We've already said goodbye to actor Cory Monteith, and before too long, we'll be saying goodbye to Glee. Show creator Ryan Murphy has confirmed that Glee will come to an end after Season 6. Now that Monteith is gone, and Finn with him, the final season will end on a very different note.
Source: http://www.ivillage.com/ryan-murphy-confirms-glee-will-end-after-season-6/1-a-550047?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Aryan-murphy-confirms-glee-will-end-after-season-6-550047
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Saturday, October 19, 2013
Ending 'Glee' Next Season Is a Good (but Sad) Decision
NYSE to open up facilities for testing ahead of Twitter IPO
By John McCrank
NEW YORK (Reuters) - NYSE Euronext said on Friday it would offer testing next weekend for trading firms planning to take part in Twitter's market debut, highlighting an industry-wide focus on risk controls after a spate of technology-related snafus in recent years.
The initial public offering of microblogging site Twitter is the most highly anticipated since Facebook's IPO last year, when software problems at Nasdaq OMX Group resulted in a chain of events that market making firms said cost them a combined $500 million (309.2 million pounds).
Before Twitter disclosed on Tuesday it would list on the New York Stock Exchange, analysts had said the Facebook IPO problems would likely weigh against Nasdaq's chances of winning the listing and the prestige that comes with it.
A date for the IPO has not yet been disclosed, but it is expected before the end of November.
NYSE said in the note to traders on Friday that in preparation for Twitter's market debut, firms could test their trading algorithms on October 26, when it would make available all of its production customer gateway connections for order flow.
The Big Board operator said additional details would be provided early next week, including registration details.
The Facebook incident was one of a number of high-profile technology-related problems that have roiled markets and weighed on investor confidence in recent years, placing a bigger focus on operational risk by regulators and market participants.
Nasdaq agreed to pay a $10 million penalty for the Facebook errors, the largest amount ever levied against a stock exchange, and also voluntarily said it would pay up to $62 million to compensate firms harmed in the May 18, 2012, market debut.
TRYING TO BREAK THE SYSTEM
Preventing technology snafus, and how to better deal with glitches that do happen, was a major focus at a market structure conference held by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) on Thursday.
The conference came one day after regulators fined trading firm Knight Capital, now part of KCG Holdings Inc, $12 million to settle charges related to an error last year that sent millions of unintended orders into the market.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said that at the time, Knight did not have appropriate risk controls in place to prevent the errors and that the firm failed to conduct adequate reviews of the effectiveness of its controls.
Exchanges and brokers have been re-examining their approaches to testing the robustness of their systems, Eric Noll, head of Nasdaq's transaction business, said at the SIFMA conference.
"Not only conformance testing - does the software do what we designed it to do - but what happens to the software if we try to break it?"
Deliberately putting bad orders or code into the system in a testing environment allows the exchange to then test what would happen to the rest of its systems, helping it make better plans to react to such a situation, he said.
STOPPING THE BLEEDING MORE QUICKLY
Several trading firm executives at the conference said U.S. markets actually function better than ever, and chalked up the drop in investor confidence to the increased media attention surrounding trading glitches.
The data shows that in equities, clearly erroneous trades - a proxy for system coding issues where capacity limits or order routing limits have been exceeded - are down 55 percent from May 2010, said Tom Gira, head of market regulation the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
But the speed that automation has brought to the markets needs to be taken into account, he said at the SIFMA conference.
"What's different about today's market than, say, 10 years ago, is that even if you do have less snafus, they are so much more amplified now than they were before and the challenge is now, how do you stop the bleeding more quickly in such a quick market," he said.
There are thirteen U.S. equity exchanges, 44 alternative trading systems, and a handful of other large non-exchange trading venues competing for order flow that brokers connect to.
The renewed focus on operational risk and having controls in place for when glitches do happen, comes after a software bug in August paralyzed thousands of Nasdaq-listed stocks market-wide for three hours. That happened just days after a technical problem at Goldman Sachs sent a flood of erroneous orders to the U.S. equity options markets. And on August 6, BATS Global Markets faced an outage that lasted nearly an hour.
(Reporting by John McCrank; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nyse-open-facilities-testing-ahead-twitter-ipo-193906151--sector.html
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Friday, October 18, 2013
Strava Cycling (for iPhone)
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Pros
Brings a different twist to tracking cycling. Great social, competitive features. Well-designed UI.
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Cons
Rides and routes are public by default. No auto pause. Need to use full website for some features. No music integration.
