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5 messages on the economy from Ben Bernanke
- Staff Orlando Business Journal
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the Fed took aggressive actions Thursday to pump up the economy because of “grave concern” that the economy would stagnate otherwise, leaving millions of Americans without a job.
Bernanke met the press after the Fed’s announcement that it would buy $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities a month to further drive down interest rates. The Fed also indicated it would keep its federal funds rate near zero through mid-2015. Its previous target was the end of 2014.
While some economists are skeptical the Fed’s move will have much impact on the economy, Bernanke defended the move. In doing so, Bizjournals' Washington Bureau Chief Kent Hoover writes that he delivered the following five messages to Americans about the economy and the Fed’s role in it. Read more here.
Professor, Network Engineering Technology Valencia College | Orlando, FL
Adjunct Professors Valencia College | Orlando, FL
Civil Engineer/Project Manager Boyd Civil Engineering, Inc. | Orlando, FL
Interim County Auditor County of Kaua'i | Lihue, HI
Office Manager and Executive Assistant ACCP | Orlando, FL
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The village will be hosting a fun-packed day on Sunday December 6 at its annual Christmas fair and switch on.
Fund raising by the Birkenshaw Village Association has gone well this year and are hoping to make the Christmas Lights event better even than last year’s.
Alan Kent, the association, said: “Birkenshaw’s Christmas fair will be the biggest yet with stalls in the community hall and the Scout HQ.
“There will also be stalls in the scout marquee on the lawn outside the church, so if you’re stuck for a present or just in the mood for shopping please come and have a look at what will be on offer.
“Please come out and support us.”
Food and drink will be available and there will also be entertainment on offer.
Father Christmas will be flying his sleigh into the community hall just after 2pm and the outdoor stage will feature Birkenshaw First School Choir, Drighlington Brass Band and festive Christmas tunes.
The lucky winner of the children’s raffle will switch on the village Christmas lights at 4.15pm and see Birkenshaw lit up.
A winning lamp post design from the Birkenshaw Primary School competition will be displayed outside the community hall.

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The dictator sim Tropico achieved critical and commercial acclaim after being released for PC and Mac in 2001. Later on, the game got several expansions and it made its way to iPad, that being the exclusive portable version available for some time. Earlier in 2019, iTunes App Store got Tropico iOS version, much to all iPhone owner’s delight, and the game immediately scored a 4.7-star rating, becoming an instant hit. Now, Feral Interactive are accommodating Android users as well.
Tropico Android release date set for September 5, 2019. Pre-registration is open right now and it will yield a Premium Port for those who secure this early bird bonus. This dictator sim was developed by Kalypso Media Group while it was Feral Interactive that ported it for iPad and iPhone. The company is on a successful video game porting streak, since they also ported Rome: Total War – Barbarian Invasion earlier this month.
However, Tropico is undoubtedly one of the most successful titles for both companies. It lets the user play as El Presidente and lead a small island on the Caribbean. The game functions much like some other simulations, where you control the economy of the island, build housing, and also open various facilities which improve your infrastructure. However, it’s the ‘El Presidente’ part of the game that gives it its main appeal, for the players may rule their island as a dictator of a third world country.
The players may chose to play as several presidents, each giving its own allure to the game, and the most important thing is that they govern their land with an iron fist sort to say. This is at the center of Tropico mobile game experience and it is arriving on Android in less than a month. On September 5th, the game will be available on Google Play. As to the pricing, it’s still unclear just how much it will cost, but it is $11.99 on iTunes App Store for Tropico iOS version, so Android is expected to be similar if not the same.


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CAMPAIGNERS were out in force in Holmfirth on Saturday calling for the demolition of a "terrible eyesore".
Members of the Holmfirth - Sort It! campaign rallied in support of the destruction of the abandoned Lodges supermarket.
The derelict store could be about to meet its maker after TV bosses shortlisted it to be knocked down for new Channel 4 show, Demolition.
A spokesman for the campaign said: "The huge ugly building spans and hides the town's pretty river from view and has stood empty for a shocking seven years and has broken windows and graffiti.
"It is an embarrassment and disgrace to everyone who loves `Compo's town'.
Holmfirth baker Greg Christofi said over the years they had been promised that work would proceed but nothing had happened.
He added: "It was an ugly building when it was built and now it's a danger to our health and safety with broken windows."
Trevor Ward, of Forward Developers, who have responsibility for the building, said there were other plans and there was no question of it being demolished.
It would be converted into a shopping mall and would have a facade more in keeping with Holmfirth.


