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The all-sports retailer, known for its supersized stores that combine retail and entertainment, will open a location in collaboration with Simon at Town East Square, in Wichita. The 220,000-sq.-ft. store will open in spring 2023 after full renovation of an existing space. It will be Scheels’ second location in Kansas, joining one in Overland Park that opened in 2015.
Similar to the Overland Park location, Scheels’ Wichita outpost will feature 85 specialty shops, a restaurant and a variety of family-friendly attractions that include a wildlife mountain, rollerball and a candy shop. There will also be interactive arcade games and sports simulators.
Wichita will the company's 31st location, with 29 existing stores and one scheduled to open this fall in Missoula, Mont. The company has also announced its 32nd location, opening fall 2023 in Chandler, Ariz.
"We have been studying this market for several years and are excited to be part of the Towne East Square development,” Steve M. Scheel, CEO, Scheels. “We want to thank Simon for all the hard work and dedication bringing this project to life, and we look forward to working together throughout the building process.”
Scheels’ history dates back to 1902, when Frederick A. Scheel, a German immigrant, used the $300 he earned from his first harvest as the down payment on the first Scheels, a small hardware store in Sabin, Minn. It is now a 29-store operation with stores in 13 states, including North Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, Montana, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Nevada, Illinois, Utah, Kansas, Colorado, and Texas.
Currently, Steve D. Scheel, the great-grandson of the founder, is the company's chairman. Great-great grandson Steve M. Scheel is CEO. Todd Anderson serves as president and oversees daily operations of more than 8,000 associates.
"Scheels is an exciting and dynamic, family-friendly brand that is a perfect example of the type of fresh, new experience Simon is known for cultivating," said Mark Silvestri, Simon's executive VP and COO for development. "Simon is delighted to welcome Scheels to Towne East Square and the entire region."


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If you thought 2021 was going to be as bad as 2020, turn that frown upside down, because we have amazing news for you: Chuck E. Cheese, the rat-based eatertainment empire, has announced that they are officially out of bankruptcy, which means they could add a new humongous and frightening reptilian to their animatronic house band, if they wanted to!
“[We] look forward to beginning a new chapter as a stronger and healthier company well positioned to execute on our long-term goals,” said CEC Entertainment CEO David McKillips in a statement. “Under new ownership, and with the leadership of our new Board, the CEC team is excited to continue delivering memories, entertainment, and pizza for kids and families around the world for generations to come.”
Hell to the yeah! This is exciting AF, especially if the new animatronic lime-green lizard that we are hoping the company introduces could have a cool name like “Gustav” or “Rodrigo The Tank.” Just imagine yourself munching on some delicious cheese pizza while Chuck E. rocks the mic with a 14-foot Iguana angrily strumming a sitar onstage next to him.
According to Nation’s Restaurant News, Chuck E. Cheese now has 100 million dollars of liquidity to support operations and growth. This comes after they managed to pay off 705 million dollars of debt in the past twelve months. That sounds extremely suspicious, but we do not care as long as Chuck and co. can rock out for the kids.
So, surely, it would be pretty easy to buy and build a seven foot tall Kimodo Dragon with blood red eyes and real working reptilian gills to add to the house band. Seems like a good use of money in our humble opinion. And if you really need to free up some cash, get rid of the ball pits. We don’t need that. We want the lizard. Give us the lizard.
And until then, we at Men’s Humor will keep you posted on all things Chuck E. and/or Cheese.

domain: news


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Optimism about the nation’s economic outlook among United States business leaders reached its highest level since 2004, according to the latest Grant Thornton International Business Report (IBR), a survey of more than 3,300 business leaders in 45 countries.
The election has come and gone. And while HVACR contractors held on to hope that November’s ballots would provide a bit of clarity, looming legislative gridlock and unstable economic conditions continue to provide a much murkier forecast.
As the holiday season and New Year approach, The NEWS wishes you good times. Really, we do. So, for the next couple of weeks, please have a few donuts and don’t worry about payroll, paying the bills, paying the piper, or even paying attention. 2012 promises to be a good year in the HVACR industry.
In a survey of more than 1,000 International Air-Conditioning, Heating, Refrigerating Exposition (AHR Expo) exhibitors, HVACR manufacturers expressed optimism about the economic outlook for 2012. Nearly three fourths (72 percent) of the total respondents expect a better year (59 percent) or a much better year (13 percent) in 2012.
Owners of small businesses are not as concerned as they had been about their cash flow, many are planning on making a capital investment in the next six months, and those that are doing well in the current economic climate are using social media as a magnet to draw new consumers.
The last few years have been challenging for HVACR contractors, the poor economy has resulted in financial stress, and recent federal legislation has caused concern. Even with these recent difficulties, there are numerous reasons to be hopeful, said Paul Stalknecht, president and CEO, Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA).


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The director of video game remakes like "House of the Dead," "Alone in the Dark" and "Postal" goes postal on "you all" for not Kickstarting his latest project. And the rant's definitely NSFW.
Thus far, 28.8 million of the Japanese company's inflators have been recalled in the US.
Commentary: Believe it or not, this video game showed me some hard truths I needed to understand to become a functional adult.
Developer DICE knows what you want; everything you loved about the original, minus the frustrations.
Flights in and out of the UK's capital are expected to be severely delayed, following a flight data computer failure, regulator Eurocontrol says.
A food delivery startup's recent collapse is just the latest sign that the era of instant gratification by app could be ending.
Drones are cool and they're only getting smarter, more powerful and less expensive. But you should definitely read this before you run out and buy one.
With Amazon's Echo smart speaker becoming a surprise hit, the online retailer is expanding its line of Alexa voice assistants with two new devices.
The US presidential primaries may not yet have outdone Leonardo DiCaprio, but the memes are mounting. Twitter's top curator picks the microblogging service's best political Moments so far.
Acadine Technologies thinks there's room alongside Silicon Valley's biggest powers for software to power drones, action cams, smartwatches, and the feature phones plenty of people still buy.


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Take that, conventional wisdom! The oddball Google Nexus Q is made in the good ol’ US of A, proving that electronics can be assembled outside of China.
This fun little tidbit wasn’t mentioned during the Nexus Q’s announcement yesterday. Sure enough, a label on the bottom of the device says “Designed and Manufactured in the U.S.A.” That little label is also why the device costs so much.
Speaking to the NYT Andy Rubin explained that making the device in the U.S. is a bit of an experiment. “Why don’t we try it and see what happens,” he said. Rubin went on to state that Google is not in a sort of crusade with this project. In fact Google hasn’t revealed the actual Silicon Valley manufacturer nor is it saying where the Q’s components are made.
There was a time when electronics were made in the U.S. Early computer giants such as HP, Dell, even Atari made their products in the U.S. The promise of cheaper labor lured these companies elsewhere.
But things are changing again. The cost of labor in China is rising quickly. Plus, there is a large advantage to having your manufacturer literally down the road from the designers. Instead of spending weeks in China, engineers and designers can drive 10 minutes down the road to solve an issue.
The Q itself seems to be a bit of an experiment as well. Google revealed the product yesterday at its yearly developers conference. Basically, the Q is jukebox which pulls media from Google’s cloud services. An Android phone or tablet tells the Q what media to play, and the Q grabs the media from online. This is fundamentally different from Apple’s Airplay service which produces the same result, but instead streams the media from the mobile device itself. The Q is a bit strange, and with a price of $299, it’s a hard sell for what’s essentially a set of features that should be built into Google’s other streaming product, the floundering Google TV.
The Q’s higher price is a direct result of assembling it in the U.S., says Google. The company hopes to drop the price over time as the product volume increases. But the question remains, will consumers, even American consumers, spend $299 on a device with a very limited feature set even if it’s made in the U.S.?


