Victoria's Secret Teen Ads - Business Insider

Victoria's Secret has been open about going after the teen market.?

The lingerie brand has invested heavily into its teen brand, Pink, and even geared its annual fashion show toward a younger audience.?

Victoria's Secret's new ad campaign confirms its intense focus on the tween market.?

It's called "Bright Young Things" and focuses on colorful lingerie, sweatpants, t-shirts, and backpacks.?

Here's one of the ads:?

The strategy makes sense. Teens girls have shown that they're obsessed with having cute lingerie and parents are willing to shell out.?

It's also likely that customers who start shopping the Pink line will remain loyal to the Victoria's Secret brand for much of their lives.?

While the Pink brand is technically for college girls, a Victoria's Secret executive admitted its actually designing for a younger audience in mind.?

?When somebody?s 15 or 16 years old, what do they want to be?? Chief Financial Officer Stuart Burgdoerfer said at a conference.??They want to be older, and they want to be cool like the girl in college, and that?s part of the magic of what we do at Pink.?

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/victorias-secret-teen-ads-2013-3

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UT News ? Blog Archive ? Archaeologist/curator to discuss cultural ...

Museums provide an invaluable service to educate the public on the arts and cultures of the world, yet the artifacts collected and exhibited may have been removed illicitly from their native countries.

Leventhal

?Stealing the Past? Collectors and Museums in the 21st Century? will be presented Friday, March 15, at 7:30 p.m. in the Center for the Visual Arts Haigh Auditorium on UT?s Toledo Museum of Art Campus.

The lecture will be by Dr. Richard M. Leventhal, director of the Penn Cultural Heritage Center, professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, and curator in the American section at the Penn Museum.

In the free, public lecture, Leventhal will talk about the need to prevent the looting of global heritage resources and the acquisition policies of museums ? two of the main focuses of his professional activities.

Leventhal, who also focuses on the preservation of cultural heritage and cultural sites, has worked with law enforcement agencies internationally to stop the illegal movement of antiquities.

He will illustrate his talk with examples from his own work and several recent cases covered in the media. For more than 30 years, the archaeologist conducted field research in Central America and Mexico, and has written about the ancient Maya.

The event is sponsored by the Toledo Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, with financial support from the Kurt T. Luckner Lecture Fund and the UT Department of Sociology and Anthropology.

For more information, contact Dr. Lea McChesney of the UT Department of Sociology and Anthropology at lea.mcchesney@utoledo.edu.

This entry was posted ?on? Tuesday, March 12th, 2013?at? 4:44 am?and is filed under? Arts, Events, Languages, Literature and Social Sciences, UToday, Visual and Performing Arts.
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Source: http://utnews.utoledo.edu/index.php/03_12_2013/archaeologistcurator-to-discuss-cultural-preservation-march-15?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=archaeologistcurator-to-discuss-cultural-preservation-march-15

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Dow, S&P extend winning streak to seven days

JeeYeon Park , CNBC ? ? ? 2 hrs.

Stocks finished near session highs Monday, with the Dow posting another record closing high and the S&P 500 within 1 percent of its 2007 peak, as investors shrugged off earlier worries over disappointing economic data from China and weakness in Europe.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished near session highs to close at a fresh high, led by Boeing and UnitedHealth. The blue-chip index is up more than 10 percent for the year and on track for its biggest quarterly gain since the fourth quarter of 2011.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq also closed higher. The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, ended below 12 for the first time since April 2007.

(Read More: The Big Bet That the S&P Will Soon Make an All-Time High)

Most key S&P sectors ended higher, led by financials, while telecoms finished in the red.

"We're in unchartered territory, but the higher this market goes without a pullback, the more investors have to be concerned that underneath the surface: risk begets risk," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist with Prudential Financial. "Last week was impressive and investors want to see the S&P 500 similarly make new highs. But the market's resting right now and it's waiting for further confirmation to move higher."

(Read More: Stocks Poised for a 5% Drop: Strategist)

Apple reversed course to spike higher on heavy volume in midday trading amid unconfirmed rumors that the next iPhone will include a fingerprint sensor and a near-field communications chip for mobile payments. In addition, traders buzzed about a possible special dividend from the tech giant.

(Read More:Why Some Analysts Are Apple Bears)

General Electric chief Jeff Immelt said the conglomerate plans to return $18 billion to investors through dividends and buybacks, adding that dividend growth is a top priority for the company. Meanwhile, Nomura downgraded its rating on GE to "neutral" from "buy."

Citigroup edged higher after RBS upgraded the bank to "buy" from "neutral."

Dell gained after Icahn Enterprises said it had entered into a confidentiality agreement with the computer hardware maker and looked forward to commencing a review of the company.

BlackBerry soared following news the company's highly anticipated BlackBerry Z10 will be sold through AT&T by March 22. The U.S. launch of the company's newest smartphone was delayed due to a longer carrier-testing phase.