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Exclusive with AWS sales chief Matt Garman: How Amazon aims to lead in generative AI
For more than two decades, Amazon Web Services Inc. has been the undisputed leader of cloud computing, but with the recent eight-month surge towards artificial intelligence applications, rivals such as Microsoft Corp. are swiftly gaining ground.
The sudden generative AI shift has caused a rush among developers and businesses to embrace AI, and Microsoft’s monumental $10 billion investment in OpenAI LP has positioned it as a potential industry frontrunner. With these changes, questions have been swirling about AWS’ leadership and position in the new cloud battleground: the generative AI market.
Can AWS maintain its leadership or will it forfeit the lead to Microsoft and other emerging contenders? I wanted to find out directly from AWS, and to do so I had an exclusive interview with Matt Garman, senior vice president of AWS sales and marketing at Amazon.
Garman, who previously headed the EC2 cloud computing initiative, possesses a unique combination of technical expertise and leadership. Now he’s in charge of steering AWS’ original cloud computing business toward the new, fast-growing generative AI market.
In the expansive Q&A (full transcript below), he identifies key opportunities and challenges in generative AI. Here’s a summary of our wide-ranging conversation:
Addressing AI’s potential ethical concerns:
Generative AI is earning increasing recognition among developers and enterprises. Yet organizations have publicly aired concerns about misuse and intellectual property rights. Garman clarifies that these companies are not banning generative AI but rather establishing measures to protect their IP. As AI technology proliferates, businesses will need to adjust to manage the growing flood of AI applications.
In fostering AI adoption, Garman acknowledges the necessity of a multifaceted strategy to serve a diverse customer base. AWS’ inclusive product strategy aims to cater to this diversity with solutions extending from the infrastructure layer to the application layer. He highlights how startups such as Hugging Face Inc., Stability Ltd., Runway AI Inc. and Anthropic have leveraged AWS’ cloud capabilities to scale quickly, democratizing access to technologies typically limited to larger corporations.
Securing data, amplifying choice:
The primary concern in generative AI is the security of intellectual property and trust in the data’s results. Garman explains AWS’ approach to ensuring data security, saying, “For our first-party models, we are very careful about which data has been used to build that model.” AWS also provides open-source models within Jumpstart, enabling customers to operate models within its proprietary Virtual Private Cloud.
Augmenting human capabilities with AI:
Industry observers predict that AI will significantly automate tasks and augment human capabilities, revolutionizing business models and society. In this context, Garman views generative AI as an extremely powerful tool for enhancing efficiency and effectiveness. He clarifies that AI is not on track to replace humans any time soon. Instead, it will amplify human abilities, allowing them to concentrate more on the innovative aspects of their work.
Innovating AI constraints and opportunities with GPUs:
The escalating demand for graphics processing units to power AI and train models is a burning issue today. AWS, having invested in machine learning and AI infrastructure for years, is committed to meeting these challenges. It says it operates the largest and most high-performing GPU clusters in the cloud. Conscious of the potential environmental issues linked to power consumption, AWS plans to power all of its global data centers with renewable energy by 2025.
“Generative AI is an incredibly powerful capability that has a chance to make us much more efficient, much more effective,” he says. “It’s not going to replace people any, any time soon.” AWS is poised to navigate the future of generative AI with data security, model versatility and a strategy for managing the challenges and opportunities related to GPUs and custom silicon.
Here’s the full interview with Garman, edited lightly for clarity:
Amazon has been doing AI for a long time. Let’s start out by clearing the air on AWS’ position in AI. Briefly explain the history, the trajectory and the experience AWS has with machine learning and AI.
At Amazon and in AWS, we’ve been super-focused on AI and ML and have long felt for frankly 20 years we’ve been working on this space and have known that generative AI is, has been and will continue to transform how companies do business. And we’ve had an expertise in this for a really long time. AWS is incredibly excited about the potential that generative AI has to fully transform lots and lots of industries and businesses. We wanted to make sure that customers can leverage it in a safe, effective way that makes sense for their business.
AI is an area that we’ve been deeply investing in and an area that we feel passionate about will help our AWS customers and our customers all over the world really transform their business. And we think the approach that we’re taking in AWS is ultimately how most customers are going to want to consume and build generative AI into the applications that they run.
Some enterprises are banning employees from using ChatGPT. Even regulation is rearing its ugly head. Why are people freaking out about AI? What is your position on this? How do you see this playing out?
When ChatGPT came out, it really inspired and caused a broad swath of people to really understand what the power of AI was. It did a great job of bringing into the public consciousness of what’s possible. And so I think you saw a lot of people get really excited and want to jump in quickly. When you look at what some of the big banks are doing or what some of the other companies are doing, they’re not so much banning the idea of generative AI. They’re putting the brakes on their own teams to be careful about putting their own IP into those systems. Part of how those systems learn, like ChatGPT and others, is that when you enter questions in, when you put data into that system, it takes that system, integrates it into what it knows, and then it builds a broader corpus of knowledge that it can answer questions from.
A lot of companies are putting the brakes on in order to have the right controls and security in place so that their own IP doesn’t leak into those (public) models. And I think that’s appropriate. When we talk to our customers and enterprises, one of the things that they’re most worried about is that they understand that in the future, their own IP and their data is actually what’s going to be one of the most valuable and differentiating things that they have going forward. And so what they’re putting in place is controls to ensure that they have that right set of controls over their IP so that their employees don’t inadvertently share it into one of these models and it gets kind of uploaded, and then available for everybody, and they kind of lose that IP.
They don’t realize that they’re actually contributing to the revised corpus with their IP, which then comes into all kinds of issues around IP rights and releases it essentially. Imagine if you’re a bank, you want to make sure that your data doesn’t get loaded up into the model, so that a competing bank can learn from what you’re doing.
What are some of the key differences on how enterprises want to consume generative AI versus say how an independent software vendor wants to consume generative AI?
Everyone is going to want to use generative AI and appropriately. Generative AI is a powerful technology that has a potential to help us be more efficient, more effective, and really change customer experiences. I think when you think about those differences and how a startup thinks about things or how a large enterprise thinks about things or a SaaS [software-as-a-service] provider thinks about things, you know, a lot of them are not totally different as you might think, their stages of adoption may be different.
If you’re a startup, you’re trying to figure out how can you get out there fast, how can you iterate quickly? How can you get access to some of these technologies that may only normally be accessible to really large companies? And that’s one of the things that cloud and AWS enable. And so you see startups like Hugging Face, like Stability and others. Anthropic is building on top of AWS because they can get large-scale capacity quickly, they can iterate quickly, they can learn and they can grow.
A lot of startups love to use the cloud. And that was, as you know, that’s where AWS kind of grew up from the very beginning as the value proposition, and generative AI is no different there.
So when you go look at, at larger scaled ISVs, it’s really not that different of a story. I think one of the things that they love is the ability to scale, the ability to test new capabilities — really cool stuff that these larger established ISVs are doing and rolling out really innovative new technologies and capabilities all based on generative AI.
Enterprises have a little bit different needs than, say, a developer or startup that’s growing rapidly. Enterprises might want SaaS-like experiences like CodeWhisperer, for example, or developers wanting, say, Bedrock for the building blocks for generative AI. How do you mix that together?
Our take is there is no such thing as a homogeneous customer. Customers all have different ways that they want to consume this technology. Some are going to want to consume it at a package layer, some are going to want to consume it all the way at the infrastructure layer. And I think that’s where AWS really shines.
For people that want to build their own models, we build our own silicon and increasingly that is going to be a competitive advantage for us to have a choice. We have, and for a long time have been, the best place to run GPU infrastructure. Our customers love running large scale GPU clusters in AWS and we also build our own infrastructure that we think has cost and performance advantages … Trainium for large training clusters and Inferentia for running large inference clusters.
If you think about SageMaker, it’s the development platform of choice of almost every single ML developer out there to make sure that they’re doing safe AI, make sure that you’re testing various different models to see what actually works well with your application.
And Bedrock is providing an easy-to-use API for the variety of models, whether you’re using a large number of these foundational models that folks are going to want to be able to use for different sets of use cases and they may even want to combine different ones.
Consistent across almost every single customer that wants to use generative AI is that they want to make sure that they do it in a secure, safe environment where they know that their IP is safe, where they can have explainability, where they have as much information as possible on how the model was created. This is where our focus is: How can we give enterprises that assurance that they have the highest performing infrastructure, but also the best and most secure platform in order to go build that generative AI so that they know that their data and their IP doesn’t leak out to places where they don’t control it?
How do you ensure security? What’s the key value proposition there?
There’s a range of things for our first-party models. We have our own models, which we refer to as our Titan models. With those, we are very careful from a copyright perspective of which data has been used to build that model. We’re very clear about that. Customers know that they can be assured that the data that went to build that model is something that we have the rights to use to go build it.
We provide things like open source models inside of Jumpstart, part of SageMaker that provides pretrained open-source models to train and tune before deploying. And when you’re running on some of those open-source models, many are becoming really powerful and in many cases are actually outperforming some of the proprietary models today. Customers are able to run those entirely inside of their own proprietary VPC [virtual private cloud] or networking. And so they can run that model. They can isolate that from any sort of external connectivity and know that anything that they use in that model stays inside of that model, stays inside of their VPC.
The same with Bedrock, where anyone who uses any sort of tuning to tune Bedrock models, which is one of the key features that we’ll have inside of our Titan models, we ensure that that data doesn’t leak back into the core foundational model and stays inside of the customer’s VPC. So many of the controls that they use for the rest of their enterprise data work just the same for their generative AI capabilities.
AWS has a broad selection of initial capabilities, you mentioned you have first-party models, OpenAI has theirs, it’s not on AWS, and then there are third-party models via Bedrock. And then the recent wave of open-source innovation, just in the past like month and a half, you saw a huge surge. When will customers want to use the prominent models that you guys have and when will they want to use some of these long-tail Bedrock-like products and open source? How will you balance those?
Our goal is to give customers both the choice to be able to run what’s best for their application. For example, a model that’s optimized for a financial services customer may not be the one that’s optimized for genomics data, may not be the one that performs best for e-commerce or images or any of those other things. Another example is Stability AI, Stability is a great model for images right now, but not for text. And by the way, they’ll change over time and they’ll add some of those. We want customers to be able to pick and choose what is the best model that they want to use for the best use case.
Enter SageMaker. We make it really easy for customers to A/B-test things. And in a cloud you can do that. You don’t have to spend billions of dollars to go build your own model. You can leverage some of these others and test if model A performs better than model B or if some combination of models is actually the optimal one for you.
Over time people will tune and kind of build on top of some of these foundational models and they’ll have their own model that they tune and then condense from those. Then that’s the thing that they’ll actually use in production. And we want to make it super-easy for them to do that process, but in a cost-effective and secure way in order to actually use that and scale that out. Cost is one of the things people are looking at in the future, and they’re worrying about the cost of generative AI. Whether it’s first-party Amazon models or open-source or other proprietary ones, our goal is over time to support every single model out there.
Generative AI reminds me of the early days of AWS when you had the same. Do I build a data center and provision all this stuff or do I put it in the cloud and get instant value, variable elasticity? I mean, the same kind of thing is happening here with the generative AI and other foundational models. You can stand up your own if you want, good luck with that, or mix and match and code your own.
That’s right, and look, and over time you’ll see us leveraging generative AI more and more in some of the applications that we make available to customers as well. CodeWhisperer is a great example. It’s a coding companion, but still with that enterprise in mind, right? We have automated reasoning built in to make sure that you’re building secure code. We have the ability to highlight, if we’re showing you code samples that come from open source, what is the licenses? And to ensure that you want to use the code sample that comes from open source.
Our focus is a little different from the others. We are laser-focused here at AWS on how we can have generative AI make our customers successful, and a little bit less distracted by productivity suites or search or any of those other things. We are laser-focused on how we can make sure that our AWS customers can take best advantage of these technologies. And we start with those use cases and then work from there.
We are seeing AI take on more tasks, shifting the humans role, augmenting the human capability. How canAI can actually automate and differentiate for companies?
I think generative AI is an incredibly powerful capability that has a chance to make us much more efficient, much more effective. You know, it’s not going to replace people anytime soon. CodeWhisperer is not going to make it so that you don’t need developers anymore. It’s going to make it so developers don’t have to write bespoke code. It’s going to make it so that developers can write more secure code, but they can focus on some of the innovative customer experience that I can deliver for my business and for customers and not have to worry about the blocking and tackling of necessarily writing code. I think the future coding language is probably going to be English and that’s OK.
Yeah, exactly. But it’s going to be saying it in English, and then the tools will translate that into code. The expertise may not be understanding the nuances of Java or C++ or anything like that, but that’s OK. It just changes some of that skill pieces, now you got to think about the parts of your application that you want to go build as opposed to how you build it.
Will the model be “Human plus AI is better than AI by itself”?
100%, yep. And that’s going to be like that for a really, really long time and probably forever.
Graphics processing unit supply seems to be a bottleneck. There’s demand for AI training and inference. What do you see as the core constraint in the industry and what does the industry have to do to have a line of sight to relieve the pressure?
There’s a number of constraints here. I think one of the things that’s key is that it takes a lot of compute power to go build some of these foundational models. It takes billions of dollars of GPUs, but not just GPUs — servers, networking, data center, power, electricity, all of those pieces, right? And we’ve been building a lot of those things for a long time.
We have the largest GPU clusters anywhere in the cloud. We have the best-performing GPU clusters in the cloud and long-term, I think that power is actually one of those things that you have to really think about because these clusters have the potential to use hundreds of megawatts to gigawatts of power. Now, you know, by 2025 we’ll be running all of our global data centers on renewable energy, which helps a lot because there’s a risk that some of that power causes environmental issues.
We’re going to want to think about how we scale those (GPUs) in a bunch of different ways. And I think that’s part of where our custom silicon comes in. Yeah, GPUs are awesome. Nvidia does a fantastic job of building a really good product and they’re going to be super-important in this space for a really long time. But we also think there’s space for custom-designed silicon, and we think products like Trainium have the real potential to help customers lower cost over time, reduce the power footprint and improve performance. It’s a competitive advantage for our customers, and for our business, by having that low-cost option for customers that actually, in some cases, can out outperform what GPUs can do.
AWS has done lots of work at the silicon and the physical layer, you guys have been squeezing every ounce of physics out of it at AWS for years. The real technical and business value and action of AI is up and down the stack. Can you just share your thoughts on the kind of generative AI that’s happening up and down the stack?
I think that there’s just going to be innovation across the board. Every single industry, there’s going to be innovation at networking, there’s going to be innovation at the compute layer, there’s going to be innovation at the tool layers, there’s going to be innovation in supporting services, like vector databases and other things like that. There’s new startups that are popping up every day focusing on different parts of that tool chain.
All of those things are really interesting, and as we’ve talked about, all the way up to the application stack where there’s all sorts of new technologies. So I think it’s a technology that can be applied almost anywhere. Whatever we talk about this month may be totally different six months from now. There’s a lot of folks out there innovating, and that’s part of why AWS is great. We give people a platform to go innovate.
What I’m seeing in my reporting is that there are two types of customers right now on the AI side. There’s ones that have been into the cloud and ones that aren’t fully in the cloud. When big shifts happen like the pandemic showed us and now with the generative AI rapid transition, it was obvious that when in the cloud “the trend is your friend.” How does having a presence in the cloud influence a company’s ability to capitalize on the rapid transition to generative AI, considering the advantageous trend observed during major society consumption changes like the pandemic?
Getting all of your data and your workloads in the cloud enables you to adjust to changing trends and technologies. Generative AI is one of those, that every single customer and company has to really think about how they’re going to integrate into everything that they do. And it’s harder if your data’s not in the cloud. Step zero is to make sure your data is in AWS, that it’s available in a data lake, that you can look at, that your compute and workloads are there, that you have your structure around it.
Many of the customers who have already jumped in that cloud journey are in a good place to move fast and others are hustling because they realize that this is capability that they’re just not going to be able to do in their own data centers. There’s just no way of doing it. The scale is just not possible. The speed, the technology’s moving, it’s just not possible to do in your own data centers. This is further evidence and impetus for people to move to the cloud quickly, but to understand generative AI is going to change their business over the next many years.
We have OpenAI, which is not available on AWS, Anthropic, which is available on AWS. I’ve been talking to insiders and VC firms in some of the top enterprises, and they all want open, they want choice. Many complain privately they would like to see OpenAI run with Bedrock. Would you ever offer Sam Altman lots of customers for OpenAI via Bedrock?
Sure. I think all customers want to have a choice. I would love to have every Generative AI model that customers are interested and excited about running in Bedrock and AWS.
Open source is growing fast in the generative AI space. Customers and developers also want open source. There’s been a big surge just in the months. It’s the early cloud AI days and you guys have the big models, and the long tail of open source models are emerging. What’s your view on the mix of the models, the big prominence to the open source and the long tail? How do you see the mix playing out?
It’s hard to say. We’ve seen awesome results from some of the distilled open-source models recently. Facebook’s LLaMA model was awesome. I think there’s a new model that just came out this week that’s LightOn, I think, which is a even smaller model that’s outperforming LLaMA now on the open-source world. Totally trained on AWS.
There’s a lot of this interesting innovation that’s going out there. I think there’s also always going to be a need for these really large core models too, that help distill some of these open-source models and specialized models. But it’s such a fast-moving space, it’s hard to say. That’s why I think that the choice is so important. We at AWS prefer to make it really easy for customers to switch horses if they find a one that they like better later.
For startups out there, what’s your advice? The entrepreneurial track is not the same as it was during gen one of cloud. You got to get customers, but scale is a huge thing. How do you see this next-gen wave hitting, what’s your advice to startups and for companies?
The way we think about it is that AWS is a great place for startups and all sorts of customers, actually as a channel to get to customers. The vast majority of enterprises and companies out there are running their businesses in AWS. But we’re not going to go build a broad swath of innovative new technologies. We’ll deliver a lot of stuff, but there’s a lot that we won’t build and partners are key to everything that we do in AWS. We have a lot of programs from Marketplace all the way through to some of our channel programs and certifications to ensure that our partners are available for our customers to use in a really easy-to-use, really easy-to-integrate way.
So I’d encourage all of them to look at some of those programs that we have in the partner ecosystem and in the Marketplace as we’re seeing that that’s one of the ways that a lot of enterprises want to bring these tools together to be able to use a broad swath of things.
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2016 is supposed to be the year that a host of long-gestating technologies finally hit the mainstream. At CES we're told it'll be the year of UHD video, VR headsets, electric cars for the masses and FAA-licensed drones. And we think you can add hydroponics to that list, too.
While the technology for hydroponic farming is hardly new - scientists and stoners have been perfecting it for decades - the world finally appears to be ready to eat plants grown in indoor nutrient baths. Experimental farms are popping up in places like the Tokyo subway, and The New York Times recently profiled two startups who have found a niche supplying fresh lettuce year-round in Alaska.
With recent food safety scares, we've seen an interesting clash between consumers' desire for locally grown organic vegetables and their concern about the potential for food-borne illness from produce grown on small farms. Hydroponics seems like the perfect technology to resolve that conflict, delivering farm-fresh greens grown within the city - perhaps even in the same building as the market - under closely monitored clean-room conditions.
The greatest hurdle to widespread adoption right now is the labor- and energy-intensive nature of hydroponics, but the current boom in robotics and automation innovation could cut those costs dramatically. And with an increasingly unpredictable global climate, the consistency of hydroponic crop quality may turn out to be worth a premium.


