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Back in December, we reported that Spotify competitor Deezer was to begin rolling out in 200 countries (but not the USA). And it has taken a big step towards this goal today by launching in 35 Latin American territories.
Deezer was launched in France in August 2007, and it reached agreements with the French copyright societies, major and independent labels between 2007 and 2009. Today, the music-streaming service has somewhere in the region of 20m users and offers 18m tracks.
Back in August, we first reported that Deezer was planning to hit the UK and it eventually revealed its pricing structure there prior to launch in September, whilst a partnership with Orange was to gain traction in the country. As of December, it was available in France, Belgium and the UK.
However, when it announced its 200-country expansion, Deezer did mention that by January 31, 2012, Canada and Latin America (38 territories) would be added to its roster, with Australasia to follow the month after. As it transpired, the service launched in Canada, Australia and New Zealand in April, and Latin America has had to wait until today. Oh well, better late than never.
So…what LatAm territories is it now available in, you ask? Here goes:
Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Bolivia, Cayman Islands, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and Uruguay.
You’ll note that Brazil is missing from this list, a rather sizable omission as South America’s most populous country by quite a distance. Cuba and Venezuela will also have to wait for the Deezer train to arrive.
Before today, Deezer was available in 49 countries, including most of Europe. Its previously announced deadline of launching in Africa by February this year has clearly been missed, and it remains to be seen whether it will hit another 115 countries around the world by the end of this month, as planned.
Whichever way you look at this, Deezer clearly has the world in mind, leaving Spotify behind which is live in less than twenty countries. However, it does have the USA which is obviously a massive music market, and Deezer has been quite specific about its intentions not to target the USA or Japan.
It’s also worth noting that Deezer will be the only fully Facebook integrated music streaming service in these LatAm territories, allowing users to log-in with Facebook Connect and listen to music directly within the platform.
Deezer will be priced as follows across today’s launch territories:
- Discovery Mode (Free): On PC/Mac and mobile devices will allow you to listen to radio channels and artist-based radio channels (unlimited listening) and to music on demand (access to 15 million tracks) in 30-sec clips.
- Free Trial: A 15-day free trial where users can unsubscribe during this period and will not be committed to subscribe or pay anything.
- Premium ($4.25 or £3.49 GBP per month depending country): Unlimited streaming on any PC/Mac with enhanced audio quality.
- Premium+ ($8.49 or $6.99 per month depending country): Available on mobile phones, all smartphones, tablets, IP TVs & IP
Mexican users will be charged in Mexican pesos at $69.5 Premium/$139 Premium+.
So, another big step for Deezer in the race to dominate the music-streaming space. There’s little question that it’s an interesting place to be at the moment, with the likes of Rdio, Grooveshark and Pandora also vying for the world’s music money.


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General Motors has made another splashy deal in the hope of accelerating its path to producing and deploying fully self-driving cars. The automaker announced today that it bought 11-person sensor startup Strobe, which specializes in developing laser-based sensors called lidars.
The acquisition gives General Motors control over the production and development of a sensor that many believe is critical to the development of autonomous vehicles. And GM is now one of the only carmakers or autonomous vehicle developers that owns a good portion of the major components of the self-driving supply chain: The car itself, the self-driving “brain” (via its 2016 acquisition of Cruise), a key part of the “eyes,” as well as the service layer, a proprietary ride-hail network.
The company wouldn’t divulge any of the financial details and there’s little that’s public about the startup. However, GM had already been cultivating a relationship via an investment from its venture arm, GM Ventures.
Bringing lidar production in-house has become especially important as self-driving players scramble to meet impending deadlines to publicly deploy autonomous vehicles. Today, while there are many companies attempting to meet the demand of the nascent self-driving space, there are few that are mass producing lidars quickly enough and affordably.
As a result, the industry largely relies on one firm, Velodyne. However, paired with the high cost of lidar, Velodyne has also sometimes been slow to meet that high demand, some sources say, leaving companies waiting for the sensors for months.
“Existing commercially available solutions cost tens of thousands of dollars, are bulky and mechanically complex, and lack the performance needed to unlock self-driving operation at higher speeds and in more challenging weather,” Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt wrote in a blog post announcing and explaining the deal. “Strobe’s new chip-scale LIDAR technology will significantly enhance the capabilities of our self-driving cars. But perhaps more importantly, by collapsing the entire sensor down to a single chip, we’ll reduce the cost of each LIDAR on our self-driving cars by 99%.”
Bigger picture: GM is closer to becoming a vertically integrated autonomous vehicle manufacturer, which could help it move faster and build a better self-driving experience and business.
First there was its acquisition of self-driving startup Cruise in 2016. Then the company began experimenting with its own ride-hail network called Cruise Anywhere. And now the company owns the production and development of a critical sensor. (GM also has a partnership with no. 2 U.S. ride-hail player Lyft, but it’s clear the company is keeping its options open.)
The benefits of being vertically integrated are clear:
- Owning the major parts of the supply chain frees GM from relying too heavily on the production cycles of suppliers.
- It allows the company to develop the technology to its own custom specs.
- And it gives GM full control over the revenue that each of those parts bring in — say, for example, if GM decides to license its lidar technology to other companies instead of keeping it proprietary. (For now, GM’s acquisition takes this lidar tech off the market for its rivals.)
Additionally, there are benefits to having each of these components working side by side under one roof. A good example from another industry is how Apple has used its vertical integration of hardware, software and services to make the iPhone a much more cohesive product experience than smartphones running Android software from Google.
GM wouldn’t give any more details on how long it would take to start building the lidar sensors and outfitting its cars with them. But as it recently announced its factories were ready to manufacture cars equipped with the hardware to drive completely autonomously, it appears confident that it will be able to integrate the lidar into those production lines quickly.
There are technological advantages to moving quickly. While being the first to market with a fully self-driving car isn’t the end-all, be-all to competition within the space, it does give whoever is first the ability to test and validate its technology far longer and then update its software based on those learnings. That means, by the time the second player rolls out its fully self-driving cars onto public roads, the first one’s technology could already be far better.
GM is hardly the only company increasingly pushing to own more of its supply chain. Alphabet’s self-driving arm Waymo also announced it was bringing lidar development in house. Lyft, too, decided to begin developing its own autonomous software. In both cases, this could reduce how much the companies rely on external suppliers, while increasing their value to potential partners.
But the company that comes closest to mirroring GM’s integration is rival electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla — despite that Tesla CEO Elon Musk does not subscribe to the larger industry belief that lidar is a necessary technology for autonomous cars. Tesla’s scale is much smaller than GM’s, but it is manufacturing its own cars and building its autonomous software in-house. Musk has also talked about eventually creating an on-demand network of self-driving Teslas.
Lastly, this acquisition will likely have the same effect on the lidar and sensor industry that GM’s Cruise acquisition did. Backed by Spark Capital, Maven Ventures and others, Cruise’s exit was followed by a flurry of investments into and acquisitions of autonomous software companies. (See: Ford and Argo AI, Uber and Otto.) Since then, investors have been turning their focus toward the other components of autonomous cars, such as sensors.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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Last week, we learned that Google’s internal R&D group, Area 120, was hit hard by Google’s broader workforce cuts, impacting teams working on some of Google’s more experimental ideas. However, we now understand that at least three Area 120 projects were spared these latest cuts and will “graduate” to other parts of Google later this year. These include Out loudan automated and cheaper one video dubbing solution; called a privacy platform for app developers Controls; and lata consumer app quietly acquired by Google last year.
Most Area 120 projects are developed in-house, making Liist a rare exception. The startup, which had grown up $1.1 million in seed capital according to Crunchbase, offered a social bookmark tool to save places can be found on the internet, including via apps such as TikTok and Instagram. At Google’s Area 120, the team had been tasked with building a new consumer product.
While Aloud and Checks have obvious utility and fit easily into other parts of Google’s organization, Liist is perhaps the most intriguing of the three survivors of Area 120. Beyond Liist’s acquisition, Google had spoken about the threat to its core search and advertising business posed by TikTok and Instagram. Speaking at an industry event, Google SVP Prabhakar Raghavan, who heads Google’s Knowledge & Information organization, told an interviewer that the search giant’s own research found that young people now often don’t start searching for places on Google.
“In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place to eat lunch, they don’t turn to Google Maps or Search,” he said. “They go to TikTok or Instagram.”
When Liist’s bookmarking app was live, he’d touted a variety of use cases, including things like saving places for travel inspiration, planning a night out with friends, creating nightlife lists, and more. Users could vote where they wanted to go or plan trips together. The app was also one of the first to integrate with TikTok’s Jump platform, which allows users to jump from videos to third-party experiences — such as saving a recipe to the Whisk app after watching a video demonstrating the recipe, for example. .
Liist’s app shut down when the team joined Google, but co-founder David Friedl’s LinkedIn states that the team has been working on a “Gen Z consumer product” within Area 120. No other details have been provided.
According to an internal email to the Area 120 team shared with TechCrunch, Liist and the other remaining Area 120 projects will now fall under the purview of Area 120 Managing Partner Elijah Roman as they move forward. The email was written by veteran Googler Clay Bavor, who you may recall took over Area 120 and other AR and VR projects as part of a 2021 reorganization that dubbed this group of projects “Google Labs.”
Roman will also now lead a suite of “applied AI” products under Senior Director of Product Management at Google Labs, Josh Woodward.
While the Area 120 layoffs are only a small percentage of Google’s recent budget cuts affecting 12,000 people, or 6% of its global workforce, the R&D group had led several innovations over the years that were successful and spread to other parts of the world. exported from Google.
These include the HTML5 gaming platform for emerging markets called GameSnacks, which is integrated with Google Chrome; the tech interview platform Byteboard, a rare third-party spinout; an Airtable rival called Tables, which switched to Google Cloud; an AI-powered conversational advertising platform AdLingo, which also went to Cloud; video platforms Tangi and Shoploop, which moved to Google Search and Shopping respectively; and the web-based travel app Traveling birdwhich came out on Commerce, among others.
However, there were growing concerns that Google no longer saw Area 120 as a significant investment. Last September, the company whittled Area 120’s 14 projects in development to just seven and told affected employees to seek new roles within Google. At the time, a Google spokesperson explained that the group would shift focus to projects that “build on Google’s deep investment in AI” and “have the potential to solve key user problems.”
Bavor’s new email to Area 120 employees similarly highlights how Google’s experiments are now more intensely focused on the impact of AI in Google products, not the other types of projects Area 120 became known for in previous years. As Bavor writes:
It is clear that as a company we are still facing macroeconomic uncertainties. At the same time, there is tremendous opportunity for us in applying AI to reinvent so many of Google’s core products. With this in mind, I’ve made the difficult decision to phase out most of Area 120. For nearly seven years, Area 120 has been a source of bottom-up innovation within Google, and we’ve learned a lot about how best to pursue zero-to-one opportunities. But with the unprecedented opportunities ahead, we need to move to a new product development model that is opinionated and focused.
I know this change is significant and troubling. What hasn’t changed is the magnitude of the opportunities ahead, especially in applied AI. Across all of our domains, I think Labs does the most important and influential work at Google. And now, more than ever, the company counts on us to execute well. I am very confident that as a team we will navigate this moment and deliver in 2023.
The email comes on top of Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, about the layoffs. that was shared publicly on Google’s “The Keyword” blog.
Google declined to comment.


