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Cable network E! is launching its first Facebook Live talk show. Live From E! will be shot on an iPhone 6S Plus and live-streamed each weekday from the broadcaster's Facebook page, which currently boasts over 9 million likes.
Amazon has secured exclusive North American streaming rights to Doctor Who. The first eight seasons will be available for free Prime streaming now that the BBC's previous licensing deals have expired and a new one has been reached with the…
Netflix has begun issuing takedown requests to pirate websites offering up downloaded links to Netflix content like House of Cards and Narcos, which is in stark contrast to the attitude the company had toward piracy even a few years ago.
A new study suggests over half of consumers experience a new phenomenon known as Buffer Rage, "a state of uncontrollable fury or violent anger induced by the delayed or interrupted enjoyment of streaming video content."


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One of the most influential venture funds included stablecoins in the list of priority projects
Almost 100% of stablecoins are pegged to the US dollar. This helps strengthen the dominant position of the US national currency, says Christopher Waller, a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
“People often conjecture that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin may replace the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. But most trading in decentralized finance involve trades using stablecoins, which link their value one-for-one to the US dollar. About 99% of stablecoin market capitalization is linked to the U.S. dollar.” the Fed official said.
In his opinion, the rapid development of the crypto industry will not deprive the dollar of its status as a reserve currency, but, on the contrary, will strengthen its influence.
“I do not expect to see the US dollar lose its status as the world’s reserve currency anytime soon. Recent developments that some have warned could threaten that status have, if anything, strengthened it, at least so far,” the expert noted.
Earlier, Christopher Waller criticized the initiative involving the release of cryptod ollars. The expert believes that such assets will not contribute to the strengthening of the American currency in the global market.
Interestingly, the well-known venture fund Y Combinato included stablecoins in the list of priority startups this year. Representatives of the business incubator noted that they plan to invest in startups that produce consumer products based on “stable coins,” as well as in instruments that provide financing for stable coins.
“There has been a lot of debate about the benefits of blockchain. However, it is becoming clear that stablecoins are an important part of the future of money. The firms we support have a long history of using digital assets to enable cross-border payments and reduce transaction fees to help users protect their savings from hyperinflation,” the fund said.
Y Combinator estimated that a total of $136 billion worth of stablecoins had previously been issued. About 7 million users have made transactions involving such assets at least once, which indicates the significant potential of such products.
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Prominent European digital asset manager Valour has finally introduced an XRP exchange-traded product (ETP), listing it on the Nordic Growth Market exchange based in Sweden.
Valour announced this development through a press statement on Thursday via its official website. Per the statement, Valour has listed two new crypto-based ETPs on the Nordic Growth Market exchange, featuring XRP and Binance (BNB).
💥We are proud to announce two additions to our product range at @ngmexchange : Valour Ripple (XRP) SEK (ISIN: CH1161139584) and Valour Binance SEK (ISIN: CH1149139698), available for trading through @avanzabank and @NordnetSE
Read full pressrelease 👇https://t.co/cfnMgf9uDS…
— Valour (@ValourFunds) February 22, 2024
Notably, this development came a few months after Valour, a subsidiary of DeFi Technologies, first disclosed an intention to welcome an XRP ETP.
XRP ETP Commenced Trading
Also, the notification disclosed that the newly listed XRP ETP, Valour Ripple (XRP) SEK, commenced trading on February 21, 2024.
The company highlighted that the Valour Ripple (XRP) SEK ETP (ISIN: CH1161139584) would allow investors to access exposure to XRP easily and securely through their bank or broker.
Furthermore, Valour emphasized that XRP holds a market capitalization of $29.57 billion, securing its position as the sixth-largest cryptocurrency worldwide. The company underscored XRP’s pivotal role in facilitating fast, cost-effective intercontinental money transfers.
Moreover, Valour highlighted XRP’s function as a bridge asset within Ripple’s payment network, enabling smooth currency exchanges on a global scale.
Given its widespread utility, Valour noted that XRP has emerged as a preferred option for financial establishments seeking efficient alternatives to conventional cross-border payment mechanisms.
In parallel, Valour remarked that BNB wields a market valuation of $54.64 billion, ranking as the fourth most prominent cryptocurrency.
Also, the company highlighted BNB’s role in facilitating trading fee payments on the largest crypto trading platform, Binance, which has spurred considerable growth interest over the years.
Top Executives React
Reacting to this new addition, Olivier Roussy Newton, CEO of DeFi Technologies, remarked:
“Valour has recently added Ripple (XRP) and Binance (BNB) exchange-traded products (ETPs) to its line of investment offerings. This move is a significant development in the company’s mission to provide easy and accessible investment options for digital assets, making it simpler for investors across Europe to invest in these cryptocurrencies.”
Furthermore, the CEO expressed that the endeavor transcends mere product expansion, noting that it signifies a strategic step toward democratizing finance.
Johanna Belitz, who serves as the Head of Nordics at Valour, recently expressed her excitement about the company’s decision to list XRP ETP positions in the Nordics. Belitz believes that this move puts Valour in a unique position to accommodate investors who are interested in navigating the world of cryptocurrencies more conveniently. By adding XRP ETPs to its list of offerings, Valour can proudly claim the title of the most comprehensive provider of crypto ETPs in the Nordics.
Notably, Nordic Growth Markets (NGM) is a prominent stock exchange in the Nordic region, boasting over 30 years of expertise. It facilitates trading over 40,000 instruments, including bonds, equities, and derivatives across Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Norway.
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NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — No. 1 U.S. wholesale-club Costco Wholesale Corp. said Wednesday that its fiscal second-quarter profit rose 16%, while smaller rival BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc. reported an 81% decline, hurt by store-closing costs and other charges.
Giving a positive indicator ahead of retailers’ February same-store sales reports on Thursday, both reported numbers that topped Wall Street expectations. See February sales preview.
As retailers across the broad brace for higher commodity costs, Costco said it’s seen inflation in fresh foods, for instance, in the low to middle single-digit range.
In February, Costco’s
The company said demand has been driven by foods, while electronics and computers sales were down.
Costco shares fell 1% at $72.21 in early-afternoon trading after it didn’t exceed analysts’ estimates. BJ’s was up fractionally to $48.51.
For the quarter ended Feb. 13, earnings rose to $348 million, or 79 cents a share, from $299 million or 67 cents a share in the year-earlier quarter, Issaquah, Wash.-based Costco said. Net sales rose 11% to $20.45 billion; total revenue, adding in membership fees, rose a similar percentage to $20.88 billion. Costco has a total of 581 warehouse clubs.
A survey of analysts by FactSet Research produced consensus estimates of 79 cents a share of profit on $20.4 billion of sales.
Comparable-store sales rose 5% in the United States and 12% internationally. Excluding positive effects from higher gasoline prices and stronger foreign currencies, comparable sales rose 4%.
“The improving average ticket within Costco’s comp-store sales growth should facilitate stronger operating-margin expansion,” said William Blair & Co. analyst Mark Miller. “International operations, which represent nearly 40% of total profits, continue to lift overall growth and returns for the company, and an expected membership-fee increase this calendar year should facilitate a step up in growth over the next two years.”
BJ’s is updating its stores to incorporate more sales of perishable foods. The company didn’t give an update on its exploration of strategic alternatives, including a possible sale.
Fourth-quarter net income fell to $10.2 million, or 19 cents a share, from $54.5 million or $1 a share in the year-ago period.
Excluding store-closing and restructuring charges, adjusted net income totaled 95 cents a share in the latest quarter. Revenue in the quarter ended Jan. 29 rose 7.4% to $2.9 billion. The company has 190 wholesale clubs concentrated in 15 Eastern states.
Wall Street analysts expected BJ’s to earn 92 cents a share, on revenue of $2.9 billion, according to a survey by FactSet Research.
BJ’s expects to earn 54 cents to 58 cents a share in the first quarter, and $2.62 a share to $2.82 a share in 2011. Analysts estimated 52 cents a share in the first quarter and $2.85 a share for the year.
“We see benefits from increased membership fees, a favorable change in product mix with higher sales of perishable foods, restructuring cost savings and reduced preopening costs, despite increased remodeling and IT costs,” said Standard & Poor’s analyst Joseph Agnese, who has a buy rating on the stock.
Comparable-club sales in the quarter rose 3.8% and would have risen 1.7% excluding the impact of gasoline sales. Member traffic excluding the gasoline impact rose 2%, while the average transaction amount was about flat. Sales of food increased 2%.