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uTalkAlot.com Adds Best Selling Smart Phones and Cell Phones to Product Lineup
uTalkAlot.com is a leading online reseller of cell phones, smart phones, voice and data plans, and mobile accessories such as Bluetooth headsets, chargers, adapters, cases and cell phone holsters.
[USPRwire, Wed Jun 03 2009] uTalkAlot.com, an Authorized Dealer of T-Mobile cell phones and smart phones, announced the addition of several new, best selling smart phones and cell phones to its product lineup. Consumers can now order the BlackBerry® Curve 8900, T-Mobile Dash™, BlackBerry® Pearl Flip 8220, Samsung Behold, and Motorola Zine ZN5 from www.uTalkAlot.com. In addition, with certain handset and smart phone promotions, consumers receive a free cell phone or smartphone and cash back rebates of up to $100.00 when the order is paired with a new voice and data plan.
“We are pleased to add some of the best selling smart phones and cell phones to our product lineup for our customers,” said Dave Enssle, a uTalkAlot.com spokesman. “These new cell phones and smart phones offer some of the most cutting edge features and functionality on the market today. And, by giving away the phones and handsets for free, offering free FedEx shipping, and even including free Bluetooth hands free headsets and car chargers with many model orders, our customers receive tremendous value. We anticipate the addition of the Curve 8900, Dash, Pearl Flip 8220, Samsung Behold, and MotoZine ZN5 will be well received by our customers and visitors to uTalkAlot.com.”
Since launching its site in April 2009, uTalkAlot.com has become one of the leading online retailers for T-Mobile cell phones and smart phones. With the addition of the BlackBerry Curve 8900, Dash, BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220, Samsung Behold, and MotoZine ZN5, uTalkAlot.com now offers the most comprehensive lineup of handsets for consumers to choose from. The company plans to incorporate several more carrier offerings over the course of 2009 in order to provide an even wider selection of cell phones and smart phones for consumers to choose from.
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uTalkAlot.com is a leading online reseller of cell phones, smart phones, voice and data plans, and mobile accessories such as Bluetooth headsets, chargers, adapters, cases and cell phone holsters. The company’s founders have provided small and medium businesses with traditional voice and data solutions since 1995, and wireless solutions since 2003. Through the years, the company's philosophy has always been to provide customers with industry leading products and support. uTalkAlot.com was launched to extend these values to customers and businesses on the web.
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Taiwanese semiconductor company is already building big factory subsidized by Tokyo!
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is considering expanding its production capacity in Japan, people familiar with the matter said, in what would be a move by the world’s largest contract chip maker to reduce geopolitical risk.
The Japanese government has signaled that it would like to expand in the country beyond a factory already under construction, but no decision has been made yet and TSMC is studying the feasibility, WSJ reports
Tweet on TSMC expansion in Japan
Chip Maker TSMC eyes expansion in Japan!
— The_Journalbiz (@the_journalbiz) October 21, 2022
Japan is subsidizing the TSMC Factory
The Taiwanese company, which makes chips for a host of major electronics products including those of Apple Inc., is building its first chip-manufacturing plant in Japan, located on the southern island of Kyushu. The multibillion-dollar plant is subsidized by the Japanese government.
The semiconductor industry has been in upheaval since last year when widespread chip shortages snarled auto making and other industries. At the same time, the U.S. and allies such as Japan have grown concerned about the rise of the Chinese semiconductor industry and the concentration of chip making in Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing claims as part of its territory.
TSMC’s factory under construction in Japan is part of the response to these issues, boosting production capacity in a U.S. ally. The plant is set to focus on less-advanced chips commonly used in autos and components like sensors, and it is scheduled to ship products in late 2024. A company called Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing, majority-owned by TSMC, is building the plant.
Once a world leader in semiconductor manufacturing, Japan has fallen behind Taiwan and the U.S. Tokyo officials have called that a national-security concern and sought to locate more chip making in the country to support other manufacturers such as car makers that need chips.
Last December, Japanese lawmakers approved $5.2 billion, in funding to rebuild the domestic semiconductor industry, part of Tokyo’s goal to increase domestic chip revenue to the equivalent of nearly $100 billion by 2030.