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The boost comes as retailers' early predictions for the coming season expect sales to rise as much as 4 percent.
Like a lot of things in this tepid recovery, holiday hiring by retailers is expected to be up — just not to where it was before the start of the Great Recession.
The boost comes as retailers, often rosy in their early predictions for the coming season, expect sales to rise as much as 4 percent.
So chains ranging from Macy's to Bradenton-based Bealls Inc. are aiming to bring in as many as 700,000 additional workers to help operate cash registers, stock shelves and clean up after the holiday scramble that starts this month and ends in December. That would be a 6 percent increase from last year's pace, which itself was up 1.9 percent from 2010, according to a study released by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement consulting organization.
This year's hiring is expected to come the closest to the pre-recession pace, before the biggest economic downturn in generations prompted consumers to limit their holiday spending in the face of a rising unemployment and a declining stock market. From 2004 to 2007, retail employment grew by an average of more than 722,000 during the last three months of each year, the Challenger Gray study showed.
All is not rosy
John Challenger, the firm's chief executive, noted the remaining challenges: relatively weak consumer confidence readings and unemployment that remains "stubbornly high." A lot of what happens this year is going to depend on how the opening weeks of the season shape up, he said.
"The mixed picture is likely to compel retail employers to proceed cautiously," Challenger said. "Look for many to start at last year's levels and hire additional workers only if strong sales early in the season warrant it."
Target Corp. expects to hire 80,000 to 90,000, less than the 92,000 jobs offered last year. Its super store in the University Parkway shopping corridor is looking to hire up to 80, said manager Dan Petruccelli, while other area Targets will hire slightly fewer.
Macy's anticipates adding 80,000 seasonal workers nationally, a 2.5 percent increase from last year. Out of that, 1,600 seasonal jobs are available at stores from Tampa Bay to Naples, said Macy's spokeswoman Melissa Goff.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. expects to hire more than 50,000.
Last year, electronics chain Best Buy Inc. cut its seasonal hiring numbers in half, offering 15,000 jobs in 2011 after hiring 29,000 in 2010. It is unclear what the electronics chain, which has been struggling in the digital age, plans this year.
Like so many aspects of the post-recession world, it remains to be seen exactly how consumers — and thus retailers — will react to a recent series of green shoots in the economy.
"I would be surprised if hiring this season is anything better than slightly higher than last year," said Howard Davidowitz, chairman with the New York City-based Davidowitz & Associates Inc., a retail consulting firm.
Store owners' caution is understandable: For retailers ranging from small mom-and-pops to the largest big box chains, the holiday season is a make-or-break time of year, often determining whether they are profitable or not. Too many seasonal employees and that equation can easily be pushed out of balance.
So far, most retailers seem optimistic. Three-fourths of those surveyed by the Hay Group, a global management consultant agency, are predicting better sales this year than in 2011. More broadly, the National Retail Federation is predicting holiday shopping will be up by 4 percent over last year, reaching $586 billion.
Hiring from 4 to 100
That relative buoyancy already is showing up in some of plans for seasonal hiring.
While the majority of retailers still plan to hire about the same amount of seasonal workers as last year, 36 percent of chain stores said they will hire more. That is a big bump from 2011, when only 10 percent of planned to ramp up from the prior year.
There are even stronger indications that some retailers feel the economy has entered a healthier stage.
"What is different this year is that more retailers are likely to retain a higher number of employees after the holiday season," said Pat Fitzpatrick, a consultant with Atlanta Retail Consulting. "That is a great indicator for an even stronger holiday season in 2013."
Kohl's, with a store each in Manatee, Sarasota and Charlotte counties, is looking to bring on 41 seasonal hires per store.
Hhgregg, an electronics retailer that expanded quickly into Florida over the last year, will hire about four associates at each of its Sarasota and Bradenton stores.
Toys R Us will take on about 100 to staff its two stores in Manatee and Charlotte counties. Nationwide, the retailer will hire 45,000.
Bealls, the Bradenton-based department store and outlet center company, plans to increase its staff at each store by 10 percent by November, said William Webster, spokesman for the company.
"Stores will ramp up hiring towards the end of October through early November, with the intention to be fully staffed before Black Friday," Webster said.
Some seasonal employees return each year to Bealls' department and outlet stores to help through the season. Although jobs are not guaranteed, Webster said some are invited to stay after the holidays.
The shopping season is expected to help lower the unemployment rate to some degree through the end of the year. The collective jobless rate in Manatee, Sarasota and Charlotte counties dipped to 9.1 percent in August, unusual in a region where business catering to tourists typically slim down after the high season.
Reasons for optimism
There are other reasons to be optimistic.
Chain store sales rose by 3.9 percent nationally during September from same month in 2011, a good indicator for the holiday shopping season ahead, the International Council of Shopping Centers said.
Following a stronger back-to-school season, Halloween merchandise sales, now an $8 billion industry, are expected to be up by nearly 3 percent from 2011, the National Retail Federation is predicting.
"Variables, including an upcoming presidential election, confusion surrounding the 'fiscal cliff' and concern relating to future economic growth, could all combine to affect consumers' spending plans," said Matthew Shay, the retail federation's chief executive.
"But, overall, we are optimistic that retailers promotions will hit the right chord with holiday shoppers."