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This article is more than 1 year old
Augmented reality: Like it or not, only Apple's ready for the data-vomit gush
It's all about AR... and iPhone has the X factor
This month's release by Apple of the iPhone X with FaceID begins the first wave of consumer products designed from the ground up for continuous awareness of space, place and face - crowning a half a century of research in augmented reality destined to fuse our rising sea of data onto the real world.
Over the last few years, Augmented Reality (AR) travelled a hype-curve rollercoaster from the crashing failure of Google's Glass to the soaring heights of Pokémon Go, accelerating into open competition between APIs from Facebook, Apple, Alphabet/Google and Microsoft (hereafter known as FAAM).
Yet the story of AR goes back much further, all the way to the dawn of modern computing. Ivan Sutherland, the Turing Award-winning genius behind Sketchpad - the first truly interactive computer program - followed that up with another modest innovation - a “head mounted three dimensional display.”
Known as the Sword of Damocles because of the way the mechanical tracking apparatus hung down from the ceiling over the user's head, Sutherland's invention used dual CRTs, focused and and reflected through half-silvered mirrors to overlay a wireframe 3D image onto the real world.
Here's where the histories get things wrong: this was never a demo of virtual reality. Sutherland invented augmented reality - virtual reality meant simply running the system with the room lights off.
AR predates VR, because AR had a real-world use case: Sutherland's paymasters at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) needed visualisation tools for jet fighter pilots, something to help them manage the overwhelming flood of data generated by those very fastest and most responsive of machines.
Jet fighters have had heads-up displays for nearly 30 years, a now-indispensable element of flight instrumentation. They begin with Sutherland - who also simultaneously invented real-time 3D computer graphics, to have something to render to within the Sword of Damocles. That's a hell of a beginning
Outside the military, AR stagnated, because computers of the time weren't up to the job. NASA's earliest VR systems eschewed real-world integration in favour of easier to generate fully-synthetic worlds. Bringing the real world into the virtual world requires a sophisticated capacity to model the real world, in real-time.
Twenty years ago, aircraft giant Boeing spearheaded one of the the first non-military deployments of AR, at their massive 777 assembly facility just outside Seattle, where technicians used AR to keep track of the countless separate component assembly operations required to fabricate a completed aircraft. Boeing's AR system took what would have been a 10,000+ page manual and projected it into a display headset overlaying the body of aircraft with the necessary technical information for the assembly process, making the process both faster and less error-prone.
Google's Glass wasn't much of an advance on Boeing's work. Like so much else in this world, Glass leveraged smartphone mass-manufacturing to cram smartphone-like components into a different form factor - all of it running a version of Android. Yet it did feature one of the hallmarks of augmented reality - continuous surveillance.
They weren't Glassholes, they were ahead of their time
One of the key points of difference between AR and VR is that AR needs to be fed a continuously updated view of the world around. Without that, AR can't know what to augment, or where to augment it. Google's Glass featured a rather Cylon-like forward facing camera with a bright red “recording” LED that made almost anyone facing it feel as though they'd been scanned by Skynet. Hence the phenomenon of the "glasshole", banned from the local pub and shunned by society. Glass died - not because it wasn’t useful, but because of the "Segway Effect": no one else wanted to be near anyone using one.
After Glass gasped its last (recently reborn as an enterprise tool closer to Boeing's use case than Sergey's) the Great Leap Forward in AR began - spearheaded by Microsoft. Adapting some of the tech from Xbox Kinect into a headset, Microsoft's Hololens represented the first viable commercial implementation of an AR platform, built around “Windows Holographic” - now a core Win10 API renamed “Windows Mixed Reality”, spanning both AR and VR devices.
In Hololens, Moore's Law had finally caught up with Ivan Sutherland: the computing power necessary to create and maintain augmented reality could fit into a bulky-but-not-uncomfortable headset. All those cycles were needed not to create the images, but to manage the core technology of modern AR - Simultaneous Localisation And Mapping, or SLAM.
Why Microsoft's 3D HoloLens goggles aren't for Google GlassholesREAD MORE
SLAM blends an assemblage of computer vision and inertial sensor technologies to create a 3D map of a space. Hololens uses a "depth camera" - mounted above the eyes - to create a "depth map". That's essentially the same technique Kinect used to map a game controller onto a human body, but pointed outward, rather than toward the user. That 3D map can then be used to situate "holograms" or other forms of 3D augmentation within real space. Look away, then look back, and the augmentation remains, because the map is the territory.
There's more than one way to SLAM. Back in 2014, Google launched "Project Tango" developing its own library of smartphone-compatible SLAM techniques that eschewed an expensive depth camera, instead focusing on compute-intensive (but cheaper) computer vision techniques. As a camera scans a space, the difference between two captured frames, combined with data from the inertial sensors on the smartphone, generates the requisite 3D map.
Tango found its way into only two devices in 2016, and as a result attracted only a handful of Android app developers - like "hologram" purveyors 8i .
In July 2016, everything changed. Niantic's tie-up with Nintendo produced Pokémon Go, the fastest selling mobile game of all time, and - in just its first month - US $200,000,000 in revenues, as users greedily purchased in-game content. With that kind of market validation, augmented reality broke through - quickly surpassing a resurgent virtual reality as the new shiny in tech.
With that, the race was on between the FAAM firms to dominate the next new frontier - the real world, augmented.
Zuckerberg led with the charge with a twenty-minute discussion of the future of AR during this year's F8 keynote, touting the smartphone camera as "the new interface", and promising a rich library of AR tools for Facebook's developers, starting with AR Studio.
Like every other major player, Facebook has its own SLAM technology. SLAM is the major barrier to entry for AR, so each of the majors touts their SLAM solution as better than their competitors. Each have different strengths and weaknesses. Facebook has to be cross-platform, working across a range of smartphone cameras and computing capacities, while device manufacturers like Apple and Microsoft can optimise their experiences.
As for Apple, they've been in the AR game for years, purchasing Kinect developers PrimeSense in 2013, and, two years later, AR developer Metaio - presumably for its SLAM software. Although much had been rumoured about a pair of Apple “spectacles” - the mythical sunglass-like idealised interface for augmented reality - very little hardware had been announced to support AR until just a month ago.
Project Tango: Google's all-ringing, all-dancing 3D-sensing smartphoneREAD MORE
At this year's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple unveiled ARKit, an iOS library seamlessly providing SLAM and integration with other key iOS services, such as CoreLocation. Suddenly, everything hard about AR became as easy as flipping a few switches in Xcode and copying a few code examples. Apple fanbois noted Apple's SLAM implementation was incredibly good, and very easy to use. A series of eye-popping demos surfaced on YouTube - including, most memorably, a “portal” into a jungle-like dimension from the middle of a city street.
Apple followed that up with the iPhone X and its TrueDepth camera - essentially a Kinect in about one-thousandth the volume, capable of accurately mapping a human face, both for identification purposes, and to produce a stream of real-time motion capture data that can be mapped onto a poo emoji.
The TrueDepth camera is the first real bit of AR technology that hundreds of millions will own - and it's clearly the direction Apple will be taking AR on iOS, with expectations it will show up across the product line within the next few years.
Alphabet ran a search-and-replace over Project Tango (perhaps not quite literally, but fairly obviously), announcing its own Android-based ARCore. It currently works only on Google's Pixels and Samsung's Galaxy S8, while Apple's ARCore works on all iOS devices back to the iPhone 6S. There are a few ARCore demos out, but nothing like the avalanche of ARKit apps that came with the release of iOS 11. Hundreds of ARKit apps were released in the six weeks following the launch of iOS 11, giving Apple an early advantage in the ARwars, as Google tries to spread ARCore to other Android devices.
Delaying a next-generation Hololens until early 2019, Microsoft promises a "3rd generation device" closer to the ideal of nearly weightless sunglasses. Meanwhile, Windows Mixed Reality remains a developer's toolkit primarily geared toward virtual reality apps. At well more than $3,000, Microsoft has sold only a few tens of thousands of its Hololens, not nearly enough to kickstart an ecosystem of AR developers.
Facebook seems to be stuck somewhere between the obvious-to-all-but-itself collapse of its VR efforts, as Oculus struggles to reach even a half million units in sales, and the launch of its AR Studio applications. No one doubts Facebook can push AR capabilities to its billions of mobile users - but when?
If, as Zuck and Tim Cook and Satya Nadella all suggest, AR is the next great computing platform, there will be another generation of winners and losers. Microsoft lost the smartphone wars, came out strong with Hololens, but seems to be lost once again. Google appears hamstrung by platform fragmentation. Only Apple has shown both the technical and marketing chops to make augmented reality an everyday experience in 2017. Right now it's all about iOS 11, ARKit and the half billion devices that support both. That’s a hell of a dent in the universe. ®


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Lidl earned praise for its distribution network and its fresh produce offerings.
idl, Amazon, Boxed, Coborn's, Grocery Outlet and Costco were among 32 retailers of food and consumables to make Hot 100 Retailers 2020 list compiled by the National Retail Federation and Kantar.
Other notable retailers making the list include Dollar General, Aldi and Wegmans.
The list is based on 2019 sales volume. Rankings are determined by increases in domestic sales between 2018 and 2019; all retail companies with domestic sales in excess of $300 million were eligible.
The retailers that made the Hot 100 Retailers 2020 list include food sellers and some bricks-and-mortar operators that feature what the NRF and Kantar called treasure hunt-style shopping experiences. Other commerce trends growing during this time include the further penetration of digital commerce by bricks-and-mortar-based retailers and the establishment of physical stores as showrooms by e-commerce businesses — efforts spark even more by the pandemic.
Those two organizations also said that merchants on the list are likely best prepared to survive and thrive in the wake of COVID-19 restrictions and well into the future.
“Where we are now, in terms how we shop and purchase items, is where we would have been 10 years from now. In other words, over the course of four months we’ve pressed the fast-forward button on shopping methods. The retailers (and brands) who have been over-investing in building digital, ecommerce and omni capabilities are emerging as the clear winners during COVID-19,” says Reid Greenberg, executive vice president of global digital and ecommerce at Kantar.
Among food retailers, the big trend last year was selling more produce. Nationally, produce sales rose to $62 billion last year, up from $60.8 billion the year before, according to Nielsen. Regional food retailers also made a splash on the list
“Regional grocers are frequently able to be more agile and more in tune with the part of the country they serve. It can often be easier to implement changes in a few hundred stores versus thousands of stores,” says Tory Gundelach, senior vice president of retail insights at Kantar.
Lidl, which took the No. 1 stop on the Hot 100 list, provides an example of that, according to the NRF and Kantar. The grocery provider earned high marks for the increased fresh food availability in its small-footprint discount grocery stores. The ability to sell more produce comes as the German-owned chain builds a network of warehouses up and down the East Coast. Lidl entered the U.S. market three years ago, served by a lone warehouse in Fredericksburg, Virginia. It now has three warehouses with a fourth in the works, to be located in Georgia with no target date yet for opening.
Besides Lidl at No. 1, other retailers of food and consumables on the list included:


