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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Some 1 billion people are now using Android devices, Google said as the company kicked off its two-day developer conference Wednesday in San Francisco.
NEW YORK (AP) - The U.S. stock market inched modestly higher Wednesday, recovering more than half of what it lost the day before, as investors were able to set aside two disappointing economic reports.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a startup Internet company has to pay broadcasters when it takes television programs from the airwaves and allows subscribers to watch them on smartphones and other portable devices.
SACRAMENTO (AP) - California's credit rating is rebounding, reflecting the relative stability of its state budget.
WASHINGTON (AP) - When the government updates its estimate Wednesday of how the U.S. economy fared last quarter, the number is pretty sure to be ugly. Horrible even.
NEW YORK (AP) - The stock market had its biggest decline in two weeks Tuesday, led by a sell-off in blue-chip bank and energy stocks. Homebuilders rose after the government reported sales of new homes rose in May to the highest level in six years.
LONDON (AP) - Law enforcement agencies across the globe are taking a page out of the hacker's handbook, using targets' own phones and computers to spy on them with methods traditionally associated with cybercriminals, two computer security groups said Tuesday.
NEW YORK (AP) - AT&T's CEO told Congress Tuesday that his company's purchase of DirecTV will help slow increases in programming prices, but won't lead to a decrease in prices.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama said Monday that the United States should join the rest of the industrialized world and offer paid leave for mothers of newborns.
NEW YORK (AP) - Stocks fell for the first time in seven days, ending a run that had pushed the indexes to all-time highs, as investors assessed corporate news.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Monday made it tougher for investors to join together to sue corporations for securities fraud, a decision that could curb the number of multimillion-dollar legal settlements companies pay out each year.
DETROIT (AP) - Faulty air bags - which have already led to the recall of millions of cars worldwide - are being blamed for a new round of recalls in the U.S.
NEW YORK (AP) - Domino's is introducing its own version of Siri.
DETROIT (AP) - General Motors says it needs to change or replace the keys for about 3.4 million cars because they could cause the ignition switch to move out of position if they're carrying too much weight.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - When AwesomenessTV launched as a YouTube channel two years ago, it was a bet by veteran TV and movie producer Brian Robbins on the ability of teen and tween audiences to find videos they love to watch online.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Teeth-bleaching isn't brain surgery, although the Supreme Court seemed to find a link between the two in an antitrust case argued Tuesday.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - In a quick about-face, the National School Boards Association is cutting ties with the nation's second-biggest cigarette maker, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.
NEW YORK (AP) - Macy's Inc. is opening its stores at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, two hours earlier than last year, to lure holiday shoppers.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal regulators say Pfizer has provided low-quality evidence to support its request to remove a bold-letter warning from its anti-smoking drug Chantix about suicidal behavior.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - First the chefs of a small Italian restaurant got mad at online review site Yelp. Instead of trying to get better reviews, they decided to take a different approach: get terrible ones.
LONDON (AP) - "This call may be monitored."
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The nation's second-largest chain of rent-to-own furniture and appliance stores has agreed to pay $28.4 million to settle a case in which it allegedly violated California's consumer protection and privacy laws, attorney general Kamala Harris announced Monday.
HOUSTON (AP) - The Houston Astros' improvement this year from baseball's worst team cost a Houston furniture mogul Jim McIngvale more than $4 million to make good on a promise to fans.
NEW YORK (AP) - McDonald's wants to explain why its burgers may not rot and that there are no worms in its beef.
NEW YORK (AP) - Americans are expected to spend at the highest rate in three years during what's traditionally the busiest shopping season of the year, according to the nation's largest retail industry trade group.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Drug Enforcement Administration set up a fake Facebook account using photographs and other personal information it took from the cellphone of a New York woman arrested in a cocaine case in hopes of tricking her friends and associates into revealing incriminating drug secrets.
FRESNO (AP) - California has fined two oil companies a total of nearly a half-million dollars for dumping oilfield fluid into unlined pits in Kern County.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Millions of Americans may qualify for waivers from the most unpopular part of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. But getting that exemption could be an ordeal.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration announced Tuesday that it is delaying enforcement of its initiative to extend minimum-wage and overtime protections to the nation's nearly 2 million home-care workers.
POINT REYES (AP) - A popular family-owned oyster farm whose lease at the Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California has expired will be allowed to keep operating until the end of the year under a legal agreement with the federal government announced Monday.


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NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 4- Sanlam Kenya has issued a profit warning for the financial year ended December 31, 2020, citing a harsh operating environment occasioned by the outbreak of the coronavirus disease.
The group’s chairman John Simba in a notice to shareholders said that the returns will be lower than earnings for the previous year.
“Based on our un-audited end-of-year financial results and information currently at the board’s disposal, we wish to report that our projected net earnings after tax for the period ended December 2020 will reflect a decline compare to the prior year earnings,” said Simba.
“This is due to the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on the local economy and foreign exchange rates which had an adverse impact on the valuation of the Group’s net assets,” he added.
During the release of its half-year earnings ended June 2020, the NSE listed firm reported a net loss of Sh99.1 million.
Sanlam has joined other NSE-listed firms that have issued profit warnings for the year 2020.
The firm said it adopted cost-cutting measures and innovation to survive the pandemic.
“In response to the challenging operating environment, the Board of Directors applied its focus on innovation and cost savings,” Sanlam chairperson John Simba said.
The board of directors has further maintained a positive outlook on the business as the pandemic and its negative impacts are expected to dissipate while the Group’s initiatives continue to support the improvement of financial performance going forward.

