It looks like Amazon, one of the leaders in work-from-home (WFH) during and after the COVID-19 pandemic may be spearheading a pivot toward full-time return-to-office (RTO), reversing a number of policies it’s implemented since the pandemic.

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are the backbone of our business at Vodia. We work with our outstanding MSPs to make sure they provide their customers with the industry’s most innovative B2B phone system, a system we are constantly improving to maintain our position as the industry’s most innovative cloud PBX.

Private label brands continue to go from room to room, and it looks like they might take over more than half the house. In fact, more than 50 percent of grocery shoppers have bought more private brands over the past year, and almost half of surveyed shoppers plan to buy more private brands this year and beyond.

Marketing Technology (Martech) is reshaping the financial services industry with data-driven strategies and compliance-focused features. These cutting-edge tools are enhancing customer engagement and setting new benchmarks for success — here’s how.

Are you an SMB looking for cutting-edge technology to help grow your business, but you don’t know where to start? Perhaps it’s time to consider drafting a technology roadmap. Like any good map, a technology roadmap provides you with directions and destinations. It’s an effective way to organize your company’s IT strategy.

If you’re working from home, you’re not alone. It seems work from home has become the new norm, alongside hybrid work models, with fewer and fewer CEOs demanding staff return to the office (RTO) five days per week. According to a recent Axios article, a Conference Board survey conducted in the autumn of last year found just six out of 158 U.S. CEOs surveyed are demanding RTO for the entire work week.

As remote and hybrid work environments continue to evolve and work from home becomes the new norm, ensuring your team and stakeholders have everything they need from your operations is crucial. How do you pivot to create and deploy the most effective system possible? How do you make it so everyone has easy access to the collaboration and communication tools they need?

Cove Central, a provider of hosted and on-premise unified communications and collaboration solutions, today announced its Technology Alliance Partner Program (TAPP) with QuestBlue and Vodia, as part of its nationwide effort in supporting Vodia’s PBX solutions.

Undoubtedly, the global pandemic has been a catalyst for transformative shifts, both within and beyond our workplaces. From the spring of 2020 through the end of the federal Covid-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) declaration in spring 2023, we witnessed a sea change in our work lives, our home lives, the retail landscape, entertainment, hospitality, travel and more. Looking at the world now, it’s hard to find much that hasn’t been altered or hasn’t shifted somehow.

Sustainability. You hear the term a lot these days, but Overall Murals put its money where its murals are with an sprayed on seven of our high-impact, wall murals for . As with some of our other refreshing beverage wallscapes, the bottles appear crystal clear and beaded with moisture. They look delicious, if we may say so. We hand painted the iconic red and white advertisements across the country to raise awareness around how all Coca-Cola’s 20 oz. bottles are 100 percent recycled - and recycla

Just when you thought Overall Murals couldn’t have more “glowing on,” we’ve put up six high-impact, glow-in-the-dark, eye-level hand painted walls for a brand in ( and ) and ( , , , and ) garnering a total of 3.8 million impressions - This is the first brand to utilize hand painted murals and what better timing then around Halloween!

Vodia gives your customers the most complete suite of robust business telephony features for on-premises and cloud-based telephony, including auto attendant, SMS, paging, separation of personal and work calls, conference calls, call recording, CRM integration and Teams integration.

Overall Murals’ SoHo double wallscape features Naomi Cambell on the west side of the street and Gisele Bündchen across Canal, each looking out toward Lafayette: this is the racing heart of Manhattan’s best neighborhood for innumerable luxury designer stores and home to Michelin star restaurants – including Hirohisa and Le Coucou – and the NOMO SOHO hotel. Ms. Cambell and Ms. Bündchen, both in crisp, photorealistic black and white – painted in the style of Chuck Close portraits of John Cage and Kate Moss – seem to stand upon the sky, each her own constellation, as glorious and impressive as the city itself.

We’ve left our footprint – a new, ruby-red Adidas Gazelle footprint, to be exact – on a new Overall Murals wall in the trendy West Hollywood/Fairfax neighborhood of Los Angeles. We’re immensely excited about the space, 3 large faces of a building on Clinton and Fairfax Ave. just blocks from beloved French restaurant ADKT LA and a hip, hop, skip, and jump (best done in a pair of Gazelles) from the famed Banana Bungalow Hotel in West Hollywood.

