All Posts By

David Fisher

Business

Sportsdirect.com Take a Look at Preparing for Bonfire Night

Bonfire night is fast approaching, which means it’s nearly time to get outside and enjoy the fireworks. Leading sports retailer SportsDirect.com is ready for the sights and sounds with a range of quality outdoor equipment.

Celebrating at home is a popular option, and a Fire Starter Kit is ideal to get the proceedings up and running. Priced at an affordable £10.99*, starting a homemade bonfire or setting off those fireworks is easier than ever.

Coats and jackets are essential for keeping out the November cold and ladies’ fleece jackets start from £8* whereas men’s zip jackets are a snip at £6.50*.

Keeping toes toasty is number one on many people’s lists and SportsDirect.com offer boots at a rock-bottom £7.50*. Fingers have not been forgotten, with gloves starting from a handy 99p*.

November 4, 2014
Business

Giants’ Great Willie Mays to Headline Annual Champion Honors Luncheon to Benefit ‘The Barbara Sinatra Center For Abused Children’

Willie H Mays, Jr., “The Say Hey Kid” of major league baseball fame, will return to the Coachella Valley to headline the Annual Champion Honors Luncheon benefitting the Barbara Sinatra Center for Abused Children.  The former New York and San Francisco Giants player and member of baseball’s Hall of Fame will conduct a rare and unforgettable intimate conversation with noted baseball interviewer Marty Lurie as a part of the luncheon program. The Champion Honors Luncheon will be at 11:30 am on January 14, 2015 at the Hyatt Regency Resort and Spa in Indian Wells, CA.

“I am extremely honored to have been invited to appear at the Barbara Sinatra Center for Abused Children Annual Champion Honors Luncheon, and to help out Barbara. Barbara was way ahead of her time on such a sensitive need,” said Mays.

Event Chair Hal Gershowitz also announced that Mr. Gary Hall, a longtime advocate and champion of numerous non-profit agencies in the Coachella Valley will also be honored at the luncheon. Gary Hall is a Senior Vice President with Wells Fargo Bank which will again serve as the presenting sponsor for the event.

“We are delighted Willie Mays is coming to share some outstanding stories of life and baseball with us. Willie has a long history of giving back to children as evidenced by his ‘Say Hey Foundation’ and that fits well with what the Barbara Sinatra Center does in the difference it makes in the lives of the children it serves,” Gershowitz said. “As was evidenced last year when nearly 700 people left our event all saying they had a great time, we are expecting the same kind of entertainment, energy, and surprises at this year’s event,” Gershowitz added.  Bud Selig, Major League Baseball Commissioner keynoted the event last year that was also attended by many MLB owners and former players and members of baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Mays is celebrating his Giants third World Series Championship in the last 5 years.  In 1954, Mays was a 23 year old right fielder with the New York Giants when in that World Series he made what is best known as “the Catch”. Considered by many to be the greatest player in baseball history, he is still revered for the passion he brought to the game.

November 4, 2014
Business

Boston Startup ENERGYbits® Fuels MIT Entrepreneurs and Triathletes: ENERGYbits® CEO Reveals Cutting Edge Science and Insights at MIT

Building a successful startup is like training to be a successful athlete. Both require commitment, endurance, passion and an unrelenting quest to find that elusive edge that helps them win. This Wednesday night,November 5th at 6 p.m., their wish may come true. The MIT Triathlon Club has invited ENERGYbits® Founder and CEO Catharine Arnston to the MIT campus to share her game–changing insights about how to succeed as a startup or athlete. Startups and athletes looking for cutting edge solutions won’t want to miss this. The 6:00 p.m. talk is FREE and open to the public. RSVP’s are required.

ENERGYbits® is a five year-old Boston sports nutrition startup that sells algae tabs to athletes, fitness enthusiasts and busy consumers like entrepreneurs. Algae are the most nutritionally dense food in the world, but until now, its health and energy benefits have been virtually unknown outside of Asia. Thanks to ENERGYbits,® knowledge about algae is finally growing and so is the buzz about ENERGYbits®.

ENERGYbits® is not an overnight success story. As every entrepreneur knows, it takes hard work, passion and commitment to turn their vision into a bonafide success. ENERGYbits® has spent years educating athletes, runners and consumers about the benefits of algae. Their efforts are finally paying off as athletes coast to coast are increasingly selecting ENERGYbits® to fuel their race and improve their game, and entrepreneurs are using them to take their performance to the next level. All without caffeine, chemicals, sugar or gluten.  Endorsements from high-profile athletes like NHL’s Andrew Ference and three-time USA Olympian David Oliver further confirm the buzz about ENERGYbits® algae is real. It’s only a matter of time before the rest of the world discovers what these pros already know: That it works.

