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INTI’s launch of a new campus in the heart of Subang Jaya marks the rise of a greatly enhanced teaching and learning environment encompassing not only state-of-the-art facilities and technology but also brand new programmes of study offered via an innovative blended and online learning platform. Embodying the concept of a cosmopolitan learning environment, with emphasis on openness and community, the new INTI International College Subang (IICS) will serve thousands of students from Malaysia and across the globe.
Amenities include a new three-storey building housing a 300-seat auditorium that serves as an impressive venue for presentations by local and international speakers as well as ample learning spaces. It also houses INTI’s new Centre of Art & Design complete with a design gallery, studios, Macintosh and Autocad labs, materials library and design centre.
The launch of the new campus building in Subang was celebrated with a 3-day festival comprising workshops and events by celebrities and industry leaders, and a community project. Dubbed the INTI Edge Festival, the events were orchestrated to project the international experience and innovative learning environment that INTI promises to deliver to its students. During the 3-day festival, INTI stayed true to its delivery of innovative learning experiences by inviting speakers such as Jay Sheldon, a television and film director who is a master of body language and signals.
A highlight of IICS’s 3-day celebration was the Dazzling Vibrante fashion show at the posh new gallery. The show featured the designs of nine graduating PJCAD students with a range of apparel that reflected their vision of the international fashion scene. The fascinating concepts ranged from 1930s Shanghai to Egyptian Goth. Among the designs featured were those of Nizam Zamil, 1st prize winner in the New Faces of YODA 2011 competition, and Hariharan Arasu, winner at the Kronenbourg 1664 L’aperitif fashion event in 2012 and apprentice of Dato’ Jimmy Choo in London.
Another memorable highlight of the launch festival was the community service project jointly organized by the United Nations High-Commissioner for Refugees and Diesel Malaysia. The Graffiti Competition saw 22 participants spray paint their interpretation of the theme, United Against Human Trafficking, with the winning design to be printed on Diesel T-shirts and the proceeds from sales contributed towards the cause. The project was also part of INTI’s efforts to instill volunteerism and build awareness amongst the youth of today regarding world issues.
The festivities ended with a bang at the Party Rockin' event at the Plaza. Party-goers danced the night away to the beats of the gorgeous DJ Patricia K and celebrity DJ/ VJ JoeyG.


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Equinox says CDC’s new mask guidelines have triggered a surge in registrations
After more than a year of training at home or running in their neighborhoods, people are ready to return to the gym as mask requirements are lifted in parts of the United States.
“We’ve been waiting for this day for 14 months, and what we’re seeing is huge pent-up demand,” Harvey Spevak, executive chairman of Equinox Group, said in an interview with CNBC. Frank Holland at “Power lunch. “
Equinox, which also owns SoulCycle and Blink Fitness, will no longer require members to wear masks while exercising, per new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last week, the agency said fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear a mask indoors as protection against Covid-19.
The company said it will continue to follow national or local guidelines, where masks are required indoors. Unvaccinated members and guests are always expected to wear a face mask.
At SoulCycle, fully vaccinated runners will be allowed to remove their masks during lessons, but everyone is still required to wear masks in common areas such as the lobby, locker rooms and hallways.
Spevak said the new policy is bringing people back to his facilities.
“Yesterday was our highest usage in the Equinox portfolio since our close in March of last year,” he said. But that record could be broken on Wednesday. “It’s still early days as we usually have our strongest push at the end of the day, but I’m pretty confident [Wednesday] will be our biggest day. “
“We are also seeing strong demand for new sales,” Spevak said.
In New York City alone, Equinox saw a 55% increase in new member sales from a week ago.
“Right now our goal is to engage with our community and make sure they feel safe and make sure they feel good about going back to their experience,” Spevak said.
Both fitness channels will not require proof of vaccination.
“We trust our runners; they care about each other, for the community as a whole. And so we believe you when you say you’re vaccinated,” said Evelyn Webster, CEO of SoulCycle, in a separate interview. .
Spevak expects the future of fitness to be a hybrid of digital and in-person experiences.
“People want to be able to go back and forth,” Spevak said. “We believe that the consumer we respond to is going to want unique experiences both physically and digitally.”
During the pandemic, SoulCycle closed its indoor studios and managed to move its classes outdoors to 21 of its locations.
“They will continue to be a permanent feature of the SoulCycle offering for the very long term,” said Webster.
As previously stated, Equinox is in talks to go public via a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, headed by Chamath Palihapitiya, according to people familiar with the matter.

domain: news


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France asks search engines and app stores to remove Wish – TechCrunch
Several French ministers issued a joint statement announcing that they had asked major search engines and mobile app stores operating in France to completely hide Wish’s website and mobile app. Wish is a popular e-commerce platform that primarily references products from merchants based in China. It does not hold inventory because products are shipped directly from merchants to customers.
Last year, the French administration in charge of consumer rights and fraud opened an investigation into Wish. At the time, the Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) suspected that it was a bit too easy to mislead consumers and sell counterfeit products on Wish, such as sneakers and perfumes with images incorrectly showing famous brand logos.
The French administration then ordered 140 different products from Wish – most of them were imported products. This time they wanted to know whether these products were safe or not.
95% of the toys they acquired on the platform did not comply with European regulations – 45% of them were deemed dangerous. When it comes to electronics, 95% of them should not be available in Europe either, and 90% of them were dangerous in one way or another.
And even the cheap costume jewelry sold on the platform presented a risk: 62% of those they ordered are considered unsafe. Again, these measurements are based on a very small sample of 140 products.
When Wish is notified that it is selling dangerous goods, those products are taken off the market within 24 hours as scheduled. And yet, “in most cases these products are still available under a different name, and sometimes even from the same vendor. The company does not keep any logs related to transactions of non-compliant and dangerous products, ”said the French Ministry of the Economy in its press release.
According to the same survey, when Wish informs customers that they have purchased an unsafe product, it does not state the reason for the product recall.
In July 2021, the French administration in charge of consumer rights and fraud notified Wish and asked it to comply with European regulations on e-commerce and product safety. The administration gave them two months’ notice before acting.
Four months later, the French government takes advantage of recent changes in European regulations to dereference or block problematic sites and applications. It’s a convoluted process, but the Ministry of the Economy has asked the French administration in charge to ask search engines and application stores to dereference Wish. This is going to take a little while – at the time of writing, Wish is still available in the App Store, and you can still find the Wish website in Google search results.
After that, Wish will be banned from the shadows in France. The website will still be available and the app will still work if you already have it on your phone. But you won’t see it in the App Store, Play Store, or Google search results.
If the French administration believes that Wish has implemented the appropriate changes to comply with French regulations, it could lift the shadowban. With this radical decision, France sets a precedent and shows once again that the web is becoming more and more fragmented. In this case, he says he is acting in the best interests of consumers.
It will also be interesting to see if the next European digital services law will have a bigger impact on dropshipping as a whole. Europe is expected to revise the 2000 Electronic Commerce Directive with the Digital Services Act.


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Independent video game developer and publisher, Psyonix, announced today that Rocket League is now available on the Nintendo Switch console.
I have been playing this game a lot since it launched last night on switch. This game is amazing portable!
Great it turned out good.
Did they make you create an Xbox Live account to play online?
N4G is a community of gamers posting and discussing the latest game news. It’s part of NewsBoiler, a network of social news sites covering today’s pop culture.


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When American Fisker, with Danish Henrik Fisker at the helm, finally managed to get the Ocean model off the assembly line and onto the roads, it caused quite a stir in the world of cars, to say the least.
After numerous delays, the car is actually on the roads now. But perhaps the whole thing happened more than once too soon.
In a surprising turn of events, the launch of 'Denmark's' electric vehicle, Fisker Ocean, has been met with criticism rather than applause.
Early adopters of the vehicle have raised concerns over its build quality, with some stating that the car is "falling apart."
The car, which was touted for its innovative design and eco-friendly credentials, has been under scrutiny for issues ranging from minor cosmetic flaws to more serious mechanical failures. Owners have reported problems such as loose fittings, electrical glitches, and in some cases, parts detaching while driving.
As reported by Boosted.dk, the company behind the electric vehicle has responded to these complaints, stating that they are taking the feedback seriously and are in the process of addressing the issues raised by customers.
"Since Fisker launched the car, Ocean owners have complained more than 100 times about cars without traction," internal documents show.
"To TechCrunch, the company (Fisker, ed.) states that these problems are rare. And that it has solved 'almost all issues' with software updates," the media writes.
However, software-related problems are not the only thing Fisker owners are complaining about. Internal documents also show that Fisker has received complaints about hoods flying open while driving, and remote controls that lock owners out of their cars or prevent them from getting out.