domain: news


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This Three-Week-Old Canadian Start-Up Has Sold 80,000 Non-Medical Masks
“The goal is to help relieve the pressure for medical grade PPE for frontline workers, be able to provide an alternative item for non-healthcare workers and create jobs.”
by : Emily MacCulloch- Apr 15th, 2020
Left to right: Larry Lau, Anna-Maria Mountfort and Kevin Vuong. Rest assured, they practiced social distancing and the photo was edited to combine the three of them.
UPDATE: Take Care Supply is aware of complaints about shipping delays and the brand says it’s doing everything it can to make the order process as easy as possible. “We have already addressed all of the challenges that are within our control – we’ve pivoted to using local manufacturers for raw materials, have transitioned to using a Canadian supplier that knits and weaves the fabric here in Toronto and use another local supplier to dye the fabric. Orders are [now] shipped within two days,” co-founder Larry Lau told us over email. “Due to COVID-19, couriers are facing their own challenges [with the] volume[of deliveries]. Unfortunately, this is out of our control. We are regularly monitoring these orders and tracking for customers ad [couriers] work to fix their backlog.”
Find a comprehensive list of over 40 Canadian-made masks here.
Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, messaging on wearing non-medical masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has been mixed. But on April 6th, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, said wearing non-medical masks, alongside other key measures like social distancing and hand washing, could help prevent people who are pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic, yet contagious, from unwittingly spreading the coronavirus in public settings, like at the grocery store, where distancing in difficult. (Note that wearing non-medical masks or face coverings have not been proven to protect the person wearing them from coronavirus.) Since N95 and surgical masks should be reserved for frontline and healthcare workers, there has been a recent surge in demand for non-medical masks.
In March, Toronto-based friends Anna-Maria Mountfort, Kevin Vuong and Larry Lau started Take Care Supply and began manufacturing fabric masks to help relieve the shortage of masks during the pandemic. In just over two weeks they’ve sold over 80,000 masks and new orders are streaming in daily.
We spoke with Take Care Supply co-founder Larry Lau and asked him to share more about the brand’s important initiative and how they got started.
How did Take Care Supply start?
About three weeks ago, Anna-Maria Mountfort, a Canadian accessories fashion designer and owner of mimiTENS, a kid’s mitten business, and Kevin Vuong, a social entrepreneur and professor at Western University, were already trying to figure out how they could help with this pandemic. They were brainstorming different ways that they could help with the shortage within the [medical] industry and the challenges with the supply chain. They began to develop a mask prototype and retool the mimiTENS factory to produce masks. Both were looking to maybe sell a thousand or a few thousand masks over a period of time when I approached them and said, how can we scale this? What can manufacturing scale up to? Can we build a brand around this?
In October 2019, myself and two other partners opened up our own fulfillment centre. Because I had this fulfillment centre – I’m an entrepreneur and I do angel investing into early stage start-ups – it made it possible for us to take on Take Care. Otherwise we would be shipping hundreds and thousands of these packages out of our homes. The three of us were really a match made in heaven in terms of the initiative.
Once Take Care Supply was founded, how quickly were you able to start producing and shipping masks out to people?
Mid-March was when Mountfort and Vuong had started talking about a prototype and then began working on it. I had my first conversation with them on Wednesday, March 25th and we had our website up and running on Friday, March 27th. We immediately had orders when we started taking them around midnight that night.
How have you seen the brand grow since then?
Each day it was growing, but what really [helped] sky rocket us was when Tobias Lütke, the CEO of Shopify, endorsed our company on April 1st on Twitter. He is big on individuals wearing masks [to minimize the spread of the virus]. A mutual contact of Lütke and myself tweeted to him about our company and we caught his eye as we’re built on Shopify and because of our initiative. We have been building this initiative for [only a few weeks] – what would normally take a start-up six months to a year to do, like find corporate partners and secure distribution, we’ve done in ten days.
Make DIY masks or support local businesses making DIY masks. If you get your hands on N95, donate them to hospitals. https://t.co/YwuaHlpzc1
— Tobi Lutke 🌳🌲🛒🕹 (@tobi) April 1, 2020
On your website, it currently says that orders are paused to fulfill orders for frontline staff. Is that because demand for the masks is so high?
On April 8th, we were expecting to be able to ramp up our production, but as more people have started to create masks, the supply [chain] has changed. We’re in the process of on-boarding more factories, working with more local partners and expanding our [outreach]. Mountfort and Vuong’s goal was to help relieve pressure for medical-grade PPE for frontline workers by being able to provide an alternative item for non-healthcare workers and to create jobs. We are excited that we’re able to onboard a few new factories along with some new partnerships. We are currently in the process to catch up to, as well as sustain, the growing demand. We are expanding our production outside of Toronto, which is great for our mandate to maintain jobs.
How many orders has Take Care Supply fulfilled so far?
We have currently sold and are processing 80,000 masks. We are still getting a lot of requests for bulk orders, but we feel like within a week we will be able to catch up.
Where are you sourcing your materials from to create the masks?
When the initiative was on a smaller scale, Mountfort and Vuong were using the local factories that they were working with previously for mimiTENS with the supply that they had. Within two days we had already used a lot of those resources. We are sourcing more options now and are in contact with individuals in our network that work in wholesale distribution or are in the apparel business. We have been able to successfully source a lot of these materials. We are now expanding where we can get materials and are starting to have conversations with factories in Montreal, as the city has a large textile community.
You ship internationally. Are you finding that the demand is mostly in Canada or is it in other parts of the world?
In the first few days the demand was primarily in Canada, mostly in Ontario, but after the [Lütke tweet], we started getting a lot of orders from the U.S. We’ve also had orders from the U.K., Australia, Finland, Netherlands and Germany. But ultimately our goal is to address the need at home in Canada first.
Can you provide some tips to make the Take Care Supply masks most effective?
None of our masks have been lab tested, but are all evidence-based. On our website, we have all of our resources and citations of where we researched and found [the information] that the fabric masks and materials are able to do their job and to have a certain level of efficacy. Our masks also have a pocket that allow you to add a filter. You can use a dried baby wipe, a Swiffer wipe or a coffee filter. Based on the evidence of what we’ve seen and what we’re reading, like this Cambridge University study, there’s efficacy for this. We don’t make any claims. A few best practices include ensuring you’re not re-using masks without cleaning them immediately after each use. In addition, when you take your mask off, ensure you remove it with clean hands and avoid contact with any orifices. [Ed note: Read the Government of Canada’s guidelines for non-medical masks here.]
It was only last week that Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer encouraged non-medical masks. Were you and your partners looking at other parts of the world where masks are worn and assume that they might be something that will be in high demand in Canada?
When we first started creating the masks, we were getting some backlash from people saying that what we were doing was useless and it wouldn’t help. But what we were basing things off of were other regions globally and how they were approaching this, even if at that point in Canada that wasn’t the case yet. The other main thing we were looking at again, was how to relieve medical grade [masks] for frontline workers. In the end, the frontline workers should be getting the highest filtration grade. It really was initiated by asking, how do we help people get access to masks even if it’s not the N95 masks? We’re also focused on the sustainable aspect of not having a one-time use item and the world being covered in used masks and gloves.
Is there anything else you want people to know about Take Care Supply?
We are looking to ramp up production so we can service and meet the demand. Also at the same time we are hoping for everyone’s patience, as we are trying to help everyone as well as prioritize those people who need it the most. We’re really focused on how we can continue to move forward and help more people.
See more options for Canadian-made non-medical masks below:
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You asked: DFA time capsule buried in 2005
Published 11:30 am Saturday, February 4, 2012
Curious about something in Western Tidewater? Send your question to firstname.lastname@example.org, and we’ll do our best to find the answer.
You asked: When did Downtown Franklin Association bury a time capsule and when will it be unearthed?
FRANKLIN—The Downtown Franklin Association on June 5, 2005, buried a time capsule containing items related to a 54-mile, world-record paper-ring chain made here.
The burial of the time capsule at the Train Depot Visitors’ Center was held in conjunction with the DFA making the Guinness Book of World Records, said DFA Board Member Kathy Worrell.
“There were newspaper articles on the paper chain,” Worrell said. “It (the time capsule) also contains a piece of the chain.”
Those who worked on the chain, known as the “chain-gang,” had their names stuffed in the time capsule. Worrell couldn’t name them, and records for the time capsule have been misplaced.
Worrell also said officials asked two young people at the ceremony to dig up the time capsule in 50 years.
“We figured we’d all be dead and gone by then,” she said.
DFA’s record for the longest paper chain still stands, according to Guinness Book of World Records spokeswoman Sara Wilcox.
The paper chain construction began June 4, 2005, and “chain-gang” members worked 24 hours straight to complete it, according to The Tidewater News. A reception at the Pace House Inn followed.


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What the Fed’s Inflation Fight Means for Investors, Home Buyers, and Savers
- November 02, 2023
- In The News
- Share Via
For nearly two years, the Federal Reserve has been aggressively fighting inflation. Whether you’re a borrower, saver or investor, that fight continues to have an impact on your money. In this Wall Street Journal article by Tanza Loudenback, Jill Fopiano, CEO and president of O’Brien Wealth Partners, and others give insight on how rising rates could impact you.


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Lewis Holtby insists that Fulham will keep fighting for the points following their 3-0 defeat to Southampton.
New boy William Kvist says Fulham will be doing ‘everything’ they can to preserve their top-flight status.
René Meulensteen says Fulham have the character to get out of trouble after the defeat to Southampton.
Fans discuss our transfer deadline day activities ahead of the Southampton game.
London's Original in McBride'sExperience much more than just the action on the pitch.Find Out More
Experience much more than just the action on the pitch.
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Christmas StoreShop the Christmas Store today, with stocking fillers from less than £1!Find Out More
Shop the Christmas Store today, with stocking fillers from less than £1!


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Nokia Corp., in the midst of a difficult transition to the Windows Phone mobile platform, is in for a rough few years with no promises of success on the other side, analysts warned
Like Nokia in February, today RIM is facing its own burning platform moment, and its co-chief executives are facing a similar decision of whether to stay the course and fight the flames or abandon their plan and take the plunge into the unknown
Investors dumped Nokia shares again on Wednesday, taking them to their lowest in more than 13 years after a profit warning a day earlier raised fears the handset maker may never regain its shrinking market share
Nokia will axe 7,000 jobs and outsource its legacy Symbian software to slash 1-billion euros ($1.46-billion) of costs as it struggles to compete in the fierce smartphone market
Richard Branson's space tourism business nears completion as the billionaire searches for pilots to fly his space planes, Nokia's Ovi Store reaches 5 million daily downloads, Guitar Hero is not as dead as it seems and Facebook is not going to China despite reports to the contrary
HTC Corp., the Taiwanese smartphone maker branded as being quietly brilliant, quietly surpassed the market capitalization of Finnish phone giant Nokia Corp. this week
Research In Motion's shrinking North American market share has made the company a punching bag for short-sellers, but some top hedge funds are betting the BlackBerry maker is due for a strong rebound
With cellphone maker Nokia Corp. finally making the shift to a new operating system for its phones, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. is expected to be among the leading smartphone makers to benefit from the move. Kris Thompson, analyst with National Bank Financial, has bumped up his BlackBerry shipment forecasts for RIM in 2012 […]
Today in technology: the Mobile World Congress, the largest showcase of the newest mobile gadgetry in the old world, formally debuts in Barcelona, Spain on Monday and controversy intensifies around Nokia Corp. and Microsoft Corp. as the two technology titans attempt to justify their new partnership.
More than 1,000 Nokia Corp. workers based in Finland have reportedly left their posts, Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported late Friday. The walkouts are believed to have been staged over concerns for the safety of their jobs, following the phone maker’s announced partnership with Microsoft Corp. on Thursday. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system is […]
At Google's recent I/O press conference the company revealed its plans for Android Wear, Android M, and also a new 'smart' home OS called Brillo
Being well-liked at work is just as important as being good at your job. Here are 10 tips to help improve your likeability factor
Terence Corcoran: Contributors to Canada's pension plan already pay in much more than they will ever get back. Nobody is going to walk in and say 'Give me more of that'
TD, RBC, CIBC beat estimates, Avago will pay US$37 billion for Broadcom, and GoPro expands its focus to drones and virtual reality
Google execs take the stage to talk about a plethora of new stuff, including automobiles, home automation, digital TV, Web-connected devices and a new version of Android


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Beware of the latest prank which can completely crash your phone and computer!January 27, 2016
A prank is making its way around the Internet that crashes your phone and computer!
The prank started with people sending the link CrashSafari.com to unsuspecting iPhone users for the recipient to have their phone crash!
What happens is that the link overloads your phone because the code features a never-ending string of characters. This causes Safari to crash, which can confuse the phone so much so it also gives up and restarts.
It's not just affecting iPhones, though with Macs, PC's and Androids now being targeted with the link making the device super slow as it tries to load the link.
People are putting the site's URL through URL shorteners so people don't realise they're clicking on the CrashSafari.com link, making it difficult to protect yourself - basically just don't click on any links that people you don't know are sending you!
If you do accidentally click the link, reboot your computer or phone straight away as it will not be able to handle the code.
At this point it seems nothing specifically malicious comes of clicking the link, but you never know when that will change so be careful!