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The future is digital, and the top executive of The Plain Dealer says the newspaper — make that news organization — intends to have the digital future figured out sooner rather than later. That's the key reason for the decision to end home delivery of the newspaper seven days a week in favor of driving news consumers online for local news and features, Plain Dealer publisher Terrence Egger said. During a 30-minute interview last Friday, April 12, in his fourth-floor office in The Plain Dealer's Superior Avenue headquarters in downtown Cleveland, Mr. Egger also fleshed some details of the new strategy. A key to the publication's future is an electronic edition of the print newspaper that will give readers the ability to scan and turn pages on their computer screen. Mr. Egger, who has been the newspaper's president, publisher and CEO since May 2006, said a new, improved e-edition will be rolled out in a few weeks. In the coming months, The Plain Dealer will consolidate the sales and marketing staffs as well as the editors and reporters — make that content providers — from the daily newspaper, cleveland.com and the weekly Sun newspapers. Mr. Egger also said the company is reviewing its real estate needs and will decide in the months ahead whether and where to consolidate staff. He said the total headcount, which he estimated at “just north of 1,000” today, should stay relatively constant, even though the company already has announced it will lay off 58 Plain Dealer journalists in the months ahead. Asked about evidence that strongly suggests the move to a strategy the news business calls “digital first” is premature, Mr. Egger said the newspaper's owner, New York-based Advance Publications, intends to be ahead of what is an inevitable move away from print. However, he emphasized the print edition will continue to be available, though only at newsstands four days a week. “Do we want to increment there slowly or do we want to get out ahead and really learn and sell with digital storytelling?” Mr. Egger said. “They (Advance executives) just felt it's not either/or, it's both. We've got to make the best bets and investments about where the content (is headed).” The digital push is aimed at capturing the attention and long-term loyalty of younger people who increasingly communicate by computer or smart phone and don't want to stain their hands with newspaper ink. Perhaps more importantly, it's also a response to the loss or revenue and readership that the newspaper industry has suffered. As a private company, Advance Publications does not disclose financial details. However, the loss of revenue at daily newspapers, particularly advertising revenue that traditionally has accounted for 80% of all newspaper revenue, is staggering. According to Pew Research Center's 2013 “State of the Media” report, U.S. newspapers lost 57% of their print ad revenue in a decade, dropping from $44.9 billion in 2003 to $19.2 billion in 2012.
Plain Dealer says print reduction is driven by digital
Publisher outlines the strategy behind decrease in
newspaper's home delivery
On April 4, Plain Dealer executives announced a major overhaul of operations. They said the daily newspaper later this summer will reduce its home delivery schedule to three days a week from seven. The paper will be home delivered on Sunday and two days yet to be determined. It will be available at newsstands the other four days a week. The primary news delivery vehicle will be cleveland.com, the Advance-owned website that now publishes stories produced by reporters from The Plain Dealer and the Sun newspapers, which also are owned by Advance. A lot is riding on the change. “Our hope is to get a reset of the business in terms of priorities, the future and the scale, to be able to be a growth company again,” Mr. Egger said. “So we can look forward to hiring, look forward to improving compensation over time, to try to get out of that downward spiral.” Advance is on the front line of this new approach, moving a number of its nearly 30 daily newspapers to alternative publication schedules. Some, including the Times-Picayune of New Orleans, generally print newspapers only three days a week. One, the Ann Arbor News, ceased publication in 2009, though Advance later replaced it with the twice-weekly AnnArbor.com print publication on Thursdays and Sundays. The Plain Dealer and another Advance paper, the Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y., along with the two Detroit newspapers owned by other companies that operate jointly, have chosen the hybrid approach of publishing seven days a week but limiting home delivery to three days. Some industry observers wonder if Advance, and The Plain Dealer, aren't jumping the gun.
“I'm kind of skeptical of it as a business strategy,” said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism school in St. Petersburg, Fla. “To the degree it makes sense, it makes sense as an occasion to get rid of expensive editorial talent and replace it with younger, cheaper people with higher technical skills.” Mr. Edmonds, a co-author of Pew's 2013 “State of the Media” report, said he doesn't believe the significant savings in printing and distribution cost from trimming home delivery offsets the loss of print advertising revenue that comes with a cut in distribution. But, Mr. Edmonds said, executives of Advance Publications seem “to think this is an appropriate idea whose time has come.” “The rest of the industry has been talking about that as a possibility someday but they don't think the right time is now,” he said. Newspapers lost $16 in print ad revenue for every $1 in digital ad revenue gained in 2012, according to the Pew study. That's up from a ratio of $10-to-$1 in 2011.
Ironically, The Plain Dealer ran a story last Friday that may have buttressed the argument that it will lose readers who won't or can't switch to online news. The newspaper reported on a survey that indicated 34% of homes in Cuyahoga County don't have the kind of high-speed Internet service that would allow them to read the e-edition or access easily access cleveland.com. The study, by OneCommunity, a local nonprofit that works to expand digital access, found that 56% of people over age 65 lack Internet access. That's a key newspaper demographic, and it could spell trouble — at least in the near term — for the newspaper's strategy. “The whole problem with (a digital first strategy) is that it might be just fine in 10 or 20 years from now, but older readers are the most loyal readers and those are exactly the people who don't want to read a product online,” said Jack Lessenberry, a lecturer in news media management at Wayne State University in Detroit. “So (newspapers) are losing their best customers.” Detroit's two newspapers were among the first to go digital first when they ended seven-day home delivery in 2009. The move by The Plain Dealer will require a shift in mindset at the news organization, Mr. Egger acknowledged. “The emphasis will be digital first,” Mr. Egger said. “Create the content, get it up on the digital platform first and then publish your print products off of that content. That's kind of a flip of where we've been traditionally.” Though the community has reacted strongly to the decision to end seven-day-a-week home delivery, Mr. Egger left the door to that service slightly ajar. Asked if the newspaper, as has happened in Detroit, would be open to selling newspapers in bulk on those street-sale-only days so some entrepreneurial delivery contractors could continue to offer their customers seven-day-a-week delivery, Mr. Egger said he “would not be shocked to see some draw down on it from a home delivery standpoint.” Draw is industry jargon for the number of papers consigned to carriers.


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Now, Abloh has teamed up with record label Deviation and its Black Lives Matter fundraiser to auction off a pair of his Off-White™ x Air Jordan 4 “Sail.” Most Off-White Jordan collabs are extremely hyped up and can bring in thousands, but this pair takes things up a notch because the colorway is unreleased, and they’re signed.
The designer announced the news on Instagram, captioning the post, “[I] got together with some friends, each of us contributing to the sustained support of the Black Lives Matter cause and I’m auctioning an unreleased signed pair of these (with your name not mine per se).
He adds that all proceeds from the sale will be donated to The Black Curriculum, an organization that addresses the lack of Black British history in the UK’s school system. Proceeds will also go to Inquest, which provides support to families experiencing a “state-related death.”
The Off-White™ x Air Jordan 4 “Sail” auction is live on eBay and is currently sitting at $35,000. If that’s not too rich for your blood, make sure you put your bid in before the 6 p.m. deadline on June 25.
Abloh was not only under fire for making a big deal out of his $50 donation to racial injustice but also for his comments about the protests. Instead of recognizing the racism in America and George Floyd’s death, he just comments on the looting of some big streetwear stores in Los Angeles.
“This disgusts me … We’re part of a culture together. Is this what you want??,” he wrote under Sean Wotherspoon’s Instagram post about his Round Two and Vintage shops being destroyed. He’d later donate more than $20,000 after the criticism and apologized.


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In April, popular Swedish furniture and appliances company Ikea launched its own range of low-cost smart light bulbs.
TRÅDFRI, or so they're called, are cheap — most will only run customers as low as $12 excluding the Gateway device — but so far users have had to rely on a remote control or Ikea's own app to use the bulbs. That's about to change.
Ikea Will Soon Add Voice Control For Its Smart Light Bulbs
Ikea announced on Tuesday, May 23, that its Home Smart products will soon respond to voice commands made via Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant. What's more, its products will integrate with Apple's HomeKit platform.
"Making our products work with others on the market takes us one step closer to meet people's needs, making it easier to interact with your smart home products," said Björn Block, business leader of the company's Home Smart unit.
Expect the functionality to arrive "during the summer and early autumn." Ikea began tilting toward the smart home arena as far back as 2015, when it launched wireless charging products for mobile phones. Two years later, it introduced the aforementioned light bulbs, which are plug and play devices, meaning there's no complex hardwiring required to install the lighting system.
Ike's Smart Home Efforts To Continue
Ikea is betting big on the smart home industry, as it promises additional launches in the long run. These forthcoming products will enable "people to build onto their smart home solution." Ikea will also commit to making its smart connected products work with third-party products or services in the market.
"We think that smart home technology should be accessible for everybody. That is why we will continue to make our products work with others on the market."
Adding Echo, Siri, and Google Assistant functionality will help Ikea sell its range of smart bulbs to those who already use either virtual assistants, especially Echo or Google Home owners. With voice commands, users will be able to turn the light on or off and adjust the brightness to their preference.
Ikea's Smart Bulbs Win In Pricing
Typically, installing smart lighting systems can be pricey. Philips Hue, for instance, specifically its Bridge 2.0, costs $60. By contrast, Ikea's smart lighting TRÅDFRI Gateway is just $30, although how many lights it can support remains nebulous.
Similarly, Ikea's smart light bulbs are cheaper. While Philips boasts a wider selection of bulb types, Ikea wins in the pricing department, with a standard bulb only running customers $12. Hue's bulbs, by contrast, cost $15. Sure, one might think that a $3 difference is pretty negligible, but customers are more than likely to buy a great number of bulbs if they plan on outfitting their whole house with smart lighting. That seemingly small gap can balloon costs pretty quickly.
Ikea's smart lighting offers a cheaper solution than most, and with the impending addition of voice command functionality, it's only fair to assume that the furniture maker will have a leg up in the smart home race soon enough.
Thoughts about Ikea's smart bulbs? Feel free to sound off in the comments section below!


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The European Commission has fined Autoliv and TRW more than € 368 million for breaching EU antitrust rules. Takata was not fined as it revealed the cartels to the Commission.
According to the EC, the companies took part in two cartels for the supply of car seatbelts, airbags and steering wheels to European car producers. All three suppliers acknowledged their involvement in the cartels and agreed to settle the case.
Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy said: “This is the second time we fine car safety equipment suppliers for participating in a cartel. Components such as seatbelts and airbags are essential for the safety of the millions of people that use their car to drive to work or take their children to school every day. The three suppliers colluded to increase their profits from the sale of these life-saving components. These cartels ultimately hurt European consumers and adversely impacted the competitiveness of the European automotive sector, which employs around 13 million people in the EU.”
The three car equipment suppliers addressed in this decision exchanged commercially sensitive information and coordinated their market behaviour for the supply of seatbelts, airbags and steering wheels to the Volkswagen Group and the BMW Group. The coordination to form and run the cartel took place mainly through meetings at the suppliers’ business premises but also in restaurants and hotels, as well as through phone calls and e-mail exchanges.