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Bitcoin payroll company Bitwage, has announced today the launch of their new API, as well as new credit and debit card services.
The API allows companies to easily integrate Bitwage services into their own environments. In today’s blog post, President of Bitwage Jonathan Chester, stated that he is confident in the security and functionality of the newly-released programming interface, “Our API has been tested by various partners and hackathons, including the blockchain university halloween hackathon.”, said Chester.
According to Chester’s post, Hubstaff, a time tracking and team management platform used by over 8000 teams across the globe, is already making use of the new Bitwage API.
“With the new Hubstaff and Bitwage integration, managers and payroll administrators can set up automatic employee payments using their credit/debit cards.”
Bitwage has been trying to capitalize on today’s globally-distributed workforce by providing payroll services that are much more cost and time efficient than traditional bank wires, “After speaking with many of our customers, we realized that customers want to be able to build credit and credit card benefits while paying their international workforces.” writes Chester.
The latest credit/debit card offering from Bitwage gives employers another route to disburse payments to their employees. Bitwage charges a 3.5% fee, and an additional $0.30 flat fee, for all credit card transactions. Hubstaff employers that use the new Bitwage credit card payment option are limited to sending a maximum of $500 per week to each employee.
If you liked this article follow us on twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin and altcoin price analysis and the latest cryptocurrency news.


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01 Oct 2019
Posted in Banking
Card payments in Vietnam set to grow at 17.8% to reach 522.5 million in 2023, says GlobalData
Card payments in Vietnam are set to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.8% from 271 million in 2019 to 522.5 million in 2023, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.
GlobalData’s report, ‘Vietnam Cards & Payments: Opportunities and Risks to 2023,’ reveals that the number of card payments increased more than fivefold in the last five years, rising from 56 million in 2015 to 271 million in 2019 at a robust CAGR of 48.3%.
Kartik Challa, Payments Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “While Vietnam remains a cash-based society, the government’s financial inclusion initiatives, the emergence of digital-only banks, improved payment infrastructure and the adoption of new payment card technologies have led to the growth of card-based payments.”
The expansion of banking infrastructure and the licensing of non-bank companies to offer payment services in rural areas were also instrumental in driving the consumer shift towards electronic payments.
In order to reduce the reliance on cash, the government approved a scheme for the promotion of non-cash payments. As part of this, the government is aiming to bring 70% of the adult population under the formal banking system by 2020.
Other objectives include the expansion of point-of-sale infrastructure and increased payments of utility bills through electronic methods.
To further boost non-cash transactions, the State Bank of Vietnam has granted licenses to 30 non-bank companies as of July 2019 to provide payment services in the country, with most offering services through online and mobile channels.
Banks are also expanding their services to both rural and urban locations in the form of new branches, mobile van branches and digital self-service branches. For instance, Agribank now runs a fleet of over 60 mobile banking vans across the country to serve customers primarily in remote areas.
Meanwhile, digital-only banks have also made inroads into Vietnam during the review period, tapping into the tech-savvy millennial customer base. Digital-only bank Timo was launched in Vietnam in 2016 while VPBank’s YOLO followed in September 2018, offering a digital account and a Mastercard debit card.
Challa concludes: “The government’s increasing focus on achieving a ‘less-cash’ economy, the emergence of new payment card technologies such as EMV and contactless, the advent of digital-only banks, and a strong e-commerce market will support the growth of electronic payments during the forecast period.”


text: Businessweek has a piece looking at the PlayStation 3, worrying that Sony is confusing the consumer with all of the technology it's trying to work into the console. From the article: "Some question whether Sony is trying to cram too much into the new box. The PS3 is expected to cost $350 to $400. While it has the potential to be a megahit, Sony's message might get muddled in the process of going after too broad a market, says Deutsche Securities analyst Takashi Oya. 'It would be difficult to sell PS3 initially as anything other than a game machine,' Oya says. Sony declined to comment on such concerns."


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Mills responds to proposed loan boost
by Wally Northway
Published: October 23,2009
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) administrator Karen Mills has issued a statement on the proposal announced by President Barack Obama to raise the maximum loan size for SBA-backed loans to small business:
Mills’ statement, in p[art, reads: “America’s 29 million small businesses have been hard hit in this recession. Nine months ago, President Obama sent small businesses a lifeline: the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Since then, the SBA has supported more than 33,000 loans for a total of almost $13 billion in small business lending. This has helped save or create tens of thousands of jobs.
“But, there is much more work to be done, which is why President Obama (has) pledged his support for legislation that would increase the maximum size of some SBA loans. Increasing maximum loan sizes will allow the SBA to ensure that more small business owners and entrepreneurs can get access to the credit they need to expand their operations and create jobs.”
Specifically, Obama called for:
• Increasing the size of SBA’s 7(a) loan from $2 million to $5 million.
• Increasing the size of SBA’s 504 loan from $2 million to $5 million for standard borrowers (supporting a total project of $12.5 million) and from $4 million to $5.5 million for manufacturers (supporting a total project of $13.75 million).
• Increasing the size of SBA’s Microloan from $35,000 to $50,000.
A copy of the President’s remarks and a fact sheet on the announcement can be found at: http://www.sba.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/sba_homepage/sba_rcvry_obama_evnt_remrks09.pdf.
A fact sheet on the proposal can be found at: http://www.sba.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/sba_homepage/sba_rcvry_new_effort_credit_sb.pdf.
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NSTRC has developed technology-based alternatives for training new SafeCare providers and guidance for technology-based delivery of SafeCare to families.
We ask that your priority is to serve your families emergent needs in the best way possible given their circumstances. NSTRC will continue to support our partner agencies throughout this pandemic. Please see the guidelines below for recommendations about how to conduct SafeCare.
NSTRC is committed to providing resources to support caregivers as they navigate this pandemic. The current pandemic may cause feelings of fear, stress, and anxiety for all members of the family. It is important to:
- Emotionally support children during this time
- Follow a daily routine and keep children active
We wish everyone health, peace, and wellness today and everyday.
SafeCare responded to the COVID-19 pandemic immediately by transitioning trainings online and adapting the model for remote delivery. Dr. Shannon Self-Brown, Co-Director of NSTRC recently published an article reviewing the effects of the pandemic on SafeCare Providers. Key findings included continued delivery, comfort with the virtual format, improved parenting skills, and a high level of engagement with families.
Remote, virtual delivery of CM prevention programming offers the opportunity to continue serving vulnerable families in the midst of a pandemic. Further research by Dr. Lindse Bullinger, Dr. Kelley Fong, and Ashley Watson, MPH, supports that virtual delivery can increase service availability and completion, without affecting caregiver skill acquisition. While traditional, in-home visits may be better for some families, virtual delivery offers increased access to families who may not otherwise engage.
Barriers related to family technology and data access must be addressed to ensure reach and the effective delivery of prevention programming during the pandemic and beyond. In addition, Providers may need support and guidance in delivering virtual services.
Read The Impact of COVID-19 on the Delivery of an Evidence-Based Child Maltreatment Prevention Program: Understanding the Perspectives of SafeCare® Providers, published in the Journal of Family Violence and Virtual Delivery in Home Visiting: Insights from Administrative, Survey, and Focus Group Data


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Marketing Edge new award logo excites industry practitioners
Against the backdrop of the recently unveiled logo of 2020 MARKETING EDGE Summit & Awards, practitioners in the IMC industry have lauded the new logo, describing it as a creative innovation accentuating the brand essence and equity of the leading marketing publication.
Recall that MARKETING EDGE recently unveiled a new logo for its annual Brands & Advertising Excellence Awards 2020 in a move to reposition and rebrand the highly respected and anticipated annual industry event.
Commenting on the new award logo, the Managing Director, X3M Ideas, Steve Babaeko, said: “The award logo is simply creativity at its best. It speaks to the value and essence of the award itself. I am excited at the rebranding effort and creativity put into the new award logo.”
Expressing his view in a similar vein, the Managing Director, Nitro 121, Lampe Omoyele, lauded the new award logo. Hear him: ‘The logo is very colourful and impactful. It says a lot about the brand.”
Also reacting to the new award logo, Boye Adefila, an IMC expert, described the award logo as ‘aesthetically pleasing’, noting that the creator of the logo did a good job.
The new MARKETING EDGE logo is a combination of text and visual imagery that serves two purposes. The text, which has bold ‘ME’ as the acronym of the organisation, tells people the name of the company and creates a visual symbol that represents the brand’s essence.
MARKETING EDGE National Marketing Stakeholders Summit will hold on 15th October (10am -2pm), while the Award night is scheduled for 16th October (6pm -11pm prompt), 2020. The virtual venue of the summit is Zoom, while the physical venue (strictly by invitation) is D’Podium International Event Centre on the highbrow Aromire Avenue, Ikeja, Lagos.


