We've seen some pretty bizarre cover stories in our time, but this one might just take the cake! And it's not even The National Enquirer!!
There's obviously nothing wrong with being transgendered, but now Star magazine has taken it upon themselves to "expose" Bruce Jenner amidst all the reports of his separation from Kris!
Talk about a rumor!! Yeesh!!
According to their sources, this is the real reason behind their split and why Kris felt okay to say she regretted her divorce from Robert Kardashian. Their cover story further explains their accusations, reporting:
Makeably, the New York-based, custom-made goods marketplace that closed on seed funding from Great Oaks, 500 Startups and others earlier this year is now relaunching under a new, easier-to-remember name: Hatch. Alongside the rebranding, the company has also evolved the process by which consumers tweak and “remix” the products offered for sale.
The site, founded by ex-Googlers Ryan Hayward and Anastasia Leng, is similar to CustomMade in that it’s an attempt to connect everyday shoppers with artisans capable of producing custom goods.
But this summer, Hatch (then Makeably), made a slight shift to differentiate itself somewhat from its competitors. Leng explained that the majority of shoppers looking for custom items weren’t reaching out to artisans with detailed requests sprung out of their own minds, but were rather “remixing” existing products with small change requests. Around 90 percent were asking for minor adjustments – like changing the base material used in a product. For example, they might request a necklace in gold instead of silver. They may have also asked for slight changes to designs or sizes, among other things.
To encourage this culture of remixing, the company changed the site to better support user behavior. In a newly added side panel, customers were told to “Make it Yours” and could fill in a form where they selected the changes they wanted to request.
Today, Leng tells us Hatch is evolving things yet again. “Based on what we’ve learned from our buyers and makers, we’ve moved the customization process directly into the photograph,” she says. Users can now interact with hotspots over a product in order to make better decisions about how to modify it, and they’re presented with visuals about what some of their inputs would look like after doing so.
At present, users can select options from visual cues the makers themselves provide (like color or type of wood), they can choose from a drop down menu of options for things that don’t require visual cues (like size), or they can describe what they’d like (e.g. a message they’d like engraved), Leng explains. Soon, they’ll be able to drag their own hotspot over a product to better communicate to a maker what they’d like to personalize, too.
To do customization right, Leng thinks Hatch should make it easier for customers to understand what they can change, see what the change looks like, and immediately see the final pricing. “These are the principles that make your experience with a service like Moo, NikeID or event CustomInk a great one. But it’s not obvious how you visualize customization when you’re dealing with products that are made by a large number of individual artisans and makers around the world, as well as products that have never been created in the exact variation you want (but which easily could be),” she says.
In early tests, the company found user feedback about the new process to be positive. “We kept hearing users describe their behavior as not one of buying, but that of designing and creating,” says Leng. (You can try it here with customizing these 3D letters or these wooden coasters.)
Today, Hatch offers 1,500 live products on its site, on average around two to three per maker, and the average price point has stabilized at $112, which Leng also notes is six times higher than Etsy’s. Eighty-five percent of makers have had at least one inquiry, 40 percent have made one sale or more, and 60 percent are full-time makers not hobbyists.
Meanwhile, on the buyers’ side, 30 percent are repeats, and 98 percent of those make their second purchases from a different category than their first. Since May, Hatch has grown 30 percent month-over-month in new makers and products, and has doubled its user base. The company doesn’t disclose users or revenue, but says that all orders today have come through organic search or referral traffic.
And now that the team is comfortable and has made the sell side of the business work, they’re going to focus on building up the demand side in the months ahead.
However, the question here is whether the maker movement and the market for those in search of custom goods online is large enough today to keep sites like Hatch afloat for as long as it would need to see this thing through. It’s also interesting that they compare themselves to Etsy, a much larger maker marketplace which recently went through growing pains of its own, despite achieving profitability back in 2009. Hatch may have successfully market-tested how custom goods sales can work online, but there’s nothing stopping a larger player from implementing similar technology of their own (or even acquiring Hatch if the startup runs out of runway, perhaps).
In other news, Hatch was previously working out of a maker co-working space in Brooklyn called 3rd Ward, which shut down earlier this month, after giving Hatch less than a week to find a new home. They’ve now put an offer down on a space in Chelsea, which would bring them into Manhattan.
The polls say it, the pols say it, the pundits say it. The government shutdown and the brinksmanship over default -- which may or may not be (temporarily) resolved by the time you read this -- has been an unmitigated disaster for the Republican Party. Senator John McCain’s decades-old joke about the popularity of Republicans in Congress --”we’re down to paid staffers and blood relatives”-- is approaching arithmetical accuracy.
All of which tell us...a lot less than it might about the electoral prospects of the GOP.
The party had already begun an agonizing reappraisal of its condition after the 2012 presidential contest, where Republicans lost the popular vote for the fifth time in the last six presidential elections. It might seem as if the recent damage to the party’s brand, combined with the demographic challenges of a younger, browner and blacker electorate, all but dooms the GOP to years in the wilderness, unless the centrists wrest control from the party’s more militant (or zealous, or screw-loose) wing.