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For Alibaba, it may be a case of “pay up and move on.” The weekend brought a fine in the billions of dollars for the Chinese tech giant, which – though unlikely to have much financial impact – may carry reverberations for other large tech players in that country.
As reported, Chinese regulators have imposed a fine equivalent to about $2.8 billion tied to antitrust violations. The regulator, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), has said that Alibaba forced merchants to choose its own eCommerce platform over those of rival firms (known as “choose one”), a practice that CNBC said, via translation of the Chinese order, “infringes on the businesses of merchants on the platforms and the legitimate rights and interests of consumers.”
The fine equates to about 4 percent of Alibaba’s top line (for sales made within China), and seems to be rather easily digestible (even though it’s a record fine levied in that country). It could have been worse, as The Wall Street Journal reported that the antitrust regulator’s fines are capped at 10 percent of sales.
But more impactful is the fact that the regulators are also requiring that Alibaba reconfigure its operations. The fine and the revamp may signal the end of a multi-month investigation of the firm, but it seems the hard work is just beginning.
“Alibaba accepts the penalty with sincerity and will ensure its compliance with determination,” the company said in a release. “To serve its responsibility to society, Alibaba will operate in accordance with the law with utmost diligence, continue to strengthen its compliance systems and build on growth through innovation.”
The Road Gets Clearer
The road ahead is a bit clearer, it seems, which may be why the company’s stock rose a few percent in pre-market trading on Monday (April 12). Wall Street, it has often been said, hates uncertainty – and removing uncertainty lets investors focus on what the truer prospects (long- and short-term) may be.
On an investor call over the weekend, the Journal reported, Alibaba executives said that the firm will re-tool its operations to foster more competition and will also submit annual “self-assessments” through each of the next three years. Alibaba has also reduced its fees levied on merchants, according to company officials. As has been reported, Ant Group has agreed to restructuring plans that will tighten capital requirements as it transforms into a financial holding company.
But, as hinted at by comments from executives, regulatory scrutiny may be on the rise. As reported by the BBC, Alibaba Group’s Executive Vice Chairman Joe Tsai noted on the call discussing the regulatory actions that “we’re happy to get the matter behind us, but the tendency is that regulators will be keen to look at some of the areas where you might have unfair competition.” Regulators may be focused on Alibaba and tech firm peers’ mergers and acquisition activities.
Earlier this year, China’s SAMR published new guidelines to strengthen anti-monopoly restrictions on Big Tech platforms. The guidelines build on a draft law published in November, clarifying the “monopolistic practices” as defined by the SAMR. Among the guidelines: Companies would be prevented from price-fixing, manipulating the market using algorithms and restricting technologies.
For Alibaba, at least, the financial blow can be absorbed; but for that company (and its peers), the dialogue with regulators will be ongoing.
Selected by EFXA


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Digital TV News: OPPO
WMYD to host Detroit’s first Next-Gen TV station
May 15, 2019 – WMYD (NASDAQ: SSP) plans to launch Next-Gen TV in Detroit in a collaborative effort that will also involve Graham Media and other local broadcasters. The launch provides an opportunity for the automotive industry to have an in-market test bed for the new platform.
News categories: Scripps, Graham Media, Pearl TV, Brian Lawlor, Emily L. Barr, ATSC, Content Distribution, Digital TV, In-Car, USA
3SS and Media Distillery team up for ultra-personalized AI-powered TV
May 15, 2019 – 3 Screen Solutions (3SS) and Media Distillery have joined forces to launch and commercialize a pre-integrated AI-based end-to-end platform which enables TV service personalization and a range of benefits for operators and their subscribers.
News categories: 3SS, Media Distillery, Kai-Christian Borchers, Roland Sars, Big Data, Digital TV, UX, Worldwide
FreeWheel announces programmatic OTT offering for local TV buyers
May 14, 2019 – FreeWheel (Nasdaq: CMCSA) has announced that members of the FreeWheel Advertisers’ network using the Strata platform can now programmatically access the full OTT marketplace through exchanges and direct premium publisher integrations.
News categories: FreeWheel, Joy Baer, Frost Prioleau, Advertising, Digital TV, OTT, USA
Cross channel ad management and tracking help drive video ad tech market
May 14, 2019 – Despite ongoing consolidation in the ad tech market, overall growth continues. The video ad tech space will reach close to US$6 billion by 2023, up from just under US$1.7 billion in 2018, according to ABI Research.
News categories: ABI Research, Michael Inouye, Advertising, Big Data, Digital TV, Market Research, Worldwide
Xandr Community brings together advertisers, publishers, and consumers
May 14, 2019 – Xandr, AT&T's advertising and analytics company, has announced the formation of Community, a curated marketplace of publishers that enables advertisers to reach their audiences at scale in a brand-safe, privacy-protected, premium video environment.
News categories: Xandr, Brian Lesser, Donna Speciale, Henry Embleton, Mark Rotblat, Reed Barker, Advertising, Big Data, Digital TV, USA
Vodafone 5G goes live in the UK in July
May 14, 2019 – Vodafone will switch on its 5G network for both consumers and business customers in seven cities across the UK on 3 July 2019. In a worldwide first, Vodafone will also offer 5G roaming in the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain over the summer.
News categories: Vodafone, Nick Jeffery, 5G, Mobile, UK
Worldwide spending on telecoms and pay TV totaled $1,615 billion in 2018
May 10, 2019 – Worldwide spending on telecom services and pay TV services totaled $1,615 billion in 2018, an increase of 0.8% year over year, according to IDC. IDC expects worldwide spending on Telecom and Pay TV services to reach $1,657 billion in 2023.
News categories: IDC, Kresimir Alic, Digital TV, Market Research, Worldwide
TiVo to separate Product and IP Licensing businesses
May 9, 2019 – TiVo (NASDAQ: TIVO) has approved a plan to separate its Product and IP Licensing businesses. TiVo intends to spin out its Product business to shareholders and the company will continue to be open to strategic transactions for each business.
News categories: TiVo Corp, Raghu Rau, Content Distribution, Digital TV, MnA, Patent, Set Top Box, USA, UX, Worldwide
Consumer spending on technology to reach $1.3 trillion in 2019
May 9, 2019 – Consumer spending on technology is forecast to reach $1.32 trillion in 2019, an increase of 3.5% over 2018. According to IDC, consumer purchases of traditional and emerging technologies will remain strong over the 2018-2022 forecast period.
News categories: IDC, Tom Mainelli, Jessica Goepfert, Digital TV, Market Research, Worldwide
- Sony and Microsoft to collaborate on cloud for D2C entertainment and AI
- Insys Video automates celebrity identification and inappropriate content detection
- HbbTV Association adds seven new members
- Beximco launches AKASH DTH in Bangladesh
- b<>com and Viaccess-Orca partner to detect video piracy
- IDC expects worldwide semiconductor revenue to drop 7.2% in 2019
- IABM report shows squeezed margins but continuing optimism
- WMYD to host Detroit’s first Next-Gen TV station
- 3SS and Media Distillery team up for ultra-personalized AI-powered TV
- Redbox selects You.i TV to develop React Native app on Roku
- MainStreaming secures $6 million funding
- Survey reveals increasing use of multiple TV sources by viewers in Europe
- SK Telecom to offer world's first live TV sports broadcast over 5G
- Four media measurement bodies form global alliance
- Philo brings streaming TV to WOW! broadband customers
- FreeWheel announces programmatic OTT offering for local TV buyers
- Cyfrowy Polsat contract pay TV subscribers down 22,000 in 1Q 2019
- Digital Alert Systems and Kaltura bring EAS Alerts to Cloud TV services
- Telestream and NPAW integrate video monitoring and analytics platforms
- Cross channel ad management and tracking help drive video ad tech market


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Janie’s Cakes operates out of a small city in East Texas. But its production is impacted by severe weather around the world and other unexpected challenges.
Whether you want to grow steadily as a lifestyle business or achieve rapid growth as an investor-backed startup, we can show you how successful women entrepreneurs have done it. What's your growth strategy?
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This summer, dive into these 7 books by and for women to help you succeed as an entrepreneur.
In the U.S, adults identifying as LGBTQ have been steadily rising. So why is the lesbian bar in decline?
Jodie Davis of American Cuckoo Clock Company is on a mission to keep the tradition of cuckoo clocks alive in the U.S. The startup journey isn’t easy.
Need a growth strategy? Then check out these advice and tips from powerhouse women entrepreneurs.
Anita Mahaffey channeled frustration with menopause-induced night sweats into Cool-jams, an online store that sells moisture-wicking pajamas and more.
Teri Dreher aims to move the needle toward greater medical transparency in the healthcare industry through her company, NShore Patient Advocates.
Queen Bey is generating buzz over her streetwear-inspired clothing line, Beyhive, which launched earlier this week.
Maisie Williams, the actress who brought fan-favorite character Arya Stark to life, is taking the tech startup world by storm and helping fellow creatives grow their talent networks.
The performer and business owner just broke a serious glass ceiling in the fashion world for women of color. She’s also the latest celebrity to turn star power into sales.
Becky O’Neil of Becky’s Pet Care says she learned to evolve with the times — even if that means caring for chickens.
Chief among Ana Sortun’s leadership skills is the ability to embrace change. Here’s how she does it, at popular restaurants Oleana, Sofra and Sarma.
A comedienne’s terrifying recent experience with a Lyft driver and a lawsuit against Uber have added new urgency to conversations about the safety of rideshare apps for women and families.
Felena Hanson launched her own co-working space Hera Hub in 2011. And then WeWork became a household name. But that’s been great for business, she says.