There’s far more than “slinging paint”. Overall Paint Lab services collaborate with clients by contributing innovative ideas and a palpable “let’s try it!” enthusiasm to help them create incredible content in conjunction with our already eye-catching murals. A glow-in-the-dark wallscape? A lenticular wall? Trompe l'oeil? Whatever you can imagine, the Overall Paint Lab takes your ideas even further to create a singular, stunning, hand painted campaign. It becomes a work of art...

Overall Murals Summer 2023 Swag Box is here! Our deep love for art of every genre and our admiration and fondness for the work of a great many artists is what keeps us excited and inspired. We love the work we do, but we also love the work a lot of other artists do, whether it’s street art or handmade furniture, a vintage surfboard or a one-of-a-kind t-shirt, the perfect tattoo – we’re as at home in the European Galleries at the Brooklyn Museum as we are at any Williamsburg skate shop.

Vodia is pleased to announce we will be at booth 1560 for Channel Partners Conference and Expo at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, November 1 through November 4th. We have just released Version 68 of our award-winning cloud PBX, and we look forward to discussing all of 68’s new features and improvements with current and potential resellers.

Vodia Networks (“Vodia”), maker of cutting-edge software-based telephone systems, is pleased to announce the company’s website, Vodia.com, is now available in Portuguese.

London/Dublin – 6 April 2022: (Poko: CSE) – Poko Innovations, Inc., an award-winning UK-based collection of CBD-focused companies that bring innovative, inspiring solutions to the CBD industry through the company’s leading platforms which, when working together, form a complete ecosystem, is pleased to announce TV Shopping Network TJC, one of the leading home shopping channels and e-commerce sites in the UK, will be launching Poko this April on TJC Beauty.

Centennial, CO – April 1, 2022: Westwater Resources, Inc. (NYSE American: WWR), a battery-grade, natural graphite development company (“Westwater” or “the Company”), commends President Biden for signing a Presidential Determination to invoke the Defense Production Act to encourage domestic production of critical materials for large-capacity batteries for electric vehicles and clean energy storage.

THIS VAIL SKI PALACE REACHES A NEW APOGEE OF MODERN ALPINE LIVING On his album, My Griffin Is Gone, troubadour (and the dad in the 1984 film, Gremlins) Hoyt Axton sings, “Would you like to go to Colorado? Heaven’s there I’m told….” Anyone who’s visited The Centennial State and its magnificent ski towns will likely agree. Vail, of course, is one of its gems, flush with sunshine and pine scented breezes all summer and covered with thick powdery snow during ski season (which begins in mid Novembe

Famed for its 1892 dedicated Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch (which offered, incidentally, an occasionally open to the public observation deck until the early 2000s) and Bailey Fountain, Grand Army Plaza was envisioned to honor the site of the Battle of Long Island (aka the Battle of Brooklyn Heights), the first major land engagement of the Revolutionary War. Built by the landscape architect team of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux “to provide a wide and picturesque approach” to Prospect Park,

Boerum Hill is named for Dutch colonist Simon Boerum, whose family settled in Brooklyn in the mid-17th century. Boerum was a farmer, miller, and member of the Continental Congress, who unfortunately died in 1775 before he could sign the Declaration of Independence.

Like legendary authors Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, Nobel laureate John Steinbeck lived and worked in Sag Harbor, in a cottage within walking distance from a windmill at the end of Main Street.

When Chicago’s ornate Paradise Theatre was demolished in 1956 (long before its due), a Chicago Star article from July of 1958 at once eulogized and described the structure, and was titled, “Not for Today But for All Time.”

Four Hill Residence is situated atop a hill with an unobstructed view of the Pentadactylos Mountains in a residential neighborhood of Makedonitissa.

Shane Mahoney, founder and President of Lugos Travel, lives to travel, with a list of destinations under his belt that would put Odysseus to shame. Bora Bora? Check. The Maldives? Of course. Skiing in the French Alps? Oui.

Love James Bond? Consider yourself one of the happy billions who’ve enjoyed 007’s exploits since 1962, when Dr. No, based on Ian Fleming’s 1958 novel, was made into a film starring Sean Connery?

The 2017 Cruise Critic UK Editors’ Picks Award for Best Service, in tandem with the award we won in 2016 for Value, is a testament to the work our onboard personnel do every single day...

I wanted to be your favorite pop song. Jangling guitars and tambourines, Beatle boots and girl-group harmonies. Set me on repeat, play me over and over, the chorus you can’t shake out of your head.