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Online advertising endangers user security, privacy
The online ad industry should offer better protections against 'malvertising' U.S. Senate probe finds
IDG News Service - The current state of online advertising endangers the security and privacy of users and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission should force the industry to offer better protections through comprehensive regulation, the U.S. Senate said in a report.
The report includes findings and recommendations of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate's Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs following an investigation into the distribution of malware through online ads -- also known as "malvertising." It was followed by a hearing Thursday that included testimony from Yahoo and Google about their efforts to combat such threats.
"Consumers can incur malware attacks [through online ads] without having taken any action other than visiting a mainstream website," the subcommittee said, referencing two attacks that involved malicious ads distributed through Yahoo and Google ad networks.
The Yahoo incident happened at the end of December and the Google one in February. In both cases affected users didn't have to click on anything and a simple visit to a website where the malicious ads were displayed was enough to expose them to malware.
"Similar attacks have struck across many online advertising platforms," the subcommittee said, noting that cybercriminals have numerous methods to evade security measures, from stealing credentials of advertising network employees to posing as legitimate advertisers.
Some ad industry companies use automated systems to scan for malicious ads, but cybercriminals can learn the location of such scanners and not serve the ads to them, the report said. In other cases, attackers can change the content of a benign advertisement after it's been scanned and cleared.
"The online advertising industry has grown in complexity to such an extent that each party can conceivably claim it is not responsible when malware is delivered to a user's computer through an advertisement," the subcommittee said. "An ordinary online advertisement typically goes through five or six intermediaries before being delivered to a user's browser, and the ad networks themselves rarely deliver the actual advertisement from their own servers. In most cases, the owners of the host website visited by a user do not know what advertisements will be shown on their site."
This makes it impossible for ordinary consumers to avoid malicious ads, to identify their source and to determine whether the website they visited or the ad network could have prevented the attack, the report argued.
The complexity of the online advertising ecosystem also poses risks to consumer privacy risks, because in most cases users can't control what data is being collected, who collects it and how it's used.
For example, a visit to a popular tabloid news website triggered interactions with 352 other Web servers, the report said. "Many of those interactions were benign; some of those third-parties, however, may have been using cookies or other technology to compile data on the consumer. The sheer volume of such activity makes it difficult for even the most vigilant consumer to control the data being collected or protect against its malicious use."
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Our new bimonthly Internet of Things newsletter helps you keep pace with the rapidly evolving technologies, trends and developments related to the IoT. Subscribe now and stay up to date!


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Sunday, August 30, 2015
Perfect storm for Aussie almond growers
Riverland farmer Simon Vause had only been dabbling in almonds when the drought hit South Australia a decade ago, but he took a leap of faith, pushed his naval orange trees over and replaced them with the popular nut.
His upheaval is paying off as almond growers in southeastern Australia experience near-perfect growing and trade conditions — they have full water allocations, the dollar is low, the dominant Californian industry is battling drought and prices are higher than ever.
“Having naval oranges at the start of the drought, we had low commodity prices, low water allocations and the high dollar, it was a nightmare,” Mr Vause said.
“But we’re right in the middle of a perfect storm now with lack of almond supply in the US, the low Australian dollar — it doesn’t get any better than that.”
Almond prices have more than doubled to $10 a kilogram since 2011, and Mr Vause is expecting the grower price to rise above $11 in the coming months.
This great news for our Australian almond grower, Select Harvests, which reported year end earnings last week.
Earnings were up 175% and cash flow was up 30%. The company harvested a record 14,500 metric tonnes of almonds versus 10,000MT last year. The management stated that the increased production and higher prices for almonds, along with constrained California supply contributed to the earnings gains. The company's full year results presentation is available here. I continue to like Select Harvests especially after the recent weakness in world stock markets.


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By Philip Mwakio
Tourism Ministry has declared 2010 the year of domestic tourism.
Acting PS, Eunice Miima said the move is intended to promote the holiday concept among Kenyans.
"We have so much ground to cover as the culture of holidaying in Kenya is still in its infancy. But survey indicates there is great zeal among Kenyans to sample tourist attractions in the country,’’ she said.
Speaking at a Coast Tourism Stakeholders forum at the Sarova Whitesands Beach Resort, the PS said the Ministry was fast tracking the establishment of additional tourism circuits in the country.
- 1 Hotels bank on events, domestic tourism to keep business alive
- 2 Time to think past safaris to earn more tourist dollars
- 3 Harness domestic tourism and save key sector
- 4 CS Najib Balala encourages domestic tourists to explore local offerings
The forum organised by Kenya Tourism Board (KTB) heard that efforts were being made to instill a culture of holiday among the locals.
KTB has earmarked domestic tourism to generate up to 50 per cent of the total revenue into the sector by 2012.
According to KTB Regional Marketing manager in charge of the domestic cluster, Fred Okeyo, the signing of the East African Community (EAC) Common market presents a much bigger opportunity for regional tourism to grow.
"We can reap from this integration, which allows free movement of people, goods and labour within the wider East African region,’’ he said.
At the same time, the PS said experts from the ministry and a technical team from the office of the Attorney General will be meeting in Mombasa to fine tune the Tourism Bill before its forwarded to Parliament for debate.


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While it’s become a much bigger consideration in recent years, influencer marketing, as a practice, has actually existed for a very long time. In the past, however, influencers were only on TV or in magazines, and unlike social media, TV and newspapers are limited, which led to a situation where a select number of celebrities were […]
While many have proclaimed the demise of Twitter in recent months, the platform is still the leading source of real-time news and updates, with no other provider able to match the immediacy, scale and insight of Twitter and its fast-flowing stream. This is partly why Twitter’s shift to an algorithm-based feed triggers comes with some […]
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Hewlett-Packard's non-executive chairman Ray Lane, who took over the board of directors following the departure of chief executive Mark Hurd, is cleaning house. Effective January 21, HP is adding five new people to the board and is showing four others to the door. The changes announced by Lane Thursday will eventually shrink the …
So, in addition to driving eBay down the toilet, John Donahoe is advising Intel on how to drive Intel down the toilet, and now Meg Whitman is going to do the same for HP. Brilliant. How is it that these companies succeed in spite of themselves? Don’t they have these people psychologically appraised before that give them the reins?
eBay/PayPal/Donahoe: Dead Men Walking.
Not to mention
The former boss of former telecoms giant Alcacent.
- JLaw, Kate Upton exposed in celeb nude pics hack
- Google flushes out users of old browsers by serving up CLUNKY, AGED version of search
- GCHQ protesters stick it to British spooks ... by drinking urine
- China: You, Microsoft. Office-Windows 'compatibility'. You have 20 days to explain
- Something for the Weekend, Sir? If you think 3D printing is just firing blanks, just you wait


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The Australian Computer Society has welcomed the announcement of a $525.3 million skills package in Tuesday's Federal Budget, but says more investment is needed to develop skills in the country.
The Federal Government has allocated an unspecified amount in Tuesday's Federal Budget to improve cyber security arrangements for the forthcoming election.
The Australian Information Industry Association has urged the Coalition to boost digital skills, innovation and government IT procurement in this year's Federal Budget.
Lets hope for a Biden win in November for the worlds sake including Assange's.
It would be great to have a look at the Telstra plans but they still after 3 years don't list[…]
Optus was declared to be misleading consumers when it marketed its products as "unlimited", now its using the word infinity[…]
Yes, you’re absolutely right. Apple launched it three watches ago with the Apple Watch Series 4, and Garmin presumably longer[…]
My garmin watch has had that feature for ages. A month ago I crashed during a bicycle race and my[…]


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Kulami receives the MENSA SELECT AWARD!!!
Kulami - a sleek, simple and smart game by FoxMind has been
awarded the Mensa Select award for 2013.
Naturally, we are happy that a game published by a company whose
motto is 'Smarter Fun!' has found its way to the hearts of Mensa
members. Seems like a match made in heaven!


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Pay Later, a micro-credit offering of Flipkart, has garnered a lot of attention from buyers. The e-commerce giant is planning to expand its credit offering, targeting a 2X growth over the next six months.
Flipkart Pay Later offers credit solutions to buyers on the e-commerce platform. It is a 30-day credit product that does not have an interest fee. The company claims that it offers bank-grade security without an OTP for most transactions. Additionally, it has end-to-end digital KYC, a checkout process for items priced up to Rs 10,000, and a single-click payment mechanism that makes purchasing a low-cost item easy.
At present, there are over 2.8 million customers who have adopted Flipkart Pay Later and have made over 42 million transactions on the platform to date. Owing to the growing reliance on digital payment, Flipkart Pay Later has seen a 70 percent adoption rate among customers at the time of check-out and plans to cross the 100 million transaction benchmark by the end of the year.
Ranjith Boyanapalli, Head, Fintech and Payments Group, Flipkart, said, “As a homegrown platform, enabling accessibility and affordability for customers is at the heart of all our offerings. The success of Flipkart Pay Later so far has shown the benefits that the construct is able to provide to millions of customers and made us confident of its market-readiness for much wider adoption, both on and outside Flipkart Group's platforms.”
“By expanding the offering, we want to enable the customers across the country to fulfill their shopping needs in a seamless and hassle-free manner,” he added.
Further, Flipkart Pay Later has seen an increase of over 50 percent in the number of registered users as of July 21 in comparison to the previous year. Customers have used the offering mainly for purchases across categories of beauty and general merchandise, home, and lifestyle.
WoodenStreet, a prominent home furniture and decor brand in India, has exhibited significant growth, boasting approximately a 50 percent increase in margins compared to the previous year. Founded in 2015 by Lokendra Ranawat, Dinesh Pratap Singh, Virendra Ranawat, and Vikas Baheti, the Rajasthan-based startup recently announced remarkable growth for FY22-23.
The company achieved a revenue of approximately Rs 200 crore for FY22-23 and has set an ambitious target of Rs 500 crore for FY23-24, signaling its determination to further expand its operations.
WoodenStreet has been maintaining a consistent annual growth rate of 60-65 percent in India since its inception. Notably, the company's margins surged by 50 percent compared to the previous fiscal year, and it has managed to maintain a positive EBIDTA of Rs 8 crore, highlighting its operational efficiency.
In an era dominated by digital platforms, WoodenStreet has successfully balanced its online and offline presence. The company has opened more than 45 new stores in the last 12 months.
WoodenStreet has strategically expanded its physical presence over the years, with over 90 Experience Centers throughout India and warehouses and R&D Units covering an extensive area of over 20 lakhs sq ft.
Lokendra Ranawat, CEO of WoodenStreet, stated, "As we set our goals for FY23-24, we're excited to introduce innovations to consolidate our market position further. Our commitment to investing in new stores remains unchanged, and we plan to open 300 stores in the next 24 months. Our growth story in FY22-23 is more than just an economic achievement. It's a validation of our continuous efforts to innovate, grow, and, most importantly, to serve our customers better each day."
To diversify and enhance the customer experience, WoodenStreet is introducing two new sub-verticals this year, namely Earthy Threads and Lightstreet. Lightstreet aims to revolutionize home illumination by offering functional and aesthetically pleasing designs. Earthy Threads, on the other hand, is venturing into the realm of soft furnishings, combining traditional artistry with contemporary sensibilities.
As WoodenStreet embarks on another fiscal year, it is evident that the brand is not merely pursuing numerical growth but is on a mission to redefine India's furniture and home decor landscape.
Founded in 2015, the brand presently operates over 90 experience stores across India and maintains a network of more than 350 delivery hubs, offering a vast selection of over 30,000 home furniture, decor, and home furnishing products.
Copyright © 2009 - 2024 Franchise India Holdings Ltd