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GENEVA — To rev up its sales engine, P&G Prestige Products is at the ready with a plan to revolutionize the in-store experience.
After studying the fragrance industry for two years — a research project headed by Carolyn Tasted, vice president of global prestige products, market development organization, P&G Prestige Products will unleash its ideas on its retail partners in Western Europe and the U.S.
Though Tasted wouldn't go into details on the new methods P&G Prestige Products would employ, she said the solutions were meant to add verve to the consumer's shopping experience. It is also hoped the plan will blow some innovation into cluttered beauty retail spaces.
"What we are trying to deliver is going from the current environment, to when the consumer walks in the store [and says to herself,] 'This environment is tailor-made for me. I know where to go and it feels special.' I think the fragrance category has lost some of its specialness," said Tasted.
When pressed to describe where P&G Prestige Products' new strategies fit in the process of buying a fragrance, Tasted offered two tactics.
The first, alignment of particular brands together in-store: "The consumer thinks about certain groups of brands similarly. How do you think about grouping those brands in ways that the consumer more understands and connects with them versus randomly?" said Tasted.
Another approach was to give the consumer — who de-selects what he or she doesn't want upon entering the store — navigational cues to streamline the de-selecting process. "How do you use the brands and the imagery in the store to take away so you know where to go to?" added Tasted.
Among others, these policies, claimed Tasted, would be adapted and tailored differently to P&G Prestige Products retail partners. "It has to reflect the retailers equity, it will never look like a P&G solution."
In Italy the P&G Prestige Products revitalization plan seems to have already kicked off. Department store chain Coin, which is in the process of giving its 40 stores a facelift, told WWD it worked with P&G Prestige Products in a new way to launch Gucci by Gucci.Paolo Valerio, category manager of beauty and wellness for Coin, said a test run for the launch accompaniment strategy took place in the Rome and Brescia stores in late November. Valerio explained a "Gucci fragrance expert" with a microphone gave a 15-minute speech about the fragrance to customers in the department store's perfumery space, explaining the scent's olfactory pyramid and allowing prospective buyers to sniff its notes.
"It went so well, customers stopped what they were doing and went over to the presentation podium and listened intently. We sold about 2.5 times what we would normally sell on a fragrance's launch day," said Valerio. "We certainly will be doing this next year," he added.
Coin's simple sales technique underlines other nuggets of information Tasted gleaned in the course of the research, which she reckoned to be the biggest global fragrance study. According to P&G Prestige Products, 70 percent of the purchase decision is made in the store, 59 percent of shoppers leave the store without buying and 100,000 samples are given out in each door annually.
"If the store environment is difficult, it's challenging for the consumer to shop in. If you eliminate the barriers, then your launches, your brands and your initiatives have more room to grow. They can breathe," said Tasted.
@fearofgod and @maxfieldla have teamed up on a pop-up installation. The store, located in the gallery space across from Maxfield’s Melrose Ave location, is the site of the brand’s House of God pop-up in which Fear of God founder @jerrylorenzo has created a church-inspired installation. A dozen vintage church pews sit in front of an LED screen playing 90s gospel singers in an effort to re-create an environment akin to a Southern Baptist Church, Lorenzo explained. Read more about the pop-up on WWD.com #wwdfashion (📷: Jennifer Johnson)
Known for his sleek, sophisticated American glamour, Norman Norell is the subject of an upcoming exhibition at @fitnyc. “Norell: Dean of American Fashion,” which runs from February 9 through April 14, will feature approximately 100 ensembles and accessories. His best work is exemplified by the designer’s glittering “mermaid” gowns frosted with thousands of hand-sewn sequins – like the one pictured. (📷: William Helburn) #wwdfashion
For pre-fall 2018, @balmain didn’t let go of the glitz. A crystal embroidered baseball jacket priced at around $40,000 hangs in the “couture” section of the brand’s first men’s pre-collection. Sporting the words “Balmain Army” across the back, the item took around two months to make. “When it was completed, it was like Christmas, it was like, ‘It’s done, it’s exactly what I wanted,’” said Balmain’s creative director @olivier_rousteing during a tour of the collection in a Paris showroom on Monday. #wwdfashion
Eighty degree temperatures and outdoor installations at the annual Art Basel Miami Beach called for bright, elevated beachwear. See more street style pictures on WWD.com. #theyarewearing #ABMB (📷: @lifeinreverie)
Following September’s emotional tribute to her brother Gianni, Donatella Versace wanted to bring the spring show’s deep sense of intimacy to her @versace_official pre-fall collection. Donatella found inspiration in Versace Palazzo in Milan and from Gianni’s opulent apartment. Archival patterns and new motifs were splashed on silk shirtdresses and fitted jersey frocks. See the rest of the photos on WWD.com. #wwdfashion
Demna Gvasalia continues to shake up the Paris fashion calendar — and experiment with new runway timetables for his @vetements_official brand. WWD has learned that Vetements plans to stage its next coed show for the fall 2018 season on January 19 during Men’s Fashion Week in the French capital. Details about the timing and venue have not been confirmed — stay tuned on WWD.com to catch the latest. #wwdnews (📷: @giovanni_giannoni_photo)
@zacposen's go-to holiday gift? Cookies! "I'll usually bake cookies and send them as a gift," said the designer, who recently released his cookbook "Cooking With Zac: Recipes from Rustic to Refined." Get the recipe for his Brown Butter-Chocolate Chip Cookies via link in bio 🍪🍪🍪 #wwdeye #cookingwithzac
For @monsemaison’s pre-fall 2018 collection, Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim honed in on the brand’s many signatures — men’s wear, which was tweaked and feminized through deconstruction, proportion play and lots of bare shoulders. See the rest of the photos on WWD.com #wwdfashion (📷: George Chinese)
On Friday night, @yohjiyamamotoofficial received the Design for Asia Lifetime Achievement Award in Hong Kong. The 75-year-old designer has been celebrated for many years and is best known for his dark and avant-garde tailoring. “In my long career, in design, architecture, [I’ve been to] so many parties, this is the very first time that I have such a warm feeling, I really appreciate this,” Yamamoto said. #wwdfashion (📷: @dominiquemaitre)


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Join Newsday's car culture discussion.
THE CAR AND ITS OWNER
1967 Oldsmobile 442 coupe owned by Michael Federico
WHAT MAKES IT INTERESTING
When Pontiac introduced its GTO muscle car in mid-1964, Oldsmobile quickly went along for the ride with its own muscular 442 (“four four two”) option, stuffing a 310-horsepower V-8 engine and a police suspension package into its mid-sized F-85 and Cutlass models. The offering was...Read more »
Saturday, Oct. 27: Luxury Classic Car Show; noon-4 p.m., spectators free; Main St./Rte. 25A, Cold Spring Harbor; info: www.howl-ween.com . . .
Saturday, Oct. 27-Sunday, Oct. 28: NY Region Sports Car Club of America Autocross to benefit United Behind Chelsea charity; 8 a.m.-4 p.m. both days, members $55 single day or $90 both days, non-members $70 single day or $105 both days, spectators free;...Read more »
What Apple’s iPad Mini event yesterday was to tech geeks, General Motors’ news conference today in Pontiac, Mich., proved to be to auto enthusiasts. The manufacturer unveiled the new engine for its seventh-generation Chevy Corvette, set to be released Jan. 13. The event prompted the Detroit Free Press to dub today “an internal-combustion holiday.”
The new small block LT1 engine is remarkably...Read more »
Long Island drivers are woefully unaware of the number one precaution they can take to prepare their cars for winter weather, according to one car-care expert.
Falling temperatures and icy conditions wreak havoc on cars, and many drivers respond by bringing their cars to technicians for checkups. But in addition to peering under the hood, drivers simply need to check their tires. Swapping...Read more »
Here's a look at the auto shows taking place on Long Island for the weekend of Oct. 21, 2012 and beyond:
Saturday, Oct. 20: Antique Car & Fashion Show hosted by Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council & featuring pre-1949 vehicles; 9 a.m.-4 p.m., spectators $6, with period dress $4, under 13 free; Village Green, Main St., Cutchogue; info: 516-524-3077 . . . Saturday, Oct. 20-Sunday,...Read more »
THE CAR AND ITS OWNER 1966 Corvair Monza convertible owned by Peter Sutich
WHAT MAKES IT INTERESTING Political activist Ralph Nader once questioned the safety of early Corvairs, but there’s no shortage of fans for these innovative, rear-engined cars today. TV host Jay Leno owns a ’66 coupe and says the car “still drives a bit like a ‘60s-era Porsche 911.” Sutich finds the criticism an advantage....Read more »
THE CAR AND ITS OWNER 1959 MGA owned by Mitchell Landress
WHAT MAKES IT INTERESTING With its sleek lines borrowed from LeMans race cars, the British MGA – sold from 1955 to 1962 -- was a radical departure from its predecessor, the TF. Today, this model is an affordable and coveted alternative to other British roadsters, such as Austin-Healeys and Jaguar XK-Es, which have been priced out of...Read more »
THE CAR AND ITS OWNER 1952 Dodge M37 weapons carrier owned by Paul Dooling
WHAT MAKES IT INTERESTING Few classic rides are as rugged as the M37, built, according to Dooling, from 1951 to 1968 as a new and improved version of the World War II Dodge truck and used in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Today, they make great collectibles among enthusiastic followers of vintage military vehicles...Read more »
When GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney slammed President Barack Obama during last week's debate for pouring some $90 billion in to clean energy "losers," Obama supporters were quick to point out that Elon Musk's electric car company Tesla, included among those "losers," has actually proven to be a winner. Indeed, the company's share price is up more than 50 percent since...Read more »
THE CAR AND ITS OWNER 1928 Model A Ford Tudor sedan owned by Sal Miliotto
WHAT MAKES IT INTERESTING By the mid-1920s, Henry Ford’s legendary Model T was getting long in the tooth and Americans clamored for a more advanced, yet affordable new car. They got it in the form of the hugely popular Model A, built from 1928 to 1931.
“The Model A was introduced as the ‘New Ford Car,’” says Miliotto,...Read more »