Celestyal Cruises invites you to the real Greek experience…Welcome to the most idyllic destinations in the Adriatic, the Aegean and the Ionian, all gift-wrapped and lovingly handed to you...

Greetings and happy holidays. We are now experiencing the harmonious undulating rhythms – rhumba, I think – of our fourth season in Cuba and our first year-round cruise calendar.

Welcome to our invincible summer. As this edition of the Celestyal Cruises Newsletter, the 9th, goes to print, we are in the middle of our first August as Celestyal Cruises.

You travel to discover the unexpected, to see a place and its people from the inside out. Let everyone else look for the expected, the tried and true – you want more.

Each of our cozy ships is like a floating hotel, one at which the entire staff knows you by name. The core of your experience with Louis Cruises is this personalized, enthusiastic attention.

Kalimera doesn’t just mean “good morning,” it means “good” in every sense of the word: quality, satisfaction and happiness…

On May 9, the SEC announced that it would extend the comment period on the climate-related disclosures proposal and reopen comment periods for the proposed rules regarding private fund advisers and Regulation ATS. In the press release, SEC Chair Gary Gensler stated, "The SEC benefits greatly from hearing from the public on proposed regulatory changes. Commenters with diverse views ha

The SEC published their Fall 2021 regulatory priorities for the next 12 months. Key items on the short-term agenda include: Tailored shareholder reports/498B (for final rulemaking); amendments to the broker-dealer electronic books and records rules; amendments to Form N-PX (“to enhance the information reported on Form N-PX”); universal proxy (adopted); and rule amendments to move to T+1 settlement. There is a long list of corporate issuer disclosure proposals, including climate changes and human

On October 18, the SEC published a “Staff Report on Equity and Options Market Structure Conditions in Early 2021” focused on the January 2021 trading activity of GameStop Corp. (GME).

Since joining the SEC in 2016, Mr. Saltiel has served as the head of the Office of Analytics and Research in the Division of Trading and Markets. Prior to that he served as Chief Economist at the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board.

Daniel S. Kahl appointed Acting Director of the Division of Examinations; Peter B. Driscoll to depart agency.

As of 2020, only 25 percent of the bond market trades electronically, and LTX, which is complementary to existing platforms, should be able to move the corporate bond market to 50 percent electronic trading going forward.

According to Gartner’s 2020 CMO Spend Survey, during the first year of the pandemic, a whopping 32 percent of marketing work formerly completed by an outside agency moved in-house. While the obvious benefit is cost-savings, this technique also increases efficiencies and allows strategic creative control. Because they are fully dedicated to one brand, in-house agency teams are generally smaller than marquee agencies of record, and a slimmer team equals less overhead. However, during major commun

Since well before the pandemic started, but especially over the past 12 months, whenever I’ve spoken with a CEO or small business owner about the digital transformation of his or her company, time and again I’ve had to remind them how important social media is.

For most of the past five or 10 years, cookies have been endemic to just about everyone’s online experiences, whether they’re shopping for kitchenware, reading the day’s headlines or even donating money to a cause. We’re pretty much at the point where we don’t give them much thought, other than ignoring them or blocking them.

What hasn’t the pandemic changed? I’m scratching my head, but I can’t come up with anything. Hiking, maybe? Not that I hike much, but I’m just trying to think of something Covid-19 hasn’t changed in some way. Even our presidential election was altered by the virus—with a majority of voters sending their ballots by mail.

As you probably noticed, given the incredible increase in ecommerce activity this year thanks to the pandemic, 2020 saw a “month of Black Fridays” among both brick-and-mortar and online retailers alike. All of the big ecommerce players, including Amazon, Target and Walmart, laid it on thick, offering deals on everything from electronics to clothing to health and beauty products to sporting goods starting Nov. 1.

For those of you keeping score at home, we are getting closer to the one-year mark of the Covid-19 pandemic (declared officially on March 11, 2020), and we are finally clear of one of the most active Atlantic hurricane seasons on record (thanks, 2020).

In case you’re not one of the 150 million Amazon Prime members worldwide, here’s a quick rundown: Prime is Amazon’s membership program. For around $12 per month, Prime members get exclusive deals and discounts: free delivery; a 30-minute head start on “Lightning” Deals; special offers at Whole Foods...