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The sales volume for the whole year of 2020 reached 1.0558 million units, a year-on-year increase of -13.1%. From January to June in 2021, the export market sold 950,000 units, an increase of 118% year-on-year; the improvement was greatly improved compared to 2020. As a result, there is greater potential for export recovery under the international epidemic in the future.
From the perspective of monthly trends, exports in recent years still show seasonal characteristics, showing the peaking and falling trend characteristics of the roller coaster in summer, but it will change to a V-shaped trend in 2020. In May-June 20 years, exports were at the low level of previous years. In 20 years, the auto market had a strong start to exports. The trend rebounded from February to June, but the trend in May-June was unusually sluggish. Under the epidemic situation, exports from July to December 2020 have a relatively strong trend relative to domestic exports, forming a feature that foreign countries are picking up more slowly than domestic ones.
The export auto market from 2017 to 19 has increased relative to the same period. From January to December 2020, 1.06 million vehicles (including chassis) were exported, and the growth rate of -13% is considered very good. The export of four-wheel drive SUVs performed better in January-June 21. This year’s traditional passenger car exports are relatively good, and both traditional and new energy passenger car exports have low growth and negative growth, which also shows that our exports are still encountering bottlenecks.
From January to June 2021, customs trucks exported 175,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 133%, and passenger cars were in a severe downturn.
From the structural point of view, passenger car exports are strongest in passenger cars with less than 9 seats, and cars account for 28%. The bus is poor.
In 2017-2019, the export volume of new energy vehicles is relatively large, but passenger vehicles are basically micro low-speed electric vehicles, and the actual number is not large. New energy will perform well in 2020, and plug-in hybrid models should also be re-sold products of the joint venture. The performance of new energy passenger vehicle exports has improved. From January to June 2021, the monthly average level is 30,000 units, accounting for about 23%, which is much higher than the domestic level.


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Wingtra launches WingtraOne GEN II—a next-generation VTOL drone with an oblique payload and advanced reliability algorithms
Zurich — After six years in development and 100’000 flights, Wingtra, the professional drone producer, is launching WingtraOne GEN II, a next-generation VTOL drone that offers industrial reliability and mapping versatility with a new oblique camera configuration for high-quality 3D drone mapping data capture.
Known for its vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) precision and dependable data capture over large areas, WingtraOne has been chosen by professionals worldwide across many industries. The WingtraOne GEN II represents a solid step forward in industrialization and reliability along with some new perks that challenge the previous limits of commercial mapping drones.
“We wanted to make the WingtraOne drone even more versatile for our customers. So next to our flagship 42MP Sony RX1, we’re including new, high-end mapping payloads,” said Maximilian Boosfeld, Co-founder and CEO of Wingtra. “I’m especially excited to announce our oblique solution, which offers outstanding 3D mapping results. It’s the perfect choice for capturing infrastructure—from a single industrial plant to full-scale cities.”
WingtraOne’s GEN II oblique mapping solution is backed by signed partnership agreements with industry leaders Bentley Systems and Esri. To demonstrate the power of GEN II carrying its Oblique Sony A6100 payload, the Wingtra team mapped the city of Zurich, Switzerland, in just six flight hours, producing an impressive 3D model, processed with both Bentley ContextCapture and Esri’s Site Scan for ArcGIS. Bentley and Esri’s software are both recommended for processing Wingtra oblique datasets.
“Bentley Systems is delighted to partner with Wingtra to transform high-resolution oblique imagery from WingtraOne drones into 3D reality meshes—an ideal starting point for infrastructure digital twins,” said Phil Christensen, VP, Industry Solutions, iTwin Context, Bentley Systems. “This enables our common users to perform analytics on the resulting models as well as leverage Bentley’s iTwin platform to share performant, city-scale digital twins.”
“Our partnership with Wingtra unlocks new capabilities for Site Scan for ArcGIS users by allowing them to create wide-scale and accurate 3D meshes leveraging the oblique payload on the WingtraOne Gen II,” said Richard Cooke, Director of Global Business Development at Esri. “These high-resolution images processed through Site Scan produce an enriched 3D GIS for our users who require modelling of open pit mines, accurate construction updates, creation of digital twins for cities, and more.”
WingtraOne GEN II further features PPK integrated on every drone, including multispectral Altum and RedEdge payloads, as well as advanced fail-safe and self-diagnosis algorithms and services for dependable operations.
“We have studied over a 100’000 flights and all incoming customer reports to understand what the limits might be so we can push them further,” said Julian Surber, Product Manager at Wingtra. “As a result, we’ve designed many reliability tools for GEN II to guarantee uninterrupted operations.”
Wingtra’s engineering team has completely redesigned the electronics of the GEN II. From the more powerful onboard computer and optimized PCB designs, to a new navigation and heading unit developed in-house, GEN II components are meant to provide industry-leading reliability to customers.
Beyond the reliability ensured by hardware updates, the GEN II runs through health-monitoring algorithms for motors, servos, batteries, camera, PPK and onboard sensors. These “drone health self checks” minimize the potential of flight with unsafe equipment.
Precision agriculture applications will get a boost from GEN II, since Wingtra’s top-of-the-line multispectral payloads, namely Micasense Altum and RedEdge, will now be paired with high-accuracy PPK. Specifically, PPK improves the quality of multispectral insights for use cases such as irrigation management and prescription maps for pesticides.
“So when you’re aiming for the highest detail orthophotos, point clouds, NDVI maps and digital surface models across the majority of your applications, you only need one drone. And that drone is WingtraOne Gen II,” said Boosfeld.
“With GEN II, we’re marking a key point in commercial drone evolution by providing you with a reliable workhorse that you can count on over every flight,” added Surber.
WingtraOne GEN II is available for purchase as of the 3rd of August, 2021, directly from Wingtra distributors globally. Register for a WingtraOne GEN II product webinar to learn everything you need to know about the drone and ask questions directly to WingtraOne GEN II product manager Julian Surber. Register here.
Headquartered in Switzerland, Wingtra is the world’s leading VTOL drone producer for mapping, survey, construction and infrastructure, and mining industry professionals. Since its market entry in early 2017, Wingtra has partnered with more than 70 of the biggest GIS equipment dealers and has been selling mapping drones globally, with a growing reach. The WingtraOne GEN II drone is based on years of engineering research and cumulative insights from data collected over more than 100’000 flights. Wingtra employs more than 80 people all over the world, with offices in the US, Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America. Wingtra’s customers are flying drones on all continents, excluding only Antarctica. Learn more at wingtra.com.
Bentley Systems (Nasdaq: BSY) is the infrastructure engineering software company. Bentley Systems provide innovative software to advance the world’s infrastructure – sustaining both the global economy and environment. Their industry-leading software solutions are used by professionals, and organizations of every size, for the design, construction, and operations of roads and bridges, rail and transit, water and wastewater, public works and utilities, buildings and campuses, and industrial facilities. Their offerings include MicroStation-based applications for modeling and simulation, ProjectWise for project delivery, AssetWise for asset and network performance, and the iTwin platform for infrastructure digital twins. Bentley Systems employs more than 4,000 colleagues and generates annual revenues of more than $800 million, in 172 countries. Learn more at bentley.com.
Esri, the global market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, location intelligence, and mapping, helps customers unlock the full potential of data to improve operational and business results. Founded in 1969 in Redlands, California, USA, Esri software is deployed in more than 350,000 organizations globally and in over 200,000 institutions in the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, nonprofits, and universities. Esri has regional offices, international distributors, and partners providing local support in over 100 countries on six continents. With its pioneering commitment to geospatial information technology, Esri engineers the most innovative solutions for digital transformation, the Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics. Visit us at esri.com


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Cheap feed reduces use of hog growth drug in U.S., opens markets
By Theopolis Waters
CHICAGO Dec 11 (Reuters) - Cheap grain has encouraged some U.S. hog farmers to switch away from a controversial drug to bulk up their animals, giving them the added benefit of being able to sell to big customers such as China, which have banned the supplement.
Ractopamine, known by the brand name Paylean, cuts the total cost of producing a hog by at least $2, or about two percent, experts said. Safety concerns have prompted 23 countries, including major importers Russia and China, to refuse meat containing the additive.
Christina Gaines, a spokeswoman for Elanco, one of the producers of ractopamine, said the drug "has been safely used in livestock production for more than a decade and affirmed by 30 regulatory authorities."
While corn prices hovering near five-year lows have prompted U.S. hog farmers to use more grain and less ractopamine, supplies remain tight.
Nebraska hog farmer Brian Zimmerman now has Smithfield Foods , owned by China's Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd., fighting over his ractopamine-free hogs with Hormel Foods.
All of Smithfield's own hogs are raised free from ractopamine and most go to China, the world's largest pork consumer.
China took $353 million of pork from the United States from January to October this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said, down about $67 million from the same period last year which represents 8 percent of overall U.S. pork exports.
That could rise as the USDA said in October China would resume imports from 14 domestic pork plants and warehouses after halting some shipments in 2014 over the use of ractopamine. Continued...