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Ingenico, a Worldline brand, has strengthened its position with unattended payments, through the launch of its Self-Modular unattended terminal PCI PTS v6.
The offering grows the firm’s capabilities whilst significantly enhancing its portfolio, with it covering all verticals – such as vending, EV charging, transportation, parking and ticketing kiosks, for both indoor and outdoor use cases.
Vincent Bernard, Head of Self-Service Products at Worldline TSS, commented: “The Self Series, which includes innovative unattended devices and an unrivalled suite of payment and business services, is unique in a rapidly growing market by addressing all self-service use cases. Thanks to its PCI PTSv6 certification and its scalable architecture, the Self Series is truly future proof.”
The self-service market has accelerated growth as consumers have heightened their focus on slowing the spread of bacteria when it comes to payments – with the growth of contactless and its rapid adoption elevating opportunities for the evolution of the unattended payment sector.
Based on the robust TETRA OS and sharing the same environment as the rest of the Self range, the Self-Modular can be easily integrated into any existing kiosks thanks to its compactness and its two flexible form factors.
The Self/8000 (EPP and contactless) and Self/7000 (smart hybrid contact reader) join the Self Series, which includes three “all in one” terminals (Self/2000, Self/4000 et Self/5000) successfully launched last year.
Michel Léger, EVP Solutions and Innovation at Worldline TSS added on the move: “The next step will be to facilitate the deployment and remote management of these unattended payment terminals in all the countries where the integrators want to deploy their kiosks.
“This is why the integration of the Self Series into our innovative and powerful PPaaS platform will be a natural evolution to support the growth of the self-service market and scale it in the most simple and efficient way.”


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Virgil Abloh is exhibiting ‘Figure Of Speech’ collection in Atlanta.
The celebrated designer is exhibiting the collection which embodies his work from fashion, furniture, photography and more, bringing to light the various creative process of the designers and the inspiration behind them.
Figure Of Speech is heavily flooded with Virgil’s signature collections like visuals of his iconic shows, graphic work, music and also his designs in the furniture industry.
Currently, the Figure Of Speech is being exhibited at the famous High Museum of Art in Atlanta till March 8, 2020, before Virgil will move it to other cities like Boston and Brooklyn.
Aside from the exhibition of Figure Of Speech which ongoing in Atlanta, he has partnered with Swedish furniture brand, Ikea to outdoor the Markerad collection, on November 1, 2019.
Having spent many years in the creative space trying his hands on even music, Virgil has quickly established his name and founded Off-White fashion brand, which primarily marries high-end fashion and street styles. Off-White is becoming the preferred brand of choice for many celebrities in the United States and other parts of the world. It’s already the world’s most popular brand, according to the latest polls by Lyst.
Virgil has also been serving the fashion world with excellent designs from Louis Vuitton after he was appointed to the position of the artistic director at the menswear department. However, he took a few months off to rest and attend to his health earlier in the year. He has since returned to work, and much is expected from him in the coming months.
Follow Glam Africa on social media: @GLAMAFRICAMAG


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Rewe boosts Italian empire
MILAN: German retailer Rewe Group has bought Unica, the Italian chain. Unica, which operates 18 supermarkets in Piedmont under the Uni fascia, generated turnover of €130m in 2006. The purchase expands Rewe's Italian portfolio, which already includes 245 Penny discount stores, 245 Standa stores, 66 Billa stores and 11 Bipa drugstores. "With a total turnover of more than €2bn, Italy is our second-largest foreign market after Austria," said Alain Caparros, CEO of Rewe Group. "We will expand our position on the Italian food trading market by organic growth and the possibility of takeovers."


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How do you get ahead in business? Well, maybe try adding a 2,000hp electric van to your fleet. It won’t work for everyone, but it certainly seems to be working for Ford. The Blue Oval brought its latest ‘Supervan’ — a successor to a long line of ultra-fast one-off Transits dating back to the 1960s — to the Goodwood Festival of Speed.
The massive motoring garden party, held and hosted annually on the grounds of Goodwood House by its owner, the Earl of March, would hardly be the right spot for a tarted-up transit to take a starring role you might think. Surely Goodwood is supposed to be more about blue-blood aristocrat brands?
Not this year. The first full and open Goodwood post-Covid saw the Ford Supervan take an undoubted starring role. The crowds gathered around the bay bales to watch multiple Le Mans winner Romain Dumas take the ‘van up the 1.7km hillclimb (essentially the driveway of stately Goodwood House) had a curious response. Although silent, the Supervan accelerates with such venom that it seems to such the air from the crowd’s lungs as it launches. There’s a collective exhalation as it passes, followed by an equally collective giggle — something that shape just a oughtn’t be able to move that fast…
Ford recons the 2,000hp battery Transit will hit 100km/h from rest in just under two seconds.
Blue collar heroes
It does, though. Ford recons the 2,000hp battery Transit will hit 100km/h from rest in just under two seconds. Dumas wasn’t holding back either. The Supervan looked almost sickeningly rapid at times, ascending the hill in a fraction over 45 seconds. It wasn’t the fastest, though…
It also wasn’t alone in bringing a touch of blue-collar heroism to Goodwood. Nigel Mansell was there too, celebrating 30 years since he won the F1 world title in 1992 with Williams. With his famed mustache back atop his lip, he was back in both the Williams-Renault FW-14B that took him to championship victory, with its 3.5 V10 engine’s echoing off the leaves of Goodwood’s trees. Mansell — still hugely popular with the crowds, in spite of an often-chippy personality — also drove one of his old Ferrari F1 cars, to scenes of no little emotion.
Nigel Mansell was there too, celebrating 30 years since he won the F1 world title in 1992 with Williams
While Paul McCartney was — at 80 — wowing the crowds three counties over in Glastonbury, Goodwood too was drawing performances from elder statesmen. Derek Bell, also 80, was reunited with one of his 1980s Le Mans winning Porsches, on the day when Porsche was revealing its new contender for Le Mans 2023. Veteran motorcycle racer Giacomo Agostini — again, 80 — appeared as youthful and lively as ever Once back in the saddle, while another veteran ‘bike racer, Wayne Rainey, was reunited with the Yamaha that he once raced. Now wheelchair bound, the result of a dreadful racing accident, Rainey brought smiles, cheers, and tears from the crowd by popping a wheelie on his specially-converted ‘bike off the line, flanked on his run by colleagues and rivals such as Kevin Schwantz , Mick Doohan, and Kenny Roberts.
As ever at Goodwood, the sheer mass of things to see and marvel at is close to mind-boggling. BMW was the star marque, celebrating 50 years of its M-Division with a firework display in front of the house, as an actual opera singer and a live orchestra belted out Carmina Burana. Next door, at the Cartier Style Et Luxe concours, there were so many €40-million+ McLaren F1s that they started to feel quite common, while sharing display space with those mighty 400km/h hypercars was a troop of diminutive pre-war Austin 7s , none with more than 750cc to call upon.
Just a short walk away, Bentley was announcing that just as it has made a dozen perfectly recreated 1930s supercharged ‘Blower’ Bentley 4.5-litre racing cars, so too it will now embark on a project to remake a batch of ‘Speed Six’ 6.5 -litre vintage cars. All of which will cost no less than €1.8-million each and none of which will strictly speaking be road-worthy.
Want something more down to earth? Kia was showing off its 580hp GT version of the electric EV6
Want something more down to earth? Kia was showing off its 580hp GT version of the electric EV6, which can hit 100km/h in just 3.5 seconds. Or how about Polestar’s new 5 electric saloon, showing off an experimental 880hp electric powertrain. OK, maybe not so down to earth, but more attainable than a Bentley…
Startup supercar brand Czinger (the C is silent) was showing off the production ready version of its tandem-seat 1,250hp C21 hypercar. However, Czinger’s car is not it’s star — it’s a rolling demonstrator for the company’s AI 3D printing techniques, which it claims can take design and development processes that currently take a week, if not months, and squash them into one single day.
It was easy to lose track of more ‘normal’ new cars from Ferrari (which brought along the stunning Daytona SP3) and Maserati (showing off the ‘Cielo’ convertible version of its MC20 supercar). Lexus was getting in on the electric game, too — showing off a delicious concept version of a battery successor to the LF-A supercar which is penciled in for production in 2030. Personally, we preferred the pugnaciously cute all-electric Renault 5, also at the Festival, which will go on sale in 2024.
In spite of big crowds and big names — Mansell, Ford, BMW, Porsche, Ferrari, the list goes on — it was noticeable that the depth of quality of entries for the hillclimb wasn’t quite what it has been in the past. Brexit is making it more difficult to ship priceless racing cars to the event, while the tighter budgets of the big F1 teams meant a smaller presence of the latest machines and current drivers, although Mercedes’ star George Russell did turn up to spin some smoky donuts in the 2019 Merc F1 car.
The actual fastest car of the weekend was the bizarre McMurtry Speirling electric car.
The actual fastest car of the weekend was the bizarre McMurtry Speirling electric car. The car, named after the Irish for thunderstorm, is the brainchild of Clontarf-born billionaire David McMurtry. Looking like a ten-year old child’s idea of what the next Batmobile should look like, the McMurtry uses an electric fan to suck air from under itself, generating 2,000kg of instant downforce. Driven by racer Max Chilton, the McMurtry broke the record of 39.8secs set by the Volkswagen IDR electric car. That IDR broke the long-standing record of 41.6secs from the bottom of the hill to the top, set by Nick Heidfeld in a McLaren-Mercedes F1 car back in 1999. The McMurtry did it in 39.8secs.
With the sun shining and the engines roaring (or whistling, in the cases of the electric motors), it was as hard as ever not to be beguiled by Goodwood. Brexit or no Brexit it’s still one of the great motor sports experiences (albeit something of a victim of its own success judging by the traffic jams and the queues for the track crossing points). Can we have one more Ford Supervan run, please? We’re quite enjoying the way it drains the air from our lungs…