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Making the Transition to a More Circular Economy
Experts believe that the rise in renewable energy production over the past few years opens the perfect opportunity for Canada to shift towards a more circular economy, defined as an economy where there is little to no waste. It involves recycling and reusing different materials.
The Canadian government has been pushing to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. In 2022, the Liberal government published draft regulations that required all new passenger vehicles and light trucks sold in Canada after 2035 to be electric, zero-emission vehicles. The reason behind this regulation stems from the fact that Canada can leverage its large amount of natural resources such as minerals. However, extracting minerals can negatively impact if not destroy ecosystems and lead to pollution, which some environmentalists view as counterproductive. The extraction of minerals results in large amounts of wastewater, and requires large amounts of energy.
The issues involving extraction can be resolved by transitioning towards a more circular economy. Rather than focusing on acquiring new minerals to develop clean energy devices such as electric vehicles, a circular economy would emphasize recycling old vehicles. This is already being done with phones such as the Fairphone 4, which is already up to 75% recyclable. Although phones are much smaller than cars, it is possible that this process of recycling could be done with cars over time.
In summary, as Canada shifts to an economy that emphasizes renewable energy devices, it is important to consider how we create these devices. Negatively impacting and polluting ecosystems to create electric vehicles would offset the benefit of using an electric vehicle. By transitioning to a circular economy this problem can be reduced.
As ecosystems are destroyed and pollution rises due to a possible increase in the extraction of raw materials, we must adopt green technologies such as the Anorra Wind Turbines and towers which can be recycled and made into other parts after their lifespan has ended, promoting a more circular economy.


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A group of investors led by Japanese mobile telecom firm SoftBank Corp is in talks to buy a 20-per cent stake for $1 billion in Indian handset maker Micromax Informatics, according to a Reuters report citing unnamed sources.
The investment would value Micromax, an unlisted provider of affordable smartphones that competes with South Korean Samsung Electronics Co, at $5 billion, the sources said. They did not want to be named because the talks aren't public.
Based outside New Delhi, the company had entered the Indian mobile handset market in 2008 and is credited with fuelling the rise of smartphones in the country.
One of the people said a deal would likely involve the sale of some 20 per cent of Micromax by existing investors. Micromax, controlled by its founders, counts private equity firms Sequoia Capital and TA Associates among its investors.
In February, research firm Canalys said Micromax had overtaken Samsung in the fourth quarter as the leading supplier in India's smartphone market, though Samsung later challenged the finding.
Micromax had filed for a public listing in 2010, but shelved those plans citing adverse market conditions. The sources said the stake sale and partial exit of investors could lead to a US listing in the next couple of years.
Neither Micromax declined nor SoftBank were willing to comment.
SoftBank has set lofty goals for investment in India, with chief executive Masayoshi Son saying it will invest about $10 billion in the country's ecommerce sector after it took a strategic stake in online marketplace Snapdeal.
Affordable smartphones and internet connections are driving the country's ecommerce boom and India is the third biggest smartphone market in the world. Low-priced smartphones are the top sellers in the country.


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Razorpay achieves unicorn status after its Series D round
By Edil Corneille
Indian FinTech company Razorpay has secured $100 million in its Series D financing round, making it the newest unicorn in the country. The FinTech’s latest partner is GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund. Along with GIC, the round was co-led by Sequoia with participation from Razorpay’s existing investors Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global, Y-Combinator and Matrix Partners.
With COVID-19 causing a potential paradigm shift in the way commerce happens in the country, the company mentioned that it is seeing multiple new demographics of businesses looking to move online and start leveraging the internet and mobile technology.
Razorpay provides businesses with the flexible ability to accept payments across multiple channels – online, links, self-hosted pages, third party branded stores, or through a QR code. The Bangalore-based company serves international brands including the likes of Facebook, Google and Wikipedia; national enterprises like Jio, Zerodha and Hotstar; recent upstarts like Khatabook, OkCredit and Meesho, along with a multitude of SMEs and freelancers.
Razorpay has built India’s advanced payments infrastructure connecting consumers with businesses irrespective of any payment instrument (100+ at last count). Its growing portfolio of payment products built on the top of payments infrastructure – Payment Links, Subscription, Invoices, Payment Pages, etc., are said to have been a critical partner in the financial journey of millions of businesses.
Razorpay’s latest payments product – Payment Button, is also said to be the company’s fastest-growing product in the history of the organisation. Currently, 2 out of 3 businesses onboarding on Razorpay are accepting digital payments for the first time, as mentioned by the company. The FinTech’s neo-banking platform, RazorpayX, has served over 10,000 businesses – processing their payroll through Opfin, paying for expenses through Corporate Card and paying their vendors in real time, disbursing billions of dollars through the underlying payouts layer.
In a bid to help MSMEs and improve their cash flows, the FinTech recently launched a credit-line product, Cash Advance. And in the past six months, the company has extended a line to more than 5,000 businesses through its financial partners. All the underwriting has been done with the cashflow data that businesses generate on Razorpay’s platform.
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NTUC FairPrice (FairPrice) today launched its fourth FairPrice Xtra store at Nex shopping mall in Serangoon, on the back of more than 10 percent year-on-year sales growth in its hypermarket chain since opening its first FairPrice Xtra in 2006. FairPrice plans to open at least another two FairPrice Xtra stores in the next two years to provide even more accessibility to customers. The official opening for FairPrice Xtra@nex was graced by Guest-of-Honour, Mr Lim Boon Heng, Minister for Prime Minister’s Office.
The other three FairPrice Xtra hypermarkets are located at AMK Hub in Ang Mo Kio, Hougang Point and Jurong Point.
Mr Ng Ser Miang, Chairman of NTUC FairPrice said, “We opened our first hypermarket at AMK Hub back in December 2006. We have four hypermarkets now. We plan to have six FairPrice Xtra hypermarkets in Singapore by 2013 to provide greater access to our customers. Eventually, we hope to provide at least one FairPrice Xtra in North, South, East and West heartland parts of Singapore as one-stop shopping destinations for families.”
One-stop shopping for the family
FairPrice Xtra stores serve an average of 280,000 customers weekly and contribute significantly to the overall sales revenue of the entire FairPrice chain. The stores offer family-friendly features like wider aisles, trolleys fitted with baby seats, dedicated baby lanes offering baby-related products, rest areas, snack corners, family-size promotional deals, and a child-safe environment.
Spanning 60,000 square feet at the third storey of Nex shopping mall, the new FairPrice Xtra@nex offers 24-hour shopping convenience to cater to the evolving needs of shoppers today. It also features the largest live seafood selection among all other FairPrice stores. FairPrice now operates 30 stores across the island that open 24-hours.
FairPrice Foundation Donates $800,000 to Community Chest
The success of FairPrice retail stores like FairPrice Xtra has enabled the co-operative to do even more good for the community.
“As a social enterprise, FairPrice is driven by our end objective to do good for our customers and to give back to the community. We are happy that our customers also support our social cause. It is because of their strong patronage that we can continue to help our customers to cope with inflation through our Stretch Your Dollar Programme and work with community partners such as the Community Chest to help the less fortunate in the society.” said Mr Ng Ser Miang, Chairman of NTUC FairPrice, who also chairs the NTUC FairPrice Foundation.
To mark the official opening of FairPrice Xtra@nex, FairPrice Foundation presented a donation of $800,000 to the Community Chest. The funds will support Lions Befrienders to continue to provide aid to lonely and needy seniors as well as to support five Family Service Centres in providing aid to needy families.
Ms Ang Bee Lian, CEO, National Council of Social Service said, “FairPrice has been a long-standing partner of Community Chest in helping people in need. FairPrice Foundation’s latest donation of $800,000 to the charities that Community Chest supports, namely Lions’ Befrienders and Family Service Centres, will go a long way towards dignifying the lives of frail and lonely elderly and keeping families together.”
A group of about 20 seniors from Lions Befrienders were invited to join in the celebrations at FairPrice@nex and were each given $50 worth in FairPrice vouchers to purchase daily essentials.
To help the needy and underprivileged, FairPrice set up the FairPrice Foundation in 2008. FairPrice aims to donate $50 million to FairPrice Foundation by 2018. With the donations from FairPrice, the Foundation has given out $26 million to the community to date.