But maybe not. Why not? Consider, for openers, the Power of the Purse. Once upon a time, the big business/Chamber of Commerce wing of the GOP held the key to its finances. It was a big reason why the Midwest/small town element of the party could never get its longtime hero, Ohio Senator Robert Taft, nominated for president. (When Taft lost for the third time, in 1952, he said, “every Republican nominee since 1936 has been picked by the Chase Manhattan Bank.”)
In political terms, that hasn’t been true since Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964. The rise of the party in the South, and its rules that give extra convention delegates to states that vote Republican, have shifted the axis of power in a way that Republicans of earlier generations would have found inconceivable.
More recently, the financial power has shifted as well. With campaign-finance laws now essentially gutted, wealthy ideologues can provide more than enough cash to fuel a cause or a candidacy (as casino mogul Sheldon Adelson did for Newt Gingrich's presidential bid last year). If the pin-striped wing of the GOP thinks it can force Republicans to the center by threatening to cut off campaign contributions, it’s an empty threat. In fact, the more likely threat is that conservative outside groups like Heritage Action and Club for Growth will fund the primary challenges to any Republican incumbent who looks to move to the center.
Bottom line: Between the Internet and the deep pockets of the Koch Brothers and company, a candidate of the party’s most militant wing will not lack for resources.
But, doesn’t this mean that the GOP is on its way to nominate a presidential candidate so far out of the mainstream that he or she will go down to a defeat that will make losers to Goldwater and George McGovern look like FDR and Reagan?
Maybe. But consider: the latest shutdown-default farce has had another consequence even more dramatic than the unpopularity of the Republicans; it has made the public even more cynical about the whole process of government. (For the first time, polls have found voters saying they’d like to throw out all the rascals, including their own elected representative).
And if the public moves into the next two election cycles with an intense conviction that government is a cross between incompetent, brain-dead, and malevolent, which political party benefits from that thinking? When government fails, it may not matter in the long term whether the hem was held by Democrats (in the case of the Vietnam war) or Republicans (Watergate). A general sense that government cold screw up a two-car funeral is exactly the belief that is at the heart of the Tea Party movement.
If you add to that the possibility that the flirtation with default may further weaken our still-weak economy, you have a potential political climate where the Tea Party faction can say,“I told you so!”
Is this a prediction? Of course not. Call it simply a cautionary note, and yet another reminder that the political certainties of one year can look awfully foolish three years later.
Contact: Mary-Ann Twist JCR@bus.wisc.edu 608-255-5582 University of Chicago Press Journals
A particular type of consumer enjoys stories with plots, characters, and imagery that allow them to get lost in the narrative, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
"Stories have the power to change people's behavior," write authors Tom van Laer (ESCP Europe Business School), Ko de Ruyter (Maastricht University), Luca M. Visconti (ESCP Europe Business School), and Martin Wetzels (Maastricht University). "Contemporary examples include the persuasive power of Latin American telenovelas, which influence family planning choices and enrollment in adult literacy programs, as well as Internet users sharing written stories, photos, and videos about themselves and their market experiences."
The authors wanted to understand what kinds of stories allowed consumers to mentally enter a story, a phenomenon called "narrative transportation." They also wondered which kinds of consumers were more likely to identify with the narratives. They reviewed articles written in five different languages that dealt with the theme of narrative transportation and tested consumer reactions to those stories.
They found that consumers were most likely to engage with realistic stories with identifiable characters and plots that easily lead to mental imagery. They also identified five characteristics that made participants more able to be transported: familiarity, attention, ability to fantasize, higher education, and female gender.
"Consumers who are 'transported' are changed by their experience. People who lose themselves in a story accept the story is true and relate to the characters," the authors write. "As the Hopi proverb goes, 'The one who tells the story rules the world,' and now we know how."
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Tom van Laer, Ko de Ruyter, Luca M. Visconti, and Martin Wetzels."The Extended Transportation-Imagery Model: A Meta-Analysis of the Antecedents and Consequences of Consumers' Narrative Transportation." Journal of Consumer Research: February 2014. For more information, contact Tom van Laer (tvanlaer@escpeurope.eu) or visit http://ejcr.org/.
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What makes telenovelas so popular?
Public release date: 15-Oct-2013 [
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Contact: Mary-Ann Twist JCR@bus.wisc.edu 608-255-5582 University of Chicago Press Journals
A particular type of consumer enjoys stories with plots, characters, and imagery that allow them to get lost in the narrative, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
"Stories have the power to change people's behavior," write authors Tom van Laer (ESCP Europe Business School), Ko de Ruyter (Maastricht University), Luca M. Visconti (ESCP Europe Business School), and Martin Wetzels (Maastricht University). "Contemporary examples include the persuasive power of Latin American telenovelas, which influence family planning choices and enrollment in adult literacy programs, as well as Internet users sharing written stories, photos, and videos about themselves and their market experiences."