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Microsoft revamps Office for tablets, Internet
SAN FRANCISCO—New versions of Microsoft’s word processing, spreadsheet and email programs will sport touch-based controls and emphasize Internet storage to reflect an industry-wide shift away from the company’s strengths in desktop and laptop computers.
The new offerings appear designed to help Microsoft retain an important source of revenue as more people access documents from mobile devices. The new Office suite also reflects the fact that people tend to work from multiple computers — perhaps a desktop in the office, a laptop at home and a tablet computer on a train and a smartphone at the doctor’s office.
Like an upcoming redesign of Microsoft’s Windows operating system, the new Office will respond to touch as well as commands delivered on a computer keyboard or mouse.
The addition of touch-based controls will enable Office to extend its franchise into the rapidly growing tablet computer market. Apple dominates that market with the iPad, though Microsoft has plans to compete with its own tablet, called Surface.
The programs will store documents online through Microsoft’s SkyDrive service by default, meaning users will have to change settings to store documents on their own computer. The programs will also remember settings, including where you last left off in a document, as you move locations.
The Internet-based services approach is one Google has been promoting with its own suite of similar programs, threatening Microsoft’s dominance.
“This is the most ambitious release of Office that we have ever done,” CEO Steve Ballmer said Monday in unveiling the new Office in San Francisco.
A preview version of the new Office suite is being made available online at https://office.com/preview. Microsoft Corp. isn’t saying when it will go on sale or what the price will be. Those details will come in the fall.
Microsoft will continue selling the package as standalone software that can be installed on computers, but the company expects the bulk of users will opt for an Internet-based version, which comes with automatic updates for a recurring subscription fee.
Other features in the new Office include:
- Inkling, which lets you use a stylus to write on a device’s screen. Handwritten notes are converted automatically to text.
- Integration with Yammer, a social network for businesses, and with Skype, a video chat service. Microsoft agreed last month to buy Yammer for $1.2 billion, while Microsoft spent $8.5 billion to buy Skype last year.
- Bing Maps will be part of the new Outlook email program. If there’s an address in an email, just tap on it to get directions.
A “reading” mode on Word will make it easier to read word-processing documents on a tablet or e-reader. That mode will make the document look more like a book page. You can also embed video into Word documents, or share a document directly on Facebook.


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General Motors (GM) vice chairman Steve Girsky took to the stage during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday to announce that his company will equip the majority of its new vehicles with LTE from 2014.
"No other company is bringing connectivity to this many vehicles," he proclaimed during his keynote presentation.
GM has partnered with AT&T to provide the network for customers in the U.S. and Canada.
Drivers will not require a smartphone to make use of GM's connected car services. Not only that, but going forward, software updates will be pushed out to connected vehicles, meaning people won't have to trade up to a new car to access the latest features.
"All of GM's brands in Europe will be full beneficiaries in the near future," Girsky added.
He talked up the potential for in-car infotainment, navigation, and safety services; however, for that potential to be realised, "a broad base of partnerships" is required.
With that in mind, via its agreement with AT&T, the two companies aim to foster an application ecosystem around GM's connected cars.
"People may question the need [for connected car services] at first," Girsky admitted. "But it doesn't take long for people to move from 'I'll never need that', to 'I can't live without it'."
That was not the only car-related news to break at Mobile World Congress today.
GM's big rival Ford announced it has partnered with Spotify to make its music-streaming service to its AppLink connected vehicles.


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The Hershey Company says its wholly-owned subsidiary, Hershey Netherlands B.V., has signed an agreement to acquire 80% of Shanghai Golden Monkey Food Joint Stock Co., Ltd. (SGM), a privately held confectionery company based in Shanghai, China.
Completion of the agreement is expected to occur in the second quarter of 2014 and is subject to China regulatory and SGM shareholder approval.
Hershey has increased its investment in China over the past several years.
With this transaction, it intends to build on the success of SGM’s brands, diverse product portfolio, in-country manufacturing and growing sales force to accelerate its growth in China, enhance its ability to serve Chinese consumers, and provide increased opportunities for employees in the country.
At the same time, SGM will benefit from the scale and scope of Hershey to enable the sustainable, long-term development of SGM’s trusted brands.
Prior to this, Hershey opened its new Asia Innovation Center, located at the Jinqiao Research Park in the Pudong District of Shanghai in May 2013.
This is aimed at accelerating the company’s growth and enables its global capabilities to quickly develop and launch new products customized to the tastes of consumers in China and Asia.


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Janvi Ghatalia – designer with a great eye
Lenovo P70 With 4000mAh battery, Octa-Core SoC Released...
IT services exporters hit by dollar gains against abroa...
Escrypto to Launch Across 3 Continents
Ezek launches Jay’s trendy brand Phanta Bear NFT to make its way into the global blockchain market
FRANCINE JANSEN, AN INDUSTRY VETERAN, GEARS UP AS COO OF FORTUNEZ
Smartgems will be launching its stable coin SGSS on 1st November 2018. Soft launching for accredited members only.
On the cent: real wolf of Wall Street hungry for 2008 financial crash revenge
Count My Payment, An Easy Way To Generate Legal Resource Needed For Any Kind Of Shared Expense Or Financial Obligation
The first global platform dedicated to free zone investment has launched its website
Donor-Advised Funds closing in on £1 billion for charities: grants to charities reach historic levels National Philanthropic Trust UK Report
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Par-K Chrysler-Jeep Sales Manager Tom Gilbo is pictured with a 2012 Jeep Liberty featuring the light blue “Winter Chill” edition package.
Chrysler Group LLC posted its second straight year of improved model sales in 2011, and Par-K Chrysler-Jeep in Fulton is excited to show consumers what the buzz is all about.
“We have something for everyone, from the Chrysler 200s and 300s, to the Jeep Compass, Patriot and Grand Cherokee,” said Par-K General Manager Thomas Gilbo. “[Fiat-Chrysler CEO] Sergio Marchionne pledged to change everything when he took over two years ago, and those changes, from the body types to the engines, have all taken place.
“The product is very much improved. There was great detail and care taken in redesigning all of the cars, and it shows. A lot of our models have the V6 Penestar engine, and some V8s, which means improved performance and gas mileage. The Grand Cherokee and Chrysler Town & Country are getting close to 30 miles per gallon on the highway; that’s very impressive.”
Par-K, much like the cars it sells, underwent improvements in 2011. After an ice storm collapsed the roof on its body shop during Super Bowl Sunday last year, Gilbo said the garage was rebuilt from the floor up, reopening in July.
“It’s beautiful; everything is brand new and top of the line in the shop,” he added. “We’ve been back to normal with our hours since the summer.
“Bill Marshall and Butch Jackowski do an incredible job managing the shop. They do custom work and have multiple cars featured in magazines, and, of course, are there for all the dents and dings and insurance work you may need.”
Par-K also added Saturday maintenance hours in September. Cars are serviced from 8 a.m. to noon, in addition to the normal 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. hours Monday through Wednesday and Friday. On Thursday, the service department is open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.


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A new art gallery showcasing the natural beauty of the region has found a permanent home just off the busiest corner in Downtown Duluth.
Photographer Ryan Tischer and his wife Aimee secured a lease at 5 W. Superior St. and will open a gallery and workshop in the space Nov. 16. Tischer works full time as a photographer based in Duluth’s Smithville neighborhood. In the past 10 years he has built a portfolio centered on iconic Lake Superior landscapes.
“We’re really excited. It’s exciting and terrifying at the same time,” he said as the couple prepped gallery walls for painting last week.
Tischer has exhibited and sold his work at juried art festivals and galleries throughout the Midwest. He used the same Superior Street address two years ago as a gallery during the Greater Downtown Council holiday pop-up storefront program.
“We liked (the space) then but we weren’t ready to open a gallery yet,” he said. “Now we are, so here we are.”
The Tischer Photographic Gallery is located in a building constructed in 1886 as the Norris-MacDougal Block, according to a downtown Duluth Commercial Historic District survey conducted in 1990. Major alterations over the years disqualified the property for historic status. The two-story building is currently divided at street level with 7 West Taphouse occupying a the space to the west. Apartments are on the second level.
Tischer plans to use the front of the building as a gallery to hang and sell his photography. The back portion will be used as a printing and framing shop, work currently being done in the couple’s basement, garage and home office.
“For the first time in my life I’ll have a separation of work and home,” said Tischer.
Ryan Tischer prints, mats and frames all his work. Aimee Tischer will keep the books and run the gallery office. Both are excited to be downtown.
“Things in Downtown Duluth are looking like they are on the up,” said Ryan Tischer. “I mean solidly. We wanted to get in on it before all the good spots are full and rents go up.”
“I’ll actually have to get dressed up now,” said Aimee Tischer.
In anticipation of the NorShor Theatre reopening, downtown Duluth has officially labeled Superior Street east of Lake Avenue as its Historic Arts and Theater District or “HART District.” Joe Nease will open the largest contemporary art gallery in the city Oct. 21 in a remodeled space at 23 W. First St.; and old standbys like Lizzards Art Gallery and Framing are thriving on Superior Street.
Still, Ryan Tischer said, it was a stint in the space during the 2015 pop-up storefront program that sold him on a city move. The program, now in its fifth year, offers retailers rent-free space in empty storefronts during the holiday season.
“We probably wouldn’t have made the jump to be honest,” he said. “The pop up was a really good tryout so we could see the space, see how foot traffic was, see what would sell; and we liked it.”
Greater Downtown Council President Kristi Stokes said the pop-up program has helped attract seven existing businesses to the downtown area including Antiques on 1st, Pichardo Boutique and Lester River Trading Company. Woodchuck USA used the program as a launching pad for what has become a nationwide, custom wood case retail operation.
“For some they realize it’s a great fit,” she said. “For some they find it wasn’t the right fit or downtown wasn’t the right place.”
Stokes said the program will be back in 2017 but higher occupancy rates have made it difficult to find empty storefronts.
“Everybody wants a Superior Street space,” she said. “But for some a skywalk location can be a good fit. We just have to make sure it works for them.”
Kathleen Busche, who owns 5-7 W. Superior St., has hosted a holiday pop-up retailer three times. She had mixed reviews for the program.
“Ryan was a great tenant,” she said. “I love him. I think he will really add a lot to Downtown Duluth.”
But she said other pop up tenants can misfire.
“Maybe they need to filter it better,” she said. “They need to make it very clear that the business should have an honest interest to seriously be downtown.”
Back in the gallery, Tischer demonstrated how a downtown location will help attract tourists and locals alike. He pointed out the front window at the Superior Street and Lake Avenue intersection.
“Traffic always gets stuck at that stoplight,” he said. “Those people can’t help but see our sign. Hopefully they’ll be inquisitive enough so when they stop downtown they’ll come and check us out.”
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Staples Canada Exceeds Recycling Goals
Staples Canada surpassed its battery collection goal of 60,000 kg by diverting over 93,274 kg of batteries in 2013, almost double the 49,528 kg of batteries collected in 2012. It partners with Call2Recycle to collect and recycle batteries (re-chargeable and alkaline) in every Staples store.
In 2013, the retailer collected 3,084,778 ink and toner cartridges, over half a million more than 2012. In 2012, Staples set a goal to collect 5 million ink cartridges between Earth Day 2012 and Earth Day 2014 (April 22, 2012-April 22, 2014). To date, Staples has surpassed its goal, collecting 5,073,392 cartridges.
Staples Canada, alongside its national electronics recycling partner, eCycle Solutions, collects electronics in almost 260 retail locations, with nine locations added in 2013. Staples Canada has collected 3,366 metric tons of electronics in 2013, beating its goal of matching their 2012 collection of 3,000 metric tons. In Q4 2013 alone, 839 metric tons were collected.
Also, Staples Canada reduced electrical consumption by 2.21 percent over 2012.
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- NH City to Save $500,000 Annually with LED Streetlights
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Charter Oak Federal Credit Union, Groton, Conn., has named Todd Cooke its new mortgage officer. Cooke has more than a decade’s worth of experience in the real estate industry. Cooke is the fourth mortgage officer on Charter Oak’s residential lending team. Cooke is a member of the National Association of...
From East and West, Midwest and South, credit union people in the news.
Two longtime credit union technology vendors gather their clients once more.
As consumers head to the malls and shopping strips this holiday season, more than half are expected to use cash or debit cards and only one out of three shoppers will break out credit cards to buy gifts, so reports an online survey of Litle & Co., a Lowell-Mass.-based payments...
Allowing members to manage their financial products remotely isn’t a luxury for credit unions these days. It’s a necessity. Especially for university-oriented credit unions, whose members are likely to move away from their primary service areas, online and mobile access is a must.
Deciding where to live in retirement can involve more than checking the number of sunny days in various locations or calculating how long it will take to drive over to see the grandkids.
Truliant Credit Union was one of several sponsors of a competition where student entrepreneurs had to come up with two-minute elevator pitches in the hopes of winning seed capital for their business ventures.
Hanscom Federal Credit Union, Hansom, Mass., announced that Kevin Reagan has been named assistant vice president of mortgage operations.