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Middling reviews and limited distribution may be putting a damper on sales of Microsoft’s Surface tablet, according to brokerage firm Detwiler Fenton.
The Boston-based firm estimates that Microsoft will sell between 500,000 and 600,000 Surface with Windows RT tablets in the December quarter. The fact that Surface is only available through Microsoft’s online store and small number of retail shops is a big factor, the firm said, and mixed reviews haven’t helped.
I’d take that estimate with a grain of salt, as it’s not clear where those numbers come from – certainly not from Microsoft. Still, it’s not the only hint of low sales for the Surface. Last month, Digitimes (itself an iffy source for rumors) claimed that Microsoft cut its Surface RT orders by half, from four million to two million, citing supply chain sources.
Microsoft hasn’t revealed any official sales figures, but last month CEO Steve Ballmer was quoted by Le Parisien as saying Surface RT sales started off “modestly.” Microsoft then claimed that Ballmer was actually talking about distribution, rather than sales.
So in a sense, Ballmer and Detwiler Fenton are saying similar things: Distribution of Microsoft’s Surface with Windows RT tablet has been modest, so unless Surface is flying off Microsoft Store shelves – indications are that it isn’t – sales aren’t going to be stellar.
It seems to me that people are at least aware of the Surface. I’ve had friends and acquaintances ask me about “that clicking thing” – a reference to Microsoft’s ubiquitous TV commercial – but I doubt that many average consumers are seeking out Microsoft Stores even if they have one in their area. (For what it’s worth, I’ve been telling these people to at least wait and see whether the Surface with Windows 8 Probetter suits their needs.)
Microsoft has promised to make Surface available in “more countries and in more stores” soon, but it’s not clear whether that includes other retailers, or just more of its own stores. If sales are as slow as Detwiler Fenton estimates, it may soon be time to bring the Surface to more outlets.
Jared Newman has been helping folks make sense of technology for over a decade, writing for PCWorld, TechHive, and elsewhere. He also publishes two newsletters, Advisorator for straightforward tech advice and Cord Cutter Weekly for saving money on TV service.


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Evidently, Starbucks (The third place) wants to also bring together that and the digital space. You can read their news article on their site here.
Not bad right? When their customers say we want a simplified wifi offering – on MyStarbucksIdea.com, they listened. It’s always nice when the company listens to it’s customers. Well, that’s what Starbucks says anyway. I’m sure it helps that everyone else around is offering free wifi and they were being left in the dust. Don’t get me wrong. People were still buying their coffee and hanging out at the Third Place.
Soon though, the Third Place will be more connected to the Digital Space. I can’t wait to see what that will look like.


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The supermarket said around £4.7bn of the losses were the result of the fall in property value of its UK stores, 43 of which it said would close earlier this month; a further 49 planned outlets are to be mothballed.
The decline in the value of its property portfolio comes as a direct result of falling footfall in many of its out of town superstores (such as the Tesco Extra pictured). As a result of changing shopping habits and a move away from shopping at out-of-town sheds, a fifth of the retailing giant’s floorspace is “underused”, according to analysts.
Chief executive Dave Lewis admitted it had been “a very difficult year for Tesco”. Experts regard that as an understatement – it’s been a catastrophic year for the supermarket giant which is still being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office after it overstated its half-year profit forecast in August 2014 by £263m; it also has a large pension fund deficit it needs to address.
Annual group trading profit, which counts sales through the supermarket’s tills was also down 60% at £1.4bn, compared with £3.3bn a year earlier. UK like-for-like sales excluding fuel declined by 3.6% in the year.
Marc Kimsey, senior trader at Accendo Markets, described the results as “another shocker” from Tesco. He added: “This set of results disappoints on every level – the pre-tax loss exceeds the City’s already dire expectations and the trading profit has fallen by almost 60% in just a year.
“Traders are now discounting positive management rhetoric regarding a ‘turnaround plan’. Only the numbers will do now and sadly, they are not only disastrous, but deteriorating.”
Meanwhile, Paul Thomas of the retail consultants Retail Remedy, described the results as not only one of the biggest losses in British corporate history, “it’s a black hole that risks consuming a once all-powerful brand”.
He said: “To say Tesco’s chief executive has a mountain to climb to reverse its decline is to underplay the scale of the task. Dave Lewis must feel like an ant scaling the Himalayas.”
But Professor Heiner Evanschitzky, professor and chair of marketing at Aston Business School, warned against writing Tesco off.
“These results are evidence of the typical ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ approach taken by any incoming CEO – better to get the bad news out now and show that you’re overhauling the business than let it haunt you any longer than necessary,” he said. “But the signs are positive for Tesco under the leadership of Dave Lewis; although trading profits are down 60% from last year, this is still a substantial profit in a time of cut-throat competition from the discounters.
“You don’t have to be perfect to win in this market. You just need to be better than some of the others – and its well within Tesco’s reach to beat the likes of Asda and Morrisons. They just need to slim down and go back to basics – solid customer service, in locations customers want them.”
He added: “Too much floor space and a misplaced focus on price are huge factors behind Tesco’s losses. Our shopping behaviour has changed enormously in recent years; we get what we need, when we need it at convenience-style stores. The age of the big weekly shop at the out-of-town hypermarket is over. As a result, the value of Tesco’s property has plummeted.”
Professor Evanschitzky urged new Tesco boss Dave Lewis to slim down the business to build the brand back up in the coming months and years:
“Lewis must focus on Tesco’s core business and core markets. Close down unprofitable stores, rent out excess floor space to other retailers to great shops within a shop and stop trying to battle it out with the discounters over price, a war that you’re bound to lose. Give shoppers want they want – a strong company that offers quality, convenience and good service.”
In a further sign of the Big Four’s woes, Sainsbury’s, the third-biggest supermarket, today said it was cutting 800 department and deputy manager jobs in a cost-cutting drive.


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The next generation of Google’s Android operating system, due for
release next month, will encrypt data by default for the first
time, the company said Thursday, raising yet another barrier to
police gaining access to the troves of personal data typically
kept on smartphones.
Android has offered optional encryption on some devices since
2011, but security experts say few users have known how to turn on
the feature. Now Google is designing the activation procedures for
new Android devices so that encryption happens automatically; only
somebody who enters a device’s password will be able to see the
pictures, videos and communications stored on those smartphones.
Good news for everyone, but seriously — how many years until a majority of Android users are running Android L or higher? Five?


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Battlegrounds mobile attracting over 10 million daily active users
Battlegrounds mobile The mobile version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has surpassed 10 million daily active users (DAU).
Developer PUBG Corp and publisher Tencent broke the news in a tweet, and explained the latest figures don’t include users in China — where the game has been targeted by hackers and cheaters.
The popular battle royale title landed on smartphones in March this year, at around the same time as its main competitor Fortnite.
Although it’s not clear how Fortnite is faring in terms of DAUs, we do know Epic’s zany last-man-standing effort has earned $50 million in under two months, with players spending an average of $1 million per day so far.
Anayltics outfit Sensor Tower believes Fortnite is more effective at monetizing its users than Battlegrounds, with Fortnite employing limited-time content drops over the more conventional cosmetic loot boxes seen in Battlegrounds.


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Timeline Television to launch multi-million pound OB truck
Timeline Television will launch its multi-million pound, state-of-the-art outside broadcast truck on the piazza in MediaCityUK on Tuesday 16th May.
The truck, named UHD2, has been designed and built by Timeline Television and includes the latest IP infrastructure and HDR technology. It is a triple expanding IP 4K HDR 32 camera outside broadcast truck.
"This new outside broadcast truck will provide fully uncompressed IP capability to broadcasters, " said Daniel McDonnell, MD of MediaCity-based Timeline Television.
"For our customers, it means we can scale and expand our facilities with ease to meet their demands. The IP technology will provide support for up to 32, 4K UHD cabled Sony 4300 cameras and 12, 4K UHD EVS servers.”
Timeline has worked closely with SAM to build the brand new unit.
Timeline’s outside broadcast fleet and team will be on the piazza in MediaCityUK on Tuesday 16th May, from 12-6pm, providing tours and demonstrations.
Other OB trucks on display will include Europe’s first 4K UHD truck, UHD1; 4K production and uplink truck, RF1; mid-sized 4K truck, OB16; and the ultra-compact Streamline.