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The first segment in the campaign, ‘Dear Alice…’ - which will run on broadcast television, online video, paid social media, organic social media, and shopper marketing - is designed to promote the Chobani brand overall, while subsequent spots featuring the same animation will focus on specific products such as ready-to-drink coffee, oatmilk, creamers, and the new probiotic-fueled line.
Featuring the strapline, ‘Because how we eat today feeds tomorrow,” the Dear Alice slot features a young woman (Alice) hosting an outdoor feast (with strategically placed Chobani products) on farmland that borders a futuristic utopian cityscape with flying wind turbines and robots that pick oranges, and then cuts to the interior of her house where we see a letter from her grandmother passing on the baton (family farm?) and reminding her that ‘A business is only as good as its people, so treat them well.’
‘We’re more than a Greek yogurt company’
The message Chobani wants viewers to come away with is that “If you eat high-quality food and you buy from companies that take care of their people and treat animals well and worry about sustainability and the future, you can help create this future world,” Meredith Madden, SVP Marketing Strategy & Insights told FoodNavigator-USA.
Chobani’s in-house creative team came up with the concept, strategy, and straplines, but worked with external partners on the animation, music, and illustrations, said Madden.
“In the past Chobani has been very focused on branding or on products, but in this campaign, we’re getting the balance of both. We want people to know that we’re more than a Greek yogurt company, as Hamdi has always had this vision of better food for more people, so we’ve entered four new categories in the last 12-13 months, but we wanted to make sure that everything we showcase keeps intact our values as a company.”
#SwitchTheChobaniFlip hashtag challenge
This kind of traditional, national branding campaign is still valuable, even in today's very fragmented media environment, said Madden.
However, Chobani has also worked on a series of lower-budget more targeted video spots "with a higher ROI" that have been highly successful over the past couple of years, from tie ups with USA Wrestling to ultra-short ‘How to’ recipe videos on Tasty and other platforms showing viewers how to make overnight oats or smoothies featuring Chobani products.
Like many brands, Chobani is also enlisting fans to create content or come up with their own flavors, most recently partnering with TikTok on the #SwitchTheChobaniFlip hashtag challenge (set to Missy Elliot’s ‘Work It’), to offer 25 winners who create a video using the hashtag a case of a limited edition Flip flavor.
It is also offering cash prizes for finalists that come up their ‘dream’ creamer flavors, with the top three fan-inspired flavors shortlisted by Chobani to be put up to a fan vote this summer, with the winner hitting shelves in 2022, said Madden. "We're really thinking about fun ways to jump into the social market."
In general, she said, CPG brands recognize that they need to become more agile at coming up with video content that can be tested and refined before it is pushed out to a wider audience, with very short spots becoming increasingly important.
"Any time we're creating video for TV it's going to be 30 seconds or 15 seconds, but we're also cognizant of the 6-second spots that are more shopper marketing focused."
She added: "The biggest change [in Chobani's approach to getting its message out to younger people in particular] is partnering with influencers on TikTok and Instagram, so we're open to finding partners that care for our brand and getting our voice out there through them as well."


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Why should the city invest so much in downtown when it’s such a small geographic part of the overall retail and commercial economic "engine?"
According to Mayor Tab Townsell, there are several reasons.
"A downtown is almost like the community’s living room," Townsell said. "It’s where you go and see people and socialize; it’s our communal space, the historic nerve center of the old city and with the revitalization, what it’s becoming again. That’s where we have our parade, our Christmas tree. It is where our community gathers. It’s also a critical litmus test for the health of a community and its pride in itself for economic development purposes, and I can say that it was very impressive to that first group of Project Sigma execs who turned out to be Hewlett-Packard when they first visited Conway."
Wes Craiglow, the city’s deputy director of development, said that his department is working to steer downtown development into continued mixed use and greater density. In a generation or two, he said, "downtown is going to be a true economic engine for the city."
"When you increase your per-square-acre density, you increase job creation and property and sales tax, and it’s also good for small businesses and entrepreneurs because space is priced very competitively. All in all, we’re pushing for a downtown that’s going to generate more jobs and raise our tax base without the need to increasing tax rates."
Craiglow, along with other city planners and the city’s economic development organizations, are working on the Markham Street Corridor project, which is planned to turn the two dozen blocks between downtown and Hendrix College into a mixed-use development "that will be very complementary to downtown."
If the Markham Street Corridor project and other ongoing efforts continue apace, Craiglow said that we can hope for a downtown that will one day be "a significant regional draw" on the order of Fayetteville’s Dickson Street or Little Rock’s River Market district.
Two Front Street entrepreneurs are on-board with this plan. Kings, a bar and concert venue on Front Street, marked the end of its second year of business this month.
Marcus Bobbitt and Dustin Botsford, co-owners of Kings, were both in their mid-20s when they decided to start a business downtown. Bobbitt said that he and Botsford "were driving to a different college town every day, five days a week" selling textbooks, and learned that "cities that have entertainment districts or thriving downtowns" did better overall. They came up with a business plan and eventually found an investor to help them get their foothold in Conway’s downtown.
"We’re really the first business in downtown that’s what I’d consider first and foremost a bar, someplace that focuses on other things besides food, and sometimes we’ve felt like we’re on an island. But it’s not about the first two years or the first five years; it’s about what Conway’s going to be in 10 years. Our goal is to have what Fayetteville has with Dickson Street in Conway on Front Street. I’m very confident that in the next few years we’ll be able to open another new location downtown."
(Staff writer Joe Lamb can be reached by email at email@example.com or by phone at 505-1277.)


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GameStop has launched a beta version of the NFT marketplace
GameStop, an American retail chain selling video game consoles and computer games, has launched an NFT marketplace. The platform will be based on Loopring’s second-tier Ethereum solutions.
The protocol uses ZK-Rollups technology for scaling. Through the use of the Ethereum blockchain, transactions will be secure.
Minting NFTs on Loopring will cost less than $1 per unit. At the same time, in the basic Ethereum blockchain, the costs can be up to 100 times higher.
GameStop NFT marketplace is available in beta mode. The release date for the full version has not been announced by the company. The price of the Loopring token (LRC) jumped to $1.23 after the news was published. Growth from levels near $0.85 amounted to almost 45%.


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The time required to hold a passport in Italy has increased significantly in the past few months, according to local media reports, while the same stressed that in some cities it is impossible to make an appointment with the offices responsible for such a document.
According to the Italian Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, the reasons that led to these problems are various while travel agencies are reporting inconvenience for the tourism industry, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
“The increase in requests for the issuance of electronic passports was determined by a plurality of causes, some contingent, such as the end of post covid restrictions, others of a structural nature, such as Brexit and, again, due to the difficulty, especially in the most populous municipalities, of obtaining an identity card quickly, with the consequence that the passport is required not only for the purposes of expatriation but also to have an identity document,” the Minister pointed out in this regard.
In this regard, a recent survey conducted by Italian Travel Agencies revealed that the current passport situation led to a 96.5 per cent decrease in bookings or about 13 thousand euros per agency in smoke.
The passport chaos caused significant damage to the travel and tourism sector, while the agency said that about 80,000 trips have been destroyed thus causing about 150 million euros in lost sales for the Italian travel agency system.
It has been reported that about 96.5 per cent of the agencies reported problems related to the association, stressing that they had seen a notable increase from just over two to more than five the weeks needed to make an appointment in order to hold a passport.
Regarding the issue, the National President of Assoviaggi, Gianni Rebecchi, has considered that it is a disservice to citizenship, stressing that the passport is not only required for going on vacation but also for family reunification, for children who do not have one and for other purposes.
Rebecchi said that it is not a question of business but also of the right to freedom of movement outside the borders of European countries.
Still, he added that it is undeniable that the problem has a significant impact on the tourism sector, more specifically in the year of the restart after the long ban imposed by the Coronavirus where Italy was the last European country to abolish travel restrictions and other bans imposed to halt the spread of the virus and its new variants.


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Tesco has unveiled plans to open its first specialist baby shop within one of its supermarkets, following a boom in baby and toddler equipment sales.
Shoppers will be able to try out a range of buggies, high chairs, car seats and other baby equipment on display in the Baby World ‘store within a store’ at the Tesco Walkden branch in Manchester before they buy.
The baby shop will also sell clothes, nursery furniture and other baby essentials, along with an ‘advisory centre for parents’ staffed by three nursery advisors. New ranges from O Baby and Hauck are also planned.
If the trial is successful, Tesco says it will roll the service out to other stores.
Tesco vs Mothercare
The move – which will place the supermarket giant in direct competition with the likes of Mothercare – has been prompted by a strong baby product sales performance, including a 52% increase in cot sales compared to a year ago.
Which? shopping expert Sarah Dennis says: ‘It’s no surprise that Tesco is jumping on the bandwagon in this growing market. And according to our recent survey, big names in the market such as Mothercare are not that highly favoured, receiving a poor rating for price, despite being among the most visited on our high street.
‘We’ll be interested to see if Tesco can offer the range and deals that customers shopping for their baby are after, as we know the store is a regular shopping destination for most of your general high street needs.’
You can find out which shop was voted best for buying baby products in our recent high street shops survey.
Tesco baby shop
Parents will also be able to arrange home delivery or next-day instore collection on catalogue items at the Baby World shop.
According to Tesco nursery category manager Dianne Jubb: ‘It’s going to feel like walking into a standalone baby shop but the prices are going to be extremely competitive. We know that first-time mums, in particular, want the experience of a dedicated baby store and like to have specialist advisors on hand.’


