a phone with a far larger secondary display placed at the bottom.
LG is set to announce that its flagship smartphone will be bolstered by a G6 Pro and G6 Plus variant in South Korea in a bid to expand LG Pay.
A new series of iPhone 8 component leaks has potentially revealed the design of Apple’s upcoming handset, including its edge-to-edge display.
A new leak has detailed that Microsoft’s Surface Phone – apparently called Surface Mobile – might include a projector, Surface Pen and more.
Samsung has reportedly entered the Galaxy S9 and S9+ into full development, hinting that we could see the company’s follow-up flagship sooner rather than later.
A leaked Galaxy Note 8 dummy has revealed that Samsung might opt to include a dual-camera array an embedded home button on its next phablet.
A new series of leaked images ahs seeming confirmed the presence of a next-generation iPhone SE that could ditch aluminum for a high-gloss finish.


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Ferrari Portofino Facelift
|₹ 3.80 Crore onwards|
About Ferrari Portofino Facelift
The Ferrari Portofino facelift is currently undergoing development, as per the recent spy images shared on the web suggest. The model was unveiled back in 2017 and this is the mid-life update for the Prancing Horse.
Exterior changes to the Ferrari Portofino facelift will include a revised front bumper and headlamps inspired from its sibling, the Ferrari Roma. Details regarding the updates to the interior of the model remain unknown at the moment.
Propelling the Ferrari Portofino facelift will be the same 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8 engine that currently produces 592bhp and 760Nm of torque. This state of tune is expected to change to witness a hike of 20bhp. The current seven-speed automatic gearbox is also likely to make way for an eight-speed unit.


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When it comes to highly sought-after prospect lists, new movers are the cream of the crop. While many U.S. adults prefer to stick with the same financial institution, moving across the country (or even across town) can spur a switch, thanks to a lack of convenient ATM locations or local branches they’re familiar with.
New Zillow research released in April showed that more than 1 in 10 Americans (11%) have moved in the past year — and millions of additional households could do so because of COVID-19-related issues. This means a strategic focus on new movers could pay big dividends for your bank or credit union.
Unfortunately, many new mover marketing programs don’t live up to the hype according to an ABA Marketing Journal post. Here are two reasons why:
- If you wait until new movers are settled to start preparing to market to them, the odds are good they’ve already found a new place to bank.
- Data is expensive, and (depending on the size of your community) the amount of new mover info you can access every week — the timeframe in which you’ll need to work — might seem to be more expensive than it’s worth.
Here’s the key to success — your bank or credit union must be able to get solid, reliable new mover data and act on it quickly. That can only happen if you first know who comprises your target market.
Who are new movers?
New movers can be defined as households in the moving, homebuying, or selling processes. They can be further subdivided into three groups:
- Pre-move: Sellers who have simply listed their current homes for sale, with intent to move
- Under Contract: Those who are under contract for a new home or are waiting to close on the sale of their current home
- After-move: New homebuyers who have recently moved into your community or have just sold their residence.
Why target new movers?
Three reasons: New movers have money, they spend money, and they’re open to change.
“Even when a household moves a short distance, marketers can’t assume purchasing patterns will remain the same,” said fintech expert and influencer Jim Marous. “Brand loyalty is tested during a move, with the frequency of changing providers/brands being twice as likely for a new mover compared to a non-mover (some categories of services have a much higher propensity of change).”
In fact, FocusUSA research shows that new movers spend more in the first six months following a move than the average consumer shells out in multiple years. According to their data, annual new mover expenditures exceed $150B each year, with the average new mover spending a whopping $9,000 per move. That’s a lot of cash, and each mover is going to need somewhere to keep it.
How can I market to new movers?
Moving is a great time to build relationships with prospective customers or members, but don’t limit yourself to one vehicle. From direct mail “welcome” campaigns featuring local branch and ATM promotions to friends-and-family referral programs (many people already know others in their new community when moving there) to geotargeted, locally-focused digital content based solely on new mover demographics, diversify your approach for the highest level of success.
Direct mail is extremely popular (and productive) — especially with new movers. The traditional approach, as always, involves strategy, design, and delivery, which boils down to making sure you craft the right message and send it to people who are already interested. That being said, direct mail can make the magic happen, according to research by small business financial services provider Fundera:
- 70% of consumers say direct mail is more personal than online interactions.
- Direct mail open rates can reach up to 90%.
- 54% of consumers say they want direct mail from brands that interest them.
- 42% of recipients read or scan the direct mail they receive.
Although direct mail enjoys high open rates, without QR code-based calls to action (or similar coded approaches), there’s not much you can do to gain insight on the analytics side of things. That’s one area in which digital marketing can really help your new mover program shine.
Digital programs require a good amount of setup on the front end to ensure successful deployment and execution but with the help of an experienced digital strategist, digital can offer significant advantages:
- By identifying your niche audience of new movers upfront, you can position your ads/advertorial content on the websites on which they’re spending their time.
- Unlike direct mail, digital allows you to view real-time data related to the success of your marketing approach (such as ad impressions and ad clicks) and make any necessary adjustments on the fly. Going poorly? Launch an updated/different ad or piece of content. Is it going well? Expand your reach in an instant!
- Your CFO will thank you for this one — a digital new mover program costs much less than a direct mail-led program, thanks to a lack of printing and postage expenses.
- Google Search and Display ads can be targeted to people based on “life events” searches that include users identified as “moving soon”, “recently moved” and “purchasing a new home” among others.
- Digital ad campaigns can also support your direct mail campaigns by scheduling ads to be served to customers before the mail hits their mailbox or right after the mail has been delivered.
Finally, make it easy to transfer funds and establish accounts at your bank or credit union. This is low-hanging fruit based on consumer perception alone. After all, research from Kasasa indicates that 61% of those surveyed believed switching accounts would be “somewhat difficult.”
Simply providing the information they need (like new account, direct deposit/automatic withdrawal, and account closing authorization forms) in a digital format will go a long way to welcoming new movers into your financial family.
We’re here to help
These days, with more and more people preferring to search online for move-related information, an omnichannel approach to reaching and acquiring new movers is critical.
Talk to a BankBound strategist to see how we can help you target new movers today.