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160 insights found
08 November 2019
A very British bounce?
There are potential opportunities in UK equities. However, these are dependent on the post-election and post-Brexit environment.
07 November 2019
Singles Day: An e-commerce retail phenomenon that mirrors China’s growth
How did Singles Day become the world’s largest online shopping day? How does it influence e-commerce and digitalisation?
08 November 2019
Just Transition: Managing the social impact of a low-carbon transition
‘Just transition’ is the name given to an emerging concept taking into account the social impact on these workers and communities of transitioning to a low-carbon economy.
01 November 2019
Boom, bust or blah!
The end-cycle slowdown could still end up in a recession in the next year or so. But it would be an odd one. Real rates never got anywhere near as high as before previous recessions in the US and the ...
31 October 2019
Singapore knocks US off top spot as the world’s ‘most competitive economy’
Which nation hosts the world’s most competitive economy? When it comes to economic stability, infrastructure and innovation, the outright winner is…Singapore, according to the World Economic Forum (W ...
23 October 2019
October Investment Strategy - Re-balance sheet policy
With some progress on the trade war and Brexit, some tail risks are receding. But we are far from resolution.
20 October 2019
AXA IM on China and Asian Market – Oct 2019
AXA IM’s Senior Emerging Asia Economist, Aidan Yao, shares his latest views on China and Asian Market.
11 October 2019
Markets have performed well this year despite all the uncertainties. A clearing of some of those is possible in the weeks ahead (possible I said, not probable). If that does happen, risk is likely to ...
09 October 2019
How Asia’s investors can help combat climate change
We look into the state of climate finance across the Asia-Pacific region and delve into future trends for investment and lending activity.


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Long assumed to be spambots, both accounts have spawned a meme-like status across the internet and garnered a cult-like following for years. Let's be clear: this isn't mainstream internet; we're talking about deep, underground web stuff.
Pronunciation Book explained how to enunciate things like "48" and "Jesus", while Horse_ebooks tweeted bits of non-attributed text that sometimes looked as though it were cropped mid-sentence. The randomness and strangeness of everything made many assume there could be no human behind it all.
Speculation pointed to a machine glitch from, perhaps, ad companies or eBook sellers. The trolls of the web were in awe and debated on the accounts' origin and oddity. Well, much to their disappointment, the accounts' anonymous creators have finally revealed themselves.
And, no, they aren't robots. Say hello to the weird: Jacob Bakkila and Thomas Bender announced at Manhattan's Fitzroy Gallery on Tuesday that they owned both accounts and have secretly maintained them for four years as an online art project.
The New Yorker reported that Bakkila, who works at BuzzFeed, and Bender, a former employee of Howcast, will no longer carry on with their ruse. The duo compared the end of their online art project to painting, noting a painter doesn't work on one piece of art for forever. But Bakkila and Bender do have more strangeness in the works.
Their next online art project is a new website, called Bear Stearns Bravo, which The New Yorker described as a "choose-your-own-adventure interactive-video piece". They've also revealed their actual identities as part of an art gallery at FitzRoy, called Horse_ebooks 2, where Bakkila and friends are answering calls from 10am to 9pm EST.
The phone number to reach Bakkila is 213-444-0102. Take note: the stilted jargon he'll utter is similar to the content previously posted to the horse_ebooks Twitter account. He and Bender even published a new video to the Pronunciation Book channel, clarifying how to pronounce Horse_ebooks. It also hints at the language behind @Horse_ebooks and the meaning of Bear Stearns Bravo.
Gawker also has a video of the Horse_ebooks 2 art gallery. Check it out if you want to delve even further into the complexities of this retired internet phenomenon.


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We all know that new-car smell – a cocktail of mostly poisonous chemicals, apparently – but what about that new Mac smell?
Well, it seems that some people have noticed and liked the scent, and now three Australian artists say they’ve put it in a bottle.
Melbourne-based artists Gavin Bell, Jarrah de Kuijer and Simon McGlinn have identified the components of the new-Mac smell as plastic wrapping, printer’s ink, paper, plastic and the smell of the aluminum laptop itself.
To find and blend these smells, they went to a company called Air Aroma.
“The scent requested by our client was quite unusual, so we contacted our fragrance suppliers in the South of France to send over samples of fragrances with the aroma of glue, plastic, rubber and paper,” says the company.
“Air Aroma fragrance designers then used these samples as ingredients to create a range of signature blend fragrances. The blends, each with unique recipes were then tested in the Air Aroma laboratory until a final fragrance was ultimately selected.”
If, though, you’re thinking that this is your loved one’s next Christmas present sorted out, there’s disappointment in store. The boys have no plans to release the scent as a commercial product, but plan instead to use it to perfume their next exhibition in Melbourne next month.


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Announced just last night was the news of Kendall Jenner gracing the cover of the new US Vogue. The September issue of Vogue magazine is pretty much the highlight of the fashion year; to say it's a big deal for 20-year-old model Kendall to be on the cover is an understatement.
We certainly are ridiculously excited to get our hands on this issue, so it's no wonder Kendall’s family were even more so.
This quirky little video, released yesterday, shows Kendall wearing a new season floaty Zimmermann number and the Kardashian-Jenner clique’s response to the news...
As always, the fam had a trick up their sleeve! Check out the video below for more:


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Kernel manages The Bank of Ireland Seed Fund, which led the syndicated investment in the company.
FeedHenry was founded in 2008, when it emerged from the Telecommunications Software & System Group in the Waterford Institute of Technology.
Its cloud platform enables the development of mobile apps for business and enterprise markets.
Niall Olden, managing partner at Kernel Capital, says, ‘With smartphone and tablet devices now outnumbering PC sales, we recognise the opportunity that FeedHenry is capitalising upon in the growing market for mobile business applications.’
FeedHenry chief executive Cathal McGloin says its ‘high calibre investor base’ will enable the business to increase its workforce.
The Enterprise Ireland-backed company has created 22 jobs in the past year and expects to create another 15 this year, according to a statement.
FeedHenry recently closed deals in Ireland, the UK and the US worth over $1 million (£610,175).
Head of high potential start-ups at Enterprise Ireland, Greg Treston, explains, ‘Our HPSU programme supporting new companies with an export focus is a key priority for Enterprise Ireland and is fundamental to building the next generation of world class Irish companies.’
Venture capital fund Kernel Capital has a portfolio of companies across technology, life science and general industry. Kernel and its associate life science investment firm Seroba Kernel have €196 million under management across multiple funds.


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Hilton has launched Curio, its new boutique brand, one of two new flags promised for launch this year. The newly listed group is looking to plug gaps in its brand portfolio as it continues to drive for growth for its existing offerings.
Curio aims to draw together independent hotels in the four and five star segments, under a brand umbrella that aims to celebrate difference, while providing the assurance that Hilton has given each property its seal of approval. The Curio name was chosen, said Hilton, as a way of suggesting “something of interest, unique or even rare”.
Several US hotels have been signed to launch the brand, including the SLS in Las Vegas (the refurbished and rebranded Sahara), which launches in September; the historic Sam Houston hotel in Houston; and the Franklin Hotel in North Carolina. In 2015, the Alex Johnson near Mount Rushmore will link with Curio after a refurbishment. In 2016, there are plans for a new build hotel in Portland to open as a Curio.
Hilton has said the focus will be on mature markets, adding properties in the US and Europe. Media reports suggest international destinations where Curios are in discussion include Doha and Dubai, and ultimately Hilton has said the brand could support “hundreds” of member hotels.
“Our customers and owners have expressed strong interest in a brand from us that includes hotels that can retain their unique identity but also deliver the many benefits of our system, including our Hilton HHonors guest loyalty program,” said Hilton CEO Christopher Nassetta. “That desire, combined with the current size of the independent hotel market and demand for differentiated hotel stays around the world, made for the right timing for this launch. Curio is an exciting new brand for us — one of two unique concepts we’ll introduce this year.”
Jim Holthouser, executive vice president, global brands, Hilton Worldwide, said, “Curio expands our portfolio to a total of eleven exceptional brands and creates additional opportunities to serve our existing customers even better, attract new customers and grow our pipeline. With Curio, we can help owners leverage our scale, scope and expertise while keeping intact each hotel’s individual character.”
In addition to Curio, Hilton has promised to reveal details later in the year of its new budget level brand for “tech savvy” younger generation travellers, lined up against rivals such as Marriott’s new Moxy.
HA Perspective [by Chris Bown]: Hilton’s announcement follows hard on the heels of Rezidor revealing Quorvus, the most recent launch of a boutique brand by a major hotel group, gathering independents under its wing.
With its finances now in the public domain, Hilton is under a new pressure to explain its strategies, with shareholders and analysts poring over growth plans and the pace at which they deliver returns. Hence Curio is announced, along with a new generation Y proposition due for reveal later this year. And it wants to make up for time lost when its earlier attempt to get into the lifestyle space in 2009, with Denizen, was thwarted among allegations of corporate espionage; and a ruling that forced Hilton to sit on the sidelines until 2013.
Curio steps into a space where Marriott already has Autograph, with 62 hotels – mainly in the US – signed, Starwood has 102 properties in its Luxury Collection, and Quorvus is looking to gain traction. With a similar philosophy, albeit outside the luxury category, Choice is also growing its Ascend collection. An independent looking for affiliation has some choice.
The Curio launch suggests hotel groups are detecting a core of customers who want something a bit more individual and locally connected than their chain properties; a backlash against interiors that can look and feel the same anywhere in the world. Or it could simply be that this is the ultimate expression of asset-light, delivering a sales and marketing support package and loyalty programme to independent owners that guarantees them more guests and revenue.
Is this a lifeline for independents, one that will stop their predicted general demise? Linking with a major global brand is one solution, but not necessarily the only one. Smaller umbrella marketing groups such as Small Luxury Hotels and Preferred have reported strong figures recently, suggesting they are more fleet of foot when it comes to marketing in the increasingly online world. They are also growing their own loyalty programmes.
[Andrew Sangster adds] The emergence of what are sometimes called “affiliation brands” like Curio or Marriott’s Autograph further puts the spotlight on what hotel brands are for.
The key short-term attraction is the big reservation system that delivers the heads in beds. When coupled with an effective loyalty scheme it is easy to see why hotel owners’ heads are turned.
But how effective are hotel brands in driving demand? And how effective will they continue to be? The Preferred Hotel Group in June publicised a report it commissioned from HVS which showed that its hotel brands were achieving a revpar premium over competitors, many of whom (in fact 60% of the room stock) were the global majors.
Leaving aside the issue of how the peer hotels were selected and whether the ranking is fair (note that we are not saying it is either fair or unfair), the fact that a consortium is prepared to make the case of its outperformance indicates that the global majors are hardly leaving their rivals in the dust.
To date, the strategy of the majors has been to rely on their traditional demand drivers, using rate parity as a tool to ensure that their pricing structure is not under mined by online rivals.
This strategy is beginning to unravel. More and more, the global majors are intimating that maintaining the same price across all channels is no longer appropriate. One idea that is being kicked around at Hilton’s HQ is to sell certain brands through particular channels, restricting the availability in the others.
“Ralph Lauren does not sell its different ranges at all stores, it has some for the mass market and some that are exclusive,” explained one Hilton executive to Hotel Analyst.
While global majors are not publicly admitting it, the harsh reality is that they have fallen massively behind in the race for transient travellers relative to the much higher spending online intermediaries. And increasingly the group and business segments are slipping out of the grasp of hoteliers.
The role of hotel brands is being rethought. This is going to reshape the industry just as much the bricks and brains separation that began a couple of decades ago.