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HOUSTON, April 19, 2017 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ — CLORALEN® today announced the launch of a brand campaign for CLORALEN®’s new Platinum™ Bleach Liquid Gel in partnership with Cavalry Agency based in Chicago. The product was inspired by consumers wanting the cleaning power of bleach without the headaches of splashing. “We conducted extensive research with consumers and learned that homemakers have an out-of-control feeling when using bleach,” says Andres Supelano, Brand Manager for CLORALEN®. “We took this challenge seriously and are excited to bring consumers the first new form of liquid bleach in decades—a gel. In fact, we’ve created an entirely new product category.”
Bleach Like A Boss, the campaign’s spirited theme, pledges users of Platinum™ Bleach Liquid Gel will now be in control when doing laundry and cleaning. Pointed headlines underscore the benefits of Splash-Free™ gel: hit the spot without a splash; get a grip on laundry day; and no sass, no splash. The ad content highlights the value of a Splash-Free™ formula with a safe pour spout and Easy-Grip™ ergonomic handle.
The CLORALEN® Platinum™ product and the Bleach Like a Boss campaign rolls out just in time for Spring Cleaning season. The campaign will execute a multifaceted media strategy to engage with homemakers in major markets throughout the U.S. Product demonstrations can be seen on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Radio spots will intro songs on Spotify. The public can share their new Platinum™ Gel cleaning experiences on social media.
Consumers can find CLORALEN® Platinum™ Liquid Bleach Gel at select Walmart stores. Visit online Store Locator.
The CLORALEN® family of products have faithfully served consumers for decades to better clean household surfaces, bathrooms and laundry. Flagship products include: 3-in-1 Power Bleach, Stain Remover & Color Protection, Bathroom Cleaner with Bleach and Multipurpose Cleaner with Bleach. Color safe bleach, chlorine bleach and bleach cleaners help kill germs and make cleaning go easier and faster. Products come in a variety of scents. Cloralen.com
About AlEn USA
AlEn USA is a household cleaning and laundry products company headquartered in Houston, Texas. Its portfolio of brands include CLORALEN®, ENSUEÑO®, PINALEN®, PINOL®, FLASH®, Xtra-Pine ®, Pine-o-Pine®. AlEn’s strong manufacturing base comprises multiple products: bleach, cleaners, powder detergents, liquid laundry detergent and fabric softeners. One of its corporate values is to generate sustainable growth based on best practices of social responsibility, striving to protect the environment. AlEnusa.com


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Condoleezza Rice, former United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor has joined the board of cloud file storage and syncing firm Dropbox.
Dropbox is in the news today after launching a number of new products and features at a morning event in San Francisco. The company debuted Carousel, a photo storage and sharing service, along with the release of its Dropbox for Business offering to the general public, and an Android client for its Mailbox email solution.
Rice is a famous figure, known in almost equal parts for her ferocious intelligence, and controversial role in the Bush administration, which included comments on alleged weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein was thought at the time to possess.
BusinessWeek initially reported the board pickup in a longer piece on the company. According to the magazine, Rice’s firm RiceHadleyGates has been an active advisor to Dropbox. TechCrunch confirmed the hire.
What’s interesting about bringing Rice onto Dropbox’s board is how normal it feels. Dropbox needs people with international experience to help it at once deal with foreign governments that have blocked its use — China, for example — and as it works to spread a product developed in one country to others that are culturally different.
Rice certainly possesses that expertise. Box, a rival to Dropbox, has also made a recent push to expand internationally. In a market as competitive as this, you must be everywhere.
Dropbox announced two more executive changes. The company has a new CFO, Sujay Jaswa, who is being into the role internally. Also, hailing from Google is Dropbox’s new COO: Dennis Woodside. In the post announcing those changes, it reaffirmed the above, indicating that Rice will help the company with its international operations.


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Six years ago this month, President George Bush signed into law the Milk Regulatory Equity Act, effectively closing a loophole that had allowed regulatory inequities between federal and state milk marketing orders in Arizona, California and Nevada. This bill marked a major victory for IDFA and the U.S. dairy industry.
Six months later, Hein Hettinga, a producer in Arizona, filed a lawsuit claiming the bill was unconstitutional because it targeted a single individual. (The Constitution doesn't allow individuals to be singled out for legislative punishment without a trial.) The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals this week upheld the 2006 law, saying it "would apply to any producer-handler that meets its statutory requirements, not only the Hettingas."
"We're pleased with the court's decision to uphold the law," said Connie Tipton, IDFA president and CEO. "Although the requirements of the Federal Milk Marketing Order system are burdensome and outdated, it's only fair that we all abide by the same rules."
Nationwide Support Among Producers and Processors
The Milk Regulatory Equity Act closed regulatory loopholes that allowed unregulated milk to take markets away from dairy producers and processors in regulated areas. The legislation had the support of producers and processors nationwide.
IDFA was part of an unprecedented national coalition of producer and processor groups that supported act, including the National Milk Producers Federation, the Dairy Institute of California, Western United Dairymen and the Dairy Farmers of America. Many IDFA member companies and their employees also logged hundreds of calls and letters to voice support for the bill.
The law made it illegal for plants in southwestern states to sell milk into a state milk marketing area from a federally regulated milk marketing area without complying with either state or federal pricing regulations. Specifically, it ensured that milk processors in Arizona, including producer-handlers that sell more than three million pounds of fluid milk per month, are required to comply with federal regulations.
The legislation also clarified that plants in Nevada selling into a federal milk marketing order had to abide by federal pricing regulations.
For more information, contact Bob Yonkers, IDFA vice president and chief economist, at firstname.lastname@example.org.


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As you all know, Huawei’s going through a rough patch after some turmoil caused by the US government’s blacklist; however, that turmoil isn’t limited to just the US — it’s caused a drop in consumer trust worldwide.
That’s why Huawei is now offering a two-year guarantee on its smartphones and tablets to consumers in the Philippines. The Chinese smartphone giant is promising at least two years of access to apps such as the Play Store, Facebook, Gmail, WhatsApp, Instagram, and plenty others, or your money back.
There are over 30 partner retailers participating in the “full refund” program. So, if you lose access to these apps, you can take your phone back to one of those retailers for a full refund from Huawei.
Unfortunately, Honor devices aren’t included in this deal yet, and this applies only to consumers in the Philippines, though we wonder if Huawei will expand that to other countries as well.