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Global shipments of cellular IoT modules experienced their first-ever annual decline in 2023, falling two percent year-over-year.
Counterpoint Research’s latest report cites inventory adjustments following supply chain disruptions and reduced demand in key verticals like industrial and enterprise as driving factors behind the decline.
One bright spot was the rapid growth of 4G Cat 1 bis modules, which captured over 22 percent of shipments in 2023. In China, this technology has become the primary cellular standard for point-of-sale systems, smart metres, telematics, and asset tracking due to its affordability and energy efficiency. The market is slowly transitioning away from 4G Cat 1 and NB-IoT towards the more efficient 4G Cat 1 bis.
“India and China have shown positive growth due to increasing demand in the smart metre, POS, and asset tracking markets. Conversely, the rest of the world witnessed a sharper decline, indicating a lack of expected market momentum,” said Mohit Agrawal, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research.
Agrawal noted that around 12 percent of modules shipped in 2023 were equipped with AI capabilities—gaining popularity in automotive, router/CPE, and PC markets to manage escalating data loads.
Market leader Quectel experienced a decline in market share primarily due to weakened non-China demand. However, the company partnered with Syrma SGS to manufacture IoT modules in India. China Mobile and Fibocom saw double-digit year-over-year growth in smart metre, asset tracking, POS, and telematics applications.
The merger of Telit and Thales propelled the newly combined Telit Cinterion into the top five vendors. Telit also partnered with VVDN for local production in India. Several Chinese brands like Unionman, OpenLuat, Lierda, and Neoway showed significant growth in niche markets.
Looking ahead, Counterpoint Research Analyst Anish Khajuria expects the IoT module market to return to growth in the second half of 2024 as inventories normalise and demand increases for smart metres, POS, and automotive applications.
Substantial growth is projected for 2025 with wider 5G and 5G RedCap adoption across multiple verticals.
(Photo by kaleb tapp)
See also: Flying taxis and delivery drones set for UK skies by 2030
Want to learn about the IoT from industry leaders? Check out IoT Tech Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Cyber Security & Cloud Expo, AI & Big Data Expo, Edge Computing Expo, and Digital Transformation Week.
Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.


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ReStoring Data has been recognized as one of Canada’s “50 Best Managed IT Companies” for 2017. The prestigious award ceremony and gala dinner were held at the Old Mill Hotel in Toronto on February 2nd, 2017. - February 08, 2017 - ReStoring Data Inc.


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Old Mutual Global Investors UK Ltd. Invests $69.46 Million in Estee Lauder Companies Inc (EL)
Old Mutual Global Investors UK Ltd. bought a new stake in Estee Lauder Companies Inc (NYSE:EL) in the fourth quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The institutional investor bought 545,919 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $69,462,000.
Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in EL. Parkside Financial Bank & Trust lifted its stake in shares of Estee Lauder Companies by 126.1% in the 3rd quarter. Parkside Financial Bank & Trust now owns 1,135 shares of the company’s stock valued at $123,000 after acquiring an additional 633 shares during the last quarter. Harvest Fund Management Co. Ltd purchased a new position in Estee Lauder Companies during the 4th quarter valued at about $126,000. Cerebellum GP LLC purchased a new position in Estee Lauder Companies during the 4th quarter valued at about $130,000. Winslow Evans & Crocker Inc. increased its holdings in Estee Lauder Companies by 2,750.0% during the 4th quarter. Winslow Evans & Crocker Inc. now owns 1,140 shares of the company’s stock valued at $145,000 after purchasing an additional 1,100 shares during the period. Finally, Zions Bancorporation increased its holdings in Estee Lauder Companies by 2,781.3% during the 3rd quarter. Zions Bancorporation now owns 1,844 shares of the company’s stock valued at $198,000 after purchasing an additional 1,780 shares during the period. 54.03% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.
Estee Lauder Companies Inc (EL) opened at $137.50 on Wednesday. Estee Lauder Companies Inc has a twelve month low of $81.69 and a twelve month high of $138.74. The company has a current ratio of 1.76, a quick ratio of 1.33 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.74. The firm has a market capitalization of $50,396.34, a P/E ratio of 47.74, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.43 and a beta of 0.74.
The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, March 15th. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, February 28th will be issued a dividend of $0.38 per share. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, February 27th. This represents a $1.52 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.11%. Estee Lauder Companies’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 52.78%.
In other news, insider John Demsey sold 11,179 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, January 31st. The stock was sold at an average price of $136.54, for a total value of $1,526,380.66. Following the sale, the insider now directly owns 23,898 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,263,032.92. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, insider 1992 Grat Remainder Trust Fbo sold 571,351 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, November 22nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $125.44, for a total value of $71,670,269.44. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 1,390,653 shares of company stock worth $175,112,676 in the last quarter. Company insiders own 16.24% of the company’s stock.
A number of research analysts recently issued reports on EL shares. Argus boosted their price target on Estee Lauder Companies from $125.00 to $142.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Thursday, November 2nd. Zacks Investment Research upgraded Estee Lauder Companies from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $147.00 price target on the stock in a report on Tuesday, January 9th. Jefferies Group set a $140.00 price target on Estee Lauder Companies and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, December 1st. Macquarie boosted their price target on Estee Lauder Companies from $1.45 to $1.50 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, December 21st. Finally, BMO Capital Markets boosted their price target on Estee Lauder Companies from $107.00 to $126.00 and gave the company a “market perform” rating in a report on Thursday, November 2nd. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and nineteen have assigned a buy rating to the company. The company presently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and an average target price of $128.57.
Estee Lauder Companies Company Profile
The Estee Lauder Companies Inc manufactures and markets skin care, makeup, fragrance and hair care products. The Company offers products, including skin care, makeup, fragrance, hair care and other. The Company operates in beauty products segment. The Company’s products are sold in over 150 countries and territories under brand names, including Estee Lauder, Aramis, Clinique, Prescriptives, Lab Series, Origins, Tommy Hilfiger, MAC, Kiton, La Mer, Bobbi Brown, Donna Karan New York, DKNY, Aveda, Jo Malone London, Bumble and bumble, Michael Kors, Darphin, Tom Ford, Smashbox, Ermenegildo Zegna, AERIN, Tory Burch, RODIN olio lusso, Le Labo, Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle, GLAMGLOW, By Kilian, BECCA and Too Faced.
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Systems running OS X 10.9 have been making an appearance online in the past few weeks.
Apple Insider claims that over the past few weeks it has seen over 30 visits from systems listed as running OS X 10.9. The site goes on to say, “While such information can be faked, the growing number of appearances of systems claiming to run OS X 10.9 could indicate that Apple is already testing early betas of the next major update to its Mac operating system.”
It is likely that Apple is testing a new version of its OS considering the fact that the last two major updates were released on an annual basis. OS X 10.8, Mountain Lion launched in July 2012 and the iteration previous to that, OS X 10.7 Lion, was launched in July 2011. The iteration before that, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was launched in 2009.
If Apple is shifting its desktop OS trend to an annual upgrade cycle, we may see the next Mac OS, version 10.9 launch in 2013.
Apple’s OS X 10. 8 Mountain Lion is quite a successful OS, considering Apple saw 7 million upgrades in just two months.
If you are one who still hasn't upgraded to the new OS, you can take a look at some of the key features of the OS here.
Source: Apple Insider


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Fast food giant McDonald’s has made a change to one of its COVID-19 policies due to the changing dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The restaurant chain says it will no longer be publicly reporting COVID-19 cases at its locations across the country; something McDonald’s did since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.
“At McDonald’s Canada, our top priority is to protect the health and well-being of our employees and our guests – it’s at the core of everything we do. In addition to our existing high standards of cleanliness, restaurants have implemented enhanced protective measures during the pandemic to ensure every part of the McDonald’s experience is safe,” according to a statement on the McDonald’s COVID-19 tracker page. “Throughout the pandemic we have communicated restaurant closures due to COVID-19 so that restaurant employees and guests were continually informed of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in restaurants and could take proper measures. This was important during the early months of the pandemic and we posted an ongoing COVID-19 tracker to report on any change of status in our restaurants.”
However, McDonald’s added, “due to the increased numbers of Canadians who are vaccinated, a corresponding reduction in impacts on our operations, and the introduction of vaccine passports or cards for restaurants in most provinces, the tracker has been discontinued.”
The company says it will continue to operate in line with guidance from public health authorities and all levels of government.
McDonald’s joins whose stores include No Frills, Real Canadian Superstore and Shoppers Drug Mart, who earlier this summer also decided to no longer make public COVID-19 cases in its stores.
However, many other stores including continue to report cases at their store locations.