I know we were all hoping the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic would be behind us by now, or at least things would be tapering off. Yet, it looks like we’re still unfortunately in the thick of it. There are a few bright spots, however: film crews have resumed production in California with state-designated safety protocols, and New York City recently added 40 new streets for outdoor dining.

Here we are, we made it to fall 2020, with Halloween, Thanksgiving and the December holidays the next stops for retailers. If you’re a digital marketer, you’ve hopefully had a busy summer. Now, as the weather begins to turn, the question you need to ask yourself is, ‘‘How can I retool and refine my strategy as we approach the year end?”

Building the new — at this point, what choice do we have? The Covid-19 crisis has upended almost everything we knew and expected about our work, our careers and our way of life. Sadly, as the crisis continues, while unemployment is improving, we are not out of the woods and the collapse of myriad small businesses continues. Welcome to 2020, but all is not lost.

By Scott Hirsch as seen on Forbes As we all know, these are extraordinary and unprecedented times. A number of industries are experiencing significant fragmentation, and many of the companies in these sectors are ready to be rolled up. The travel and hospitality industry has taken the brunt of the blow this past quarter, as have sports and entertainment, furniture and home furnishings ... even dentists, according to Business Insider. Retail has been devastated, with former giant JCPenney now ba

After years of experience, I know a thing or two about getting it done. As an international digital data marketing expert with a successful track record as a serial entrepreneur, I believe we’re often our own worst enemies when it comes to getting done what we need to. Procrastination is your enemy and it’s a dragon you can slay! All it takes is action and forward motion.

We use the word “brand” constantly, and not just in the context of advertising and marketing – we regularly apply it to individuals (your “personal brand”).

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are the backbone of our business at Vodia. We work with our outstanding MSPs to make sure they provide their customers with the industry’s most innovative B2B phone system, a system we are constantly improving to maintain our position as the industry’s most innovative cloud PBX.

If you’re working from home, you’re not alone. It seems work from home has become the new norm, alongside hybrid work models, with fewer and fewer CEOs demanding staff return to the office (RTO) five days per week. According to a recent Axios article, a Conference Board survey conducted in the autumn of last year found just six out of 158 U.S. CEOs surveyed are demanding RTO for the entire work week.

Cove Central, a provider of hosted and on-premise unified communications and collaboration solutions, today announced its Technology Alliance Partner Program (TAPP) with QuestBlue and Vodia, as part of its nationwide effort in supporting Vodia’s PBX solutions.

Undoubtedly, the global pandemic has been a catalyst for transformative shifts, both within and beyond our workplaces. From the spring of 2020 through the end of the federal Covid-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) declaration in spring 2023, we witnessed a sea change in our work lives, our home lives, the retail landscape, entertainment, hospitality, travel and more. Looking at the world now, it’s hard to find much that hasn’t been altered or hasn’t shifted somehow.

Currently, Alyssa’s Law has been enacted in Florida, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee and Texas; it is in process in legislatures in Arizona, Oregon, Nebraska, Michigan, Georgia, Connecticut, and Virginia, with a combination of federal and state funding available for schools to update their emergency systems – these schools must apply to update their emergency systems.

Vodia gives your customers the most complete suite of robust business telephony features for on-premises and cloud-based telephony, including auto attendant, SMS, paging, separation of personal and work calls, conference calls, call recording, CRM integration and Teams integration.

AI technology, particularly ChatGPT, is what they describe as “all the rage” right now, but did you know that Vodia has been using AI since its inception? Our auto-attendant uses AI, based on system setup. Over the decades, AI technology has significantly evolved, going beyond the management of auto-attendants in a cloud phone system and has certainly become more dynamic than our ubiquitous auto-attendant, and both SMBs and enterprises are now exploring myriad possibilities.

Vodia Networks (“Vodia”), maker of cutting-edge software-based telephone systems, and Hexis Consulting (“Hexis”), a provider of custom, managed IT solution, today announced their partnership, with the migration of a number of Hexis clients from 3CX to the Vodia phone system already in process; the company is seeking to offer better pricing and better support to its clients who have moved their telephony to the cloud.

The Vodia app also makes it so you can set business hours, for the entire company or for individual employees, all within the PBX. This means no one can call an employee late at night or on a weekend or holiday. This is a key requirement for many employees, who worry using their smartphones means receiving work calls at all hours. With our PBX and the Vodia app, it doesn’t.