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Bottom Line
Bringing a totally different twist to bicycle-ride tracking, Strava Cycling takes segments of your ride and pits your best time against others who have ridden the same stretch of road. While exciting, and fiercely competitive, the Strava Cycling lacks some basic features typically included in tracking apps.
Strava Cycling (free for iPhone and Android; iPhone version reviewed here) puts a new spin on bicycling tracking apps by comparing segments of your ride to other Strava users who have ridden the same stretch. Flick on the app, hop on your bike, and Strava will record where you go, how fast you travel, your change in elevation, and a few other metrics. At the end of the ride, you'll see your route divided into defined segments, and, when you select one, you can see where you stand on a leaderboard that pits your time on the segment against other Strava users'. It's highly intriguing, but the app has a few serious flaws that quickly put a damper on the experience.
The main problem is that all your activity is public by default. If you use your real name and start marking segments that you ride regularly, you could be giving away your home address, work address, and other places that you might want to keep private. You can make your profile private so that only users you approve can see where you ride, and there's a feature in the full website that lets you hide certain locations that you mark, such as "home" and "work." I appreciate that these privacy options are available, but I didn't like being hit by the realization that I might need them after having used the app for several days.
Privacy concerns aside, I was captivated to see that my time crossing the Queensboro Bridge left me 44th out of 207 female Strava riders, but that I hit fifth place crossing the John Jay Byrne Bridge (holler!). And the competition is fierce. Looking at some of the record times for a couple of segments in Manhattan, I thought, "The only way I'd hit that speed is in an ambulance." If you're into competition, Strava is the most compelling bicycling app I've founnd.
But when it comes to just tracking rides, Strava seems to do the bare minimum. It gets the job done, but not nearly with the same rigor as Cyclemeter ($4.99), our Editors' Choice for bicycling apps for the iPhone. For example, Strava doesn't have an auto-pause, or a delay start countdown, which many riders like so that they can turn on the app to start recording, but still have a few seconds to then put their phone into place. These are pretty standard features in most bicycling apps, including Cyclemeter and Runtastic Road Bike PRO ($4.99). Strava also can't connect to your music, as Cyclemeter and Runtastic Road Bike PRO can.
Strava Premium
Strava offers a Premium subscription ($59 per year or $6 per month) to enrich its free app. Premium adds goals progress, which is the ability to set time or distance goals, such as bike 75 miles every week, as well as performance goals (ride a certain segment in a set amount of time), and track your progress. Premium users also get some sophisticated heart rate monitoring options, like the ability to set a "suffer score" or custom heart rate zone to quantify "suffering" or levels of intensity. See Strava's website for more premium features.
While I enjoyed seeing how fast other Strava users ride in my area, the app isn't the best for tracking your rides. Cyclemeter not only collects the most data, but also offers the best customization options. You can set up Cyclemeter to display as much or as little information as you want. For serious cyclists, it's by far the most comprehensive app—but it's only available on iPhone. Another app I recommend—and one that's available on Android, too—is Runtastic Road Bike PRO, particularly for riders who aren't necessarily pro racers and therefore don't need every single metric under the sun, but do want to track their rides and make sense of their data.
By Jill Duffy
Analyst, Software
Jill Duffy is a writer and software analyst, specializing in productivity software, iOS, and apps and gadgets for health and fitness. She writes the weekly Get Organized column, with tips on how to lead a...
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Season of uncertainty for stores
NEW YORK (AP) — Will Washington be the Grinch who stole Christmas?
After weeks of bickering between Congress and the White House, President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed into law a plan that ended a partial 16-day government shutdown and suspended the nation's debt limit until early next year.
But the measure, which comes just weeks ahead of the holiday shopping season, only temporarily averts a potential default on U.S. debt that could send the nation into a recession.
Retailers hope that short-term uncertainty won't stop Americans from spending during the busiest shopping period of the year, but they're fearful that it will.
"I am not nervous, but I am mindful," said Jay Stein, chairman of Stein Mart, a 300-store chain that sells home goods and clothing. "The biggest enemy of consumer confidence is uncertainty."
Retailers and industry watchers say Washington gridlock already has caused shoppers to hold back on purchases.
The number of people going into stores nationwide dropped 7.5 percent for the week that ended Oct. 5 and 7.1 percent during the following week compared with a year ago, according to ShopperTrak, which measures foot traffic at 40,000 retail outlets across the country.