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It’s easy to target locavores for their sometimes elitist and naive world view when it comes to what and how people should eat. (And for the record, I’m not saying they’re wrong, just that they should get their heads out of their asses when it comes to preaching at people who can’t afford to make food a priority…) But it appears that there’s a whole new way to take advantage of the gullible foodies who think they’re saving the world by “knowing where their food comes from”.
CHOW has an article this week about vendors who show up at farmers’ markets claiming to be farmers but who aren’t. Journalists from NBC Los Angeles bought produce from an LA-area farmers’ market and then made a point of visiting the farms the food came from. Except that some of those farms didn’t actually exist.
This is exactly the kind of thing that the Toronto area MyMarkets attempts to weed out, requiring that all vendors be certified and that vendors sell only the food that they themselves have grown. This unfortunately rules out co-operatives like the Kawartha Ecological Growers (KEG), but does a good job of culling the people who would head to the food terminal and load up on imports and sell them as their own. CHOW’s got a list of things to look for to ensure that you’re dealing directly with the farmer and not some scoundrel reseller.
Harder to winnow out is when those same not-actually-local products are served in restaurants. There’s been a trend lately to give restaurants grief for long detailed menu descriptions that include everything from the cut of meat to the farmer who raised it, right down to the name of the animal, but maybe it’s not such a bad thing, especially when restaurants see dollar signs in jumping on the local sustainable bandwagon.
An article in the UK’s Daily Mail accuses some restaurateurs of “telling porkies” about their pork – and other menu items – by calling conventional meat sustainably raised, including incorrect references to the place of origin (some items in the UK have a special status), and in one case even claiming the pork they served came from a particular farm… which had never raised pork. Terms such as organic, hand-picked, and hand-raised are also littered across menus. Either the person creating the menu is grabbing at buzzwords without knowing their real meanings or they’re intentionally misleading customers into thinking they’re getting a local, sustainable product when they’re really not.
This is something that would be easier to pull off here in Toronto, where pretty much every restaurant claims to be serving local products. Obviously, some restaurants have more integrity than others, but customers would be wise to ask questions if they’re concerned. And build relationships, with both restaurants and farmers (here in Toronto, many of the same farms who vend at farmers’ markets also service our local restaurants), so you know the farm cited on those restaurant menus, and you know that you can trust the chef is giving you the real goods.
My favourite local food moment took place about a month ago when dining at Nathan Isberg’s The Atlantic. The server handed us the menu for the evening but immediately pointed out that they didn’t have the chicken. It was early in the evening, so we were a bit confused. “The farmer is running late and hasn’t dropped them off yet,” she replied. And sure enough, 20 minutes later, Mark Trealout of KEG walked through the front door carrying a big box of heritage breed chickens, slaughtered earlier that day.
Know your farmers, trust your chefs, but keep a healthy dose of cynicism to rout out impostors.


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Neo, China’s biggest cryptocurrency has been on an unstoppable rise since Da Hongfei launched it in 2014. The coin has already taken the cryptoworld by storm, but its creators aren’t stopping there. They want to assemble a “smart economy” that will work a lot like a computer program. Assets will be traded in a public ledger and “smart contracts” will be written by people that will allow money to be shifted around when certain conditions are met.
During an interview with Bloomberg, Da stated that, “We want to be the place people go to when they want to do serious and reliable transactions,”
In the past month the Neo coin has seen the stunning increase of 128 percent. Whereas on December 25 one coin was $59.94, it has since skyrocketed to $136.75. The market has clearly been rattled. It is officially the eighth largest cryptocurrency on the world market. It has a market cap that is steadily resting at $8.8 billion.
One can get a good idea of where Neo is heading by looking at their website. Here is a statement from the company site, “NEO is a non-profit community-based blockchain project that utilizes blockchain technology and digital identity to digitize assets, to automate the management of digital assets using smart contracts, and to realize a “smart economy” with a distributed network.”
At the moment, it won’t be hard to see how much Neo and Ethereum have in common. Both have a desire to start up a smart economy, where individuals would use the blockchain to shift their ideas on shifting assets around. Whereas Ethereum has Dapps which allows developers to run their own ideas off of the network, Neo has the desire to do things differently.
Eden Block CEO Noam Levinson wrote this in a December article, “Ethereum did it first. It was revolutionary and exciting and took the crypto world by storm. Today almost every ICO is built on Ethereum’s ERC20 token platform and Vitalik Buterin is one of our time’s greatest minds. Yet if we’ve learned anything from the fact that Alibaba is closing in on Amazon’s market cap and WeChat dominates China’s social media scene, it’s that China plays by their own rules.”


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This is a big month for Volkswagen’s aspiration to become the leading maker of electric vehicles.
The all-electric ID.4, a compact SUV that is a crucial part of the company’s planned transition, began arriving at U.S. dealerships this month.
And Volkswagen held a “Power Day” event last week, in which executives mapped out how they intend to transform the company to focus on EVs, a process that will include opening giant new battery factories and working with others to set up charging infrastructure.
But the thing that got my attention was a research note from a Deutsche Bank analyst saying that Volkswagen was quickly catching up with Tesla as the global leader in EVs. (Deutsche Bank is an iconic German company that does business with Volkswagen, another iconic German company, but the bank’s stock analysts are independent of other parts of the company.)
Volkwagen “should come very close to Tesla’s” sales in 2021, and “We see a good chance that VW could surpass Tesla’s (all-electric vehicle) sales as soon as next year,” said a report issued on Monday by analyst Tim Rokossa.
His conclusion was based on Volkswagen’s newly stated goal of selling 1 million EVs this year, and the global rollout of the ID.4.
To understand why this is a big deal, let’s look back to 2019, when Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess announced a shift in strategy to focus on EVs. At the time, the company was still reeling from the effects of being caught cheating on U.S. emissions testing in 2015, a scandal that has led to more than $30 billion in fines and legal settlements. Volkswagen in 2019 was a leader in gasoline and diesel vehicles, but had been unable to develop a globally successful electric vehicle. I wrote about this last year as part of my series about Germany’s transition to clean energy.
The company is now developing EV models across its brands, which include Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche, among others. The linchpin is the Volkswagen “ID” series, starting with the ID.3, a compact car which went on sale last year in parts of the world but not the United States, and now the ID.4.
Looking at the bigger picture of the transition to EVs, it is good for the entire market if there are several strong competitors pushing each other to make the best vehicles at the most affordable prices. To get the most robust competition, multiple big players need to rise up to take on Tesla.
Tesla is the global leader, but this race is tightening. Last year, Tesla delivered 499,511 new vehicles to customers. The runner-up was Volkswagen, with 424,729, followed by the alliance of Renault, Mitsubishi and Nissan, with 247,623, and General Motors, with 215,275.
Those numbers, from EV-Volumes.com, include all-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids that can run on electricity and gasoline.
If we are just looking at all-electric vehicles, which includes all of Tesla’s output, then it has a larger lead, with Volkswagen only selling about 220,000 of this type.
Tesla continues to dominate the U.S. market, with 201,769 vehicles sold, followed by General Motors, with 20,807, and with Volkswagen next at 18,726, including both its all-electric models and plug-in hybrids.
Much of the hype about Volkswagen’s progress on EVs is based on the idea that the ID series is well-positioned to be a strong seller in the next few years, and that Volkswagen has a workable plan to dramatically increase its EV output.
This month, a UBS analyst called the ID.3 “the most credible EV effort by any legacy auto company so far.”
Patrick Hummel, the lead author of the UBS report, framed the emerging EV race by making an analogy with makers of smartphones.
“If Tesla is the Apple of the new mobility world, leading legacy (automakers) like VW and Hyundai could be like Samsung,” he said.
He was arguing that Tesla, like Apple, has cachet and a reputation as an innovator, but there is plenty of room for Volkswagen, like Samsung, to build strong businesses.
So far, I’ve focused on sales in the next year or two. This industry will get even more interesting after that, as companies begin to introduce their next generations of batteries that have longer ranges, shorter charging times and lower costs.
I wrote on Friday about how legacy automakers have been pairing off with battery start-ups to develop “solid-state” batteries. In a solid-state battery, lithium ions pass through a solid material to discharge electricity, which is different from the current dominant technology in which lithium ions pass through a liquid or gel. Solid-state batteries have a higher energy density than those with liquids, allowing manufacturers to pack more energy into a smaller space.
Volkswagen appears to have an early lead in making a solid-state battery, thanks to its highly publicized partnership with the battery-maker QuantumScape. Volkswagen has said it is aiming to have a solid-state battery in some models by 2025.
Just about every other major automaker is talking about its work on a solid-state battery, with the notable exception of Tesla, which is focusing on its next generation of batteries coming out in 2023, and hasn’t said much about what will happen after that.
Competition among automakers is setting up the 2020s to be a time of rapid innovation. UBS said in its report that its analysts are increasingly confident that EVs will have 20 percent of the global market by 2025 and 50 percent by 2030, and a chance of 100 percent by 2040. Their current share is 4 percent globally, and 2 percent in the United States.
An EV boom of that scale would mean a steep decrease in emissions from transportation, which will help in global efforts to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
It also would mean a period of enormous change for automakers and all of the businesses that are tied to them, from convenience stores to oil refiners.
Review Says ID.4 Is ‘Unexciting’: Car & Driver took the Volkswagen ID.4 on a road test and found it comfortable but unexciting. The reviewer, Joey Capparella, writes that there is “little verse or joy to the driving dynamics.” Rather than try to win over early adopters, the ID.4 “feels like it’s trying to convince buyers that an EV can cost and provide the same experience as mainstream gas-powered vehicles.” This is neither a rave review nor an overly negative one. We’ll have to wait to get an idea of what regular drivers think of this model that is so important for Volkswagen’s EV plans.
How Clean Are EVs?: One of the ongoing debates about electric vehicles is whether they are truly better for the environment than gasoline models, after accounting for emissions from the lifecycle of manufacturing and ownership. Various studies have clearly shown that EVs are better for the environment, but also showed that the extent of the benefit varies depending on factors like the fuels used to generate electricity in a region. The Wall Street Journal this week has a story that nicely explains the various factors, using an animated graphic. The bottom line is that EVs do indeed have lower emissions than gasoline vehicles, but it’s more complicated than you might think.
Floating Wind Farm Reports Strong Results: The energy company Equinor is feeling good about electricity production at its Hywind Scotland offshore wind farm, a project that had an average “capacity factor” of 57.1 percent last year, the best in the United Kingdom, and an encouraging sign for floating offshore wind, according to this BBC News story. Capacity factor is a measure of how an energy project’s actual output compares to the maximum that is technically possible. For comparison, onshore wind in the United States has an average capacity factor of 35 percent. Offshore wind typically has a higher capacity factor than onshore wind, but developers are still figuring out how floating wind farms—as opposed to projects with turbines attached to the sea floor—will perform because they are not yet common. With the caveat that the Hywind project is in an unusually windy region so the results may not be typical, Equinor and other developers of floating wind projects have got to like what they see.