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Spacer.com.au Pty. Ltd. of Australia, a peer-to-peer self-storage marketplace, has raised $2.7 million in funding that it will use to acquire competitor Parkhound and pursue other expansion opportunities. The purchase will add 55,000 customers and 10,000 parking spaces to Spacer’s growing network, though Parkhound will continue to operate under its own brand, according to the source.
Parkhound co-founders Robert Crocitti and Michael Nuciforo will move to advisory roles after the transition is complete.
"The focus is to move into working with commercial operators, be it in parking or property, to help them monetize their excess capacity," Spacer CEO Michael Rosenbaum told the source. "Right now, we're also focused on bedding down the acquisition and continuing to grow in the U.S. But longer term, we have global ambitions; and we have a partnership and a strategic alliance with Costockage in Europe."
Costockage is a Paris-based peer-to-peer storage business. The companies partnered in April 2016 to jointly expand service to Asia. In March, Spacer acquired U.S.-based Roost Shared Storage Inc., which launched its peer-to-peer service in San Francisco in 2014. Spacer’s U.S. presence also includes Boston and New York.
"With cities becoming increasingly densified through urbanization, many new apartment builds are only allocating one parking space for a two-bedroom unit, making parking rentals high in demand along with self-storage," Rosenbaum said. "We're seeing really strong demand, and it outstrips supply by a multiple."
Spacer’s expansion plans include entry into Chicago and Washington, D.C. The company has been growing 20 percent per month for more than a year and raised more than $5 million, according to the source.
Spacer enables people in need of storage to find available space in their local area from businesses and homeowners. All rental payments are made through Spacer, which collects a 15 percent commission. The company raised $1.2 million from angel and private investors in October 2015.
- The Australian Financial Review: Parking Space Start-Up Spacer Raises $2.7 Million and Buys Rival Parkhound


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Fans Unite on Facebook In Advance of Re-Mastered DVD Release on July 23
Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) and Milyoni, the leader in #SocialVideo, today announced a virtual concert-going experience featuring The Smashing Pumpkins. Slated for Saturday, July 20, the never before released concert from the upcoming The Aeroplane Flies High re-mastered CD/DVD release will be available for a FREE 24 on-demand rental starting at 6:00PM PDT/9:00PM EDT.
Smashing Pumpkins fans can join the FREE interactive viewing party of the fully re-mastered July 4, 1997 iconic concert from Belfort, France at http://www.facebook.com/smashingpumpkins Powered by Milyoni's #SocialVideo Platform, fans will connect with other viewers and enjoy a unique and socially interactive experience featuring live chat and time-released Social Widgets, delivering exclusive images, trivia, polls and video clips that can be shared via social networks.
"UMe has proven to be one of our strongest partners providing unprecedented content that allows us to deliver the best and most engaging social experience," said John Corpus, CEO, Milyoni. "Equally as important is attracting new users, and by applying our cutting-edge analytics engine, we can illustrate how our audience shares to their social networks and yields an unprecedented rate of new users."
As part of the continuing series of reissues of The Smashing Pumpkins' acclaimed catalog via Virgin/UMe, the iconic alternative band is set to release four separate versions, all fully remastered, of their platinum-selling 1996 box set The Aeroplane Flies High: 6-CD +1 DVD; 5-LPs and Deluxe Digital and Standard Digital editions. The CD/DVD, 5-LP version and digital configurations will be released July 23 2013.


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Read it and tweet: Social media takes a lot of time, but it pays off, says a report released today.
Ninety percent of marketers surveyed say that social media is important for their business, with the self employed and small business owners with two or more employees "more likely to strongly agree," says the 2011 Social Media Marketing Report, which surveyed some 3,300 marketers.
The No. 1 payoff: Generating more business exposure, say nearly 9 in 10 marketers. Increased traffic (72 percent) and improved search rankings (62 percent) were also top on the list. Improved sales was last on the list of seven benefits, with 43 percent of those surveyed enjoying success—but it was the self-employed and small business owners with two or more employees who were most likely to report that social media helped them close new business. The self-employed and small businesses also were most likely to find business partnerships through social media, with at least 59 percent reporting that benefit.
As almost anyone who's ever updated a status (and then clicked around for another hour) can attest, social media is time-consuming. More than half (58 percent) of respondents are using social media for more than six hours per week, and about one-third (34 percent) invest 11 or more hours weekly. Fifteen percent spend more than 20 hours a week blogging, tweeting, and the like. The more experience respondents had with social media, the more time they spent: 63 percent of people with three or more years experience spend more than 10 hours a week on social media. Just 41 percent of those with one to three years experience spend that much time. For the record, about half of those surveyed have less than a year's experience with social media marketing.
Wondering if you can (or should) hire someone to do this sort of marketing for you? Just 28 percent of businesses are outsourcing some portion of their social media marketing, says the survey.
Where, exactly, are efforts being spent? Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs were the top four social media tools. Facebook overtook Twitter to take the top spot in the study this year (in 2010 it was Twitter). But some three-quarters (77 percent) of marketers plan to increase their use of YouTube and video marketing this year—a virtual gold rush.


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Advantage Life Sees Ames Bankruptcy Hurting Sales
Advantage Life Products, a Laguna Hills distributor of anti-smoking products, said Friday that the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of one of its biggest clients has at least temporarily snuffed out a large chunk of its sales.
Ames Department Stores, which filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors last month, owes Advantage about $360,000. The New England-based retail chain accounted for more than 15% of Advantage’s total revenue during the past year.
“The timing of Ames’ announcement a week before our fiscal year-end is unfortunate, and the long-term impact on Advantage sales will depend on their reorganization plan,” the company said in a statement.
Ames had planned on buying between $250,000 and $300,000 worth of the company’s CigArrest product, a chewing gum sold as an alternative to smoking.
Advantage has been hoping that a recently imposed smoking ban on almost all U.S. airline flights would result in improved sales for CigArrest.
Advantage President Charles Sleichter said he expects Ames to place new orders for CigArrest once its reorganization begins.
Advantage said the Ames bankruptcy will not adversely affect the company in the short run because it has almost $1 million in cash and no debt.
“We can certainly take that hit and carry it for a long time,” Sleichter said.
For the first nine months of its fiscal year, Advantage had net income of $925,000 on sales of $8.3 million. Sleichter said fourth-quarter earnings will be down 3 to 4 cents a share from earlier projections of 26 cents a share.


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El Salvador: Community Protests Walmart’s Environmental Impact
Posted on July 30, 2012 by jway
Last week, a group of Salvadorian community activists demanded that Walmart comply with “minimum” environmental protection standards in the building of a new grocery store in the city of Mejicanos, El Salvador. According to a story by Spanish-language news agency EFE, the company plans to build the store on a site that the Salvadorian government has marked as environmentally vulnerable.
According to activists, construction on the site without environmental modifications would result in “severe harm” to the area, which is susceptible to flooding. One protester, Efe Alejandro Aragón, attributes the potential harm to the fact that a store on the site would inhibit proper drainage of rainwater. Residents of the neighborhood where the store is to be built are demanding wells with filtering systems to protect the aquifers and sub-soil near the store.
Under the previous mayor, Walmart’s plans to construct the store had been denied because the company failed to address local residents’ concerns. However, in May, the plans were approved under the new mayor. However, approval to build the store from the local planning authorities is still pending.
Walmart has faced similar scrutiny on the environmental effects of its stores throughout the United States, including recently the California towns of Burbank, Redlands, and Los Angeles’s Chinatown. The Mejicanos protests suggest that Walmart’s willingness to disregard environmental and community concerns when constructing new stores extends beyond the borders of the U.S.
In the company’s most recent annual SEC filing, where it is required to disclose pending legal actions that it sees as particularly important or potentially expensive, Walmart reported two environmental actions against it in Brazil. In the town of Porto Alegre, the local government has found alleged “soil contamination due to leakage of oil from power generating equipment” at nine Walmart locations. At another store, in the Brazilian town of Bento Goncalves, the local authorities have detected “soil contamination involving a leaking subsoil oil duct at a store site” as well as potential “soil contamination from wastewater at the same store.”
For comprehensive information about Walmart’s environmental impact, see Stacy Mitchell’s thoughtful coverage of the issue for Grist.
This post was written by Rebecca Cassler.


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Filipina’s fashion brand to showcase indigenous weaves in NY Fashion Week
NEW YORK– A Filipina-owned fashion brand, Daily Manong, which promotes indigenous artists and weavers in the Philippines, will join this year’s New York Fashion Week, produced by hiTechMODA.
Daily Malong is an e-commerce store promoting the application of indigenous handwoven textiles on modern wearables, offering handwoven products sourced from different indigenous communities in the Philippines.
Daily Malong, founded by chief creative officer Lydia Querian, is building awareness of “uncommon” Filipino textiles in a more prominent platform like New York Fashion Week.
“I decided to work with hiTechMODA because they promote fashion brands focused on environmental, sustainability, and inclusivity,” said Querian, a designer, dancer and musician who completed fashion design and fashion business certification from Parsons New School. She frequently immerses with indigenous communities in both Southern and Northern Philippines.
Daily Malong’s debut in NY Fashion Week is themed “Indigenous Is the Future.” The term “indigenous” is often associated with old, ancient, or primitive. Daily Malong’s latest collection wants to change that narrative by “bringing the indigenous to the present and future.”
Daily Malong partnered with Darzah, a Palestinian woman-owned nonprofit and ethical fashion brand. Darzah works with refugee and low-income women artisans in Palestine’s West Bank who handcrafted and hand-embroider each of Darzah’s pieces.
Daily Malong also partnered with Maggie’s Box, a Filipino brand offering a variety of footwear for women on the go. Its shoes are handcrafted in the Philippines.
Darzah and Maggie’s Box will be providing Daily Malong footwear to complete the runway looks. Daily Malong’s curated partners share the same goal of celebrating and preserving each other’s cultures on a big platform, such as New York Fashion Week.
“Bringing indigenous weaving practices to the future perpetuates time-tested traditions, helping the present and protecting the future,” said Querian. “Each indigenous textile worn today helps wearers and weavers navigate societal atrocities, prevent climate change, and restore a more sustainable environment.”
Daily Malong’s runway is on Sept. 10, 2021, at the Edison Hotel. For more information on Daily Malong, visit www.dailymalong.com and Instagram and Facebook