Genworth rallied to lead the S&P 500 gainers after a Barron's article over the weekend said the mortgage insurer's stock could almost double in the next year, thanks to gains in mortgage and health-care pricing.

Among earnings, Dick's Sporting Goods tumbled after the sporting goods retailer missed quarterly expectations. The company said lower-than-expected sales of outerwear and cold weather accessories offset some positive trends in areas such as athletic footwear and apparel.

Apparel retailer Urban Outfitters is scheduled to post earnings after the closing bell.

"What's the catalyst for a pullback? Some internal deterioration and or when traders start to lose money buying every dip as the rally gets too extended and narrow," wrote Elliot Spar, market strategist at Stifel Nicolaus.

China's Shanghai Composite declined after data showing industrial production and retail sales in China for the January and February period missed expectations. In addition, inflation rose in February, igniting worries of potential monetary tightening. Meanwhile, Japan's Nikkei hit a new four-and-a-half year high, fueled by weakness in the yen.

(Read More: Why China's Yuan Is No Longer a Big Worry for US)

European shares traded lower, pulling back from four-year highs, dragged by banks on the heels of Italy's credit downgrade from Fitch to BBB-positive last Friday. The downgrade follows a week of political haggling after no party gained sufficient votes in a national election to form a government.

?By CNBC's JeeYeon Park (Follow JeeYeon on Twitter: @JeeYeonParkCNBC)

? 2013 CNBC LLC. All Rights Reserved

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/dow-sp-extend-winning-streak-seven-days-1C8780233

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Behold! Photos of early iPhone development prototypes!

An early iPhone prototype has surfaced, different from others that we?ve seen before, and much closer akin to the aspect ratio we're now used to in the iPad. It's also caught on camera. While we have previously seen design concepts and renders, it?s rare that we see a development prototype. From early 2005, the prototype has a 5"?7" screen and is two inches thick. It also has a number of ports that would never make it to the final iPhone design. According to Ars Technica:

As seen in the gallery above, this early prototype has a number of ports that we're used to seeing more commonly on computers than on mobile devices, including USB ports, an Ethernet port, and even a serial port. Apple never intended for all of these to make it into the final product, of course?our source said that because this was a development prototype, ports like Ethernet and serial were included simply to make working on the device easier. Still, "at that early date no one knew what [the final device] would be," the source emphasized, highlighting the constantly changing nature of Apple's development process.

The engineering team was impressed that they were essentially running Mac OS X on a machine of that size. In only two years, this device would be refined and become the iPhone we all know and love, making its first appearence at Macworld 2007.

It?s funny to think that from this device, and others like it, no doubt, has come most if not all of Apple?s current success. Years from now, we?ll undoubtedly see more such prototypes for devices that we haven?t even seen yet.

Source: Ars Technica. Image: Ars Technica

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/hR2fxLAU9to/story01.htm

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Do Paid Search Ads Work?

Google company headquarters in New York

Photo by Andrew Kelly/Reuters

Before you read the rest of this article, go to Google and try searching for ?Amazon.? You?ll probably notice that the top two listings are both for Amazon?s website, with the first appearing on a light beige background. If you click on the first?a paid search ad?Amazon will pay Google for attracting your business. If you click on the second, Amazon gets your business but Google gets nothing. Try ?Macys,? ?Walgreens,? and ?Sports Authority??you?ll see the same thing.

If you search for eBay, though, you?ll find only a single listing?an unpaid one. Odds are, after marketers at Amazon, Walgreens, and elsewhere catch wind of a preliminary study released on Friday, their search listings will start to look a lot more like eBay?s. The study?by eBay Research Labs economists Thomas Blake, Chris Noskos, and Steve Tadelis?analyzed eBay sales after shutting down purchases of search ads on Google and elsewhere, while maintaining a control set of regions where search ads continued unchanged. Their findings suggest that many paid ads generate virtually no increase in sales, and even for ones that do, the sales benefits are far eclipsed by the cost of the ads themselves.

Companies spend enormous sums on marketing their products. Yet it?s notoriously difficult to measure the impact of ad expenditures. Companies advertise heavily at times when they hope to sell a lot?like Christmas Eve and Boxing Day?and in areas where they expect to see their sales grow. So a na?ve examination of the relationship between ad expenditures and revenues will of course find they move in sync, even if customers don?t pay the ads any mind.

Advertising has also traditionally produced a lot of waste?I see ads for Brioni suits when I open up the morning paper, even though the last time I wore a suit was on my wedding day. The study?s authors quote 19^th-century retailer John Wannamaker: ?I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half.?