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Gartner flags 10 strategic tech trends for 2019
Supply chain operators may have to get up to speed on a new range of cutting-edge technologies to keep up with the currents of change, according to a recent industry report.Â The report by market research firm Gartner Inc. finds that disruption and new business models in 2019 will be driven by 10 powerful technology trends, including some familiar concepts like autonomous vehicles and blockchain, as well as some more esoteric concepts such as augmented analytics and quantum computing.
While most shippers, brokers, carriers, vendors, and warehouse operators will agree that the logistics industry is awash in emerging technologies, Gartner said its study focuses only on those trends that have substantial disruptive potential that is beginning to break out of an emergingÂ state into broader impact and could reach a tipping point over the next five years.
Viewed through that prism, Gartner says the ten strategic technology trends that organizations need to exploreÂ in 2019 are:
- Autonomous things (robots, drones, andÂ autonomous vehicles will increasingly exhibit advancedÂ behaviors thatÂ interact more naturally with their surroundings and with people)
- Augmented analytics (an area of augmented intelligence using machineÂ learning (ML) instead of data scientists to automate the process of dataÂ preparation, insight generation, andÂ insight visualization)
- AI-driven development (creatingÂ AI-enhanced solutions using predefined modelsÂ delivered as aÂ service, and assigning AI co-developersÂ to help humans with application development projects)
- DigitalÂ twins (digital representations of real-world entitiesÂ or systems that can help users apply analytics andÂ rules to respond to business objectives)* Empowered edge (the collection and processing of data directly at the endpoint devices used by peopleÂ or embedded in the world around us, instead of at centralized servers)
- Immersive experience (how conversationalÂ platforms such as virtual reality (VR),Â augmented reality (AR),Â and mixed reality (MR)Â can change the way peopleÂ perceiveÂ the digitalÂ world)
- Blockchain (a distributedÂ ledger that can enable trust, provideÂ transparency, and reduce frictionÂ across business ecosystems)
- Smart spaces (physicalÂ or digital environments in which humans and technology-enabled systems interactÂ in increasingly open,Â connected, coordinated and intelligent ways)
- Digital ethics and privacy (how peoples' personal information is being usedÂ by organizations in both the public and private sectors)
- Quantum computing (a type ofÂ nonclassical computing that operates on the quantum state of subatomicÂ particles and can handle problems too complex for traditional approaches or algorithms)
While Gartner identified these trends as general, industry-wide themes, each one could apply specifically to logistics in a range of ways, the firm said.
In one example, robotic applications could soon evolve far beyond their current use in discrete tasks, and begin to cooperate within a broader network. "As autonomous things proliferate, we expect a shift from stand-aloneÂ intelligent things to a swarm of collaborative intelligent things, withÂ multiple devices working together, either independently of people or with humanÂ input," David Cearley, a vice president andÂ Gartner Fellow, said in a release.
"For example, if a drone examinedÂ a large field andÂ found that it was ready for harvesting, it could dispatch an 'autonomousÂ harvester'," Cearley said. "Or in the delivery market, the mostÂ effective solution may be toÂ use an autonomous vehicle to move packages to the target area. Robots andÂ drones on board the vehicleÂ could then ensure final delivery of the package."
Despite this great potential for change, some of the strategic technologies flagged for 2019—such as blockchain—still require significant development before they can perform reliably in a business environment, Gartner said.
"Current blockchain technologiesÂ and concepts are immature, poorly understood, and unproven inÂ mission-critical, at-scale businessÂ operations. This is particularly so withÂ the complex elements that support more sophisticated scenarios," Cearley said. "Despite theÂ challenges, the significant potential for disruptionÂ means CIOs and IT leaders should begin evaluating blockchain, even if theyÂ don'tÂ aggressively adopt the technologies in the next few years."
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No doubt a surprising number of people were looking forward to the retail release of Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition. Originally set for April 30, the retail version has been delayed by a couple months. Now, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition is heading to stores June 4.
Why the delay? According to Microsoft's Major Nelson, Microsoft and Mojang want to make sure they've got all the content in the game before it hits retailers. No idea what content he's referring to, specifically, but our guess is they're trying to get in updates and patched contents -- as much as possible, anyway.
Major Nelson dropped the news this morning via Twitter:
FYI: In order to include the very latest content, the retail version for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has been delayed until June 4 (US)— Larry Hryb (@majornelson) April 12, 2013
Hey, it's not like you can't already snag the game off Xbox LIVE, but anyone hoping to grab a boxed version is just going to have to sit tight until June. Sounds like it'll be a better game for it.


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The Smart fortwo is gearing up for its third generation. Here is a rendering of what it might look like.
The Smart fortwo is set for its third generation and Theophiluschin has already imagined what it will look like. They say the new rendering was designed as a mix between the Smart forspeed and forvision concepts. Smart's city car first arrived at the 1998 Paris Motor Show and has started a genre almost all its own. The Smarty City Coupe is a rear-engine two-seater that runs on electric only.
The first generation ran from '98-'07 and the second generation is currently on the streets now. The third generation is expected to start production in 2012. Rendering courtesy of Smart fortwo.