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UCWeb, a global leading provider of mobile internet software and services, which started India operations just three years ago, has announced that it has become number one in India’s mobile browser market. According to research firm StatCounter, UCWeb’s flagship product, UC Browser’s market share in India has surpassed Opera, the incumbent player in July, reaching a record high of 30%.
Addressing the rising security concerns, UCWeb established strategic partnership with global leading security company Trend Micro in May 2013. Trend Micro has built the world’s largest security network based on its proprietary technology and 50,000 servers globally. Backed by Trend Micro’s security network, UC Browser can thus alert users of high risk or malicious websites, i.e. phishing sites in advance and alert users of unsafe or malicious applications before the download.
The founding of UCWeb India made it possible for the company to gain insights on Indian consumers and tailor the UC Browser to their regular needs. For example, UCWeb’s engineers discovered that most users prefer to download videos before consumption, hence the team enhanced the download feature on the browser and made the media player to work with the download manager in a more integrated fashion. To improve the mobile browsing experience throttled by slow internet connection and frequent interruptions, UCWeb optimized the deployment of its cloud servers to accelerate the webpage load and security for users in India.
UCWeb has identified content & service integration and security as key areas for the development of UC Browser platform moving forward. UCWeb has established extensive partnership with leading content and service providers in India including Yahoo India, OLX, and Cricbuzz.
UCWeb India has more than doubled its headcount in New Delhi office and the current India team has grown to more than 30 people, 70 percent of them being Indian nationals. The company aims to staff up to 100 employees by the end of 2014, out of which more than 85 percent will be Indian nationals. Today, UC Browser is serving tens of millions of Indian consumers with English and Hindi versions, both developed and operated in India.


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LISAA Nantes students present a fashion show at the Korean Spring Festival
For the 3rd annual Korean Spring festival in Nantes, students presented their fashion silhouettes in front of an audience of spectators on the Graslin Theatre square.
Korea, the muse
A musical fashion show
E'Joung-Ju geomungo, a traditional Korean stringed instrument musician, was accompanied by four percussionists, masters of of the Samulnori JinSeo Group: Bok Man Kim - kkwaenggwari musician, small gong, Kil Ki Ok - musician Jing Eng, large gong, Kyoung Kim Su - janggu musician, hourglass drum, Gu Yun Lee - buk musician, bass drum drum.


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SuperData has released its worldwide digital video games stats for June 2017. According to the stats, the PC segment dropped 16% compared to last year’s June. As SuperData pointed out, this is mainly due to Overwatch’s incredible success back in 2016; a game that really boosted overall PC sales in 2016.
On the other hand, the Free-to-play MMO and pay-to-play MMO segments appear grew 5% and 6%, respectively. So yeah, while we all hate these categories, it appears that there is a huge market for them out there.
Furthermore, DOTA 2 continues to climb the Free-to-play MMO top 10 due to the crowd-funding activity toward the prize pool for their largest yearly tournament, “The International”.
It’s also worth noting that Tekken 7 made the top 10 console and PC lists at launch, selling well over 200,000 digital units across console and PC worldwide during its launch month.
Last but not least, here are the top 10 grossing title for all platforms!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”


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Google has some really bad news for those of you who still want to get your hands on a Nexus One phone. The last shipment is being sold off now, and once the stocks are out, there will be no more new Nexus One phones available for customers in the US.
On the brighter side, customers in Europe and Asia will still be able to get one of these phones, which are permanently enshrined in the smartphone ‘hall of fame’ (if there is any!). And as the new and improved Droid phones on Verizon Wireless keep the Android OS flag flying high in the US markets, the withdrawal of the Nexus One signals and end of an era.
An era in which Google tried to reshape market dynamics by providing customers an unlocked smartphone handset; and more importantly an alternative to Apple’s all conquering iPhone.
But about seven months since its much anticipated launch, the Nexus One has lost steam, in terms of sales and that is something which hastened its end.
But discontinuing Nexus one in US is really surprising? Perhaps not, if you consider two things:
So, not surprisingly there was not much hoopla surrounding the official blog post where Google announced the demise of the Nexus One in the US. It would be fair to say that the phone was popular among the geeks, but majority of the not so technically inclined people, did not really get to grips with the concept of an unlocked smartphone.
While the curtains have been drawn without much fanfare, one thing is for sure that this was a fine device and certainly worth a buy while it was available. The Android 2.2 OS update made it even better. So, in hindsight it would be interesting to see what would have been the fate of the Nexus One, had Google flexed its marketing muscles for this phone.
In addition it would also be fair to say, that for a phone which was only available online and on one carrier (t-Mobile) the Nexus One didn’t fare too badly at all. So, goodbye Nexus One, we’ll miss you!


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After months of leaks and hints, Fibit has finally revealed its newest wrist wearable: The $300 Fitbit Ionic. Fitbit claims up to four days of battery life, a refined OS that pairs nicely with devices running iOS, Android, and Windows, and a brand new sensor for tracking your heart rate. This smartwatch, which visually calls to mind the lovechild of an Apple Watch and a Fitbit Surge, is a natural progression for the huge wearable company. Just last year, it snapped up notable smartwatch makers Pebble and Vector for a reported $38 million. And between the almost-perfect Surge and the incredibly unattractive Blaze, Fitbit has been interested in the smartwatch sector of the wearable market for a while. This is the culmination of that interest. It’s profoundly ugly—like every Fitbit that’s come before, but it could be technologically cool enough that you might not care.
A smartwatch, even an unattractive one, makes sense for Fitbit right now. According to IDC, Fitbit’s market share plummeted over the last year leading the former number one wearable brand to drop to third place in market share behind Apple and Chinese tech titan Xiaomi. While you won’t find a Xiaomi fitness tracker or smartwatch on many wrists in America, you will find the Apple Watch. Here in New York, I see a few on wrists every single day as I commute into work. Yet, while Fitbit has seen its marketshare shrink, the company still claims to have over 50 million registered users and over 67 million devices in the wild. It’s down, but not out, and clearly hopes that the Ionic will help turn things around.
When it comes to style it can’t hope to beat Google and its myriad of partners in the fashion world. It’s big bezel and sharp angles can’t even beat the gentle curves of an Apple Watch. The Apple Watch, by virtue of being Apple-made, is something of a fashion accessory now. The Ionic will likely be too big and square to accomplish the same feat. So one way Fitbit is hoping to distinguish itself is by focusing on what it does best: Fitness. To that end. Fitbit claims it’s built an incredible accurate new heartrate sensor. The current Fitbits use its PurePulse system which is an optical heartrate sensor using green lights that rapidly flash across the skin allowing and sensor to detect the pulse of a person’s blood flow. This is the de facto method for detecting the heartrate on the wrist.
With the Ionic, Fitbit is introduces a new “triwave color sensor” that uses a combination of red, green, and infrared lights to detect bloodflow. How well it detects it, and whether it is more accurate than previous Fitbit devices or the Apple Watch remains to be seen.
For the fitness focused, the Ionic is also water resistant up to 50 meters, can track your movements via GPS, has swappable bands so you don’t have to look like a gym goober all day, and can automatically detect when you exercise and when you stop exercising—useful if you jog with a dog.
And with a claimed four days of battery life, it could certainly do that. Battery life has long been one of the things holding smartwatches back from more widespread adoption. They can handle a day of constant use, but generally crap out early into day two. Meanwhile, the Ionic loaner Fitbit provided us on Thursday, which is running an early build of the software and nowhere near representative of the final product, was at 51 percent right now. That’s more than three days of wear, whilst constantly checking my heart rate, and more importantly, polling my phone for notifications.
Over the last few years, Fitbit has gotten pretty good at delivering notifications to your wrist, but it’s just not as good at it as wristables running watchOS or Android Wear. The Ionic could, potentially, change that. It allows for call, text, and calendar notifications. Theoretically, it can handle notifications from other apps as well, and I managed to get it to work with three of the other apps on my phone.
Besides notifications (and the option for different watch faces) another big smartwatch must the Ionic has is an NFC chip for cardless payments at retailers. At launch it is expected to work with Mastercard, Visa, and American Express—though Fitbit insists its working with banks for better interoperability.
And Fitbit had better cross its fingers they do, because at launch there will be exactly four non-Fitbit apps available on the Ionic: a Starbucks, Accuweather, cycling app Strava, and Pandora. Those are meager options, but the Pandora one could be nifty, as it will allow you to take Pandora offline and onto the watch’s 2.5GB of storage space (provided you have a Plus or Premium Pandora account).
There’s no Spotify, or Google or Apple Music, so if you don’t want to listen to Pandora you’ll need to side load your own music. All of it will play via Bluetooth headphones, including the pair Fitbit itself is launching around the same time. The Fitbit Flyer are wireless Bluetooth headphones that Fitbit claims have six hours of playtime in them, compatibility with all available digital assistants, audio prompts for connectivity and battery life, and a small selection of wings, tips, and fins to help you find a better fit.
The Fitbit Flyer wireless earbuds will retail for $130, while the Fitbit Ionic will retail for a whopping $300. That’s not a super competitive price, but it’s cheaper than the better looking watches on Android Wear and priced the same as the super successful Apple Watch—which is rumored to have its own update coming in September. The Fitbit Ionic starts shipping in October 2017, but we’ll have our own review in the coming weeks once the software on the device has been finalized and we’ve had a chance to get to know this great sounding hardware packed in an unfortunate-looking body.