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Google announces Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro launch date following two months of teasers
Google has finally confirmed when it will launch the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. The company lifted the lid on the Pixel 6 series in August, followed by TV spots, billboards, in-store teasers and even a YouTube video based around potato chips.
Now, the company has revealed that it has scheduled the 'Pixel Fall Launch' for October 19, a date that has been mentioned several times already. According to Google's 'Pixel Event With Google' website, the October 19 event will commence at 10:00 PT, or 17:00 UTC. Incidentally, this website is interactive and can be navigated using your spacebar.
As expected, Google will host its October 19 event via YouTube. The event is a pre-recorded live stream; there will be no in-person event. 9to5Google points out that the ASL version is already on YouTube, albeit marked as private for the time being.
Presumably, Google will announce how much the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro will cost in two weeks time, along with various other details about both devices that it has held back so far. A recent Google Camera app update hinted that Google will start shipping the Pixel 6 series roughly a week after its October 19 event, for reference. Pricing for both models has also leaked.
Google via 9to5Google


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This is the new impressive Aston Martin Vanquish S with sharper styling, better handling and a boost to the engine’s power output.
The latest addition to what has been an illustrious model line-up sees a natural evolution of the Vanquish to the S specification with greater attention paid to the car’s aerodynamics and chassis to deliver a scintillating performance and more intense driving thrills.
An important part of this is the 6.0 litre V12 which has seen its power boosted from 573 PS to 600 PS with better throttle response. Aston Martin has also introduced a better breathing intake system with a larger inlet manifolds to boost the volume of air flowing around the engine when it’s running at high revs.
The Aston Martin Vanquish S features
In addition, to help control all of this power, the Aston Martin Vanquish S features a recalibration of its eight-speed automatic transmission for faster gearshifting and there’s more refinement at low speeds.
Aston Martin says its Vanquish S will deliver a better level of precision and the engine’s response will be immediate.
The new car also has a better suspension and spring rates with antiroll bars that have been re-tuned to help deliver a keener edge when the driver selects the sporting driving mode.
Visual aspects that help set the Vanquish S apart
One of the visual aspects that help set the Vanquish S apart is the new aerodynamic package which makes great use of exposed carbon fibre, a new rear diffuser and a revised front splitter helps deliver better reduction in frontal lift without affecting drag.
Drivers also get a car with a striking set of new quad exhaust outlets and the Vanquish S has a more aggressive appearance from the sporting GT production model.
Among the options available are new forged five-spoke wheels, a new painted graphics pack and carbon fibre bonnet louvres. Inside the cabin, options include new quilted leather seats and new finishes and materials including a carbon fibre fascia panel.
Get this car on personal contract hire
Aston Martin says the second generation of its Vanquish has delivered engineering advances including all-carbon fibre bodywork with the new car distinguishing itself from the firm’s new DB 11.
Available in both Volante and Coupe variants, the Aston Martin Vanquish S prices start from £199,950 with deliveries starting in December to lucky customers.


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A quarter of us have had our current account compromised - and the fraudsters have stolen an average of £828 each. While most people eventually get their money back, an alarming one in five never get the cash refunded, because the bank decides they were in some way to blame.
The research, by uSwitch, found that online banking fraud increased by nearly two-thirds last year, making it the fastest growing type of fraud. Two fifths of people think they are now more likely to be the victim of current account fraud than any other kind of crime.
The issue is becoming even more alarming with the fall in interest rates on savings accounts. The fact that some current accounts offer better interest rates than savings accounts mean that increasingly people are likely to be holding hundreds or even thousands of pounds in savings in their current account. It means that even more cash is vulnerable when they are the victim of fraud.
The rapid rise in sophisticated fraud – a scam is now committed in the UK every 15 seconds – is leaving 59% of victims feeling increasingly helpless, as they believe there is nothing they could do to prevent it taking place.
uSwitch.com is calling on banks to introduce a 24-hour cooling off period when a consumer transfers money over a pre-set amount to a new account. However, in the interim, there are nine steps well worth taking anyway.
1. Make sure anything with your name, address, or any other personal details on is shredded before you throw it away. This is absolutely essential with any correspondence from the bank too.
2. Take steps to make sure your post is safe - and delivered somewhere secure. If you live in a block of flats, consider how you can secure your mail -or consider having sensitive items delivered elsewhere.
3. When you move house, make sure your post is forwarded for at least six months, and take care to inform absolutely every business you have dealings with of your new address.
4. Be aware of when you are expecting things like statements, new cheque books and new cards - so you are aware if they go astray in the post before they reach you.
5. Never give any of your personal details out to anyone over the phone or on the internet - even if they claim to be your bank or the police.
6. Be aware that if you are a victim of fraud, your bank will not contact you and ask for personal details - or set up a new account and get you to transfer your money into it over the phone. These are all lies told by scammers to take your money.
7. Check your bank statements carefully to make sure you recognise each transaction.
8. Check your credit record regularly - as it will include a note of every bit of debt and every financial product you have. Make sure there's nothing unexpected there.
9. If in doubt, contact your bank. If there's anything at all that seems strange - from a rogue entry on your statement to an unusual phone call - get in touch with your bank immediately and let them know. They would always much rather have a false alarm than you push it to the back of your mind and become a victim of fraud.


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White papers, case studies, technical articles, and blog posts relating to
Updated: 54 min 33 sec ago
Also known as private browsing or porn mode, your browser privacy setting has all sorts of useful applications that have nothing to do with hiding the consumption of adult content.
Apple and Samsung are part of group working on a standard to ensure Digital Key will be reliable and unhackable.
Tesla accuses former employee of hacking, stealing data, and leaking false information to the media.
Among the big elephant platform providers, Hortonworks remains just about the last one not shy of having Hadoop associated with its name. But after this week's DataWorks Summit, it's apparent that Hortonworks and data warehousing providers are aiming to play the same Switzerland of analytics in an increasingly cloud-centric world.
You'll need to wade through Cisco's advisories to work out if software you're running is vulnerable or already fixed.
Closing in on $100 million in funding, Bossa Nova is helping brick-and-mortar compete with Amazon
Amid recent political upheaval, Catalonia in northeastern Spain is bringing together its security initiatives.
Cloud computing can't fix everything but it can be a key element of business transformation if handled well.
Learning from previous cyber attacks, and understanding what is coming next is key to keeping your data safe.
Are you connected to your colleagues on social media? Should you be? To avoid uncomfortable encounters, perhaps you need to rethink the connection, according to a new study.
When it comes to cloud services and software-as-a-service (SaaS), we're all familiar with the usual players. But there's a huge world of opportunity and available resources beyond Google, Dropbox, Salesforce, Amazon, Microsoft and even beyond storage and server services.
Business users adored their hardware QWERTY BlackBerry keyboards, but most of the world has moved to on-screen keyboards over the last decade. The KEY2 provides the best physical keyboard, but that comes with some compromises.
Everybody knows that 12345 is a bad password. But what they're using instead isn't much stronger
Teradata said SAP built HANA using its intellectual property and now is trying to block out its customers from accessing their ERP data.
AMD did something that was long overdue -- it upended a stagnant and complacent server market, and all in a year.
The council-owned entity is looking to put its data to good use, embarking on a project with US-based Machine Zone to 'gamify' public transport.
Mendix Assist provides 90% accuracy on next-step suggestions while building out an enterprise app.


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It’s official: Orange (www.orange.com) has formally launched its mobile HD voice in the UK. And there’s a new phone manufacturer in the mobile HD voice mix as well.
Covered by BBC News and V3.co.uk, there’s not a lot new, with a rehash of the trials that took place over the summer in the UK and how Moldova got HD voice first and that Orange will not be charging extra for HD voice service.
However, three Nokia handsets – X6, E5, N5230 – will be joined by the Samsung OmniPro in initially supporting mobile HD voice in the form of the AMR-WB codec on Orange’s 3G network. Previous announcements have listed Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets, so Samsung is the third on-the-record handset vendor supporting AMR-WB for voice calls.
Former T-Mobile customers may not be happy either; the service will not initially be available on the old T-Mobile network since the Orange and T-Mobile networks haven’t been merged together in the UK.
An Orange spokesperson expects mobile HD voice to be a standard offering on all networks in about two years.