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Most of the iPhone SE 2 leaks that have come our way are either cases or CAD renders or even just concept makers. Olixar which is a case maker that is thought to be a trusted source for a number of flagship smartphone leaks last month revealed that it is starting production of iPhone SE 2 cases with reports from its close sources stating that it is going to release soon. However, now the case maker has made a U-turn and claimed that there will be no iPhone SE 2 this year.
Olixar states that its close sources in the industry have told it that Apple will not be making any iPhone SE 2 this year. Hence, it has stopped production of related accessories at notice. The iPhone SE 2 CAD renders disseminated recently suggested a design close to the iPhone X but in a miniature metal shell and a glass back design. There were numerous case and front panel leaks as well that hinted at a notch design that would grace the mini iPhone.
Gizchina News of the week
However, Apple never said a word about the iPhone SE 2. Furthermore, strong rumours of three iPhones this year also say that Apple will be making an affordable LCD iPhone this year. Since the industry is mostly gravitating towards bigger screens, which the LCD iPhone has, and it will be cheap, ultimately leaves no reason for the iPhone SE 2. However this is merely hypothetical, and Apple would still release an iPhone SE 2 handset if it wants to, but today’s latest report from PhoneArena suggests that is not likely.


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Facebook Inc. unveiled smartphone software that puts social-networking features front and center on a handset, stepping up efforts to boost sales of advertising on small screens.
The new software, which the company calls Home, makes it easier to access Facebook features -- such as friends’ photos, messages and status updates -- on a smartphone’s home screen, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said at an event today in Menlo Park, California. The downloadable application, available on phones that use Google Inc.’s Android operating system, also boasts improved messaging tools, Facebook said.
Now that the majority of users access Facebook via mobile devices, Zuckerberg needs ways to keep them engaged longer while coaxing advertisers to pay to place promotions on small screens. The company is betting that a handset with Facebook-centric software will do a better job wooing users and marketers than the current approach, which emphasizes a downloadable application, Howe said.
“The problem with apps is they’re a click away from wherever you are,” said Carl Howe, an analyst at Yankee Group. “Facebook wants to remove that barrier.”
Home will have monthly updates, can be installed from Google Play, Google’s online app store, and will be available on tablets in the coming months, Facebook said.
Facebook rose about 1.8 percent to $26.72 at 1:33 p.m. in New York. Through yesterday, the stock had declined 1.4 percent year-to-date, while the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 6.6 percent.
Facebook isn’t building a smartphone or creating an operating system, Zuckerberg said.
Amazon.com Inc. uses a version of Android in the Kindle Fire tablet. In Amazon’s case, that means bypassing Google’s preloaded applications, such as Gmail, Google Maps and YouTube, which generate revenue for Google.
Software crafted by Facebook will more prominently display the social network on handsets and could challenge competitors such as Apple Inc. and Google for the attention of smartphone users, Howe said.
“They’re not as mobile focused as Apple and Google are,” Howe said in an interview. “They need to play catch up.”
While the iPhone operating system is controlled exclusively by Apple, Google provides more flexibility with Android. Companies can take older versions of the software and customize it for their own services and preferences.
Zuckerberg has said he sees opportunities to push the company’s features deeper into mobile devices -- though he has denied that Facebook will make its own smartphone. Already, Facebook, along with Twitter Inc., has been built deeper into the latest version of Apple’s software, enabling users to post easily to the social-networking service.
“I think people want it to be very integrated into all of the different devices that they have, and that’s what we’re going to focus on,” Zuckerberg said on a call with analysts in January. “So, rather than just building an app that’s a version of the functionality that you have today, I think making it so that we can just do -- go deeper and deeper I think is going to be a big focus for us.”
A new Facebook-enabled handset follows earlier forays into mobile devices for the social-networking service.
HTC Corp. began selling “ChaCha,” an Android-based phone with a dedicated Facebook button to share music, photos and messages, in 2011. INQ Mobile Ltd. and Facebook that year also unveiled a phone with close integration of services, such as wall postings and photos.
While those devices have won over some die-hard Facebook fans, widespread adoption has been limited, according to Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Gartner Inc. A new Facebook handset may struggle to match the success of devices made by Apple or Samsung Electronics Co., which manufactures the Galaxy line of phones, she said.
“I don’t think that Facebook as a brand will necessarily get consumers -- that are your average Facebook users -- to pick out that phone over a Galaxy or an iPhone,” she said.
After a 31 percent decline in Facebook’s shares since an initial public offering in May, through yesterday, investors are looking for signs that the company can extract more ad dollars from promotions on mobile phones. The number of daily Facebook users on desktops and laptops fell in the fourth quarter as the portion of members on mobile devices increased, regulatory filings show.
Facebook’s nascent mobile-ad service, started in March 2012, isn’t helping the company gain market share in the U.S., according to EMarketer Inc. Facebook is projected to grab 12 percent of the market in 2015, down from 13 percent this year, EMarketer said. Over the same period, Google’s stake will climb about two percentage points to 57 percent.
A new handset could help Facebook get more information on users to bolster its mobile ad efforts, according to Melissa Parrish, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc.
“They need to do more,” Parrish said. “The most important thing is putting more focus on how they can deeply understand the people who are using Facebook on a mobile device.”
© Copyright 2014 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved.


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NovaLash International formally returns to the UK
NovaLash has officially ended its partnership with its previous distributor in England and is now fully operational in the UK.
Now re-established under its formal company name, NovaLash International, the brand is also known as NovaLash UK. After appointing a sole UK distributor for training and products in 2018, by 2022 the company decided to bring operations back in-house while utilizing a third-party logistics company for inventory management, packing, and shipping.
"We are really excited to be back, and we look forward to reconnecting with the UK, Irish and European markets," said Zachary Falb, Global Education and Training Manager. "Customers can expect increased levels of service and support as well as faster, more efficient delivery of products."
As part of its re-entry into the market, Novalash has also launched a new online shop at www.novalash.co.uk that is open to all lash professionals.


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There has been a raft of good news for Knaresborough’s High Street recently.
Harrogate Borough Council are pressing ahead with the renovations of the three High Street shops it purchased earlier this year. Planning permission for the three shops and residential flats above has been granted and work is underway.
In addition, our town is also attracting more businesses, with the vacancy rates for the town dropping to 10.2 per cent compared to 12.6 per cent in March 2020.
Local MP Andrew Jones welcomed the news: “These have been difficult times and we are still not through them. Retail and hospitality face ongoing challenges but these figures are positive and an improving position on much of the last few years. Knaresborough’s figures should improve even further when the long-term empty properties on the High Street come into use later this year. They were derelict eyesores until the council bought them and refurbished them.”


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As it's a free upgrade that gives you more apps, improved features across the board, and better performance, there is really no reason not to get Mavericks on your Mac.
Pricing not available
Microsoft's current desktop OS is close to stealing second place from Windows XP in the desktop OS arena, according to new stats from Web tracker Net Applications.
iCloud Drive will store and sync your files across all of your devices. It's a good idea to learn as much as you can about it.
The share of PCs running on Microsoft's latest operating system jumps in October.
Before you upgrade your Mac to Yosemite, you need to make sure your machine is up to the task. We present a quick, four-point checklist to help you make the proper preparations.
The consumer electronics giant on Thursday is pushing out new Macintosh software with some search features that subtly underscore Apple's rivalry with Google.
New iPads and Macs, as well as an official launch of the OS X Yosemite computer operating system, should show up at Apple's event this week.
Even if you don't love RT, at this price you almost have to consider it. Don't you?
Apple just released a patch for Shellshock, a bug that could give hackers access to Macintosh computers, but a security specialist says Apple fixed only two out of three security holes.
Coming in with an average of 13.7 megabits per second, the Southern state boasts the speediest broadband service in the country.


