The collaboration is aimed at providing a scalable compliance solution for cost-conscious businesses, and includes integration of El Fresko software with Digistore appliances. – Data archiving solutions specialist El Fresko Technologies
and optical disc storage and management solutions provider Digistore Solutions
International announced a technology partnership to provide a compliant
archiving and e-Discovery solution for small to medium-size businesses.
The technology…
Acting vet Robert Culp has died.
The actor who teamed up with Bill Cosby in the groundbreaking ’60s comedy-adventureI I Spy and played Bob in the critically acclaimed sex comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, died Wednesday after taking a fall outside his Los Angeles home.
He was 79.
Culp died at a local hospital [...]
Big media firms are quietly building empires overseas
FOR a long time pay-television has essentially been an American business, much more popular (and lucrative) there than anywhere else in the world. But the balance is about to tip. In 2010 more will be spent on subscriptions to multichannel television outside the United States—about $96 billion—than in it, according to SNL Kagan, a research outfit. The effect on big American media firms is profound.
The rest of the world has lagged America in pay-TV both because relatively few people subscribe to it and because, in some countries, it has been difficult to sell advertising. In Japan, for example, just 24% of television-owning households pay for more channels, and ad revenue is puny. Yet other countries are catching up, with poorer countries often speeding past richer ones (see chart). Brazil’s Net Servicos grew from 1.8m subscribers in 2006 to 3.6m in 2009. American media companies hope that they will be lifted by a rising tide of pay-TV subscribers in emerging markets. …
How an original business model got Spaniards hooked
IT IS called El Gordo (“the Fatty”) because of the huge amount it pays out: €2.3 billion ($3.3 billion) in this year’s draw, to be held on December 22nd. Yet Spain’s Christmas lottery is notable not just for the vast sums to be won, but also for its clever business model.
Spaniards are not especially big gamblers, with spending per head below the average for the European Union, according to a 2006 study by London Economics, a consultancy. Yet they spend about €12 billion a year on lottery tickets, over 1% of GDP—almost as much as the country spends on research and development. Roughly three-quarters of them participate in the Christmas lottery. …
At least 124 people have been killed in El Salvador by flooding and landslides following days of heavy rain, the government says.
President Mauricio Funes has declared a national emergency, describing the damages as “incalculable.”
Recession shakes the world’s second-biggest department-store chain
FEW people outside Spain have heard of El Corte Ingles, a family-owned retail giant. With over €17.4 billion ($25.5 billion) in annual sales, it is Europe’s largest department-store chain and the second-biggest in the world after America’s Sears. Yet the company operates almost exclusively in Spain, a market a fraction of the size. That has left it especially vulnerable to the dire condition of the Spanish economy, which is expected to shrink by around 4% this year.
For the first time in the chain’s 70-year history, sales fell in the year ending in February by 3.5%. The wider retail industry did worse, with sales dropping 7.2% in the same period, says El Corte Ingles. Yet adjusted for new store openings, the numbers are probably less flattering. …
An intimate display of masterworks
IN A city bursting with free museums, a gallery must provide something special to merit an entry fee. The Phillips Collection, a modest art museum in a leafy neighbourhood of Washington, DC, does so. It affords viewers a rare opportunity to marvel at Impressionist, modern and contemporary masterworks in the intimacy of a once-private home.
Navigating the small rooms of this mansion in Dupont Circle feels like a treasure hunt. Works by Klee, O’Keeffe and Bonnard mix with Braque, Goya and El Greco around fireplaces and winding staircases. The effect is refreshingly humane, and entirely unlike the dwarfing, take-your-medicine feel of many galleries. At the Phillips, paintings can be read closely, like personal missives, often without the bother of anyone else in the room (except for the watchful security guards, many of whom have the desultory look of freshly minted art-school graduates). …
A major new report to be published by Geophysical Research Letters, concludes that global warming will accelerate so quickly in the next 5 years – 150% of the IPCC’s predictions – that it is “expected to silence global warming sceptics”.What I find int…
OCOTAL, Nicaragua — Ousted President Manuel Zelaya encamped his roving government in exile in this sleepy mountain town near the Honduran border Sunday to launch his return to power after a coup last month.
After weeks of shuttling betw…
LAS MANOS, Nicaragua — Deposed President Manuel Zelaya returned to the Honduran border on Saturday and announced he would set up camp there, despite foreign leaders urging him not to force a confrontation with the government that ousted …