Welcome to the long hot summer of remote and hybrid work arrangements. According to a recent American Opportunity Report published by McKinsey & Company June 23, 2022, “organizations worldwide have created new working norms that acknowledge that flexible work is no longer a temporary pandemic response but an enduring feature of the modern working world.”

A call center takes a company’s telephony to a much higher level. Incoming calls are immediately queued in a call center while the system finds an agent to take the call; while callers are queued, they can hear hold music or marketing messages, and they can be given prompts that let them know where they are in the queue, the approximate wait time and if they can press a number to initiate a callback (rather than waiting on hold), all of which improves the caller experience and keeps the caller engaged with a brand (as opposed to hanging up and calling someone else).

Summer 2022 is almost here, a relief to many, particularly in the Northeast who weathered a rather cold and rainy April and May. After a hectic winter, one which saw the omicron variant of Covid-19 sicken a great many of us, almost immediately after the turn of the year and stalling what many companies believed would be the beginning of a return to the office (RTO), spring arrived, and the push to bring everyone back to the office began in earnest again, but it gained no traction. Why?

Who doesn’t love a great love story? How about a new one, the SIP HARMONY – VODIA love story? Spring is in the air, and love is borne upon its gentle breeze…

Global organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry conducted a survey of 570 professionals across the USA earlier this year, and almost 75 percent of survey respondents told Korn Ferry they feel “a return to the office will be negative for their mental health.”

One of the key problems with remote and hybrid work is work-life balance. Many of us find we’re taking calls in the evening, replying to emails before we drift off to sleep, checking text messages if we wake up in the middle of the night…it often feels like our jobs have seeped into every corner of our lives, and it might not be healthy. Thomas Merton – American Trappist monk, writer and theologian – once remarked, “happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.”

Our mission is to make #workfromanywhere possible, seamlessly connecting you and your team with a solution that was designed for the cloud from day one. It’s everything you need for work from anywhere and hybrid work environments.

The change in our personal and work lives since the spring of 2020 has pushed companies online at an incredible pace, and the result is a global digital transformation we couldn’t have imagined as 2020 began.

As the industry’s leading cloud PBX, the deployment of our software around the world is music to our ears. We think of each of our outstanding partners as one of our greatest hits, a platinum album…indispensable.

“Gartner C-Suite: Redesigning Work for a Hybrid Future” delineates and dispels seven myths about hybrid work. According to the esteemed research group, “75 percent of hybrid or remote knowledge workers say their expectations for working flexibly have increased, and four out of 10 employees are at risk of leaving if you insist they return to an in-person office environment.”

Impressive functionality underpins The Ninja. Resellers can manage their customers, cloud services, voice services, licensing and hardware orders online and in a flash.

With freelancing, you often have multiple projects going at once, sometimes from the same number of clients, and you have to make sure you get everything done and meet every deadline. Also, say no to nothing and tell EVERYONE you're freelancing. You never know if/when you're going to bump into someone who might hire you. Creative Circle works with the most talented creatives in the business! One is our beloved freelance writer, David Porter.

Leon joined our factory recently. Not new to ASML, he brings a lot of experience to this role, including welding with his grandfather and building furniture with his father.

The ASML Linkou office opened in December 2003, but it was in 2007, with the completion of ASML’s purpose-built, company-owned properties outside the Netherlands, that Linkou was expanded as a strategic initiative to create an operational footprint in Asia.

Berliner Glas, a former ASML supplier, became part of ASML in 2020, and we are pleased to announce the closure of the S&SC workstream, a handover from the Berlin Operations Transformation Program, is a success – this is an important milestone, one we can all be proud of.

Guido Fakkeldij has been with ASML for more than a decade-and-a-half. After supporting our logistics center (5L) for several months, Guido joined again our EUV Factory. As of February, he has been part of the EF leadership team as Head of EXE Manufacturing and is responsible for bringing the manufacturing of our High-NA platform (EXE) to volume.

Since 2019 we have continued to strengthen our worldwide Customer Support (CS) by making our teams in all regions more self-sufficient and by improving the value we deliver to our customers.

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back. - Albert Camus

Ms. Taleen Tchalikian is the director of the Human Resources Department at Celestyal Cruises. Behind her bright and easy smile lie real drive and stick‐to‐itiveness. She exudes confidence and determination, but her warmth never wavers. “The foundation of our work at Celestyal Cruises is based on the viability of our words,” she says, “and our company’s reputation in the market is outstanding.”