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UK Fintech Awards select trading simulator, artwork registry as competition winners
A Hong Kong-based trading simulator and a mainland Chinese security company’s project using the distributed ledger technology blockchain to register and trade artworks have won a UK government competition to promote international financial technology (fintech) collaboration.
EquitySim and Shenzhen-listed security card manufacturer Hengbao were winners of the UK Fintech Awards 2016, presented by the Department for International Trade, formerly UK Trade and Investment.
“Something we want to support on a global scale is driving markets to be more innovative. Hong Kong and the UK, because of their natural status as fintech hubs, can support and develop each other,” said Andy Burwell, director of inward investment for the Department of International Trade in Hong Kong.
Burwell said the UK’s existing links with Hong Kong, such as the large number of British corporations in the city, make it possible for a stronger fintech relationship as technologies can be applied between the two locations.
The two winners will receive a five-day trip to the UK, training on information technology and tickets to Fintech Connect Live in London.
EquitySim, which moved its head office to Hong Kong three months ago, gives aspiring traders US$100 million to invest in its simulator and asks for a one-line explanation on why they made each trade. Their investments are then tracked and assessed.
The company, which was co-founded by Justin Ling, sells business schools subscriptions to the simulator to give students an opportunity to build a trading track record before they graduate and also to act as a way for lecturers to assess a student’s performance.
EquitySim also works with recruiters representing 300 financial institutions to help them find candidates with a feel for the market. Ling said the company, which has helped 150 people find jobs in eight months, charges a placement fee for every person hired through EquitySim.
“Coming from a great school and having great grades is great, and that indicates that you’re a smart person. But it’s the actual interactions and real life experience with the markets that obviously helps you excel,” Ling said.
James McKeogh, advisory partner at KPMG in Hong Kong and a judge for the competition, said the two winners showed the ability to combine ideas across industries into new products, which he views as being the definition of innovation.
“The idea of being able to show your capabilities through gamification and then connecting that with the ability to sell yourself through recruitment... it’s getting towards a bit of an Uber moment because it’s connecting two disparate areas,” McKeogh said.
Ling started trading stocks when he was 14-years-old and was successful enough to pay his way through university.
While studying at Simon Fraser University in Canada, Ling managed US$5 million of the university’s endowment, for which he made a 12 per cent gain in 2013.
Hengbao’s blockchain-based artwork registration and trading platform allows artists to register their works on the blockchain, which stores records across a decentralised network and is therefore almost impossible to cheat, according to Xiao Zhang, Hengbao Innovation Research Institute research and development engineer.
When an artist sells their work, they can transfer ownership to the new owners on the blockchain, giving a full ownership history and allowing others to authenticate the art.
The company will charge artists to register their work and will charge a commission of between 1 to 5 per cent for artwork sold using their services, Zhang said.
Zhang said the company plans to develop its relationships with the art world in the UK.


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Harry Potter, The Last of Us and Kingdom Hearts are likely to be the stars of the year – but streaming could change everything
Video games are a fast-moving form of art and entertainment, and that makes the games industry a notoriously difficult one to predict. Sure, new Fifa and Call of Duty games will arrive every year and sell predictably well, there’ll probably be a new Assassin’s Creed, and Nintendo will usually deliver a fresh take on Mario, Zelda or Pokémon – but who could have foreseen that 2018 would be obliterated by Fortnite, a colourful cartoon shooter that launched to little fanfare in 2017 but became a global phenomenon over the course of last year? Or that one of 2018’s most critically acclaimed games would be a psychedelic virtual-reality version of 80s obsession, Tetris?
Games are now almost as varied as the people who play them – more than two billion of all ages, across the world, playing on phones or PCs or PlayStations. But apart from Rockstar’s western epic Red Dead Redemption 2, whose £550m opening weekend made the kind of splash seen only every few years, the biggest earners of 2018 were games that have been around for years: Clash Royale and Pokémon Go on mobile, League of Legends and Counter-Strike on PC, and the omnipresent Fortnite. The money that these established, evolving mega-games make is astounding: it’s estimated that Fortnite now earns its creator Epic Games about $100m (£78.5m) a week. In terms of revenue, any new game released in 2019 will struggle to compete.


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Brian Krebs has published an ad from "Foreign Agents," a notorious Russian crime service. They're advertising the availability of foot soldiers in the USA who can help cash out hacked bank accounts and credit cards. Unlike traditional bank-fraud mules, who don't know that they're part of a scam, these "associates" are "неразводные" ("nerazvodni" or "not deceived").
The proprietors of this service say it will take 40-45 percent of the value of the theft, depending on the amount stolen. In a follow Q&A with potential buyers, the vendors behind this service say it regularly moves $30,000 – $100,000 per day for clients. Specifically, it specializes in cashing out high-dollar bank accounts belonging to hacked businesses, hence the mention high up in the ad of fraudulent wire transfers and automated clearinghouse or ACH payments (ACH is typically how companies execute direct deposit of payroll for their employees).
According to the advertisement, customers of this service get their very own login to a remote panel, where they can interact with the cashout service and monitor the progress of their thievery operations. The service also can be hired to drain bank accounts using counterfeit debit cards obtained through ATM skimmers or hacked point-of-sale devices. The complicit mules will even help cash out refunds from phony state and federal income tax filings — a lucrative form of fraud that, according to the Internal Revenue Service, cost taxpayers $5.2 billion last year.
Say what you will about their criminal tendencies, those bank robbers have excellent art direction.
Online Service Offers Bank Robbers for Hire
Google is downranking websites that use pejorative, racist terms like n*gger, so the awful people of 4chan and /pol/ are replacing that word with “google.”
It’s been more than 20 years since the publication of Making Book, Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s collection of essays, mostly drawn from the pre-online days of fanzines and letters columns; this year, in honor of Teresa’s stint as Fan Guest of Honor at Midamericon II, the 74th World Science Fiction Convention, NESFA Press has published a second volume: Making Conversation, a collection of essays drawn from the online world on subjects as varied as moderation and trolling, cooking, hamster-rearing, fanfic, narcolepsy, the engineering marvels of the IBM Selectric, and more.
Someone — possibly the government of China — has launched a series of probing attacks on the internet’s most critical infrastructure, using carefully titrated doses of denial-of-service to precisely calibrate a tool for shutting down the whole net.
#1. A-Audio Legacy Noise Cancelling Headphones with 3-Stage Technology The A-Audio Legacy Headphones are the Boing Boing Store’s best seller this month, and it’s easy to see why. With 40mm drivers, powerful circuitry, and memory foam padded circumaural ear cups, these are clearly super high-quality headphones. Plus, the patented 3-Stage Technology lets you toggle between passive […]
Vaping is getting more mainstream by the day, which means there’s been an influx of quality yet affordable vaporizers on the market. We’re particularly excited about the APX Wax Vaporizer Kit, which is an easy-to-use, high-quality vape that works with both dry herbs and waxy concentrates.If you’re a beginner trying to get into vaping, the APX […]
When you’ve had a long day and it’s time to unwind, there’s a lot you can do to relax: drink some tea, take a shower or even read a book. But there’s one thing that’s essential to a comfortable night’s rest—and that’s investing in some really good sheets. Enter Bamboo Bed Sheets. These quality sheets retail for $120, but […]


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Nokia to cut over 1000 IT jobs
Nokia Lumia smartphones are pictured in a shop in Warsaw
Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia said it will cut over 1000 IT jobs, including 820 employees who will transfer to HCL Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services, as part of an already-announced restructuring.
It said 300 jobs will be cut altogether, and that most of the reductions would be in Finland.
The cuts are part of Nokia's plans to cut 10,000 jobs, including 3,700 in Finland.
The changes will "increase operational efficiency and reduce operating costs, creating an IT organisation appropriate for Nokia's current size and shape," the phonemaker said.
The latest cuts, mostly in Finland, are part of plans announced last June to cut 10,000 jobs gobally.
The company has cut around a third of its workforce under Chief Executive Stephen Elop.
Once the world's biggest mobile phone maker, Nokia has fallen behind Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy phones in the lucrative smartphone market.
Nokia shares were flat, while HCL shares rose 4.8 per cent and Tata Consultancy shares rose 1.2 per cent in Mumbai.
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Over two years since its initial unveiling and the Tesla Cybertruck remains as polarizing as ever. But while critics continue to argue that the vehicle is simply too “ugly” or “strange” to be successful, the Cybertruck is still attracting the interest of many. The most recent one, it seems, was noted podcast host Joe Rogan, who was fortunate enough to see the vehicle up close.
And as it turns out, just like the multitudes of people who have placed reservations for the vehicle, Rogan ended up loving the angular, uniquely-shaped truck as well. In a Facebook post that featured several shots of the vehicle, Rogan gushed about the Cybertruck, calling it the “coolest car I’ve ever seen in my life.” He also dubbed the vehicle “insanely attractive in real life” and a “huge leap into the future.”
Rogan’s comments are quite noteworthy since he owns several impressive cars. Interestingly enough, some of Rogan’s prized vehicles like his 1965 Corvette Sting Ray convertible, 1969 Chevy Nova By Steve Strope, and a 1970 Cuda called the “Sick Fish” are painted in a shade that’s a bit similar to the Cybertruck’s steel exoskeleton. Needless to say, it appears that a Cybertruck may very well be in Rogan’s garage in the future as well.
During Tesla’s recently-held Q4 and FY 2021 earnings call, Elon Musk all but confirmed that the Cybertruck would indeed be delayed to 2023. Musk did note, however, that the Cybertruck’s biggest obstacles for its release will probably not be a shortage of batteries.
“Batteries will probably not be the limiting factor in Cybertruck production. There’s a lot of new technology in the Cybertruck that will take some time to work through. And then, there’s a question of like, what’s the average cost of Cybertruck and to what degree is that affordable? There’s — you can make something infinitely desirable. But if it’s not affordable, that will constrain people’s ability to buy it because they don’t have the money.
“I worry more about like how do we the Cybertruck affordable despite having awesome technology. That’s the thing that will really set the rate. Aspirationally, we’d like it to go, in terms of just a rough order of magnitude, we’d like Cybertruck to be at least on the order of [indiscernible] vehicles a year. But it will take us a moment to get to that level,” Musk said.
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HYDERABAD: Owners and operators of over 3,000 public charging points plying on Hyderabad’s roads, including auto-rickshaws, do not have any public charging points at their disposal. However, the city is still positioned better than the Bengaluru, where around 8,000 electric vehicles are plying without any public charging points whatsoever. With the delay in formulating Telangana's Electric Vehicle policy, due to a series of election, the emerging electric vehicle market is facing initial hiccups.
Of course, the picture is not completely gloomy. “Currently, two major companies are scouting for locations in the city to set up public charging points for EVs,” an official in the Energy Department said.
Sources said that the two companies are willing to set up charging points at all Hyderabad Metro stations, RTC bus depots, cinema halls and other such places in the city. This will likely encourage people to shift to EVs in the next one or two years.
According to sources, a normal charger may cost around `50,000, which would take around five to six hours to charge the battery of a normal EV. The speed charger, which would take less than two hours, costs around `4 to `5 lakhs. “If a person buys a house worth `1 crore, he/she can set up his own charging point at his residence by spending `5 lakh. It would not be a problem for them,” the official said.
However, the real problem is that the manufacturing of EVs has not picked up in the country. “The Central government placed an order for 10,000 EVs. But, the manufacturers have been unable to deliver them for many months,” the official explained.The price of an EV car is around `12 lakh. This is also one of the reasons buyers are not so inclined to shift from petrol/diesel vehicles.
EV policy soon
The State government is expected to come up with its own Electric Vehicle policy soon . It may offer several incentives to those who want to set up public charging points, said sources. The State government is very eager to promote EVs in the city. State government officials have requested the Centre to choose Hyderabad, which has a 200 acres of land bank near the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, for setting up a 5 GWh capacity manufacturing plant, as envisaged by the Central government as part of National Mission on Transformative Mobility.
High price of entry a deterrent
The price of an EV car is around `12 lakh. This is also one of the reasons buyers are not so inclined to shift from petrol/diesel vehicles. “Sports utility vehicles cost around `25 lakh. Transport operators may prefer buying them,” said the official. A normal charger used to charge such a vehicle can cost around `50,000