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For more than a year, the travel sector has eagerly awaited a rebound, and although travel is heating up heading into the summer, not every company is back to its pre-pandemic levels of business.
At Airbnb Inc., though, recovery came sooner than expected, even if business is anything but normal, said Chris Lehane, Airbnb’s senior vice president for global policy and communications.
For one, the demographic profile of a typical Airbnb user has shifted dramatically from 2019 to now, according to Lehane. Prior to the pandemic, the primary use case for Airbnb was two millennials traveling to a big city, he said. In 2021, that trend has essentially been flipped on its head, with familial groups who are looking to ditch the hustle and bustle now viewing travel as something they can do while they work.
“Right now, the typical case study of a guest on Airbnb is going to be a family traveling from an urban market to a rural area,” Lehane said during an interview on Monday with Morning Consult. “That, to us, is a really powerful sign of the market shift and the larger, fundamental evolution in travel that we’re seeing.”
41% of Americans Feel Comfortable With Domestic Travel for Work
Comfort with business travel, too, has been on the rise this year, a trend that Airbnb hopes to capitalize on down the line.
Airbnb and its Airbnb for Work business have worked in the past with companies across industries to host employees on business trips, but with many people still working at least partially from home for the foreseeable future, Lehane predicted the needs of companies will shift as they try to find new ways to encourage staff members to bond in person. To that end, Lehane said Airbnb has begun to have conversations with companies about hosting teams of 10 or 20 people on a monthly or quarterly basis to fill the void left by working from home.
“The water cooler equivalent, potentially, becomes people staying as a group at an Airbnb,” he said.
That would mean fewer short-term or one-night stays for business trips, he said, and more interest in off-premises, team-building activities as a way to replace some of the regular interactions people are missing out on by not regularly going into their offices.
Consumer interest in international travel remains fairly low compared to where it was before the pandemic, which is true of people in the United States and in parts of Europe, according to Morning Consult data. So far, it’s been a nonissue for Airbnb, which generates most of its revenue from the United States.
The company reported first-quarter revenue up 5 percent from 2020, and even an increase from the first quarter of 2019. That’s not so much a return to normal as it is an indicator that the pandemic has made home sharing more mainstream, Lehane said.
Since home sharing eliminates crowded spaces such as hotel lobbies, he said, some travelers felt encouraged to try out Airbnbs early in the pandemic to get away from home while still following social distancing guidelines.
“When the pandemic hit, no one really knew what would happen with travel,” Lehane said. “We didn’t know if we were going to have a business. But fairly quickly, by this time last year or even earlier, people began to use Airbnb’s rentals and homestays because they understood they were a safer option. They gave you more control over your travel options.”
The company was certainly caught off guard early on in the pandemic, when many hosts voiced complaints last summer about some of its decisions, such as offering guests refunds on cancellations when the coronavirus first started to spread.
A year later, Airbnb has taken steps to better its customer and host experiences. The company on Monday announced an upgrade to its platform, including improvements in the user experience such as more flexible bookings and a more refined search process, along with increased support for hosts as it seeks to recruit and retain them.
“What we saw last summer was that we rebounded, and we didn’t necessarily have the customer support we needed, because no one would have anticipated travel coming back as quickly as it did to Airbnb last year,” Lehane said.
As of last week, compared to 2019, a million new listings were added to the platform, according to Lehane, with the typical new host earning $8,100 over the course of the pandemic, and half of new hosts getting bookings within four days of signing up.
Americans Less Comfortable With Home Sharing Than Hotels
As more hosts and users have discovered the platform in the past year or two, Lehane said, home sharing has become more mainstream.
It’s yet to become as widely popular as major hotel chains, according to Morning Consult data, but Lehane said the majority of users join the platform based on recommendations from friends or family members, resulting in continued growth for Airbnb as it’s gained traction in the travel space.
“The pandemic really accelerated the mainstreaming of short-term rentals as a way for people to be able to travel,” Lehane said.


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Yearly Revenue In Cryptocurrency Projected To Rise By 99% By 2027 In The UK
September 29, 2023 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Data forecasted by Statista & presented by BitcoinCasinos.com shows a 99% increase in cryptocurrency revenue (2023-2027)
Highlights from the data:
- United Kingdom Crypto Market Projected For 99% Growth To $3.77B By 2027
- The UK Have Largest Anticipated Growth Across Top 5 Cryptocurrency markets
- The US Will Continue To Lead The Crypto Market In 2027 (10x Larger Than Next Biggest Market)
There was a huge decline in the crypto market from 2021 to 2022. Revenue dropped 49 percent in just one year falling from $1.65 billion to just $840 million. Over the last two years, several economic factors have held down the growth of the cryptocurrency market. However, a lot of the bad publicity stemmed from the downfall of one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, FTX.
With public trust waning in the value of digital assets, it’s no surprise that the crypto market has been extremely volatile in the last few years. But, it seems like the market is projected to recover at the end of 2023 with a projected 125 percent revenue increase.
Cryptocurrency Revenue Expected To Increase By 99% By 2027 In The UK
By the end of 2023, the revenue in the crypto market is projected to reach $1.89 billion.
The average revenue per user on the crypto market is an estimated $107.10 USD in 2023. That number is expected to nearly double over the next four years, as the crypto market is expected to experience an annual growth rate of 18.84 percent during that span. That amounts to a total market revenue of $3.77 billion USD by 2027.
With revenue set to increase by 99 percent, the number of users will also be on the rise as well.
The UK Are Anticipated The Largest Growth In The Cryptocurrency Market By 2027
The largest market increase will be seen in the United Kingdom, where crypto market revenue is projected to grow by 99% to a total of $3.77 billion. The U.S. will continue to dominate the crypto market in 2027 with an estimated market revenue of $31.62 billion, up 76 percent from 2023.
According to estimates, the lowest projected growth will occur in Germany, which will only have $2.35 billion in market revenue by 2027, up just 45 percent compared to 2023.
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Grads Not Heading to Local Media (or Reading it)
It scares me too, but typical communications grads aren’t necessarily news junkies, according to a newly released annual survey of new communications grads by The University of Georgia. Even though grads aren't especially big consumers of news in any medium, they are optimistic that media jobs will be there for them.
The UGA survey found that 75 percent saw a TV news program "yesterday," less than 60 percent read a paper, and 50 percent heard news on the radio. These figures are on par with "civilian" use rates. Are the newly minted communications professionals all using the Internet for news instead? Not really. Less than 60 percent typically read news online on any given day.
Looking forward, eight of 10 believe that "most people" will get their news from the Internet in 20 years. Still, that doesn't mean that Internet sites are where they want to work. Just 6.3 percent of the new communication grads interviewed for an Internet job this year. Less than 19 percent applied at a daily, 18.4 percent applied for a TV job, less than 23 percent applied at a PR agency, and 22.3 percent applied at an ad agency.
One more finding: Most don't believe that newspapers and TV nets will collapse. Two-thirds expect current TV nets to survive 20 years, and three-quarters said major cities will have "at least one newspaper" in 20 years.
This Post Has One Comment
Going into the news business without devouring the news is like wanting to become a gourmet chef when all you ever eat is cold cereal and Kraft macaroni and cheese (with ketchup). I’m glad they think traditional media will be there to pay them in the future. But since they rarely read anything, I wonder if this view of the future is the result of any fact-based analysis, or just the vague hopefulness of lazy minds.


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Welcome to AM Intel, a (mostly) daily round-up of easily digestible Dallas dining details that every local needs to know. Looking for more intel about where to eat and drink in the Big D? Sign up for Eater Dallas’s newsletter, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Eggholic will bring vegetarian Indian street food to the metroplex next month
Eggholic an Indian street food chain that serves up a bevy of egg-based dishes, many of them vegetarian, is set to open in Irving next month. The chain, which was first founded in Chicago by Indian-born cousins Bhagyesh and Lay Patel, will open mid-September at 7705 North MacArthur Boulvard. The restaurant was inspired by the family’s weekly “egg nights” back in India, and serves dishes similar to those found on Indian street carts, like cheese katori (boiled egg filled with spices and cheese), lachko (green bell pepper with cheese and runny eggs), grilled egg sandwiches, omelets, and egg-based curries.
Zalat brings pho-topped pizzas to Irving
Zalat Pizza, the Dallas-based chain known for its late-night hours and creative pies, has opened its first location in Addison. The pizzeria, at 4835 North O’Connor Road, opened Monday, August 23, serving up scratch-made pizzas for takeout only via Zalat’s website and third-party delivery apps.
Zalat, which was founded on Fitzhugh Avenue in 2015, is known for its creative takes on pies, with ingredients like Nashville hot chicken, elote, and sriracha ranch sauce. The Irving location is open until midnight seven days a week.
TikTok star Larray’s new ghost kitchen is now serving loaded mac and cheese in Dallas
Larray, the TikTok Hype House member with more than 25 million subscribers, is launching a delivery-only restaurant in Dallas this week, according to Business Insider. Larray’s Loaded Mac will serve seven varieties of the pasta dish, including a pizza-inspired version called “That Girl”, and a mac loaded with pulled pork, Fritos and onions. Diners can order from delivery apps like Grubhub, DoorDash, and Postmates, or directly from the Loaded Mac website.
Larray, who’s full name is Larri Merritt, told Insider that his grandmother, a home cook, inspired him to get into the virtual restaurant business. He also said he plans to release a Youtube reaction video of his grandmother trying Loaded Mac’s version of her signature dish.