Men's clothier Jos. A. Bank Clothiers and furniture chain Ethan Allen said their customers cut back in recent weeks. And auto sales, which had been strong, trailed off last week, with experts blaming Washington lawmakers.
Retailers say the agreement that lawmakers approved, which funds the government until Jan. 15 and gives the Treasury the ability to borrow above its limit until Feb. 7, may not be enough to alleviate shoppers' concerns.
Robert N. Wildrick, chairman of Jos. A. Bank, which has 623 U.S. stores, said retailers can't afford more uncertainty during the holiday shopping season. "The more this nonsense goes on .... the more scared (consumers) become," he said.
Even before the stalemate in Washington, retailers had reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the holiday season, which accounts for up to 40 percent of retailers' annual revenue. While the job and housing markets are improving, that hasn't yet translated into sustained spending increases among shoppers.
But retailers spend money on ads, order additional inventory and add sales staff during the holidays hoping shoppers will spending freely. If they don't, stores have to discount, which eats away profits.
The National Retail Federation, the nation's largest retail group, had forecast in early October that sales would climb 3.9 percent in November and December to $602.12 billion, higher than last year's 3.5 percent gain. But the forecast didn't account for the prolonged shutdown.
Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist for the Washington, D.C.-based group, told The Associated Press that he may lower the projection after he sifts through retail sales and jobs data, reports that had been delayed because of the shutdown. The uncertainty could hurt sales.
"It's like having an ongoing fever that you would like to shake but just doesn't go away," Kleinhenz said. "That causes a backup in decision-making from consumers and businesses."
Take Nino Rodriguez, who was already planning to cut back spending on gifts for his four children ages 3 to 21 by about 25 percent to $1,500 as he juggles stagnant wage gains with college tuition costs.
Now, the Chicagoan plans to cut another $500 from the holiday budget because of uncertainty. In particular, he's concerned about having government aid checks suspended for teenage sons who have special needs.
"The doomsday clock is just one second less than what it was before," said Rodriguez, who works in the hospitality business. "All this just heightens our awareness of spending."
This isn't the first time that debt-and-spending stalemates have hurt shoppers' mood during the holidays. Last year, Americans worried about tense negotiations in Washington to resolve the fiscal cliff, a simultaneous increase in tax rates and a decrease in government spending.
Congress and the White House reached a deal on Jan. 1 that prevented income taxes from rising for most households, but many store executives blamed the uncertainty for a slowdown in sales in December. In November 2012, sales were up 4.7 over the year ago period, but rose only 2.4 percent in December.
And in August 2011 when there was market turmoil and political strife over raising the federal debt ceiling, consumer sentiment fell to a 31-year low, according to the Thomas Reuters/University of Michigan survey.
Jeff Landis of Chicago-based Montopoli Custom Clothiers recalls those days when business was quiet and he had to delay ordering fabric and call his wealthy customers. He said he's seeing the same scenario play out now.
"This is a buzz kill," he said.
Follow Anne D'Innocenzio at www.Twitter.com/adinnocenzio
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/season-uncertainty-stores-165925877--finance.html
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Teen found with fetus in bag at store, NYPD says
NEW YORK (AP) — The results of an autopsy could determine whether two teenage girls are hit with serious charges after one of them was found carrying a dead fetus in a bag while shopping at a Victoria's Secret store in Manhattan.
Police were called to the store Thursday after a security guard on the lookout of shoplifters searched the 17-year-old girls, discovered a strong odor coming from one of their bags and found the fetus.
The girls were arrested on charges of petit larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, police said. The teenager thought to have given birth was hospitalized, and the other was questioned by police.
One of the girls told detectives she was carrying the remains because she had delivered a day earlier and didn't know what to do, authorities said. It wasn't clear whether the fetus was alive or dead when delivered, or how far along the girl was in her pregnancy.
The medical examiner's office was performing an autopsy on the remains, and more charges could follow depending on the results.
A person who answered the phone at the home of the girl believed to have given birth had no comment. No phone number was available at the address provided by police for the second teenager.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/teen-found-fetus-bag-store-nypd-says-055748875.html
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Bike Your Way To Adventure With These Sweet City Cycling Guides
Rapha has been a one-stop-shop for all kinds of cool bike accessories since launching its first collection in 2004; in addition to the stylish wearables, they’ve got a small batch of prints and publications dedicated to the joy of road climbs and racing. Now, they're adding leisure travel to the mix with an eight volume collection of City Cycling Guides.
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The Nexus 5 Accidentally Pops Up Early on Google Play for $350
Google's worst kept secret
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