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One of the best parts of Halloween is the candy! Halloween candy is synonymous with cavities, especially if you or your children have a fondness for sour and sticky sweets. According to the National Retail Federation and National Confectioners Association, Americans in 2017 are expected to spend a record-breaking $2.7 billion on Halloween candy. About 71 percent of celebrants plan to hand out candy and 31 percent plan to take their children trick-or-treating, statistics show.
UNLV School of Dental Medicine’s Dr. Cody Hughes has a few tips on how to avoid ghoulish consequences, such as your dentist’s disapproving glare, by keeping your dental health in mind while having fun.
Healthy eats before sweets
Eat pieces of your trick-or-treat bounty or any sweets directly after a meal instead of as snacks throughout the day. This will help keep your mouth’s pH level even, which is crucial to preventing cavities.


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- The Suez Canal crisis will likely cause shipment issues for Caterpillar, sources told Bloomberg.
- The blockage is pushing the machinery firm to consider airlifting products if deemed necessary.
- Many US manufacturers were facing supply-chain issues, even before the blockage.
Caterpillar Inc., the world's largest construction equipment maker, is enduring shipment delays due to the Suez Canal blockage. The US firm is contemplating airlifting products if deemed necessary, Bloomberg reported.
A source familiar with the matter told the outlet that the maker of the emblematic yellow diggers and bulldozers expected delays of a week or more in shipments from Asia to its destination facilities in Europe.
Many large manufacturers have been facing supply-chain issues in recent weeks. In part, this is because some countries are starting to reopen amid mass vaccine rollouts. This has triggered huge demand for essential products.
The mammoth container ship obstructing the Suez Canal has been jammed for three days. Experts have said that the blockage is costing about $400 million an hour and that the stricken vessel could take weeks to move.
As some container ships proceed to reroute around Africa to avoid the logjam, Caterpillar is inclined to send products by air if the delays threaten a factory-line shutdown, the source told Bloomberg.
Basic goods including toilet paper, coffee, and furniture are among the goods that could face supply shortages due to the jam. It will affect "basically anything you see in the stores," Lars Jensen, an independent container-shipping expert based in Denmark, told NBC News.
US machinery factory activity growth slowed in the first week of March after double-digit gains for most of February, reflecting what could be supply-chain challenges across the sector, Bloomberg Intelligence reported. This mirrored potential supply-chain hurdles across the industry during the pandemic.
As for the Ever Given, the White House says the US has offered help to reopen Suez Canal and end the chaos. The vessel's owner said he hoped it would be freed soon and offered up an apology for the 'tremendous trouble' caused.
Get the latest Caterpillar stock price here.


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GE Appliances Makes Inroads in RV Segment
When consumers shop for new appliances, they often look for brands they already know, and many prefer buying ones that are American-made.
There’s a new player in the RV market that can easily fill both those desires. After announcing in March 2019 that it would begin designing products for RVs, General Electric Appliances saw its first rooftop air conditioners installed in OEM units in January.
However, given that GE has been selling electric appliances since 1907, there’s much more ahead, starting with refrigerators and water-filtration systems designed specifically for RVs.
Nor will the products be limited strictly to the OEM market. A partnership with South Bend, Ind.-based appliance distributor Midwest Sales and Service (MWSS) is helping spread the word – and products – to dealers and other aftermarket outlets.
And, to make the products even more attractive to RV buyers, both GE and MWSS stress the appliance manufacturer’s strong service network.
Moving into the RV Space
Moving into any new market isn’t to be taken lightly, and GE Appliances officials say in this case it might not have happened at all if not for a fortuitous partnering with MWSS.
MWSS President Heath Wechter says when he took over leadership of the family-owned distributor business in 2017, he felt MWSS had good customers within the RV industry and was working with some excellent vendors. However, he wanted his company to work more with manufacturers.
“We thought that if we could bring a real brand power into the industry with a suite of products it could improve the overall quality of what’s going into coaches today,” Wechter says.
And, he adds, the ability to create the volume needed by the RV industry was also an important consideration.
“We knew we couldn’t do it on our own, so we went to some of our vendors – and we ended up sitting down with GE,” he says. The timing couldn’t have been better. Jim Skaggs, vice president of sales for business development for GE Appliances, explains that in early 2016, General Electric had sold its appliance business to Haier Group Corp., a Qingdao, China-based company whose own experience manufacturing refrigerators dates back to the 1920s and had survived Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
“That really created an opportunity for us to look at our business in a different way,” says Skaggs. “Not only were we given access to more capital investment, but we were also challenged to say where else we could grow within the North American market.”
It didn’t hurt that each group was already familiar with the other.
“They had been a customer of ours,” Skaggs says. “We supplied whatever it was they needed, but more than anything it was for residential spaces.”
To help make his case, Wechter took more than 30 people to Louisville, Ky., and made a presentation introducing the RV industry and talking about the different opportunities the market offered. Nor did it hurt that there are more than a few RV enthusiasts among the approximately 6,000 people employed at Appliance Park.
From there, much of the initial work involved MWSS employees scheduling time for GE product teams to visit the different OEMs to see for themselves what the opportunities are.
“They know their business really well,” Wechter says. “They came back to us and said they wanted to go after rooftop air conditioning. We also introduced them to the idea of doing 12-volt refrigerators, and those ended up being the first two product lines to go forward.”
Innovation in the RV Space
Even though GE Appliances has a strong presence in the consumer market with both air conditioners and refrigerators, going from Wechter’s initial meeting with the company to production quantities has taken the better part of two years.
But, as both Wechter and Skaggs note, these products are designed specifically for RV buyers.
“It would be one thing if they were just making a refrigerator that was sized for the industry,” Wechter says. “It’s another when they’re actually developing RV appliances.”
Certainly, some of what GE innovates for its residential customers carries over into what Skaggs refers to as the “RV space.” Those things include energy efficiency, style, and a plethora of finish options from matte to glossy in a variety of hues.
However, in getting into the RV market, Skaggs says GE also tried to learn from would-be buyers what they want, and from the OEMs, what they need.
From consumers, “It might be larger capacity, or quieter operation, or products that can cook faster – things that make the chore of using appliances not quite so much a chore,” he says.
One strong possibility: Wi-Fi connections to help people know how their appliances are operating, adjust the power, turn them on or off, or shorten cycle times.
For the OEMs, Skaggs says a big effort was to learn what they needed to improve the manufacturing process.
“It was truly a collaboration for us,” Skaggs says. “We sent engineers and design teams to Elkhart to get an idea of what would make their lives easier. We wanted to make sure that not only did our products fit, but what we could do around installation to make it easier.
“We sell millions of air conditioners, and we took the technology from our existing products, but we designed them to fit the space and the style and the innovation of an RV unit,” he adds.
One other important thing that GE Appliances brings to the RV market is its brand name. Skaggs says consumers can rest assured that their RV appliances will be designed by the same engineers and manufactured at the same plants using the same guidelines as its residential products.
However, Wechter says he also sees the GE brand as having a definite marketing advantage. While older buyers will appreciate the strong presence GE appliances have in their homes, he notes that younger buyers are often attracted to what he calls “brand power.”
“Brand power really has the ability to connect with them,” he says. “They know where they’re buying and who they’re buying from, but GE gives them a strong brand name and a common message.”
While the first GE Appliances’ air conditioners – in both 13,500- and 15,000-BTU models – were installed in Keystone RV’s Passport and Bullet towables in January, GE is ramping up to become standard in more models and to see more of its products specified by the OEMs.
MWSS’s Wechter is particularly enthused about the 12-volt refrigerators and says, “We’re starting to sell more refrigerators because of the upgrades in the dealer area of our website.”
Skaggs sees the refrigerators as a good test for his company’s design and engineering teams in the area of energy supply.
“When you’re off-grid, you want those appliances to last as long as they can without connecting to a power source,” he says. “Those are the things we’ve had to work on. How do you – without sacrificing performance – generate the longest-lasting usage?”
While GE manufactures a wide range of other appliances, from cooking options such as cooktops, ranges and microwave ovens, to dishwashers and washers and dryers, Skaggs suggests that the next addition to the company’s RV suite may be water heaters.
“We’re getting back into the water heater market with a $60 million investment in a factory in Camden, S.C.,” he says. “We’re not initially thinking about making water heaters for the RV market, but long term, as we gain technical and design expertise and some scale, I wouldn’t be surprised if we get into manufacturing water heaters for RVs.”
Still another area where GE Appliances probably will make its mark in the RV industry is in the arena of smaller appliances that aren’t built-in. A good example of a product that’s had success in the residential market that would fit well in RVs, Skaggs believes, is a countertop icemaker called the Opal.
“Right now, our mindset is: Where else can we grow our market efficiently,” he says. “The RV market seems to be craving the things we do well.”
That market also includes the RV aftermarket. Skaggs says GE Appliances is currently looking at how best to serve the more than 3,000-plus dealers in North America, but certainly MWSS will play a role in that, as well.
“We’ve built a dealer access program where they can sign up and have access to our online B2B (business-to-business) portal,” Wechter says. “They can order direct and we deliver to the GE distribution network, which has 12 area distribution centers and 170 local delivery locations.”
While much of GE Appliances’ long-term success in the aftermarket will depend on how successful the company is in getting its products into the OEMs, for individual owners some of that aftermarket success also will depend on GE’s ability to service what it sells, and Skaggs says between the company’s customer care and factory service organizations it has more than 10,000 national service technicians trained to repair GE products.
“Our repair cycle time is about three days, and that’s significantly better than what it is in the RV area today,” says Skaggs. “If we can build out that network and make sure we have trained and capable technicians, as well as a reliable parts supply, I think we can make some significant inroads there. It will be a differentiator for us.”
Wechter says for now he simply wants to make sure that the launch of the new air conditioners is just the first step in seeing GE Appliances create a stable, long-term product supply for the RV market.
“What the RV market has in volume compared to the total living units in the U.S. is dramatically different,” Wechter says. “It took awhile to attract the interest of a major manufacturer to be interested in our 400,000 annual units. I think GE really took its time and did the right things to make sure the company is delivering a quality product. I’m just looking forward to seeing the idea of a GE suite come together.”
“The RV industry is a very stable industry and one with tremendous opportunity,” adds Skaggs. “We have a history of innovation, we create quality products, and we have a brand that consumers trust. Instead of asking ourselves why we’re getting into this market, we’re asking ourselves why weren’t we in it in the first place? People enjoy using our appliance products every day and there’s no reason we can’t do that for the RV market, as well.”