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June video game sales dropped 31% compared to June 2008, according to data from market research firm NPD Group. The drop marks the fourth consecutive month of year-over-year declines.
"This is one of the first months where I think the impact of the economy is clearly reflected in the sales numbers," said NPD Analyst Anita Frazier in a statement. "The size of the decline could also point to consumers deferring limited discretionary spending until a big event (must-have new title, hardware price cut) compels them to spend."
The trend can't be attributed to consumer interest, as 4 million new players have entered the market since last year, according to the NPD. "Certainly there is plenty of opportunity in the industry, but the rate of change in many areas of the industry presents a lot of challenge as well ," says Frazier.
All platforms suffered a decline compared to June 2008, with the exception of the Xbox 360, which sold 240,600 units. However, Nintendo continues to dominate hardware sales.
Nintendo DS: 766,500
Nintendo Wii: 361,700
Xbox 360: 240,600
PlayStation 3: 164,700
PlayStation 2: 152,700
The big story in software might involve a game nowhere to be found in June's top 10. Wii Play, a collection of mini-games packaged with a Wii remote, failed to crack the list for the first time since its launch on February 2007, ending a 29-month run. "That's an astonishing record for this industry," Frazier notes.
Activision's open world action game Prototype topped software sales, as consumers scooped up 419,900 copies. UFC 2009 Undisputed continued its strong showing at retail, with the 360 version selling 338,300.
Meanwhile, Wii MotionPlus, the motion-control accessory for the Wii remote, posted a solid debut. The Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 bundle sold 272,400, while the accessory sold an additional 169,000 as a standalone item. The rest of the top 10 (publisher and platform in parentheses):
Prototype (Activision, 360): 419,900
UFC 2009 Undisputed (THQ, 360): 338,300
EA Sports Active (EA, Wii): 289,100
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (EA, Wii): 272,400
Wii Fit (Nintendo, Wii): 271,600
Fight Night Round 4 (EA, 360): 260,800
Fight Night Round 4 (EA, PS3): 210,300
Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Nintendo, Wii): 202,100
Red Faction: Guerrilla (THQ, 360): 199,400
inFamous (Sony, PS3): 192,700
The overall June plunge is the greatest year-over-year monthly decline since September 2000, when the industry experience a 41% drop. Barring any release delays, Frazier remains optimistic. "Even with the industry down 12% year-to-date, with a strong back-half performance, full year sales could still be flat to slightly up to 2008's record-breaking performance."
By Brett Molina
Photo: Prototype (Activision)
Mike Snider began covering the video game industry during the Super Nintendo-Sega Genesis clash in 1992. An original pinball wizard, he eventually was seduced by Robotron: 2084 and Tempest. These days he is a fan of action/shooters and lives out his Keith Moon fantasies playing a mean drum kit on music games. More about Mike.
Brett Molina has been writing about video games for USA TODAY since 2005. He is well-versed in Madden NFL, the fighting genre and first-person shooters. The first video game he played was Asteroids at a local arcade. He has been hooked ever since. More about Brett.


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Posted: May 20, 2020
ABC’s new program allows restaurants and bars to serve customers on adjacent sidewalks, parking lots, and streets
California restaurants and bars could be permitted to serve cocktails and food on adjacent sidewalks, parking lots, and in city streets in the coming months. That’s according to California’s Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC), which oversees licensing and regulation for bar and restaurant alcohol consumption. ABC’s new plan could create large outdoor bars and dining areas serviced by food trucks and pop-ups.
ABC’s new Temporary Catering Authorization (TCA) will allow restaurants and bars to create an outdoor area to consume food and alcohol, and one way for restaurants to recover lost revenue since the COVID-19 pandemic began. If a restaurant is approved, it can expand operations to parking lots, sidewalks, public thoroughfares closed to public access, and other areas within close proximity to the business. The authorization goes beyond a traditional liquor license, which restricts the purchase and consumption of alcohol on the restaurant’s premises.
As with anything alcohol related, there are strict conditions. This is specific to COVID-19 restrictions, and is available for when the restaurants partially reopen. Businesses must submit a slew of requirements before approval, including a diagram of the proposed temporary area, and approval from local law enforcement. Plus, the TCA only applies to ABC licensed establishments in counties where temporary stay-at-home orders have been lifted. The TCA will be removed as soon as COVID-19 measures are rolled back.
By Mona Holmes May 18, 2020 Source and complete article: La.eater.com
Go-Wine's mission is to organize food and beverage information and make it universally accessible and beneficial. These are the benefits of sharing your article in Go-Wine.com
Professional consulting to the Food and Beverage industry.www.winebusinessacademy.com
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Tasting wine is a nice experience, but visiting the places in which wine is made is a magic moment. Available in New York City for touchless pickup.


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» One Million Dollars A Year For Life Forever
One Million Dollars A Year For Life Forever
One Million Dollars A Year For Life Forever on Technology News and Updates AdmaTechnology.com at Friday, April 18, 2014
Sony showed off its latest ultrabook Windows 8 operating system, Vaio T13 “Touch Screen”, Indocomtech exhibition in 2012 at the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC).
With a 13.3-inch wide screen, users can enjoy a new experience with Windows 8 [...]
With a price of $159 U.S. dollars.
If you are lovers of the underwater world and the music, then you need to have a digital music player Finis SwiMP3.
Finis SwiMP3 is a digital music player or MP3 player waterproof which has 2GB of memory capacity or [...]
Cooler Master Thursday (09/04) launches headphones aimed at people who love to travel, namely HC-300 and HS-500.
Both headphones are using HDSS technology, a breakthrough technology that eliminates the distortion that can move more freely.
Model HC-300 [...]
IOS Users no longer need to envy the Android users who have been enjoying Angry Birds for free.
For the first time since it was released in 2009, as a game developer Rovio decided to change the price of being free in the App Store.
Quoted from Ubergizmo, [...]
Astounding number ready achieved by Apple. In the near future, the number of applications that have been downloaded from the App Store will touch the figure of 50 billion.
Quoted from Techradar, Saturday (4/5), Apple has already provided a gift for those [...]
This product is a breakthrough which brings the Go Green campaign. What are these phones? Read short reviews below.
Samsung Blue Earth
Blue Earth phone is a touchscreen mobile phone made by Samsung’s first solar-powered, which first appeared [...]
The good news for you smartphone users had Windows Phone OS. Angry Birds can now be downloaded for free.
Quoted from Ubergizmo, Thursday (2/5), Angry Birds has changed the status of being free is the original version, that is Angry Birds first.
Eidos Montreal announced a new game genre action adventure titled Thief 4, which is scheduled to be released on the PS4 console, PC and next-gen Xbox.
The game is scheduled to be released in 2014. Thief Game is a reboot of the classic series that brings [...]
Right now who do not know Instagram, a photo sharing application. If you include people who have an account Intagram, here’s how to play smart application.
Not a photographic aesthetic interest to many people but that enshrined [...]
An Iranian scientist has claimed that he managed to create a time machine.
Scientist named Ali Razeghi has filed a design called ‘Aryayek Time Travelling Machine‘ to the Centre for Strategic Inventions.
Quoted from Huffingtonpost, Friday [...]
Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 11 astronaut, plans to sell graffiti sheets contains instructions and guidelines that he uses when for the first time landing on the Moon.
Sheets of paper that contains guidelines used Aldrin when Neil Armstrong was driving the Lunar [...]


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It’s always nice to be sent good news. I know our economy is struggling, there’s rioting in the U.K., and children are starving everywhere, so any sliver of positivity is much appreciated. Today that sliver is that publishing isn’t doing so bad after all! So maybe it doesn’t make up for the bad economy, rioting, and starving children, but it’s something.
The Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group collaborated on a new survey called BookStats that looked into the state of the publishing industry. It found that in 2010, publishers’ net revenue increased 5.6 percent and they sold 4.1 percent more books (in all formats) when compared to 2008.
So much for that whole doom and gloom outlook that e-books are killing publishing and the industry is on its way out. So yay for the future of my career and for my love of books.


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REHAU will be in Manchester next month to showcase two new products at its third Specifi event.
In what is the first time REHAU has exhibited at the UK’s only built environment roadshow, the company will be attending five events across the UK in total.
The Specifi events are attended by globally-renowned industry speakers, specifiers, installers and technical experts, who spend time talking about projects, products developments and innovations with several built environment brands.
REHAU will be at the Manchester Specifi event on July 4th from 4.30pm to 10pm.
The RAUTITAN plumbing system, a 10 bar pipework solution designed for drinking water and heating systems, which launched in the UK at the end of last year, will be showcased
RAUVITHERM is a PE-Xa pipe ideal for use in district heating, biomass, biogas and heat pump applications, whilst RAUTHERMEX is suited to a variety of low carbon heat installations and features high performance PU foam, which makes it good for large district heating installations over long distances, where minimising heat losses is vital.
REHAU will also be featuring its brand new sound attenuated drainage solution, RAUPIANO, which will be launched to the market later this year.
The RAUPIANO product offers a patented structure, sound damping, is heat and impact resistant, chemical resistant and pressure resistant to 2-bar.
Drew Clough, Product Manager at REHAU, talked about how the Specifi events have gone thus far: “The roadshow events have been excellent and we have been very happy with the level of interaction and interest generated by our visitors.
“At the Specifi events REHAU is discussing the RAUTITAN plumbing solution that we launched last year in the UK, and also our brand new RAUPIANO product.
“It has been great so far and we are really looking forward to upcoming events over the next few weeks. Our next stops are Newcastle and London so if you have been unable to visit us so far, we hope to see you at these locations.”
Specifi is a free event in partnership with CIBSE YEN. Entrance is free to the event and there are only 100 seats available, so to book your seat visit www.specifi.co.uk
Ross on Wye,
Cembrit has announced the launch of a new through-coloured cladding board with a sandblasted surface, Patina Rough.Posted in Articles, Building Industry News, Building Products & Structures, Cladding, Innovations & New Products, Posts, Walls
Sample timber fire doors from Ahmarra Door Solutions recently exceeded expectations when tested against regulations.Posted in Articles, Building Industry News, Building Products & Structures, Doors, Health & Safety, Research & Materials Testing, Security and Fire Protection
EverEdge was recently specified to provide edging and planters for a project for Cain International at Islington Square in London.Posted in Articles, Building Industry News, Building Products & Structures, Garden, Posts
Contour discusses maintaining LST radiators and ensuring that they are consistently meeting their expected potential.Posted in Articles, Building Industry News, Building Products & Structures, Building Services, Heating Systems, Controls and Management, Posts


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These figures mark the 21st consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth in OOH ad revenues. For the first six months of the year, total OOH expenditures increased 4.2% to $3.84 billion.
Second-quarter growth in outdoor ad spending was led by categories, including miscellaneous services and amusements, up 10.1% to $463.7 million; retail, up 5.4% to $242.7 million; government, politics and organizations, up 2.2% to $119.9 million; financial, up 1.3% to $116.6 million; and communications, up 7.9% to $105.4 million.
Turning to specific advertisers, top spenders included McDonalds, Apple, Metro PCS, Warner Bros Pictures, Geico, Verizon, Chase, AT&T, Citi and 20th Century Fox Pictures.
As noted above, over the last few years, out-of-home has managed to defy the downward trend affecting other traditional media, including newspapers and magazines, thanks in part to the rise of digital out-of-home displays.
The OAAA also highlighted the complementary role OOH advertising can play with mobile, now the fastest-growing digital ad category, for example in cross-channel, place-based campaigns.
Earlier this year, the OAAA released a study that tracked 1,837 smartphone users via a smartphone eDiary, recording various factors, including their location, media consumption, purchase activity and moods.
The results showed that OOH ads reached consumers in the hour prior to 43% of mobile shopping activity, ahead of other media like TV, radio and newspapers.