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Now paralyzed from the neck down, former IndyCar driver Sam Schmidt is looking for a different type of victory at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Wednesday, when he will become the first person in the nation to receive a restricted driver’s license for a semi-autonomous vehicle.
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Helped by a $134,000 grant, Henderson will create a step-by-step response plan to battle cyberthreats.
Samsung plans to issue a software update for its recalled Galaxy Note 7 smartphones that will prevent them from overheating by limiting battery recharges to 60 percent.
The drone industry is in its infancy, which experts say makes now the right time to talk about workforce diversity.
Owners of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd Galaxy Note 7 smartphones should stop using the devices and turn them off because of the threat of a battery fire, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said on Friday.
Commercial-drone operators have received the green light to make money using drones and to fly in specific areas — now they are hungry for more.
Email and password data for more than 68 million Dropbox users is for sale in the darknet marketplace. The data set, which is from a 2012 breach, includes users’ email addresses as well as obscured passwords.
Apple drew back the curtain on the iPhone 7, revealing several expected changes — including water-resistant features and the absence of a dedicated headset jack — marking an evolution rather than a stunning breakthrough for the flagship smartphone line.
When Apple shows off its latest iPhone on Wednesday, it will answer a question it hasn’t had to address in years: “What’s it putting in the box?” (Besides the iPhone itself, that is.)
Ten video gamers will take on Formula E racing drivers in a virtual ‘ePrix’ in Las Vegas in January with $1 million in prize money to be won, organizers of the electric series announced on Thursday.


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The omni-channel beauty products seller has bumped up its valuation expectation to over $7 billion as it prepares to hit the street next week. It has also acquired direct-to-consumer brand Dot & Key
October 22, 2021
4 Min Read
After the successful listings of Zomato in India and Freshworks in the US, the next set of India’s most valued internet companies is gearing to tap the capital markets.
The News: Nykaa is targeting a valuation of over $7 billion, sources inform The CapTable, as it gets ready to hit the public markets next week. The company has also increased its primary issue by 20%, the maximum permissible amount, from Rs 525 crore ($70 million) to Rs 630 crore ($84 million).
A majority of the IPO, around Rs 4,700 crore (nearly $630 million), is by way of offers for sale by existing shareholders, who collectively own about 41.97 million shares, according to Nykaa’s draft IPO prospectus. Overall, the IPO is pegged at Rs 5,330 crore ($712 million).
Nykaa increased the valuation target for its IPO after meeting with potential investors. When the company, owned by FSN E-Commerce Ventures, filed for its IPO in August, indications were that it would target a valuation of $4-5 billion, and leave enough upside for incoming investors for a “pop” after the listing.
Zomato, which was the first homegrown Unicorn to go for an IPO, has seen its share price nearly double from its IPO price.
Still More Upside: “(Nykaa is) now targeting a $7-billion-plus valuation for the public offering,” said one source briefed on the matter. “The bankers pushed them to go for a valuation as high as $9 billion, given the demand.”
We report on the latest and most important developments in India’s biggest tech companies and disruptive startups so you can make better decisions.
Know the key decision-makers with Org Charts. We thrive on decoding boardroom conversations so we can bring you a 360° view of what's happening at India's high-growth companies.
Tracking the highs and lows of India’s biggest internet companies over the past decade has given us access to the right decision-makers to interpret the latest state of play.
We thrive on inside scoops and decoding boardroom conversations so we can bring you a 360° view of what’s happening at India’s high-growth companies.


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When it seems like Capcom has already given up on the Megaman franchise, they then reveal a new Megaman game! The gaming giant surprised fans all over the world when they revealed a new addition to one of their most iconic gaming franchises with Megaman 11. They even revealed a brand new trailer for the new game, and it’s coming in with all the hype.
Megaman 11 will feature 3D sprites on a 2D plane, which feels like a more modern version of the classics. They also announced that they will release the game in late 2018 for PC, PS4, Xbox ONE, and Switch. Gamers all over the world, rejoice!
But Megaman 11 ain’t the only thing that Capcom announced. They also revealed the release of all eight Megaman X games for PC, PS4, Xbox ONE, and Switch. Previously, Capcom released the various Megaman X games for SNES, PlayStation, and PlayStation 2. They will release the games in summer 2018.
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Further evidence of auctioneering entering a new age of prosperity came with the near sell-out movie poster sale at Ewbanks
in Surrey on August 21. With 341 out of the 344 lots changing hands a sell-through rate of over 99% this was one of the most successful poster sales the auction house has ever held.
With pre-sale hopes of £47,000, the final total came to over £92,000.
Ewbanks Sports & Entertainment Memorabilia department took over as the companys leading specialist department in 2019 with over £1.25m in auction sales by the end of the year. This year the total already stands at around £1.2 million, with four months still to go.
Highlights from the latest sale included an original poster for the 1942 film Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, which took £9,000, a 1962 Dr No poster from the original James Bond film, which sold for £5,200, and a rare surviving poster from the 1964 comedy Carry On Cleo most were destroyed after a court case which made £3,200. Another Bond poster, for the 1965 action thriller Thunderball, went for £2,200.
From Sci-Fi blockbusters like Star Wars to kitsch 1950s B movies like Revenge of the Creature and satirical comedies like Dr Strangelove, online bidders dominated as usual, snapping up 94% of lots offered, with almost everything either well within estimate or significantly above.
From the recent sale of the Norman Whiteside Football Collection to our more general fine antiques auctions, selling rates have risen significantly through the pandemic and have remained high after lockdown was eased and we were able to provide more albeit limited access to the auction rooms themselves, says senior partner Chris Ewbank.
Of course, the digital revolution means we now regularly sell to buyers from over 30 countries at our sales, and this global reach gives us a good idea just how much the world has moved on in the past few months.
I have already been talking about how attitudes towards and adoption of online bidding has moved forward ten years in a matter of weeks, but what we are now also seeing is that this development is continuing as strongly as ever, which indicates that this positive change is here to stay.
One of the concerns of many auction houses at the start of lockdown was that they would run out of material to sell, but the phenomenal response to online bidding shown since then has resulted in more collections emerging from the attic for sale.
The outstanding success we have been able to demonstrate in the past three months has attracted the attention of quite a few potential consignors who have now approached us with some fairly amazing art and collectibles that might not have seen the light of day for some time to come in other circumstances, said Chris Ewbank.
The international media made a great deal of the Whiteside auction trouncing its pre-sale estimate of around £140,000 to total around £200,000, and this together with publicity surrounding our other recent auctions has clearly caught the imagination of those with things to sell.
While Mr Ewbank is understandably delighted by this extended run of success, he also argues that it is important for other reasons.
The UK economy and people have taken a real battering since March and so we need to boost confidence, save jobs, get cash flowing and support the tax base to revive health and prosperity. Firms like ours are doing our bit and are very pleased to do so and I am just as thrilled that the wider British art market has been able to show its resilience during this period of crisis. We are of course complying with Government advice, for the protection of our staff clients and buyers.
Ewbanks have a packed programme of autumn events and will soon be announcing a landmark auction to be held before the end of the year.


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Manufacturer purchased the brand in 2019, has made major upgrades
Diamond Mattress has relaunched Royal Sleep Products, which it acquired in 2019, after making major investments in manufacturing, business systems, and product strategy and development, according to a news release.
By upgrading equipment, implementing lean manufacturing processes and restructuring shipping, Royal Sleep has expanded capacity and sales by more than 50%, according to the news release. Royal Sleep also has unveiled a new website with a fully supported retailer and marketing portals.
Retail partners of both Diamond Mattress and Royal Sleep will benefit from the expanded mattress assortment, niche pricing strategy, increased manufacturing capacity, and greater sourcing and buying power, according to the news release.
Royal Sleep operates from a 60,000-square-foot facility in Fort Worth, Texas, and produces mattresses, futons, foundations and sleep accessories for retail and the hospitality sector in southern, central and western regions of the United States.
“The Royal Sleep brand spans six decades with a great reputation in Texas, and that will be only extended and elevated with expanded reach now as part of the Diamond Mattress family,” said Ed Barrera, chief financial officer and chief operating officer for Diamond Mattress, which has headquarters in Rancho Dominguez, California.
Breanna Pennington, Diamond Mattress vice president, added: “True to our Diamond I-CARE values, we have also focused on adding the right people to the team, who are not only industry veterans but are passionate and dedicated to strong relationships with external and internal customers.”


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At the Shanghai auto show last month, Land Rover was coming to terms with selling the Range Rover Evoque alongside its half-priced Chinese clone, the Land Wind X7.
Not to be outdone, Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. unveiled its own version of a western SUV, opting for the classic Mercedes-Benz G class.
The relationship between Daimler and BAIC is a little different than that between Jaguar Land Rover and Jiangling Holding, Land Wind's parent company.
For one thing, Daimler owns 12 percent of BAIC, and last month, BAIC announced plans to take a 35 percent stake in Mercedes-Benz Lease Co., which is Daimler's Chinese leasing subsidiary.
Still, executives in Stuttgart were said to be unhappy when BAIC started planning this SUV, the BJ80C, in 2011. CarNewsChina.com reports that Mercedes-Benz tried to get BAIC to back off the project.
How close of a copy is this? Our colleagues at Autoweek figure you'd have to be about 250 yards away to not be able to tell the difference between the two vehicles sitting side by side, but with the help of city smog and the cover of darkness, the breaking point may be inside a hundred yards.