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Focus On Energy Products by Ash O’Mahony
Download feature synopsis PDF here
Publishing: 1 June
Advertising deadline: 24 May
Submissions deadline: 10 May
A disruptor is on the scene. And it’s not the kind of ambitious startup brand you typically imagine shaking up industries. No, in this case, it’s Coca-Cola that is doing the disrupting. In March, it revealed the launch of Coke Energy, which contains caffeine from “naturally derived sources”, as well as guarana extracts and B vitamins. It has already got rivals spooked in the US. It’s the first time an established, non-energy brand such as Coke has pushed its way into the market. So could this pave the way for more mainstream brands getting in on the act? To what extent will it attract new shoppers? And could it steal share from the major energy brands?
Shopper profiles: Established brands have clear shopper profiles but Kantar finds the category is continuing to recruit new shoppers. Could new brands speed things up?
Ingredients: To what extent are natural ingredients important to today’s shoppers? Many products contain artificial sweeteners so could this prove a stumbling block?
Other disruptors: So aside from Coke, who else has the potential to be a disruptor?
Energy products: Are there any innovative products outside the drinks format that could tempt consumers into a different type of energy boost?
Streetbees poll: How do shoppers feel about mainstream brands? Do they feel more accessible to shoppers who normally don’t buy into energy drinks? What are the most important factors to shoppers outside of this core market?
Innovations/Coffee variants: We identify four new innovations in energy drinks/products that ideally have not appeared in The Grocer before. including launch date, image and RSP.
Kantar data: Using Kantar commentary, we explain the reasons behind the rise and fall of certain sub-categori0es.
Nielsen data: Using Nielsen commentary, we explain the reasons behind the rise and fall of the top 10 brands.
Online Listicle to go live on 31 May: What are the main innovations & how are they shaping the market
- PDF, Size 0.35 mb


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Bogus postman delivers a fraud
OUR report on postal scams involving stolen mail and identity fraud struck a chord with Sarah Jackson. Sarah, 34, was tricked on her doorstep last month by a bogus postman who asked to see identification before he would hand over her mail.
The letters turned out to be junk mail, but it was too late - the conman had already noted personal details from Sarah's driving licence that would give him the key to commit fraud in her name.
A week later, Sarah was contacted by three mobile phone companies where accounts had been opened in her name. She had never applied for the phones. The criminals also used her name to obtain store cards. 'I have informed the police and the credit reference agencies,' says Sarah, of Shenley, Hertfordshire. 'Putting a warning on my credit file has managed to stop a number of fraudulent credit applications, but I still fear that the criminals might continue to use my identity to commit further fraud'.
Much of this kind of postal crime seems to centre on the Watford area of Hertfordshire.
Royal Mail says it is aware of a criminal investigation and is liaising with police. Last month, a gang that included postal workers was arrested in north London by police probing the theft of post.
The couple from Chingford, Essex, discovered the theft only after RBS Advanta contacted them to question some unusual spending. Emma says: 'RBS stopped the cards immediately, but I wouldn't trust anything valuable in the post now.'
• If a card provider is a bank, your card can be collected from a branch.
Sarah Jackson's name has been changed to protect her identity.
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After being starved of fine dining experiences during COVID, it seems Australians are desperate to eat at the country’s best restaurants once more – and with the end of the financial year (EOFY) looming, it’s particularly hard to get a table…
In what’s sure to be welcome news for the hospitality sector, restaurant bookings are at an all-time high Down Under ahead of EOFY on the 30th of June (that’s this Thursday for those of you who are never early on their taxes).
This is partly because restaurants that never used to take bookings have adjusted to doing so because of The Spicy Cough, but also because there’s unprecedented demand for eating out, especially when it comes to haute cuisine.
DMARGE spoke with Thomas Pash – the CEO of Hunter St. Hospitality, one of the country’s top restaurant groups – who confirmed that Sydney institutions Rockpool Bar & Grill and Saké are seeing bookings for private dining rooms up 30-40% on pre-COVID levels. Other restaurants across Australia’s capital cities are experiencing similarly strong booking numbers.
“There is certainly a big appetite for EOFY celebrations this year and a stronger appetite than there was prior to the pandemic,” Pash says. (We love his pun, too.)
“After several years when EOFY celebrations were on hold due to lockdowns, corporate groups are coming back strong,” he elaborates. “It’s a way for businesses to thank their teams and divisions for their hard work over the past few tough years.”
We also reckon there’s a bit of ‘use it or lose it’ marketing spend from more than a few businesses ahead of EOFY… Either way, it’s a good thing. Restaurants have done it tough over the last two years.
Now I’ve just got to find a dinner date that won’t stand me up…


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900 Lincoln Blvd. in Middlesex Borough — Courtesy: The Boniakowski Commercial Real Estate Group
By Joshua Burd
A candy and sweets importer is relocating from New York after acquiring a 27,000-square-foot building in Middlesex Borough, The Boniakowski Commercial Real Estate Group announced.
Todd Gannet, a senior vice president with the brokerage firm, represented both parties in the sale of the property at 900 Lincoln Blvd. He said the undisclosed buyer, a high-end importer, was drawn to the opportunity to move to a larger building that will accommodate its rapid growth.
Gannet also recently brokered the sale of a 1,100-square-foot retail building at 321 Bound Brook Road, also in Middlesex. He said the property, previously occupied by a shower and bath supply company, was listed and sold in three days to a local investor, who now plans to lease the building.
In a third deal, Boniakowski inked the sale of a freestanding, 1,300-square-foot building at 194 Lafayette Ave. in Edison. The buyer, We Capital LLC, plans to renovate the property based on the requirements of a retail, service, professional or medical user.
Gannet represented both parties.


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- Video Games
- About Us
Ziggy Marley to join Image Comics for an exclusive signing at Comic-Con International 2010
Berkeley, CA - 1 July 2010 - Grammy Award-winning musician Ziggy Marley is adding another title to his already impressive resume: comic book author.
The first issue of Ziggy's book, MARIJUANAMAN, will hit store shelves across the country on April 20, 2011. In support of his book, Ziggy will be making an exclusive one-day-only appearance at Comic-Con International. On Saturday, July 24, Ziggy will be signing MARIJUANAMAN posters with publisher Image Comics from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at booth #2729. Joining him will be artist Jim Mahfood (MIXED TAPES) and co-writer Joe Casey (GODLAND, OFFICER DOWNE).
Five-time Grammy winner and Reggae icon Ziggy Marley's early immersion in music came at age ten when he sat in on recording sessions with his father Bob Marley. For the next decade, as front man to Ziggy Marley and The Melody Makers, Ziggy released eight best-selling albums, garnering three Grammys, with such chart-topping hits as "Tomorrow People" and "Tumbling Down." Ziggy's first solo album, DRAGONFLY, was released in 2003, to much critical acclaim. His second solo release, LOVE IS MY RELIGION, won a Grammy in 2006 for Best Reggae Album. His third solo release, FAMILY TIME, scored him a Grammy in a new category: Best Musical Album For Children.
Now, Ziggy is blazing into the comic world with his latest project, MARIJUANAMAN. Ziggy's new superhero, Marijuanaman, is from a planet that is in desperate need of THC. Marijuanaman seeks to save Earth's marijuana fields from destruction by the drug company PharmeXon, and thus saving his home planet from destruction.
"I have been reading comics since I was a little boy in Jamaica,” Ziggy declares. “I am very excited to be a part of Image Comics, Comic-Con, and the comic book community."
Don’t miss Ziggy Marley's appearance at Comic-Con International 2010, where he will be signing limited edition Marijuanaman posters at Image Comics, booth #2729, on Saturday, July 24, 2010, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The first issue of MARIJUANAMAN will be in stores April 20, 2011. Find out more at www.marijuanamancomic.com.