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Not a publisher, not quite a telco, but definitely in need of regulation...
Zoho takes their B2B data privacy stand - "We will not be part of this industry practice." But will it pay off?
Zoho took a bold stance on B2B data privacy at ZohoDay 2020. That stance has huge implications for their heavy bets on AI - and their avoidance of the public cloud. Here's a look behind the debate.
Enterprise hits and misses - quantum gets real, Koch buys Infor, and Shadow's failed app gets lit up
This week - quantum computing gets a real-world gut check. Koch buys Infor; we analyze. SAP extends maintenance, and Alphabet finally reveals Google cloud earnings. Shadow apologizes for a terrible election app launch; I skewer. And the whiffs keep coming...
A facial recognition app that can find all of the pictures of you on the internet in seconds sounds the privacy alarm bells. Its sketchy provenance doesn’t help.
This week - Data Privacy Day comes and goes, leaving a trail of breaches and debates in its wake. IBM does the CEO shuffle, and evokes salty reactions. The diginomica team hits the enterprise tarmac; explainable AI gets a wake-up call. Plus: your weekly whiffs.
Mark Zuckerberg reckons Facebook has tried too hard to be liked. No more...
I agree with Nick - the cynical reading of Facebook's new 'Supreme Court' throws up a lot of important small print
Toothless PR gesture or an independent body with real bite? Facebook's new Oversight Board ticks a lot of boxes, but begs a lot of questions.
Boris has defied Trump and Huawei will take part in the UK's 5G network rollout. Stand by for a tweet storm...
Data Privacy Day - CEO perspectives on tech's responsibility towards data protection and the greater good
The CEOs of PayPal, Salesforce, Microsoft and Alphabet add their voices to the ongoing debate around the tech industry, regulation and data privacy.
UK faces 'no win' decision over Huawei as the firm's CEO calls the US "over-concerned" about China's capabilities
Bojo's Choice - upset the US or upset China? Meanwhile Huawei founder and CEO says that his firm is ready to fend off US action to undermine its business.
A Davos discussion about what the responsible governance of AI actually mean throws up as many questions as answers - and a few evasions.
WEF 2020 - stakeholder capitalists don't just need to do the right thing, they need to be seen to do it
In an age of social media 'pile ons', accusations of hypocrisy can thrive easily and make fresh demands of advocates of stakeholder capitalism.


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Zesty product lines continue to trend upward as Oppy includes garlic and ginger to its mix
Vancouver, British Columbia — Boosting its spicy offerings as of late, the leading grower, marketer and distributor of fresh produce adds garlic from Spain to its product mix amid organic ginger success.
Arriving on both the East and West coasts, Oppy’s BB #:113404 conventional Spanish garlic is available year-round in bulk and 3-pack mesh bags. Varieties include pure white, spring white, spring violet and morado in a range of sizes — Oppy is exploring further options, including black garlic.
“We believe this is going to be an excellent addition to our range of global products,” shared Executive Director of Berries and Canadian Category Development Aaron Quon. “With our customers sharing considerable interest in garlic for some time, we carefully picked a program with superior quality that is sure to expand.”
Oppy is working with several trusted grower-partners in Spain, the world’s second largest garlic exporter.
Quon continued, “Building off of our Peruvian organic ginger from recent years, we look forward to serving our customers and their shoppers with spicy additions as they continue to trend upward.” According to Nielsen data, dollar sales of garlic increased 43% over the last five-year period.
Reach out to your Oppy sales representative and join the team at CPMA in booth 1220 for more.
Growing, marketing and distributing fresh produce from around the globe for 165 years, Vancouver, BC-based Oppy discovers and delivers the best of the world’s harvest. With over 50 million boxes of fresh fruits and vegetables grown on every continent moving through its supply chain annually, Oppy offers popular favorites from avocados and berries to apples and oranges year-round, alongside innovative seasonal specialties. Over the years, Oppy has introduced North Americans to a number of items across its diverse produce range, including Granny Smith, JAZZ and Envy apples, as well as green and gold kiwifruit. Go to oppy.com to learn more.


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Hospitals, pharmacies, and patients all rely on logistics companies that deliver heat-sensitive medicines, such as insulin and vaccines, to keep them at the right temperature at every step in the transport chain.
Swiss Post and its partner Modum have built a blockchain solution to monitor the temperature of medicines at all stages of transit — right up to the moment they are handed over to the customer.
Many medicinal and pharmaceutical products have to be kept within certain temperature ranges while in transit, which may be over thousands of kilometers. To monitor the temperatures to which these products are exposed, Swiss Post uses smart transportation boxes, blockchain, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
“Not many European logistics companies transport medicinal products because the requirements have become so strict,” says Thomas Wälchli. As head of Business Development and Industry Management at PostLogistics, the logistics division of Swiss Post, it was Wälchli’s job to design shipping solutions that comply with EU guidelines on Good Distribution Practice.
“We didn’t want to invest in a fleet of refrigerated vehicles to transport medicines and healthcare products,” he explains. Instead, the company decided to develop a box that can maintain a certain temperature. The ability to monitor the temperature in these boxes is new, however. In Swiss startup Modum, Swiss Post found a co-innovation partner with customers in the pharmaceutical industry that are customers of SAP. Modum created an IoT solution called MODSense, which monitors temperature.
Since trust among all parties in a supply chain is paramount, Modum and Swiss Post decided to incorporate blockchain technology as well. It enables a unique checksum of all the sensor data from the physical goods to be stored. This makes it easy to prove at any time that sensor data has not been manipulated. Using blockchain technology in this way builds trust in the digital ecosystem. Valuable information about how the goods have passed through the supply chain can be exchanged securely with everyone in it, and processes can be automated.
MODSense uses an IoT sensor that is placed inside a package and programmed with the permitted temperature range for the content of that package. An entry to the blockchain is created, storing this information.
The sensor collects data — for example the temperature inside the package — while it is in transit, offline. At delivery, the bar code on the package is scanned, the data collected by the sensor is read, and the checksum is written to the blockchain. A smart contract in the blockchain then automatically selects one of two actions: send product again or issue the invoice.
The joint project between Swiss Post and Modum began in June 2017. The idea of asking SAP to assist Modum came later, at the end of 2017.
“We explored how SAP Co-Innovation Lab could help build solutions on SAP Cloud Platform,” explains Hans-Joachim Odlozinski, head of SAP Co-Innovation Lab locations in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Africa. Following some initial discussions with Modum, SAP teamed with the startup and Swiss Post in early 2018.
“Our model for co-innovating with customers was the basis for our collaboration with Swiss Post,” says Marc Degen, co-founder of Modum. “It was a perfect match.”
SAP Co-Innovation Lab brings partners and their ideas together within SAP so that, whenever they need to, they can draw on the expertise of different development teams at the company.
“Swiss Post and Modum had a lot of ideas from the start,” says Pascal Hagedorn, project leader at the SAP Co-Innovation Lab location in Switzerland. “We just had to define exactly what we wanted to achieve with blockchain. That is where the expertise of colleagues from SAP Innovation Center Network really helped.”
Blockchain technology from SAP was used for a proof of concept to implement the solution across the company. Experienced blockchain developers under Torsten Zube, head of SAP Innovation Center Network and Blockchain at SAP, were part of the project. “We started the pilot at the end of November 2018,” explains Wälchli.
“That is what we do at SAP Co-Innovation Lab,” says Odlozinski. “We work with partners—here it was Modum—to develop a proof of concept and enable them to implement it for the customer, in this case Swiss Post.” Safeguarding intellectual property rights is a priority. “Partners own the rights to the solutions they build,” he adds.
Degen describes the collaboration with SAP as very close. He says it was underpinned by a joint vision of companies quickly and reliably creating digital innovations on flexible cloud stacks.
“Being able to work with state-of-the-art solutions, such as the Hyperledger Fabric service on SAP Cloud Platform, makes SAP attractive to startups because you don’t have to read up on SAP stacks before you get started.”
Degen and the team at Modum used invitations to events such as SAPPHIRE NOW in 2018 and Outside the Block in Berlin to collect early feedback on the solution from partners and customers. “These events also helped us get our name out there, and that’s not easy for a start-up,” he says.
Swiss Post is building on its work with Modum and SAP. It is looking at how food distributors might also benefit from the new blockchain-IoT solution. “The main advantage of the solution is that selective information can be accessed securely by every party in the supply chain,” explains Wälchli.
Hagedorn adds, “This makes it an attractive extension to other SAP solutions for logistics, such as SAP Global Track and Trace. Under our co-innovation project, we are currently working with Modum on how to integrate it into SAP’s business process world.”
Images via Swiss Post.