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Toyota South Africa Motors (TSAM) now assembles the Toyota Ses’fikile at its Prospecton plant in Durban.
On Friday Minister of Trade and Industry Dr Rob Davies attended the official function, which signalled the finalisation of long discussions between TSAM, Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan and the South African government.
The Ses’fikile will be assembled from semi-knocked down kits which will be imported from Japan, but some localisation has already been achieved.
Dr Johan van Zyl, President and CEO of TSAM and Managing Officer at Toyota Motor Corporation, told Moneyweb the localisation level of the current assembled Ses’fikile will be about 21% to 22% with components like batteries procured locally.
The minibus will be assembled on a dedicated line at Prospecton with an initial investment of R70m for this first phase of the project.
The investment created 90 direct jobs at the plant, but Van Zyl said that with upstream and downstream suppliers and service providers it has resulted in 210 more jobs. “If you look at the investment to job creation ratio, you can see it is a very positive one, which makes this product a good one for further investment,” he said.
The Ses’fikile is not only important for the national taxi industry, it is also a major volume seller for Toyota in South Africa.
“With this in mind it makes economic sense to localise the assembly of this product and reap the benefits of increased investment, job creation and possible downstream supplier development,” says Dr Van Zyl.
Dti pushing local manufacture
Davies told Moneyweb that after the predecessor of the Ses’fikile and Quantum, the Hi-Ace stopped in 2007, all the vehicles used for taxi transport were imported.
“For example in 2009, 280 000 minibuses were registered in South Africa; very few of those were manufactured locally. We want to encourage manufacturers in South Africa to resume the local manufacture of this very important class of vehicles in the country. It can form part of our larger Industrialisation Policy Action Plan,” he said.
Davies also indicated that although the rules and regulations for the Automotive Production and Development Plan (APDP) set to kick off next year, have been published for passenger vehicles, the department is still busy completing a study to see how the plan can be expanded to include medium and heavy commercial vehicles.
In phase two of the project, after all the rules and regulations of the APDP and government’s taxi programme have been finalised, Toyota South Africa Motors will look at ways to further localise content, Van Zyl said.
The Ses’fikile is specifically adapted to meet all the requirements set by government for the local taxi industry.
Currently the Ses’fikile will be exported to Swaziland, Namibia, Botswana and Lesotho, Van Zyl said. Current production is 40 units a day, with the bulk of the approximately 1 000 units per month going to supply the South African market.
The hope is later to manufacture the Quantum for possible export to other countries.
Davies said that government hopes that investment by automotive companies will continue in South Africa, as well as strengthen and deepen.
He told Moneyweb that during a recent trip to Japan he met with 16 CEOs of Japanese companies who were all interested in finding out how to get involved in South Africa.


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Cruise Recalls 950 Robotaxis Following Pedestrian Collision
Cruise, the autonomous vehicle venture owned by General Motors, has issued a recall affecting 950 of its robotaxis after a pedestrian collision in San Francisco last month. The incident prompted Cruise to ground all of its driverless operations. The collision occurred when a pedestrian was hit by a human driver in another car, causing her to be thrown into the path of the Cruise robotaxi. The autonomous vehicle braked aggressively and attempted to pull over to the side of the road, but in the process, it dragged the pedestrian forward about 20 feet.
Regulatory Consequences and Rival Operations
The October 2 collision triggered a federal probe and led California regulators to revoke Cruise's permits to operate driverless vehicles in the state, unless there is a human safety driver present. In contrast, rival Waymo, owned by Google parent company Alphabet, continues to operate its driverless fleets in California and beyond.
Defects in Automated Driving System Software
According to a filing with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on November 7, Cruise discovered defects in its automated driving system software, specifically related to its "Collision Detection Subsystem." The filing states that after a collision with a pedestrian positioned low on the ground, the Collision Detection Subsystem may cause the Cruise AV to attempt to pull over out of traffic instead of remaining stationary, which is not the desired post-collision response.
Safety Measures and Third-Party Reviews
In response to the incident, Cruise has implemented a voluntary recall and is actively searching for a Chief Safety Officer. Louise Zhang, VP of Safety & Systems at Cruise, is currently serving as the Interim Chief Safety Officer. The company has also initiated third-party reviews of the collision, enlisting the services of law firm Quinn Emanuel, known for its work with Tesla and Elon Musk, and engineering consultants Exponent.
Temporary Suspension of Cruise Origin Production
Following the loss of permits in California and concerns over safety, Cruise temporarily halted production of its Cruise Origin driverless vans. The company had planned to produce a limited volume of these autonomous shuttles in Detroit. The Cruise Origin, unveiled in 2020, features no steering wheel or acceleration pedal and can accommodate six passengers.
In conclusion, Cruise's recall of 950 robotaxis and the subsequent regulatory consequences highlight the challenges faced by autonomous vehicle ventures in ensuring safety and addressing potential software defects. The incident has prompted the company to take significant measures, including the search for a Chief Safety Officer and third-party reviews. The temporary suspension of Cruise Origin production and the financial losses incurred by General Motors underscore the impact of safety concerns on the business.
Impact of Cruise's Robotaxis Recall on Emerging Autonomous Vehicle Ventures
The recent recall of 950 robotaxis by Cruise, General Motors' autonomous vehicle venture, following a pedestrian collision, provides crucial insights for new businesses in the autonomous vehicle industry. The incident underlines the importance of safety measures, regulatory compliance, and the potential implications of software defects.
Regulatory Compliance and Market Competition
The regulatory consequences faced by Cruise, including the revocation of permits to operate driverless vehicles in California, emphasize the need for new businesses to ensure strict compliance with regulations. The continued operation of rival Waymo's driverless fleets serves as a stark contrast, highlighting the competitive landscape of the industry.
Software Defects and Business Strategy
The defects discovered in Cruise's automated driving system software underline the importance of rigorous testing and quality assurance for new businesses in the autonomous vehicle sector. This incident serves as a reminder of the potential impact of software defects on operations and reputation.
Safety Measures and Organizational Structure
Cruise's response to the incident, including the implementation of a voluntary recall and the active search for a Chief Safety Officer, underscores the significance of safety measures and the need for dedicated safety roles within the organizational structure.
Production Suspension and Financial Implications
The temporary suspension of Cruise Origin production and the financial losses incurred by General Motors highlight the potential financial implications of safety concerns. For new businesses, this underlines the importance of risk management and contingency planning.
In light of these developments, new businesses in the autonomous vehicle industry can learn valuable lessons from Cruise's experience. Ensuring regulatory compliance, addressing software defects, prioritizing safety measures, and managing risks are all crucial considerations for success in this rapidly evolving industry.


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Canadian Solar announced on Thursday that it is still assessing the go-private proposal from its chief executive officer and due diligence is to be completed by end-September.
In December 2017, the company received a non-binding proposal by its chairman, President, and CEO, Shawn Qu, to buy out and delist the company.
Qu is offering to pay USD 18.47 (EUR 14.8) in cash for every common share not already owned by him and his wife, Hanbing Zhang.
According to Canadian Solar’s statement, the special committee of its board of directors and its financial and legal advisors continue to review the offer but no firm decision has been taken regarding the proposed transaction.
Meanwhile, Qu has hired a financial counsel and is holding talks with potential equity partners and debt financing sources.
They have a deadline to complete the due diligence on the company by the end of this month, Canadian Solar said.
The solar photovoltaic (PV) products manufacturer and solar installer noted that there is no assurance that a definitive offer will follow the “going private” proposal or any agreement will be reached, approved or completed.


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HDFC Bank deploys mobile ATMs across India
HDFC Bank on Saturday said it has deployed mobile ATMs across India to assist customers during the lockdown.
Mumbai, HDFC Bank on Saturday said it has deployed mobile ATMs across India to assist customers during the lockdown.
"At restricted, sealed areas, the 'Mobile ATMs' will eliminate the need for general public to move out of their locality to withdraw cash," the bank said in a statement.
"During the lockdown last year, HDFC Bank successfully deployed mobile ATMs in over 50 cities and facilitated lakhs of customers in availing cash to meet their exigencies."
Accordingly, customers can conduct over 15 types of transactions using the 'Mobile ATM', which will be operational at each location for a specific period.
"We hope our mobile ATM will provide a great support for people who want to avail basic financial services without having to venture far from their neighbourhood," said S. Sampathkumar, Group Head - Liability Products, Third Party Products and Non-Resident Business at HDFC Bank.
"This service will also be of great help to all the healthcare workers, and other essential service providers who have been working tirelessly to combat the pandemic."