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Japanese mobile studio Gumi has invested in The VR Fund.
The company announced that it had backed the virtual and augmented reality development incubator with an undisclosed sum of money.
The VR Fund previously revealed that it was seeking up to $80 million in funding when it was founded last month by former PlayFirst CEO Marco DeMiroz.
Gumi offered the financial support through its US arm, Gumi America, and is one of the first games companies to side with the young San Francisco-based firm.
Should it hit its target, The VR Fund will overtake the $50 million raised by Japanese mobile outlet Colopol last year specifically to back VR and AR projects.
However, it’s still some way off the $1.5 billion raised by augmented reality specialist Magic Leap in three rounds of funding across 2015.


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Home prices in Louisville rose by 0.2 percent in December 2012 from a year earlier, according to the home price index created by Santa Ana, Calif.-based CoreLogic Inc. (NYSE: CLGX), a provider of business information and statistics.
Home prices decreased by 0.2 percent from November to December 2012, according to CoreLogic.
Nationally, home prices in December 2012 increased by a robust 8.3 percent from a year earlier. Prices showed a more modest increase of 0.4 percent from November to December 2012. All but four states experienced year-to-year price gains.
The year-to-year increase in December was the biggest increase since May 2006.
“December marked 10 consecutive months of year-over-year home price improvements, and the strongest growth since the height of the last housing boom more than six years ago,” Mark Fleming, CoreLogic’s chief economist, said in a news release. “We expect price growth to continue in January, as our (pending home price index) shows strong year-over-year appreciation.”


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LEDINPRO Company Showcasing Innovative LED Grow Lights and Smart Control System at GreenTech Amsterdam 2023
LEDINPRO, a leading provider of cutting-edge LED lighting solutions, announced its participation in the highly anticipated GreenTech Amsterdam exhibition, set to take place from June 13 to June 15, 2023. The company will be showcasing its latest release of LED grow lights and smart control systems, aiming to revolutionize the agricultural industry.
Boasting a prime booth location at 01.450, LEDINPRO is excited to unveil its state-of-the-art LED grow lights and smart control system, offering attendees a glimpse into the future of sustainable and efficient horticultural lighting. The exhibition provides an excellent platform for industry professionals, growers, and enthusiasts to witness the unparalleled innovation and advanced features that LEDINPRO products bring to the market.
LEDINPRO's LED grow lights are meticulously designed to optimize plant growth and maximize yields, all while significantly reducing energy consumption and minimizing the carbon footprint. With a focus on sustainability, these cutting-edge lights harness the power of advanced LED technology to provide plants with the precise light spectrum they require for photosynthesis, resulting in healthier plants and improved crop quality.
Complementing their exceptional LED grow lights, LEDINPRO will also showcase their innovative smart control system. This intuitive and intelligent system allows growers to monitor and adjust various parameters remotely, including light intensity, color spectrum, and photoperiod duration, creating an optimal growing environment tailored to the specific needs of different plant varieties. The smart control system empowers growers to optimize resource allocation, minimize operational costs, and ultimately achieve higher crop yields.
We are thrilled to participate in GreenTech Amsterdam 2023 and demonstrate the game-changing capabilities of our LED grow lights and smart control system. We believe that our innovative products will pave the way for sustainable and efficient agriculture, contributing to a greener future. This exhibition provides a perfect opportunity for us to engage with industry leaders, exchange knowledge, and showcase our commitment to driving technological advancements in horticulture."
GreenTech Amsterdam is widely recognized as one of the premier international platforms for horticultural technology, attracting professionals, researchers, and industry experts from around the world. LEDINPRO's presence at the exhibition signifies its dedication to advancing the field of agricultural lighting and underscores the company's mission to provide growers with sustainable, high-performance solutions.
Visitors to GreenTech Amsterdam are encouraged to visit booth number 01.450 to explore LEDINPRO's revolutionary LED grow lights and smart control system, learn about the company's technological breakthroughs, and engage in insightful discussions with LEDINPRO's knowledgeable team.
For more information about LEDINPRO and its innovative products, please visit www.ledinpro.com.


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US Federal Court orders Apple to ease App Store rules
Apple will have to allow app developers to send their users to other payment systems as a federal court ordered in a legal case between Apple and the creator of "Fortnite" video game, Epic Games.
A year ago, Epic Games offered Fortnite players discounts if they used Epic’s payment system instead of those from Apple and Google. Both of the companies quickly removed Fortnite from their app stores. As a response, Epic Games sued both of them. Apple tried to dismiss the lawsuit, however, it failed to do so.
According to Sensor Tower, an app data firm, the App Store makes around $20 billion a year for Apple. Apple has forced app developers to use its payment systems in exchange for access to Apple's app store, which is the only way to get an app on Apple devices. Apple benefits commissions on many transactions based on this arrangement.
The judge, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, stated that Apple violated California’s laws against unfair competition by barring app developers from directing customers to other ways to pay for their services. According to her order, Apple must let developers include links in their apps to other payment methods within 90 days. Although the court dismissed the antitrust conduct of Apple stating that " while the court finds that Apple enjoys a considerable market share of over 55 percent and extraordinarily high-profit margins, these factors alone do not show antitrust conduct,” the judge said. “Success is not illegal.”


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Warning: If you’re a Sprint customer who currently uses the company’s aging iDEN network, it’s time to bail. The carrier issued a notice on Wednesday reminding that the network will officially go dark in 60 days on Sunday, June 30. That means your iDEN device will no longer be able to access the data network, place voice calls or even access 911. You’re not being left out in the cold, though, Sprint just wants you to migrate over to its Sprint Direct Connect services, which uses its CDMA network, instead.
“Our shutdown communications are meant to give customers more than enough lead time to plan their migration,” said Bob Azzi, senior vice president-Network. “This has been especially important for public safety, first responders, health care users and others who rely on the service to protect and preserve people’s lives. We strongly urge customers to migrate now, rather than wait until the last minute.”
If you’re still using an iDEN device we recommend you head to a Sprint store and swap it out for a new phone that supports Direct Connect as soon as possible.


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Samsung, LG launch smartwatches with new Google software
South Korea's Samsung and LG on Thursday launched rival smartwatches powered by Google's new software as they jostle to lead an increasingly competitive market for wearable devices seen as the mobile industry's ...
Google shows off Android Auto, wearables (Update)
Some 1 billion people are now using Android devices, Google said as the company kicked off its two-day developer conference Wednesday in San Francisco.
Google making low-cost smartphone for emerging markets (Update)
Google announced Wednesday it was working on a low-cost smartphone aimed at emerging markets as part of an initiative called Android One.
Google to show off smart home gadgets, wearables
Google is expected to reveal an Android update, smart home devices and other innovations at its two-day developer conference, beginning Wednesday in San Francisco.
New smart watch fuses fashion and fitness
Smart gadget specialty firm Withings introduced a fashionable Swiss-made time piece Tuesday that doubles as a fitness tracker.
New Microsoft-Nokia smartphone is... Android (Update)
Microsoft on Tuesday opted for the Android operating system from arch rival Google for its new Nokia smartphone, in a move aimed at regaining momentum in the competitive mobile sector.
Review: Colors come to life in new Samsung tablet
Samsung's new Galaxy Tab S tablet looks different. As soon as I turned on the screen, I noticed that the colors are stunning and vivid. Red looks redder, and greens are greener. The lawn and the trees in ...
Google Internet eyewear heads for Britain
Google on Monday made Glass available in Britain to early adopters willing to spend 1,000 pounds for a chance to dabble with the Internet-linked eyewear.
Mozilla on media stick: We don't make devices
Review: Amazon phone unlikely to catch Fire
In announcing Fire, its first-ever smartphone, Amazon showed off some sparks of innovation. There are two standout features in particular: a service called Firefly that can identify everything from a song ...
Review: Padfone X combines tablet, smartphone
Most of my friends who own iPads also own iPhones. Apple bet that users would find enough differences between those devices that consumers would want both - and Apple was right.
Review: Warming up to tablets with keyboard covers
It took some travels across the country for me to appreciate a tablet with a keyboard cover.
Report says Apple smartwatch to come this fall
Apple is likely to launch a computerized wristwatch this fall that includes more than 10 sensors to take health measurements and other data, according to a published report.
Google, Microsoft to add smartphone 'kill' switches (Update)
Google and Microsoft said Friday they plan to join Apple in offering theft-deterring "kill switches" in their smartphone operating systems, as part of an agreement with mayors and police agencies.