November 4, 2014
Business

Honda Performance Development Engines On Display at SEMA

Today Honda Performance Development (HPD) will feature nearly a dozen racing products at the Honda booth at the 2014 Specialty Equipment Market Association Show (SEMA) in Las Vegas, illustrating the wide range of competition products and services offered by the racing subsidiary of American Honda Motor Co., Inc.

HPD racing engines covering every racing discipline from the entry-level karting and Quarter Midget categories to the 2014 Indianapolis 500-winning HI13RT Indy Twin-Turbo V6 will be featured in the display.

In addition to nine different HPD racing engines, the display will include an HPD B-Spec Fit – popular in a variety of amateur club racing categories and rallying – and a replica of the Honda Dallara DW-12 driven to victory at this year’s Indianapolis 500 by champion driver Ryan Hunter-Reay

“HPD has long championed a logical development ladder system for young drivers in all forms of motorsports,” said Art St. Cyr, president of HPD.  “The HPD engines and cars on display at SEMA demonstrate this commitment, from four-stroke Quarter Midget engines for our youngest racers to Ryan Hunter-Reay’s Indy-winning chassis, with cutaway bodywork to show the Honda engine that helped make his victory possible.”

November 4, 2014
Business

Vari-Form Receives 2014 GM Supplier Quality Excellence Award

General Motors honored its top-performing suppliers at an Award Ceremony Wednesday, September 24 at Cobo Center. Vari-Form, the technology leader in hydroforming for the automotive industry, was one of the recipients of a Supplier Quality Excellence Award.

“We are honored to be recognized again by General Motors for our quality products and technologies,” said Stephen Dow, president of Vari-Form. “This recognition for quality excellence reflects Vari-Form’s long-term commitment to customer satisfaction and support.”

The GM Supplier Quality Excellence Award is focused on improving collaboration with suppliers. Winning suppliers met more than 12 quality criteria during a 12-month period that ended on June 30. This is the third year GM is honoring suppliers who are making noteworthy contributions to GM’s goal of providing the best overall customer experience in the automotive industry. Vari-Form was an earlier recipient of this prestigious Award; recognized by GM in 2012 for meeting or exceeding GM’s stringent quality performance criteria.

“We know that maintaining a focus on the details to achieve perfection each day is not an easy task, so much so that only a fraction of our suppliers have earned this special recognition. You (Vari-Form) are a critical part of the team who helps ensure the customer is delighted with their product purchase and we want to recognize and thank you for that,” said Sheri Hickok, Executive Director, Global Supplier Quality & Development, GM.

Current Vari-Form projects with General Motors include hyroformed aluminum frame rail components for the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray, produced by the Vari-Form Strathroy manufacturing facility, and delivered to the GM Bowling Green Assembly Plant, Home of the Corvette. These innovative rails are optimized for light weight and superior strength, and helped GM engineers achieve significant reduction of gross vehicle weight over prior models.

November 4, 2014
Business

NuData Security Harnesses Subconscious Behaviors to Predict and Prevent Online Fraud

At Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, NuData Security will be showcasing how it uses psychological principles to strengthen its online fraud detection solution, NuDetect. Through the tracking and monitoring of subconscious behaviors, NuDetect is able to establish an unparalleled biometric identifier without the need to interrupt a user’s experience. Behavioral analysis serves as a means of understanding how legitimate users truly act, thereby predicting and preventing fraud from occurring.

  • According to a recent Ponemon report, the cost of a single data breach rose to $3.5M in 2013 growing 15 percent last year, with the most costly data breaches caused by malicious and criminal attacks. The 2014 Identity Fraud Study released by Javelin Strategy & Research identified a reported increase of more than 500,000 fraud victims to 13.1 million people in 2013, the second highest number since the study began over a decade ago. Also from Javelin, in 2013, one in three people who received a notification letter from a data breach later became an identity fraud victim.
  • When individuals repeat behaviors, they become committed to subconscious memory; it is a core element of human learning and development. These cover all aspects of repeated human life, from learning to walk, to riding a bike, and even entering a username and password.
  • Similarly, when individuals create passwords, they are committed to memory via repetition, allowing for quick recall. This also means that individuals tend to reuse the same passwords across several websites, adversely impacting their security online.
  • By understanding the psychological principles of human behavior, including memorization through repetition of patterns, NuDetect incorporates repetitive factors into its fraud prediction model, recognizing and alerting customers to impersonation attempts (known as account takeover), passively and with a high degree of accuracy.
  • In a completely passive manner, behavioral analysis is able to identify suspicious activity, potentially coming from a fraudster who has procured legitimate account credentials, and stop any deceitful transactions from taking place.
  • By mapping the subconscious, NuDetect is able to build a profile of a user’s behavior, and compare activity patterns against those of a potential impersonator. At a single user level, this includes how a user types, scrolls, how they hold their phone, etc. Looking at these factors are what have made NuDetect a leading detector of user impersonation, just one segment of NuData Security’s overall fraud prediction platform.
November 4, 2014