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Consuming pills could lead to deadly results over the long term, based on evidence
MasterCard's Banga ranks eighth in the list while ICICI Bank chief Kochhar comes in at the 18th position, one notch ahead of billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffet on the Fortune list of 50 global leaders
New York: MasterCard's India-born CEO Ajay Banga and ICICI Bank chief Chanda Kochhar have been named by Fortune magazine among the '2012 Businesspersons of the Year', an annual ranking of 50 global leaders who are "the best in business", reports PTI.
The list has been topped by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos with Apple CEO Tim Cook coming in at the second place.
Another Indian giving Banga and Kochhar company in the list of 50 global business leaders is Deepak Narula, founder and managing partner of hedge fund firm Metacapital Management.
Banga, 52, ranks eighth in the list while Kochhar comes in at the 18th position, one notch ahead of billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffet. Narula ranks 36th.
Fortune said investors have so far been impressed with Banga's performance at the helm of MasterCard.
"Since Banga took the helm two years ago, MasterCard's stock has more than doubled, outperforming archrival Visa," it said, adding that the former Citigroup executive wants MasterCard to be a leader in the mobile payments revolution.
Banga's other big bet includes prepaid cards in emerging markets such as Mexico, South Africa and Brazil, a major reason why MasterCard now generates 60 per cent of its revenues outside the US.
On Kochhar, 51, Fortune said a bullish outlook through the recession helped her direct India's second largest bank, which has assets of $93 billion, to a "standout performance".
"Next up for the ICICI lifer: More global clients," the publication added.
On Narula, Fortune said the former Lehman trader's $1.5 billion mortgage-focused hedge fund has "left others in the industry in the dust this year, posting 37% returns through October".
"Metacapital has outpaced other funds for years by taking positions with near perfect foresight of policy change and movement in the housing market".
In compiling this year's businessperson of the year list, Fortune took stock of financial results, stock performance and market value of the company.
It also considered metrics such as strategic savvy, ability to steer a very large organisation, risk taking and cultural significance.
"It was a year of comebacks and cool performances for the executives on Fortune's annual Businessperson of the Year ranking," the publication said.
Bezos, who topped the list, had another stellar year, with revenue up 31% in the past year.
"It is his penchant for taking risks and disrupting industries that earned him the top spot on our list," Fortune said.
Bezos's philosophy of giving priority to long-term gains over short-term profitability is yielding palpable results for the tech giant he built from scratch.
Analysts estimate Amazon Web Services, a cloud-based computing platform used by hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world, could generate as much as $1.5 billion.
"Amazon's Kindle Fire line helped popularise the seven- inch tablet form such that Apple finally released a version of its own," Fortune added.
On Cook, Fortune said despite a shuffling of executive management, the first full-year as CEO for Steve Jobs's successor was "chock-full of milestones".
Apple's stock soared to an all-time high of $705 per share and its latest iPhone sold more than five million units during its first weekend on sale, creating a company record.
Among the other business honchos on the list are Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page at rank 6, Exxon Mobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson (9), Oracle co-founder and CEO Larry Ellison (14), Wal-Mart CEO Michael Duke (17), IBM Chairman and CEO Ginni Rometty (22), Starbucks founder and CEO Howard Schultz (23) and Twitter co-founder and executive chairman Jack Dorsey (48).
Both CBDT and CBEC have quantified the amount which Kingfisher owe to the government and are making out comprehensive plan to recover tax dues of over Rs200 crore
New Delhi: The Revenue Department in India is working on a comprehensive plan to recover tax dues from debt-ridden Kingfisher Airlines (KFA), which owes more than Rs200 crore to the exchequer, reports PTI quoting a top Finance Ministry official.
"As a matter of fact both Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) have quantified the amount which Kingfisher owe to the government and we will be making out comprehensive plan to recover tax dues," CBEC Chairman Praveen Mahajan told reporters on the sidelines of an event organised by industry body CII.
Kingfisher Airlines, which has been making losses since its inception in 2005, owes more than Rs200 crore in taxes to the government.
Mahajan further said, "We have already frozen KFA's accounts. Whatever is there in service tax act, we have taken all the actions because this is in our interest also."
When asked whether the CBEC is contemplating prosecuting KFA, Mahajan said, "Prosecution also might happen...But everything takes time. There are different steps you have to take before you prosecute some body."
The CBEC chief indicated that the Reveune Department might talk to aviation regulator DGCA as the beleaguered airlines is likely to submit a comprehensive revival plan to DGCA by this month-end.
"Finance Minister P Chidambaram has told CBDT and CBEC to get together and plan it out and whether it invloves talking to regulator or whatever," Mahajan said.
Answering questions on revenue collection, Mahajan expressed confidence that the government will be able to meet indirect tax realisation target of Rs5.05 lakh crore for 2012-13. The indirect taxes during April-September rose by 15.6% to Rs2.17 lakh crore as against the annual target of 27% doing better.