The Internet promised to change all that. Google, Yahoo, Bing, and others gave sellers the opportunity to target their pitches to customers who were plausibly interested in their products. That?s why paid ads for Amazon come up in response to a search for books but not life insurance. Further aligning the interests of companies and consumers, advertisers only get charged for paid search listings that actually get clicked on, ensuring that they pay for attracting genuinely interested customers.

But what do companies actually get for the billions they now spend on search marketing? The eBay team began by examining whether there?s any benefit to buying search ads that contain the word ?ebay.? In these cases, it?s possible that in the absence of paid listings, customers would simply click on the unpaid?or ?natural??listing, which would appear at the top of the search anyway. So in March 2012, eBay conducted a controlled trial to see what would happen if they shut off this ?branded keyword advertising? by halting their purchases of search ads containing the word ?ebay? on Microsoft and Yahoo search engines, while continuing to purchase search ads on Google as a control. There was no change in eBay sales via Yahoo and Bing, relative to those that came through Google?consumers simply substituted clicks on the unpaid search listing for the now-absent paid ones.

Encouraged by these findings, eBay management agreed to run a controlled experiment in which they shut off all Google search ads in a third of the country, while continuing to buy ads everywhere else. In contrast to branded keywords?where it?s inevitable that the company will end up as one of the top unpaid listings?there?s a good chance that if you try searching on ?used les paul guitar,? a guitar reseller will appear ahead of eBay?s search listing. So in order to drive a customer to eBay for his guitar purchase rather than, say, to Guitar Center, it might be worth the cost of placing a carefully targeted ad.

But in aggregate, that?s not what the eBay team found?overall, there was no appreciable decline in sales of eBay listings in the part of the country where Google ad purchases were shut off. People who thought to buy guitars via eBay were finding their way to the site anyway, either by clicking on natural listings or by going directly to eBay?s site without using a search engine at all. Search ads did generate a modest increase in the likelihood that Internet surfers with little recent history of eBay transactions would end up making purchases on eBay. So paid search ads serve an informational function, letting a sliver of potential eBay customers know that they?re in the guitar business. But by the time you get to customers who have had three prior eBay transactions in the last year, the effect of paid search on sales drops almost to zero. Overall, paid search turns out to be a very expensive way of attracting new business: The study?s authors estimate that, at least in the short-run, paid ads generate only about 25 cents in extra revenues for each dollar of ad expenditures. (For branded keyword searches, the additional revenues are close to zero.)

People buying search ads aren?t idiots?they?ve looked at the correlation between keyword purchases and subsequent sales and no doubt found it to be strong. But this study suggests that marketing departments should be more careful in confusing causation and correlation in assessing the returns to their ad expenditures, to avoid the equivalent of concluding that marketing works because you advertise and sell a lot in December.

The study?s authors note that paid search may be more profitable for other companies than it?s been for eBay. For example, as Stop & Shop tries to get a foothold in the crowded New York online grocery marketplace, they might sensibly buy some ads to compete with FreshDirect. Paid search may also be worth it for smaller companies that lack the name recognition and high Google page rank that make paid searches less valuable for the eBays and Amazons of the world?some of Google?s own research indicates that this is likely the case. Caveats aside, eBay?s experiences suggest that all companies should look carefully at how much bang they?re getting for their search marketing dollars.

The larger lesson from eBay?s experiment is about the importance of questioning conventional marketing wisdom. As much as the Internet has given companies opportunities to target their ads, it?s also given them a ready testing ground to experiment with different business practices to see what really works.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=2427af1380414a760eee419b894f46cf

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Cloud-computing platform for robots launched

Mar. 11, 2013 ? Researchers of five European universities have developed a cloud-computing platform for robots. The platform allows robots connected to the Internet to directly access the powerful computational, storage, and communications infrastructure of modern data centers -- the giant server farms behind the likes of Google, Facebook, and Amazon -- for robotics tasks and robot learning.

With the development of the RoboEarth Cloud Engine the team continues their work towards creating an Internet for robots. The new platform extends earlier work on allowing robots to share knowledge with other robots via a WWW-style database, greatly speeding up robot learning and adaptation in complex tasks.

More intelligent robots

The developed Platform as a Service (PaaS) for robots allows to perform complex functions like mapping, navigation, or processing of human voice commands in the cloud, at a fraction of the time required by robots' on-board computers. By making enterprise-scale computing infrastructure available to any robot with a wireless connection, the researchers believe that the new computing platform will help pave the way towards lighter, cheaper, more intelligent robots.

"The RoboEarth Cloud Engine is particularly useful for mobile robots, such as drones or autonomous cars, which require lots of computation for navigation. It also offers significant benefits for robot co-workers, such as factory robots working alongside humans, which require large knowledge databases, and for the deployment of robot teams." says Mohanarajah Gajamohan, researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and Technical Lead of the project.