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Falling market share and rising competition from other two wheeler majors, has caused Bajaj Auto Ltd to sit up and take a serious look at their scooter strategy.
Once a leader in the two wheeler industry, Bajaj Auto’s market share has been declining after their decision to exit the scooter segment in Dec 2009. At the time they decided to stop manufacturing scooter, so that they could concentrate on manufacturing motorcycles.
When Bajaj Auto quit scooter segment in 2009, they were the second largest two wheeler manufacturer (with 27% market share), first was Hero Honda (with 41% market share), which split a year later in December 2010. Third was TVS Motors with 18% market share.
Five years down the line, in 2014 the situation was such, Hero MotoCorp leads the lot with sales of 61 lakh two wheelers (41.2% market share), followed by HMSI (Honda Motorcycles and Scooters India), followed by TVS Motors, and then Bajaj Auto at about 21 lakh (14% market share).
Bajaj’s decline in market share is mainly attributed due to their decision to exit from scooter industry. For the period April 2014 to January 2015, scooter market has seen a marked increase of 27% to 3.74 million units, against motorcycle sales which saw just a 4% increase to 9.11 million during the same period. This stark increase is due to the huge rise in demand for automatic scooters. The best selling of the lot is Honda Activa, which registers about 2 lakh unit sales every month.
But, to their credit, Bajaj Auto has the export numbers, which have increased exponentially post their exit from the scooter industry. The company is the largest exporter of motorcycles in the country. Their exports for the same period, FY 2013/14, stood at 13.23 lakhs, which is 66.7% of the total motorcycle exports from India. Due to such high number of exports, the company has also managed to post record profits.
But, with the scooter market expected to grow faster than the motorcycle market, how long can Bajaj Auto avoid a re-entry? Well, it seems not very long. If we are to believe a new report, which claims that Bajaj Auto will launch their new scooter next year. Leaked now in patent sketches, the new Bajaj scooter will be a premium offering, which will rival the Vespa brand of scooters in India.
With prototype scooters already seen on test outside their facility in Pune, expect the scooter to be powered by a new engine, about 125-150cc. More details will be revealed soon.
Below is a collection of the iconic ‘Hamara Bajaj’ commercials evolving over the years.


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Here’s How Sabyasachi, Manish Malhotra & Ritu Kumar Got Named In A Money Laundering Case
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday summoned three of India’s top fashion designers-- Manish Malhotra, Sabyasachi and Ritu Kumar, reported The Indian Express. They will be questioned in connection with an alleged money laundering case against Punjab Congress MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira. The designers will reportedly appear at the ED headquarters in New Delhi on different dates this week.
Image Credit: Instagram/manishmalhotra05
According to the report, The Enforcement Directorate has summoned the designers to interrogate about cash transactions made between them and the political leader. “We have information that Khaira paid money to the tune of several lakh of rupees to the three designers in cash in 2018-19. We want to question them about these transactions,” an ED official told the media.
Video Credit: Instagram/viralbhayani
During the investigation, ED found out about some cash payments made by the MLA to the designers for clothes provided for a wedding organised by the politician a few years ago. The designers have been accused of violating income tax laws. When asked about this, Khaira told The Indian Express, "I am not the person to answer this, you either ask the ED or the designers. I had purchased wedding dresses like lehengas worth Rs 3-4 lakh… two-three items… How big a case of money laundering is this?… It was a very meagre purchase for the wedding of my daughter.”
Meanwhile, it was reported that while the staff of Sabyasachi and Ritu Kumar were aware of the matter and were “deciding their course of action”, Malhotra has not responded.
She walks in beauty, like the starry night, swirling in the glory of the #Nooraniyat light.— Manish Malhotra (@ManishMalhotra) June 23, 2021
So soft, so calm, so eloquent,
Exhibiting the craft of every element.@MMalhotraworld #SaraAliKhan #ManishMalhotra #ManishMalhotraLabel #ManishMalhotraWorld #bride #Indianbride #Noor pic.twitter.com/6zHFJXsM7V
Video Credit: Twitter/ManishMalhotra
In March, the ED had raided 12 locations across Punjab, Chandigarh and Delhi, including Khaira's son-in-law Inderveer Johal. Other premises were reportedly linked to convicts in a 2015 Fazilka drug smuggling case, in connection with which Khaira is facing money laundering allegations.
Lead Image Credit: Instagram/sabyasachiofficial, Instagram/manishmalhotra05, Instagram/ritukumarhq
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Prague City Hall intends to allow retailers to display and sell their products, directly from sidewalks immediately outside of their shop fronts free of charge, Blesk.cz reported.
Retailers will have to maintain a safe passage on the sidewalk and keep the area clean. Shop owners will now just need to send an application to City Hall, for approval.
Restaurants with gardens would not be affected by the measure, said Julie Kochová, council spokesperson and member of PrahaSobe, that currently runs Prague council in alliance with The Pirates and United Forces for Prague (TOP 09 and STAN).
“In a collapsing economy, we have to look for the best ways to stimulate demand, protect businesses from crashing and employees from layoffs,” said Praha sobě leader Jan Čižinský.
City Councilor Jan Chabr (TOP 09) said it is necessary to lay down clear rules. “This is an idea we are discussing at the moment. I presented a draft version yesterday during the board meeting. We need to set clear rules,” Chabr said.
With the permission of the Technical Administration of Roadways of Prague (TSK Praha), entrepreneurs can send the application and receive the authorization straight after,” said Deputy Mayor Adam Scheinherr (Praha sobě).


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Marketers Beware: The App Landscape is Changing
- Monday, October 31st, 2016
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Cristina Constandache, VP at Cheetah Mobile, shares her insights into how consumers are changing the way they interact with apps, and what mobile marketers can do to keep up.
Mobile is taking centre stage at a rapid rate. According to Mediapost, 2016 is the first year when worldwide mobile ad spend will surpass desktop ($99 billion and $97 billion respectively), and the UK is the only place in the world besides China where mobile accounts for over half of national ad spend. Great news for marketers, who can rest assured that their mobile ad spend is money well spent, as long as they take into account the changing rules of mobile marketing.
For one, we used to scroll and scroll through the myriad of apps that populated our smartphones until we found the one app we needed. Each app would serve just a single purpose, and branded apps blossomed in their thousands on the iOS App Store and Google Play. But this is no longer the case – in fact, according to ComScore’s 2015 US Mobile App Report, quite the opposite. Consumers are now spending 80 per cent of their smartphone time in just three apps, while those that aren’t favourites are out of the game.
So on the bright side, consumers are engaging for longer with the apps they do use. But to stay among those prized few, marketers must use all the user retention tactics at their disposal. What we’re seeing from the mobile frontline is that developers with a strong focus on delivering valuable content, whether editorial or video, are much more likely to successfully retain and engage users.
The appetite for video
In an undeniably fundamental shift, 53 per cent of all online video viewings in Europe now happen on mobile, according to Ooyala’s Video Index 2016. It’s no longer up for debate whether video should be mobile-optimised – in fact, video must be mobile-first.
Smartphones are highly interactive devices compared to TV, for example, and ads must reflect this. That’s why integrating interactive elements such as mini games or micro quizzes are favoured by many mobile marketers. It’s a similar story for the vertical video format: perfectly suited to the mobile screen, vertical video has rapidly overtaken the landscape format of laptops, pioneered by apps like Snapchat, musical.ly, and Periscope.
Cheetah Mobile is partnering with popular social video apps like musical.ly to bring on the vertical video revolution. Video demand will continue to grow exponentially, but it’s not only video consumers are asking for.
No news isn’t good news
Just like video, editorial content from publishers is in high demand. News streams are found everywhere on mobile from the Facebook app to the iOS home screen. Why? Deloitte research shows UK citizens collectively look at their smartphones over a billion times a day – and if we’re constantly on our phones, the last thing we want is nothing new! The demand for news content is increasing dramatically because we interact more regularly with our devices and expect something new every time we pull down to refresh.
This is the logic behind our recent acquisition of News Republic, a leading mobile news app that tops the charts on iOS and Google Play in many markets around the globe. News content adds value to the user experience and generates high levels of engagement – especially when there is a locally-relevant, personalized news experience powered by a combination of machine intelligence and local editors in individual markets.
Easy ways to embrace mobile
The mobile marketing rulebook might have been revised, but marketers just need to keep pace with where consumers are and what they want – which, let’s face it, has always been their remit. Here are three considerations to revise your mobile strategies in line with changes in consumer behaviour:
Invest in editorial and video content. Consumers’ appetites for mobile content are surging, and marketers can use this to their advantage to drive the best ROI and ensure high levels of user retention. To avoid being left without enough mobile-optimised content to fill digital and emerging channels, brands must begin thinking now how they can allocate resources or showcase user-generated, influencer, and other third-party content to maintain supplies and high standards.
Think vertical. Cisco has predicted that by 2019, 75 per cent of all mobile traffic will be video content. This content must be optimised for mobile, which increasingly means vertical. These days we’re not so willing to turn our phones sideways, and brands must take this into account. As for the benefit for them – many app makers are finding that users are much more likely to finish a vertical video ad than a horizontal one.
Make a move into the app ecosystem. Your brand should be able to offer an app that’s more than a one-trick pony. By integrating social functions, e-commerce, and third party services, as well as funnelling in all that great editorial and video content you’re creating, your app will easily be branded a favourite by your customers and stay in their top three, safe from deletion.
While it may seem like the playing field is shrinking as consumers focus their attention on fewer apps, the growing demand for more content – editorial and especially video – should be seen as an opportunity, not a restriction.
This sponsored article was written by Cristina Constandache, VP at Cheetah Mobile, and is editorially independent from Mobile Marketing Magazine