So many outside influences are affecting a job right now. Whether you’re working from home or in an office, the nature of how we conduct ourselves, wearing a mask, social distancing, how we interrelate with our colleagues, is all in a new place.

If you’re hiring, chances are more than 35 percent of your applicants are Millennials. Americans born between 1982 and 2002 now make up more than one-third of the U.S. labor force.

Forget the Shredded Wheat and Grape Nuts, the kale, apple and cucumber smoothie…What does a great CTO eat for breakfast. Problems! The willingness to embrace problems, to tackle them and solve them, is the driving force behind what we do every day, and we should start right away, at breakfast, without hesitation or procrastination.

It's been a year since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States. Not the happiest of anniversaries, but an interesting one, nonetheless. Last year was an incredible test of our agility, our adaptability, and our endurance.

Many of us are finding that we have some extra time on our hands right now as we stay at home to help stem the spread of the coronavirus. From my perspective, April was supposed to unfurl into sunny afternoons at baseball games, family dinners, and Easter and Passover celebrations. But now, I feel as if every moment is a step further into the unknown.

Scott Hirsch, CEO of Media Direct, is an internet marketing pioneer widely recognized as an expert in e-commerce and the online marketplace. You don't need me to tell you we're going through hard times. Some of us might have thought we would be past the pandemic by Memorial Day or mid-summer, but Covid-19 cases are still prevalent across the U.S., and many businesses have been forced to file for bankruptcy. What we thought was going to be a speed bump has turned into a roadblock.

Scott O. Hirsch explains how to optimize your efficiency while working remotely DELRAY BEACH, FL / ACCESSWIRE / March 20, 2020 / The news media is following closely the trials and tribulations of Fortune 100 companies as they deal with ramifications of the COVID-19 outbreak. As a serial entrepreneur who's created multiple $100M brands, Scott O. Hirsch knows all about working under pressure. Working under pressure while working from home? That's a whole new ball of wax. Here are some of his tips.

We use the word “brand” quite often, and not just in the context of advertising and marketing – these days we regularly apply it to individuals.

Overall Murals’ SoHo double wallscape features Naomi Cambell on the west side of the street and Gisele Bündchen across Canal, each looking out toward Lafayette: this is the racing heart of Manhattan’s best neighborhood for innumerable luxury designer stores and home to Michelin star restaurants – including Hirohisa and Le Coucou – and the NOMO SOHO hotel. Ms. Cambell and Ms. Bündchen, both in crisp, photorealistic black and white – painted in the style of Chuck Close portraits of John Cage and Kate Moss – seem to stand upon the sky, each her own constellation, as glorious and impressive as the city itself.

We’ve left our footprint – a new, ruby-red Adidas Gazelle footprint, to be exact – on a new Overall Murals wall in the trendy West Hollywood/Fairfax neighborhood of Los Angeles. We’re immensely excited about the space, 3 large faces of a building on Clinton and Fairfax Ave. just blocks from beloved French restaurant ADKT LA and a hip, hop, skip, and jump (best done in a pair of Gazelles) from the famed Banana Bungalow Hotel in West Hollywood.

Greenwashing is also prevalent in the diamond industry. Alluvial diamond mining such as that practiced in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the Katanga province, is harmful to the environment for a number of reasons, including deforestation, pollution of rivers, exploitation of water resources and the unhealthy, unregulated and dangerous digging conditions miners face every day.

Since at least 2010, we’ve seen significant changes in customer expectations, and these expectations have altered the customer journey. In the current environment, and particularly with the exponential increase in people making purchases online since the advent of the pandemic, consumers now expect a few things from brands: a faster, better, smoother journey from introduction to a product/service through purchase to after-purchase support, transparency and good corporate citizenship.

First popularized by French jewelry giant Cartier during the Roaring Twenties, rose gold has seen a resurgence in popularity, particularly rose gold engagement rings, which seem to have eclipsed platinum as the current “rings of choice” across the USA thanks to their exquisite color and vintage feel.

With freelancing, you often have multiple projects going at once, sometimes from the same number of clients, and you have to make sure you get everything done and meet every deadline. Also, say no to nothing and tell EVERYONE you're freelancing. You never know if/when you're going to bump into someone who might hire you. Creative Circle works with the most talented creatives in the business! One is our beloved freelance writer, David Porter.