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Check it out! If you’re planning on being in Asbury Park on the evening of April 26th, just know that there’s an exciting art fundraiser that you should check out.
“Goddess & Glam” is an evening of art fundraiser at the Parlor Gallery in Asbury Park featuring food, cocktails, live music, body painting, a fashion show, and much more. Cassondra Hadel, designer and owner for Camaroha Sutra, as well as jewelry designer Oriana Lamarca, are co-hosting the event to benefit threads4care.
Sponsors include: valet, red carpet photo backdrop at the door, Brando’s food, drinks by Asbury Park Brewery, Dessert by Confections of a Rockstar, body paint by Porkchop, DJ Adam Worth, raffles, modeling from Barbizon Model Agency, door prizes and swag bags( donated by over 30 businesses in Asbury Park).
The fundraising event is slated to go on from 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM on Thursday, April 26th – with the fashion show kicking off at 7:30 PM.


text: No one knows the true cost of fraud in the UK, but it’s taking place on an industrial scale and is without question one of the biggest crimes afflicting UK plc today. It is unrelenting and indiscriminate with many organisations estimated to be losing around five per cent of their annual revenue to fraud. The state infrastructure has a modest impact on fraud and means it’s largely down to industry, business and commerce to take steps to protect themselves. Inside, the prevalence, frequency and features of key losses are outlined. The strengths and weaknesses of different sectors in tackling fraud, error and loss are also highlighted. But it’s also clear there are huge variances in the size of losses and the quality of counter fraud strategies across the sectors.


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When the founders of Giving-Capital Inc., a Philadelphia-based company that provides online donation services, first went shopping for an accounting firm for tax services in 1999, they had their pick of mid-tier local firms. Instead, they chose a Big Five firm that could grow with them, provide networking connections that smaller firms couldn't and, most important, be a name their clients-including American Express, Morgan Stanley and Salomon Smith Barney-could trust. Little did they know the large, reputable firm they chose, Arthur Andersen, would just a few years later find itself waist-deep in scandal.
Fallout from the debacle has landed GivingCapital in the same unenviable spot as hundreds of other orphaned Andersen clients. But as a small business with 35 employees, it would now have to jockey alongside much bigger companies for the attention of the Final Four (as the remaining top-tier accounting firms have come to be called) and even face competition for mid-tier accounting firms looking to inherit some of Andersen's heavyweight clients.
of CEOs of small to midsized businesses favor harsher penalties, jail time and tougher prosecution in financial abuses.
SOURCE: TEC International
"A lot of small businesses are going to be squeezed out of those mid-level firms, even the fast-growing, progressive companies," says Norman Scarborough, associate professor of economics and business administration at Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina.
And as the choices narrow, "your ability to negotiate and get decent pricing becomes more challenging," says Gretchen Nickel, managing director and CFO at GivingCapital. "You have to make a choice about whether you're willing to pay the bucks for the big guys. If you don't [pay up,] you're not going to get their full attention-go with a smaller firm."
Some small businesses are opting for the latter, particularly those that don't require auditing services and need only basic tax and accounting services. The Phelps Group, a Santa Monica, California-based marketing firm, made the choice years ago to employ a local firm for all its accounting and has been thrilled with the level of service, according to Phelps CFO Bob Berry. "When you're working with big firms, you're probably 10 or 12 layers removed from any of the principals," he says. By contrast, Berry gets the personal attention of the head of his accounting firm.
But the Phelps Group isn't public nor is it planning to be in the immediate future. Conventional wisdom has long warned entrepreneurs who have one eye on the public markets that an auditing firm whose name packs muscle with Wall Street is critical to a successful IPO. That thinking has changed somewhat, given the recent high-profile accounting messes, but the larger firms still offer broader resources and brand names.
of large-company CFOs say they've been pressured by their CEOs to misrepresent earnings.
SOURCE: CFO Magazine
Also, a considerable number of small businesses do voluntary audits, sometimes for their own internal checks and balances or to give bankers an added level of confidence to negotiate a better interest rate. GivingCapital has always done audits to reassure clients and hopes to replace Andersen with another heavy-hitter, "provided we get some decent pricing," Nickel says. The company is fortunate in that the teams with whom it worked at Andersen are currently relocating to other firms, lock, stock and barrel, which may give Nickel a foot in the door at the new firms. But to persuade a top-tier firm to take on GivingCapital's business, at a reasonable price, she'll have to prove her firm is going to grow at a healthy clip. "I'm selling them as much as they're selling me," she says.
To attract top- or even mid-level firms where no prior relationship exists, small businesses will have to demonstrate significant growth potential so the accounting firms see the possibility of doing audits and IPO work for them later, says Scarborough. He advises CEOs to take a business plan along "and do a sales job. 'I may be a small company now, but look where we're going.'"
Small businesses that already have relationships at larger or mid-level firms will have to be careful they don't get short shrift due to an influx of former Andersen clients. If you start noticing you're getting less attention from the partner who used to call you personally, "then it's time to be a squeaky wheel," says Debra Jeter, associate professor of management at the Owen Graduate School of Management in Nashville.
Another option is to go with a reputable smaller or local outfit that has relationships with larger firms. That way, if your business grows or you decide to go public, you have the option of transitioning.
While the Big Five brand names used to be enough to get Wall Street's stamp of approval, they're not enough anymore. "We've got a whole new world on our hands," Jeter says. "The quality of the audit is ultimately going to be the deciding factor."
C.J. Prince is a New York City writer specializing in business topics and executive editor of Chief Executive Magazine.


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There’s a Google Assistant speaker at this point in every shape and size, and to suit every need or price. Back at CES, Belkin showed me its new Soundform Elite Assistant speaker, the very first one to include wireless charging built-in. Now, I’ve spent the past couple of months using it, and as great as it is, I have a tough time figuring out who it’s for. Let’s talk.
Belkin Soundform Elite Stories May 21, 2020
Belkin Soundform Elite Stories January 8, 2020
At this point there are a crazy amount of Google Assistant speakers on the market, but the majority of them really only serve a single purpose. Personally, I love it when companies do something creative to turn two products into one, and that’s exactly what Belkin has done with its Soundform Elite Hi-Fi.
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) kickstarts the entire year in hardware. At the start of a new decade, technology running a Google operating system offered some tidbits into the far future, but also what you’re likely buying over the next 12 months. Here’s the Best of CES 2020 awards from 9to5Google.
Belkin Soundform Elite Stories January 6, 2020
Google Assistant speakers have been taking over CES in recent years and this year, Belkin has a clever new speaker to share. In partnership with Devialet, Belkin’s new Google Assistant speaker has hi-fi audio and built-in wireless charging.


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Montreal tech company Sollum has found itself in a strong position going forward. With a new $5 million investment it will look to accelerate adoption of its smart LED lighting for greenhouse growers.
The new cash comes from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC). SDTC helps Canadian entrepreneurs accelerate clean technology solutions.
“Our company is building on strong momentum. We see this commitment from SDTC as a clear vote of confidence in the potential of our technology and its contribution to addressing climate change and food autonomy,” said CEO Louis Brun.
Earlier this month, Sollum closed its second round of funding, grabbing $2.7 million from Investissement Québec, along with its initial investors and National Bank.
Sollum says its smart LED lighting solution “dynamically recreates the full spectrum of the sun’s light.” The company’s technology helps greenhouse growers create customized light recipes to cultivate any produce, regardless of its native climate and the location of the greenhouse.
Sollom says its “proven benefits from customer and partner facilities so far validate the core concept”. To that end they say their technology has led to productivity increases of up to 40 percent, energy savings of up to 30 percent, longer food storage life and improved produce taste and appearance.
“Canadian cleantech entrepreneurs are tackling problems across Canada and in every sector. I am encouraged that this unprecedented economic climate has shone a spotlight on the importance of local food production and its impact on the economy and the environment,” said SDTC’s CEO, Leah Lawrence.


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Small- to medium-sized businesses (SMEs) looking for growth in the UK economy this year are likely to be disappointed. In the Bank of England’s (BoE) Quarterly Inflation report, Mervyn King, governor of the BoE, revealed that growth this year will be weaker than previously estimated.
In addition, inflation rose to four percent in January, double the bank’s target, with King confirming that figure is likely to reach five percent before falling to about two percent in 2012.
With such grim news at home, it is no surprise that SMEs are being braver about looking to emerging markets for growth. According to a biannual survey of more than 6,000 SMEs in 21 countries carried out by HSBC, 40 percent of the world’s SMEs will be doing business internationally by 2013.
In the UK, 20 percent of SMEs are currently trading internationally while HSBC’s international trade finance lending to UK business was up 13 percent in the past year, it says.
Tim Vye, operations director at Reed Finance, which specialises in recruiting finance professionals, says he has seen an increase in SMEs requesting candidates with international experience.
“That is partly as a result of the trading conditions in the UK,” Vye tells Financial Director. “SMEs are diversifying their business and they are looking for target markets abroad.”
In January, the continuing inflationary pressures faced by the British economy caused input costs for manufacturers to rise to their highest annual rate in more than two years, data from the British Retail Consortium shows.
Vye says that manufacturing companies in particular are increasingly looking to set up factories in central and eastern Europe.
“High-tech manufacturers are going to look to produce goods overseas cheaply,” he says. “The transport cost might be high, but they can gain value overseas through the efficiencies of doing so and the opportunities to trade in those countries.”