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Finalize the ongoing infrastructure work at Latin American airports and get more support from Latin countries in aviation, especially with the collection of fewer taxes. That’s what Avianca Holdings CEO Hernán Rincon would do if, on a magical turn, it could change the industry landscape in the region.
During the Latin American Aviation Summit in Cartagena, Colombia, a panelist questioned Rincon: “If I had a magic wand, what would make Latin American aviation reach higher levels?” And he mentioned these two items, as well as a third. “My last change would be for the passengers to be more into their shopping, as they generally do not observe what they are getting until they have to change something on the journey and cause a terrible experience for everyone.”
He also spoke about the new consumer profile and how it affects the world of aviation. “Millennials spend much of their time on Facebook and Twitter, so we must create a digital dialogue that follows this direction,” he said, giving clues to what the Colombian company is likely to become. “I want to see Avianca as a digital airline that flies planes.”
In a panel on demand in the region, Capa chairman Peter Harbison and Indigo Partners executive William Franke set an example of South America that, despite having 50% of the quota in the Brazilian market, is still lacking a penetration.
The event, which takes place between yesterday and today, also counts with the participation of the executive vice president of Amadeus, Elena Ávila, who warned of the need to create an emotional connection with the passenger, mainly through technology and in all moments of sale. Azul’s Alliances and Distribution director, Marcelo Bento, and Expedia Latin America director Carolina Piber also attended a panel on Latin America’s future traveler who also featured the head of Amadeus Online Travel, Sergio Vargas.
“As an industry we have to use technology to communicate with these new consumers, we can not escape from this reality,” said Vargas.


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There’s no question that video games are an integral aspect of global entertainment. Hardware and software releases for gamers are a billion dollar industry, and the most highly anticipated new titles often post larger grosses than the biggest Hollywood blockbusters. With each of the largest computer companies boasting significant gaming divisions and more corporations turning to this market to make up for lackluster computer and television sales in the recession economy, what could possibly keep gaming systems out of every home in America? One obvious issue is how those coping with disabilities are limited in the popular titles they can actually play. While home entertainment systems will always be an option, many disabled gamers have been unable to enjoy the communal experience of an arcade. Thanks to the nonprofit organization The AbleGamers Foundation, that is no longer the case.
Gaming fans of all types will be able to enjoy a permanent arcade that AbleGamers just opened in Washington D.C., but the real winners are disabled gamers. This new installation is described as an accessibility arcade, bridging the gap between communal gameplay and the fairly significant disabled gaming community. How significant? According to AbleGamers it could be 33 million potential customers, and that is just within the United States alone. All of them are gaming fans, but all deal with some sort of disability that requires alterations in either gaming titles or the systems themselves. This permanent accessibility arcade will directly address this problem, and will remain a visible solution game companies can look towards when trying to discern how to best serve this community. Look for this new arcade at the MLK Jr. Memorial Library.
The best part of this recent announcement is the clear communication that AbleGamers isn’t stopping there. While one arcade will certainly cause an impact in that community, the company’s goal is to create change across the board. Hence the publication of a unique document they call “Includification”. Though that’s quite a mouthful, the discussions held within are hugely important. AbleGamers suggests how new games can be engineered with the disabled in mind, and points out current success stories. Some suggestions include a remappable set of keystrokes, so an individual could change the gameplay to fit their needs, and asking that game designers attempt to devise their games so they can be played with one hand if necessary. Other aspects of the document lay out various ways today’s gamers overcome their disabilities in order to play along. They profile one particular disabled gamer’s 3500 DPI mouse, which allows him to play with just the subtlest of motions. Another highlight is how games like “Max Payne 3” allow players to change the color of the target, so those who only see particular aspects of the color spectrum can still blow away baddies.
Other unique developments AbleGamers profiles in its document show that the future of gaming for the disabled is only improving. The hit game “Bejewelled” has made considerations for all comers right from the outset, by differentiating each jewel by color and shape. And a new piece of software called SmartGlass, recently released by Microsoft, may make it possible for two people to play the same game together even if they are at far different ability levels. While video games will never reverse disabilities, and 1800wheelchair and other services will always be required, anything that helps close the gap between people is a very good thing.


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Urban farmer and entrepreneur Beverly Grant grew up in northeast Park Hill in the 1970s. She saw Denver's eastside go from being a thriving, middle-class black neighborhood to a food desert -- a community without a grocery store. And more recently, she's watched as longtime residents of Five Points, one of Denver's oldest African American neighborhoods, have been displaced by gentrification, moving out to Montbello and Green Valley Ranch. See also: Dahlia Square could become a garden spot -- but right now plans are sowing dissension
The changes in the area moved Grant to found Mo' Betta Green MarketPlace, a traveling farmers' market servicing various eastside neighborhoods.
When Grant first heard the term "food desert," she felt sad that the community she loved could be defined by such jargon. "We are not a food sovereign nation," she says. "It's hard when you can go to the store and get anything you want year round -- food flown half-way around the world. It's contributing to a breakdown in health."
Guided by the old adage "You are what you eat," she decided to build a business growing and selling locally grown, organic foods. Investing in sustainability and health produces true wealth, she says. As more people build community gardens and raise chickens, goats and bees in their back yards, she believes the culture is turning its back on industrial agriculture and returning to off-the-grid living -- which is not just a trendy concept, but the way things used to be.
She has trademarked the term "integrus" to describe foods that have a traceable origin, that are organic, local and delicious. Growing vegetables in hoop houses and fish in aquaponics systems are two examples of systems she admires. "With 80 percent of the world's population living in cities, urban agriculture is not a fad," she says. "It presents a creative challenge to us all to figure out how we can create food production in small spaces year round."
Find me on Twitter: @kyle_a_harris


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Adult Americans are spending their leisure time at home playing games at a pace not seen since the 1950s, when television was just emerging as a home- entertainment force.
And the games they seem to enjoy playing most are those that play down the competitive element-non-game games, as one expert calls them.
''Games are a good indicator of what`s on society`s mind,'' said John F. Kelly, a writer and games collector from Washington.
''In the 18th Century, there were a lot of explorer and travel games. In the `30s, people wanted to turn their lives around; boy makes good. Now, with all the concern about ethics, you have games like Scruples.''
Judging from some of games on the market today, Americans are definitely not in a serious state of mind. Indeed, one of the hottest board games, Adverteasing, might best be described as mindless.
The game tests players` knowledge of which company ''brings good things to life'' or where the ''Home of the Whopper'' is.
Players join an advertising concern, starting as a clerk in the mail room, then work their way up to president by correctly identifying product and company slogans and jingles.
''You can be totally uneducated and play Adverteasing,'' said Richard Levy, who with his wife, Sheryl, created the game. ''We live in an age of 30- second television commercials. With Adverteasing, you can open the box and you know how to play.''
For sure, any board game whose rules take longer than two to three minutes to explain or itself takes hours to play or requires a player`s undivided attention is unlikely to find an audience nowadays.
''The kind of games that are popular now have certain traits in common,'' said Jonathan Bard, of Stoller & Bard, the public relations concern that represents Games Gang, which markets Pictionary, a sort of charades played on paper, and for the last two years the country`s top-selling game.
''They are attractive on the outside, easy to understand,'' Bard said.
''In the `80s, we saw a new genre of socially interactive games,'' said Angelo S. Longo, a game developer for a marketing concern called the Games Gang.
''People are playing games as a social thing. What you come away with is not the fact that you lost, but wasn`t that fun.'' Longo, who has a doctorate in clinical psychology is the developer of Red Letter, an offshoot of Scrabble.
In 1985, after a wave of interest prompted by the Trivial Pursuit craze, Americans spent $291 million on family board games, which average $12 to $25. Last year, sales rose to $353 million.
Not just for kids
''Thirty years ago, games were considered child`s play,'' said Patricia McGovern, a spokeswoman for Parker Brothers, the board games manufacturer.
''Today, games are viewed as entertainment. It`s become perfectly acceptable for adults to play games.''
Board games are based on fewer than a half-dozen basic forms: race games, in which the goal is to be first, like Encore, a singing version of Name That Tune; war games that combine chance and accumulation, like Monopoly; games of position, like checkers; and games that require players to solve a puzzle, like Clue.
Most ideas for new games flow from those basic structures.
''Race games evolved from hunting,'' said Longo, noting that they date back 3,000 years. He cited as examples a Korean game called nyout, and pachisi, the national game of India, more commonly known as Parcheesi.
The basic structures are so good, Kelly said, that game inventors can build any game around them. ''The trick is figuring out a gimmick that will sell the game,'' he said.
The trend toward games that incorporate popular culture began in the 1950s.
Games based on books, movies and television characters like the Lone Ranger, Winnie the Pooh and Tarzan hit the market. Today, you can buy games like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Platoon and Dr. Ruth`s Game of Good Sex.
In this age of ''tell all'' television, it seems only natural that some of the more popular games are those Kelly calls ''embarrass-yourself-i n-front-of-friends'' games, like Scruples.
The renewed interest in games as entertainment for adults has spawned new ways of socializing for the midlife set.
At the No Exit Cafe in Chicago, Othello players meet regularly on Wednesday nights to test their skills. Two new ''games bars'' have recently opened in lower Manhattan.
Recently ago, Bob Barber, a librarian at the University of Illinois at Chicago, held a games party at his house. Players streamed in from noon to 6 p.m.
Marilyn Bagel, an advertising writer from Bethesda, Md., got her entire office involved in a game of Adverteasing.
''Games provide a safe structure in which people can socialize,'' said Sherri MacIngo, a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California whose specialty is demographics. She is also described by friends as a top-notch bid whist player.
''It gives us a chance to express latent emotions,'' she said. ''I`ve known people whose personalities change almost totally when they play games. And they don`t have to apologize or make excuses for it because it`s always in the game-playing milieu.''
Toy analysts attribute the resurgence in adult games not only to the nostalgia but also to a need for escape from a hectic, stressful world.
''My dad used to say, `Son, you`ve got to work hard, but play even harder,'' said Brian Maloney, a 26-year-old senior account executive at Ogilvy & Mather and the proud owner of a Nintendo video games set.
''I started playing Nintendo this year and found it to be therapeutic. A lot of people are seeing play as not just something for children. It`s a great way to relax and unwind.''
''Basically we`re all out of control in the work environment,'' said Longo. ''When you play a game, the structure of the game gives you control. You understand the parameters. That can help one`s self concept.''
College students, who make up a primary market for games, seem to be playing less.
Larry Kahn, vice president of the North American Tiddlywinks Association and owner of a tiddlywinks parlor in Maryland, learned how to play the game while a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1970s.
Nowadays, he discovered on a recent return to his alma mater, students are into studying. ''Hardly anyone played tiddlywinks or was interested in learning how to play,'' he said.
MacIngo said: ''What I`ve seen at USC, especially among black students, is that students are more issue-oriented. Students seem to be sending out a message that they don`t have time for games.''
Studies often show an increase in hours worked by Americans and a loss of leisure time.
But John P. Robinson, a sociologist and University of Maryland researcher who has conducted studies of how Americans use their time, has found that people have more free time than they did 20 years ago.
''And the kinds of activities that people enjoy most are those that involve interaction with people,'' Robinson said.
Doing triple time
Although the majority of Americans still spend most of their leisure time watching television, there appears to be growing interest in activities that contrast with watching television and that may be fueling new interest in games, Robinson said.
Some worry that with the shift toward non-competitive games Americans might be losing their competitive instincts.
''Not by any stretch of the imagination,'' Longo said. ''There is still a competitive element to most games.''
Still, Bagel finds that ''some of these games you can play while doing other things.''
She has prepared dinner and washed dishes while playing Adverteasing.
''After all,'' she said, ''it`s not like chess where you have to be seated all the time and make a move every few minutes.''