"On-board computation reduces mobility and increases cost.," says Dr. Heico Sandee, RoboEarth's Program Manager at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, "With the rapid increase in wireless data rates caused by the booming demand of mobile communications devices, more and more of a robot's computational tasks can be moved into the cloud."

Impact on jobs

While high-tech companies that heavily rely on data centers have been criticized for creating fewer jobs than traditional companies (e.g., Google or Facebook employ less than half the number of workers of General Electric or Hewlett-Packard per dollar in revenue), the researchers don't believe that this new robotics platform should be cause for alarm. According to a recent study by the International Federation of Robotics and Metra Martech entitled "Positive Impact of Industrial Robots on Employment," robots don't kill jobs but rather tend to lead to an overall growth in jobs.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by ETH Z?rich, via AlphaGalileo.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Dominique Hunziker, Mohanarajah Gajamohan, Markus Waibel, and Raffaello D?Andrea. Rapyuta: The RoboEarth Cloud Engine. Accepted for publication at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2013

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/computers_math/information_technology/~3/MysNo8UtL34/130311091123.htm

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Who will take on job of fixing Detroit's finances?

DETROIT (AP) ? It appears the appointment of an emergency manager to take over Detroit's failing finances is all but a done deal. But one question remains: Who will get the difficult, thankless job?

Gov. Rick Snyder is being coy about his selection, saying only the person is "top notch." Michigan's Emergency Loan Board will do the official hiring of the candidate, who will provide state oversight on spending and restructuring.

Whoever is chosen, he or she will not only have to tackle the city's massive deficits and debt but also succeed in pulling Detroit out of a fiscal tailspin so steep that it's had to borrow millions of dollars just to pay its bills and city workers' salaries.

"This will take somebody who has very deep and strong financial expertise and very deep and strong political and personal capabilities," said Timothy Horner, a partner in the Warner Norcross & Judd law firm. Horner, whose firm has been closely following Detroit's fiscal struggles because it represents businesses and creditors, told The Associated Press on Friday that the emergency manager job is "a very difficult assignment."

An appointment is unlikely to occur before Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has a chance to appeal Snyder's determination Friday that the city is in a financial emergency. The 10-day appeal period will be followed by a March 12 hearing. It's then that Snyder can change his mind or reaffirm his position and move forward with an emergency manager appointment.

Bing said Friday that doesn't agree with Snyder's determination and that he is looking into the city's options.

Emergency managers have the power under state law to develop financial plans, renegotiate labor contracts, revise and approve budgets to help control spending, sell off city assets not restricted by charter and suspend the salaries of elected officials.

Given the makeup of Detroit ? more than 80 percent of the 700,000 residents are black ? the emergency manager's job would be easier if that person is black, according to Bill Brandt, chief executive of Development Specialists, Inc., a national turnaround firm.

"If he's even toying with the idea of putting a white fella in charge in a city that's 80 percent black it will be seen as more of this plantation mentality," Brandt said of Snyder.

Detroit and its mostly white suburbs have shared an often-strained relationship for decades.

"You need to get a buy-in from the large population and the way is to get a spirited intellectually bright African American with a great deal of political chops," Brandt added.

Among the issues needing immediate attention, is Detroit's massive health care costs and unfunded pension benefits to retirees.

Detroit's sinking population ? a quarter-million people left between 2000 and 2010 ? and shrinking tax base will have to fund its legacy liabilities, Horner said.

"Over many years, the city made many promises to employees and workers and incurred debt based upon a city that was much larger," he said, noting the emergency manager will first need to address "short-term liquidity issues" while handling "long-term legacy liabilities."

Horner also pointed out the manager would need to have experience with bankruptcies.

"If the emergency manager is not able to restructure, we will end up with Chapter 9," he said.

But bankruptcy can be avoided if everyone comes to the negotiating table, said William M. Dolan, a partner in the Brown Rudnick international law firm.

Providence, R.I., had a $110 million structural deficit, $1 billion in unfunded health care and an $800 million unfunded pension. Dolan represented the city last year in negotiations with its active unions and retirees over concessions to address legacy liabilities.

Both sides negotiated everything down and converted health care coverage to Medicare from private plans.

"When you go into bankruptcy your pension is gone. It's gone," Dolan said.

But for residents, the appointment of an emergency manager runs deeper than ledger sheets and balance books.

"You are telling the people of Detroit that they are too stupid to manage their own affairs, and that's an insult," said Oliver Cole, a photography studio owner in the city and president of a 900-family neighborhood association on the northwest side.

"We want the city of Detroit to function," the 62-year-old added. "We want it to be a great city, have police, fire, good EMS, trash pickup and parks maintained.

"The emergency manager gives people the opinion he can do anything. That is tantamount to another mayor and that's why I disagree. You have supplanted the will of the people to elect their leader. Now you say 'your voice doesn't count.' "

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/job-fixing-detroits-finances-175949847.html

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