The authors wanted to understand what kinds of stories allowed consumers to mentally enter a story, a phenomenon called "narrative transportation." They also wondered which kinds of consumers were more likely to identify with the narratives. They reviewed articles written in five different languages that dealt with the theme of narrative transportation and tested consumer reactions to those stories.
They found that consumers were most likely to engage with realistic stories with identifiable characters and plots that easily lead to mental imagery. They also identified five characteristics that made participants more able to be transported: familiarity, attention, ability to fantasize, higher education, and female gender.
"Consumers who are 'transported' are changed by their experience. People who lose themselves in a story accept the story is true and relate to the characters," the authors write. "As the Hopi proverb goes, 'The one who tells the story rules the world,' and now we know how."
###
Tom van Laer, Ko de Ruyter, Luca M. Visconti, and Martin Wetzels."The Extended Transportation-Imagery Model: A Meta-Analysis of the Antecedents and Consequences of Consumers' Narrative Transportation." Journal of Consumer Research: February 2014. For more information, contact Tom van Laer (tvanlaer@escpeurope.eu) or visit http://ejcr.org/.
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| Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The future of Nicky Hayden appears to have been decided. Jorge Martinez, boss of the Aspar team, has decided to drop Aprilia in favor of Honda, according to German language website Speedweek.com. Aspar is set to make an announcement later this week on its future, and that decision appears to be that the Spanish team will be running Honda’s production racer RCV1000R for next season.
The decision was made almost inevitable once it was announced that current Aprilia racing boss Gigi Dall’Igna would be leaving the Noale factory to join Ducati. Dall’Igna and Martinez had a strong working relationship dating back to the years in which Aspar ran 125 and 250cc team, and Aspar’s faith in Aprilia’s MotoGP program was based on the strength of that relationship.
With Dall’Igna gone, that leaves Aprilia’s MotoGP program in disarray – at least, temporarily – and makes the Honda production racer the best option. Aspar also had the option to run a Ducati GP13 as a customer bike with the spec Dorna software, but with Dall’Igna just arrived and little chance of any updates to that bike, it was not a promising option.
The decision was made despite a last-ditch effort by Aprilia to retain Aspar. New Aprilia Racing boss Romano Albesiano had flown to Malaysia to try to persuade Aspar to stick with the Noale factory, but the uncertainty over Aprilia’s future in racing meant his efforts were in vain.
American Honda’s financial contribution to help get Nicky Hayden back on a Honda helped to make the choice for the Honda easier. Whether HRC also helped to sweeten the deal is unknown, but of the five bikes Honda have already built, only two had been sold, one to the Gresini Honda team for Scott Redding, and one for the Cardion AB team for Karel Abraham.
Having four bikes on the grid instead of two will make developing the machine much easier, especially with a proven veteran like Nicky Hayden on board.
Aspar’s defection from Aprilia leaves only the PBM team with any links still to Aprilia. The British team is currently racing Aprilia’s RSV4-based engine in their own chassis, but there have been rumors that Paul Bird’s team may drop the Aprilia lump in favor of something else.
The Aprilia engine is handicapped by the spec software, as the engine is designed to make use of the butterfly exhaust valve for improved mid-range, but Magneti Marelli have not implemented software control of this yet, nor are they likely to in the near future, other algorithms being given priority.
With the functionality list being determined by the popularity of an item, requests for functionality to help one specific engine technology tend to be put to the back of the queue.
Who Hayden’s team mate will be is as yet unknown. Aleix Espargaro has been released to the NGM Forward team for 400,000 euros, 300,000 of which comes from the Forward team, and 100,000 of which comes from Espargaro himself, in the form of him foregoing his bonus for winning the title of best CRT rider.
Eugene Laverty had been linked to the ride, but Laverty was an Aprilia appointee, and with Aspar switching to Honda, he may not have a place in the team. According to Speedweek, the list of possible riders could also include Yonny Hernandez or Hiroshi Aoyama.
Current rider Randy de Puniet looks set to take on a full-time role as tester for Suzuki, who will be making their return to MotoGP in 2015, if all goes to plan.
She may be famous as a pop princess, but Britney Spears is itching to settle down with a large family.
In an interview with Germany's RTL network, the "Work B**ch" singer shared, "I'd like to have more kids, settle down...have kids—maybe twins—and get married. That would be nice."
Sharing that her down-time is devoid of glamor, the 31-year-old songstress admitted, "I really don't go clubbing, I don't do that. I like to stay at home, I like watching movies and eating lots of popcorn."
Later, Brit said that her upcoming very personal album will be titled Britney Jean, which is what her family calls her. "It's like a term of endearment. I just wanted to share that with my fans," she told London's 95-106 Capital FM. Check out her translated interview below.
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