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Benioff’s 2013 (NOT 2012) DreamForce Day 1 Keynote
Marc Benioff does a great job of setting the tone and direction of the software space. If you missed Dreamforce 2012, you might feel a bit left out. But, if you'd like to get a jump on next year's event, read Marc's Keynote for 2013. It's got vision to spare and should make a lot of software firms envious.
Marc Benioff is a great showman, salesman and speaker. His annual show, Salesforce.com’s DreamForce, has become the show to attend for application software buyers globally. Last week's event was a high-energy affair chock full of product announcements, glowing customer testimonials and more.
Marc's keynote often sets the standard for what other vendors’ user conferences should aspire towards – but don’t achieve. Salesforce.com is simply too far out in front of the mainstream application software marketplace with their multi-tenant cloud applications, a PaaS (platform-as-a-service) called force.com, a huge ecosystem of software partners that have created applications on the platform (e.g., three ERP product lines alone), a Java developer platform (i.e., VMForce), cloud database solutions and much more. His competitors are late digesting last decade’s (and older) acquisitions and have only recently ‘discovered’ the cloud.
This year, Marc reinforced the “business is social” theme by bringing in a veritable who's who of CEOs to discuss how their firm is reaching new buyers via new media. These conversations showed how businesses are marketing, conducting commerce and more through the use of unstructured data, via the Internet and through new kinds of systems not found in more mainstream ERP product lines. These CEO discussions also showed a widening gap between the companies that get social and those that don't.
This gap will widen more by next year. And to give all of us an insight into how the market will change next year and how big the gap will get, let's take a look at what Marc Benioff might talk about at next year’s DreamForce event:
“WOW - it’s really great being here at the Moscone Center once again for another amazing DreamForce event. Over the next three or four days, you'll hear from an amazing collection of speakers talking about the amazing Salesforce.com products and how they transform their businesses into mobile, social and cloud powered juggernauts.”
(Note: For the sake of brevity, we've removed the next 1,043 usages of the word “amazing”)
“Last year, in 2012, we told you that business is social. We showed you how human resources can be social through our new work.com product. We told you that salesforce.com would soon experience a 1 billion transactions per day event. And, I'm happy to report that we not only met the challenge but we’re now currently exceeding 1.3 billion transactions per day on a regular basis.
But this morning, I really want to focus on the business -- the business of your firm. I want you to get comfortable while I articulate a vision we see rapidly coming up on businesses everywhere today. This is a vision told in several ‘trinities’.
From our humble beginnings in 1999, we knew that three forces would converge that would fundamentally change business and technology. Those forces were cloud technology, mobile technology and something we didn't fully understand in its entirety in 1999: social technology. These three technologies became the first trinity of truly transformative technology. Today, in 2013, we are proud to announce that salesforce.com has absolutely and totally dominated each of these three computing disciplines individually, but have also delivered solutions that absolutely exploit the best combined characteristics of all three.
The combination is the key to understanding change and change in business. And in our boldest statement to date, now some 14 years after we were founded, we say to you, to our competitors and to the customers to come that salesforce.com has absolutely and unequivocally mastered the opportunities presented by the combination of cloud, mobile and social technologies.
Now, as we look towards the future, a future that I might add that our competitors still cannot grasp as they are still trying to understand the individual technologies of the last decade, we see a new trinity of technology is about to impact the worlds of technology and business. The second trinity is comprised of three things: powerful analytic applications, in-memory database computing capabilities and big data.
I’m sure some of you will be thinking right now, “But wait Marc, hasn’t salesforce.com already been focused on these technologies, too?” You’re right, we have but we did so in a singular not combined fashion. Our Radian6 product has been making sense of the gargantuan volumes of unstructured data found on the Internet, in Twitter streams, Facebook updates, blog posts and more for years. We've been making short work of big data for a long time. But we used it as an adjunct of our core CRM product line. We used it to monitor sentiment analysis among customers. The true opportunity behind this may be far greater than anyone’s initial estimation.
Now, we’re pleased to announce a number of new capabilities will soon help our customers handle a greater variety of big data types like weather information, point of sale transaction data and more. We’re making it easier than ever for every company in this world to integrate, compare and enhance their traditional, internal ERP data with structured and unstructured data regardless of its origin or size of its databases.
Our channel partners are building incredible new optimization programs built on new force.com extensions that will marry this traditional transaction data to the new, big data sources. Businesses will have a better way to understand who to staff and how many people to staff at their retail stores based on current weather forecasts. Companies will be able to look at retail cash sales of their customers’ customers and use those to better plan their inbound supply chain purchases. In short, we will make every salesforce.com customer that utilizes these new second trinity technologies the most competitive and the most profitable companies within their industry vertical.
When we tackled the first trinity of mobile, cloud and social, we saw this as a way to democratize technology, to connect businesses better with their employees and customers and deliver a whole host of other benefits to you. The second trinity will create insights. Insights so amazing, so bold so competitively advantageous that it will create a huge gap between the businesses that do not know how to optimize their operations versus those who measure and understand everything from customer sentiment to buying trends to seasonality changes to potential product defect monitoring and a whole host of other forward-looking opportunities.
The second trinity is about harnessing opportunity. And that's why we're announcing bigopportunitynow.com.
bigopportunitynow.com takes the best capabilities we, our customers and our cadre of partners have created around analytics, in-memory database technology and big data. Think of bigopportunitynow.com as the most awesome executive dashboard you could ever imagine. This technology is monitoring massive amounts of information, news events, commodity price changes, regulations, collections, and so much more. It looks at the explicit and implicit actions of your competitors and highlights for you potential opportunities your firm should be exploiting.
With bigopportunitynow.com, salesforce.com is delivering the innovation your firm needs to compete in this new economy. We are delivering the innovation so that you have the opportunity to exploit the new knowledge needed to win in the ever quickening and competitive global marketplace today.
But the change is not going to stop there.
My business partner, Parker Harris, and I talked about another trinity forming these days. This one is comprised of 4G mobile telephony, ubiquitous telephone and Internet access around the world and the rise of video as a business medium. We believe that virtually every business process is going to be impacted by the rise of these three converging technologies, too.
For example, call centers are something that salesforce.com is intimately familiar with. Our technology has been used in call centers for more than a decade. But, how does the call center world change when customers will be calling in expecting a full motion video to full motion video telephone call?
I believe video will transform every business process and, by extension, every business system. We’ll need new storage and retention protocols to save our video calls not just our emails. We are investigating and experimenting aggressively here as last year’s iPhone 5 and the Android phones are technically ready for this world. So are your customers and suppliers!
I’m committing to you that salesforce.com, the most innovative company in the enterprise software space, will be the first to market with full video enabled applications." (wait for applause….)
"We’re also studying other combinations of technologies that are bit further out still but will undoubtedly change business, competition and software. We’ll share more of that in next year’s DreamForce 2014.