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Google +1 is no Facebook conqueror, but it could be made into an attractive program for advertisers, says Clint Boulton
Google on 30 March launched its long-awaited, supposed Facebook-flaming +1 button to the world as an experimental feature, with a slow rollout coming as the search engine tunes and tweaks the feature.
+1 is best thought of as simply Google’s version of Facebook’s Like button, the social network’s recommendation engine. Users will click the +1 next to each search result or ad on Google.com, and +1s will start appearing next to each selected search or ad result in subsequent searches.
Don’t think of +1 as a bid to beat Facebook so much as a way for Google to emulate Facebook’s passion for forging digital ads paired with social recommendations, which is a super smart move by Google, albeit with some pitfalls.
The good news is the service is easy. Users literally just click the +1 when they like a search result for a car, restaurant or ads to recommend these products to users. No mess, no fuss.
This requires Google users, who are accustomed to coming to Google.com to search and flit away, to leave more information about themselves, similar to the way they already do on Facebook. Profiles users enter their name, work info if they prefer, interests and links to other websites.
Profiles is how Google’s Social Search links users to their friends, surfacing content created or shared by Google’s linked Gmail and Chat users, as well as users from Twitter or Quora.
“It’s a continuation of search becoming more personalised and relevant to you,” Altimeter Group founder Charlene Li told eWEEK. “The biggest problem is that Google excludes the biggest social network, Facebook, so you’re limited to who is in your Google address book/Chat list and Twitter.”
Google Profiles not up to the job
The problem is that there is absolutely no indication that enough people are using Profiles the way they feed content to and suck content from Facebook.
Google doesn’t disclose the number of Profile users it has, but even if it is in the tens of millions, it’s still just a fraction of its massive, unparalleled search base of 1 billion users. How can Google get more searchers setting up Profiles to engage in sharing via +1?
As IDC analyst Hadley Reynolds told eWEEK, Google continually runs up against a chicken and egg problem every time it tries another socially driven product or feature.
The value to users of social features like +1 comes from being able to see what friends have thought about things, but to leverage that value of friends’ “likes,” Google needs to have a critical mass of people already in its network, which it largely lacks today, Reynolds explained.
The fact is that most people want to maintain their groups of friends on one network, and that tends to be Facebook.
“Since Google doesn’t ‘own’ the dominant social network, it needs to get people to opt in to a Google-run version of one (in this case, the Google Profiles),” Reynolds said. “People may wonder why they would bother to go through the signup process and maintain settings and so forth on another system only to be able to get a probably minor enhancement to their search experience.”
Following the money trail
Google didn’t throw out this “me too” feature as an altruistic feature. It’s following Facebook’s money trail, as Likes helped the company earn $1.86 billion (£1.14bn) in ads last year.
Google has said in early testing that the +1 recommendations boosted the rates at which people clicked on the ads. As Search Engine Land noted, Google owns paid search advertising so the +1 annotations have the potential to boost AdWords campaigns.
Moreover, Google will soon extend the +1 button to external websites, just as Facebook did with the Like button.
It’s unclear what financial return Google will get by combining the web’s biggest third-party ad network — AdSense — with recommendations.
If the tens of millions of Profiles users are generating buttons for other Profiles users to click on, Google stands to make some money. Google might not have the social network, but it certainly has the ad networks to support whatever it does in search.
Count IDC’s Reynolds as a believer in Google’s ability to make money from +1.
“I do think the commercial value of +1 is significant, and it could be made into an attractive program for advertisers, an area where Google has an opportunity to potentially out-innovate Facebook,” Reynolds said.
“However, they have to solve their social chicken and egg problem in order to have +1 make a difference.”
That means somehow, some way, getting more users to join Google Profiles to start sharing via +1. That’s a challenge, since most people go to Google to search for information and go to Facebook to share information. GigaOm offers the best analysis of this dichotomy.


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Public charging stations for plug-in electric vehicles (EV) have surpassed 48,000 globally, a recent report suggests.
Navigant Research said a spike in world-wide electric vehicle demand has created more interest for EV infrastructure, providing some underlying support for the 48,705 public charging stations
Further EV interest in the US has increased the appetite for more charging stations, also. The first quarter of 2013 saw a 9% advance in US public charging stations. That’s bolstered by strong 2013 first quarter sales for the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, and Tesla Model S.
Meanwhile, there are now 5,678 public charging stations across the US with approximately 180 added each month. If the trend continues, the US Department of Energy expects 7,400 charging stations on the road by the end of 2013.
“Numerous companies offering various technologies and business models have emerged to take advantage of the large public investments in this emerging industry,” said Navigant Research senior research analyst Lisa Jerram.
“There has also been enormous private investment in EV infrastructure as these companies respond to and anticipate growing demand. As the market for PEVs grows, and government support for charging infrastructure tapers off, the EVSE (electric vehicles supply equipment) industry will become more dependent on private investment to expand,” she said.
It’s too early to tell where the market will go for public charging stations and EVs. However, the trick going forward in promoting new charging stations is a three-step approach. That includes strong clean transportation policy, increased private investment (namely Tesla’s Supercharger Networks), and ongoing public education about charging stations in the energy-climate era.
If all three of those vital ingredients come together, the market for EV public charging stations will be bright.