According to Gartner’s 2020 CMO Spend Survey, during the first year of the pandemic, a whopping 32 percent of marketing work formerly completed by an outside agency moved in-house. While the obvious benefit is cost-savings, this technique also increases efficiencies and allows strategic creative control. Because they are fully dedicated to one brand, in-house agency teams are generally smaller than marquee agencies of record, and a slimmer team equals less overhead. However, during major commun

The city is, after all these years, still a waking dream for me. I feel part of it now, as if it’s a giant room and I’m a battered La-Z-Boy recliner, maybe situated between the Dorilton and Verdi Square? I love it here so much. This city is a magic trick, more fireworks than sky. And, even after a year and nine months of COVID, I still love it as much as I always have.

We took 14,000 job orders, resulting in 3,825,848 candidate hours worked (that’s equivalent to 1,852 years of full-time work).

NEW YORK, Jan. 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM), operator of financial markets for over 11,000 U.S. and global securities, today announced OM Holdings International, Inc. (OTCQX: OMHI), a provider of a multi-tenant on-demand technology platform for the delivery of goods and services throughout the Caribbean, has qualified to trade on the OTCQX® Best Market. OM Holdings International, Inc. upgraded to OTCQX from the Pink® market.

Back in February 2019 W42ST published its 50th issue. No minor feat for an independent, full-color monthly as the embers of print media were almost ash. As part of the issue, Phil O'Brien and Ruth Walker asked we lucky few, the W42ST contributors to answer a few questions and show off a bit.

With the shift to solely digital marketing and the added pressure of tighter budgets, marketing leaders have been under more pressure to prove ROI on every dollar spent. Demand is growing for business intelligence experts, data scientists, and senior analysts.

Travel through Springsteen’s work and you’ll find a veritable King Solomon’s mine of Bible references, both Old and New Testament, where they illuminate bus drivers, cowboys, dealers, drag racers, dreamers, drivers, factory workers, gamblers, gypsies, lotharios, poets, prophets, single mothers, soldiers, stuntmen, veterans, waitresses and everyday heroes residing within the grooves of his oeuvre.

Just as your current customers will be receptive to your revised messaging, so will new potential customers. While you’re getting your digital marketing campaign ready to launch, look to build your list of new leads. Think of whatever you undertake this summer as a brand new start.

In perhaps the most memorable photograph in a compilation of same, Yenia Exposito-Linares, Frank’s wife, eight months pregnant and wearing bikini, floats face-up six feet or so below the surface of the sea, a constellation of bubbles as round as her belly rising from her mouth and nose. It is the book’s purest, most visceral image of hope.

Southards Pond Park’s nature paths diverge in its woods, and you and your dog can travel all of them, over streams, through tunnels…this is a park that invites you to explore its 19 forested, uncrowded acres.

Our public relations program to be implemented on behalf of Tech Mahindra will highlight several key elements to further position the company as an innovative global leader in the U.S. IT sector, with an emphasis on its convergent, digital, design experiences, innovation platforms and reusable assets.

Across the street, in the courtyard of a smoldering building smoke still whispering from its roof, a little boy flung fistfuls of feathery ashes toward a waning streetlight.

We have a twenty-six foot RV, seven surfboards, four wetsuits, three rash guards, one boogie board, five leashes, fifteen bars of surf wax, a television, a VCR, a camcorder, a CD player, ten movies, forty CDs, one copy of The Magnificent Peninsula...

GLK Student Fund identifies worthy Tanzanian students who are gifted and motivated but lack the means to finance an education and connects them with sponsors who can pay their school fees. In 2017 GLK Student Fund supported more than 60 students, increasing its scholarships by 36 percent.

Everyday people doing extraordinary things – this is the Heroes issue

Working with a copywriter? Here are a few tips to help him or her provide you with copy that sings. The written word. We started with cuneiform and we’ve arrived at Kindle, and even as each technological tour de force seems to leapfrog over the one you just figured out how to use, quality writing is still one of the core drivers of business communication. A picture may say a thousand words, but even with a knockout image you’re still going to have to write something, somewhere, somehow. We’re i

Whatever your passion, be it birding, feeding ducks, golf, picnicking, tennis, surfing or just strolling amongst flowers and trees, Long Island has a great park for you, and this guide shows you the parks accessible from some of the LIRR’s recently-modernized stations.

What does a substation do, and how does it work? There are 104 substations on the LIRR across all areas of the Rail Road’s electrified territory. At each of these substations, AC voltage is converted to DC voltage and safely fed to the third rail out on the tracks.