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Worcester Trumps Boston to Open Medical Marijuana Dispensary in Massachusetts
A survey was conducted to select a place that will be best suited for the establishment of dispensaries to cure medical marijuana patients. The new figures by the state regulators revealed that 100 applicants applied to get the license for the establishment of medical centre.
It has been reported that Worcester has left Boston in the competition to grab the opportunity to open centre in Massachusetts. According to latest figures, nine of the no –profit companies shave opted for the Worcester and six have opted for Boston. The two companies Framingham and Lowell has attained third most desirable position, by gaining five applicants.
Along with this, Northampton has attracted three applicants and Cambridge has attracted single applicant with a similarly liberal populace. It has been reported that about 35 permits will be awarded in maximum. State officials are planning to award winners of this competition by the end of January.
Barbara Ferrer, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission, said: “We are glad there are applicants that have moved forward in Boston because we support the idea that we should have a dispensary in the city”.
She said that she was not surprised of the second position attained by Boston, as it is not an easy task to open a business in the city.
New Zealand News
- Hyundai Motor Corp to create ultra-fast EV charging network E-pit in Korea
- MGE gets six-month extension for South Korea’s Inspire Entertainment Resort development project
- Price of two cheapest trims of Tesla Model 3 electric sedan increased by $500
- Genting Malaysia asks employees to accept reduced pay; executives to take leave without pay
- Tesla to design & build affordable EV in China: Tom Zhu
- Norway’s ICE car sales decline as buyers making shift to EVs
- Pursang launches Retro-inspired E-Track Motorcycle for Euro 14,449 in Netherlands
- ElectReon successfully tests dynamic wireless EV charging system on public road in Sweden
- Volvo to design special Gothenburg Green City Zone for autonomous & related technologies


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Construction has started on the third phase of the $200 million South Market District mixed-use development, an upscale apartment complex called The Beacon.
The building, at Girod Street and O’Keefe Avenue, will consist of 126 apartments, 20,000 square feet of retail space and a landscaped courtyard. The retail space in The Beacon will focus on apparel, accessories, home furnishings and additional services.
The Beacon is scheduled for completion in January 2016 and will connect to the South Market District’s fourth building, which is set to begin construction in late 2015. Work on the fifth and final building should begin in late 2016.
“The future of downtown New Orleans is incredibly bright. South Market is attracting tremendous interest from prospective residents and retailers alike. We look forward to watching the area transform into a vibrant community over the coming months,” said Matt Schwartz, a principal with The Domain Companies, which is developing South Market District.
When completed, the development will have more than 700 apartment units and 170,000 square feet of retail space.
Parts of the first two phases of South Market District, The Paramount, a 209-unit apartment building with 21,500 square feet of retail space, and The Park, a garage with 27,000 square feet of retail space, are scheduled to open in December. The retail components of both buildings will open in early 2015.


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There’s gold in them thar fools:
Orbitz Worldwide Inc. has found that people who use Apple Inc.’s Mac computers spend as much as 30% more a night on hotels, so the online travel agency is starting to show them different, and sometimes costlier, travel options than Windows visitors see. The Orbitz effort, which is in its early stages, demonstrates how tracking people’s online activities can use even seemingly innocuous information—in this case, the fact that customers are visiting Orbitz.com from a Mac—to start predicting their tastes and spending habits.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that Mac users also have more debt than Windows or Linux users. Of course, one thing that Orbitz may not have learned in their research is that Mac users spend infinitely more than Linux users on hotels, since Linux users build their own shelters whenever they travel.
True science fact: there are no homeless people in America. Did you really think it was a coincidence that the standard “homeless” look is a strung-out, bearded, middle-aged white man?


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Stocks to Watch: AT&T, Tyson (Update 1)
NEW YORK -- AT&T (T) , the No. 2 U.S. telecommunications company, will start selling home monitoring services nationwide.
AT&T will begin trials of the services this summer in Dallas and Atlanta.
AT&T's "Digital Life" will monitor homes for burglaries and will allow customers to control such things as appliances, lights, heating and cooling.
AT&T made its announcement ahead of the U.S. cellphone industry's annual trade show, which starts Tuesday in New Orleans.
Tyson Foods (TSN) reported second-quarter earnings Monday of $166 million, or 44 cents a share, up from year-earlier earnings of $159 million, or 42 cents.
Sales were $8.3 billion, up from $8 billion last year.
On average, analysts expected the company to post a quarterly profit of 38 cents a share on $8.47 billion.
Micron Technology (MU) won the right to negotiate exclusively to buy Elpida Memory after offering more than 200 billion yen ($2.5 billion) for the Japanese chipmaker, Reuters reported, citing a source with direct knowledge of the deal.
The acquisition would lift Micron's global market share of memory chips used in personal computers to 25%, making it the second largest behind Samsung Electronics .
Elpida filed for bankruptcy protection in February.
Shares of Micron Technology rose 2.29% in premarket trading Monday to $6.70.
Dish Network (DISH) , the satellite-TV provider, posted first-quarter profit of $360.3 million, or 80 cents a share, down from year-earlier earnings of $549.4 million, or $1.22 a share.
The 2011 quarter included a $340.7 million gain related to a settlement with TiVo.
Revenue rose 11% to $3.58 billion.
Analysts expected earnings of 70 cents a share in the first quarter on revenue of $3.62 billion.
Sysco(SYY) , the food distributor, will report fiscal third-quarter earnings of 43 cents a share on revenue of $10.45 billion, according to analysts.
The bid would have been for about $17 a share.
"DigitalGlobe has consistently demonstrated superior operating performance compared to GeoEye, including the stronger relative performance on the EnhancedView program," said DigitalGlobe CEO Jeffrey R. Tarr in a statement. "DigitalGlobe is the only provider in the industry with a constellation of three healthy on-orbit high resolution satellites, which allows us to deliver vastly more imagery to NGA than GeoEye, both in total and per-taxpayer dollar, generating significant value for the government and taxpayers. We are enthusiastic about our prospects and the opportunities before us, and our ability to successfully execute on our strategic plan to create value for our customers and shareowners."


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Israel is home to some really talented people. Back when Intel was losing to AMD over half a decade ago, not in terms of market share, but in terms of performance of their products, it was Intel’s team in Israel that came out with Core architecture that put the company back on top. More recently Dan Shechtman (pictured above), who works at the Israel Institute of Technology, won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of quasicrystals. Apple wants some of those brilliant minds for themselves, at least according to the Israeli publication Globes, who says that Apple has “decided to open a development center in Israel focusing on semiconductors.” Aharon Aharon, who is described as “a veteran player in Israel’s high tech industry”, will be put in charge of this new office. It should be noted that it will be Apple’s first research and development center outside of Cupertino, California.
Now in related news, it’s also been widely reported that Apple is getting ready to blow as much as $500 million on an Israeli company called Anobit. Their specialties, according to TechCrunch, are “solutions designed to improve the speed, endurance and performance of flash storage systems while driving down the cost.” Anobit has over 20 patents under their belt, over 70 that are pending, and they employ roughly 200 people. According to Calcalist, another Israeli news publication, Apple uses Anobit’s products in the Phone, iPad, and MacBook Air.
Update: The Anobit deal is official.
Both of these news items reinforce Apple’s philosophy of taking complete control of their products. They want to be responsible for nearly every little thing that makes up their hardware. Steve Jobs was called a madman, a perfectionist, and an unrelenting asshole for the way he ran Apple, but look where it’s got them today. We don’t yet know how deep Apple wants to get into designing their own processor and memory subsystem, but this news makes us think that they’re aiming to pull a Qualcomm, meaning that they want to design their own ARM compatible processor instead of relying on off the shelf intellectual property.
[Image Credit: The official web site of the Nobel Prize]


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June 5, 2014 – Brown-Forman CEO Paul Varga is looking to expand his company’s line of flavored whiskies based on the success of recent extensions of the Jack Daniel’s brand. During a conference call with analysts Wednesday following the release of Brown-Forman’s quarterly earnings, Varga cited the success of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey. The whiskey-based liqueur sold more than 1 million cases worldwide during the past year, and Varga said Brown-Forman will use the lessons learned from launching Tennessee Honey in future product development.
“I’m sitting and looking at a category that in the United States alone, if you just — just our rates and estimates of what’s happening in the flavored whiskey as a segment in the United States, the latest numbers have it significantly largely than the — I’ll just cite the Irish whiskey category or the cognac category. And as the more recent three-month trends related to flavored whiskey as a general segment reflects that continued growth. I mean, it will be larger than scotch pretty soon. And so you are sitting in and you are weighing — you don’t want to be too slow or too fast on either one of those.”
Brown-Forman introduced Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey four years ago in the US market, and is now testing a cinnamon-flavored “Tennessee Fire” version in three US states. Chief Financial Officer Jane Morreau told analysts flavored whiskey is “driving some of the most explosive growth that we’ve seen in the spirits industry in years.”
Brown-Forman reported a 17% increase in fourth-quarter earnings for the fiscal year ending April 30, with earnings of $0.62 per share – outperforming analyst consensus estimates of $.58. Overall sales for the Jack Daniel’s brand rose 8% worldwide, with international sales growing by 10% and domestic sales by just 6%. Woodford Reserve sales were up by 26%, with a 16% gain for Old Forester. Varga hinted that Brown-Forman will try to expand export sales of both brands and the company’s other whiskey brands to take advantage of what he called “the global whiskey opportunity.”
NYSE ticker: BF.B