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As nation gains, 'overweight' is relative
CNN) -- The little number on the tag on a pair of pants that indicates size can mean a lot to a person, and retailers know it.
The probability of people describing themselves as overweight is decreasing, researchers find.
That's why, in recent years, as the American population has become generally more overweight, brands from the luxury names to the mass retail chains have scaled down the size labels on their clothing.
"You may actually be a size 14 and, according to whatever particular store you're in, you come out a size 10," said Natalie Nixon, associate professor of fashion industry management at Philadelphia University. "It's definitely to make the consumer feel good."
Research shows that, when it comes to self-perception, the concept of "overweight" may be relative.
A working paper from a group led by Mary Burke, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Massachusetts, suggested that people's perceptions of overweight have shifted, and "normal" is now heavier than it used to be.
Researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, nationally representative surveys run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The first group was surveyed in 1988-1994, and the second was surveyed in 1999-2004. Because there were different people in each survey, it is not possible to tell if the perceptions of individuals shifted over time, the authors said. Watch CNN's Elizabeth Landau talk more about the study »
Participants were asked whether they consider themselves "underweight," "about right," or "overweight," and reported their body mass index, a measure of the health risks associated with weight. Calculate your BMI »
Are people more complacent, or better educated?
Although the BMI of the general population increased from the earlier survey period to the later one, the probability of people describing themselves as overweight decreased in the later survey, researchers found.
They found that weight misperception tended to decrease among women -- meaning women with normal BMI who were surveyed in 1999-2004 were less likely to say that they're "overweight" than women with normal BMI in 1988-1994, especially among 17 to 19-year-olds. For men, it was about the same.
"For women, this was good news," Burke said. "Women seem to get a more realistic perception of themselves."
Although the study authors said this trend may reflect healthy body image campaigns, physician nutrition specialist Dr. Melina Jampolis, who was not involved in this research, said she doubts that positive messages had this much influence.
Rather, it is the relative increase in weight of the general population that makes people with normal BMI feel more normal, she said.
On the flip side, feeling normal but being overweight may decrease a person's motivation to lose weight, Burke said.
Still, while the BMI scale reflects disease risks associated with being overweight, it does not reflect the whole story of a person's health, experts said.
There have been reports that being somewhat overweight, but not obese, is associated with decreased mortality, such as a 2005 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that looked at deaths from a variety of causes.
Innovations such as treatments for high cholesterol have lowered the death risks for overweight people, Burke said. Especially for older adults, being slightly overweight may increase bone density, cushioning bones against falls, she said.
But the JAMA paper shows associations, not causes. People should not take this information as an excuse to gain weight, Jampolis said.
There are, however, other reasons that BMI isn't the whole story -- for instance, it does not reflect the distribution of a person's weight, Jampolis said.
"You could have really skinny arms and legs and just carry your weight in the middle, and it could be only 10 pounds, but belly fat, the visceral adiposity, it could very significantly increase your risk of disease," she said.
A brief history of body size perceptions
Experts noted that plumpness has been in style during some historical periods, especially as an indicator of prosperity when food was scarce. But the ideal of controlling one's food isn't new either. The book "Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West" by historian Peter Stearns points out that fasting was a religious virtue seen throughout the Middle Ages, and continuing into the Puritan version of Protestantism. Christianity also espoused the idea of restricting food to fight sin.
The artistic and literary movement known as Romanticism, beginning in the late 18th century, stressed "slender, ethereal" ideals, Stearns wrote. The 1830s brought a prominent New York fashion style of a "willowy" look for young women, and there were many reports of anorexia nervosa during this time, the book said. But for older women, plumpness remained fashionable, and women on stage were expected to be voluptuous.
The meaning of the word "diet" came to include the goal of weight loss as early as 1910, Stearns wrote. "Middle-class America began its ongoing battle against body fat" between 1890 and 1910, Stearns wrote. The main factors that contributed to this shift were the advent of fat-control devices, the rise of public conversation about fat, and changes in fashion for both men and women, he wrote.
The culture of beauty that shaped up around the turn of the last century, promoting slimness as beautiful and fatness as ugly, has intensified since then, Stearns wrote.
Despite the widespread notion of dieting, obesity has risen dramatically over the last 20 years in America, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A recent survey by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America's Health found that the percentage of adults classified as obese went up in 23 states in the last year. View a map of obesity in America »
As clothing size numbers scale down in an era when bodies are getting more overweight, portion sizes have been increasing, Jampolis said. Photographs of fast food hamburgers from 50 years ago reveal that the serving size back then would seem like a "joke portion," now, she said.
"The same thing has happened with our body sizes. We're perceiving them as totally normal," she said.
As far as vanity sizing, Nixon called it a "temporary fix" that reflects a larger problem of people looking for quick solutions for losing weight, she said.
"It doesn't really deal with the root of the problem," she said. "It's really a lifestyle issue. It's not about a temporary diet, it's not about being pleasantly surprised because you're a size 12 instead of a size 16," she said.
Does size matter? Oh yea.
Much better than "Healthcare."ReplyDelete
I'll be back in a minute.ReplyDelete
The Abduction of the Daughers of LeucippusReplyDelete
Check Out that Fine 16 Yr Old Ass - The ObamassiahReplyDelete
I bet them big, Dumbo Ears got bloody Last Night.ReplyDelete
And, not from being pulled on in "Orgasmic" Ecstasy, either.ReplyDelete
Are You Jealous?ReplyDelete
Sarcozy's old lady prolly invited her up for a little "three way," and Berluscooni gallantly invited the family for a little "retreat" on the Yacht.ReplyDelete
Uh, Bob, the idee is to put up the pikturs of the purty ones.ReplyDelete
They're all purty at the end of the night Ruf. Linear told us so.
Drawing Night at the Casino. Later.
There goes any chance of gaining access to the computers in the motels boobie stays at, while on his travels.ReplyDelete
Guess the original McDonald burger wouldn't stand up as much of a meal, not compared to a double bacon cheeseburger on toasted sour dough bread from Jack in the Box.
When Will The Recovery Begin?ReplyDelete
... In a recession this deep, recovery doesn't depend on investors. It depends on consumers who, after all, are 70 percent of the U.S. economy. And this time consumers got really whacked. Until consumers start spending again, you can forget any recovery, V or U shaped.
Problem is, consumers won't start spending until they have money in their pockets and feel reasonably secure. But they don't have the money, and it's hard to see where it will come from. They can't borrow. Their homes are worth a fraction of what they were before, so say goodbye to home equity loans and refinancings. One out of ten home owners is under water -- owing more on their homes than their homes are worth. Unemployment continues to rise, and number of hours at work continues to drop. Those who can are saving. Those who can't are hunkering down, as they must.
Eventually consumers will replace cars and appliances and other stuff that wears out, but a recovery can't be built on replacements. Don't expect businesses to invest much more without lots of consumers hankering after lots of new stuff. And don't rely on exports. The global economy is contracting.
My prediction, then? Not a V, not a U. But an X. This economy can't get back on track because the track we were on for years -- featuring flat or declining median wages, mounting consumer debt, and widening insecurity, not to mention increasing carbon in the atmosphere -- simply cannot be sustained.
The X marks a brand new track -- a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows. All we know is the current economy can't "recover" because it can't go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin. More on this to come.
Robert Reich is, largely, full of shit; BUT, he's more right than I was.ReplyDelete
He left out what might be the most important thing. The comeback that was starting in Feb. fell apart as soon as gas prices got over $2.25, or so.
And, I'm afraid the exact same thing will happen over the next several months. Gas Prices fall, the consumers start stirring, gas prices start back up, Everything Stops. This could last awhile.


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Amazon Prime is a quite popular service for Amazon customers to order goods easily and get them delivered in just one day after the booking.
Internetworld points out that Google conceded about 40 percent of revenue by dealers. Scot Wingo, working at e-commerce provider ChannelAdvisor, assumes that Amazon Prime records a growing client base, which cannibalizes the sales of Google.
Therefore, more and more customers save the visit to Google and search as well as order directly on Amazon instead. Amazon Prime promises for a one time annual fee of €29 in Germany or 79 dollars in the U.S. fast delivery with no minimum order value.
This service should be available for several online stores such as Macy’s, Gap or OfficeMax. So, Google won’t even sent the goods, but only wants to offer a consistent service to order products and deliver them via parcel delivery companies.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Google intends to build the delivery service around its existing Google Shopping service. If the customer finds the desired product, the fast-shipment will be available to order.
Referring to The Wall Street Journal, a pilot experiment will be launched in the region around San Francisco in 2012. The company did not comment on that information. Google and Amazon already compete in the business with music and videos on the internet.
We will see what’s gonna happen in the future(…)


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Price Tag for CCPA Compliance: $55B
Data privacy doesn’t come cheap.
According to a regulatory assessment released by the state attorney general, the California Consumer Privacy Act will hit businesses with upwards of $55 billion in initial compliance costs. That works out to about 1.8 percent of California’s gross state product.
The cost estimate assumes that about 75 percent of California businesses will be required to comply with CCPA.
The report prepared by Berkeley Economic Advising and Research and released in late September notes that some of those costs could be defrayed by compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. Many California companies must comply with broader GDPR rules, which took effect in May 2018, meaning those broader privacy rules could help reduce “their expected cost of CCPA compliance and may offer useful guidance regarding the costs of enterprise adaptation to California standards,” the cost assessment concludes.
Nevertheless, the study finds that CCPA compliance costs are expected to add as much as 40 percent to annual IT budgets.
Among the industry sectors seen as hardest hit by the new privacy rules are professional, scientific and technical services along with the healthcare sector.
“The CCPA will fundamentally change how firms work with personal data,” the cost estimate concludes. “Some industries will be forced to completely revise their business models to incorporate the newly required data protections.”
For example, controversial data brokers that helped fuel the drive for greater data privacy rules would be forced to clean up their act.
“Adapting to the new privacy conditions will require innovations in the way firms use data,” the study notes. “New data management systems that ensure privacy standards will need to be developed along with new techniques to extract useful information from data with obscured identifying personal information.”
Among the costs associated with implementing new data management tools required under CCPA are legal, operational and technical considerations. Among the required changes are renegotiating service provider contracts and adjusting business models to change the way personal information is handled.
Hence, the study concludes that total CCPA compliance costs are likely to vary based on company type and the amount of good and services delivered to California consumers.
Initial compliance costs associated with legal fees incurred while preparing for the new privacy law, which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2020, are estimated to range between $50,000 to $1 million.
Hefty fines for non-compliance with CCPA could add to legal fees. A recent survey by the International Association of Privacy Professionals found that only 2 percent of California businesses consider themselves fully compliant with the new privacy law.
Still, tools are available to help boost compliance. Earlier this year, data governance specialist Io-Tahoe released data discovery tools in that use machine learning algorithms to help track down and manage what the new privacy law refers to as “personally identifiable information.”
The tool also covers other sensitive data covered by the California law, GDPR and other privacy regulations.


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It’s sexy, it’s rare – has an $85,000 price tag. And it’s being hailed as a beautiful masterpiece.
It’s a single malt – but not just any single malt: Bowmore Distillery Single Malt Scotch from Scotland’s Isle of Islay, recently released the Black Bowmore DB5 1964, the famous distillery’s first-ever spirit made in partnership with the equally iconic luxury car maker, Aston Martin.
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We’re talking an extremely scarce single malt inspired by the year 1964, when Bowmore began distilling its ultra-rare Black Bowmore, and the year Aston Martin’s DB5 became the world’s most famous vehicle, thanks to its starring role as James Bond’s legendary car in the movie, Goldfinger.
Over the years Black Bowmore has become one of the rarest and most sought-after single malt whiskies ever created. A recent press material states “this latest release represents only the sixth bottling of this exquisite single malt. Since 1993, only around six thousand bottles of Black Bowmore have been made available, thus adding to the desirability of this iconic whisky.”