Beyond technological advances, the big story at Luxepack New York was green packaging, and the show included a Green Awards event, which underlines an industry trend toward sustainable packaging alternatives.

David A. Porter was a co-founder and the managing editor of 20 Pounds of Headlights, a literary annual published in San Francisco in 2004. He has published fiction, non-fiction and poetry in Alexandria Quarterly, Cold Mountain Review, Hotel Amerika, Nimrod, Orange Coast Review, Paterson Literary Review, The Santa Clara Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Surfer’s Journal and W42ST. Porter is a graduate of Rutgers University and San Francisco State University, where he received his MFA in Crea

On a blanket folded in half on the floor of his darkened nursery, I pull him to my chest. I press the heel of my palm against his breastbone.

You learn penury as you progress, the way your musculature expands after months in the gym. Remember the gym? That chain of luxurious shrines to your physique, spilled across Manhattan like a stack of chips fallen to the felt of a poker table.

It feels foolish to be this old. The world no longer beckons. It’s too late for a hit record, a best-seller, a massif of abdominal muscles buckling beneath the skin, even a semblance of bliss. The world is for the young; it must pass us by.

Across the street, in the courtyard of a smoldering building smoke still whispering from its roof, a little boy flung fistfuls of feathery ashes toward a waning streetlight.

David A. Porter is a graduate of Rutgers University and San Francisco State University, where he received his MFA in Creative Writing. Porter was a co-founder and the managing editor of 20 Pounds of Headlights , a literary annual published in San Francisco in 2004.

A short walk from our bus stop on Strovolou, the scent of honeysuckle begins. You grip my index finger as we walk up the empty street toward home.

The penultimate story in Protracted Adolescence, my first story collection (at this point it’s something I can’t seem to finish, think Chinese Democracy), “Heavy D Wants You Raw” is...

What I want to provide here are the liner notes to Alex Green’s contribution to the Great American songbook.

I wanted to be your favorite pop song. Jangling guitars and tambourines, Beatle boots and girl-group harmonies. Set me on repeat, play me over and over, the chorus you can’t shake out of your head.

We were sitting at the kitchen table in my apartment in the Outer Sunset. I’d been living with my friend Marybeth from Rutgers since August, when I’d moved to San Francisco from New Jersey.

Publicity photo of Azzan Yadin-Israel by Frank Veronsky and used with permission by the author In his dense and impeccably researched 2016 book, The Grace of God and the Grace of Man, Rutgers University Classics and Jewish Studies professor Azzan Yadin-Israel charts a rattlesnake speedway through the biblical references in Springsteen’s lyrics. Yadin-Israel’s pilgrimage takes us some of the songs Springsteen wrote before the release of Greetings from Asbury Park (1973) all the way through “Swal

If you hate indifference, Revolution and Crime should be your soundtrack. The album is alive with the fire and fury of The Alarm, Billy Bragg, The Clash, Gang of Youths, The Jam, Bob Marley, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, the first Pretenders album, Springsteen, early U2, X…

Imagine you're a skinny, music-besotted high schooler, somewhere in the wilds of suburban New Jersey, circa 1985.

Like most of Springsteen’s fans from New Jersey, particularly those of my generation, I was fortunate enough to grow up in a landscape Springsteen made mythic.

You may wonder, since we broke up so very long ago, probably before the turn of the century, officially, why I’ve chosen to write you now – why send a kiss-off letter nearly a decade after the body’s gone cold?

My wife, a longtime lover of Saabs, recently purchased a used two-door Saab convertible here in Cyprus. The car must be pretty old, as it only has a cassette player...

The latter half of the 1980s was still a time when an urgent, American rock song, played with skill and passion, and often without a whiff of synth, could find its way to radio, to MTV and onto the Billboard charts.

So this is what happened to the teenage dream…I started taking notes for this book way back in 2005, when I got my first iPod, an 80GB “brick”, which I still have and regularly use.

In 1982, following the release of his eponymous debut, a young Marshall Crenshaw told Kurt Loder, “that’s what I wanted: to have a job to do and have it be music”.

Marrying the crispness of British New Wave to the force and melodicism of Britpop, Fractured Life, the tour de force debut from Wessex youngsters Air Traffic...

I find it hard to restrain myself from hosannas when discussing the work of Greg Dulli. As a longtime and rabid fan of the Afghan Whigs and the Twilight Singers...