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Canon & Nikon will be at Photo Fest Ireland, to be held this Sunday.
Olympus announce the price of the Olympus PEN Lite E-PL3 with a new 3inch swivel screen, and world's fastest AF. (ARTICLE UPDATED 21 JULY 2011)
Pentax Imaging Company have announced the Pentax Optio A40, the latest model in the Optio A series of advanced compact digital cameras with superior image quality and performance.
HTC has announced a new smartphone with a camera designed for optimum image quality with an UltraPixel sensor.
Nikon today introduces Nikon 1, a revolutionary digital camera system built from scratch to offer still image and movie recording without compromise.
Following Jessops' plans to axe 81 of its shops as announced last Thursday, the photographic retail giant have unveiled exactly which stores it plans to close down.
A clever photo of a family inside small boxes has helped a Nottingham photographer pick up his first national award.
Sony introduce a series of small cameras which they say will give a 'big performance'.
Lee Filters holder for Nikon's 14-24mm f/2.8 wide-angle lens
Corel add 75 new features to the latest version of their PaintShop Pro software.
Red Digital Cinema turn their attentions to the photography market.
Designed to improve the quality and cost efficiency of home and small office printing.
Epson has agreed a settlement with DCI printer cartridge makers after it was alleged that patents were infringed.
Read on to find out who has won a new Epson printer in our 'Nature' competition.
Kenro have added a 300 watt portable studio flash kit to their range of photographic accessories.
Arrikon has launched 1FLOW Software Photo Management and Editing suite.
Nikon's new stand at Focus will be state-of-the-art.
The GH3 and Lumix G Vario 14-140mm lens win EISA awards.
This week, you can win great prizes from Datacolor and Samsung in our August competitions.
Here's why this week's Photo Of The Week was a worthy winner.
Photographers who register their interest in the new PEN E-P5 and decide to buy may receive a free gift.
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By Nyein Nyein
The domestic gold market sees more sellers than buyers, said general secretary U Ohn Myaing of Myanmar Gold Entrepreneurs Association (MGEA).
The coronavirus consequences shut down the gold market and it was reopened on 18 May. At present, pure gold fetches about K1.22 million per tical (0.578 ounces, or 0.016 kilograms), he continued. Meanwhile, the global gold price hit a record high of US$1,766 per ounce. The domestic gold price does not rise as it should be when more people are selling than buying in the domestic market, he continued. “Along with the rise in global gold prices, the domestic gold price is likely to increase. However, the price cannot raise when demand is lower than supply,” he added. Following the global hikes, the domestic market cannot raise the price owing to the ban on international commercial flights amid the coronavirus crisis and Kyat gaining against the US dollar, he noted. A dollar exchange rate is priced below K1,400, as per data of the local currency market. At present, despite the reopening of the gold shops, it is time for the academic year and monsoon cultivation season. Having said that, the market witnessed selling rather than buying, MGEA stated. In early September last year, the price of pure gold reached an all-time record of above K1,300,000 per tical in the domestic market, while the price of gold was pegged at US$1,550 per ounce in the global market. Meanwhile, the global gold price currently crosses US$1,753 per ounce. A dollar exchange rate stands at around K1,400, as per market data. According to gold traders, during the past four months, the local gold price moved in the range of, K1,214,100 on 5 February and K1,234,200 on 28 February. In March, it reached the lowest level of K1,148,000 (31 March) and the highest level of K1,218,600 (4 March). In April, the coronavirus pandemic risks shut down the gold market, and the market was reopened on 18 May, with the minimum rate of K1,214,100 (27 May) and the maximum rate of K1,236,000 (18 May), according to gold traders.With global gold prices on the uptick, the domestic price hit fresh highs last year, reaching K1,000,000 per tical between 17 January and 21 February, crossing K1,100,000 (22 June to 7 August), climbing to 1,200,000 (7 August-4 September), and then reaching a fresh peak of K1,300,000 on 5 September. (Translated by Ei Myat Mon)


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Last month, the Dutch competition authority (ACM) cleared a joint agreement among soft-drink suppliers including Coca-Cola to discontinue plastic handles on multipacks to make the packaging more recyclable and reduce plastic. Applying its draft sustainability guidelines, the ACM found that the arrangements did not harm competition given that evidence showed the handles did not play a role in the competitive process and participants remained free to decide on, e.g., when and how to discontinue the handles.
The ACM has been at the forefront among competition authorities in trying to find a workable approach to balancing competition policy and sustainability goals. A key challenge of these efforts has been how to apply the exemption criteria which permit agreements which do restrict competition law but offer countervailing benefits because:
- the agreements offer benefits in the form of improving production or distribution, or promoting technical or economic progress;
- the users of the products in question are allowed a fair share of those benefits;
- the restriction of competition is necessary for reaping the benefits, and does not go beyond what is necessary; and
- competition is not eliminated in respect of a substantial part of the products in question.
Lack of clarity as to how these criteria apply to sustainability initiatives (e.g., how 'benefits' and 'fair share' is measured in this context) make it difficult for businesses to self-assess whether a given agreement would merit exemption, potentially leading to a ‘chilling effect’ inhibiting cooperation agreements that might improve environmental sustainability.
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has said that it will produce guidance designed to alleviate this chilling effect. Meantime, in its advice to the UK Government, the CMA has sketched out its views on some of these problem areas.
In the CMA's view, if an agreement leads to environmental benefits to a broader group of consumers than just those adversely affected by the restriction of competition, such benefits, in principle, can be taken into account in the ‘fair share’ assessment. However, this would not, in principle, permit a situation where benefits to one group of consumers are offset against net harm to an entirely different group of consumers (without sufficient benefit accruing to the harmed consumers).
Overall, the CMA thinks that there is some flexibility under the current UK legal framework to accommodate environmental benefits brought about by agreements that restrict competition. However, it has advised (perhaps with an eye to the planned overhaul of the UK competition law regime), that there may be merit in making the law more explicit. It also notes that, meantime, if there are situations where the flexibility proves insufficient and there are exceptional and compelling reasons of public policy to do so, the Government could to consider instead the use of exclusion orders.


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April is Financial Literacy Month, when the nation is focused on spreading financial literacy education to help consumers understand how to better manage money. In a time when many Americans are still reeling from the financial impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, supporting financial well-being for all consumers, especially the unbanked and underbanked, has never been more important.
During our Spring Conference earlier this month, we held a session called, “Faster Payments: Accelerating Financial Inclusion.” Adam Telem, Vice President, Product Management, Mastercard, who moderated the session underscored a key concept being addressed by the FPC. “It is really critical to think about how we, as an ecosystem, can come together and drive the right financial services for unserved and underserved consumers and small businesses.” With 106 million financially vulnerable Americans and many weakened small businesses as result of COVID-19, attendees felt the full weight of the statement.
“That’s why the [FPC’s] Financial Inclusion Work Group is so important,” Jay Collins, General Counsel and Corporate Development Officer, Ingo Money, Inc., one of the session’s four panelists, added. “There are so many avenues faster payments are in. Bringing together all of these different financial companies and different stakeholders into the Work Group will help highlight all the areas that we need to be working on to help financial inclusion take a step forward this year.”
The Financial Inclusion Work Group plans to create a blueprint for leveraging faster payments to accelerate access to the financial system for those unbanked and underserved Americans. The Group will work to showcase and explain how faster payments adoption is part of a holistic approach to advancing financial inclusion and mitigating some or all of the issues, concerns, and necessities of those most in need of financial services.
While it has a big task ahead of it, the discussion from the recent session provided some guideposts for initial efforts that will make the biggest impact. Panelists agreed that consumer protections, continued education, and efforts to upgrade legacy systems were of paramount importance.
“The idea of certainty that comes with a faster payment, which is a benefit in and of itself, also needs to come with robust protections,” said Christina Tetreault, Manager, Financial Policy, Consumer Reports, another participant in the session. “We are eager to see these products roll out solving problems, and coming with solutions to people and protections that inspire confidence and will drive greater use and adoption.”
In addition to protections, education is also critical. “Education is key in the space to let people know what is going on and how a payment is made and what protections are in place today or possibly in the future,” said Collins. “That is a big area you want to focus on when trying to bring consumers into the financial realm.”
“And there has to be an education of the value of being included in the banking system itself,” added Carlos Naudon, President & CEO, Ponce Bank. “Many underserved are being served with alternative banking means, which are arguably more expensive than they would be through the banking system. There are barriers that need to be overcome. But that is what we can address with education.”
And finally, there needs to be a continued focus on modernization. “There’s opportunity for us to take advantage of getting legacy processes and systems out of the ecosystem,” said Beverly Cole, Senior Director, Global Treasury, Walmart. “This can be focused on pretty quickly. These are steps that we can take now as we are trying to figure out the long journey. “
While I don’t think anyone would disagree that supporting financial inclusion is a long-term effort, the recent session at the Spring Conference underscored that point once again. There are many components to supporting the unbanked and underbanked – people, processes, systems – all of which have intricacies and nuances of their own. Now is the time to ensure their needs are met through the opportunities faster payments bring.
The FPC’s Financial Inclusion Work Group is open to additional participants. If you are interested in helping to support the financial well-being of the unbanked and underbanked through faster payments, consider joining the FPC. Learn more here.